Oscar's Foreign Race Heats Up With Russian Controversy

Blow the horn. The nifty annual charts for Oscar's Foreign Language Film competition are up. With 25 films announced (26 if you count Iran's confusing "did they or didn't they?" issues with their internationally acclaimed marital drama A Separation) we're nearing the halfway mark of the list which usually tops out somewhere around 65 films.

Brazil, Bulgaria and Lithuania have announced

Current predictions are for fun speculation only since we don't even have half the official list. Let's not get too crazy in thinking we know how this plays out; this category often surprises both with submission choices and finalists. (Especially with their recent Executive Committee switcheroo powers. That must be how Dogtooth made it last year!)

Albania to Italy the most recent additions are Brazil's Rio slums crime drama Elite Squad 2, Bulgaria's Tilt which seems a little rock and roll / adolescent for Oscar (here's the trailer) and Colombia's The Colors of the Mountain.

Italy to Vietnam one new addition is a father/daughter drama from Lithuania called Back in Your Arms which takes place in the 60s but the backstory is very World War II. I want to see this ... I mean, it even has dance numbers!

RUSSIA has also announced...

When Nikita Mikhalov, the director and star of the very popular Russian Oscar winner Burnt by the Sun (1994) announced he was making the sequel some time ago I immediately predicted that a future nomination was sewn up. But beware of 'looks unbeatable on paper.' Burnt by The Sun 2: Citadel met with surprisingly rough reviews when it hit Cannes and was an expensive box office failure at home.

The controversy doesn't end there. Here's a quote from a recent Guardian article on this selection:

Vladimir Menshov, the chairman of the country's Oscars committee, has publicly called on Mikhalkov to withdraw his film. Apart from anything else, he said, there was something "inappropriate" about the veteran film-maker, who is a member of the committee, having put his own movie forward for consideration.

"This film, which came out in May, had an absolute critical drubbing ... it was never shown anywhere internationally," Menshov told Echo of Moscow radio on Tuesday. "And most importantly, it was a catastrophe at the box office."

Burnt by the Sun (1994), Oscar WinnerOn the other hand if an entire committe is making the decision, why shouldn't one mamber who is a working filmmaker be able to submit their films as long as they don't have deciding power? It'll be interesting to see if Oscar's love for the original transfers. It did provide a memorable moment on the telecast with the director and his adorable daughter Nadezhda (both stars of the film). Or will the Academy give this sequel the cold shoulder that it's receiving elsewhere. 

Have you ever seen Burnt by the Sun?

Are you glad to see the charts back?  

 

TIFF Finale Pt. 1: "Silver Cliff" and People's Choice Winner "Where Do We Go Now?"

Paolo here back with...wait, there are more movies after the awards were announced? Yes, but before we get to that, I was unfortunately reminded by Amir that I saw Love and Bruises. It's a movie about a Chinese woman in Paris named Hua who studies the women's rights movements but hangs around with rapists outside of campus. One of these, Mathieu (Tahar Rahim, who needs to work with better directors), is the jealous possessive type but lets her alone with his skeezy best friend. Cheery stuff.

Silver Cliff

Aarim Ainouz' SILVER CLIFF begins with Djalma (Otto Jr.), a beefy guy who isn't having fun despite swimming on a beach in Rio de Janeiro and making love to his wife Violetta (Alessandra Negrini). He flies to a smaller city and dumps her over the phone. Arriving at the airport too late, she roams around the city, from hotels to beaches, playing his voice message and suspicious of its tone. She meets a father (City of God's Thiago Martins) and daughter with their own back story.

Rio is a city where Brazilians can get willingly lost and here we follow the abandoned halves of broken marriages in Silver Cliff. Though the majority of the film concentrates on Violetta, her scenes neither written nor performed compellingly, Ainouz's choice to begin and end with the male characters is a puzzler.

The People's Choice Winner...

Where Do We Go Now?

After the screening of Nadine Labaki's WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (Lebanon's Oscar Submission), I overheard a festivalgoer telling his friends that 'someone's probably blogging that this is the worst People's Choice Winner ever.' I might be one of those bloggers misconstrued as writing that.

The film's chief merit is its female perspective on Lebanese sectarian conflict. In the spirit of "Lysistrata," a group of village women try to stop men from gunned conflict through pranks. (Some audiences might see this approach as too idealistic since it's difficult for any group who hate each other and unite and pull off miracles.) The director also stars as Amale (Labaki) whose character arc takes her from merely vulnerable and beautiful to someone who can publicly question notions of masculinity and God. But why did the idealistic women have to hire those big city Ukranian exotic dancers? By exploiting them for the men's use these women are taking steps back as they try to move forward. Where Do We Go Now? would have been more effective with less of its irreverent comic tone and musical numbers which only work half the time. The film could still reach the same denouement without trying so hard for its laughs.

TIFF Award Winners

The list as they came in [thanks to The Lost Boy]

BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE Edwin Boyd, directed by Nathan Morlando (Paolo's review, Amir's review)
BEST CANADIAN FEATURE Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau
BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM Doubles With Slight Pepper by Ian Harnarine
PEOPLE'S CHOICE MIDNIGHT MADNESS The Raid, directed by Gareth Huw Evans
PEOPLE'S CHOICE DOCUMENTARY The Island President by Jon Shenk
INTERNATIONAL CRITICS SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS The First Man, directed by Gianni Amelio
INTERNATIONAL CRITICS DISCOVERY SECTION Avalon directed by Axel Petersen 

And the biggie, the PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD, which often signifies Oscar attention in either Best Picture or Foreign Film categories is WHERE DO WE GO NOW? the musical from Lebanon which is from the director of Caramel. It was recently submitted for Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film.

UPDATE: Here's the international trailer.

It's officially one to watch now, a very likely nominee if past awards are indication. Runners up in this category were Iran's very buzzy marital drama A Separation and Ken Scott's Starbuck. 

TIFF: "Himizu," "Lovely Molly," "...Nightmare" and "Union Square."

Paolo here, back with yet more TIFF films from the final weekend.

The first film today is Sion Sino's HIMIZU, using the backdrop of the March 11 earthquake to tell the story of fifteen year old Yuichi Sumida's (Shota Sometani) violent dreams and reality. One of his dreams puts him in the Fukushima rubble, where he finds a pistol inside a washing machine and when he wakes up, he checks his own washer to see if it's true. What ensues is school absenteeism, stalking from a lovesick and excitable girl, abuse from his father (who tells him he should drowned him in a river) and beatings from Yakuza loan sharks. 

At one point he has convulsions, a reaction to his unbelievably painful life. It's a raw and forceful performance from Sometani that might be ignored by larger audiences because of world cinema ghettoization. Sino's approach in telling Sumida's story meanders after the point when Sumida stands up to get revenge from these adults.

I feel snobby when I miss films from TIFF's Midnight Madness programme but fortunately, they play them again days after their premieres. Yesterday brought us LOVELY MOLLY from BLAIR WITCH director Eduardo Sanchez. It starts with the young titular character (Gretchen Lodge) explaning, teary eyed, that the actions that her body is committing is not really her. Her seemingly perfect marriage and childhood home disintegrate because of an incubus that haunts her. It is a competent horror film with the occassional excellent moment, especially those in which Lodge confronts her inner monster or becomes one. Lodge, in a debut performance, commits to the role with both eloquence and ferocity.

The transitions between regular film and video cam equipment are smooth.The scares aren't cheap but the intervals between them are far too long. While we're waiting for either the invisible ghost or Molly to attack, we're left with watching close-ups of furniture while eerie music plays on the background. The film can't rely only on great sound design to make its house look creepy. And why does the house have a security system but not proper lighting?

New Isabelle Huppert and Mira Sorvino movies after the jump.

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TIFF: A Funny Man, Love and Bruises,... Anatolia

Amir, here, back with more coverage of new TIFF films. The Toronto International Film Festival is winding down but luckily I have a couple of big name movies still scheduled. Here's a few from the last two days.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This Cannes grand prix winner is a slow-paced police procedural in which a doctor, a prosecutor and a group of other police agents drag an alleged murderer along with them in the rural Anatolia region of Turkey so he can show them where he’s hidden his victim’s body. More than half of this gorgeously shot film is spent during the night and I for one wished the morning never came. Gokhan Tiryaki’s impeccable lighting and the varied range of shots he creates in the limitless but monotonous locale of the film easily tops my personal list of best cinematography of the year. 

There’s more to the film than the actual nightly search as Ceylan gives us indications that we should question the nature of the crime. Supernatural observations, spirituality and religious themes of guilt and faith all play a part in this hypnotic film. At two and a half hours, Anatolia won't be for everyone, but if you’re willing to go along with Ceylan’s delicate look into the social structure of Turkey and his humanistic approach to this crime tale, the end result is incredibly rewarding.

The cast of "A Funny Man" (Nikolaj Lie Kaas in the center)

A FUNNY MAN (dir. Martin Peter Zandvliet) 

The director’s follow-up to Applause (for which Paprika Steen was a medalist right here in Nathaniel's film bitch awards) is a biopic about Dirch Passer (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), one of Denmark’s best known comedians. Once again, Zandvliet has given us an insightful look into the troubled life of an artist, one who’s always faced with the struggle of transitioning his successful comedic career into that of a serious dramatic actor. Much of the film is similar to what we often see in biopics that cover the bulk of the protagonist’s life, but don’t let that throw you off. A Funny Man is an emotional film that can make you laugh, cheer and cry at the same time and there are truly great performances in it. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (of Brothers and The Idiots fame) is a marvel as the late Passer and embodies both his comic genius and his dramatic talents to the same effect. Even better is Lars Ranthe as his partner Kjeld whose subtle turn in this demanding role is sensational. Both actors would have been easy gets for Oscar nominations had this film been in English. The film’s real champ for me, however, is Sune Martin, whose soothing, gentle score is even better than the eccentric work he did for Applause.  

LOVE & BRUISES (dir. Lou Ye)

This was the beginning of my most disappointing day at TIFF. I was excited to see this for Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete) but my enthusiasm died down just a few minutes into the film. Ye’s hollow and underdeveloped love story between Hua, a Chinese teacher (played by Corinne Yam) and Mathieu, a French construction worker (played by Rahim) who meet by accident on the street of Paris was anything but lovely. One-dimensional characters, a sexist and judgemental view of relationships and an inconceivable plot make it one of the weakest scripts of the year.

Rahim tries but the script gives him very little to work with. Worse still, the film gives us a whopping total of ZERO reasons to like Hua’s character who’s inexplicably adored by almost every man she meets. Though, I'd add that my reasons for disliking Hua all relate to how flatly written the character is which is entirely different from the misogynistic reasons the film itself seems to hate her. Lest you think sexism is the film’s only fault, its on-the-nose depiction of social class division is surprisingly even more distasteful. I’d give this film a straight "F", but I’d probably listen to Peyman Yazdanian’s score out of context, so a "D-" would be fair. 

CUT (Amir Naderi)

I’d like to say it was the after-effect of the previous screening that made me abandon this halfway through, but Cut was no masterpiece either. The film opens with a sequence that begs for our sympathy as a cinephile walks the street yelling “they’re killing pure cinema. Today’s films are only for entertainment” into a megaphone. Then, in a contrived turn of events, he becomes a human punching bag for inexplicably violent men in order to pay his deceased brother’s debts. The film’s subpar production values and mediocre acting weren’t helping its cause but I shouldn't express opinions on a film I haven’t watched in full. Perhaps a miracle of improvement happened after I left?  

>Final Weekend: back-to-back screenings of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis follow-up and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights which has just been picked up for distribution (albeit in 2012), actressy musicals and Joachim Trier still to come.