"... that's the best thing a girl can be in this world - a beautiful little fool." - Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
(pic by Baz Luhrmann) JA from MNPP here. Deadline reported a little earlier today that Carey Mulligan will presumably play Daisy Buchanan for Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby, you know, if he gets around to making a Gatsby. (Who knows with Baz?) But for now as the Magic Eight Ball says signs point to yes. And perhaps the best visual I'll be given today is in their article:
"Mulligan was on the reception line for The Fashion Council Awards in New York when she got the call on her cell phone from Luhrmann, just a few minutes ago. She burst into tears on the red carpet in front of Karl Lagerfield and Anna Wintour."
Thanks for that, Deadline. They forgot to mention the part where the tears of an innocent caused those two's fangs to burst forth.
Anyway I think she's a great choice. What about y'all? And will Baz really get around to making this movie for real? And what do we think about Leo DiCaprio as Jay and Tobey Maguire as Nick? .
On this very day in 1939, Australia's Northern Standard incorrectly assumed that The Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and her Drover (Hugh Jackman) had both perished in the Kuraman Desert!
Newspapers. They've always had it rough; The second you publish something it's ancient history.
Just as soon as this news was making the rounds the lady and her cattle driving man, rode into town in a cloud of triumphant dust and defeated their main rival. They won! Celebratoryparties, long delayed lovemaking and a return to the now thriving Faraway Downs followed. After a short orgiastic montage of Australia's natural beauty (the country's and the movie's), the epic movie ends with a speech by the young narrator Nullah (Brandon Walters)
Just like Drover say 'that rain make everything come alive.' The land it grow green and fat and we all go back to Faraway Downs. Mrs Boss happy. Drover Happy.
I hear for the first time that thing called Christmas. Then the rain, it stops. And then Drover, he go droving. The Mrs Boss, she always misses Drover. But I know, he's going to come back.
How perfect are these golden shots as closing romantic images?
Only there's no closing. The epic movie didn't end there, not on October 29th (and the cattle drive was already quite a movie) or with Nullah's first Christmas. Or even after the Drover went a-drovin' again, an amusingly brief montage which consists only of this leaving and returning, beautifully illustrating a family falling into its future pattern.
But there's a lot more adventure, World War II adventure, coming. There's roughly sixty more minutes of it. I've often thought that had Australia wrapped up with that three shot shown above and this clear romantic narrative about the formation of a family (after one hour and forty-three minutes of a rousing western adventure), the critics and audiences might have been kinder. Wasn't Australia's main sin only that it was desperately overstuffed, that it didn't trust that one adventure, one tone, or one lead character arc was enough and it had to pack in at least a few of everything? Sometimes less is more, even for gorgeous sun-kissed epic that aspire to the mythic.
Australia came out two years ago and though two years isn't a long time, you rarely hear people discuss this one anymore. Have any of you watched it recently? If you haven't seen it since its premiere, what is your most vivid memory of it? * * *
I've never been one to collect memorabilia, stills or autographs. But if I did I'd surely have a stash to represent my Kidmania. So happy 43rd to the Oscar winner.
In addition to that Trespass picture which sounds like a disaster, Kidman will soon be doing an HBO picture called Hemingway & Gellhorn. I smell Emmy nomination.
Here are arguably my six favorite pictures of Nicole from the past six years. Arguably because I argue with myself, don't you? Argue with yourself, not me, I mean.
random photo shoot, 2007
promoting Margot at the Wedding with Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2007
With Baz, her best iconographer, in 2008
random photo shoots from 2005 & 2007
<--- a 2006 photoshoot. I wish I knew the photographer's name.
Fansites like the great Nicole's Magic are a godsend. Visit them! I wish all actresses had fansites this devoted. It's easy to find similarly strong sites for other mega-stars like Pfeiffer or Streep. But sadly many of the great actresses have almost nothing online or scattershot, out of date sites. I've found that the name actresses from 70s through the early 90s are the biggest problem area. Once you hit the mid 90s, the internet had begun to take over and the stars from the 1950s and earlier will always have the "classic hollywood/nostalgia" factors going for them in terms of archiving. But inbetween those eras it's tough going if you want to see great photoshoots and whatnot.
Just about my only gripe with the best fansites of moviestars is that they tend to not list the photographers when they're sharing photoshoots from the years. Usually if you're scanning from a magazine the photographers name is right there and they definitely deserve the credit.
In chronological order, my six favorite Kidman performances: To Die For (1995), Moulin Rouge! (2001), The Others (2001), Birth (2004), Dogville (2004) and Margot at the Wedding (2007) with apologies to a handful of others. Here's hoping Rabbit Hole (2010) disrupts this list. Not that that will be easy to do because that list feels pretty untouchable. I didn't even have room for her 'violent jolt' in The Hours (2002). *
I don't know how many of you caught my tweet a week back when I finally got through Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (more on that soon if I can stomach it)...
..but the following three things are probably living in its toxic proximity. Sometimes I like to mush all the bad things together, roll them around in my mouth until they're one giant blob of suck, which I can then spit out and be done with. This is the way I deal.
Suck 1Nicole Kidman signed to Cage/Schumacher Flick. This was announced almost exactly 15 years after Batman Forever opened. Weirdness. If Nic' really wants to travel back in time to 1995, shouldn't she be thinking more along the lines of Gus Van Sant's To Die For?
It's evident to most thinking people -- those that don't reflexively hate on her at least -- that Ms. Kidman has great taste in art flicks and abyssmal taste in mainstream projects. The Latest Evidence: Trespass, from the makers of 8MM. It really shouldn't be this hard to choose your mall films inbetween the ones you're doing for your craft. If you're looking for something mainstream, cozy up to any number of respected directors who are mainstream at heart (or half the time) but still always shoot for art or quality. I'm talking about your Scotts, Scorseses, Spielbergs, Soderberghs, Finchers, Manns, etcetera. You might not get to be in a $200 million grosser but chances are, the movie won't be universally hated. But starring opposite Nic Cage with Schumacher directing you? Dear god, why? It's like asking for trouble.
Schumacher is capable of making a good movie (Tigerland) and Kidman already knows him (Batman Forever) but it's the combo of Cage & Schumacher. That screams BAD MOVIE. Nic Cage, my arch nemesis, already dragged Julianne Moore down with him (in the truly exerable Next) and now Nic' too? Who's next on his hit list?
Nicole and Baz in January 2002. Good times! --->
Suck 2Baz Luhrmann still hasn't decided on his next project. The Playlist acts like the abundant possibilities (The Great Gatsby, a Bollywood style musical, or a historical epic) are good things and he'll start filming in 2011 and maybe we'll even get a musical (!) If I know Baz this is not good news but bad, bad news. He's had two years of downtime and he still hasn't decided on his next project? He hasn't even narrowed it down by genre? There's at least three possibilities and likely more? That means we're at least a year away from a decision. Then someone has to write a script and then the studios have to decided whether or not to bankroll it and then Baz has to tinker with it endlessly in pre-production. It'll be 2015 before we get another movie. That's at the earliest and only if we're lucky. Mark my words.
<-- Joss with "Echo" and "Angel"
Suck 3Continued MGM Fallout. Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods is delayed again. It's not that I care so much about a 3D horror film but that I'm always rooting for Joss and whenever there are hold ups (as there continually are here and there will continually be on The Avengers) that means more and more time away from his true calling: series television. MGM's woes throw kinks in other things, too. The James Bond franchise was totally reinvigorated when Daniel Craig put on the tux. And just as it was worth caring about again... denied. That legendary lion hasn't roared in some time but the nostalgic part of this cinephile's heart really wants it, too.
Talk me through this sudden dark mood. What would you have Nicole Kidman do? Why must Nicolas Cage contaminate the filmographies of so many fine actresses? Will Baz ever get back to work? Will there ever be another 'Craig, Daniel Craig' Bond film? Will Joss ever realize that he should go to pay cable for a new television series?
Dear Baz, I fell madly in love with Strictly Ballroom.Romeo + Juliet made my eyes bug out and my heart leap. Moulin Rouge! completed me. I even liked Australia!
My point is this: Please step away from the boys and party venues and make a movie. It takes you for-e-ver. NO TIME TO WASTE.
It was only five years ago when the Australian Film Institute Awards reached their most sad and pathetic moment. 2005, the year that will live in infamy for followers of Australian film, produced only one (ONE!) film that the AFI felt worthy enough to award. Cate Shortland's Somersault was nominated for and won every.single.category. The really sad thing is that it probably deserved to win them all, which says more about the slate of Aussie films that year than anything else.
Sidebar: Two of Somersault's wins were for Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington's performances. The former is on the cusp of Oscar and the latter on the cusp of global fame and worship. You could do worse than seeing where these two learnt the ropes.
This year's AFI awards, however, are a much different story. 2009 has been a stellar year for Australian cinema - perhaps the best ever - and my country's version of the Oscars (as they like to be called) certainly showed why.
Samson & Delilah's creator Warwick Thornton walked away with three of the AFI's glass statues winning for Best Cinematography (he has been a cinematographer for 25 years prior to directing S&D), Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay. The film also took hope Best Film for producer Kath Shelper (who I've seen loitering around the comment sections here at The Film Experience!) Australia's entry into the Best Foreign Language Film category at next year's Academy Awards also won for Best Sound and the film's two stars, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, took the Young Actor Award.
Robert Connelly's Balibo took the honours for Best Actor (Anthony LaPaglia), Best Supporting Actor (Oscar Isaac) and Best Adapted Screenplay. Rhonda Epinstalk herself, Rachel Griffiths, won a Best Supporting Actress gong for her role in Rachel Ward's directorial debut Beautiful Kate. Frances O'Connor, she of constant almost-fame in America, won her first AFI Award from five nominations for her role in Ana Kokkinos' Blessed. Kokkinos couldn't direct a good movie if it fell into her lap, and Blessed was no different, but O'Connor has a scene - and anyone who has seen it will know which one - that ranks as one of the most emotionally devastating scenes you're ever likely to see. She deserved the prize for that scene alone.
And what happened to Baz Luhrmann's Australia? Well, it was snubbed for nominations in the top categories, but took home trophies for Costume Design, Production Design and Visual Effects as well as a special AFI in honour of it's astronomical box office. All good for a night's work, I say.
What do these wins mean for Samson & Delilah's Oscar hopes? Not much at all, sadly. Three years ago Ten Canoes won the big prize, but wasn't able to make any headway in the Foreign Language league. Adam Elliot's Mary and Max, a shortlisted title for Best Animated Feature, was nominated for several awards, including Best Film, but failed to win any. Meanwhile The Cat Piano and Miracle Fish won Best Animated Short and Best Short Fiction Film respectively. Both are on Oscar's shortlist and shouldn't be ignored. Check out The Cat Piano below, I guarantee you'll love it!
Recently discovered rough draft for an ad in the back pages of The Verona Beach Herald:
"Nurse position sought - am a highly enthusiastic and expressive candidate. Will treat your charge with great teasingloudsmothering adoration until its too late. Due to recent tragic learning experiences on the job I'll not allow the child to ever venture from my sight, not never. Nor to fall in love with no Montagues not never neither. Nor to leave her bedroom ever not never neither.
JA from MNPP here. The night before last I watched the 2006 French thriller Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne). I'm sure many of you have seen it. It's a nice, solid, little piece of work - smart and character-based in a way not enough American thrillers are and just twisty enough (plus it's got Kristin Scott Thomas flexing her Gallic-skills, which is always a treat). I had a couple of issues with the film (I'm never gonna hate on getting to listen to the entire length of a Jeff Buckley song, but the music-video-like montages were a little distracting), but mostly I was entirely involved in its drama - I found myself shouting at the screen! - and enjoyed it thoroughly.
And then it ended. Or rather, it should've ended. I saw the cut to black coming, I felt it in my very bones. Right... now. Black.... now? Fin. The End? No? You gonna keep going movie? Okay... another thirty seconds of overly sentimental hooey. Blurgh. Thanks for that, movie! Thanks. Send me out on an annoyed note.
It's just... it was so there. In my mind. That cut to black. I wanted numerous heads of lettuce and cauliflower to toss at the screen. Bales of hay. I wanted to rewind time, step into the editing suite, and smack them about the face and hands until they got it.
The movie that always gets called out for its over-extended ending is Return of the King, but that one didn't so much bother me (but then, I am a geek). I last remember this feeling hitting during Australia (and there was like forty more minutes of film to go on that one). But this did get me thinking of that very specific gut-feeling I get when I sense a perfect ending and the subsequent sense of violation when it is crossed, and was curious when the last time y'all felt that twinge... and if you take it as personally as I appear to... .
Nathaniel walks to the stage, tears welling in his eyes
Thank you so, so much. Whistle so I can tell where you are dear reader... There you are! Thank you for listening to our informal chatty awardsy podcast all season and especially for commenting so we know we're not talking into the great web void. I couldn't have done this without my beautiful co-stars Joe, Nick and Katey who always believed in me! I also must thank my accoun ---[drowned out by orchestra]
Enough hokey awards show humor. If you aren't already completely Oscared out (you're totally forgiven if you are), join the four musketeers for one last podcast pow-wow about Oscar night. The best option is the iTunes version i.e. the enhanced podcast but you can listen to the simplified mp3 if you don't have an enhanced player.
Topics include but are not limited to:
Jessica Biel's napkin and Marisa Tomei's "envelopes"
Meryl Streep in the front row, Anne Hathaway singing, Hugh Jackman up on stage
Commie Homo Loving Sean Penn
Penélope Cruz Obsessions. Spreading like brushfire
Why is there no Oscar cable channel?
Somewhere round about the middle of the podcast (60 minutes this time. We had much gushing to do) Nick dropped an intriguing question for listeners/readers. What do you think is the Best Consecutive Run for Acting Oscar winners ever? Nick thinks it might actually be the last four years of Best Actor, great performances all...
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Forrest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Sean Penn, Milk
Well done, AMPAS. I counter with a five year spread of Best Actresses in the 1960s that I think is unbelievably satisfying. Which consecutive string of winners thrills you most? We want to hear it in the comments. *
Billy Loves Stu notices a stupid trend in horror remakes Gallery of the Absurd Brangelina Collector Plates. Hee Tractor Facts smart piece on Carrey & Deschanel in Yes Man The House Next Door interesting Doubt review. Negative but it's good for counterbalance. This film has definitely been coddled due to its solid performances Hollywood Elsewhere Baz not taking Australia's failure well?
Webster's Is My Bitch Brad & Ang make each other Christmas gifts. (Awww... who else here loves Running on Empty and their similar birthday tradition?) CarpetBagger discovers the Life Magazine Oscar archives. Yummy Tribeca Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino and 'Manly Men' movies Coffee, Coffee and... RIP Robert Mulligan Obsessed with Film looks at the weak box office for the new Will Smith & Jim Carreyvehicles NY Mag Fug Girls '10 things we learned from fashion in 2008' includes applause for Marion Cotillard, boos for Evan Rachel Wood and more *
Poster Wire an animated poster for Terminator: Salvation. oh god please let this marketing technique take off. We loves it Awards Daily "a tale of two Nixons" -damn, I wish I'd thought of that The Big PictureThe Wrestler takes a hit from the LA Times. Right in time for Oscar season. Ouch, that'll sting ONTD Seventeen describes the sexual appeal of Robert Pattison. Dear god he's like a Frankenstein monster of celebs Modern Tonic has a Best of TV 2008 list... Are You There, Blog? Carrie Fisher hawking her new book. She's so damn funny
Deadline Hollywood Luhrmann to take on The Great Gatsby next. Damn but Baz likes a challenge. That thing (brilliant) has to be considered unfilmable, right? The Carpetbagger alerts us to the annual Oscar short films showing Multiple Personality Cruise visits Letterman "they have this thing called the internet and they have these things called blogs" Towleroad Seann William Scott photos from Balls Out. That boy (thankfully) has no shame The Bad and Ugly ...speaking of shameless, Halle Berry going topless again (pics from the set of Frankie and Alice) Boy Culture Matthew celebrates his 40th in swanky style... Yes, I was there (my illustration is the last one on the page. That is such a great party memorabilia idea. I'm totally going to steal it)
And finally... Heroine Content takes issue with Empire's "100 Greatest Movie Characters" list. There's a lot to take issue with. It's 88% male, 93% white. So annoying. Guess who's not on the list? Margo Channing from All About Eve. Severine from Belle Du Jour. Mrs. Iselin from The Manchurian Candidate. Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire. Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Bree from Klute. F***ing Annie Hall. Yeesh... and that's just the seven that popped into my head without looking at any list of movies. Most of the women chosen were from genre or "guy" movies (Aliens, Star Wars, The Professional, Silence of the Lambs, ...Roger Rabbit) The canons are always being rewritten but they always get rewritten in the same old ways.
Stale Popcorn a must read: spot-on reenactment of manic fanboyism ModFab is apparently on a one man mission to review every single Oscar movie in two weeks time. Where do people find the time? Acidemic yes, what is that buzzing in Belle Du Jour ? My New Plaid Pants 'Do Dump or Marry: Baz's men' In Contention on the Sundance lineup Cinema Styles on the difficulties of happy endings
Kenneth in the (212) remembers the golden god days of Ryan O'Neal Pajiba "five guys it main pain you to realize are Republicans" Huffington Post Thelma Adams on the sex in The Reader. The article has a lot of interesting points but labelling scenes between a 33 year old actress and an 18 year old actor "child pornography" is grossly misleading Carpetbagger gets rowdy with Mickey Rourke @ the Gotham Awards The Hot Blog Best Action Movie. Do the BFCA need another category? We could solve all of these genre problems if all awards groups would only realize that you can be great without being a drama and should be rewarded if you are. In other words if WALL•E or The Dark Knight or Let the Right One In are the best in a year, nominated them for "Best" not "Best of [insert ghetto here]" So sayeth the FiLM BiTCH.
Blah blah blah. Enough of my soapbox. Here is the trailer to the new 20s era queerish biopic (Salvador Dali + Federico Garcia Lorca) starring Robert Pattison, trading creepy Twilight staring for creepy pencil mustache
my internet is where I want you to touch loves Slumdog's "throbbing" imagery The House Next Door 5 for day: Mia Farrow Film Essent Best Picture locks? Victim of the Time a prize for Thandie Newton DaddyCatcher I must have been asleep at the wheel? How had I not heard this Baz Luhrmann/Wicked thing [thx] MTV Hugh Jackman on being 'the sexiest man alive' and those gay rumors Berlinale Tom Tykwer's thriller The International will open Berlin Antagony & Ecstacy has some words for the outrageous anti-feminism of Twilight i09 further proof that The Dark Knight caused a loss of public sanity earlier this year -- a man left his 2 year-old in a locked car while he watched it. In Utah, natch
Only four movies dare stare-downs with Edward & Bella (Twilight) in their second week of Harlequined romance. Your new releases, from least to most screens (links go to trailers)
Milk - In the grand tradition of most of the best movies of any given year *sigh*, this straightforward but artful and expertly acted bio of a great American is only available to you if you live in big cities. The rest of you will have to wait until Dec 5th or 12th. It's worth the wait.
Transporter 3 -Surprising but true fact: I have never seen a Jason Statham movie despite finding him to be one sexy m*********
Australia -It took visionary Baz Luhrman (i.e. the wizard of Oz) 8 years to make a follow up to Moulin Rouge! You can blame that on his aborted production of Alexander the Great (which was to have starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Mel Gibson & Nicole Kidman) and his general filmmaking timetables. Movie # 5 coming sometime in 2013. This epic WW II adventure romance is very much a MOVIE. Read the review.
Four Christmases -Vince & Reese are described as a "happily unmarried couple" in the synopsis of this holiday flick. Which means you know it will end with their engagement or marriage and maybe even a pregnancy announcement. If we've learned anything about mainstream Hollywood all quadrant efforts they are totally into reinforcing heternormativity which means we can't have our Miss Witherspoon living in sin with no feeling for children. But first this unwed couple have to (presumably) learn life lessons by reluctantly visiting their broadly comic families. Am I getting warmer? (Tell me if you've seen it.)
Expect it to be a massive hit --top ten of '08, easy-- because there's baby vomit in the trailer and apparently baby vomit is hi-lar-ious! Possible silver lining: the cast (Vaugh, Witherspoon, Favreau, Chenowith, Duvall, Steenburgen, Spacek, Voight) is rather merry: Five Oscar winners for a high concept family flick? It's like they're trying to one-up Meet the Fockers.
... to get to the center of Baz Luhrmann's Australia anyway? JA from MNPP here, just wondering. The big honking Down Under premiere is literally four days away and Baz is still editing. Editing! He's filmed a thousand different endings, and apparently nothing sticks. Do we, the expectant fans, panic? Or do we help a brother out?
I think y'all know the answer. Baz needs our help! Sure, none of us have seen any of the film beyond the trailer, but I have a feeling there are certain genre tropes of the Epic Romance that will be fulfilled, so we can probably feel out, at least partially, some of the steps the story goes through. Nicole wants to be a strong woman who can survive on her own! Hugh is the big man who thinks she's a little too far out of her comfort zone! They bicker, they flirt, they make blinding lust shoot off the screen in a rainbow of sparks. Something biggish, a war with large planes and booming sound effects, erupts! Oh noes will our lovers end up together?
And then... what? What is the only way you can imagine the movie ending that would leave you satisfied? Here's mine:
Hugh walks into a burning building, looking for Nicole whom he knows to be trapped inside because she's protecting an endangered Aborigine child whose family was murdered by some evil land barons. Hugh screams her name... nothing. He's sweating profusely... his shirt catches on fire so he rips it off. A beam falls at him, and he tumbles backwards... and falls right through the movie screen like Jeff Daniels in The Purple Rose of Cairo. I run forward, sweep him up into my arms, and carry him off into the sunset. Roll credits.
You know the old Hollywood saying "dying is easy but comedy is hard"? I've never doubted that its truth. But you know what the mythical "they" don't say that I bet is equally true: 'Pulling off sweeping epics with lots of kissing? Not a piece of cake!' For huge romantic films to soar the casting has to be perfect, the chemistry has to sizzle and the size and stylistic choices of the movie walk a delicate highwire. Any false step and your lovers can go tumbling into the kitsch of Harlequin paperback cliché. There's also the very real trap of cheapening history by reducing it to pretty backdrop for the tortured swooning of very beautiful people. Not surprisingly the historical epic, whether fictional or 'true story based', sometimes ignores romance altogether or relegates it to subplot.
The subject is relevant since the super sized Baz Luhrmann epic Australia will soon hit theaters and, if people swoon along with its photogenic lovers, it could be up for Oscars. How many? Which ones?
Is Oscar an easy lay for this specific type of film or do they only swoon when Mr & Mrs Perfect come courting?
Read the rest for an incomplete history of big scale love stories courting the Academy. *
But how long will Baz Luhrmann's epic feels once the projector is running? Hollywood Elsewhere suggests that the final running time is nearly 3 hours. More alarming is the news that there's apparently still no final print. I'm no great fan of the marathon movie and I always worry about rushed post-production but I still can't wait. About that three hour running time: With Baz working his mojo, Hugh all heroic and Nicole in period finery I suspect it will fly by. Especially because that killjoy voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that we're not going to get Bazmark's next film until at least 2013, you know? I suppose good things come to those who wait.
Opinions on Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!) vary from moviegoer to moviegoer -- not everyone responds to super sized style and theatrics but to me the Australian filmmaker is a blessed rarity. He's a real live descendant of the old showman style of filmmaker or Hollywood producer. You can see the D.W. Griffith ambition. You can see the Selznick in him. If he were born before the movies he could have been a circus impresario and, quite obviously, he's Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) in Moulin Rouge!, frantically sweating, pumping up and exploiting his talent and whipping his audiences into a carefully orchestrated frenzy. Baz thinks big. But more importantly, he thinks big naturally. His films, agonizingly slow in coming for fans, never bear the marks of required No. of Setpieces that Hollywood blockbusters do (particularly the action films). There's no straining to pad the running time, no lazy idea-free setpieces make their way in.
Even within his earliest film Strictly Ballroom (1992), which is indisputably modest in budget and story, he's going for the rousing super-sized moment. Consider the "L'Amour" sign (making its first big screen appearance, consider the hair and makeup, consider the triumphant crowd-rocking finale. Consider Paul Mercutio's ass.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), which completed his aesthetic non-narrative "red curtain" trilogy of movies, were yet bigger, pricier and more successful. With each film his budgets, imagination and even the fame of his leading actors seems to increase exponentially. I worry for him a little as a result. His new film, brazenly going by the moniker of Australia stars Nicole Kidman & Hugh Jackman, two of the most famous stars on earth. It'll either be a big success or be declared a folly. This is probably as big as it gets unless his next film is called The Milky Way with a cast entirely populated by $15-25 million dollar movie stars. Even the extras will have to be household names.
Deep breaths now...
I know people have been asking me my opinion on the new trailer but I'm mostly speechless. I can sum up my reaction in basically three words which contain many more feelings.
That last refers not to the World War II explosions that end the trailer nor to the mini explosive notes mixed into the score as the showy cuts happen. It's the sound of my own heartbeat, thunderous.
Am I laying it on thick enough?
It's just that so many epics seem so desperate only to win Oscars. With Baz you know that this (Australia) is just what's inside of him. It's showy but it'll probably be damn sincere. One can't accuse any of his films of being made with awards in mind... which is more than can be said for many epics and golden hopefuls that find their way into theaters in November and December each year. It was a happy accident that Moulin Rouge!, a mad experiment, got as far as it did. It only became associated with the awards circus after it developed a feverish devoted fan base.
My greatest fear is that the new film will be stiffly weighed down by Baz & Nicole's efforts to top themselves (better not to try and top Moulin Rouge! methinks) and my greatest hope for it is that it will be every bit as thrilling in its 120+ minutes as it is in this new tiny dosage. *
Thanks for that, Deadline. They forgot to mention the part where the tears of an innocent caused those two's fangs to burst forth.
