First, the advertisement for t-shirts by lastexittonowhere.com provides hours of fun for movie geeks.  The website gives the game away pretty quickly as you roll over the designs.  There is one Australian movie in the catalogue:

…which strikes me as an opportunity for an aspiring cinematic entrepreneur.  What t-shirts could be made from Australian films?  I’d like to see ‘Get a Dog Up Ya’ from Idiot Box, and Barry McKenzie’s ‘Pommy Bastards’ is bound to be a winner.

…which is one Australian movie more than made the Sight and Sound list of 30 key films of the last decade. As Nick James notes, this is “not a top 30, but the films that in our opinion best represent the decade’s most distinctive oeuvres and movements”. Should the fact that no Australian films feature bother us at all? Admittedly this was a highly subjective poll, decided solely by S and S contributors Kieron Corless, James Bell, Isabel Stevens, Nick Bradshaw and editor Nick James.  But given that (only) three (from memory) Australian films appeared in a much more broad-ranging critics’ poll of the best films of 2009 (Samson and Delilah, Bright Star, Mary and Max), perhaps this tells us something about the (lack of) visibility and punch of Australian films on the world stage.

In the same issue, Shane Danielsen looks at national cinemas over the last decade and, despite the fact that Danielsen was based in Australia for some time before going to Edinburgh to head the fest there, there is absolutely no mention of Australian cinema here either.

So are there Aus films from the last decade that deserve to appear on any list of the top films of the period?

(For the record, the S and S 30 films are: Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002), Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, 2005), The Beat My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005), The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007), Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006), The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005), Eloge de l’Amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001), The Five Obstructions (Jorgen Leth, Lars von Trier, 2003), The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000), Hidden (Michael Haneke, 2004), Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006), In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000), Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, 2003), La Nina Santa (Lucrecia Martel, 2004), A One and a Two… (Edward Yang, 2000), Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000), Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002), The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002), Spirited Away (Miyazaki Hayao, 2001), Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002), 10 (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002), There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007), 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008), Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003), Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004), United Red Army (Wakamatsu Koji, 2008), Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2003), Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002) Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky, 2000), Workingman’s Death (Michael Glawogger, 2005).

Chopper (2000)

Country of Origin: Australia

Director: Andrew Dominik

Screenwriter: Andrew Dominik

Producer: Michele Bennett

Editor: Ken Sallows

Director of Photography: Geoffrey Hall, Kevin Hayward

Production Designer: Paddy Reardon

Genre: crime, prison

Duration: 94 mins

Cast: Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon, Dan Wyllie, Vince Colosimo, Kate Beahan

Synopsis:

1991. Notorious standover man Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read (Eric Bana) watches himself being interviewed on television from his prison cell. Flashback to 1978. In Pentridge Prison, Chopper launches an unprovoked attack on a fellow prisoner, a senior trades union figure, stabbing him repeatedly in the face and neck. Chopper denies any involvement, but after the prisoner dies, a contract is put on Chopper’s head. He is attacked by his cellmates Jimmy (Simon Lyndon) and Bluey (Dan Wyllie), but survives. In hospital Chopper initially refuses to make a statement, until he learns that Jimmy has made a statement against him and filed a claim for compensation through the victims of crime fund. Chopper requests a transfer to another prison, fearing further attacks, but prison authorities refuse. He convinces another prisoner to cut off his ears in order to secure the transfer. 1986. Chopper, recently released from prison, takes his girlfriend Tanya (Kate Beahan), a prostitute, to Bojangles nightclub. Neville (Vince Colosimo), a former associate who Chopper kneecapped some years earlier, approaches him. Neville is friendly and forgiving, but Chopper is suspicious and leaves the club after drawing a handgun and firing several shots into the ceiling. Chopper argues with Tanya, accusing her of sleeping with Neville. Tanya storms off, but Chopper kicks down her front door and beats her up. In a bar, Chopper gives information to two police officers, believing that they will turn a blind eye to his activities. Chopper goes to Neville’s mansion to apologise. Reluctantly, Neville lets him in, but becomes angry when Chopper asks for money. Chopper shoots Neville in the stomach, then helps Neville’s henchmen take him to hospital. Chopper goes to see his former cellmate Jimmy who is now a junkie living with his heavily pregnant girlfriend Mandy in a squalid apartment. Chopper pulls a gun on Jimmy, and demands to know if Jimmy is planning to kill him on Neville’s behalf. Jimmy manages to talk him down. Back at Bojangles nightclub, Chopper meets Sammy the Turk. Believing he is being set up, Chopper follows Sammy outside to the carpark and shoots him in the head, unaware that Mandy has been watching. In the bar, Chopper tells the police a different version of events, but feels insulted when they disbelieve him.  Mandy turns crown witness and testifies against Chopper. He is acquitted of murder, but sentenced to five years for malicious wounding. 1991. In the prison yard, Chopper is interviewed by a television journalist following the publication of his memoirs. In his cell he watches the interview on television with two prison officers. They leave, and Chopper is left alone, staring at the wall.

Critique

Andrew Dominik’s stylish and disturbingly amusing film about real-life violent criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Read begins with a title that announces “This film is a dramatisation in which narrative liberties have been taken. It is not a biography”. This loosely fictionalised film forms part of a minor but important strain of Australian screen culture: dramatisations of the lives or exploits of real-life outlaws. This almost true-crime subgenre includes the various films about Ned Kelly, and Kevin Dobson’s 1982 feature about eponymous 1920s Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor. The subgenre has become a staple part of Australian television drama in the last decade – due, in some part no doubt to the success of Chopper – with, first, the 2003 telemovie The Postcard Bandit about bank robber and serial escapee Brendan Abbot, and most recently the two Underbelly television series (2008-9).

Adapted from Read’s best-selling memoirs, which now run to twelve books, Chopper makes clear at an early stage that while the central character is a gifted storyteller and raconteur, he is far from a reliable narrator.  Throughout the film the same events are presented several times, Rashomon-like in slightly different versions. The murder of Sammy the Turk is replayed three times, once with the main characters (including the unfortunate Sammy) recounting their parts direct to camera in lilting, rhyming prose. What is depicted onscreen is often at odds with the stories Read tells the police and others during the film. This is consistent with the shifting mythology that has grown around Read, much of it created by the man himself. By his own admission, he has killed 19 people and injured many more, although, as he proudly and repeatedly observes, no “innocent characters” were ever hurt. Read’s books have sold thousands of copies, and he regularly tours his live show around Australia.

Chopper is notable for its visual style and its play with time. The opening titles play across low angle time lapse shots of clouds scudding across the sky above a prison, and several scenes are speeded up for comic effect, first as a visual representation of characters who have just snorted speed, and later in the poetic retelling of Sammy the Turk’s murder to emphasise the way in which this event rapidly entered popular folklore.  The lighting of different scenes is expressive and arresting. The sequences in the prison cells and exercise areas contrast the grey-blue of the actors’ faces and clothes, the colour of cigarette smoke, with the bright, white walls. The brothel bedroom in which Chopper hooks up with Tanya following his release from prison is a luscious red that is almost painful to look at, and this palette is carried through to the interior of the nightclub.  The lounge room in Chopper’s father’s house is the colour of nicotine-stained fingers, while the kitchen is bathed in a mouldy blue-green light. A similar contrast is used in the scene in which Chopper visits Jimmy and Mandy’s wretched apartment: the stairwell and front door are dirty brown, while the interior of the apartment is a sickly, unnatural green.

The film is full of images and moments that have already achieved iconic status, although perhaps the most memorable does not feature in the film itself. The image that adorned the film’s publicity materials and the DVD cover features Bana shirtless, with his tattoo-covered arms crossed over his similarly-illustrated chest, holding two revolvers, his face expressionless but menacingly powerful with trademark handlebar moustache and aviator sunglasses clinging to his earless-head.

Along with the thrice-told murder of Sammy the Turk, perhaps the most extraordinary scene in the film is that in which an unsuspecting Chopper is repeatedly stabbed by his cellmate and long-time accomplice Jimmy Loughnan.  At first, Chopper thinks Jimmy is playfully sparring with him. “A bit early for kung fu, isn’t it?” he asks.  Jimmy plunges the knife again and again into the stunned Chopper, who calmly admonishes him “Now Jimmy, if you keep stabbing me, you’re going to kill me”. Rather than fighting back, Chopper hugs his assailant as if he can’t quite believe what is happening. Jimmy stabs him again and they end up face to face in a close embrace, as if they are about to kiss each other. Chopper removes his clothes to inspect his gaping wounds, then collapses into Jimmy’s arms. This extraordinary scene is made more remarkable when it is later revealed that Chopper is only in prison because he held a judge hostage in an attempt to have Jimmy released from jail.

To date, director Andrew Dominik has only made two feature films since graduating from Swinburne Film School in 1988. Chopper, his first film, reportedly took seven years to make, most of which was spent convincing nervous investors that the morally repugnant but compelling stories by and about Read were worth committing to celluloid. It would be another seven years before Dominik’s next film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), was completed. Dominik’s second film about a notorious outlaw is as visually striking as his first, but while he won a number of awards including Best Achievement in Direction at the 2001 Australian Film Institute Awards for Chopper, and despite the plaudits deservedly heaped on cinematographer Roger Deakins for Jesse James (including the 2008 Academy Award for Best Achievement in Cinematography), Dominik’s achievements in Jesse James were largely, and unjustly, overlooked.

As well as directing both films, Dominik wrote the screenplays for Chopper, and Jesse James. His first film magnificently captures Chopper Read’s characteristic, mannered delivery and verbal dexterity, and the film is full of beautifully crafted exchanges between Chopper and his associates.  “You’re fucking sick, Read. You’re insane,” yells Keithy George shortly before his grisly demise. “Beethoven had his critics,” Chopper replies. “See if you can name three of them.”  After he fails to convince the police of his involvement in the murder of Sammy the Turk, he disconsolately tells his father “I used to be Chopper Read. Now I can’t get arrested in this town.”

In contrast with Dominik’s stop-start film career, lead actor Eric Bana has gone from strength to strength following his unforgettable performance as Chopper. He was cast, first, in a supporting role in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001), before his first Hollywood lead as Bruce Banner/the Hulk in Ang Lee’s much maligned 2003 version of the comic-book classic. Bana, a former (and much loved) stand-up and television comedian, has consistently proven his talent and versatility with major parts in such diverse films as Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy (2004, as Hector), Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005, as Avner), Justin Chadwick’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2008, as Henry Tudor), JJ Abrams’ Star Trek (2009, as Nero) and Robert Schwentke’s The Time Traveller’s Wife (2009, as Henry DeTamble). In between his Hollywood roles, Bana has regularly returned to Australia to lend his talent and profile to local feature films and to make a documentary about his obsession with cars, Love the Beast (2009).

Draft of an entry for the Intellect Directory of Australian and New Zealand Cinema (forthcoming 2010)

Director: PJ Hogan

Screenwriter: PJ Hogan

Producers: Lynda House and Jocelyn Moorhouse

Cinematographer: Martin McGrath

Production Designer: Patrick Reardon

Editor: Jill Bilcock

Genre: comedy

Duration: 101 mins

Cast: Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Sophie Lee, Bill Hunter, Jeanie Drynan, Matt Day, Daniel Lapaine

Synopsis:

At a wedding reception in the beachside town of Porpoise Spit, Muriel (Toni Collette) catches the bouquet thrown by bride Tania (Sophie Lee), much to Tania and her catty bridesmaids’ dismay. Later, Muriel stumbles on the groom and one of the bridesmaids in flagrante delicto. Another guest realises that Muriel is wearing a stolen dress, and calls the police. Muriel’s father Bill (Bill Hunter), a local politician, convinces the policemen to drop the investigation. At a local nightclub, Tania is consoled by her girlfriends after her husband admits various indiscretions. The girls convince Tania to go on holiday with them to Hibiscus Island instead of going on her honeymoon. Muriel is dumped from the gang because they feel she is not ‘on their level’. Muriel’s mother Betty (Jeanie Drynan) gives her a blank cheque, made out to cash, to buy cosmetics from her new employer Deirdre, with whom Bill is having an affair. Muriel uses the money to pay for a holiday to Hibiscus Island, where she meets an old school friend, Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), who has also been treated miserably by Tania and her gang. The gang humiliate Muriel and try to prise Rhonda away from her; Rhonda tells Tania about the bridesmaid’s affair with her husband. Rhonda and Muriel win a talent quest with their rendition of the ABBA song ‘Waterloo’. Muriel returns to Porpoise Spit to learn that her deception has been discovered, and immediately runs away to Sydney. She moves in with Rhonda, changes her name to ‘Mariel’ and finds a job in a video store. Mariel’s first date with the clumsy Brice (Matt Day) ends in disaster when Rhonda inexplicably falls to the ground and is unable to move her legs. A tumour is discovered on Rhonda’s spine, and she is confined to a wheelchair. Mariel phones home to discover that her father is under investigation for official graft. Rhonda makes Mariel promise that they will never go back to Porpoise Spit. Mariel visits all the bridal wear shops in Sydney to try on wedding dresses and indulge her marriage fantasies. She gains the sympathy of shop assistants by making up terrible stories about her family so that they will take a photograph of her in the dress. Rhonda finds Mariel’s album full of photographs, and confronts her in a bridal shop. Mariel cries that she wants to get married in order to leave the old Muriel behind. Rhonda is told that her cancer has returned, and that she will never walk again. Responding to an advertisement in a singles column, Mariel meets South African swimmer David (Daniel LaPaine) who must marry an Australian to gain citizenship in order to fulfil his dream of swimming in the Olympics. Mariel and David are married in a sumptuous ceremony. Rhonda refuses to be a bridesmaid, and tells Mariel she has betrayed her, as Rhonda now must go back to Porpoise Spit to live with her mother. Mariel’s mother Betty only just arrives in time to see the wedding vows; she also sees Deirdre on Bill’s arm. In a supermarket back in Porpoise Spit, Betty is arrested for absent-mindedly shoplifting a pair of shoes. Bill again convinces the police to drop the charges, telling the sergeant in his wife’s hearing “You can see she’s not right in the head”. Bill tells Betty he is leaving her for Deirdre, and blames Betty and his family for his failings as a politician.  Betty commits suicide. At her funeral, a telegram of condolence from former Prime Minister Bob Hawke is read out; Bill has arranged this for the benefit of the press who are covering his ongoing trial. Mariel rushes out of the church, overcome by her father’s insensitivity and self-centredness. She is reunited with David, and they spend the night together. In the morning, Mariel tells David she doesn’t love him. She goes back to her family home, where Bill pressures her to stay and help him raise her siblings. She refuses, and pays back some of the money she stole from him. Mariel goes to Rhonda’s house to take her back to Sydney. Together, Mariel and Rhonda leave Porpoise Spit forever.

Critique

Muriel’s Wedding is one of the most important Australian films of the 1990s. Along with films like Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann, 1992) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Stephan Elliott, 1994), Muriel’s Wedding helped define the ‘quirky comedy’, a subgenre of Australian cinema that met with great success domestically and internationally in the 1990s.  The film also launched the careers of many of its leading players. After her first feature film role in Muriel’s Wedding, Toni Collette built her reputation with a string of strong performances in Australian features including Lilian’s Story (Jerzy Domaradki, 1996) and The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998) before she was chosen by director Todd Haynes to star alongside Ewan McGregor in the 1970s glam rock film Velvet Goldmine (1998). The following year marked her Hollywood breakthrough, with her Academy Award-nominated role in M. Night Shyamalan’s blockbuster hit The Sixth Sense (1999). In 2010, Collette won a Golden Globe award for her role in the American television series The United States of Tara.  Muriel’s Wedding also marked the feature debut of Rachel Griffiths, who plays Muriel’s best friend Rhonda. After a supporting role in director PJ Hogan’s next film, the Hollywood comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Griffiths worked around the world on a variety of Australian and international films and television programs, before settling in Los Angeles and landing a starring role as Brenda in the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under. Matt Day, who plays Muriel’s first boyfriend Brice, also made his feature film debut here.

Muriel’s Wedding is an ugly duckling story about a fantasist and habitual liar who seeks an escape from the dullness of her family life and from the pain of being ostracised by the cool girls in the music of ABBA and in dreams of marriage. Regularly humiliated by her father, a crooked local politician, who publicly abuses Muriel and her slothful siblings as “useless” and “dead weights”, Muriel suffers further indignity when she is cruelly shunned by the awful Tania and her gang for her unfashionable hairstyle and clothes, for her size, and worst of all, for listening to 70s music.  It is only after she meets Rhonda, a free spirit who accepts Muriel for who she (says she) is (because Muriel cannot help herself, and deceives Rhonda just as she deceives everyone else), that Muriel gains self-confidence and the will to escape the small-minded, selfish, small-town attitudes of Porpoise Spit.  Dancing with Rhonda and miming to ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’, dressed in a blonde wig and stunning white outfit, Muriel is given the first glimpse of the swan that she can become.

For a time, her friendship with Rhonda and her new life in the big city keeps her obsessive-compulsive disorder at bay, but when Rhonda is diagnosed with cancer and Muriel becomes her carer, Muriel quickly lapses back into a world of ABBA, lies, and wedding fantasies. Ultimately it takes the death of her mother and her father’s attempts to turn this, like everything, to his personal advantage, to make her realise that her own selfishness and deceptions have almost destroyed the one thing that can save her – her friendship with Rhonda.

Muriel’s Wedding turns on Muriel’s transformation, and ultimately on her realisation that her fantasy of a traditional white wedding and marriage will not bring her the happiness she craves. Her decision to reject her perfect husband, and choose instead life with her friend Rhonda, subverts the romantic comedy convention of resolving the narrative through the (re)union of a heterosexual couple. And her choice of mateship over matrimony also invests this celebrated Australian trait with a new value as Muriel clearly rejects the older, male-centred mateship practiced by her father in his dealings with the police, with developers, and with his political mentors. In these things the film is respectably radical, but the film is not beyond resorting to well-worn caricatures of small town Australians who are variously presented as ugly, slothful, bitchy, venal, unfaithful, and shallow. The city, and specifically Sydney (‘City of Brides’ as an on-screen title announces), is by contrast a place of excitement, love, passion, and the future.  Australian audiences have shown time and again, from the ocker comedies onwards, that they are prepared to laugh at, and sometimes with, ugly Australian characters. Overseas marketing also played on this stereotype; the tagline for the French poster was “Elle est grosse, elle est bête, elle est Australienne” (“She is fat, she is stupid, she is Australian”). Of course, by the end of the film, her size is no longer an issue, and she is clearly not stupid, but she remains inevitably, an Australian. Muriel’s transformation is physical as much as mental, evident in the contrasting shots of her face as she travels by taxi at various points in the film. Returning from Hibiscus Island she is sunburnt, pimple-nosed and dowdy; leaving for Sydney with Rhonda at the end of the film she is delicately made-up, and glowing, with a beatific smile playing on her lips.

Mention must also be made of the tragic character Betty, Muriel’s mother, who suffers with stoic dignity her husband’s verbal abuse and infidelity, who arrives late at her daughter’s wedding only to be passed unseen when Muriel walks up the aisle out of the church after the service, and whose absent-mindedness leads to arrest and humiliation in the police station. In the car on the way home after being released from custody her desperate, heartfelt request to her husband for help in coping with the pressures of their family life, is brutally cut off in mid-sentence when he dismissively turns on the radio. And in a final indignity after Bill announces that he wants a divorce, she is assaulted by her own son, Perry. When she commits suicide, Bill manages to turn it to his advantage, believing that claiming she died of a heart attack will aid his case in court and with the press, just as he uses her funeral as a platform for his own interests. Ultimately, though, she has the last word; she sets fire to the back garden – the sacred quarter acre block – because Perry would not mow it, leaving the iconic Hills Hoist with the singed remnants of a load of washing forlornly hanging amid the smoky waste. This is a powerful image, suggesting the devastating bush fires that regularly ravage country areas, but alongside the destruction and the almost sacrilegious attack on the washing line, there is also the promise of new growth through the fire’s regenerative potential.

It was announced this week that the Pinewood Shepperton group will further expand its international holdings with a new studio complex to be built in the Iskander region of southern Malaysia, close to Singapore. Construction is expected to begin towards the end of next year, with completion some time in 2012, according to Screendaily, and opening some time in 2013, according to the official press release (pdf file).  The studio will be built on an 80 acre greenfield site close to the new urban development of Medini which is being financed by a group of investors from Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Medini will also be the site of the first Asian Legoland theme park; the ground-breaking ceremony was held earlier this month.

Screendaily.com reports that the studio will offer sound stages ranging from 12,000 sq ft to 30,000 sq ft, around 100,000 sq ft in total (which suggests five or six stages), as well as offices, workshops and post-production spaces. No film school here, though.  BroadcastNow reports that there will also be 60,000 sq ft of television studios, presumably equipped for HD production. As with so many of these developments, government investment will be substantial. Beserah Ventures Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Malaysian government “investment holding arm”, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, will work with Pinewood Shepperton on the development.  The Financial Times notes “Analysts do not envisage Pinewood having to make any capital contribution to the physical asset or have any ownership” and quotes a research note from broker Investec:

“PWS should get brand/licence fees for use of its name ‘Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios’, plus for sales/marketing services.” The company expects to start making income from 2011.

Screendaily.com quotes Pinewood Shepperton CEO Ivan Dunleavy:

“This represents important progress in the company’s strategy to build a meaningful new revenue stream, exploiting our expertise and brand internationally. Following our deal for Pinewood Toronto and now Pinewood Malaysia, we are exploring further opportunities in this new and growing market.”

The official press release states that the development will cost approximately RM400 million, or US$120 million. Initially the studio will aim to attract productions from around Malaysia and the Asia Pacific, “and over the medium to long term, international productions”.  Malaysian satellite broadcaster ASTRO has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to use the studios for local language content production.

The official press release also provides some interesting projections of anticipated economic impact:

• RM1 billion (c.US$290 million) in economic impact over 8 years
• 3000 direct jobs (presumably in construction, with ongoing production job numbers being significantly lower), and “potentially an additional 5000 indirect jobs a year from the rising number of foreign films and TV shoots”

Pinewood’s interest was sparked by the growth in production of regional and local content in Asia, which has grown at 14.5% per year for the last decade, according to the press release.

Stories:

Izwan Idris “Khazanah and Pinewood in RM400 mil Studio Project” The Star Online 17 December 2009

Salamander Davoudi “Pinewood Shepperton in Malaysian Venture” Financial Times 16 December 2009

Chris Curtis “Pinewood to Open Malaysian Studios” BroadcastNow 16 December 2009

Sarah Cooper “Pinewood Shepperton Expands into Asia” Screendaily.com 16 December 2009

Toronto

Torontofilm.net reports that Cinespace Studios, currently located in eastern Toronto, will open a new 1 million sq ft facility in Etobicoke, western Toronto, next year. The site currently hosts equipment provider William F White and post production house Deluxe. It is probably not insignificant that:

Cinespace president Steve Mirkopoulous made the announcement, coinciding with the Ontario Liberal government, voting into law, the ‘enhanced’ Ontario film tax credit, refunding 25% of eligible spending, effective as of June 30.

Shreveport

Construction is due to begin today (21 December) on the Nu Image/Millennium Films studio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Building work must begin on the long-delayed project by the end of the year in order to qualify for the state’s generous infrastructure tax credit, which is worth up to 40% of the $10 million construction costs.  The Shreveport Times reports:

The company will lease 6.7 acres from the city for $1,200 annually for 49 years for a total of just less than $60,000. The planned 53,000-square-foot building is a $10 million project. Phase one will include two soundstages and office space.

The studio must employ at least 30 local workers because of an agreement with the city, [Diego] Martinez [president of Studio Operations] said.A second phase includes plans to add prop storage, a carpentry mill and more soundstage space. If completed, Millennium Films would take up 20 acres in the shadow of downtown Shreveport.

The city spent about $2 million to buy land that includes acreage for phase two.

These numbers are revealing; studio developments of this kind typically rely on some (often considerable) government investment or subsidy. In this case, the city of Shreveport has spent $2 million, with the Louisiana state government tipping in up to $4 million, for a direct return of just $60,000 over 49 years. The hope is, of course, that the productions attracted to the facility will have significant direct and indirect impact on the local economy, although as the experience of other places around the world shows, this is by no means assured.

Stories:

Adam Kealoha Causey “Construction of Shreveport Studio to Start Monday” Shreveport Times 17 December 2009

“Mayor: Construction Starts Monday on Shreveport Film Studio” WDAM.com 17 December 2009

1. Australian Film Industry for GRECA research group, Universite Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 30 November 2009

2. Hollywood – An Australian View, guest lecture, Newman College, Birmingham, UK, 4 December 2009

This issue of Flow was prompted by a recognition that sports media has not to date attracted the kind of critical and scholarly attention that has been paid to other forms such as news, drama, soap operas, or reality television. The invitation to contribute highlighted a number of issues including fan experiences, sports in different media, social media and sports, the professional-amateur interface in content provision, and historical and contemporary discourses and representations of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity. All of these are important and worthy subjects in what is undoubtedly a woefully under-studied area. And yet all of these suggested topics focus on the sports event, with the implicit assumption that ‘sports media’ equates exactly to coverage and discussion of sports events, no more, no less. In this brief article I want to question this assumption, to open up the category of ‘sports media’ – and more precisely, sports television – to explore the diverse range of sports-related programming and content that has been almost completely overlooked by scholars of the media, and television studies in particular. I call this range of content ‘sportv’, and I argue that far from being marginal or invisible, it is a quintessential form of television. ‘Sportv’ includes but is by no means restricted to event coverage.

Other articles in this issue, with first paragraphs:

Harper Cossar ‘Sports Media: Tensions and Transitions’

“Film study creates the game plan, in which you’re trying to out-think or out-maneuver the other guy. … You need to have options for every move or countermove, and you identify your best options by studying film. That way, in each situation, you’re reacting rather than deciding.” — Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers head coach1

At FLOW’s 2008 conference, I convened the roundtable discussion “Televised sports and its contexts.” The contributors approached sports from a variety of perspectives. Some addressed aesthetics and style, while others questioned sports’ vivification of race/gender/class issues. Some proffered historiographic queries with regard to sports’ importance in the overall scheme of TV history, and others addressed the “lowbrow” reputation of sports such as mixed martial arts. All of these lines of inquiry pointed toward one ultimate direction: sports on TV is not studied heavily by media scholars. But it should be.

Heather McIntosh ‘HBO, Sports Documentary, and Women’s and Girls’ Soccer’

“It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” With that slogan, premium cable channel Home Box Office attempts to distinguish itself as better than other channels on television through its programming. With in-house and contracted productions, the documentary division covers a broad range of social, cultural, and political issues such as the Iraq War, the Katrina devastation, and Alzheimer’s disease. HBO’s sports division also creates its own programming, which includes Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports, Joe Buck Live (“A New Sports Show with a Fresh New Spin”), and Got No Game with Paul Mercurio. The sports division, too, creates documentaries, including Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino and Assault in the Ring.

Jacob Dittmer ‘Football’s New Forms’

The new media age is upon us and a major benefactor in the world of professional sports is the National Football League. True, the NFL has long been the darling of broadcast television with the Super Bowl still regarded as one of the most-watched (global) media events. Beyond the sport’s success in broadcast there has seen a surge of new forms of fandom due to new media’s role in fantasy football and video games (in particular Madden NFL). These forms have enabled fans/users to increase their weekly intake of NFL to preposterous levels. Fans now engage in their own games of control and ownership over the sport by participating in online communities. Convergence media as espoused by Jenkins1 is certainly illustrated with football as an example of the mediated form. Today, the fan can receive stats and fantasy football updates on their mobile phone. Fans can take any team to a Super Bowl in a video game’s alternate reality. In terms of sheer numbers, fantasy football participation has grown by nearly 10 percent a year2 with an estimated market of 27 million players3 . The success of the Madden game franchise is equally staggering with an estimated 70 million units of the game’s various incarnations sold worldwide in the game’s 20-year history.4

Markus Stauff ‘The Faces of Athletes’

While sport is often defined as, for example, the public display of physical exercise, in media sports we encounter equally often the public display of emotions. The visibility of the face is one of the decisive differences between the reception of sport in the stadium and in the media. Already in the 1960s the integration of faces of players, as well as those of the fans in the stadium, during the NFL broadcasts was thought to open the sport, defined as the realm of masculinity, to a female audience. It is no wonder then, with the realm of masculinity under pressure, that the esteem of faces and their expressions is observed with disapproval. The emphasis on the face is thought as a commercial media strategy that distracts us more and more from the real nature and meaning of sports. At the same time, emotions are often said to be one of the core features of sports; even more, sports is considered one of the last resorts of emotions and also the guarantor of authentic emotions that are not restricted by social norms of behavior. The face, then, is at the heart of sports’ cultural representation as it is at its margins, ambivalently connected to all that is thought to lie beyond true sports: advertising, star cult, personal biography, and so on. I want to argue that the display and interpretation of facial expressions are – not unlike statistics – part of the many different ways of knowledge production that not only embellish but also constitute modern sport and its particular political potential.

Stephen Brauer ‘The Dual/Dueling Sides of TO/Terrell Owens’

Throughout his career as a wide receiver in the NFL, Terrell Owens has used the media spotlight to generate publicity for himself. 1 His usual means of doing this, outside of some of the outlandish comments he has made directly to the press, has been through his celebrations following a touchdown reception. A few of these moments include the time he used a Sharpie to autograph the ball and handed it to a “fan” sitting in the stands (who happened to be his financial adviser), once when he set down the football in the endzone as a pillow and comically pretended to take a nap, and the time he grabbed a fan’s bucket of popcorn and dumped it into his helmet.

Brett Hutchins and David Rowe ‘Broadcasters Under Pressure’

Television broadcasters are experiencing the first genuine challenge to their hegemony in the transmission of popular sports events and reports for many decades.  Their dominance is arguably traceable to the BBC’s nation-building sports broadcasts of the mid-1920s and to the 1939 Gillette-sponsored World Series broadcasts that were followed by a sales increase of their razors by 350 per cent.  TV’s hold on sport was enhanced by the incredible ratings success of the American Super Bowl, an event initiated in 1967 that quickly evolved into a model for television sports media events, and by the summer Olympic Games, particularly after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad, with its emphasis on sponsorship, product licensing and ‘showbiz spectacular’ opening and closing ceremonies.  The challenge to television broadcasting is being posed by telecommunications operators and digital media companies who are increasingly major players in global professional sport.  Indicators of altered market conditions are, for example, evident in Europe, Asia and Australia.  Recent deals have seen France Telecom’s Orange purchase IPTV and mobile rights to French Ligue 1 football, and Singtel (controlled by the Singapore Government) acquire the internet rights for Italy’s top tier domestic association football (soccer) league, Serie A.  In Australia – popularly mythologised as a sporting nation – the dominant telecommunications company, Telstra, holds exclusive online rights to three of the most popular spectator sports, Australian football, rugby league and V8 Supercar racing, all involving multiple-year deals valued in the tens of millions of dollars.  The financial muscle of the telecommunications sector underlines the fact that broadcasters should be worried about the contestation of their historical dominance of the media sport market.  Again using an Australia example, telecommunications carriers reported annual revenues of AU$25.2 billion in the 2006-07 financial year, approaching four times that of broadcast and subscription television broadcasters (AU$6.9 billion). 1

Ethan Tussey ‘Foam Finger Cubicle: Selling ESPN 360 as Workplace Media’

Before he passed away in late June of 2009, Billy Mays had established himself as cultural icon of the infomercial genre. His energetic manner and booming voice provided just the right amount of exaggerated sincerity that has proven irresistible to the YouTube remix community. Mays’ resonance with “technologically savvy multi-taskers” was undoubtedly the reason that ESPN selected him to be their official spokesperson for their online sports video service ESPN360.1 In a series of advertisements that began airing in December 2008, Mays self-consciously employs his brand of histrionics to argue that advances in streaming internet video technology have created a “revolutionary” moment for sports fans. The rhetorical appeal of these advertisements is designed to expand the venues of the sports media from the living room and the stadium to the cubicle, and in the process, transform the meaning of sports fan activities.

Fred Mason ‘XFL @ MSNBC.COM: Reflecting on a Moment and Looking to the Future’

Through the winter of 2001, I followed messages posted to MSNBC’s online bulletin board system (BBS) devoted to the XFL. It proved a difficult task due to the volume of traffic, and by the time the league’s only season came and went, I had downloaded over 3000 postings threaded through different topics. I originally planned to assess what sense football fans were making of the hyper-mediated broadcast style of the XFL. A large percentage of posts were concerned with media issues, as fans intelligently discussed many aspects of the overall broadcast package. Some of the further uses of the BBS surprised me, with a group of about 60 participants spending significant amounts of time following discussions that often verged far off the topic of football, into such things as other sports, national politics, family life and personal issues. In the days before Facebook and MySpace, back when we still questioned whether an “online community” was a possibility, I became enamored with the idea that we had a new technology allowing people both to come together, and to discuss and challenge the dominant forms of media and the way it presented things. Since then, social networking is a reality and we often hear of the emancipatory possibilities of Web 2.0. Meanwhile, after further years of teaching and researching the sports media, I’ve become more skeptical of the perspective that new technologies will offer “freedom” to the consumer, especially in regard to sport. Here, I want to look back on the XFL and MSNBC.com’s XFL BBS, with a view to seeing what the relatively recent past might tell us about the future of sport and the media.

Robert Carlyle fumes about the difficulties of financing independent films in Britain and leaves for Vancouver to work on Stargate

In other places, the stories are all about international collaboration, and the prospects of building industries via international connections:

Vietnam establishes an international film festival

Cambodia creates a film commission (with assistance from France’s Agency for International Development) whose principal task is to sell Cambodian locations to international producers:

“This is real-low-cost Asia, but these days Cambodia has so much more to offer, too,” [Cambodian Film Commission CEO Cedric] Eloy said. “Regulation is done with a light touch. Our office acts as a filter for the ministry and can get shooting permits issued within a couple of weeks. Many of our locations could pass for other places in Asia.”

The United Arab Emirates looks to New Zealand as an example of how to become a major international player in a very short period

And film commissions and government agencies from Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Nepal and Cambodia pledge to work together to

establish a “region-wide incentives system of reduced customs and tariff formalities”, as well as develop co-operation programmes to increase cultural understanding between participating countries.

This is not a trend, it is the new reality of film production.

On October 22 in Sydney, Metro Screen will host a public forum prompted by recent exchanges between film people about Australian audiences liking/needing Australian films

MSN: OZ Film Vs. OZ Audience

Starts: 22-Oct-2009
Capacity: 300
This activity is: Available

A mandatory screen forum led by film industry heavyweights
Presented by Metro Screen
Moderator: ANDREW URBAN 

Online audience bookings essential below.

Introduced by: Liz Watts – Producer, Porchlight Films
Panellists:
Dr Ruth Harley – CEO Screen Australia
Troy Lum – Managing Director of Hopscotch Films
Margaret Pomeranz – At The Movies ABC
Garry Maddox – Journalist, Sydney Morning Herald
Susan Hoerlein – Publicity & Promotions Manager, Tsuki Marketing and PR Agency
Rachel Ward – Actor/Writer/Director – first feature ‘Beautiful Kate’
Anthony I. Ginnane – President of SPAA
 [Screen Producers Association of Australia]
Kath Shelper – Producer first feature ‘Samson & Delilah’
Plus special guests in the audience include:
Screen NSW [former NSW FTO]
Australian Writers Guild

With useful links to what’s been said by participants

• Gary Maddox – The year in pictures – SMH
• Rachel Ward – Cut! Time for a free kick for niche Australian movies and their makers – SMH
• Dave Guzman – Response to Rachel – blog
• Lynden Barber – Response to Rachel – ABC unleashed.
• Michael Coulter – Screening the same old dreary story – Sunday Age
• Luke Buckmaster – response to Michael – Crikey

At the heart of this seems to be the fact that Australian audiences don’t embrace the many Australian films that are downbeat in tone and subject matter.  Lynden Barber summarised Rachel Ward’s position on this:

The core of her argument was that the public should get over the notion that Aussie films are too dark and depressing. Some of the finest Australian films were dark in theme and we should not shy away from this, she suggested.

Fair enough.  Part of the point is that dark and downbeat films are an important part of the Australian cinema, but as Barber continued

The trouble is that nowhere did it seem to occur to Ward that negative public perceptions of our films might also carry some weight and require an active industry response as opposed to defensiveness – a stance that some readers felt, rightly or not, reeked of an arrogant refusal to listen to criticism.

The term ‘hoary old debate’ could have been invented for the question ‘why don’t Australian audiences watch/love/rush out in droves to Australian films’.

Then, completely unrelatedly, or rather related through the stream of ideas that comes to me via the people and organisations I follow on Twitter, I found this, which seems to me to perhaps hold the key here.  And I’m not advocating an end to dark and depressing films. Just endorsing the FunTheory.com’s main point that ‘we can change people’s behaviour for the better by making things fun to do’.  It should be no surprise that most of the highest grossing Aus films at the local box office are comedies (something that is mirrored around the world…)

Check out the funtheory.com

Berlinale Talent Campus #8 — The Talent Press

Call for Applications

Berlinale Talent Campus, Goethe-Institut and FIPRESCI invite young film critics to Berlin.

Dear friends of film,

We’d like to invite you and/or your colleagues to apply for The Talent Press, a project of the Berlinale Talent Campus, Goethe-Institut, and FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics). Young film critics and film journalists will be invited to Berlin to report on the films at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival (February 11 – 21, 2010) and on the events of the Berlinale Talent Campus (February 13 – 18, 2010).

The call for applications for the Talent Press is now open. Please read the following application regulations carefully (they can also be found online at www.berlinale-talentcampus.de and www.fipresci.org)

ELIGIBLE ARE

Young film critics or journalists

— Fluent in English (in writing and speaking);

— Under 30 years;

— Eager to report on films screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and on events held during the Berlinale Talent Campus 2010;

— Having published articles in newspapers, film magazines, on websites or at universities.

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM YOU

— To be willing to cover a broad range of journalistic work: you will write interviews, reviews, reports, articles and features on the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Berlin International Film Festival

— To attend daily editorial meetings with a personal mentor (see below)

The work you write may be published on www.berlinale-talentcampus.de and www.fipresci.org. Participants will grant unlimited use and exploitation rights in and to all articles and reviews done in the framework of the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Berlin International Film Festival.

WHAT WE WILL OFFER YOU

— The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet and to be with 350 young talented filmmakers from all over the world and to experience the day-to-day buzz of a prestigious A-Festival.

— You will be guided through the Berlin International Film Festival by Peter Cowie (former International Publishing Director of “Variety” and author of many books on film), Oliver Baumgarten (Chief Editor “Schnitt”) and other renowned film critics. Rubaica Jaliwala is your contact person from the Berlinale Talent Campus team.

— Every day, you have the opportunity to write a critique about a film from the festival program or short reviews of an event at the Campus program, and will discuss and review it with your fellow participants and film critics.

— Free accommodation in youth hostels in Berlin from February 12 – 19, 2009.

— A share of the travel expenses depending on your country of origin.

YOUR ONLINE APPLICATION SHOULD INCLUDE

— Curriculum vitae and personal data (address, email etc.)

— Up to three (3) original copies of articles that you have published in the last two (2) years (if these articles are not in English you should supply us with a decent translation as a proof of your English writing skills for each article).

HOW TO PROCEED COMPLETING AN ONLINE APPLICATION

You can only apply on the Berlinale Talent Campus website:

www.berlinale-talentcampus.de

(All the relevant information and the application form can be found by clicking on APPLY NOW on the homepage of the Berlinale Talent Campus site. Make sure you choose the Talent Press Application when you have to choose an application)
— Get an application number on the website;
— Log in and fill out the complete online application form;
— Please ensure that you have filled out the online application completely. If you are unable to upload your articles you can send them by regular mail;
— Your work must be at the Berlinale Talent Campus offices by October 7, 2009;
Please make sure your name and application number are clearly displayed on the articles you send.

If you have any queries please contact info@berlinale-talentcampus.de

The application deadline is October 7, 2009. Successful candidates will be notified by the end of December.

Kind regards,

The Berlinale Talent Campus team
Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin
Potsdamer Strasse 5
D-10785 Berlin
T +49 (30) 259 20 515
F +49 (30) 259 20 519
info@berlinale-talentcampus.de
www.berlinale-talentcampus.de

The Berlinale Talent Campus is an initiative of the Berlin International Film Festival. The Talent Press is organised in co-operation with FIPRESCI, Goethe Institute and Goethe Forum.

FIPRESCI – International Federation of Film Critics
Schleissheimer Str. 83, D-80797 Munich, Germany
T +49 (89) 18 23 03, F +49 (89) 18 47 66
info@fipresci.org, www.fipresci.org

Former world champion surfer and singer/songwriter Beau Young will perform concerts in tandem with the screenings. Should be a blast.

The DVD is available for purchase at http://searchingformichaelpeterson.com for US$30 plus postage.

SCREENING DATES (more dates to be announced soon)

FRI. 9/25 NEW YORK SURF FILM FESTIVAL / OPENING NIGHT/ TRIBECA

MON. 9/28 ROCKAWAY BEACH, NY – THE TAP AND GRILL

THURS. 10/01 VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – WATERMAN’S SURFSIDE GRILLE

FRI. 10/02 ASBURY PARK, NJ – THE CAROUSEL BUILDING

WED. 10/07 SAN FRANCISCO, CA – VICTORIA THEATER

THU. 10/08 SANTA CRUZ, CA – VETERANS MEMORIAL BUILDING

FRI. 10/09 SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA – LA PERLA DEL MAR CHAPEL

SAT. 10/10 SAN DIEGO, CA – DEL MAR FAIRGROUNDS

THU. 10/15 VENICE BEACH, CA – THE STRONGHOLD

FRI. 10/16 SANTA BARBARA, CA – VICTORIA HALL THEATRE

SAT. 10/17 LONG BEACH, CA – SHELTER SURF SHOP

For all tour dates, ticketing and venue information go to http://searchingformichaelpeterson.com