News

Vincent Sheehan, Liz Watts and Anita Sheehan.

After 23 years and a body of work that spans 15 features, five TV series, two docos and three shorts, Porchlight Films will cease operations as founding partners Vincent Sheehan, Liz Watts and Anita Sheehan move on to pursue new opportunities individually.

The company is best known internationally for producing three of David Michôd’s four features, including his Oscar-nominated debut, Animal Kingdom, as well as The Rover and Netflix’s The King.

Other notable film credits include Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang, Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene, Rachel Perkins’ Jasper Jones, Tony Krawitz’ Jewboy and Dead Europe, Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter, Tony Ayres’ The Home Song Stories and Walking on Water, Cate Shortland’s Lore, Rowan Woods’ Little Fish and David Caesar’s Mullet.

In television and episodic, the team have produced Foxtel drama The Kettering Incident, created by Vicki Madden...

Cate Shortland on the set of 'Berlin Syndrome'..

Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland has only made three features: 2004.s Somersault, 2012.s Lore and now Berlin Syndrome, with the last two both set in Germany.

.Like a lot of people I.m just drawn to the vibrancy of the culture,. says the filmmaker, .and I love living in Berlin..

Shortland.s partner is Australian filmmaker Tony Krawitz (Dead Europe), whose family is German Jew.

.His grandmother is still alive, she.s 102, and she.s from Berlin,. Shortland tells If. .We.ve lived in Berlin on and off for the last six years, our kids went to school there for a while. My German.s still really atrocious but I love living there..

Now the director has shot a feature in the city — adapted by Snowtown.s Shaun Grant from a novel by Melanie Joosten.

Aquarius Films producer Polly Staniford was...

'Glitch'.

Production has kicked off in Melbourne on the second season of Matchbox Pictures'.Glitch, with directors Emma Freeman and Tony Krawitz at the helm. The shoot will continue on location around the city and in regional Victoria until the end of March.

The first season of the zombie drama, created by Louise Fox (Broadchurch, Dead Europe) and Tony Ayres (The Slap, Cut Snake, Nowhere Boys), followed seven people who had inexplicably returned from the dead.

The second season sees .the Risen. unravel the mystery of how and why they are back while contending with a lethal threat..

In October it was announced that Netflix was coming on board as a production partner for the second season, along with Matchbox and the ABC.

.We can.t wait for our audience to see where the story goes. We want to deliver on the promise of answers and keep the thrills and spills coming,...

Glitch.

The second season of.Glitch will be co-produced by the ABC, Matchbox and Netflix.—.making it the closest thing to a Netflix Original produced locally..

The first season of the zombie drama streams on Netflix Oz and debuted on Netflix U.S. last week (October 15).

According to Chris Oliver-Taylor, MD of Matchbox Pictures and the show's Ep, "Glitch was something that Netflix were interested in very early as a result of the quality of series one."

"Matchbox always tries to produce programs that work for an international audience. The international deal was reasonably simple to construct; the more complicated piece of the puzzle was working with Netflix, NBCUniversal and the ABC to work out the local Australian arrangements, working through windowing and how to manage on-demand."

Oliver-Taylor is excited about what the deal might mean for the local sector.

"We think that by bringing on Netflix to be a...

Liz Watts.

Producer Liz Watts will join See-Saw Films. (Lion, The King.s Speech) Iain Canning and Emile Sherman to produce a biopic on the life of Mary Magdalene.

Set to begin shooting in Europe later this year, Watts (The Rover, Animal Kingdom, Little Fish) will produce Mary Magdelene through her Sydney-based production company Porchlight Films. Watts has previously worked with See-Saw on the company.s 2012 production, Dead Europe.

Garth Davis (Top of the Lake, Lion) will direct from a script written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett (How to Talk to Girls at Parties).

Rooney Mara (Carol, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is attached to play Magdelene and Joaquin Phoenix (Her, Walk the Line) is in talks to play Jesus.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, The Martian) is also in talks to play the apostle Peter and Tahar Rahim (A Prophet, The Past) in talks to play Judas.

.It...

The founder of Sydney-based Porchlight Films has teamed up with the UK’s See-Saw Films on the prestige drama ahead of a European production start later this year.

Tahar Rahim is in talks to play Judas in the biopic alongside Rooney Mara in the title role. Joaquin Phoenix in is negotiations to play Jesus and Chiwetel Ejiofor is in talks to play the apostle Peter.

Garth Davis will direct from a screenplay by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett.

Watts, who launched Porchlight in 1997 with producer Vincent Sheehan and co-director Anita Sheehan, collaborated with See-Saw on 2012 drama Dead Europe.

Her credits include David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, The Hunter starring Willem Dafoe, The Rover starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, and Little Fish with Cate Blanchett.

She most recently served as executive producer on eight-part detective series The Kettering Incident and is working in the same role on the feature adaptation of Jasper Jones starring Levi Miller, [link...

The Daughter.

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The Daughter director Simon Stone and cast including Ewen Leslie and Odessa Young are set take part in Q and A sessions following preview screenings of the film in Sydney at Melbourne.

Palace Cinemas will host Stone (The Turning) and actors Young (Looking for Grace) and Leslie (Dead Europe) for two sessions..

Moderated by film critic David Stratton, they will follow preview screenings of the film at Palace Verona, in Sydney.s Paddington and Palace Cinema Como, in Melbourne.s South Yarra.

The Daughter is inspired by Stone.s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen.s The Wild Duck, which was first performed at Belvoir Theatre in Sydney..

The Daughter also features performances from a stellar cast which includes Geoffrey Rush, Miranda Otto and Sam Neil. .

Produced by Jan Chapman (The Piano, Lantana) and Nicole O.Donohue and with costumes by Margot Wilson (The Dressmaker), the film is a deeply...

Sophie Mathisen and Jonathan Burtreaux in Drama.

First-time writer-director Sophie Mathisen looked to the Lena Dunham model when making her first film.

Dunham famously made her debut feature, Tiny Furniture, by setting most of it in her parents' New York loft..

Mathisen made hers in Paris, shooting in the three-storey apartment owned by the parents of her focus-puller. The space ended up doubling as two seperate apartments, plus a nightclub.

Mathisen, who also stars in the film, graduated from Vca as an actor, worked in theatre for a few years, then decamped to London for an Ma in acting for screen at London's Royal Central School of Speech and Drama..

While in London she became increasingly interested in scriptwriting, and ended up writing scripts for her fellow students..

"When it came time to do my thesis, I pitched that instead of making a short I'd make a feature instead", Mathisen told If.

Glendyn Ivin is a huge fan of Peter Weir.s Gallipoli but he has resisted the temptation to revisit Weir.s seminal 1981 movie since he was hired to direct the Nine Network miniseries Gallipoli. .I love that film; it.s one of the reasons I became a filmmaker,. Ivin told If on Monday during a recce for the eight-hour production which starts shooting in and near Melbourne on March 17. .But I have avoided watching it again because we are doing a very different story..

In keeping with this fresh take on the saga of the young Aussies who fought in the legendary WW1 campaign, Ivin said he and his DoP Germain McMicking will shoot the film in a style which is far from a traditional drama.

The screenplay is by Christopher Lee (Howzat! Kerry Packer.s War, Paper Giants, Rush, Police Rescue), adapted from the best-selling book by Les Carlyon.

Kodi Smit-McPhee, Harry Greenwood, Tom Budge, Lincoln Lewis, Matt Nable, Anthony Hayes, Lachy Hulme and Ashleigh Cummings are among the big ensemble cast announced today for the Endemol Australia/Nine Network miniseries Gallipoli.

A three-month shoot starts in and around Melbourne on March 17 with Glendyn Ivin (Beaconsfield, Puberty Blues) directing. The screenplay by Christopher Lee (Howzat! Kerry Packer.s War, Paper Giants, Rush, Police Rescue) is adapted from the best-selling book by Les Carlyon.

The producers are John Edwards (Howzat! Kerry Packer.s War, Beaconsfield, Paper Giants, and Offspring), Imogen Banks (Puberty Blues, Offspring) and Robert Connolly (producer of Balibo and The Boys, director of Underground: The Julian Assange Story, The Slap). Nine.s co-Heads of Drama Jo Rooney and Andy Ryan and Endemol Australia CEO Janeen Faithfull are executive producers. .Smit-McPhee plays 17-year-old Thomas .Tolly. Johnson, who lies about his age to enlist with his brother Bevan in the...

While a lively debate over the 13 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards for The Great Gatsby rages on social media, TV viewers have given their verdict on the Network Ten telecast.

The delayed two-hour show, which started at 8.30 pm, drew an average audience of 400,000 in the capital cities and a peak of 540,000. That was better than last year.s one-hour telecast which had 331,000 viewers. To be fair the AFI confirmed Ten as its broadcast partner only a couple of weeks before that so there was a lack of promotion last year.

The show, which had a weak lead-in from Jamie Oliver's new series Save with Jamie,. was beaten by Person of Interest on Nine and Bones on Seven.

On Facebook and Twitter there was a pronounced backlash against The Great Gatsby.s domination over The Rocket. Kim Mordaunt.s low-budget Lao-set drama got 12 nominations, two fewer than Baz Luhrmann.s opus,...

If the 3rd annual Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards could be categorised as a David vs Goliath battle between The Rocket and The Great Gatsby, Goliath is the hands-down winner.

Baz Luhrmann.s opulent romantic drama won six awards tonight, for best film, director, adapted screenplay, lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio, supporting actor Joel Edgerton and supporting actress Elizabeth Debicki.

That.s in addition to the six awards in craft categories plus the Aacta award for outstanding achievement in visual effects bestowed on Luhrmann.s film on Tuesday.

Kim Mordaunt's The Rocket, which had 12 nominations versus 14 for Gatsby, had to be content with just one trophy, for Mordaunt.s original screenplay.

The outcome is likely to reignite the debate about the near-impossibility of comparing a lavishly-mounted 3D film financed by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures, which cost $160 million, with an independently-funded Lao-set film from a first-time director budgeted at about $2 million.

The Great Gatsby dominated. Aacta.s technical and short films awards today, collecting gongs in all six craft categories for which it was nominated, plus the Aacta award for outstanding achievement in visual effects.

The co-production Top of the Lake bagged two TV trophies while Matchbox Pictures. Nowhere Boys, created by Tony Ayres, was named best children.s TV series.

The TV documentary prize went to Redesign My Brain, which explores the revolutionary new science of brain plasticity, written and directed by Paul Scott and produced by Isabel Perez and Scott for ABC TV.

Writer-director Nick Verso's The Last Time I Saw Richard, produced by John Molloy, was honoured as best short fiction film. Developed and funded through Screen Australia.s Springboard program, the short is a prequel to the upcoming feature film Boys In The Trees, tracing the friendship between two teenagers in a mental health clinic in...

Actor and comedian Shane Bourne will host this year.s Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTAs), broadcast in a 90-minute presentation on Thursday, January 30, at 8.30pm on Network Ten.

Bourne will lead the night of peer-voted awards, live performances and special appearances from personalities across the Australian television and film industry.

AFI | Aacta CEO, Damian Trewhella, said .We are delighted Shane will host the 3rd Aacta Awards Ceremony. Shane is an AFI Award winner and audience favourite, and a well loved and respected member of the screen industry.. Bourne said, .I am really looking forward to being involved in the 3rd Aacta Awards and providing the social lubricant to help ensure a great night for all as we celebrate the year.s achievements in television and film. And if the official after party is just a fraction as good as the scenes from The Great Gatsby then...

Glenn, Team Film Experience's resident Australian, here. In all the hubbub surrounding the big wins for American Hustle and Her, it went unnoticed (not surprisingly, but also not without reason) that the nominees for this year's Aacta Awards were announced. Australia's own "Academy" (renamed from the Australian Film Institute several years back) went big for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which is hoping for a tech resurgence later in the guild-stretch of the Oscar season, and Kim Mordaunt's The Rocket, which is still holding on hope for an Academy foreign language short-listing. Other famous names like Rose Byrne, Hugo Weaving, Mia Wasikowska, and Naomi Watts also appear across the 14 categories recognising Australian films.

Catherine Martin and her team of production/set/costume designers are - let's face it - the only likely Oscar cross-over here for their work on The Great Gatsby so it's hard to picture her losing.

Other best film nominations include Dead Europe, Mystery Road, Satellite Boy and The Turning.Scroll down for full list

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and Kim Mordaunt’s The Rocket lead the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television (Aacta) Award nominations: 14 and 12 respectively, it was announced today.

Luhrmann’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald 1925 novel was made on a Hollywood-sized budget by a very experienced director while festival hit The Rocket, which tells the story of a boy trying to prove he isn’t cursed, was filmed in Laos by a writer/director who had not previously made a dramatic feature.

The Rocket and The Great Gatsby are pitted against each other for the prestigious best film award, for best director and in three of the four acting categories.

The best actor award, for example, could go to Leonardo DiCaprio for his performance in The Great Gatsby or to Sitthiphon Disamoe, a one-time...

The Great Gatsby has been nominated in 14 categories and The Rocket is in contention for 12 at the third annual Australian Academy of Cinema & Television Arts Awards.

In TV, Top of the Lake top scored with 10 nominations ahead of eight apiece for Mrs Biggs, Power Games: The Packer- Murdoch Story and Redfern Now series 2.

Gatsby and The Rocket are vying for best film with Dead Europe, Mystery Road, Satellite Boy and Tim Winton.s The Turning.

A total of 50 productions has been nominated across 39 awards categories. The Nsw Government announced today it would renew its partnership agreement for a further three years, from 2015-2017.

Aacta has signed a three-year deal with Foxtel which entails pay-tv rights and further collaborations. Aacta/AFI CEO Damian Trewhella tells If that in future years this may take the form of deeper coverage on Foxtel before or after the awards, spotlighting creative talent.

The Gatsby remake...

Goalpost Pictures, Matchbox Pictures. Penny Chapman, Jungleboys, Top of the Lake and Lore won key awards at the Screen Producers Australia awards on Wednesday night. Julie Zemiro hosted the free-wheeling ceremony at the Crown Palladium with an appealing mixture of humour, self-deprecating satire and due respect for the recipients. Goalpost was named Production Business of the Year, its principals Ben Grant and Rosemary Blight noting they have been in the industry for 23 years. Chapman received the Maura Fay Award for Services to the Industry in recognition for her work on programs such as The Slap, The Straits, Old School and Devil.s Playground. Jungleboys took the award for Breakthrough Business of the Year, co-founder Jason Burrows paying tribute to his partners Phil Lloyd and Trent O.Donnell. Burrows also expressed gratitude to Screen Australia, the ABC and Centrelink for .financing. the first nine months of Jungleboys. existence. See-Saw Films. Top of the Lake...

The Australian Screen Sound Guild, supported by Sennheiser, yesterday announced the winners of the 2013 Assg Awards at a lunchtime ceremony held at the Establishment Ballroom in Sydney..

Hosted by the hilarious Rhys Muldoon, it is the second consecutive year the Assg have held the ceremony on a Sunday, which has proved a popular choice with attendees..

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby was the favourite on the day, taking home four gongs in total, including the Assg Member's Choice and Best Soundtrack of the Year..

The Syd Butterworth Lifetime Achievement Award went this year to two recipients - the outstanding team of.Gary Wilkins and Mark Wasiutak.

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A full list of winners can be found below.. Greg Bell Student Encouragement Award Sponsored by Amber Technology Jonathon Tooke (Sae) Best Sound for a Television Commercial or Promo Sponsored by Sound Devices. A Day in Creative Kathleen Burrows, Bruce Heald Best Sound...

Director Justin Kurzel has begun pre-production in London on Macbeth, which stars Michael Fassbender as the ambitious Scottish king and Marion Cotillard as the conniving Lady Macbeth.

Kurzel is working with two of his collaborators from his debut film Snowtown, cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and production designer Fiona Crombie.

The producers are See-Saw Films. Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, whose credits include Tracks, Top of the Lake, Shame, Dead Europe and The King.s Speech.

Crombie has just finished the production design on Julius Avery.s Son of a Gun. Snowtown was her first feature, which she followed with Dead Europe and Top of the Lake.

The daughter of director Donald Crombie and former South Australian Film Corp. CEO Judith Crombie, Fiona graduated from Nida and was the resident designer at the Sydney Theatre Co. before she embarked on short films and TVCs.

Transmission will release Macbeth in Australia. StudioCanal is...

The finalists for the Screen Producers Australia Awards have been announced.

The awards, which recognise the creation of outstanding screen content by Australian screen businesses, will be presented on Wednesday 20 November at 6.30pm at the Palladium, Crown Hotel in Melbourne during the Screen Forever Conference.

Tickets for the Awards, the Screen Forever Gala Party and the Afterparty are included in the Full Conference Pass and the 2-day Pass. The finalists are:

Feature Film Production

Porchlight Films & See-Saw Films, Dead Europe Porchlight Films, Lore Fg Film Productions, Patrick

Light Entertainment Television Production

FremantleMedia Australia, Grand Designs Australia High Wire Films, The Agony of Life Shine Australia, The Voice

Drama Television Production

Every Cloud Productions, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries See-Saw Films, Top of the Lake Southern Star Entertainment, Offspring

Interactive Production

The Project Factory, Offspring: Moving In Envelop Entertainment, Precinct 13 mememe productions, dirtgirlworld

Children's Television Production

Sticky Pictures, The Dukes of Bröxstônia Werner Film Productions,...

The Aacta Awards Screenings will be held in Sydney at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction and in Melbourne at The Backlot Studios Southbank from October 9-30.

In contention are 14 feature films, four animated shorts and four fiction shorts. Nominees for the feature film, television and documentary categories will be announced later this year. The 3rd Aacta Awards will be staged in Sydney in January.

The 14 features are 100 Bloody Acres, Adoration, Blinder, Dead Europe, Drift, Goddess, The Great Gatsby, Mystery Road, Patrick, Return to Nim's Island, The Rocket, Satellite Boy, Save Your Legs! and Tim Winton.s The Turning.

The nominees for animated short are A Cautionary Tail (Pauline Piper, Simon Rippingale), Butterflies (Warwick Burton, Isabel Peppard), The Dukes of Bröxstônia- Mojo (Stu Connolly) and Woody (Stuart Bowen, Jodi Matterson).

Nominees for best fiction short are The Last Time I Saw Richard ( John Molloy, Nicholas Verso), Perception (Lyn Norfor, Miranda Nation), Record (David Lyons,...

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta) today announced the nominees for Best Short Animation and Best Short Fiction Film at the 3rd Aacta Awards.

The Academy also revealed 15 feature films that are eligible for the awards, which will be presented in Sydney next January.

The nominees for Best Short Animation are:

Cautionary Tail. Pauline Piper, Simon Rippingale Butterflies. Warwick Burton, Isabel Peppard The Dukes of Bröxstônia . Mojo. Stu Connolly Woody. Stuart Bowen, Jodi Matterson

In contention for Best Short Fiction Film are:

The Last Time I Saw Richard. John Molloy, Nicholas Verso Perception. Lyn Norfor, Miranda Nation Record. David Lyons, Dave Szamet Tau Seru (Small Yellow Field). Rodd Rathjen Juries of industry professionals will decide the nominees in these categories. Members of the AFI and Aacta will vote to decide the winners after the Aacta Awards Screenings. The 15 feature films are:

100 Bloody Acres Adoration Around The Block...

The Australian Director.s Guild has announced the winners of the 2013 Adg Awards during their annual Awards ceremony held on Friday night in Sydney.

Women directors took home several of the coveted awards, with Cate Shortland beating male competitors Wayne Blair (The Sapphires) Tony Krawitz (Dead Europe) and Kieran Darcy-Smith (Wish You Were Here) to scoop Best Direction in a Feature Film for Lore..

Women continued to triumph in the television sector, with Rachel Perkins winning Best Direction in a TV Drama Series for Redfern Now (Pretty Boy Blue) and Jessica Hobbs taking home the gong for Best Direction in a TV Mini Series for Devil.s Dust (Parts 1 & 2)..

Also triumphant in their fields were Jessica Reddenbach, who won the Award for Best Direction in a Short Film for Tender; Jennifer Peedom for Best Direction in a Documentary Series for Life at 7; Grace McKenzie for Best Direction in a Documentary...

A host of notable industry figures are set to attend the 2013 Australian Directors. Guild Awards, to be held in Sydney this Friday night.

Amongst those attending are Leah Purcell and Catherine Mckenzie, who are both nominated for their work on Redfern Now, as well as feature film director Cate Shortland (Lore) and Tony Kravitz (Dead Europe)..

Hosted by actor/director/writer/producer Adam Zwar, the Awards will be held at the Hoyts Cinemas at the Entertainment Quarter and will be followed by a dinner at Trackdown Studios..

This year, for the first time, the Adg will be acknowledging the work of Assistant Directors, with a special award to be presented to long-serving First A.D. Jamie Leslie..

Renowned Australian talent Rachel Ward, Bryan Brown, Susie Porter and Denise Roberts have also been confirmed as presenters..

For more information on the Awards or how to purchase tickets, visit.http://www.adg.

Devil.s Playground, the Foxtel miniseries that deals with the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the 1980s, .won.t pull any punches,. according to producer Helen Bowden.

Now shooting in Sydney, the six-part series stars Simon Burke as Tom Allen, a psychiatrist who is hired as a confessor to the clergy and gets embroiled in political and theological intrigue.

Burke played Allen as a 13-year-old schoolboy in Fred Schepisi.s 1976 drama The Devil.s Playground. The stellar cast includes Don Hany and John Noble as Bishops, Jack Thompson as the Archbishop, Toni Collette as a State Labor MP who campaigns for social justice, Andrew McFarlane as a priest and Max Cullen as a retired priest.

The screenplay by Blake Ayshford, Cate Shortland, Alice Addison and Tommy Murphy is .complete fiction but drawn from events that happened,. Bowden told If.

Funded by Screen Australia and Screen Nsw and produced by Matchbox Pictures,...

The number of Australian film projects that are adaptations . that is, based on an existing novel, short story, stage play, musical or some other creative work . is declining, according to Screen Australia. Only 38 of the 200 Australian films produced between 1999 and 2008 were adaptations . compare that 19 per cent figure to the 1920s, when one-third of all Australian films were based on existing works.

And compare that figure to the current rate of adaptation in the Us where 50 per cent of all films are adaptations, and they account for 60-70 per cent of the box office take each year.

Why are adaptations important? The Australian Film Television and Radio school.s head of screenwriting, Ross Grayson Bell, believes these sorts of projects are vital for Australian producers. "Adaptations get better funding, and they do better at the box office," he says.

But Bell is concerned that the Australian film industry hasn't made the...

Festive battle for No 1 heats up as first instalment of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth epic precipitates a fall of the Guardians

The winner

Peter Jackson and Jrr Tolkien have consistently proved a potent combination at the box office, so it's no surprise to see audiences turning up in droves for the first of three films based on The Hobbit. However a haul of £11.60m in four days is far from record-breaking, and isn't even the biggest opening of 2012. Skyfall debuted in late October with £20.18m, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 followed a month later with £15.85m. Both titles achieved these sums in three days with no previews, as did The Dark Knight Rises when it opened in July with £14.36m. Marvel Avengers Assemble kicked off with £15.78m over its initial four days. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has thus only achieved the fifth-best opening of the year.

The...

Tell us about the films you've seen in the past few days – and find out what our critics made of them

Seen any good films over the weekend? Or bad ones for that matter? Whether you went to the cinema, watched movies on TV, or even visited what used to be known as the "video shop", we'd like to hear about your recent viewing in the comments below.

Here's what our critics had to say about recent releases:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Bradshaw said: There can be no doubt that Jackson has made The Hobbit with brio and fun, and Martin Freeman is just right as Bilbo Baggins: he plays it with understatement and charm. But I had the weird, residual sense that I was watching an exceptionally expensive, imaginative and starry BBC television drama production. Read more

Smashed

Peter Bradshaw said: Raw and sombre, not without flaws,...

The Devil’s Playground

A series which picks up the story of classic feature film The Devil’s Playground 35 years on, is among 11 productions to receive Screen Australia funding.

Return to the Devil’s Playground is a six-part series produced by Matchbox Pictures’ Helen Bowden and Blake Ayshford and directed by The Strait’s Rachel Ward and Dead Europe’s Tony Krawitz.

Writers on the production are Ayshford, Cate Shortland, Alice Addison and Tommy Murphy.

The series picks up the story in 1988, 35 years after Fred Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground, where main character Tom Allen, a psychiatrist and a secular confessor to the Catholic clergy, becomes entangled in political and theological intrigue.

The series is executive produced by Penny Chapman, Simon Burke, who played the original character of Tom Allen and is the current Actor’s Equity president, and Penny Win.

Screen Australia’s overall investment across the 11 productions...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | Smashed | Neil Young Journeys | Chasing Ice | Love Crime | Dead Europe | UFO | False Trail | Code Name: Geronimo | Tinkerbell And The Secret Of The Wings | Babette's Feast | Baraka | What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A)

(Peter Jackson, 2012, Us) Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis. 169 mins

So the three-movie idea is more likely down to financial demands than creative ones, and the now-notorious higher frame rate reduces cinematic spectacle to pin-sharp TV movie, but this is terrifically wrought escapism. Freeman is the perfect lead, too. But what could have, should have been a masterpiece ends up a fantasy epic with too much epic and not enough fantasy.

Smashed (15)

(James Ponsoldt, 2012, Us) Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul. 81 mins

Winstead shows impressive range as a young alcoholic teacher trying to get back on track. The familiar subject feels fresh applied to a new demographic.

★★☆☆☆ In Dead Europe (2012), Australian photographer Isaac (Ewen Leslie) heads to Greece (his family's home nation) for the first time, presenting an exhibition of his work while at the same time visiting his errant brother Nikolai (Marton Csokas). His father - an ex-communist who fled the fascist uprising - has sunk into depression and pleads with his son not to make the trip as does Isaac's mother. Following his father's death, Isaac decides he will also take his father's ashes back to his mountain village so bring his father some peace, but once in Europe Isaac will find that his rationality and his very identity are in danger of crumbling.

Read more »...

Seven Psychopaths | Celeste And Jesse Forever | I, Anna | Confession Of A Child Of The Century | The Oranges | The Man With The Iron Fists | You Will Be My Son | So Undercover | When Santa Fell To Earth | Gremlins | Khiladi 786

Seven Psychopaths (15)

(Martin McDonagh, 2012, Us) Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits. 110 mins

It's a cult movie formula to die for: Pulp Fiction meets the Coens meets Adaptation, with postmodern high-jinks, wacky crime thrills and lashings of irreverent comedy. The latter redeems a movie that's almost too manically clever for its own good. Reality barely enters into this story of a blocked screenwriter caught up in a dognapping escapade, but there's never a dull moment. Perhaps it could do with a few.

Celeste And Jesse Forever (15)

(Lee Toland Krieger, 2012, Us) Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Ari Graynor. 92 mins

A made-for-each-other couple have trouble staying separate in this relaxed romcom,...

Jewboy director Tony Krawitz makes his return with Dead Europe, a festival darling now beginning its international rollout with an impending release coming in the UK. Ewen Leslie, Martin Csokas and Kodi Smit-McPhee star in the picture, one that takes a dark look at hidden family history.A young photographer transporting his father's ashes from Australia to Greece comes to learn that something sinister happened in his family's past involving a young Jewish boy. Despite an effort to distract himself with a mix of random sex and drugs, Isaac's world begins to unravel as he realizes that he cannot escape the ghosts of the past.The first trailer for the film is now available, take a look below....

Skyfall has made another $7.7m at the Australian box office in the second weekend of its release.

The Bond film, directed by Sam Mendes and distributed by Sony Pictures kept a very healthy screen average of $13,209 across 585 screens according to Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia.

The film in eleven days has taken $24.8m locally. It surpasses total local earnings of previous Bond film, 2008′s Quantum of Solace which grossed of $20.645m over 11 weeks, according to Box Office Mojo. Quantum of Solace opened on 476 screens.

Elsewhere, Pitch Perfect, directed by Jason Moore and starring Australian female comedian Rebel Wilson, and distributed by Universal made $931,000 in a wide, pre-release across 212 screens for a $4,392 screen average.

Roadshow’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, directed by Stephen Chbosky opened across 182 screens to take $755,500 while Red Dawn, directed by Dan Bradley and starring Australians Chris Hemsworth and Isabel Lucas made $376,700 for Roadshow across 156 screens.

The new James Bond film was by far the biggest film at the Australian box office this weekend.

The Sam Mendes-directed Skyfall took a massive $12.304m across 580 screens.

At $21,215 for screen average, the film, distributed by Sony Pictures is one of the biggest screen averages for a major opening picture in 2012.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt2 added another $4.489m in its second week at the box office, across 613 screens for a $7,325 screen average to be the second highest grossing film of the weekend.

Elsewhere, in limited new releases, the National Theatre Live: Timon of Athens made $48,731 across 25 screens while 2 Days in New York, directed and starring Julie Delpy, and distributed by Hopscotch/eOne across 23 screens made $36,670.

A documentary about a former fashion editor, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel took $15,397 across seven screens for a $2,200 screen average.

Of Australian films at the box office, Housos Vs Authority,...

Tony Krawitz.s psychological thriller Dead Europe follows the plight of a young man who, disturbed by revelations of his family.s sinister past, attempts to seek solace in a world of random sex and drugs. It is also a film which captures authentic portrayals of the forgotten peoples of contemporary Europe. Keen to ensure their stories were told, Krawitz actually went in search for people he thought would resonate well in the film, and asked for their permission to be included. The result, as Krawitz explains, is a mirror effect between audience and main character Isaac. Just as Isaac is .not sure what.s real and what.s not,. the audience also questions, .Is that an actor or not? Is that a real location or not?. Based on the novel by Christos Tsiolkas, Dead Europe is a mystery set on the turbulent streets of contemporary Europe. The film follows...

Tony Krawitz.s psychological thriller Dead Europe follows the plight of a young man who, disturbed by revelations of his family.s sinister past, attempts to seek solace in a world of random sex and drugs. It is also a film which captures authentic portrayals of the forgotten peoples of contemporary Europe. Keen to ensure their stories were told, Krawitz actually went in search for people he thought would resonate well in the film, and asked for their permission to be included. The result, as Krawitz explains, is a mirror effect between audience and main character Isaac. Just as Isaac is .not sure what.s real and what.s not,. the audience also questions, .Is that an actor or not? Is that a real location or not?. Based on the novel by Christos Tsiolkas, Dead Europe is a mystery set on the turbulent streets of contemporary Europe. The film follows...

The final Twilight takes $12.5m on opening weekend

The final instalment of the The Twilight Saga has had a massive opening weekend at the box office.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, distributed by Hoyts/StudioCanal, took $12.49m, according to the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia.

Across a huge 655 screens, the film had a $19,070 screen average.

The film wasn’t a series’ best, however. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the second film in the series, released three years ago, made $16.109m on its opening weekend to be the second-highest grossing opening film in Australian box office history, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which made $18.364m in its first weekend.

However, Breaking Dawn is the third-highest opening weekend film in Australia for 2012. Batman film The Dark Knight remains the top opening weekend film for 2012, taking $15m. The Avengers took $13m.

Elsewhere, two Australian films and one New Zealand...

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn . Part 2 has posted the third biggest opening weekend this year after grossing more than $12.49 million at the local box office.

The final instalment in the five-part paranormal-romance series trailed only The Dark Knight Rises ($15.1 million) and The Avengers ($13.3 million), which both posted bigger opening weekends in 2012. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn . Part 2, distributed by Hoyts/Studio Canal, opened across a massive 655 screens and posted an impressive screen average of $19,070.

The opening result was slightly above The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn . Part 1, which opened with $12.1 million in 2011 and went on to gross $28.8 million in Australia.

The second film, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, remains the biggest of the franchise: it opened with $16.1 million in 2009 and went on to gross $38.7 million in total.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn . Part 2 was followd by Argo ($1.07 million in its fourth weekend), The Intouchables ($466,479 also in its fourth weekend), Seven Psychopaths...

Director Tony Krawitz will travel to the Us on behalf of the Australian Directors’ Guild to present his documentary The Tall Man to the Directors’ Guild of America as part of the Us guild’s Finders Series. The Finders Series looks to spotlight undistributed independent feature films from guild directors.

The announcement:

The Australian Director’s Guild is taking director Tony Krawitz and his award-winning documentary The Tall Man to Los Angeles and New York next week as part of the Directors Guild Of America’s (DGA) Finders Series.

The Directors Finder Series is a DGA initiative to spotlight undistributed independent feature films directed by Guild members. After its original inception in the USA, the series was expanded to also include International Association of English Speaking Directors Organizations (Iaesdo) members’ work as well (including USA, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom and Canada).

The Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg) will screen...

How do you make a true life story about litigation against a big cement manufacturer appealing to general audiences? You cast the hell out of it. This is exactly what the makers of Devil's Dust, the story of the James Hardie asbestos scandal and court case have done, and the results look superb. Anthony Hayes (The Square) leads the cast as Bernie Banton, the campaigner who became the public face of the political and legal campaign to achieve compensation for the sufferers of asbestos-related conditions, which they contracted after working for the company James Hardie. Other lead cast include Dony Hany (Rake, Lucky Miles), Daniel Henshall (Snowtown, These Final Hours), Ewen Leslie (Mabo, Dead Europe), Mirrah Foulkes (Animal Kingdom), Henry Nixon (Noise), David Roberts (The Square), Alexandra Schepisi (The Eye of the Storm) and the always-great character actor Alan...

With a new director, the Jewish International Film Festival has launched its 2012 program to screen across Sydney and Melbourne. Included in the line up is Australia’s Dead Europe by Tony Krawitz; Roman Polanski – A Film Memoir by Laurent Bouzereau and Yolande Zauberman’s Would You Have Sex with an Arab?

The festival runs from 1 – 18 November at Bondi Junction’s Event Cinemas and from 7 – 25 November at Melbourne’s Classic Cinemas in Elsternwick.

The announcement:

Under the guidance of a new Director, the Jewish International Film Festival is set for the most electrifying season in its 23-year history when it screens in Sydney and Melbourne this November.

Drawing on his extensive exhibition and distribution experience, Festival Director, Eddie Tamir has assembled a brilliant line-up of 34 features and documentaries from 14 countries, which will challenge, inform and entertain audiences from within and beyond the Jewish community.

Said, Tamir, “I’m delighted to build...

Sydney’s newest film event, the Cockatoo Island Film Festival, today launched its inaugural feature film and documentary program and In Competition categories and announced of a Peter Weir masterclass.

The film festival’s awards categories will be Best Feature, Jury Prize for Artistic Vision, Best Documentary, Best Australian Short, Young Film-maker of the Year and the Nsw Mining Young Indigenous Documentary Fellowship worth $20,000.

Allanah Zitserman, co-director of the Cockatoo Island event, said: “This has been in the planning stages for almost two years and we’re excited to announce such a diverse and high-quality list of feature films that will compete for the Best Feature Film Award.

“The films are from all corners of the globe including South America, Asia, Europe, the Us, Britain, Russia, Scandinavia and from local directors and casts.”

Of the 15 feature films selected in the program, 12 will have their Australian premieres at the festival, however only on Australian film,...

Australian Actor Ewen Leslie Signs with CAA The arrangement marks his first U.S. representation. Leslie, repped in Oz by Shanahan Management, plays a gay Greek-Australian photographer who uncovers a shocking family secret when he returns to his ancestral homeland in Tony Krawitz’s Dead Europe, which premiered in Toronto. He also has a supporting role in Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man, about a Scotsman who travels to Asia to meet one of the men who tortured him during WW2. Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgård and Jeremy Irvine star in that film that’s slated to bow next year. –Don Groves Canada, Norway Buy ‘Ripper Street’ Ahead of Mipcom Adding to deals in the U.S. and Australia, BBC Worldwide has sold crime drama Ripper Street to Canada’s Space and Norway’s Nrk ahead of Mipcom which runs October 8-11. The 8-part period series stars Matthew Macfadyen,...

This article originally appeared in If Magazine #148 (August-September).

Tony Krawitz They were both challenging projects in terms of the geography: Dead Europe was filmed in Australia, Greece, Paris and Budapest; Cate.s Lore was filmed in the German language in five regions across Germany.

Lore was meant to shoot in May/June last year and Dead Europe in October/November but then Lore was put back. I was in denial how difficult it would be. Making films at the same time isn.t recommended for couples with kids!

Our son Jonathan went to school in Berlin and, during his Easter break, I took him with me on a recce to Greece for two weeks. He also spent six weeks working as video split operator and clapper loader on Cate.s film, which ended up starting in early-July. He loved it.

I came back to Australia with the kids in the...

Writer’s note: This review contains spoilers.

One of the greatest joys of cinema is being caught off guard. And I don’t necessarily mean this in the sense of traditionally implemented surprise (a pop-out scare, for example), I mean you go into a film thinking that it’s going to adhere to certain genre standards, only to be met with elements that no one could have predicted. ‘Dead Europe’ is one of these films.

The synopsis that was making the rounds on the paper schedules at the festival read something like: “A photographer travels to Europe to unravel the mystery surrounding a family curse.” Sounds fairly conventional, right? Well, I guess I should have read the longer synopsis on Tiff’s official website. At least it makes reference to things becoming “bizarre,” “violent”, and “sexual encounters” becoming “more depraved.” Even with that information, this is still a film that...

Sins of the Father: Krawitz’s Adaptation Promises More Than It Delivers

You can’t escape the past, and if your family has demons haunting it from bad karma dating back to World War II, someone’s going to have to reckon with them. At least that’s what’s in store for a Greek family that relocated to Australia in Tony Krawitz’s adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ novel, Dead Europe. The second fictional film from Krawitz, who first directed the 2005 film, Jewboy, begins with a moody, ominous setup, and features a nonchalantly gay lead character, whose sexuality, refreshingly, has no correlation to the proceedings. However, the excellent build up is let down by a second half that feels inevitably predictable, another title in a series of film stories capitalizing on the horrors of Old World Europe.

Isaac Raftis (Ewen Leslie) is a celebrated Australian photographer who has just...

Aussie filmmaker Tony Krawitz first drew international notice and won accolades in 2005 with Jewboy, a dramatic short he wrote and helmed that starred Ewan Leslie as a orthodox Jew struggling to find his place in the world and within his own family. Besides taking home honors from the Australian Film Institute for Best Short Fiction Film and Best Short Screenplay, Jewboy earned coveted spots in the Cannes Film Festival as well as at Sundance. Now at last Krawitz offers his narrative feature follow-up Dead Europe. The drama, which made its world premiere Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, reteams Krawitz with Leslie, who stars as Isaac, an Australian photographer who learns some dark secrets while mourning the death of his father. Per his father's last wishes, Isaac takes his ashes to Greece with plans to disperse them from a scenic vista. But when he's stopped by a someone...

2010′s searing family crime drama Animal Kingdom brought Australian cinema to the forefront of the international stage with a vengeance, turning attention to the country’s film community once again. One movie that seems poised to benefit from the increased exposure is director Tony Krawitz’s second feature, Dead Europe, a drama about a man discovering unpleasant aspects of his ancestral history as he travels to a racially tense Greece. Child actor Kodi Smit-McPhee, who has already made a name for himself with roles in The Road and Let Me In, leads a cast that includes Ewen Leslie, Marton Csokas, William Zappa, Yigal Naor, and Danae Skiadi. Krawitz hands off the screenwriting reins this time to first time feature film scribe Louise Fox. A trailer for the film has now been released, and can be seen below.