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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
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Winners of Australian Directors' Guild Awards Announced
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Gold Coast Indie Film & Television Network Presents 'Getting Behind The News'
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Weird Endings
Yumi checks out the latest Clive Owen flick.
After a flat-out week of interviewing bands, for me it was great to see all the fantastic Aussie film actors making their presences felt at the weekend's epic fundraiser ‘Sound Relief' in Sydney and Melbourne. The benefit gig was a labour of love for all involved but especially those in Australia's creative community.
Notables included Toni Collette, Kylie Minogue, and the co-stars of Baz Lurhmann's Australia, David Wenham and Jack Thompson. It's very easy to talk this stuff up but the feeling on the day really was warm and loved-up. My boss even kissed me on the head in a really Dadsy way near knock-off AND I got through the whole day without swearing at or wishing to murder my co-host.
No word as we go to print about whether there'll be a DVD but I reckon there would have to be. It was all too good for there not to be.
Amongst all this I have managed to see just about every film there is to see but I'm saving up The Boat That Rocked until I've had a chance to interview the stars Bill Nighy and Nick Frost next week. I've always had a burning crush on Nick Frost (he's the fat friend in Shaun of the Dead and plays DJ Dave in the new Richard Curtis comedy) and am hoping to be able to hold myself together during our special 15 minutes. Last time I interviewed him I did get a bit dizzy. Fingers and legs crossed.
Speaking of weird sexual tension, there's a strange and fascinating little indie flick from 2004 called Closer that you should try to check out - it's an ensemble piece with Natalie Portman and Jude Law and is riveting in spite of its excess of dialogue. In it, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play a warring couple whose hotness for each other is matched by their nastiness to each other. The level of bastardry is awesome and the two actors play it like they never need to act again.
It makes sense that a filmmaker has put them together again to try and ignite the same chemistry in Duplicity, out this Thursday.
Duplicity is a story about two glamorous spies who give up on low-paying government work to end up in the private sector where the stakes are high and the bonuses higher. They become embroiled in a corporate war where rival company leaders (played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson), are so blinded by competitive rage that they don't notice the heist of the century being planned under their noses.
Clive Owen is great in anything, what can I say? The man would look good sitting in a bucket of KFC, smearing potato and gravy on his torso. Julia Roberts, on the other hand, is a bit of a misery to watch. Every shot looks like it was preceded by a war fought to stop her from looking her age. By the end of the film all that implied effort just feels exhausting. And wasted, because she still looks great, just... not 26 anymore.
The director Tony Gilroy got his start as a screenwriter and wrote and directed this (as well as his debut directorial feature, Michael Clayton) which makes it more of a mystery why the end of Duplicity is such MASSIVE LET DOWN! My only guess here is: They shot a couple of endings and this is the cop-out they settled with. Duplicity indeed. If you liked those Oceans movies then Duplicity might be for you. They're not dissimilar: Glossy and expensive-looking films with good old fashioned movie stars, dazzling international locations, and that's enough so who needs a plot?
Weird endings must be a theme here because next week's big cinema releases The Uninvited and Knowing both veer massively into the left field to wind up their otherwise conventional, genre plots.
Melbourne actor Emily Browning stars in a remake of a Korean horror film for The Uninvited, which doesn't try to be anything but a disposable popcorn flick. The Grudge 2 star Arielle Kebbel, as the sister, spends most of the movie in a bikini or in the bathroom which is good enough for me. It's scary enough in parts but the end really does leave you with the feeling that you've just wasted your time.
Big things were expected for Australian-trained director Alex Proyas after his earlier work The Crow and Dark City stunned audiences with their distinctive, uber-gothic stylings. He's a talented man. Garage Days sucked, but he's a talented man. His latest big-budget Hollywood flick is Knowing and it stars the ultimate Hollywood actor, Nicolas Cage.
Nic Cage doesn't so much act, as resonate. He's never believable but his presence says, "This is a bit silly, but who cares? Let's have a laugh and enjoy the bumps and bangs along the way."
The enduring box office success of Nicolas Cage is one of the great in-jokes of 20th Century cinema. And here he is again, in a high-concept, big-budget flick about a message from the past that predicts the end of the world. It's going to do well because people like explosions and people like Nic Cage. For Aussie audiences, check it out for Rose Byrne and Ben Mendelsohn.
Just one last note: It was with great pleasure that I got to interview notorious pants-man Russell Brand, known here mostly for stealing the films Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Bedtime Stories from his less charismatic, less fun co-stars. No, he didn't try to pants me but did make mention that for a mother-of-two I have an impressively unsaggy nose.
XX YUMI
