Foreign Oscar Watch: Iran's "Today"

[This post is part of our continuing series on this year’s contenders for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. We're aiming to review (gasp) half of them. Here’s Amir with the Iranian entry, Today. He has also interviewed the director and discussed the film on his Iranian cinema podcast "Hello Cinema". - Editor]

Reza Mirkarimi is probably overdue for an Oscar nomination. Sure, his name doesn’t ring a bell for a lot of cinephiles and doesn’t carry the same weight as internationally renowned Iranian auteurs such as Kiarostami, Panahi or Asghar Farhadi, but consider this: He is the only filmmaker to have had his films shunned by both the Academy and the Iranian committee that submits them!

His first try for gold came back in 2005 with So Close, So Far, a meditative and moving portrayal of a broken father-son relationship. It was far stronger than all five of the eventual nominees but that was before voters in this category had begun to vote for what is actually best. Still, he had every reason to be hopeful in 2012 with A Cube of Sugar, a distinctly Iranian film with a regional flavor that surprisingly won awards at every festival it played at. Coming on the back of A Separation’s win, it was reasonable to expect the raised profile of Iranian cinema to help the film along the finish line. Yet, the Iranian committee submitted the film and boycotted the Oscars later on the same day! Remember that strange story?

So, two years on, Mirkarimi is back with Today, a consensus option that wasn’t exceptionally well received in its home country, but saved the committee a whole lot of political trouble compared to their other choices...

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Curio: Coin Characters

Alexa here with your weekly art break. Brazilian-born, Frankfurt-based graphic designer Andre Levy uses his free time from his job in advertising to create more personal work.  One of these projects has gotten a lot of attention on the internet: entitled "Tales You Lose," the project has Levy transforming coins into portraits of pop culture icons. 

Amelie, Bride of Frankenstein and more after the jump

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The legacy of The Little Mermaid, 25 years later

Tim here, to celebrate the silver anniversary of one of the most important films in the annals of American animation. 25 years ago today – some of you are going to have to brace yourselves, because you’re about to feel very old – Walt Disney Pictures released The Little Mermaid, in one fell swoop rewriting the landscape for family entertainment and animation alike.

As hard as it is to believe now, once upon a time, Disney was an embarrassing underdog, whose theme parks were solely responsible for keeping its saggy movie division propped up. 1989 was only four years removed from the disastrous release of the pricey The Black Cauldron, and the takeover of the company by executives Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, who managed to stabilize the live action filmmaking division, while putting the animation studio under the command of Peter Schneider.

It was Schneider who managed an ambitious and terrifyingly foolhardy plan, concocted by Jeffrey Katzenberg  to restore the luster of Disney animation after a generation or more of mismanagement, by releasing a new animated feature on an annual basis. The first film produced on that model was 1988’s Oliver & Company, a rock-solid hit, but hardly the triumphant return of Disney animation that everyone was hoping for. That came with the second film in Schneider’s plan, The Little Mermaid, and the rest is history.

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New Trailer: 50 Shades of... Prada?

Manuel here offering an off-beat theory on that new 50 Shades of Gray trailer.

The worldwide phenomena got a Beyoncé-scored trailer that debuted during last week's Scandal which suggests the marketing team at least know who they're courting. "Haunted" really is a great trailer song & when paired with (intentionally?) campy dialogue like

My tastes are very... singular.
Enlighten me then...

it makes for quite the breathy, pulpy trailer, but am I the only one noticing that this trailer makes the film look like an oddly humorless gender-bending fan-fiction of The Devil Wears Prada?

Between the Runway-looking office reception, Jamie Dornan's teased "gird your loins" entrance, and Dakota Johnson's Andy Sachs-esque outfit, I half-expected Dornan's Gray to give us a sibilant monologue on cerulean fabrics. Alas, despite its gorgeous London skyline shots and a "getting ready to meet Mr Gray" setup scene that might as well be scored to KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See," this trailer doesn't seem to be aiming for the fun and flirty sensibility of that other best-selling novel adaptation. So many moody shots seem right at home in a horror flick (is he stalking her at a... hardware store?) suggest this film will try to battle its sudsy image by wearing a self-serious smoldering scowl. To be fair, Dornan wears those well (anyone else watch The Fall?) and despite an odd accent and a lack of his usually gorgeous facial hair, his Gray is sure to be the most ogled male film lead since the Magic Mike boys dropped trou. Of course, now I'll just keep imagining what Gray would've been in the hands of Streep; might that have netted her her fourth Oscar? I kid, though it does seem odd that this trailer would so openly (if unconsciously) crib images from that 2006 flick, or am I just imagining things?

Check out the full trailer below and tell me you weren't sad when there were no Emily Blunt or Stanley Tucci one-liners to buffer the self-seriousness of it all:

Enlighten me readers, does this new trailer whet your apetite enough to buy a ticket? Are these just words you're scrolling through in hopes I saved a shirtless Dornan shot at the end of the post?

Beauty vs Beast: I'm Not That Innocence

Howdy folks, Jason from MNPP here with Monday's weekly dose of "Beauty vs Beast" -- you might be forgiven for having mistaken this series for an episode of G.L.O.W. as of late (please tell me that some of y'all are my age and know and love that reference) - it seems like it's been a lot of lady match-ups, I mean. So when I saw that today is Martin Scorsese's 72nd birthday, at first I was all, "Finally I can inject some testosterone in here! Pesci! De Niro! Guns and phalluses and junk!"

But then I looked at Marty's filmography I saw the first thing I always regrettably see these days - namely his last movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. And I haaaaaaated WoWS. And my stomach tumbled. And so in my indignation I turned against the testoterone, and where did that leave me? Lady fight!

poll by twiigs.com

I know aksing The Film Experience community to even consider a vote against Michelle Pfeiffer is akin to blasphemy, but know this: my vote is for May, May all the way, May got her man and didn't slink away without a fight. All the prime years of Daniel Day-Lewis were hers; nyah nyah nyah Countess Loser.

PREVIOUSLY And speaking of hauling ass to the ladies, last week we trained our eyes on the cutthroat world of high school girls, which also involves a lot of whispers in hallways and note-passing - in the battle for the Queen of Clueless, it's Cher Horowitz who gets the seat at the center of the lunch table. Said Ben:

"Have to go with Cher, due to our shared love of Beavis & Butthead and Snickers. And can you believe they still haven't put R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty? As if!"