It’s not often than the best foreign film of the year wins the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of the year. Part of this is attributable to the Motion Picture Academy’s usual lack of standards, but a lot of it can be credited to the Byzantine rules governing what films can even be considered for the Foreign Film Oscar. As this article in the Hollywood Reporter notes, this year is typical insofar as many of 2007’s best-regarded foreign films are ineligible for nomination: Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out of the running because the Academy does not consider that Taiwanese talent had enough to do with its filming (a situation James Schamus regards as "absolutely unfair and ridiculous," pointing out that Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, was made under precisely the same circumstances); Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is disqualified because countries are only allowed to submit one film for consideration, and this year France went with Persepolis; the Israeli film The Band’s Visit is a no-go because it contains too much English dialogue; and The Kite Runner won’t be considered because of its international crew — particularly absurd, because in its absence, Afghanistan has no other entry in the category. — Leonard Pierce