We have The King’s Speech with a well-deserved total of eight (Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and two Best Supporting Actor nominations) but then you have small treasures that seriously made the grade: both the SXSW showcased Monsters, Tribeca preemed The Arbor received six nominations, while the Sundance displayed Four Lions grabs a total of five. For a list by list category including the stellar Documentary category is listed below.
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.
Knowing Quentin Tarantino's appreciation for films that are "out there": if I had to do some really early predictions here, I'd say that the Gold and Silver Lion front-runners are in Alex De La Iglesia's bizarro fantasy film A Sad Trumpet Ballad, Pablo Larrain's Post Mortem or Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (a filmmaker we recently profiled in our American New Wave 25 series - she spent more than a decade in Austin's film scene). I'd also add put Abdellatif Kechiche's Black Venus high up on any awards list, especially the Lido - it's a film I've been pegging for Venice since the film went into production.
Now that all bets are off on Terrence Malick showing up on the Lido, and Wong Kar-wai's The Grand Master appears to be on the same no-show list (the fest have announced that Andrew Lau's The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen has their second opening night flick celebrating the anniversary of Bruce Lee’s 70th birthday).
What we do know from the list below is that along with Black Swan, we have Barney's Version, The King's Speech, Potiche and The Town heading to Venice. The Debt is likely to debut there as well, joining Helen Mirren in The Tempest, but for some reason I'm seeing it more as a Telluride item. Among the world premieres that will service the Toronto public well, we have a pair of buyer titles in Little White Lies and The Conspirator and we have the shot in the streets of Toronto, Casino Jack (no longer being called Bagman). Among the off the radar selections, I'd say not many were expecting Emilio Estevez's The Way, Barry Blaustein's Peep World, David M. Rosenthal's Janie Jones.