September, 2010

Tony Curtis passed away today, aged 85. Curtis was big in the 50s and 60s, earning kudos for his part as a press agent in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and garnering an Oscar nomination for his role in Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958). But Curtis will be best remembered as a cross [...]

The latest offering from the always interesting Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things etc.) is the strange and beautiful 30 minute short I’m Here, which is available to watch in three parts on Youtube (you can watch them all below). The film is based in a sister universe shared [...]

The new trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 gives fans and detractors alike reason to cheer. Fans can work themselves into a frenzy – not that they wouldn’t have otherwise – because it’s probably the most enticing glimpse of a Potter movie yet. Detractors can take some comfort in the knowledge [...]

Coming to terms with the sound, fury and sheer insanity of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies has evolved well beyond the point of morbid fascination, well beyond the shock-tainment of watching something spectacularly awful – like a train crash or a Justin Bieber performance or even a combination of both. I have strange visions: there is [...]

Last week I banged on about Casey Affleck’s “meltdown-umentary” I’m Still Here, which chronicles Joaquin Phoenix’s exit from the confected atmosphere of film sets and his journey into the more (supposedly) liberating surrounds of night clubs and recording studios, where he flexes his rhymes as a neophyte wannabe rapper. Unsurprisingly the first question that pops [...]

Here’s a whiff of news from the casting couch bound to surprise and please (or perhaps even mortify) Freddie Mercury fans: Borat and Bruno star Sacha Baron Cohen has signed on to play the flamboyant Queen frontman in an upcoming biopic, according to a statement released this week by GK films. The yet-to-be-titled film will [...]

The big question hanging over actor-cum-director Casey Affleck’s so-called “meltdown-umentary” about two-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix is whether or not this film is one gigantic ruse. Was Phoenix serious in 2008 when he announced he was quitting his acting career to pursue life as a rapper? Was his spectacularly awkward interview on David Letterman for [...]

Aside from pointing towards Angelina Jolie’s smouldering good looks – those moony soul-piercing eyes, the chunky cherry ripe lips, the wet gothic visage which never dries or dissipates, as if the wind changed one fateful day and froze her face into the shape of a beautiful ancient gargoyle – nobody appears to be capable of [...]

Stuart Beattie is a rare figure in the Australian film industry: an Aussie who moved to America and made a living in Hollywood as a writer for large scale films bankrolled by major production studios. His credits include the Oscar-winning Collateral (2003), Derailed (2005), 30 Days of Night (2007) and the Pirates of the Caribbean [...]

This posts features Cinetology’s first guest reviewer, Emma Jane, a fan of controversial filmmaker Bruce LaBruce (pictured, left) and a student undertaking a combined Literature and Cinema honours degree at Monash University. She also contributes to Screenmachine.tv. But first, a quick intro from myself or you can skip straight to her review. By now many [...]

The most successful New Zealand film of all time – and for the record The Lord of the Rings series doesn’t count, given they were largely funded by American production studios and we all knew Kiwis would never be able to front up that much dosh anyway – is this modest humdinger from director Taika [...]

Richard Wolstencroft, director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), has responded to a series of questions in relation to this blog post, which was originally published last Thursday (September 2) and focused on an online smear campaign against him conducted by an ex-MUFF volunteer with some heavy accusations and a big axe to grind. [...]

One of the most provocative and darkly stylish trailers I’ve seen for a long time is this rather stunning and disturbing peek at writer/director Jason Eisener’s sure-to-be-exploitation film Hobo with a Shotgun. Check out the trailer below; it reeks of grindhouse. Starring Rutger Hauer as the eponymous hobo, the film begins with his character – [...]

Piranha 3D presents the perversely satisfying thrill of watching swarms of great looking beachgoers having the time of their lives – bikinis, booze, pumping beats, shots of tequila licked out of belly buttons, that sort of thing – then seeing them scurry for survival as the soon-to-be dead meat for an influx of hyper human [...]