• Michelle Kung writes up Toronto from the perspective of plays taking to the screen en masse, like Tracy Letts’s “Killer Joe”… [Speakeasy]
• …which Liddell Entertainment, by the way, picked up at the fest. [Variety]
• Sasha Stone on life after the 2011 fall festival circuit. [Awards Daily]
This year’s Competition strand of the Venice Film comprised 23 films — a large-ish number by major festival standards, and yet it still feels remarkably thin.
Admittedly, I’m viewing the field with a slight eyepatch on, having only seen 17 of the 23 films. Yet compared to last year’s lineup — where the successes ranged from higher-profile American auteur works like “Black Swan” and “Meek’s Cutoff” to more rarefied critical hits like “Silent Souls” and “Post Mortem,” with several heavily discussed possibilities in between — it feels this year like the Lido conversation has centered on the same small handful of titles for the past week.
Last year, Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” was something of a shock Golden Lion winner; this year, anything that extensively discussed would be in the thick of consideration. As I wrote earlier, the extreme front-loading of the schedule, combined with the lack of breakout critical sleepers in the festival’s quiet second week, has made for a rather static buzz wave.
(Thoughts on this year’s contenders, and my own list of predictions and preferences, after the jump.)
With two days to go until wrap-up, and a host of journalists having defected to Toronto, one can feel the air not-so-slowly hissing out of the Venice balloon. And while this certainly has its upsides — it no longer takes half an hour to get an espresso as the festival café, for example — it’s difficult to escape the sense that we’re drinking the dregs of the film programme. (If I had a euro for every time I’ve heard the term “front-loaded” uttered around the Lido…)
Or perhaps not — the festival didn’t start to a tune of critical consensus, and it’s not ending that way, either. Last night, the last of the heavyweight Euro auteurs in competition, Aleksandr Sokurov, unveiled his take on Goethe’s “Faust” — and while I thought it a mostly agonizing misstep for the Russian formalist (with a bevy of walkouts suggesting others agreed), ecstatic applause all the way through the closing credits didn’t bode well for critical consensus. Sure enough, Sight & Sound’s Kieron Corless tweeted this morning that the film is “flawless,” and online bookies appear to be knocking down its Golden Lion odds. To each his own cinema, and all that — but I’ll happily let others have mine, in this case.
I was hoping to get William Friedkin’s “Killer Joe” here at Telluride, but Guy will have a chance to see it in Venice if he sees fit. I’m very much looking forward to it for some reason, and I dig the poster that hit the net today. Check out the full (grossly watermarked courtesy of Coming Soon) image after the jump.
On a warm Saturday afternoon in Telluride last year, I sat in the crowded Chuck Jones Cinema and felt the warmth in the room as Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” screened for its first audience of the year. Six months later, at the end of a road with plenty of twists and turns, the film’s producers held aloft the Oscar for Best Picture.
In 2008, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” after previewing in Telluride, screened on the very same day as Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” at the Toronto International Film Festival. Six and 18 months later respectfully, same results. In 2007, Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men” started its victory march at Cannes before moving into autumn fests. In 2004, Paul Haggis’s “Crash” bowed for Toronto audiences before a summer 2005 release and an eventual Oscar win.
The obvious connection here is the festival circuit, particularly the fall festival circuit, which has become a significant launching ground for awards contenders in the last half-decade. And starting in two days with Guy’s Venice coverage, the 2011 fall festival season — and the awards potential it is sure to bring with it — officially kicks off around these parts.