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by Nick Taylor

One of my favorite bits of This Had Oscar Buzz’s year in review episodes is the segments where they discuss a film that overcame its middling quality to cash in on their buzz and score with the Academy. This is the energy I bring to you for my 25th anniversary retrospective of Shine, an Australian film that copped seven Oscar nominations and a Best Actor prize for Geoffrey Rush in his starmaking role. I do not remember hearing or reading a single solitary comment about this film in the years since I became a cinephile. The closest I’ve ever gotten comes courtesy of folks sticking up for their personal pet among 1996’s Best Actor lineup, or scattered comments that Geoffrey Rush was better in his other nominated performances. It’s slim pickings, and having finally seen Shine for myself, I find very little of worth to really excavate here.

The creation of the supporting Oscar categories in 1937 clarified the intention that the lead acting categories are meant to honor true star turns. While most Best Actor wins have aligned with that idea, there have been more than a few whose placement has been called into question due to low screen time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest winners in the category:

10. Gary Cooper (“High Noon”)

40 minutes, 57 seconds (48.35% of the film)

Five-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Cooper earned his second win in 1953 for playing morally conflicted Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon.” By appearing in less than half of the 85-minute film, Cooper made history by holding two screen time records at once. At the time, his one-hour, 30-minute, 55-second performance in 1941’s “Sergeant York” was the longest to have won in the Best Actor category. His second win broke a 21-year record for shortest, which was previously held...

Director: Ursula Dabrowsky.

Writer: Ursula Dabrowsky.

Family Demons is a Saylavee horror production that will be released in North America through Ifm Films. Rich in family dysfunction, violence and abuse Family Demons has qualities similar to Greek tragedy. In the film Billie (Cassandra Kane) plays the heroine who has a tragic fall due to her philia or love for her mother. Her fall is caused by her philia and a curse that haunts others in her family (mental disorder).

The film is centrally about Billie and the abuse she experiences at the hands of her mother (Kerry Reid). Her abuse continues a cycle of mental illness that actress Kerry Reid brilliantly shows in her alcoholism and neglect for her young daughter. The mother is haunted by her own demons, but it is Billie's failing attempts to reconcile with her mother that drives the show.

The heroine Billie finds hope in...

Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance by Donna McRae

Low cinematic genres – (as Clover, Williams and Robin Wood and others) have often pointed out – often handle explosive social material that mainstream cinema is reluctant to touch. — Joan Hawkins (1)

Can you make a film about the aftermath of incest and child abuse and its effect on three generations of women in the same family? Would this film contain an inherited ghost running through the narrative that could represent repressed feelings of colonial guilt on another level? Could this film prick the conscience of a nation that might be shuddering in silence for all its past sins? Would you get funding for this film from an Australian funding agency if you didn't have a track record? Would this very serious film fill cinemas, especially Australian ones? Could you get international profile actors to star in your film? Or would Australian film actors like Gracie Otto,...

Family Demons is an indie' film from Australia that has recently been picked up by Ifm World Releasing for worldwide distribution. The film really packs the fun into both family dysfunction and this first trailer, which can be seen below. A North American release date is awhile off, but a brief description of the film's heroine can be found courtesy of Fangoria: "a young woman violently fighting for her life." Family Demons is a must see film as early reviews are very positive. As well, the first trailer shows director Ursula Dabrowsky's flare for the dramatic. Have a look at all the details for Family Demons past the break.

The synopsis for Family Demons:

"Billie (Cassandra Kane) kills her violent alcoholic mother (Kerry Reid) in a fit of fury and repressed anger. Helped by her boyfriend Sean (Alex Rafalowicz) she plans on getting out of town and heading...

Written and Directed by Ursula Dabrowsky

Produced by Sue Brown

Featuring Cassandra Kane, Kerry Reid, Alex Rafalowicz

Another new Australian indie that combines atmosphere and storyline for one hell of a mindfuck, Family Demons takes alcoholism and child abuse to a chilling level of consequences. Poor young Billie is a teenage girl with a crappy mom – she drinks, beats Billie, chains her to the bathroom toilet, brings home vile men for cheap sex, and never bothers to stock the cabinets with any food. No longer able to exist with quiet desperation, Billie decides to take steps to remove herself from her abusive situation. Only, because of horrific and diabolical reasons, Billie will never, ever be able to leave her mother – no matter what she tries...

Kerry Reid is beyond vile as the depressingly familiar figure of Mom; alcoholic, broke, aging, unhappy, and always inebriated. Taking out her frustrations in her child in violent ways,...

Family Demons, the award-winning psychological horror film produced by Sue Brown and directed by Ursula Dabrowsky, has been picked up for worldwide distribution by Ifm World Releasing Inc, the Us/Australian international film and TV sales company!

Billie (Cassandra Kane) kills her violent alcoholic mother (Kerry Reid) in a fit of fury and repressed anger. Helped by her boyfriend Sean (Alex Rafalowicz) she plans on getting out of town and heading for the big city but her mother’s vengeful, evil ghost will not let her go....

A real nail biter, this Australian production has already won ”Best Australian Director” at the 2009 Night of Horror Film Festival and was nominated as a finalist in the 2009 DigiSPAA awards.

watch the trailer:...

According to its own press kit, Family Demons is "a psychological horror film about an abused teenage girl who murders her alcoholic mother and is horrified to discover that the mother's vengeful spirit returns to haunt her. Even in death, the mother is hell bent on denying her daughter's freedom."

Shot on location in Adelaide, South Australia, writer/director Ursula Dabrowsky cites The Sixth Sense, Carrie, Ju-on (The Grudge) and Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre among her influences on Family Demons. Never merely re-shooting scenes from popular films, Dabrowsky has used her influences to create a film that is at times atmospheric, kinetic, haunting and visceral.

Rather than slicing through the typical cast of characters, Dabrowsky takes the time to establish each character and their relationship with Billie (played by Cassandra Kane). Billie is in her late teens, and is constantly reminded by her alcoholic mother (played by Kerry Reid...

CHICAGO -- A radiant drama about a concert pianist's emotional turmoil, "Shine" dazzled Saturday night viewers at the 32nd annual Chicago International Film Festival. Crescendoing with a number of previous festival accolades, this Fine Line release should similarly win the hearts of select-site audiences when it is released later this fall. It will surely grace many end-of-year top 10 lists.

"Shine" is based on a true story, centering on the life of one David Helfgott, a promising concert pianist who "cracked" under the strain of playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. The breakdown was due only in part to the demands of confronting that awesome work on a technical, as well as artistic level, but had its roots in Helfgott's tumultuous childhood. In his household, his father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) ruled with an iron-fisted hand with one major goal in mind, that young David (Alex Rafalowicz) would someday be a great pianist.

In Jan Sardi's complex and perceptive scenario we see that the father's rule was in large part an attempt to live vicariously through the accomplishments of his son. But, we further see how his autocratic rule placed the young pianist in a contradictory bind: While his father encouraged him to the highest artistry, he also forbid many practices that would ensure David's reaching such a height.

Rafalowicz magically conveys that young boy's turmoil in marvelous, shimmering detail. He evinces both the boy's passion and talent, as well as providing clues to his insecurities and inner confusions. In effect, David Was expected to interpret works -- by Chopin and Liszt as well as Rachmaninoff -- with a feeling beyond his years. And more debilitating, his emotional life was so constricted by his father that David instinctively knew he did not have the range-of-life to adequately play such mature wonders.

Alternately lilting and frisky, "Shine" is a terrific, complex character study. Under Australian director Scott Hicks' wand, the players, as well as the technicians, combine in a wonderful symphony of passion and despair and rise ultimately in transcendent triumph.

In large part this is due to Geoffrey Rush's virtuoso performance as the gifted but troubled adult pianist. It is a truly poetic characterization, graced with idiosyncratic flourishes and enlivened by a number of cadenza-like interludes of almost slapstick desperation. Other cast members are similarly superb, particularly Mueller-Stahl as David's overbearing father and John Gielgud as a wily music professor.

Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson's compositions are marvelously apt, conveying the emotional link between David's troubled world and the healing power of the music he plays. Propelled by telling, singular images, as well as grand 'scapes of the mind, "Shine" is also accentuated by Pip Karmel's crisp, but resonant editing.

SHINE

Fine Line Pictures

A Scott Hicks Film

Producer :Jane Scott

Director: Scott Hicks

Screenwriter :Jan Sardi

Director of photography:Geoffrey Simpson

Editor :Pip Karmel

Production designer:Vicki Niehus

Costume designer:Louise Wakefield

Music :David Hirschfelder

Color/stereo

David as an adult:Geoffrey Rush

David as a young man:Noah Taylor

David as a child :Alex Rafalowicz

Peter :Armin Mueller-Stahl

Gillian:Lynn Redgrave

Cecil Parkes :John Gielgud

Katharine:Susannan Prichard

Sylvia :Sonia Todd

Ben Rosen :Nicholas Bell

Running time -- 107 minutes...