International Oscar Race -- Big First Round of News!

by Nathaniel R

Festival season is about to begin (we kick off with Elisa in Venice again!) which means it's nearly fall. That also means various organizations and academies and councils around the world are deciding which of their country's films they should submit to the Oscar race for Best International Feature Film.

We now know 2 official submissions and a few finalist lists so let's start sharing the good news...

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Queering the Oscars: Best Foreign Film 1999, "All About My Mother"

For Pride Month, Team Experience has been looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations. We've decided to extend the series for a few more episodes. Pretend it's still June for a bit!

by Eric Blume

It’s wonderful fun to revisit 1999’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner, director Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother.  Although it’s a beautifully textured, multi-layered tapestry of themes and emotions, it has to be one of the unusual films to ever win this big prize. The plot involves, among other thing: a nurse going onstage as an unrehearsed cover for Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire; a HIV-positive, pregnant nun; two heterosexual women united by giving birth to sons named Esteban from the same transgender woman; and numerous conversations and jokes about acquired tits.

That none of these unlikely and uncommercial plot strands feel forced or shocking is due to the artistry of Almodóvar. The Spanish auteur weaves stories together nobody else would think of in a million years, wrapped up in the boldest color palettes imaginable, with performances of sheer emotional force that rattle the roof...

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Discounts to "IFFF"

BEAUTIFUL BEINGS (Iceland's Oscar Submission)For those of you who like to be completists with Oscar's Best International Feature Film race there's a new virtual film festival you should know about. Being a completist or even seeing a good chunk of the movies is a tough thing to do within any Oscar season given the amount of submissions we generally get (90+) and the unpredictable distribution of those exact same movies. Rodrigo Gutierrez created "International Feature Film Festival" to help with this. About a third of the films on last season's Oscar submission list have been available at one time or another on demand, streaming, or in theaters in the US but the others have been more difficult to find.

For the first edition of IFFF (which runs April 6th-23rd) thirteen of the submissions that haven't yet been distributed in the US or Canada are showing. The list of the films and discounted ticket codes are after the jump... 

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Reader's Choice: Babette's Feast (1987)

This weekend's topic, currently streaming on HBOMax and Criterion Channel, was chosen by readers. This article contains spoilers so if you've never seen the film, correct that first.

for such a delicious movie, the first shot of people and food isn't very appetizing!by Nathaniel R

How far does the "foodie" movie subgenre stretch back? It's difficult to tell from the internet alone, which tends to think movies of all genres began in the 1980s; online "best of all time" lists are of little use when you're curious about film history. We know at least that the subgenre was in full swing by the 1990s with arthouse hits such as Like Water for Chocolate, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Big Night arriving semi-annually. Was the watershed moment, at least for US moviegoers, bout a half a year stretch between the fall of 1987 and the spring of 1988? In that time the hilarious Japanese "ramen western" Tampopo (1985) was slowly collecting its fult following and Denmark's Babette's Feast was a hit at arthouse theaters and took home the Oscar.

Whether or not Babette's Feast was the first truly popular foodie title with movieogers, it was at least a grand appetizer or sensational first course for the now robust subgenre...

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'Babette's Feast' next Thursday!

Thank you for voting in the readers poll about what movie we should talk about next week (Thursday March 23rd). So please watch Babette's Feast (1987) before that day. It's only 102 minutes long which used to be a normal movie length but now will feel like a short film! The Oscar-winning foodie classic is currently streaming on both HBOMax and Criterion and is also available to rent on most platforms if you don't have those services.

Somehow I've never seen it despite being a) really into Scandinavian things b) obsessed with the Best International Feature Film category and c) fascinated that Denmark has become Hollywood's "favourite" country other than Germany in the past two decades (if this keeps up those two countries will be to the 21st century what Italy/France were to the Oscars of the 20th century)