Typepad log-in problems have blocked would-be commenters over the last two or three days, but I think things are okay now. It had something to do (idiotically) with the server clock being off due to the time change. In any case, Film Society of Lincoln Center associate program director Scott Foundas tried to respond two days ago to blogger reactions to the LAFCA voting, but was blocked by the malfunction. Here’s what he wrote:

“[LAFCA Best Supporting Actor winner] Niels Arestrup did not ‘exhaust’ his Oscar eligibility last year. In fact, he was never — and never will be — eligible for an Oscar because of the current Academy rule (much revised over the years) stating that any film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film can not be nominated in a subsequent year in any other categories, regardless of when it actually opens in the U.S. Had A Prophet been released for a qualifying run in 2009, then Arestrup would have been eligible at the 2010 Oscars. Had the film not been nominated for Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars, then Arestrup would have a shot in the spring.

“This is the sort of thing one would assume would be common knowledge amongst such an august group of awards-season ‘experts,’ but then we all know the old adage about making assumptions…

“As for the suggestion that neither Arestrup nor Kim Hye-Ja will surface again during the remaining awards season, ‘just as it was the first and last we heard of LAFCA’s 2009 best actress Yolande Moreau,’ I suppose that was true of Moreau if one discounts Moreau’s similar wins at the National Society of Film Critics, the Cesar Awards [French Oscars], and even that hotbed of obscurantist cinephilia, the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“At the very least, you can expect to see Arestrup (who also already won a Cesar for his performance) and Kim’s names in the mix in the annual nationwide polls of film critics conducted by The Village Voice, Film Comment and Indiewire. Look back to the reviews these films received at the time of their release, and you will find that the performances in question — and the movies that contain them — were among the best received of the year.

“Sorry that the companies responsible for releasing the films in question didn’t paper the pages of Variety with ‘For Your Consideration’ ads or organize any cocktail soirees to parade their talent before the Oscar-blogging cognoscenti, thereby instantly ruling them out as contenders in the minds of some. (Hey, they’re no Frankie and Alice.) The job of film critics, however, remains to review movies, and not just the hype surrounding them.”