celluloid tongue.

Top Three of the Decade

2009-12-30T02:22:00.007+11:00

In lieu of any actual content, I thought I’d join the bandwagon and share my at-a-pinch, from-the-heart three most-loved films of the decade. Why just three? Because after that it gets messy. These are, to borrow a phrase from a movie which didn’t make the cut, my desert island personal favourites of the past ten years — that is, the films to have most indelibly notched their own place in my heart. It’s a flint too late and I’m a whisper too tipsy to elaborate, so here, listed alphabetically and in pictorial-only representation, they are. You’re encouraged to discuss/question/lambast... (And for anyone wondering, a favourite films of the year list will be up tomorrow or Thursday*.)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Proposition

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

*I’d neglected to account for New Year’s Eve. List will be up in the new year, I’m afraid.

FYI...

2009-12-28T22:46:00.004+11:00

Things might be slow around these parts for the next few days, but I’ll strive to get a few reviews and a favourite films of 2009 list up across the week ahead. As ever, thanks for your patience. Would love to hear what you’ve been watching, too.

- gerard.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T05:29:00.000+11:00

Eat, drink, be merry — but most importantly, watch this.

2009 in Review: Directors

2009-12-24T23:25:00.002+11:00

Following on from Tuesday’s post about the performances which most lit up my movie-going year is a similarly lengthy look at the filmmakers whose MOs most struck a chord in 2009.

To recap, I’m yet to see the following titles:

A Single Man, Amreeka, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Blessed, The Boys Are Back, Cheri, Coco Avant Chanel, The Cove, The Damned United, Departures, Disgrace, Dogtooth, Fish Tank, Flame and Citron, Food Inc., The French Kissers, Frozen River, Genova, Good, In Search of Beethoven, Is Anybody There?, Julie & Julia, Looking For Eric, Mao’s Last Dancer, Nowhere Boy, Nine, Paper Heart, Precious, Red Cliff, The Road, Seven Pounds, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist, Summer Hours, Tulpan, Valentino: The Last Emperor, Two Lovers, Valkyrie, W., The Young Victoria.

Find the list after the jump...

Claire Denis, 35 Shots of Rum

Shane Acker, 9

James Cameron, Avatar

Jane Campion, Bright Star

Steven Soderbergh, Che: Part One & Part Two

Henry Selick, Coraline

Neill Blomkamp, District 9

Tsai Ming-liang, Face

Wes Anderson, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Oliver Hirschbiegel, Five Minutes of Heaven

Lynn Shelton, Humpday

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Terry Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

Thomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In

Jim Jarmusch, The Limits of Control

Adam Elliot, Mary and Max

Gus Van Sant, Milk

Duncan Jones, Moon

Jody Hill, Observe and Report

Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo

John Musker & Ron Clements, The Princess and the Frog

Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married

Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road

Warwick Thornton, Samson & Delilah

Joel & Ethan Coen, A Serious Man

Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York

Erik Poppe, Troubled Water

Zack Snyder, Watchmen

Kelly Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy

Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are

Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon

Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler

More Alice in Wonderland Ephemera

2009-12-24T14:21:00.006+11:00

I’m very excited for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and am loving the look Burton’s reaching for a little more with everything we see. A slew of new promotional fodder has arrived online. Let’s dive right in...

Of most pressing interest to anyone such as myself who’s been wondering where Lewis Carroll’s titular heroine is in the film’s two trailers is the UK variant of its most recent, complete with 50 seconds of previously unseen Alice-centric real-world setup. Watch for yourself at Disney UK’s YouTube channel. That’s more like it, no?

Next, courtesy of Apple Trailers comes some perhaps overly-Photoshopped yet stylistically splendid banner art, which gives new look at both The March Hare and The Doormouse, in particular.

Enlarge:

Next, the Loyal Followers of the Caterpillar Facebook page has released a new look at the Alan Rickman-voiced hookah-puffer.

Click below:

Finally, the film’s official site has been given an overhaul. Check it out here.

Cronenberg, Knightley, Waltz and Fassbender Offer Cure

2009-12-24T13:25:00.006+11:00

The Facebook page for local distributor Hopscotch Films has been alight with news of their recent acquisitions these past few days, with new details pertaining to a handful of previously clandestine projects coming to air via a series of status updates, no less. Care to learn what Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Robert Pattinson will be up to in Paris circa 1880? Click here. Want to know who’ll be joining Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in a “a sexy comedy of errors about a very modern family”? Head here to find out. Curious as to whom actress Madeleine Stowe has lined up for her Last of the Mohicans-like directorial debut? Read all about Unbound Captives here.

One announcement in particular caught my eye, however: first proper word of The Talking Cure, a project David Cronenberg has been quietly developing amidst his increasingly crowded slate. With Cosmopolis, The Matarese Circle and that remake of his own remake of The Fly all announced across the past fourteen months, The Talking Cure never seemed like a high priority. Now, however, we know a cast are locked and the film will be Cronenberg’s next project.

And what a cast. Joining Keira Knightley, who’s certainly making an effort to involve herself with more intriguing fare between next year’s gentle sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go and now this, are a pair of downright basterds — Inglourious Basterds, that is — namely, Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender (who were two of the greatest pleasures to be found in a film with no shortage of things to write home about, and never for a moment shared the screen).

The film is an adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and the salad days of psychoanalysis.

Read the full, uh, status update here.

Film Review - 9

2009-12-23T15:53:00.024+11:00

At a trim 79 minutes, 9 could all but fit inside Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen twice in full. It’s an equation worth keeping in mind as you watch Shane Acker’s directorial debut — an imaginative cut of techno-cautionary sci-fi splitting at the seams with visual ingenuity, yet which drops a stitch when it comes to its script.

Happily, however, 9 has much more than its compacted run-time to recommend it.

A mini action epic at just half the length of Michael Bay’s overblown bot-crash, it’s more shadowy in tenor than the family-oriented output of Pixar and DreamWorks. With its murky palette and lanky ragdoll protagonists, 9 most closely recalls the creaky, handmade visual stylings of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, though keen-eyed viewers will distinguish Gonzo ink-blotter, Ralph Steadman, and Czech kitchen surrealist, Jan Švankmajer, amongst Acker’s eclectic assortment of influences, too. Burton serves as producer on 9 — along with Russian hyper-kineticist Timur Bekmambetov — and the match makes for one of the year’s most visually arresting exercises in slight, lightweight and fleet-footed animated escapism.

Expanding on his sublime 11-minute, Oscar-nominated short from 2005, Acker conjures an intriguing alternate history against which to position his simple moral parable. One in which the steam-powered design sensibilities of the Industrial Revolution have endured into an unspecified future — and been weaponised, mass-manufactured, made subservient to a sentient mother-machine and used to raze human civilisation back to the earth. It’s a world where Judy Garland still sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ yet ominous scientific practices border on the fabled mysticism of the Dark Ages.

Inhabiting this grimy and ruined milieu — a more forbidding echo of the dilapidated, dead Earth vistas of WALL·E — are a fractured band of animate, burlap-clad ragdolls. Our pint-sized hero is 9 (sensitively voiced by Elijah Wood), newest member of the tattering fray. Awaking in an abandoned workshop with no clue who he is or how he came to be, he’s soon scuttling through the detritus with 5 (John C. Reilly), thus setting up what’s quickly revealed to be the recurring ‘run away!’ template of Pamela Pettler’s threadbare, setpiece-stuffed screenplay.

You’ll recognise the voices of 9’s companions, though it’s their distinct appearances which will leave an impression. There’s Christopher Plummer’s severe elder, 1, with his ragged mantle and makeshift papal mitre; warrioress 7 (Jennifer Connelly), all kung-fu stance and bird-skull helmet; shrouded twins, 3 and 4, mute cataloguers of artefacts and curios; resident artist and visionary, 6 (Crispin Glover), a clear nod to Burton in black and white Beetlejuice candy stripes; the burly 8 (Fred Tatasciore), the group’s taciturn, shear-wielding muscle; and the frail inventor, 2 (Martin Landau), in his candle-topped cap, whose abduction rouses 9 and co. into action.

9’s plot might be fabric thin, but its burnt-out world will stick with you, as Acker holds his own with the industry’s superstars where alluring animation and sheer conceptual weirdness is concerned. Under Bekmambetov’s practised eye he stages some truly breath-catching action, with towering War of the Worlds killing machines and nightmarish monsters seemingly wrenched from the canvas of Hieronymus Bosch waiting to swoop, spring and snap at every turn.

Sometimes vision alone makes a movie. 9 is such an instance. A masterpiece it’s not, but Acker’s one to watch, and for animation buffs, 9’s one to catch.

DIRECTOR: Shane Acker
SCREENWRITER: Pamela Pettler
CAST: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Fred Tatasciore, Alan Oppenheimer
RATING: M
RUN TIME: 79 minutes

2009 in Review: Performances

2009-12-22T20:55:00.045+11:00

With 2009 all but elapsed, it’s time to reflect upon the year that was. I’m not generally one for list-making, so don’t expect any scrupulously ranked and calculated Top 10 catalogues, but rather a few inventories of some of the films and people who’ve most made my movie-going year.

Between the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals, I’ve seen a number of titles are yet to open proper in Australia, but for the sake of keeping things interesting, I’ll be including a few of them on these lists. In the interest of full disclosure, here’s a summation of some of the notable titles I’ve either not yet had the chance to see or have simply slipped me by (almost all of which I was at least semi-interested in and most of which I fully intend to catch just as soon as I’m able to):

A Single Man, Amreeka, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, Blessed, The Boys Are Back, Cheri, Coco Avant Chanel, The Cove, The Damned United, Departures, Disgrace, Dogtooth, Fish Tank, Flame and Citron, Food Inc., The French Kissers, Frozen River, Genova, Good, In Search of Beethoven, Is Anybody There?, Julie & Julia, Looking For Eric, Mao’s Last Dancer, Nowhere Boy, Nine, Paper Heart, Precious, Red Cliff, The Road, Seven Pounds, Sherlock Holmes, The Soloist, Summer Hours, Tulpan, Valentino: The Last Emperor, Two Lovers, Valkyrie, W., The Young Victoria.

A number of films I’ll be touching on made noise on international year end ‘Best Of’ lists last year, but due to their having released in Australia in 2009, are obviously eligible for inclusion.

As the title of this post has no doubt betrayed, I’m kicking things off with a look at my favourite performances of the year. This is just that: my favourite performances. Not any attempt at distinguishing the ‘best’ or ‘worthiest’ or ‘most important’, but simply those which have most left their mark on yours truly over the past twelve months.

It’s a long list. And I do mean a long list. Which is why you’ll find it in alphabetical order after the jump...

Carey Mulligan, An Education

Charlotte Gainsbourg & Willem Dafoe, Antichrist

Zoe Saldana, Avatar

Abbie Cornish & Ben Wishaw, Bright Star

Penélope Cruz & Blanca Portillo, Broken Embraces

Tom Hardy, Bronson

Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom

Benicio Del Toro, Che: Part One & Two

Sharlto Copley, District 9

Meryl Streep & Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

James Nesbitt, Five Minutes of Heaven

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Heath Ledger & Lily Cole, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Peter Capaldi, In the Loop

Matt Damon, The Informant!

Christoph Waltz & Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Jean-Claude Van Damme, JCVD

Tilda Swinton, Julia

Kåre Hedebrant & Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mary and Max

Sean Penn & Josh Brolin, Milk

Sam Rockwell, Moon

Kim Hye-ja, Mother

Keith David, The Princess and the Frog

Johnny Depp & Marion Cotillard, Public Enemies

Anne Hathaway & Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married

Kate Winslet, The Reader

Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio & Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Marissa Gibson & Rowan McNamara, Samson & Delilah

Yolande Moreau, Séraphine

Michael Stuhlbarg & Fred Melamed, A Serious Man

Samantha Morton, Synecdoche, New York

Kim Ok-bin, Thirst

Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen & Trine Dyrholm, Troubled Water

Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

Jackie Earle Haley, Watchmen

Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy

Max Records & James Gandolfini, Where the Wild Things Are

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Brittany Murphy RIP

2009-12-22T10:52:00.007+11:00

Just last week a friend and I were discussing Brittany Murphy and what felt like her recent absence from movies. The last two roles I could recall seeing (or hearing) her in were George Miller’s Happy Feet, and one I’d count as a career high — as the titular victim in Karen Moncrieff’s multi-strand drama, The Dead Girl.

Awaking yesterday morning to news of her death shocked just as news of Heath Ledger’s passing did back in early 2008. Both were young actors of true talent and spirit who never quite managed to find their stride, although Ledger, it could certainly be argued, was certainly well on his way. Murphy had a rare volatility as a performer, one which she often married with her innate, wide-eyed charm to cast some of her most memorable performances. On this end, the aforementioned The Dead Girl aside, she’ll most fondly be remembered for her appearances in Girl, Interrupted, Clueless, and Sin City, although I have to admit to being unfamiliar with large tracts of her résumé.

No matter which way you cut it, 32 is too young to go. Visit BBC for a pictorial tribute.

New Tron Legacy Pic

2009-12-19T21:57:00.002+11:00

From Disney comes a new still from Tron Legacy, whose IMDB listing, I’ve just discovered, indicates the involvement of John Hurt and Michael Sheen. Ace.

Enlarge:

Tron Legacy releases December 26^th, 2010.

Iron Man 2 Trailer

2009-12-19T20:49:00.003+11:00

Iron Man 2 has its first trailer, and things are looking surprisingly promising. Given the quick turnaround, I’d been expecting a fun-enough, if undercooked follow-on to return-helmer Jon Favreau’s undeniably ace first instalment. But with Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow trading quips and money-can’t-buy chemistry, a Ruski Mickey Rourke lending menace, and the first glimpse of Don Cheadle suiting up as War Machine on show, this raises hopes considerably.

Watch for yourself at Apple Trailers.

Iron Man 2 rockets onto Australian screens April 29^th.

More Toy Story 3 Pics

2009-12-19T20:21:00.003+11:00

From AOL Movies and /Film come two new hi-res shots from Pixar’s Toy Story 3.

Enlarge below:

June 24^th, Toy Story 3 reaches Australia — and in 3-D!

A Prophet Trailer

2009-12-19T19:47:00.004+11:00

Jacques Audiard’s French crime drama, A Prophet, took the Grand Prix earlier this year in Cannes and has since garnered no shortage of comparisons to The Godfather.

That should be enough to spark your interest, so check out its trailer at Apple.

A Prophet is on limited Australian release from February 11^th.

Film Review - Avatar 3-D

2009-12-17T07:49:00.024+11:00

At once stunning and frustrating, rousing and deflating, Avatar is a strange beast — but then, innovations always are.

Neither the hard sci-fi actioner fans of James ‘Aliens! Terminator!’ Cameron’s superior early work might be champing for, nor the swooning Titanic-in-space suggested by much of its marketing, Cameron’s latest is closer in feel to a Lord of the Rings-mining fantasy extravaganza than any entrant in his own distinctive back catalogue.

Yet with its central story of impossible love, underpinning of mind-twisting science-fiction conceits and Olympian leaps in technological achievement, there’s no mistaking that for better or worse, this ambitious colossus is exactly the movie its maker intended.

It’s been 15 years since Avatar first tugged at the hem of Cameron’s pathologically envelope-pushing imagination. 15 years during which the Hollywood maverick patiently waited for technology to catch up, busying himself with deep sea dives and a certain titan about a certain doomed steamship. Oscars holstered (for Best Director and Best Picture, no less) and an indisputable box-office king to his name, it was merely a matter of developing the means for realising Avatar’s most special of effects — a Herculean undertaking unto itself — before Cameron was handed what industry rumour spuriously tagged as THE BIGGEST BUDGET EVER! and set free to bring the weird world of his fancy to the screen.

The good news is, insofar as delivering Avatar as The Motion Picture Event™ that’s been promised, Cameron’s proved to be a man of his word. From its opening moments — a sky’s-eye sweep across the treetops of paraplegic space marine Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) dreamscape — it’s clear that the purpose-developed 3-D hardware at use truly scores a next-level line in the sand of old-fashioned, new-fangled blockbuster thrill-bringing.

In a quiet, expository first act, Avatar eases its audience into the future of 2154, gently readying the retinas for the peeper-pounding stereoscopic calisthenics that will account for much of the remainder of its fleet 161 minute run time. You’ll ‘ooh’ as crew members emerge from cryostatic slumber and float, weightless, through a bunk hall of vast height and fathomage. You’ll ‘aah’ at the sight of nascent ‘Avatars’ — custom engineered hybrids of the film’s ten-foot, cerulean-hued alien Na’vi species and the DNA of their remote human pilots — at amniotic rest in their synthetic wombs.

But this is just a primer, a period of regulation in which to acclimatise not just to Avatar’s internal reality, but the vanguard movie magic that’s been shrewdly employed in getting it up on the screen.

Give this to Cameron: few working Hollywood filmmakers can claim to put blockbuster bucks to such pioneering and prescient use. So once Jake transplants his consciousness to his new, blue vessel (also inhabited by Worthington, in an odd act of life/art verisimilitude, thanks to state-of-the-art motion-capture animation techniques) and, for the first time in years, can scrunch his own toes and look through the elevated eyes of a biped, you buy into the moment for its emotional pull and see the performance powering the pixels.

Unfortunately, moments of such genuine emotional sonority soon prove rare. As Cameron’s original script sticks undeviatingly to The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ school of narrative design, it falls to the depth and wit of his writing inspire the heart-and-soul involvement these predictable epics require.

It’s here Avatar comes up drastically short.

After a decade and a half of creative incubation, it would be unforgivable to find Avatar so lacking in character complexity were its ocular accomplishments not so downright jaw-slackening. Star Wars, The Matrix and Princess Mononoke (to name but a few), each followed this same basic template to a tee, but, crucially, offset the conventional contours of their plots by peopling their unusual backdrops with characters worth giving a damn about.

Disappointingly, Avatar marks the most indistinct writing of Cameron’s career. As you’d expect from the man who sent Arnie hurtling through time to collect the head of an unborn revolutionary’s mother, there’s no shortage of intriguing ideas in the mix — from the Avatars themselves, to the invention of a unique Na’vi dialect, to an entire ecosystem which serves as an organic computer.

But when it comes to that all-important human touch, Avatar almost feels scripted by Xenomorph — and a Xenomorph reared on Aliens, at that. Dialogue is utilitarian at best, tin-eared at worst, and its cast of scientists and space cadets are little more than ersatz re-embodiments of the players from that nerve-flaying 1986 Cameron classic. Of further dent to its juggernaut hull is that character moments are parcelled out in brief, paltry doses — or worse: skimmed right past in Worthington’s overly-relied-upon voice-over.

Yet despite all this, two performers manage to make their mark amidst the onslaught of shock and awe: Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang. As the lissom Na’vi warrioress cum amorous interest, Neytiri, the Star Trek starlet emerges as Avatar’s best in show — no small feat in a James Cameron sci-fi that also finds Sigourney Weaver amongst its ranks. In a role that’s entirely mo-capped (à la Lord of the Rings’ Gollum), Saldana’s Neytiri stands as the character who best earns our empathy. Radiating spirit, grace and strength, it’s owed to the actress’ effortless adoption of the Na’vi’s long-limbed elegance that she so utterly convinces as a real, living thing. Veiled by a patina of digital cosmetics (of which Neytiri is Avatar’s premier model), she might purely have come off as a bid to bag WETA some well-deserved Oscar swag. Instead, it’s she who grounds the film’s cross-racial romance and ushers us into the exotic realm of the Na’vi.

Then there’s Lang as Colonel Quaritch, who doesn’t so much chew on the scenery as he does tear its head off and guzzle the blood which spills from the stump of its neck. Cut like a diamond and wearing the memory of some distant dance with the devil emblazoned in scar tissue upside his face, his scowling, snarling military hard-man is a knowingly OTT graduate of the R. Lee Ermey boot-camp of bile-barking, big-screen bad-assery. By the time he straps into a mechanical exosuit to go mano-a-mano with Avatar-Jake, you’ll have serious doubts as to the hero’s hopes for making it through to the sequel.

Elsewhere, the cast make best of what little they’ve been given — both in and out of their blues, where applicable. Giving a likeable turn and nailing Jake’s unique physicality (paraplegic turned fullgrown, initiate Na’vi), Worthington walks away with his dignity intact, despite not exactly justifying all the NEXT! BIG! THING! hype Hollywood seems hellbent on crowning him with. Also going native is Weaver’s terse, noble botanist, and while it’s fun to find her back on the deck of a space station, Ellen Ripley Dr. Grace Augustine ain’t.

Even less is asked of Michelle Rodriguez and Giovanni Ribisi, the latter of whom initially seems on track for some modicum of significance as the bottom-line-watching company man, Parker Selfridge, only to wind up a mere steward for narrative propulsion. “One thing stockholders hate worse than bad press, is a bad quarterly statement,” he warns, thus summing up the bulk of Avatar’s dramatic fulcrum.

It’s simple capitalist greed which sees the marauding forces of Earth — solely represented by the US military and corporate sector — assailing the distant, rainforest-draped moon of Pandora. Rich deposits of a precious element that could end Earth’s energy crisis lie untapped beneath the Na’vi’s native habitat. So, with the promise of having his mobility restored, Jake is enlisted to infiltrate the Na’vi and negotiate their peaceful resettlement. “Killing the indigenous looks bad,” tells Selfridge. It’s an outlook he’s quick to recant.

So, Avatar boils down to Pocahontas with mech-tech, with Cameron plainly raising a fist for Mother Nature. Laying the modern war allegory on with an earthmover in a flimsy pitch for thematic resonance, there’s a sense he’d have been happier delivering a fictional Baraka — liberated from story to delve wholly and headfirst into the beguiling otherworld of his own invention.

More than the front-line special effects (more bar-raising than they are revolutionary); more than the ingenious application of 3-D photography; more even than the sustained 40 minute setpiece of staggering scope and precision that sends Avatar out with a seismic ka-boom, it’s the vivid allure of Pandora itself which will most latch itself to the memory. Cameron’s conceived an entire bionetwork humming with a palpable authenticity, where bioluminescent moss pulses at the touch, insects amaze like deep-sea freakshows, mountainous outcrops defiantly hang in mid-air, and the wildlife — from hammerheaded leviathans to great beasts of the sky — almost appear part flora.

When Cameron simply lets us luxuriate in the oddness of his unearthly Eden, Avatar becomes truly transporting. With its lofty canopies and yawning chasms, Pandora is the perfect 3-D playground for the unparalleled visualist, who fills his frames with the kind of ambient detail — fluttering foliage, errant cinders and the like — which denotes a visionary’s passionate dedication to design.

If only he’d seen fit, between all of the ground-breaking and world-building, to show the same attention and affection to his storytelling.

DIRECTOR: James Cameron
SCREENWRITER: James Cameron
CAST: Same Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi
RATING: M
RUN TIME: 161 minutes

New Alice in Wonderland Trailer

2009-12-16T20:38:00.005+11:00

‘Surprisingly epic’ sums up the arresting new trailer for Tim Burton’s trip down the rabbit hole, Alice in Wonderland, which has just arrived online at Apple Trailers. Granted, some of the most effects-intensive shots still seem a mite unpolished, but this one’s looking better and better with everything we see.

Watch here.

Alice in Wonderland hits Australia on March 4^th.

Golden Globe Nominations Announced

2009-12-16T20:32:00.002+11:00

The nominees for the next Golden Globes have been announced.

Find the full list at Globes’ official site.

Inception One-Sheet

2009-12-16T10:24:00.003+11:00

The first poster for Christopher Nolan’s cerebral thriller, Inception, might be exactly the same in concept as one for his last movie, but there’s no denying — with a city whose streets slosh with some wayward sea, there’s definitely some striking imagery at play.

Enlarge:

This first appeared over at /Film.

Inception reaches Australia on July 22^nd.

New Toy Story 3 Pic

2009-12-16T10:15:00.005+11:00

Empire has released a single new still from Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3.

Enlarge:

Toy Story 3 reaches Australia on June 24^th 2010.

Animal Kingdom Clip

2009-12-15T06:46:00.004+11:00

The feature debut of writer/director David Michôd is the crime thriller Animal Kingdom. Set in Melbourne’s criminal underworld and starring the high-class likes of Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, and Jacki Weaver, the film will have its world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival before opening locally in May.

A teaser clip (which plays not unlike a trailer) has been added to the film’s official site. Check it out and get in on the ground floor for what’s already looking to be one of next year’s strongest homegrown releases.

2009 AFI Award Winners Announced

2009-12-15T06:29:00.004+11:00

It was great to see Warwick Thornton’s Samson & Delilah clean up at the AFI Awards over the weekend. The unflinching indigenous romance/drama claimed no less than seven trophies, including Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Young Actor (shared by Marisa Gibson and Rowan McNamara) and Cinematography. A shame to see Adam Elliot’s wonderful Mary and Max left out in the cold despite four nominations, however. Congrats also to The People’s Republic of Animation, whose Oscar-shortlisted The Cat Piano took Best Animated Short honours.

Find the full list of winners at the AFI’s official site.

New Nine Clip

2009-12-14T06:54:00.006+11:00

What better way to kickstart a Monday than with a racy clip of Penélope Cruz performing ‘Call From the Vatican’ from Rob Marshall’s Nine?

Sadly, the film’s premiered in the US to decidedly less than stellar reviews. We Australians can find out if sheer razzle dazzle is enough to get Nine by when it releases on January 21^st.

But for now, onward to Yahoo! Movies for a look at that clip. Believe me when I say you won’t regret it...

Cruz can be seen on local screens from this Thursday in Pedro Almodóvar’s engaging if somewhat slight mystery/drama, Broken Embraces.

TRON Legacy Poster

2009-12-14T06:42:00.000+11:00

I had zero interest in Disney’s upcoming TRON sequel until seeing that teaser which hit the net back in July. That, along with knowledge of Jeff Bridges’ return involvement, was enough to ensure my interests were piqued.

From Wild About Movies comes the film’s first one sheet.

Enlarge:

Don’t get too excited just yet – TRON Legacy is still a full year away.

Status Update...

2009-12-14T06:38:00.000+11:00

Apologies for my absence round these parts of late. The past week has been stuffed with screenings with more in the week ahead, so if the blog appears low on ‘check this out!’ content, it’s because I’ll be striving to get some reviews up (or at least drafted) before going away next week for Christmas.

- gerard.

Very Much Enjoyed...

2009-12-09T23:49:00.002+11:00

Penhall Penning Scripts for Mendes, Hillcoat

2009-12-09T20:50:00.003+11:00

Joe Penhall, screenwriter of the interesting and little-seen Daniel Craig/Rhys Ifans obsession thriller Enduring Love, has been tapped by two of the best directors in the biz to pen a pair of promising adaptations.

Newly announced is a feature take on John Edward Williams’ 1960 revisionist Western, Butcher’s Crossing, which Sam Mendes is eyeing as a possible directorial vehicle. The novel centres on a Harvard drop-out who abandons his studies to join a great buffalo hunt in Kansas.

Also on Penhall’s impressive to-do list is an adaptation of his own play, Landscape With Weapon, for John Hillcoat. The pair previously collaborated on the Penhall-written, Hillcoat-directed, Cormac McCarthy-sourced The Road (releasing in Australia January 28^th). Landscape With Weapon (according to Penhall’s Wikipedia entry) tells the story of “a brilliant young engineer who invents an innovative and devastating weapon of mass destruction.” In the Loop’s Tom Hollander pioneered the central part on the London stage in 2007.

Sounds like two reasons to start getting excited.

Full story at The Hollywood Reporter.