This year's victims: the delightful and fascinating Persepolis and the masterfully executed Cannes winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (good enough to be on my best picture ballot) from Romania didn't even make their 9-wide finalist list. People who have seen this picture will tell you that that's inexcusable. I haven't seen the 9 pictures they did select but I can assure you that it's an artistic impossibility that all are superior to the Romanian film. Few films in any given year are. Argh! I've now gone monosyllabic at the news from AMP ASS.
I can say but this: They suck!
And you know who else does? The distributors who regularly push back Oscar foreign hopefuls until January or February banking on an Oscar nomination that might never come. 4 Months was supposed to open properly in November. Instead, presumably high on dreams of Oscar glory, it got a one week qualifier and settled on a proper theatrical release date to coincide with its Oscar nomination. Which is now imaginary. This happens to films every year. Why don't they just release them directly after their festival triumphs and then hope for the best?
The Nine Foreign Film Finalists...
Austria's The Counterfeiter, Brazil's The Year My Parents Went on Vacation and Canada's Days of Darkness (from Oscar favorite Denys Arcand)
more on these three
Israel's Beaufort, Italy's The Unknown, and Kazakhstan's action epic Mongol
more on these three
Poland's Katyn, Russia's "12" (a riff on 12 Angry Men) and Serbia's The Trap
more on these three
