Interwebby Goodness
Here are a couple items of interest from Jeffrey Overstreet at Looking Closer.
First, the trailer for Persepolis, an animated movie about Iran’s turbulent revolutionary history that’s making big waves among those who have seen it. France has picked it as their official submission for Best Foreign Film at the upcoming Oscars, and many others are sure it will beat out Ratatouille for Best Animated Film. I don’t know what sort of precedent there is for an animated movie winning Best Foreign Film or a foreign cartoon winning Best Animated Film, but it can’t have happened very often. The trailer looks great, and I look forward to seeing it.
Second, Amazon is running a special here, with several classic movies available to downloaded and watched for free. Some can remain on your computer for the next month, a few you can keep (as long as you want to let them tie up the 1.8 Gb or so they take). I grabbed permanent copies of the fantastic His Girl Friday (you should really see this) and Charade and temporary copies of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (which I’ve been meaning to see for quite some time). Check it out!
FWIW, the Best Animated Feature category has only been around since 2001, when the winner was Shrek. The year after that, it went to the Japanese film Spirited Away. The next two awards went to Pixar’s Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, the fifth award went to Great Britain’s Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and the sixth award went to Happy Feet.