Links: Streep in Berlin, Tarantino in Hot Water, Garber at the Altar

Oscars Cometh
Awards Daily Love and Mercy is pulling out all the stops for their Oscar campaign including Brian Wilson concerts
Twitter everyone is excited that Mad Max Fury Road is getting an Oscar campaign but most hits get this treatment even the ones that have no chance.
Academy Conversations Truth is on the campaign trail, too with this recent conversation in NYC. Pssst. I believe NY's BAFTA chapter also hosted a screening just last night at the theater I was in (though I was there for a different movie)
NYT Style "The Gonzo Vision of Quentin Tarantino" like Matt Damon before him he might do his latest Oscar campaign good by just shutting up. In this new profile he infuriates a lot of people with his anger about his racial criticisms of his work and even has the nerve to be chauvinistically condescending about Kathryn Bigelow's beating him at the Oscars

Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film..."

 

General Linkage
Variety WOW. Meryl Streep, who has never really been a film festival queen like some respected actors will be president of the Berlinale jury in 2016. It's her FIRST film festival jury. Naturally she starts at the top as president of an A list fest
AV Club on a fun new instagram movie/tv mocking account "Night Lotion" LOL
EW a roundtable with the creatives behind Aladdin for its Blu-ray release
TFE did you vote on our Aladdin inspired poll?
The Tracking Board collects all the recent Jennifer Lawrence news... which is a lot and frankly we don't have the strength this week. Can we talk about any other actress for a change? She doesn't even have a movie out right now. Can we at least wait for her to be in movie theaters again?
Gothamist Lena Dunham's next HBO series in development is called Max about magazines and second-wave feminism in the 1960s
Guardian Sir John Hurt's given the all-clear from doctors after his chemo for cancer. Yay! 
Guardian in extremely confusing Hollyweird news Paramount is developing a remake of The Ten Commandments (1956). Didnt they notice all the money lost on the last one (Ridley Scott's Exodus)?
Vulture goes to the set of The Knick
NYT Playboy magazine will no longer feature nudity but tone down their pictorials to "suggestive"
EW want to be naked with Miley Cyrus and The Flaming Lips? Everyone gets naked (including the audience) for the video for "The Milky Milky Milk" 
/Film on recent Marvel news - the biggest of which is that Hulk will co-star in Thor: Ragnarok
Playbill interviews the huge stage talent Danny Burstein. He is really remarkable on stage but has a low profile on film and TV. I was pleased to see him pop up recently in The Family Fang and Blackhat albeit in tiny roles. If only they were making great screen musicals and casting appropriately.
Pajiba collects the best tweets from the Democratic Debate last night. Some really funny ones here 
Variety Julianne Moore lead Hollywood committee fighting for gun violence prevention 

*throws rice*
Finally, congratulations to Victor Garber (Alias, Titanic, Argo,The Flash). He married his boyfriend of 16 years, the artist Rainer Andreesen this week. They eloped apparently. Photo via Rainer's instagram

Sing-Along to Go
Here's Victor Garber singing Elton John's "Last Song". Since nearly the entire cast of The Flash has beautiful musical theater voices, can we please get a musical episode?  Pretty pretty please. I don't care if it has to be on an Alternate Earth.

Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 5: We do love our trivia!

"everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category
*...but were afraid to ask"
Pt 1 81 Trailers | Pt 2 Women Directors & Debuts | Pt 3 Zoology | Pt 4 I know that face! 

who will follow Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland's IDA) to an Oscar win for Foreign Language Film?OKAY OKAY. We promise to calm down now.

We hope you've enjoyed our week long attempt to get you really pumped up for an Oscar category that's sometimes hard to get invested: Best Foreign Language Film. The films can be hard to track down making this competition less accessible, so we try our statistics and anecdotes and lists to pique your curiosity!  

But from here on out we'll try to track down as many as we can and actually see them. Imagine it: seeing movies! Please do share this series on twitter and facebook and whatnot. It's so much work and so many websites just depressingly print text only lists of titles and call it a day! We've already reviewed or done interviews from 11 of the pictures: Argentina's The Clan, Austria's Goodnight Mommy (now in theaters), Colombia's Embrace of the Serpent, Dominican Republic's Sand Dollars, France's Mustang, Germany's Labyrinth of Lies (now in theaters!), Hungary's Son of Saul, Norway's The Wave, Portugal's Arabian Nights Volume 2, Sweden's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, and Taiwan's The Assassin (opens Friday!). Off blog we've lined up screenings of 8 more in the next two weeks so we'll be sure to report. We'll never get to 81 but we can try.

ONE FINAL ROUND OF TRIVIA AFTER THE JUMP
Let's talk running times, previous Oscar nominees, and returning directors who've been submitted before.

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Chiwetel

'They had faces then,' yes. The famous Sunset Blvd appropriation is still accurate. But it doesn't tell the full story. They have faces now, too. (Hollywood just isn't as sure-handed about to frame them.)

Evidence: Look at this one. Were happy to keep looking at Chiwetel Ejiofor as long as Hollywood keeps casting him.

Photography by Greg Williams

8 Best Things About "Steve Jobs" (First Impressions)

True confession: When I read Jason's breathless rave for Steve Jobs from my sick bed last week I was like "calm down, man,  it can't be that good" Cut to one week later me sitting in the theater, as the end credits rolled: "I gotta read that rave again and nod my head vigorously this time!" While I suspect I don't love it quite as much as Jason, it is inarguably one of 2015's must-see picture and we shan't be annoyed at all when it racks up Oscar nominations in January.

The film goes wide on Friday and trust that you'll want to be there. Here are my 8 favorite things about it at first glance... 

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Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 4: "Hey, I know that face!"

"everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category
*...but were afraid to ask"
Pt 1 All 81 Trailers | Pt 2 Women Directors & Debut Filmmakers | Pt 3 Zoology 

Actors You Know & Possibly Love
Successful actors really rack up the frequent flyer miles. The savvy ones cultivate relationships wherever they go. The very smartest of them pick up a second or third or fourth language and actually use those languages in their careers. Viggo Mortensen doesn't have quite the Hollywood career he deserves but notice that he doesn't settle - he's truly in love with his craft and uses his Spanish, English, Danish, and French in films all over the world. When the Danish Connie Nielsen was starting to look basic after lots of unsatisfying American films, she reminded everyone that she was actually gifted by going international with France's demonlover and returning home for Brothers. Actors who are bilingual and never use that onscreen are a mystery. It would be fun to see Sandra Bullock in a German movie or Hugh Jackman or Bradley Cooper in a French flick... even if it was only cameos since we know none of them are hurting for work. Why did Mira Sorvino not really capitalize on her Mandarin during her long dry spell? It's no accident that Charlotte Rampling and Carmen Maura never stopped working or that Kristin Scott Thomas only quit working when she wanted to; they speak multiple languages and make films outside their home countries often.

Let's look at the actors with a strong international presence that pop up in this year's Oscar submitted foreign-language films after the jump...

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