Foreign Language Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Any regular readers of the site know and love Scott Weinberg, who knows and loves the horror genre like nobody's business. He has already (rightfully) sung the praises of a freaky foreign handheld horror flick called [REC] (the American remake of which, Quarantine, is due out Stateside this October), and while I'd add my own voice to that choir, today comes news of a sequel to the original, vividly titled [REC] 2 (hey, it's a step above The De2cent).

Originally featured on Spanish-language site Aullidos, a simple and striking teaser poster comes bearing the news that a sequel was even in the works, touting precious little information besides the promised reunion of original helmers Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The original is good enough that I fear for any attempt to re-catch lightning in a bottle, but while it didn't beg for any sort of follow-up, it didn't quite eliminate the potential for one either.

Since this puppy doesn't even have an IMDb page yet, we'll keep you posted on more details as they come in. Otherwise, enjoy the trailer for [REC] included after the jump, since it reveals less about what goes down that fateful evening than what its American cousin has already managed to spoil.

[Thanks to Bloody-Disgusting for the heads-up.]

A lot of countries have small film industries, and there's often an "obvious" choice when it comes to selecting an entry for the Oscars' Best Foreign-Language Film category. But not France! France has such a large, thriving movie industry that it can pick and choose, and even snub deserving films in favor of other deserving films.

Case in point: France has announced its entry for the 2008 Oscars, and it's not La Vie En Rose, the Edith Piaf biopic that received rapturous reviews in the United States (including one from our Erik Davis) and seemed like a lock for an Oscar nod. Instead, it's Persepolis -- which won the Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year and has nothing but positive reviews so far at Rotten Tomatoes. James Rocchi reviewed it at Cannes, calling it a "masterpiece"; Kim Voynar saw it at Telluride and offered her approval, too.

It's hard for me to imagine a movie coming out of France this year that's better than La Vie En Rose, but the consensus is that Persepolis might be just such a film. It certainly isn't an out-of-nowhere choice. Furthermore, its subject matter -- a little girl's story of living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in the late '70s and early '80s -- is weightier and more serious than that of La Vie En Rose.

Meanwhile, for lovers of La Vie En Rose, there is still hope that its star, Marion Cotillard -- undoubtedly the best thing about the film -- will be nominated for Best Actress. If that doesn't happen, THEN I'll start working up some serious outrage.

Norway announced yesterday that it would be submitting Reprise as their country's entry for the best foreign language film Oscar. The movie is about "life's realities intruding on youthful assumptions." It joins Sweden's entry Falkenberg Farewell and Denmark's After the Wedding, which were announced earlier in the week.

The foreign language film category in the Oscars often feels tacked on haphazardly, and is frequently paid little attention. Which is exactly how I treated foreign films until I took a cinema history course in college. That was probably the first time I watched a film with subtitles (I think it was Raise the Red Lantern), and opened my eyes to world cinema. Frequently, American cinema seems to be all Boobs and/or Explosions IV at the box office, while films with real stories and characters go unnoticed.

Foreign films are almost always lower in budget than our mid-range films, yet they have more heart and story than our films do. Why is that? U.S. big-budget blockbusters usually perform very well overseas, so if they like those types of films, why aren't they producing them? Is it a problem of budget, or of storytelling? Heck, even Shaun of the Dead was much better than the non-stop stream of bad horror movies on this side of the pond.

Anyhow, while I think about what makes foreign films so good, I'm off to go see The Guardian to put it all in perspective.

I've been reading a lot of chatter on films screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and, before I started reading said chatter, I chattered about it with a Toronto resident/attendee, in order to gain a better understanding of what was being shown this year, as well to guide my friend into seeing and reporting on films that particularly interest me.

Though I can't say I recommend seeing it, I was quite intrigued to read an article regarding Manoel de Oliveira's sequel to Bunuel's Belle de Jour, titled Belle Toujours (Beautiful Every Day). At first, I thought, does this movie actually exist? How come nobody's mentioned it? Actually, Oliveira himself has mentioned it - he wrote his own summary of the film on IMDb. For those interested, it premieres in Toronto on September 13, and then again on the 15th.

Basically, the film revisits the life of one of Severine's friends, Henri (Deneuve is no longer Severine, but Henri is played, again, by Michel Piccoli, who has aged into a kind of soft, grandfatherly-looking sadist). In the original, Henri relentlessly stalked Severine -- looking to consummate some adulterous rendevous, until he discovered her secret life as a whore. Years later, Henri runs into Severine by chance at a Dvorak concert, and the pursuit begins anew. I'm intrigued to know the purpose of this pursuit, as I always thought he gave up on her in Belle de Jour because the power he'd hold over her is the power to reveal her secret. But it's been a while since I've seen the original.

Imagine the following scenario: a millenary cult commits a terrorist attack on a major metro subway line, filling the cars with poison gas and killing many passengers. In the investigation that follows, it is learned that the cult is not only widespread and deep-pocketed, but peopled with highly-regarded intellectuals from the nation's top universities. What kind of shockwaves would that send through the halls of power? What kind of intellectual chill would result? That's roughly the situation that Japan faced in 1995, in the aftermath of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult's nerve gas attack on the Tokyo Metropolitan Subway. Four hundred suspected collaborators and fellow travelers were arrested following that attack, although some of the leadership went uncaught. The cult -- its members, its practices, its mythology -- vaulted to the forefront of Japanese consciousness and never left. Over ten years later, stories about the potential resurfacing of the cult and its leaders still make for easy, scary headlines and gel nicely with the image Japan exports through its entertainment, of a society with ghosts practically falling out of the walls. Akihiko Shiota's Kanaria is a thinly fictionalized take on the societal fallout of the attack.