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On Thursday February 6 2025, CBS broadcasts Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage!

A Tire Convention and the Moral High Ground Season 1 Episode 9 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” titled “A Tire Convention and the Moral High Ground,” promises to bring both humor and drama to viewers. This episode will air on CBS, and it looks like Georgie is in for quite a surprise.

In this episode, Georgie learns that Jim’s annual trip to the tire convention is not exactly what he claims it to be. This revelation could lead to some interesting situations as Georgie digs deeper into the truth. The exploration of Jim’s secret may bring unexpected twists and turn the episode into a mix of comedy and intrigue.

Meanwhile, Mandy is grappling with her own concerns about her marriage to Georgie. She begins to have doubts about their relationship, questioning whether they are...

Jon Voight will always be known for his Oscar-winning performance in Coming Home, the 1978 war drama starring Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern, but nearly 50 years later he's set to star in a new Western. Voight stars alongside Katherine McNamara (Shadowhunters) and Henry Thomas (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial) in High Ground, an upcoming action thriller set to be released on digital platforms on March 18. Republic Pictures, which operates under Paramount Pictures, has teamed up with Collider to bring you an exclusive look at the first trailer for the upcoming film, which follows a sheriff in a small town who must fight against a cartel that is after a mysterious prisoner in the local jail. The film features elements of a classic action thriller against the backdrop of a more modern Western.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith culminates in the epic "Battle of the Heroes" lightsaber duel, and fans have new reason to believe that acclaimed director Steven Spielberg deserves credit for it. As a long-time friend and collaborator to Star Wars creator George Lucas, it's always been known that Spielberg contributed some ideas to the final duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar. However, comments made by Nick Gillard, stunt coordinator for the Star Wars prequel trilogy, seem to have revealed an interesting role Spielberg played in the creative process.

In a recent interview with Chris Castellani on Chris And Company episode 25, Gillard made new comments about one of Spielberg's ideas for the duel on Mustafar, creating excitement among fans and news outlets. However, it's important to know whether Gillard's comments are being exaggerated and whether they align with what has been said in the past.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith's Iconic High Ground Scene Was Steven Spielberg's Idea - Main Image

The stunt coordinator who worked on Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith revealed that the iconic "high ground" scene was an idea from a legendary filmmaker.

One of the prequel trilogy installment's memorable moments is the climactic duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in Mustafar where the former said that he has the "high ground" before severing his former padawan.

Up to this day, the scene remains one of the most pivotal moments for fans who grew up on the prequel trilogy. However, as it turns out, it was not George Lucas who came up with that idea.

Steven Spielberg Was Behind Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith's High Ground scene

In a recent interview, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith stunt coordinator Nick Gillard shared that it was Steven...

Exclusive: The Mentalist actor Simon Baker, Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories and Australian agent-producer Lee-Anne Higgins are taking to adapt Emily Perkins’ novel ‘Lioness.’

The trio have optioned the hot book, which comes from bestselling Aotearoa New Zealand author Perkins and won the recent Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Baker, who took his first full TV series starring role since The Mentalist in Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe earlier this year, will direct all episodes. Papandrea, Steve Hutensky and Katie Amos will produce for Made Up Stories, along with Higgins, Baker and Perkins.

Lioness follows Therese Thorne, a woman who has married a wealthy older man and built a successful career, but now finds a fraud investigation threatening her sense of loyalty as well as her reputation. She faces a midlife reckoning about love and complicity, while being drawn to her neighbour,...

Upcoming wartime drama The Guns Of Muschu has assembled a cast of Australian talent ahead of a planned shoot in 2025.

Directed by Australia’s Matthew Holmes, the story is set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea during the Second World War and centres on a mission in which eight commandos went in but only one survived.

The cast is led by Ben Hall, known for his roles in TV miniseries Warnie and Devil’s Playground, alongside Matt Day (Sweet Country), Callan McAuliffe (The Walking Dead), Jordan Fraser-Trumble (The Legend Of Ben Hall), Gerald Lepkowski (The Death Of Stalin), Maximillian Johnson...

Epic war-time survival tale “The Guns of Muschu” has already assembled a weighty cast ahead of a production start in the first quarter of 2025.

The film is an adaptation of the non-fiction book “The Guns of Muschu,” written by Don Dennis, with an adapted screenplay by Tom Broadhurst and Jack Brislee (“Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan”). The narrative brings to life a pivotal chapter of Australian war history with gritty authenticity, recounting the high body count Operation Copper, a mission during WWII when Australian and New Zealand troops were sent into the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

The objective of the mission was to investigate the Japanese defenses on Muschu Island, capture a Japanese officer for interrogation and discover the location of two naval guns on the island that were protecting a harbor. Eight commandos were landed as part of the operation, but only one survived.

The story...

Netflix this morning dropped the full-length trailer for its civil rights-themed biopic “Rustin,” executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama through their Higher Ground production company and starring Emmy winner Colman Domingo in the lead. It tells the story of the unheralded (until now) movement leader Bayard Rustin (Domingo), the architect of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. The trailer abundantly features Domingo of course but also snippets of most members of the all-star cast, which includes Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Aml Ameen, Gus Halper, Cch Pounder, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Johnny Ramey, Michael Potts, Jeffrey Wright and Audra McDonald. Watch the trailer above.

Produced by Oscar winner Bruce Cohen (“American Beauty”), “High Ground’s” Tonia Davis and five-time Tony Winner George C. Wolfe (who also directs), “Rustin” has quite a pedigree. It’s also co-written by “Milk” Academy...

U.S. actor and comedian Steve Martin and the state government of Australia’s Northern Territory have thrown their weight behind “Honey Ant Dreamers,” a feature film about the Indigenous art industry.

The film will portray the story behind the birth of the ‘Western Desert Art Movement’ told for the first time, through a First Nations lens. In the Western Desert outpost of Papunya, tribal groups fought to preserve their law, culture and identity by painting their Tjukurrpa, or things which were most precious to them. The sacred stories were once painted on their bodies and in the sand, but later migrated to boards and canvas. Propelled by the entrepreneurial efforts of traditional elder Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, these works have taken the global art world by storm.

“Honey Ant Dreamers” is the feature directorial debut of co-writers, Pitjantjara, Luritja and Warlpiri woman Anyupa Emily Napangarti Butcher, and Michael Cordell, who best...

As Avatar: The Way of Water proceeds, director James Cameron once more pushes the boundaries of filmmaking on a visual level. This sequel flows from the Omatikaya clan in the jungles of Pandora to the sea tribe, the Metkayina, strewn across the oceans. However, it's still a bloody war as Colonel Quaritch returns as a Na'vi clone to hunt Jake and his family down.

No matter what, the humans want to take the planet for themselves by any means necessary. But this time, rather than just mining for resources, they're going all in on genocide. However, as simple as Avatar 2's narrative seems, some plot holes and unanswered questions arise, confirming the story's not as foolproof as Cameron would have liked.

Related: Exclusive: Avatar: The Way of Water's Jon Landau on the Universal Appeal of Avatar

Why Did Kiri Have a Seizure in Avatar 2?

It does seem...

Documentary ‘Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra’ and Leigh Whannell’s ‘The Invisible Man’ also won awards.

Stephen Maxwell Johnson’s High Ground has won the top feature film prize at Australia’s Screen Producers Association Awards.

The drama picked up the Feature Film Production of the Year award at a ceremony tonight (March 30), held as part of Spa’s annual conference on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Set in the 1930s, the film stars Simon Baker as a First World War veteran who teams up with a young Aboriginal man, played by Jacob Junior Nayinggul, to hunt down a dangerous outlaw.

Exclusive: Simon Baker, star of CBS’ The Mentalist, has partnered with MGM International Television Productions.

The actor and director, who made his directorial debut in 2017 with Breath, an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel, has struck a multi-year, first-look deal with the production company behind series including Epix’s From and Peacock’s Last Light.

The deal will see Baker, who also starred in The Devil Wears Prada, develop scripted projects with MGM with an international focus, with an eye for him to director and/or star.

Other on-screen roles include LA Confidential, Margin Call and CBS’ The Guardian. He recently starred in and exec produced High Ground, directed by Stephen Johnson, and starred in Blaze from Del Kathryn Barton.

On the scripted side, MGM is also behind international series such as Amazon’s El Fin del Amor and Shelter, Epix’s Billy the Kid, HBO Max’s Mariachis and France Television’s The Reunion.

Cinema box office in Australia rebounded by 50% in 2021, compared with 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the theatrical business was still less than half the level of 2019.

Gross boss office was A$605 million ($432 million) according to data from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia and tracking service Numero. That compared with A$401 million ($286 million) in 2020 and A$1.23 billion ($878 million) in 2019.

Despite the country’s slow and spotty reopening – Melbourne endured one of the world’s longest lockdowns – Australian films enjoyed a year that was stronger that in many pre-pandemic periods. Their combined gross was A$71.5 million ($51.0 million), or 12% of the national total, compared with A$22.7 million, or a 6% market share in 2020, and A$40 million or 3.5% in 2019.

The local charge was led by “Peter Rabbit 2” with A$22.0 million ($15.7 million) and “The Dry” with A$20.1 million ($14.3 million). Rounding out Australia’s top five titles were: “Mortal Kombat,” “Penguin Bloom” and “High Ground.

They were led by Sony’s ‘Peter Rabbit 2’ and Roadshow’s ‘The Dry’.

Australian films and co-productions garnered 11.8 % of the local box office market in 2021, the biggest share for 35 years, according to figures from Numero/Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia (Mpdaa).

Sony’s Peter Rabbit 2, an Australian-us production, was the highest grossing local film, with a gross of US$16m, but with Roadshow’s literary adaptation The Dry, starring Eric Bana, snapping at its heels with a 2021 gross of $14.6m (total gross is $15.5m thanks to 2020 previews).

The other biggest local performers were Warner Bros’ Mortal Kombat...

TV dramas 'Fires', 'New Gold Mountain' and 'The Newsreader' each took home two prizes at yesterday evening's virtual Aacta Industry Awards, as did films 'Nitram', 'The Dry', 'Mortal Kombat' and 'High Ground'.

The post ‘Fires’, ‘The Newsreader’, ‘New Gold Mountain’, ‘The Dry’, ‘Nitram’, among early Aacta winners appeared first on If Magazine.

Anousha Zarkesh and Nathan Lloyd have once again led the charge at the annual Casting Guild of Australia (Cga) Awards, scooping the major prizes across television and film at Saturday’s virtual ceremony.

Lloyd followed up his two awards from last year with Best Casting in a TV Drama, TV Miniseries and Telemovie for The Newsreader, and a second consecutive Achievement in Casting gong for web series All My Friends Are Racist.

Zarkesh – also a multiple winner in 2020 – took out Best Casting in A Feature Film for her work on High Ground.

‘High Ground’

Of the other television and film categories, Kirsty McGregor won Best Casting in a TV Comedy for Fisk, while Daisy Hicks received ‘Best Casting in a Short Film’ for Tough.

The Cga also highlighted its annual list of Rising Stars as part of the ceremony, with the 2021 group made up of Albert Mwangi (Bump), BeBe Bettencourt...

A cross-section of the country’s emerging screen talent has received the endorsement of the Casting Guild of Australia (Cga) with the announcement of the guild’s annual Rising Stars.

The 2021 list comprises Albert Mwangi (Bump), BeBe Bettencourt (The Dry), Clarence Ryan (Stateless), Claude Jabbour (Eden), Elizabeth Cullen (Elvis), Georgie Stone (Neighbours), Jacob Junior Nayinggul (High Ground), Marlo Kelly (Joe Exotic), Ngali Shaw (Rfds) and Yerin Ha (Halo).

Now in its seventh year, the program is designed to identify Australian actors that have the potential to shine on the world stage, with previous recipients including Eliza Scanlan (Babyteeth), Katherine Langford (13 Reasons Why), Zoe Terakes (Nine Perfect Strangers), Tilda Cobham-Harvey (Hotel Mumbai) and Alexander England (Little Monsters).

Cga president David Newman said the guild was particularly proud of the “talent, tenacity, drive, and passion” of the 2021 Cga Rising Stars.

“In a time when an actor has had to adapt like never before,...

The casting directors behind Nitram, The Dry, High Ground, and The Furnace will battle it out in the feature film category of the Casting Guild of Australia Awards to be held later this month.

Nominees across eight categories were announced today ahead of the virtual ceremony on November 20.

Nikki Barrett has two nominations in the feature film, getting a nod for The Furnace and also Nitram with Alison Telford and Kate Leonard. Rounding out the category is High Ground‘s Anousha Zarkesh and The Dry‘s Jane Norris.

Barrett also features in the Best Casting in a TV Drama, TV Miniseries and Telemovie nominees for her work on Fires, going up against Eden‘s Danny Long – who has a total of four nominations – The Newsreader‘s Nathan Lloyd and Wakefield‘s Marianne Jade.

For Best Casting in a TV Comedy, Kirsty McGregor is recognised for Fisk and season two of Frayed,...

“High Ground,” a 1930s-set drama film, picked up eight nominations for the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. It narrowly led the field of contenders that included controversial drama “Nitram” with seven nominations, “The Dry” with six and “Penguin Bloom” with five.

Nominations were announced over the weekend ahead of a week of voting. The winners will be announced at a ceremony at Sydney Opera House on Dec. 8, 2021.

Six films received nominations for best film: “The Dry,” “The Furnace,” “High Ground,” “Nitram,” “Penguin Bloom” and “Rams.” Five of the six also received nominations for best director.

“High Ground,” received five of its nominations for acting, with two of its performers going head-to-head in the best actor category, and two more in the best supporting actor section.

Similarly, “Nitram,” which chronicles the build-up to a real-life mass shooting in Tasmania, received nominations for its two leads and two supporting cast.

Aacta has revealed those in contention for the major film, television and short-form prizes at this year’s awards, with High Ground leading the charge in the film categories and The Newsreader ahead in television.

The nominations follow those revealed for feature documentary in July, with the technical craft categories still to come.

Aacta also announced today that this year’s awards will move from The Star to the Sydney Opera House, with the ceremony to be held December 8.

There has also been a change in broadcast partners from Seven to 10, where the ceremony will air first followed by an encore on Fox Arena on Foxtel, Binge, and Aacta TV.

High Ground has earned eight nominations, including Best Film. Also nominated for the night’s major prize are Nitram, which earned seven nods, The Dry, which has six, as well as The Furnace, Penguin Bloom and Rams.

The Best Indie Film Award,...

Friday will see the launch of the first stage of the Australian Feature Film Summit, an event spearheaded by a working group across exhibition, distribution and production, which aims to break down sector silos to build further theatrical success for Australian features.

Its origins lie in provocative questions about the future of local film posed by producer and distributor Sue Maslin back in 2018.

Such as: Have we turned into a vanity publishing industry with little connection between creative ideas and audiences? If the old business models are broken, how can we work differently? How can we get a better equation between risk/reward?

Maslin felt a disconnect between what exhibitors were prepared to show on screens and what filmmakers were making, with the vast majority of Australian films earning less than $1 million. It occurred to her that most producers had little to do with the ‘retail’ end of the industry.

In 2018, producer and distributor Sue Maslin posed some provocative questions regarding the future of Australian feature film.

Among them: Have we turned into a vanity publishing industry with little connection between creative ideas and audiences? If the old business models are broken, how can we work differently?

It kicked off introspection among industry, and sparked lively conversation at that year’s Prism, hosted by Screen Producers Australia (Spa), that gathered executives from federal and state screen agencies, producers, distributors and exhibitors.

Out of that event hatched a cross-industry working group who for the past three years have met regularly to strategise how to grow a local feature film sector that makes more commercially successful and culturally relevant films.

Among its founding members are Maslin; Independent Cinemas Australia CEO Adrianne Pecotic; producer Antony I. Ginnane; Event Cinemas general manager of content Claire Gandy; Spa director of policy Holly Brimble; Motion Picture...

MK2 Films has boarded “Blaze,” the feature directorial debut of award-winning Australian painter Del Kathryn Barton, which stars Simon Baker (“High Ground”) and Julia Savage (“Sweet Tooth”).

Now in post-production, the film stars Savage as Blaze, a teenager who is the sole witness to a shocking crime. Struggling to make sense of what she saw, she unleashes the wrath of a dragon coming from her wild imagination. “Blaze” will combine live action with VFX and stop-motion animation techniques.

MK2 Films has acquired world sales rights to the film and is kicking off sales at Venice, where the banner is presenting Mounia Akl’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon” (with Participant and Endeavor Content) in the Horizons section.

Barton previously co-directed “The Nightingale and the Rose,” an animated short film based on an Oscar Wilde story that featured Barton’s illustrative style, with a voice cast headlined by Mia Wasikowska and Geoffrey Rush.

John Huston’s classic “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) echoes through Roderick MacKay’s feature debut “The Furnace” which premiered at last year’s Venice section Orizzonti, before heading on a festival tour with the final stop at Karlovy Vary, where we caught it. Both films are the stories of gold and greed, but the key difference between them are their milieus and the differences between the American and the Australian use of western genre tropes.

In America, westerns were created to preserve the myth of the hardy pioneers that fought the savage Natives for the land and have pushed the frontiers of the so-called civilised world from one ocean to another. Only in the New Hollywood era, the revisionist westerns appeared aimed at debunking the myths and used as the metaphorical canvas to expose the American imperial politics of the 20th century. In Australia, however, the western setting...

The big news on Sky Cinema in August was the arrival of Wonder Woman 1984, animated family film Extinct and Eric Bana-starring crime mystery The Dry (based on the Australian novel by the rather excellent Kate Harper). September welcomes a new premiere every day, including the Oscar-nominated Minari starring Steven Yeun, the Karen Gillan and Lena Headey-starring action flick Gunpowder Milkshake and Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie in Fox News Me Too scandal drama Bombshell.

Read on in our handy guide to what’s coming up on Sky Cinema this month.

Russian Raid – 1st September

A former operative battles a war criminal’s henchmen to seize a highly guarded factory for his shady boss. Russian action with subtitles.

Alone – 2nd September

A kidnapped woman escapes into the wilderness, forced to battle the elements as her pursuer closes in on her. Thriller.

Long Story Short – 3rd September

Teddy wakes up...

September usually means the beginning of the traditional fall TV season. As such, Hulu’s list of new releases for September 2021 contains some impressive TV swings.

For starters, all of ABC and Fox’s (both now united under the Disney banner alongside Hulu) fall season offerings will be made available to stream on Hulu the next day. More impressively, however, two FX on Hulu originals make their way to the streaming world this month.

The first is the long-awaited adaptation of the classic comic Y: The Last Man. The story of a virus that destroys every mammal with a Y-chromosome (save for one escape artist and his monkey) is set to premiere on September 13. Shortly after that, the B.J. Novak-produced anthology series The Premise arrives on September 16. Even those who are fatigued from timely anthology concepts will want to check this one out.

Read more TV How Y: The...

High Ground, The Invisible Man and 2067 lead the feature film nominees and Hungry Ghosts, Stateless and Bump television for the upcoming Australian Production Design Guild (Apdg) Awards.

Production designer for High Ground Ross Wallace and The Invisible Man’s Alex Holmes will compete for the night’s top gong against Relic‘s Steven Jones-Evans and True History of the Kelly Gang‘s Karen Murphy.

In television, battling for the production designer award are Hungry Ghost‘s Carrie Kennedy, On Becoming A God In Central Florida‘s Annie Beauchamp, Stateless’ Melinda Doring and The Luminaries‘ Felicity Abbott.

There are 23 categories for this year’s awards, including the traditional live performance, film, television, event, animation and costume design awards, in addition to new categories that include set decorators, screen graphic designers and live performance video designers.

“Over the past 10 years our young emerging designers have flourished,” production designer and Apdg president George Liddle said.

In the wake of the success of the Kevin Hart feature Fatherhood on Netflix, the producers of that movie, Higher Ground and Temple Hill, are collaborating with the streaming giant once again for a new project entitled Blackout, a film & television event which will be adapted from six different Black love stories written by six different writers.

Those scribes are Dhonielle Clayton (Tiny Pretty Things), Tiffany D. Jackson (Allegedly), Nic Stone (Dear Martin), Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give), Ashley Woodfolk (The Beauty that Remains) and Nicola Yoon. Blackout is being developed as part of Higher Ground’s overall deal with Netflix.

From the perspective of 12 teens with six shots of love, Blackout takes place as a heatwave blankets New York City in darkness and causes an electric chaos. When the lights go out and people reveal hidden truths, love blossoms, friendships transform, and all possibilities take flight.

“The Marsh King’s Daughter” has rounded out its cast with Brooklynn Prince, Gil Birmingham, and Caren Pistorius joining the ensemble of the psychological thriller. They will appear alongside the previously announced Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn in the big-screen adaptation of Karen Dionne’s best-selling novel of the same name. Neil Burger, the director of “Limitless” and “The Illusionist,” will slide behind the camera on this one.

STXfilms, Black Bear Pictures and Anonymous Content have joined forces on the film, which started production in Canada this week.

Here’s the official logline: “‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’ follows Helena (Ridley), a woman living a seemingly ordinary life with her husband and young daughter, but hiding a dark secret within: that her father is the infamous ‘Marsh King,’ the man who kept Helena and her mother captive in the wilderness for years. Helena is forced to face her demons when her father escapes from prison unexpectedly.

Sydney Film Festival has revealed the first 22 titles on its line-up for this year, which will see the festival return to cinemas around the city after 2020’s virtual iteration.

Leading the pack are a contingent of local docos including Philippa Bateman’s Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow; Amanda Blue’s Step into Paradise and Eddie Martin’s The Kids, recently selected for Tribeca.

Sff will also boast the Nsw premiere of Kiwi film The Justice of Bunny King, Gaysorn Thavat’s debut feature led by Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie; and Nz-Canadian co-production, NIght Raiders, directed by Danis Goulet and executive produced by Taika Waititi.

Festival director Nashen Moodley is excited to return to an in-person event come August, noting the festival already had a “incredible” response to its summer season in January at the State Theatre, when it screened High Ground, Firestarter, Girls Can’t Surf, Minari and Another Round.

Recently the Australian western has been enjoying a new lease of life thanks to stories which include or even centre the perspectives of indigenous people, after a century of treating them like scenery. Does this risk creating a new rigid form in which they re always good and the white people who come into contact with them are always bad? It's not clear that this is actually happening, but High Ground represents an early attempt to complicate emerging narratives, with troubled characters in both groups. Whilst the story that emerges is ultimately pretty routine stuff, one should not underestimate the contribution that each one of this new generation of films makes to rebalancing the way that Australians think about their history, nor how refreshing it is for viewers in any location to access a different perspective.

The film opens with a massacre. There are well over a hundred such incidents recorded.

The rise in conflict between drastically different cultures is often driven by the missed opportunity between the groups to want to better understand the other’s distinct ways of life. The upcoming action-adventure movie, ‘High Ground,’ challenges the accepted notions of Australia’s settlement, and presents an alternative perspective on how the country was formed by its […]

The post Interview: Stephen Maxwell Johnson Talks High Ground (Exclusive) appeared first on Shockya.com.

High Ground Samuel Goldwyn Films Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Stephen Maxwell Johnson Writer: Chris Anastassiades Cast: Simon Baker, Jacob Junior Nayinggul, Jack Thompson, Sean Mununggur, Callah Mulvey, Witiyana Marika Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/19/21 Opens: May 14, 2021 I would guess that an astute filmgoer, […]

The post High Ground Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has added to its growing list of Australian acquisitions, negotiating a deal for the worldwide rights to Antaine Furlong’s Ascendant.

Under the agreement, there will be a planned theatrical release of the film as Rising Wolf in the US on July 16.

Ascendant will be released in Australia and New Zealand this Thursday via Maslow Entertainment.

Set in Shanghai, the story follows Aria Wolf (Charlotte Best), a young woman who wakes, trapped, kidnapped in an elevator of a super high­ rise building at the mercy of her tormentors. Cocooned in the belly of the beast, Aria is forced to adapt her thinking, her beliefs, and her endurance.

The cast includes Jonny Pasvolsky (The Front Runner), Alex Menglet (Wentworth), Susan Prior (The Rover), Lily Stewart, Justin Cotta,Tahlia Sturzaker (I am Mother), and Karelina Clarke.

Ascendant was written by Kieron Holland and Furlong, who produced alongside Kristy Vernon,...

"When you get the high ground, you control everything..." Samuel Goldwyn Films has debuted one final US trailer for High Ground, an Australian western about racism that originally premiered at the Berlin Film Fest over a year ago. We've already posted two other trailers for this last year, including the full Australian trailer. Set in the 1930s, High Ground is inspired by true events, telling the story of a policeman in Northern Australia and the local aboriginals he attempts to befriend. After a terrible massacre leaves many natives dead without justice, years later he is forced to return and confront the same aboriginals when they start attacking outposts. A "frontier western about colonial violence and misunderstandings that deeply resonates in today's Australia – and indeed all over the world – the film explores the nature of loyalty and the ability to distinguish freely between right and wrong, in opposition to the dogmas...

Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason has acknowledged that the government’s proposed media reforms may result in fewer theatrical features but said the organisation remained committed to supporting projects for which cinemas were the “perfect home”.

Mason appeared at a Senate Estimates hearing on Tuesday evening, where the box office success of Australian films such as The Dry and Penguin Bloom was to springboard into how proposals, such as the lowering of the Producer Offset for feature films to 30 per cent, would impact the industry.

The session comes a week after a delegation of actors, crew, writers, and producers came to Canberra to challenge the reduction of the offset, among other reforms relating to the sector.

After assuring the committee that he was “aware of all the concerns that may be around” regarding the changes, Mason was asked by Senator Nita Green whether the proposals could result in fewer Australian feature films,...

A delegation of actors, crew, writers, and producers have converged on Canberra to push for local content requirements for SVOD and AVOD platforms, as well as other reforms relating to the screen sector.

Actors Simon Baker, Bryan Brown, Marta Dusseldorp, and Justine Clarke jointed Flying Bark Productions CEO Barbara Stephen, and Blue Rocket Productions co-founder David Gurney at Parliament House today as part of the Make it Australian campaign.

Spearheaded by the Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg), Australian Writers’ Guild (Awg), Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (Meaa), and Screen Producers Australia (Spa), the campaign previously took to the capital in 2019 to lobby on similar issues.

Since then, the government has proposed in a green paper that streaming services be required to invest a percentage of their revenue on Australian content in the form of commissions, co-productions, and acquisitions. It is consulting on the paper until late May.

The Make It Australian campaign...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired the North American rights to Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson ahead of its world premiere at SXSW next week.

In a deal was brokered by Momento International, The Drover’s Wife marks yet another Australian acquisition for Samuel Goldwyn, who has in recent years picked up films such as Rams, High Ground, Judy & Punch, Top End Wedding, Measure for Measure. H is for Happiness, Dirt Music, Koko: A Red Dog Story and Sweet Country.

Produced by Bunya Productions and Oombarra Productions, The Drover’s Wife is written and directed by Purcell, based on her stage play of the same name.

A reimagining of Henry Lawson’s classic short story, the story is set in 1893 on an isolated property the Snowy Mountains, and follows the heavily pregnant Molly Johnson (Purcell) and her children, who struggle in isolation to survive after her husband leaves,...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to “The Drover’s Wife,” an Australian revenge tale written, directed and starring Leah Purcell. Sold by Memento International, the film is an adaptation of Purcell’s successful Australian stage play. The film is set to premiere March 18 at SXSW.

A searing Western thriller, the play “The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson” is a reimagining of Henry Lawson’s classic short story “The Drover’s Wife.” The story is set in 1893, and centers on the heavily pregnant Molly Johnson (Purcell) and her children, who struggle in isolation to survive the harsh Australian landscape after her husband leaves to go drove sheep in the high country.

One day, she finds a shackled Aboriginal fugitive named Yakada (Rob Collins) wounded on her property and forms an unlikely bond with him. Molly soon becomes the target of the suspicious lawman Nate Clintoff (Sam Reid...

Japan’s highest grossing feature film of all time, Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train, is also proving a hit with Australian audiences.

Released via Madman Entertainment, the anime topped the box office with a $1.9 million opening from 201 screens over the weekend; a whopping average of $9,270.

A follow-up to the 2019 TV series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, based on Koyoharu Gotoge’s comic, the story follows Tanjiro Kamado’s journey as a demon slayer after his family is brutally murdered and his sister is turned into a demon.

Released in Japan in October last year, the film grossed more than ¥37.8 billion, or $USD362 million.

The Australian release includes screenings in IMAX and 4Dx formats. In Japan, the film smashed IMAX records, and its international success has helped boost numbers locally.

“The movie’s many fight sequences look fantastic on the giant screen and we’re very pleased with numbers we’re seeing.

Crime thriller The Little Things is the first new release in weeks to succeed in knocking Robert Connolly’s The Dry from the no. 1 position at the box office.

The John Lee Hancock-directed neo-noir follows two detectives (Denzel Washington and Rami Malek) as they investigate a string of murders that lead them to a strange loner who may be the culprit.

The film opened on $1.4 million from 276 screens over the weekend, or $1.8 million with previews.

That makes Australia the second best performing market worldwide, second only to the US where has been released in cinemas and on HBO Max simultaneously.

Other new releases included Lee Isaac Chung’s Oscar hopeful Minari, which Madman opened on 59 screens to bring in $172,309, or $276,226 with previews.

Winner of the Sundance US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the US Dramatic Audience Award, the semi-autobiographical film starring Steven Yeun follows a South Korean family who...

Australia’s lucky run at the box office continues. Four out of the five highest grossing films last weekend were local titles, with new release Long Story Short joining the ranks with The Dry, Penguin Bloom and High Ground.

However, the national Bo was depressed, with Victorian cinemas – which typically boast around 27 per cent national market share – shuttered in the wake of a state-wide lockdown.

Roadshow’s The Dry remains the top performer, adding $711,168 in its seventh weekend to progress to $17.3 million; it is now the 15th highest grossing Australian film of all time (without adjusting for inflation).

Stablemate Penguin Bloom was again no. 2, bringing in $444,989 to advance to $5.9 million.

Writer-director Josh Lawson’s Long Story Short opened on $315,590 from 278 screens for Studiocanal, or $332,961 with previews.

The rom-com follows Teddy (Rafe Spall), a serial procrastinator who wakes up the morning after his wedding to discover that he’s jumped forward a year in his life.

With continued paucity of product from the US and other international territories, Australian films remain the main event at the box office.

Showing incredible legs, Robert Connolly’s The Dry is still the no. 1 title, earning just under $1.2 million across its sixth weekend, a drop of just 18 per cent.

The mystery drama, based on the novel by Jane Harper, has now made $16.2 million in total for Roadshow Films. That figure makes The Dry the 17th highest grossing Australian film of all time (without adjusting for inflation), and the fourth highest performing local film of the last decade behind Lion, The Dressmaker and Red Dog.

Fellow Roadshow drama Penguin Bloom, directed by Glendyn Ivin and produced by the same production company as The Dry, Made Up Stories, remains in the number two spot. In its third frame, the Naomi Watts-starrer earned $729,269, a fall of 43 per cent, to bring takings to $5.2 million.

Russia, South Korea and China continue to be the strongest markets for Disney’s Soul.

Soul drops 26% in seventh week of play

Russia, South Korea and China continue to be the strongest markets for Disney’s Soul, which overall grossed an estimated $6.9m from 11 markets at the weekend, a drop of 26% from the previous frame. Total after seven weeks of play is an estimated $96.2m.

The Pixar animation extended its chart-topping run in Russia to three weeks, declining 21% with estimated weekend takings of $2.7m, and $11.6m to date. That’s the third best total for a Pixar film in Russia,...

*Competition Is Now Closed; Winners To Be Notified Shortly*

If has 15 double passes to give away to Stephen Johnson’s High Ground, courtesy of Madman Films.

Set in 1930s Arnhem Land, High Ground follows young Aboriginal man Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul), who in a bid to save the last of his family teams up with ex-soldier Travis (Simon Baker) to track down Baywara—the most dangerous warrior in the Territory, who is also his uncle. As Travis and Gutjuk journey through the outback they begin to earn each other’s trust, but when the truths of Travis’ past actions are suddenly revealed, it is he who becomes the hunted.

Starring alongside Nayinggul and Baker are Jack Thompson, Witiyana Marika, Aaron Pedersen, Callan Mulvey, Ryan Corr, Caren Pistorius and Esmerelda Marimow.

High Ground, which premiered at the 2020 Berlin Internatioanl Film Festival, is written by Chris Anastassiades and produced by David Jowsey,...

In a remarkable result, four Australian films – The Dry, Penguin Bloom, High Ground and Occupation: Rainfall – took home almost 50 per cent of the national box office last weekend.

The four titles together totaled $3.5 million, or 47 per cent of the total B.O of $7.5 million.

Such a strong local showing speaks to a variety of factors: the paucity of product from the US, good word-of-mouth and strong marketing campaigns by distributors.

The four titles’ performance is also a hopeful sign for the other Aussie films due in coming weeks, including documentary Wild Things (Potential Films), released this Thursday; dramas Long Story Short (Studiocanal) and Unsound (Filmink Presents) due on February 11; and Wayne Blair and Nel Minchin’s doco Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra (Icon) on February 18.

“With few Hollywood/international productions entering the market over the coming weeks, I expect this to continue for some time,” Village Cinemas national film programming manager Geoff Chard tells If.

It’s a rare feat for an Australian film to break through to the top of the box office, let alone for two local titles to lead the weekend’s rankings. But Penguin Bloom and The Dry have done just that.

Roadshow Films’ Penguin Bloom, directed by Glendyn Ivin and starring Naomi Watts, Andrew Lincoln and Jacki Weaver, opened on $1.5 million from 398 screens, or $1.7 million with previews, to come out on top.

Stablemate The Dry was close behind, netting $1.4 million over its fourth weekend to cross $12 million overall. Each film was produced by production company Made Up Stories, led by Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky and Jodi Matterson.

For Roadshow Films CEO Joel Pearlman, both titles’ results are testament to audiences’ desire to support home-grown filmmaking. He argues “now is the time for Australia to champion its bold stories and beautiful locations with the world.”

“It’s remarkable that the two...

Despite the reemergence of Covid-19 cases and restrictions in some states, the holiday period has proved lucrative for many exhibitors thanks to Wonder Woman 1984, The Croods: A New Age and local film The Dry.

And while there’s promise in titles like this week’s Penguin Bloom, some cinema owners have concerns regarding the lack of big name releases over the coming weeks and months.

Majestic Cinemas CEO Kieren Dell tells If a strong period is “tailing off fast”, as cinemas don’t have access to the usual depth of product to sustain themselves through the six weeks of school holidays.

Or as outlined by Cinema Nova CEO Kristian Connelly: “The challenge for the coming months will be the absence of ‘big ticket’ titles that usually populate this time of year but each week is bringing more attractive releases to cinemas that should help get audiences back in the habit of going to the movies.

We made it! if.com.au is now on holiday hiatus, resuming January 13, 2021.

For all our e-subscribers, throughout the break we’ll send you newsletters with what we thought were our best, most pertinent and enjoyable reads of 2020 (I promise they’re not all just about Covid). If you’re not signed up, do so here.

On that, how does one even go about summing up 2020?

From the pandemic effectively shutting down the screen industry overnight, to policy shifts that signal quite a different future, it has been a momentous, difficult and important year.

To borrow 2020’s most overused word, much of what we’ve seen has been unprecedented. But at the same time, the pandemic has sped up shifts that were already happening.

For instance, pre-covid, we were wrapped up in discussion about theatrical windows and just how streaming was affecting the cinema business.

That conversation, of course, has only accelerated.

After a difficult year for exhibitors, Palace Cinemas CEO Benjamin Zeccola is pleased to end 2020 on a positive note with the official opening of Coburg’s Pentridge Cinema next week.

Housed within the city’s historic Pentridge prison site, the new venue comprises 15 screens and has the capacity to hold 1,100 patrons.

The opening is the culmination of a seven-year development process for Palace Cinemas, including almost three years of construction.

Australia’s largest independent cinema group faced fresh challenges this year when the Covid-19 pandemic forced the closure of its locations, with about 550 staff affected by the shut down.

Pentridge Cinema

“It is a tremendous privilege to open a new cinema in such a vibrant part of Melbourne, with such a vast and diverse catchment area,” Zeccola said.

“It has been a (lime-)light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, that we’ve watched getting brighter as we pushed on throughout the lockdown.