With the Oscars tonight, I thought I would post some shallow lists and comments, my opinions on some of the films that were, and were not, nominated.

Of the nine nominees for Best Picture, I've seen only six. I have no interest at all in seeing Philomena, and I never got around to seeing Captain Phillips or Nebraska (I don't usually love Alexander ( Read more... )

I haven’t seen any of the documentaries that received Oscar nominations this year, but I did see enough documentaries in 2010 (at the HotDocs festival, TIFF, and VIFF) to make a Top 10 list.

1. A Film Unfinished, Yael Hersonski

2. Into Eternity, Michael Madsen

3. Ruhr, James Benning

4. Windfall, Laura Israel

5. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of ( Read more... )

Here’s my list of top 10 narrative movies of the year. I’ll do a separate list for documentaries.

1. Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik

2. Carlos, Olivier Assayas

3. John Rabe, Florian Gallenberger

4. Inception, Christopher Nolan

5. L’Affaire Farewell, Christian Carion

6. A Somewhat Gentle Man, Hans Petter Moland

7. Oliver Sherman, Ryan Redford ( Read more... )

The 28th Annual Genie Award nominations were announced today; these are awards for Canadian films (including co-productions) released commercially in 2007. The official rules seem a little weird; a film can qualify for the Genies by playing for two consecutive weeks in certain specified cities (Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Hull, Quebec ( Read more... )

As they did last year, AMPAS has announced a list of nine films that will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category.

The big news is going to be two of the films that are not on the list: Persepolis and 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. Both were eligible for the award, having been submitted by France and Romania ( Read more... )

For selected categories, here are my thoughts on which films from among the nominees should, in an ideal world, win, and which films should have been nominated that were not.

Best motion picture of the year
I have seen 3/5 of the nominees.
I really hope that Little Miss Sunshine does not win. I liked the film fine, but it is such a far distance ( Read more... )

In a slight change from previous years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a nine-film shortlist of contenders for this year’s foreign-language-film Oscar:

• Days of Glory / Indigènes (Algeria);
• Water (Canada);
• After the Wedding / Efter brylluppet (Denmark);
• Avenue Montaigne / Fauteuils d’orchestre (France);
• The Lives of Others / ( Read more... )

This is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but of everything I saw this year at VIFF, from all over the world, my favourite film was American. And not even some indie production, but a film produced by a major Hollywood studio and coming soon to a theatre near you: Little ChildrenI’d heard the film was good, and I’ve been a big fan of Kate Winslet ( Read more... )

The VIFF awards were announced on Thursday (media release) and the winner of the People’s Choice Award for Most Popular International Film is The Lives of Others, which I saw at TIFF and blogged about here. Briefly I thought the film lagged whenever the Wiesberg character was offscreen. I just thought that Sebastian Koch’s performance as Georg ( Read more... )

Further to my previous blog entries here and here, the Academy now has officially announced the list of 58 films submitted by various countries for consideration in the Foreign Language Film Award category. According to the official rules:“All submissions sent to the Academy will be screened by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Committee(s ( Read more... )