In his latest Notes on a Season column at The Envelope, Pete Hammond has really dug into the matter of AMPAS president Sid Ganis' strategy (along with telecast producer Gil Cates) refraining from even asking the WGA for a waiver to benefit the Oscar show.  Juicy stuff there, I gotta say.

Hammond also gets into the foreign film fiasco of this week, which left Romanian entry "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" flapping in the wind along with French entry "Persepolis."  He wrangled a quote from one member of the comittee that makes you want to jump off a building:

We spoke with three foreign language committee members to get the other side, and all were perplexed by the outcry at their choices.

"I voted for Austria, Canada, Italy and Poland among the films that made the final list, and I saw over 50 movies," one voter who has been on the committee since 1993 told us. "I did not like '4 Months.' I thought it was depressing. I've lived through the whole abortion thing. I didn't get anything out of it."

This same voter gave low scores to "City of God" [also nixed early on by the committee] as well saying, "I thought it was so violent. Who needs to watch 11-year-old kids killing people?"

Eesh...