Danny Boyle’s new crowd-pleasing film Slumdog Millionairewas originally intended to be shot entirely in English, but apparently due to the preferences of a casting director, about a third of the movie is in Hindi. While this fraction may not be enough to call it a foreign-language film, it could have been enough to turn off subtitle-fearing audiences were the movie not so otherwise accessible due to its feel-good, “Hollywood-style” story involving star-crossed romance, destiny and an ultimate “love conquers all” message. Also, the movie breaks free from one off-putting foreign film tradition by following Man on Fire, Night Watchand TV’s Heroes into the realm of non-traditional subtitling.
Slumdog received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award, and it could very well extend its popularity in the direction of the multiplex crowd. If it’s a hit with moviegoers who aren’t typically open to world cinema, this could be the chance for similarly feel-good foreign films to cross over and reach a wider audience, whether they be upcoming releases like the Sundance-winning Captain Abu Raed or titles from the past that could always use more Netflix-queue love.
And so, in the hopes that Slumdog could help open the door to further foreign film consumption, SpoutBlog presents this guide to the most accessible world cinema titles from the past ten years. For every entry-level film on the list, we name a couple of more intermediate titled in the same vein — just in case you get hooked.
Here is the new teaser trailer for Blindness, the latest film from Fernando Meirelles (City of God; The Constant Gardener). Normally I wouldn’t be so excited about something that reminds me of Val Kilmer’s post-eye-surgery point-of-view shots from At First Sight, especially when such visuals are accompanied by generic outbreak plots, but I’m so excited about Meirelles’ work that I’d have seen Alvin and the Chipmunks– poop-eating included — if he’d been behind the camera. All this despite the fact that I was extremely disappointed with The Constant Gardener the first time I watched it on account I had such high expectations. Maybe I should calm down my anticipation before Blindness hits theaters this September.
Anyway, I know there are some other outbreak films coming out soon, including M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and the enticingly titled Zombie Strippers, but neither of them come from a Nobel Prize-winning novel, like Blindness does. Of course, the greatest novels are often those which cannot be adequately adapted into films, so maybe Zombie Strippers (which is merely based on, loosely, the non-Nobel-winning play Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco) will actually be better. Which should make Meirelles, the producer, realize: the Rio favelas would sure be a good setting for a zombie movie. May I suggest the obvious title City of Zombies? It fittingly fills out an unintended trilogy.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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