I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND, directed by Jir?? Menzel, is this year‚Äôs official Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film from the Czech Republic. The film focuses on two parallel stories. The first follows the youthful exploits and gradual maturing of an ambitious young man, Jan D??te, before the War and during the German occupation. In love and guided by na?Øvet?© rather than opportunism, D??te finds himself on the side of the occupying power.

November 13, 2007–Delbert Mann, who adapted Paddy Chayefsky's classic teleplay “Marty” into an Oscar-0inning feature, died on Sunday (Nov 11). He was 87.

Nominated for 8 Oscars, the film won one legit award, Cinematography to Vilmos Zsigmond (who had shot Spielberg's first theatrical feature, “The Sugarland Express,” 1974), and one Special Award for sound effects editing, which did not exist then as a separate category, to Frank E. Warner.

Posthumous awards and nominations are rare in most categories. Cult composer Bernard Herrmann, best-known for his dark and haunting Hitchcockian scores, such as “Vertigo” and “Psycho,” received two posthumous nominations in the same year, 1976, for Scorsese's “Taxi Driver” and for Brian De Palma's “Obsession;” the latter film was a tribute to Hitchcock's masterpiece, “Vertigo.” It was a fitting swang song for Hermann's distinguished career, though the Academy decided to honor Jerry Goldsmith for “The Omen,” which happened to be another Hitchcock-inspired thriller.

MALDEAMORES (Lovesickness) is the official Puerto Rican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar Film caegory at the 80th annual Oscar Awards. The winner of the Audience Choice Awards at the 2007 Chicago Film Fest, ?¢¬Ä¬úMaldeamores?¢¬Ä is a story about love, in all ots forms and at all ages. A child?¢¬Ä¬ôs first kiss, a man who can?¢¬Ä¬ôt grasp rejection, an unfaithful husband and an elderly love affair. Passion defeats reason again and again in a story of the eternal, often masochistic search for love.