Best Foreign Film Oscar : Your Thoughts
Nine films have made it to the penultimate round. These will soon be reduced to the Final Five…
As of now the Nine are –
“Days of Glory” from Algeria
“Water” from Canada
“After the Wedding” from Denmark
“Avenue Montaigne” from France
“The Lives of Others” from Germany
“Pan’s Labyrinth” from Mexico
“Black Book” from the Netherlands
“Volver” from Spain
“Vitus” from Switzerland.
Two questions:
Which ones do you think will make it to the Final Five?
and
Which one will take the Oscar?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
water doesn’t deserve to be there in the first place.. so i hope it doesn’t go past where it is now.. of the rest, i haven’t seen any, so hard to say.. but will definitely catch volver this weekend if it’s still playing somewhere..
Oz do you have a link for all the other nominations for Oscars?
= striker, with the buzz around Pan, I think it may be the strongest contender… have to see it this weekend…
= Om, couldn’t find much… the nominee’s will be announced on Jan 23rd. Check out www.oscar.org
Most of these have been favorites for many months now. Going by the buzz, the final 5 will most probably be:
So Argentina’s Derecho de familia didn’t make it either. :((
Do I sound biassed if I say Volver has a good chance to stay in the final five? :d I think it is a good film, anyway.
I have only managed to see ‘VOLVER’ and ‘PANS LABYRINTH’ and they are both fantastic in their own right.
‘Labryinth’ was such a treat that I had to go back twice to see it.
I would’ve done the same for ‘Volver’ but it didnt stay on that long.
But If I had to choose out of these two, then i’d say ‘Volver’.
Tough choice but this film was hugely entertaining, gripping, funny, serious all in one.
A gem!
(And Oz, great films aren’t always raved about sadly…)
I think “Water” will have an excellent chance of getting through to the final five, but it will face stiff competition from the rest of the field, which I think will be the following:
Water
Pan’s Labyrinth
Volver
The Lives of Others
Days of Glory
For some reason I think “Volver” will get the nod because of its broader appeal here in the United States. I think “Pan’s Labyrinth” deserves the honor because it is one of the most inventive, original and beautiful films I’ve seen in a long time. “Volver’ has been given the marketing muscle, it has the star power of both Cruz and Almodovar, and it is backed by Sony Pictures Classic, who are starving for some retribution so they will put all kinds of money into it.
We shouldn’t really trouble ourselves with Academy Awards because they are never an indicative of the quality of a film- it is more about lobbying, DVD sales, and self-promotion.
I do have hopes that “Water” would somehow win because it will help legitimize, from a business and marketing standpoint, the efforts of quality South Asian filmmakers.
Crouching Tiger” led to an influx of money into Chinese and HK filmmaking enterprises, and I can only hope that “Water” would do the same. Plus it would provide a counterbalance to the “we need to make another ‘Lagaan’” syndrome that is plaguing the Indian / American production houses.
We can only hope for such things, until then, the hustle and flow must forever continue.
Water I guess will not survive this round. Volver will win (though I secretly keep hoping that Labyrinth just might). And, though I haven’t watched it – Water, Volver and Labyrinth are the only ones I’ve seen – I think Black Book will make it to the final round – because anything to do with Jews and WWII will always be IN.
Water to my mind is a crap film iam saying this becz i ve seen the film at the festival. The reason being the set up of the film is in srilanka doesn’t look real at all. All this deepa mehata’s and Nairs etc. are chuts who want to cash on ancient india poverty male chauvinism anything depressing about our country. This is the fucking thing what the gora’s want to see. Therefore i feel their intention is not honest they always want to cash on dukhi, nangi, bhuki, India. Is this what india is all about?
Water is full ‘ch*tya banane ka dhanda’…. I guess Pan and Volver are in for sure along with Days of glory. I also expected Korea’s ‘King and the clown’ (Wicked!!!) and eastwood’s ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ (Highly acclaimed) to come into the final five…
Other thing I am sure of is that Babel is not going to win the best film only because it won the Golden Globe. Yes, oscars are that silly!
Another really really strong contender for the award is ‘Lives of others’. It’s hot hot hot amongst critics.
me thinks the five to make the nominations will be -
1)pan’s labyrinth
2)volver
3)the lives of others
4)days of glory
5)vitus
winner – the lives of others
hard to beat – pan’s labyrinth
strong contender – vitus
major upset – water!!(chullu bhar ‘paani’ mein doob jayenge sab!!)
Almodovar and del Toro are probably shoo-ins in this category. Which means that the other seven films will be vying for three spots.
The Dutch and German film might end up vying for a single spot. Potentially with the Dutch film going through even though it might be the less deserving of the two since Hollywood recognises the Veerhoeven name.
That’s five for the remaining two places –
Now the Algerian film honours French war efforts while the French film is more ‘traditionally’ French so either the two will cancel each other out or the French film will go through.
Hmmm….
I’d have to say that the slate come Jan 23rd will read:
Avenue Montaigne
Black Book
Pan’s Labyrinth
Vitus
Volver
Pan’s Labyrynth will not win…. it has been nomited everywhere for lot of other stuff….
WATER is one of the shittiest movies ever to be in that catagory….its a joke that John Abraham will claim the rest of his life to have been in a OSCAR nominated film… the dude can’t act….same for the beautiful LISA RAY…
Anyways so the fight is between DAYS of GLORY & THE LIFE OF OTHERS…
it will clearly go for LIFE OF OTHERS….
when u see debut features what makes them special is the freshness & rawness of those films…the hunger of the filmmaker shows…which disapears soon….
but LIFE OF OTHERS seem like a work of someone who has made films for decade. It is frighteningly assured piece of work for a 1st time filmmaker…he is very young too…
And thats whats so amazing….
IFP Zindabad!