• The French lose their marbles not just over the exclusion of “Of Gods and Men” from this year’s foreign film shortlist, but the INCLUSION of Algeria’s “Outside the Law.” [The Carpetbagger]
• Elizabeth Snead talks to a number of costumers on this year’s awards circuit [Deadline]
• Is this Banksy? [Cinematical]
“Dogtooth.” That’s the title an every Oscar pundit’s lips right now, as Greece’s critically beloved but super-outré submission — which includes inter-sibling sex and feline homicide in its curious bag of tricks — stunned pretty much everyone by showing up on the nine-title shortlist for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. I can hardly believe I’m typing this myself.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that this is the work of the Academy’s executive committee, which was set up two years ago to give more challenging fare a leg up in the Oscar race by hand-picking an extra three titles to go on the shortlist compiled by general voters in the category. They’ve certainly done their job on this occasion — bravo, guys. (Japan’s reportedly edgy “Confessions” appears to be the second film they saved; the third is open to question.)
As it turned out, I predicted only four of the nine — not hard in the case of Denmark’s Golden Globe winner “In a Better World,” Canada’s “Incendies” and Mexico’s “Biutiful,” which have been installed as favorites for weeks now.
Tomorrow, we get the last of the Academy’s crucial pre-nomination shortlists, as the list of 65 entries for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is slashed to just nine titles, from which the eventual nominees will be announced in a week’s time. Predicting these nine is a vague and mostly thankless task, but I am nothing if not vague and thankless, so let’s give it a go.
Remember, here’s the system as it currently stands: six of the nine titles on the shortlist are voted in by the general committee of volunteer voters in the category, based on the scores given at each film’s official Academy screening. The remaining three are selected by a hand-picked executive committee, with the specific intention of “saving” significant and/or challenging titles that didn’t win the approval of the larger, more conservative body of voters.
This curious system was set up two years ago, following the uproar that greeted the exclusion of critically beloved Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in the 2007 race.
Appropriately enough for the occasion, I watched last night’s Golden Globe awards in a celebratory alcoholic fog (the night having coincided with a friend’s birthday) so thick it took most of today to sleep it off — hence the apologetically late posting.
My memory of the evening’s finer details is therefore about as clear as, say, Ricky Gervais’s, though I do recall cheering so manically for “Carlos”‘s win in the TV Miniseries category (even if the film is, by its director’s own admission, a work of cinema) that I inadvertently tossed red wine in my hair. That, and so many green dresses on screen that I briefly wondered if the collected stylists of Hollywood had been roped into a particularly gratuitous product placement scheme for the weekend’s box office champ.
The awards themselves, meanwhile, were both well-judged and helpful, tying (or at least tidying) up a few loose ends remaining on the circuit — and even allowing me some minor bragging rights for calling the widely unfancied Paul Giamatti. (For an hour, at least, until my inevitably doomed prediction of a Best Picture upset missed outright — awards season giveth, and it taketh away.)
A couple of months ago, I compiled some critical thoughts on five films in contention for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, ranging from the hotly fancied (France’s “Of Gods and Men”) to the longest of long shots (Estonia’s “The Temptation of St. Tony”). It was intended to be the first in a series of posts spotlighting as many of the 65 submissions as I could get my hands on — but alas, in the chaos of the season, my plans got away from me.
Now, with exactly a week to go until the Academy announces the nine-film shortlist on 19 January, it’s time to belatedly return to the category. At this late stage, I’ve still seen only a third of the competing field, with a handful of unseen screeners patiently piled atop my DVD player. Sadly, two of the films most heavily tipped for a nomination — Canada’s “Incendies” and Denmark’s Golden Globe-nominated “In a Better World” — are not among them.
I have, however, caught up with the submissions of four countries frequently favored by the Academy. My viewing, however, only confirmed the relative scarcity of obvious heavyweights in what is always an unpredictable race.
• $55 million…for an Oscar? [New York Post]
• Move over Natalie Portman. Marion Cotillard is carrying, too. [Us Weekly]
• Are Golden Globes speeches always better than the Oscars? [Movieline]
Along with my annual bewilderment as to the reasoning for BAFTA’s longlist announcement, I’ve never really got why they announce their Best Foreign Language Film nominations separately, 11 days ahead of the other categories. To me, it seems merely an additional way to marginalize an already marginalized category, but what else is new?
The official line, I believe, is that the head start gives voters extra time to catch up with the nominated films, but when their selections are as obvious and ubiquitous as the five films listed after the jump, is that really necessary? I mean, who isn’t aware of “I Am Love” or “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” by now?
The continued appearance of the latter film — a sloppy potboiler that may have made bank, but has no business beating, say, “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” to a nod — in this category has been one of my biggest bugbears of the season, by the way. (Moreover, its grim appearance on BAFTA’s Best Film longlist, where it is the only foreign-language title to place, suggests it’ll probably win this race in a walk.)
[Guy’s updated predictions here.]
Okay, I won’t lie to you: I initially conceived this column in my head last week as a Christmas Eve wishlist, but then got too busy mulling wine and Christmas shopping in Dublin snowdrifts to actually write it.
So a New Year’s Eve wishlist it is, then. Under either name, with the season currently in stasis until January’s Guild awards usher in the next phase of competition, here’s a list of ten open requests (or distant hopes) for Academy members currently hemming and hawing over their ballots.
Go forth into the world: Okay, I’ve given up my fight for a foreign-language Best Picture contender for yet another year. And despite a banner year for the form, a documentary nominee ain’t happening either. But is it too much to ask the Academy to recognize that not all notable filmmaking happens within U.S. borders? We’re looking at the sad likelihood of 90% of the Best Picture race being given over to American productions, with the lone exception, “The King’s Speech,” about as authentically British as a “Mind the Gap” T-shirt. Wouldn’t “Another Year” or “Animal Kingdom” be slightly more interesting stamps in Oscar’s passport?
• Jeffrey Wells does his part to re-inject Tilda Swinton’s performance in “I Am Love” back into the Oscar conversation. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• The Academy is ready for its close-up — on Twitter! [Twitter]
• Celebrating 15 years of Fox Searchlight Pictures. [/Film]
• Off the Carpet picked out the likeliest runners in a highly malleable Best Supporting Actress race.
• We checked in on the Best Animated Feature race, where it seems we may be looking at a three-nominee field after all.
• Away from the awards beat, the week’s big news was the casting of Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman venture.
• The Academy formally revealed the list of 65 contenders for Best Foreign Language Film.
Welcome to Oscar Talk.
In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.
This week we’re happy to be joined by In Contention’s own Guy Lodge and indieWIRE‘s Peter Knegt, both calling from London where the London Film Festival has just kicked off. Plenty to chew on with four voices on the mic so let’s see what’s on the docket…
• Melissa Silverstein on female dominance in the documentary shorts field. [Women and Hollywood]
• Turns out Clint Eastwood filmed an early, unpolished draft of Peter Morgan’s “Hereafter.” Well…it shows. [Vulture]
• Speaking of which, David Cohen spotlights the impact of digital wizardry on that story-driven film as well as Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” [Variety]
For the past few months, we’ve been keeping you abreast of the submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, so this finalized list of contenders, which was sleuthed by Pete Hammond earlier this morning (and officially unveiled by AMPAS via press release here), doesn’t contain too many surprises.
As usual, however, a few low-profile late entries have snuck into the mix since the October 1 submissions deadline, while one film (Afghanistan’s entry “Black Tulip”) appears to have been disqualified, as the country does not feature on the Academy screening schedule. An eligibility-date snafu, I’ll be bound.
The four titles new to our list come from Ethiopia (“The Athlete”), Georgia (“Street Days”), Greenland (“Nuummloq”) and Kyrgyzstan (“The Light Thief”). I’m hoping to see the last of those — reportedly a heartwarmer about an electrician coming to the aid of an impoverished rural community — at the London fest later this week, but the other three are unfamiliar to me. Always nice to see more African countries in the running, however.
• As robust box-office returns for “The Social Network” amplified its Oscar buzz, this week’s Off the Carpet column warned that the awards race is “a marathon, not a sprint.”
• Keeping the conversation on David Fincher, we counted down the greatest technical achievements in his filmmography…
• …and invited you to name your favorite Fincher film in our new poll.
• Oscar-watchers got a new title to play with this week, as it was revealed that Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” will qualify for the 2010 awards after all.
I neglected to mention this over a busy weekend, but the deadline for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submissions passed on Friday. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have all the contenders set in stone, however — we’re still waiting on the official list from the Academy, which always features a couple of latecomers and a switched selection or two.
Still, to all intents and purposes, the eventual Oscar shortlist is set to come from the 62 titles entered thus far. (Check out our updated list here.) The most notable submission among the last-minute stragglers is Argentina’s “Carancho,” a romantic legal thriller from director Pablo Trapero — whose previous feature, the strong female proson drama “Lion’s Den,” was the country’s unsuccessful Oscar submission in 2008.
The film stars Ricardo Darin, a familiar face to that voting branch; the Argentine superstar has headlined five of the country’s last nine entries, including reigning Oscar champ “The Secret in Their Eyes.” The film played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, where it was rather well-received. I’ll be catching up with it at the London fest this month.
• A grim week for Hollywood talent, as we said goodbye to Gloria Stuart, Tony Curtis, Arthur Penn and, most prematurely, Sally Menke.
• Mexico’s “Biutiful” became the starriest entry yet on the Best Foreign Language Film longlist, now up to a round 60 titles.
• This week’s Long Shot column examined the widely predicted “Social Network”-versus-“King’s Speech” Best Picture battle, wondering what it says about the current state of “Oscar bait.”
• Just to remind us that there are other films knocking around, the long-awaited trailer for the Coens’ “True Grit” set the web abuzz.
With the official (though not necessarily final) deadline for submissions just two days away, there’s been a flood of new additions to the list in the past few days, including two big guns that were holding out on us — Italy and Spain. (Check out our updated list, now up to 55 titles, here.)
Among those who follow this race, all eyes were on Italy’s selection, and not just because the country still holds the record for most wins in the category. (The Italians’ fortunes have dipped rather in recent years, however: since “Life is Beautiful” triumphed in 1998, they’ve managed only a single unsuccessful nod.) With a shortlist of 10 contenders to choose from, it was difficult to predict which way the Italian selectors might lean.
Many Oscar-watchers assumed that the high-profile Tilda Swinton starrer “I Am Love” would get picked, but that was always unlikely: far less well-received in its home country than in English-speaking territories, chances are the film’s stylistic excesses wouldn’t have been to the Academy’s taste either.
The list of submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar has been fairly short on widely-known auteur names thus far, so expect a lot of awards-watchers to zero in on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful,” which has just been announced as Mexico’s official entry in the race.
As with “Pan’s Labyrinth” four years ago, the country has opted for a high-profile Spanish co-production — set and filmed in Barcelona with a Spanish cast — with the Cannes seal of approval.
Given its name appeal, and the likely accompanying push for star Javier Bardem in the Best Actor category, many might see “Biutiful” as a slam-dunk for a nomination, but I remain less sure. (Even if Bardem does pull through, it could still miss in the foreign race — see “Volver” in 2006.) The film is a relentlessly downbeat and occasionally inscrutable slog that has so far inspired as much critical scorn as admiration — it won’t enjoy the same hip cache that helped Iñárritu to a nomination here 10 years ago for the more universally liked “Amores Perros.”