Call me an optimist, but I'm always hoping for Oscar reform. I've been rather excited about recent rumblings that the Academy is finally, finally considering changing its rules regarding foreign film consideration. I saw one of the new nominees last week, The Counterfeiters, and I have to say that there were at least 20 or 30 other, better foreign language films last year. In fact, I'd have to say that The Counterfeiters is a contender for my worst list of 2008; it takes on an interesting story, but cinematically it's sheer amateur hour. The only reason it got nominated is because it takes place in a concentration camp. I also need to mention that the director, Stefan Ruzowitzky, made one of the worst films I have ever seen, All the Queen's Men (2002), starring Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Izzard as soldiers who go undercover as drag queens in WWII.

Did anyone notice that though La vie en rose earned three nominations (Best Actress, Costume, Makeup) it didn't get nominated for Foreign Language Film? Likewise, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (205 screens) -- filmed almost entirely in French -- was nominated for four awards (Best Director, Editing, Screenplay, Cinematography), but not Best Foreign Film. Why? Diving Bell doesn't count as foreign because it has an American director. Not to mention that each country is only allowed to submit one film, and France's choice, Persepolis (100 screens) was not nominated either. Instead, it was nominated for Best Animated Film! This type of thing happens all the time. In 2002, the foreign film committee rejected the Brazilian film City of God. It was released in 2003 to great critical acclaim and success, and was nominated the following year for four Oscars in other categories. In 2000, Taiwan chose to submit the hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, rather than arguably the greatest film of the past decade, Edward Yang's Yi Yi. Why couldn't both be nominated?

The Spanish film The Orphanage (El Orfanato) has been marketed in the U.S. as a movie that Guillermo del Toro worked on in some capacity: similar to Pan's Labyrinth, but with more elements of horror. I found this campaign to be terribly misleading, even disappointing in light of my expectations. (Misleading marketing for a movie? You could have knocked me over with a girder, to quote Dorothy Parker.) The Orphanage is instead more of a slow-paced suspense film with supernatural trimmings, centering around a mystery that the main characters cannot solve even though the audience may have figured out a few clues. Although del Toro is credited as a producer on the film, it's directed by J.A. Bayona and has very little in common with Pan's Labyrinth, except that both feature children with rich fantasy lives.

Laura (Belen Rueda) and Carlos (Fernando Cayo) move to an old country estate with their son, Simon (Roger Princep). The mansion used to be an orphanage where Laura lived as a girl, until she was adopted. Now the couple is renovating it as a home for special-needs children. Odd things start occurring, though, before they can finish the job. An old woman who says she's a social worker warns Laura that she's keeping an eye on them because of Simon's chronic illness, and knows information that the parents have not yet told their child. And Simon discovers a whole slew of new invisible friends, some of whom sound extremely spooky and even dangerous. They play a special game that you know isn't going to end well. On the day of the grand opening for the renovated orphanage, Simon disappears without a trace. Has he been kidnapped, and is he still alive? Laura is determined to root out the truth and find her son, and will try anything.

Wouldn't you like to have Alejandro Amenabar as a friend? The award-winning director of Open Your Eyes, The Others and The Sea Inside has announced he will produce El Mal Ajeno, to be directed by his friend Oskar Santos. Actress Belen Rueda has been set as the female lead. She described the story to Variety as a "mixed-genre doctor's drama laced with fantasy and suspense elements." Rueda was very impressive in The Sea Inside as a lawyer fighting for quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro's (Javier Bardem) right to die, while battling her own medical problems. Her role in El Mal Ajeno is said to be a patient's wife, but I can't imagine she'll be any kind of wallflower; she has too strong a personality to blend easily into the background. The script is by Daniel Sanchez Arevalo, who recently made a splash on the festival circuit with DarkBlueAlmostBlack, due for a theatrical run in the US later this year.

The Spanish title El Mal Ajeno translates word for word, depending on your free online translator of choice, as either 'the badly other people's one,' 'the badly strange, foreign' or 'the evil somebody else's.' Santos previously made A Trip to The Sea Inside, an 87-minute documentary that was included on the DVD of The Sea Inside. More germane to the making of a picture with fantasy elements, though, Santos also directed two fantasy shorts, Torre and El Sonador. The latter was based on an idea by Amenabar, who also served as producer. Between the making of those two shorts, Santos also contributed a short film to UrbanChillers.com. Filming on El Mal Ajeno is set to begin in early 2008, which means we have to wait until next year to find out if Santos can mix genres like his friend Amenabar -- and also what the heck that title really means.