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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)
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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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The Monster mash
Yumi Stynes reveals that she loves a good fright at the cinema and talks about the latest releases.
I'm a sucker for a good horror film.
Zombies are my favourite. Give me a shuffling, decaying corpse with a taste for human brains and I will eat it up, the good with the bad, the 28 Days Later with the Zombie Strippers. Psychologists will tell you that you're attracted to your fears and I think mine started when I was a bartender at the Palace in St Kilda and by 4:30am the slurring drunks queuing at my bar kind of resembled zombies with their disheveled clothes, unseeing eyes and unremitting focus on consumption. More, more, more!
I like zombies. They're misunderstood. Given the opportunity, I'd be a zombie too. There are many moments in zombie movies where heroic minor characters choose to end their own lives after they've been bitten. They'd rather die than turn into what they despise. There's the Michael character at the end of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, nobly fighting off zombies with his few remaining bullets so that the heroine (Sarah Polley) can escape. Me? I'd embrace the infection and feast on human flesh til it was time to limp into the sunset. John Leguizamo, infected but still human in Land of the Dead, is offered a mercy bullet by his friend but refuses: "Nah. I always wanted to see how the other half lives."
The other half for horror fans is vampires. If zombies aren't your bag (and what's not to love?!), you might be into vampires, and the great news is that last year's stunning Swedish vampire flick, Let the Right One In has at last arrived at Australian cinemas.
First up: Don't be fooled by the trailer and the stills. This ain't no Lost Boys. The pace is at times slow, meditative, and heck, the darn thing is in a different language!
The film tells the story of an outcast boy who falls in love with a mysterious, androgynous girl who has been 12 years old "for a very long time". There is blood and violence but a lot of it is implied, like in one of the opening scenes where blood is drained from a body hanging in a tree, through a funnel and into a plastic bottle. You don't actually see the blood go in, but hear it sloshing and missing, and the sounds are sickeningly effective.
Kare Hedebrant was completely unknown and untrained when he was cast as the lead, Oskar. His performance is remarkable and at the risk of sounding flippant, he also has the coolest haircut you will see in a movie this year. Director Tomas Alfredson said he would break the shoot up into pieces so that if a scene required Oskar to appear desolate, he would tell Hedebrant, "Walk down the street. Stop. Think of when your cat died."
Some studio exec's brain must've died when the idea of Pink Panther 2 was floated. Did they not see Pink Panther 1? It was terrible! I haven't cringed so much since Young Divas!
Some studio exec's brain must've died when the idea of Pink Panther 2 was floated. Did they not see Pink Panther 1? It was terrible! I haven't cringed so much since Young Divas! These remakes of the classic Inspector Clousseau comedies, originally starring the tortured genius Peter Sellers, are sad and wasteful generators of carbon emissions and should not be allowed to pollute your life. Avoid. Oh, and I have a question: Has Steve Martin done anything funny in the last ten years? Apart from that eye tuck?
If you're lucky enough to have children - or be one - you've probably heard of Zac Efron. He is the latest guy that teenage girls think about right before they go to sleep ear-deep in their Hannah Montana pillowcases. He has dreamy eyes, perfect skin, and just enough girly sensitivity to be soft and desirable and not too threatening. When I was a little girl we had Sebastian Bach. And Corey Haim. And Johnny Depp. Whether young Zac ends up with a career resembling Corey Haim's or Johnny Depp's remains to be seen but so far he's played his cards pretty spot-on. Keen to get away from the singer-dancer shtick that made him famous in High School Musical 1, 2 and 3, and Hairspray, he's fled the Footloose remake project - possibly to spend more time in the gym. Plucky young Zac has metamorphosed from boy to hunk.
So, 17 Again? Pros: Zac Efron. Cons: Matthew Perry.
Matthew Perry's career is one of the enduring mysteries of the 21st century.
Other Enduring Mysteries of the 21st Century:
1. Why Madonna can't afford better surgery.
2. How Elizabeth Hurley keeps getting work.
3. Why Russell Brand and Neil Finn can have a full head of hair but Bruce Willis can't.
4. How top models manage to be stupid, boring and fascinating.
5. Why Lindsay Lohan seems to need to go to the bathroom so often.
Monster VS Aliens is another movie to see with kids. A few critics have attacked the film for being predictable and for having a hackneyed storyline. Helllo? I gotta wonder whether they've seen any movies lately? That's the living definition of a kid's movie! It's meant to be cheesy! Most people are loving this lively 3-D family flick and it's easy to see why. Much like Speed, the Keanu Reeves bus movie, this is a one-concept idea, executed brilliantly: Giant Girl Fights Baddie. It's cool, and the sidekicks are fun. The 3-D elements had kids around me gasping and reaching out their grubby hands toward the screen. I'd recommend this for the upcoming school holidays and don't be surprised if you find yourself loving it too. Just a little bit.
Now, to make it perfect, could we somehow throw in a shirtless Zac Efron, some Skid Row songs and a couple of zombie strippers...?
