Filmbiz blog

Vale Michael Pate

by Steven Vagg | September 29, 2008 15:30

Steven Vagg remembers the late, great Michael pate.

A real jolt to read that Michael Pate had died. He was getting on in years but he always seemed so indestructible. And no kidding I had “call Michael Pate” on my “to do” list – I wanted to chat to him about an article I’m researching on Alec Coppel. Pate worked with Coppel – one of the many, many people Pate worked with. He had an amazingly long and varied career – not just an actor but also director, producer, writer, soldier. Enjoyed a prosperous career in Hollywood as a character actor, came home in the late 60s and continued to work solidly.

His looks typed him as a villain in Hollywood – I particularly remember his Indian in Hondo and his bitter white settler in Something of Value. Marvellous speaking voice, great presence.

A film writer once told me Pate “could talk the arm off a chair” – and he was dead right: I interviewed Pate about Rod Taylor a number of years ago and he certainly liked to tell his stories. But they were funny stories. He was still trying to get up projects too. Actors never retire!

Screen Australia Wants You

by Dov Kornits | September 26, 2008 10:53

Publisher Dov Kornits finds out what Screen Australia is up to.

I was privileged to sit in on a media meet-and-greet with the new head honchos of Screen Australia, the organisation recently formed to replace the Australian Film Commission (AFC), the Film Finance Corporation of Australia (FFC) and Film Australia (dare I say FA?).

The offices in William St., Woolloomooloo in Sydney's inner city are going through a few changes as all three organisations move on in, but one thing's for certain: the views from their offices are worth the budgets of a few Australian feature films. After a few mesmerising moments spent admiring the view from the meeting room, I was snapped out of my hypnosis, and told to sit down and ask questions. I didn't manage any, but luckily my fellow journalists Sandy George, Michaela Boland and Garry Maddox, amongst others, had plenty to ask, so I was safe.

Under the pump from the Screen Australia side were Chairman Glen Boreham and CEO Dr. Ruth Harley, who handled themselves admirably. Boreham comes from a corporate background (IBM), whilst Harley is from the land of plentiful sheep and, more significantly, Peter Jackson. Boreham said that his favourite Aussie films are historical in subject matter, with Gallipoli and Breaker Morant the standouts. He even confessed that he'd like to see more of those types of films financed by the new organisation. Harley wasn't as candid, but she did say that Breaker Morant is one of the only films where she can quote a line of dialogue: "A slice taken from a cut loaf won't be missed."

When I think about this line in hindsight, I wonder if she mentioned it for a reason...

The official reason for the gathering emerged early on. Screen Australia have drafted a Statement of Intent (SOI), and want to let the world know that they're inviting comment from the industry and whoever cares to have their opinion heard, until September 30. Screen Australia will use the directions articulated in the SOI as the basis for developing programmes to be offered in the 2009 calendar year. So head to http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/soi now.

Some of the interesting points brought out in the meeting were their feeling that Arts Minister Peter Garrett's recent statement that Australia should be making 35 films per year was off the mark. From their experience - specifically those of Dr. Harley, who travels to film markets - there are too many films being made in the world right now, and the focus should be on quality, not quantity. She may know something, as she did a lot of good for the NZ film industry, but Harley confessed that was a tiny industry compared to Australia, and also noted that Australian TV is way ahead of our Southern brethren. An interesting point brought up by Harley was the need to have a look for inspiration at film industries such as Israel, where very recently local films collectively have started enjoying box office figures in the teen percentages of the entire take in the country, whereas a few years back it was virtually 0%. In Australia, if you take away Happy Feet and the like, our films take about 1% of the entire box office.

Mr. Boreham mentioned that he'd like Screen Australia to start with a clean slate. Towards the end of the session, he piped up with the claim that he wants to make Screen Australia a more commercial organisation, and wants to encourage our producers to be more collaborative. This led to another point where he threw out the claim that out of the many films produced in this country recently, very few collaborations between film directors and producers continued on to a further project. He looked at Ruth Harley at that point and got her to comment about the fact that NZ production is simply more sustainable because of the encouragement of forming production houses, which then developed projects. In their opinion, this is something that is lacking in Australia.

As we were being wound down, someone asked whether the Screen Australia logo, which incorporates Australia's coat of arms on the left and the words SCREEN AUSTRALIA on the right, was going to be featured on all Australian films funded post-2009. After a bit of a giggle, and a confession that it currently looks rather daggy, Boreham confessed that an application is currently in front of the government asking to omit the left part of the logo...

So that's it for my brief report on the future of Australian government film funding.

Make sure you get on down to http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/soi until Sept 30 Australian film industry pundits.

The big screen online

by Brian Duff | September 15, 2008 09:11

Brian Duff looks at the world wide web of film.

While film news, gossip and announcements were once confined to the "trades" - Variety and The Hollywood Reporter - dedicated movie magazines Sight & Sound, Premiere, Cahiers du cinema, et al - and the film pages of daily newspapers, today hundreds of thousands voices shout in the chasmic darkness of the internet, each fighting for traffic and carving out a unique corner of the World Wide Web.

The most useful of these sites are broadly utilitarian, if happily user-friendly, databases like Internet Movie DataBase and AllMovie (each of which makes token attempts at breaking news and celebrity gossip) and local staple The Cinematic Intelligence Agency which offer concrete information and announcements alongside user generated content in the form of postings and discussion threads. Elsewhere, there are absorbing niche offerings available at fansites of all stripes, encompassing actors, filmmakers and genres, which range from bitterly critical to messianic devotion.    

For webmasters and mistresses seeking heavy traffic and multiple hits per day, sites like Coming Soon, Movie Web, Hollywood.com and Dark Horizons tend to throw every tidbit they can gleam from the trades, wire services and individual film and filmmaker websites against the wall and see what sticks, often posting a dozen updates a day on hotly anticipated films. By their nature, these websites are blockbuster-centric with a clear bias toward genre films - sci-fi, comic book, action and franchise - that appeal to the most web-friendly demographic. Less accepting of tinseltown twaddle - at least explicitly - are the likes of eFilmCritic (which reckons that it doesn't allow a single "Hollywood movie crime slide by unpunished), Film Threat (the masthead of which proclaims "truth in entertainment"), Film School Rejects (which features a column called "What the Fuck!?") and Urban Cinefile (published by local favourites Andrew Urban and Louise Keller).

While these sites often feature exclusive content, be it in the form of set visits, interviews or even newfangled pieces like video journals and viral marketing pushes, they stand in contrast to the more staid, albeit usually better written, internet profiles of established movie magazines. Most prominent and respected amongst these remains Premiere Magazine, the US arm of which, after a 20 year run as perhaps the finest film magazine in the world, became web-exclusive in a cost cutting measure (losing much of its formerly formidable staff in the process). The aforementioned Sight & Sound, out of Britain, and eminent French mag Cahiers du cinema both have a prominent web presence to supplement their print versions, as does Filmmaker, Cineaste, Empire, Film Comment, Total Film and FILMINK magazines, alongside literally thousands of other fanzines, papers, mags and bulletins available in both print and web editions.

Taken together, this massive collection of websites is overwhelming - especially when added to the relative glut of information already available in physical form at the newsagency - which is exactly why compilation websites, headlined by Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic, exist. These one stop shops bring together as many reviews as possible to produce an aggregate score for each reviewed film. They also allow readers to link back to the original source, often through film-specific web portals for prominent publications like Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times and big time entertainment companies like AOL and CNN, all of which hope to proffer their star critic as the voice to trust in an untrustworthy sea of critics.

It is into this sticky morass that we have decided to relaunch the FILMINK website, which hopes to become a reliable, sharply written and well used portal to complement our top form publication. Herein, exclusive interviews and features will sit prominently alongside those most essential chunks of the magazine - film and DVD reviews - in what we hope will become a familiar stopover for folks interested in a page with a bit more depth than simple wire posts and anonymous celebrity sledging and a bit more wit than the dry, if terribly useful, database sites.

We hope you enjoy the site, and come back to it often to keep up to date with what's happening in film in Australia.

Where in the world is our film industry?

by Rhiannon Sawyer | August 14, 2008 02:56

FILMINK's Rhiannon Sawyer tackles the big question: how come she's not starring in any movies?

If you live in the Czech Republic, apparently you can't go anywhere without stepping onto a film set. (This is according to the lovely Czech girl I ran into in a line at a bar- an authoritative voice i thought).

This comment made me ponder where all of our films are made. Yes, we have Fox Studios in Sydney which has been the home to many a blockbuster, and a few friends of mine were in background scenes in Superman but how come I haven't stumbled onto any film sets yet? Surely somewhere in Sydney people are making movies which I could be in. I'm not asking for anything huge, just one line and maybe a neat costume...

Myself and the lovely Czech girl (whose name escapes me but whose existence I assure you is real) were discussing why she was in Sydney. For a travelling filmmaker, apparently Australia is not the place to visit. While we may have many a sweeping vista for some great background shots, the industry is not churning them out at a fast enough rate, nor are the international visitors taking advantage of our talented teams. She was complaining that in the Czech Republic, she couldn't get a holiday because so many people were using the old castles and beautiful buildings for their costume dramas. In Sydney however, she couldn't cut a break. We seem to have a strong short- film-competition- entering population, but nothing beyond.

Of course there are much larger issues to consider, such as the serious lack of funding and support for filmmakers in Australia and the general state of the industry in the face of American Hollywood dominance, but for the moment I'll let you ponder the fate of the lovely Czech girl in the bar, and myself, who is still waiting on my close-up.