There are still plenty of "to be announced" surprise films including Danny Boyle's 127 Hours that will be unveiled hours before they screen, but for the most part, this year's Telluride festival can claim the North American premiere status away from TIFF on a large number of Cannes items (this includes Michelangelo Frammartino's must see, still unsold, docu-essay Le Quattro Volte) and they can also claim first dibs on world preems for acquisition titles such as: Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal's Chico and Rita (see pic above), Justin Chadwick's audience tickler The First Grader, the Dmitry Vasyukov with Werner Herzog doc Happy People: A Year in the Tagia and Errol Morris' Tabloid.
As a result of a bizarre 2009 production year, TIFF is the happy recipient of some premium titles which include the world premieres to some of my most anticipated films this year in: Mike Mill's Beginners, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, Andrucha Waddington's Lope and Rowan Joffe's Brighton Rock. Then we have titles that are coming from this year's Sundance, Cannes or both (Blue Valentine picks up the trifecta honor) and then we have titles that come to us from out of nowhere with Michael Winterbottom's The Trip and Richard Ayoade's debut film, Submarine.
I spent all of last week divulging some of films that I expect to be in Cannes this year, and Screen Daily happened to do the same. There are a good number of films that are mentioned of both sites' lists, but I mention about twenty films that the trade makes no mention of, and of course they have got a long list as well of films that I either passed on as potential selections or I was totally oblivious as to their existence.
Joe Dante will be presenting not one, but two films at the Lido. The Venice Film Festival will be presenting Dante's latest film - the 3D supernatural called The Hole and will include a re-cut showing for The Movie Orgy - Ultimate Version. The stitched together pic, that Dante made during his student days, is a back-breaking 280-minute look at the B films from the 50's and 60's which I'm sure would be a blast for folks like Quentin Tarantino.
Kudos go to the producers who have the insight to hire a two time in three years Oscar-nominated screenwriter (The Queen and Frost/Nixon) but the reason why I'm handing the Lemon of the Week to Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli is for their loyalty to the screenwriting pair of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade who will once again work with the incoming scribe that is hired.