Showing all posts about film
WHAM! The story of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, by Chris Smith
8 July 2023
There’s an old saying in the place where I reside: if you remember Wham! you were in the eighties.
Wham! as in the out of control mega-successful British pop duo of the late George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley. A new documentary of the same name, directed by American filmmaker Chris Smith, and produced by Netflix, recounts Michael and Ridgeley’s days in Wham! through archival interviews and footage, and previously unheard audio interviews. See the trailer here.
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Chris Smith, documentary, film, history
Barbie film banned in Vietnam over Nine-dash line map scene
7 July 2023
American actor and filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s new film Barbie, has been banned by Vietnam’s Department of Cinema, on account of a scene depicting a map of the South China Sea. The map in question features the “nine-dash line“, which represents a territorial claim over the waters by China, a claim Vietnam, and indeed an international court, have dismissed.
But Barbie isn’t alone in being banned in Vietnam. Pine Gap, a TV mini-series made in Australia in 2018, was likewise not broadcast for the same reason.
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current affairs, film, Greta Gerwig
The Bechdel test, a joke but cool, says Alison Bechdel
5 July 2023
Devised in 1985 by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, though Bechdel says a friend, Liz Wallace, thought of it, the Bechdel test has become a well-known metric by which to gauge a film. To pass the Bechdel test, a movie must meet the following requirements:
- Feature at least two women…*
- who talk to each other…
- about something other than a man
Think of the last movie you saw. Does it pass? I watched American filmmaker Kris Rey’s 2020 movie I Used to go Here the other night, which does. I last mentioned the Bechdel test when I wrote about a fanciful remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey, about eighteen months ago. While it could be argued the Stanley Kubrick made original passes the Bechdel, if only just, that didn’t appear to be the case for the “proposed” remake. At least, not based on the information available, that is.
But here’s something, in a recent interview for The Guardian with British journalist and author Hephzibah Anderson, Bechdel says the test was never meant to be a tool for assessing a film:
It was a joke. I didn’t ever intend for it to be the real gauge it has become and it’s hard to keep talking about it over and over, but it’s kind of cool.
The Bechdel test isn’t only cool though, I think it’s an essential mechanism for filmmakers to work by.
* another provision states the featured women should be named.
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Leslye Headland to direct The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo film adaptation
4 July 2023
Well over a year after a screen adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2017 novel The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo was announced, American filmmaker and screenwriter Leslye Headland has been named as director. Reid’s work of historical fiction spent over a year on The New York Times best seller list, after becoming a TikTok sensation in 2021.
The story recounts the life and times of Hollywood Golden Age star Evelyn Hugo, who, at age 79, grants a rare interview to an unknown journalist, Monique Grant. The now reclusive Hugo promises to reveal all to Grant, much to the chagrin, and envy, of Grant’s better known contemporaries. While Grant is as surprised as anyone else at being chosen, Hugo has a reason for selecting her.
So far there is no word on who will be cast, but earlier this year fans of the novel were clamouring for Jessica Chastain to take the role of redhead Celia St. James, Hugo’s foil and friend.
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books, film, Leslye Headland, novels, screen adaptations, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Bill Murray had Asteroid City cameo appearance, sort of
3 July 2023
A scene from Bill Murray’s “cameo” in Wes Anderson’s film Asteroid City.
American actor Bill Murray has starred in all but two of Wes Anderson’s feature length films. Murray missed participating in Anderson’s latest, Asteroid City, after being side-lined by a Covid infection. Murray had been cast as a motel manager, but Steve Carell was brought in instead at the last minute.
But that didn’t stop the veteran actor, and Anderson stalwart, from making an appearance on the Asteroid City set, after he had recovered. In a “retro” trailer, posted by the New Yorker, Murray can be seen in a specially created role, walking through the township, where he meets Jason Schwartzman, who in this instance portrays someone called Jones.
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Bill Murray, film, science fiction, Wes Anderson
A Room with a View, a brilliantly romantic film with Julian Sands
3 July 2023
Perfectly made, beautifully acted and pitch-perfect. Charlotte Higgins, writing for The Guardian, of A Room with a View, the 1985 Merchant Ivory film that launched the careers of British actors Helena Bonham Carter, and the late Julian Sands:
The film, in a small way, has followed me. Not unconnected with having loved the film, as a student I did travel around Italy, with a friend, and wandered around Santa Croce, and gazed at the Arno, and took a trip to the hills above Florence, though without, alas for us, romantic incident. On the morning of my 21st birthday I woke up in a house in rural Tuscany to be given, by a friend, a mixtape containing O mio babbino caro, the soaring, glorious aria from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi that we hear as the film’s opening titles roll.
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Vale British actor Julian Sands, star of A Room with a View
29 June 2023
Julian Sands and Helena Bonham Carter, in a still from A Room with a View.
The remains of British actor Julian Sands, who had been missing since January this year, after setting off on a hike on Mount Baldy, in California, were located earlier this week. Sands’ disappearance sparked a large search effort, which was hampered by dangerous storms in the region.
Sands was a prolific film and television actor. His credits include The Killing Fields, The Phantom of the Opera, Ocean’s Thirteen, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to name a few. His breakthrough role however is considered to be that of George Emerson, in the 1985 film adaptation of late British author E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel, A Room with a View.
Made close to forty years ago now, the romance drama, set in Italy and England, was the intersection of an amazing array of acting and production talent. Acclaimed producers James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant, who collaborated under the banner of Merchant Ivory, produced and directed. Late German novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, wrote the screenplay.
As George Emerson, Sands played a love interest of protagonist Lucy Honeychurch, portrayed by compatriot actor Helena Bonham Carter, which was likewise seen as her breakout role. George was pitched against another of Lucy’s suitors, Cecil Vyse, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in what was also one of his earlier film performances.
Veteran British actor Maggie Smith portrayed Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy’s older cousin, and chaperon during their trip to Italy. Smith and Bonham Carter would later work together in some of the Harry Potter films. Judy Dench featured in a supporting role as a novelist called Eleanor Lavish.
Denholm Elliott as George’s father, Rupert Graves as Lucy’s brother Freddy, and Simon Callow, as a vicar, Mr Beebe, also featured. New Zealand opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa sang O mio babbino caro, an aria from Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s 1917 comic opera Gianni Schicchi, on the soundtrack.
While Sands appeared to not be nominated for any awards for his performance in A Room with a View, the film won in three categories in the 1987 Oscars, and four in the British Academy Film Awards in the same year. For anyone wishing to learn more about Sands’ work and career though, A Room with a View, is an essential, and excellent, starting point.
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books, E. M. Forster, film, Helena Bonham Carter, Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, Julian Sands
An Oscar Award for film stunts may be on the way
25 June 2023
American filmmaker Chad Stahelski, possibly best known for directing the John Wick films, starring Keanu Reeves, believes an Oscar Award for movie stunts is forthcoming.
While promoting the latest instalment of the franchise, John Wick: Chapter 4, earlier this year, Stahelski, a stunt actor himself, said he spent time talking to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who present the Oscars annually, and described the process as “incredibly positive”:
In a recent interview with ComicBookMovie.com to mark the Blu-ray release of “John Wick: Chapter 4,” Stahelski announced that conversations about a stunt Oscar have finally taken place “in the last couple of months” between the Academy and a contingent of stunt coordinators.
“We’ve been meeting with members of the Academy and actually having these conversations, and, to be honest, it’s been nothing but incredibly positive, incredibly instructional,” Stahelski said. “I think, for the first time, we’ve made real movement forward to making this happen.”
Earlier this year, entertainment and culture magazine Vulture, frustrated by the Academy’s apparent lack of interest in the matter, established their own awards for film stunts. Winners, who were announced in March 2023, included Top Gun: Maverick (surprise, surprise), The Batman, and Nope.
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awards, film, film production, Oscars
The Last Daughter a film by Nathaniel Schmidt, Brenda Matthews
21 June 2023
For decades until the 1970’s, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families by successive Australian governments. These children became known as the Stolen Generations. Indigenous woman Brenda Matthews was taken from her family aged two, and placed in the care of a white family.
Matthews was later returned to her birth family after her biological mother regained custody of her. The The Last Daughter, trailer, a documentary which Matthews co-directs with Nathaniel Schmidt, recounts her story as she attempts to trace her adoptive, loving, white foster family, while learning more about her Indigenous family.
The Last Daughter is presently screening in selected Australian cinemas.
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Australia, documentary, film, history, Indigenous culture
Behind the scenes images from the making of Asteroid City by Wes Anderson
14 June 2023
Design magazine Wallpaper* has published a selection of photos taken during the production of the new Wes Anderson film, Asteroid City. Anderson worked with his long-time collaborator, production designer Adam Stockhausen, to create the trademark “Andersonesque” sets of Asteroid City:
Stockhausen achieved the hyperrealistic quality of Asteroid City through the use of forced perspective: the town becomes desert and bleeds into the horizon, all on a set the size of a football field and its boundaries seemingly imperceptible.
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