Foreign=Suck: Changes for 2009?
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snack
Extraordinary
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:18 pm Posts: 12159
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck (shortlist is out)
Levy wrote: esnack wrote: And I at least expected Lust, Caution to make the shortlist. How does this selection process work? Was it even eligible? Oops...no. Nevermind.
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:26 pm |
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Levy
Golfaholic
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2005 2:06 pm Posts: 16054
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
So, basically the top 3 candidates were left out. It's as if No Country, Blood and Into the Wild were left off Best Picture.
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:28 pm |
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snack
Extraordinary
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:18 pm Posts: 12159
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Levy wrote: So, basically the top 3 candidates were left out. It's as if No Country, Blood and Into the Wild were left off Best Picture. ITW is debatable at this point, but I guess so was The Orphanage, so yes, like that. Does anyone have last year's shortlist btw? Did Volver even make that?
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:32 pm |
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Shack
Devil's Advocate
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 2:30 am Posts: 40599
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
It's like the D list version for foreign films Persepolis 
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:42 pm |
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Dr. Lecter
You must have big rats
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:28 pm Posts: 92093 Location: Bonn, Germany
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Seriously..HOW THE FUCK could 4 Months... miss? I mean I can understand Persepolis if it's also up for Animated and all... I could understand The Orphanage...it's horror. But 4 Months has been sweeping Best Foreign Picture awards left and right (as long as The Diving Bell didn't take them). How on earth could they dismiss it? I mean, seriously, it's as if they snubbed NCFOM from the Best Picture race. I sense some Romania hating 
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:49 pm |
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Shack
Devil's Advocate
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 2:30 am Posts: 40599
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
I think academy voters were always secretly getting their votes from writers(because they know better), and now that they went on strike they're all like LOL WTF DO I DO WTF DO I DO? Michael Clayton for BP and art direction? OK. Diving Bell for BP? OK. 4 Months for foreign? Ew, I'm Republican. I can't think of any other explanation for this year. 
_________________Shack’s top 50 tv shows - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=90227
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:03 pm |
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Dr. Lecter
You must have big rats
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:28 pm Posts: 92093 Location: Bonn, Germany
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Or the Academy just wanted to fuck around with the consensus. Like "LOL, let's snub all the frontrunners and replace them with most films no one has heard of...lol, wouldn't that be like, ZOMG, awesomest?!"
Next up:
Best Pictre line-up:
1408 Blades of Glory The Bourne Ultimatum Spider-Man 3 Beowulf
Lolz!
_________________The greatest thing on earth is to love and to be loved in return!
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:07 pm |
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Shack
Devil's Advocate
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2005 2:30 am Posts: 40599
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Dr. Lecter wrote: Or the Academy just wanted to fuck around with the consensus. Like "LOL, let's snub all the frontrunners and replace them with most films no one has heard of...lol, wouldn't that be like, ZOMG, awesomest?!"
Next up:
Best Pictre line-up:
1408 Blades of Glory The Bourne Ultimatum Spider-Man 3 Beowulf
Lolz! Don't even joke! 
_________________Shack’s top 50 tv shows - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=90227
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:13 pm |
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Jonathan
Begging Naked
Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 12:07 pm Posts: 14737 Location: The Present (Duh)
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Wow, like, WTF indeed. That shit is whack. 
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 6:14 pm |
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billybobwashere
He didn't look busy?!
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:59 pm Posts: 4308
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Holy shit. This category does suck.
and Persepolis now has a shot to win Best Animated Feature again.
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:42 pm |
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Alfred
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 3:29 pm Posts: 429 Location: A place, where birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
That's insane!!! The Counterfeiters is the new frontrunner.
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1 billion, come on hit me!
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:54 pm |
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Dr. Lecter
You must have big rats
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:28 pm Posts: 92093 Location: Bonn, Germany
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
God, is there any way that this is an error?
Because if not, this is my predicted line-up:
The Counterfeiters 12 The Unknown Days of Darkness Beaufort
With 12 winning this...
_________________The greatest thing on earth is to love and to be loved in return!
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 9:00 pm |
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Webslinger
why so serious?
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:24 pm Posts: 4110 Location: Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Holy shit. 4 Months and Persepolis both miss, and they don't even go with The Orphanage. I have absolutely no interest in this category this year.
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 9:34 pm |
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billybobwashere
He didn't look busy?!
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:59 pm Posts: 4308
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
loyalfromlondon wrote: I was telling Gulli a few weeks back, I might be the only one who doesn't love Persepolis. It's good and clever and all but nothing award worthy.
Would be a real shame if it won Best Animated Feature over Ratatouille. I'm not saying I hope it does - I absolutely loved Ratatouille and will likely not find Persepolis nearly as good - but it would be a very Academy sorta thing to do, going with the unusual longshot in one of those "unimportant" Picture categories, which is what happened when they gave it to The Lives of Others last year and didn't give it to Amélie a few years back.
_________________ Retroviral VideosA film-based project created for the purpose of helping raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, specifically in South Africa.
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:34 am |
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billybobwashere
He didn't look busy?!
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:59 pm Posts: 4308
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
loyalfromlondon wrote: billybobwashere wrote: loyalfromlondon wrote: I was telling Gulli a few weeks back, I might be the only one who doesn't love Persepolis. It's good and clever and all but nothing award worthy.
Would be a real shame if it won Best Animated Feature over Ratatouille. I'm not saying I hope it does - I absolutely loved Ratatouille and will likely not find Persepolis nearly as good - but it would be a very Academy sorta thing to do, going with the unusual longshot in one of those "unimportant" Picture categories, which is what happened when they gave it to The Lives of Others last year and didn't give it to Amélie a few years back. They are more than welcome to give Persepolis Best Animated if they bump Ratatouille to Best Picture.  
_________________ Retroviral VideosA film-based project created for the purpose of helping raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, specifically in South Africa.
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:44 am |
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MikeQ.
The French Dutch Boy
Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 8:28 pm Posts: 10266 Location: Mordor, Middle Earth
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
It's really terrible that so many presumably great frontrunners missed... but folks, take this chance to support Days of Darkness!! It's Denys Arcand's completion of his trilogy!  Go Arcand! Peace, Mike
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:48 am |
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Raffiki
Forum General
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:14 am Posts: 9966
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
The category for foreign film will probably be the most publicly unrecognizable in a long time. Every year, there's at least one film that has gained mainstream American buzz.
I, too, have no interest in the category this year. Are any of these films even playing here?
_________________ Top Movies of 2009 1. Hurt Locker / 2. (500) Days of Summer / 3. Sunshine Cleaning / 4. Up / 5. I Love You, Man
Top Anticipated 2009 1. Nine
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:13 am |
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snack
Extraordinary
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:18 pm Posts: 12159
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
It's a long read, but it's worth it. Quote: How Do You Say "Oscar Scandal" in Romanian? by Scott Foundas January 15, 2008 3:30 PM Tuesday, January 15, 2008  a date that shall live in Academy Awards infamy. Earlier today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the nine films that have been shortlisted for this year's Foreign Language Oscar, of which five will comprise the final list of nominees to be announced (along with all Oscar nominations in all categories) one week from today. And here's the rub: The year's most acclaimed foreign-language film, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days isn't among them. This isn't, mind you, one of those periodic cases of a film being disqualified on the basis of the Academy's notoriously serpentine rules and regulations, as happened earlier this year with the Israeli film The Band's Visit and two years ago with Michael Haneke's Caché. No, 4 Months has been in this race from the beginning as Romania's official entry, competing against submissions from some 62 other countries, and its failure to advance to this penultimate round of the nominating process is as embarrassing a blunder as any in the Academy's history: You can put it right up there with the Best Picture win by Crash (2004).
To put things into perspective, 4 Months isn't the only significant foreign film shut out by the Academy this year. Of the 63 eligible titles, also failing to make the shortlist were Marjane Satrapi's animated Persepolis (from France), as well as the film with which it shared the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Mexican director Carlos Reygadas' transfixingly beautiful Mennonite marital drama Silent Light; Hong Kong director Johnnie To's masterful neo-noir Exiled; another Cannes prize-winner, South Korean director Lee Chang-Dong's Secret Sunshine, which also placed first by a wide margin in the “best undistributed film†category of the recent Village Voice/L.A. Weekly film critics poll; and the effortlessly charming two-hander Belle Toujours, by the 99-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.
Each of those omissions, however, is markedly less surprising than that of 4 Months. Persepolis, for example, is considered a shoo-in for a nomination in the Academy's Animated Feature category, and it could be that voters on the Foreign Language committee felt that the film would be sufficiently recognized that way. Genre films like Exiled are almost never acknowledged by the Academy in any non-technical categories. And hardcore art-house directors like Lee, Reygadas and Oliveira are perennial Oscar bridesmaids: Just consider that in the 51 years since the Academy created the competitive Foreign Language category, Theo Angelopoulos, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami and Wong-Kar Wai have failed to amass a single nomination between them, despite having had one or more of their films submitted by their respective countries. (Even Academy favorite Ingmar Bergman, who thrice won the foreign-language Oscar, failed to earn so much as a nomination for arguably his most famous film, The Seventh Seal, in 1957.)
But 4 Months is something different: It's the sort of movie the Academy has often acknowledged in the past, which is to say a film of high artistic merit that it also easily accessible for the general moviegoing audience. (For other, Oscar-winning examples, see Costa-Gavras' Z, Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Bertrand Blier's Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Bergman's Fanny & Alexander, and Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother.) That's one of the reasons why 4 Months has been a sell-out attraction at film festivals around the world, from highbrow affairs like Cannes (where it won the coveted Palme d'Or of the main competition) to less industry-centric regional events like Telluride and L.A.'s own AFI Fest.
Even my own mother  an elementary school administrator and about as plain-folks a moviegoer as one could hope to find  gushed about the film after seeing it at last year's New York Film Festival, and it's not hard to understand why: Mungiu's film isn't an intellectual exercise but rather a visceral one, holding the audience rapt with its breathlessly intense story of two college roommates attempting to negotiate an illegal abortion in Communist-era Romania. Unfolding in something close to real-time, in long hand-held camera set-ups as confidently executed as anything in the Bourne franchise, the movie gets its hooks into you early and deep, and for the next two hours dares you to break its gaze. And beat for beat, Mungiu's brilliant direction is matched by the performances of his two stars, Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu, and by the terrifying Vlad Ivanov as the backroom abortionist Mr. Bebe.
Since Cannes, the accolades for 4 Months have been piling up faster than one can count  not just from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, but from the famously obscurantist National Society of Film Critics and the unapologetically populist Broadcast Film Critics Association too, plus Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominations for foreign-language film, and the European Film and European Director of the year awards at the recent European Film Awards in Berlin. Given all of that, an Oscar nomination might have seemed inevitable, but for several months now there have been rumors (many of them voiced by Hollywood Elsewhere columnist Jeffrey Wells) that Oscar voters had not responded especially strongly to the film at official Academy screenings. Which raises the question: Which Oscar voters exactly are we talking about here?
As explained in the Academy's official press release:
“Foreign Language Film nominations for 2007 are being determined in two phases. The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 63 eligible films and their ballots determined the above shortlist. A Phase II committee, made up of ten randomly selected members from the Phase I group, joined by specially invited ten-member contingents in New York and Los Angeles, will view the shortlisted films and select the five nominees for the category.â€Â
This is the second year now that the Academy has employed this two-phase nominating process for the Foreign Language category  an attempt, Academy president Sid Ganis said in a 2006 press release, “to see if we can permit busy working members to participate in the [nominating] process without them having to commit to several months’ worth of screenings.†In the meantime, those “several months' worth†of Phase I screenings continue to be attended largely by Academy members who have a lot of spare time on their hands, namely retirees. And of those several hundred who serve on the committee, many still fail to see the minimum number of films required in order to nominate  this despite a 1987 Academy rule change that split the nominating committee into three groups, thereby reducing by one-third the number of eligible films any one committee member was required to see. (In a 1989 New York Times interview, Academy spokesman Bruce Davis explained that only 50% of the previous year's 450-member Foreign Language committee had met the minimum nominating requirements.)
"I've had better days," producer and Foreign Language nominating committee chairman Mark Johnson said when reached by phone late Tuesday afternoon, adding that, while he had nothing to say against any of the nine shortlisted titles, he was "stunned" by the omission of "a couple of films" from the roster.
Johnson went on to compare the day's events to the 2003 Foreign Language Oscar nominations, which failed to include the acclaimed Brazilian film City of God, which in turn went on to be nominated in four non-foreign categories (including Director and Adapted Screenplay) at the 2004 Oscars. Alas, such a happy ending will likely elude 4 Months, owing to another arcane Academy rule: While City of God hadn't yet opened commercially in the U.S. at the time of its Foreign Language Oscar veto and could therefore qualify the following year in all other categories, 4 Months played a one-week qualifying engagement in a single Los Angeles theater at the end of 2007, thereby making it eligible for all Oscar categories this year, when relatively few Academy members (outside of those on the Foreign Language committee) are likely to have seen it.
"I thought we had made big strides last year, but apparently not big enough," said Johnson with regard to the two-phase nominating process. Asked if further retooling (including the possible involvement of more active Academy members earlier in the nominating process) may lie in the future, Johnson was unambiguous. "That's what has to be done, because in my mind it can't continue like this," he said. "I don't believe these choices reflect the Academy at large."
That brings us to the nine films that did make this year's Foreign Language shortlist. Of them, I have seen only two  Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky's wonderful The Counterfeiters, which has long been considered a likely nominee, and Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore's histrionic and unintentionally hysterical melodrama The Unknown, in which an Eastern European prostitute on the run from her brutal ex-pimp reinvents herself as a cleaning woman in the home of the Italian family she believes has adopted her love child. Check back soon for the Lifetime network remake. Of the remaining seven titles, two (Israel's Beaufort and Kazakhstan's Mongol) come bearing good-to-excellent festival buzz, while two others hail from previous Oscar winners: Canadian director Denys Arcand's Days of Darkness (which closed last year's Cannes Film Festival to scathing reviews) and Nikita Mikhalkov's 12, a Russian remake of Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men.
The final voting for the Foreign Language Oscar (Phase III, if you will) is open to any Academy members who can prove they have attended screenings of all five nominated films  a process that has itself resulted in more than a few upset victories over the years, including the insipid Italian travelogue Mediterraneo over Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern in 1991, and the frothy Spanish comedy Belle Epoque over Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine in 1993. But hey, there's no accounting for taste, right? And at least if a film makes it into the final nominee pool and then loses, it can be said to have been fairly judged by the Academy en masse. But how many Academy members ultimately put the kibosh on 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? One subset of one committee comprised of  oh, I don't know  the sound guy from Airport '77, the costume designer from Oliver!, and Ernest Borgnine?. If this is the Academy's idea of reform, may I be the first to propose abolition? http://blogs.laweekly.com/foundas/how-d ... scandal-i/
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 6:50 am |
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snack
Extraordinary
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:18 pm Posts: 12159
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Quote: Somewhere between 300 and 400 people voted for the nine films. Exaggerating only slightly, a veteran marketer described the foreign film branch this morning as "all retired, their median age is 75, a lot of them are on walkers and they have very conservative tastes." Disgusting, and completely consistent with Pan's surprise loss, 4-3-2 and Persepolis getting uber-snubbed, and the general disdain for Almodovar films. It just sucks because the only way to get Americans to see these films is to have them get an Oscar/nom, since the distributors can do very little in the way of promotion.
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:49 am |
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Gulli
Jordan Mugen-Honda
Joined: Mon May 01, 2006 9:53 am Posts: 13403
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
WTF!! the lack of Persepolis is loopy in my mind.
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:37 am |
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Barrabás
llegó a la casa vía marítima
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 4:53 pm Posts: 6333 Location: la gran casa de la esquina
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
WTF?! No Persepolis, Orphanage and 4,3,2?!?!?
Well, I've only seen one of these (The Year My Parents Went On Vacation) and it was great, so I hope that wins. But stilll....the Academy REALLY screwed up here.
_________________ .
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:19 pm |
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Chris
life begins now
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:09 pm Posts: 6480 Location: Columbus, Ohio
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
God this year has been so off the wall. I'm pissed off I have so much work this quarter to follow the races closely.
I'm usually somewhat interested in the foreign film award, but I have absolutely no interest this year.
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Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:01 pm |
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billybobwashere
He didn't look busy?!
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:59 pm Posts: 4308
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Seriously, I bet all the films eligible aren't even as good as the trailer for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days.
_________________ Retroviral VideosA film-based project created for the purpose of helping raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, specifically in South Africa.
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Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:20 pm |
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Dr. Lecter
You must have big rats
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 4:28 pm Posts: 92093 Location: Bonn, Germany
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
billybobwashere wrote: Seriously, I bet all the films eligible aren't even as good as the trailer for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days. http://imdb.com/title/tt0488478/
_________________The greatest thing on earth is to love and to be loved in return!
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Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:26 pm |
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Rod
Extra on the Ordinary
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2004 8:50 pm Posts: 12821
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 Re: Foreign Category = Suck: Now With Evidence (Shortlist)
Maybe they liked the film so much that they decided NOT to award it this year for foreign film so it can compete in all other categories next year... 
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Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:57 pm |
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