criterionforum.org

I predict a couple of surprises on Oscar night. Both or either Ledger and Williams will win.

leo goldsmith wrote:

kieslowski_67 wrote:best foreign language film ("paradise now" is a favorite, but not a lock).

Paradise Now is perfect foreign language Oscar material. It's basically a Hollywood movie made elsewhere. Anyway, I've never heard of any of the others. So much for 2046.

2046 wasn't eligible. I don't know if it was because of the Academy's weird rules regarding foreign films or if the Chinese selection committee just didn't like it, but they went with The Promise instead. Lot of good that did them.

Hong Kong opted for The Promise as their official Oscar entry as it was a huge box office hit over there. They probably saw 2046 more as a sequel to In the Mood for Love (which it isn't, really) so opted for The Promise instead.

It is between Paradise Now and Tsotsi for best foreign film Oscar.

Either Terrence Howard should win or "Hard out Here for A Pimp" should win one or both of these nominations. Hustle and Flow is right up there in my favorites of 2005.

marty wrote:Hong Kong opted for The Promise as their official Oscar entry as it was a huge box office hit over there. They probably saw 2046 more as a sequel to In the Mood for Love (which it isn't, really) so opted for The Promise instead.

It is between Paradise Now and Tsotsi for best foreign film Oscar.

Mainland China opted for "the Promose" over Yimou's "Riding alone for 1000 miles" (a vastly superior feature film on many different levels, and the themes that the AMPAS actually will like ala "sea inside" from last year). Hongkong went for Peter Chan's musical "perhaps love" (the songs are forgettable, and kind of feel like broken as far as story telling is concerned).

"2046" came out in 2004 and I am not sure whether Hongkong submitted the movie for Oscar consideration last year. I honestly don't think that the AMPAS cares about Wong. If "in the mood for love" failed to gather a nomination in 2000 for best foreign language film, I highly doubt that the AMPAS would give a damn to "2046", a vastly inferior film in any possible way (with the exception that Callas's "Norma" beat out the songs, if any, in "ITMFL").

BTW, after Ang's "crouching tiger hidden dragon" swept the critics awards in 2000, Yimou and Chen Kaige rushed in to make some big budget martial arts movies as followups. It will be interesting to see what kind of gay love stories they will tell after "brokeback moutain" takes the top honor from Oscars on March 5th.

Hong Kong nominated Running on Karma last year, but I think it was disqualified on some technicality. But is 2046 considered a Hong Kong film or a mainland film? Wong is obviously more associated with Hong Kong, but Cannes categorized it as a mainland production. I don't know what it would be considered under the Academy's rules.

I haven't seen it yet, but I was also kind of surprised of the omission of "Saraband." Was it eligible?

I think Saraband had already screened on television in Sweden or something like that.......

That reminds me, Grizzly Man was/is airing on the Discovery Channel this week. Was it in fact ineligible for a nomination because of this, just as Fahrenheit 9/11 was last year, or did the Academy just really not like it?

Any chance Saraband was omitted because it was a boring, ugly, uncinematic piece of shit?

Barmy wrote:Any chance Saraband was omitted because it was a boring, ugly, uncinematic piece of shit?

IMHO, Saraband was my third favourite film of the year. Oh well, as they say, different strokes....

Regarding Grizzly Man, I just read the other day the reason it was not nominated was simply because it did not get enough votes! Can you believe it! They screened it for Academy voters and still nothing. What is the world coming to?

Standard for the academy's doc branch to overlook a film a) directed by an already established auteur who doesn't exactly need a career boost from an Oscar, b) who makes feature films too and thus might be considered a "dabbler" by an underinformed documentarian, c) about a person you'd hardly call a role model or an inspiration. Herzog's film is not trying to make the world a better place, at least not in the ways most doc. nominees try to do it.

There are also, I believe, questions surrounding the cliquey process by which the Documentary Oscar nominations are determined. The shortlist that Grizzly Man failed to make was, I believe, voted on by an unspecified handful of insiders, not by the Academy (or documentarians) in general.

zedz wrote:There are also, I believe, questions surrounding the cliquey process by which the Documentary Oscar nominations are determined. The shortlist that Grizzly Man failed to make was, I believe, voted on by an unspecified handful of insiders, not by the Academy (or documentarians) in general.

Very similar to the process that excluded Hoop Dreams in '94. There have been calls for the Academy to reform their Documentary process. I don't know if they have considered/done it.

Senses of Cinema 2005 World Poll (3 Parts - see links at the bottom) - featuring forum members such as Doug Cummings, Acquarello, and dvdane (Henrik).

2. Crash (Paul Haggis, USA, 2004)
A morale disguised as a film, Crash is half haunting elegy about how pointless it is to fight injustice and racism, half racist melodrama, reducing people to ethnic stereotypes, and so manipulative it talks down to people. Watch it back to back with Nazi films like Der Ewige Jude (Fritz Hippler, 1940) and watch how similar they are in rhetorics. Tasteless and disgusting.

I miss Henrik's posts here.

Independent Spirit Awards:

http://www.imdb.com/features/rto/2006/isa

Is this the first year the Spirit Awards and Oscars have at least 3/4 the same nominees?

I'm disappointed that Memoirs of a Geisha won for best cinematography....the movie looks nice ( like every other movie that comes out, ), like the guy who shot it knows how to work the camera, and on what to focus on, but boy does that movie offer nothing, especially visually. So when the New World loses to such a stale movie....just yuck.

Jon Stewart was funny, and though I haven't seen Capote yet, I was glad that Philip Seymour Hoffman won.

Ugh! Crash!?

Actually, the thing that bothers me the most is that I actually turned it on. John Stewart fished me in.

The highlight of the evening for me was Three 6 Mafia winning for best original song.

I'm dead serious.

Did anybody else interpret the length of Altman's speech as a revenge of sorts against the Academy?

Somehow the Academy always seems to give at least one Oscar to each of the favourite films. Out of the five nominees, CRASH is definitely the worst but it all makes sense now why it won:

1. Many Academy voters are aging actors who would not have enjoyed the revisionist western of BM and they felt like it tarnished the classic image of the Hollywood western.

2. As George Clooney noted in his acceptance speech, the Academy and Hollywood seems to know it is NOT of touch with the real world and what better film in these times where there is racial tension against Muslims, blacks etc and anything non-mainstream. This film tries to tell us we are an intolerant racial bunch but, hey, an accident or death may change your views.

3. It was turned down by all the major studios and the Academy loves stories like this one but then again so was BM!

4. The only truly independent picture of the five with the other four being affiliated with major studios in one way or another.

5. Payback for CRASH producer Bob Yari complaining about the Producer Guild and the Academy for not giving him a credit. They basically told him " No Fuck Off!" I love the way Cathy Schulman thanked him despite the fact that she is currently suing him!

It was a choice between the PC, let's all be friends, if you don't like this you are a homophobe gay cowboy film vs. the over-the-top, layered on thick, Stanley Kramer would blush melodrama about race relations. What two great choices.

BM managed to turn gay sex into a Leno "joke" repeated ad nauseum, including twice in the Oscar "show" intro. Bury that crappy film stat.

the good news is that thanks to the Crash win, racism has ended.