Tongue-Tied (or, Mel-shuggenah! The Greatest Story's Getting Old)

[Having just sat thru what felt like a trim and quick Oscars telecast (maybe it's 'cause I was sober, at home, folding laundry), something just occurred to me: could The Passion of the Christ, whose reviews are sufficiently mixed that I assume it's out of the running for any of the mainstream awards, be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? The award assumes a film shot in a foreign language will have originated in a foreign country, but I haven't checked the rules to see if it must do so. Says something about assumptions about America and the English language, doesn't it? I remember when a British film got a nod because it was in Welsh, so why not a U.S.-made film shot in Spanish or Chinese or Navajo? Does the fact that Mel Gibson is Australian make a difference? Anyway, the thought of a film nominated in which the dialogue is in two dead languages is kind of interesting.*]

[I feel like I've read so much about the thing in the last couple of weeks that I don't really need to see it, which is just as well, since I truly don't want to.]

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[*Linguistics tidbit picked up recently from my handy-dandy copy of The World's Major Languages, Bernard Comrie, Ed. (a gift from Max the day after a particularly neurotic birthday; Happy 9th, Max!): The ethnic group often known today as "Assyrian" (a large colony of whom live in California) actually speaks a language known to linguists as "Neo-Aramaic"; it's descended not from what the Kings of Nineveh spoke, but from the speech of Our Lord's countrymen. Cool, huh?]