token popular culture post

So I just discovered something really exciting.

I found a list of the nominees for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award. And included in it was....a film from Kazakhstan! I was amazed. It's called "Mongol" and is directed by Sergei Bodrov, a Russian-born director who directed the movie Kavkazskii Plennik (Prisoner of the Mountains), which is apparently a really good movie that was also nominated for a foreign-language Oscar in 1996. So. I obviously can't do anything about the results, but I'm happy for good publicity for Kazakhstan from the film industry (we don't need to talk about Borat), and I want to see the movie. It's about Genghis Khan.

Then another nominee also excites me. It's a movie called "12" and the plot summary is: "12 Russian jurors decide the fate of a Chechen teenager charged with murdering his stepfather." It's directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, a really famous Russian director who is also, oddly enough, the son of the composer of the Soviet and Russian national anthems. He's been nominated for several Oscars and won one. I saw part of his film "Anna" about his daughter. It was really fascinating and I'd like to see the rest of it.

Anyway. I thought it was interesting.