Cinemascope

As far as I know, Ken Rudolph is the only member of the Foreign Language Oscar Committee with his own blog. There he jots down each and every movie he’s seen, with a short critique and a grade (1-4 stars).

So far he’s walked out on one movie - Singapore’s “881″, directed by Royston Tan. But he seems to enjoy a good portion of what’s screened to him.

His favorites so far (a week before the narrowing of the list to the top 9 movies to be re- screened to the committee):

SILENT LIGHT (d. Carlos Reygadis; Mexico) 3.75
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (d. Fatih Akin; Germany) 3.75
THE TRAP (d. Srdan Golubovic; Serbia) 3.75 (a film he regards as the surprise of the batch and an overlooked gem).
I JUST DIDN’T DO IT (d. Masayuki Suo; Japan) 3.5
KATYN (d. Andrzej Wajda; Poland) 3.5
THE COUNTERFEITERS (d. Stefan Ruzowitzky; Austria) 3.5
BEN X (d. Nic Balthazar; Belgium)
BEAUFORT (d. Joseph Cedar; Israel) 3.5 (Rudolph prefers “Beaufort” to the eliminated-darling “The Band’s Visit”)

Italy’s THE UNKNOWN, Romania’s 4 MONTHS…, and France’s PERSEPOLIS are all graded with a 3.25. It now has to be seen how many of Rudolph’s top 8 favorites will also appear on his committee’s nominees.

About “Beaufort”, a personal favorite of mine, and superb film hurt by the The Band’s Visit fiasco, Rudolph writes enthusiastically:

BEAUFORT (d. Joseph Cedar; Isreal)
Israel’s original submission, The Band’s Visit , was eliminated; and lucky for us they found this replacement: a strikingly effective based-on-a-true-story of a platoon of soldiers holding an old Crusader fort in Southern Lebanon under siege by Hezbollah. The acting was superb, particularly Oshri Cohen, so memorable as the youth in Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi a few years ago. Here he is playing the platoon officer, wracked by battle fatigue and doubts about the mission. Cedar has made some good films in the past; but this tense, claustrophobic, character driven war film takes him to a new level. *** 1/2

(Hat tip: Liron)

Addendum: the kind Sasha Stone followed up on this, but gave this item her unique point of view: while I was interested in reading his remarks on the foreign language race, she noted Rudolph’s grades for the possible best picture contenders. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is your average Academy voter”, she writes of Rudolph.

Los Angeles, CA – DGA President Michael Apted today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2007.

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
There Will Be Blood

JOEL COEN & ETHAN COEN
No Country For Old Men

TONY GILROY
Michael Clayton

SEAN PENN
Into The Wild

JULIAN SCHNABEL
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I told you! I said before: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly will be big.
But the race is now between “No Country” and “There will be Blood”. I’m rooting for “There Will Be Blood” for Best Picture and The Coens for Best Director.

What else did we learn?

“Sweeney Todd” is dead.
It was dead when excluded bt the BAFTA’s long-list. It’s now a corpse.
“American Gangster” is dead. GOOD! Mediocre movie with an over-eager producer.
“Juno” is dead.
(At least in the Best Picture race. It’ll walk away with best original screenplay trophy, thus killing Diablo Cody’s career, and an acting nomination for Ellen Page. And that’s it).
“Atonement” is almost dead. I still see it as a best picture nominee (without a director nod), and the clear winner of the costume and set designs, with possible wins for original score.

The lovely and freckled Kate Nash will be arriving to New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday, and you should do your best to catch her.
Imagine a song like “Mariella”, with a tempo that’s constantly escalating, performed live. This song is an absolute riot:

Kate Nash, “Mariella”

Kate Nash, the sweetest heartbreak kid, sings self deprecating songs about misfortunes in love and the disintegration of relationships, but her sweet-and-sour cabaret-disco-pop songs, and lyrics of female camaraderie, turn even the most sour fumbling with men seem at least somewhat upbeat.
But when she goes for the romantic jugular, she’s heartbreaking. As in “Nicest Thing”:

Kate Nash, “Nicest Thing”

Download her entire lovely, comical and moving debut CD “Made of Bricks”

This witty observation is off the cover of The New York Press: eight teams of brothers have made a movie in 2007.

Andrew & Luke Wilson (+ Owen)
The Wendell Baker Story

Joel & Ethan Coen
No Country For Old Men
(NYP forgot the Coens’ produced “Romance and Cigarettes”)

Ridley & Tony Scott
American Gangster, The Taking of Pelham 123
(Ridley and Tony are also very visible in “Dangerous Days”, the 200 minute documentary accompanying “Blade Runner: The Final Cut”)

The Brothers Strause
Alien Versus Predator Redux

Ben & Casey Affleck
Gone Baby Gone

Peter & Bobby Farrelly
The Heartbreak Kid

Michael & Mark Polish
The Astronaut Farmer

The Wachowski Brothers
The Invasion (+ the upcoming Speed Racer).

(VOTE: The best brother-brother filmmaking team out there right now).

BUT —

The editors of The New York Press left some siblings out, let me help them complete it with at least six other teams that were active, together or apart, in 2007:

Oxide & Danny Pang
The Messengers

Jennifer & Suzanne Todd
Across the Universe (producers)

Tony & John Gilroy
writer-director and editor (respectively) of “Michael Clayton”

Joe & Matthew Michael Carnahan
Director of “Smokin’ Aces” and writer of “The Kingdom” and “Lions for Lambs”

Chris & Paul Weitz
The Golden Compass

Harry & Rupert Gregson-Williams
Composers. One for “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shrek the Third”, the other for “Bee Movie” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”

Whittling down the full list to a more convenient long-list, before picking the five final nominees is a very British tradition (see, for example, the Booker Prize). The BAFTAs have released their long-lists of nominees, 15 in each category, from which the BAFTA voters will now choose the 5 finalists (on January 14), from which they will choose the winner.
It’s an elegant cycle, since many smaller films will probably not make the cut for the nominations, but will have been consoled that they were nearly there. Sarah Gavron’s “Brick Lane”, and the many mentions of “Control” and “Hairspray” are - I think - such movies that will (sadly) go no much further than the long-list.

Variety’s Adam Dawtrey breaks the list down to the essentials: “Atonement” leads with 17 mentions. Next up, with 13 mentions, are “American Gangster,” “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood”. “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” also has 13 mentions, but none for movie or director.

“The Bourne Ultimatum”, directed by a brit, has 11 entries. “Control” and “Lust, Caution”: 10 each.

“Charlie Wilson’s War” (7) “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (6) “Eastern Promises” (9), “Into the Wild” (9), “Juno” (6), “The Kite Runner” (8) “The Lives of Others” (8) and “Michael Clayton” (8). Also: “3:10 to Yuma” and “Sweeney Todd” have 9 mentions each, but not on the Best Picture ballot.

Here is the complete list:
(more…)

Up until now I’ve played down my Oscar expectations from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood“. My rationale was defeatist: “this movie is just too brilliant to be recognized in real-time by Oscar voters”. And it seemed that the other “desert movie” (”No Country for Old Men”) has a bigger and more vocal following. But over the last few days I’ve played and replayed “Blood” and “Old Men” in my head and and if the impact that these two movies have on me is anything close to what Academy voters think of them, then I must revise my prediction: “There Will Be Blood” will be much bigger at the Oscars than most expect. Best picture nominee for sure (well, I think…). In fact, as support for this movie will grow it may come at the expense of “No Country for Old Men”. It’s now easier for me to imagine a Best Picture category that has TWBB but not NCFOM.
Also: I think most Oscar predictors are underestimating “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “Sweeney Todd” and overestimating “Michael Clayton” and “American Gangster”.

So my current Best Picture nominees are:

- No Country for Old Men (but dropping)
- There Will Be Blood (rising fast)
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (because you can’t have an Oscar without a based-on-novel-based-on-a-harrowing-tragic-but-life-affirming-true-story)
- Sweeney Todd (got to have a musical, and Hairspray is just too light-weight)
And…

I dunno… Juno? Atonement? One is for the younger voters, one is for the elderly academy members. Who’ll out-weigh who? Plus: they both will be in, if the shocker will happen and NCFOM will indeed drop out (or it will be revealed that I have overestimated “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”)