Well, well. Here's some welcome news. After this year's much balleyhooed disaster with the Best Foreign Film Oscar noms -- recap: lauded Romanian Cannes winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days somehow didn't even make it onto the Oscar shortlist -- The Envelope's Mark Olsen reports that a rule change has been voted in for next year's event. Now, I don't like to get too worked up about the Oscars -- it's such an insidery, backpatting schmoozefest of the "You're great!" "No, you're great!" variety -- but last year's foreign noms really pissed me off.

I wasn't as enarmored of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days as many of my fellow critics were, but even so, it's a masterful, tensely drawn piece of filmmaking, it won the Palme d'or and gave critics worldwide a collective cinematic orgasm, and it damn sure deserved not just to be shortlisted, but to make the final cut of nominees. That it wasn't nominated was a travesty, and confirmed the ongoing suspicion of many in the film community that many of the people in the Academy who are charged with making decisions around foreign film noms are a pack of drooling idiots.

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?

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?

 

Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch, who astonishes at every turn), along with her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) and four friends, were the only members of an anti-Nazi organization called The White Rose. Over the few short months of the group's existence in 1941 and 1942, they printed and distributed six leaflets to German and Austrian citizens, decrying the Nazi regime and urging resistance. Caught and convicted of high treason, troop demoralization, and aiding the enemy, Sophie Scholl was executed in Munich on February 22, 1943. She was 21.

Though Scholl is is something of an icon in Germany, she's virtually unknown here in the US, which is why Marc Rothemund’s Oscar-nominated Sophie Scholl - The Final Days is such a revelation. Using sources including newly-available Nazi interrogation notes, Rothemund’s fictional film explores the last few days of Scholl’s life in searing detail, from the printing of the fateful pamphlet on the night of February 17 to her death only five days later. Aided by a pair of remarkable performances, he has created a film that does his central character the honor of not only living up to her legacy, but also making it relevant to modern audiences.

Best foreign film Oscar nominee Joyeux Noël will finally be released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics (on a limited scale, of course, seeing as how it's foreign and lacking in martial arts, and therefore no one will see it) in early March. The film tells the extraordinary true story of a World War I Christmas Eve truce, during which German, French, and British soldiers climbed out of their trenches to celebrate the holiday together. Described in Variety as "proudly old-fashioned," with "multiple resonances for the current world," the movie has received uniformly strong reviews and certainly deserves to be seen - and, obviously, an Oscar win (the ceremony takes place two days after the film's US release) would help.

In the meantime, a new American trailer (which, because I'm a huge sap, very nearly made me cry) has been released, so we can watch that as we await its release.

The Promise, Chen Kaige's gorgeous fantasy epic (remember the trailer?) and also China's official Oscar entry, easily broke the Chinese opening weekend records when it was released last week. The film's four-day total of £5.2 million outdistanced the previous record (set by Kung-Fu Hustle) by almost a full £1 million, and the first week total is also expected to set a record.

The film, which took nearly three years to shoot is, with its cost of £24 million, the most expensive Chinese film ever made. It is one of the nominees for the best foreign film Golden Globe Award, and must be considered one of the films with a legitimate shot at an Oscar nom as well, if only because of the status of its director. Unfortunately, the US release is currently slated for some vague time next spring (by which point a region 0 DVD will be widely available), so we won't know for month and months if it actually deserves any of this regard.