The main reason I hate American public holidays...

...it means people don't update their blogs! Seriously, people. I'm bored here. You're supposed to be entertaining me!

Oh well, at least Nat is still posting! And what a post!!! He discusses Ten Canoes' Oscar submission. This has got me completely pumped. I really liked Rolf de Heer's landmark one-of-a-kind indiginous adventure tale (and I've mentioned that many times on here) and always hoped they it would be submitted, but when I saw it I was afraid there may be too much english language in it (David Gulpilil's narration is done in English, while the rest of the film is not). But, it appears there was nothing to fear. I'd been predicting Ten Canoes would garner a spot for a while now, so I'm happy it's at least in contention.

This is only Australia's second submission to the Foreign Language category. In 2001 Steve Jacobs' film La Spagnola (starring Lola Marcelli, Alice Ansara and Alex Dimitriades) was submitted, but obviously not nominated. I liked that movie, it was wonderfully over-the-top and it featured an interesting scene involving a zucchini and muffins. Take my word on that. That film was in Spanish, so I'm not really sure how they got around the Oscar commitee with that, but it may have to do with our high European population? I don't know.

I hope Ten Canoes can get a nomination. Anyone who's seen it will tell you how good it is (I honestly don't know of one single person who doesn't like it) and it'd be awesome for Rolf de Heer to have an Oscar. I'm a big fan of Rolf's. Constantly churning out quality movies year after year (The Tracker, Alexandra's Project, Bad Boy Bubby, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Dingo, Epsilon (those last two are unseen by me but I've heard great things. I wish they were released on DVD). Ten Canoes is his most successful (nearly at $3million box-office, which is stellar for an Australian film let alone a film not in English) and probably his most critically acclaimed. I reckon this is the film to beat for the AFI Best Film category, too.