Showing all posts about film
Sydney Film Festival announces first 22 films for 2022
6 April 2022
The Sydney Film Festival has unveiled the first twenty-two movies that will be featured at this year’s event. Among their number is The Passengers of the Night (Les passagers de la nuit), directed by French filmmaker Mikhaël Hers, and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, as a woman trying to get her life back on track.
Election night, 1981. Socialist François Mitterrand has been declared president and there are hopeful celebrations across Paris. But it is not a happy night for Elisabeth (Gainsbourg, Antichrist), whose marriage has come to an unexpected end. She must find the means to support herself and two teenaged children. When she lucks upon a job on her favourite talkback radio show, she meets Talulah (Noée Abita, Slalom, SFF 2021), a charismatic young woman who is struggling, and invites her home. Free-spirit Talulah has a lasting impact, inspiring confidence in each of the family members.
I couldn’t find a trailer, but did locate a clip of this scene from the film.
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film, Mikhaël Hers, Sydney Film Festival, trailer
Little Tornadoes, screenplay co-written by Christos Tsiolkas
6 April 2022
Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas, author of Seven and a Half, teamed up with Melbourne based filmmaker Aaron Wilson to write the screenplay for Little Tornadoes, trailer, which premiered at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival:
Introverted* Leo is a steelworker at his small town’s local plant. After his wife abandons him without explanation, leaving him to care for their two young children, he is bereft – barely able to cook a decent meal or keep the household running. So when a recently-arrived Italian colleague suggests that his sister, Maria, act as surrogate homemaker, Leo reluctantly accepts. But can one woman’s warm, nurturing presence fill the void left by another, and can Leo yield to the winds of change?
Little Tornadoes is set in 1971, and was filmed in Tocumwal, in New South Wales, where Wilson grew up. In a voiceover in the trailer, one of the characters utters the words “so long ago, it was a different country.” I’m not sure of the context of her words, but here the film somehow feels more like it was set in 1921 rather than 1971. Little Tornadoes arrives in Australian cinemas on Thursday 12 May 2022.
*Leo’s either an introvert, or he’s reserved. You cannot be introverted, just like you cannot be called blonded if you have blond hair, right? Pedantic I know…
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Aaron Wilson, Christos Tsiolkas, film, trailer
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes
4 April 2022
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, trailer, directed by Emma Cooper for Netflix, explores the circumstances surrounding the 1962 death of American actor Marilyn Monroe.
[The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes] explores the mystery surrounding the death of movie icon Marilyn Monroe through previously unheard interviews with her inner circle.
While Monroe’s death was ruled suicide through a barbiturate overdose, some people believe Monroe was murdered, despite a police investigation finding no evidence of foul play.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes goes to air on Wednesday 27 April 2022.
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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo film adaptation
29 March 2022
On the subject of books being adapted to film, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Los Angeles based author Taylor Jenkins Reid, is set to be made into a movie, produced by Netflix.
The book, which has recently spent 54 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller Paperback list, four years after publishing, and has turned into a TikTok book phenomenon, follows reclusive Hollywood legend Evelyn Hugo, who chooses an unknown reporter, Monique Grant, to tell her life story. Evelyn recounts her time in the Golden Age of Hollywood, her rise to fame, and her seven marriages — revealing stunning secrets and lies. But through it all one question remains: Why has she chosen Monique for her final confession?
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is on my sprawling TBR list, here’s hoping I’m able to finish reading it before the film arrives.
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film, novels, screen adaptations, Taylor Jenkins Reid
99% of books optioned for film die in development hell
29 March 2022
It must be the dream of every author: to have their book made into a film. But with so many novels and manuscripts in circulation, what are the chances of this happening? Remote, to say the least, I would think. Not that long odds dissuade some writers, particularly first time, or aspiring authors.
I’ve heard literary agents say some budding novelists, when submitting a manuscript, have gone so far as to append a list of actors they’d like to see play the characters in their story, when their novel is inevitably — you understand — adapted for the big screen. This before the manuscript has even found a publisher, let alone anything else.
The exuberant hopes of first time authors aside though, even a genuine, bona fida, movie option on a novel is still no guarantee an author will one day be proudly striding the red carpet at the premiere of their book turned film. In fact, according to American steampunk fiction author Gail Carriger, there’s a mere one percent chance any optioned book will become a film.
Sobering or what? Only one in one hundred novels that have been optioned will end up as a big screen production. One way of looking at an option is to see it as a film producer taking a temporary hold on the film rights of a novel, while they try to find interest, and funding, for a potential movie. In the end — and the process may be protracted — they might not succeed.
While their novel may languish in development hell, there is one small consolation, the author will receive an option payment of some sort, hopefully one that’s relatively generous.
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CODA wins Best Picture, Zack Snyder Oscar Twitter awards
28 March 2022
CODA, trailer, directed by American filmmaker Sian Heder, has been named winner of the Best Picture in the 2022 Oscars. A full list of winners can be seen here.
Meanwhile Zack Snyder has taken out both of the inaugural “people’s choice” awards. He won the #OscarsFanFavorite poll for Army of the Dead, and #OscarsCheerMoment for Justice League.
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film, Oscars, Sian Heder, trailer, Zack Snyder
Diana the Musical wins worst film Razzies gong
28 March 2022
Before the Oscars serve up the best films of the last year (as voted by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at least) this morning Sydney, East Coast of Australia time, over the weekend parody award show the Razzies, announced the worst films of 2021 (in their opinion) for us.
Diana the Musical, directed by Christopher Ashley, was adjudged Worst Picture. With a lowly Metacritic score of twenty-nine though, I guess that wasn’t hard to see coming.
LeBron James was named Worst Actor for his part in Space Jam: A New Legacy, with Jeanna de Waal collecting Worst Actress for her part in the aforementioned Diana the Musical. Meanwhile Jared Leto picked up Worst Supporting Actor for his role in House of Gucci, a film that had been the talk of the town prior to its release.
American actor Bruce Willis won the Golden Raspberry in Worst Performance By Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie, a special category this year, for his work in Cosmic Sin. Willis received eight nominations in this category and must’ve surely been sweating on the outcome.
Update: The Razzies have withdrawn their award for Bruce Willis in their special category “Worst Performance By Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie”, following news of his aphasia diagnosis. Quite right. As a humourous dig, it seemed like a little light-hearted fun, but not anymore.
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The Australian Feature Film Summit 2022
28 March 2022
The Australian Feature Film Summit (AFFS) takes place in Sydney on Thursday 12 May 2022, with the goal of bringing all involved in the feature film production process, including exhibitors, distributors, producers, and investors together for the first time.
The mission of the AFFS is to harness the current success of the Australian feature film sector and strategise how to make more commercially successful and culturally relevant films going forward.
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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Grosvenor, Paul Brennan
22 March 2022
The Summer Hill Grosvenor Theatre, was a grand old cinema that once stood in the inner west Sydney suburb of Summer Hill. The cinema opened in October 1930 and could seat over two-thousand people in its auditorium.
As a cinema though The Grosvenor had something of a chequered history, frequently changing ownership, and opening and closing on numerous occasions. For a short time between cinema operators, the building served as a warehouse. The Grosvenor finally closed as a film-house in 1969, and the building, after becoming dilapidated and vandalised, was demolished a few years later.
The Mysterious Disappearance of the Grosvenor is a documentary made by Australian cinema historian and film distributor Paul Brennan, and brings the The Grosvenor back to life though intricately rendered CGI recreations. It seems inconceivable today to sit in a room with two-thousand other people watching a film.
A short clip of Brennan’s work From Station to Door, offers a glimpse of a long vanished way of life, when a trip to the movies would have been an occasion, a night out on the town, even. This coming from someone who would rather stay at home and stream films.
The two closest classic art deco cinema experiences that come someway to replicating the scale of The Grosvenor that I can think of in Sydney would be the Ritz Cinema, in Randwick, and the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, in Cremorne.
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Australia, cinema, film, Sydney
A trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
19 March 2022
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, trailer, directed by Tom Gormican, seems like it is a movie for movie people, about movie people, by movie people:
A cash-strapped Nicolas Cage agrees to make a paid appearance at a billionaire super fan’s birthday party, but is really an informant for the CIA since the billionaire fan is a drug kingpin and gets cast in a Tarantino movie.
But it is a little more than that. As of the time of writing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was enjoying a one-hundred percent rating on film and television review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. It is a rare distinction, and in doing so rubs shoulders with the likes of Three Colors: Red directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, Singin’ in the Rain from 1952, Slalom, directed by Charlène Favier, and Before Sunrise starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke.
The title’s Metacritic score meanwhile is a slightly more circumspect seventy-eight out of one hundred. A release to look out for nonetheless.
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