AFI Films for 2006
'Tis the season for the Australian film industry's annual "office party", the
Australian Film Institute Awards.
Although this 'night of nights' for the Australian industry has struggled over
recent years to find a home with a TV broadcaster, 2005 saw a makeover. A-list
actor Russell Crowe
was appointed host, charged with bringing the audience back to the broadcast by
keeping things snappy and, um, entertaining.
Crowe managed to do just that, thankfully keeping the proceedings a
'poetry-free zone'…
After the AFI Award for Best Film, arguably the second most prestigious gong is
for Best Direction. This year sees nominations going to
Paul Goldman (Suburban Mayhem),
Clayton Jacobson (Kenny),
Rolf de Heer (Ten
Canoes) and Ray
Lawrence (Jindabyne).
While Kenny has eclipsed
its rivals at the box office, this very successful 'mock doc' is
Jacobson's first feature (due out on DVD December 6th). Between them,
his fellow nominees have racked up a sizable collection of previous films, all
available on DVD.
With two decades in film to his name (largely developing features and making
commercials), (Jindabyne's
Ray Lawrence has
only two other features to his name:
Bliss (1985) and Lantana
(2001). But they are both blinders.
Bliss was a
satirical/mystical look at a man who thought he was living in hell after a near
death experience, while Lantana
took a deep dark look at well-off suburban couples struggling in relationships
and with a local murder.
Quadrupling Lawrence's
output over his twenty-year filmmaking career, inveterate peer
Rolf De Heer has been more prolific, though his back catalogue is a
little more 'hit and miss'. While his two indigenous-themed films
The Tracker (2002) and this year's
Ten Canoes are critically regarded as his best work to date, it is
perhaps De Heer's
more idiosyncratic genre pics
Alexandra's Project (2003) and
Bad Boy Bubby (1993) which have found most favour with audiences.
Also with only two other features under his belt –
Australian Rules (2002) and
The Night We Called It A Day (2003) – director
Paul Goldman might sound like a new kid on the block. Not quite right;
cutting his teeth on music videos in the 1980s, then commercials in the 90s,
Goldman's first feature was as co-cinematographer on one of the best –
and most confronting - Australian films ever made:
Ghosts Of The Civil Dead (1988).
Co-starring David Field and musicians
Dave Mason and Nick
Cave, there's never been another film like it. In 1989 it was nominated
for a whopping nine AFI Awards. Let's hope it would still get the same
recognition today.
- Megan
Megan Spencer has spent way too much of her life in the dark, all for a good
cause though - watching movies as a professional film critic. For the last six
and a half years she has been serving the ever-increasing hunger for film and
DVD reviews as radio triple j's resident film critic, and a year ago joined the
new line up of long-running SBS-TV film review program, The Movie Show.
Every now and then she pops up into the light to make her own films,
documentaries (her latest is 'Fantastic Brutality', a documentary about an
obsessed wrestling fan, to be released next year). She has also written about
film for many publications including J-Mag, Limelight, Inside Film Magazine and
the Age Green Guide.
And the impossible question to ask a film critic: what's her favourite film?
"Blue Velvet would be at the top of the list, so would Fight Club... But then
again American In Paris makes me cry every time."
Megan has also been part of the Foxtel's Project Greenlight Australia as an
on-air panelist and judge.
