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What Lies Ahead: Venice, Telluride, Toronto

The real fun starts when looking at the lists that have been released by the first three film-festivals of the season: Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. Of course Telluride famously does not “release” a lineup, instead it announces it as a surprise on the day the festival starts. But, one can read tea leaves: since Toronto and the New York Film Festival have announced their lineups, to the extent a movie that hasn’t been seen yet is listed there as a “New York premiere” or a “Canada premiere,” you can guess it may be in Colorado first.

Venice

But, what about Italy? They’re starting their fest with La La Land, from the director of Whiplash, Damien Chazelle. Also listed are Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (he did Drive and Demolition in past years), and Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time. Chazelle’s film is a musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as she’s trying to live out her dream as an actress. While musicals have not fared well of late with the Oscars, they do like the subject matter. Meanwhile, Malick (whose movie looks to be an eccentric documentary about the story of the universe) and Villeneuve (about mysterious spacecraft arriving on Earth) have never really found space with the Academy, either, but that’s pretty much what people said about Birdman the year it premiered in Venice and we know how that turned out.

In fact, as Oscar lovers well know by now, basically every past Best Picture winner has been seen by the time Toronto announces the People’s Choice Award, with most of them making a debut or an appearance in either Venice or Telluride.

Telluride

Moving on to the Rocky Mountains, it’s hard to tell what we can expect from Telluride right now (though a lot of the ones we’ve already listed from Sundance, Cannes, and Venice will surely be there). The question is what will be the Steve Jobs like surprise? Of course Jobs ended up going nowhere fast at the Oscars, but it was nevertheless a movie to consider. Even better, is there going to be a Room at Telluride? Could that be Clint Eastwood’s Sully, about the fated United Airlines flight that landed on the Hudson? Something always makes a debut and a splash there, and it normally hangs around the Oscar conversation.

Rest assured, we will be covering Telluride right here, daily on Box Office Prophets over Labor Day weekend, so we will dissect the tea leaves as soon as they are uncovered.

Toronto

And when it comes to Toronto, we have at least a few potential Oscar contenders that will make their debut there. Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral, based on the Phillip Roth novel about destructive political allegiances, is on the list, while the psychological thriller Elle, about a powerful business woman attacked in her home, has been mentioned (though, it being foreign language, I have my doubts).

That said, TIFF’s broad lineup does permit it to show case some of the best of world cinema, and numerous Best Foreign Language Film submissions, as well as eventual nominees, are routinely seen there. This year, Chile’s Neruda, by Pablo Larrain, will play north of the border.

Looking Ahead to the Rest

Of course, the three first festivals don’t have the final say. Even though they have premiered the eventual Best Picture winners for the last few years, serious nominees have premiered after. Just last year, The Revenant came within a bear paw of dethroning the festivals, and NYFF’s Bridge of Spies and AFI Fest’s The Big Short had strong pushes as well.

So in NYFF, aside from some of the above-mentioned names, you’ll have Ava Duvarney’s documentary The 13th as the opening, and Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women will have the centerpiece spot that Bridge of Spies had last year. NYFF is also known for adding a surprise here or there (last year it was The Martian, which we had already seen in Toronto), so you never know.

And of course the sky is the limit beyond that - Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese have movies this year that will come out late in the year, and the now-perennial Best Picture actor Michael Keaton will be Ray Kroc in the Weinstein Company’s The Founder towards the end. I, of course, infamously already had it as a Best Picture contender in my monkey-throwing-darts column after the end of last ceremony.

That’s the landscape so far, folks. While it has been a relatively sleepy year so far in terms of released contender movies, it is really a promising and exciting lineup in the months to come. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that the winners of the major acting categories have not been released in theaters yet, and that, if any of them have been seen at all, they come from either Birth of Nation, Manchester by the Sea, or Loving.

Welcome back to the BOP Oscars column, and see you in two weeks or so from the sleepy Colorado mountains! May the odds be ever in your favorite movie’s favor.

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