February, 2012

The most impressive achievement in director Gary McKendry’s Killer Elite is its least pleasurable: finding a way to make an action-packed globetrotting hit man movie punctuated by muscles, guns and shit-eating snarls as dull as ditchwater. Even audiences after nothing more than a biff to the senses are likely to leave feeling as dudded as [...]

This morning I returned to familiar conversational territory when a colleague in the office raised the question of the Oscars’ Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories. Particularly a) whether there is any real difference between them and b) whether anybody can explain it. Before you read any further, assume there is a difference and have a [...]

Most film titles are arbitrary and easily interchangeable (check this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominations for nine of them). Few play as important a role in establishing tone as Shame, the word hanging over director Steve McQueen’s cold and brooding character study about a sex addict named Brandon, played by Michael Fassbender. Shame suggests guilt, [...]

If you ever find yourself transcribing an interview with Marc Fennell, here’s a useful tip: slow the audio down. A lot. “I talk fast at the best of times,” the Red Bull guzzling broadcaster tells Cinetology over the phone while he sits on a hammock, at a family gathering for his grandmother’s 80th birthday. “I [...]

Another ball of awards season fluff, another chunk of Oscar bait, another faux prestigious American film draped around a performance built on parroting the mannerisms of a beloved celebrity. Director Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn is a passable piece of historical fairy floss that succeeds best by inviting male audiences to ponder what it [...]

British writer/director Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur is a kitchen sink drama of the scungy and hard-hitting ilk, bookended by scenes in which its devil-may-care protagonist Joseph (Peter Mullan) murders a dog. S’prise s’prise, turns out he’s the emotionally unhinged glass is half empty type. Joseph’s anger and disdain finds potential redemption through his relationship with Christian [...]

It seems every bona fide film blog these days has its own podcast. I figured it was time for Cinetology to join the fold. Teaming up with fellow film obsessive Rich Haridy — a man with whom I have shared many a spirited discussion — we present for your listening pleasure the pilot episode of [...]

Nobody who has ever attended the funeral of a person killed by their own hand and seen the salty faces of loved ones, felt the whirlwind of confusion and despair from those left behind could completely accept the lyrics of Mike Altman, son of director Robert Altman, whose famous words opened M*A*S*H (1970) and were [...]

It’s a line of attack sometimes directed at film reviewers, usually by those caught in the cross hairs of a critical lambasting: that critics are failed artists, desperate have-nots, individuals with nary a creative thought floating through their sanctimonious minds. Whilst Sandra Hall, who began reviewing films for The Sydney Morning Herald in 1996 and [...]

As guest contributor Tara Judah observes in the post below, the landscape of the cinema industry is rapidly changing. Exhibitors are currently in the foggy intersection between old and new, with cinemas across Australia — and indeed the world — in the process of replacing 35mm film prints with DCP (Digital Cinema Package) technology. The [...]

It’s the water cooler film everyone with half an eye on the American awards season but has been yakking about, but you won’t find any of that jazz – the whole speaking thing – in French director Michel Hazanavicius’s sumptuous silent salute to pre-talkies Hollywood. Like Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Artist takes place [...]

Director Asger Leth’s Man on a Ledge raises the curious premise of an escaped fugitive using a suicide threat to create his own do-it-yourself retrial, with ex-cop Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) manipulating a precarious situation on the 21st floor of a hotel building to pry open a closed investigation that landed him in the slammer [...]

Few veteran film critics are as internet savvy as The Australian and SBS online reviewer Lynden Barber. Barber worked as a staff writer for newspapers and magazines in the 80s and 90s, banging away on stories during the days when “Google” still sounded like something you might use to shield your eyes, but has had no [...]

Director Kriv Stenders’ box office hit Red Dog — which took in more than $21 million domestically last year — scored the top gong at last night’s AACTA Awards (formally known as the AFIs). Taking home the Best Film trophy, the pooch prevented Justin Kurzel‘s devastatingly brilliant Snowtown from a clean sweep. Snowtown won Best Direction [...]