Around this time last year, we did a mid-year stocktake of sorts, wherein the site’s various contributors named the best (and worst) of what the cinematic year had presented thus far. You may have noticed that we haven’t offered up a similar piece for 2009. Time constraints may have had something to do with it, […]

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I believe the 9-title shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film is due today, but details on the announcement are oddly hard to come by, so I could be wrong. In any case, it’s one I’m having a tough time calling. The new voting system should ensure that some of the year’s most acclaimed contenders are […]

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Bent Hamer’s “O’ Horten,” Norway’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film, has just got the shiny Apple treatment for its trailer. It looks melancholy, sweetly strange and altogether rather winning, as one would expect from the always interesting Hamer, whose Matt Dillon-starring 2005 effort “Factotum” really deserved more notice. The trailer comes complete with besotted […]

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The race starts here. With the deadline having passed on Wednesday, 53 67 countries have submitted a candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film award. Now it’s all in the hands of the Academy’s notoriously obtuse foreign film committee. Under a new system aimed to avoid embarrassing exclusions like last year’s snub of “4 Months, […]

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Leading a quick roundup of some recent entries in the Best Foreign Language Film race, Norway has unsuprisingly selected Bent Hamer’s absurdist comedy “O’ Horten” as their pony. The film garnered a number of followers at Cannes and Telluride, with Variety declaring it a “warm and gently humorous divertissement.” I was a big fan of […]

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