AFI Award 2008 nominees just announced. At a quick glance, all four titles competing for best film deserve to be honoured though Dee McLachlan's independently funded The Jammed is getting its recognition very late (it failed to qualify for last year's awards, despite being in cinemas during 2007).
Notably missing from the lists are Benjamin Gilmour's Son of a Lion (which does have a few noms in the rival IF Awards) and Matthew Newton's Three Blind Mice (which, as Matt Ravier has already noted, is unjustly omitted from the IF noms too.
Also snubbed are Jasmine Yuen Carrucan's likable road movie Cactus and Scott Hicks's excellent documentary, Glass: a Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts, though it's good to see ABC TV doco The Oasis getting due recognition.
On the plus side Luke Ford (pictured above - his co-star Rhys Wakefield with fellow nominee Toni Collette), who gives the outstanding performance in the very fine The Black Balloon, gets a supporting actor nod that he missed out on in the IF Awards (simply because the IFs - for reasons best known to themselves - don't award supporting actors). Remaining noms are at the AFI website. Black Balloon is overall front-runner with 11 noms.
FEATURE FILM NOMINEES
L’Oréal Paris AFI Award for Best Film
* The Black Balloon. Tristram Miall
* The Jammed. Dee McLachlan, Andrea Buck & Sally Ayre-Smith
* The Square. Louise Smith
* Unfinished Sky. Cathy Overett & Anton Smit
AFI Award for Best Direction
* The Black Balloon. Elissa Down
* The Jammed. Dee McLachlan
* The Square. Nash Edgerton
* Unfinished Sky. Peter Duncan
Macquarie AFI Award for Best Original Screenplay
* The Black Balloon. Elissa Down & Jimmy The Exploder
* Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger. Cathy Randall
* The Jammed. Dee McLachlan
* The Square. Joel Edgerton & Matthew Dabner
Macquarie AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
* All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane. Stephen Vagg
* Unfinished Sky. Peter Duncan
AFI Award for Best Cinematography
* The Black Balloon. Denson Baker ACS
* Death Defying Acts. Haris Zambarloukos BSC
* The Tender Hook. Geoffrey Simpson ACS
* Unfinished Sky. Robert Humphreys ACS
AFI Award for Best Editing
* The Black Balloon. Veronika Jenet ASE
* Black Water. Rodrigo Balart
* The Jammed. Dee McLachlan & Anne Carter
* Unfinished Sky. Suresh Ayyar ASE
AFI Award for Best Sound
* The Black Balloon. Ben Osmo & Paul Pirola
* Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger. Liam Egan, Tony Murtagh, Phil Judd MPSE & Des Kenneally
* The Tender Hook. Liam Egan, Tony Murtagh, Phil Judd MPSE & Gary Wilkins
* Unfinished Sky. Andrew Plain, Annie Breslin & Will Ward
AFI Award for Best Original Music Score
* The Black Balloon. Michael Yezerski
* The Square. François Tétaz & Ben Lee
* The Tender Hook. Chris Abrahams
* Unfinished Sky. Antony Partos
AFI Award for Best Production Design
* Children of the Silk Road. Steven Jones-Evans
* Death Defying Acts. Gemma Jackson
* The Tender Hook. Peter Baxter
* Unfinished Sky. Laurie Faen
AFI Award for Best Costume Design
* Children of the Silk Road. Wenyan Gao & Kym Barrett
* Death Defying Acts. Susannah Buxton
* Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger. Shareen Beringer
* The Tender Hook. Cappi Ireland
AFI Award for Best Lead Actor
* Rhys Wakefield. The Black Balloon
* Guy Pearce. Death Defying Acts
* David Roberts. The Square
* William McInnes. Unfinished Sky
AFI Award for Best Lead Actress
* Noni Hazlehurst. Bitter & Twisted
* Emma Lung. The Jammed
* Veronica Sywak. The Jammed
* Monic Hendrickx. Unfinished Sky
AFI Award for Best Supporting Actor
* Luke Ford. The Black Balloon
* Erik Thomson. The Black Balloon
* Joel Edgerton. The Square
* Anthony Hayes. The Square
AFI Award for Best Supporting Actress
* Leeanna Walsman. Bitter & Twisted
* Toni Collette. The Black Balloon
* Maeve Dermody. Black Water
* Saskia Burmeister. The Jammed
13 comments:
Well, my four favourite Aussie films for the year are the four titles you mention as being locked out of the AFI noms. What does this mean? Am I so out of touch with what makes a good film?
No Matt, it's the AFI membership that's out of touch. Always has been. Remember a little film called Picnic at Hanging Rock, long regarded as a classic of the 1970s film revival? Incredibly it failed to get a single AFI nomination. Not even for cinematography (Russell Boyd with John Seale as his camera operator). True!
I recall a pre-fame Naomi Watts giving a remarkable performance in a film called Strange Planet. Did the AFI members know they had a great actress in their midst? What do you think? Of course not! She failed to even gain a nomination.
Strange Planet was an abominable piece of rubbish. It firmly drove the nail in the coffin of Emma Kate Croghan's directing career - she's never been heard from again. Thank god.
Terry: Bad films can still feature good performances and in Strange Planet Watts showed more than a glimmer of the acting skills and screen presence we're now so familiar with.
I should be your sub.
Photo above is Rhys Wakefield, not Luke Ford.
I know Black Balloon is gonna win though I wish it wouldn't. I'm not sure if people were a bit too desperate to embrace a feelgood Aussie flick, because hardly anyone seems to have recognised for the cutesy middlebrow mediocrity that it is (though admittedly with a few strong scenes and performances).
I found The Jammed's success hartening from the truly-indie-box-office-hit perspective, though also depressing from the perfectly-intelligent-people-mistook-this-for-cutting-edge-fiulmmaking perspective. Still I'm trying to focus on the positive.
I missed Unifinished Sky, but I did catch The Square, which is getting my vote. Hardly flawless or groundbreaking, but a lot more engaging than any other Aussie feature I saw this year (sadly I missed Three Blind Mice).
Meantime my favourite Aussie film of the year, Jerrycan, is up for Best Short film (against at least one miserably dire Wes-Anderson-lite piece of s*ite). It was better directed, photographed and edited than each of the Picture nominees I saw.
Only 2 noms for Best Adapted Screenplay? And a Best Original Screenplay nom for Esther Blueburger? Either the director and producers massively screwed over that script, or AFI has no credibility. Guess which one I am leaning towards?
I wonder what the combined box office is for all four movies? Better yet, what is the combined Australian box office for every single movie nominated? I bet it is less than Mamma Mia!
You guys are kidding yourselves if you think the AFIs mean anything. They are not our Oscars! They mean jack to anyone and everyone. The award show is a glorified sportsman night and the winners are as glad to win an AFI award as they are of winning a Division 5 Powerball prize.
Syms: Thanks for your kind offer! Looking more closely at the pic I believe you may be right - it is a bit hard to be certain.
Kant: I'm thinking "middle-brow" is one of those terms that should be avoided in discourse since it's really a meaningless label rather than an argument - used in the same way that "petit-bourgeois" used to be deployed by the Marxist Left to dismiss any ideas that jibed with its own. Or the way Republicans are now using the word "socialist" to insult Obama rather than arguing exactly why they think redistribution of wealth is such a bad idea.
On the other hand, middle-brow (or any other brow) is a very tempting handle to use. Eg. Definition of middle-brow: Wes Anderson.
Scott: Yes, I noticed that Esther Blueburger original screenplay nom too. I still havent seen the film. If it's as bad as many people have been saying then this indeed would appear a bizzare nomination. It wouldn't be the first in AFI history.
Oh, but in my world middlebrow has such a precise and definite meaning: saying "this film is distinctly middlebrow" is much more succinct and elegant than "your grandma will love black balloon; it's the perfect movie for her to see right before luncheon with the ladies at the pancake parlour."
Whereas when the Republicans brand Obama 'socialist', it's just hilarious. I for one hope they don't stop doing that. Please don't discourage them.
Lynden: Esther Blueburger is not horrific, but it is hard to believe that its screenplay is one of the four best in the country over the last year. Is screenwriting really that bad in this country? I better get cracking on my own then
I don't think the problem is scriptwriting so much as the kind of scripts that get funding
I was initially flabbergasted that Three Blind Mice didn't get a single nomination. But then, other than AFI members and festival-goers, no-one else has seen it. It got my vote, and the only other two worthy films in contention (IMO, of course) are Son of a Lion and The Square.
To add to Goran's description, I'd say The Black Balloon was bland, mediocre. It just seemed like yet another quirky coming-of-age, politically correct local film that felt contrived from start to finish, without any dynamism, 'electricity' or originality.
I'm surprised to see The Jammed in there, when it was overlooked last year (maybe Three Blind Mice will get a nom next year), and can't see it being remotely in contention for best film. While it's message may be worthy, it's a fairly clumsily made film. I didn't see Unfinished Sky but it held no appeal whatsoever. So, I suppose I'm hoping for The Square to win. It's one of the very few local films of recent times that actually engages with an audience, is well-written, acted and put together. After seeing that short Spider, it's pretty obvious that the brothers Edgerton are a talented couple of guys to watch out for.
Post a Comment