Editing a movie beside the late, great Paul Cox was like attending ‘a one on one’ film school. The growling auteur was a brilliantly stubborn man, who treated film with reverence and wore his heart on his sleeve.
This year’s Sydney Film Festival presented a panoply of films. Highlights included a sinister documentary about competitive tickling, the tale of a woman who befriends a wolf and an indie comedy featuring Viggo Mortensen as a leftie dad.
Films about incompetent, inspirational flops are popular at present. These strange heroes embody the mantra of our self-help culture: never give up and embrace willpower over talent.
Bruce Beresford can’t draw, but he has wept in an art gallery. A lifelong delight in a wide range of art – from paintings to opera – has influenced his craft from a young age.
British rom-com Me Before You has topped the box office in the UK and is about to reach Australia. It has all the clichés of feel-good romance (including a castle), but it has also been labelled a ‘disability snuff movie’.
Jared Borkum, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Many broadcasters around the world enforce local content quotas to ensure their television industries’ survival. But the success of these measures varies widely.
The Sydney Film Festival opens on Wednesday with the world premiere of Ivan Sen’s Goldstone. There is no filmmaker working here today who is more adept at touching the raw nerves of Australian culture.
The boxer’s death follows hard on the heels of David Bowie and Prince. The world is losing global icons and learning how to grieve using new and democratic tools.
Film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Martin Scorsese scenes. In episode two, Isaacs looks at the opening credit sequence from the iconic 1973 film Mean Streets.