Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film by Peter Weir, released fifty years ago

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Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film by Peter Weir, released fifty years ago

9 August 2025

Yesterday, Friday 8 August, marked fifty years since Picnic at Hanging Rock, trailer, premiered in Adelaide, South Australia. They story about some students of a girls’ school who go missing during a picnic, continues to captivate, and baffle, film watchers.

The Sydney born Australian filmmaker Peter Weir has made a slew of top-notch movies. These include Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, and The Truman Show, but Picnic at Hanging Rock is by far — to my mind at least — his most enigmatic.

The screenplay was based on the 1967 novel of the same name, by late Australian author Joan Lindsay. Much of mystery enveloping the film stemmed from the belief it was based on actual events. The story is in fact fiction (thankfully).

I re-watched Picnic at Hanging Rock a few years ago, and soon after saw a lesser known Weir feature, The Plumber, which is truly bat shit mad/disturbing. Take a look at the trailer. If not already, Weir’s work should be required learning at Australian film schools.

War of the Worlds 2025, with Ice Cube, scores ZERO on Rotten Tomatoes

8 August 2025

Jesse Hassenger, writing for The Guardian:

The real question is how audiences have made it through an unconvincing cheapie like War of the Worlds — a sci-fi epic that seems to take place in real time yet features a vast and coordinated worldwide mobilization of multiple armed forces — without shutting it off in disgust (it boasts a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Check out the trailer. The 2025 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel — published as a book in 1898 — directed by American filmmaker Rich Lee, had been sitting in the store room since production wrapped five years ago.

War of the Worlds’ zero percent score on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, is in sharp contrast to the one-hundred percent score achieved by 2022’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. At least for a time.

I only learned a few years ago Wells’ novel has an Australian connection, being written as a protest against the treatment of Indigenous/First Nations people in Tasmania, at the hands of British colonisers. In a bid to sway public opinion, Wells portrayed a terrifying invasion of England by powerful extra-terrestrials, to help people comprehend the atrocities taking place in Australia.

Cast of The Castle reunite, but not for a sequel, nor a prequel

16 July 2025

Alisha Buaya, writing for Media Week:

Uber has reunited Australian film icons, stars of The Castle, Michael Caton, Stephen Curry and Anthony Simcoe, to highlight Uber Green’s transition to a fully electric rideshare product.

The Castle was made by Australian actor, comedian, and filmmaker, Rob Sitch. The 1997 film is a feel good, David versus Goliath comedy, about a working class family attempting to stop property developers taking their home, their castle, away from them.

But wait until you see where the home is located.

The Uber promotion informs riders they now have the option to hire an EV for their journey. As yet, I’m not sure just how much of The Castle — aside from the stars — comes into this.

Emulate Wes Anderson with Shoot Like Wes, a book by Adam Woodward and Liz Seabrook

3 July 2025

Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, on the set of Wes Anderson's film Asteroid City

Perhaps the world is still sufficiently pre-peak the work of American filmmaker Wes Anderson, to the point that photographers still want to emulate his style in their work. If you believe the former, and are among the latter, then Shoot Like Wes, a book by British journalist and film critic Adam Woodward, and London based photographer Liz Seabrook, might be for you.

Inspired by the distinctive vision of director Wes Anderson, Shoot Like Wes is packed with rich imagery and in-depth analysis of the auteur’s remarkable body of work. This is the only guide you’ll need to create your own cinematic masterpiece, transforming everyday scenes into vibrant, storytelling moments worthy of the big screen.

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books, film, photography, Wes Anderson

Fifteen years ago, my interview with Claire McCarthy, Australian filmmaker

30 June 2025

In 2010, Claire McCarthy’s publicity company kindly gave me the opportunity to ask her about her then upcoming film, The Waiting City, which starred Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton. I published the interview on this day fifteen years ago.

I remember feeling a tad apprehensive preparing my questions as I hadn’t seen the film beforehand, and subsequently didn’t think they were particularly original. All seemed to be well (or well enough) on the night though, as they say.

Margaret Pomeranz, David Stratton, join Australian Film Walk of Fame

28 June 2025

Colloquially referred to as Margaret and David, the long time Australian film critics became, on Sunday 1 June 2025, the first non-actors to be inducted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame.

The pair are perhaps best known for the two film review television shows they co-hosted, The Movie Show, on SBS, from 1986 until 2004, and then At the Movies, on ABC, from 2004 through to 2014.

Among other roles, Stratton served as director of the Sydney Film Festival from 1966 until 1983. Pomeranz meanwhile was a prominent anti-censorship activist, and was once detained by police during a protest. Despite the warmth of their professional partnership, they often disagreed with each other as to the merits of a film. This became a distinguishing hallmark of their collaboration.

In the earlier days of disassociated I wrote a fair bit about film, and often saw Pomeranz and Stratton at various previews screenings and other events. Stratton hosted a conversation with Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 2006.

One evening, while waiting to go into a preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Sydney in 2012, Pomeranz walked right passed me, as she was leaving the earlier screening. “Any good?” I asked her. She nodded politely in response.

The Australian Film Walk of Fame plague awarded to Pomeranz and Stratton earlier this month, is the second one presented this year. In recent years, the Walk, located outside the Ritz Cinema, in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, has been a little quiet. Is this something of a Film Walk of Fame revival?

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the third and final Downton film

25 June 2025

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, trailer, directed by Simon Curtis, with a fair chunk of long time Downton cast members reprising their roles, will be released globally on Friday 12 September 2025.

I’ve only ever seen series three of the original TV show, which aired in the second half of 2012, and that’s because I was gifted the DVD set of the series some years later. I saw the first spin-off film, simply named Downton Abbey in 2019, but missed the 2022 follow-up, Downton Abbey: A New Era.

It’s tricky to work out what’s happening based on the little of the story we see in the trailer for The Grand Finale. One thread of the preview seems to revisit the earlier part of series three, where the possibility the Crawley family would have to leave the Abbey, loomed large. But who knows.

There’s no missing the finality of that title though.

On Falling, a film by Laura Carreira, with Joana Santos

24 June 2025

We order an item from an online retailer, submit payment, and a few days later it arrives in a box on the doorstep. Most convenient.

On Falling, trailer, the debut feature of Edinburgh, Scotland, based Portuguese filmmaker Laura Carreira, explores the lesser seen, behind the scenes, side of this ostensibly expedient process.

Aurora (Joana Santos), is a Portuguese immigrant living in Scotland. She works in a distribution warehouse, likely being paid below minimum wage rates, and at the end of her shift retreats to her single room apartment, where she lives alone.

On Falling is bleak drama, but the sort I like. The film premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, last September, and has been in limited release, mainly in Europe.

I can’t, as yet, find any information about a cinematic run in Australia, so this might be one to stream.

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film, Joana Santos, Laura Carreira

David Wenham inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame

7 June 2025

Talking of the erstwhile Australian Film Festival, as I was earlier this week, word has reached me that Brisbane based Australian actor David Wenham was admitted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame in February 2025. The induction coincided with a screening of Spit, Wenham’s then most recent work, at the Ritz Cinema, in Randwick, Sydney.

Anyone who has seen Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, 300: Rise of an Empire, or Elvis by Baz Luhrmann, will have seen some of Wenham’s work. Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach, was one I particularly liked. The pavement outside the Ritz is adorned with the plagues of the twelve Australian actors who have so far been inducted to the Walk.

(Thanks Stef AKA Coffee Girl)

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Australian film, David Wenham, film

All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, a film by Louise Alston

2 June 2025

All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane is the sequel to rom-com All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, made in 2007, also directed by Australian filmmaker Louise Alston. The story to Leaving Brisbane, which was also Alston’s debut feature, goes something like this:

Anthea is 25, single and hates her job — and all her friends are leaving Brisbane. Should she follow the herd to the big city? Is there anything worth staying for now that her best friend Michael finally has a girlfriend?

All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, however, is not a linear sequel. Alston refers to it as a “spiritual” sequel, which tells the story of a woman, Cris, who returns to Brisbane after ten years in London:

Cris returns to Brisbane after being in London for a decade, having just been dumped by her fiancé. She finds herself working alongside her ex who refused to leave Brisbane to be with her ten years ago, and is now married with a child.

I’m yet to see Leaving Brisbane, though I did catch Alston’s 2010 feature, Jucy, at the sadly defunct Australian Film Festival in 2011.

There’s also a few crossovers between Jucy and Back in Brisbane in Nelle Lee, who co-starred in the former, and Stephen Vagg, Alston’s husband, who wrote the screenplays for both, plus of course Leaving Brisbane. No word yet as to when it will screen in cinemas, Back in Brisbane is presently in post-production, but I’ve read sometime in 2025.

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