FYC: "Ride Your Wave" for Best Animated Feature

by Cláudio Alves

There's nothing more wonderful about cinema, about art as a whole, than the ability to surprise. If I feel a film showed me sights I never thought possible, if it told me stories I could have never imagined, it instantly earns respect and a special place in my heart. Following that line of thinking, one must say that no other picture in this awards season surprised me quite as much as Masaaki Yuasa's Ride Your Wave. Mixing supernatural stylings and teenage melodrama, the Japanese director has managed to create one of the most painful portraits of loss and paralyzing grief in a long time. If you thought the sight of a girl talking to a water bottle would never make you tear up, think again…

Click to read more ...

Best International Feature: China, India, Japan

by Cláudio Alves

The cultural hegemony of Hollywood can make it seem as if the American film industry were the biggest in the world. However, some nations produce even more cinema than the US, and, annually, there's a much greater number of non-English-speaking features than Anglophonic ones. Since the Oscars tend to relegate such films to the Best International Feature category, it's possible to get a skewed view of the global realities of movie-making from them. In truth, the Academy's very local in its choices. With that in mind, let's explore the submissions of three countries whose industries are as robust as America's…

Click to read more ...

Japanese Academy Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Two of the nominees this year, a journalism mystery and a trans drama

Anyone have any theories as to why American theaters (pretend there's not a pandemic) so rarely get Japanese movies? Chinese, Indian, and South Korean movies hit the US quite regularly (on the coasts at least) but otherwise Asian movies don't seem to get much play in the US. Streaming sites appear to have the same preferences for Asian cinema (though you can add in Thai cinema to the mix there). We try to cover the Golden Horse Awards each year -- which honors Chinese language cinema -- but we realize we've never covered the Japanese Academy (now in their 44th year). That's surely because we've rarely heard of the movies or the stars. With Chinese cinema the titles and stars are often familiar to cinephiles. Theories?

Anyway, here are the nominees this year for the forthcoming March 19th ceremony in Tokyo. Three names -- two of which have been up for Oscars -- are familiar...

Click to read more ...

International Contender: Canada, Germany, Japan, and more...

Since the last posting of this kind we've had six new submissions announced for Oscar's International Feature Film race, bringing the total to 25 thus far. We're tracking both here on the Oscar charts and at letterboxd. (We usually end up around 90 titles but we suspect there will be fewer titles this year due to the pandemic and the resulting cinema chaos.)

Click to read more ...

Sakamoto on Criterion

by Cláudio Alves

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a master of music that needs no introduction. Thanks to his work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra and solo experiments, Sakamoto has helped shape the evolution of electronic music like few other artists in the past decades. His avant-garde sound is difficult to confuse with that of other composers, but he's not an artist predisposed to repetition or stagnation. Since the 1970s, has never stopped composing, never stopped challenging himself, or dazzling his audience with music whose beauty transcends comprehension. Sakamoto's also an avid cinephile and had been writing film scores since the 80s when Nagisa Oshima cast him in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Across the years, he's built an eclectic filmography that's rich in artistic brio and lacking in mediocre efforts. He even won an Oscar.

Because of such excellence, the Criterion Channel has curated a selection of 10 Ryuichi Sakamoto scored pictures. Here are some highlights…

Click to read more ...