November
19
Oscar Watch: Australia Screens for Press
Baz Luhrmann loves drama, spectacle, scenery, westerns, war movies, romance, adventure, and over-the-top emotion. That's what you get in Australia, which is well done for what it is, assuming that you like old-fashioned Hollywood movies of the sort they do not make anymore. Luhrmann's camera careens around the rugged dusty outback, its desert crags recalling Monument Valley. The director artfully blends landscape and pounding horses and cattle with VFX. The end of the movie, when the Japanese bomb Darwin, calls up Pearl Harbor, and not necessarily in a good way. The movie's cattle baron villains might as well be called Snidely Whiplash.
The heart of Australia is less the stylized big movie romance between Lady Ashley and the Drover (well played by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman) than their love affair with a magical aborigine boy (non-pro Brandon Walters). Like Dances with Wolves, this epic western seeks to heal old wounds between a continent's dominant white culture and its older, indigenous one. Whether the film will prove to be as commercial as the Kevin Costner Oscar-winner is another question. Critics are likely to be mixed on Australia, which could hurt its Oscar chances. Green Cine collects the first round of Australia reviews, from Down Under. Here's Todd McCarthy.
Gurus 'O Gold and Buzzmeter are tracking various Oscar watchers. Slumdog Millionaire is rising up the charts, partly because it has been well-publicized and reviewed and is doing well in theaters. How can anyone say that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the front runner if they haven't seen it yet? I will see it Thursday. Remember, most of these movies haven't yet opened or been widely reviewed, much less put in front of paying audiences. UPDATE: Fox News' Roger Friedman, who tends to be friendly toward Weinstein Co. releases, advance reviews The Reader.
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Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, and David Gulpilil. Add in the two stars and you've got the biggest all-star Aussie cast in a long time. Plus, they've got Hong Kong kung fu great Yuen Wah as the cook on the cattle drive. (He played the landlady's husband in Stephen Chow's KUNG FU HUSTLE.) Does this mean there's some kung fu in the film? If so, that would make me even happier. :D
Posted by: Brian | November 20, 2008 at 07:53 AM
It didn't knock me out. I actually found the villains in the film more interesting than the lead characters. But I've got two major problems with the film
1) Nicole Kidman. Granted I've never been a fan of hers and after seeing this even less so. She exudes absoluely ZERO sex appeal. She's a skinny cold fish on screen and is it just me or does her face look really weird and creepy in this film?
2)For a film as expensive as Australia it's got some of the crummiest, cheapest looking CGI effects I've seen in a long time. After all this advanced high flautin' digital technology, the effects in Australia are really lousy. Albert Whitlock, back in the old days with his matte paintings, created special effects ten times more realistic and believable than this cartoony, flat CGI stuff. Am I the only one who believe this?
Posted by: Sergio | November 20, 2008 at 03:42 PM
are ya'll crazy?? this was the best performance by Kidman ever and Jackman was absolutely the bomb! What a fabulous movie...not only about love between a man and woman but love for family-a child. And they showed the horror of war without all the gory body parts and blood strown all over the place that other war movies insist upon. This was a classic. My new favorite and new favorite actors in Kidman and Jackman. Wow. Sorry you missed the magic of this incredible movie!
Posted by: susan | December 03, 2008 at 09:57 PM