Showing all posts about film
Barbie by Greta Gerwig, a very 2001: A Space Odyssey trailer
18 December 2022
What prompts you to see a movie? An interest in the story? Because you liked the book and are hoping against hope the film adaptation is going to be ok? Maybe you’re a fan of the director, or one of the lead actors? But what about the trailer? Would viewing a trailer — in isolation, without knowing anything about the film — be enough to inspire you to watch a given title?
The teaser/trailer for Barbie, the latest feature from American filmmaker Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, might just the trailer that does it for me…
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2001: A Space Odyssey, film, Greta Gerwig, trailer, video
The Lost King, a film about finding Richard III, by Stephen Frears
10 December 2022
The Lost King, trailer, tells the story — in its own way — of British writer Philippa Langley, and her relentless work to find the body of English King, Richard III, who died at the Battle of Bosworth Field, in the English county of Leicestershire, in 1485.
There’s some serious British talent involved here. Veteran filmmaker Stephen Frears — whose previous work includes My Beautiful Laundrette, The Queen, Tamara Drewe (where I saw him speak at a screening thereof in Sydney in 2011), and Philomena — directs.
Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the screenplay, portrays Langley’s husband, John, while Langley herself is played by Sally Hawkins. Hawkins has to be one of the most prolific actors around. Her career started in 1999 with a role as an extra in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and since then she has been in Cassandra’s Dream, An Education, Never Let Me Go, Made in Dagenham, Submarine, Blue Jasmine, The Shape of Water, and Spencer. To name but a few.
The Lost King opens in Australian cinemas on Monday 26 December 2022.
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film, Sally Hawkins, Stephen Frears, trailer, video
Acting is not a glamorous career says Russell Crowe
7 December 2022
New Zealand born Australian actor Russell Crowe, also president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, speaking at the AACTA Awards this evening:
“The perception of glamour is merely a marketing tool that we take advantage of when it suits us. The reality of a creative life is workdays that never finish, crippling imposter syndrome, and the juggling act of trying to find a way to make your living in the gig economy,” said Crowe.
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Australian film, film, Russell Crowe
Elvis directed by Baz Luhrmann wins eleven AACTA Awards
7 December 2022
Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann has cleaned up at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards, held at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion tonight, with his latest feature Elvis.
Among the eleven ACCTA Awards haul for the Elvis Presley biopic, were best director, best film, best lead actor, going to Austin Butler in the title role, and best supporting actress to Olivia DeJonge, for her portrayal of Priscilla Presley.
Other productions to be recognised included The Stranger, The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, and River, which won the best documentary ACCTA. Full list of winners here.
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Australian film, Baz Luhrmann, film
Trailer for Moja Vesna the debut feature of Sara Kern
27 November 2022
Moja Vesna is the slow-burning, deeply affecting, debut feature of Melbourne based Slovenian-Australian filmmaker Sara Kern, which premiered at the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival. The trailer is certainly gripping.
In Melbourne’s outer suburbs, reticent Moja, her well-meaning Slovenian father Miloš and her volatile older sister Vesna all struggle to cope with the impacts of a significant death. But Vesna is in denial about the demands of late-stage pregnancy and Miloš barely speaks a word of English, so Moja is forced to assume the role of stabilising presence and cultural mediator — with little chance to mourn the loss of their mother.
Moja Vesna commences a theatrical season in Australian cinemas from today.
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film, Sara Kern, trailer, video
Apples a film by Christos Nikou a world without social media
16 November 2022
If we really are witnessing the demise of social media, then Apples, trailer, the 2020 debut of Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou, might offer a glimpse of this brave new world. Of course some people will find the scenario familiar, but others — those who grew up with a parent’s smartphone constantly in their hand — might be left feeling disorientated.
Apples is set in contemporary Athens, the capital of Greece, where the world is in the grip of a pandemic that causes instant, and in many cases, permanent amnesia.
Recently widowed Aris (Aris Servetalis) is one of the virus’s victims. As he was carrying no identity documents at the time he lost his memory, Aris is taken to a hospital where he waits to be “claimed” by friends or relatives. Medical staff warn this may never happen though. His near and dear may have also succumbed to the disease, and no longer have any memory of him.
When it becomes apparent this is the case, Aris is placed on a program that gives patients a new identity and life. He is given an apartment and a living allowance, but must complete a daily task set by his doctors. Instructions are left on a cassette placed in his letterbox, which he listens to on a cassette player. He is also required to photograph his exploits, using a Polaroid camera.
Assignments variously include riding a bike, going to a horror film, and even crashing a car in a low-impact collision with a fence or a tree. The exercises are intended to help victims of the virus create new memories. While on one of his missions, Aris meets Anna (Sofia Georgovassili), herself a virus victim, and they begin to form a bond.
But nothing is quite what it seems to be in this world devoid of an internet, where people must interact in person, or call around to each other’s apartments if they wish to see each other. At times though it seems quite comforting. People appear to live normally, as if the advent of social media and the internet were a passing blip in history.
Could it be that straightforward though? Simply forget the internet — and anything else for that matter — both the convenient and inconvenient it has brought to the world? I doubt it, and so to, I think, do the protagonists in Apples.
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Christos Nikou, film, trailer, video
Academy says Apollo 10 1/2 by Richard Linklater is animation
10 November 2022
American filmmaker Richard Linklater’s animated feature, Apollo 10 1/2, is free to be nominated for an Oscar award in the animation category, following a change of heart by the Oscar animation committee. Last month the Academy ruled the feature was based upon too much live-action footage, and accordingly was ineligible for nomination as animation.
According to the Oscars eligibility rules, an animated film is defined as a “motion picture in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, and usually falls into one of the two general fields of animation: narrative or abstract.”
While Apollo 10 1/2 certainly looks like animation, a technique called rotoscoping was used to make the live-action film used in production look so. The decision is good news for Linklater, and fans of the film. Even if Apollo 10 1/2 had missed out on an animation nomination, it’d doubtless prevail in any other award category it was nominated for, if you ask me.
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film, Oscars, Richard Linklater
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue now a film by Sebastian Lelio
8 November 2022
Manna from heaven is all eleven year old Irish girl Anna O’Donnell needs to sustain herself. She eats no other food. Or so she, and her family, say. Along with the inhabitants of the nineteenth century Irish Midlands village where Anna lives.
Her situation has come to the attention of the authorities. But is it true? Is the girl able to survive without eating? Or is it a stunt? A ploy contrived to lure curious, cashed-up, tourists to the region?
To ascertain whether the phenomenon is a medical anomaly, or perhaps a sign of something more divine, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) an English nurse, is dispatched to investigate.
Together with a nun, Wright will take turns to keep watch on Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), to see what is happening, in Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s adaptation, trailer, of Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel (published by Pan Macmillan) of the same name.
I read the novel in 2019, and am looking forward to seeing the story on the big screen. If the trailer is anything to go by, Lelio’s film looks like a faithful adaptation of Donoghue’s book.
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books, Emma Donoghue, film, Sebastian Lelio, trailer, video
The Neighbors’ Window a short film by Marshall Curry
29 October 2022
Here’s some weekend viewing for you. The Neighbors’ Window, a short film made in 2019 by American filmmaker Marshall Curry, is a story about two middle-aged parents who become obsessed with a twenty-something couple who move into an apartment across the street.
The Neighbors’ Window tells the story of Alli (Maria Dizzia), a mother of young children who has grown frustrated with her daily routine and husband (Greg Keller). But her life is shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street and she discovers that she can see into their apartment.
Any film with the word window in it is just about always going to draw the inevitable comparions to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but as The Neighbors’ Window goes to show, things are never quite what they seem to be.
Based on actual events, as recounted by writer and filmmaker Diane Weipert, Curry’s fictional work has won a slew of awards, including Best Live Action Short at the 2020 Academy Awards.
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The Novelist’s Film a film by Hong Sang-soo
29 October 2022
The Novelist’s Film, trailer, the 2022 feature from Seoul based South Korea filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, casts a spotlight on “the importance of authenticity in the dishonest world of cinema.” And chance encounters.
The story might strike a chord with authors who have been fortunate enough to have a book of theirs adapted to film, though the writer here seems to be taking a slightly unorthodox approach to bringing her novel to the big screen:
A female novelist takes a long trip to visit a bookstore run by a younger colleague who has fallen out of touch. Then she goes up a tower on her own and runs into a film director and his wife. They take a walk in a park and meet an actress, after which the novelist tries to convince the actress to make a film with her. She and the actress get something to eat, then revisit the bookstore where a group of people are drinking. The actress gets drunk and falls asleep.
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