Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Lars and the Real Girl is nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Nancy Oliver).

In one of the more unusual coincidences on this year’s movie release schedule, Craig Gillespie has seen his first two movies, Mr Woodcock and Lars and the Real Girl, released within a month of each other. Gillespie, an Australian who came to the U.S. to study at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts and never left, worked at an ad agency for eight years, then moved on to directing commercials. After twelve years as one of the most successful directors in his field, Gillespie helmed his first feature, Mr Woodcock, a broad comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton, Susan Sarandon and Seann William Scott about the titular gym teacher from hell who returns to torment an old student. Gillespie, however, was not ideally suited to the film and failed to nail the tone the studio wanted, so Wedding Crashers‘ director David Dobkin was called in to take charge of (uncredited) reshoots.

Gillespie, though, says his second movie, Lars and the Real Girl, is exactly his kind of movie, and there is a restraint and quiet poise inherent in proceedings that suggest that he was much more in his element. click here to read full story