Cannes 2009, Directors Fortnight line-up

There's an Australian short in the Cannes Directors' Fortnight line-up, just announced: Cicada, directed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson (it screened in MIFF last year where it was described as "a man details his most intimate and life changing moment in a moving monologue."

Feature Films
Tetro, dir: Francis Ford Coppola (US)
Amreeka, dir: Cherien Dabis (US)
La Terre De La Folie, dir: Luc Moullet (France)
Humpday, dir: Lynn Shelton (US)
Polytechnique, dir: Denis Villeneuve (Canada)
Like You Know It All, dir: Hong Sang-soo (South Korea)
Les Beaux Gosses, dir: Riad Sattouf (France)
Eastern Plays, dir: Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria)
Daniel Y Ana, dir: Michel Franco (Mexico)
Here, dir: Tzu-Nyen Ho (Singapore)
Ne Change Rien, dir: Pedro Costa (Portugal)
Go Get Some Rosemary, dir: Benny and Josh Safdie (US)
La Pivellina, dir: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel (Austria)
Yuki & Nina, dir: Nobuhiro Suwa and Hyppolyte Girardot (France, Japan)
Carcasses, dir: Denis Cote (Canada)
De Helaasheid Der Dingen, dir: Felix Van Groeningen (Belgium)
Le Roi De L’Evasion, dir: Alain Guiraudie (France)
La Famille Wolberg, dir: Axelle Ropert (France, Belgium)
I Love You Philip Morris, dir: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (US)
J’ai Tue Ma Mere, dir: Xavier Dolan (Canada)
Ajami, dir: Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani (Germany)
Navidad, dir: Sebastian Leilo (Chile)Oxhide II, dir: Liu Jiayin (China)
Karaoke, dir: Chan Fui (Chris) Chong (Malaysia)

Short Films:
Song Of Love And Health, dir: Joao Nicolau (France, Portugal)
Jagdfieber, dir: Alessandro Comodin (Belgium)
Nice, dir: Maud Alpi (France)
The History Of Aviation, dir: Balint Kenyeres Hungary)
American Minor, dir: Charlie White (US)
Anna, dir: Runar Runarsson (Denmark)
The Attack Of The Robots From Nebula-5, dir: Chema Garcia Ibarra (Spain)
Cicada, dir: Amiel Courtin-Wilson (Australia)
Drommar Fran Skogen, dir: Johannes Nyholm (Sweden)
Dust Kid, dir: Yumi Jung (South Korea)
Les Fugitives, dir: Guillaume Leiter (France)
John Wayne Hated Horses, dir: Andrew Betzer (US)
Superbarroco, dir: Renata Pinheiro (Brazil)
Thermidor, dir: Virgil Vernier (France)

Special screenings:
Montparnasse, dir Mikhael Hers (France)

Cannes competition line-up - extra info and pix 1

Agora (Spain).
Directed by Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside)
Stars Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella.

Story about the 4th-century philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, set in Roman Egypt in the fourth century AD. Juding from the mammoth sets (pictured right - www. culturaclasica.com), it looks to be an epic on the scale of D.W. Griffiths's Intolerance.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Prophet (France).
Directed by Jacques Audiard (The Beat that my Heart Skipped).

A young Arab man is sent to a French prison where he becomes a mafia kingpin

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Antichrist (Denmark/Sweden/France/Italy)
Directed by Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves)
Stars Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Horror story about a couple retreating to a cabin in the woods after losing a child.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Broken Embraces (Spain)
Directed by Pedro Almodovar (Volver)
Stars Penelope Cruz

Follows the tragic fate of a former film director, blinded in a car accident 14 years before, mixing mixing past and present and a film within the film.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Enter the Void (France)
Directed by Gaspar Noe (Irreversible)
Stars Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta

"The visions described in the script are inspired partly by the accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who describe a tunnel of light, seeing their lives flashing past them and ‘astral’ visions, and partly by similar hallucinatory experiences obtained by consuming DMT, the molecule which the brain sometimes secretes at the moment of death and which, in small doses, enables us to dream at night. The film should sometimes scare the audience, make it cry and, as much as possible, hypnotise it" - Gaspar Noe.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Face (France/Taiwan/Netherlands/Belgium)

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang ( I Don't Want to Sleep Alone)

Stars Kang-sheng Lee, Laetitia Casta, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye

Homage to Truffaut. "Set in the Louvre’s royal apartments, around the Pyramid and in hidden sanctums, is a film within a film about a Taiwanese director (Kang-sheng Lee) who is making a loopy adaptation of the lurid story of Salome (Casta), the stepdaughter of Herod who demands the head of John the Baptist (Léaud)" - New York Times.

Cannes 2009 line-up announced

(Image: Enter the Void, directed by Gaspar Noe)

Competition:

A Prophet
France. Directed by Jacques Audiard

Agora
Spain. Directed by Alejandro Amenabar

Antichrist
Denmark/Sweden/France/Italy. Directed by Lars von Trier

Bright Star
Australia/UK/France. Directed by Jane Campion

Broken Embraces
Spain. Directed by Pedro Almodovar

Enter the Void
France. Directed by Gaspar Noe

Face
France/Taiwan/Netherlands/Belgium. Directed by Tsai Ming-liang

Fish Tank
UK/Netherlands. Directed by Andrea Arnold

In the Beginning
France. Directed by Xavier Giannoli

Inglourious Basterds
USA. Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Kinatay
Philippines. Directed by Brillante Mendoza

Les herbes folles
France/Italy. Directed by Alain Resnais

Looking for Eric
UK/France/Belgium/Italy. Directed by Ken Loach

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
Spain. Directed by Isabel Coixet

Spring Fever
China/France. Directed by Lou Ye

Taking Woodstock
USA. Directed by Ang Lee

The Time That Remains
Israel/France/Belgium/Italy. Directed by Elia Suleiman

The White Ribbon
Germany/Austria/France. Directed by Michael Haneke

Thirst
South Korea/USA. Directed by Park Chan-wook

Vengeance
Hong Kong/France/USA. Directed by Johnnie To

Vincere
Italy/France. Directed by Marco Bellocchio

UN CERTAIN REGARD

"Samson & Delilah," Australia, Warwick Thornton
"Adrift," Brazil, Heitor Dhalia
"The Wind Journeys," Colombia, Ciro Guerra
"Demain des l'aube," France, Denis Dercourt
"Irene," France, Alain Cavalier
"Air Doll," Japan, Hirokazu Kore-eda
"Independance," Philippines-France-Germany, Raya Martin
"Le Pere de mes enfants," France-Germany, Mia Hansen-Love
"Dogtooth," Greece, Yorgos Lanthimos
"Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats," Iran, Bahman Ghobadi
"Eyes Wide Open," Israel, Haim Tabakman
"Mother," South Korea, Bong Joon-ho
"The Silent Army," Netherlands, Jean van de Velde
"To Die Like a Man," Portugal, Joao Pedro Rodrigues
"Police, Adjective," Romania, Corneliu Porumboiu
"Tales from the Golden Age," Romania, Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru
"Tale in the Darkness," Russia, Nikolay Khomeriki
"Tzar," Russia-France, Pavel Lounguine
"Nymph," Thailand, Pen-ek Ratanaruang
"Precious," U.S., Lee Daniels

Out of Competition:

• Robert Guediguian - L'Armee Du Crime
• Alejandro Amenabar - Agora
• Terry Gilliam - The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus

Midnight Screenings:

• Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar - A Town Called Panic
• Sam Raimi - Drag Me To Hell
• Marina De Van – Ne Te Retourne Pas

Special Screenings:

• Anne Aghion - My Neighbor, My Killer
• Adolfo Alix Jr and Raya Martin - Manila
• Souleymane Cisse - Min Ye
• Michel Gondry - L'Epine Dans Le Coeur
• Zhao Liang - Petition
• Keren Yedaya - Jaffa

Competition Jury:

• Isabelle Huppert, president (actress, France)
• Asia Argento (acress, director, screenwriter, Italy)
• Nuri Bilge Ceylan (director, screenwriter, actor,Turkey)
• Lee Chang-Dong (director, author, screenwriter, Korea)
• James Gray (director, screenwriter, US)
• Hanif Kureishi (author, screenwriter, UK)
• Shu Qi (actress, Taiwan)
• Robin Wright Penn (actress, US

Opening Film Disney/Pixar - Up / Closing Film Jan Kounen – Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Fanny and Delilah wake in fright to find audience

Festival news 1 :
Two Australian features in Cannes this year:

(i) Jane Campion's UK-set Bright Star, about the relationship between romantic poet John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne (played by Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish, pictured above) , and

(ii) Samson & Delilah, Warwick Thornton's lyrical story about two outcasts from a remote aboriginal community (see my review in the new May edition of Limelight).

Festival news 2:
The newly restored version of Ted Kotcheff's rightly revered 1971 feature Wake in Fright will have its premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on Saturday 13 June ahead of a national release through Madman Films. A crucial influence on the Australian cinema renaissance of the 1970s, the film has long been unavailable on celluloid, DVD or VHS. This restoration is a result of the film's editor Anthony Buckley's discovery of the negatives in a vault in the US several years ago.

The restoration's public unveiling has been a long time coming, mainly due to complications surrounding the question of rights ownership rather than anything to do with the restoration work undertaken by Atlab/Deluxe and the National Film and Sound Archive. Buckley informally agreed with me in 2006 to launch the film at the SFF - assuming the rights could be cleared - so it's gratifying to see the festival firming it up this far down the track.

What's the film like? Imagine an inversion of an Ocker film where, instead of the usual 'you beautiful little battler' sentimentalisation of average outback Aussies, the film depicts the inhabitants of a small rural town as drunken, brawling, roo-shooting rednecks from hell.

Festival news 3:
Perth's Revelation Film Festival seems determined to outgrow its culty origins and says that extra funds of $140,000 over the next two years (ie. $70,000 a year) from Tourism Western Australia are aimed at raising its profile, as well as turning it into "a prime networking event for experienced and emerging filmmakers."

In an email this week the festival's PR wrote to me that "at a time when, as you pointed out (note: in my recent ABC website piece on festival cutbacks), other Australian festivals are scaling back, this funding should see Revelation's profile grow significantly over the next two years... We are not interested in drawing out the length of the festival and overstretching the attention of our punters, simply to become "bigger" in terms of the festival's reach and scope."

Glad to hear it - I've never been, but the program always looks lively, so I'd love to get there one day.

A dingo's got my DVD!

Not until today, reading my colleague Richard Kuipers's astutue assessment of Fred Schepisi's Evil Angels (aka A Cry in the Dark), soon to be published on the National Film and Sound Archive's australianscreen.com website, did I realise an alarming fact: this brave and high profile 1980s Australian film is not available on DVD in Australia.

Why the hell not? Legal rights complications, or simply a case of ignoring a film that was never very popular with the Aussie public because it dared to show widespread home team bigotry over the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance?

Fairfax - always last with the news

Here's one reason why John Fairfax and Sons, which owns the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, is in trouble.

Today the SMH published a UK Daily Telegraph story on its news pages about Pixar's next animated film Up being downgraded by figures in the financial world because it's felt to be not commercial enough, despite its apparent quality as a piece of storytelling.

If this is familiar, you doubtless read my April 8 post, End is totally, kinda, nigh for Pixar and Facebook, quoting the same information published three days previously in a story in the New York Times.

That makes the SMH story more than two weeks old. Which might not have mattered so much if the Fairfax paper was not trying to pass it off as "news".

Surely one of the primary definitions of news is that it reports information that is geneuinely new - usually meaning it's happened within the last 24 hours or less. News that consists of a story that rehashes another story printed in an overseas paper 15 days previously is not news at all. It should be rebranded "olds".

The report also raises ethical questions, since it appears to use a substantial amount of information from the NYT article without attribution. Isn't this practice called plagiarism?

Rhetorical question: whenever you read a report from an overseas correspondent, how often do you think he or she has dug up new information, as opposed to simply raiding the local media for anecdotes and quotes and performed a quick rewrite without citing the sources of the information?

Tonight's homework: read Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, the story of a British foreign correspondent reporting on a war that doesn't exist.

(image: laraking.files.wordpress.com)

Christian Petzold - one of Germany's most highly regarded auteurs

The contemporary film noir, Jerichow, which was selected for competition in Venice last year, is screening tonight at the Melbourne Kino as part of the Audi Festival of German Films.

This is the latest film from auteur writer-director Christian Petzold, held in high regard by German and international critics and festival programmers who see him as one of the most consistently interesting of this decade's German new wave.

See the Goethe-Institut website for my overview of the film and Petzold's career.

German women on film: strong, complex and fascinating

Attending the Festival of German Films I've been impressed by the number of recent features built around strong, complex women and featuring outstanding female performances. These include Hilde, Clara, A Year Ago in Winter, 12 Means: I Love You, November Child and The Baader Meinhof Complex.

In my latest two blog posts on the festival, over at the Goethe-Institut website, I review three of these titles: the musical biographies Hilde (about iconic post-war actress-singer Hildegard Knef) and Clara (Robert Schumann's concert pianist wife Clara Schumann), and the contemporary drama, A Year Ago in Winter, a story about a grief-stricken young woman's relationship with the artist painting her portrait and the follow up to the Oscar-winning Nowhere in Africa for writer-director Caroline Link.

Extract 1:
Hilde "seems to have been inspired by the success of the Oscar-winning French biopic La Vie en Rose, the story of cabaret icon Edith Piaf. Both careers followed the classic rags-to-riches trajectory so commonly found in this genre (Knef, a teenager during WW2, was arrested by the Russians near the war's end and once freed had to survive amidst the squalor of post-war Berlin). Both performers struggled with personal demons, professional set-backs and tumultuous love lives yet managed to survive professionally for several decades. Both stories climax with a moment of triumph on stage. At times - almost certainly by coincidence - Hilde star Heike Makatsch (pictured top) looks uncannily reminiscent of that film's French star Marion Cotillard in one her more glamorous, non-Piaf roles. But Hilde goes one better than the French film by eschewing its unsastisfactory structure with its semi-arbitrary flashbacks and flashes forward.



Extract 2:
"Written and directed by veteran filmmaker Helma Sanders-Brahms, Clara stars Germany's leading female film actress Martina Gedeck in what on one level can be read as a proto-feminist story about a gifted woman fighting against the male prejudices of the age...Too often films of this "great artist or composer" sub-genre suffer from a degree of unintentional camp thanks to stilted dialogue of the ilk, "I say Joannes, you will one day become more famous than even I!", a trap this film largely avoids..."

Extract 3:
"Links's screenplay is too baggy and lacking in narrative momentum to satisfy as dramatic storytelling (a sub-plot concerning the young woman's relationship with an arrogant boyfriend is blown out of all proportion) and she makes the fatal mistake of letting the film drag on past its natural climax. This is disappointing given the intrigue she builds in the first half. Link obviously realises what an advantage she has in (female lead Karoline) Herfurth, however - the relationship between her camera and the actress's face and body would be called fetishistic were this the work of a male director."

Media misses the potential break up of Thailand?

Interesting email overnight from my friend Chris in Thailand, who has been fiercely critical of the Australian media's reporting on the country's political turmoil. He gives an important local perspective that has been missing from this week's news reports:

"Many are missing the number one point about what is happening in Thailand - namely

the fact the Thai state, instigated by Thailand's military in 1937, is now on the edge of breaking up.

"REGIONALISM has now become SO strong that North-Eastern Thailand - known as Isaarn - where 60% of "Thais" live (actually they are Lao or Khmer), the labour pool which supplies Bangkok and southern Thailand - is almost ready to breakaway. Ditto Lanna - North "Thailand", i.e. Chiang Mai and further north. SMH's Lindsay Murdoch can be congratulated for being one of the few journalists to have started focusing on this very heightened regionalism."

(images: guardian.co.uk/ afp)

Fiction and non-fiction: contrast and compare

Top, in black and white: German terrorist leader Andreas Baader and his girlfriend-accomplice, Gudrun Ensslin. Next, in colour: Moritz Bleibtreu and Johanna Wokalek, who play the two late gang members in The Baader Meinhof Complex, which has just opened the Audi Festival of German Films in Sydney and Melbourne (and does the same in Brisbane next Wednesday).

UK journalist Neil Ascherson interviewed the pre-outlaw Ulrike Meinhof in 1964 when she was a well-known columnist and political magazine editor and he was a foreign correspondent. In a brilliant and detailed piece of reminiscence and analysis in The Observer he notes that the film is "brilliant, it's fearsomely convincing. But then, because this is a film about the perpetrators and not the victims, the sheer power of the telling has upset some (German) citizens. They ask: 'Whose side are you on?' The film-makers would retort that they are on no side, just telling it as it was.

"Another criticism is that the RAF actors are so good-looking. Were they really so gorgeous? A few certainly were. Meinhof was more attractive than she seems here, while Ensslin - gauntly elegant - was less disco-sexy than Johanna Wokalek makes her. But the point about looks is political. One critic in Welt am Sonntag complained that the screen Baader and Ensslin were like Germany's answer to Bonnie and Clyde - a slander on both movies. But he went on to say that The Baader-Meinhof Complex 'brings to light a repressed truth about the allure of the RAF. Girls with guns are the ultimate desire and fear fantasy of a patriarchal, inhibited society.'"

Finally the clip below is an extract from a 1970 interview with the real Ulrika Meinhof (recorded shortly before she went underground) , which shows that Martina Gedeck's portrayal of the late terrorist (see pic above) is remarkably accurate.



(image of baader and ensslin: algerianist.files.wordpress.com)

Festival of German Films launches

The Audi Festival of German Films got off to a vigorous start in Sydney last night) with a swinging party and gala screening of The Baader Meinhof Complex, the dynamic and hugely ambitious history of the Red Army Faction terrorist group of the 1970s from director Uli Edel (Christiane F) and writer-producer Bernd Eichinger (Downfall).

It's the turn of Mebourne and Perth to open tonight and Brisbane kicks off in a week on Wed 22 April. I'll be blogging through the festival on the Goethe-Institut website and linking from here.

(Before you ask, the continuation of the 'rampaging police' theme from the post below is entirely coincidental - though it is interesting that heavy handed police tactics against peaceful demonstrators are depicted in the German film as having helped to pave the way for the ultra-leftist terrorism that followed throughout the 1970s.)

Eng-a-land swings like a pendulum due, bobbies on bicycles two by two

Argentina under the generals? Poland or Romania before the fall of Communism? The Burmese military clearing the streets of monks?

Or just the British bobby going about his duty to clear the streets of lefty pinko scum?

The Guardian has helpfully compiled on one page a series of clips of riot police assaulting unarmed demonstrators in the City of London during the recent G20 protests, includign an event called Climate Camp.

Among the videos is one showing the unarmed bystander, newsvendor Ian Tomlinson, being shoved to the ground from behind, clearly without provocation (the victim has his hands in his pockets and is quietly walking away from police). Tomlinson died from a heart attack only minutes later:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-police-videos-catalogue (POSTSCRIPT April 20 - a second postmortem has since concluded that he died from internal bleeding.)

Another video (not taken from The Guardian website) is below. It starts to get interesting at the 1.30 mark when protesters raise hands in air to show they are not being violent and police launch an aggressive wedge tactic on the far side of the crowd. In another clearly rehearsed tactic, riot officers in blue helmets then start attacking protesters in the face and upper body using the sharp edge of their riot shields:

So what exactly is the aim of the police here? To "prevent" violence, as per the official spin, or to cause it, thus creating an opening for the protesters to be written off in most of the mainstream media as "violent", "rioters" etc. ?

Statement from a witness: "I was there yesterday. I am a Company Director and I have two young children. Hardly the ‘yob’ that has been bandied about. I saw an elderly lady and young girls in tears because the Police would not let any of us leave. 99% of people there, were there for a peaceful demonstration.

"Little did we know that that constitutes being penned in an area like cattle until the Police decide you can go. Our protest finished by 12.30pm, yet many, many people were held for 7 hours. For what? You could count on two hands the amount of thugs that covered their faces. Why not let us go, and use the Police resource effectively to deal with anyone who wanted to cause trouble.

"We were not given any choice. There was no water and no facilities. Anyone who needed to be elsewhere had no right to leave. No one who needed to leave because of medical reasons could go. I am not talking about the handful of activists the media on the whole has concentrated on. I am talking about normal men, women and children. Some old, some young.

"It was disgraceful but more than that, it was really, really worrying that we suddenly had no rights at all and no choice in the matter. That the right to protest now means that you end up with no rights at all, that the Police can ‘hold’ you for however long they like when you have done nothing illegal at all, smacks in the face of decency.

"Before this protest I was angry about the state this country is in and went only to show my discontent. Now I am really fearful for it. I am shocked by what I saw. I am horrified. But far more than that, I am really, really sad for what this country has become. When did we turn into a Police state?"

The two images to the right show that police were not the only ones guilty of violence however: one protester is shown hurling a metal crowd control barrier at police lines, while an another smashes a Bank of London window (hard to believe it wasn't barricaded, but there you go). But clearly these incidents are being caused by isolated, clearly identifiable individuals - not by a mob on the rampage.

Also from The Guardian:

Specialist protest squads at centre of investigations into G20 police violence.

Police territorial support teams, used at demonstrations

and marches,

involved in previous controversy.

"Officers from the Metropolitan police's specialist territorial support teams are at the centre of investigations over the use of unprovoked violence during the G20 protests. Both of the officers who have been suspended in the last week were part of the force's territorial support group (TSG), a unit of 720 officers who operate in mobile squads...

"As the Independent Police Complaints Commission began an independent investigation into a TSG sergeant seen on the most recent video using his gloved hand to hit a female member of the public, the Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, announced that he had asked Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to review public order policing tactics in the light of the G20. He also ordered a review of all footage held by the police in order to establish whether any other officers should be subject to investigation."

Sydney Filmfest announces four of its competition titles

Sydney Film Festival has announced the titles of four of the 12 titles selected for its second feature film competition, to be judged by an international jury chaired by veteran Australian director Rolf de Heer.

I've seen two of these and thoroughly approve: Louise-Michel (pictured above) is one of the most inspired films I've seen in the last 12 months, an outrageously black French comedy that more than lives up the promise of the Belgian film-makers earlier Aaltra. And Disgrace is an extremely fine adaptation of J.M.Coetzee's Booker Prize winning novel set in post-apartheid South Africa.

From today's media announcement:

• 
  

Coraline (Henry Selick, USA) – "The director of The Nightmare Before Christmas creates an extraordinary gothic fairytale world in the first stop-motion feature shot in stereoscopic 3D, based on Neil Gamain’s beloved novel and featuring the voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French."

Disgrace (Steve Jacobs, Australia) –"This haunting adaptation of the bestselling novel by Nobel Prize-winning author JM Coetzee features a masterful performance from John Malkovich and is set in South Africa’s Eastern Cape."

Louise-Michel (Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine, France) – "From the creators of cult hit Aaltra (2004) comes a pitch black comedy about job-loss, vengeance and inept assassins set against the economic downtown in Europe."

The Maid (Sebastian Silva, Chile) - "Fresh from its award-winning success at the Sundance Film Festival comes this intricate comedy/drama about a long serving (and suffering) household maid who becomes vengeful towards the wealthy family for whom she works."

• 
  

Full announcement, including some other films, should be on the 2009 program, at the SFF website. However the media release seems to have gone out before the website people have managed to get their act together. It's either not online (at 2.55pm, some 50 minutes after the media release went out) or it's impossible to find. Tsk tsk. So I've taken the liberty of performing a public service announcement:

From the SFF media release:

"FIRE ME UP – films that get the adrenalin pumping or heat up debate include: action maestro John Woo’s historical Chinese epic Red Cliff starring Asia heartthrobs Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) and Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers) and the upbeat doco No Impact Man in which author Colin Beavan and his family make the decision to live for a year with zero effect on the environment (eliminating cars, non-local food and television just to start with!).

TAKE ME ON A JOURNEY – films that transport you or take your emotions elsewhere include: the splendid family animation Brendan and the Secret of the Kells which follows the magical story of a boy monk and his efforts to save the Celtic world’s greatest treasure and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s award-winning Still Walking chronicling the 24-hour reunion of a dysfunctional Japanese family.

MAKE ME LAUGH – films that will crack your sides or make you chuckle include: hilarious political spoof In the Loop which does for Downing Street and the White House what The Hollowmen did for Canberra and charming animated family comedy Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms about a worm at the bottom of the compost heap who is wriggling his way to the top.

GIVE ME A KISS – films to romance you or about love’s complexities include: Bluebeard Catherine Breillat’s (Romance) daring take on the traditional fairytale and Berlinale award-winner Everyone Else about a couple whose perfect amorous bliss belies an underlying, more destructive tension.

FREAK ME OUT – films that will bend your mind or chill your bones include: Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool in which a small Canadian town is infected by a mysterious virus and Paranormal Activity a truly spine tingling horror that will have you checking under the bed for weeks afterwards!

All films listed above will be screening for the first time in Australia."

Back to me: last year's inaugural competition was won by British first-time director Steve McQueen's IRA prison protest film Hunger, with Australian actor-director Mathew Newton's guerrilla production Three Blind Mice getting a special mention. The Newton production went on to win the FIPRESCI (international critics) prize at London Film Festival and the best feature award at Thessaloniki in Greece.

Three Monkeys has Australian distribution

The great Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan began his creative career as a photographer before turning to film and there's plenty of evidence of his finely atuned compositional instincts on his website.

The four gorgeously haunting still photographs on this page are all from a series called For My Father. They make for fascinating comparison with the images from his most recent film, Three Monkeys, two posts below.

Regarding my earlier comments, it turns outs Three Monkeys indeed does have an Australian distributor. My congratulations to sharp-eyed Melbourne-based distributor, Accent Film Entertainment, who sent me the following message this morning:

"Hi Lynden! Someone pointed me to your article on our film Three Monkeys. We acquired the film last year after watching it at the Cannes Film Festival. Even though we loved the film, we felt that it will probably be too difficult to get screens outside of a film festival but we still wanted to give people the opportunity to watch it on the big screen.

"Immediately after Cannes, we agreed to screen at the Melbourne, Brisbane and New Zealand film festivals where it screened to great audience numbers. One Melbourne screening was sold out while the other was almost sold out.

"The film also screened at the Adelaide Film Festival in February this year and is also screening at the Turkish Film Festival in April at ACMI. We are currently negotiating to screen the film at this year's Sydney Film Festival as well. Our aim has always been to try and get as many theatrical screenings as possible to the right audience for the film, namely film festival audiences.

"As far as I was aware, we were the only distributors who made an offer for the film at Cannes so they were not exactly clamouring for the film and there was certainly no bidding war. Interestingly, one other notable distributor told me, after he learnt of our acquisition, that he would have acquired it himself 10-15 years ago where it could find a commercial audience but it is too tough these days."

See here to read the transcript of a recent Guardian interview with Ceylan at London's BFI Southbank, where the filmmaker talks about his preference for digital over film stock in both film and still photography, among other topics.

Oh the times, they aren't-a-changing

My go-to man for the hot poop in the world of high finance is Steven Pearlstein at The Washington Post. I discovered his no nonsense columns during last year's financial meltdown where they shone out for their lucidity, insight and take-no-prisoners tone.

In his latest no-bullshit broadside Pearlstein takes aim at the culture of Wall Street, "a culture that not only tolerates but almost celebrates taking advantage of customers. Here is an industry in which brokers traditionally get their start making cold calls to strangers, offering bogus stock tips, and investment bankers cut their teeth peddling bad merger and acquisition ideas to corporate clients.

"It is an industry in which the majority of money managers consistently underperform the broad market averages, analysts and strategists are almost always bullish, and firms rarely run into a security that can't be brought to market. These days, Wall Street is a place where the trading culture has supplanted the investment culture and score is kept on the basis of how many securities a banker or a firm underwrites rather than whether those securities actually turn out as good investments.

"It's hard for anyone who grows up in an industry to see fundamental problems in its culture. But until Wall Street deals with this blind spot, it is likely to careen from one crisis to another...

"Of course, an industry that earns so much profit that it can afford to pay multimillion-dollar bonuses to 26-year-old traders also has too much money to lavish on the political process in ways that undermine those who would regulate it."

Peralstein says he wouldn't go as far as MIT economist Simon Johnson, who argues in the May Atlantic magazine that the United States has effectively become a banana republic with the Wall Street oligarchy running the show. "What is undeniable, however, is that there are regulators here in Washington who have been reluctant to rein in the industry out of fear that they would be thwarted by the White House, the Treasury and key members of Congress acting under pressure from the industry."

This - admittedly depressing - note of political realism sounds like a cue to turn to the third part of Bill Flanagan's Bob Dylan interview (this time posted at Newsweek), in which the world's greatest singing poet has some wise words to say about Obama. Seems that Dylan admired Obama early on, largely due to his admiration for his autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father.

But asked whether he think Obama will make a good president, Dylan says he has "no idea", going on to allude to the dream-busting realities that compromise and corrupt political power:

"He'll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back. You know, it's like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned. "

Burned by Wall Street, and no doubt by what Dwight Eisenhower famously warned of as far back as the 1950s as the dangerous power of the military-industrial complex.

Postscript: Dylan has given a more sanguine view of what Obama might be able to achieve to a Danish journalist: "...we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama," said Dylan according to a report in The Times. "He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to."

(top image: evilmonito.com; dylan-and-Obama image: 4bp.blogspot.com)

Whither art cinema? (Yes, that hardy perennial)

Former Sundance grand poo-bah Geoff Gilmore is sounding off on the challenges facing independent film from his new perch at New York's Tribeca filmfest, where he toils under the grand title of Chief Creative Officer:

Extract 1:
"...the old art film is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and the new global independent is seeking to find his/her place on whatever platform is available. Indeed, independent film making is probably at a point where it needs to evolve to continue to have import, where its impact on the landscape of American film and film culture over the last three decades is morphing into something else—something that isn’t entirely familiar."

But how does it need to evolve? And what exactly does Gilmore mean by "the old art film" - Chocolat and Bottle Shock, or Three Monkeys by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (the source of the three stunning images above, a film that won Ceylan the best director prize at Cannes and the Asia-Pacific Screen Awards yet has been dumped into the too-hard basket by Australian distributors judging by its non-appearance on 2009 release schedules).

Extract 2 focuses on the changing world of film festivals, a favourite recent theme of mine:
"The new world has a global and eclectic face to it for many reasons: international film has changed and prospered, the old art film is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and the new global independent is seeking to find his/her place on whatever platform is available."

Woods's Creatures to finally take flight

At last, an Australian release date for Aussie director Rowan Woods's long-delayed US film Winged Creatures has been announced - July 9. Image above is of Jackie Earl Haley, recently seen in Watchmen, Oscar-nominated for Little Children in fairytale style following many years of no acting jobs, and recently announced as the new Freddy Krueger.

Woods (pictured below right) is of course the director of The Boys, one of the finest Australian films of the 1990s, and Little Fish.

Two trailers have been on YouTube for seven and eight months respectively, with this recent comment on one of them: "It comes out (in the US) in April on DVD. Filming was completed by April '07. The studio didn't know what to do with it despite big name talent. No theatrical release. Supposed theatrical release in over seas markets. Deemed financially unworthy."

Here's the official blurb for Winged, which makes it sound awfully like Paul Haggis's Crash:

"A moment of random violence erupts in an ordinary Los Angeles diner. The survivors find that the meaning of their lives has changed and that they must find trust in a world that now seems unforgiving. No matter how much their families and friends attempt to understand, these individuals must follow their own paths to recovery.

"Winged Creatures is a powerful ensemble drama, starring Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson. A story of tragedy and hope for our times, it explores the notion that our lives are fleeting, like birds in a fight, like winged creatures."

The day Elvis Costello took over from David Letterman

Keep hearing great things and yet somehow keep managing to miss ABC TV's The Elvis Costello Show, always remembering about 24 hours too late. Still there's always the ABC's i-view player to aid catch ups, and a few clips have turned up on YouTube of Costello interviewing and singing with guests such as Lou Reed and the reformed Police.

Sampling these clips I discovered that Costello's new side-career is nothing new - somehow I managed to miss that he guest-hosted the David Letterman Show in late 2003.

The above Letterman clip of the singer-songwriter interviewing comedian-actor Eddie Izzard gives a sense of Costello's empathy as an interviewer - picking up on Izzard's use of improvisation in his stand-up and comparing it with the way that jazz musicians work. This leads Izzard into talking about his use of favourite comic riffs that serve as punctuation or rest points and trigger laughs during flat points of a performance. I can't imagine Letterman drawing this out of Izzard somehow. Fascinating - and funny with it.

Some folks call it behaving like an asshole

A wonderful blog thread here from Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells and his readers on Billy Bob Thornton behaving like an asshole on a CanadianTV broadcast while being interviewed about his country rock band The Boxmasters. Sitting in are his fellow band members, who look distinctly uncomfortable about their comrade's sullenly unco-operative behaviour.

At the 07.10 mark Thornton tries to justify his major moodiness by accusing the TV interviewer of breaking a pre-broadcast agreement not to talk about "shit like that", presumably meaning his acting career.

Thornton was later booed by Toronto audience members during a gig on the tour supporting Willie Nelson when he referred to his having made the local news. Note that towards the end of the interview Thornton complains of Canadian concert-goers being so undemonstrative they're like "mashed potatoes with no gravy". The tour has now been cut short owing to "flu". Funny, that.

It's worth viewing the TV interview clip on Wells's site and then reading the lengthy list of comments. These include some extremely candid remarks by George Hickenlooper, whose short film Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, starring a certain Billy Bob Thornton, was later taken by BBT as the basis for the best screenplay Oscar-winning, self-directed feature Sling Blade, the film that made his name.

"It's the same kind of creepy shit I had to deal with while directing Billy Bob in the original Sling Blade short," writes Hickenlooper before launching into what might be called a full-blooded character assassination, concluding with "seeing this (interview) makes the hair stand on the back of my neck. This guy has put out so much bad karma it's eventually going to catch up with him."

A journalist, Chris Willman, then recalls interviewing Thornton at the Telluride film festival when Sling Blade (the feature) premiered. "I mentioned to the publicist that I'd seen the short," Willman writes, "which I figured was incredibly good fortune, since probably no other journalist there had. I was warned in no uncertain terms that if I even alluded to Hickenlooper's short, Billy Bob would become violently angry, and I had to vow not to mention it."

Hickenlooper comes back for a second bite and it's worth quoting in full: "This is really ancient history for me and I harbor no bad feelings towards Billy Bob," he says, somewhat unconvincingly (considering what follows). "I just don't think the record was ever really set straight. At the time, Thornton's people spun it in a way that made it sound like I was passed over by Billy Bob in directing the feature version. The reality is I walked away. I couldn't stomach his abusiveness.

"When the feature was a hit, I considered filing a law suit (without the success of the short the feature would never have been made), but Thornton was such a media darling that it would have been too damaging for me to pursue it.

"There is no question that this man is a great talent. He also has many warm, endearing qualities that are genuine. With that said, there is a dark side to him, an extremely dark side, that is cruel and irrational. This will be my last word on the subject. It always kind of amazed me that the Oscar he won for Best Adapted Screenplay was based on "a play" that never existed.

"Pearls Before Swine was a one man show in which Karl's monologue was only one of many characters Thornton played. The reality is the feature was based on the short which I had directed and which Billy Bob never wanted anyone to know about, nor know about my contribution. It always hurt me a great deal, considering the fact of how much I gave to launch this guy's career in film.

"Regardless, I liked the feature. Though had I directed it, I would have given Karl less of a Disney quality. In the short I think he's a much more interesting and compelling character. Just my opinion for whatever it's worth..."

Phew.....

How to sell / not sell an Australian film

Which poster makes you want to see the film - the first (for the DVD), the second (for the Australian theatrical release, bottom right), or the French one?

The top image is in the window of my local Video Ezy and there's no question it makes an impact. I can't help wondering how anyone ever thought the theatrical poster would ever intrigue a single person. The slogan "Some things can't be buried" and image of a man standing over a bit of dirt are unforgivably lame.

The French poster is stylish - and while somewhat generic, that's the whole idea. It gets across that this is a genre film. The slogan "each decision will be fatal" also transmits a sense of life-or-death urgency that director/ co-writer Nash Edgerton's film indeed enjoys but which was entirely lacking in both the original Australian poster and trailer . The Pulp Fiction-esque DVD image of Joel Edgerton (a recognisable face in Australia) looks dynamic and the luridly pulpy colours help it to leap out at the viewer. It's something that might conceivably prompt someone who's never heard of the title to pick it up and consider renting it.

I'm a celebrity, let me out of here - part 2

Extract 2 (follows on from post below):

"Mediated's most significant contribution may be its insights into the existential price we pay as mediated people. De Zengotita writes that the 'moreness of everything,' the sheer increase in the volume of media vying for one's attention, leads to adaptations in the psychic life of the human being.

"Because individuals can only register a certain amount of information in any given moment, the bombardment of media images gives rise to defense mechanisms such as apathy and indifference. Constant exposure to representations creates a “thinness to things, a smoothness, a muffled quality—it's all insulational, as if the deities of Dreamworks were laboring invisibly around us, touching up the canvas of reality with digital airbrushes. . .

"Another consequence of growing up in a world of mediation, of always feeding on the 'irresistible flattery that goes with being incessantly addressed' by representations, is that one becomes spoiled. The flattered self, de Zengotita writes, 'never gets enough. It feels unappreciated. It whines a lot. It wants attention.'"

(image: imgs.xkcd.com)