It began as two tiny words pinned to the wall of one of the old army huts that housed NIDA back in the golden days. We were in our second year of the acting course and were instructed to put forward ideas for short plays that we would then “self-devise”. While many students including myself …

When an impoverished, God-fearing family of eight takes up residence with a chronic gambler, his boozy wife and their three offspring, the stage is set for a fair dinkum Aussie epic. And the long awaited screen adaptation of Tim Winton’s cherished 1991 novel ‘Cloudstreet’ delivers. The ”major mini-series” premiered last Sunday night and while some …

This week sees the DVD release of the brilliant home-grown protest film ‘Gasland’ through Palace Films. Nominated for a 2011 Best Documentary Oscar, the film follows filmmaker and theatre director Josh Fox as he investigates the explosion of the coal seam gas industry in the United States. Hydrolic Fracturing (or fracking) is the means by …

I saw David Suzuki give his most recent lecture at the Sydney Opera House last October and was impressed by his simple message about our basic human needs – not for endless economic growth but for clean air, clean water and clean earth. Whatever we do to these elements, like dumping toxic waste into waterways, …

‘Balada Triste de Trompeta’ translates as ‘The Sad Ballad of the Trumpet’ but it’s being released in the English speaking world as ‘The Last Circus’, which is peculiar because the haunting  ballad in question features prominently in Alex de la Iglesia’s demented movie about two crazed clowns battling it out  for the love of a …

Helped Screen Australia launch their new report into understanding audiences in our rapidly changing multi screen world yesterday. The report contains a way of gauging the Total Audience Views across a production’s entire release cycle, something the authors claim has never been done before. The report provided lots of discussion points for panelists such as …

Went to see Wim Wenders extraordinary 3D dance film ‘Pina’ last night at the Sydney Opera House. It was the closing film of this year’s German Film Festival and Wenders flew in especially for a Q&A afterwards. He told us that he’d been trying to work out a way in which to bring the legendary …

Nellevision now has a Youtube Channel! Following up on the recent upload ‘Ecoloco’ is ‘Les Deux Redux’. It’s a film I made using footage I shot one wild and wonderful night in gay Paris when I was lucky enough to score an invite to the opening of Scarlett Rouge’s kooky art installation. Spread across three …

Starring: Gene Wilder; Terri Garr; Marty Feldman; Peter Boyle Director: Mel Brooks Rated: PG Distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment With the wild success of The Producers, which first burst on to the screen in 1968 winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay, then more recently morphed into the riotous Tony Award winning stage musical before …

Starring: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Maria Barranco Director: Pedro Almodovar Rated: M Distributor: Hopscotch The title of this film says it all. Well, nearly. How can eight short words really sum up all the ingenious parts of Pedro Almodovar’s ecstatically crazed vision? In this brightly colourful film, the Spanish maestro spins his cinematic magic around …

Starring: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann Director: Bruce Robinson Rated: M+15 Distributor: Rainbow Entertainment The year is 1969 and London is “a country [sic] coming down from its trip.” No-one could better understand this declaration made by the drug-addled dealer in Withnail and I than the films’ Executive Producer George Harrison and its’ Special Production …

Starring: Victor Sjostrom; Ingrid Thulin; Bibi Anderson Director: Ingmar Bergman Rated: Distributor: Hopscotch Entertainment You know how sometimes a certain smell or sensation, or even an actual place, can trigger a whole avalanche of memories and emotions? For Professor Isak Borg, it’s a wild strawberry patch at his family’s abandoned lakeside house. After a particularly …

Starring: Karina Lombard, Nathaniel Parker, Claudia Robinson Director: John Duigan Rated: M Distributor: Roadshow Entertainment Kaleidoscopic images of kelp introduce the viewer to the dangerously seductive waters around Haiti in the mid 1800’s. Above the high tide mark British colonials cling to a dream of dominance in their ridiculous top hats and waistcoats, mocked by …

Starring: Carmen Maura; Veronica Forque; Chus Lampreave Director: Pedro Almodovar Rated: R Distributor: Hopscotch Entertainment Zoom in on a flat in one of the many tenement blocks flanking the highway in Madrid and we’re introduced to one seriously dysfunctional family. Gloria (Carmen Maura) is a mother of two who works her butt off as a …

Starring: Angela Punch McGregor; Arthur Dignam, Director: Igor Auzins Rated: G Distributor: AV Channel If audiences didn’t quite get enough of the sound of thundering hooves with the release of The Man From Snowy River in 1982, along came We of the Never Never hot on its heels to give them another dose. Shot on …

Starring: David Gulpilil, Jenny Agutter, Lucien John Director: Nicholas Roeg Rated: M+15 Distributor: Madman “You shouldn’t walk about in the sun”, says the White Girl to her younger brother. Clearly they both have the wrong skin colour to cope with the relentless ultra violet rays beating down on them somewhere out in the remote Australian …

Starring: Chips Rafferty, Francoise Christophe Director: Lee Robinson Rated: PG Distributor: They don’t make films like this any more. Walk Into Paradise claims to be ‘the story of the most primitive people on the face of the earth’. Shot entirely in New Guinea in 1955, barely a decade after WW2, the film was the first …

Starring: Anna Karina; Sady Rebbot Director: Jean-Luc Godard Rated: M Distributor: Madman Jean-Luc Godard was one of the ring-leaders of the French New Wave film movement, experimenting with the form and capturing the essence of day to day life for his Parisian contemporaries to smoke packets of Gitannes over. In his third film, Vivre Sa …

Starring: Fiona Kay; Bill Kerr; Frank Whitten; Penelope Stewart Director: Vincent Ward Rated: M Distributor: The AV Channel New Zealand director Vincent Ward is renowned for his dark and moody films like the award winning medieval odyssey The Navigator and Map of the Human Heart. His next outing, River Queen, staring Kiefer Sutherland and Samantha …

Starring: Tom Cruise; Kelly McGillis; Val Kilmer; Anthony Edwards Director: Tony Scott Rated: PG Distributor: Paramount For all those little boys who loved to make intricate model aeroplanes, Top Gun must have fallen out of the sky like a big fat wet dream. Likewise for all those girls who liked to cast their eyes over …

Starring: Ann-Margaret; Roger Daltrey; Oliver Reed Director: Ken Russell Rated: M 15+ Distributor: AV Channel As The Who blaze a trail across the country on their first tour here since 1968, you might like to have a squiz at their out-of-control rock opera Tommy. Written by lead guitarist Pete Townsend and starring front man Roger …

Starring: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Brock Peters Director: Robert Mulligan Rated: PG Distributor: Universal Harper Lee was a lucky woman. She obviously had a moral giant of a father who taught her some big lessons in life; lessons about courage, dignity and justice. Mr Lee was a practising lawyer in Alabama during the …

Starring: Cary Grant; Grace Kelly Director: Alfred Hitchcock Rated: G Distributor: Paramount Golden Classics Who’s the thief and who’s catching him is the big question in this racy flick by the masterful Alfred Hitchcock. Set on the French Riviera at a time when quiche Lorraine was still novel, the film tells the tale of a …

Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Minoru Chiaki Director: Akira Kurosawa Rated: PG Distributor: Madman Entertainment William Shakespeare’s stage play about an ambitious Scottish general who, emboldened by a prophesy related to him by some witches in a forest and further encouraged by his conniving wife, embarks on a bloody rampage to assume the throne, has …

Starring: George Clooney; Mark Wahlberg; Ice Cube Director: David O. Russell Rated: R(18+) Distributor: Village RoadshowPictures It’s 1991. Operation Desert Storm is over and most American soldiers stationed in Iraq are celebrating. But one major Archie Gates (George Clooney) has just laid his hands on a map, shoved up a member of the enemy’s rear …