We weren’t gigantic fans of Matteo Garrone’s hyperlinked Italian crime drama “Gomorrah” (though we did like it), but with all the accolades and praise it earned this year (the Grand Prix award at Cannes and an very enthusiastic endorsement from Marty Scorsese), its shortlist snub yesterday from the Oscar Foreign Picture committee cannot be viewed as anything but a major fuck up and oversight on their part.
As we noted yesterday, this is nothing new. In 2007, two fantastic films that were overlooked by the AMPAs group were Carlos Reygadas’ “Silent Light” and Fatih Akin’s “Edge of Heaven” (two films that went on to receive tons of universal praise this year when they were finally released Stateside). In 2008, the glaring omissions were the Palme d’Or winning masterpiece “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and the brilliant animated French film, “Persepolis.” In 2002, the bungle was overlooking “City of God,” etc. etc.
Some people are full-on outraged by the AMPAs continued blunders. InContention keenly writes, “This is the most vile of all Academy committees. They prove their disdain for truly great cinema year in and year out.” L.A. Times columnist Scott Feinberg went off last night quoted IFC Entertaiment prez Jonathan Sehring going off last night. “I know I speak for the entire country of Italy and a lot of people in the critical community when I say that it just doesn’t make sense and there’s something wrong with the foreign language committee as a whole. It’s still broken.”
L.A. Weekly writer Scott Foundas says with astonishment, “how do you say Oscar scandal in Italian?” People are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore and rightfully so. Hopefully this bad press will force the AMPAs Foreign committee to wake the fuck up or to hire some new people on their staff.