Monthly Archives: October 2015

Oct 30 2015
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Truly terrifying Aussie films

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With Halloween just around the corner, here are some of the most terrifying Aussie films to have come out over the past 30 years…

Wyrmwood (2013)

Family man and mechanic Barry teams up with Benny on a cross-country mission through the zombie-ravaged Australian bushland in an attempt to rescue Barry’s sister Brooke, who has been kidnapped and is getting experimented on.

Watch it now on iTunes and Google Play

The Babadook (2013)

After the death of her husband, a woman is plagued by her son’s fears of a shadowy monster.

Watch it now on iTunes, Google Play or Quickflix

100 Bloody Acres (2012)

A couple of small business owners are caught up in a bloody mess.

Watch it now on Google Play or Quickflix

Bait (2011)

A sleepy, coastal town is hit by a freak tsunami and a group of survivors are trapped in a flooded supermarket with several hungry sharks.

Watch it now on iTunes or Google Play

The Tunnel (2011)

This never before seen footage follows a news crew chasing a story about government cover-up in a disused labyrinth of tunnels under Sydney’s St James train station.

Watch it now on Netflix, iTunes and Google Play

The Reef (2010)

Four friends attempt to swim for land after their yacht capsizes on a week-long sailing trip, only to be stalked by a great white shark.

Watch it now on Netflix, Stan or Google Play

The Loved Ones (2009)

Brent declines Lola’s invitation to the school dance. Lola’s over-protective father kidnaps Brent and father and daughter force Brent to endure a macabre formal of their own making.

Watch it on Netflix, iTunes or Google Play

Rogue (2006)

A saltwater crocodile terrorises a group of tourists in Kakadu National Park.

Watch it on Stan, iTunes or Google Play

Wolf Creek (2004)

Three backpackers are abducted in the isolated Australian outback.

Watch it on Stan, iTunes or Google Play

Bad Boy Bubby (1993)

Bubby has been locked in an apartment in Adelaide for all of his 35-years, believing the air outside to be poisonous… Until he makes his escape, going on a shocking journey of self-discovery.

Watch it on DVD

Razorback (1984)

A man is pitted against a vicious killer while searching for his missing wife.

Watch it on DVD

Oct 29 2015
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Australian drama: A state of play

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Australian audiences are embracing local content in droves but industry needs to continue rallying behind local production, with challenging times ahead. By Caris Bizzaca.

If 2015 has taught us anything, it’s that Australians have a huge appetite for quality, home-grown stories.

From the record box office figures for Australian films ($66 million and counting) to acclaimed TV productions such as The Secret River and Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door, audiences are lapping up the excellent fare on offer.

Amid these successes, Screen Australia has released its annual Drama Report, covering all feature films and TV dramas that started production in the last financial year. In this case, that’s 2014/15 – the year of telemovies including the upcoming Molly, films such as The Dressmaker and TV series like No Activity and ongoing seasons of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Love Child and Please Like Me.

With the screen industry constantly in a state of flux, especially considering the amount of time it takes to get a production off the ground, Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason says it’s important to look at the big picture the Drama Report presents.

“We’ve done this report for 25 years and I think what you’ve got to do is never look at a year in isolation – you’ve got to look at trends and how it all falls together,” he says.

This year’s report shows some areas of great strength, but also flags some challenges on our doorstep.

Expenditure for 2014/15 financial year was $837 million, just 1% less than last year’s record level. In feature films, the amount of money actually being spent on feature films was consistent, but largely made up of foreign spend thanks to films such as Pirates of the Carribbean sequel and The LEGO® Movie sequels.

These studio movies might not be telling Aussie stories, but they have massive impact on our local industry, Mr Mason says.

And this is invaluable.

“People forget this means employment for crew, facility houses and location services,” he says.

And it’s only set to continue into next year’s report with news that a Thor sequel and Ridley Scott’s next Alien film will be filmed in Australia.

“That’s securing thousands of jobs, which then spill over into town, because every restaurant, every taxi company, every hire car company wil get benefits too as well as the promotion of the country, so it’s valuable on lots of levels,” he says.

“But what you need for consistency is a lot of local product going as well.”

While there was a drop in spending on local drama production, it wasn’t because there were less Australian films. In fact, the number was largely the same as last year when you look at films funded predominantly by Australian sources and infrastructure. The drop instead was due to the lack of big-budget Aussie movies funded by overseas studios, such as The Great Gatsby or Mad Max: Fury Road, which were made the previous year.

“We’re happy that local film is pretty consistent,” Mr Mason said of the 35 Australian films starting production including Red Dog: True Blue, Lion and Joe Cinque’s Consolation.

“But it’s actually in TV rather than a one-off film, that people – actors and crew – get more consistent work.”

Television itself is an area going through some of the biggest changes.

The Drama Report shows that TV drama is coming off the high watermark of the previous few years, and both spend and hours are down.

“(That’s) largely that’s to do with people commissioning shows with a shorter run,” Mr Mason says.

“You’re not seeing amazing long shows like Packed to the Rafters or Offspring that run season after season. You’ve got brilliant tele on but it might be Peter Allen for a couple of episodes, or The Secret River, so again shorter hours.

“That’s also challenging because the costs of making a shorter run show are much greater than amortising it over a long run like Packed to the Rafters.”

So while TV is clearly vital for the ongoing health of the local screen industry, the costs are posing real challenges. And this is all before the impact of funding cuts to ABC, Screen Australia and SBS are felt. Government support is clearly more vital than ever.

Mr Mason says the main concern is, as always, cost.

“It’s still expensive to make content in Australia in any way, shape or form,” he says.“And we’re a small population to recoup those costs. It’s much cheaper to acquire something overseas than it is to make it here locally.”

The cost to a broadcaster to commission a one-hour Australian drama such as Love Child or House Husbands ranges from around $450,000 to $1.2 million per broadcast hour.

And while popular international dramas can be more expensive to produce than Australian programs, their production costs are covered in their home market. Even high-end programs such as Downton Abbey – with proven audience appeal overseas and competition amongst Australian broadcasters to acquire – are typically licensed by Australian broadcasters for around $350,000 per hour, well under the base costs to commission an Australian drama. And repeats of a popular program with highly-paid cast, such as The Big Bang Theory, can be licensed by Australian broadcasters for as little as $200,000 per hour.

So what’s ahead?

“We’re not crying wolf. But there are challenges on our doopsteps,” Mr Mason says.

“What’s important to take away, is how keen Australians are to see local productions. To hear our accents, see our stories, understand our culture – that’s something you can’t put a price on. And it’s something we will continue trying to create.”

The Drama Report is available on the Screen Australia website.

Oct 28 2015
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From big screen to small, we just can’t get enough of Sarah Snook

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Australian actress Sarah Snook continues to soar on Australian film and television, capping off a stellar year with a double whammy of The Dressmaker and The Beautiful Lie. By Caris Bizzaca.

The same night Sarah Snook was walking the red carpet at the glamorous premiere of The Dressmaker, her acclaimed series The Beautiful Lie was hitting television screens for the first time.

A chameleon of sorts, this seemingly innocuous night encapsulates the way Snook has managed to deftly switch between film and television, sinking her teeth into fascinating dramatic fare and avoiding being pigeon-holed into one kind of role.

This year alone has also seen Snook star in ABC series The Secret River and smash-hit family film Oddball, which recently passed the $10 million mark at the Australian box office.

But despite her impressive resume, which also includes excellent time-travel sci-fi flick Predestination with Ethan Hawke and her breakout role in Not Suitable for Children with Ryan Kwanten, Snook has been able to keep her anonymity largely intact.

Part of this can be attributed to the wide variety of roles she has played, but also the way in which Snook becomes her characters. So much so, that in Predestination, where she plays a transgender man, some of her friends watching the film didn’t even realise who it was at first.

For The Beautiful Lie, a modern take on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the story takes place in Melbourne rather than 19th century Russia, with Snook tackling the starring role. Instead of an aristocrat, she plays Australia’s version of high-society – a former tennis pro – in the six-part ABC series.

Director Glendyn Ivin says Snook’s character Anna is a difficult one to play.

“We all know from very early on that she’s making arguably the wrong decisions and in that way she’s a very morally ambiguous character,” he says.

“But with Sarah you see the indecision, like a tidal wash back and forth, of her right and wrong (choices) and her processing of that. There are very few actors that I’ve seen that have that kind of presence onscreen.”

While The Beautiful Lie has been transported to modern day Australia, Snook’s career has often seen her delve into history.

The Secret River, based on Kate Grenville’s bestselling novel, starred Snook as an early settler in NSW, while The Dressmaker takes place in a tiny Aussie country town in 1951, and even TV movie Sisters of War, with one of her first roles, was set during WWII.

“I guess I’m drawn to them but not exclusively,” Snook says.

“I grew up watching the BBC, and Jane Austen films like Pride and Prejudice, so a part of me loves being in those worlds. They have the most all-encompassing costume and production design and you can really hide.”

The costumes play a significant role in The Dressmaker, where Tilly Dunnage (played by Kate Winslet) returns to her small town after years working in European fashion houses. Her creations have a profound impact on the townsfolk, particularly Snook’s character Gertrude.

“She starts off almost invisible,” Snook says.

“She’s someone who doesn’t have a lot of confidence and is very shy, but when she gets made into this beautiful swan by Tilly for the footballer’s dance she kind of comes into her own. [But she] realises there’s a way to use that power and use it not necessarily for good.”

Based on Rosalie Ham’s novel, The Dressmaker is filled with a lot of drama, comedy and a surprising number of twists. Snook was able to draw on the book, but unsurprisingly worked closely with costume designer Marion Boyce to create the character.

“So much of it was about marking that transformation with the dress,” Snook says.

“There were even little nicknames – the wedding dress, the balcony dress, the footballers dance, the forthy wedding dress – and they all had their individual styles.”

However they also had to have a similar thread (no pun intended) linking them as well, because they were coming from a single designer in the film – Tilly.

“Rather than exploring a different dress just because, it was about trying to make sure it came from what Tilly would design for Gertrude.”

Now with The Dressmaker wrapped, Snook is going to cap off the year by leaping into something different.

The NIDA trained actor is heading overseas to tread the boards at London’s The Old Vic, with rehearsals for The Master Builder starting in December.

“I know it’s been performed at The Old Vic before and Maggie Smith was playing the character that I’m playing, so I’m really terrified, but also excited, because that’s going to be a challenge,” Snook says.

So no pressure, then?

“No pressure,” she says, laughing. “Oh and she just acted with someone called Laurence Olivier, so it’s like ‘oh yeah that’s fine’.”

The Dressmaker is out in cinemas on 29 October, Oddball is playing now and The Beautiful Lie is airing on ABC TV on Sunday nights, and on iview.

Oct 26 2015
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The Aussie producer rallying audiences around social justice docos

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Australian impact producer Alex Kelly reveals how she’s bringing grassroots climate change movements together with the documentary This Changes Everything. By Caris Bizzaca.

Documentary filmmakers are quickly realising the benefits of having impact producers like Australian Alex Kelly on board, who make it their mission to connect the film with the right audiences.

It’s necessary for documentaries like This Changes Everything, which follows the people on the front lines trying to do something about climate change.

As an impact and distribution producer on the doco, Kelly’s goal was to find groups across the globe passionate about the issues.

“So it’s basically connecting with who’s organising things around climate change, economic justice, social justice and unions, and how can we share the film with them in a way that amplifies and supports their work,” she says.

In Europe, it led to 17 several event screenings with groups like Greenpeace, labour unions and Friends of the Earth.

“In Amsterdam they projected the film onto a coal power station and about 1200 people turned up,” Kelly said. “It’s amazing – there are these photos of the smoke stack and the film.”

They also had two standing ovations at their opening at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where the film was runner-up for the audience award.

And their “crazy, simultaneous digital-theatrical-grassroots release” means it’s now opened in 65 cities in the US, on TUGG in Australia, on iTunes globally and for grassroots community screenings.

The documentary differs from your average climate change movie, because it seeks to galvanise audiences, instead of leaving them in despair.

“It doesn’t hold back from looking at some hard stories, but it’s actually a very, very hopeful film,” Kelly says.

In Australia, TUGG screenings have been set up in places including Lismore, where the Bentley Blockade has been successful in stopping coal seam gas proposals.

“And in Darwin, where there was a really amazing horse-back protest against fracking,” Kelly says.

Her hometown of Alice Springs is doing a screening and she says they have also heard from some remote Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land and across the Northern Territory and Western Australia too.

“So I think over the next few months we’ll see all kind of unusual outdoor projections and different screenings,” she says, adding that they are partnering with GetUp and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

It means the film and movements end up working together.

“The film is being used as an organising tool to get people to come together to watch it and then have conversations about protests,” she says.

“So filmmakers are providing a really useful tool and movements are providing ways of distributing and sharing the film with audiences, so it makes a lot of sense.”

This idea of ‘impact producing’ is still relatively new, having emerged in the last five years or so, Kelly says.

Kelly found her way into impact producing through her work with theatre company called Big hART.

“Big hART uses arts and theatre to drive social change, so in many ways I’d been doing this work for about 15 years but it didn’t have a name,” she says.

“So it’s kind of been this amazing thing for me that I’ve been doing this work and not really feeling like I had a lot of peers and then I discovered that there was this global movement in film around documentary films.”

And it’s becoming more and more popular.

“Making a film is such a big undertaking and it takes so long that especially if it’s a film about a social issue, it makes sense to get everything you can out of that and connect it with audiences who are going to find it the most useful to drive their work,” she says.

To find out where This Changes Everything is screening in Australia, or to organise your own TUGG screening, visit https://tugg.com.au/this-changes-everything/

Oct 20 2015
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U.S. soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division, 1st battalion, 14th regiment, Alpha Company, 1st Platoon, who are attached to the 1st Infantry Division for the attack, set up firing positions as they secure a school that is to be used as a launching point for an attack to take back Samarra from insurgent control. The operation circled the city of Samarra with four battalions. After the initial attack the city is to be held with 500 Iraqi National Guard units after the fight.

Handycam footage becomes chilling documentary about Iraq War

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Brisbane-born journalist Michael Ware explains how he turned his Handycam footage from the Iraq War into chilling documentary Only the Dead. By Caris Bizzaca.

When Australian journalist Michael Ware first began working in the Middle East, he bought a $300 Handycam on the black market “almost on a whim”.

But it quickly became a kind of visual notebook to capture the chaos that was unfolding during the Iraq War, as US troops invaded the country and the newly created Islamic State (IS) began to take hold.

“Particularly as the bullets are flying or as you’re running from a mortar, the camera was able to record the things that I couldn’t. You can only scribble so fast,” he says.

“And each year I would come home on leave from Iraq and I would dump that year’s batch of tapes into a tupperware box under my mother’s bed.”

After seven years in the Middle East, Ware had collected hundreds of hours of tapes, capturing moments he can’t even remember happened.

“When I finally sat down with this tupperware box and all the tapes that were in it, I felt compelled to honour the lives that were contained in those tapes,” he says.

“So part of me was driven to tell the story.”

That story became the documentary Only the Dead, which follows Ware as he embeds himself inside insurgent militia and Al Qaeda, and watches as Islamic State is formed under the violent leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Rated R18+ Only the Dead contains graphic footage of some of the shocking murders and death Ware witnessed.

Several times the work nearly claimed his own life. At one point Ware was captured and nearly beheaded by Zarqawi’s men in Baghdad, and also faced chilling moments while travelling with US troops.

But Ware points out Only the Dead is so much more than a film about the Iraq War.

“The other part is the story we discovered buried within this archive… of the light and dark that lives within all of us.”

“It’s an age old story,” he says. “It’s something that Joseph Conrad wrote about in the 1890s in Heart of Darkness. It’s something that Francis Ford Coppola turned into Apocolypse Now in 1979 and it turns out its something I filmed by accident in Iraq.”

Ware hopes audiences who watch Only the Dead might think about how far they would go in any of these situations, “and wonder what parts of you lurk within, that you don’t yet know about”.

“I know I certainly found dark recesses of my own heart that I didn’t know existed and I know many of the soldiers around me found the same thing.”

It took Ware some time to realise what the story of Only the Dead was, and a further hard 18 months to two years of editing down the footage.

And it was not always an easy process. Some mornings Ware would just need to “tap out”, although he says it became easier as time went on.

There are things from Ware’s life in Iraq that will stay with him forever.

He will never get his sense of smell, or much of his taste back, following a bombing in 2009.

But he prefers to see the positives of it.

“They say that smells can be one of the greatest triggers of memory and part of trauma, but I lost my sense of smell in a bombing in 2009, so I think I managed to escape that.

“(And) it helps me changing the baby’s nappies,” he says, laughing.

Now the doco is finished, Ware is also facing a new kind of dread – being interviewed by media.

“As a journalist it’s horrible being on the wrong side of the notebook,” he says.

“It’s like sulphuric acid on my skin. Quite frankly I’m still getting my head around it.”

Ware says he’s been a professional storyteller his whole life – first as a print journalist working for Time magazine, then in broadcast news for CNN and now in film.

“So I’m just trying to stay focused on that sense of continuity that I’m still just telling stories, even if it is now on the wrong side of the camera.”

And Ware is already looking at the next story, saying there are so many still left untold. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to say them.

“Perhaps in doco form, but also in scripted form, be that film or television,” he says.

“What I’m discovering, is in so many ways, I can tell greater truths in fiction than in documentary.”

While he can’t give any more details about what might be in the pipeline, one thing is for certain: watch this space.

Michael Ware will present Q&A special event screenings of Only the Dead, rated R18+, nationally across Australia from 20 October. For full details, please visit www.onlythedeadfilm.com.

Oct 18 2015
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VIDEO On the red carpet at The Dressmaker’s Aussie premiere

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Liam Hemsworth, Sarah Snook, Hugo Weaving, Jocelyn Moorhouse and Sue Maslin are at the Aussie premiere of The Dressmaker.

Screen Australia’s Caris Bizzaca is on the red carpet for the Australian premiere of The Dressmaker in Melbourne. Caris chats to many stars of the film who are at the premiere, including Liam Hemsworth, Sarah Snook and Hugo Weaving. Plus the film’s producer, Sue Maslin and director, Jocelyn Moorhouse.

The Dressmaker is out across Australia from 29 October.

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Oct 18 2015
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The Dressmaker has its star-studded Australian premiere

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Aussie actor Liam Hemsworth had been searching for a movie to make back home in Australia when he finally came across The Dressmaker. By Caris Bizzaca.

Two things immediately grabbed the 25-year-old’s attention.

The first was how much the role of Teddy, a star footy player in the tiny rural town of Dungatar, reminded him of his grandfather.

“My grandpa was this very hard-working, quirky, funny, Australian guy and it was that element that attracted me to the part more than anything,” Hemsworth says.

The second was how he had never come across anything quite like The Dressmaker.

“(It’s) just a very different film – something that was off the normal path,” he said, with its part-comedy, part-drama, part-tragic story.

“It just seemed like something that was bold and different and unique.”

It’s a sentiment echoed across The Dressmaker cast, including Hugo Weaving and Sarah Snook, who walked the red carpet with Hemsworth at the Australian premiere in Melbourne on Sunday night.

Weaving calls The Dressmaker a “radically different piece” of cinema, comparing it to something like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

“In the way that something like Inglourious Basterds is a hybird of styles and works, I think this is a similar sort of hybrid style,” he says.

“It’s a western… it’s Sergio Leone, it’s got a dark underbelly to it, it’s a serious revenge film, but it’s quite exuberant, very stylish (and) visually bold.”

In The Dressmaker, Kate Winslet dons a (very believeable) Aussie accent and stunning wardrobe to play Tilly Dunnage, who returns to her rural hometown in 1951 after years working in Parisian fashion houses. Armed with her sewing machine she’s determined to reconnect with her eccentric mother (Judy Davis), face the demons of her past and seek revenge.

In the film’s opening shots, Tilly takes a long draw on a cigarette, saying “I’m back, you bastards”.

Not that all of the townsfolk are. Weaving’s kind, cross-dressing cop prefers feather boas to nasty gossip. Although he could never admit it – he, like the rest of the community, are all hiding secrets.

Based on Rosalie Ham’s beloved novel, it’s been quite a journey bringing The Dressmaker to screens, particularly for producer Sue Maslin.

“My journey, I have to admit probably started more than 30 years ago, because I went to school with the writer of the book Rosalie Ham as a little girl,” she says.

“In boarding school, we both came from the big flat wide Riverina plain and we would catch the long bus trip home together…

“(After school) we had no contact for 30 years until one day I read the book.”

Maslin fell in love with the story, optioned the rights and set about trying to finding a director who could bring Ham’s story to life, while balancing both the comedy and tragedy.

“To have the two together, it takes a very rare director to pull that off,” Maslin says.

And yet, she always knew that person was Jocelyn Moorhouse.

It was in part thanks to Moorhouse’s 1991 film Proof (which also starred Weaving), about a blind photographer who doesn’t trust anybody.

“The premise itself is deeply ironic,” Maslin says.

“I mean Joss gets it. She understands how comedy and tragedy work together.”

Weaving says Moorhouse was key to him signing on, purely because it meant working with her again.

“Joss was responsible for the first film I really wanted to do,” he says.

“I was like four years out of drama school and I’d read a lot of rubbish really and Proof was a great script. It was Joss’ first film and she really gave me the oportunity to do something I was really proud of.”

The Dressmaker marks Moorhouse’s return to directing after an 18 year hiatus. Initially she turned Maslin down to make the film… until she read the book. After falling completely in love with the story, Moorhouse not only signed on to direct The Dressmaker, but also co-adapted the novel with her husband/filmmaker PJ Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding).

“I was so excited to do a movie like no other movie. One you couldn’t really define because it’s its own special, crazy, wonderful self,” she says.

“It’s a bit of a rollercoaster actually, but a very entertaining rollercoaster.

“You might think you know what this movie is but you don’t. So just hang on. Enjoy the ride.”

The Dressmaker is out across Australia from 29 October.

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