Tiger goes ape

White Bengal tiger, photographed by Australian Birte Person at Singapore Zoo. Story at UK's Daily Mail.

(Thanks to Virginia Moncrieff for the tip)

Bulldoze Hopetoun, get creative

There was an amazing amount of reactionary, nostalgist whingeing in Sydney today over the closure of supposedly iconic Surry Hills rock dive The Hopetoun - a cramped, horrible room for live music at the best of times.

So I've joined the Facebook group, Save the Hopetoun, solely to offer a counter view to the audience most likely to tie to me to the stake.

The kneejerk way people to flock to lost causes like this I find really depressing. My hero when it comes to campaigning for arts venues is Marcus Westbury, who has mounted a highly successful and practical campaign to open up condemned properties as arts spaces in his native Newcastle.

Westbury and his campaigners didn't whinge about why someone else wasn't running spaces for them, they went and did something practical, creative and forward thinking.

That's exactly what rock fans in Sydney should do if they want to create one or more new live music spaces. Alternatively they could have a good wallow in nostalgia. It wont do any good but I'm sure it'll make them feel better - for about five minutes.

For what it's worth, here's my proudly snot-nosed comment on the Facebook group page:

The Hopetoun has " had its day and frankly it always was a complete pit. if there's a strong creative scene, it will throw forward its own venues, as the rave scene did. The advent of underground venues more recently in Sydney underscores the point.

"Who is this campaign aimed at? The Hopetoun was a business that no longer seems to have a workable business model, so how are its Facebook supporters going to address this little problem? It'll take more than $100 each. it means coming up with an alternative busines splan. Are you ready to put in the graft?

"And re. gentrification of Surry Hills, this is an inescapable fact and has been for several years. The chances of holding onto what is now a piece of valuable real-estate as a token indie rock-dive are nil.

"Get realistic, peoples. This is a reactionary, kneejerk, unimaginative and backward looking campaign. Go to a cheaper suburb, open a warehouse, a tent. Go the council and negotiate to take over a condemned building as a venue. Be smart."

Bound to be flamed to hell, I'm sure. Should be fun.

Postscript 12.40am: first Facebook flamer already - it reads "You are an asshole" and it comes from the eloquent pen of one Kirsten Morley.


(Images: large: SMH/ small: Time Out Sydney)

Twitter-fear strikes again

At the ABC website I examine "Twitter-fear", old media, and the social networking revolution.

Extract:
"Witness the astonishing behavior of Fairfax's Australian Financial Review, which has asked its editorial staff to sign a nine page ethics policy requiring they only use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, forums and other websites that invite community participation "in a strictly personal capacity".

"While some of the Fin Review's ethics policy is sensibly aimed at preventing journos from becoming entangled in public political debates that might compromise their professional profile (the ABC has similar rules), this policy actively prevents writers from building professional social networks using the tools the era demands..."

Please log comments on the ABC blog rather than here.

European network has glowing praise for Aussie filmmakers

Interviewing a leading European public TV executive recently I was keen to find what his views were on local filmmakers.

Hans Robert Eisenhauer, commissioning editor for German-French joint venture ZDF-ARTE, was in Sydney for the INPUT conference, an annual gathering where international public TV executives screen and discuss the best of their networks' recent work.

When we met Eisenhauer had just had extensive meetings with Australian documentary producers to discuss their proposals for international co-productions. His verdict on the projects pitched to him and the overall standard of Australian work? Glowing.

My story is published today in The Australian's media guide.

It is my great pleasure to present to you...Robocop

Robocop - as directed by anti-riot forces in Pittsburgh today.
(Image: New York Times)

POSTSCRIPT: A reader has suggested the US riot gear (above) looks closer to the military uniforms in another Paul Verhoeven movie, Starship Troopers. You be the judge:

Screen Australia selects the lucky 12

(Pictured: Troy Lum of Hopscotch Features, credit: intotheshadowsmovie.com)

Screen Australia has announced the names of 12 production companies to receive funding of $9 million - part of the new emphasis on outsourcing much of the scruipt and talent development and other work to private businesses working at the production coal face rather than centralising it within the federal bureaucracy.

The 12 successful companies are (in alphabetical order):

• Cordell Jigsaw Productions (Michael Cordell, Nick Murray)
• Essential Media & Entertainment (Chris Hilton, Ian Collie, Sonja Armstrong, Carmel Travers)
• Goalpost Pictures Australia (Rosemary Blight, Kylie du Fresne, Ben Grant, Cass O’Connor)
• Hoodlum (Tracey Robertson, Nathan Mayfield)
• Hopscotch Features (Troy Lum, Andrew Mason, John Collee, Frank Cox)
• Matchbox Pictures (Helen Bowden, Penny Chapman, Tony Ayres, Michael McMahon, Helen Panckhurst)
• Prospero Productions (Ed Punchard, Julia Redwood)
• Renegade Films (Australia) (Joe Connor, Ken Connor)
• Roar Film (Stephen Thomas, Kath Symmons, Craig J Dow Sainter)
• Scarlett Pictures (Kath Shelper)
• Waking Dream Productions (Jan Chapman)
• Warp Films Australia (Anna McLeish, Mark Herbert, Robin Gutch)

The media releases says "the companies to be funded span features, television, documentary and interactive digital platforms, and include both experienced entrepreneurs and newer players. Their business plans incorporate strategies for development including diversification, new revenue streams, new alliances, innovative approaches to distribution, strategies for raising private equity, and expansion across states and into international markets. Mentorship and opportunities for talent renewal are also represented..."

For more detailed info on the companies click here; for the original media release see here.

Charlotte avec Papa - tres creepy

So now we know how come Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't blink an eye-lid at being asked to do genital mutilation and all that how's-your-father in Lars von Trier's Antichrist (being released in Australia by Transmission/ Paramount).

This 1988 video clip for a duet with her Daddy, French crooner Serge Gainsbourg, shows the old man exerted a somewhat skin-crawling influence on his daughter's professional career, apparently teaching the girl that there really is no such thing as boundaries for the Gainsbourg clan.

For those inclined to think "no, this can't really be about what it looks to be all about, she looks so under-age here", the song's title clears up any lingering ambiguities: Lemon Incest. Chopin would hardly have been pleased at the foul misuse of his tune (Thanks to Toronto mag The Eye). Charlotte appears to have been either 16 or 17 when the clip was made.

Wikipedia records that in the mid-60s Serge's song for teen singer France Gall, Les Sucettes (Lollipops), "caused a scandal in France: Gainsbourg had written the song with double-meanings and strong sexual innuendo, of which the singer was apparently unaware when she recorded it. Whereas Gall thought that the song was about a girl enjoying lollipops, it was really about oral sex."

Effing creep.

By chance I also came across this strong newmatilda.com opinion piece on the sexualisation of children today. Author Melinda Tankard Reist  quotes M. Gigi Durham on what the latter calls 'the Lolita Effect, that is, "the distorted and delusional set of myths about girls' sexuality that circulates widely in our culture and throughout the world". Girls are encouraged "to flirt with a decidedly grown-up eroticism and sexuality".'

Reist then quotes from a reader's letter to The Age: "I am the mother of a 13-year-old girl. She is not overly developed, she does not wear makeup, she is aware of her burgeoning sexuality, but a little daunted by it and curious of it. Whenever I go out with her — be it to a shopping centre, a walk down the road or picking her up from school — she is gawked at, wolf-whistled and stared at by men usually aged in their 20s and 30s. It doesn't matter that she is standing with her mother..."

On the irresistible rise of Yolande Moreau

The wonderful Yolande Moreau - previously little-known outside of France - beat Kristin Scott Thomas to the best acting prize in the 2009 French Cesar Awards.

My profile of Moreau and her excellent starring vehicles Seraphine (a poetic artist biography released today) and black comedy Louise-Michel is up at the SBS film website.

Seraphine is Martin Provost's biography of naive painter Seraphine de Senlis, an uneducated scullery maid in rural France driven to create art in the first half of the last century (see this page for examples of her extraordinarily sensual paintings).

Meanwhile Louis-Michel - which screened in competition at this year's Sydney Filmfest and is scheduled for release at an unspecified date - is the latest black comedy from Belgian writer-directors Gustave de Kervern and Benoit Delepine. Some viewers may recall their inspired wheelchair comedy Aaltra from the festival circuit about six years ago.

The death of storytelling? I don't think so, Paul

Veteran screenwriter and sometime director Paul Schrader, best known for writing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, believes that the proliferation of screen storytelling has led writers to the brick wall of "narrative exhaustion".

"It is increasingly difficult to get out in front of a viewer's expectations," he said in a recent article in The Guardian. "Almost every possible subject has not only been covered but covered exhaustively."

At newmatilda.com I examine Schrader's case and find it wanting , laying out nine arguments that suggest his pessimistic theorising to be bunk. The first: "Great film and TV drama and comedy does not only narrative but also character — not to mention atmosphere and mood, sensuality and sensation..." The second: "it ain't the story you tell, it's the way that you tell it... "

One request: if you'd liketo make a comment, please do so on the newmatilda article rather than here. Thanks.

Nice poster - now where's the film's star?

I like this poster for Michael Winterbottom's Genova (released in Australia at the end of October) - it gives a nice sense of the film's exotic Italian location and the expressions on the faces of the good-looking pair on the scooter accurately reflect a sense of unease and uncertainty that runs right through the film.

I am however surprised that Colin Firth, not only the film' star but a popular star in his own right, is relegated to a tiny image at the top of the page.

Why are distributors sometimes reluctant to capitalise on the presence of popular actors in their key marketing images? Winterbottom of course is British but I 've heard this point debated many times in the Australian film industry with regard to our own features.

See the marketing image below left for Rachel Ward's Beautiful Kate focussing on its unknown young co-star Sophie Lowe. You'd never guess from this that the film actually stars the well-known and widely liked Ben Mendelsohn, with the arguably even better known Bryan Brown and Rachel Griffiths in supporting roles.

Now you might argue that the images for both Beautiful Kate and Genova are aesthetically pleasing in their own right , and there I can't disagre. But in the context of the current debate about why so few people want to see Australian films, bear in mind that the choice of key images for a marketing campaign is primarily a commercial one - and if the image undersells the film then it's merely a pretty picture and not part of a successful marketing campaign.

Beautiful Kate has been performing quite well at the domestic box office - but would it have done even better witha more savvy campaign behind it?

In the case of Genova I'm sure Palace films has a strategy (appeal to a younger demographic?). I'll endeavour to find out what it is and report back.

Sydney notice: Metro Screen (same entrance as Chauvel Cinema) is holding a debate on October 27 on the issue: why are local filmmakers struggling to find audiences?

How to hit your puppet with the ugly stick

Last night Mary and Max director Adam Elliott (pictured right) put animation in the spotlight when he was named best director at the Australian Directors Guild annual screen awards dinner in Sydney.

As I've previously noted, Samson and Delilah's Warwick Thornton didn't figure in the nominations for the simple reason he's not a member of the guild and therefore not eligible. Had he been a member he surely would have been favourite to win - though of course we'll never know.

In the circumstances Elliott is certainly an honourable prize-winner. If his film had its flaws they were to be found in the script rather than the extraordinary direction.

The ADG award is a reminder that animators have made a breakthrough with investors and local funding bodies - one spearheaded of course by Elliott's Oscar win for Harvey Krumpet. M&M, his feature debut, showed again - and I don't say this lightly - that Elliot has a touch of genius in him.

Given this, I hate having to say that Elliott's chances of gaining the global audience and critical acclaim his animation and sense of humour deserves will probably remain limited until he weans himself off of his heavy dependence on narrative voiceover - a storytelling device much more suited to short films than to features. This held back M&M from reaching its full potential, especially when added to the film's parallel narrative, another problematic storytelling technique.

Whatever these quibbles, the film is a masterwork compared to the year's other local stop motion feature, $9.99 (released next Thursday, pictured below). My review ran in Limelight magazine last month, a full month early thanks to the distributor postponing its release after the magazine's deadline, and is republished with kind permission:Star rating: two and a half out of a possible five:

"On the heels of Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max comes another Australian (or in this case, part-Australian) stop-motion animated feature. Directed by New Yorker Tatia Rosenthal and written by Israeli short story writer Etgar Keret, this Israeli-Australian co-production consists of a whimsical series of intersecting stories featuring silicon puppet characters all living in a city block of flats.

"Representing them is a Rolls Royce cast of Australian (and mostly male) acting talent including Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Barry Otto, Claudia Karvan, Samuel Johnson and Leeana Walsman.

" The 'doll’s house' set-up, exploring the lives of a number of characters inhabiting the same building reaches back to films such as Grand Hotel (1932) and Hotel du Nord (‘38) and further back still to novels such as Balzac’s Pere Goriot (1835) - and can be irresistible in the right hands.

"Too bad that after a terrific opening scene, it’s downhill all the way. Most of the material is so slight and lacking in dramatic impetus that it’s hard to know why anyone would have invested so much labour in turning it into a film. That these ugly puppet characters look nothing like the well-known actors whose voices they share doesn’t help"._ Lynden Barber

Re. that last comment, yes, of course I'm aware that animation houses such as DreamWorks regularly hire well-known actors to voice their characters. I find it as distracting as it is here.

I was amazed to read Rosenthal in today's SMH virtually admitting the ugliness of the puppets was a deliberate choice . "I wanted a non-glossy finish, in the same way that people are," she says. "I think imperfections are really interesting and we were going for painterly, imperfect people.''

Let me check I have this right. She takes a project aimed at the already highly elusive adult audience for animation. Then she tries to bring it all to life with deliberately unattractive silicon puppets. That'll draw an audience.

Young Victoria - portraits and film

I started with the intention of contrasting Emily Blunt in Young Victoria with portraits of the historical figure at a similar age, which I was sure would demonstrate cinema's tendency to make ugly mugs look ravishingly gorgeous. But in as much as we can trust the royal portrait painters, it seems Blunt is not such a bad match for the real thing.

Aussie film problems? We are not alone

The Australian media is not alone in its soul-searching and criticism of the state of the local film industry. Similar issues plague the UK industry, according to this opinion piece by The Guardian's Jason Solomons.

Three extracts:

"...the deeper you go inside the British film industry, the thinner the pickings, the slimmer the plots, the ropier the ideas. In truth, there's always a decent winner (Moon this year, or Control in 2007, or My Summer of Love, pictured above, in 2004), but it's often a lone star, so far ahead in a competition that is, for the most part, embarrassing in its lack of professionalism and quality..."

"...one of the main problems we've got is that British people still don't really like British films. In creating this 'sustainable industry"\' with lottery money since 1994, we've forgotten to educate the consumer, creating a supply but not a demand...

"As money belts tighten, the British industry needs to focus on quality. I'd like to see far more time put into scriptwriters and a more stringent line taken by producers who should not go into production unless the script is strong enough..."

People's Republic scores again

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

The Cat Piano, the latest prize-winning short from Adelaide's very splendid The People's Republic of Animation, raises the question: could Australia have its very own answer to Pixar and Aardman staring us in the face?

Like Adam Elliot's Mary and Max, this surrealistic tale of a mysterious outsider who turns the torture of cats into a kind of twisted music is far more dark and adult than anything produced by either of those successful animators . So major commercial acclaim seems on the face of it unlikely.

But in terms of sheer inventiveness of the storytelling, the bold imagery and pure delight in the medium , TPRA can surely hold their heads among the aforementioned exalted company. The dependence on narrative voiceover (here provided by Nick Cave) is not an issue with short film, but as Mary and Max showed, is more problematic when it comes to a feature. But I'm sure they can solve that one.

You want the Girlfriend Experience 1 or 2, Sir ?

Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, starring porn star Sasha Grey (pictured above) as a call girl paid to give men the illusion of emotional intimacy, opens today. I review the film in the September issue of Limelight magazine, which is out now.

Something I only discovered today is that there's a 2008 Canadian movie with a similar title and theme (pictured right), being referred to as Ileana Pietrobruno's Girlfriend Experience after its Vancouver-based director. Judging from the trailer not only does it look remarkably similar in theme to the Soderbergh but an interesting film in its own right. Has anybody out there seen it and like to comment?

If both films were playing in town and I had only the trailers to guide me (see below, Canadian film up first), I'd be keenest to see Pietrobruno's film first. The trailer gives a strong sense of what it's about and the kinds of issues it engages in. The Soderbergh trailer has some funky drumming and tells us merely this is about a call girl and her boyfriend - it offers nothing else to tantalise or hook the viewer.

The major difference in terms of story seems to be that Pietrobruno focuses primarily on the male client's experience - something we've seen very rarely in cinema (Caveh Zahedi's 2005 hybrid doco I Am a Sex Addict being a recent exception).

Trailer: Ileana Pietrobruno's Girlfriend Experience

Trailer: Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience:


Sasha Grey interviewed about porn on the Tyra Banks Show (sorry but there doesn't seem to be a version of this without annotations):

Censorship moves against Toronto filmfest

The political boycotting of film festivals - whether over Israel/ Palestine or China/ Uighurs - is not about to go away.

Toronto International Film Festival, which opens on Sep 10, is the latest festival to be hit by a filmmaker withdrawing a film in protest against Israel.

Last Thursday John Greyson withdrew his film Covered (pictured) as a protest against its City to City focus on films from Tel Aviv. The next day, he and nine other Torontonians issued a petition inviting the city’s cultural communities to “protest TIFF's complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine.”

Festival co-director Cameron Baily has posted an offical reply on the TIFF website.

Extract:
"John writes that his protest isn’t against the films or filmmakers we have chosen, but against the spotlight itself. By that reasoning, no films programmed within this series would have met his approval, no matter what they contained. For us, the content and form of films does matter. In fact, when I met with a number of the signatories earlier this week, I encouraged them to see the films before passing judgment on the programme. Regrettably, they chose a different route. We know some of them to be veterans of Toronto’s battles against censorship - all the more surprising to watch them denounce a film series without seeing the films in it."

Minister reviews Stone Bros. rating

Media Release from distributor AFS:

MINISTERIAL INTERVENTION OVER CLASSIFICATION RATING

Federal Minister for Home Affairs, The Hon Brendan O’.Connor MP, has intervened and ordered an immediate review of the Classification Board’s decision to rate an Australian comedy, Stone Bros. MA 15+ (Strong Drug Use).

The minister’s intervention follows an empathetic appeal against the Classification Board from distributors Australian Film Syndicate and director Richard J. Frankland. Frankland; “I’m grateful to the Minister for ordering a review. It’s a good thing he’s done. I now hope that commonsense prevails and the film gets the rating it deserves.”

AFS has opposed this classification rating from the outset, due to the message that such a rating sends to audiences, both young and old. It maintains that Stone Bros. is not a film with “strong drug use”; rather it is a film with a strong message about the futility of drug use.

Part of AFS’ appeal was also based on what they believe to be an error in the Board’s assessment as to what is actually shown on screen. The Board writes “The film opens with a montage in which marijuana is shown being cut from the plant, mixed with tobacco and formed into joints.” The fact is no marijuana plant is shown in the film.