Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to his 2010 head turner Blue Valentine has guns, shoot-outs and Ryan Gosling — but it’s also a daring and unconventional work. There was plenty to talk about.
READ MORE‘You guys have got a thumb up your ass’: interview with Marlon Wayans, writer/star of A Haunted House
Marlon Wayans isn’t known for critically acclaimed work. But comedy is subjective and sometimes — as he says of the critical populace — “you guys have got a thumb up your ass.”
READ MOREThe beauty and horror of climate change: interview with Chasing Ice director Jeff Orlowski
Jeff Orlowski’s Oscar-nominated climate change documentary Chasing Ice reveals the delicate craft of measuring global warming on glacial ice. It’s no easy job — and neither is making a film about it.
READ MOREDealmaker or dream breaker? Tropfest phenomenon comes down to heart, Polson insists
Has Tropfest got too big for its own good? I speak to organiser John Polson after another wildly successful event in Sydney – which some filmmakers refuse to enter.
READ MORE‘I am a mean looking Mexican’: interview with Hollywood hardass, Danny Trejo
He’s Hollywood’s go-to guy for a mean looking Mexican. Veteran actor Danny Trejo has been in more films and TV shows than even he can count — and his fascinating real-life story is every bit as intense as the kind of characters he portrays.
READ MOREAll about the close-up: interview with Tom Hooper, director of Les Misérables
Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Les Misérables has received a mixed response from critics. I talked to him about the mammoth task of bringing Les Mis to the big screen.
READ MORETo infinity, the aquarium and beyond: interview with Lee Unkrich, director of Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3
Both myself and my three-year-old niece love Finding Nemo and Toy Story. Does having an impact on a person’s formative years feel daunting for a filmmaker? I speak to director Lee Unkrich about this, the colossal influence of Pixar Studios and more.
READ MOREGood film, just don’t mention the ‘war’: interview with Paul Thomas Anderson
I assumed acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson would be happy to discuss correlations between his new film, The Master, and the Scientology movement on which it was partly based. I was wrong.
READ MOREFear, loathing, savages and success: interview with Benicio Del Toro
Benicio Del Toro’s road to success has not been a conventional one. The Oscar-winning actor spoke to me about making it in Hollywood, his new film Savages, the legacy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and being a bad-ass Puerto Rican.
READ MORECruisin’ for a PR bruisin’: Chopper Read film over before it begins
The producer claims they had an agreement. The star, Chopper Read, calls bullshit. Both speak to me about the bizarre launch of new Australian film The Hurtin’ Kind Part One: The Albanian.
READ MOREUnscripted and on message: an interview with Mark Duplass, star of Your Sister’s Sister
Director Lynn’s Shelton’s love-triangle-with-a-twist dramedy Your Sister’s Sister (which opens in select cinemas nationwide this week) is the best kind of micro budget American indie: a thoughtful, engaging, and, in its own unprepossessing way, daring feature built on strong performances and interesting characters. After making a scene at a memorial party for his late brother [...]
READ MOREUnderground and unrepentant: an interview with Terry McMahon, director of Charlie Casanova
Charlie Casanova is not a film you watch and forget. Irish writer/director Terry McMahon’s grungy hard-hitting character portrait follows a self-obsessed sociopath named Charlie (Emmett J. Scanlan) who runs over a woman with his car and decides, Two Face style, to draw a card to determine whether he calls the police. His business is struggling, [...]
READ MORELong live the King: an interview with Garry Waddell, star of The King is Dead!
In 1975 a team of guerrilla filmmakers came together to make Pure Shit, a searing portrait of heroin addicts in Melbourne. All these years later it remains the most vivid and rawest depiction of drug abuse the Australian film industry has yet produced (I have written previously about the remarkable circumstances surrounding the film, particularly how [...]
READ MOREDramatising history: an interview with Nikolaj Arcel, writer/director of A Royal Affair
A Royal Affair is writer/director Nikolaj Arcel’s sumptuously shot love triangle drama set in 18th century Denmark. The story, full of political powerplays and back room machinations, focuses on a Danish queen, her insane king and a German doctor. Based on real events and partly adapted from a novel by Bodil Steensen-Leth, Queen Caroline Mathilde [...]
READ MOREBringing Nazis on the moon down to Earth: an interview with Timo Vuorensola, director of Iron Sky
It’s not every day you get to watch a movie about Nazis from the dark side of the moon who come down to invade Earth, and certainly not every day you get to speak to the filmmaker who made it happen. Iron Sky (currently playing in Australian cinemas) aka the ‘Nazis from the moon movie’ [...]
READ MOREOf flesh and mind: an interview with David Cronenberg
For decades director David Cronenberg has created perversely interesting representations of the human body. In Videodrome (1983) James Woods hides a gun by pushing it into his stomach. Jeff Goldblum transforms into a man/insect hybrid in The Fly (1986). The characters in Crash (1996) get off on having intercourse immediately after automobile accidents. In Existenz (1999), Jude Law uses a pistol [...]
READ MOREInterview with Jim Sharman, director of Andy X and The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Shortly after the release of the acclaimed Oscar-winning Days of Heaven in 1978 its director, Terence Malick, whose previous film Badlands was equally respected by critics, moved to Paris and disappeared from public view. He returned to the chair 20 years later to make the star-studded The Thin Red Line. It is always a curious occurrence when [...]
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