latest notices
Careless Love Opening Night + Q&A
With director John Duigan ('The Year My Voice Broke') and cast Nammi Le and Peter O’Brien. THU 17 MAY – 7pm RITZ CINEMA, 45 St Pauls Street, Randwick NSW 2031 TICKETS ON-SALE – book now www.ritzcinema.com.au “Careless Love” tells the story of...
Film Producing with Metro Screen
Metro Screen, Paddington Town Hall, Sydney(NSW)
Winners of Australian Directors' Guild Awards Announced
(Nationwide)
Gold Coast Indie Film & Television Network Presents 'Getting Behind The News'
Gold Coast(QSL)
latest news
The Sapphires To Open Melbourne International Film Festival
The feel-good feature is set to kick off the Melbourne film festivities.
Screen Australia Invests in 16 Features
An eclectic set of projects have been granted funding...
De Niro & Douglas To Headline ‘Last Vegas’
The two legendary gents look to be starring in this comedy centred around a Las Vegas bachelor party.
‘Housos’ Get Big Screen Outing
Writer/director/comedian Paul Fenech is set to make his debut feature.
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Hot Soup
Yumi Stynes keeps track of the latest releases and asks why singers are now acting???
I'm meant to talk about films here but wanted to just quickly mention two of my favourite shows on TV on the moment: The Soup with Joel McHale just became the highest-rating show on E! and is a way of catching up on all the crappy reality TV you've been too sensible to actually watch. Joel's delivery is priceless and he's a hero among haters. I met him for an hour-long interview when he was in the country earlier this week and the man is a gem. And unafraid of snakes!
The other show you need to be across is Australia's Next Top Model which is sort of like a beauty pageant but - would you believe - more sadistic! In my 9 years of working on TV I have never seen a show fascinate and obsess my work colleagues more. It's not too late to get an office pool going - everyone's doing it! Is it morally dubious? Yes! Is it entertaining? Hell, yes!
But let's get into movies. The phenomenon of singers who want to be actors has been around since the dawn of cinema. Recent years have seen some successes with Jon Bon Jovi, Chris Isaak and Harry Connick Jr making a respectable fist of it, although this may possibly have been at the expense of their music!
For modern divas, it's tough.
Natalie Imbruglia is actually a pretty good actor but will anyone go and see her film Closed For Winter? I'm guessing no.
Madonna has never been anyone except Madonna in any of her films, the best of which was Abel Ferrara's 1993 oddity Dangerous Game where she was actually believable as a famous, egotistical actress who, like Madonna, was most comfortable at the centre of everyone's attention. In the subsequent 12 years she's done nothing at all to enhance her reputation as an actor but her movies are starting to acquire a faint glimmer of camp badness much like Elvis Presley's body of celluloid work (Elvis's Blue Hawaii is Madonna's Swept Away!).
I actually think Madonna's acting is less dire than J-Lo's. At least Madonna is not so desperate to be liked. J-Lo's repetitive portrayals of down-home working class girls with hearts of gold make me want to attack her in the face like a 30 Days of Night vampire (See: J-Lo as a heart-of-gold dance teacher in cacktastic Shall We Dance? and a heart-of-gold hotel maid in the turd Maid in Manhattan. Also see her as a heart-of-gold fiancé in the whiffy Monster-in-Law. These three movies also have in common the ability to bring their formerly respectable co-stars down to new career and performance lows, respectively Richard Gere, Ralph Fiennes and Jane Fonda).
Wouldn't J-Lo be more believable playing a haughty, demanding diva with excessive vanity and interminable beauty routine? Or is that just me? Ha. She's actually due to play a wannabe mum who meets the man of her dreams the same day she's artificially inseminated with twins. It's a new flick called The Back-Up Plan due out next year. Maybe they'll get Josh Hartnett to play the male lead? Or Kevin Costner? Some other guy who's just hanging on by a thread? Michael Biehn? Eric Roberts?
Beyonce may be one of the few big singers to equal her music success in film. It's early days yet and she's not yet taken on any roles to put her seriously outside of her Destiny's Child persona. I'd like to see her as a junkie. Or an ugly chick. Not to worry, so far her run of Austin Powers, The Pink Panther, Dreamgirls and Cadillac Records has not been too great an embarrassment.
Her latest film, Obsessed has just topped the US box office and pretty much follows your Fatal Attraction formula but with African American leads. Final Destination star Ali Larter plays the Glenn Close character. The critics hate it and why shouldn't they? No bunnies died in the making of the film.
No wolves died in the making of Wolverine so far as I know but it's this week's safest bet if you're heading out to the movies. I saw Hugh Jackman swimming at my local pool when he was mid-shoot and mega-buff and my mouth hung so far open a small fish swam into it. He's a great big ox of a man. Wolverine = Good. Nuff said.
I also loved Mary and Max, the animation from Academy Award winning Aussie stop-motion obsessive, Adam Elliot. The narration (by Barry Humphries) is way too intense and unrelenting and may send you around the twist. If you can get past the barrage of words (panadol may help) the pictures, which celebrate the smaller, less grandiose Australia we all experienced as youngsters, are a joy. The story is unusual and based on Elliot's real life. Philip Seymour Hoffman does principal voicework and is a bit of a revelation - this is no celebrity guest spot, this is a real performance.
Finally a movie ordeal as incomprehensible as its name is unpronounceable. Synecdoche New York - also starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, is the new brain dirge from the mind that gave us Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman. Part of me wants to warn away everyone I love from watching this torturous, convoluted film. Part of me can't stop thinking about it. It's the sort of movie where you enjoy reading analysis of it more than you enjoy actually watching it. It will probably be included in the film student's canon, along with Battleship Potemkin and Un Chien Andalou. Is it fun? Hell no!
