Film Review - 9

At a trim 79 minutes, 9 could all but fit inside Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen twice in full. It’s an equation worth keeping in mind as you watch Shane Acker’s directorial debut — an imaginative cut of techno-cautionary sci-fi splitting at the seams with visual ingenuity, yet which drops a stitch when it comes to its script.

Happily, however, 9 has much more than its compacted run-time to recommend it.

A mini action epic at just half the length of Michael Bay’s overblown bot-crash, it’s more shadowy in tenor than the family-oriented output of Pixar and DreamWorks. With its murky palette and lanky ragdoll protagonists, 9 most closely recalls the creaky, handmade visual stylings of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, though keen-eyed viewers will distinguish Gonzo ink-blotter, Ralph Steadman, and Czech kitchen surrealist, Jan Švankmajer, amongst Acker’s eclectic assortment of influences, too. Burton serves as producer on 9 — along with Russian hyper-kineticist Timur Bekmambetov — and the match makes for one of the year’s most visually arresting exercises in slight, lightweight and fleet-footed animated escapism.

Expanding on his sublime 11-minute, Oscar-nominated short from 2005, Acker conjures an intriguing alternate history against which to position his simple moral parable. One in which the steam-powered design sensibilities of the Industrial Revolution have endured into an unspecified future — and been weaponised, mass-manufactured, made subservient to a sentient mother-machine and used to raze human civilisation back to the earth. It’s a world where Judy Garland still sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ yet ominous scientific practices border on the fabled mysticism of the Dark Ages.

Inhabiting this grimy and ruined milieu — a more forbidding echo of the dilapidated, dead Earth vistas of WALL·E — are a fractured band of animate, burlap-clad ragdolls. Our pint-sized hero is 9 (sensitively voiced by Elijah Wood), newest member of the tattering fray. Awaking in an abandoned workshop with no clue who he is or how he came to be, he’s soon scuttling through the detritus with 5 (John C. Reilly), thus setting up what’s quickly revealed to be the recurring ‘run away!’ template of Pamela Pettler’s threadbare, setpiece-stuffed screenplay.

You’ll recognise the voices of 9’s companions, though it’s their distinct appearances which will leave an impression. There’s Christopher Plummer’s severe elder, 1, with his ragged mantle and makeshift papal mitre; warrioress 7 (Jennifer Connelly), all kung-fu stance and bird-skull helmet; shrouded twins, 3 and 4, mute cataloguers of artefacts and curios; resident artist and visionary, 6 (Crispin Glover), a clear nod to Burton in black and white Beetlejuice candy stripes; the burly 8 (Fred Tatasciore), the group’s taciturn, shear-wielding muscle; and the frail inventor, 2 (Martin Landau), in his candle-topped cap, whose abduction rouses 9 and co. into action.

9’s plot might be fabric thin, but its burnt-out world will stick with you, as Acker holds his own with the industry’s superstars where alluring animation and sheer conceptual weirdness is concerned. Under Bekmambetov’s practised eye he stages some truly breath-catching action, with towering War of the Worlds killing machines and nightmarish monsters seemingly wrenched from the canvas of Hieronymus Bosch waiting to swoop, spring and snap at every turn.

Sometimes vision alone makes a movie. 9 is such an instance. A masterpiece it’s not, but Acker’s one to watch, and for animation buffs, 9’s one to catch.

DIRECTOR: Shane Acker
SCREENWRITER: Pamela Pettler
CAST: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Fred Tatasciore, Alan Oppenheimer
RATING: M
RUN TIME: 79 minutes

2009 in Review: Performances

With 2009 all but elapsed, it’s time to reflect upon the year that was. I’m not generally one for list-making, so don’t expect any scrupulously ranked and calculated Top 10 catalogues, but rather a few inventories of some of the films and people who’ve most made my movie-going year.

Between the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals, I’ve seen a number of titles are yet to open proper in Australia, but for the sake of keeping things interesting, I’ll be including a few of them on these lists. In the interest of full disclosure, here’s a summation of some of the notable titles I’ve either not yet had the chance to see or have simply slipped me by (almost all of which I was at least semi-interested in and most of which I fully intend to catch just as soon as I’m able to):

A Single Man, Amreeka, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Blessed, The Boys Are Back, Cheri, Coco Avant Chanel, The Cove, The Damned United, Departures, Disgrace, Dogtooth, Fish Tank, Flame and Citron, Food Inc., The French Kissers, Frozen River, Genova, Good, In Search of Beethoven, Is Anybody There?, Julie & Julia, Looking For Eric, Mao’s Last Dancer, Nowhere Boy, Nine, Paper Heart, Precious, Red Cliff, The Road, Seven Pounds, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist, Summer Hours, Tulpan, Valentino: The Last Emperor, Two Lovers, Valkyrie, W., The Young Victoria.

A number of films I’ll be touching on made noise on international year end ‘Best Of’ lists last year, but due to their having released in Australia in 2009, are obviously eligible for inclusion.

As the title of this post has no doubt betrayed, I’m kicking things off with a look at my favourite performances of the year. This is just that: my favourite performances. Not any attempt at distinguishing the ‘best’ or ‘worthiest’ or ‘most important’, but simply those which have most left their mark on yours truly over the past twelve months.

It’s a long list. And I do mean a long list. Which is why you’ll find it in alphabetical order after the jump...

Read more...

Brittany Murphy RIP

Just last week a friend and I were discussing Brittany Murphy and what felt like her recent absence from movies. The last two roles I could recall seeing (or hearing) her in were George Miller’s Happy Feet, and one I’d count as a career high — as the titular victim in Karen Moncrieff’s multi-strand drama, The Dead Girl.

Awaking yesterday morning to news of her death shocked just as news of Heath Ledger’s passing did back in early 2008. Both were young actors of true talent and spirit who never quite managed to find their stride, although Ledger, it could certainly be argued, was certainly well on his way. Murphy had a rare volatility as a performer, one which she often married with her innate, wide-eyed charm to cast some of her most memorable performances. On this end, the aforementioned The Dead Girl aside, she’ll most fondly be remembered for her appearances in Girl, Interrupted, Clueless, and Sin City, although I have to admit to being unfamiliar with large tracts of her résumé.

No matter which way you cut it, 32 is too young to go. Visit BBC for a pictorial tribute.

New Tron Legacy Pic

From Disney comes a new still from Tron Legacy, whose IMDB listing, I’ve just discovered, indicates the involvement of John Hurt and Michael Sheen. Ace.

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Tron Legacy releases December 26^th, 2010.

Iron Man 2 Trailer

Iron Man 2 has its first trailer, and things are looking surprisingly promising. Given the quick turnaround, I’d been expecting a fun-enough, if undercooked follow-on to return-helmer Jon Favreau’s undeniably ace first instalment. But with Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow trading quips and money-can’t-buy chemistry, a Ruski Mickey Rourke lending menace, and the first glimpse of Don Cheadle suiting up as War Machine on show, this raises hopes considerably.

Watch for yourself at Apple Trailers.

Iron Man 2 rockets onto Australian screens April 29^th.

More Toy Story 3 Pics

From AOL Movies and /Film come two new hi-res shots from Pixar’s Toy Story 3.

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June 24^th, Toy Story 3 reaches Australia — and in 3-D!

A Prophet Trailer

Jacques Audiard’s French crime drama, A Prophet, took the Grand Prix earlier this year in Cannes and has since garnered no shortage of comparisons to The Godfather.

That should be enough to spark your interest, so check out its trailer at Apple.

A Prophet is on limited Australian release from February 11^th.

Film Review - Avatar 3-D

At once stunning and frustrating, rousing and deflating, Avatar is a strange beast — but then, innovations always are.

Neither the hard sci-fi actioner fans of James ‘Aliens! Terminator!’ Cameron’s superior early work might be champing for, nor the swooning Titanic-in-space suggested by much of its marketing, Cameron’s latest is closer in feel to a Lord of the Rings-mining fantasy extravaganza than any entrant in his own distinctive back catalogue.

Yet with its central story of impossible love, underpinning of mind-twisting science-fiction conceits and Olympian leaps in technological achievement, there’s no mistaking that for better or worse, this ambitious colossus is exactly the movie its maker intended.

It’s been 15 years since Avatar first tugged at the hem of Cameron’s pathologically envelope-pushing imagination. 15 years during which the Hollywood maverick patiently waited for technology to catch up, busying himself with deep sea dives and a certain titan about a certain doomed steamship. Oscars holstered (for Best Director and Best Picture, no less) and an indisputable box-office king to his name, it was merely a matter of developing the means for realising Avatar’s most special of effects — a Herculean undertaking unto itself — before Cameron was handed what industry rumour spuriously tagged as THE BIGGEST BUDGET EVER! and set free to bring the weird world of his fancy to the screen.

The good news is, insofar as delivering Avatar as The Motion Picture Event™ that’s been promised, Cameron’s proved to be a man of his word. From its opening moments — a sky’s-eye sweep across the treetops of paraplegic space marine Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) dreamscape — it’s clear that the purpose-developed 3-D hardware at use truly scores a next-level line in the sand of old-fashioned, new-fangled blockbuster thrill-bringing.

In a quiet, expository first act, Avatar eases its audience into the future of 2154, gently readying the retinas for the peeper-pounding stereoscopic calisthenics that will account for much of the remainder of its fleet 161 minute run time. You’ll ‘ooh’ as crew members emerge from cryostatic slumber and float, weightless, through a bunk hall of vast height and fathomage. You’ll ‘aah’ at the sight of nascent ‘Avatars’ — custom engineered hybrids of the film’s ten-foot, cerulean-hued alien Na’vi species and the DNA of their remote human pilots — at amniotic rest in their synthetic wombs.

But this is just a primer, a period of regulation in which to acclimatise not just to Avatar’s internal reality, but the vanguard movie magic that’s been shrewdly employed in getting it up on the screen.

Give this to Cameron: few working Hollywood filmmakers can claim to put blockbuster bucks to such pioneering and prescient use. So once Jake transplants his consciousness to his new, blue vessel (also inhabited by Worthington, in an odd act of life/art verisimilitude, thanks to state-of-the-art motion-capture animation techniques) and, for the first time in years, can scrunch his own toes and look through the elevated eyes of a biped, you buy into the moment for its emotional pull and see the performance powering the pixels.

Unfortunately, moments of such genuine emotional sonority soon prove rare. As Cameron’s original script sticks undeviatingly to The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ school of narrative design, it falls to the depth and wit of his writing inspire the heart-and-soul involvement these predictable epics require.

It’s here Avatar comes up drastically short.

After a decade and a half of creative incubation, it would be unforgivable to find Avatar so lacking in character complexity were its ocular accomplishments not so downright jaw-slackening. Star Wars, The Matrix and Princess Mononoke (to name but a few), each followed this same basic template to a tee, but, crucially, offset the conventional contours of their plots by peopling their unusual backdrops with characters worth giving a damn about.

Disappointingly, Avatar marks the most indistinct writing of Cameron’s career. As you’d expect from the man who sent Arnie hurtling through time to collect the head of an unborn revolutionary’s mother, there’s no shortage of intriguing ideas in the mix — from the Avatars themselves, to the invention of a unique Na’vi dialect, to an entire ecosystem which serves as an organic computer.

But when it comes to that all-important human touch, Avatar almost feels scripted by Xenomorph — and a Xenomorph reared on Aliens, at that. Dialogue is utilitarian at best, tin-eared at worst, and its cast of scientists and space cadets are little more than ersatz re-embodiments of the players from that nerve-flaying 1986 Cameron classic. Of further dent to its juggernaut hull is that character moments are parcelled out in brief, paltry doses — or worse: skimmed right past in Worthington’s overly-relied-upon voice-over.

Yet despite all this, two performers manage to make their mark amidst the onslaught of shock and awe: Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang. As the lissom Na’vi warrioress cum amorous interest, Neytiri, the Star Trek starlet emerges as Avatar’s best in show — no small feat in a James Cameron sci-fi that also finds Sigourney Weaver amongst its ranks. In a role that’s entirely mo-capped (à la Lord of the Rings’ Gollum), Saldana’s Neytiri stands as the character who best earns our empathy. Radiating spirit, grace and strength, it’s owed to the actress’ effortless adoption of the Na’vi’s long-limbed elegance that she so utterly convinces as a real, living thing. Veiled by a patina of digital cosmetics (of which Neytiri is Avatar’s premier model), she might purely have come off as a bid to bag WETA some well-deserved Oscar swag. Instead, it’s she who grounds the film’s cross-racial romance and ushers us into the exotic realm of the Na’vi.

Then there’s Lang as Colonel Quaritch, who doesn’t so much chew on the scenery as he does tear its head off and guzzle the blood which spills from the stump of its neck. Cut like a diamond and wearing the memory of some distant dance with the devil emblazoned in scar tissue upside his face, his scowling, snarling military hard-man is a knowingly OTT graduate of the R. Lee Ermey boot-camp of bile-barking, big-screen bad-assery. By the time he straps into a mechanical exosuit to go mano-a-mano with Avatar-Jake, you’ll have serious doubts as to the hero’s hopes for making it through to the sequel.

Elsewhere, the cast make best of what little they’ve been given — both in and out of their blues, where applicable. Giving a likeable turn and nailing Jake’s unique physicality (paraplegic turned fullgrown, initiate Na’vi), Worthington walks away with his dignity intact, despite not exactly justifying all the NEXT! BIG! THING! hype Hollywood seems hellbent on crowning him with. Also going native is Weaver’s terse, noble botanist, and while it’s fun to find her back on the deck of a space station, Ellen Ripley Dr. Grace Augustine ain’t.

Even less is asked of Michelle Rodriguez and Giovanni Ribisi, the latter of whom initially seems on track for some modicum of significance as the bottom-line-watching company man, Parker Selfridge, only to wind up a mere steward for narrative propulsion. “One thing stockholders hate worse than bad press, is a bad quarterly statement,” he warns, thus summing up the bulk of Avatar’s dramatic fulcrum.

It’s simple capitalist greed which sees the marauding forces of Earth — solely represented by the US military and corporate sector — assailing the distant, rainforest-draped moon of Pandora. Rich deposits of a precious element that could end Earth’s energy crisis lie untapped beneath the Na’vi’s native habitat. So, with the promise of having his mobility restored, Jake is enlisted to infiltrate the Na’vi and negotiate their peaceful resettlement. “Killing the indigenous looks bad,” tells Selfridge. It’s an outlook he’s quick to recant.

So, Avatar boils down to Pocahontas with mech-tech, with Cameron plainly raising a fist for Mother Nature. Laying the modern war allegory on with an earthmover in a flimsy pitch for thematic resonance, there’s a sense he’d have been happier delivering a fictional Baraka — liberated from story to delve wholly and headfirst into the beguiling otherworld of his own invention.

More than the front-line special effects (more bar-raising than they are revolutionary); more than the ingenious application of 3-D photography; more even than the sustained 40 minute setpiece of staggering scope and precision that sends Avatar out with a seismic ka-boom, it’s the vivid allure of Pandora itself which will most latch itself to the memory. Cameron’s conceived an entire bionetwork humming with a palpable authenticity, where bioluminescent moss pulses at the touch, insects amaze like deep-sea freakshows, mountainous outcrops defiantly hang in mid-air, and the wildlife — from hammerheaded leviathans to great beasts of the sky — almost appear part flora.

When Cameron simply lets us luxuriate in the oddness of his unearthly Eden, Avatar becomes truly transporting. With its lofty canopies and yawning chasms, Pandora is the perfect 3-D playground for the unparalleled visualist, who fills his frames with the kind of ambient detail — fluttering foliage, errant cinders and the like — which denotes a visonary’s passionate dedication to design.

If only he’d seen fit, between all of the ground-breaking and world-building, to show the same attention and affection to his storytelling.

DIRECTOR: James Cameron
SCREENWRITER: James Cameron
CAST: Same Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi
RATING: M
RUN TIME: 161 minutes

New Alice in Wonderland Trailer

‘Surprisingly epic’ sums up the arresting new trailer for Tim Burton’s trip down the rabbit hole, Alice in Wonderland, which has just arrived online at Apple Trailers. Granted, some of the most effects-intensive shots still seem a mite unpolished, but this one’s looking better and better with everything we see.

Watch here.

Alice in Wonderland hits Australia on March 4^th.

Golden Globe Nominations Announced

The nominees for the next Golden Globes have been announced.

Find the full list at Globes’ official site.

Inception One-Sheet

The first poster for Christopher Nolan’s cerebral thriller, Inception, might be exactly the same in concept as one for his last movie, but there’s no denying — with a city whose streets slosh with some wayward sea, there’s definitely some striking imagery at play.

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This first appeared over at /Film.

Inception reaches Australia on July 22^nd.

New Toy Story 3 Pic

Empire has released a single new still from Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3.

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Toy Story 3 reaches Australia on June 24^th 2010.

Animal Kingdom Clip

The feature debut of writer/director David Michôd is the crime thriller Animal Kingdom. Set in Melbourne’s criminal underworld and starring the high-class likes of Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, and Jacki Weaver, the film will have its world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival before opening locally in May.

A teaser clip (which plays not unlike a trailer) has been added to the film’s official site. Check it out and get in on the ground floor for what’s already looking to be one of next year’s strongest homegrown releases.

2009 AFI Award Winners Announced

It was great to see Warwick Thornton’s Samson & Delilah clean up at the AFI Awards over the weekend. The unflinching indigenous romance/drama claimed no less than seven trophies, including Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Young Actor (shared by Marisa Gibson and Rowan McNamara) and Cinematography. A shame to see Adam Elliot’s wonderful Mary and Max left out in the cold despite four nominations, however. Congrats also to The People’s Republic of Animation, whose Oscar-shortlisted The Cat Piano took Best Animated Short honours.

Find the full list of winners at the AFI’s official site.

New Nine Clip

What better way to kickstart a Monday than with a racy clip of Penélope Cruz performing ‘Call From the Vatican’ from Rob Marshall’s Nine?

Sadly, the film’s premiered in the US to decidedly less than stellar reviews. We Australians can find out if sheer razzle dazzle is enough to get Nine by when it releases on January 21^st.

But for now, onward to Yahoo! Movies for a look at that clip. Believe me when I say you won’t regret it...

Cruz can be seen on local screens from this Thursday in Pedro Almodóvar’s engaging if somewhat slight mystery/drama, Broken Embraces.

TRON Legacy Poster

I had zero interest in Disney’s upcoming TRON sequel until seeing that teaser which hit the net back in July. That, along with knowledge of Jeff Bridges’ return involvement, was enough to ensure my interests were piqued.

From Wild About Movies comes the film’s first one sheet.

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Don’t get too excited just yet – TRON Legacy is still a full year away.

Status Update...

Apologies for my absence round these parts of late. The past week has been stuffed with screenings with more in the week ahead, so if the blog appears low on ‘check this out!’ content, it’s because I’ll be striving to get some reviews up (or at least drafted) before going away next week for Christmas.

- gerard.

Very Much Enjoyed...

Penhall Penning Scripts for Mendes, Hillcoat

Joe Penhall, screenwriter of the interesting and little-seen Daniel Craig/Rhys Ifans obsession thriller Enduring Love, has been tapped by two of the best directors in the biz to pen a pair of promising adaptations.

Newly announced is a feature take on John Edward Williams’ 1960 revisionist Western, Butcher’s Crossing, which Sam Mendes is eyeing as a possible directorial vehicle. The novel centres on a Harvard drop-out who abandons his studies to join a great buffalo hunt in Kansas.

Also on Penhall’s impressive to-do list is an adaptation of his own play, Landscape With Weapon, for John Hillcoat. The pair previously collaborated on the Penhall-written, Hillcoat-directed, Cormac McCarthy-sourced The Road (releasing in Australia January 28^th). Landscape With Weapon (according to Penhall’s Wikipedia entry) tells the story of “a brilliant young engineer who invents an innovative and devastating weapon of mass destruction.” In the Loop’s Tom Hollander pioneered the central part on the London stage in 2007.

Sounds like two reasons to start getting excited.

Full story at The Hollywood Reporter.

McQueen Sets Fela

Steve McQueen, the video artist turned feature film director behind last year’s outstanding Hunger, will look to the life of African musician and human rights activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti for his next project, Variety tells.

Taking Michael Veal’s biography Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon as its source, McQueen’s film — plainly titled Fela — will pay equal interest to Fela the musician and the revolutionary both.

Fela’s recording career spanned some four decades, and earned him reputation as a pioneer of funk, thanks to the approbation of James Brown. His music played platform for his campaigning against political oppression in Nigeria, specifically setting his sights on the malicious conduct of the Nigerian military. He died of Kaposi’s sarcoma brought on by AIDS in 1997.

Read more here.

Hoffman Anderson’s Master

It was five long years between Paul Thomas Anderson’s last two directorial efforts, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Word broke at Variety last week, however, that the wait for the fastidious filmmaker’s next feature project isn’t likely to be nearly so long, as Anderson has set up a new, as-yet-untitled period drama written as a vehicle for frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Hoffman has previously stepped before cameras four times for Anderson — on Hard Eight (or Sydney, depending on where in the world you call home), Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love — though this new collaboration will see the actor taking the lead in an Anderson film for the first time.

The story centres on a character known as The Master, “a charismatic intellectual who hatches a faith-based organisation that begins to catch on in America in 1952.” Along the way, he encounters a twenty-something-year-old vagabond named Freddie, who assumes a position of influence in The Master’s administration. When faith’s following swells in both numbers and fervour, Freddie is left questioning both his mentor and his beliefs.

The unshakable titan/opportunistic young religious zealot dynamic formed the crux of There Will Be Blood, albeit in only superficially similar fashion — that film pitted its central pair as adversaries from the out.

While Blood cast an unfavourable pall over organised faith, Anderson’s next film won’t be so specifically cynical. Says Variety: “Anderson explores the need to believe in a higher power, the choice of which to embrace, and the point at which a belief system graduates into a religion.”

Sign me up. Better yet — pass the kool-aid…

Find the full story here.

Ozon’s Ricky @ ACMI

Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image will host the Australian premiere season of François Ozon’s Ricky from February 2010.

The film blends social realist drama with whimsical fantasy when an infant sprouts wings and takes to the skies. (View its trailer here.)

Ricky’s engagement at ACMI commences with the film’s Australian premiere on February 25^th 2010, and will run until March 10^th.

Keep an eye on ACMI’s official site for details.

Depp, Hayek Kusturica’s Friends

Johnny Depp is in talks to reteam with his Arizona Dream director, Emir Kusturica, for the role of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in the Serbian filmmaker’s Seven Friends of Pancho Villa and the Woman With Six Fingers, Variety announced last week.

Also in “advanced negotiations” is Salma Hayek. The pair previously shared screentime in Robert Rodriguez’s similarly Mex-set Once Upon a Time in Mexico (and, it must be said, would sure make for one good-looking one-sheet).

From Variety: “Script is based on biographical novel The Friends of Pancho Villa, in which author James Carlos Blake recounts how Villa and his compadres had a great time fighting and robbing the rich, but also dancing, partying and making love.”

Points to Kusturica for taking the manageable title of his source and elaborating it to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford-ian proportions.

Interestingly, Villa actually appeared as himself in a handful of films — both biographical and documentary in nature — between 1912-1916.

If cast, Depp would perform the role in Spanish, with shooting not intended to commence until 2011.

Story here.

Film Review - Where the Wild Things Are

338 words and eighteen illustrations. That’s all it took for Maurice Sendak to transport children to a land of lively monsters beyond the sea with his now-classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. First published in 1963, it remains a concise examination of childhood’s frustrations and fears — and the escapist flights of fancy they inspire — that fires young imaginations by plainly engaging kids on their own simple terms.

338 words and eighteen illustrations. Enough to comprise a literary landmark, perhaps. But hardly the surest basis for a feature film.

Thankfully, it’s a fact which seems to have slipped Spike Jonze by.

In the music video wunderkind turned purveyor of avant-garde cinematic nonpareils, Sendak’s slender text finds an empathetic spirit. In less sensitive hands, Where the Wild Things Are might have been all rumpus, no substance — designed by committee for broadest appeal to maximise sales of plush toys and white wolf-hooded onesies.

But with the blessing of Sendak, Jonze weathered six years of setbacks and studio unease to bring a beloved relic from his youth to the screen in highly personal fashion. From the out, it was clear he aimed to make a film not simply intended for nine-year-olds, but one which captured what it’s like being nine. Cue turbulent outpourings of jubilation, pettiness, loneliness and compassion. Just another day in the playground, really.

It’s an ethos on show from the opening titles, which arrive beautified by child-like scribblings. We first encounter their author in a moment stripped straight from the page: terrorising the family pooch. Solitary, imaginative and irrepressibly rambunctious, Max (magnificently naturalistic relative newcomer, Max Records) is all hot aggravation and strangling ennui, and, as his daily routine is impressionistically sketched, the grounds for his anxieties drift into focus. When he invites his teenage sister (Pepita Emmerichs) into the game, she fobs him off. His teacher nonchalantly informs his class of the sun’s looming demise. His loving mother (Catherine Keener), in the fledgling days of a new relationship, is no longer able to lavish him with the full-time attention he craves.

So, away Max steals under cover of night in the film’s prime deviation from its source. While the prospect of a forest sprouting from a boy’s bedroom, sinew by serpentine sinew, as imagined by Jonze is indeed a beguiling one, its omission speaks to the footing in the everyday for which he and co-writer Dave Eggers aspire. This grounding of the fantastic is further enhanced by the decision to keep camerawork largely handheld. As Max’s escape to the realm of the Wild Things is as authentic to him as the row with his mother which sends him there, presenting the clearly incredible so matter-of-factly better cloaks us in his vivid interior world.

A world which, as envisioned by the filmmakers, is a mud-slinging tree-climber’s delight. Great, distressed forests abruptly give way to idyllic stretches of coastline. A desert that’s so geographically improbable can only be there to make crossing its arid leagues all the more the reward. Bathed in autumnal hues and lacking in foliage, the Wild Things’ island exists in a permanent seasonal witching hour. It’s a subtle move which inflates the story’s interest in the transitional and the transitory: the rift between reality and fantasy; the space bridging childhood and adolescence; the ephemeral nature of youth and its blissful naïvety.

To fill these psychological schisms, Max invents the Wild Things — huge beasts at once cuddly and dangerous. “I like the way you destroy stuff,” notes Carol (James Gandolfini, giving what’s arguably the voice performance of the year), the Wild Things’ tantrum-prone and self-appointed ringleader, upon first observing Max’s knack for dismantling anything he can get his mitts on. From here, it’s but a boast and a vow before Max is crowned king of their mythical kingdom. His subjects’ chief concern? “Will you keep out all the sadness?” Wild rumpus is immediately declared.

But his fuzzy new friends soon signal a saddening truth: good things can’t ever last. It’s not long before cliques emerge in the party, tempers flare, and Max is revealed as the lonesome sheep in wolf’s clothing he is.

Thanks to sharp characterisations and expressive voice work, the Wild Things are convincing and captivating creations. As with Harryhausen’s King Kong, E.T., the daffy creatures of Labyrinth and Gollum, the progressive technology at work — in this case, a seamless amalgam of animatronic Jim Henson Company costume work and digital face animation — recedes from view as fascinating characters take shape. Each Wild Thing is a manifestation of both the various facets of Max’s own personality and his feelings towards those who matter most in his life. So, Carol embodies his ardent creative ambition and unruly disposition; the habitually ignored Alexander (Paul Dano), his sense of voicelessness and need for affirmation; KW (Lauren Ambrose), who peers out from behind tresses of long, lank hair, shares both her best and most vexing traits with his perennially preoccupied sister.

This is the kind of writ-large symbolism kids can identify, but Jonze and Eggers layer their unspoken emotional intricacies so expertly as to posit Where the Wild Things as something of a nostalgia-blotched Rorschach test. That a barrelling dirtclod fight echoes an early backyard snowball melee is obvious, but watch as Max revels in the chance to finally play tormentor as he sets his sights on the group’s weakest Wild Thing. Later, a mundane exchange doubles as an elementary allusion to spirituality (“I don’t really know if there is such a thing as a king who can do all the things you said”). And when Judith (Catherine O’Hara) and Ira (Forest Whitaker) — the pack’s only couple — whoop with delight as they batter each other with treetrunks, a hovering theory eventually crystallises: is this a representation of a child’s confused view of sexual behaviour, violent and gratifying in chorus?

Mature concerns, but ones which indelibly carve their mark on blossoming minds. It stimulates without sacrificing its standing as a family film. Think Synecdoche, New York via Sesame Street.

But, most importantly, as was Sendak’s most treasured of bedtime story-books, Jonze’s own wild thing is a rollicking celebration of the imagination’s power to salve inner agony. It’s a bittersweet paean to the carefree, therapeutic pleasures of running amok, belly-flopping into a pile-on and erecting a fort out of sticks — and a love-letter to imaginary friends.

The distinct lack of narrative propulsion and ticking-clock peril might be off-putting for some. But for anyone who’s ever found solace in daydream, hurt to be heard even as the thought of speech itself terrifies, or sought shelter in the arms of a loved one, Where the Wild Things Are should prove every bit as heartening as coming home to find supper waiting on the table, still hot.

DIRECTOR: Spike Jonze

SCREENWRITERS: Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers

CAST: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Paul Dano, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Berry Jr.

RATING: PG

RUN TIME: 101 minutes

Duvall Gilliam’s Don Quixote?

Terry Gilliam has his sights set on Robert Duvall for the title role in his resurrected The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the performer has told Collider.

“I may work with Terry Gilliam next — if they get the money — to play Don Quixote de la Mancha,” he told says. “Totally amazing to work with Terry Gilliam. But, once again, the money. It’s so difficult to get the money. He saw me play a Cuban barber one time with Richard Harris and that’s what gave him the idea to cast me as Don Quixote.”

You may recall I was quite taken with Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and there are few projects I’d rather see come to fruition than his misfortune-fraught Don Quixote rethink.

Story here.

Frankenweenie Details

Head over to Bloody Disgusting for a look at the casting call for Tim Burton’s stop-motion feature reworking of his 1984 live-action short, Frankenweenie.

Producer Allison Abbate let spill to Coming Soon last month that not only is the film being shot for 3-D, it’s looking likely to retain the original’s black-and-white cinematography, too. Offhand, I can’t recall a feature-length children’s film produced in black-and-white since the advent and proliferation of colour cinema. I’m certain there must be at least a handful, but with the full power of the Mouse House behind him, it’s safe to say it’s likely something that hasn’t been done by anyone operating at Burton’s level (or at the very least, not for some time).

Abbate, it’s worth noting, also produced Wes Anderson’s willfully retro-styled Fantastic Mr. Fox, whose plain, Sylvanian Familes-like character designs and unpolished animation techniques were inspired by Le Roman de Renard.

Read the Frankenweenie character breakdowns here. Note all adult roles and the principal character of Victor are conspicuously absent, likely as they’ll be filled by either Burton regulars or direct offers rather than open-call canvassing.

Kitano Announces Outrage

Variety has word on Takeshi Kitano’s return to the gangster picture, which has announced its title: Outrage.

As has become the norm for the Japanese legend, Kitano will singlehandedly fill out the core creative triumvirate of writer/director/star, taking the role of a subordinate mobster tasked with getting his hands dirty for his superiors.

Full story here.

Another Nine Trailer

It’s nice to finally find Daniel Day Lewis front and centre in this, yet another trailer for Rob Marshall’s Nine.

Still no hint of his singing voice, mind, but this is the best look we’ve been given at the film yet.

Have a look at Apple Trailers.

Nine arrives on January 21^st.

Up in the Air Clips

Paramount has released a pair of clips from Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which hits Australia on January 14^th.

The clips, entitled ‘Something Real Large’ and ‘I’m Not a Tour Guide,’ can be viewed here and here, respectively.

I’m seeing this one tomorrow afternoon and will have a review up closer to its release.

Film Review - The Descent: Part 2

What’s scarier than the dark? Claustrophobia. The Descent had both — in abundance. And while this obligatory sequel avoids the pitfall of deviating too far from the rig, its mimicry of its predecessor quickly illuminates a scant justification for being.

Neil Marshall’s 2006 nailbiter was a near-perfect terror trip which sent a troupe of intrepid women spelunking to certain death. Jon Harris’ follow-on (suffixed Part 2) simply recalibrates the gender equilibrium — not to mention panders to bloodthirsty splatter fiends by ramping the spilling of viscera.

An immediate continuation of The Descent’s less hopeless and unsatisfying American ending, Part 2 returns Shauna Macdonald’s traumatised Sarah to the subterranean caverns that claimed her friends’ lives. Things inevitably crumble into gore-slicked nightmare as she remembers: they weren’t alone...

Having sharpened his claws in the original’s editing suite, Harris at least knows how to handle the cannibalistic ‘crawlers’. But it’s a gaping abyss which separates setpiece devising from the mounting of dread, which is why The Descent: Part 2 makes for one franchise you’ll wish had stayed buried after its first expertly suffocating plunge.

DIRECTOR: Jon Harris
SCREENWRITERS: J Blakeson and James McCarthy and James Watson
CAST: Shauna Macdonald, Krysten Cummings, Gavin O’Herlihy, Joshua Dallas, Anna Skellem
RATING: TBC
RUN TIME: 94 minutes

See Men Stare at Goats... Later

A quick one for anyone out there hoping to work off Christmas lunch with a strict regime of George Clooney-facilitated bellylaughs this Boxing Day: Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats has seen its Australian release bumped back to February 4^th.

Those looking forward to a seasonal Clooney fix will have to hold out until Fantastic Mr. Fox on new year’s day, or Up in the Air, which releases on January 14^th.

Iron Man 2 Teaser Poster

Yahoo! Movies has loosed the terribly unfinished-looking first teaser poster for Iron Man 2.

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It’s very ‘So what?’ but, well, that’s often teaser art for you. And with an audience as inbuilt as this one has, all the promo fodder really has to promise is a) that it’s coming; and b) it’ll do what it says on the shell.

UPDATE: Now clickable in ultra hi-res thanks to the good people at Paramount.

McLachlan’s Eliminated Underway in Melbourne

Melbourne is currently playing home to the shoot of Eliminated, the sophomore feature of Dee McLachlan, who broke onto the scene in 2007 as the writer/director of the hard-hitting sex trade thriller, The Jammed.

Elimated marks a distinct change of pace for the filmmaker, whose award-winning debut drew from actual court transcripts to detail the bleak reality of Melbourne’s dark dealings in human trafficking.

According to its press release, Eliminated will be “a politically incorrect comedy about two of Australia’s major obsessions, terrorism and reality television.”

“Like Masterchef, The Apprentice or Survivor,” explains McLachlan, “our film follows in the true tradition of reality style shows — but with a twist.”

Eliminated reteams McLachlan with two of her stars from The Jammed, Veronica Sywak and Masa Yamaguchi. The pair will be joined by Osamah Sami (Lucky Miles), Richard Cawthorne (Noise), Frieda Mckenna (The Wedge), Leah De Niese (Neighbours), Sachin Joab (My Year Without Sex), Kendal Rae (The Shak) and stage actor and musician, Matt Hetherington.

From the official synopsis: “In Eliminated, a panel of guerilla judges selects and tests an eager and diverse group of young contestants to see who will take out the crown of ‘master terrorist’. Subjected to various challenges, interrogations and torture, the aspiring terrorists adapt and change — and even learn to work together — as they face tormenting and surprising eliminations.”

Enlarge a picture of the film’s ‘judges’ below:



Eliminated is yet to set a release date.

Where the Wild Things Are: Buy 3 Get 1 Tree Promotion

Now here’s an act of corporate responsibility worth getting behind.

In support of Spike Jonze’s quite brilliant Where the Wild Things Are, which was shot in and around Melbourne, Roadshow Films have committed to plant one tree for every three tickets sold. All you have to do is redeem the offer online.

The film releases this Thursday, December 3^rd, and is one of my favourite pictures of 2009, for what it’s worth. So gather some friends, take in a screening, and go here to register your purchase.

New Wolfman Posters

Like dribble dripping from lupine jaws is the Gothic creature-feature cool conveyed by this trio of new posters for The Wolfman that recently arrived online at Empire.

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Despite bearing a design which instantly recalls a few other film posters, I’m particularly fond of the third.

Still crossing everything this one turns out alright...

Film Review - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 3-D

Between the masterful artistry of Coraline, Ponyo and Up, 2009 has laid down a lavish cinematic smörgåsbord for small fries. Each of these delicacies offered soul food garnished with generous lashings of eye-candy, making for a particularly rich year’s movie-going for the young and their young-at-heart chaperones. But before you say “No, I couldn’t possibly,” make room on your plate for one last scrumptious sampling from the children’s carte du jour, because from out of the blue comes the zesty Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs — just in time for dessert.

Taking the slim children’s book of the same silly name as its recipe, Cloudy rightfully serves fun as the order of the day. So while Bill Hader’s panicky tech-tinkerer, Flint Lockwood, learns to eat humble pie when the success of his water-into-food-converter goes to his head, the caution against the dark lure of celebrity never impedes the film’s righteous flurry of belly laughs. Nor do timely caveats against greed and gluttony, which are essential to a story whose dish is piled high with scenes of such blissful comestible revelry.

Naturally, all the ice-cream blizzards and cloud-bursting sirloins carry considerable price. And not just on the waistlines of the town’s gobbling gastronomes, but on the Earth’s overwrought atmosphere, too. It’s morally responsible, but most importantly, allows directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller to dish up a series of deliciously surreal comic setpieces in rigorously exploited 3-D.

So forget 2012 and its mutant neutrinos — this is a real helping of super-sized cataclysm. But as that blustering Roland Emmerich bore made snoringly obvious, without characters to care about thrown in the thick of it, spectacular spectacle only goes so far.

Good thing, then, that Cloudy’s trump card is the whipcrack wit of its writing. Its script is smart enough to never let Flint and co. get lost in the dizzying mix. His courting of Anna Faris’ bright and beautiful weather reporter, Sam Sparks, is as sweet as it is winkingly knowing. (Wait for the scene in a giant jelly palace where he makes her over into his kind of gal.) James Caan lends heart as Flint’s salt-of-the-earth father, a huggable lummox who typifies the film’s awesome design style. And cameo kings, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T, are given meatier supporting roles than one might expect — the former as the town’s insatiable Mayor, the latter as an acrobatic cop — which keep the offbeat humour drizzled on thick without doing a DreamWorks and lapsing into in-jokey platitudes.

In the wrong hands, it could have been stomach-churning — a feature-length advert for Happy Meals. Instead, rather than lazily reheating proven tropes, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs cooks up a tasty, inventive family adventure that goes down an absolute treat.

Yum.

DIRECTORS: Phil Lord & Chris Miller

SCREENWRITERS: Phil Lord & Chris Miller

CAST: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, Andy Samberg, Neil Patrick Harris

RATING: G

RUN TIME: 90 minutes

New Lovely Bones One-Sheet

MySpace has undraped the new poster for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, and it ain’t bad.

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Following its recent UK premiere, a number of reviews for the film are starting to hit the net, though sadly, the general flavour seems to be so-so to negative. (They key complaint being that Jackson’s heavy reliance on special effects detracts from the emotional undertow of the story, a concern that was raised by its trailer.) Rotten Tomatoes, as always, is as good a starting point as any.

The Lovely Bones releases on January 1^st.

Two More Nine Posters

Here’s two more posters for Rob Marshall’s Nine. Though each is better (well, in execution if not in theory) than either we saw yesterday, they still appear pretty slapdash. The second one, although I probably favour it above any other we’ve seen, is particularly problematic. I love the shot from the film they’re showcasing, but the garish red font, desaturated palette and background flare cant help but call Max Payne to mind...

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These arrived at The Hitlist and In Contention.

Nine arrives January 21^st.

Thor Scores Dennings

Kenneth Branagh has been amassing quite the cast of players for his gathering foray into the Marvel universe with Thor: Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgård, Colm Feore and Stuart Townsend are already signed to join Home & Away’s Chris Hemsworth in the title role.

Add to that one budding young supervixen in the eye-catching form of Kat Dennings.

Portman recently revealed Dennings’ involvement in an interview with MTV. “She’s a good friend and an amazing actress,” says Portman. “So I’m looking forward to that.” Hear, hear.

No word yet as to whether the young actress will be imbued with godly faculties or simply plain ol’ mortal. I’m assuming the latter (yet secretly rooting for the former). Only time, as always, will tell.

Full story here.

An A Single Man Poster

I like this stylish new poster from Wild About Movies for Tom Ford’s very stylish-looking A Single Man.

Click below for a better look:

Well see this one in Australia on February 10^th.

Two Nine Posters

They’ve been a long while coming (what, with the film’s US release now less than a month away), but Rob Marshall’s return to the big-screen musical, Nine, finally has a slick pair of one-sheets.

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These first showed up at Cinematical and Yahoo! Movies, respectively.

New Avatar Clip, Banner Art

Remember that new James Cameron film that’s been making some noise? Suddenly, it’s just over three weeks away. Whether Avatar will withstand the tsunami of hype that’s barreled forth from Cameron himself the past twelve months will indeed be interesting to see, but to stem the wait, IGN has released a two-and-a-half-minute clip from the film.

Showcasing that great jungle chase sequence that proved the highlight of the Avatar Day package, what’s most readily apparent is how, well, fake this looks when viewed in their embedded player — one could be excused for thinking they were viewing unfinalised footage from an animated film, in places. You’ll have to take my word when I say that this was infinitely more impressive in IMAX 3-D. This does give an idea of the subtle camera and editing techniques Cameron’s employed to heighten the immersive-ness of the Avatar experience, however, and for that I’d recommend checking it out here.

Additionally, The Film Stage has added a some new international key art, the best of which can be enlarged below:

Avatar arrives December 17^th.

9 Giveaway

UPDATE: The competition has now closed. Thanks to all who entered. Winners’ tickets will be in the post later this week.

- gerard.

Thanks to the magnificent people at Madman, celluloid tongue has ten in-season double passes for Shane Acker’s gorgeously animated ragdoll action yarn, 9, up for grabs.

From the film’s official synopsis:

“Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton (Nightmare Before Christmas) and Timur Bekmambetov (Nightwatch, Wanted) come together to bring you the animated sci-fi epic 9. Featuring the voice talent of Elijah Wood, John C Reilly and Jennifer Connolly, 9 is a post apocalyptic, visually stunning fable where the fate of humanity lies in the hands of nine small ‘stitchpunk’ creations.”

For more on 9, visit its official site.

To enter, e-mail me your name, postal address and the answer to the following question:

Which two of 9’s nine are mute?

The first ten entrants to answer correctly will be notified via return e-mail.

9 scrabbles into cinemas on December 9^th.

Once Upon a Time in the West Restoration at The Astor

Melburnians, it’s time to holster your six-shooters and saddle up: Sergio Leone’s epic homage to the American Western, Once Upon a Time in the West, is back on the big screen in the form of a beautifully restored 35mm print showing exclusively at The Astor Theatre.

I caught the first screening of the film’s two-week tenure this afternoon after having not seen it in full for over two years. And while it reaffirmed my opinion that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (GBU) remains the superior picture, there’s no denying West’s standing as a classic of the genre.

Produced in 1968 (two years after GBU marked the completion of his ‘Man With No Name’ — or ‘Dollars’ — trilogy with Clint Eastwood), West is a sprawling distillation of Leone’s key stylistic tics and thematic concerns. So, there’s Charles Bronson’s other man with no name (nicknamed ‘Harmonica’), a mysterious and morally inscrutable stranger who blows back into town fixin’ to settle a score. And Leone’s interest in the prelude to violence — rather than the act itself — is in full play. (Nowhere is this more patently apparent than in the film’s prologue, a largely dialogue-free, twelve minute lead up to a fleeting pistol skirmish which unfolds without any real incident.) So, too, is his propensity for contrasting wide landscape panoramas with extreme close-ups on his actors. Then there’s key Leone constituent Ennio Morricone’s grand, stirring score, the most memorable cue from which carries the bonus of being knit into the plot.

But make no mistake — this isn’t merely some self-reflexive exercise in ticking off boxes. With West, Leone segues from the jaunty, heightened tone of the ‘Dollars’ films into something altogether more sombre and ruminative, and it’s this shift in style that lends West its aura of a swansong to the near-mythic heyday of America’s Old West. Furthermore, in the stunning Claudia Cardinale, Leone finds his first-ever female lead, and admirable effort is exerted to make her land-rich widower/ex-prostitute a principal player as much in character complexity as in screen time. Finally, cast boldly against type, Henry Fonda takes his primary role as a ruthless villain, which sees him gunning down a child in cold blood.

Leone debutantes might question the film’s deliberate pacing, and the cagey delay with which he reveals his character’s motivations could well leave some frustrated as they question exactly which bloody-handed outlaws are in fact worthy of sympathy. But as an introduction to his legendary canon of Westerns, Once Upon a Time in the West is difficult to look past. While I’m sure this restored print is destined to become a regular fixture on The Astor’s calendar, I can’t recommend making the effort to catch it during its inaugural season enough — and that goes for Leone devotees and newcomers alike.

Once Upon a Time in the West is screening until December 5^th. Find full details at The Astor’s website.

Australian Animated Short The Cat Piano Makes Shortlist for Oscar

Following in the footsteps of fellow countrymen Adam Elliot and Anthony Lucas, Adelaide’s The People’s Republic of Animation (specifically, directors Eddie White and Ari Gibson) have made the Academy Awards’ shortlist for Best Animated Short Film with their poetic tale of feline intrigue, The Cat Piano.

Narrated by Nick Cave, the short tracks an anthropomorphic tomcat beat poet’s recount of the sinister circumstances surrounding the disappearance of a slinky nightclub chanteuse. It’s all laid out in starkly defined, cobalt-hued comic-book noir, and is more than worth eight minutes of your time.

You can view The Cat Piano in full at PRA’s official Vimeo feed.

Here’s hoping the pair follow Elliot and Lucas one step further and secure themselves a well-deserved nomination.

A complete list of the ten contenders (eight more of which are available for viewing, either in full or in part) can be browsed at Rope of Silicon.

Crazy Heart Trailer, Poster

With Jeff Bridges front-and-centre as a hard-livin’, heart-hurtin’ country music cast-off, it’s not difficult to see why Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart is earning comparisons to fellow old-dog-on-the-road-to-redemption drama, The Wrestler. Co-starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell, this does look good, but seems most interesting as a showcase for Bridges. (Even if Cooper’s own screenplay proves to rely too heavily on proven tropes, the role of Bad Blake at least looks to be the best Bridges has landed in five years.) And with T-Bone Burnett in charge in of the tunes, you know the soundtrack should prove worth a listen.

View the film’s trailer at Apple.

The Big Picture recently revealed Crazy Heart’s one-sheet.

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Jury’s still out on that tagline...

Crazy Heart is on tune for a February 18^th Australian release.

Police, Adjective Trailer

Romania’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film consideration at the next Oscars is the curiously titled Police, Adjective. Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, the film is a deadpan comic drama centred on an undercover cop “who undergoes a crisis of conscience when he is pressured to arrest a teenager who offers hash to his classmates.” It claimed the Un Certain Regard award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and its trailer has just shown up at Apple.

Watch it here.

French Bright Star One Sheet, Campion Q&A Screening

Bright Star is an impressionistic account of the final three years in life of 19^th century Romantic, John Keats (played by Perfume’s Ben Whishaw), and is Jane Campion’s first feature since 2003’s In the Cut.

From The Auteurs comes the film’s striking French one-sheet. (They call it “painterly,” and a more apt description doesn’t come quickly to mind.)

Have a better look by clicking below:

I’m seeing the film next weekend, and will try and make time to write about it before its release on Boxing Day.

Furthermore, Melbourne’s Palace Como on Chapel St is hosting a members only screening of the film on December 3^rd which will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the filmmaker. Tickets are just $16 (booking fee inclusive) and can be purchased at the cinema’s online box office.

Ricky Trailer

Hardly one to rest on his laurels, François Ozon’s next line-blurring feature foray, Ricky, looks to be equal parts working-class domestic drama and, uh... flying baby movie?

Yes, you read right: flying baby movie. Just so you’re clear, that’s a movie in which a baby can fly. The titular tot seemingly sprouts wings, becomes a small-town sensation, and evidently takes to the air. “He’s like an angel!,” his sister intones in the film’s trailer, which itself is decidedly low on swooping shots of the airborne toddler. Sounds strange? Sure — but it could be fun, too.

Check it out at Apple Trailers.

Guest Post: 2009 Inside Film Awards Wrap Up

The winners of the 2009 Kodak Inside Film Awards for Australian film were announced in Sydney on Wednesday night. I wasn’t there. But Sophie Langley was. Here’s her report.

Two of my favourite films this year have been Australian. This surprises me; I see as many Australian films as I can, and often find them interesting, but never before have I been as affected by Australian films as I was by Warwick Thornton’s Samson & Delilah (screening on ABC1 this Sunday night for Australian readers, and available on DVD next Wednesday) or Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max (currently available on DVD and blu-ray).

The Kodak Inside Film Awards served to remind me of three things: how truly wonderful these two films are; how many other great Australian films I've seen this year; and just how many others I’ve missed. This has been a good year for Australian film.

Samson & Delilah took out the most number of awards by far. Warwick Thornton thanked Protools (“Actually, I have no idea how to use Protools — I used Garage Band”) for his Best Music Award; he also took out Best Script; a shy Rowan McNamara (Samson) took Best Actor; Marissa Gibson (Delilah) accepted Best Actress from afar — she was up against the very talented Frances O’Connor (Blessed) and Sacha Horler (My Year Without Sex). Thornton also walked away with Best Director, an accolade that nearly reduced him to tears of humility, and Best Feature Film.

Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly, also picked up some awards (Best Sound and Best Editing); Beautiful Kate got a mention for Best Cinematography; and Mary and Max took Best Production Design.

Baz Luhrmann was awarded the Living Legend award. Whatever your response to his most recent effort, Australia, there is no denying this man’s contribution to the film industry in Australia has been somewhat unique. Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and even Australia have made their mark. In his acceptance speech Luhrmann referred to the variety of productions in the nomination lists, and said that he was excited to be working in the Australian film industry at a time when it is so diverse and where there is so much potential.

And he is right about diversity. Compare Australia to Samson & Delilah, Beautiful Kate to Mary and Max, Cedar Boys to Balibo or My Year Without Sex. These stories are so different from one another, the production styles too. This variety extends as well to the short film, animation and documentary nominations.

The thing these films have in common, aside from their place of production, is that none of them are afraid to tackle a sticky topic. I can't help but feel annoyed when people suggest that Australian film is too bleak. Sometimes, yes, but generally I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a ‘dark’ film. Social realism is healthy, in reasonable doses. That said, I do agree that the balance between so-called ‘bleak’ films and more fun films hasn’t been quite right. That balance is a work in progress, I guess.

Let’s hope that Luhrmann’s call to action — to grab this opportunity, this vibrant industry, and continue with it — didn’t fall on deaf ears. I’m looking forward to some more great Australian film appearing on a screen near me (and you!).

The full list of 2009 IF award winners is available here. Sophie can be found blogging at avocado and lemon.

Film Review - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Early in Terry Gilliam’s latest and much-beleaguered fantasia, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Christopher Plummer’s titular mystic looks the devil in the eye and tells him: “You can’t stop stories being told.”

You needn’t be the shrewdest of viewers to spot a dash of the former Python in the wizened Parnassus. With his travelling troupe of ragtags and misfits, he’s a showman of the old school, out of time, out of place — a psychedelic swami peddling genuine wonders to a diminishing audience. Though it’s that very line which rings out like a self-motivating mantra when the troubled road his Imaginarium has travelled to the screen is remembered.

Gilliam is no stranger to mid-production setbacks. The sorry fate which befell his unrealised The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was heart-wrenchingly documented in Lost in La Mancha. On the special effects-laden The Brothers Grimm, it was heated spats with notoriously hands-on überproducers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, which gridlocked the film in a stalemate so lengthy that Gilliam had stomped off and shot Tideland before its plentiful pixels were finally in place. (That particular tribulation was candidly chronicled in the fascinating behind-the-scenes scrapbook, Dreams and Nightmares: Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Grimm and Other Cautionary Tales of Hollywood.)

But even flash floods and raging Hollywood heavyweights couldn’t have prepared Gilliam for his highest hurdle yet: the sudden death of Heath Ledger, Imaginarium’s star attraction, at the junction of what had been the smoothest shoot of his recent career.

That Gilliam was able to preserve what was captured of his friend’s final performance is alone worthy of no small respect. That he’s forged so graceful a solution to the crisis is a miracle of directorial ingenuity to rival any of the marvels found beyond the magic mirror of the film’s extraordinary ‘imaginarium.’

In Imaginarium’s real world — a grimy, inhospitable modern day London, teeming with nouveau Dickensian squalor — Ledger plays Tony, a charming amnesiac first found hanging by the neck beneath the Blackfriars Bridge. Rescued at the behest of the Doctor’s kewpie doll daughter, Valentina (supermodel Lily Cole) and to the chagrin of her would-be suitor, Anton (Andrew Garfield), Tony quickly ensconces himself in Parnassus’ favour and is recruited as the band’s marionette-limbed barker. Fresh blood is just the thing the good Doctor is after — he finds himself in something of a bind. The Devil (Tom Waits) is in town to collect on a wager. The prize? The rouge-cheeked Valentina, nearing sweet sixteen. (“The age of consent,” she purrs.)

Donning a commedia dell’arte mask, Ledger puts forward his best Jack Sparrow routine — cockney accent, twitchy carriage and all. Tony isn’t enough of a role to dislodge The Joker as the swansong of the actor’s sadly curtailed career, and it’s inevitable he should here seem less thrilling when compared to his Oscar-winning scene-thieving in The Dark Knight. This is Ledger with his sleeves rolled up — a jaunty jape between blockbusters and ‘worthier’ fare in the good company of an all-class ensemble. But in re-teaming with Gilliam after the problematical Grimm, he at least goes out with a spring in his heel, a smile on his face, and a rascally gleam in his eye.

On any other project, Gilliam’s fix to his leading man’s tragic absence would have risked comparisons to Bela Lugosi’s awkward posthumous replacement in Plan 9 From Outer Space. But whether by sheer coincidence or gracious cosmic design, Ledger’s passing neatly occurred at an opportune point for an actor switch. So, with Imaginarium’s already generous order of whimsy, it’s easy to accept Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as through-the-looking-glass Ledger proxies. Having the dicey Tony assume shifting physical guise actually helps paint him as a slippery character, so it’s possible that had Ledger completed the role, the film might have been less absorbing.

Still, the actor’s non-presence during a jumbled third act accounts for his character’s mizzling emotional payoff. Depp, Law and Farrell each inhabit the part with the requisite shifty charisma, but that Tony’s biggest moment ultimately falls to a face that’s lately ascribed to him strips it of much of its wallop.

Understandably, the film is the product of its difficult circumstances. As Ledger exits, things lean expectedly off-track, and Gilliam’s phantasmagorical imagination tends to outrun the reach of his budget. And yet, it seldom matters. Somehow, this precarious high-wire act avoids tumbling into an incomprehensible clutter of colour and quirk — thanks largely to his company of players.

Trading the catwalk for a film set, the angelic Cole is a striking presence as the ennui-stricken teen. She’s genuinely captivating — coy, canny and cool — and a future in acting seems like a surety. Garfield, who’s done grim and determined in Red Riding 1974, reveals both ace comic chops and a welcome frailty as the near-ignored everyman in Parnassus’ weird and wonderful coterie. Together, they’re the heart of the film — making the Doctor its beautiful mind. Plummer essays the ancient enchanter with equal parts self-serving pluck and crumpled pathos. He’s the perfect foil for Waits’ suavely sly and unctuous Mr Nick, the unique cinematic Satan who casually confesses having no understanding of black magic whatsoever.

The possessory card which heralds the credits reads: “A film by Heath Ledger and Friends.” A heartfelt tribute, but make no mistake — this is unadulterated Gilliam from lights down to curtains. Between visual allusions to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and a nonsense musical interlude harking back to his days with Monty Python, Imaginarium, flaws and all, is a labour of love unmistakably sprung from the mind of its maker.

It’s also an unusually poignant paean to human transience and the mercurial nature of dreams. “Nothing is permanent,” sighs Depp as Ledger’s dapper doppelgänger. “Not even death.”

And in Gilliam’s world, he’s right.

DIRECTOR: Terry Gilliam

SCREENWRITERS: Terry Gilliam & Charles McKeown

CAST: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell

RATING: M

RUN TIME: 122 minutes

A Single Man Trailer

Not to be confused with the Coen brothers’ superlative A Serious Man is the directorial debut of fashion doyen and former creative director of Gucci, Tom Ford — A Single Man.

Taking Christopher Isherwood’s novel of the same name as its source, A Single Man tells the story of a gay British college professor (an intriguingly against-type Colin Firth) making home in Southern Carolina at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Mourning the death of his long-term partner, the film charts a solitary day in the life of its despondent bachelor. And, if its first trailer is any indication (which seems like a safe bet), this thing will be rapturously photographed.

Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode co-star as Firth’s best friend and dead lover, respectively. It’s already garnering raves across the pond, and will reach Australia in February next year.

View the trailer at Apple.

A Giving of Thanks...

Just a quick post to thank all of you continue to make time in your days to include celluloid tongue as a point of (hopeful) online interest. Today marks the blog’s second birthday. Here’s to all of you, and the year ahead.

- gerard.

New Nine Trailer

With its US release now just a month away, the marketing faction behind Rob Marshall’s musical Nine sure are keeping a tight lid on the vocal chops of star Daniel Day Lewis. The film’s teaser was cut to a number performed by pop starlet Fergie, and now its full trailer takes a tune belted by Kate Hudson as its lone audio cue, one of three new compositions for the film by original Broadway composer, Maury Yeston. (A song, it’s worth noting, which already plays better when married with its accompanying visuals than it did on first listen at YouTube earlier today.)

Joining the aforementioned for a tuneful tale of creative meltdown are Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench and Sophia Loren. Visually, Marshall looks to be reaching into his Chicago trunk of tricks, which is no bad thing, considering a) How well doing so turned out the first time; and b) The muted reception to his Memoirs of a Geisha. Fingers crossed he’s found room for some substance between all the unequalled glamour and bodice-bedecked lady lovelies...

Head to Yahoo! Movies to drink it all in.

Alice in Wonderland Banner(s)

The Disloyal Subjects of the Mad Hatter Facebook page has been incrementally revealing a triptych of poster art for Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland over the past week. It’s safe to say the Facebook page will likely play a large role in the unveiling of future Alice ephemera, so if you’re watching this one as closely as I am, you’d do well to sign yourself up as a fan.

The three banners stand alone as individual pieces, or sit nicely together as a seamless panorama. Well, mostly seamless — take a look to the far right. I’ve no idea why the Hatter makes two appearances…

Enlarge a stitched version of the complete scene above, or take a look at each poster separately by clicking below:




As a standalone unit, the one spotlighting Mia Wasikowska’s Alice works best (and is worthy of special mention for the riff on Sleepy Hollow’s Tree of the Dead standing sentry in the background). As a whole, it’s certainly a clear to bid sew as many disparate essentials from the film together as possible, and resultantly, looks a little disorderly. But taken individually, I’m loving the look of each independent element (and it’s nice to see the Caterpillar’s been allowed to hang onto his hookah). Especially Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen…

The tea party begins March 4^th.

New Nine Stills, Leaked Songs

Yahoo! Movies has a new set of stills from Rob Marshall’s glitz ‘n’ glam musical, Nine.

Here’s a sample to whet your appetite:

Click here for the rest. You know you want to…

Elsewhere, four tracks from the soundtrack have leaked on YouTube. Check ‘em out while you can. Nice to see someone’s finally found a good use for Fergie. Kate Hudson, meanwhile, sounds autotuned beyond recognition. Here’s hoping that’s just the case for this particular number.

Nine shimmies onto Australian screens on January 21^st.

Bonham Carter, Pearce and More Join Hooper’s Speech

Regal period pieces often wind up stuffier than the wearer of an undersized corset. But with the talent behind The King’s Speech, a drama based on the relationship between King George VI and Lionel Logue, the royal speech therapist who helped the sovereign drop his stutter and done learn to speak all good-like and that, such snooze-worthy adherence to prim convention should be of no concern.

Directed by Tom Hooper, the man behind HBO’s excellent John Adams and the recent, well-repped The Damned United, and starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush as King and coach, respectively, a royal flush of A-class, all-class thespians have just joined King’s court, The Hollywood Reporter tells.

Firth and Rush (no slouches themselves) will share the screen with no less than Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon. Quite the lineup for a tale which, on paper, at least, doesn’t so much scream “must see!” as it does stammer “c-c-c-could b-be interesting?”

Story here.

Win Wake in Fright on Blu-Ray

The re-issue of Ted Kotcheff’s wry and alarming Wake in Fright has been a homegrown highlight in a year teeming with quality Aussie produce.

Originally released in 1971, the film shocked audiences with its frank and unflattering depiction of life in the red centre’s back-of-beyond Outback townships, where blue-collar, beer-blurred delinquency takes a turn for the sinister when both the mercury and testosterone levels run high.

For more on the film, visit its official site.

celluloid tongue has a copy of the newly-released Wake in Fright blu-ray up for grabs. To be in the running, you’ll have to do two things: 1) Comment on this entry (anything will do); and 2) E-mail me the answer to the below question, along with the username used when leaving your comment, and your mailing address.

Question: Two brands of beer are featured in the film. What are they?

The competition is open to Australian readers only.

The winning entrant will be selected via random number generator (with each comment being assigned a number according to sequence) and will be notified via return e-mail on Friday, November 20^th.

Q&A: David Caesar

Prime Mover is David Caesar’s first film since 2002’s knockabout ‘Yanks Down Under’ crime caper, Dirty Deeds. An ambitious blend of romance, dance, music and big rigs, the film has garnered acclaim at both the Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals. Michael Dorman, Emily Barclay, Ben Mendelsohn and William McInnes front the cast, and it’s currently on Australian release.

In an echo of his stint as an arbiter on ABC TV’s 1997 competitive documentary series, Race Around the World, the writer/director has been appointed to the jury of this year’s 9^th Annual Bondi Short Film Festival. The position places him in the company of Rachel Ward, Gracie Otto, Balibo’s Damon Gameau, FilmInk editor Don Korvits and Triple J’s Robbie Buck.

David has kindly made the time to address a quick Q&A via e-mail for celluloid tongue.

Prime Mover is your first feature film in seven years. Why the wait?

In an ideal world I’d make a film every 2 or 3 years, but it’s never that simple. I’ve had two kids and been developing other scripts — who knows how long it will be before the next one. Soon, I hope!

Although it’s a distinctly Australian story (always a plus for filmmakers seeking local funding), the film is an unusual mélange of styles and genres. Was Prime Mover a difficult film to get off the ground?

They’re always difficult to get off the ground. I think the genres and styles were always a selling point. The other issue was not having an international star involved. That always makes it tougher.

Even more so than it did in Dirty Deeds, music plays a vital role in Prime Mover. How long before you go the full Moulin Rouge! route – would you ever try your hand at an out-and-out musical?

I like really raw musicals. My favorites are One From the Heart and Romance and Cigarettes, so I doubt I’d ever go the full Moulin Rouge! But I’m interested in the relationship between singing and violence, so I’m kind of developing something like that.

This is your third time working with Ben Mendelsohn, following Idiot Box and Mullet. Director/actor pairings always hold a certain fascination to an audience – what is it that’s kept that creative relationship kindled over the years?

I love working with Ben and I’m planning on doing it again and again over the coming years. The man is a legend of Australian film and TV!

You’ve been building on your respectable CV as a director of television dramas these past few years, working on shows such as RAN: Remote Area Nurse and Fireflies. What appeals to you about directing for TV?

It appeals pretty much as directing a feature, but it is always much faster. But there’s something great about diving in for a few weeks and then out again, instead of agonising for years on a single project. I also co-wrote and directed another mini-series for Foxtel called Dangerous, which in screen times terms was equal to two features. I think there is some really interesting stuff happening in TV and I love being involved in it.

As something of a modern veteran of the local industry, what excites you about your appointment as a judge at this year’s Bondi Short Film Festival?

I always look forward to seeing what the next generation is doing. I want to keep moving forward and doing new things, so I’ll always be influenced by other people.

How valuable do you consider short film competitions such as the BSFF and Tropfest for fostering the development of fresh talent?

The great thing about them is getting good work noticed. That’s what’s great these days, there’s lots of places for new people to get their stories shown and noticed.

It’s been a red letter year for Australian films, with a number of local productions finding both commercial and critical success. It’s quite a varied crop of titles – from Mao’s Last Dancer to Balibo, Mary & Max to Samson & Delilah – that have been widely embraced. What can the industry learn from these successes?

There’s plenty of others as well! They’re really different in terms of stories and genres — the bigger the range will always be better for audiences instead of a one size fits all model. It looks like we’ve got a couple of good years ahead, with Bright Star, Tomorrow When the War Began, Bran Nue Dae and Mad Max 4 all sounding exciting and very audience friendly.

Finally, insiders and punters alike have an opinion on how to improve the state of the Australian film industry. What do you feel needs to be done?

Make more films, raise the chance of success. I also think we should look more at idea and story development instead of script development. I think we often end up with beautifully developed scripts from insubstantial ideas.

Prime Mover is currently on national release. The 9^th Annual Bondi Short Film Festival screens its 14 finalists on Saturday, November 28^th at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion. Find further details at the Festival’s official site.

Clash of the Titans Teaser Trailer

Before today, I wasn’t convinced the world needed a new Clash of the Titans, but after seeing the first trailer for Louis Leterrier’s looming, hulking great redux, I’m now certain of it. Frankly, it’s looking terrible. Swollen with cacophonous, CG-summoned spectacle, this looks like nothing more than The Scorpion King suffering an actue case of 300 envy, with a wearisome bid for Lord of the Rings-scale grandeur thrown in to amplify the impression that this is a film without a single original idea in its empty lunk head.

I’m all for ass-kicking spectacle, but compared to the stirring, tactile charm of Desmond Davis’ 1981 original (thanks in no small part to the stop-motion creature work by Ray Harryhausen), this slick new retelling of the Perseus myth looks every stony inch as enjoyable as making goo-goo eyes with a Gorgon. Here’s hoping Avatar delivers, because the Sam Worthington of Somersault, Dirty Deeds and Gettin’ Square feels further away with every one of these sterile blockbuster blow-outs...

Watch at Yahoo! Movies.

Clash of the Titans releases April 1^st, 2010.

Ryder, Hershey, Cassell Swan into Aronofsky’s Next

Somehow, I’ve thus far managed to neglect mention of Black Swan. Lord knows why — it’s one of the in-development titles to which I’m most looking forward, what, with it being the post-Wrestler Darren Aronofsky’s next item of interest. And that’s to say nothing of the casting of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as a pair of ballerinas...

Tagged as a “supernatural thriller set in the world of New York ballet,” Black Swan centres on Portman’s dancer who seems to be having delusions about Kunis’ rival performer. The Hollywood Reporter has announced three new additions to the cast: Barbara Hershey, Vincent Cassell, and (pinch me!) Winona Ryder.

Of the new additions, only Ryder’s role has been disclosed: she’ll be stepping into the slippers of a more seasoned ballerina. Fingers crossed Aronofsky can work some Rourke-style comeback magic with Ms Ryder, who deserves a career far better than the Hollywood wilderness to which she’s been relegated this past decade.

Find the full story here.

Jones Sources Gyllenhaal

I never found the time to write a review, but Duncan Jones’ gorgeous Moon remains one of my favourite films of the year. Today, The Hollywood Reporter announced the filmmaker will next lend his eye to Source Code, a sci-fi thriller that’s also attracted the attention of Jake Gyllenhaal.

Jones has been unable to secure funding for his hopeful sophomore feature, a Berlin-set sci-fi/actioner called Mute which he’s likened to Blade Runner. Source Code centres on a soldier who mysteriously awakens in a body that isn’t his own on a commuter train. To make matters worse, a bomb is about to detonate.

The original screenplay is by Ben Ripley, with Billy Ray (scripter of the recent State of Play feature) having recently tried his hand at a retool.

Lensing is on track for early next year.

More here.

Wolfman: Elfman Off, A Pair of Posters

It’s enough to make a grown Wolf-fan bay.

Just when everything was finally looking okay on the Wolfman front, along comes cinemusic with an announcement to have you howling: some three months from its February release, Danny Elfman has ceded scoring duties for the film. His replacement? Ex-Tangerine Dream synth-jockey and purveyor of forgettable pseudo-industrial dross — Underworld composer, Paul Haslinger.

Elfman has apparently completed a score in the vein of the grand, gothic splendour of Wojciech Kilar’s work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but, burrowed away in Tim Burton’s Wonderland as he currently is, has been unavailable for the additional duties incurred by The Wolfman’s extensive reshoots.

None of Elfman’s work will be used in the finished film.

Read more here.

In additional lupine news, a fresh pair of posters for the film have arrived at AICN and Cinematical.

Enlarge:

The Wolfman, complete with a new score I’m decidedly less enthusiastic about, reaches Australia February 25^th.

Fincher to Reincarnate Peter Proud

David Fincher’s perennially piled plate has just been topped off with another promising dollop of gristle.

Although soon to shoot the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Facebook founders story, The Social Network, and despite remaining tied to a new Heavy Metal anthology film, a live-action take on Charles Burns’ highschool body-horror, Black Hole, a mysterious project concerning a chef with Keanu Reeves and the eternally just-beyond-arms’-reach adaptation of Brian Bendis’ Torso, the infamously meticulous filmmaker has added yet another intriguing project to his ever towering ‘To Do’ pile.

The Hollywood Reporter tells Fincher will reteam with his Se7en screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker, to bring The Curious Case of Benjamin Button The Reincarnation of Peter Proud back to the big screen. The novel by Max Erlich was published in 1975, and the author scripted the first film telling of his work, which released later that same year.

From THR: “Proud centers on a college professor who begins having recurring dreams and nightmares and, realising they are images of a past life, decides to search out the source of the visions. With his girlfriend in tow, he discovers a woman and her grown-up daughter who are keys to his past life.

The supernatural thriller drew heat for a subplot involving incest.”

Fitting fodder for Fincher, then, who plans to send Kevin Walker back to the original source to contemporise the tale for modern audiences. If I’m honest, I’d sooner see Fincher get to Black Hole, but with that particular project still swimming sans screenwriter, it might well be a long time coming.

Full story here.

Salt Trailer

In case you (like myself) missed it last week, Yahoo! Movies debuted the first trailer for Angelina Jolie’s latest foray into high-octane action terrain, Salt. Directed by Philip Noyce, Salt locks its sights on a CIA officer who finds herself falsely called out as a Russian emissary. Seemingly equipped with a trunkload of wigs, the titular spy goes on the run, and Bourne-like identity crises and shock revelations presumably ensue.

There’s no doubt Jolie has a better nose for dramatic roles than she does her summer tentpoles (well, except for the surprisingly ace Kung Fu Panda — and, if I’m honest, I had a lot of fun with Wanted, too. For that matter, I never got around to Mr and Mrs Smith...), but with Noyce calling shots, perhaps Salt could prove quite the happy marriage of depth and kinetics?

Check it out here.

Salt releases August 26^th, 2010.

Paltrow is Alfredson’s Other Danish Girl

Gwyneth Paltrow has joined the cast of Tomas Alfredson’s follow-up to Let the Right One In, The Danish Girl, a sex change drama which locked Nicole Kidman as its gender bending lead in September.

The film is an adaptation of a book by David Ebershoff, which details the true story of the first ever post-operative transsexual, Einar Wegener (Kidman), and her wife Greta, who’ll now be played by Paltrow. With Alfredson at the reins and such a talented pair of actresses afforded what should equate to some of the meatiest roles of their career, The Danish Girl is quickly shaping up as one of 2010’s most promising titles.

Story at Variety.

Where to Watch The Brothers Bloom

Following a string of release setbacks long enough to make The Wolfman seem positively punctual by comparison, Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom is finally slinking its way into Australian cinemas this week. I’ll be checking it out this weekend – I was a big fan of Johnson’s bold playground noir debut, Brick.

Find a complete list of cinemas who’ll be screening the film nationwide below:

VIC
Nova
Rivoli
NSW
Palace Verona
WA
Paradiso
QLD
AMC Stafford
BCC Cairns City
BCC Toowoomba Strand
BCC Mackay City
BCC Maroochydore
BCC Pacific Fair

Catch it while you can.

Drone Magazine in Print

I’ve contributed an article to the first ever print issue of Drone Magazine, which is being launched at Melbourne’s The Tote next Thursday, January 19^th. Copies of the inaugural edition (dubbed Issue 0.5) will be included with the $12 entry fee to the gig, at which Black Ryder, Slight of Build, Killed 2 Birds and Dreaming of Ghosts will be taking the stage for a night of raucous rock ‘n’ roll revelry.

Limited copies are available for purchase from the website for the very modest price of AU $4. I’ve taken a look at Nick Cave’s incredible career during his time as a moustachioed Renaissance man, and there are also exclusive interviews with Black Ryder’s Aimee Nash and Steve Kilbey of The Church — amidst other treasures — to be found within.

See Men Stare at Goats on Boxing Day

Sony has announced Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats will receive an Australian theatrical release from December 26^th, pitting it against Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, Jane Campion’s young Keats snapshot, Bright Star, Guy Ritchie’s biff-heavy rethink of Sherlock Holmes, Riad Sattouf’s well-repped The French Kissers, Sam Taylor Wood’s teen Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy, and, erm, Old Dogs, Did You Hear About the Morgans? and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

Film Review - A Christmas Carol 3-D

Get past the unremittingly ugly visual style and A Christmas Carol surprises. It surprises for its fidelity to its 166-year-old source. It surprises for its sombreness of tone and reflective engagement of regret and atonement. But what will really have you asking “What the Dickens?” come Christmas morning is why Robert Zemeckis’ latest motion-captured dispatch from the uncanny valley is being pushed as a gaudy, slapstick-stuffed thrill ride — excepting a handful of unfortunate lapses, at heart, it’s somewhat more noble than that.

‘Ugly’ might be a touch unfair, but Zemeckis’ spartan commitment to a technology that’s yet to close the ground between his ambitions and its own limitations detracts from an otherwise faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ oft-filmed literary classic. While the overtly fantastical Beowulf, with its dragons and sea serpents and sexed-up Angelina Jolie-as-succubus, was a befitting candidate for the entirely mo-cap-animated treatment Zemeckis first investigated with The Polar Express, A Christmas Carol is markedly less so. Cutting an entire synthetic reality from the same digital cloth makes sense when dealing with an abundance of pixel-grinding creatures of feature — if man, monster and mountainside all co-exist in the same computer-conjured cosmos, discerning the seams becomes a moot point.

It’s an argument which holds considerably less egg nog when applied to the well-worn story of Dickens’ miserly misanthrope, Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey). The spirits of A Christmas Carol don’t pose the logistical challenge of, say, Beowulf’s Grendel, so the decision to eschew live-action altogether feels like an obvious grab for the ubiquitous computer-generated bandwagon. And while Zemeckis revels in the dizzying freedom afforded his virtual lens (pay special attention to the ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’ segment), such liberty increases the allure of ‘look ma, no limits!’ capability-strutting braggadocio. Vertiginous flights across the skyline of Victorian London amply demonstrate the technology in full, soaring flight. Overpacking a rushed third act with a gratuitous chase sequence feels more like the candy cane that broke Rudolph’s back.

Close-ups on Carrey’s digitally-ripened mug, however, suggest that in five years’ time, Zemeckis’ methods might match pace with his madness. There’s no question that the characters of A Christmas Carol are, by and large, as aesthetically appealing as dropped mince pies, but glimmers of brilliance occasionally shine through the clunky, cold patina of ‘art imitating life — oddly.’

With Dickens’ yuletide staple so well-loved, it’s wise of Zemeckis’ screenplay to do things by the book. Slabs of dialogue are lifted straight from the page, and the story retains all of its chilling solemnity, commencing with Carrey’s parsimonious grump pocketing coins from the eyes of dead man. Things get so intense, in fact, that 3-D encounters with Marley’s ghost and the shrouded shadow that’s the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come could have tykes hurling the specs off and trembling under their seats. Which does pose the pertinent question of exactly who this is aimed at. Had he jettisoned the child’s play and pitched directly for the Beowulf bracket, Zemeckis’ innovative technological noodling might have been more readily palatable.

Where Zemeckis improves on screen Christmas-es past is by casting each of the seasonal spectres as projections of Scrooge’s own self. Aside from garnishing his Christmas Carol with a vibrant red ribbon thematically, it affords his adaptable leading man a chance to remind us he’s arguably the most under-utilised star in Hollywood today, portraying no less than seven roles with characteristic chameleonic ease. The elderly Scrooge is, oddly, his second time inhabiting a Christmas curmudgeon following Dr Seuss’ green meanie in The Grinch. Subdued and allowed to unwrap the pathos, he’s more memorable here than he’s been in the flesh for half a decade. Elsewhere, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth are casualties of less convincing animation, along with the rest of the largely featureless (though recognisable) support cast.

We probably didn’t need another take on the world’s most famous story of personal epiphany, and there’s no denying Zemeckis’ eerie motion-capture animated stylings still make for emotionally frosty affairs. As such, A Christmas Carol’s lasting impression is more that of a collection of well-intentioned and eye-catching stocking stuffers: appreciated, but this won’t fulfill your Christmas wishlist — nor will it inspire the earthy affection of the gift made with love and by hand. Which positions the film as something of a letdown. A failure, but a noble one, then.

DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis

SCREENWRITER: Robert Zemeckis

CAST: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn, Carey Elwes, Bob Hoskins

RATING: PG

RUN TIME: 96 minutes

Hillcoat Talks Wettest County, Bunny Munro

John Hillcoat recently spoke with Atomic Popcorn in support of The Road, but also let drop a few tantalising details about upcoming projects.

Key points:

1) Nick Cave has scripted the previously-announced The Wettest County in the World.

2) Ryan Gosling and Shia LaBeouf look poised to star.

3) Plans are afoot to bring Cave’s novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, to the small screen.

Best news I’ve had all week.

Story here.

Julia @ ACMI

Just FYI, sad circumstances mean I’m away from home this week, so updates may remain scarce. Your continued patience is appreciated.

Tonight, however, I saw Eric Zonca’s Julia, which is skipping Australian cinemas and going direct to DVD in December. Rent it. Better yet, if you live in Melbourne, catch it during its limited season at ACMI later this month. It’s a film worthy of your attention.

Julia is an unflinching study of Tilda Swinton’s desperate, volatile alcoholic which segues sharply into thriller terrain when the titular trainwreck seizes an opportunity to commit, as she puts it, “the ultimate double cross.” The film is first-rate, and boasts a surprisingly satisfying conclusion, but Swinton is flat-out electric. Seeking proof she’s arguably her generation’s finest? Look no further. She’s that good here. Swinton is that rare actress working in the Hollywood system who’s unafraid of looking haggard onscreen. Not dowdy. Not sporting disfiguring prosthetics or an unflattering hairdo. But appearing au naturale and playing her age, and here, she looks to have lived every day of her 49 years as if it were her last on Earth. Which would obviously appear little more than a stunt if she wasn’t so startling on-screen. There are times when a performance single-handedly makes a movie. Julia is such an occasion.

ACMI’s first-look screenings of Julia commence November 19^th and finish November 22^nd. Book tickets and read more here.

New Trailer for The Road

That moronic first trailer for John Hillcoat’s The Road, in which Cormac McCarthy’s stark tale of survival and paternal devotion seemed to have been brought to the screen with all the bombast and business of a Roland Emmerich worldbreaker, did little to mollify anxious fans of the Pulitzer-winning novel. This second preview, arriving at Yahoo! Movies, is less deceitful — just.

A promising, tone-appropriate first half gives way to a wrap-up almost as disingenuous as the I Am Legend meets The Day After Tomorrow tropes on display in the previous trailer. While that abomination pushed hard to find an action yarn in Hillcoat’s by-all-accounts sobering film, the new trailer is intent on convincing you of another thing altogether: “THE ROAD IS GOING TO INSPIRE YOU AND MAKE YOU CRY!” There’s swelling strings (certainly not taken from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ original score for the film) and even an auditory appearance from perennial sound-engineer’s in-joke ‘Screams 3; Man, Gut-wrenching Scream And Fall Into Distance’ (not to be confused with the Wilhelm scream) amidst a montage of near every moment of vocalised hope and compassion in the book.

See for yourself here.

The Road reaches Australia on January 28^th.

New Avatar Trailer

That score might be a touch overblown, but there’s a lot of encouraging stuff to be found in the new trailer for James Cameron’s titanic romantic sci-fi actioner, Avatar. Having been in attendance on Avatar day, I’m already anticipating this one keenly. For everyone else, this new trailer is the best promo made widely available yet, stuffed with impressive new footage and greater insight into the film’s world and story.

Find it at Yahoo! Movies.

Avatar releases December 17^th. Do yourself a favour and catch it in IMAX.

Damon, Brolin Get Gritty

Old news by now, but not something I can let pass without mention: the Coen brothers are lassoing quite the cast for their new adaptation of Charles Portis’ True Grit. First Jeff Bridges entered talks for the role which earned John Wayne his Oscar in 1970. And now, The Hollywood Reporter revealed last week, the brothers have extended offers to Matt Damon and Josh Brolin for major parts.

Damon, if signed, would step into the role of the Texas Ranger working alongside Bridges’ brusque US marshal to track a murderous outlaw through hostile Indian territory. True Grit would mark his Coen brothers debut. Brolin, reteaming with the brothers for the first time since No Country for Old Men, would play the murdered man, the father of the story’s as-yet-uncast protagonist, a 14-year-old girl.

Full story here.

The Coens’ A Serious Man reaches Australia on November 19^th. It might well be my favourite film so far this year.

Happy Halloween

Hopper Cancels Melbourne Visit Due to Cancer

Unfortunate news for anyone intending to attend ACMI’s upcoming Dennis Hopper events, Dennis Hopper Masterclass and Dennis Hopper in Conversation with David Stratton (myself included): Hopper has been forced to cancel his trip to Australia after announcing he’s suffering from prostate cancer.

Hopper was heading to Melbourne to launch ACMI’s upcoming Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood exhibition, an exclusive retrospective which opens November 12^th. Anyone with tickets to either of the in-person events can contact ACMI on 03 8663 2583 or 03 8663 2200 to organise a refund.

All the best to Hollywood’s easy rider for the rough road ahead — it’s sad news indeed.

Jennifer’s Body Heading Direct to DVD in Australia

No reason for the decision has been divulged (perhaps the lukewarm reception in the US?) but the film which looked from the outside to be one of the easiest sells of fourth-quarter 2009 will no longer be reaching Australian cinemas.

Karyn Kusama’s highschool horror Jennifer’s Body, starring Megan Fox and penned by Juno’s Diablo Cody, will now head directly to DVD in Australia, Twentieth Century Fox Films has announced.

Phuket, Thailand indeed.