Vote on the Euro Film Awards (Plus: Oscar Submits)

While I normally approve not of "people's choice" awards -- that's what box office is for -- I do find the European Film Awards a curious beast worth noting each year. They have variety by way of scattershot film culture, there being no unifying "Hollywood" to control them. This year their People's Choice Awards -- which you can vote on and enter for a chance to win a trip to the awards in Berlin -- offers up an odd collection of Camp Comedy (France's star-laden Potiche), Royalty Porn (The UK's Oscar winner The King's Speech), Meta History (Spain's Even The Rain), Message Movie (Denmark's Oscar Winner In a Better World), Neeson-y Thriller (the international Unknown), Fish Out of Water Comedy (Italy's Welcome to the South), Ensemble Drama (France's star-laden Little White Lies), and even Animated Family Film (Germany's Animals United).

And the Nominees Are...

Go and vote...
...as long as you're not planning to help The King's Speech win yet more statues. Cinema-Gods help us all.

Meanwhile the Oscar Foreign Film submissions continue...

NORWAY
Anne Sewitsky’s debut Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig) which we've previously discussed (I heart the trailer) will represent the land of the midnight sun in this year's Oscar race. Previous awards under its belt include the Sundance Festival's World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic which, if you'll recall, is the same prize that the great Australian feature Animal Kingdom got its first big boost from in 2010. Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31st is the loser in this Oscar scenario but here's hoping that both films get stateside distribution. 

HUNGARY
Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse will represent daring Hungary in this year's Oscar race. Hungary nearly always competes for Most Atypical Submitted Film which is bad for their nominatability but great for proof of variety in that odd annual Oscar survey of what's happening in international cinema. This one will need a helping hand from that special committee that Oscar dreamt up to basically force critical darlings on to the nominated shortlist. The new system obviously paid off last year for Greece's Dogtooth. Cinema Underground tells it like so...

Not since Alexander Sokurov’s The Second Circle have I watched a movie that felt so much more like physical endurance than an active intellectual and emotional experience... The Turin Horse is a punishing film.  The people in it are ugly and often cruel.  Their lives are repetitive and arduous.  There is little plot, little action, little change of scenery, but there are plenty of long, long takes in which no words are spoken.   

And that's from a somewhat positive review.

Oscar Foreign Film Pages

Notes From Venice: "The Ides of March"

Editor's Note: Please welcome Ferdi from Italy (pictured below) who has been a Film Experience reader for many years. He's also a critic for LoudVision so please visit them if you speak Italian. We're very happy to have him sending us bite-sized notes from Venice this year for The Film Experience. - Nathaniel R.

Ferdi reporting from the opening day of the 68th Venice Film Festival. 

TFE Correspondent Ferdinando Schiavone shot by Fabrizio Spinetta

The Ides Of March is exactly what we've come to expect from Clooney: a solid, classically made, political contemporary drama. It's got a subtle shakespearian twist, a sharp screenplay and a strong cast. (OK, Evan Rachel Wood is always Evans Rachel Wood but, dammit! she's always good). Ryan Gosling is undoubtedly best in show with a perfectly nuanced character arc. He sparkles most in a couple of tasty scenes with Wood. But poor Marisa Tomei is soooo underused (again!) and Clooney plays a character working up to a big speech in front of a live audience (again!). Nothing new or revolutionary here, but quite everything in the right place.

Hollywood glamour aside, it's quite a shy opening film for a festival this big. (Last year things were very different with the incendiary opener Black Swan.)

Photo via Zimbio

Everyone has been saying that The Ides of March is a good movie (perhaps because it's talking about the right things in a serious way) but where are the emotions? Press reaction at the very first screening ranged from good to tepid, but it took the arrival of the stars at the press conference (all present but for Gosling) before you could feel warmth of unconditional love. How will the public react tonight when it opens the festival?

Editor's Note: Now check out these starry photos that Ferdi sent along from his photographer Fabrizio Spinetta from tonight's big event. 

George Clooney in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Two more fun photos after the jump! 

Click to read more ...

Oscar Madness Hits So Early...

I have a post scheduled to go up later suggesting that the new Film Experience 'season' will start on Tuesday September 13th.... after a wee break. But it seems that the Much Oscared Web we travel and help weave isn't even waiting till after the Labor Day Holiday to spazz out about Oscar This, Oscar That. You'd think Labor Day was already past us the way the web is collectively all up in Fall Movie Season's grill. Over at Movie|Line Stu Van Airsdale surveys the red carpeted landscape ahead with quotes from yours truly and other pundits who suffer, as I do, from gold fever. You know who they are. 

Are you ready for fall movie season yet? How ready: Scale of 1 to 10?
Or do you need a summer vacation from summer first?

In other news, little nuggets from Venice are on the way soon from two Film Experience correspondents. Stay tuned. 

Foreign Film Oscar: South Korea's "Front Line"

Oscar's foreign film submission announcements will be flying at us for the next month and you can keep track of the whole list at my foreign oscar predictions pages. A short time ago I told you that South Korea had narrowed down their Oscar submissions. That news was shortlived as the competition is over and they've gone with the battlefield drama The Front Line. [Thanks to faithful TFE reader Jin for the info.]

Here's the warry trailer.

Excuse me but I barely see any actressing! I mean other than Kim Ok-bin. Shouldn't there be a rule against films light on actressing in South Korean cinema? They have so many good ones and their one representative film for AMPAS is practically bereft of them? sigh.

To make up for their sudden xy departure, here's a recent photoshoot starring Kim Ok-bin, who you'll recall was a Film Bitch nominee right here in 2009 for Thirst.

I feel much better already...

Three other selections were announced last week...

ROMANIA
Romania, like South Korea, doesn't have any Oscar nominations to show for years of cinephile enthusiasm. The Academy generally can take some time to catch up so if a country wants to get Oscar play their international cinema heat can't be shortlived. Their entry this year is Marian Crisan debut feature Morgen, a hit at the Locarno festival, which is about an unlikely friendship between a security guard and an illegal Kurdish immigrant.

MOROCCO 
Actor Roschdy Zem's second feature as a director Omar Killed Me stars Sami Bouajila, who international arthouse audiences might remember best from the gay comedy The Adventures of Félix or from major roles in two different Algerian Oscar nominees Days of Glory and Outside the Law (both of which happened to co-star Zem). Bouajila pops up in English language films once in awhile too (The Siege, London River). The previous Oscar heat doesn't stop there: Director Rachid Bouchareb, who directed both of the recent Algerian nominees starring these two, helped with the screenplay adaptation of this biopic about an innocent prisoner. The Hollywood Reporter calls it "intense and superbly acted."

VENEZUELA
Alejandro Bellame Palacios’s The Rumble of the Stones is about a mother attempting to rebuild her family's lives after a natural disaster. There are many hardships along the way but apparently it's an optimistic picture; one fan on Facebook called it a "true tribute to the nobility of Venezuelan women."

Not yet announced but getting there...

MEXICO
It's not official yet but you shouldn't be surprised if Mexico goes with festival sensation Miss Bala for their Oscar film which we've mentioned a few times. Awards Daily likes the trailer but I'm not watching it since I'm seeing the film in a couple of weeks and want to be surprised. I'm pretty wild for the poster. It's provocative ... and I mean story-wise though I'm sure breasts never hurt in selling a movie. The movie is getting a U.S. release in the fall courtesy of Fox International.

Mexico currently has these 11 features under consideration. Thanks to Armando for sending in the list. The films are

• Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)
• 180˚(Fernando Kalife)
• Dias de Gracia (Everardo Valerio Gout Grautoff)
• El Baile de San Juan (Francisco Athie) 
• Flores en el desierto (José Alvarez)
• La Mitad del Mundo (Jaime Ruiz Ibáñez)
• Bala Mordida (Diego Muñoz Vega)
• Siete Instantes (Diana Cardoso)
• Somos lo que Hay (Jorge Michael Grau)
• Una Pared Para Cecilia (Hugo Rodríguez)
• Viaje Redondo (Gerardo Tort)

If I'm not mistaken, none of these filmmakers have ever been put forward by Mexico before so with no "favorite son" precedent it could be anyone's ball game ...were it not for the obvious critical enthusiasm for Miss Bala that is. The other film that has something of an international profile is the disturbingly grotesque Somos lo Que Hay which opened in the US as We Are What We Are. For all its horror dread potency, I can't see Oscar touching that one.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "The Artist"

Sometimes our Yes No Maybe So series is just formality. Who doesn't want to see this big shiny novelty, a silent movie for 2011!?

Nevertheless let's manage expectations with our patented Yes No Maybe So system. Yes (all the reasons we're on board) No (potential issues the trailer suggests we could have) Maybe So (random introspection that's neither positive nor negative exactly)

Yes That Cannes win for Jean DuJardin is tantalizing, especially since the performance in short trailer form looks so deliciously physical and charismatic rather than a traditional 'Master Thespian!' type deal. But mostly the concept alone, the evidence of joyful dance scenes, clever physical comedy and the a heart that beats with the sincere love of cinema promises a good time. 

No Uh.... what to say... what to say... how will any onscreen terrier ever measure up to Skippy who starred in The Thin Man and The Awful Truth?
As you can see I'm failing to come up with a "no" this movie looks so gorgeous and fun. In all seriousness, though there's nothing in any way "turn off" about this brief look, I do wonder how the movie will sustain its gimmick over 100 whole minutes. 

Maybe So I've successfully read nothing about the plot of this picture but the trailer suggests A Star is Born style plot yes? I understand that we're dealing with Hollywood homage and archetypes and tropes so it's appropriate and all of that but my god that's been done hundreds of times already.

Here's the trailer...

are you a yes, no or a maybe so? does the trailer justify (for you) the Oscar buzz?