Late one night in Paris, when director Christian Carion was writing the script of his latest film Farewell - a true story from the 1980’s about Russian traitors and French spies - he received a call from a man he didn’t know. “My number is completely unknown,” says Carion, “and I have no idea how […]
Despite playing - indeed creating - some of the most famous characters in cinema and television over the past forty years, and working with many of the industry’s leading directors and producers, John Hurt has never felt he was in control of his own destiny. The English actor, who recently returned to Australia to take […]
When I saw the email, my heart raced. “Do you want to interview Micheal Haneke?” it read. ‘Are you kidding’, I thought. ‘Is Scorsese a Catholic?’ I called the publicist back immediately, and after agreeing a date, sat down to work out what I would ask the 68 year-old Austrian film director who has been […]
War movies tend to be expensive, difficult to make and subject to intense scrutiny – especially the ones based on “true” stories that are linked to the myths and legends of national identity. Although Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant made in 1980, and Peter Weir’s Gallipoli made the following year, are amongst two of the best-known […]
At over 190 centimetres tall with broad shoulders and a six-pack to match, you might think that 19 year-old actor Liam Hemsworth is a bit of a handful. But according to the man himself, he’s calmed down a lot. “When I was a little kid I was a devil,” he says with his deep booming […]
When he was just eight years old, Jean-Pierre Jeunet – director of Amelie (2001), Alien: Resurrection (1997) and Delicatessen (1991) - made a small theatre from cardboard. He painted it, built sets and puppet characters, costumes and props and used his parents’ bedside lamps for lighting. For the boy who was an only child until […]
There have been more than twenty film versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, but none starring a local Canberra girl in the title role. In 1903 May Clark played the first screen Alice, the longest film ever made in Britain at the time. At a whopping 12 minutes, it was considered far too long […]
It may seem that an Italian-Glaswegian who spent three years working on a failed doctoral thesis about Milton’s Paradise Lost is the least likely person to put in charge of a biting contemporary film about transatlantic politics, but Armando Iannucci has long been observing and parodying the behaviour of those in charge. “At school I […]
It’s been quite a year for Warwick Thornton. After his debut feature film Samson & Delilah picked up the Camera D’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it has gone on to collect a string of other gongs and nominations, including six IF awards, the Audience Award at the Adelaide Film Festival, and eight nominations […]
When Patricia Clarkson comes on the other end of the line, there’s absolutely no mistaking the voice. “Hi, I’m fine” she says with that deep husky tone that has become the trademark of her extraordinary career – particularly over the last six years. After being crowned the darling of independent cinema in 2003 with key […]
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