Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au being adapted to film

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Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au being adapted to film

26 November 2024

Australian author Jessica Au’s multi-award winning 2022 novel, Cold Enough for Snow, is being made into a film, says publisher Giramondo. No word yet as to who the lead actors will be, but production is scheduled to commence in 2025, and will be the debut feature of Jemima James.

Fingers crossed this is a faithful adaptation. If you haven’t yet read Cold Enough for Snow, now’s the time. It’s not a long read, but the ending sure packs a wallop.

Unification, a short Star Trek film, in memory of Leonard Nimoy

20 November 2024

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the 1994 release of Star Trek Generations, comes Unification, which kind of picks ups after the conclusion of Generations.

But it’s also a whirlwind jaunt through The Original Series (TOS) universe. There’s a cameo by Gary Lockwood, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, who featured in Where No Man Has Gone Before, the third episode of the first TV series of Star Trek, made in 1966. Robin Curtis, who portrayed Saavik in 1984’s The Search for Spock, also appears.

If, like me, you were wondering how it all came together, Trekmovie has a great explainer about Unification’s production:

The characters from Star Trek history were brought to life through live-action performances, including Sam Witwer as young James T. Kirk and Lawrence Selleck as Spock. According to OTOY, they were filmed in costume, performing as Kirk and Spock on set, aided by “both physical and digital prosthetics resulting in period-accurate portrayals matching the appearance of the characters as they originally appeared in TV and film at the time.” William Shatner and Susan Bay Nimoy, widow of the late Leonard Nimoy, served as executive producers on the production.

Might this be Star Trek Seven, in TOS universe?

Merchant Ivory, a James Ivory, Ismail Merchant documentary, by Stephen Soucy

19 November 2024

Filmmakers James Ivory, the late Ismail Merchant, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who collaborated as Merchant Ivory, made over forty features between 1963 and 2009. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any well-known actor of recent decades who did not work with them.

My favourite is A Room with a View, which I’ve written about a few times, though The Remains of the Day, is also up there. Now a documentary, appropriately titled Merchant Ivory, trailer, which chronicles their work and lives, has been made by Stephen Soucy. Required viewing for fans, I think.

Blitz, a movie by Steve McQueen, with Saoirse Ronan

18 November 2024

I’ve ended up seeing a stack of movies featuring Irish-American actor Saoirse Ronan, over the years. Tracking all the way back to Atonement in 2007, I think. Maybe I’m not so much of a Ronan fan, as I am the movies she’s in.

But it’s an impressive list of titles. The Lovely Bones, The Way Back, Hanna, Violet & Daisy, The Host, How I Live Now, The Grand Budapest Hotel, directed by Wes Anderson, Brooklyn, On Chesil Beach, Ammonite, The French Dispatch, again, directed by Wes Anderson, and finally, Foe. It could be then, I am as much a fan of Ronan, as the films she’s in.

Curiously, her latest film, Blitz, trailer, directed by British filmmaker Steve McQueen, and has some eerie parallels with Atonement. Both include World War II settings in London, and tube stations, where civilians sheltered during Nazi bomb raids.

Blitz screened as part of this year’s British Film Festival, along with another title starring Ronan, The Outrun, directed by Nora Fingscheidt. Talk about prolific output.

Star Bores: A Few Cope, as fourth Star Wars trilogy announced

11 November 2024

For years I was excited by the prospect of a Star Wars sequel trilogy. This, long before what became episodes seven through nine, were even announced. I used to burn the midnight oil reading fan-written Star Wars EU plots and stories, that were published on various Star Wars forums and wikis.

But all three films, when they were eventually released, were underwhelming. The Last Jedi, the only one I remotely liked, seemed to be hated by just about everyone else. But I think the Disney produced sequel trilogy, made after series creator George Lucas had sold Disney the franchise, was hamstrung by the expectations of EU storylines, some of which were decades old by that stage.

Of course, the EU stories were not canon, or official, and differed considerably — to say the least — from Lucas’ vision of a third trilogy. Nonetheless, they prominently featured many of the Star Wars characters we knew and loved, as they struggled to build the New Republic. When the first sequel trilogy film, The Force Awakens (the very title was a portent of things to come…) arrived, we all expected to see the old gang back together again. Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbecca, R2D2, C3PO, plus other hangers-on, who’d joined in as the original trilogy progressed.

Instead we had a confusing array of new characters, Han Solo wearing the same bloody clothes from twenty-years earlier, and director J.J. Abrams, borrowing heavily from Episode Four, A New Hope. I thought to myself: I have a bad feeling about this. Abrams that is, having seen him in action in the re-booted Star Trek films. I knew it was over there the moment Star Trek villain Khan (re)entered the frame in Star Trek into Darkness.

Now a fourth trilogy is apparently in the works. Where this story goes, or who exactly is involved, remains to be seen at this stage. Naturally the Star Wars name will get people along to the cinema to see whatever eventuates, but I wonder what interest this new trilogy will have to early Star Wars fans.

Despite the cameo appearances by the likes of Luke, Leia, Han Solo, et el, episodes seven to nine, did not feel like Star Wars stories. They were a galaxy removed from the earlier instalments, and the magic of the Lucas made films, present even in the prequel trilogy, was nowhere to be found.

But we can live in hope. Dare I say: new hope. After all, Disney has access to some great writing talent, perhaps something amazing is on the way. Until then, may the fourth trilogy be with you…

Great movie title drops are like clever cameo appearances

8 November 2024

Title Drops, by Germany based data visualisation designer and developer Dominikus Baur, analyses the number of times a movie’s title is mentioned during the story.

It’s something that’s not always possible though. I’m looking at 2001: A Space Odyssey, as an example. Although if you can think of a way it could, somehow, happen, let me know. Time-travel classic Back to the Future, however, is, I think, the gold-standard when it comes to title drops.

I’m not sure movies named for a main character, Barbie for instance, really count. It’s surely a given their name will come into the conversation sooner or later. But something like: “next Saturday night, we’re sending you back to the future“, is self-referential in both a smart, and funny, way.

One thing that seems apparent form the data here is that title drops are becoming more frequent.

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From thousands to millions: the film budgets of Stanley Kubrick

29 October 2024

Late American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick made his first feature, Fear and Desire, on a budget of a little over fifty-thousand dollars (US), in 1952. Almost thirty-years later, Kubrick had a budget of nineteen million dollars to make The Shining.

I expect many successful filmmakers move along a similar budget trajectory. But it sounds like Kubrick was boot-strapping to the max, during the production of Fear and Desire:

I then found out how much feature films were being made for, you know, millions, and I calculated that I could make a feature film for about $10,000…by projecting the amount of film I’d shoot, figuring that I could get actors to work for practically nothing. I mean at this point I was the whole crew, cameraman, assistant cameraman, you know, director, everything.

As a comparison, 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968, and easily my favourite Kubrick movie, came with a ten million dollar price tag. Over budget, and almost a year and half behind schedule, but worth every cent. Watch this trailer for 2001, made in 2018, and tell me I’m wrong.

Juice: the new cli-fi novel by Australian author Tim Winton

2 October 2024

Juice is the latest novel by Australian author Tim Winton, which was published yesterday. From this synopsis, Juice sounds like it blends elements of the Max Mad saga, with Winton’s own environmental and climate change concerns:

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.

I heard Winton speak about six-and-a-half years ago at the Sydney premiere of Breath, a film based on his 2009, Miles Franklin award winning, novel of the same name. The feature was directed by, and starred, Australian actor Simon Baker, also present that evening.

Winton was one of the screenwriters of the Breath film adaptation. That’s a smart move, get the author of the book being adapted, to co-write the screenplay. Where possible of course. Quite a number of Winton’s books have been made into movies, so it seems like there’s a good chance Juice will follow suit.

Vale British actor Maggie Smith, Harry Potter, A Room with a View, star

30 September 2024

I’m pretty sure the 1984 film, A Room with a View, made by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, was my introduction to the work of British stage and screen actor Maggie Smith, who died last week, aged 89. I’d been trying to read the 1908 novel of the same name, by E.M. Forster, but was struggling, as I seem to with the classics. It was then I found out about the film adaptation.

In it, Smith played the role of Charlotte Bartlett, who was chaperon to her younger cousin, Lucy Honeychurch, portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter, during a visit to Italy. Smith and Bonham Carter would go on to work together again in the some of the Harry Potter films.

As a screen actor, Smith was not only an amazing talent, she was also prolific, featuring in over eighty films, so there’s a good chance you’ve seen her in at least one movie. Some of her credits include A Private Function, Romeo.Juliet, Richard III, Gosford Park, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet, The Lady in the Van, and 2019’s Downton Abbey.

Going back to A Room with a View though, and I may not be popular for saying this, but here I think is an instance of the film easily being better than the book.

Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition now on in Melbourne

20 September 2024

Photography exuding the aesthetic of American filmmaker Wes Anderson, is on show in Australia at the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition, in Melbourne, until early November 2024.

“Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” is a journey through more than 200 of the most beautiful, idiosyncratic, and interesting places on Earth — all seemingly plucked from the whimsical world of Wes Anderson. 10 themed areas provide you a personal passport to visual inspiration and adventure with amazing photography and immersive moments throughout.

Surely a treat for Wes Anderson fans, and an excuse (for some of us) to visit the southern capital.

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