Foreign Language Film Contenders Lead Asia Pacific Screen Awards

Some of the year’s most buzzed-about festival titles and Oscar contenders are among the nominees for this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards. APSA is similar to the EFAs except awarding films from across the Asia Pacific. Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, Japan’s submission to the Oscars, leads with three nominations followed by Burning from South Korea and Nadine Labaki's Lebanese legal drama Capharnaum each with two

Other Oscar submissions this year that snagged nominations include the Cannes best actress winner Akya from Kazakhstan, the queer drama Malila: The Farewell Flower that is Thailand’s entry and India’s child musical Village Rockstars.

Click to read more ...

Two Visual Triumphs Seeking Distribution: "The River" and "Shadow"

Since we're already deep into NYFF - thanks to Murtada and Jason for this excellent reviews (I'll join them shortly) --  I must accept that all the full reviews I had planned for things without release dates I saw at TIFF just aren't going to happen. But several films we caught are hitting theaters soon so they will get reviews: A Star is Born (10/5), Beautiful Boy (10/12), Border (10/26), and Boy Erased (11/2). In the meantime here are the final two TIFF films I must pinpoint because they don't have distribution yet but they totally deserve it.

Shadow
I'm calling this one 'camp without color,' because we always think of "camp" as something innately colorful, don't we? Director Zhang Yimou (House of the Flying Daggers) gifts for visual spectacle remain undimmed and this time he organizes his mise en scene around the duality of the yin yang symbols as well as inkwash paintings...

Click to read more ...

1984: Year of the Heroic Farm Wife

As we look back at 1984, please welcome new contributor John Guerin to talk about a famous Oscar triple...

In 1984, 60% of the Best Actress category was farm wives

In May 1985, after scoring Oscar nominations for playing distressed farmwives in Country and The River, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and urged senators to help aid farmers during a devastating agricultural crisis. After a toxic combination of faulty economic policies, mounting debts, high interest rates, and a declining Midwest population, American farmers were experiencing financial hardship unseen since the Great Depression. Both Country and The River offer visions of farm families under such pressures, pitting family and community against unyielding forces of nature and government.

Can you remember the last time an actress testified before Congress after starring in a politically-minded film?

Click to read more ...