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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?

Don't worry, we've only got about 40 or 50 more entrants to wade through in the next month! I hope that the AMPAS offices have cleared enough space to accommodate all the candidates / film prints that must be flooding in as the deadline approaches for Best Foreign Language Film submissions. The latest hails from Belgium: Variety reports that Nic Balthazar's Ben X has been officially submitted.

As Monika Bartyzel told us, Ben X triumphed at the recently-concluded Montreal World Film Festival, sharing the jury's Grand Prix of the Americas award with Claude Miller's A Secret as well as winning the the audience award for Most Popular Film. The official site says that Ben's "life is a universe to itself," where he plays his favorite computer game avidly, trying to train himself to deal with constant bullying at school until "Scarlite comes into his life, the girl he has met in his on-line game." Dennis Harvey of Variety felt that the film's "mix of fantasy computer graphics ... classic misfit-vs.-bullies youth drama, hyperactive p.o.v. and some overly twisty plot developments doesn't quite cohere." He acknowledged, however, that the film's reception in Montreal "proved it's a potential crowd-pleaser."

Director Nic Balthazar is a former theater and film critic who has also worked extensively in television and enjoyed success as a playwright and stage director. Newcomer Greg Timmermans plays the title role. The trailer looks like a music video -- pretty cool. So far, Ben X does not have North American distribution; it opens in Belgium on September 26.

I'm always fascinated by the choices different countries make for their Best Foreign Language Film submission. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences leaves the selection process up to each country. Rule Fourteen states in part: "Selection of the best picture from each country shall be made by one organization, jury or committee that should include artists and/or craftspeople from the field of motion pictures." A few days ago, The Netherlands chose to submit Duska, a romantic tragicomedy, and now two more countries have announced their submissions. Variety Asia Online reports that Thailand is backing The Legend of Naresuan: Declaration in Independence, while indieWIRE has the news that Austria has selected The Counterfeiters.

As noted in the Variety article, Naresuan is the second film in a trilogy and is based on the 16th century adventures of the King of Siam. The Variety review by Richard Kuipers, which gives the subtitle as The Reclamation of Sovereignty, says the film "is a much more entertaining, if still confusing, proposition for foreign observers than the first." Action fans should be delighted -- Kuipers says more than one half of the running time is devoted to "massive battle scenes" -- but, sadly, I don't think that translates into Academy favor. Local audiences made Naresuan the country's all-time box office champion earlier this year.

The Counterfeiters (pictured) features one of my favorite actors, August Diehl (Tattoo, Distant Lights, Love in Thoughts). He's forced into service as part of a huge counterfeiting operation set up by the Nazis in 1936. The team is led by Karl Markovics, a convicted criminal facing a moral dilemma. Based on a true story, the film was directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Anatomy). The Counterfeiters won the Golden Bear at Berlin; Sony Pictures Classics plans a 2008 release.

The fifth and final 2006 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film finally arrives in American theaters, and it's a serious case of too little, too late. Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, from Denmark, is fairly middlebrow and melodramatic, not as bloody awful as Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory or Deepa Mehta's Water, but equally unmemorable. It's a testament to how badly the Academy needs to revamp this category: instead of taking a single submission from each of a list of countries, why not simply nominate the best foreign language films that played in American theaters during a calendar year? That way we could have enjoyed such nominees as Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times, Claude Chabrol's The Bridesmaid, Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle, or perhaps even Jean-Pierre Melville's resurrected 1969 film Army of Shadows.

Fortunately, there's another reason for After the Wedding to exist, and that's the unique and charismatic star Mads Mikkelsen, with his impossibly pointy cheekbones, beady eyes and reptilian lips that look as if they're about to slide right off his face. In this country, he's best known as James Bond's nemesis in Casino Royale, or as Clive Owen's scrungy sidekick in King Arthur (2004), basically a sadistic badass. But in his native Denmark, he's capable of all kinds of things, from black comedies (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, The Green Butchers) to weepy melodrama (Open Hearts). After the Wedding definitely falls into the latter category (otherwise, it wouldn't have been an Oscar nominee).

I'm a little disappointed with this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees, which usually fall into the 400 screen or less category, but I'm also a little excited. When the category was established back in the 1950s (it was an "honorary" award from 1947 to 1955), the statue very often went to great works of art by great filmmakers. Winners included Federico Fellini (La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8 1/2, Amarcord), Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle), Ingmar Bergman (The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Fanny and Alexander), Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), Jirí Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), Luis Buñuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), François Truffaut (Day for Night) and Akira Kurosawa (Dersu Uzala) -- and that's not even taking into account all the great films that were nominated and lost.

Then, sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Academy started picking other types of films, usually movies with a kind of social conscience rather than artistic excellence that were also lightweight and easy to understand. This resulted in forgettable winners like Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, The Official Story and Burnt by the Sun. The award has not gone to an honest-to-goodness masterpiece since Fanny and Alexander in 1983. The closest we've come was in 1999, with Pedro Almdovar's All About My Mother.

This year could break the long, dry spell.