Foreign Watch: Two Oscar Favorites Join the Fray

We've been faithfully updating the Oscar charts daily to reflect the submissions in one of our favorite categories. We'd call it our favorite but then how would Cinematography, Production Design, both Actress categories, and Costume Design feel? The deadline for submission is just a few days away so in a week or two the Academy will make the list official. Generally speaking, there are one or two surprises from our charts once they do -- a sudden addition or replacement and maybe a single disqualification. But if this list holds we are just short of the all time record number. The are currently 82 submissions, which is one shy of the record from 2014 (the Ida year).

90 year old legend Andrezj Wajda with his film trophies

Among the newly announced films are After Image, a biopic of an avant garde artist, by Andrzej Wajda for Poland and The Idol, the true story of a man who competed on "Arab Idol," from Hany Abu-Assad of Palestine. Oscar loves these two directors so they're surely threats for the finalist list. Poland has submitted films by Honorary Oscar winner Andrzej Wajda a total of nine times in their history and four of those were nominated: The Promised Land in 1975, The Maids of Wilco in 1979, Man of Iron in 1981, and Katyn in 2007. Meanwhile both of Palestine's nominations in the Best Foreign Language Film category come from Hany Abu-Assad: Paradise Now in 2005 and Omar in 2013.  Can these men work their Oscar-hooking magic again?

Updates to the charts (part 1, part 2, part 3) also include new contenders from Argentina, Bangladesh, Jordan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Turkey.

September. It's a Wrap

While the world continued to be horrifying this past month was a partial joy thanks to TIFF ushering in prestige film season, our favorite time of year, and a particularly good one from the looks of it. Here are a baker's dozen highlights from the month at the blog in case you missed these...

7 Favorites
• Isabelle Huppert is Elle -the French icon slays in this tricky movie
• Blue Velvet - 30 memorable things on its 30th anniversary 
• Memories of The Blair Witch Project - Team Experience looks back
• The Red Turtle & Courgette - animation is not a genre 
• I Could Go On Singing (1963) - Judy Garland's final film 
• The Furniture: Love & Friendship - the country charm of the hit comedy
• Moulin Rouge! the musical numbers we're most eager to see reinvisioned for the stage musical version 

7 That Spurred the Most Conversation
• Fences & 20th Century Women -they're finally teasing us 
• Oscar Chart Updates -these always spur plentiful conversation
• Tom Hanks in Sully - what does he have to do to nab another Oscar nom?
• Amy Adams Times Two - Oscar's girlfriend in Arrival & Nocturnal Animals
• The Black Dahlia (2006) - looking back at this curiousity 10 years later
• Natalie Portman in Jackie - Fox Searchlight plans a December bow
• Emmy Afterglow - what was your favorite win... other than Sarah Paulson?

7 Things Coming in October
• More from NYFF including 20th Century Women & Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
• A Marie Antoinette theme party
• 1963 Supporting Actress Smackdown: Tom Jones, Lilies of the Field, and The VIPs
• Fall TV: Crisis in Six Scenes, Divorce, Westworld, Crazy Ex Girlfriend
• New Films: Birth of a Nation, Moonlight, The Handmaiden
• The return of "Oscar Horrors"  
• ...and a new series on Costume Design 

Domhnall Gleeson as the Creator of "Winnie the Pooh"

The biopic genre never dies and one of its favorite subthreads is "famous author". Enter Domhnall Gleeson who will portray A.A. Milne in as yet untitled film about the man behind Winnie the Pooh and the Thousand Acre Woods, his wife (Margot Robbie) and their son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston) who would be immortalized in the Winnie the Pooh books. The film just began principal photographer in the UK.

Here's the first photo of the star in character.

More photos, a note from the press release, and comments after the jump...  

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NYFF: Paterson and The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography

Here’s Manuel reporting from the New York Film Festival with two projects on unassuming artists.

Paterson
In Paterson, Adam Driver plays a bus driver named Paterson. He lives in the New Jersey town by the same name and, living up to the town's poetic tradition (it was home to both Allen Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams), jots down verses in between bus shifts.

Jim Jarmusch's latest is just as precious as that description makes it sound and that's before I tell you that it's structured around a week in the life of Paterson, with every day marked by the same routine...

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Stage Door: Believing in Breaking the Waves, the Opera

Daniel here to discuss the latest transfer from big screen to live stage. 

Bess McNeill, the golden-hearted islander at the center of Breaking the Waves, is a woman of astonishing faith. It is the source of her resilience and it is her undoing, though the salacious facts of her downfall can distract from the strength of her conviction. However, the whirlwind of anonymous sex, medical trauma and social exclusion that characterize the second half of the film do not undo the romantic catechism of its first scene. 

Bess sits in church, beset by the stone-faced Calvinist elders of her community. They demand to know why she wishes to marry an outsider, an act they clearly interpret as a spiritual betrayal. She responds to their questions with an irrepressible joy. Her confidence in her own love, as well as that of her fiancé, is as compelling a testament of faith as has ever been put to film. 

Or, as the case may be, as has ever been put to music...

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