sweden Tagged Articles at Cinematical

(Sorry to get your hopes up, Sports Illustrated fans. This movie is not relevant to your interests.)

You may be familiar with the type of movie where a group of lovable losers get together to do something you wouldn't expect people like them to do, and therein lies the comedy. You had out-of-shape men stripping in The Full Monty, and old ladies posing nude in Calendar Girls, and a retired gentleman swimming the English Channel in On a Clear Day. These movies always seem to be British, but you will be pleased to know that now the Swedes have gotten in on the act!

The Swimsuit Issue is about a group of ordinary men of varying ages and physiques who combine to create Sweden's first all-male synchronized swimming team. You can see why that's very funny: They're MEN, but they're doing SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING! There really isn't much to it beyond that. It's a fairly generic film, but harmless and lighthearted. Hard to believe this and Ingmar Bergman came from the same place.

Our hero is Fredrik (Jonas Inde), currently unemployed and recently divorced, but not a bad guy. He's the captain of his local floor hockey team, whose national championship in 1985 Fredrik is still very proud of. While his teammates consider the game nothing more than a larkish pastime, Fredrik is intense. His competitive nature even shows up in casual games with his teenage daughter, Sara (Amanda Davin).

No one at the community rec center takes floor hockey very seriously, either, and other groups are always being given preferential treatment when it comes to scheduling practice space. They can't even take a relaxing dip in the pool without a synchronized swimming team kicking them out -- and this, naturally, is what leads to forming a team of their own.

It's not a job that garners instant sympathy, like coal miner or bomb-squad cop or personal assistant to Harvey Weinstein, but pause for a second to contemplate the plight of the modern film festival programmer: Every three days, somewhere in the world, there's a film festival. There are not, however, a hundred and sixty-odd brand new films that would allow every fest to be a wall-to-wall blanket of world premieres. Many festivals offer revival screenings of classic material in a new light (I have happy memories of Don McKellar introducing a brand-new uncut print of Cronenberg's The Brood at Toronto a few years ago) as a way of offering something new. Many combine musical talents with older films to create unique experiences in viewing that, unlike some festival circuit films, can't go from town to town because they're unique live experiences. At this year's San Francisco International Film Festival, audiences had a chance to see one of those signature experiences – a screening of the Swedish 1921 horror-folktale The Phantom Carriage, with an original live score by local resident and pop music legend Jonathan Richman.

Richman's most familiar to mainstream audiences for his work as the singing narrator in There's Something About Mary – a tragedy on the same scale, and of the same nature, as if people only recognized Marlon Brando from his sleepwalking work in Superman. Richman's work – with his first band and as a solo artist – has gone from pretty much helping invent American post-punk with The Modern Lovers to raucous children's music to more gentle (but never banal) ventures into folk- and European-influenced acoustic songwriting. He seemed, at first blush, like an odd choice to compose a score for a 80-year old film; watching Richman lead an 8-piece orchestra on the stage of San Francisco's historic Castro Theater, however, any possible concerns about stylistic whiplash were washed away by the shimmer and grace of the score as it unfolded before the audience.

Movie tourism is nothing new; there have been tours of studios for years, and recently tours have sprung up in New Zealand for Lord of The Rings and Harrow, England for Harry Potter aficionados. The Folklore Society of Stode Sweden is on the hunt for an Ingrid Bergman look-alike to re-enact the actresses' first marriage to Petter Aron Lindstrom 70 years ago. The Society intends to officially marry a couple in name and deed, providing the dress and a reception for free to the lucky winner. In a somewhat humiliating side note, the event organizers aren't bothered about finding a look-alike for Lindstrom for the event. Bergman's most famous romance was with Italian Neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini, not Lindstrom -- who was from Stode and the inspiration for the event. Bergman's daughter, Pia Lindstrom, will be in attendance and guests will get to dine on the original wedding china at the reception. Stode's event sounds a little obscure even for a die-hard fan, and with Bergman's daughter in attendance, it all sounds just the slightest bit creepy.

Nostalgia is one thing, but this is taking it a little far don't you think? Although, if you happen to have a relative in Sweden that bears an uncanny resemblance to Ingrid Bergman with a mounting wedding bill, this might be her lucky day.

[via topix.net]

Norway announced yesterday that it would be submitting Reprise as their country's entry for the best foreign language film Oscar. The movie is about "life's realities intruding on youthful assumptions." It joins Sweden's entry Falkenberg Farewell and Denmark's After the Wedding, which were announced earlier in the week.

The foreign language film category in the Oscars often feels tacked on haphazardly, and is frequently paid little attention. Which is exactly how I treated foreign films until I took a cinema history course in college. That was probably the first time I watched a film with subtitles (I think it was Raise the Red Lantern), and opened my eyes to world cinema. Frequently, American cinema seems to be all Boobs and/or Explosions IV at the box office, while films with real stories and characters go unnoticed.

Foreign films are almost always lower in budget than our mid-range films, yet they have more heart and story than our films do. Why is that? U.S. big-budget blockbusters usually perform very well overseas, so if they like those types of films, why aren't they producing them? Is it a problem of budget, or of storytelling? Heck, even Shaun of the Dead was much better than the non-stop stream of bad horror movies on this side of the pond.

Anyhow, while I think about what makes foreign films so good, I'm off to go see The Guardian to put it all in perspective.