Australian filmmakers criss-crossing the country to talk about their films has paid off
twice now this year. First director and star Damon Gameau appeared at more than 70 Q&A sessions on the way to the documentary That Sugar Film becoming a hit.

Now director Jeremy Sims and (mostly) actor Michael Caton have appeared at 48 Q&As leading up to the solid opening for Last Cab To Darwin last weekend. The final one – at least before a couple of industry screenings for AACTA Awards voting – was at a small community hall in Kangaroo Valley, south of Sydney, on Sunday. “It was packed,” Sims says. “People, as usual, laughed and cried and they all stayed to talk about the film.”

But Sims cautions against the idea that grassroots word-of-mouth campaigns are the way to go for Australian films. “It’s only if you’ve got a good film,” he says. “If you’ve got a bad film, it’s the worst way to market a film.”

Last Cab,which has Caton as a Broken Hill taxi driver who heads to Darwin to take advantage of new euthanasia laws, took $1.15 million on the weekend. With previews, it has taken $1.37 million already, adding to a strong year for Australian films that includes the hits The Water Diviner, Paper Planes and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Garry Maddox – SMH – August 12, 2015

Variety critics Scott Foundas, Justin Chang, Peter Debruge, Guy Lodge, Jay Weissberg and Maggie Lee weighed in with their choices for the 21 best films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (listed in alphabetical order):

1. “Amy.” British director Asif Kapadia followed up his 2010 “Senna” with this even more daring and revealing portrait of the brilliant but tragic jazz diva Amy Winehouse. Drawing on a wealth of professional and user-generated video, Kapadia again eschews the usual talking-heads interview format to keep WInehouse front and center for two harrowing hours, during which we come to understand how thoroughly the troubled singer lived her life under the camera‘s relentless and unforgiving gaze. The result is an unforgettable portrait of the cult of celebrity in the iPhone era. (Scott Foundas)

2. “Arabian Nights.” Even this year’s most impressive competition films couldn’t match Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ magnum opus for brazen ambition and conceptual heft. Screened in three parts across one week in Directors’ Fortnight, this six-hour allegorical meditation on the current European economic crisis bristled with invention, ribald wit and flashes of heated fury. Knotting stories of ghost dogs, mermaids and laid-off shipyard workers into one vast tapestry, Gomes made one of the festival’s most daunting-looking pics into one of its most unpredictably entertaining. (Guy Lodge)

3. “The Assassin.” While viewers were rightly mesmerized by the film’s ravishing visuals and exquisite period details, most have overlooked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s subtle and timely political allegory on the uneasy yet symbiotic relationship between Taiwan and China, obliquely yet poignantly evoking the conflicting loyalties and sense of estrangement felt by Taiwan’s settlers and their homegrown offspring. (Maggie Lee)

4. “Carol.” The jury may have fobbed it off with half a best actress award (for half its exemplary star duo, to add insult to injury), but Todd Haynes’ tender take on Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian romance ranks among the director’s most immaculate achievements: Though it’s composed and constructed with metric precision, a raw, reckless heart beats fast beneath its exquisite wintry surface. It also takes an immediate place in the canon of great melancholy Christmas films; one hopes and expects that American awards bodies will give generously in the holiday season. (G.L.)

5. “Cemetery of Splendor.” As familiar as home and as mysterious as a dream, the lush and hypnotic world of Apichatpong Weerasethakul — let’s call it Joeburg — is a place to which I always long to return. His latest film, a melancholy melding of the personal and the political, is a calmer, gentler thing than his previous films, yet it’s no less remarkable in its ability to find a strange, otherworldly magic in the everyday. (Justin Chang)

6. “Disorder.” A drum-tight home-invasion thriller fiercely anchored by the increasingly ubiquitous Matthias Schoenaerts, Alice Winocour’s sophomore feature isn’t a stunningly original feat, but was still among the most pleasant surprises in Un Certain Regard: Few would have guessed from the French helmer’s costume-drama debut, “Augustine,” that she has such tough, tactile genre-filmmaking chops. Hollywood producers should take note. (G.L.)

7. “Inside Out.” Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen somehow manage to deconstruct emotion while supplying it in generous measure in this deliriously funny, intensely cathartic romp through a young girl’s head space. The result is a wondrous return to form for Pixar, and a welcome reminder that there are still unexplored worlds waiting to be colonized by the imagination — including, perhaps, the imagination itself. (J.C.)

8. “Journey to the Shore.” Not since “Truly, Madly, Deeply” has the communion between the living and dead been depicted with such tenderness and heartache. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan’s maestro of psycho-horror, infuses this hushed, timorous drama of loss, regret and acceptance with his signature haunting mood, employing magical shifts of light and darkness. (M.L.)

9. “The Lobster.” Lonelyhearts who fail to find a suitable partner at a dating boot camp are transformed into animals, or else forced to hide out in the forest where they’re hunted for sport, in “Dogtooth” director Yorgos Lanthimos’ jury prize-winning absurdist social satire. Taking aim at the way modern society imposes a narrow definition of marriage on everyone, the crafty Greek allegorist setsout in the darkly comic Bunuel tradition, before turning its bachelor protagonist (an emasculated Colin Farrell) loose in its unexpectedly tender second half. (Peter Debruge)

10. “Macbeth.”

That Justin Kurzel’s stormy new interpretation of Shakespeare’s punchiest tragedy was left until the very end of the competition led some critics to expect a cautious afterthought. What they got instead was an urgent, visceral update to enthrall the “Game of Thrones” set, unmistakably the work of the same director who electrified festival auds with “The Snowtown Murders” four years ago. With arresting performances by Michael Fassbender and a particularly inspired Marion Cotillard, this spare new adaptation stands worthily alongside Polanski’s 1971 version. (G.L.)

11. “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Having set the high bar for the modern action movie with “The Road Warrior” in 1981, George Miller surpassed himself (at age 70!) with this years-in-the-making “revisiting” of his iconic post-apocalyptic action hero (Tom Hardy, ably stepping in for Mel Gibson), here paired with a formidable female ally in Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa — arguably the greatest female action hero since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Miller’s dizzyingly kinetic, color-saturated, wall-to-wall chase sequences kicked off Cannes with a bang which it never quite surpassed. (S.F.)

12. “The Measure of a Man.” Veteran French leading man Vincent Lindon won a well-deserved best actor prize from the Cannes jury for this modestly scaled but powerfully affecting social drama from director Stephane Brize. As an unemployed factory worker turned supermarket store detective, Lindon appears in virtually every shot, effortlessly holding the screen with his weary brow and unassailable humanity. (S.F.)

13. “Mon roi.” While it passionately divided critics, Maiwenn’s power-romance should be required viewing for all aspiring American indie directors (especially those of the mumblecore school). The “Polisse” director demonstrates the raw, heartbreaking emotional truth that one can achieve through personal storytelling and collaborative improvisation, eliciting career-best work from Emmanuelle Bercot (who shared best actress honors with “Carol’s” Rooney Mara) and Vincent Cassel. (P.D.)

14. “Mustang.” Five headstrong sisters in rural Turkey are forced to conform to their society’s rigid concept of female self-expression in Deniz Gamze Erguven’s impressive feature debut. Undeniably scripted with Western auds in mind and not averse to exaggeration, the pic nevertheless boasts energetic performances of an intriguing nascent sexuality (think “The Virgin Suicides” by way of Sally Man) and a maturely fluent visual style very much in line with current arthouse aesthetics. (Jay Weissberg)

15. “My Golden Days.” Arnaud Desplechin imagines the childhood and adolescence of his cinematic alter-ego Paul Dedalus (first played by Mathieu Amalric in 1996’s “My Sex Life … “) in this transporting memory film set in the late 1980s, with Roxanne Shante on the soundtrack and a thick, bittersweet air of first loves, fractured friendships and lost youth. Denied a slot in competition, “Golden” was the toast of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight, where it was acquired by Magnolia Pictures for a U.S. release. (S.F.)

16. “One Floor Below.” Champions of new Romanian cinema long ago cottoned on to Radu Muntean’s minimalist storytelling, and while he stays true to his style here, there’s a slightly simmering quality that turns this story of a regular guy unwilling to finger a murderous neighbor into a quietly tense anti-thriller. Wrestling with questions of societal responsibility via a protag used to playing the system, the pic may seem understated, but its themes are weighted with a moral dilemma of quasi-Dostoevskian proportions. (J.W.)

17. “Our Little Sister.” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of blossoming womanhood is a lightweight yet graceful divertissement that, a few arch Ozu-esque flourishes notwithstanding, reps a companion piece to the hypersensitive feminine sensibilities and visual luxuriance of Kon Ichikawa’s “The Makioka Sisters.” (M.L.)

18. “Sicario.” Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all aces in Denis Villeneuve’s serpentine, pulse-pounding thriller, but the film’s undeniable MVP is the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, in his second visually stunning collaboration with the director of “Prisoners.” After the likes of “Traffic” and “Heli,” Villeneuve tells us little that’s new about the horrific cycle of violence and corruption that has ensnared both the Mexican drug trade and America’s war against it, but there’s no denying he tells it in muscular, bracingly cynical style. (J.C.)

19. “Son of Saul.” The most powerful and provocative Holocaust-themed film since “Fateless” (which coincidentally also hailed from Hungary), Laszlo Nemes’ Grand Prix winner engages directly with the impossibility that any film could possibly do justice to those events, while challenging the notion that consequently none should try. Nemes rejects the melodrama of “Schindler’s List” in favor of a rigidly formalist approach, one that forces audiences to evaluate and consider its artistic choices alongside the already profound moral dilemmas faced by its characters. (P.D.)

20. “Taklub.” Brillante Mendoza’s ode to the decency and dignity of ordinary people afflicted by the worst typhoon disaster in Philippine history thoughtfully reflects on the limits of faith, compassion and hard work. A welcome return to the studied simplicity of his earlier works like “Foster Child” and “Slingshot.” (M.L.)

21. “Youth.” Paolo Sorrentino’s most tender film to date is dividing the critics and took home no prizes, yet its champions are touting the emotional rich way the bravura filmmaker explores aging via two very different figures in the waning years of their lives. Selling points include standout performancess by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, a blistering cameo from Jane Fonda, plenty of eccentric humor, expectedly wide-ranging musical choices and a visual banquet courtesy of d.p. Luca Bigazzi. (J.W.)

Variety Staff – May 25, 2015

Jason Blum is making a killing in Hollywood by following a simple formula: make it cheap and share the spoils.

Modern Hollywood is all about the numbers, but even in an industry obsessed with box office and back-end (a cut of the spoils), Jason Blum is one out of the box. At 45, the main man at Blumhouse Productions heads a pipeline of profitability built on a simple premise: make it fast, make it cheap, and make a pile of money – if it works, that is (and not all of them do). “We have a budget cap of about $US4 million per film, maybe a little more, and we came up with that number by looking at the movies that don’t work,” says Blum.

Many of his movies do work – like The Purge ($US89 million, two sequels), Insidious ($US93 million, two sequels), or Sinister ($US78 million, a sequel on the way).

But if a film doesn’t make it into cinemas, there’s always DVD and video-on-demand and subscription services, and Blum reckons taking $4 million – half from North America, the other half from the rest of the world – is a safe bet.

Keeping budgets at that break-even point “allows us to do weird, original stuff – because weird, original stuff is not always commercial,” he says. “Some of them work, some of them don’t, but as long as we keep the budgets down we can keep experimenting and trying new things.”

Rose Byrne in Insidious. The Australian actress was paid minimum wage for the film, but thanks to a profit-sharing deal has reportedly earned $US7 million from it.

The latest of those new things is Unfriended, a brilliantly inventive spin on the low-budget horror formula of six people in a room, being killed off one by one. The central premise here is cyber bullying, and the six are in an online chatroom – a virtual room – with the entire film constructed from imagery captured on secondary screens (laptops, phones, instant-messenger screens, Facebook pages and so on).

As is the Blumhouse way, it was made cheap, is going wide and, if it works, will undoubtedly have a sequel or three.

Jason Blum has been producing movies since 1995, but it was in 2007 that this mantra first emerged, when a low-budget horror film called Paranormal Activity landed in his lap. Made by Oren Peli for $15,000, the “found-footage” frightener had been rejected by every studio in town when Blum, who had a production deal with Paramount, made a case for it.

Earlier this year he told W magazine that “Paramount rejected it 100 times” before agreeing to put in cinemas. It grossed $US193 million worldwide and has spawned four sequels (so far).

On his imdb profile page, Blum has a producer credit on 78 titles; boxofficemojo lists 22 titles for a combined box office of more than $US1.8 billion, which suggests the true total is even higher; The Hollywood Reporter has claimed his 10-year output deal with Universal guarantees him a 12.5 per cent cut of the first-dollar gross (the ticket price) on all his titles.

Whatever way you cut it, those are astonishing numbers.

But Blum isn’t just making schlock. He also produced the triple-Oscar-winning Whiplash (for which he received a best picture nomination).

The indie favourite about a student jazz drummer (Miles Teller) terrorised by his teacher (J.K. Simmons, who won the best supporting actor Oscar) is, he jokes, a “Sundance horror movie”.

“I didn’t make Whiplash thinking it would be a big profit centre,” he continues. It was, rather, a passion project, the sort the profitability of the genre stuff allows him to indulge.

“I love our scary movies, that’s going to continue to be the primary focus of me and the people who work at the company, but when something amazing comes across the desk we’re in a position now where we can do it not purely for financial reasons. If everyone loves it but we’re not going to make a lot of money on it, so long as we don’t lose money we’ll pursue it.”

If it all sounds too good to be true there are some who have claimed that’s because it is. The reason Blumhouse movies are cheap is because everyone gets paid only base rates.

For the key creatives – writer, director, stars – the trade-off is a profit share that kicks in once the film has passed certain hurdles (the first at $30 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter). But for lowly crew, there’s no delayed payday, just the union minimum they signed on for in the first place.

Blum doesn’t see any reason to be defensive about this. “It makes no sense for someone to say, ‘Because your movies are very commercial I should participate [in the profits]’. If it’s a $50 million studio movie you don’t participate, you get paid scale. So why should you participate in ours?”

The real winners in this model, other than Blum, are the stars. Blum says their deals are predicated on their “quote” – the fee they usually work for. So even if John Travolta or Ethan Hawke or Jessica Alba signs on for the minimum (about $3500 a week), their eventual return could be pretty impressive. Rose Byrne, for example, is said to have earned more than $7 million for her role in Insidious.

“We’ve made a lot of people some great back end, so people have come back to try again,” says Blum. “From an actor’s point of view, it’s four weeks and if the movie works it’s a big payday. And if it doesn’t, you were in a cool movie.”

Unfriended opens on April 30 in Australia

Karl Quinn – SMH – April 17, 2015

The worldwide box office saw only modest gains in 2014 as revenue tumbled in North America.

Global revenue reached $36.4 billion, a slim uptick of 1 percent over 2013 ($35.9 billion), according to the Motion Picture Association of America’s annual report. For much of the past decade, global revenue has seen sizeable year-over-year gains, including 6.4 percent in 2012.

Without Asia — and particularly China — 2014 revenue would have certainly been down year-over-year. The Chinese box office grew by 34 percent to $4.8 billion, marking the first time that box office revenue has crossed $4 billion in any foreign market outside of North America.

In the U.S. and Canada, revenue fell a steep 5 percent to $10.4 billion (revenue also fell by 3 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa). Overseas, total international revenue came in at $26 billion, compared to $25 billion in 2013.

Here’s five worrisome takeaways from the MPAA report:

1. The 32 percent problem

Admissions hit a 19-year low in North America, with 1.27 billion tickets sold. Part of the problem: 32 percent of the population in the U.S. and Canada didn’t go to the movies at all. The same has been true for several years, but it’s clear Hollywood needs to cull a new audience. According to the MPAA, there was actually a jump in the number of frequent moviegoers buying tickets (fueled largely by older consumers), so that means fewer “occasional” and “infrequent” moviegoers went to the cinema in 2014.

2. Where were the tots?

Frequent moviegoers, defined as someone who goes to the cinema at least once a month or more, are Hollywood’s most prized demo. This group makes up only 11 percent of the population but buy 51 percent of all tickets sold. In 2014, there was a steep fall off in the 2-11 age group, with only 2.7 million young children going to the movies, compared to 4.3 million the year before.

3. The Trouble with Generations X, Y and Z

There was also a precipitous drop off in the number of frequent moviegoers between the ages of 25 to 39 (including parents of the missing tots). Those in this category made 7.1 million trips to the cinema, compared to 8.2 million in 2013 and 9.9 million in 2012. It matters because, overall, this age group watches more movies than any other. There was also a continued fall off in the number of frequent moviegoers in the 18-24 age group. This demo went to the movies 7 million times, the lowest level in at least five years. Conversely, frequent moviegoers in the 40-49 age group soared, from 3.2 million to 5.7 million, while frequent moviegoers 60 and older hit an all time high, making 5.3 million trips.

4. 3D Burnout

In 2010, 52 percent of moviegoers in North America saw a 3D title. Last year, that number fell by almost half to 27 percent, even though there were more 3D titles more than ever (47). In 2013, 31 percent of those going to the cinema saw a 3D title.

5. The gender balance

Since 2010, females have consistently made up a larger share of moviegoers, while the number of males has remained flat.

Pamela McClintock – The Hollywood Reporter- 11/3/2015

Screen Producers Australia hopes to reach agreement with the other major guilds on a new scheme for low budget features within the next few months.

SPA is proposing that all participants- producers, directors, writers, cast and crew- would receive 50% of their minimum award fees, reinvest the balance and thus share in the potential profits.

The scheme would apply to features costing less than $1.5 million which would not be eligible for Screen Australia funding but could qualify for the producer offset.  Producers would pay the employees’ tax obligations based on the minimum rates.

The aims are to boost the level of feature production, which has barely changed in 30 years; enable cheaper films to be made on a far more professional basis; and provide a pathway for a new generation of writers and talent.

Owen Johnston, SPA’s manager, commercial and industrial affairs, gave IF an update on the scheme today after hosting a screening on Tuesday night of UK film Delicious. The writer, director and co-producer Tammy Riley-Smith and the producer/ composer Michael Price took part in a Q&A session after the screening at AFTRS.

To be released in Australia by iTunes on February 9, Delicious was made for £150,000 ($280,000) under the agreement for low budget features between the UK producers association PACT and the UK’s Equity. The filmmakers say they expect the production to be in the black in two years.

The darkly comic romance stars Sherlock’s Louise Brealey as Stella, an obsessive dieter who embarks on a dysfunctional romance with aspiring French chef Jacques (Nico Rogner). Released from prison, Jacques arrives in London and starts working in the kitchen of volatile chef Victor (Adrian Scarborough), whom he believes could be his father. In the city he meets his neighbours, feisty pensioner Patti (Sheila Hancock) and the beguiling Stella, whom he plans to seduce with his culinary talent.

Since 2009, 139 films costing £3 million ($5.5 million) or less have been registered under the scheme.

SPA’s scheme is a simplified version of the UK model which entails actors taking a 75% pay cut on films costing less than £3 million and 50% less for projects budgeted below £1 million.

Johnston said, “One of the union’s concerns was that the scheme would erode the pay scale for actors. In the UK that hasn’t happened; it has created work additional to the status quo.”

He points out the number of films produced in Australia, 25 to 30 per year, excluding credit card films, has not changed in 30 years.

“We think the scheme will enable low budget films to be made far more professionally, inspire writers to work on these films and provide practice for a new generation of talent. “

Last year SPA flagged the idea of creating a joint review panel made up of reps from MEAA and SPA to assess applications for certification under the scheme. That notion caused concern at the ADG, which wanted a seat at the table.

Johnston said the composition of the review panel has not been determined and the ADG may well be involved.

SPA has been negotiating the terms of the agreement with the MEAA and will soon circulate a draft to that body, the ADG and the AWG. He hopes to get sign-off in the next few months so the scheme could be operating by mid-year.

Equity director Zoe Angus tells IF, “We have had preliminary discussions with SPA about introducing a registration scheme for low budget films. SPA has advised us that they will table a proposal shortly. MEAA will consult widely with members to ensure that any new arrangements offer the right protections for performers.”

Concurrently SPA has been discussing with Screen Australia a more flexible interpretation of the offset rules which require films to have a theatrical release or, at minimum, the intention to do so.

That seems to be happening as evidenced by The Mule, which eOne released on digital platforms and qualified for the offset.

SPA is also working with Screen Australia on ideas for alternative distribution avenues for Australian films.

[Wed 04/02/2015 9:26 AM].  IF MAGAZINE

By Don Groves