Potential Foreign Oscar Submissions from Cannes

While most of the world obsesses on Eurovision today, we'll stayed obsessed with France. The Cannes festival ends tomorrow with the awards ceremony and the biggies like the Palme D'Or (the overall winner) Best Actress (or 'The Anti-Marion' as it will surely soon be retitled since she's in the mix every single year but never wins) and the Camera D'Or (first film). But until tomorrow afternoon when we hear those honors, we've still got plenty to discuss including potential Oscar submissions (I must soon create those massive foreign submission charts) and the first wave of jury prizes.

UN CERTAIN REGARD
Isabella Rossellini's jury has handed out their prizes with this statement from Rossellini

We, the jury, would like to thank the Festival de Cannes for inviting us to be part of the Jury for Un Certain Regard. The experience of watching nineteen films from twenty-one countries was memorable. It was like taking a flight over our Planet and its inhabitants… Any anthropologist would be envious of us. We would like in particular to thank Thierry Frémaux and his team for their incredible kindness. I cannot refrain from expressing also my personal gratitude to the Festival for having chosen my mother Ingrid Bergman for the poster of the 68th edition of this festival. Mamma seems to hovered over all of us, filmmakers and film lovers, as a guardian angel. Thank you.

Here's a roundup of prizes including many potential Oscar submissions for Best Foreign Language Film...

Click to read more ...

Turkey Does Not Heart Julianne

It's your weekly reminder that Julianne Moore won an Oscar! And also a news story that sounds like sketch comedy. Thanks to Benji for this heads up that the universe is keeping Juli humble. Seems she filmed a commercial - part of a series of commercials using celebrities to promote tourism in Turkey.

Unfortunately the powers that be in The Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkey have rejected the commercial she filmed for "poor acting" and cited her "depressive persona" as a concern. They offered her a chance to reshoot but she declined and they scrapped the commercial.

Someone somewhere leak this commercial. We beg you! You all know we love Julianne far Moore than is healthy but this story is so weird it's funny, don't you think? Especially since she surely got paid regardless and she just won an Oscar. (In case you hadn't heard.)