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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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My Cinema Life With A Blankie
Yumi Stynes dishes about the hot flicks in the cinemas now.
There are so many terrific films out at the moment you'd be crazy if you didn't brave the winter to catch one. About a year ago I nominated a movie blankie to always bring to the cinema. It's a patchwork quilt small enough to fit in my handbag and big enough to cover my legs. Why? The air-conditioning at the movies in summer is so blasting you'll catch a cold, and in winter it means I can still wear short dresses but snuggle in. They should give out blankets at the movies like they do on Qantas. Meantime, I'm packin' rug. Heh heh.
You've still got time to catch the mesmerising Aussie film Samson and Delilah before it closes. It recently won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and will hopefully be reaching plenty more international audiences before year's end. Try to catch it for yourself because it's incredibly thought-provoking, the performances by the two untrained leads, 14 years old at the time of shooting, are terrific, and the film will change the way you think. (Unless Wolverine is your favourite film in which case there probably won't be enough action and you should maybe skip it.)
Another Aussie film attracting praise is My Year Without Sex which I saw and liked but probably wouldn't recommend, mostly because it plays out like a good episode of a kitchen-sink drama on ABC. If anyone said to me, "Let's go see a film about a housewife who's a bit hopeless and her husband, who's frustrated but very kind," I'd say, "..uh huh?" And if they went on, "Oh! But she gets cancer!" I'd go, "Nooooo." But don't let me put you off. The cancer stuff is treated with great sensitivity and women who have been through similar experiences may relish seeing it represented with such humour and familiarity.
If dumbing down or tuning out is more what you're looking for this week then you could do worse than to check out the new popcorn flick from the Judd Apatow school of comedy, directed by John Hamburg, called I Love You, Man. The star is Paul Rudd, who has spent the last 14 years being a rock-solid supporting cast member; from Alicia Silverstone's stepbrother/love interest in Clueless to Katherine Heigl's sister's husband in Knocked Up. This time he is quite simply amazing! His performance as Peter Klaven, the great guy with no male friends is so nuanced and empathetic that one can't help but think of Tom Hanks in Big. It's just a pity that the rest of the cast can't quite match his depth. At times his co-star, Jason Segel looks like he stumbled on set from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and is killing time til he can get back to the resort. For a movie about man-love (or "Bromance"), the chemistry between these guys ain't exactly sparkling. Jon Favreau also makes an appearance, seemingly escaped from a far better film, and the hottie from this year's comedy song 'Jizz in My Pants', Andy Samberg, plays Peter Klaven's cute gay brother.
Russell Crowe makes a point of being neither hot nor cute in the new newsroom thriller State of Play. In the opening scenes he's guzzling Cheese 'n Bacon balls out of the packet and a point is made several times in the film about the grossness of his diet. I couldn't help but wonder whether he hadn't pushed for those inclusions himself so that he could get as fat as he liked? Cynical, yeah? This is the sort of film our parents might once have liked but seems dated to me. By the time it gets to the big dénouement, I'm feeling kind of bored. Ben Affleck is comically square-jawed and Rachel McAdams looks exactly like a movie star should. State of Play's greatest asset is Jason Bateman's cameo as a bisexual mover-shaker called Dominic Foy. He hasn't stolen a film this well since Smokin Aces. He can share my blanket any time.
