Buladó and Dutch Films at the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

The Netherlands have submitted the magical realist drama Buladó for the upcoming Oscars. It's the third feature-length film from 42 year-old biracial director Eché Janga. It's a rarity for a Dutch submission in that it doesn't take place in The Netherlands but in one of the former Dutch colonies. It's set in the Caribbean Island of Curaçao (Janga's father is Curaçaoan) and is largely in the language of Papiamento rather than Dutch. 

The Netherlands have an interesting Oscar history because they've won nearly half the time when nominated but the nominations are not super common. They're currently in their longest Oscar drought ever as they haven't been nominated since 2003 (despite three finalists since then)...

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Tribeca 2017: Sex Games and Ticking Clocks in "The Exception"

Here's Jason Adams reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival yet again!

Let me just be clear about his right up front: I like thinking about Black Book. Paul Verhoeven's sexy 2008 Holocaust thriller with Carice Van Houten is one of my favorite movies and I've seen it at least a dozen times by now. And so it turns out that enthusiasm is open to re-interpretations, because a full half of The Exception plays like an off-Broadway re-staging of that earlier movie, and I still liked it plenty. No, director David Leveaux doesn't have nearly the handle on making moral hay of human contradictions so deftly as Verhoeven does, but who does? Leveaux makes a go of it, at least...

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Posterized: Matthias Schoenaerts

With the Kate Winslet romantic drama A Little Chaos in select theaters and on VOD, we're seeing Matthias Schoenaerts as the Romance Novel Ready Cover Boy twice over this year since Far From the Madding Crowd already passed us by. If they ever release Suite Française in which he co-stars with Michelle Williams we'll have three swoony Schoenaerts fantasies in one year in which he falls for beautiful recent Best Actress nominees.

So how familiar you are with Belgium's greatest export? He first came to our attention in the Oscar nominated Belgian drama Bullhead (2011) though in truth we had seen him before in Paul Verhoeven's undervalued Dutch WWII thriller Black Book. (2006). But since that movie was all about Carice Van Houten & Michel Huisman erotic fantasies (at least it was for yours truly -- they were both later coopted by Game of Thrones as Melisandre and Dario Naharis, respectively) I'll admit that I didn't glom on to him right then.

Did I ever tell you I met him? That story and movie posters after the jump...

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