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Two more countries, neither of which have ever won the Foreign Film Prize in Hollywood, have announced their finalists lists.
We'll take Norway first since it's less popular with Oscar (5 nominations) and because I stand humbly before you to say I was wrong. My conjecture about what might be submitted -- other than the new Joachim Trier -- was quite wobbly. The three finalists are not the biggies from the Amanda awards but Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st (Oslo, 31. august) which we briefly discussed, Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig) and Jens Lien’s Sons of Norway (Sønner av Norge). While Trier has the highest international profile, that doesn't always equate with submission choice. Happy Happy is a very frisky marital comedy (I ♥ the trailer) and Sons of Norway is a punk rock coming of age film that even features a cameo from Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten. Neither of the trailers are subtitled and both feature nudity but if you want to see them they're here: Happy Happy and Sons of Norway.
Award winning filmmaker Joseph CedarIsrael, which has been nominated nine times (and thrice consecutively in recent years), just announced the nominees for their Oscars, the Ophir Awards. This is always the list they pull from for their Best Foreign Language Film submission so it's probably going to be the 13 times nominated (whew) frontrunner Joseph Cedar's Footnotewhich played at Cannes winning the Screenplay award but garnering somewhat mixed reviews. It's about feuding father and son professors at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writer/director Joseph Cedar, who was actually born here in New York City, was previously nominated for the soldier drama Beaufort (2007).
But if there's a dark horse submission it'll be one of these four: Yossi Madmoni's Restoration, Nadav Lapid's Policeman (Ha-Shoter) Marco Carmel'sMy Lovely Sister or Maya Kenig's Off White Lies... all of which are more difficult to find info on then the Norwegian films at this point.
Hot off an Oscar win in February for In a Better World, Denmark has announced their follow up contender ...or at least their intention to announce it. The land of my ancestors has narrowed down the past year in Dansk film to three tre: SuperClásico, Martin Zandvliet's Dirch(A Funny Man) and Pernille Fischer Christensen's En familie (A Family).
En Familie, which my Danish informant Thomas (tak!) predicts will be the selection is a drama about a wealthy family with a dying patriarch. Jesper Christensen stars. You might recognize him from the Daniel Craig Bond films (he plays Mr White) or from the popular Swedish flick Everlasting Moments. He's also in Melancholia this year though I don't know how large his role is there.
SuperClásico is a divorce comedy which actually takes place in Buenos Aires. No word yet on whether that naked bum on the poster is Argentinian or Dane in origin ;). It's from the director of Flame & Citron, a film that got a healthy festival run a few years back. Important Note: Paprika Steen headlines and you'll recall that she was the Film Bitch Silver Medalist right here in last year's "best" celebrations. It'll be nice to see her smile this time around!
The final contestant, Dirch or A Funny Man is a biopic about a famous Danish comedian. It stars Nikolaj Lie Kaas who you may have seen in Lars von Trier's The Idiots or famous Scandinavian films like Reconstruction or Brothers (he originated the role that later housed Jake Gyllenhaal). He's only recently started to branch out into English language films (something many Scandinavian giants do albeit usually in minor supporting roles) so you might have also seen him in Angels & Demons or in Whistleblower, Rachel Weisz's Oscar bid, which recently opened here in the States. You might think that Dirch would be too homegrown specific for Oscar submission but you never know. There are always a few biopics in the 60+ wide submission list of people who are infinitely more famous in their home countries than abroad.
IN DARKNESS, Poland's Holocaust Themed Oscar EntryMore Best Foreign Film News GREECE, which up until last year's Dogtooth, hadn't been nominated since 1977 (and has never won), will submit Attenberg, which you'll recall won the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival last fall.
POLAND, 8 nominations / zero wins, will submit Agnieska Holland's In Darkness which In Contention made the following funny about.
Poland... appears to have intensively focus-grouped the Academy’s foreign-language branch and subsequently created their Oscar entry in a purpose-built lab: a true-life Holocaust drama about a Leopold Socha, a reformed petty criminal who heroically helped numerous Jewish refugees hide in the sewers of Nazi-occupied Lvov.
Holland was previously nominated for best screenplay for her arthouse hit Europa Europa in the early nineties, also a Holocaust drama.
We won't waste too much time on the American box office today as it's the usual stories: an animated film tops the charts (don't make me say the name), Bridesmaid barely dipped and Midnight in Paris is zooming up the "all time Woody Allen lists". On this last bit I wish we had "adjusted for inflation" charts at the ready. Those inevitable stories about it passing Hannah and Her Sisters at the box office are going to be annoying because $40 million in 1986 is a helluva lot more ticket-buying action than $41 million in 2011, you know? I'm guessing that Annie Hall, which really captured mainstream attention, would reign supreme if you adjusted for inflation. [updated: yep, ANNIE HALL is #1]
And yes I normally do a new drawing for the box office but I hate drawing cars and the only picture I'd like to conjure in that realm is Cars 2's "Mater" squished flat in a compactor.
01 CARS 2 new$66.1 02 BAD TEACHER new$31.6 03 GREEN LANTERN $18 [review] (cum. $88.9) 04 SUPER 8 $12 [thoughts] (cum. $95.1) 05 MR POPPER'S PENGUINS $10.1 (cum. $39.2) the rest of the top twelve are now losing screens... X-MEN FIRST CLASS $6.6 [review, top ten X] THE HANGOVER PT II $5.5, BRIDESMAIDS $5.2, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES $4.9 [review], KUNG FU PANDA 2 $4.1, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS $4.1 [podcast] and TREE OF LIFE $1.3 [overheard & thoughts]
Worldwide Action It's all about the 4th Pirates film worldwide unfortunately, reminding us that the US hardly has the strangehold on lemming-like sequel culture. Johnny Depp on loop nears another 1 billion gross. Crazine$$.
But let's talk about movies that never get any attention on movie blogs! I looked at the global charts at box office mojo and thought it was worth sharing. Here are the top grossers that aren't Hollywood for 2011 (Please note: Bollywood does not give figures to B.O.M. so who knows with those films)
2011's Top Grossers (Non-English Language)
01 Hankyu densha This Japanese film is based on a best-selling novel about intersecting lives (it uses a public transport line as connecting backdrop). Starring Miki Nakatani and Erika Toda. It's nearly as big a hit as, say, Rango across the ocean but it's Japan only thus far. [Trailer] 02 Rien à déclarer (Nothing to Declare) Directed and written by and stars (whew) Dany Boon who you might remember as the lead actor from last year's chaotic farce Mic-Macs (which was from Amélie's director). It's a comedy about customs officers during the elimination of the French-Belgium border in the 1990s. This is a bigger hit than True Grit or No Strings Attached overseas and has distributors in various markets but nothing for the US as far as I can tell. 03 Che bella giornata (What a Beautiful Day) A very complicated sounding comedy starring Checco Zalone (who also co-wrote the movie) as a security officer in Italy who gets mixed up with an Arabic girl posing as a French woman. Italy only thus far. [Official Site]
04 Kokowääh German star Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) co-wrote this family comedy and co-stars with his daughter. Warner Bros handled the very very successful German release. Will we see it... or some English language remake here? 05 SP The Motion Picture Japanese film about Security Police that's based on a TV series. 06 Gantz A genre film about two teenagers played by Ken'ichi Matsuyama and Kazunari Ninomiya hunting and killing aliens. This one has distributors in some European countries in addition to Asia but the only US plans (at the moment) is a spot in the New York Asian Film Festival which is just about to start (July 1st).
Here's the trailer for the festival as a whole (cute). If you're in NYC are you seeing anything?
After that in the global charts when its not Hollywood films it's mostly Asian films (they have their own strong markets) but there's one film in particular that our actress-loving heart is thumping for longingly. That's Les Femmes du 6ème étage (Service Entrance) which is a French film about Spanish maids from director Jean-Philippe LeGuay. The Spanish cast includes Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas (Volver reunion alert!) as the help and Fabrice Luchini and Sandrine Kiberlain as conservative wealthy French employers.
Service Entrance
Strand Releasing has US distribution rights but given that the film is the 79th most popular overseas for 2011 with a $15 million gross (thus far), we hope it gets a hearty US push.
Do you like hearing about foreign hits or did your eyes just glaze over?
Last night I had a lovely Scandinavian dinner with friends as we discussed our book club title "The Ice Princess" the latest best seller capitalizing on the super hot Scandinavian crime genre (oh what The Girl With/Who... has wrought!). I didn't like the book at all and the translation seemed clunky (or maybe that was the fault of the original prose?) but I find the whole trend vaguely hilarious since Scandinavian countries, to their vast collective credit, are not exactly known as hotbeds of crime! Returning home, what do I have in my inbox?, but the nominations for Norway's annual "Amanda" Awards. Don't you love unexpected theme days?
Norway had a record breaking year with 34 original films eligible for their own prizes. To give you a very general sense of the amount of films various countries make each year here's a handy graphic AMPAS provided for the films of 2007. Would that all the regularly Oscar submitting countries had been listed!
It's no surprise that Bollywood is the biggest deal with over a thousand films made a year.
BUT BACK TO NORWAY.
They basically have two "Best Picture" categories since Scandinavia has a rich history of children's films. So the six lucky movies are as follows.
Nokas was released in Norway the day after last year's foreign film eligibility cutoff!Best Children's Film
Elias og jakten på havets gull (Lise I. Osvoll) -ANIMATED
Jørgen + Anne = sant [a.k.a. Totally True Love] (Anne Sewitsky)
Keeper’n til Liverpool (Arild Andresen) -a comedy about a 13 year old soccer goalie.
Best Film
Gazas tårer [aka Tears of Gaza] (Vibeke Løkkeberg) -This is a documentary film about the consequences of war.
Kongen av Bastøy/ The King of Devil's Island (Marius Holst) -Here is the highest profile release, a true story period epic about a boy's prison in the early 20th century.
Nokas (Erik Skjoldbjærg) -Another true story, this one a crime drama about Norway's most famous robbery. This is from the director of the famous thriller Insomnia (1997) which Christopher Nolan went and remade.
Trailer to The King of Devil's Island with Stellan Skarsgård
Eligibility dates aren't exactly the same for the Amandas as they are for Oscar submissions but you shouldn't be surprised if one of these six films is Norway's submission. Two other films of note: Maria Sødahl's Limbo, a period filmwith the great Lena Endre about expat Scandinavians in Trinidad, did very well in total nominations (acting, screenplay, direction and more) but missed the Best Picture cut under the familiar awards rule of something-has-to. But it won't be the Oscar submission as it would have been eligible in 2010 and it also has a lot of dialogue in English. Trolljegeren, known abroad as Troll Hunter (it's even in release as we speak right here in the States) won multiple nominations, too.
I'm assuming that Joachim Trier's second feature Oslo 31, August missed the eligiblity cut off for these awards. And given that it was so well received at Cannes, perhaps Oscar submission is in the cards? Norway submitted the young filmmaker's debut Reprise once upon a time. (Oscar foolishly ignored it. God, what a startling debut that was. I nominated it!). Here's the trailer to Oslo 31, August.
...same lead actor as Reprise, playing a troubled soul again. I shouldn't make any uninformed guesses but my hunch is that it'll be this one or The King of Devil's Island for Oscar submission.
"I'm going to lose to the King's Speech again??? It's my turn!"Best Foreign Film One of the funnest things for awards junkies when perusing off-Oscar prizes is how often Oscar giants show up in Foreign Film prizes. Hint: They usually do.
Robert G from Sketchy Details here. I'm drawn to the beautiful imagery hidden in horror films. There's something intriguing about the dissonance between something so beautiful in the middle of an otherwise disturbing feature.
Eyes Without a Face is one of the more aggressive horror films from the Black & White era. The entire film concerns a doctor trying to restore his daughter's beauty after a car accident severely burned her face. He goes so far as to fake her death after a failed medical experiment to better control his wandering child.
Even with the graphic imagery and grave subject matter, Eyes Without a Face is ultimately a film about hope and the attempt to renew a young life. This is made quite clear in the funeral scene.
After all the guests have left, Dr. Genessier and his assistant Louise are left to tend to the large quantity of flowers left at the grave. The arrangements are traditional--white lilies--but seem unnaturally bright and alive against the foggy background.
Where Dr. Genessier is unwavering in his plans, Louisa is losing faith. She's the one who always has to clean up his mistakes. She loses her composure in the Genessier family tomb against a wall of perfectly white daisies.
A slap across the face is all it takes to bring Louisa back to reality. Her patient, Genessier's daughter, deserves a chance to be beautiful again, just like the flowers at her staged funeral.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:06AM 
Award winning filmmaker Joseph CedarIsrael, which has been nominated nine times (and thrice consecutively in recent years), just announced the nominees for their Oscars, the Ophir Awards. This is always the list they pull from for their Best Foreign Language Film submission so it's probably going to be the 13 times nominated (whew) frontrunner Joseph Cedar's Footnote which played at Cannes winning the Screenplay award but garnering somewhat mixed reviews. It's about feuding father and son professors at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writer/director Joseph Cedar, who was actually born here in New York City, was previously nominated for the soldier drama Beaufort (2007). 
