latest notices
Greening Screen
Following on from Metro Screen's The Greener Screen event we would like to say: When preparing your next project, we ask that you consider how you can work to make your production greener. This does not have to be an...
This Life Explored
(NSW)
Lester Bostock Metro Screen Patron
(NSW)
Controversial Joaquin Phoenix Film to Release in Australia
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth(Nationwide)
latest news
AFTRS Opens its Doors on Open Day
Australia’s premier film, television and radio school is set to hold its opening days in Sydney and Melbourne over the coming days...
Working for Change
We speak to award-winning Aussie filmmaker, Genevieve Clay, about her role in the first ever Live & Love Short Film Competition.
Different Focus
The Focus on Ability Festival recently wrapped for its second year and we spoke to the festival’s founder and this year’s winner.
Kick Starting Talent
M2 Entertainment (M2E) has relaunched as a film finance and production company which aims to nurture emerging and established talent.
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Precious Time
Sometimes heading out to a film with no idea what you’re in for can be a treat. Sometimes it’s a shocker!
Last year, I headed off to see The Reader knowing nothing about it except that it starred Kate Winslet. I had vague visions of a glossy romantic comedy where Kate was shiny and gorgeous and blonde and worked in a fantasy office space and was horribly but sexily misunderstood by some handsome, misunderstanding Dermot Mulroney-type guy who knew how to treat her mean and had bogloads of money, a gym-fit body, and only a handful of mental problems. Whoa, was I wrong! The Reader was a gut-wrenching, emotionally devastating film set before and after WW2 about a fleeting oasis of love in two ruined lives. Excellent film, but I had to be shovelled out of the preview suite, and scraped off the floor as a blubbering mess looking like one of those dead bodies that they used to find in the Murray River all swollen and wet.
Anyway, it was after that experience that I decided that a little bit of information about each film screening may, in fact, enhance the experience. But time being a bit short, work being a bit busy, and with all those John Mayer tweets to read, I had to gallop off to see the new Eric Bana movie The Time Traveller's Wife with nothing to go on but a glance at the movie poster artwork. Luckily, the artwork revealed Bana and his co-star Rachel McAdams lying in embrace looking all airbrushed and professionally gorgeous. The movie was sure to be, in a word, gooey.
German director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) steers this long, elaborate tale based on Audrey Niffenegger's bestselling book about a man who inexplicably leaps back and forth in time. He even goes back in time and introduces himself to his future wife when she is a very young girl. It's complicated. It's poignant. Much like the book, it's working hard on the weepy angle.
Is it gooey? Hell gooey, but it's compelling too. Rachel McAdams plays sad rich girl Clare, who stands by her man come what may. I guess it's a meditation on loyalty and true love, and it's made for middle-class white people. The bad news about The Time Traveller's Wife is that although Eric Bana spends a fair bit of the film naked, he actually looks better with his clothes on! Damn!
Since he starred in the Spike Lee film Summer Of Sam, I've been fascinated by actor Adrien Brody. Even those expensive-looking ads that he does in magazines are kind of fascinating. He looks so soulful and intelligent and tormented, even when he's spruiking shoes. In Summer Of Sam (1999), he played a mixed up Bronx teenager who found expression for his sexuality through the punk scene, affecting a cockney accent and dancing in gay clubs. It's an excellent characterisation. Three years later, he won an Oscar for his performance as the title character in The Pianist. Since then, his career has slightly misfired - he's had solid supporting roles in movies like King Kong and The Village, but no starring roles in successful films. The Brothers Bloom is his latest vehicle, and he teams up with Mark Ruffalo as the younger, sweeter brother in a swindling con duo. The film aims to be kooky and cute, and if you're patient, you'll find a lot to enjoy.
Maybe you're patient enough to read books and will therefore recognise and appreciate the literary references packed into the story - for example, Brody's character is called Bloom, his brother is Stephen and their love interest, played by Rachel Weisz, is Penelope. All three characters also appear in Ulysses. Did you know that? No, me either: I don't even have time to read movie synopses!
