January, 2011

Documentary filmmakers and their subjects have always blurred the line between truth and fiction, reality and performance. The distortions are often accidental – we know, for example, that the presence of a camera changes how participants behave – and at times deliberately manipulative: we see filmmakers prone to misrepresenting facts, forging spurious connections in service [...]

No working American filmmakers are as prolific, diverse and consistently impressive as the inimitable Coen Brothers, who have maintained the moviemaking Midas touch for almost three decades and continue to surprise. The Coens’ add hard-boiled classical western to their ever-expanding oeuvre with True Grit, adapting a novel by Charles Portis which was also the source [...]

Early this morning the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 2011 Oscar nominations, giving Australian film buffs good reason to crack open an extra Australia Day drink or two. Jacki Weaver has been nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her eerily enthralling performance as a crime family matriarch in journalist-cum-director [...]

Last week some interesting news emerged from the Hollywood casting couch, and although I’m a tad late here’s a quick recap of the two biggest announcements. Speculation finally ended over which villains will appear in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises (the title, some wags have squawked, is a reference to Batman’s [...]

After filling in for Steve Price over the last few weeks Melbourne Talk Radio host and all round nice guy Luke Grant has returned to his usual Monday to Friday evenings slot, bringing back our weekly movie discussion segment. In his absence I’ve been yacking with the minor media personalities MTR trundled in to fill [...]

The Australian film industry is regularly bogged down in bad press for reasons real or imagined. Common gripes include: Australian films are too wanky and pretentious; Australian films are too shallow and stupid; Australian film funders don’t “get it” and, most regularly and most crucially, Australian films don’t make any money.

Writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s melodramatic psychosexual thriller Black Swan plunges viewers into a familiar storytelling context – the blurry line between genius and insanity, this time tightroped by a self-consuming ballerina – and stretches its nightmarish hyper reality to damn near breaking point. By the sin of ambition, wrote Shakespeare, “fell the angels,” and the film [...]

Superhero movies have a way of sucking the credibility out of Hollywood actors – even those who didn’t have much to begin with. Brandon Routh’s career stocks plummeted after donning the undies-outside-your-pants-look in the dreadful Superman Returns (2006). Billy Zane is still red in the face from squeezing into the purple suit in The Phantom [...]

The real dilemma in watching Ron Howard’s new movie is not the one the characters mull over – whether a man should tell his best buddy that his wife is having an affair, which is obviously YES – but rather what to make of this noodle-scratching dramedy and the spectacular incompetency the veteran director exhibits. [...]

To mark the Australian theatrical release of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s docu-mystery Catfish, Cinetology give readers the chance to win one of 30 double passes to attend advanced screenings of the film valid at participating cinemas nationwide this weekend (January 21 – January 23). Here’s a snippet from Peter Bradshaw’s review: Catfish keeps you on [...]

To mark the Australian theatrical release of True Grit, the acclaimed new film from the Coen Brothers, Cinetology is giving Melbourne readers the chance to win one of 30 double passes to attend a special sneak preview on Tuesday January 18 at 6:30pm at Cinema Nova. The film opens nationwide January 26. Starring Jeff Bridges, [...]

The financial woes that halted the production of the next James Bond movie have finally been dodged, with the announcement today that the new owners of MGM have given the 23rd Bond instalment a green light. Last November I wrote about MGM’s slow trek towards a financial second life after a long stretch of tinkering [...]

At Panasonic’s annual CES conference in Las Vegas last week an inaugural ‘Director’s Visions’ panel discussion took place between Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann. The three filmmakers traded opinions on Blu-ray, particularly how its capabilities relate to a medium in which, as the suit from Twentieth Century Fox who introduced the panel observed [...]

Director Roger Michell’s feel good comedy Morning Glory, set in the sleep deprived world of early morning TV broadcasting, is a lightweight crowd pleaser that makes very strong and very different statements about its two top billing stars. The first is that Rachel McAdams, whose bubbly champagne charisma and girl next door good looks are [...]

Remember that scene in Forrest Gump, pictured above, in which dopey ol’ Forrest recites his somewhat unsophisticated views on the relationship between life and a box of chocolates? Remember the advertisement for Coca-Cola on the street bench behind him? If you answered yes to the last question, think again: that ad was never in Robert [...]