Once again it's time to complain about the Academy's foreign film rules and point out the great films ineligible and/or disqualified from being nominated in the category. The Hollywood Reporter has a surprisingly long article about the annual controversy, in which the trade lays out everything you wanted to ever know about the Oscar for "Best Foreign-Language Film." Basically, the usual complaint is that such an award can't always truly honor the best foreign-language film, only the best foreign-language film that falls within certain guidelines.

Some of this year's obvious exclusions are Ang Lee's Lust Caution, which was denied submission by Taiwan because the film is hardly representative of the country's film industry, and Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was passed over by its potential submitter, France, in favor of Persepolis (as was La Vie en Rose), which could have settled just fine with being an Animated Feature nominee. Other disappointments include The Band Visit, which was denied for having too much English dialogue, and The Kite Runner, which can't be submitted by Afghanistan because it was directed by Marc Forster, a Swiss-American, and featured an international crew. Afghanistan ended up with no submission, while Israel had to quickly substitute The Band Visit with Beaufort and Taiwan had to replace Lust Caution with Island Etude.

Last year, the Academy retooled some of the restrictions for its foreign-language category, although now it appears they could use some more tweaking. Also, I would like them to retroactively honor excluded films of the past, which they could do in some way without revoking the Oscars it has handed out (except the one for Tsotsi -- that one was really undeserved, and I'll say it again and again).

The record 63 films eligible for the foreign-language Oscar were announced last month by the Academy, and Cinematical's Eric D. Snider comments on that list here.

We don't have to wait two years! We only have to wait one! In case you can't tell, I'm excited to hear the solo Wolverine spin-off will be hitting theaters in 2008, rather than 2009, as we've always thought. But is it true? According to IESB, it is. The site spoke with Wolverine director Gavin Hood -- twice -- and claims the guy said Fox is pushing the thing out next summer. However, Hood is also quoted as saying production doesn't even begin until either December or January and that it would take four months to shoot. So what is it, guys, is he starting filming in just under a month, or is he starting in a few months?

Either way, I'm still excited to know it's going into production soon. Wolverine, which star Hugh Jackman and Wizard magazine discussed in-depth recently, will lens in Australia and New Zealand and will apparently feature "other mutants such as Gambit" (but probably not Gambit; Hood merely acknowledged that "other mutants" would appear, and that could simply refer to Sabretooth, who we already know about). Other than that, IESB was only able to confirm that Wolverine would be rated PG-13 and that Hood seems to see the X-Man's story as something out of opera or Greek mythology, which he is more familiar with than comic books.

Despite my excitement as a fan of the comics and the character of Wolverine in particular, I have some reservations. I was probably one of the biggest critics of Hood's Oscar-winning film Tsotsi, and now that his follow-up, Rendition, is getting mixed-to-bad reviews, I hate to think that he'll also ruin Wolverine. The opera/mythology stuff intrigues me, but I hope he'll at least do some research into the comic books, and I hope he's more kidding than half-kidding in his telling IESB that he's only doing the movie to pay for his twins' college tuition. Let's pray Hood wasn't right in initially telling Fox that he's the wrong guy for this.

It's Easter weekend, and for a lot of us that means easter egg hunts, church services, and dinner with the extended family. After stuffing yourself silly with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks and ham and listening to Uncle Bert's war stories for the 89,000th time, you'll be ready to escape -- and where better to escape to than the movies? If you live in Seattle, count yourself lucky. You'll have more to choose from than Scary Movie 4 or The Wild.

UW Film Club 

This week at UW brings us a showing of Academy Award-nominated Brazilian film City of God. Tuesday, April 18 @6PM, Electrical Engineering Auditorium. Also this week at  UW:

Beautiful Boxer shows as part of International Queer Nights, Tuesday, April 18 @7PM, Q Center

ASUW A&E Movie Spring Series - every Weds. at the HUB Ballroom.

April 19 - Memoirs of a Geisha @5:30PM; Chronicles of Narnia @8PM

 

Shockingly, this weekend might actually be sunny here in the Puget Sound. If you're like me, you'll be out and about soaking in some rays that don't come from a lamp, but that's okay. Once the sun goes down, you'll still be wanting something to do, though --  and as always, Seattle has your movie fix.

UW Film Club 

This week brings us the 5th Annual Native Voices Film Festival. Check out the schedule - all events are free, so if you don't want to spend $20 to go see something at the multiplex, this might be a good option.

Monday's odds and ends:

• The South African press is reporting that two people involved in post-production on Tsotsi have been arrested as "key members of a suspected syndicate" that was producing and selling pirated DVDs of the film. On a personal level, the two men were in court this morning, facing "charges of fraud, theft and corruption." Professionally speaking, meanwhile, both are probably out a job, and have totally torpedoed business for Video Lab, their (ex-)employer.

• According to Production Weekly, worldwide writing acclaim isn't enough for Alan Ball (he of American Beauty and Six Feet Under fame): what he really wants to do is direct. To that end, he's chosen a nice, totally not controversial topic for his debut feature. Based on a novel called Towelhead, the movie, which starts shooting this summer, takes place during the Gulf War, and "follows a 13-year-old Arab-American girl who must navigate a sexual obsession with a bigoted Army reservist under the oppressive eye of her Lebanese father." Multiplex, here he comes!

• Here Be Monsters is a children's book so huge in the UK that even I, a childless American, have heard of it. The book's popularity (it'll be out here in July) led to a bidding war for the movie rights; LAIKA Entertainment won (they paid "significant six figure[s]") and plan to turn the story into a animated film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the book tells the story of "young boy who tries to save his town from a dastardly takeover plot," and is illustrated with hundreds of drawings (lots of them of monsters) by author Alan Snow and, best of all. Plus, best of all for LAIKA, it's the first installment in a planned series! Mmm ... franchise. The production will be overseen by The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, and there is talk that Here be Monsters will also be a stop-motion film.

I know you'll find it hard to believe if you live in the Puget Sound area, but this weekend we're scheduled for yet more rain. Like a good Seattleite, I like my rain and dark cloud cover as much as the rest of you, but even I'm starting to get excited at the occasioal glimpses of blue sky and sunshine.  As always, though, you have lots of movie options to keep you happy, and chances are whatever theater you choose, there's a coffee shop nearby to get your obligatory caffeine fix to boot.

UW Film Club 

 

This week brings us the Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival  (March 31-April 6), and what a lineup! The festival has some promising films lined up, including Sundance winner Iraq in Fragments, Gate of the Sun, a 278-minute epic film about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as told through the 50 year history of an uprooted Palestinian family, and documentary The Color of Olives. Check out the full schedule here.

 

 

Will Smith presents Best Foreign, because of course foreign language films comprise the greater part of his body of work. What country is Paradise Now going to officially be from? -- Palestinian Territories, nice compromise. Here are the nominees:

Don't Tell (Italy)
Joyeux Noël (France)
Paradise Now (Palestinian Authority)
Sophie Scholl -- The Final Days (Germany)
Tsotsi (South Africa)

 

And the winner is....Tsotsi! Woot!

Director Gavin Hood gives the most impassioned and heartfelt speech of the evening. He graciously insists the camera people show the kids who starred in the film, too. Why is it that the non-Hollywood types give the most realistically emotional speeches, while the  people who are supposed to be able to act often give boring ones?

 

Though there are three major releases hitting screens this weekend, a glance at any newspaper's entertainment section will leave you mysteriously convinced that Running Scared is the only one. Why? Make no mistake, it's not because the studios are scared of bad reviews for Doogal and Madea's Family Reunion - it's just that it's expensive to put screenings together for ungrateful critics. Tear. So instead, I've including Tsotsi, the South African release nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, in the roundup, as it also opens this weekend. In sum: Running Scared is derivative crap/brilliance, and Tsotsi isn't as good as you'd expect. Details follow.

• Running Scared: Despite New Line's clever attempted to distract the public via a porntastic promotion, most critics still noticed that Running Scared is pretty bad. In the negative reviews, there's a lot of talk about self-consciousness, and the pallid aping of Tarantino - oddly, the same things show up the handful of good reviews, except there those things are praise-worthy. It's confusing, and leads one to the inescapable conclusion that, even more than usual, your reaction to this one is going to depend almost entirely on your point of view.
  
  
• Tsotsi: Because it's currently playing in just six theaters, reviews of Tsotsi are few and far between. Critics who have seen it, however, found themselves vaguely disappointed, particularly given the film's lofty status as an Oscar nominee. Though most agree that the movie looks gorgeous, it's hard to find anyone who will grant that sort of praise to its storytelling - even those who like it are forced to admit that the film's story of redemption is disappointingly "conventional."
  

Gavin Hood's Tsotsi might surprise you. One of this year's favorites to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, the South African entry is anything but the masterpiece of inspired filmmaking you should expect it to be. It is a crowd-pleaser, sure, winner of the People's Choice Award at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, but other than being a fairly optimistic story of moral turnover that audiences can get behind, the film has very little to propel its worth to the same level as its esteemed appraisal.

Based on the 1980 novel by Athol Fugard, with many liberties taken to modernize what had been relevant literature of Apartheid-era hoplessness, Tsotsi is a bland look at its country's economic rather than racial separations. The universality of the film's themes is globally accessible, but its tired intentions and scarce intensity keep it from being a great film.

All that film-type stuff going on in Toronto concluded this weekend with a screening of the (we're really supposed to take Justin Timberlake seriously?) film, Edison. This came after the fest's "big deal" People's Choice Award was handed out to the South African drama, Tsotsi. Not to be confused with Dustin Hoffmans' Tootsie, pic tells the violent life story of a Johannesburg gang leader. Following similar praise in Edinburgh, Tsotsi will now go into distribution negotiations with all but South Africa up for grabs. The award for the film the people liked second best went to Mother of Mine; a mother and son drama set in war-torn Finland. Both films have been submitted to represent their countries in the foreign language category at the Oscars.

While we're on the subject, The Discovery Award, voted for by the press corps, went to Look Both Ways while the FIPRESCI Prize was awarded to South Korean director Kang Yi-kwan for Sa-Kwa. The Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature ended in a tie between Familia and the music-industry themed mockumentary, The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico. The Best Canadian Feature trophy went to Jean-Marc Vallee's C.R.A.Z.Y for its "standout acting, its incredible emotional resonance and extraordinary visual inventiveness." Gee, and here I thought the bad punctuation in its title might have hurt their chances. For more information on the festival, its films and these awards, you can visit their website here.