Who the hell is this?
Like Xavier Dolan and Denis Villeneuve before him, Philippe Falardeau is the latest in a long line of Quebecois film directors whose work might finally stir some interest in English Canada. The reason, of course, has nothing to do with our own cultural awareness – it comes as a result of someone else acknowledging M. Falardeau’s 2011 film Monsieur Lazhar as a work of note. Yes, the dreaded Oscars are once again upon us and the Academy has nominated Monsieur Lazhar in the foreign language film category.
Monsieur Lazhar is scheduled to release to DVD on March 13th, a couple of weeks after the Oscars (making that a question we’ll have to answer at the counter a few hundred times between now and then) but why we’re waiting, you could direct interested parties to either of Faladeau’s previous feature works; C’est pas moi, je le jure! (It’s Not Me, I Swear!) from 2008 and/or Congorama (2006).
We just ordered a PAL copy of “A Separation” from the U.K. None of the other foreign picture nominees are on DVD at this point.
On the nominated Best Documentary front, we just ordered “Hell and Back Again” and “If a Tree Falls”, so we should be seeing those shortly. “Undefeated”, about a high school football team trying to reverse its losing ways, unfortunately shares its title and year with the critically-assassinated “Sarah Palin: The Undefeated”, a coincidence that I guarantee will cause thousands of people to accidentally order the wrong movie on Amazon.com and possibly propel Newt Gingrich all the way to the Whitehouse.
The balance of the Oscar nominees are pretty much what you’d expect from the Academy, a collection of War Horse hyper-sentimentalism and the perennial Clooney/Pitt nods (both for the wrong movies, but who cares?). Drive and Gosling were snubbed, along with Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Michael Fassbender in Shame and Margin Call, all victims of the unsaid safe bets and nothing controversial rules for the Oscars.
At the end of the day, the most interesting pick this year might be Moneyball for best picture. It’s a decent, but modest film that focuses on a baseball team that doesn’t actually win in the end. As metaphor for a declining United States, it might just be the closest bit of realism to invade the Oscars in years.
And it stars Brad Pitt.
Shoe-in.
it’s some undiscovered member of the pelletier clan.
and FYI, we’ve had if a tree falls at the FBE for, oh, 5(?) months now. just sayin’.
As I mentioned to you on Friday, your comment had me thinking that no one would be injured if a tree fell in the FBE… I would like to add that no one would likely clean it up either. Has it rented yet?