The phenomenal success of the Twilight and Harry Potter books prove great fortunate can be found in the arena of high school and adolescent coming of age stories, provided tales of classroom dramas, puberty blues and extra curriculum shenanigans can be mingled with more risqué supplements. Harry Potter brought magic, wizards and witches to the [...]
Just when it looked certain that the eerie success encountered by The Blair Witch Project was a once-off – after all, it’s been ten years since that faux DIY freaking-out-in-the-woods spook fest became an international box office behemoth – another American film financed on a similarly miniscule budget has been greeted with similarly phenomenal success.
Paranormal [...]
Writer/director Rian Johnson’ s 2005 debut feature, Brick, was a bold exercise in genre-merging that combined familiar concepts – the noir thriller and the high school coming of age drama – in unfamiliar ways. It was enigmatic, compelling and heavily stylised, layered with little clues, ciphers, fake outs and pockets of intrigue. His follow up [...]
Star-centric posters featuring large floating heads and a pithy tag line are the film industry’s garden variety marketing one sheets, but here is one cookie cutter image that really works. The poster (left, click to enlarge) is for Clint Eastwood’s new pic Invictus and depicts Matt Damon superimposed onto the back of Morgan Freeman; they [...]
“I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth’s Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock’s “Fingerprints of the Gods”. When I discussed it with (co-writer) Harald (Kloser), I said we need a “plausible” reason, not a scientific one. Show this film [...]
Since making a name for himself in 2001’s indie mind melt Donnie Darko and later as Heath Ledger’s lover in Brokeback Mountain (2005) Jake Gyllenhaal has remained somewhat aloof and left-of-centre from the inner circle of mega-earning A list Hollywood actors, largely avoiding the cha-ching! lure of junky action blockbusters. The big exception is The [...]
In today’s Crikey newsletter I write about the upcoming nano budget indie flick Paranormal Activity and in particular about the extensive (and remarkably successful) online marketing techniques that have been used to promote it. If you’re not a Crikey subscriber (tsk tsk) you can sign up for a free three week trial here. Here’s a [...]
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is arguably the world’s most famous festive season morality fable, a story of spiritual redemption and rediscovered merriment for misanthrope miser Ebenezer “bah humbug!” Scrooge. Jim Carrey, aided by a thick sheen of CGI profiling, plays the über frugal pernicious protagonist with a splendidly uptight aura. It is his second [...]
In The Time Traveler’s Wife Eric Bana plays Henry DeTamble, an unlikeable mope with an uncontrollable tendency to spontaneously melt into nothing and reappear, naked, in another timeframe. As you do.
Rachel McAdams plays his eponymous wife Clare, the ultra tolerant lovesick type who clearly sees in him something nobody else can. Well into this saccharine [...]
While rumours of a Ridley Scott directed live action adaptation of Hasbro’s blockbuster board game Monopoly continue to sporadically surface on the internet (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/03/02/exclusive-ridley-scotts-monopoly-movie-to-address-real-life-economic-problems/) ,thus boggling the brains and testing the gullibility of readers the world over, news surfaced last week of a deal Hasbro has made with Sony Pictures for the rights to a [...]
This Is It was the name of Michael Jackson’s highly anticipated concert tour that was scrapped less than three weeks before opening night, when death interrupted the pasty-faced star’s plans for a comeback. Director Kenny Ortega’s documentary of the same name plays a lot like a concert movie, but given there was never any actual [...]
Earlier this year myself and some Twitter buddies played a game called #nicer filmtitles. As its title suggests, the game all about taking the name of popular films and making them, well, nicer. For example, The Empire Strikes Back becomes The Empire Writes A Strongly Worded Letter. The Day the Earth Stood Still becomes The [...]
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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
In Search of Beethoven
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Phil Grabsky - director of In Search of Beethoven
Jonathan auf der Heide - director of Van Diemen's Land
Ana Kokkinos - director of Blessed
Jeremy Saunders - key art designer
Robert Connolly - writer/director of Balibo
Les Chantery - star of Cedar Boys
Bert Deling - director of Pure Shit
Warwick Thornton - writer/director of Samson & Delilah
Sergei Dvortsevoy - writer/director of Tulpan
Adam Elliot - writer/director of Mary and Max
Mark Forstmann - writer/director of Monkey Puzzle
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