The Oscar Calendar Weekly Watchlist for April 15 to 22, 2012

I’m back with another edition of the Oscar Calendar’s Weekly Watchlist.

Last week, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival awarded its top honor to Fernand Melgar’s Special Flight (Vol Special), while Ann Hui’s A Simple Life, which was Hong Kong’s foreign language submission to the Oscars last year, picked up five “gongs” at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and the David Di Donatello Awards announced their nominees, including 16 nominations for Marco Tulio Giordana’s Story Of A Massacre (Romanzo Di Una Strage). Meanwhile, The Hunger Games continued to make a pig out of itself, hogging up all the crumbs that moviegoers might have spent on independent films. (Seriously, am I the only one who sees the irony here?)

If you are looking to attend a film festival this week, there are plenty to choose from. The big news to watch for is the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival, but it is also likely that the line-up for Cannes will be announced too, stealing some of the thunder. Other film festivals beginning this week include San Francisco International Film Festival, Tiburon International Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival Riverside International Film Festival, City Of Lights, City Of Angels Film Festival (Col-Coa), goEast Festival Of Central And Eastern European films in Wiesbaden, and the Torino GLBT Film Festival. Plus, you can still catch the end of Dallas International Film Festival, Havana Film Festival New York, Athens International Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, and Chicago Latino Film Festival.

Those who follow the Oscar shorts races will note the following directors have qualified for next year’s Oscar consideration.

1. Justin Reardon for The Hungarian Gangster Of Love
2. Pendleton Ward for Thank You (Animated)
3. Till Nowak for The Centrifuge Brain Project
4. Joost Reijmers for A Curious Conjunction Of Coincidences
5. Tudor Guirgiu for Superman, Spiderman Or Batman
6. Afarin Eghbal for Abuelas (Grandmothers) (Animated)

While the documentary shorts don’t technically allow for qualification through festivals, it is worth noting that Full Frame gave the award for best documentary short to Mira Jargil’s The Time We Have (Den Tid Vi Har), while Atlanta chose Willem Baptist’s I’m Never Afraid and Aspen went to Douglas Sloan for Elliott Erwitt: I Bark At Dogs. Tribeca, San Francisco, Athens, Florida, Nashville and the David Di Donatello awards are all qualifiers that will be announcing in the next few weeks.

At the commercial theaters, the wide and limited releases include: Darling Companion, Chimpanzee, The Eye Of The Storm, Fightville, Goodbye First Love, Hit So Hard, The Lucky One, Marley, Think Like A Man, The Moth Diaries, To The Arctic, Downtown Express, My Way, Whores’ Glory, Zombie Dawn, and Penumbra.

For more on what is coming up in the world of movies, be sure to check out the full Oscar Calendar.
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