Fast on the heels of the fall festival season, Oscar-baiting officially begins with this early peek into the Best Foreign Film category, a list of all of the films selected by their home countries for official competition. Academy voters will have to attend screenings of the 60-plus contenders, many of which have already received high marks on the festival circuit (including "The Class," "Tony Manero," "Waltz With Bashir," "Gomorra" and "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex"), finally whittling it down to five contenders when the full nominees are announced next year. The upcoming St. Louis International Film Festival features four of the submissions: the aforementioned "The Class" and "Waltz With Bashir," plus "O'Horten" and "Under the Bombs."
As much as I loved "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", I was afraid that their feature debut marked the end of Wallace and Gromit, followed as it was by the destruction
by fire of the Aardman studio and creator Nick Park's unfortunate foray
into CGI with "Flushed Away". Rejoice, then, in the news that the
plasticine heroes are returning soon ...
Some conservatives have complained for years that less qualified women or African-Americans have been elevated to high office over better qualified white males. Gov. Matt Blunt arguably did the opposite in elevating Zel Fischer to the Missouri Supreme Court over Lisa Hardwick, a Harvard-educated, African-American appeals judge with more judicial experience.
The Alton Telegraph is fighting a subpoena from a Madison
County grand jury seeking the identities of anonymous Web posters who
may have information about a murder case. First Amendment experts say
the case could break new legal ground.
The plight of 17 Uighurs captured near Tora Bora during the age of terrorism would seem a long distance in time and space from a Cold War drama on Ellis Island involving Ignatz Mezei. But the Bush administration is trying to use the U.S. Supreme Court's Mezei decision to keep the Uighurs locked up. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch waged an editorial campaign to free Mezei.
The great French comedian Jacques Tati, whose films combine Keatonesque
clowning with a scathing critique of the late 20th century, was born a
century ago today. Turner Classic Movies (the only reason I pay my cable bill) celebrated with four of his
films, including his masterpiece, the complex and puzzling "PlayTime",
an endlessly inventive satire of urban modernity and the closest the
movies have ever come to the visual trickery of "Where's Waldo?".
Gov. Matt Blunt says Sen. Claire McCaskill too "casually dismisses" the voter registration irregularities involving ACORN in Kansas City. McCaskill said that voter registration fraud is not as serious as vote fraud because the fake registrants don't vote. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that election officials were illegally removing voters from the rolls in six swing states.
Opening its 2008-9 term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a spirited argument over whether federal law "preempts" smokers from going to state court to challenge misleading tobacco company claims about the safety of "light" cigarettes. Justice Stephen G. Breyer drew a laugh when he said preemption would let tobacco companies say that "smoking 42 cigarettes a day will grow back your hair."
The Beacon features links to the latest work by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.This Washington-based non-profit organization promotes in-depth
international coverage of topics
that have been under-reported, mis-reported - or not reported at all.
To see a list on our World news page, click here . The Pulitzer Center's
founder is Jon Sawyer, former Washington Bureau chief of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.
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As much as I loved "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", I was afraid that their feature debut marked the end of Wallace and Gromit, followed as it was by the destruction
by fire of the Aardman studio and creator Nick Park's unfortunate foray
into CGI with "Flushed Away". Rejoice, then, in the news that the
plasticine heroes are returning soon ...
