The Philippines delay Oscar submission! What gives?

By Juan Carlos Ojano

FILIPIÑANA has the potential to break the Philippines’ Oscar-less streak… if it gets submitted.

The Film Academy of the Philippines was set to announce the country's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards last September 4. However, a statement was issued instead, postponing the whole thing to give way for further deliberations.

This comes after the Filipino theatrical release as well as the US theatrical release of the supposed frontrunner, Rafael Manuel's dark comedy Filipiñana, which depicts a day at a luxury resort where the difference between classes is starkly illustrated. Think of it as an arthouse White Lotus, if Mike White gave creative authority to some formalist-minded director or an anti-colonial auteur like Lav Diaz. Executive produced by Jia Zhangke and distributed by Kino Lorber (North America) and BFI Distribution (UK and Ireland), the film is enjoying a healthy run in international circles, while maintaining well-attended screenings in limited release in its home country.

And yet, there's trouble afoot with the matter of its selection as the nation's Best International Oscar submission...

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Emmys: Can “The Pitt” be stopped in the Drama races?

by Cláudio Alves

THE PITT is the year’s most nominated program, with 25 nods under its belt.

If there’s still some suspense in the Comedy Emmy races, with Hacks and Widow’s Bay battling out for supremacy, nothing seems able to stop a The Pitt sweep in Drama. Perhaps Pluribus could do it, having scored nominations in the double digits, yet its strongest bet seems to be Best Actress, and that’s about it. Not that the chance to finally see Rhea Seehorn with an Emmy after years upon years of stellar work in Better Call Saul isn’t a treat on its own. Still, sweeps are boring, and here, at The Film Experience, we yearn for variety and surprises. Can the TV Academy deliver on that front?

Eric Blume, Nathaniel R, and I don’t have much faith in them…

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Venice: Lee Chang-dong's Oscar submission "Possible Love"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

POSSIBLE LOVE

It took Lee Chang-dong more than ten years to write Possible Love, after the horrifying police repression of laid-off SsangYong Motor workers in 2009 made him want to tackle the way inequality in Korean society is built around work, and around the pride or shame attached to having or losing a good job. After seeing the result, it is difficult not to marvel that it took him only ten years to write one of the most flawless and powerful films of the last decade. Every scene across its 164-minute running time works like an instrument in a concert, sometimes with almost diabolical precision, and as an homage to Kieślowski’s Dekalog (to which it is dedicated) and similarly intent on encompassing both the moral dilemmas of ordinary life and the capitalist structures surrounding them...

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Emmys: It's "Hacks" vs "Widow's Bay" for Best Comedy

by Cláudio Alves

With 24 individual citations, the last season of HACKS is the year's most nominated comedy.

Just as this post hits the timeline, the TV Academy will be in the middle of its two-day celebration of the so-called Creative Arts Emmys. In other words, the show where they give out every “below the line” category, with the Guest Acting prizes thrown in for good measure. The main ceremony, when the big awards will be announced to a new class of television luminaries – or more of the same, since they sure love to reward the same folks, over and over again – happens on September 14th. It’s a bit of a chaotic time, here at The Film Experience, with the fall festivals on a roll and the film awards season starting to peek over the horizon, while the small screen demands attention of its own. And indeed, we must pay respects to TV and the industry’s highest honors. 

With that in mind, Eric Blume, Nathaniel R, and I decided to have a quick look at the principal races and share our predictions, starting with the Comedies…

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Venice: The Mara Sisters in "Bucking Fastard"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

BUCKING FASTARD © Gateway to Orkney LLC

Back in the 1980s, Werner Herzog met the Chaplin twin sisters for a project, but he is the first to warn against connecting his return to fiction filmmaking after a string of documentary projects too closely to that real story. In his new film Bucking Fastard, Jean and Joan are not twins but sisters who "speak, move, dress, dream and even slip their tongues, as the title proves, in the very same way." The movie is about their quest for true love, one that is neither particularly well planned nor particularly successful, as if the point were simply to find a way not to feel alone. Joan and Jean feel that way - alone together - even though they are always together, even though their understanding of each other is absolute...

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