Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.
Brilliant clip. Thaks to Mark Pesce for uncovering.
Random thoughts, musings, interviews, news items, insights and brain spasms mostly related to the world of FILM and THE MOVING IMAGE but also encompassing music, media and public affairs.
Media Release (bold emphasis is mine - LB):
IF Award winners 2009.Best Actor: Rowan McNamara – Samson & Delilah
Best Actress: Marissa Gibson – Samson & Delilah
Best Script: Samson & Delilah – Warwick Thornton
Best Music: Samson & Delilah – Warwick Thornton
Best Direction: Samson & Delilah – Warwick Thornton
Best Sound: Balibo – Sam Petty, Emma Bortignon, Phil Heywood, Ann Aucote
Best Editing: Balibo – Nick Meyers
Best Production Design: Mary & Max – Adam Elliot
Best Cinematography: Beautiful Kate – Andrew Commis
Independent Spirit Award: My Tehran For Sale – Director: Granaz Moussavi, Producers, Julie Ryan, Kate Croser, Granaz Moussavi
Rising Talent: Dominic Allen
Box Office Achievement: Australia – Baz Luhrmann, G.Mac Brown and Catherine Knapman
Living Legend IF Award: Baz Luhrmann
Best Film Festival: Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival
Best Short Film: Ralph – Director Deborah Mailman, Producers Jessie Mangum and Kylie Du Fresne
Best Animation: The Cat Piano – Directors Eddie White & Ari Gibson, Producer Jessica Brentnall
Best Short Documentary: Mankind is No Island – Jason Van Genderen
Best Documentary: The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce – Michael James Rowland, Producer Nial Fulton
Best Music Video: Sway Sway Baby – Short Stack – Dan Reisinger
Sydney Film School sound design and music lecturer Michael McLennan suggests the problem may lie less with their musical subjects per se than with the bio-pic tradition – this type of story is often riddled with cliché and notoriously difficult to pull off.
But for all their problems, these films can lead viewers to make great musical discoveries. As a young man Sculthorpe was heavily struck by the music of Gershwin (pictured left), Chopin and Strauss after seeing their respective Hollywood biographies, Rhapsody in Blue, A Song to Remember and The Great Waltz. Several of those interviewed said they thought Amadeus was ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining and filled with marvelous music. Even Ken Russell’s silly The Music Lovers (Tchaikovsky) and Mahler are filled with wonderful examples of their subject’s art.
The notion of the artist as a tortured soul stems of course from the Romantic era, with Beethoven – infamously cantankerous and half-crazed by his hearing loss in later years - the emblematic example.
ng Bruckner as one example. “It was a Romantic period and maybe it fed into the way the artists saw themselves – but I think if Schumann had had a choice, he would have chosen not to go mad,” John says.
But do these archetypes make for good films? The list of impressive films about composers and classical musicians is a short one. Triteness, distortion and kitsch abounds. Composer Nigel Westlake, whose works include the soundtrack for the film Babe, says that “in almost all these cases, huge liberties have been taken with the subject matter in the name of drama and scandal, to the point where historical fact is transformed into virtual fantasy…
In the cover story for the October edition of Limelight magazine I examined the way the lives of composers and classical muscians have been treated on film, and wonder why the themes of mental and physical illness have been such a constant.
the musically gifted in the movies tend to have a kangaroo loose in the top paddock, or at the very least to be troubled, physically ailing or strange. On film they are variously depicted as psychiatrically ill (viz. David Helfgott in Shine); irascible and deeply eccentric (Ludwig van in last year’s Copying Beethoven - Ed Harris as the composer pictured above right), or suffering a disabling illness (the MS-afflicted Jacqueline du Pre in Hilary and Jackie).
Witness Isabelle Huppert’s sexually repressed-to-the-point-of-psychosis lead role in The Piano Teacher; the revenge-fixated ex-piano student in last year’s French drama The Page Turner; or Holly Hunter’s wilfully mute axe-wielder in The Piano.
At newmatilda this week I take the wrecking ball to Daniel Day Lewis's hammier indulgences and suggest a worthier candidate for the title of Great British Screen Actor - Alfred Molina (pictured above in Ridley and Tony Scott's TNT mini-series The Company)."Good films — and sometimes even mediocre ones — are full of great acting that goes unnoticed. That's why they're great — we're not meant to notice the craft behind them. Genuine performances don't have tickets on themselves. Sadly, this means they often pass uncelebrated..."

Over at newmatilda I go hunting for the missing-in=action politics of Michael Moore 
The Australian Financial Review today (Thursday) quoted Screen Australia chief Ruth Harley (pictured) signalling that the agency will fund fewer films, but at higher budgets - $15 million and above.
In The Australian today I take a look at the cinematic trend towards films about teens for adult audiences , including AN EDUCATION, SAMSON & DELILAH, YOUNG VICTORIA & GENOVA & the upcoming NOWHERE BOY, FRENCH KISSERS, PRECIOUS & THE BOYS ARE BACK (Aaron Johson as the young John Lennon pictured above)
At newmatilda this week I muse over the recent MetroScreen forum at Sydney's Chauvel on local films' audience problem and draw together some threads. One of which is that Australian filmmakers and distributors urgently need to think outside the box/ get with the program/ smell the coffee (insert your favourite cliche here) when it comes to selling films.
