Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Ray Pride

The first Oscar charts of the season have been more screwed up in years past… I must be learning how to do this.

I decided to do an update - the last, barring insanity on my part, until after Toronto - because I hate to have dumb errors in my first go round sitting around on people's desk and desktops for almost two months. There have been some titles that have come up since I last published and there have been a few that are already falling. (Here's a little trade secret… if I were doing weekly charts starting now, some studios would understandably be afraid to let me see their Toronto movies early for fear of getting smacked before the festival. By going into an awards coma from now until after the festival, I can do my pre-Toronto work unencumbered with their fear of chart dropping. And embargo rules stay utterly respected.)

The Oscar season really started about a month ago as Miramax started doing not-for-review screenings of Finding Neverland for a lot of press. They got the read they were interested in - mostly very positive - and will use Toronto to do the real press launch. But I will think of this Oscar season starting in earnest for me when I sat down with Walter Salles to chat about The Motorcycle Diaries just three days after New Line laid out $7 million to pick up another Spanish-language film, Alejandro Amenabar's Out To Sea (which still might need to suffer a domestic title change unless the studio can make title peace with another studio.)

Salles has been working the world for his movie for months now, starting with its premiere at Sundance (Redford is an exec producer and a true driving force on the project) but really heating up at and after Cannes. Salles cruised into L.A. for his first meet-the-press weekend and is already long gone. But expect him to be here a lot come late October and well into the Oscar season. His film is still the off-dead-center project most likely to make it into The Big Show this year. They may love Almodovar, but Salles has made a coming-of-awareness movie that everyone over 25 can easily identify with, even if the words are in Spanish.

Salles himself was a wonderful surprise to me. He is eight years my senior, but he still has the fresh exuberance of a man in his 20s. He and a few members of his production team took the trip through South America that the young men in Motorcycle Diaries take… twice… before doing it a third time for the production of the film. (I found the same to be true of Fernando Meirelles, whose City of God Salles produced and who is only five months older than Walter.) He is lithe… a giddy spirit coming now, at 48, to the height of his powers. He is polite and generous to this stranger, never feeling like someone who is working me. When he is interrupted halfway through his meal to go do a photo shoot, he expresses his dismay, but he goes off to do what he must, frustrated but peaceful.

We talked a bit about The Motorcycle Diaries, but we also talked about Brazilian Cinema and international cinema's place in America. The Brazilian movie industry has found its legs again, now representing about 20% of annual ticket sales in the country with just 40 to 50 films that are made in the country. They're still going to Spider-Man 2, but Brazil is looking to its own voices again.

Oscar forecasters will roll their eyes when anyone suggests that two foreign language films (and maybe a documentary) could be nominated for Best Picture this year. But The Academy showed its willingness to go in unexpected directions last year and one can only hope that, even though there is little chance that the "right" films will win, the Academy is going to keep moving in a positive direction in terms of nominations.

Adjusted charts follow… see you in September.

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August 4 , 2004

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