Italian mob movie offed from Oscar list
By Steven Zeitchik
Get ready for one of the first Oscar controversies of the season -- at least in the rarefied world of the foreign-language prize. The Academy's foreign-language committee has released its shortlist of nine, and Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah," the Italian mobster movie from IFC that premiered to a fair degree of buzz at Cannes, isn't on it.
The IFC Films got a big push -- at least by foreign-language standards -- in town, with Garrone lunches and events and the like. And the system was tweaked this year after a difficult film didn't make it last year, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" -- also, coincidentally, an IFC title -- and committee leadership admited an oversight. (The exec committee now picks three of the movies after the screening committee picks six, instead of the screeners choosing all nine.) More debate, handwringing, no doubt to come.
The complete list -- which includes the unsurprising "Waltz with Bashir" and the slightly surprising "The Baader Meinhof Complex" from Germany -- follows below.
Austria, "Revanche"
Canada, "The Necessities of Life"
France, "The Class"
Germany, "The Baader Meinhof Complex"
Israel, "Waltz with Bashir"
Japan, "Departures"
Mexico, "Tear This Heart Out"
Sweden, "Everlasting Moments"
Turkey, "3 Monkeys"
Why isn't "Let the right one in"...the swedish vampire film...on this list? that movie was AMAZING! i think they shafted pretty bad.
Posted by: Rob Goodwin | January 14, 2009 at 06:40 PM
What is really tragic is that India's film didn't make the short list either. It is a great film called Taare Zameen Par and it deserved to be seen.
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Posted by: Miriam | March 21, 2009 at 07:05 AM