Australian producers are struggling to face challenges imposed by a changing screen industry – and greater transparency will benefit everyone.
AAP Image/Gaye Gerard
David Court, Australian Film, Television and Radio School et Andrea Buck, Australian Film, Television and Radio School
There is an emerging push for greater transparency in the industry about how films are funded and the profits they return. But can sharing information can help a financially risky industry into the black?
Blue steel has never looked so good.
Yoan Valat/EPA
The camera, situated in the middle of the foyer of a public building, looks through large windows into the street and city beyond. The protagonist couple of Eastern Boys – affluent Frenchman Daniel (Olivier…
Bullying in music education is pervasive, but often more insidious than this.
Sony
Aspects of Whiplash are implausible – but it does reflect the real and insidious bullying culture that exists in music education.
In American Sniper, Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is the ‘sheepdog’ – someone who operates in a state of constant, anxious alertness against inevitable attack.
Entertainment Weekly
Many are decrying the film as merely conservative propaganda. But American Sniper – as with many of Eastwood’s films – has a more nuanced approach that addresses modern anxieties.
Four minutes into the 1994 Oscars, host Whoopi Goldberg declared: “Tonight we gather to honour Hollywood’s best, which is also the world’s best”. The directors of the five films nominated for the Best…
With the Academy Awards ceremony just around the corner, it’s worth reflecting on some of the criticism triggered by the Oscar nominations and fuelled by the recent BAFTA awards. There was only one thing…
Colman Domingo, director Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo at the Berlin film festival.
Jens Kalaene/EPA
The 2015 Golden Globe nominations for Selma (Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director) seemed to signal that the film’s chances were high for being on all the nomination lists for the rest of the awards…
Two films about recent American history feature in the Oscars run up this year. There’s Selma, a heroic retelling of the civil rights movement. And then American Sniper, about US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle…
How does a classic film like The Godfather change when its score is played live?
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
On the weekend, Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s (SSO) played the score to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather during a screening of the film at the Sydney Opera House. The Godfather is the film…
The reaction to the Ghostbusters 3 cast announcement indicates broader cultural concerns.
Jeff Jackowski
Last week, director Paul Feig announced that the protagonists of Ghostbusters 3 would all be women. While some have heralded the female follow up as a feminist coup, others – including many fans – have…
Foreign PR campaigns have been waged for decades. Films like 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front were significantly altered to appease Germany’s Nazi Party.
filmjunk.com
Feature films and television shows notoriously play fast-and-loose with the facts. When prologues proclaim “Based on a True Story,” they’re gracefully implying that what follows is mostly fiction. Awards…
If you’re in favor of copyright extensions – and aren’t a corporation holding the rights or a descendent of the original author – you probably need some sense knocked into you.
Flickr
In 1998, if Congress hadn’t extended copyrights by 20 years, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind would all be in the public domain…
Martin D Brown, Richmond American International University
The latest spy film has all the familiar accoutrements. Well-cut suits, a dastardly villain, some intricate gadgets. But this is a film that harks back to the classics: Kingsman: The Secret Service is…
Recognition is a super-human process that requires sacrifice …. and a bit of flying.
Atsushi Nishijima/Twentieth Century Fox
What do Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Simpsons, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film Birdman have in common? All three utilise the concept of meta-theatre. The concept of meta-theatre, or meta-text, in its crudest…
Joaquin Phoenix plays hippy private eye Doc in Inherent Vice.
Warner Bros. Pictures
In a revealing moment from Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 “nostalgia-noir” novel, hippy private eye Doc Sportello speaks to a client, Trillium Fortnight, who is able to diagnose the whereabouts of…
Director Andrey Zvyagintsev and actors Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Elena Lyadova at the premier of the controversial film Leviathan.
Sebastien Nogier/EPA
The Russian film world has been in some turmoil this week. First there was news that the government was to decree that films “defiling the national culture, posing a threat to national unity and undermining…