Guillermo Del Toro's brilliant fantasy "Pan's Labyrinth" won't up on these shores until the end of the year, but that'll be just soon enough for it to qualify to compete in the "Best Foreign Language" category for next year's Academy Awards, for which Mexico is submitting the film as its official entry into the race. With "Return Of The King" having swept the ceremony a few years back, perhaps the middlebrow old cranks who vote for these things are slowly coming around on their opinion of the genre, which for too long has been dismissed as juvenile FX fodder. Del Toro's new film--nothing less than a career legacy work--is a deeply personal and heartfelt work mixing Lewis Carroll with the grim realities of Franco's Fascist Spain. Plus--if I can appeal to your juvenile senses here (and god bless 'em)--it's got the coolest monsters since, well, Del Toro's "Hellboy" adaptation. Don't miss it.
28 September 2006
"Pan" The Oscars
Guillermo Del Toro's brilliant fantasy "Pan's Labyrinth" won't up on these shores until the end of the year, but that'll be just soon enough for it to qualify to compete in the "Best Foreign Language" category for next year's Academy Awards, for which Mexico is submitting the film as its official entry into the race. With "Return Of The King" having swept the ceremony a few years back, perhaps the middlebrow old cranks who vote for these things are slowly coming around on their opinion of the genre, which for too long has been dismissed as juvenile FX fodder. Del Toro's new film--nothing less than a career legacy work--is a deeply personal and heartfelt work mixing Lewis Carroll with the grim realities of Franco's Fascist Spain. Plus--if I can appeal to your juvenile senses here (and god bless 'em)--it's got the coolest monsters since, well, Del Toro's "Hellboy" adaptation. Don't miss it.
