European Award Noms (Shades of Oscar, 2011 AND 2010)

Our Oscar chart updates are underway (much more coming at you tomorrow) and now The European Film Award nominations are out. The Film Experience always enjoys their attempt at boiling down so many countries into one group of "best of"s. The American and British Film Academies don't have it so hard, you know, each generally only dealing with the best of Hollywood and London with the occasional embassy outreach to a hot foreigner. (That'd be The Artist this year).

Melancholia vs. The Artist at the EFAs

For our Oscar discussion purposes the most amusing thing about this year's lineup is that two Oscar winners from 2010 (the UK's The Kings Speech and Denmark's In a Better World) are competing against one of the presumed frontrunners of 2011 (France's The Artist) with a few arthouse madman (The Melancholia) and French language side dishes (The Kid With a Bike -- not submitted for this year's Oscar race -- and Le Havre, which is an Oscar submission for in Best Foreign Film).

FILM

• The Artist
• Le Havre
• In a Better World
• The Kid With a Bike
• The King's Speech 
• Melancholia

Sigh. The King's Speech. At this point it's like an unstaked British vampire, sucking the life from Gallic beauties and crazy Danes. 

DIRECTOR

• Susanne Bier, In a Better World
• The Dardenne Brothers, The Kid With a Bike
• Aki Kaurismäki, Le Havre
• Béla Tarr, The Turin Horse
• Lars von Trier, Melancholia

It seems absolutlely bizarre to snub Michael Hazanavicius for direction (The Artist, more than most movies, would've been a disaster without its careful but exuberant guiding hand). Meanwhile Tom Hooper probably won't lose sleep over his snubbing here. Once you've won the Oscar...

ACTRESS

• Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
• Cécile de France, The Kid With a Bike
• Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia
• Nadezdha Markina, Elena
• Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Melancholia's sisters (Dunst & Gainsbourg) each get half the movie. They also share the EFA nom.

We're literally revisiting Cannes jury deliberations for this lineup since all of the women were there. Remember when everyone was all: will it be Kiki or Tilda in "Best Actress"? I wish the EFA had a higher profile just to give Dunst another boost and get back into the Oscar conversation.

More after the jump including actors, composers, and dreamy unsettling production design.

ACTOR

• Jean Dujardin, The Artist
• Colin Firth, The King's Speech
• Mikael Persbrandt, In a Better World
• Michel Piccoli, We Have a Pope
• André Wilms, Le Havre

Will Dujardin take this on his way to Oscar nomination glory or will Colin Firth's endless coronation continue?

SCREENWRITER

• Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, The Kid With a Bike
• Anders Thomas Jensen, In a Better World
• Aki Kaurismäki, Le Havre
• Lars von Trier, Melancholia

ANIMATED FEATURE

• A Cat in Paris (France/Belgium)
• Chico & Rita (Spain/Isle of Man)
• The Rabbi's Cat (France)

We were just talking about this category. Two of these (A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita) could be Oscar-nominated this year. Here are the trailers to both...

DOCUMENTARY

• Pina (Germany)
• Position Among the Stars (The Netherlands) 
• Vivan Las Antipodas (Int'l)

DISCOVERY (Prix Fipresci)

• Adem (Belgium | The Netherlands)
  written and directed by Hans Van Nuffel 
• Atmen (Austria's Oscar Submission)
  wrirten and directed by Karl Markovics 
• Michael (Austria)
  written and directed by Markus Schleinzer 
• Nothing's All Bad (Denmark)
  written and directed by Mikkel Munch-Fals 
• Tilva Ros (Serbia)
  written and directed by Nikola Lezaic 

CINEMATOGRAPHER

• Manuel Alberto Claro, Melancholia
• Fred Kelemen, The Turin Horse
• Guillaume Schiffman, The Artist
• Adam Sikora, Essential Killing 

In one of the great cinematic turnarounds of our lifetime Lars von Trier's movies went from elaborate visual constructions, to grungey natural light manifestos and now we've lept over the cliff into stunning dreamscape tableaus.

EDITOR

• Tariq Anwar, The King's Speech
• Mathilde Bonnefoy, Drei (Three)
• Molly Malene Stensgaard, Melancholia 

An errant nomination for Tom Tykwer's Three. I've been so interested in seeing that movie but it keeps escaping me. Stand still Drei. I'm coming for you!

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

• Paola Bizzarri, We Have a Pope
• Antxón Gómez, The Skin I Live In
• Jette Lehmann, Melancholia

Interesting nominee pile here. Gómez's Frankenstein laboratories and extravagantly meticulous, strange but artful living spaces are wonderful to gaze upon. Though why can't the EFA decide how many people they want in a category: 3,4,5,6?; they can't settle!

COMPOSER

• Ludovic Bource, The Artist
• Alexandre Desplat, The King's Speech
• Alberto Iglesias, The Skin I Live In
• Mihály Vig, The Turin Horse

I wonder if Oscar's notoriously inconsistent music branch will object to Bource's (The Artist) outsourcing of classic film scores or if he'll get an easy nomination for the great soundscape which relies so much on his work? Though it'd be thrilling to see Iglesias get an Oscar nomination for one of his best scores ever in The Skin I Live In, will Oscar really take notice? The more attention the score gets the better for his chances, so well done EFA committee.

EFA's PEOPLES CHOICE AWARD
previously discussed

• Animals United (German)
• Even the Rain (Spain)
• In a Better World (Denmark)
• The King's Speech (UK)
• Little White Lies (France)
• Potiche (France)
• Unknown (int'l)
• Welcome to the South (Italy)

Answer Me These Questions Three...
Will they embrace Cannes official persona non grata Lars von Trier in a big way?
Do you think Almodóvar's horror film can win any year-end love on these shores?
Will The King's Speech own the night again, glamouring the voters with its undead stare and mysterious vocalizations?

The European Film Awards will take place on December 3rd in Berlin this year. On a scale of 1 to 10 how much would you like to be there?

Comments

[Peggy Sue]

As I wrote before I love Le gamin au vélo. Cécile de France is so luminous.

I think it's great they aknowledge Charlotte's performance in Melancholia. That movie is a pas a deux not a solo

PS I miss Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy!

[Peggy Sue]

As I wrote before I love Le gamin au vélo. Cecile de France is so luminous!

I think it's great they acknowledge Charlotte's performance in Melancholia. That movie is a pas a deux not a solo.

PS I miss Juliette in Certified Copy!

[Robert]

I admit I had to wiki recent Best Film winners to get a sense of their tastes and I gotta say, The Kings Speech doesn't seem to fit in line. They have really been very anti-Oscar recently. They've avoided anything simple and sentimental lately so I'm gonna say no Artist or King's Speech. They've never awarded a Bier or Dardenne film but the two this year seem so minor. That leaves Melancholia which I'd say was a good bet but they really might hesitate to celebrate Lars after his bad year. So put my guess down for Le Havre.

Oh and allow me one Bela Tarr fanboy moment to shout "yay! for the Turin Horse love.

[Jan]

The erratic number of nominees really is stupid. I can imagine how crazy it would drive you if AMPAS did the same :)

Surely, The King's Speech won't get Best Film without nominations for directing & writing. And after all, the European Academy had enough good taste not to vote for another wretched Oscar favorite a few years ago. Though, to be fair, TKS is mostly just bland, not an unholy mixture of fairytale and Salaam Bombay! like Slumdog.

It looks like they could go for Melancholia/von Trier bigtime like they did with The Ghost Writer/Polanski last year. Melancholia is pretty great, so I would be fine with that.

[Philip]

YAY KIKI! <3

I don't care how important or non-important these awards are, I'm just happy she's getting recognized period.

[Nick Davis]

I think this is probably Le Havre's to lose.

[RJ]

Adore the Dardennes, so I'm excited for Kid With A Bike. The presence of Jeremie Renier is just a bonus.

[Pat]

Question the first: Probably not... seems like the most likely nods for the film are in categories with stiff competition
2. Hopefully not. (It's awful.)
3. Probably not... make way for The Artist!
Ps: yay Pina!
Pps: All those nominations for In a Better World = Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[BVR]

the score for The Skin I Live In is the best score I've heard all year. It actually made me love the movie more than I probably should.

[Sami]

Le Havre is not among your Foreign Language Film predictions. Not even in your top ten - laughable.

[anna]

I would have loved to see Florian Cossen's "Das Lied in mir" (The Day I Was Not Born) among the Prix Fipresci nominations. The nominees must be incredibly strong, if Cossen's debut didn't make it. Actually, I'm half convinced they just overlooked it, it's my favourite film of the year so far.

[Mirko]

I'm so sorry mighty portugues opus MISTERIOS DE LISBOA has been overlooked

[cal roth]

Oh, boy, I fu*king LOVED The Kid With a Bike. I'm in love. I could marry this movie.

[tombeet]

I'm generally satisfied with all the nomination. As for best picture, I've seen 5 out of 6 (excluding The Artist), I would say Melancholia is the most likely to win.
Just a bit sad that The Skin I Live In was snubbed in the main awards, but happy that they recognized The Kid with a Bike and Le Havre, which I also loved

[Jack]

Hopefully they don't make the same mistake the Cannes jury did by snubbing Tilda in favor of Kirsten's entirely self-aware and strained performance. I'd even be more okay with Gainsbourg winning.

[tombeet]

@Jack: couldn't agree more.

[Bia]

So, was Kirsten nominated because she is now a German citizen? Or can Americans always nominated?

[Peggy Sue]

A warning to all the Renier lovers: You're gonna hate his character in Le gamin au vélo!
(don't worry he looks as yummy as usual)