Newsblitz.

It's The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). And not, for example, Perfume (Das Parfum). The trade association German Films announced today that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature debut, winner of seven Lolas (German Oscars, more or less), an audience award at Locarno and much positive buzz in Telluride and Toronto, will be sent to the Academy as the country's entrant into the Best Foreign Language Film sweepstakes (full story in German here).

Sony Picture Classics looks set to release the film in the US on February 23, just three days before Oscar Night - in other words, when all the attention will be on what the American and British stars will be wearing - and a full month after the nominations are announced. I hope that's smart. Of course, gearing the release to the Oscar schedule would be a crap shoot anyway; it has to get nominated in the first place for any such speculation to matter.

Meanwhile, plenty of consolation for Perfume producer Bernd Eichinger, whose Downfall (Der Untergang) was in the running two years ago (it lost to Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside [Mar adentro]). Downfall's opening weekend drew just over 480,000 Germans to theaters; Perfume's opening weekend: 950,000.

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2006 1:20 PM