Once Were Warriors

There once was a movie called Warrior that was about boxing brothers. It was a movie that not many people cared about nor wanted to see. Then along came a poster that basically said "yeah, our movie is probably shit, but we have sexy Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy with their shirts off exposing their - let's be blunt - incredible bodies and looking all hot and stuff and now you're gonna see it anyway."

Let's look, shall we?


On a purely technical note I like the black and white, I'm a sucker for a vertical title and, hey, at least the actors names align with the actual actors so that's always a win!

But, really, just look at this poster once more.


Yup. That's just... yeah. Okay. What time is it?

An Australian in Paris Cannes

An Australian presence at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival hasn't exactly been loud and proud for many years now, although the occasional Samson & Delilah (un certain regard) and Bright Star (in competition) do surface to make local media take notice ever so briefly. So it's great news this year with four Australian productions screening at the festival, including in competition for the Palme d'Or!

Julia Leigh's "erotic fairy tale" Sleeping Beauty takes pole position amongst the Australian contingent having been given a competition slot despite being Leigh's first film as director. The screenplay, also by Leigh, is apparently a masterwork and was featured on the famed "Black List" in 2008 (alongside Easy A, Bad Teacher, Going the Distance, The Beaver and I'm with Cancer) so we could have a potential screenplay winner here? We'll certainly see, but the trailer (below) is a mixed bag. The idea of Jane Campion jumping on the "presented by" bandwagon that Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth have been on for years is certainly exciting, but this sort of incredibly arch-looking arthouse to the extreme film can be hard to swallow. It reminds me a lot of Corroboree, which is not something I care to do very often. Sleeping Beauty stars Rachael Blake doing a knockout Charlotte Rampling impersonation, and Emily Browning. Surely it can already be considered more of a success than Sucker Punch, yes?

Sleeping Beauty from Pollen Digital on Vimeo.

Featuring in Un Certain Regard - the same platform that won Samson & Delilah the Camera d'Or for Warwick Thornton - will be Ivan Sen's Toomelah. I remember hearing this film announced at last year's MIFF screening of Sen's experimental Dreamland, but didn't expect it to arrive to quickly. Especially since Sen and his producing partner David Jowsey are still tinkering away at an official cut of Dreamland to be released in 2012. Toomelah is about a young Aboriginal boy who wants to be a gangster, and it stars all non-actors from the director's community. No trailer yet, but we'll bring it to you when it arrives!

Less exciting, however, is the inclusion of Justin Kurzel's Snowtown amongst the Director's Fortnight selections. Having seen it a couple of weeks back, I can't say I particularly enjoyed the experience. I'll surely have more to say closer to the release date, but I think it's one of the best made bad movies I've seen in quite a while. Wait, does that make sense? Yes. Yes it does.

Australian filmmakers have a strong history with short film success and this year Nash Edgerton will feature amongst Cannes' official short selections with Bear. The film, in which he stars, is Edgerton's followup to award-winning short Spider and his debut feature The Square. According to the press release Bear was co-written by Edgerton and David Michôd, who you will all know as the director of Animal Kingdom. Perhaps the rising profile of Blue Tongue Films, the production company behind Kingdom, The Square and more, gave it a leg up, but it's exciting nonetheless.


Stay tuned to the blog during the Cannes Film Festival to see how these films are being received by the press from France and around the world.

T&A

Thank you to Jason at My New Plaid Pants for these two images, lifted from the trailers for Crazy Stupid Love and Warrior respectively. If these films are merely excuses to get the likes of Ryan Gosling and Joel Edgerton undressed for extended periods of time then so be it. I'm really fine with that.

Claudia Karvan Shared a Joke with Me and Now I Can Die

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend the 2010 Samsung Mobile AFI Awards here in Melbourne. I was at the ceremony for Friday night's Industry Awards, which you can read about at Encore Magazine, but on Saturday night I sat upstairs in the media room, asking questions to the winners after they came off stage. Catherine McClements was actually one of the most interesting, giving very detailed responses, but I enjoyed all of them including Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Emma Freeman, Deborah Mailman, Liz Watts, Adam Zwar and everyone else.

However, the real fun started afterwards at the after party. Held in The Regent Theatre's ballroom, it certainly looked lavish. I introduced myself to cute-as-a-button Morgana Davies, shook her hand and told her how much I loved her film and her performance in it. Her mother was suitably in love with me. I momentarily spoke to Joel Edgerton who is just as lively and, yes, incredibly sexy in person as you would expect.

Myself and Tara Judah of Liminal Vision, my partner in crime for the evening, had a wonderful chat with Best Adapted Screenplay winner Stuart Beattie who we somehow ended up at the same booth with (all by ourselves, too!) I basically spent a lot of time yammering on to him about how much I love Collateral, how I was a fan of Australia and probing him for information about his film. He had told us earlier in the press room that Paramount have just asked him to write the Tomorrow sequel, which I hope we get to see sooner rather than later.

When he got up to go to the bar we, naturally, took photos with his statue.


Tara and I also waxed lyrical with Michael Spierig, AFI Award-winner for Daybreakers (it won Best Visual Effects at the Industry Awards).

However, by far the greatest moment was when I got the chance to say something to the one and only Claudia Karvan. Australian acting royalty (15 AFI acting nominations, 4 AFI producing nominations) and she had nobody standing around her, making it perfect timing for me to turn into a puddle of superlatives about how incredible she is. I'm sure people like she and Edgerton are far too used to such things, especially at events like this, that it really doesn't matter all that much (although I think Edgerton liked that I said he was snubbed for The Waiting City), however, Karvan then turned to me and shared a joke! She pointed out a group of uniformed police officers and asked me "Do you think they're here for a Rush promotion?"

I. Could. Die.
Someone involved with her show Spirited came over at that stage and I figured it was my cue to leave and unfortunately didn't get a photo with her, but this is a picture from her on the red carpet so just imagine me standing next to her and doing my darnedest to not make a fool of myself. I think I succeeded on the not-looking-like-a-fool part, but if she somehow reads this then I will have actually failed. "What a weirdo!" I can imagine her saying in that oh-so-fabulous i-can't-quite-disguise-how-much-contempt-i-have-for-even-though-i'm-trying-to-sound-like-i-give-a-damn-about-what-you're-saying way she has.


I was there on behalf of Encore Magazine and you can read my roundup of the evening by clicking here and here. Unfortunately the awards are moving to Sydney next year so I won't be able to go, but I'll always have Claudia Karvan sharing a joke with me. Bless.

Review: The Waiting City

The Waiting City
Dir. Claire McCarthy
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 100mins

An affluent white couple arrives in slum-ridden India and within hours the airline has lost the wife’s luggage and the husband has gotten sick from drinking the water. These may be scenarios you would find in a light-hearted fish out of water comedy (it’s half the plot of Sex and the City 2, actually), but in this case they are the starting points to Claire McCarthy’s mature and poignant tale of lives affected by adoption in The Waiting City. McCarthy had previously worked as a volunteer in Calcutta and has used this life-changing experience as the basis for this her second feature film. Starring Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton, both of whom returned from successful American careers to make this small, some might say “intimate”, exploration of a failing relationship teetering on the brink of collapse.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine


The Waiting City is beautiful and poetic and I don't mind admitting a shed a couple of tears. However, on a far more crass note - has Joel Edgerton ever been more, ahem, doable? I think not. He just gets better with age, doesn't he? I'm so glad Americans, along with the rest of the world, will soon be getting a whole lot more of him from Animal Kingdom, The Thing remake and Warrior.

American Kingdom

It has been so great to see the emphatic reacting that Australian audiences have had to Melbourne-set crime thriller Animal Kingdom. It currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and in it's second week at the box office it actually increased 11%. I'm fascinated to see how it continues as the word continues to spread that this is - whether one agrees or not - the newest Aussie classic. I may have preferred that label to be attached to something like Three Blind Mice, but if Animal Kingdom has to be the one to get the critical and commercial respect then I'm only too happy to watch them get it.

The film, directed by first time director David Michôd is receiving an American release in August and Quickflix Blog got a hold of the American poster. Let's check it out.


It's obviously a big change from the two previous designs that we've seen (the Australian theatrical poster and the Sundance festival poster, both below). They've gone with a cool (as in cold) blue look as opposed to the Gothic family portrait look of the local design. I find it interesting and, quite frankly, stupid that they haven't put Guy Pearce on there since he is the only recognisable face (for Americans) amongst the cast. Unless I'm somehow underestimating the reach of Joel Edgerton's Star Wars cameo and he is somehow known over there in the States.

I do love that they included a quote about how deliciously evil Jacki Weaver is since, as you should very well already know, I agree wholeheartedly that she gives one of the greatest performances you'll see this decade (and, yes, I am aware this decade isn't even 6 months old, but it is that impressive). I would be intrigued to hear from any American readers as to whether this design appeals to you. Speak up in the comments if you'd like. Personally, I'm not keen on this new look and I prefer the Aussie design, but what say you?


See?