I have a pretty good idea of how tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday night will probably unfold here in Telluride, but I need more time to sift through things. It’s 7:44 pm now, and I have to scoot in order to be 15 minutes late for a dinner date with Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling at La Marmotte. 11:30 pm: Lovely dinner. The Amazon gang (Ted Hope, Bob Berney, et. al.) sat near our table; Brad Bird and a couple of others were over in the corner. The cool night air filled our lungs as we stepped out of La Marmotte. I strolled up to the Abel Gance outdoor theatre and watched the end of The Social Network, which was being shown as part of the festival’s Rooney Mara tribute. Then over to the Sheridan Bar to say hello to Kris Tapley, Eugene Hernandez, Greg Ellwood, Ryan Werner and Sony Classics co-president Tom Bernard. And then over to the Hotel Telluride for a lobby chat with Deadline’s Pete Hammond and award-season strategist Lisa Taback.

Daniel Craig is playing James Bond in Spectre and in one more film after that, but when that’s done I’d be hugely in favor of Tom Hardy taking over. Hardy looks dangerous. He doesn’t have Sean Connery‘s classy-casino-player handsomeness but he has that simmering brute beast thing. No one would have any trouble believing that Hardy’s 007 could not only kick OddJob’s ass but snap his neck like a breadstick. Yesterday Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson wrote that Hardy is gaining on Idris Elba as the most popular Bond contender among English bookmakers. What do gamblers or bookies know? Nothing. Okay, maybe something. But the instant I imagined Hardy as Bond I knew. He’s perfect.

Is there any way to be a Hardy-over-Elba guy without sounding like a racist? No, there isn’t. Right now Glenn Kenny is starting to tweet something acidic and disdainful about the subterranean meaning of this post. As everyone knows by now Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz recently said that Elba is “a bit too rough to play the part…it’s not a color issue…I think he is probably a bit too ‘street’ for Bond.” Everyone presumed that Horowitz used “street” as a substitute for “urban.” I think he meant to say that Elba doesn’t look particularly upmarket — that he lacks that special 007 vibe of a professional killer with a certain elite urbanity and polish. Is that also a racist thought? 

I only know that Hardy, to me, looks like a much more threatening guy than Elba. Elba is rugged-looking enough but at the same time there’s something a little too amiable and moderate about him. He seems fairly willing to listen, open to reason — to some kind of civilized solution. But when Hardy gets that look in his eyes you have a feeling he could do anything. He could bite someone’s nose off.
Maybe I’ll feel differently after I see Elba’s performance in Beasts of No Nation, but I have this gut feeling about Hardy. He’s the guy….if he wants the role. And I wouldn’t blame him for a second if he doesn’t.

Hollywood Elsewhere landed in Durango about 25 minutes ago, or around 11:15 am. Half-blue, half-cloudy skies. Warmish. The Telluride Film Festival slate has been announced, and I’m flirting with the idea of watching Robert Frank‘s Cocksucker Blues for the first time in my life. Invitations to dinners and whatnot are hitting the inbox. Meryl Streep and the Suffragette gang (minus the pregnant Carey Mulligan) are throwing a small party this weekend. The usual scenic two-hour drive to Telluride awaits.

· CAROL (d. Todd Haynes, U.S., 2015)
· AMAZING GRACE (d. Sydney Pollack, U.S., 1972/2015)
· ANOMALISA (d. Charlie Kaufman, U.S., 2015)
· BEAST OF NO NATION (d. Cary Fukunaga, U.S., 2015)
· HE NAMED ME MALALA (d. Davis Guggenheim, U.S., 2015)
· STEVE JOBS (d. Danny Boyle, U.S., 2015)
· IXCANUL (d. Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala, 2015)
· BITTER LAKE (d. Adam Curtis, U.K., 2015)
· ROOM (d. Lenny Abrahamson, England, 2015)
· BLACK MASS (d. Scott Cooper, U.S., 2015)
· SUFFRAGETTE (d. Sarah Gavron, U.K., 2015)
· SPOTLIGHT (d. Tom McCarthy, U.S., 2015)
· RAMS (d. Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland, 2015)
· MOM AND ME (d. Ken Wardrop, Ireland, 2015)
· VIVA (d. Paddy Breathnach, Ireland, 2015)
· TAJ MAJAL (d. Nicolas Saada, France-India, 2015)
· SITI (d. Eddie Cahyono, Indonesia, 2015)
· HEART OF THE DOG (d. Laurie Anderson, U.S. 2014)
· 45 YEARS (d. Andrew Haigh, England, 2015)
· SON OF SAUL (d. Lázló Nemes, Hungary, 2015)
· ONLY THE DEAD (d. Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag, U.S.- Australia, 2015)
· TAXI (d. Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2015)
· HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (d. Kent Jones, U.S., 2015)
· TIME TO CHOOSE (d. Charles Ferguson, U.S., 2015)
· MARGUERITE (d. Xavier Giannoli, France, 2015)
· TIKKUN (d. Avishai Sivan, Israel, 2015)
 
The 2015 Silver Medallion Awards, given to recognize an artist’s significant contribution to the world of cinema, go to filmmaker Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) who will present his latest film, STEVE JOBS; documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis (THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES) who will present his latest work, BITTER LAKE; and actress Rooney Mara (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) who will present CAROL. Films will be shown following the on-stage interview and medallion presentation.

I was told a couple of days ago by an astute, always-perceptive friend that Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight was trim, rigrorous and quite satisfying (“Definitely in the vein of All The President’s Men,” he said) so I was ready and waiting for the raves from Venice Film Festival. Sure enough, Variety‘s Justin Chang weighed in with one

“It’s not often that a director manages to follow his worst film with his best,” Chang begins, “but even if he weren’t rebounding from The Cobbler, Tom McCarthy would have a considerable achievement on his hands with Spotlight, a superbly controlled and engrossingly detailed account of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the widespread pedophilia scandals and subsequent cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

“Very much in the All the President’s Men/Zodiac mold of slow-building, quietly gripping journalistic procedurals, this measured and meticulous ensemble drama sifts through a daunting pile of evidence to expose not just the Church’s horrific cycles of abuse and concealment, but also its uniquely privileged position in a society that failed its victims at myriad personal, spiritual and institutional levels.

In a pre-Telluride, non-mp3-supplemented discussion of award-season intrigues, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Stephen Galloway conclude with an ill-considered remark:

Galloway: “The problem isn’t an excess of festivals; it’s that so many follow each other in a crunch — Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York. All the serious-minded movies come tumbling out in the fall, then the rest of the year it’s comic-book pictures. Which is exactly why I’m dying to see a good film now. I’ve wandered through the summer desert and I’m parched. Other than Straight Outta Compton, I can’t think of any recent film I fell in love with and believe should get a best picture nomination.”

HE to Galloway: There was this little film that opened three and a half months ago called Mad Max: Fury Road. (May is relatively “recent,” right?) The most awesomely composed action spectacle in a dog’s age. A masterwork from the great George Miller. Ten days ago Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan insisted that Fury Road was the year’s best film so far. Maybe you need to watch it again?

Cate Blanchett is reportedly attached to play Lucille Ball in an “authorized” biopic that Aaron Sorkin will write. But what’s the big story hook? There are two threads but neither strike me as hugely interesting. One, Ball went from being a modestly successful actress in the ’30s and ’40s into a phenomenally popular TV legend and producer in the ’50s and early ’60s (and to some extent into the late ’60s and early ’70s). It’s historically noteworthy for a woman to have become a small-screen superstar and super-mogul during the stodgy Eisenhower era, but it doesn’t sound particularly grabby as a narrative. And two, Desi Arnaz, her husband and showbiz producing partner of 20 years, was a drinker who cheated on her, but a marriage poisoned by infidelity is not exactly knockout material in and of itself.

Lucille Ball in her dishy phase, probably taken sometime in the early ’40s. The truth? She smoked and drank a lot (you could hear it in that voice that could cut through iron), and she didn’t age all that well. But she didn’t need to when I Love Lucy exploded. She was beyond huge in the ’50s.

The most interesting aspect of the film, if it happens (and you never know how these things will go), will be Blanchett’s performance. She’ll have to somehow channel that deep whiskey-and-cigarette voice that Lucy developed as she got older. Ball was a gifted comedienne who was known throughout the industry as a kind, compassionate straight arrow who cared about her friends. But I honestly don’t see a movie here if the film is going to focus on the ’50s success years. Becoming super successful and then being cheated on does not a good story make. The world is full of people who drink and cat around…so what?

With Reginald Hudlin and some nondescript white guy named David Hill (kidding) co-producing the 88th Oscar ceremony (airing on 2.28.16) and expectations of diversity being kicked around far and wide, the general suspicion is that Kevin Hart might be offered the hosting gig. Scott Feinberg wrote yesterday that he has “a strong suspicion that Hudlin and Hill will tap Kevin Hart for the job — the comedian has said it is his dream to host, promising to ‘turn that event into a youthful night,’ and I think he would be a brilliant choice who would explode the show’s ratings.” Apart from the constant-microphone-adjustment factor (Hart is 5’4″) and the fact that his stand-up material in Let Me Explain never struck me as even vaguely funny, this sounds like a reasonably decent idea. A punch-up. Something else. Unless he bombs like Chris Rock.

Whatever Hitfix was before or seems to be now, the owners want more. They don’t want to be a fanboy site — that’s too “niche.” They want to be big…big like Buzzfeed…big big BIG! And that meant dumping anyone who was clinging to any kind of attitude about Hitfix being a hip insider site for film lovers and award-season assessors. And so three months ago Variety‘s Kris Tapley bailed on/was cut loose from Hitfix because, as I’d been told and subsequently expressed, his In Contention column was seen by Hitfix honchos as “too hip and upscale to appeal to the knuckle-draggers they’re now looking to focus on.” And then Dan Fienberg and Katie Hasty left. And now Hitfix co-founder Gregory Ellwood, who accepted a demotion to roving junketeer and interviewer a while back, has also jumped ship.

Four or five hours ago Ellwood posted the following on Facebook: “Obviously nothing lasts forever, and HitFix is currently going in a different direction. It’s not a bad path, just not the one I would have chosen. [So] after millions of visitors, thousands of stories and cropping way too many photos in photoshop for someone with the title of Editor-in-Chief, I’m officially leaving HitFix. Yes, as they say on my favorite reality TV ‘competition’ show it’s time to sashay away. I’ll no longer be ‘Mr. HitFix.'”

Variety‘s Justin Chang and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy have reviewed Cary Fukanaga‘s Beasts of No Nation, which screened today at the Venice Film Festival. Both critics agree that it’s riveting to sit through — a beautifully captured if somewhat traumatizing portrait of a child’s experience of guerilla warfare in Africa, and is therefore no one’s idea of an easy sit or an engaging exotic adventure, much less a date movie. But Idris Elba might have a shot at acting honors, although McCarthy and Chang don’t mention a possible category. I’ve been told that Elba’s role is more of supporting than lead, but what do I know?

Chang calls Beasts an “artful, accomplished but not entirely sustained adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 debut novel, never quite finding an ideal cinematic equivalent for the singular spareness and ferocity of the author’s prose. By turns lucid and a bit logy, and undeniably overlong, it’s nevertheless the rare American movie to enter a distant land and emerge with a sense of lived-in human experience rather than a well-meaning Third World postcard.”

McCarthy notes that while Fukanaga’s two previous features “also dealt with brutalizing rites of passage suffered by young people — Central Americans making their way through Mexico to the U.S. border in Sin Nombre, a 19th century English orphan girl’s harsh life in Jane Eyre — Beasts rates as the most disturbing of the three because of the way the pre-pubescent boy at its center is forced to become a ruthless killer.”

“Partisan (Well Go, 10.2) points to nothing more than a man with a vengeful grievance against the world and an ill-defined messiah complex, using his powers of persuasion over the weak and impressionable to recruit a personal army. Why, is anyone’s guess. Cassel’s measured performance keeps the malevolence mostly under the surface. But Gregori is just not an intriguing enough central character to make this extended exercise in dour artiness more than mildly effective.

A 9.2 N.Y. Times story by Ken Belson presents a fairly clear case that Peter Landesman‘s Concussion (Sony, 12.25) isn’t quite the blistering, truth-telling whistleblower drama presented in the just-released trailer.

The forthcoming film dramatizes the true-life saga of Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith), the forensic pathologist who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE — a then-new disease affecting football players — back in ’02, and how the NFL made his life hell as a result. Belson’s story, which relies on Sony hack e-mails, indicates that Sony execs felt it would be less troublesome from an N.F.L. standpoint to sand off some of the film’s edges.

The title of Belson’s piece, “Sony Altered ‘Concussion’ Film to Prevent N.F.L. Protests, Emails Show,” says it neatly.

Concussion doesn’t open for another four months but whatever the final impressions may be, the film has definitely taken a hit in terms of its integrity. However fair or unfair, perceptions are everything. I don’t know if anyone was thinking all that strongly about Concussion as a 2015 Best Picture contender, but anyone who had thoughts along those lines is probably re-assessing them to some extent.