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.

Interview: Tobias Lindholm on the Oscar Nominated 'A War' and Creating Time on Film

Writer/Director Tobias LindholmJose here. In Tobias Lindholm’s A War, the hardest battle for Danish commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) comes not in the warzone of Afghanistan, but in a courtroom back home where he faces prison time for a tactical decision that ended the lives of civilians. A thoughtful essay on the rules of humanity during wartime, the film remains largely apolitical while still engaging audience members who might question the very nature of foreign invasions, the need for war, and our roles as humans in a world that pits us against each other. Directed with confidence by Lindholm, the film remains outside any specific genre while providing a master class in how to create tension, intimacy and thrills.

A War has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Lindholm isn’t completely unfamiliar with the experience, having also worked as a writer in the 2012 nominee The Hunt. The versatile filmmaker is next working on yet another screenplay with Thomas Vinterberg and is also writing Paul Greengrass' next film. I had the opportunity to talk with him the day after the Oscar luncheon, and he shared his insight into creating time on film, his cinematic pet peeves and the excitement of awards season.

Our interview is after the jump...

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Interview: Alicia Vikander on Modern Girls, Talking Robots, and Scandinavian Celebrity

Vikander at the SAG Awards where she won Best Supporting ActressWhen I sat down with Alicia Vikander to discuss her career she was full of surprises, and not just in the way she answered questions. She approached in what looked like the simplest black dress, nothing special at all, until she turned around and the dress had an elaborately elegant back with a trailing bow. She promptly plopped down in a chair, opened a small bag of chips, and began munching away. She's a vision, alright, but the vision kept shifting: Unadorned Beauty, Glamorous Star, Girl Next Door. 

This hard to pin down picture shouldn't come as a surprise. In the short time we've been watching her she's been equally believable as a sly robot, a conflicted Danish queen, a debutate Russian aristocrat, a bohemian artist whose world is turned upside down, and a British writer during wartime.

But she's been so ubiquitous this year, both on screen and red carpets, that we're wondering which sides of herself she's yet to reveal. So we begin, counterintuively, with her future.

[The following interview was conducted before she won her SAG Award else we'd have talked about it.] 

NATHANIEL R: You've had so many movies released in the last few years. If you don't slow down, what's going to be left to accomplish?!? 

more after the jump...

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Interview: Director Roar Uthaug on Making the Disaster Film Feel Fresh in 'The Wave'

Director Roar Uthaug

Jose here. The fact that Norway’s Oscar submission this year is a disaster film, should be reason enough to warrant attention. It also happens that The Wave is quite a fun ride to sit through! Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, director Roar Uthaug, delivers a film that demands you get the largest bag of popcorn available, some candy and a giant soda. It’s a film meant to be enjoyed, something which Hollywood often forgets to provide when focusing on CGI extravaganzas that always put the effects before the people.

Uthaug’s film centers on a family led by sensitive geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) and his pragmatic wife Idun (Ane Dahl Topr, the star of last year's Norwegian Oscar submission 1001 Grams), who are preparing to leave their charming little town, when everything that can possibly go wrong, does indeed go wrong. The issue in this case is disastrous landslide that causes a tsunami in the fjord! To say that Uthaug excels at creating tension and induces nail-biting (my cuticles resent him) would be an understatement. What is surprising is how fresh the film feels by the end. Uthaug was kind enough to answer some questions I had about his film.

Read the interview after the jump.

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Academy's Make Up and Hairstyling Branch Triple-Down on Tom Hardy

Glenn here. If there's one thing we know about the Academy's make up and hairstyling branch it's that we know nothing about what they will or will not like. Evidence of that is quite clear in this year's preliminary shortlist of seven contenders, of which three will be selected as the nominees. As we are all aware, the make up and hairstyling category remains the only one with three nominees each year - give or take a slow year in the world of animation - despite every film having it in some capacity and despite being one of the few categories that doesn't have a predetermined sway towards prestige.

This year's field of seven is as wholly unexpected as we have come to expect from both the branch and from this year in general. The list of films in contention for a nomination who will get to present their works to the branch, include Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy, and Tom Hardy. [More...]

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