"Budapest" in Berlin: Fun Press Quotes from the Cast

The 64th Annual Berlinale began today and though The Film Experience can't be there (we're still recovering from Sundance) we are watching from afar. The events began early today with jury introductions and the press conference for Opening Night Gala film Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel. The conference was fun if not exactly informative. Wes Anderson kept getting questions about the aspect ratio (it's apparently square like a 30s movie) and questions about his influences and where his ideas spring from that he didn't really answer but for generalities. He watched a lot of Ernst Lubitsch for this one and admitted that he loves Stanley Kubrick and his "systems", too, whatever that means. I wouldn't have ever grouped Lubitch and Kubrick, myself, but I'm pleased that someone out there can alchemize them. 

Herewith the best moments featuring Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, and more...

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CIFF Report: The Foreign Film candidates

Tim here, with a report from the other major U.S. film festival of October. The Chicago International Film Festival is, with reason, regarded as minor compared to the likes of Toronto and New York – no major premieres, few celebrities, only a couple of the big upcoming awards players. The flipside is that’s it’s absolutely lousy with interesting little films that won’t ever get a significant North American release, so even if it’s rough for Oscar watching, it’s hard to complain as a Midwestern cinephile.

Having said that, let’s turn to Oscar watching. I had an opportunity to see several of the films on the 76-title deep list of submissions for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and I’d like to share my thoughts on their respective chances at making it onto the ultimate list of nominees. Let’s go alphabetically by country.

ARGENTINA – The German Doctor
In which a German-Argentine woman and her family inadvertently give aid and comfort to one of the most notorious of all escaped Nazis.
My feelings (and review): The film keeps acting like it wants to break out and be more garish and horrifying than it ever quite manages to be, and it’s probably for the best that it doesn’t. The script probably isn’t as smart as it means to be, but the fact-based story is interesting and surprisingly tense.
Oscar prognosis: “Nazi” is a magic word for this category, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see this make the nine-film longlist. It’s a little domestic and tonally off-kilter for where the category tends to live, but the subject matter is spot-on, and the Academy tends to favor Argentina more than other South American countries.

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Foreign Oscar Buzz: Israel, Hungary and Romania

Soon we'll be inundated with Foreign Film Oscar Submission news but for now news from three countries to get us started. The Oscar Charts will be up this weekend for this always diverse and exciting (if you're paying attention) category. [Thanks to Daniel, Yonatan and A.D. for the tips]

S#x Acts

ISRAEL
Israel has been on a hot streak with Oscar with four nominations in the past six years so news of the Ophir Awards is always important. This narrows the field for which film will be their official submission since they go with the Ophir winner. Seven films are in the running for their Best Picture (The Ophir).

The frontrunner is Bethlehem (12 nominations) a drama about the Arab- Israel conflict which focuses on three characters: An Israeli secret services agent, his teenage Palestinian informant and the informant's older brother, a commander of the Al Aqsa Martyr's brigade. Other nominees include S#x Acts, a drama about a transfer student who improves her social status via the boys at her new school. Sukaryot is about an Israeli-Arab entrepreneur wants to open a chain of candy store competing directly with an Israeli corporation. Magic Men is a dramedy about a Hasidic Jew who joins his magician father on a trip to Greece to find the man who saved his father during the Holocaust. And the soul comedy is Hunting Elephants about a child's adult relatives who set out to rob a bank. (Patrick Stewart is one of the leads so perhaps this will have too much English dialogue to qualify?) Far less likely are two films which only scored Best Picture nominations at the Ophirs: White Panther about a young Russian who seeks refuge from street gangs in a local boxing gym and I Am Bialik, a mockumentary about a man who claims he's descended from Israel's national poet.

ROMANIA
Tough Romanian cinema has been hot with critics for nearly a decade but has yet to catch on with the Academy, who (generally speaking) prefer warmer films. Can Child's Pose, their 2013 submission, break through? The Golden Bear winning film stars the acclaimed Luminita Gheorghiu who previously appeared in two of the country's most important exports (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Death of Mr Lazarescu).

Luminita in "Child's Pose"

The Guardian synopsizes the contemporary political drama like so:

the film tells the story of a mother's desperate and often illegal attempts to save her son from prosecution after he knocks down and kills an impoverished teenager...

HUNGARY
The official submission is The Notebook/A nagy füzet which was the Karlovy Vary winner. Hungary had a solid Oscar run in the 1980s but has had difficult finding traction since and especially in the past couple of decades when they've made very daring oddball choices for their representative films. This new one appears to be more in Oscar's wheelhouse since it's about two young boys ripped from their parents during World War II.

For whatever reason, Oscar has historically been very kind to narratives about children in wartime in this category, not just because at least a handful of films that fit that genre seem to be submitted each year but because the tear-jerking obviously transcends culture and language barriers. This one looks discomfitingly unsentimental though with children hardening themselves to atrocities. 

If you've seen any of these at festivals, have your say in the comments. Which country are you most excited to see land a nod this year?

New Official Foreign Submissions. "Amour" Leads the Oscar Buzz

Hungary chose "Just the Wind / Csak A Szél"Ukraine, Hungary and Azerbaijan join the small ranks of countries who have officially submitted their Oscar submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category. The Ukraine chose the biopic Firecrosser and Azerbaijan went with Oscar's second favorite storyline in this category with Buta (young child befriended by old person). The big story here, though, if only for being a slight curveball, is that Hungary did not go with a totally outre effort as they've been prone to do as of late. Instead they went with a more sober traditionally artistic effort. Which is not to say that they aren't still pushing the boundaries of what AMPAS will watch. Just the Wind is reportedly harrowing and brutal, dealing with a series of racial murders and poverty.

[Hungary hasn't been nominated since the heyday of István Szabó who had four nominations in the 1980s. Szabó's films were so hot in the US arthouse that his actor muse Klaus Maria Brandauer even flipped over to Hollywood and became an Oscar nominated actor (Out of Africa) and international star for a time.]

You can read more about the films on the official chart, a staple of The Film Experience's famous Oscar coverage. Spread the word about our thorough submission charts!

Will Michael Haneke's AMOUR be a threat for high profile nods like actor, actress, director?

Austria through Iran 
4 official submissions thus far but it's Michael Haneke's Amour, from Austria, that's got all the buzz right now. Word has it that they've got their sights set higher than just a lone Oscar nod in this awesome but usually stand-alone category. His previous high profile (Caché had much last minute buzz though no nominations followed) and White Ribbon's two nominations make the case for golden momentum.

Italy through Vietnam 
3 official submissions thus far: Serbia, Ukraine, and Venezuela 

As always we'd love to hear about your home country's film options. You can email Nathaniel if you have a hot tip or news about your home's selection or the selection process itself.

Sleep Deprivation, Hungarian Potatoes & Oscar Charts

Yesterday morning I had to pass up a chance to see Hungary's Foreign Film submission The Turin Horse which saddened me. But half an hour of footage of peasants boiling potatoes in black and white mixed with three hours of sleep (2011 Insomnia Plague right here!) would not be an ideal match. If I die from operating heavy machinery while sleep deprived (what if my computer falls on me?) please know that it was fun talking movies with you this past decade.

The Turin Horse -- not to be watched without sleep

OSCAR'S FOREIGN FILM RACE
But good news! This week I will be seeing Mexico's submission Miss Bala (more specifically I'm watching it as you read this), Iran's submission A Separation, Turkey's probable submission (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and what I suspect will be Argentina's submission The Student which recently received the Academy's official "go ahead, then" despite some initial concerns about its eligibility (something due to the format it was shot in). In other words, it's on! I don't think anyone, even those who say they do, knows what will happen this year with either the executive committee or the nominating groups given how many high profile critical darlings and crowd-pleasing baity entries are already in the mix to split all types of aesthetics in the voting. And we still don't even know about 20 entries including three big deal Oscar countries: Spain (19 noms, 4 wins) update: it's Pa Negre (Black Bread) a Spanish Civil War Drama that won big at the Goyas, Italy (26 noms, 10 wins) and the Czech Republic (8 noms, 3 wins). 

Joshua Marston shot by Andreas Rentz in Berlin, 2011CONTROVERSY
In related news, the controversies we've already noted here are covered over at Deadline in more detail in addition to the new but totally expected story that Albanian's entry "The Forgiveness of Blood" might not be deemed Albanian enough what with Joshua Marston (from California) in the director's chair.

Given that Marston was already booted out of this category once (Maria Full of Grace) due to his citizenship despite his international spirit -- consider that he has yet to make an English language feature -- we are reminded again how frustrating the Academy rules are. You do have to have rules, mind, but there are always casualties when the letter of the law rather than the spirit rules.

Please to enjoy the ever-expanding charts and pass them on! Nobody gives you this category like The Film Experience. 

Trailer for the Swiss entry and the entire Cuban film (if you can speak Spanish) after the jump.

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