Category Archives: Film

Film news with a particular orientation towards Australia.

Major US Film Studios Prosper on the Margins

Film, Latest News

Nomura Equity Research analyst Michael Nathanson goes deep on changes in new report on film economics

Shrinking release slates, a focus on tentpoles and the emergence of a ‘new normal’ in the homevid market has allowed the largest media congloms to boost the financial performance of their movie divisions. Nomura Equity Research analyst Michael Nathanson goes deep on the changes in a new report on film economics.

Even with all the B.O. statistics that are churned out on a daily basis, the profitability
picture for films at the major studio congloms is often opaque at best. Michael
Nathanson, a respected biz analyst for Nomura Equity Research, did forensic work
on studio financials over the past decade to better understand the composition of
revenue and earnings that the majors derive from film these days. It’s especially hard
to get a handle on the numbers for congloms such as Time Warner and News Corp., since each studio lumps TV content revenues together with pics for financial reporting.

Perhaps the biggest revelation from Nathanson’s probe was the degree to which the Big Six studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.) have successfully reined in costs in order to improve profitability. Part of that has come from the steady trimming of annual release slates at the majors, and part has come from hawkish management of overhead costs (and the jettisoning of so many pricey producer housekeeping deals).

In the report “Studio Revenue Never a Sure Thing,” Nathanson focused on three
encouraging trends for the film biz that solidified in 2012:

The reversal in the long-term slide of annual admissions, which grew in 2012  for the first time since 2009.

The leveling off of declines in the homevideo marketplace.

The continued growth of international box office as a share of total B.O.

The focus on tentpoles and franchise releases also has improved the overall
performance of film divisions, even with the eye-popping production budgets and
marketing expenditures those pics require. In success, they drive more worldwide
B.O. and downstream revenue than a midsized movie. And tentpoles tend to travel
the globe better than midrange pics — a crucial calculation because of the rising
proportion of B.O. returns that come from outside the U.S.

But doesn’t Wall Street frown on the idea of studios routinely making $200 million-
plus commitments to a single movie, especially when it turns out to be a flop, a la
“John Carter” or “Battleship?” Not as much as you’d think, Nathanson argues,
because film in general remains a small part of the picture for the largest
conglomerates. The contribution by films to a Big Six conglom’s budget is highest at
Viacom, with 30.2% estimated for 2013, followed by Time Warner (25.3%), Disney
(12.7%) and News Corp. (11.7%).

“It’d be an issue if movies were a bigger factor as a percentage of a company’s
profitability, and if there (was) a greater occurrence of blowups on tentpoles,”
Nathanson told Variety.

“If it becomes more of a habitual thing, there may be greater scrutiny. For the time
being, having that opaqueness hasn’t really hurt anybody,” he said. “The stocks are
all at 52-week highs, and companies like Lionsgate have doubled (share price) in the
past year. If you see a greater occurrence of bombs, there will be more time spent on
understanding how the studios account for them.”

Looking deeper into film activity at Time Warner, News Corp., Disney and Viacom,
Nathanson found that film revenues dropped $3.7 billion from 2007 to 2012, while
operating costs fell $3.4 billion, including a $400 million drop between 2011 and
2012. For studios, film profit margins in 2012 were higher than 2007 levels (around
the 11% range) and costs are down 18% from 2007. That’s mostly because studios are
releasing far fewer films than they did six years ago.

Between 2006 and 2012, the aggregate number of annual releases by the Big Six
dropped by 69 titles, a decline of 34%, according to Nomura. The 2012 figure stood at
134 releases, down from 145 in 2011. The focus of studio resources on tentpoles and
franchise releases, of course, has come at the expense of other types of movies. As
Hollywood’s creative community can attest, the midrange budget studio pic is fast
becoming an endangered species.

The year-to-year volatility of film revenue for the majors remains a concern for
investors because of the huge fiscal difference between hits and misses at the plexes.
Nathanson estimated film revenue for the Big Six studios was down 4.5% in 2012, to
$21 billion, compared to 2011, which saw a solid 5.8% gain.

The rebound in admissions last year was a good sign to Wall Street that moviegoers
will turn at the plexes if Hollywood’s product is strong enough. From 2000 to 2012,
the compound annual growth rate of admissions eased 0.2%. Admissions hit 1.3 6
billion in 2012, up from 1.2 9 billion in 2011, which reversed a two-year trend of declines. But continued declines among moviegoers in the 12-24 age range is cause for concern.

The stabilizing of homevid activity is also a big plus for Hollywood in the eyes of
investors. After seven years of declines, homevid appears to have found a “new
normal.” Spending on home entertainment products was essentially flat (up 0.2%) at
around $18 billion in 2012 compared with the previous year — the first sign that new
VOD and SVOD streaming platforms are starting to offset the drop in physical disc
sales. Revenue from VOD platforms gained 10.8% in 2012 vs. the previous year to $2
billion, while streaming revenues spiked 45.8% to $2.3 billion.

Nathanson argues that the shuttering of 750-plus Blockbuster stores by Dish
Network, and Netflix’s “forced obsolescence” of its physical disc subscription model
has pushed consumers to check out new alternatives. If revenue from streaming
options is subtracted from last year’s home entertainment spending tally, revenue
would have declined 4.2%.

On the international front, Nathanson’s number-crunching reinforces just how
reliant Hollywood studios have become on overseas B.O. to improve margins. After
calculating the B.O. splits with domestic exhibs, he estimates that domestic B.O.
revenue for Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom and Disney in 2012 has dropped $550
million since 2007, while the international haul has climbed $350 million over the
same period.

Still, even in a fast-changing marketplace for film, the significance of a pic’s domestic
B.O. perf can’t be overlooked. “Film studios still need to maintain a stable
relationship with U.S. theater owners, given this fi rst window sets the vast majority
of value for downstream windows,” Nathanson wrote.

2012 BOX OFFICE

Global: $34.7 billion
Domestic: $10.8 billion
Int’l: $23.9 billion
Domestic admissions: 1.36 billion
Avg. domestic ticket price: $7.96
Films released domestically: 677

Cynthia Littleton – VARIETY – 18.04.13

Cannes Unveils Official Selection Lineup

Film, Latest News

Steven Spielberg’s jury will have no shortage of Hollywood talent to sift through on
the Croisette this year. Heralding a strong showing for American auteurs, Palme d’Or
laureates Steven Soderbergh and Joel and Ethan Coen will square off with Alexander

Payne and James Gray at the star-packed 66th edition of the Cannes Film Festival,
announced by delegate general Thierry Fremaux and president Gilles Jacob at a Paris
press conference on Thursday.

In light of earlier announcements – that Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” would
open the festival, that Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” would kick off Un Certain
Regard, and that Spielberg would serve as president of the main competition jury – it
comes as little surprise that this year’s lineup is so top-heavy with U.S. and English-
language fare, even as it reflects healthy strains of international filmmaking,
especially from Europe and Asia.

The Coen brothers, previously in competition with 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,”
will make a return appearance with “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a look at New York’s ’60s
folk-music scene starring Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake. Payne, last in
Cannes with “About Schmidt,” will return with another road-trip comedy,
“Nebraska,” starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte and set in the writer-director’s native
Omaha. Jeremy Renner, Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard star in Gray’s 1920s-
set drama “The Immigrant,” which previously went by the titles “Lowlife” and
“Nightingale.”

Soderbergh, who recently competed for Berlin’s Golden Bear with his final theatrical
picture, “Side Effects,” will get another sendoff on the Croisette with his made-for-
HBO miniseries “Behind the Candelabra,” starring Michael Douglas and Matt
Damon as Liberace and his younger lover, Scott Thorson, respectively. Although
Olivier Assayas’ six-hour telepic “Carlos” was barred from competing at the festival in
2010, there’s a precedent for HBO fare screening in competition, as “The Life and
Death of Peter Sellers” did just that in 2004.

Fremaux said that while Soderbergh had initially wanted to present “Candelabra” out
of competition, he begged the director via email to “say yes” to a competition slot,
and Soderbergh agreed. “His first film, ‘sex, lies and videotape,’ played at Cannes and
won the Palme d’Or, and we wish him the same fortune with (his last) film,” Fremaux
said.

Also vying for festival prizes are Danish helmer Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”) with
his latest Ryan Gosling starrer, “Only God Forgives,” and Roman Polanski’s French-
language adaptation of David Ives’ Broadway play, “Venus in Fur,” with Mathieu
Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner. Another Polanski-helmed pic, auto-racing docu
“Weekend of a Champion,” will receive a special screening.

Polanski, who hasn’t been in competition since “The Pianist” won the top prize in
2002, isn’t the only past Palme winner back in contention; the others are Soderbergh
and the Coen brothers (who won the Palme for 1991′s “Barton Fink”).

While Warner Bros.’ DiCaprio starrer “Gatsby” will get things off to a splashy start on
May 15, what this year’s festival so far doesn’t have is the sort of big-budget
Hollywood entertainment that typically generates red-carpet wattage at the midway

point (a la “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” last year and “Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” the year before). Rumors had circulated that Warners’
“Man of Steel” or Paramount’s “Star Trek Into Darkness” might nab an out-of-
competition berth, but they didn’t pan out. U.S. studios repped on the Croisette
include CBS Films (“Inside Llewyn Davis”), the Weinstein Co. (“The Immigrant”) and
Paramount (“Nebraska”).

Along with his selection committee, Fremaux said he sifted through 1,858 films
submitted from June to just two days before the press conference – an increase over
selection pools from previous years. Fremaux also pointed out the numerous
international co-productions in the festival, with numerous helmers working outside
their native tongue and country. “Films can’t be reduced to their nationalities any
longer,” he said.

Cases in point: Iran’s Asghar Farhadi (“A Separation”) will appear in competition for
the first time with “The Past,” a Paris-set romantic drama starring Berenice Bejo
(“The Artist”) and Tahar Rahim. Gallic auteur Arnaud Desplechin will have his fifth
film in competition, “Jimmy P.,” an English-lingo drama set in Kansas at the end of
WWII, starring Benicio Del Toro and Amalric. As for “Only God Forgives,” the
violent revenge thriller was directed by a Dane, stars an American as a British
gangster, is set in Bangkok’s criminal underworld, and was funded by Paris-based
powerhouses Wild Bunch and Gaumont.

Out of competition, France’s Guillaume Canet (“Tell No One”) will make his English-
language directing debut with “Blood Ties,” a thriller starring Clive Owen, Billy
Crudup, Cotillard and Mila Kunis. Another high-profile picture slotted outside the
Palme race is “All Is Lost,” J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to “Margin Call,” a one-man
survival-at-sea drama that, per star Robert Redford, has no dialogue.

Of the 19 films slated for competition, 13 are directed by filmmakers who have
previously been up for the Palme. These include France’s Francois Ozon, back with
“Jeune et jolie,” a sexually charged portrait of a 17-year-old girl; Italy’s Paolo
Sorrentino with “The Great Beauty,” which reteams the helmer with “Il Divo” star
Toni Servillo; and Chad’s Mahamet Saleh-Haroun with “Grigris,” the story of a 25-
year-old man who yearns to be a dancer, despite a paralyzed leg.

The three Asian helmers in competition are also veterans: China’s Jia Zhangke with
“A Touch of Sin”; Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda, bringing paternity-switch drama “Like
Father, Like Son”; and his compatriot Takashi Miike, whose thriller “Straw Shield”
looks to challenge “Only God Forgives” as the fest’s bloodiest contender.

“Japanese cinema is making a comeback. It used to nurture the Cannes selection 15,
20 or 30 years ago, and it hadn’t been as present in a long time,” Fremaux said. “We
could have selected many more.”

Aside from Farhadi, the six Cannes competish first-timers are Tunisia’s Abdellatif
Kechiche with Lea Seydoux starrer “La Vie d’Adele,” the helmer’s first film since

2010’s “Black Venus”; Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam with “Borgman,” in
which a middle-class family receives a visit from the devil; France’s Arnaud des
Pallieres with “Michael Kohlhaas,” adapted from the 16th-century novel of the same
name; Mexico’s Amat Escalante (whose “Sangre” premiered in Un Certain Regard)
with crime-and-corruption drama “Heli”; and Italian-French actress-helmer Valeria
Bruni-Tedeschi with “Un chateau en Italie.”

Fremaux said that Ozon’s “Jeune et jolie” and Kechiche’s “La Vie d’Adele,” both of
which explore teenage sexuality, were likely to generate interest and heated
conversation about “the way in which a filmmaker depicts sexuality in 2013, and how
far he can go.” He also noted that both “Adele” and “Candelabra” are same-sex love
stories.

Bruni-Tedeschi is the sole female filmmaker in competition, a small improvement
over last year’s widely criticized dearth of distaff directors. Interestingly, the two
best-known femme helmers in the official selection will screen their latest work in Un
Certain Regard: Coppola with the aforementioned “Bling Ring,” a Los Angeles-set
look at teenage misbehavior starring Emma Watson, and France’s Claire Denis with
“The Bastards,” toplining Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroianni. There are seven
female directors in Un Certain Regard total.

“As a citizen, I’m obviously concerned about the place of women in society … but I
don’t think gender should come into play when you’re looking at an auteur and what
he or she has created,” Fremaux said. “It’s clear that men tend to dominate the film
world and Cannes is a reflection of that trend. How to increase the presence of
women in film is a question that should be raised not only once a year after the
Cannes press conference, but every day, everywhere, in film schools, at production
companies, etc.”

Fremaux has gone out of his way to raise Un Certain Regard’s profile during his
tenure, often slotting established auteurs in the noncompetitive sidebar; this year’s
batch includes Rithy Panh’s “L’image manquante”; Alain Guiraudie’s “L’inconnu du
lac”; Filipino helmer Lav Diaz’s latest four-hour-plus opus, “Norte, hangganan ng
kasaysayan”; and “Omar,” from Palestinian helmer Hany Abu-Assad (“Paradise
Now”).

Imprisoned Iranian helmer Mohammad Rasoulof, whose feature “Good Bye” played
alongside Jafar Panahi’s “This Is Not a Film” at the 2011 fest, received an Un Certain
Regard berth for his latest pic, “Anonymous,” which was shot secretly and smuggled
out of Iran. Another UCR title likely to attract considerable attention is James
Franco’s latest directorial effort, “As I Lay Dying,” which Fremaux singled out as “a
very original attempt to bring the singular universe of Faulkner to the bigscreen.”

Over the years, the sidebar has served as an international launchpad for Sundance
hits, as with “Beasts of the Southern Wild” last year. This year’s beneficiary is Ryan

Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station,” which premiered to much acclaim at Park City under its
simpler original title, “Fruitvale.”

Rounding out Un Certain Regard are Flora Lau’s “Bends”; Adolfo Alix Jr.’s “Death
March”; Rebecca Zlotwoski’s “Grand Central,” also starring Seydoux; Diego
Quemada-Diez’s “La Jaula de Oro”; Valeria Golino’s “Miele”; and Chloe Robichaud’s
“Sarah prefere la course.”

The festival will host a special tribute to Indian cinema with a screening of “Bombay
Talkies,” an omnibus featuring the work of four Indian directors. Elsewhere in the
selection, Amit Kumar’s cop thriller “Monsoon Shootout” will receive a midnight
screening.

Other special screenings at Cannes include Daniel Noah’s comedy “Max Rose,”
featuring Jerry Lewis’ first filmed performance in more than 20 years and screening
in homage to the French fave; James Toback’s meta-docu “Seduced and Abandoned,”
which he shot at last year’s Cannes fest; Stephen Frears’ HBO telepic “Muhammad
Ali’s Greatest Fight,” focusing on a crucial moment of the fighter’s career; Taisia
Igumentseva’s “Bite the Dust”; and Roberto Minervi’s “Stop the Pounding Heart.”

Fremaux noted the possibility that a few more films might be added to the lineup in
the coming weeks. The festival runs May 15-26.

Justin Chang- VARIETY – 18.4.13

Mystery Road beckons – Ivan Sen’s murder mystery

Film, Latest News

Writer-director Ivan Sen reckons he learned a valuable lesson after he
shot Dreamland, an experimental movie about an obsessive UFO hunter who roams
the Nevada desert and discovers a deeper mystery, in 2009.

He showed a print to a French-based international sales agent who said she loved the
film but admitted, “I can’t sell it.” So when Sen and producer David Jowsey
subsequently set up Bunya Productions, they resolved that every film would have a
defined target audience.

That strategy paid off with the director’s Toomelah and looks like continuing the

wave of successful Indigenous films with Sen’s Mystery Road. Jowsey showed a 10-
minute clip of the murder mystery at a function at the Australian Film Television and
Radio School on Wednesday night to launch the new edition of the school’s quarterly
journal LUMINA.

The issue celebrates the rise of Indigenous filmmaking including interviews with Sen,
director/cinematographer Warwick Thornton and his producer Kath Shelper,
director Tony Krawitz and The Sapphires scriptwriters Tony Briggs and Keith
Thompson.

The Mystery Road clip caused a palpable buzz among the audience, not least for
Sen’s stunning cinematography in and around the outback towns of Moree and
Winton. Aaron Pedersen plays an Aboriginal cop, Detective Jay Swan, who’s called
on to investigate the murder of a young Indigenous girl and realises a serial killer is
at work. The cast includes Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten, Jack Thompson and Tony
Barry.

Jowsey told SBS Film the film is still in post and he hasn’t set a launch date yet. He
envisions a release of 15-30 screens. The $2 million film was financed by Screen
Australia, Screen Queensland and the ABC. Gary Hamilton’s Arclight Films has
world sales rights outside Australia, and an international premiere at the Toronto
International Film Festival in September is on the cards.

In the LUMINA interview, Sen said the film is aimed primarily at art house
audiences while also “pushing hard at the fringes of the multiplexes… It will have
commercial bones but it will also have an Aboriginal and a cultural perspective.”

Sen said Bunya‘s approach is to “target an audience and then create something for
them, with an idea of the budget in mind. It makes everything achievable in a smaller
amount of time.”

The Bunya-produced Satellite Boy, writer-director Catriona McKenzie’s drama about
a 12-year-old Aboriginal lad who sets out for the big city with his best mate after his
grandfather’s house is threatened with demolition, opens in Australia via eOne
Hopscotch on May 16.

The AFTRS has played a pivotal role in nurturing Indigenous screen culture since
CEO Sandra Levy allocated more resources to that sector in 2009, including
appointing Pauline Clague as the institution’s first Indigenous training officer. Since
then more than 600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have attended AFTRS
courses.

Also shown at the function was an extended clip of The Gods of Wheat Street, a six-
part ABC-TV drama about the challenges facing a modern Aboriginal family, directed
by Wayne Blair, Catriona McKenzie and Adrian Wills.

DON GROVES / 18 APRIL 2013 / SBSFILM

Gambling On Gatsby

Film, Latest News, ,

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the only Australian film selected to screen at
this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it will be the opening film.

Aside from a talent for spending money and throwing parties, Baz Luhrmann and
Jay Gatsby, the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, have little in
common. But after a customary six-month release delay, this May we finally get to
see the flamboyant Australian’s $125 million Warner Brothers adaptation of the
classic novel. So while, in the novel, Gatsby’s guests waft dreamily about his blue
gardens, Baz says: ‘Great parties are like chemical equations that explode.’

The film’s fusing of American lyricism and Lurhmann’s visual fireworks has already
inspired both controversy and expectation. Nobody but Luhrmann’s circle and a
handful of studio executives has yet seen the film, but that hasn’t stopped the media
from weighing in (the Daily News: ‘How Baz Luhrmann will ruin The Great Gatsby’;
the New York Times: ‘A Pre-defense of Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby’).

While the sceptics flag up the expensive six-month delay in the film’s release and the
fact that the hip-hop star Jay-Z is scoring much of the film’s -soundtrack, Luhrmann
optimists savour the prospect of the director’s creative spectacle meeting the book’s
‘epic grandeur’ (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description). The bigger question is whether
Luhrmann’s version, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as
Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as narrator Nick Carraway, can improve upon
Jack Clayton’s 1974 take starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Although it was
neither a critical nor commercial success, it remains a cultural and style reference.

When I met Luhrmann in a stylishly subterranean basement in the Ace Hotel in
downtown Manhattan, he was keen to stress that he was drawn to the project
because of an appreciation for the book. ‘Universally, Gatsby’s a bit like Gone With
The Wind and like Titanic. People vaguely know it and some people who are
Fitzgerald nuts know it very well. It’s amazing how many people know the Redford
film but therefore don’t know the book because they’re poles apart… The novel is
exquisite. You learn the history of Gatsby, everything about his life during the
journey and telling. You know where he’s come from, you know who he was and you
know what he is.’

It could end up being the role of a lifetime for Leonardo DiCaprio, whose more recent
screen outings have not always matched the subtlety of his performances in early cult
classics (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries and, of course,
Luhrmann’s own 1997 Romeo+Juliet opposite Claire Danes). DiCaprio was 22 when
he first teamed up with Luhrmann. ‘Leo was a prince when we madeRomeo+Juliet.
Now he’s a king. Any time I’ve spent with him, he’s only ever had one focus in his life
and that’s acting and the quality of it.’

For his own part, the director divides critics with films that include Moulin
Rougeand Australia. He has a reputation within the industry as a perfectionist who
haemorrhages money in pursuit of the ideal. In a navy-blue suit and with salt-and-
pepper hair, on the surface Luhrmann resembles another commuter leaving Grand
Central Station. In person, he sweeps you into his world with a gale force of charm —
he is among the most charismatic men I’ve ever encountered. His powers of
persuasion are legendary — whether it’s persuading the Fitzgerald estate to buy the
rights to The Great Gatsby, or schmoozing the biggest musical artists of our time
to let him use their songs in Moulin Rouge.

While blazing a trail in the Australian theatre scene, hich included directing La
Bohème at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, Luhrmann acquired the nickname of
Count Von Groovy. These days the world is his fiefdom. ‘I have a philosophy — I
dream in Paris, I have fun in London, I like to live in New York and I like to dance in
Brazil. LA for work and Sydney is home.’

‘I love to affect culture,’ he says with typical understatement. Luhrmann may not be
shy in highlighting his role as a trendsetter, but his esoteric cinematic recipes have
resulted in mainstream cultural menus being transformed. ‘When I started
withStrictly Ballroom, everybody kept saying ballroom dancing will not be popular
in America. Strictly Come Dancing came directly from Strictly Ballroom. The
graphics and clothes from Moulin Rouge have been absorbed by other cultures.
They’re still doing bordello clips in pop. Every week there’s a new nightclub opening
saying it’s Moulin Rouge-ish.’

Romeo+Juliet was loathed by many critics but won him powerful friends in Britain:
‘Some people said it was MTV Shakespeare. But Lord Puttnam said it’s done more for
Shakespeare education [than anything else].’ And while Fitzgerald purists may flinch,

as Shakespeare purists did with Romeo+Juliet, it’s hard to begrudge a new
generation the chance to fall in love with another classic. There’s talk among his
creative team that Luhrmann’s plans include another Shakespeare movie mash-up.
‘My problem is death. I have more things in my cupboard I want to make. There’s the
Shakespeare canon, there are cinematic musicals, there are edgy psychological
works.’ He even hints he’d like a shot at directing 007. ‘Sometimes having a brand is
a burden,’ he says, ‘because sometimes I’d like to be a shooter and knock off a movie
just for the fun of making someone else’s script or a Bond film.’

Should his colourful depiction of 1920s Long Island find favour with audiences and
critics, Luhrmann will be able to do whatever project he chooses. But whatever the
outcome of the Gatsby gamble, the celebrations promoting the film will be legendary.
‘Gatsby was someone who liked parties. So look out for that!’

Aaddendum: Leonardo DiCaprio will join his Great Gatsby co-stars Tobey
Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Elizabeth Debicki at the Australian
premiere of the film in Sydney on May 22. The cast, along with director Baz
Luhrmann, will walk the red carpet at Hoyts at Fox Studios after the world premiere
of the film in New York on May 1, and after attending the Cannes Film Festival,
where it is the festival opener, on May 15.

The Great Gatsby is released in Australia on May 30.

Tom Teodorczuk – THE SPECTATOR – 30 March 2013

The director’s cut: Oliver Stone’s move from silver screen to small screen

Film, Latest News, Television

The Nixon director’s new American history series sees him follow in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Steven Spielberg

The title of Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, the 10-part documentary series that starts its UK run this Friday (Sky Atlantic, 9pm), is carefully calculated to maximise on the celebrity of the film director, possibly surprising viewers at finding such a big-screen name in the small-screen listings.

Stone’s attempt to correct what he sees as US-centric teaching of 20th-century
history in American schools is full of arresting connections – sauerkraut was
renamed liberty cabbage in the US during the first world war and french fries became
freedom fries during the “war on terror” – and the British screening of his series is
subject to its own intriguing connection: this week’s announcement that the
American drama Bates Motel has been bought for broadcast in the UK by the
Universal Channel.

The A&E network series, a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror movie Psycho,
may look like TV cashing on a celluloid classic, but Hitchcock himself was a pioneer
of easy traffic between the screen media – and Stone can be seen as following his
example.

Either side of making Psycho, Hitchcock was working in television, directing a half-
hour drama and fronting the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-61) and The
Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962). This ecumenical attitude was not entirely artistic: as
depicted in the recent film Hitchcock, about the making of the horror movie, the
director had financial problems caused by having, due to studio scepticism, to part-
fund the film himself. But Hitchcock, as a populist and a self-advertiser (he had long
made cameo appearances in his movies), was also drawn to the possibility that the
younger art form offered of bringing his work and himself to simultaneous audiences
of millions.

In appearing as a presenter and host, Oliver Stone is directly following Hitchcock,
although his participation in Untold History is only vocal, consisting of almost hour-
long monologues on voice-over. But, in common with his cinematic near-
contemporary, Martin Scorsese, Stone has seen TV as an opportunity for
documentary rather than fiction.

Before his current factual project, the director of Nixon and JFK had presented
America Undercover, a show devoted to exposé documentaries, while the director of
Taxi Driver and Goodfellas has regularly contributed small-screen documentaries,
usually on the subject of music, including The Blues and Living in the Material
World. True, Scorsese directed the opening episode of Boardwalk Empire but he
withdrew to the production side afterwards.

But the movie director who has done most to suggest an artistic equality between TV
and cinema is David Lynch. His Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-91) challenged two powerful
beliefs: that TV drama was most suited to realism – Lynch worked within a police
procedural structure but introduced weirdness and surrealism – and that good
directors only worked in television as an apprenticeship for Hollywood. Twin Peaks
significantly reduced cinematic snobbery against broadcasting, not least because its
picture-house spin-off – Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Come Fire Walk With Me (1992) – was
a flop, while the first series of the TV drama, in which Agent Cooper investigates the
disappearance of Laura Palmer, remains a recognised classic which had huge
influence in freeing TV drama from the tyranny of linear narrative. Eventually, Lynch
himself proved too far ahead of executive taste with his next intended TV project,
Mulholland Drive, which was rejected when the network saw pilot material and
Lynch was forced to turn it into a feature film.

It may be significant that Lynch is also an artist: a profession in which there is less of
a hierarchy between different sizes and styles of art: the movie theatre and the living
room were simply different canvases to him. In the cases of two other directors with
substantial credits in both sizes of image, there was also a strong element of
gratitude. Steven Spielberg and Anthony Minghella had both begun in television, the
former learning his craft on episodes of Marcus Welby MD and Columbo, while the
latter was script editor on Phil Redmond’s children’s show Grange Hill and wrote for
Inspector Morse before making his debut as a writer-director with Truly Madly
Deeply, made by the BBC as a cinema-TV hybrid.

Partly as a result of these CVs – and also because they belonged to the first
generation to grow up with TV as a standard part of life – neither directed ever
succumbed to the disdain for the goggle-box that is common in Hollywood. Both
returned there even after winning Oscars, attracted by the greater space that TV
offers for storytelling. Poignantly, Minghella’s final directing work, screened after his
death in 2008, was on the BBC1 Sunday night drama The No 1 Ladies Detective
Agency. Spielberg’s work for the medium includes the impressive war epics Band of
Brothers and The Pacific, although he has risked lowering the value of his name in
TV credits with looser executive-producer attachments to trash such as Smash.

So, while some movie purists may regard Bates Motel as a vulgarisation of a classic
film, it follows a model of cross-pollination established by Hitchcock and which
sensible directors, including Spielberg and Stone, now follow.

Mark Lawson – Wednesday 17 April 2013 – guardian.co.uk

The Tribeca Film Festival – Robert De Niro’s Tribeca mission

Film, Latest News,

Formed just after 9/11, Robert De Niro’s Tribeca film festival helped New York get back on its feet. The veteran actor tells Ed Pilkington about his love for the city, restoring King of Comedy, and how Twitter could redefine cinema – The Guardian,

‘New York has given me everything’ … De Niro.

Robert De Niro has been thinking in recent days about the concept of longevity. The
actor has been in the business of making films so long – his debut on the big screen
was in 1965 – that his work is now being restored.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. Restored, huh? It’s kind of amazing,” he says,
sitting in his production hub in downtown Manhattan, the Tribeca Film Centre.

The restoration in question is the painstaking return to its original glory of King of
Comedy, Martin Scorsese’s dark 1982 satire on modern celebrity obsession, with its
famous punchline: “Better to be king for a night, than schmuck for a lifetime.” The
movie has been digitally remastered from the original camera negatives and will be
shown later this month on the closing night of this year’s Tribeca film festival, with
both De Niro and Scorsese in attendance.

“Rupert Pupkin, now what film was that one?” De Niro quips, feigning to have
forgotten the part of the self-delusional would-be standup he played 30 years ago. “I
haven’t seen the movie in at least 20 years, and I want to see it – it will bring back
memories not just of what I did in the movie, but of that period in my life,” he says.

King of Comedy will be one of the highlights of the 2013 Tribeca film festival, the
celebration of New York and its movie-making tradition that De Niro co-founded in

2001 when the dust of the fallen Twin Towers had barely settled over Ground Zero.
The first festival, in 2002, was framed as a form of economic stimulus, the aim being
to attract visitors back to lower Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

And it succeeded. Each year the festival has expanded, growing international
tentacles until it can now claim to have screened more than 1,400 films in 80
countries, including through its Arabic offshoot, Doha-Tribeca. In the process, it has
comfortably achieved its initial objective, generating about $750m (£488m) worth of
economic activity for New York.

But therein lies a conundrum. New York City is back on its feet, as seen graphically in
the form of the looming 1 World Trade Centre, the 1,776ft skyscraper nearing
completion in Ground Zero just eight blocks away from De Niro’s HQ.

The city’s revival poses De Niro, together with his co-founder and producer of the
Tribeca film festival Jane Rosenthal, with a fundamental question: in its 12th year,
what is the festival’s purpose now that its initial reason for being has been met and
superseded?

De Niro says it remains his ambition to make the festival “part of the tradition of
New York, part of the fabric; that I hope will be what it will be in years to come, and
it’s partially that now.” His love of the city, and of its cinematic history, remains
undiminished: “It’s given me everything. I was born and raised in New York,
I studied acting here; I love to travel, but I’m a New Yorker.”

He might have added that the city also gave him his champion, fellow New Yorker
Scorsese, who conjured many of De Niro’s greatest performances in Mean Streets
(1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980),
Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995).

De Niro recalls how he and “Marty” stumbled upon the look for Pupkin. “We were
driving along Broadway, and we saw this shop with mannequins with flashy clothes
like you’d find in places in Vegas. We jumped out of the cab and went in the store and
I said to Marty, ‘What do you think?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, let’s take it.’ And we took the
whole thing off the mannequin, even the hairstyle.”

Tribeca film festival’s struggles with its purpose in life have been exacerbated by the
proliferation of movie festivals around the world and the increasingly clogged nature
of the annual calendar. Tribeca, dubbed “Hollywood on the Hudson”, suffers from its
timing so soon after the Oscars, which deprives it of the pre-Oscar buzz enjoyed by
Venice, say, or Toronto.

Rosenthal accepts that this is a problem. “It does make things more difficult, and
maybe if we have completed a certain mission then we would look to change the
dates. It’s been 12 years, so maybe it’s time to think about it.”

Like any festival, De Niro and Rosenthal are also having to grapple with the challenge
of the internet and the opportunities it offers. This year they are extending across the
Atlantic a films-on-demand experiment that has already proved successful in the US,
exposing independent movies to a far greater audience.

The technique will be rolled out to the UK from 16 April, with an initial slate of six of
the festival’s films being offered for an eight-week run on pay-per-view through
Virgin Media and digital platforms such as iTunes, PlayStation and Xbox. The
selected titles include Greetings from Tim Buckley, a feature that explores the
relationship between the father-and-son musicians Tim and Jeff Buckley; and Fresh
Meat, a horror-comedy that profiles a gang of dysfunctional criminals who make
the less-than-ideal decision to kidnap a family of cannibals.

As a further foray into the world of digital film-making at this year’s festival, there
will be a tieup with Twitter’s Vine to launch a six-second film competition. This will
be a competition for films lasting six seconds and posted through Twitter’s
#6secfilms hashtag.

Can that really be true? Robert De Niro, an actor whose attention to detail is
legendary, lending his name to six-second films? “I think it’s great,” he protests. “It’s
pure image, and I like that. It seems to me a good exercise at finding a beginning, a
middle and an end. I’m thinking, maybe I need to do it for myself.”

The Tribeca film festival opens on 17 April. Details: tribecafilm.com/festival

Sunday 14 April 2013 BST

Will Baz deliver on The Great Gatsby

Film, Latest News, ,

Whether you hated or adored Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia, are you looking forward to his remake of The Great Gatsby?

My sense is that Baz’s fans are eager to embrace his reinterpretation of the classic F.
Scott Fitzgerald novel, which was adapted on screen most memorably by director
Jack Clayton in the 1974 movie which starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

But will folks who haven’t been enamoured of Luhrmann’s previous, highly theatrical
efforts, or those who loved the novel and earlier screen versions accept his transition
to a more conventionally-framed romantic drama set in the 1920s, albeit in 3D?

Luhrmann’s extravaganza (reported budget $127 million) opens in Australia on May
30 after its US debut on May 10 and the international premiere opening the Cannes
Film Festival on May 15. There seems to be genuine excitement among executives at
Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, the co-producers, who saw a 2D cut of the
movie in Los Angeles last month.

That optimism is backed up by one member of the crew who tells SBS Film, “I think
it’s the real deal. It might turn a lot of heads. It’s an unusual Baz Luhrmann film, the
straightest and most normal film he’s ever done.” But he adds a caveat, “For those
who aren’t fans of Baz Luhrmann, I’m not sure this will change their minds.”

That person has seen the 2D version but quotes a colleague who has seen the 3D
rendering as saying “it’s a smack in the face,” meaning a positive impact. The
technician describes the performance of Joel Edgerton as the wealthy Tom
Buchanan, whose wife Daisy (Carey Mulligan) has an affair with Jay Gatsby
(Leonardo DiCaprio), as a “tour de force”.

Insiders say one of the most impressive scenes is a confrontation in New York’s Plaza
Hotel where all the principal characters gather to escape the “heat” of the Buchanan
house. However, some of the CGI-created shots were described as “painterly” and not
realistic, similar to the fake scenes of Darwin in Baz’s Australia.

The on-screen chemistry between DiCaprio’s Gatsby and Mulligan’s Daisy is said to

have quite a frisson, far more credible than the romance between Nicole Kidman and
Hugh Jackman’s characters in Luhrmann’s last film. One sequence in which the two
actors ad-libbed, with spontaneous laughter, impressed the crew, as did another
scene in which Gatsby throws his coloured shirts around his bedroom.

Baz and Leo reportedly disagreed at times over how the actor should play Gatsby,
hardly an unusual occurrence on a film set when highly-strung creative types don’t
see eye to eye.

Some of the more mature crew members watched Clayton’s movie during the
production. A few of their younger colleagues tried to sit through the
Redford/Farrow version but gave up after 20 minutes, possibly bored by the
filmmaking style of the 1970s.

Elizabeth Debicki is said to be a knockout as golfer Jordan Baker, who is pursued by
the book’s narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a bond trader and former Yale
classmate of Tom’s.

Veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, who plays Jewish mafia head Meyer Wolfsheim,
gave a glowing account of his experiences during filming. “The sets were an eye
opener for me,” the Indian actor wrote on his blog.

“Grand and colossal in its presence and opulence… All about was like an imagination
fructifying to reality. The sincerity of all that worked, including the main stars, the
earnestness of the director, his crew and the unimaginable detail of authenticity, all
added up to an experience which when I returned to my room, could not fathom!!… I
can say that in my 44 years and 180 films I had never worked in such a set up.”

But the expectations among many filmgoers in the US and here are, to put it mildly,
are mixed. When Deadline.com posted the latest trailer, the reactions were sharply
divided.

The positive comments ranged from “No other word for it – sensational!,” and “Not
sure I want to see it in 3D, but this looks spectacular” to “Leo’s a hard worker and
this seems to be a really creative for him and Baz. Pumped!”

The naysayers were vitriolic. ”An overblown, confusing and boring movie made from
the most overrated piece of fiction of the last century. Sounds like a winner!” said
one.

“This will end up exactly like every other Baz Luhrmann film – an indecipherable hot
mess. All style, no substance,” opined another sceptic. “Awful would be too kind…
poor Scott … another film travesty of his great American novel! So, so sad,” said
another.

So what might the romantic drama earn at Australian cinemas? Well, for all its detractors and carping critics, Australia raked in $37.5 million, a fine result, although Rupert Murdoch admitted 20th Century Fox ended up making a small profit on the film thanks to the Australian taxpayer via the 40 percent producer rebate.

The Gatsby remake is said to skew heavily towards females, which might limit its box
office potential slightly. Roadshow is banking that the film, which runs nearly two
and a half hours, will appeal to Baz’s admirers who enjoyed Strictly Ballroom,
Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, if not Australia quite so much, as well as the
legion of DiCaprio fans and those who read the novel.

On the upside, no other female-oriented mainstream film is opening in June so
Gatsby has a lot of clean air. Maybe $25 million-$30 million is achievable.

Aaddendum: Box Office Mojo/Wikipedia on Baz’s global takings [in $US, not
counting DVD etc]:

1992 Strictly Ballroom: Budget: $3m – US + Aust Box Office: $33m.

1996 Romeo + Juliet: Budget: $14.5m – Global Box Office: $147m

2001 Moulin Rouge: Budget: $52.5m – Global Box Office: $179m

2008 Australia: Budget: $130.5m [but $78m after Australian Government rebates] –
Global Box Office: $211m.

Don Groves / 15 April 2013 / SBS FILM

Movie money an easy target but critics miss mark

Film, Latest News

So why are taxpayers spending more than $20 million to get Walt Disney Studios to
shoot a blockbuster movie in Australia? Isn’t this just throwing cash – not much more
than a bribe – at a hugely profitable Hollywood studio?

Federal Labor backbencher Ed Husic is not alone in questioning why the government
is handing so much money to attract 20,000 Leagues under the Sea – the latest

movie based on Jules Verne’s novel about Captain Nemo’s adventures – instead of
funding hospitals.

After all, the movie will have no more cultural connection to Australia than some of
the big Hollywood films that shot in Sydney when the dollar was half the value – the
Matrix trilogy, two Star Wars episodes and Mission: Impossible 2.

Like so much involving Hollywood, shooting 20,000 Leagues is a numbers game.

Depending on how the movie is set up and who stars in it – Channing Tatum seems
more likely than Brad Pitt but both actors have other films lined up – it is expected to
have a budget of at least $200 million.

Federal and state subsidies could total more than $50 million, when you add the
$21.6 million grant to a tax rebate of 16.5 per cent (the ”location offset” for big-
budget foreign movies), plus whatever NSW, Victoria and Queensland offer to get the
work.

In round terms, even if the star gets a salary of $20 million, the director, producers
and other foreign cast get $15 million and post-production goes overseas, 20,000
Leagues could spend $130 million to $150 million in Australia.

These government incentives will bring Hollywood money into the country for a
movie likely to shoot for six to eight months.

It will pay wages to 200 to 400 crew and cast on a typical filming day, plus fees for
studio, facilities and equipment hire, construction, catering, transport and
accommodation.

Everyone who works on the movie will pay tax and spend their earnings as they go
about their lives.

When he launched The Wolverine, Hugh Jackman estimated that a $100 million
movie immediately returned $20 million to the government in tax revenue.

Without 20,000 Leagues, some of these crew members will take jobs outside the film
industry and others will head overseas to work but many will be under-employed or
unemployed.

Economics professor John Quiggin, from the University of Queensland, argues the
$21.6 million would be better spent on commercial Australian films than a movie
largely set underwater with a US star.

That grant would support just one or two medium-budget Australian films. But
everyone getting paid more on a Hollywood movie helps local filmmaking.

On 20,000 Leagues, the grant leverages up production worth at least $130 million,
provides work for crew and actors, stops facilities and equipment companies making
cuts for lack of business and develops skills that support Australian filmmaking.

True, it’s not producing the next Red Dog or The Sapphires and does nothing for
hospital patients. But it does create jobs and bring economic benefits.

Some of the US-backed movies shot in Australia

The Great Gatsby (2013)
Director: Baz Luhrmann. Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan
(above)

The Wolverine (2013)
Director: James Mangold. Stars: Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee

I, Frankenstein (2013)
Director: Stuart Beattie. Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy, Miranda Otto

The Lego Movie (2014)
Directors: Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Chris McKay.
Voiced by Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell

Sanctum (2011)
Director: Alister Grierson. Stars: Richard Roxburgh, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Wakefield

Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two (2006 and 2011)
Director: George Miller. Voiced by Elijah Wood, Robin Williams

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
Director: Michael Apted. Stars: Ben Barnes, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
Director: Troy Nixey. Stars: Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010)
Director: Zack Snyder. Voiced by: Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, David Wenham

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Director: Gavin Hood. Stars: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds

Comment: Garry Maddox – SMH – April 6, 2013

Mind the (converging) gap…

Film, Latest News, Online Media, Television, , ,

28 March, 2013 | By Wendy Mitchell.  Screen International UK

The creative and business elements between TV and film appear to be growing ever closer.

Who could have predicted 10 years ago, or even five, that an A-list film director such as David Fincher would be helming a drama series starring Kevin Spacey for an internet-only service? And the resulting project – House of Cards – attracting more attention than most films or traditional TV shows receive?

That’s just one sign of the changing times, in a media world where Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and Girls are just as lauded as auteur work on the big screen. For further evidence that the snobbery about TV is being erased from the film world, the highly artistic International Film Festival Rotterdam this year included a programme of TV works; and Sundance and Berlin both screened Jane Campion’s New Zealand TV series Top of the Lake.

I was talking to Warp Films’ Mark Herbert this month about when that company moved into TV with Shane Meadows’ This is England TV show following his same-titled 2006 feature film. Herbert noted that TV in recent years has started to take up more attention in the Warp office among staffers, as well as in meetings with talent, who are happy to move between TV and film.

It’s also a financial consideration to work across both – TV projects can often be greenlit with financing from one or two companies, as opposed to the complicated patchwork of international film co-productions. And the regular income from TV can keep an indie production company buoyant when film financing can take years to piece together.

These are just a few reasons why Screen increasingly covers event-TV productions and other areas of overlap between the film and TV worlds – as content goes multi-platform, the old distinctions aren’t that important.

If you’re making quality stories that people want to see, does it matter if they were intended for the small screen or the big screen?

Those shifts in attitude are one challenge to exhibitors attending CinemaCon. They understandably want to protect the theatrical experience, and the economics of studio blockbusters necessitate they do, but nobody can afford to forget that consumers are also choosing to view on tablets, TV screens and even mobile phones.

Aussie Sophie Lowe in Wonderland with new role

Film, Latest News, Television,

Australian actor Sophie Lowe has scored the lead in a hotly contested Hollywood
pilot in which she will star as Alice, the character best known from Alice in
Wonderland. The project named Once:Wonderland is still in development but is
expected to be a spin-off for the ABC’s Once Upon a Time. The plot will focus on an
entirely different time in Alice’s life, separate to the classic tale.

US reports have confirmed Lowe will take part in filming from April 7 in Vancouver,
with hopes the pilot will be picked up for a full series. Lowe, who was born in
England but moved to Australia when she was 10, initially started out as a model but
made the switch to dancing and acting and studied at the McDonald College of
Performing Arts in Sydney. She was nominated for an AFI Award for her lead role in
the Australian film Beautiful Kate.
Christine Sams – Sydney Morning Herald – March 30, 2013