The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Finland has chosen its Oscar submission this year.
They've gone with the acclaimed black and white boxing drama The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki which is about a featherweight championship match between American and Finnish boxers in 1962.
That film is also in the finalist list for the European Film Awards. Nominations for the EFAs will be announced on November 5th. The EFA ceremony changes location each year and this year it will be held in Poland on December 10th. Because of competing eligibility dates you'll notice that each year's EFA list contains films from different Oscar seasons. The list of their finalists for 2016 is after the jump...
It's that exciting time of the year again when we start hearing the names of the films selected to compete in this year's Oscar race for Foreign Language Film. It's our signature category at TFE (outside of Lead and Supporting Actressing of course and arguably the eye candytech categories). All four of the foreign charts are now up and will be frequently updated when news comes in. We currently have 9 official submissions but dozens more will be named in the next three weeks.
Last year Jose and I interviewed representatives from 17 films and the team reviewed another dozen still and we hope to provide similarly extensive coverage again this year. Check out the charts above and do share with your friends and countrymen!
the great Sonia Braga at Cannes in May
Germany's Toni Erdmann is currently leading the Oscar buzz but the other topic on everyone's lips in this category is what will happen with Brazil's Aquarius. More on that and a couple of other speculative bits after the jump...
Over the next couple of months we'll be hearing the names of the 70ish films that will be competing for Oscar's coveted shortlist as Best Foreign Language Film. So far nine countries have selected their films and other countries have begun the winnowing to get to their top choice.
Our charts are now in progress with posters, info, and links to official sites and such as well as links back to highlights from last year's global class.
The Companion forces a boxer and a soldier with AIDS to spend lots of time together
Denmark and Brazil have narrowed it down to three films each with Brazil's choice already embroiled in a lot of controversy due to political fighting in regards to Aquarius (starring Sonia Braga which hits TIFF & NYFF shortly and which was very well received at Cannes) though I have to admit it's hard to make sense of the turmoil from an outsider's perspective given the Google translate limitations. Thank to Jon in the comments for alerting us to this brewing controversy but if someone can sum it up for us in brief that would be appreciated. But on our first chart we have three official submissions
CUBA - THE COMPANION Cuba's submission is about a boxer accused of doping who is forced to become a companion to a soldier who has contracted AIDS. Cuba has only been nominated for the LGBT drama Strawberry & Chocolate (1994) in the past but I maintain thatBehavior (2014), their most recent submission, would have been a worthy nominee. Here's the new film's trailer with subtitles:
CROATIA - ON THE OTHER SIDE There is a trailer available but not subtitled. It's about a mother who's kept a secret for a very long time.
AUSTRALIA - TANNA Australia's entry takes place on a remote island and is performed by the Yakel tribe. This one opens in New York City and Los Angeles in September so cross your fingers that it wins further expansion. Here's the official site and the trailer. Our own Glenn Dunks wrote about it for Paradise magazine. It won two prizes at Venice last year and it looks potentially exciting...
Let's ignore Suicide Squad's big box office weekend (read Lynn's review here) as that story is overworked already given the months of hoopla on the internet and the expected fact of a very big weekend (that's what happens with much-hyped superhero films). Instead for the weekend box office column, let's talk about a situation that occurs each year in terms of different preferences in blockbusters around the globe. Those differences sometimes go a long way in explaining why some franchises never die (Hello, Ice Age) even long past their natural expiration dates. Though Finding Dory has easily topped the domestic charts in the US to become 2016's champ, it couldn't reach the global power of Captain America: Civil War (#1), Zootopia (#2) or The Jungle Book (#3) worldwide. Taste and success do vary across borders.
Stephen Chow's "The Mermaid" is the 7th biggest hit of 2016... but it did only $3 million in the US
After the jump let's look at the titles from 2016 with less than a third of their treasure chests coming from the US (currently the biggest film market though China will reportedly surpass us soon). What can we learn from this list?
Though the new Ghostbusters couldn't defeat the very family friendly Secret Life of Pets to take the box office crown, it was still a win for Paul Feig & Melissa McCarthy company (their best opening yet, just beating their previous best for The Heat). Other winners this weekend: Sultan, the Bollywood sports drama starring Salman Khan, is now the #1 foreign language release of the year, jumping over the Chinese hits The Mermaid and Ip Man 3; Woody Allen's Café Society experienced more demand in its opening weekend than of his films since Blue Jasmine; and, finally, the provocative survivalist family drama Captain Fantastic led by a typically sterling Viggo Mortensen expanded fairly well. Next weekend will be key for Captain Fantastic with word of mouth; there's neither anything like it in the marketplace nor really anything to compare it to in ages (since maybe The Mosquito Coast in the Eighties?) but unfortunately that much originality in topic and purpose usually hurts movies at the box office in this era of intense branding.
TOP WIDE 800+ screens. arrows indicate gaining or losing screens 🔺01 The Secret Life of Pets $50.5 (cum. $203.1) 🔺02 Ghostbusters$46 NEWReview 🔻03 The Legend of Tarzan$11.1 (cum. $103) Review 🔻04 Finding Dory$11 (cum. $445.5)Review 🔺05 Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates$7.5 (cum. $31.3) Review 🔻06 The Purge: Election Year$6 (cum. $71) 🔻07 Central Intelligence$5.3 (cum. $117.5) 🔺08 The Infiltrator$5.2 (cum. $6.7) NEWReview 🔻09 The BFG $3.7 (cum. $47.3) Review 🔻10 Independence Day: Ressurection $3.4 (cum. $6.7)
Sultan is now the #1 foreign hit of the yearTOP LIMITED Excluding previously wide. 🔻01Sultan$985K (cum. $5.2) 🔻02 Hunt for the Wilderpeople$563K ($1.4) Review 🔺03Cafe Society$355K NEWReview 🔺04 Captain Fantastic$277K (cum. $406K) Review 🔻05Swiss Army Man$262K (cum. $3.7)Halfway Mark Achievements
What movies did you catch this week?
Beyond Captain Fantastic and Ghostbusters, I Netflixed it bingeing Stranger Things (we'll talk about it soon) and finally finishing Grace and Frankie Season 2, and I apologize that I didn't have Estelle Parsons on my Guest Actress ballot for Comedy and that Emmy didn't nominate her either. This is why they need blue-ribbon panels; there are just too many eligible shows that voters aren't taking seriously that contain better specific performances than the shows they vote for reflexively in all categories as we saw all over the Emmy nominations.
Monday, September 5, 2016 at 10:00PM 
