May, 2011

In a joint statement released by New Line, Warner Bros and MGM, the titles of Peter Jackson’s upcoming two The Hobbit films have been announced. The press release was distributed through Facebook and also confirms the (US) release dates for the two films, with worldwide openings inevitably not long after. The first film, slated for [...]

This week I’m kicking off a new Cinetology feature. Every Sunday I’ll compile a list of links to some of the more interesting film-related stories published online over the last week. This list is not intended to be extensive; it is merely a compilation of interesting articles published from various outlets. If you’ve read a [...]

Last night on Melbourne Talk Radio I discussed The Hangover 2 and the new Australian film The Tunnel with the always entertaining Luke Grant. I kicked my spot off with a ramble about the safe injecting rooms debate, one of the issues Luke previously discussed, but rest assured we do get around to yaking about films. Listen [...]

Those bleary-eyed soggy brained The Hangover boys are back, nursing more king hell headaches and attempting to fill in crater sized holes in their brains caused by alcohol and spontaneous feats of lunacy. The follow-up to director Todd Phillips’s surprise 2009 hit, The Hangover 2 takes the cookie cutter sequel approach of identifying all the [...]

Director Carlo Ledesma’s subterranean spook-fest The Tunnel is an underground film in a literal sense — it is largely based in dilapidated tunnels and bunkers below metropolitan Sydney — and an above the ground film in a sense the local industry has never seen before. The Tunnel’s unprecedented distribution strategy, in which it officially “opened” [...]

Snowtown is the uncompromising debut feature of director Justin Kurzel, who depicts the lives of the infamous ‘bodies in the barrels’ killers leading up to their incarceration in the late 90′s. It was always going to be a tricky project to approach, given the film raises obvious ethical questions about how to represent the murderers [...]

It’s hard to know where to begin with an obituary of Bill Hunter, the well-loved Australian actor who passed away last night in a Melbourne hospice from cancer, age 71. So many roles, so many classics. Hunter appeared in more than 60 films and was much more than a go-to guy for gruff true blue [...]

Last weekend I watched director Brendan Fletcher’s Aboriginal drama Mad Bastards and decided to do something different to writing a straight-up review. Below I explain what I see as a striking (and completely unnoticed) correlation between the federal government’s mental health initiatives and the dominant theme in Australian films so far in 2011. The article below combines [...]

Another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, another excursion into cinema as an extended amusement park ride. Lots of weird places to visit, lots of crazy things to gawk at and the bonuses that come with having it in convenient movie form: no sore back afterwards, no waiting in line, no side effects for pregnant women [...]

Directed by first time feature filmmaker Justin Kurzel, Snowtown is based on one of the worst serial killing chapters in Australian history — the infamous ‘bodies in the barrels’ case in which the remains of 12 people were discovered in barrels of acid at a vacant bank building in a South Australian town in 2003. [...]

No doubt determined to avoid the Mark Hamill/Luke Skywalker syndrome of being remembered for one role and one role only, Twilight poster boy Robert Pattinson trades vampires and werewolves for animals and acrobats in director Francis Lawrence’s travelling circus themed romantic drama Water for Elephants. Presumably following the advice of his publicist and financial advisor, [...]

Imagine we live in a different world in, say, a galaxy far far away. Imagine instead of the White House we had the Galactic Empire. Imagine instead of Barack Obama there was Darth Vader, and instead of Osama bin Laden there was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now check out this very clever New York Times parody story from ‘The Galactic [...]

Six or seven years ago I was watching a DVD on the couch (can’t remember what it was) and I fell asleep about three quarters of the way through. In slumberland, a funny thing happened: I dreamt the ending to the movie. I woke up slightly hazy while the final credits were rolling and thought [...]

If Alfred Hitchcock were alive and directed a cross between The Matrix, Groundhog Day and Murder on the Orient Express it would resemble something along the lines of Source Code, the second feature from filmmaker Duncan Jones, whose 2009 debut Moon became an instant classic in the SCI-FI sub-genre of psychological cabin fever space dramas. [...]

I admit I felt a little sleazy when I sidled up to the box office and requested a ticket to 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, a lavish exercise in Asian erotica that sells itself as the first three dimensional feature length porno. The public in Hong Kong clearly didn’t have any reservations, given the [...]

Yes, that’s me pictured above in a rejigged limited edition poster for Limitless. But why am I in it? To find out you’ll need to head over to The Scrivener’s Fancy, the marvelous website curated by the inimitable Mr Tony Martin. In the first installment of ‘Cinemantics’ I “prove” that my life influences Hollywood movies, [...]

I would say the body of Osama bin Laden is still warm, but US officials assure us it’s awfully wet and lodged down the bottom of a river somewhere. Regardless, it seems rather early to be discussing movies about his life, but that was exactly what transpired yesterday when Variety confirmed that an upcoming film [...]