Norway's Oscar Search Narrows

The land of the midnight sun has narrowed down its contenders for this year's Oscar race. The three films that will be competing for the honor (to be announced on September 7th) are...

• The King’s Choice (Erik Poppe)
  A WW II drama about German soldiers invading Norway 
• The Pyromaniac (Erik Skjoldbjærg)
  Dramatic thriller about a southern village terrorized - premiering at TIFF
• Welcome to Norway (Rune Denstad Langlo)
  A comedy about a couple opening a home for refugees 

Poppe was submitted once before a dozen years back for Hawaii Oslo  and Oscar loves World War II but my guess is it's going to be Pyromaniac or Welcome to Norway. Skjoldbjaerg's history should help with the former since he had a finalist for submission with Pioneer a few years ago, though Norway opted for a lower profile submission, and he was also the co-writer of the internationally popular Norwegian hit Insomnia (1997) which was remade by Christopher Nolan in the Aughts. Welcome to Norway's topicality might help it take the honor, though. Both films won acting prizes at this week's Norwegian Oscars, "the Amandas" where last year's Oscar submission The Wave took the top prize of Best Norwegian Film.

Norway has been nominated five times (1957's Nine Lives, 1987's Pathfinder, 1996's Other Side of Sunday, 2001's Elling, and 2012's Kon-Tiki) but has yet to win the Oscar gold. 

THE AGE OF SHADOWS just announced as South Korea's choice, upsetting THE HANDMAIDENCurrent Foreign Oscar Predictions
10 Official Submissions Thus Far...

Chart 1 (Afghanistan - Finland) 
Submissions from Australia, Croatia, and Cuba

Chart 2 (France through Morocco) 
Submissions from Georgia & Germany

Chart 3 (Nepal through Vietnam) 
Submissions from Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Switzerland, and Venezuela.

La La Land Razzle Dazzles Venice

Classic musicals from Singing in the Rain to An American in Paris to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are being invoked to praise La La Land. There are comparisons to golden age stars like Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly and Gene Kelly. The Damien Chazelle film, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, has critics at Venice falling in love and believing in the magic of cinema again. La La Land just topped our most anticipated fall film list and it looks like the excited anticipation was proven correct just a day later.

Here is an assortment of what is being said...

Click to read more ...

Links: Movies (and TV) Matter, Garrel Picks Pics, Oscar's Centennial

Thrillist "Why everyone was wrong about Warcraft" - the summer's most underrated movie?
MNPP great moments in movie shelves hits Young Frankenstein
The Wrap looks at Colton Haynes winning an HRC award. Why Colton, exactly?

Criterion Louis Garrel chooses movies from the Criterion closet. He likes Jacques Tati, Loves of a Blonde, and Amarcord among others
FlavorWire looks back at Madonna & Sean's Shanghai Surprise in its Bad Movie Night column
Telerama (in French) Alain Guirardie talks about his filmography - he thinks he can do better than Stranger by the Lake! 
SBS hilarious satire video on White Fragility in the Workplace
Slate pits Bad Moms against Ghostbusters because women have to be pitted against each other!
NY Times on current film restoration anxiety asking the following question which I swear is going to give me regular nightmares:

What happens to an art when its foundational medium disappears? 

Today's Must Read
Richard Brody at the New Yorker wrote a great piece called "Why Movies Still Matter?" that examines the critical circularity that leads people to write things like "Could This Be the Year Movies Stopped Mattering?” We're all inside this ororborus! Help. My favorite part is his contention that the rise in popularity of serial television is actually emulating the college experience. Interesting.

The experience that the watching and the critique of new serial television resemble above all is the college experience. Binge-watching is cramming, and the discussions that are sparked reproduce academic habits: What It Says About, What It Gets Right About, What It Gets Wrong About. There is a lot of aboutness but very little being; lots of puzzle-like assembling of information to pose particular kinds of questions (posing questions—sounds like a final exam), to explore particular issues (sounds like a term paper). For these reasons, television’s actual competition isn’t movies or museums or novels but nonfiction books, documentary films, journalism, radio discussions, and general online clicking. Serial television is designed to gratify the craving for facts to piece together and analyze. The medium seems created for the media buzz that’s generated by the media people who are its natural audience, and to whom the shows owe their acclaim, their prestige, and their success.

Then he goes on to investigate the personal versus the public in our cinema experience. Love this piece. So much to think about and not judgmental about those film or television! Or to quote another great writer...

TV and movies have been coexisting for decades, yet the number of people insisting one must vanquish the other remains constant.

— Farran Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) August 29, 2016

  

News
EW Emily Blunt hears what Julie Andrews says about her casting as Mary Poppins Returns
Guardian Anne Hathaway to star in Live Fast Die Hot  the adaptation of a bestseller about new motherhood and responsibility
Variety Richard Linklater is making a sequel (of a sort) to The Last Detail (1973) called Last Flag Flying
/Film early photos from Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes, his new streaming series
Towleroad Matt Bomer has signed on to play a trans sex worker in a new film called Anything. They're still not casting trans actors for trans roles which is a shame. Especially since we actually have famous trans actors now, proof that there's no reason to not cast them or think they can't win media attention themselves 
Variety Stranger Things renewed for Season 2. (I liked Season 1 but a continuation of that story seems like a mistake to me. Better an anthology template!)
Comics Alliance Stranger Things' breakout "Barb" (Shannon Purser) will guest star on CW's Archie adaptation Riverdale
Awards Daily Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply will open the AFI Fest this year in November 

FINALLY
In case you haven't heard ABC and Oscar have extended their contract. The Oscars will now be held on ABC through 2028 now. In extremely related news: 2028 is when the 100th Academy Awards will be held so imagine that centennial. If you'd like TFE to be around for that (so far away) please consider joining our monthly donaters --see sidebar -- because it's so not easy to keep making this site work each year, financially speaking. 

Judy by the Numbers: "Let There Be Love/You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You"

Anne Marie has been chronicling Judy Garland's career chronologically through musical numbers...

In 1957, a golden opportunity landed in Judy Garland's lap that looked, at first glance, like a lawsuit. In fact it was a lawsuit (and a counterlawsuit) concerning a contract she'd signed with CBS. Garland (on the advice of hubby Sidney Luft) had signed a $300,000 contract with CBS for three years of TV specials in 1955. However, only one special had ever aired. In 1957, Judy sued, which caused CBS to countersue. The result reads like something out of the rejected musical version of Adam's Rib: in 1961, Judy & CBS decided to put aside their differences (and lawsuits) to sign a new contract for two new specials. The first of these aired just a year later in 1962.

The Show: The Judy Garland Show (CBS, 1962)
The Songwriters: Lionel Rand (music), Ian Grant (lyrics)
The Cast: Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, directed by Norman Jewison

The Story: Norman Jewison (soon to be famous for directing, among other things the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof) got one thing very, very right about this TV special: when you have three legendary talents onscreen, you don't need much else. The whole series featured a very pared down aesthetic: little choreography, few costume changes, and a set featuring random pillars and lights that flew out to reveal an equally mustard yellow void. Of course, when you have Judy, Dean and Frank clowning around and stepping in time, you don't need much more.

The series would be nominated for 3 Emmy Awards and net huge ratings for CBS. This was good news for both network and star, who decided to continue to put aside their differences in order to do a weekly TV series.

Select Previous Highlights:  
“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart” (1938), "Over the Rainbow" (1939), "The Trolley Song" (1944), "I Don't Care" (1949), "Get Happy" (1950), "The Man That Got Away" (1954)

Making a "Splash"

I'll be doing that tomorrow as I've been under the weather today. But don't despair if you needed a fix of Ron Howard's best movie (you heard me), the charming fish out of water comedy Splash from 1984. Here are seven articles from Best Shot participants to enjoy. Click on the photos to dive into their takes on this romantic winner about a man and his mermaid. 

Scopophiliac at the Cinema

Antagony & Ecstasy

Rachel's Reviews

Sorta That Guy

Dancin Dan on Film

Christian Bonamusa

Allison Tooey