FOREIGN OSCAR UPROAR: "HOW DO YOU SAY 'SCANDAL' IN ROMANIAN?" (LAW, VAR, BIZ, EMP)

By Nancy Vialatte

In what LA Weekly calls, �A date that shall live in Academy Awards infamy,� yesterday marked the release of the foreign-language Oscar shortlist. Nine films were announced but some of the most critically-lauded and award-winning films of the year were entirely ignored. Indeed, the year's most acclaimed foreign-language film, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's �4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days� did not make the cut.

Variety refers to the reaction from bloggers as an uproar.

The films that were named are: Austria's "The Counterfeiters," by Stefan Ruzowitzky; Brazil's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," by Cao Hamburger; Canada's "Days of Darkness," by Denys Arcand; Israel's "Beaufort," by Joseph Cedar; Italy's "The Unknown," by Giuseppe Tornatore; Kazakhstan's "Mongol," by Sergei Bodrov; Poland's "Katyn," by Andrzej Wajda; Russia's "12," by Nikita Mikhalkov, and Serbia's "The Trap," by Srdan Golubovic.

In response, Empire writes, �virtually the entire list is a mistake.� The omission of �4 Months,� �Persepolis� and �The Orphanage,� opines Empire take the list from �incomplete to unconscionable.�

Writing about �4 Months,� LA Weekly says:

This isn't, mind you, one of those periodic cases of a film being disqualified on the basis of the Academy's notoriously serpentine rules and regulations, as happened earlier this year with the Israeli film The Band's Visit and two years ago with Michael Haneke's Cach�. No, 4 Months has been in this race from the beginning as Romania's official entry, competing against submissions from some 62 other countries, and its failure to advance to this penultimate round of the nominating process is as embarrassing a blunder as any in the Academy's history: You can put it right up there with the Best Picture win by Crash (2004). (LAW)

However, �4 Months� � which won the Palme d�Or in Cannes in 2007 - isn�t alone. Other highly significant snubs were reserved for France�s entry, Marjane Satrapi's animated �Persepolis� � which was the Cannes Jury Prize winner - Carlos Reygadas' drama �Silent Light,� Johnnie To's �Exiled,� Lee Chang-Dong's �Secret Sunshine� and Juan Antonio Bayona�s entry from Spain, �The Orphanage.�

Still, LA Weekly�s Scott Foundas says each of those omissions is markedly less surprising than that of �4 Months,� noting that �Persepolis� is considered a shoo-in for a nomination in the Academy's Animated Feature category.

Genre films like �Exiled� are almost never acknowledged by the Academy in any non-technical categories. And hardcore art-house directors like Lee, Reygadas and Oliveira are perennial Oscar bridesmaids. In the 51 years since the Academy created the competitive Foreign Language category, says Foundas, Theo Angelopoulos, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami and Wong-Kar Wai have failed to amass a single nomination between them.

But �4 Months� is something different: It's the sort of movie the Academy has often acknowledged in the past, a film of high artistic merit that it also easily accessible for the general movie-going audience.

Even my own mother � an elementary school administrator and about as plain-folks a moviegoer as one could hope to find � gushed about the film after seeing it at last year's New York Film Festival, and it's not hard to understand why: Mungiu's film isn't an intellectual exercise but rather a visceral one, holding the audience rapt with its breathlessly intense story of two college roommates attempting to negotiate an illegal abortion in Communist-era Romania. Unfolding in something close to real-time, in long hand-held camera set-ups as confidently executed as anything in the Bourne franchise, the movie gets its hooks into you early and deep, and for the next two hours dares you to break its gaze. And beat for beat, Mungiu's brilliant direction is matched by the performances of his two stars, Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu, and by the terrifying Vlad Ivanov as the backroom abortionist Mr. Bebe. (LAW)

Since Cannes, �4 Months� has won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics, the Chicago critics and the Broadcast Film Critics Association too, plus Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominations for foreign-language film, and the European Film and European Director of the year awards.

("Persepolis," for its part, took the New York Film Critics and LA Film Critics awards for animated film and a National Board of Review prize.)

Given all of that, an Oscar nomination might have seemed inevitable, but for several months now there have been rumors (many of them voiced by Hollywood Elsewhere columnist Jeffrey Wells) that Oscar voters had not responded especially strongly to the film at official Academy screenings. Which raises the question: Which Oscar voters exactly are we talking about here? (LAW)

The Academy's official press release states:

Foreign Language Film nominations for 2007 are being determined in two phases. The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based members, screened the 63 eligible films and their ballots determined the above shortlist. A Phase II committee, made up of ten randomly selected members from the Phase I group, joined by specially invited ten-member contingents in New York and Los Angeles, will view the shortlisted films and select the five nominees for the category.

This is the second year now that the Academy has employed this two-phase nominating process - an attempt, Academy president Sid Ganis said in a 2006 press release, �to see if we can permit busy working members to participate in the [nominating] process without them having to commit to several months� worth of screenings.�

In the meantime, those �several months' worth� of Phase I screenings continue to be attended largely by Academy members who have a lot of spare time on their hands, namely retirees. And of those several hundred who serve on the committee, many still fail to see the minimum number of films required in order to nominate � this despite a 1987 Academy rule change that split the nominating committee into three groups, thereby reducing by one-third the number of eligible films any one committee member was required to see. (In a 1989 New York Times interview, Academy spokesman Bruce Davis explained that only 50% of the previous year's 450-member Foreign Language committee had met the minimum nominating requirements.) (LAW)

"I've had better days," producer and Foreign Language nominating committee chairman Mark Johnson told Foundas, adding that, while he had nothing to say against any of the nine shortlisted titles, he was "stunned" by the omission of "a couple of films" from the roster.

Johnson went on to compare the day's events to the 2003 Foreign Language Oscar nominations, which failed to include the acclaimed Brazilian film �City of God.�

The Risky Business blog weighs in by saying, �Proving that the foreign-film nominating committee is as secretive and inscrutable as any organization outside a Dick Cheney cabinet meeting - they even have a �dirty thirty� - the voters went with what might be construed as an almost purposely obscure list. (Telling stat: last year, nine of the nine short-listed movies had U.S. distribution; this year it's just three). When the noms are announced Tuesday, it will almost certainly set off a call for an overhaul, or an overhaul of an overhaul. In a way it has already started.�

"I thought we had made big strides last year, but apparently not big enough," Johnson told Foundas with regard to the two-phase nominating process. Asked if further retooling may lie in the future, Johnson was unambiguous. "That's what has to be done, because in my mind it can't continue like this," he said. "I don't believe these choices reflect the Academy at large."

(An interesting footnote: Not only did France lose out on a nomination with "Persepolis," French sales companies also suffered a blow. Although they have sold exceedingly well, of the most glaring omissions, "4 Months," "Persepolis," "Silent Light" and "The Orphanage" are all films handled by French sales agents.)

Nominations for the 80th Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 22.

FOREIGN OSCAR UPROAR: "HOW DO YOU SAY 'SCANDAL' IN ROMANIAN?" (LAW, VAR, BIZ, EMP)

By Nancy Vialatte

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