Beyond Telluride Film Fest: Oscar Buzz

25 Nov Beyond Telluride Film Fest: Oscar Buzz

Golden Oscars (from Show Biz)

The girl can’t help it. I try to look away, but find myself drawn like a moth to light to articles speculating about films that might make it to the Oscars. Everyone who attended knows #40 was the best Telluride Film Festival ever. Here’s my review, which you might want to read before you read this terrific wrap up from Roger Friedman’s ShowBiz 411: Hollywood To The Hudson. Story includes buzz about a number of films that picked up energy over Labor Day weekend in Telluride.

The Oscars are coming, and the drumbeat is starting to get louder. Here’s what’s happening: On Monday we will see one of the two remaining films which has yet to be screened. That’s David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” with Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Christian Bale. Russell has been denied awards for “The Fighter” and “Silver Linings Playbook” in the last couple of years. So “American Hustle” is much anticipated.

That leaves just “The Scorsese,” as it is known: “The Wolf of Wall Street” is being screened on Monday night for ‘friends and family.’ Not press. After it’s shown, Scorsese heads to the Marrakesh Film Festival, where he’s head of the jury. He doesn’t get back until the first week of December. “Wolf” has a very late premiere: December 17th. But it also follows some other last minute Scorsese entries like “Gangs of New York.” Oh the drama!

Other than those two, everything else has been seen is being watched either on DVD or in the slow rollout of screenings. In the last 24 hours I’ve viewed Spike Jonze’s excellent, off beat highly inventive “Her” on DVD and Peter Berg’s ferocious “Lone Survivor” on a big screen. Each of them is terrific. And that poses the question: what the heck are we going to do? There are too many good films and not enough slots (except at the Golden Globes, where you can be a comedy/musical without a song or a laugh).

Here are the players, so to speak, in no order.

It would seem like four films are ‘in’ without a doubt. Maybe. They would be “Gravity,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Blue Jasmine,” and “The Butler.”

You will want to continue reading here (for more titles that emerged from Telluride)…