by Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 9 February 2022

Jane Campion’s repressed western up for 12 prizes at 94th Academy Awards, with Dune scoring 10 nominations and Belfast and West Side Story both bagging seven

The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s Montana-set drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a threatening rancher, has swept the board at the Oscar nominations.

The film is up for a dozen prizes, including best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best actor for Cumberbatch, best supporting actress for Kirsten Dunst and best supporting actor for both Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons.

Campion last won an Oscar in 1994 for The Piano, which began its journey in Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or. That film was nominated for best director and best picture but lost out to Schindler’s List, with Campion making do with best adapted screenplay. She now becomes the first female film-maker to have two best director nominations.

If The Power of the Dog triumphs, it will be the second consecutive year a woman has won best picture and best director, following Chloé Zhao’s run with Nomadland. The only other female director to have taken either prize is Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010.

The film’s dominance this season is a significant victory for Netflix, the streamer behind the film, as well as titles such as Adam McKay’s polarising satire Don’t Look Up (in the running for four awards) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (three nominations).

Up for 10 awards is Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic set in the distant future. Steven Spielberg’s take on West Side Story took seven nominations, as did Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white autobiographical coming-of-age tale.

One of these was for Judi Dench, whose nod in the best supporting actress category makes her the second oldest acting Oscar nominee ever (following Christopher Plummer’s nod for All the Money in the World, when he was 88).

Dench’s Belfast co-star, Ciarán Hinds, is also nominated for best supporting actor; Branagh is up for best director and best original screenplay.

Branagh becomes the first person to secure Oscar nominations in seven different categories, having previously been up for live action short, best adapted screenplay, best supporting actor and best actor (for Henry V). Speaking on Tuesday, Branagh, who has yet to win an Academy Award, said he was thinking of “my mother and father, and my grandparents – how proud they were to be Irish, how much this city meant to them.

“They would have been overwhelmed by this incredible honour – as am I. Given a story as personal as this one, it’s a hell of a day for my family, and the family of our film.”Advertisement

Olivia Colman, who won best actress in 2019 for The Favourite, is in contention in the same category this year for her role as a depressed author holidaying on a Greek island in The Lost Daughter. Jessie Buckley, who plays her character’s younger self, is also in the running for best supporting actress.

Colman was snubbed in the equivalent Bafta shortlist last week, as was Kristen Stewart for her turn as Princess Diana in Spencer. Both women feature on the Oscars list, alongside Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos, Jessica Chastain in televangelist biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Penélope Cruz for her latest collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers. It is a first nomination for Stewart, 31.

Lady Gaga has been nominated for her role in Ridley Scott’s true crime drama House of Gucci in almost every preceding awards lineup, but was absent here. Other surprise omissions include last year’s best actress winner, Frances McDormand, for best supporting actress in The Tragedy of Macbeth and Passing, Rebecca Hall’s acclaimed directorial debut, which was overlooked entirely.

Will Smith moves into pole position for his first ever Oscar win for his performance as the ambitious father and tennis coach to a young Venus and Serena Williams in King Richard, which also picked up a nomination for his young co-star, Aunjanue Ellis, as best supporting actress.

The best actor shortlist is rounded out by Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, who plays Rent creator Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick … BOOM!, Denzel Washington for The Tragedy of Macbeth and Javier Bardem for Being the Ricardos.

All five men are repeat nominees, and taken as a whole, the 2022 shortlist was light on new talent. Yet a few surprises did emerge, in particular the three nominations for Coda, a Sundance hit featuring a predominantly deaf cast.

Troy Kotsur’s best supporting actor nomination makes him only the second ever deaf actor up for an Oscar, following his Coda co-star Marlee Matlin’s win in 1986 for Children of a Lesser God.

Coda joins an eclectic best picture shortlist – the only category which at this stage all 9,500 Oscar members vote for – alongside The Power of the Dog, Dune, Belfast, West Side Story, Drive My Car, Don’t Look Up, King Richard, Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley.

Drive My Car’s director, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, is also nominated for best director, best adapted screenplay and best international feature – a breakthrough for a film not in the English language which would have felt more striking before the success in February 2020 of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.

The nominations were announced by black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross and comedian Leslie Jordan, a healthcare worker, a basketball-loving high schooler, a teacher and a New York firefighter. Voting closes in more than a month, before the ceremony itself on 27 March 2022. The Bafta awards take place a fortnight beforehand.

Last year’s mid-pandemic ceremony was an experimental, socially distanced affair held at Los Angeles’s Union Station, which saw record-breakingly low TV audiences tuning in.

Details of this year’s event are still to be confirmed, but the Academy has indicated that it will again feature a host. Names rumoured to be taking on the post include Conan O’Brien, Pete Davidson and Spider-Man star Tom Holland.

by Jackie Keast IF Magazine January 28, 2022

Producer and executive Jill Robb has been remembered by friends and colleagues as an inspiration and driving force in shaping the modern Australian screen industry.

Robb, the first marketing and distribution manager of the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) and the inaugural CEO of the Victorian Film Corporation, today’s Film Victoria, died January 16, aged 87.

Among her credits as a producer and executive producer were films Dawn!, the multi-AFI Award-winning Careful, He Might Hear You, The More Things Change… and Eight Ball, and the TV series Phoenix, Secrets, Silent Reach, Stark, and Snowy River: The McGregor Saga.

Over her career, Robb was also an executive producer for the ABC, and a founding member of the board of the Australian Film Commission. She served on the Film Victoria board from 1983-1989.

Born in England, Robb’s film career began in 1958, when she was a stand-in for English actress Jill Adams in Lee Robinson’s Dust in the Sun, starring Chips Rafferty.

There, she landed herself a further gig working in the production office, beginning a lifelong passion for filmmaking.

In her early years, she was production coordinator on Michael Powell’s 1965 classic They’re a Weird Mob, and in 1967, Robinson brought Robb on to work as an associate producer on Skippy.

It was on the seminal show that Robb gave Sue Milliken one of her first jobs, working in continuity. It would prove the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

“Jill had an innate self-confidence. She was a grounded person, very sure of herself and quite a creative thinker,” Milliken tells IF.

“When she got opportunities, she made the most of them.

“She’s almost the only person I can think of who was a really talented, creative producer and a really talented and competent bureaucrat. That just doesn’t happen.”

While Robb could be tough, Milliken recalls that she was also kind and generous, considerate of the people who worked for her and would look to support them in their careers. For Milliken, she was a mentor.

“What I liked about Jill, she was one of those people who had no pretensions. She was completely open,” she says.

“She would find opportunities and help you if she could. I really liked that. Also, she had a wonderful, dry and very sardonic sense of humour. She could see pomposity a mile off and had no time for it. She was entertaining and a very good person.”

Another to receive their first break from Robb was Matt Carroll – one of her neighbours in Sydney’s Paddington during the ’60s.

Robb got the then architecture student a job working in Skippy‘s art department during his university holidays, where he initially filled up production vehicles with petrol, and then worked in the kangaroo unit.

“I always blamed Jill for my ending up not an architect, but a film producer,” he tells IF.

The duo would go on to work together at the SAFC, and Carroll considers Robb’s work there pivotal to the international success of films like Sunday Too Far Away, which she got into Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, and Breaker Morant, which was in the official competition in 1980.

He remembers her as a brilliant executive, one that “didn’t take prisoners” in an era where there were few women in leadership positions.

“She was just the most extraordinary person,” Carroll reflects.

“We just adored her because she was so clever, so supportive and made us love the film industry.

“She was a really clever businesswoman, as well as great creatively and a great leader. There’s only ever been one of her.

“The industry was very lucky to have her.”

Greg Ricketson worked as a production manager on Careful, He Might Hear You and associate producer on The More Things Change…, and developed with Robb a series about Australian war hero Nancy Wake that ultimately did not go ahead.

He remembers her as a “one of a kind” and a “magic woman in every sense of the word.”

When Robb interviewed him for Careful He Might Hear You, Ricketson remembers her telling him: “There are lots of things that I am incredibly good at and I’m always going to be in control of. There are some other things which I’m not as good at, and I need somebody like you to run it for me. But I expect you to keep me informed when you make decisions so that I understand them. I’ll keep you informed when I make decisions that are not in your control so that you understand them. And we both must promise that if we disagree, we’ll talk it out.“

For Ricketson, the encounter was an early hint to Robb’s way of running a production, where her openness and trust of those in her employ gave room to an egalitarian and collaborative environment. She was also inquisitive, genuinely appreciative of the role of each member of the crew and unafraid to get her hands dirty.

“You just adored her because she took notice of you and took notice of your work. When she made suggestions they weren’t orders, they were more a collaborative suggestion. But because she was such a wonderful, collaborative person, 99 times out of 100 people said, ‘Okay, let’s try that’,” Ricketson tells IF.

“Everybody who worked with Jill just fell in love with her.”

In the early days of her career, Robb also ran a modelling school, and was casting director on Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright in 1970. 

In a statement posted on social media, Film Victoria called Robb a “ground-breaking woman”, noting “she became a role model for many, particularly women working in the screen sector”.

Her career was recognised on numerous occasions, named a Member of the Order of Australia, awarded AFI’s Raymond Longford Award, and honoured by Film Victoria in its annual Jill Robb Award, which recognises the achievements of women in the industry.

Recipients of the Jill Robb Award include Sue Maslin, Jill Bilcock, Nadia Tass, Sonya Pemberton, Fiona Eagger and Deb Cox, Mitu Bhowmick Lange and Claire Dobbin.

Robb is survived by her daughter Louisa and brother David, and their families.

Australian films capture 16% market share. Jackie Keast, IF magazine 3 December 2021

In the three years before the pandemic, Australian films contributed less than 5 per cent of the total national box office per year.

The same held mostly true in 2020, where local features captured only a 6 per cent market share.

But 2021 has not been a typical year. According to Numero, to date, at a total of $71.4 million (excluding holdovers), Australian films have contributed 16 per cent of the national box office.

Now, that market share will likely shrink somewhat before year end, with the theatrical market starting to recover post-lockdown and splashy films such as Dune, Encanto, Spider Man: No Way Home and The Matrix Resurrections entering the market.

However, the current figures still speak to just how much Australian films like Peter Rabbit 2, The Dry, Penguin Bloom and High Ground helped exhibitors during the difficult first half of the year when there was little Hollywood product.

It also speaks to the breathing room Australian films received then, when many films were allowed more screens and more time to build word-of-mouth and momentum. All of top 10 highest grossing local films of the year opened on more than 100 screens.

Distributors and exhibitors also threw significant weight behind those releases with regards to marketing and promotion, as did Screen Australia via its Our Summer of Cinema campaign.

The box office share of Australian films over the past six years.

As IF has already reported, this is the second highest grossing year for Australian film on record (not adjusting for inflation). The highest was 2015, when ticket sales tallied $88 million, spurred on Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dressmaker, Oddball, The Water Diviner, Paper Planes and Last Cab To Darwin.

Indeed, if the country had not faced extended lockdowns in NSW, the ACT and Victoria – leading to larger local films like Roadshow’s The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson moving to 2022 – that 2015 record may have been surpassed.

Cinema Nova CEO Kristian Connelly reflects that 2021 offered Australian film a rare opportunity to gauge true audience interest, without “the distraction of an endless parade of American blockbusters.”

“Seeing the remarkable success of The Dry, Penguin Bloom, High Ground, June Again and many more releases reveals a genuine interest in Australian stories, which reinforces the appeal of seeing ourselves on the big screen,” he says.

Prior to the release of the latest Bond instalment No Time To Die a few weeks ago, The Dry was the top grossing title of the pandemic at Sydney’s Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, and its most successful Aussie film in years.

“The big takeaway for us though was that the successes of the film was due to how extremely good it was and because it had mainstream audience appeal. People weren’t turning out to see it because it was locally made but because it looked and sounded like a film they wanted to see, was based on a best seller and had a well known star in the lead. It ticked a lot of boxes,” general manager Alex Temesvari tells IF.

“Penguin Bloom and High Ground also had appeal to bigger audiences than usual again thanks in part to little competition from Hollywood product at time of release.

“There is certainly a case to be made for producing and nurturing more high quality local content that actually appeals to mainstream audiences as opposed to just cinephiles and giving them the best shot at finding an audience in cinemas.”

Notably, almost all of the $71.4 million to date was amassed by titles released in the first half of the year, prior to the Delta outbreak. It is also worth noting that only six titles crossed the $1 million mark.

Since June 1, 23 new Australian films entered the market, totalling just $1.9 million. Most of that was taken by Transmission’s Buckley’s Chance, which grossed $925,233, Madma’s Nitram, which made $467,441 and Mushroom’s 20th anniversary re-release of Chopper, at $100,148.

Not included in this is Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, which is an Australian-New Zealand co-production, with See-Saw Films among the production companies. While the film was distributed theatrically by Transmission Films, no box office was publicly reported ahead of its release on Netflix yesterday.

Of course, all films that have released in the second half of the year have faced a disrupted market, given COVID lockdowns in the country’s largest theatrical markets.

Some films, like Umbrella’s Streamline, which opened September 2, had a short, limited release into states that were open before moving onto Stan. Sharmill Films documentary Palazzo di Cozzo released nationally September 16, but only opened in its native Melbourne last weekend.

The highest grossing Australian film of the year is UK co-production Peter Rabbit 2, which finished just shy of $22 million for Sony, closely followed by The Dry, which ended on $20.7 million for Roadshow. Both films rank among the top 15 highest grossing Australian films of all time.

Warner Bros.‘ Mortal Kombat came in at third, amassing $9.3 million. While some may not regard Mortal Kombat as an ‘Australian film’, it qualified for the Producer Offset, was shot in Adelaide, and was directed and produced by Australians Simon McQuoid and James Wan respectively.

Penguin Bloom finished on $7.5 million, and High Ground on $3 million.

The highest grossing feature documentaries of the year were Madman’s Girls Can’t Surf, which earned $619,475, followed by ABCG Films’ My Name Is Gulpilil, which gathered $421,641.

Moving into 2022, the key challenge for Australian films that intend a theatrical release is securing enough screens and marketing support to find an audience. With feature-length work for streaming platforms now eligible for a 30 per cent Producer Offset, some filmmakers may choose to bypass cinemas. This will no doubt continue to be a key conversation into the year ahead, including at the next stage of the Australian Feature Film Summit spearheaded by Sue Maslin, Gino Munari and others.

Aussie films dated for next year include Madman’s Shane (January 6), Gold (January 13) Blind Ambition (March 3), River (March 24) and How To Please A Woman (May 26), Studiocanal’s Wyrmwood: Apocalypse (February 10), Dark Matter Distribution’s Loveland (February 10), Paramount/Umbrella’s Falling for Figaro (February 24), Radioactive Pictures’ Ruby’s Choice (February 24), Roadshow’s The Drover’s Wife the Legend of Molly Johnson (May 5) and Warner Bros’ Elvis, from Baz Luhrmann (June 23).

Other titles expected for release next year are Robert Connolly’s Blueback, Gracie Otto’s Seriously Red and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, all Roadshow, Bonsai Films’ Blaze, starring Yael Stone and Simon Baker, Madman’s Bosch & Rockit and Nude Tuesday, and CinemaPlus’ Sweet As.