A wife wins her unwitting freedom in the form of a camera before she finds herself behind the limits of her marriage. A husband refuses to look beyond himself, to see that the siren song no longer calls him. A marriage continues to spawn new lives, to add its frailty and its weight, its babies and its abuse into this world. Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments is this brand of simple story, though a curious film. This is not to say the story is simply redundant or (heavens, no) boring, but, as you might guess, its curiosity refreshes the “period piece slash woman’s picture” frame that marketing (in a backwards-thinking move) will do its best to make appealing—thus subverting that the film’s evident wonder with light (and its negative) balloons its niggling tendencies into something advanced and graceful. Troell moulds what some may see as clichés away from strictures by—it’s simple, yes—observing the familiar and attending to how it forms, or how it can form, the new.
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The Carpetbagger has posted the nine semi-finalists for the Best Foreign Film Oscar Nomination. Comparing this list to the list of 67 films submitted for consideration by their countries of origin, the only real notable omission I can spot is Italy’s Gomorrah; I’ve sen some bloggy chatter already lamenting the exclusion of Let the Right One In, but that film was passed over for submission by its home country of Sweden in favor of Everlasting Moments (which did make the shortlist). The full list, with links to the films we’ve covered (as you’ll see, we have a lot of catching up to do), after the jump.
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We’re less than two weeks away from receiving this year’s Oscar nominations, and though none of the major categories are completely predictable just yet, each has at least three or four certain favorites. Meanwhile, the final slots for Best Picture, Best Director and the acting and screenwriting categories may be simply a random grab from small handfuls of rotating contenders. As of now, it doesn’t appear we’ll be seeing any huge surprises come the morning of January 22nd, when the Academy announces the nominees. The Dark Knight is sure to become the first comic book film up for Best Picture, and it won’t even be a shocker if animated feature Wall-E is listed alongside it in the same category.
But the ballots don’t need to be mailed out until Monday, so I’m taking one last chance to reach out to the procrastinators within the Academy membership. If you still don’t know who and what to write in, and you’re unwilling to go the safe route and nominate the expected bunch of films and talent, then consider some of these underdogs, under-appreciated and pretty much unlikely possibilities:
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