Newsletter: Gold Standard: Telluride, Toronto and the quest for Oscar gold

Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season leading up to the Oscars.

I’m Glenn Whipp, The Times’ awards columnist and your newsletter host. And, yes, I know it’s September. And I know you probably still haven’t cleaned the grill from that Labor Day barbecue. But with the Telluride Film Festival in the books, Venice nearly over and Toronto launching this week, we’re beginning to see many of the movies that will dominate the awards season conversation for the next few months.

And, so far, the news for movie lovers is almost uniformly good. I wrote this awards season preview for the fall film festival titles last week, and, for movies like “La La Land,” the charming musical set in the City of Angels, and the intimate coming-of-age drama “Moonlight,” you need only pay attention to the “best case” scenarios. People love these movies.

‘La La Land’ and ‘Moonlight’ win favor at Telluride

Times film writer Rebecca Keegan was at Telluride, reporting that “La La Land” screened to rapturous reviews, including a ringing endorsement from one Mr. Tom Hanks. She also spoke to Barry Jenkins, the director of “Moonlight,” which follows a gay black man dealing with his sexuality at three moments in his life.

Averting #OscarsSoWhite3

“Moonlight” and “La La Land” will also have gala premieres at Toronto in the coming days, as will Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation,” the historical drama about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion. Parker, who wrote, directed and stars in the movie, has been mired in controversy the last few weeks. New details of a 1999 rape case in which Parker was charged and later acquitted have come to light. (The accuser committed suicide in 2012.)

After “Birth of a Nation” premiered at Sundance in January, it was presumed to be a best picture shoo-in and a way for the film academy to avert a third straight year of #OscarsSoWhite. The controversy has erased the movie’s slam dunk status, but it’s not out of the game and the next few months boast a strong slate of movies with African Americans in prominent roles as I detailed in this story. (And, yes, “Moonlight,” is among the titles.)

Follow The Times at the Toronto International Film Festival

I’ll be covering the Toronto film festival this week, as will Times film critic Justin Chang and movie writers Amy Kaufman, Mark Olsen and Steven Zeitchik. You can keep up on our various comings and goings through our festival live blog here. We’ll have reviews, video interviews, gala event coverage and, in my dreams, that horseradish grater from Telluride will make an appearance at some point.

Feedback?

I’d love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com.

Can’t get enough about awards season? Follow me at @glennwhipp on Twitter.