Under The Radar: Plus Cameriamge Festival 2012: The Winners
Posted on Wednesday December 5, 2012, 18:50 by Simon Braund in Under The Radar
 On Friday, with contributions from cinematographers Chris Doyle and Anthony Dod Mantle, Gus Van Sant paid heartfelt tribute to his friend and collaborator Harris Savides from the stage of the Opera Nova, accepting the Director Duo Award award on his and the late cinematographer’s behalf. Van Sant and Savides, who died of brain cancer in October, worked on six films together - Finding Forrester (2000), Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005), Milk (2008) and Restless (2011). Elephant and Last Days were shown at Plus CamerIamge along with a full retrospective of Savides’ career - aside from his work with Van Sant, Savides also brought he remarkable talent to bear on such films as American Gangster, Zodiac and The Game.
The festival wound down on Saturday with a closing ceremony at Opera Nova, followed by a screening of Last Days.
Results of the various competitions are as follows.
Student Films Competition
Golden Tadpole: Blacks... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Belated BIFF: The Hunt; Heaven’s Gate; Django; Sons Of Norway; Maniac; The Queen Of Versaille
Posted on Monday December 3, 2012, 10:34 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar
 The 21st Brisbane International Film Festival is all done for another year, closing with Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina (not released in Australia until February). For me though, the clear highlight of the 2012 program was Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt. It’s an amazing piece of work about the fear and perception of evil, with a series of terrific turns led by Mads Mikkelsen, and including a child performance for the ages from little Annika Wedderkopp. Don’t sit around reading about it, just see it, and decide whether its on your top ten for the year – for me it most certainly is.
One treat on this year’s BIFF program was the new, restored print of the legendary/notorious Heaven’s Gate. At the screening’s introduction, it was explained that there have only been a few minor changes made to the first director’s cut of the film - a few minor edits here and there, perhaps the biggest being the elimination of the intermiss... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: European Film Awards 2012
Posted on Sunday December 2, 2012, 00:05 by Owen Williams in Under The Radar
 A bit of context before the ceremony: this year’s European Film Awards are taking place in the beautiful surroundings of Valletta, Malta, following a couple of weeks of quiet (and not so quiet) ructions within Malta’s own modest film establishment. Despite a record year for domestic applications to the Malta Film Fund, it transpires that no visiting productions at all are currently scheduled to shoot in Malta next year. Cue bitter recriminations and accusations of incompetence and financial mismanagement from Film Service Providers Malta – a collection of production service companies responsible for managing most foreign productions filmed in Malta over the last ten years – towards controversial Malta Film Commissioner Peter Busuttil. Finance Minister Tonio Fenech dismissed the spat as a “personality clash,” but it’s a claim angrily denied by FSPM. Continue reading...Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Plus Camerimage Festival 2012: David Lynch
Posted on Tuesday November 27, 2012, 10:45 by Simon Braund in Under The Radar
 Last night, David Lynch was treated to a rowdy, minutes-long standing ovation when he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award for directing at the opening ceremony of the Plus Camerimage festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Earlier in the evening Lynch, a regular at the festival in recent years, was presented with the key to the city of Bydgoszcz by mayor Rafał Bruski. In a brief speech, Lynch described the honour as “dangerous”, although it’s doubtful that the key bestows any real civic powers on the recipient. (If it does, his first order of business should be to fix a few potholes).
Plus Camerimage, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is an international festival dedicated to the art of cinematography. Featuring a welter of event, including the main competition, in which nominees vie for the coveted Golden Frog award; and competitions for student films, documentary shorts and features, music videos, feature debuts and Polish films. It also boasts an extensive progra... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: BIFF 2012: Show Me The Magic & Murch
Posted on Friday November 23, 2012, 10:27 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar
 I’m a big fan of Australian cinematographer Don McAlpine’s work, so I was very interested to see the world premiere of Cathy Henkel’s documentary Show Me The Magic, which traces his life and remarkable career.
At 78 (although looking easily 10 years younger), for all his unassuming appearance, McAlpine has had an amazing time working in the movies. Born and raised in rural New South Wales, he worked as a teacher, before becoming a news cameraman (in which we see some of the most amazing footage in the film – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt spearfishing at the exact spot where he later disappeared, presumed drowned), and then moving into documentaries as a means of working with colour film stock. From there it was short films, and then into a 45 year run of features including Breaker Morant, My Brilliant Career, Predator, Parenthood, Patriot Games, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, and many others.
Watching Henkel’s fil... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Brisbane International Film Festival: First Report
Posted on Monday November 19, 2012, 17:30 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar
 The 21st Brisbane International Film Festival is well and truly underway, and after the damp-squib opening night film (The Sweeney? WTF?! Evidently Skyfall was too much to ask), everything is up, up, up, headlong into a strong, eclectic program, blending festival titans (Haneke’s Amour, Kim ki-duk’s Pieta among others), with buzzing curios and must-see rarities.
In the ‘grievous miscarriage of justice documentary’ category this year, it’s pretty hard to go past the Peter Jackson-produced West Of Memphis (which is by all accounts astonishing). I’m pretty certain it will get a general release quite soon, so I opted instead to see The Central Park Five, also running as part of BIFF’s really strong documentary program. Like pretty much anyone who watches them, I’m a big fan of Ken Burns’ PBS ‘American history’ documentaries – Jazz; The Civil War; and most recently Prohibition, among many others. This time, Burns shares writing and ... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Night Visions 2012: Silje Reinamo and Thale
Posted on Sunday November 4, 2012, 14:39 by Owen Williams in Under The Radar
 Home-grown Scandinavian films are in relatively short supply at this year’s Night Visions in Helsinki: the Audience Award went to Dredd (although it was a close call between that and Bobcat Goldthwait's excellent God Bless America). One of the very best films of the festival however, is the beautifully enigmatic and eerie Norwegian entry Thale [ tah-lay], directed by Aleksander Nordaas and starring Silje Reinåmo. It’s the story of a forest sprite who’s been kept separated from her kind for some years, until the death of her human guardian and the arrival at her cabin-in-the-woods of Erlend Nervold and Jon Sigve Skard: a dryly hum... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Night Visions 2012: Juan Martinez Moreno and Attack of the Werewolves
Posted on Saturday November 3, 2012, 14:26 by Owen Williams in Under The Radar
 
A couple of weeks ago, you may have noticed a DVD called Attack of the Werewolves sneak, unheralded, onto the lower shelves of your local supermarket. If you immediately dismissed it, given that unprepossessing straight-to-video debut and its underwhelming cover, nobody could blame you. But you’re missing out, because Attack of the Werewolves – re-titled in the UK from Lobos De Arga (Wolves of Arga), and playing gangbusters to super-enthusiastic Night Visions audiences under its American moniker A Game of Werewolves - is in fact a great little Spanish-language horror comedy that’s well worth ninety minutes of your time.
There’s a section in Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie where a man leaves his village and makes his successful way in the world. He returns home years later, and they kill him... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Night Visions 2012: The Paperboy & The ABCs of Death
Posted on Friday November 2, 2012, 11:38 by Owen Williams in Under The Radar
In context, the biggest mystery in the slow burning, slightly mental literary crime tale The Paperboy is why it's playing at this festival. Lee Daniel's directorial follow-up to Precious, starring Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman and John Cusack, isn't an obvious fit for its horror surroundings, but by the end, in all its deep-south, swamp-gothic murder melodrama, it just about starts to make sense.
Regardless of where it's playing, it's a more-or-less worthwhile, atmospheric film. It feels self-consciously 'quality', but it's not as hammer-blow heavy-handed as Precious, its sultry southern atmosphere is effectively oppressive, and the performances are all-round pretty good, although it's hard to quite take Kidman as white-trash intent on marrying her prison-inmate penpal. Efron takes his shirt off a lot (and, at one point, gets bi... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Night Visions 2012: The Bay
Posted on Thursday November 1, 2012, 09:24 by Owen Williams in Under The Radar
 Helsinki, it seems, doesn't go much for Hallowe'en. They see it as a kind of affected American import like we do in the UK - in fact they're even less convinced by it, since the shops don't appear to be full of tat like ours. I've yet to see a " sexy Edward Scissorhands" costume. Nevertheless, the long established horror and fantasy festival Night Visions kicks off on an appropriate October 31. There's already been some preamble, with guests John Waters and Paul Verhoeven taking to the stage of the Maxim theatre. Empire arrives in time to bump into Joel Murray - brother of Bill - here representing Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America. He tells me that Goldthwait once had a collection of thousands of wind-up toys, lining his guest bedroom, which would autonomously move at any given time during the night. He then apparently replac... Continue reading... Comment Now
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