The MIFF Box Office opens today at The Forum Theatre!
154 Flinders St (cnr Russell St).
Mon 14th July - Thursday 24th July 11am - 7pm.
Friday 25th July - Sunday 10th August 10am to start of last session.
Phone bookings available on 03 9662 3722.
Monday 14 July - Thursday 24 July 11am to 9pm.
Friday 25 July - Sunday 10 August 10am - 9pm.
Or buy online! Check out our program HERE on the website.
Single tickets, festival passes and Opening & Closing Night tickets are available for purchase NOW.
Jul 17, 2008
MIFF Festival Program Launched!
If Batman had a shrink
Christian Bale as Batman in The Dark KnightThe idea of the superhero shrink is ripe for comedy, yet the inner workings of the Dark Knight's mind would be no laughing matter
For all pop culture's shamelessness, one comic opportunity has yet to be exploited. I could see it as a Saturday Night Live sketch, or an entire Jack Black film: a psychiatric service for superheroes.
Catwoman could celebrate her liberation from dowdy secretary to latex black nightwalker, then prank call Halle Berry and upbraid her for having wrecked her mythos. The X-Men would arrive together, saying how lonely they felt before discovering their commonality. Superman could debate the conundrum of being a virtually indestructible alien.
But the toughest nut to crack would be Batman.
All superheroes experience pain as they suffer the initiations that the genre demands. They have to be brought low before rising up again through sheer will. They also need a chip on the shoulder big enough to sustain a multi-film production, comic books, novels, video games and intense cultural analysis.
But Batman's the only constant self-hater. Wealth, worldliness and acclaim as Bruce Wayne do nothing for him: his own pain is his fetish. He reminds himself of his trauma every time he dons his wetsuit, because he's chosen as his emblem not something which provides strength and inspiration, but the sign of his misery. The black bat looms like a fascist stamp over everything he does, a constantly reinforced link between the grieving kid and the angry man.
Batman doesn't want to get over it. Bruce Wayne's money enables Batman to indulge his own chagrin and vindicate his desire for confrontation. His vast wealth could easily be rerouted into the institutions of the great and the good. That would improve the world. But what Batman really wants is to get off on his own grudge.
Unlike many other superheroes he doesn't have extraordinary gifts, not even (like Cassandra) those of prophecy and intuition. He didn't become super by accident (like Spider-Man) or force (like Nikita), and he's no Potterish Chosen One either. Batman's suit and vehicles are weapons loaded with gadgets. They let him pick and win fights. Like actual medieval knighthood, the chivalric ideal is an excuse to satiate the desire for violence.
And yet for all his angst, Batman has only one real foe: himself. It was the young Wayne whose fear of bats, brought on by a childhood tumble into a cave, caused his parents to leave an opera performance early and fall victim to a random street thug (at least in Christopher Nolan's version). While the Dark Knight's vigilantism is focused upon a vain effort to retrospectively right that wrong, the fact that he dresses in the guise of the creature that brought on his own moment of greatest failure suggests the larger part of his anger is directed inwards. The bat represents everything Wayne hates, regrets and fears - and he's in love with it.
Nolan's Batman Begins was a return to Bob Kane's original invention in 1939, and it utilised another heroic reworking: Mary Harron's reinvention of Christian Bale in American Psycho. American Psycho is one of the most impressive, coldly seductive films of the last decade. It showed the previously nondescript, now rebuilt Bale as an Aryan uber-paragon, his perfect form taut with contempt. It was this identity which Bale carried into the rebooted Batman.
In The Dark Knight, out next week, Batman confronts The Joker, a peculiar self-hater just like himself. The faceoff will be a tortured duel between two pathologies but in true Nietzschean form, Batman's pain is our pleasure - and his own. [blogs.guardian.co.uk]
Read More......
Justin Theroux to write Iron Man II
Justin Theroux in Mulholland Drive. The actor will pen the new Iron Man filmActor-turned-writer Justin Theroux will write the sequel to the biggest film of the year so far, Iron Man, Marvel studio has announced. Theroux, who has penned the forthcoming Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr comedy Tropic Thunder, is best known for roles in the David Lynch films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire (and ... ahem ... Charlie's Angels II: Full Throttle.) Variety also reports that Downey Jr and director Jon Favreau are close to signing on the dotted line for the new film, which follows the original movie's $300m haul in the US alone.
Juno scribe Diablo Cody will pen an untitled comedy script for Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks company which is based on an original idea by the film-maker himself, according to Variety. Spielberg has already brought the Oscar winner on board for the TV series The United States of Tara, for which Cody wrote the first episode, as well as taking an executive producer role. Dreamworks is keeping tight-lipped over the new project, which doesn't yet have a director, cast, or even a name.
Chinese authorities have given the go ahead for the Far East-set The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor to be released in the country. Censors have asked for only minor changes to be made to the film, which has been made as a co-production with the state-owned China Film co-production corp. That involved extensive collaboration from script stage onwards, but means the film bypasses the country's quota of 20 foreign films allowed to open in China each year. [The Guardian]
Read More......
Jul 16, 2008
BFI plans gallery of film memorabilia
Where can you see Marilyn Monroe's dress from Some Like It Hot or the first ever script for Coronation Street? Nowhere yet - but the BFI Southbank, which celebrates its 75th birthday this September, is hoping to open a new film centre to house all its TV and film memorabilia by 2015.
As well as a gallery and five cinemas, the film HQ would give the public access to thousands of hours of National Archive film and the opportunity to look at the BFI's posters, letters and scripts. Currently stored in Hertfordshire, the collection includes letters from Alec Guinness while he was filming with David Lean, an annotated early script of Star Wars and Peter Sellers' makeup diary.
"Once we have the green light, we will start a massive fundraising campaign," says Amanda Neville, director of the BFI. "It is vital that we have a centre for everyone to learn about film and film culture." [The Guardian]
Paramount drops $450 million movie financing deal
A tight credit market prompted Viacom Inc.'s movie-making subsidiary, Paramount Pictures, to drop a deal for $450 million in financing from Deutsche Bank, the companies said Tuesday.
The studio had been seeking the financing to contribute to a three-year, 30-movie slate, including sequels to "Transformers" and "Star Trek," but decided not to proceed several weeks ago.
"The deal terms had evolved to a point where they were unattractive when compared to alternative sources of financing available to Paramount," said spokeswoman Patricia Rockenwagner.
The studio said the decision will not affect its moviemaking plans because projects in the pipeline, including "Transformers," "Star Trek" and "G.I. Joe," already have co-financing deals in place.
Deutsche Bank had no comment on the deal but acknowledged its film financing team had left the bank several weeks ago as the bank scaled back activity in the sector.
"We are maintaining our entertainment financing capabilities, but we continue to realign our business in response to changing market conditions," said Deutsche Bank spokesman John Gallagher.
Major movie studios spent an average of $106.6 million making and marketing each of their films in 2007, up 6.3 percent from 2006, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
New DVDs: ‘A Throw of Dice’ and Summer Serials
There’s hardly a frame in the 1929 film “A Throw of Dice” that doesn’t provide a surge of visual pleasure. Produced by the German director Franz Osten and the Bengali lawyer and crusading nationalist Himansu Rai, the movie itself seems poised between two cultures, balancing the highly developed technique of German silent filmmaking and the rich iconography of Indian tradition. Jungles and palaces, elephants and tigers, princes in silk and servants in rags were photographed on location in Rajasthan and presented with the meticulous lighting, enveloping depth effects and rhythmic editing patterns of the Weimar cinema at its height.
Based on an episode from “The Mahabharata,” the ancient Indian epic, the film tells the story of two kings, the open-hearted Ranjit (Charu Roy) and the devious Sohat (played by Rai himself) who, during a hunting expedition, fall in love with Sunita (Seeta Devi), the beautiful daughter of a wise man who lives deep in the wild. Ranjit wins Sunita’s heart, but on the day of the wedding, the conniving Sohat lures his rival into a game of chance using trick dice. Ranjit loses her, along with his kingdom and his personal freedom, and returns to Sohat’s palace as a slave. Chance has led Ranjit to this dreadful pass; chance, perhaps, will rescue him.
Largely forgotten until a restoration by the British Film Institute made a splash last summer at a screening in Trafalgar Square in London, “Dice” was the third film produced by Osten and Rai. (The first, “The Light of Asia,” has been restored by the European cultural channel Arte.) All three seem to have been substantial successes in Europe and Asia, a phenomenon explained partly by the decision to cast Indian actors (although Ms. Devi, born Renee Smith, was Anglo-Indian) rather than the European performers in dusky makeup who had populated previous German visions of India, like Joe May’s 1921 film “The Indian Tomb.”
Though hardly free of the colonialist curse of Orientalism, “A Throw of Dice” seems less concerned with presenting its characters as exotic/erotic “others” than with creating a common ground of artfully presented spectacle. Osten returned to India in 1935 to work at the studio Rai had created, the mellifluously named Bombay Talkies Workers Industrial Co-Operative Society, where he directed 15 more features — a run that came to an end during the production of “Kangan” (“The Bangle”) in 1939, when Osten, a member of the Nazi party, was arrested by British colonial officials and held through the end of the war.
The new disc, originally produced for British release by Tim Pearce and Nadine Luque, features an appropriately cross-cultural score by Nitin Sawhney that blends Western orchestrations and Indian motifs. (Kino International, $29.95, not rated)
SUMMER SERIALS
Columbia Pictures thought so little of its serials that it apparently didn’t bother to maintain the copyrights for many of them, and it has fallen to individual collectors and enthusiasts to keep them in circulation, often in substandard prints.
One of the independent companies fighting the good fight is Restored Serials (restoredserials.com), which a few months ago came out with a digitally cleaned and polished version of one of Columbia’s most entertaining efforts, “The Green Archer” (1940). Based on a 1923 novel by Edgar Wallace, its 15 lively chapters describe the epic battle between Spike Holland (Victor Jory), a passionately dedicated insurance investigator, and Abel Bellamy (James Craven), a waspish antiques dealer whom Spike suspects of heading a gang of jewel thieves.
The main setting is Garr Castle, a sprawling edifice that serves as Bellamy’s headquarters and is honeycombed with a satisfyingly large number of secret passages and trap doors. The Green Archer of the title is a mysterious masked figure who materializes whenever Holland needs a hand or the plot needs advancing, popping up to pump arrows into bad guys or deliver crucial clues.
“The Green Archer” was one of four Columbia serials directed in 1940 by James W. Horne, a veteran filmmaker best known for his comedy shorts and features starring the likes of Laurel and Hardy (“Way Out West,” 1937), Charlie Chase (“Looser Than Loose,” 1930) and Buster Keaton (“College,” 1927). Like all of his serials, “The Green Archer” is a frequently hilarious exercise in self-conscious camp, created decades before that concept entered the mainstream with the television version of “Batman” in 1966.
Carried along by the surprisingly deft performance of the unknown Craven (whose first film this was), Horne turns the villainous Bellamy into a study in slow-burning, comic frustration. Like the perennially exasperated Edgar Kennedy of the Laurel and Hardy shorts, Craven’s Bellamy stares in disbelief as his bungling minions mess up his most elaborate plans, his temper eventually erupting in torrents of sarcasm. At one point Horne shows three of Bellamy’s hulking henchmen engaged in a fierce game of tiddlywinks.
Stunts like that could have gotten you fired over at Columbia’s chief rival, Republic Pictures, where serials were taken seriously. In his engaging 1995 autobiography, “In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase,” the Republic director William Witney describes exactly that happening to one of his colleagues, Alan James, when he tried to slip a much tamer gag into “S.O.S. Coast Guard” (1937). Republic believed in its serials, even when they weren’t believable, an attitude that might benefit many of today’s popular filmmakers, even as they continue to exploit Republic’s basic formulas. (Hello, Indiana Jones.)
Working with John English, Witney created many, if not most, of Republic’s best serials, among them “Daredevils of the Red Circle” (1939) and “Drums of Fu Manchu” (1940). (The two directors would alternate behind the camera, one filming while the other prepared for his shoot the next day.) Recently the independent distributor VCI (vcientertainment.com) added English and Witney’s rare 1938 “Dick Tracy Returns” to its catalog of digitally restored serials, and it’s a pip: 15 chapters of magnificently staged, marginally plausible action, starring Ralph Byrd as Chester Gould’s pointy-jawed comic-strip cop.
Tracy’s nemesis, as was the custom in the newspaper strip, is a stylized version of a notorious gangster then in the news, in this case, one Pa Stark — a sort of Ma Barker, complete with killer brood, recovered for the patriarchy. Stark is played by one of the most identifiable actors of the form, Charles Middleton, who lent his long, sour face and grand, Shakespearean diction to Ming the Merciless in the three “Flash Gordon” serials.
“He was always cast as the head of the orphanage,” Witney wrote about Middleton, “the one who loved to beat little kids. In real life, he was the nicest, most gentle person imaginable.” (“The Green Archer,” Restored Serials, $19.95, not rated; “Dick Tracy Returns,” VCI Entertainment, $29.99, not rated)
source: www.nytimes.com/
Jul 12, 2008
Great Brad Pitt quotes
There is a serious lack of Brad and Angelina news right now. Obviously, we’re all just biding our time, waiting for the Big Announcement, that the Jolie-Pitt twins have been born. Other than that, it’s all just tabloid fodder or re-hashing the same thing all over the Internet.
So, in light of the no-babies-yet-news and due to a shortage of Brad Pitt lately, here is a collection of one person’s 18 favorite quotes said by Brad over the years. My favorite is the same one that made me laugh so hard years ago when I first read it:I phoned my grandparents and my grandfather said ‘we saw your movie’. ‘Which one?’ I said. He shouted ‘Betty, what was the name of that movie I didn’t like?’
Now THAT is humbling! I also liked his comment about not speaking about things you don’t know much about, because you know that when he does talk about things like Darfur and New Orleans, it’s because he’s taken the time to learn about the topics, and he is speaking of things he’s researched.
What was your favorite on the list?
(Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday! I had a great day and got some awesome gifts including a really nice zoom lens for my camera, I can’t wait to play with it. Also, I think it was Ligaya who mentioned the quote site - thanks!)
source
Vantage Point (Single-Disc Edition)
During an historic counter-terrorism summit in Spain the President of the United States is struck down by an assassin's bullet. Eight strangers have a perfect view of the kill but what did they really see? As the minutes leading up to the fatal shot are replayed through the eyes of each eyewitness the reality of the assassination takes shape. But just when you think you know the answer the shattering final truth is revealed. VANTAGE POINT is a mindbending political action-thriller starring Dennis Quaid Matthew Fox Academy Award® Winner Forest Whitaker (Best Actor 2006 The Last King of Scotland) with Sigourney Weaver and Academy Award® winner William Hurt (Best Actor 1985 Kiss of the Spider Woman).System Requirements:Running Time: 90 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396216167 Manufacturer No: 21616
Product Details
* Amazon Sales Rank: #40 in DVD
* Brand: Sony
* Released on: 2008-07-01
* Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
* Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
* Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
* Original language: English
* Subtitled in: Cantonese, English, French, Korean, Spanish
* Dubbed in: French, Spanish
* Number of discs: 1
* Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
* Running time: 90 minutes
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Vantage Point, which aspires to be a cunningly twisted thriller, comes equipped with plenty of hurtling action, handheld camerawork, what-was-that? editing, and a plot that has multiple, contradictory agendas writhing like a nest of snakes. It's all set a-boil within a few blocks of a town square in Spain where a U.S. President is targeted for assassination. Although the movie lasts 90 minutes, the events it depicts are mostly over with in a quarter-hour or so--but seen, rewound, and reseen from half a dozen different (you guessed it) vantage points. The first line in the credits reads "Original Film," apparently the name of the production company. "Gimmick Movie" would be more accurate; the opening reel, effectively jolting, affords an initial overview of the events through the eyes, lenses, monitors, and dueling sensibilities of a TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver), her activist-minded reporter (Zoe Saldana) and crew. Everybody's in Salamanca (actually, Mexico City) for the start of an international conference to reaffirm Arab-Western commitment to the fight against terrorism. Terrorism, of course, sees this as an ideal moment to break out. As gunshots and explosions reduce everything to chaos, the clock is reset to zero and we proceed to revisit the scene as experienced by several Secret Service agents (namely Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox), an American tourist with camcorder (Forest Whitaker), sundry locals--including three who may be caught up in a love triangle or a conspiracy or both--and even the President himself (William Hurt).
For a while, this is mildly diverting: that guy, or that gesture, so sinister when glimpsed across the plaza in one run-through, now appears harmless in close-up--or vice versa. But there's no real ambiguity (so stop with the careless comparisons to Kurosawa's Rashomon)--this is a shell game in which the peas aren't worth tracking. Despite decent actors, the characters might as well be holograms (although poor Forest Whitaker is saddled with "motivation" of surpassing sappiness), and the casting telegraphs several twists: one redoubtable good guy practically gives a wink-wink, nudge-nudge that he's really bad, etc. The movie declines to specify which nutjob philosophy the terrorists espouse, and their numbers are multi-ethnic. There's also a laborious suggestion that they have bloodthirsty, reactionary counterparts among the President's inner circle, which perhaps qualifies as redeeming socio-political comment and prompts a meaningless declaration of deep meaning from the Prez. The whole megilleh finally comes down to an extended car chase through impassably claustrophobic streets that would mark a lurch into unintentional self-parody--if only that point hadn't been passed a couple of rewinds earlier. --Richard T. Jameson
Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angeles
Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles captures the multi-Grammy® Award-winning, Platinum-selling singer/songwriter in the element where fans love him the most: live on stage. This special concert includes three sets: an acoustic performance, a rare set with John Mayer Trio (John Mayer, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino), as well as a set featuring Mayer's full band.
John Mayer's Where The Light Is includes 22 songs and features a one-of-a-kind song list made up of the three distinct performances - all recorded the night of December 8th, 2007 at the NOKIA Theatre in Los Angeles.
Disc Tracklisting
Acoustic Set:
1.Neon
2.Stop This Train
3.In Your Atmosphere
4.Daughters
5.Free Fallin'
Trio Set:
6.Everyday I Have The Blues
7.Wait Until Tomorrow
8.Who Did You Think I Was
9.Come When I Call
10.Good Love Is On The Way
11.Out Of My Mind
12.Vultures
13.Bold As Love
Band Set:
14.Waiting On The World To Change
15.Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
16.Why Georgia
17.The Heart Of Life
18.I Don't Need No Doctor
19.Gravity
20.I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)
21.Belief
22.I'm Gonna Find Another You
Special Fetures:
Slow Dancing on Mullholland Drive
Who Did You Think I Was- Steve Jordan & Pino Palladino Multi-angle Cam
Product Details
* Amazon Sales Rank: #52 in DVD
* Released on: 2008-07-01
* Rating: NR (Not Rated)
* Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
* Number of discs: 1
* Formats: Color, DVD-Video, PAL
* Original language: English
* Number of discs: 1
* Running time: 164 minutes
Customer Reviews
Great Music, Great Value5
I paid even less by pre-ordering but that's of no consequence. The DVD is a top-shelf production with a great variety of music (I mean come on--22 tracks!) and worth two-times the retail price. I'm a BIG JM fan...this is the next best thing to an actual concert experience...I couldn't be more pleased.
Buy it! PERIOD5
It is amazing to watch Mr. John Mayer and the musicians he hangs with.
Guys old enough to be his father but Mayer showing that respect that can only come from a true music man!
His respect for the different genres and players of those genres is very appealing!
And did i say he plays the hell out of a guitar - cheez - that boy is on fire!!!!
Go Johhny, Go Johnny - Go Johnny GO!!!
like punching underwater5
Having been a John Mayer fan since I first heard his Why Georgia song two years after it came out I knew there was more than meets the eye. So I explored and found all the JM info I could..and then Any given Thursday came out and City Love and Covered in Rain proved me right.. So needless to say I was waiting for him to come out with a lengthy live DVD, and people this is it.John Mayer approaching his prime, this is a great performance(specially Paparazzi part) and you won't regret this purchase. Mayer can shred with anyone out there alive right now.. BUY IT or and...
REMEMBER DUANE ALLMAN
Jackie Chan museum planned in Shanghai
Jackie Chan's Web site says construction has begun on a museum for the action movie star in the Chinese financial capital Shanghai.
A statement published Friday says the 54-year-old attended a ceremony marking the start of work earlier this week.
The museum will house props and costumes from Chan's movies, photos and other memorabilia, the Web site said. Construction is scheduled to finish in October 2009.
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