Doc Corner: To Syria in 'The Cave' and 'For Sama'

By Glenn Dunks

The sheer audacity of making a documentary in Syria is something that astounds me. But part of what makes Syria such a fascinating subject for continued exploration is that theirs is a story we have seen unfold in real time. From its initial uprising to its deafening destruction and their continued traumas, the last decade have granted audiences a unique interior look into many facets of the Syrian Civil War from the side of rebels and side of the radicals, humanitarians and civilians.

So when I say that Feras Fayyad’s The Cave is easily among the very top of the docket, I don’t do so lightly. Fayyad is already an Oscar nominee for Last Men in Aleppo about the men known as The White Helmets. Here he has shifted gears to focus on the women doctors of what’s known as The Cave, an underground hospital network underneath the city of Ghouta. Mostly medical students who stayed behind to help those in need, the spotlight lands firmly on 30-year-old aspiring paediatrician Dr. Armani Ballour whose calming presence amid the storm of shells and fire around them is as compelling a non-fiction subject I have seen in a very long time...

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Hopelessly devoted to link

CBS Olivia Newton John, our beloved child hero, is battling cancer for the third time. It's stage four this time but she's determined to outlive the statistics.
MNPP Jake Picking cast as young Rock Hudson in Ryan Murphy's upcoming series Hollywood (which takes place in the 1940s). Exactly how many series does Murphy launch at any one time? No wonder people say The Politician is a mess.

After the jump LGBTQ horror, Angelina ❤️ Michelle, advances in de-aging technology, Animated Feature Oscar hopefuls, and more...

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Best International Feature: Parasite, The Whistlers, and Denmark's Hopefuls...

by Nathaniel R

Park So-dam and Choi Woo-sik as con-artist siblings in Parasite (2019)

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2ND 2:00 PM: The titles competing at the 92nd annual Oscars for Best International Feature are coming at us fast and furious now. In the past few days the number has climbed to an "official" 26 submissions...with probably 60ish titles still to come. 

SOUTH KOREA
It was widely expected that South Korea would select Cannes Palme d'Or Winner Parasite to represent them but we've been surprised by the country's selection before (why oh why did they pass on The Handmaiden in its year - argh!). Thankfully they didn't surprise us this year. This is Bong Joon-ho's best movie ever, give or take the also-quite-brilliant but Oscar-shunned Mother (his only other film that was submitted by South Korea) so it would be sweet to see it actually compete for the gold.

Denmark's finalists, Romania's selection, and the official submission chart updates are after the jump...

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The Ophir Nominations. Which film will be Israel's Oscar Submission?

by Nathaniel R

The Ophir Awards, honoring the best in Israeli cinema, were created in 1990. The winner of Best Film always becomes Israel's Oscar submission. Well, almost always. There have been a few exceptions due to eligibility issues --  the most famous example being The Band's Visit (2008) which was hugely successful in US arthouses (and eventually became a Tony-winning Broadway musical) but which could not be submitted because the Israeli and Egyptian characters spoke in English too often due to their language barriers.

After the jump, the nominations for this year's Ophirs  NOW UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS (thank you to longtime reader Yonatan for the hat tip!) and more about Israel's Oscar history...

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The New Classics - A Separation

Michael Cusumano back again with my new series on great scenes/films of the 21st Century. This week a title we will surely hear often when the best of the decade lists start rolling in...

 

Scene: Razieh is Fired (aka The Incident)
It’s rare for a movie, even a great movie, to sneak up on the audience the way Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation does.

The screenplay is centered around an inflection point. Everything pulling the characters inexorably toward, or ricocheting off of, the moment when a man shoves a woman out his front door. Yet this action is not granted any special emphasis. First-time viewers have no clue they’ve witnessed the action around which the entire story pivots. It is only a few short scenes later, when the man is on trial for causing the miscarriage of the women he pushed (a murder charge in Iran) that the weight of that shove comes crashing home...

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