Fenix & Golden Horse Prizes

Two sets of international film awards were recently handed out and in the holiday flurry we haven't yet shared them, but since three Oscar submissions dominated, better late than never!

Alfred Castro in "El Club"

Fenix Awards
The Fenix awards are a Mexican based initiative to honor films and industry professionals of Latin America, Spain and Portugal.m They're only in their second year so it's too new to know if they'll make an impact but this year they gave Pablo Larraín's  El Club (Chile's tramautizing Oscar submission) Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actor prizes. Alfredo Castro was the acting recipient of the latter (it's a large cast of mostly men and fans of Larraín will know him well since he previously starred in Larraín's other Oscar submissions Tony Manero and No). Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia's mesmerizing Oscar submission for which we're heartily rooting) took Sound, Cinematography, and Music along with Best Director (in a tie)

Golden Horse Awards
The Assassin, which has been marginally successful without quite catching on with audiences, is on a roll with prizes and honors. This past week it dominated the Golden Horse Awards winning six prizes with Picture, Cinematography, Makeup and Costume Design (which are grouped for some reason), Sound Effects and a special filmmaking prize for Hsiao-hsien Hou even though they also gave him Best Director! So that didn't leave much for its chief rivals Mountains May Depart, Port of Call, Tharlo, and Drunk Thanatos but they each were honored in one way or another. Hou's semi-abstract take on the wuxia genre also topped the Sight & Sound Best of 2015 poll.

Which is a long way of saying that this one, which is pretty but alienating, might prove hard for the Academy's Executive Committee to ignore when it comes to their "three saves" for the 9 wide finalist list from which the 5 Best Foreign Language Film nominees will be chosen.

Related: Foreign Film Oscar Charts

NYFF: The (Prettiest) Assassin

Nathaniel returning to life, albeit to watch a film about someone who ends it, on the closing weekend of the 53rd New York Film Festival

If you believe in cinema as a reflection of reality then every college should offer at least undergraduate courses in Becoming an Assassin because that profession is always hiring! According to the movies, there are more assassins in the world than accountants. Full disclosure: I'm no fan of this overflowing subgenre. Assassin movies, like their counterparts Gangster Dramas and Serial Killer Thrillers, often glorify death-dealing or at least cast their protagonists as noble "anti-heroes" or admirably gifted / committed to their criminal art. [More...]

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Oscar Contender "The Assassin" Leads the Golden Horse Nominations

Nominations for the 52nd annual Golden Horse Awards have been announced with Taiwan's Oscar submission The Assassin leading the pack as well as netting arthouse favorite Hou Hsiao-Hsien a non-competitive statue for "Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker" to go along with his Best Director prize from Cannes earlier this year. The Assassin opens in limited US theatrical release on October 16th via Well Go entertainment. China's Oscar submission Wolf Totem, which is actually from animal-movie loving French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (!), only received 1 nomination for visual effects. The latter film is about a student living with Mongolian herders who adopts a wolf cub. 

Though The Assassin is likely to sweep the Golden Horses outside of acting (where only the ridiculously beautiful Shu Qi, Hou's regular muse, is nominated. No Chen Chang? Grrrr.) it's not the only big deal in Chinese languages cinema this year. Taiwan's Thanatos, Drunk, Hong Kong's popular crime thriller Port of Call, and China's acclaimed festival favorite Mountains May Depart also reaped several nominations. The event will be held on November 21st in Taipei. 

BEST FEATURE FILM

• The Assassin (Taiwanese arthouse action epic, Oscar submission)
• Mountains May Depart (Chinese family drama spanning 1995 to the future of 2025)
• Port of Call (Hong Kong crime thriller) 
• Thanatos, Drunk (Taiwanese LGBT-interest sibling drama)
• Tharlo (Tibetan black and white drama)

A complete list of nominations after the jump...

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CIFF Report: The Foreign Film candidates

Tim here, with a report from the other major U.S. film festival of October. The Chicago International Film Festival is, with reason, regarded as minor compared to the likes of Toronto and New York – no major premieres, few celebrities, only a couple of the big upcoming awards players. The flipside is that’s it’s absolutely lousy with interesting little films that won’t ever get a significant North American release, so even if it’s rough for Oscar watching, it’s hard to complain as a Midwestern cinephile.

Having said that, let’s turn to Oscar watching. I had an opportunity to see several of the films on the 76-title deep list of submissions for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and I’d like to share my thoughts on their respective chances at making it onto the ultimate list of nominees. Let’s go alphabetically by country.

ARGENTINA – The German Doctor
In which a German-Argentine woman and her family inadvertently give aid and comfort to one of the most notorious of all escaped Nazis.
My feelings (and review): The film keeps acting like it wants to break out and be more garish and horrifying than it ever quite manages to be, and it’s probably for the best that it doesn’t. The script probably isn’t as smart as it means to be, but the fact-based story is interesting and surprisingly tense.
Oscar prognosis: “Nazi” is a magic word for this category, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see this make the nine-film longlist. It’s a little domestic and tonally off-kilter for where the category tends to live, but the subject matter is spot-on, and the Academy tends to favor Argentina more than other South American countries.

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