I haven’t been keeping up with Greencine Daily recently, though they linked to my review of The Prestige and my profile of James Longley, which was very nice of them. (Iraq in Fragments: Starts November 10, Varsity. Don’t miss.)

What I learned in my recent swift perusal:

1) The foreign language Oscar submissions, which are usually kinda treacly and lame, are looking pretty sweet this year. Anne Thompson’s buzz-meter picks include the entry from Kazakhstan—I seriously wonder if Sascha B. C. is to thank/blame. And I want to mention the Slovenian entry Gravehopping, which is one of the better black comedies I’ve seen this year.

2) You can watch Frontline’s The Lost Year in Iraq online.

3) You can tag along on a visit to Lady Antonia Fraser’s house here. The Marie Antoinette biographer intrigues me, not only because her Marie Antoinette: The Journey contains a rather detailed account of the French queen’s irregular menstrual periods (I read it in preparation for the Sofia Coppola film, which ended up not screening in Seattle in time for me to write the review—but we roped in Michael Atkinson, formerly of the Village Voice, to write it up, and he did a bang-up job), but because her daughter Flora Fraser wrote a first-rate biography of the daughters of King George III, recently out in paperback. Whew. That was a long sentence. Sorry.