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Foreign nominees: ‘It’s just lovely to be here’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hollywood - The woman dashing across North Highland Avenue on Friday in her stylish cocktail dress and even more stylish black strap heels is going where I’m going. She’s Susanne Bier, the Danish director of “After The Wedding,” one of five nominees for this year’s foreign-language film Oscar.
To see a gallery of photos from the event, click here.
She’s going to lose, too. That’s not me being cruel. That’s what she says herself when we meet up later on the red carpet for what is merely one in a series of seemingly endless Academy Award photo ops. (Pssst, there’s another photo op Saturday morning when 50 young students from Inner-City Filmmakers will trot down the red carpet toting the Oscars that will be handed out on Sunday.) “I can’t be optimistic,” Susanne says about her Oscar chances. Neither is Deepa Mehta, the India-born director of the nominated “Water.” She and I are reminiscing about her visit to Atlanta last year and our lunch of delectable fish. She says she’s not going to win either. “I’m a realist,” she says with a smile. “It’s just lovely to be here.” The nominee deflating everyone’s ego is Guillermo del Toro who made “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which is nominated not only for foreign-language film but also for five other Oscars. He’s standing on the far end of the red carpet and being swarmed by what seems like 50 reporters and photographers. You think he doesn’t know what the Oscars are all about? I ask him where he and his fellow Mexican filmmakers and nominees Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Babel”) and Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”) will be partying while in Los Angeles. “Wherever it’s free,” he says with a big smile. “Free booze? We’re there!” The foreign-language competitors, joined by another nominee, Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”), pose with a giant Oscar statue. An academy official encourages the nominees to “sit on the Oscar; play with it.” They hoist it aloft together and the media’s digital cameras click en mass. The press buzzes around like busy bees, their steps making a squish-squish sound because the red carpet is covered in plastic and it rained last night. They interview the directors. They talk to a few of the various films’ stars - Mads Mikkelsen (“After the Wedding” and James Bond’s most recent adversary) and Maribel Verdu and Ivana Baquero (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) — who’ve also shown up. The press interviews each other. I am not making this up, One American TV reporter hoists his microphone into the face of a Danish TV reporter and says, “Klaus, how does it feel being a part of the international press covering the Oscars?” I can’t delay myself to learn Klaus’ monumental answer. I’ve got to rush over to inquire what Deepa will be wearing Sunday night. She beams. “A sari.”
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