The envelope, por favor

JOHANNA SCHNELLER

From The Globe and Mail

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January 26, 2007 at 3:36 PM EST

Within the hoopla, there is good news. Washington may have alienated the world with an ill-advised, disastrously managed war. But Hollywood, through its Oscar nominations, has shed its long-held, America-first xenophobia and -- this year, anyway -- looks genuinely international.

The best-picture nominees are set in Boston, the American Southwest, London, Iwo Jima, Tokyo, Morocco and Mexico, and are spoken in those cities' respective languages. (For those of you in caves, the films are Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen.)

And of the 20 acting nominees, one is Japanese (Rinko Kikuchi, best supporting actress, Babel), five are black (Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy, best supporting actress and actor, Dreamgirls; Djimon Hounsou, best supporting actor, Blood Diamond; Will Smith, best actor, The Pursuit of Happyness; and Forest Whitaker, best actor, The Last King of Scotland), and two are Hispanic (Adriana Barraza, best supporting actress, Babel; and Penelope Cruz, best actress, Volver). Announcing the nominations on Tuesday morning, presenter Salma Hayek teared up at every Hispanic name that was announced.

There were a number of them. In addition to the two actresses, three movies directed by Mexicans received multiple, high-profile nominations. Three for Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, including best adapted screenplay. Six for Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, including best original screenplay and best foreign film. And a whopping seven for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel -- it's nominated in the most categories -- including best original screenplay, best picture and most notably, best director, opposite American stalwarts Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood. (Though Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, also notably, is in Japanese with subtitles.)

Whitaker, Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio (best actor, Blood Diamond) are nominated for films set in Africa. Dreamgirls is the most-nominated film, with eight -- a record for a movie with a mostly black cast (though three of those nods are for best song). And Smith's best-actor nomination for the tepid The Pursuit of Happyness cements his status as the most popular actor in America, so widely beloved that the terms "crossover appeal" and "colour-blind" finally feel as antiquated as they deserve to be.

This year's nominations also put Hollywood's overemphasis on youth aside. Six of the acting honorees are 50 and older: Barraza is 50, Alan Arkin (best supporting actor, Little Miss Sunshine) is 72 and Peter O'Toole (best actor, Venus) is 74. Most remarkably, the best-actress category -- usually chockablock with tasty babes such as Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry -- is dominated by more seasoned actors: Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) is 57, Helen Mirren (The Queen) is 61 and Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) is 72. As well, four out of the five directing nominees are over 50: Paul Greengrass (United 93) is 51, Scorsese (The Departed) is 64, Stephen Frears (The Queen) is 65 and Eastwood is 76.

But don't start the parties at the AARP, NAACP and UNESCO just yet. The nominations, as laudable as they are, are not wholly due to a revised conception of glamour or a new-found love of all mankind in La-La Land. Economics plays its usual part.

First of all, Americans are aging, with more people than ever over 50. Oldsters are late adapters -- they will probably be the last generation that still thinks of movie-watching as trundling off to theatres and plunking down $13 for a ticket, unlike their children and grandchildren, who are far more likely to illegally download a film, watch it on their cellphones or skip it altogether and play the video game.

It makes good fiscal sense to give the grey-haired product to spend their money on while they're still around.

Secondly, Hollywood woke up to the potential of the international market only about a decade ago. Before that, films opened in the United States and were rolled out to the world whenever, country by country. "Box-office dollars" meant North American dollars, period.

Then the suits started noticing that action/adventure films played as well in Europe, Asia and South America as they did here, and began actively courting that audience -- and counting its money. Now, many films from all genres are released on the same date worldwide as North America, the better to combat piracy, maximize publicity and rake in dollars stronger than ours.

Darker, more demanding films -- the kind that win Oscars -- very often do better with sophisticated overseas audiences than with the lunkheads here at home. Babel earned nearly $24-million (all figures U.S.) domestic, plus $40-million more overseas. The Departed and The Queen earned more than half their total grosses ($255-million and $72-million) outside North America. And while Letters from Iwo Jima has pulled in only $2.5-million domestic, its worldwide gross is close to $40-million.

These are numbers not only to pay attention to, but to celebrate -- say, at a black-tie gala in late February? Art and commerce don't have to go hand in hand, but it's better for everybody in showbiz when they do. The fact that the nominations make Hollywood look worldly and inclusive is icing on the cake. Or, this year, the flan.

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