Official Foreign Film Submissions Thus Far

All the foreign submission charts have been updated to reflect the speedy announcements of new titles. We're now up to 84 (last year's tally was an all time record of 85). Somehow I neglected to include Ireland on the submission charts. They've selected an "audacious" biopic about the singer Joe Heany called Song of Granite. The film uses both documentary footage and narrative sequences. It's in black and white and looks gorgeous in still photos

Submissions we've reviewed thus far here at TFE...

• Argentina's Zama
• Austria's Happy End
• Belgium's The Racer and the Jailbird
• Estonia's November
• Hungary's On Body and Soul
• Norway's Thelma

Submissions we've seen but haven't yet reviewed...

• Czech Republic's Ice Mother
• Egypt's Sheikh Jackson
• Finland's Tom of Finland
• France's 120 Beats per Minute
• Polan's Spoor

Submissions we're scheduled to see soon...

• Sweden's The Square
• Switzerland's The Divine Order

The rest of the list (thus far). We'll look out for opportunities to see them...

• Afghanistan A Letter to the President
• Albania's Daybreak
• Algeria's Road to Instanbul
• Armenia's Yeva
• Azerbaijan's Pomegranate Orchard
• Bangladesh's Khacha
• Bolivia's Dark Skull
• Bosnia & Herzegovina's Men Don't Cry
• Brazil's Bingo: King of the Mountain
• Bulgaria's Glory
• Cambodia's First They Killed My Father
• Canada's Hochelaga, Land of Souls
• Chile's A Fantastic Woman
• Colombia's Guilty Men
• Croatia's Quit Staring at My Plate
• Denmark's You Disappear
• Dominican Republic's Woodpeckers
• Ecuador's Alba
• Georgia's Scary Mother
• Germany's In the Fade
• Greece's Amerika Square
• Hong Kong's Mad World
• Iceland's Under the Tree
• India's Newton
• Indonesia's The Leftovers
• Iran's Breath
• Iraq's The Dark Wind
• Ireland's Song of Granite
• Israel's Foxtrot
• Italy's A Ciambra
• Japan's Her Love Boils Bathwater
• Kazakhstan's Road to Mother
• Kenya's Kati Kati
• Kosovo's Unwanted
• Kyrgyzstan's Centaur
• Laos's Dearest Sister
• Latvia's Chronicles of Melanie
• Lebanon's The Insult
• Lithuania's Frost
• Luxembourg's Barrage
• Mexico's Tempestad
• Morocco's Razzia
• Mozambique's The Train of Salt and Sugar
• Nepal's White Sun
• Netherland's Layla M
• New Zealand's One Thousand Ropes
• Pakistan's Saawan
• Palestine's Wajib
• Panama's Beyond Brotherhood
• Paraguay's Los Buscadores
• Peru's Rosa Chumber
• Philippines's Birdshot
• Portugal's Saint George
• Romania's The Fixer
• Russia's Loveless
• Serbia's Requiem for Mrs J
• Singapore's Pop Aye
• Slovakia's The Line
• Slovenia's The Miner
• South Africa's The Wound
• South Korea's A Taxi Driver
• Spain's Summer 1993
• Taiwan's Small Talk
• Thailand's By the Time It Gets Dark
• Tunisia's The Last of Us
• Turkey's Ayla: The Daughter of War
• Ukraine's Black Level
• United Kingdom's My Pure Land
• Uruguay's Another Story of the World
• Venezuela's El Inca
• Vietnam's Father and Son

Current predictions

Some Rami to Love

Look, it's the first image of Rami Malek as the iconic Freddie Mercury in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. The film will be directed by Bryan Singer, who is stepping away from the mutants for once, unless you count Freddie Mercury's mutant lungs / range (four octaves -heeeyyy) which maybe you should. What'cha think?

It's quite a fine image, really. Rami's unique facial structure really plays up the Freddieness once you add that moustache. For what it's worth we are promised that this will not be a traditional biopic (it covers only the formation of the band in 1970 through their Live-Aid performance in 1985). There have been murmurs that the project might not do justice to Freddie's story, or his sexuality, because the surviving members of Queen are totally involved. That's always tricky with true stories when the actual people are involved in telling it.

With deep apologies to Queen, I'm now singing one of my favorite of their hits with new lyrics

All we hear is Rami oh ga ga
Rami oh goo goo
Rami oh ga ga
All we hear is Rami oh ga ga
Rami oh blah blah
Rami oh, what's new?
Rami oh, someone still loves you!

OTD: Vera Drake and Lily Tomlin

On this day (Sept 1st) in showbiz history...

1934 Metro Goldwyn Mayer releases their first animated short, The Discontented Canary. It wasn't Oscar nominated but they soon begin to crash Walt Disney's stranglehold on that particular category back then, with nearly annual nominations (for a time) beginning in 1939 (Peace on Earth) and regular wins in the 1940s thanks largely to the Tom & Jerry series. 

1952 Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is first published. It wins the Pulitzer and gets adapted to the movies twice, the first time as a feature in 1958 with Spencer Tracy and the second time as an Oscar winning Russian animated short in 1999 which was painted on glass. 

1977 Blondie signed their first major record company contract. Whatever happened to that Debbie Harry biopic we were supposed to get? Wasn't it going to star Kiki Dunst or was that just our TFE fantasy?

2004 Mike Leigh's marvelously humane and potent Vera Drake wins the Golden Lion in Venice. The film is nominated for 3 Oscars including a surprise Best Director bid. Imelda Staunton goes on to lose the Oscar to a far inferior performance. We've been demanding a recount ever since.

Happy Birthday to Them
Oscar Nominees: Lily Tomlin (Nashville), Rachid Bouchareb (Foreign Film nominations for Algeria: Outside the Law and Days of Glory)
In Demand: Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Boyd Holbrook (Logan, Narcos)
Other Famous Types: Gloria Estefan
Foreign Stars: Fengyi Zhang (Chinese movie star), Lhumnita Gheorghiu (brilliant Romanian actress), Mohammed Assaf (Palestinian pop star) 

Soundtracking: "Evita"

It's Madonna's birthday!! Chris Feil looks back at one of her biggest soundtracks...

By the mid-90s, musicals were all but dead, even though Disney created their own resurgence in animated form. Madonna’s career however was always heading toward reviving it: she constantly reinvented the game for the music video and her Breathless Mahoney songstress was Dick Tracy’s genre flirtation device. With her divisive performance in Evita, she brought the cinematic musical back into the popular culture and delivered a hit soundtrack in the process.

And I should qualify that for emphasis: a hit soundtrack to a quasi-opera about propaganda and Argentine political figures when the popular music landscape highlighted Alanis, Tupac, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Madonna did that in arguably the least accommodating musical or cinematic climate, and perhaps only Madonna could have done it. Like it or not, much of the film’s success (even musically) is thanks to her star power, no matter how indelible Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s score remains.

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Review: The Glass Castle

This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

‘This would be easier to take on the page.’

That thought kept striking me from odd angles all during the new movie THE GLASS CASTLE  now playing nationwide. In 2005 the writer Jeanette Walls turned the rags of her childhood into adult riches with her memoir “The Glass Castle.”  The book won several awards and sold millions of copies. It was translated into dozens of languages. The big screen, however, has a tricky vocabulary and grammar all its own.

The Glass Castle flashes back-and-forth between adult Jeanette Walls (Brie Larson), a gossip columnist ashamed of her oft-homeless parents (Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts), and her memories of her difficult nomadic childhood...

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