International Oscar Race Pt 2: Movie Stars, genres, and stats

by Nathaniel R

We aim to maintain our title of 'the site that gives you the most when it comes to Oscar's Best International Feature Film race.' Nevertheless, even if we aren't that anymore with all the corporate sites and the indies now covering the race, at least we were influential in popularizing the coverage! That's a legacy we're proud of.

Speaking of popular. How many of the films have stars that movie-savvy folks will recognize? Let's look at the international stars with fanbases outside their home countries (and other areas of trivia interest) after the jump...

Submissions with internationally-familiar stars

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Year in Review: Greatly Abbreviated Box Office Lists and 'What Ifs'

the year in review lists are winding down but not quite yet done!

If you had predicted that Bad Boys 3 would be the biggest grosser of 2020 in January, nobody would have believed you.

We shan't rehash what's happened to movie theaters this past year (everyone knows). But normally at this time we have tons of fun compiling extensive deep-dive lists of how well movies of various genres and types of releases did. And of course we can reflect on how the success impacted their awards chances (Parasite never would have won Best Picture without that incredible theatrical run, becoming the biggest subtitled hit in the US in the past 16 years. Since there was only the first three months of the year with normal box office the lists are VERY strange and in some cases we just couldn't do them. But here's an extremely abbreviated version of what we normally do...

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Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Filipinos at the Oscars

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Coen Brothers’ western epic True Grit, an adaptation of the 1968 novel of the same name. The film stars Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. However, at the center of the film is then-13 year old Hailee Steinfeld. She plays Mattie Ross, the strong-willed daughter of a man murdered by a notorious outlaw (Brolin). She then hires Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to hunt down the outlaw. Steinfeld’s performance received critical acclaim at the time and she became the ninth youngest nominee ever for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. She was 14 years and 45 days of age at the time of nominations.

Another remarkable record is that she became the first actor of known Filipino descent to be nominated for an acting category at the Oscars (her maternal grandfather Ricardo Domasin was half-Filipino), a fact that was given media attention in the Philippines at the time. She is part of a small group of nine Oscar nominees who are of Filipino descent. Here are the rest...

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China submits "Leap" to the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

China has submitted the women's volleyball drama Leap to the Oscars, which is already streaming on Amazon Prime. Gong Li headlines but you'd barely recognize her she's so unglamorous this time. The 55 year old superstar has recently returned to the screen after taking a few years off, and its' going pretty well. She's the flashiest thing about Disney's Mulan and now she's headlining her seventh Oscar submission in the International category. We already discussed China's Oscar history but how about Gong Li's history starring in Oscar hopefuls? Here they are...

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"Better Days" and China & Hong Kong at the Oscars

by Nathaniel

Hong Kong has selected Better Days (available to rent on Amazon), to represent them at the 93rd Oscars. Its director Derek Tsang (also known as Tsang Kwok Cheung) first entered the movies as an actor. But for the last decade the now 41 year old talent has been moving behind the camera. (He's the son of the director Eric Tsang who followed a similar path working both sides of the camera). His film is a contemporary crime drama about a bullied teenage girl and a mysterious thug who protects her. It won 8 prizes at the annnual Hong Kong Film Awards.

The Academy Awards have been notoriously resistant to Asian cinema, apart from a 20th century fixation on Japan. Most Asian countries have somewhere between zero to two Oscar nominations, usually not a number that accurately reflects their status in global cinema. Only in the 1990s when Chinese cinema was all the rage at US arthouses, did Oscar come around and then only for a few short years. After the jump at look at China and Hong Kong's track record with Oscar. We're grouping them together, despite how problematic that is politically, because when it comes to the film industries it can be hard to separate them for us Americans across the ocean. That's because the two countries often share the same directors and movie stars. That's reflected in their Oscar submissions... 

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