Trust your initial instincts. When we wrote yesterday that Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” was rumored to screen at the New York Film Festival, we unfortunately didn’t have a second to express our skepticism. Jeffrey Wells did yesterday and reminded us and we thought, “uh, yeah, we should mentioned that, it seems dubious.”
Well, again, trust your instincts. Anne Thompson is reporting today that “Milk” – Van Sant’s biopic of the slain first openly gay Mayor of San Franciso, Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn – won’t be ready for any of the fall festivals including, NYFF, Telluride or the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s a shame, we’re hot to see this, but this means, it’ll either come out during the Oscar-bait late November/early December season or will be pushed to 2009 depending (Thompson says it won’t be ready until at least late October/early November).
Another bummer and blow to the autumn festival season is John Hillcoat’s adaptation of of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” which the Variety scribe also says won’t be ready until December.That picture, one that we’re heavily anticipating, stars Viggo Mortenson, Charlize Theron and relative newcomer, 13-year-old, Kodi Smit-McPhee. The score to this one is also being composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, the duo behind the incredible, “The Assassination of Jesse James” music (one of our favorite score of 2007).
All this comes on the heels of another Thompson report that said Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, would also not be ready for fall festival season. Lastly, the trade reporter says Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” will only be screened by festivals willing to play it in its entire 4 1/2 hour cut which probably means hippie-discovery fest Telluride (they don’t even announce their films until the day it starts!) would be ideal, but we hope to god NYFF is still willing to put this on (we believe they are from what we’ve heard).