The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards are described as Australia’s version of the Oscars. Some wags call it the “Ozcars”. AACTAs are voted for by the screen industry, rather…
Robocop will hit Australian screens next week. Does it have what it takes to deliver a record-breaking return on investment?
Kerry Hayes/Columbia Pictures Industries Inc and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.
Can we predict which films will turn a massive profit? Studio honchos would surely like to think so. In fact, an empirical and scientific study of the feature films that returned the highest rate of profit…
A Jewish victim at Klooga Death Camp.
Jeremy Hicks
A one-off programme on History’s H2 channel and Sky News has broadcast for the first time some film footage I discovered depicting the Holocaust. This may seem unremarkable: in the digital age, smartphones…
Academy Award nominations rarely enter into the domain of politics, and certainly have not delved into Indonesian politics in the past. This year, however, is different. US-British director Joshua Oppenheimer’s…
Sometimes too much is just too much. Martin Scorsese’s latest film is swamped by its excesses.
Paramount Pictures
The Wolf of Wall Street is Martin Scorsese’s Scarface – and that isn’t meant as a compliment. I watched Brian De Palma’s 1983 film again recently. I had been looking forward to it: the Blu-ray edition…
Lupita Nyong'o and Alfre Woodard star in Steve McQueen’s new biopic.
Chris Pizzello/AP
The United States was in the middle of a civil war 150 years ago and, while Abraham Lincoln had just issued the emancipation proclamation, it would still be another 18 months until freedom finally came…
Nymphomania is in the eye of the beholder.
Flickr/Orofacial
A woman masturbates, has erotic feelings towards numerous men and women, and an “excessive” desire for sex. Is she a nymphomaniac? Filmmaker Lars von Trier is reigniting debate on the subject with his…
Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, stars of Blue is the Warmest Colour, at the Cannes Film Festival.
EPA/Ian Langsdon
From limited theatrical releases to the queer film festival circuit – and being refused classification – 2013 has seen films with LGBT content distributed to audiences by a variety of means. Box office…
Oscar contender Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock, relied heavily on visual effects – but the industry itself is struggling.
AAP Image/ Warner Bros Pictures
It’s the season to be making predictions about 2014 Oscar wins, and although Australian audiences are yet to see Best Picture favourites from the likes of Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street), David…
The jury of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival had its say on the films of the year in May.
EPA/Guillaume Horcajuelo EPA/Sebastien Nogier
Warning: this is not a list of the best movies of 2013. There were plenty of movies released this year that stirred up debates about cinema and who makes it. They were the ones that made me sit up and…
What kind of filmmaking does Tropfest encourage?
Go_OffStation
Sunday night in many ways marked a great achievement for the Australian short film genre, with the live broadcast of Tropfest – “the world’s largest short film festival” – on national television via SBS…
Bamboozled won best film at Tropfest on the weekend, causing much controversy.
Tropfest
On the weekend, Bamboozled was awarded the best film prize at the Tropfest. It has sparked controversy for its homophobic and transphobic narrative devices. The film portrays an encounter between Peter…
It’s a film about the vision and style of Cormac McCarthy – but does it work?
Twentieth Century Fox
The Counselor is a collaboration between one of the last century’s literary greats, novelist Cormac McCarthy, and one of the filmmakers who has helped define contemporary, mainstream American cinema, director…
The best-film award for Bamboozled has angered many movie fans.
Tropfest
It would have been hard to avoid the news that the best-picture award at Sunday’s Tropfest short-film festival in Sydney was given to filmmaker Matt Hardie for Bamboozled – and even harder to ignore the…
If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes …
Jodi Sita
In Blade Runner (1982), Roy Batty, the leader of an outlaw group of Nexus-6 replicants, undertakes a quest to “meet his maker”. When he encounters Chew, the genetic designer of his eyes, he mocks: “Chew…
The British Film Festival offers much to please audiences – but how connected is it to the Brit diaspora?
nickwheeleroz
When it comes to film festivals, Australian audiences have plenty to choose from. Virtually every week there is a film festival from a different ethnic, national, religious or cultural group vying for…
An excerpt from Alison Bechdel’s comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For (1985).
Wikimedia
Four cinemas in Sweden recently pledged to rate films based on whether they pass what is known as the “Bechdel test,” a means of evaluating gender bias in film, named after American graphic artist Alison…
Casting stars such as Rachel Griffiths isn’t enough to overcome a broken distribution system.
Paul Miller/AAP
There’s more than one reason the new Australian film Patrick – released last month – is a horror story. Sure, it’s a fright flick, based on the 1978 orginal, in which a creepy coma patient uses telekinesis…
Tom Cruise at the Austrian premiere of Oblivion (2013).
EPA/HERBERT NEUBAUER
Take a very ordinary blockbuster of the summer of 2013. Joseph Kosinski, hot from rebooting the Tron franchise, directs Tom Cruise as a clone seeking some lost vestige of humanity (so nothing difficult…
Sydney’s newest film festival is hoping to make a big splash with free screenings and a diverse program.
micn2sugars
The Sydney Intercultural Film Festival, which opens this week, is the most ambitious new film festival to hit Sydney this year. It represents a major departure from the conventions of film festivals…