Icelandic Connection ~ Eternal Sunshine
Valdís Óskarsdóttir
You’re the man now, dog!
Did you know the editor of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) was from Iceland? Her name is Valdís Óskarsdóttir and among movies she has edited are Vinterberg’s Festen (1998), Anders Thomas Jensen’s Mifunes sidste sang (1999), Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester (2000) (yeah the one with. “You’re the man now, dog!”). and Sergey Bodrov’s amazing movie, Mongol (2007).
In 2005 she won the “BAFTAS” for film editing for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. She has also won several awards for editing movies like Festen, Mifunes Sidste sang and Sveitabrúðkaup to name a few.
In 2008 she wrote and directed Sveitabrúðkaup, a low key Icelandic movie about a wedding in the countryside that goes from bad to worse. The cool thing about that movie is that the movie was filmed in seven days with four cameras. The cinematographer was the amazing Oscar winning Anthony Dod Mantle who went from shooting Sveitabrúðkaup straight to working with Danny Boyle making Slumdog Millionare (2008).
Lately, Valdís has been focusing on writing and directing her own movies here in Iceland but she still remains as one of the powerhouses in Icelandic film making scene and is without a doubt the best editor this dinky little island has ever produced.
So for your coctail party you need to know this.
She’s icelandic (it’s important). She rescued Michel Gondry’s Ethernal Sunshine (lets face it, he’s genius but his movies are a bit of a mess). She has worked with brilliand and amazing directors. You can’t discuss Dogma 95 without acknowledging her work and she has worked with Anthony Dod Mantle many times.
Enough said, and thank you for reading this mess.
Websites
Valdís Óskarsdóttir ~ Official Site
Valdís Óskarsdóttir ~ IMDB
Valdís Óskarsdóttir ~ Wikipedia
Icelandic Connection – Leatherface
Leatherface a.k.a Gunnar Hansen
A fact known to all Icelanders but few in the rest of the world. Leatherface was played by an Icelandic actor, Gunnar Hansen. Yes the main baddie from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hails from Iceland. Hansen is an Icelandic author and actor who since acting in a the cult favorite has been keeping him self busy by writing and acting. Most recently he played the role of the Captain in the Icelandic Horror movie Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre.
Now you have a new connection you can throw out at your next cocktail party. You know, the cocktail parties where you discuss the classic horror movies of the seventies.
Icelandic Connection – Steven Tobolowsky
Where the Icelandic medical system almost kills Steven Tobolowsky
If you are a podcast listener and haven’t been listening to The Tobolowsky Files, you should. The character actor Steven Tobolowsky shares a series of short stories about life, love, and the entertainment industry on the podcast.
Tobolowsky is probably most famous for his role as Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, but has appeared in over 200 movies and television series.
On Episode 28, Tobolowsky talks about when he was visiting Iceland with his wife and was thrown off of a horse and broke his neck in five places. The Icelandic doctors told him he was OK to travel but he later discovers how close he really came to dying here in this dinky little island in the middle of the Atlantic. Steven has since thankfully made a full recovery.
It is an amazing story to begin the Icelandic Connection feature here on AshDigital.com. You can download the episode straight from /Films here.
The Icelandic Connection
When I was younger in my drinking days I would spend a lot of time talking about my unified theory of the Icelandic Connection. Briefly it goes like this.
Icelanders are not happy until they find an Icelandic Connection to any event or person in history… ever. No matter what comes up, Icelanders will go to any length to connect Iceland and/or Icelander to said event or person. I usually tagged to the idea that the theory will be “proven” when we can place an Icelander on the Titanic and to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
So this is the theory. I think this tendency of Icelanders stems mostly from deep rooted inferiority complex. It seems to be a sport among journalists to try to dig up these connections. This is nothing new and certainly is not unique for only Icelanders. But with a tiny nation of barely 300+ thousand souls the “connections” usually go from comical, to far fetched to sometimes absurd.
Here though, on this blog I am not going to be focusing on that. Mostly I’m thinking of making this a feature of things I come across that connect to the things I am interested in.
Let’s connect the dots 
James Cameron on Attack of the Show
This week I discovered Attack of the Show. Been going through some of the videos and found few videos featuring James Cameron.
James Cameron talks Avatar & More
James Cameron on Avatar Re-Release
Avatar’s Cameron-Pace 3D Camera Rig Review
