Foreign Film Oscar Submissions: Juvenile Delinquents and Missing Persons

I've updated the foreign film pages to reflect some of our now known contenders: Iraq (Son of Babylon), The Netherlands (Tirza), Romania (If I Want to Whistle, I'll Whistle) and Taiwan (Monga) have all announced. South Korea has narrowed their list down to six films, though most suspect it'll be Lee Chang-Dong's Poetry in the end. Many countries have yet to announce but there's still time. We generally don't know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won't have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to compete in this category for the 2010 film year.)

Romania: if he wants to whistle, he'll whistle, okay?

Taiwan: if he wants to shoot, he'll shoot.

Many countries have yet to announce but there's still time. We generally don't know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won't have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to be eligible in this category for the 2010 film year.)

So far in the competitive lineups we have two rough sets of twins: two dramas about young male criminals (Taiwan & Romania) and two journey films wherein an older person searches for their adult child with a young child helping them (Iran & The Netherlands). And yes, "Oscar already loves the Iran and Dutch entries sight unseen," he said sarcastically. This AMPAS branch just digs cross generational journeys. A lot. You know they do.

I wrote about the Taiwanese submission Monga very briefly over at Towleroad earlier this year because of some talk show incident wherein they asked the 20something leads, Mark Zhao and Ethan Ruan, to kiss. I can't imagine an American talk show asking Young Hollywood co-stars to kiss. Could you imagine the ruckus if the ladies from The View asked the Twilight boys to lip lock in order to get their trailer shown?

To quote Nomi Malone... "different places!"

Here are the popular boys singing "Tonight Tonight" from Monga (with clips from the movie). It appears to be the theme song though Wikipedia states differently saying that this cover of "Making Love Out of Nothing At All," the Air Supply classic, has that honor. ("!!!" and also "???")



I'll update more Oscar pages tomorrow. In the meantime, if you need more Oscar speculation check out All These Wonderful Things' list of documentary hopefuls.
*

Carice van Houten is a Star

Today's Hump Day Hottie post is brought to you by my screening of Black Book a few weeks back. Yes, it's still playing in my head. It won't leave.

I think we all need to read blogs more carefully. I regularly find people asking things in comments that indicate that they didn't actually read what they were commenting on. I'm even guilty of it myself... on my own blog. Months ago when I was interviewing Arjan Writes for the blog interview series, he urged us to check out the Dutch film Black Book and called Carice van Houten "amazing".

I hate getting to parties late but boy was that three syllables of understatement. And it was in one ear and out the other at the time. I didn't go to the theater and see the movie. What's wrong with me?

Anybody who sees Black Book is inevitably wowed by van Houten's fire. Verhoeven is a naughty auteur. Just look at The 4th Man, Starship Troopers, Turkish Delight, Showgirls. This isn't the first time he's asked his female star to spread 'em. Remember Sharon Stone's pantyless in Basic Instinct? But here's the thing: Stone later played naive about it. It's impossible to imagine this 30 year-old Dutch goddess telling the press afterwards that she was "tricked" into it like the American star did. In every scene in Black Book you can feel her game spirit. "What now?" you imagine her asking enthusiastically, never "How dare you?"

Recently the new Bond girls were announced and they were, as per usual, young beautiful European things. All I could think was Carice! Why isn't CvH rolling around in the sheets with Daniel Craig in Bond 22 ? Maybe Craig on top would be beneath her, though. She's already a star. Americans just don't know her name yet is all. They might soon. Turns out I'm still catching up with her sudden international rise: after my Bond girl fantasy ended I learned that she has four films already in post-production (Dorothy Mills which she headlines, Valkyrie opposite Tom Cruise, Body of Lies opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Repossession Mambo opposite Jude Law) and another one (Vivaldi, a biopic, opposite Joseph Fiennes) soon to start filming.

Damn girl, slow down.

On second thought: Faster! Give us more.


And, you saw this coming, Carice van Houten is one of the nominees for the FB "Breakthrough" Award for her work in Black Book
*

Filmmakers, please don't kill off sexy characters mere minutes after you've introduced them

It's just not right.

(This message has been brought to you by Nathaniel's recent screening of Black Book)

Can someone please find some more work for Michiel Huisman, pronto? Thanks for listening.
*