The curious case of "The Red Balloon"

by Cláudio Alves

Last time we explored the history of non-English speaking films at the Academy Awards, we looked at the success of Japanese cinema in the Best Costume Design category. In 1956, two years after the historical victory of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell, the Academy finally inaugurated the Best Foreign Language Oscar as a competitive category. Federico Fellini's La Strada was the first winner and, like Gate of Hell, it also scored a nomination in another category, Best Original Screenplay. This time around, though, the foreign film champion lost that additional statuette. However, it didn't lose to a Hollywood production or even an English-language one. Instead, that year's prize for Best Original Screenplay went to one of the weirdest Oscar winners of all time. 

We're talking about a nearly dialogue-free French short film about a magical balloon directed and written by the creator of the Risk board game… 

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New Rules for the Next Oscar Race!

by Nathaniel R

Is the Academy being proactive or panicky? That's up for debate but they've made a big announcement. Though the Oscar ceremony is almost exactly 10 month away (February 28th, 2021) -- practically a full year -- AMPAS is planning for the worst with the coronavirus pandemic and adjusting accordingly. The biggest news might well be a 'letting the genie out of the bottle' rule change. They will now allow streaming films without theatrical releases to compete for Oscars.

From their own mouths:

“The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theater. Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering. Nonetheless, the historically tragic COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligibility rules. The Academy supports our members and colleagues during this time of uncertainty. We recognize the importance of their work being seen and also celebrated, especially now, when audiences appreciate movies more than ever.” 

We've assumed this was going to happen eventually though the notion frightens us for what it portends, not for its arguable necessity at the moment. This change makes a lot of sense in this extremely unprecedented situation BUT, and here's the nuanced bit of our feelings that's hard to sell in easy sound bites....

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Posterized: The Best of Icelandic Cinema

by Nathaniel R

A few weeks back we celebrated Romanian cinema due to Whistlers, their most recent Oscar submission, hitting VOD. Why not follow suit today as Iceland's latest Oscar submission, A White White Day, arrives for home viewing? A White White Day is a moving character study about a widower dealing with new revelations about his wife after her death in a car accident. Meanwhile he's building a home for his daughter against the Icelandic landscape which makes for memorable recurring tableaus. We reviewed it at TIFF last year and it's worth checking out. Especially if you love Nordic cinema or are familiar with the work of Iceland's greatest movie star Ingvar E Sigurdsson, who is typically perfect here. We imagine that this film would have ruled this year's Edda Awards (Iceland's Oscars essentially) but the Eddas have been postponed indefinitely (they were originally scheduled for March) due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

And on that note let's look back at the most essential, famous, acclaimed, influential (or some combo thereof) Icelandic films of the past 40 years via our Posterized series. We've put asterisks beside all the titles that star Sigurdsson since we love him and you will too after screening A White White Day.

How many of these 18 Icelandic films have you seen? 

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Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Yojimbo

Team Experience is celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next couple of nights. Here's Eric Blume...

When the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo was released in 1961, he and Toshiro Mifune already had collaborated on over a dozen films, and this collaboration is widely considered one of their greatest.  It essentially birthed the character of The Man With No Name, was remade three years later by Hollywood as A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood, and has had an enduring influence on films for almost sixty years...

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Toshiro Mifune @ 100: The Hidden Fortress

Team Experience is celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next few days. Here's Nathaniel R...

Raised as an American child (through no fault of my own) in the era when the original Star Wars trilogy first captured the world's hearts, it's perhaps unsurprising that I knew Star Wars before any of its influences. Though my innate interest in cinema led me eventually to "Akira Kurosawa's greatest hits" somehow The Hidden Fortress (1958), always escaped my eyes. I knew of it mainly only as 'that movie that everyone says inspired George Lucas's space opera.' 

It would be foolish to pretend with snobbish cinephilia that the original Star Wars film doesn't improve on its then 19 year-old inspiration, but The Hidden Fortress deserves more than this footnote status; minor Kurosawa is still Kurosawa...

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