Checking with Oscar Experts: Variety / New Trailer for Jay Kelly / Visitations: Ballad of a Small Player and The Mastermind

CHECKING WITH OSCAR EXPERTS: VARIETY

We started with last Thursday's post to transition from predicting the films that would play Telluride to focusing on which TFF #52 films might be players in the 2025-26 awards season.  We began with Scott Feinberg of  The Hollywood Reporter and today we look at the Best Picture predictions from Variety's Clayton Davis, senior awards editor.  Here are Davis's current top ten picks to get nominated for best Picture (TFF 352 films are in bold and are listed in order of most likely to less likely:

1) Hamnet

2) One Battle after Another

3) Sinners

4) A House of Dynamite

5) Wicked: For Good

6) Sentimental Value

7) Marty Supreme

8) Frankenstein

9) The Secret Agent 

10) Bugonia

Other TFF #52 films in the Top Twenty are:

13) It Was Just an Accident

15) Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

17) Jay Kelly

So in this scenario five TFF #52 films would be Best Picture nominated which would be a first for that to occur.

Davis's current picks are linked here.

NEW TRAILER FOR JAY KELLY

From Netflix this morning, the release of a new trailer for Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern.  Jay Kelly is in theaters on Nov.14th.

VISITATIONS

Director Edward Berger on Ballad of a Small Player for The Hollywood Reporter.

Kelly Reichardt, John Magaro, Bill Camp and others for The Mastermind at the New York Film Festival.