latest notices
QPIX STUDENTS ARE TROPFEST FINALISTS
Graduates of QPIX’s 2011 Diploma of Production course have won their way into the finals of TROPFEST, the world’s largest short film festival, with their student production PHOTOBOOTH. Set in the Afghanistan conflict, PHOTOBOOTH is one of a sequence of...
'Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu' Out February 10
(Nationwide)
Over The Fence Comedy Film Deadline
(Nationwide)
Rottofest 2012: Call For Entries Now Open!
(Nationwide)
latest news
Geoffrey Rush Joins Tropfest
The acclaimed actor and newly-crowned Australian of the Year, Geoffrey Rush, will be a key player in 2012’s Tropfest activities.
Naomi Watts To Play Princess Diana
The Aussie actress is set to play the people’s princess in an upcoming film that chronicles the final two years of Diana’s life.
Sullivan Stapleton Signs On To ‘300’ Prequel
The Aussie actor has beat out the competition to land a role in the upcoming blockbuster.
James Cameron Loses Long Time Australian Collaborators
Producer Andrew Wight and cinematographer Mike deGruy lose their lives in a helicopter crash.
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Beautiful But Scary
Yumi Stynes gives us her take on the latest cinematic releases.
If you're really looking for a movie to see this week, I highly recommend Drag Me To Hell. It's the new Sam Raimi horror flick and destined to be a classic in the genre. Funny, gross and terribly entertaining, this is the best horror movie I've seen all year! I particularly recommend it if you don't often see horror on the big screen because you'll be amazed how your own body reacts to this visceral delight.
Sam Raimi is a highly accomplished film producer, writer and director, (having helmed the last 3 Spider-mans and just announced to do Spidey 4) and he works with utter confidence in the far-fetched and hugely entertaining yarn about a self-improving bank loan officer who evicts an old gypsy woman from her home. Alison Lohman as Christine Brown has three days to set things right before the demons come to drag her to hell.
Awesome?
Awesome.
For more serious cinema fans it's been an interesting month in Australian film.
I recently curated a question/answer session between the writer-director of the new Australian film Cedar Boys, Serhat Ceradee, and two of his stars, Rachael Taylor and Les Chantery. It was the night before the film opened (on June 30) so most people in attendance hadn't seen the film but were movie enthusiasts or budding filmmakers.
One of the audience questions was "Why should I see this film if I'm not Lebanese?" I've been thinking about the question all week.
Obviously it's a crazy question. Great films are often about very specific times, places and people. Goodfellas is about 1970s blue collar Italian gangsters. Serhat put it like this; "You don't have to be a murderer to watch a crime flick, y'know?"
It's true, but I can understand why the question was asked.
Cedar Boys is a story about young Lebanese Australian men searching for the means to make their social ascension at a time in Australia when their ethnic backgrounds hold them back with mostly negative connotations of gang rapists, drive-by shootings and drug dealers.
It's not a brilliant film, but a solid story with consistently great performances and enough insights and excitement to make it worth seeing. But am I damning with faint praise? Cedar Boys is worth seeing for many reasons but mostly because the lead actor is a revelation of Aussie talent. Les Chantery, as Tarek, is a star. The NIDA-trained graduate was told at school that he would probably only ever be cast as terrorists, and certainly those types of roles have regularly been on offer in his career so far. But anyone who remembers seeing Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper or Abbie Cornish in Somersault can appreciate the excitement that comes with watching a new discovery in a breakthrough role.
The other Australian actor on the cusp of a breakthrough is Sophie Lowe, star of the new film from actor turned director Rachel Ward. Out of Chadwick modelling agency's stables, Lowe plays the title character in Beautiful Kate. Like a lot of eerily beautiful model-actors, Lowe appears to come from the methadone school of acting. Blank detachment; aloof sexuality. Do you learn that on the runway? I dunno, maybe it's female jealousy or something, but I found similar problems with Gemma Ward's performance in The Black Balloon. Another model trying her hand at acting, Gemma was great, but her relationship with the camera was so intense that her interactions with the other characters shrank in comparison. These girls are so dazzling they can annihilate their surroundings, and not necessarily at the service of the story.
Beautiful Kate is about a dysfunctional family regrouping to farewell their dying father. Bryan Brown is the hardened patriarch slowly losing his menace as his body fails, Rachel Griffiths plays the quietly observant younger sister and Ben Mendelsohn is the brother who bares the most obvious scars of the family's past.
Beautiful Kate is a well-made film with a far greater budget than Cedar Boys but will probably leave audiences a little mystified. Cedar Boys has a clear purpose. Beautiful Kate, based on a book by Newton Thornburg, centres around a fairly baffling idea. If that girl in the Cedar Boys audience was compelled to ask "Why should I see this film if I'm not Lebanese?" she could also ask, "Why should I see this film if I haven't experienced incest?"
Top 5 Films About Incest:
Hotel New Hampshire
Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster make for very sexy siblings in this 1984 drama based on a book by John Irving where the sister and brother repeatedly commit consensual incest.
Creepiness level: 3
Capturing the Friedmans
This Andrew Jarecki documentary about an upper-class American Jewish family appeals at first to our better instincts - they can't be that bad, surely. The story of Professor Arnold Friedman and his 18 year-old son Jesse, their trial and incarceration is like falling down a sinkhole into hell.
Creepiness level: 5
The War Zone
When actors direct their first film after decades in the biz, it's often a deeply personal tale they have been waiting their whole lives to tell. Tim Roth's family Christmases must've taken a dark turn after 1999 when he released this heavy, heavy film.
Creepiness level: 5
Chinatown
"She's my sister!" SLAP! "She's my daughter!" SLAP! "She's my sister and my daughter!" Faye Dunaway's anguished confession that she gave birth to her own sister at the end of Roman Polanski's gumshoe classic Chinatown is still shocking. The film came out in 1974.
Creepiness level: 4
Bad Boy Bubby
Bubby is kept locked up by his Mam. They have sex. She has long grey hair and giant saggy boobs. It's a very funny film. The sex scenes are not funny. A Rolf de Heer masterpiece from 1993 and unmissable for anyone who loves Australian film.
Creepiness level: 2
Incest is still such a touchy subject (ahem) that filmmakers can't make titillating or overly sexy, or even particularly funny. It just has to be serious. And weird.