Could there be more chatter out there about Wong Kar Wai’s new film, My Blueberry Nights, which opened the Cannes Film Festival? I doubt it. It’s strange, because I’m not even convinced that people think it’s a great film, but it sure has created a lot of buzz. (Maybe it has something to do with how long people had to stand in line to get in and how many people got turned away and what color their film festival badges were…or it could have more to do with the acting debut of Norah Jones?)

Erica Abeel from the Filmmaker Magazine blog sums up what most people seem to be saying: “…it seems almost sacrilegious to report that “Blueberry,” the Hong Kong auteur’s first English-language production, and his first film set and shot in the U.S., is gorgeous to look at, but not a helluva lot more. In fact, the screening in the packed Salle Debussy was greeted with only a smattering of anemic applause.”

Similarly, from Cinematical: “My Blueberry Nights is so beautifully shot, though, that you’d be excused for thinking that the quality of the performances is almost irrelevant; each scene is a symphony of color and light, each frame exquisitely shaped by the play of pigment and shade. New York is caught in blue, wintry tones; Memphis in deep, relaxed browns; Nevada’s casinos come alive in jittery crimson. It’s too bad that we can’t quite believe in the characters within those gorgeous visions, though.”

And I found this opinion interesting, from Isabella Ho, a film scholar from Taiwan. She observes that two accomplished Asian directors–Wong Kar Wai and Hou Hsiao Hsien from Taiwan–are at Cannes with their first films not shot in their native languages. It made me think of Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritus (Babel), both Spanish-speaking filmmakers with big 2006 hits in English. (I wrote a post a few months back about all the attention being given to Mexican cinema.) Here’s what Isabella Ho has to say:

“I think it’s very sad that these directors are driven to make movies outside their home countries and in other languages,” said Ho, a representative of Taiwan film distributor cum production company CMC. “Their home audience doesn’t seem to appreciate the stories they are trying to tell.”

Is it sad? I can see sad aspects about it, but I don’t know if they outweigh the benefits of Wong Kar Wai being able to just make the film he wants to visually make. After all, it sounds like My Blueberry Nights could be a movie to watch with the sound on mute, anyway.

You can read even more about My Blueberry Nights here on indieWIRE, here on GreenCine Daily, here on the Filmmaker Magazine blog, and here on the Risky Business blog.

Last night’s Oscars threw me for some loops, especially the winners for Best Foreign Language Film (The Lives of Others beating out Pan’s Labyrinth?) and Best Cinematography (Pan’s Labyrinth over Children of Men?). Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win was just a mildly pleasant surprise, especially since I was the only one in a family pool of 11 to pick him. Melissa Etheridge winning in the Best Original Song category with her piece for An Inconvenient Truth, beating out three nominations from Dreamgirls, was pretty clearly a political move (not necessarily a partisan move, but political, nonetheless). But does anyone really care about the Best Original Song category?

As I was scanning other blogs and sites this morning, I found a few post-Oscar pieces especially worth looking at. Pajiba writes in today’s post that although they’re not interested in big awards shows…

Mostly, we just provide this post so that our readers have a space to bellyache, though it’s hard to get too worked up about anything in last night’s show. In fact, the biggest complaint we have was that the 79th Oscar telecast offered so little to kvetch about.

Pajiba’s post and some of its comments (there are lots and they’re kind of fun to sift through) also brought up some suggestions on how to make the Oscars program shorter. Not surprisingly, everyone has an opinion.

GreenCine Daily also has a day after post worth checking out. And HairyLime on Spout wrote a “Post Oscar breakdown” that was followed by a couple interesting comments. Let us know what you liked, hated, and were bored or surprised by on Oscar night.

From my very cold and very snowy perspective here in Grand Rapids, Austin is starting to sound really good. But it always does, right? It’s a great film town, SXSW is a great festival, and March is a great time to head South.

The festival lineup of films was unveiled earlier this week, so it’s officially time to start anticipating. Here’s the info from the official festival site. indieWIRE has a nice overview of what’s scheduled, too, and here are some notes from GreenCine Daily.

One of the movies in the lineup is Kurt Cobain About a Son, which some of us saw at Denver. It’s a great film, and director A.J. Schnack is a great guy. We were lucky to catch him and Michael Azerrad for a chat about his film and also did a roundtable from Ted’s Montana Grill in Denver where we talk about the film. If you’re heading to SXSW, make sure to catch it.

We’ll dive into the lineup and say more about it here as we get closer to the festival. In the meantime, we’re busy preparing to do the festival’s Spout-sponsored email/webcenter, and dozens of podcast interviews. Rick will also be on a panel “New Dogs, New Tricks: New Media Goes to the Movies,” which is just a great example of what a good fit this festival is for us–the perfect mix of movies and interactive media. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.