Reprinted from Deadline Hollywood by Pete Hammond on September 20, 2020.
As expected Chloe Zhao’s Venice Golden Lion winner Nomadland took the often Oscar-predictive Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award announced this morning. Regina King’s One Night In Miami was second, and Beans was third in the slimmed down competition at the fest which had about a sixth of the number of films in play than usual. That also meant far fewer Oscar hopefuls aiming to get this prize.
As the Fall Festival season, such as it is in the age of Covid, now continues on to the just started New York Film Festival , (which opened Thursday with Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, the 68 minute first installment of a series of essentially TV movies that was originally to have played Cannes) and then moves to London and the AFI Fest in October, the latter opening with streamer Amazon’s latest, a modern day film noir with an outstanding performance by Rachel Brosnahan in a movie called I’m Your Woman, this has indeed been a crazy kickoff to what is normally the beginning of the Oscar movie awards season. Actually it has proven to be anything but the normal awards season kickoff with only a mere handful, if that much, of genuine contenders promising to be remembered half a year from now when voting finally begins for the two-month delayed 2020 Oscars. Bottom line, despite what some eager beaver pundits would have you believe, this Oscar season, coming after the end of Emmy season tonight, will not get going in earnest until at least November after the election, and of course even that cautious start date is dependent of where we are Covid-wise, Theatre-wise, and Content-wise. …
Another movie that blew me away at TIFF, already came with real cred as the Silver Lion award winner at Venice a week earlier. Michel Franco’s devastating New Order, a film so remarkably timely considering the protests in the streets of this country currently, is set in an unrest-riddled Mexico City setting up a battle between the haves and the have nots. For its sheer importance and incredibly prescient storyline this film should have actually been knocked up a notch by the Venice jury and given the top Golden Lion (that went to Nomadland), but I suspect that when, and if, it is selected as the official Mexican entry for Oscar’s Best International Film it will become a major contender. It is universal, and considering what is going especially in America now, and (hopefully not) after the November 3rd election when some are predicting even more intense unrest and violence, it is positively scary and believable that what is just a movie in New Order is very plausibly what could happen for real. This is a WOW, and an urgent warning. Franco, who I interviewed in Cannes five years ago when he was in competition with the Tim Roth starrer Chronic another very disturbing film, is the real deal. …
