Best International Feature: Parasite, The Whistlers, and Denmark's Hopefuls...

by Nathaniel R

Park So-dam and Choi Woo-sik as con-artist siblings in Parasite (2019)

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2ND 2:00 PM: The titles competing at the 92nd annual Oscars for Best International Feature are coming at us fast and furious now. In the past few days the number has climbed to an "official" 26 submissions...with probably 60ish titles still to come. 

SOUTH KOREA
It was widely expected that South Korea would select Cannes Palme d'Or Winner Parasite to represent them but we've been surprised by the country's selection before (why oh why did they pass on The Handmaiden in its year - argh!). Thankfully they didn't surprise us this year. This is Bong Joon-ho's best movie ever, give or take the also-quite-brilliant but Oscar-shunned Mother (his only other film that was submitted by South Korea) so it would be sweet to see it actually compete for the gold.

Denmark's finalists, Romania's selection, and the official submission chart updates are after the jump...

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TIFF Quickies with Gael García Bernal, Paprika Steen and more...

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

Herewith very quick notes on five new films from world cinema, some with stars you'll recognize, that deserve lengthier word counts. That said, we're a week behind with TIFF reviews so we have to crank them out somehow -- better short-takes than no takes at all! 

Museo
The ever prolific Gael García Bernal continues to be a gift to world cinema. He has a small role in The Kindergarten Teacher (which... more on later) but fully carries Museo, a restless gem from Mexico. The movie begins with a formative father and son memory and memorable newsreel footage of an ancient statue being hauled across Mexico as a prized museum acquisition. Years later in 1985, the son Juan Nunez (García Bernal), or "Shorty," as his often derisive family calls him, remains obsessed with the story and robs the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City of 140 more mobile pre-Hispanic pieces...

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The European Film Awards Long List

by Nathaniel R

Maria Bäumer plays the famous 1970s actress Romy Schneider in German biopic 3 DAYS IN QUIBERON

Though we only know ten "official" titles for Oscar's foreign film race so far the European Film Awards often hold clues as to other films that might be submitted. Their 49 "suggestions" for nominations (aka finalists) have been announced. Nominations will follow on November 10th with the ceremony to be held December 15th in Seville, Spain. Those 49 films and our thoughts on their Oscar prospects are after the jump... 

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Months of Meryl: "Out of Africa"

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#12 — Karen Blixen, aristocratic Danish author who owns a coffee plantation in Kenya during the first decades of the twentieth century.

JOHN: Did Karen Blixen once have a farm in Africa? Like a marching zombie with arms outstretched, Karen intones this mantra via voiceover several times during Out of Africa, either because she remains in disbelief at her accomplishment or feels compelled to remind the viewer of a reason to focus on Ms. Blixen amid Sydney Pollack’s African travelogue.

Out of Africa tells the tale of Karen Blixen, a headstrong woman who relocates from Denmark to Kenya circa 1914 to marry her lover’s twin brother (Klaus Maria Brandauer), run a short-lived coffee plantation, and eventually fall in love with English game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). Out of Africa was a project that piqued but ultimately eluded such directors as Orson Welles, David Lean, and Nicholas Roeg. As envisioned by Sydney Pollack and distributed by Universal Pictures in 1985, it's a colossal Hollywood production that endlessly reveres the natural beauty of its Kenyan environs while dodging engagement with the colonialist specificities of its time and place...

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Interview: Nikolaj Lie Kaas on Playing the Complex Lead in Denmark's Oscar Submission 'You Disappear'

By Jose Solís.

Since his breakthrough performance in The Idiots, where he played the sensitive, tragic Jeppe, Nikolaj Lie Kaas has remained one of the most interesting male actors in the world. Jumping from genre to genre, and from big Hollywood productions, to intellectual television series, his body of work is as varied as it’s complex. He’s played real life people, an assassin trying to thwart Tom Hank’s plans, a romantic hero, and one of the most beloved literary characters in contemporary Scandinavian fiction. But in Peter Schønau Fog’s You Disappear he reveals layers previously unseen as he plays Frederik Halling, a school headmaster whose world is shaken when he’s accused of embezzlement. Could it be that the brain tumor affecting his personality is to blame, or has Frederik always been this way?

The late, great Michael Nyqvist plays Frederik’s lawyer, and Trine Dyrholm plays his loving wife. You Disappear has been selected to represent Denmark at the Academy Awards next year, so I caught up with leading man Kaas, to discuss his work in the film, the way in which he approached a character like Frederik, and his opinion on awards season.

Read the interview after the jump.

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