Fox Searchlight Dominates Telluride As ‘Shape Of Water’ And ‘Battle Of The Sexes’ Make Oscar Pitches

“Downsizing” shrunk its Awards chances by hitting the high elevation
On paper, bringing Alexander Payne’s epic “Downsizing” to Telluride was a no-brainer. The patrons have loved his last two here, “The Descendants” and “Nebraska,” and the filmmaker is a regular attendee even when he doesn’t have a picture to screen. Unfortunately for Payne and Paramount, the film simply didn’t play. As the weekend continued, the negative buzz grew like an uncomfortable drumbeat. The studio will hope the film is appreciated more in Toronto, but it may want to consider either releasing it sooner than Christmas or pushing the film to 2018 with a more commercial advertising campaign to help salvage a reported $80 million production budget (just some unsolicited advice I’m throwing out there).

Get ready for lots of snubs in the Best Actress race
Anyone looking at the upcoming season realized the Best Actress race is going to be extremely competitive, but frankly, this is murderer’s row. We now know that Bening (‘Liverpool’) and Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”) are major players. Stone also has a chance with “Battle Of The Sexes,” but with Kate Winslet (“Wonder Wheel”), Meryl Streep (“The Post”), Michelle Williams (Ridley Scott’s “All The Money in the World”), Judi Dench (“Victoria and Abdul”) and McDormand (superb in ‘Three Billboards’) in the mix, among others, it’s gonna be tough to make the cut (and one reason why I believe “Lady Bird” star Saoirse Ronan would only be a real contender in a much weaker year).

Foreign Language Film is still wide open
Last year “Toni Erdmann” charmed industry and Academy members at Telluride giving it a leg up in the Best Foreign Language Film race (until that insane Muslim ban pushed “Salesman” through at the end). 2017 saw Chile’s “A Fantastic Woman” (truly fantastic), Israeli’s “Foxtrot” and Lebanon’s “The Insult” each earning significant buzz over the weekend. Cannes winner “The Square” and runner-up “BPM (Beats Per Minute)” will play TIFF and NYFF instead, but Mark Johnson and his screening committee for the Foreign Film branch have a big job ahead of themselves with just three “saves” when cutting submissions down to the shortlist (which always seems to be the case). More importantly, none of the Telluride FLF players wowed enough to make them the current frontrunner.

Next up? Toronto where “Suburbicon” and “mother!” will screen on this side of the Atlantic, Harvey will unveil “The Current War” and “The Upside” and Bleecker Street will have high hopes for “Breathe.”