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Chainsaw Man is one of the premier shonen battle manga series of today, and its anime adaptation ramped up the action scenes considerably. Few anime series can present a gruesome mixture of gory fights and terrifying monsters to the same degree as Csm, while still treading the thin line between shonen and seinen so masterfully. Season 1 of Csm not only adapted the manga source material accurately, it added a style and flare to the fight scenes that would only be possible in animation.

Chainsaw Man's first season doubled down on the series' over-the-top, Tarantino-esque action sequences, with nearly every episode putting Denji through brutal battles that would likely be considered part of the horror genre if they happened in any other series. With that kind of thing being the norm, Csm Season 1's best fights either bring something new to the table, or ramp up the intensity to...

George Trumbull Miller, the director of The Man From Snowy River and The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, has died of a heart attack. He was 79.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the news of the Australian filmmaker’s death on Saturday. No details of the day he died have been shared at this time.

Miller rose to prominence in the 1980s with his massive hit The Man From Snowy River, starring Kirk Douglas. To this day, the Western still has a place on Australia’s list of top 20 grossing films of all time in unadjusted terms. It made 17.2 million locally then, which equals about 68 million in today’s world.

After becoming one of his home country’s most commercially successful filmmakers, the Scottish-born director made his way to Hollywood, where he helmed The NeverEnding Story II, Christmas movie In the Nick of Time and family movie Zeus and Roxanne,...

Australian film and television director George Miller has died of a heart attack in a hospital in Melbourne, Australia. He was 79.

He is best remembered for his film The Man From Snowy River, which launched him to make movies in Hollywood,

Unfortunately, Miller was destined to always be known as “the other George Miller.” That’s because he worked at the same time as the creator of the Mad Max franchise, Dr. George Miller.

Early in his career, Miller worked on the Australian television shows Division 4, Matlock Police, The Box, and The Sullivans. The boom in TV miniseries saw him take on the colonial-era Against the Wind, starring pop singer Jon English.

George T. (for Trumbull) Miller’s The Man From Snowy River was released in 1982 and spawned a sequel. It is still in the top 20 Australian films in unadjusted terms.

That led him to Hollywood, where he made...

George Trumbull Miller, an Australian film and television director whose most notable credits include “The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter” and “The Man From Snowy River,” died of a heart attack in a hospital in Melbourne. He was 79 years old.

Miller’s death was confirmed by the Sydney Morning Herald. No details regarding a date of death are available at this time.

Miller reached national prominence for his 1982 Western “The Man From Snowy River,” starring Kirk Douglas. The film grossed 17.2 million in Australia and reached more than 20 million worldwide, inspiring a sequel as well as an arena attraction. More than 40 years on, “Man From Snowy River” remains one of the top 20 highest grossing local productions in the history of the Australian box office.

Coincidentally, George T. Miller’s rise as a filmmaker closely paralleled that of his fellow Australian, “Mad Max” director George Miller.

“He was very kind to me,...

Ben Lawrence took home the main prize – Best Direction in a Feature Film (Budget $1M+) – at last night’s Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg) Awards, for his debut narrative feature Hearts and Bones.

Held virtually and hosted by Greta Lee Jackson and Nina Oyama, this year’s Adg Awards also saw female directors take home 10 of the 19 prizes – marking the first time ever that women have made up more than 50 per cent of winners.

Among them were Josephine Mackerras, who took home Best Direction of A Feature Film (Budget under $1M) for the French-language Alice; Maya Newell whose In My Blood It Runs saw her win Best Direction of a Documentary Feature, and Emma Freeman, who won Best Direction of a TV or SVOD Mini-Series for Stateless: Episode 3.

The guild suggests this reflects the push for gender parity in the industry. Traditionally, women have been extremely underrepresented in director roles, and last week,...

Gary Conway.

One of Australia’s most respected and prolific TV directors who started his career at Crawford Productions in the 1960s, Gary Conway died on Friday in a hospice in Melbourne, aged 73.

Conway directed nearly 800 episodes of Neigbours, beginning in 1988, and worked on the Fremantle show until late last year when he was forced to stop after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

“Gary was a great mate to me and to many, many others,” his friend and long-time colleague, composer Garry (Sam) Hardman tells If.

“Gary started at Crawford’s a couple of years before I did. I met him when I started with the company in 1965. There were 45 people on staff back then and Gary was the company’s art department.

“He would make up the credit cards for Homicide and Hunter as well as the ‘fake signs” for filming that could turn an ordinary office building into a federal bank.

Sigrid Thornton.

Sigrid Thornton will be presented with the Chauvel Award tonight at a screen industry gala event held as part of the Gold Coast Film Festival.

The award recognises the prolific actress’ significant contribution to the Australian screen industry. Her long career includes films such The Man From Snowy River and The Lighthorsemen, and TV series SeaChange, All The Rivers Run, Prisoner and recently, The Code and Wentworth. Established in 1992, previous winners of the Chauvel Award include Fred Schepisi, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Jan Chapman, Heath Ledger and Deborah Mailman.

“This recognition is a wonderful and very humbling acknowledgement of essentially what’s been a lot of hard work,” Thornton tells If.

“It’s a career that’s been full, rich and enormously joyful, but it’s also had a lot of ups and downs as well.”

Thronton will soon return to one of her most notable roles, that of Laura Gibson,...

Former Another World actress Carmen Duncan passed away on February 3 after battling cancer for years. She was 76.

Duncan was born on July 7, 1942, in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. She graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (Nida) in Sydney in 1961.

Her career included films such as Harlequin (1980) and Turkey Shoot, as well as staples of Australian television, such as You Can't See 'Round Corners, the cop shows Division 4 and Homicide, soap opera Number 96, and television classics such as The Young Doctors and Skyways.

Duncan was nominated for an Australian Film Institute (AFI) award in 1980 for her work in Harlequin. But it was on television where Duncan perfected the art of playing sophisticated, independent and successful women.

In the 1980s Duncan moved to the United States and conquered the world of daytime television, securing the role of businesswoman Iris Carrington Wheeler in the long-running soap opera Another World.

Louisa Mellor Jul 29, 2016

Actor Vivean Gray, fondly remembered as Mrs Mangel in soap Neighbours, has passed away at the age of 92...

Vivean Gray, the British-born actor whose Australian on-screen career stretched from the 1960s to the 1980s has passed away, aged 92.

Gray will be remembered for early recurring roles in Melbourne-set television programmes Homicide and Division 4, her cinematic role in Peter Weir's eerie 1975 film Picnic At Hanging Rock, a stint in soap The Sullivans and Prisoner: Cell Block H  and of course, for playing Nell Mangel in Neighbours.

Gray's time on Neighbours was short in comparison to that of some actors who've spent decades on Ramsay Street. She played local curtain-twitcher Mrs Mangel for just two years between 1986 and 1988. Those years though, were Neighbours' boom period here in the UK. Ask anyone over thirty who watched television in the eighties, and they'll remember her fondly.

Our thoughts...

Screen Queensland has appointed Jo Dillon, formerly a development executive at Screen Australia, in the new role of head of development and production.

This co-incides with the retirement of director-development Jock Blair after a career spanning more than 40 years, and the departure of production investment and business development executive Catherine Nebauer.

Nebauer is leaving mid-August to become general manager of ZooMoo, billed as the world.s first kids channel dedicated to animals, launched by David Haslingden.s Beach House Pictures and Nhnz.

Dillon starts at Screen Queensland on August 25 and Blair steps down on August 1.

.As Screen Queensland continues to work with industry to grow a healthy and sustainable industry, Jo.s experience with creative and thoughtful leadership will provide exactly what the industry is asking for,. said CEO Tracey Vieira.

Vieira tells If that Dillon is a new addition to the executive ranks and she will hire replacements for Blair and Nebauer.

Prolific screenwriter Everett De Roche, who died in Melbourne yesterday, was one of the instigators of the Ozploitation genre movement of the 1970s and 80s.

The Us-born writer, who migrated to Australia with his wife in 1968, was 67. He had battled with cancer for three years. He started as an in-house writer for Crawfords for four years in the 1970s, penning episodes of Homicide, Division 4, Ryan and Matlock Police.

His first feature screenplay was Colin Eggleston.s Long Weekend in 1978. Among his film credits were Richard Franklin.s Patrick (1978), Simon Wincer.s Harlequin (1980), Franklin.s Roadgames (1981), David Hemmings. Race to the Yankee Zephyr (1981), Russell Mulcahy.s Razorback (1984) and Franklin.s Visitors (2003).

In 2008 he and director Jamie Blanks collaborated on a remake of Long Weekend, for which he added two characters, a baby dugong and several scenes. "The basic environmental message works as well today as it did in 1978," he said.

Director, writer, film critic and media academic Jonathan Dawson has died in Hobart, aged 71.

Dawson wrote and directed documentaries, commercials and documentary specials for the ABC and commercial networks and the 1982 feature film Ginger Meggs.

After graduating from Melbourne University, he joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a trainee radio and TV producer/director. He left the ABC to join Crawford Productions as a writer/director on Homicide and Division 4. He then went on to Channel 9 in Sydney to direct The Link Men and write for other series including Rush and The Box.

He continued to publish poetry and short stories but left the fulltime film industry to set up the new media studies department and screenwriting courses at the University of Canberra.

From there he set up Griffith University's Foundation Year in 1975, where he worked to create the then new screen studies and production courses now internationally acknowledged,...

Update: While the polls in this round of 2013 Ultimate Slash Madness Tourney remain active, vote recording for the Elite Eight closed Wednesday August 7, 2013 at 11:59pm Eastern. At the end of this post you can see the final recorded vote tally in each bracket. The winner of our 2013 tourney was announced here.

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Ultimate Slash Madness is living up to the title. Holy crap guys, you’ve cast three million votes so far in this year’s tourney!

Voting in Round 2 closed yesterday, and we’re down to the Elite Eight slash pairings for Round 3. There were some intensely close match-ups in the last round. Fans of Merlin‘s Merthur, X-Men‘s Erik/Charles and The Avenger‘s Thorki all put up valiant fights and kept their respective races neck and neck until the final bell. But in the end the final eight are…

Destiel and Wincest from Supernatural, Teen Wolf...

Over a hundred thousand votes have been cast so far in our Queens Tournament which pits all sixty previous RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants in a bracket style tourney to see who truly is the Ultimate Queen. We’re down to just 16 fabulous ladies, and it’s anyone’s guess who will come out on top.

Round 2, which closed this weekend contained some real nailbiter brackets: Raja beat out Raven by a mere 220 votes, Jiggly Caliente pulled a surprising upset and knocked out Carmen Carrera by a 40 vote lead, and perhaps the biggest upset of all: Jessica Wild put the lid on Pandora Boxx by a mere 18 votes.

For handy reference – here is the overall leaderboard for remaining contestants after Round 2…

1 Jinkx Monsoon 6294 2 Jujubee 5506 3 Raja 5437 4 Latrice Royale 5196 5 Alaska Thunderf*ck 5150 6 Manila Luzon 4707 7 Sharon Needles 4623 8 Chad Michaels 4518 9 Alyssa Edwards 4355 10 Willam 4341 11 Shangela 4246 12 Jiggly Caliente 4191 13 Bebe Zahara Benet 4191 14 Jessica Wild 4110 15 Ivy Winters 3962 16 Nina Flowers...

Gold Coast-based veteran writer, producer and director Phil Avalon is currently developing a World War I film, The Stolen, with director Geoff Davis. After more than two years. production, the film is close to completion.

The Stolen follows an unknown soldier who grew up on a farm in Queensland, signing up at a very young age to join the war. He returns home only to find that his family destroyed by bushrangers who have killed his father and kidnapped his sister.

Avalon first heard of the film through actor and good friend Tony Bonner, who appeared in his last film, surfing drama Liquid Bridge (2003), which also starred Ryan Kwanten.

.Bonner had been in the film for a while at that time., Avalon recalls. .He suggested that I have a look at this project. So I had a look at the scripts and the vision of the director Geoff Davis. And...

Only eight wildly popular fantasy couples are left standing to compete in Round Three of our Ultimate Slash Madness Tourney. Teen Wolf's Sterek might have been the heavy favorite to start with, but can they get past Harry & Draco? Will Inception's Eames & Arthur wreak havoc on the dreams of Johnlock fans? Can Merthur work their magic up against Lotr's Legolas & Aragorn and finally, does underdog McShep from Stargate Atlantis stand an angel's chance in hell to take down Supernatural's Destiel?

Note that this round of voting is only open until midnight eastern Wednesday, September 12th so vote early and often. (As before, the polls are restricted to one vote in each bracket per hour. (If you attempt to vote more frequently than that you'll get a message that your vote has already been recorded).

Will your favorites get past round three?

Division 1

Division 2

Division 3

Division 4

Thank you for voting...

Wow. Over three million votes were cast in the first round of our Ultimate Slash Madness Tourney, and some of the match-ups ended up being incredibly close. For instance, Community's Tory and Abed beat out Smallville's Clark and Lex by a mere 38 votes! But of our original 32 competing slash couples only 16 can advance. You'll find them below in their eight Round Two brackets. This round of voting is open until midnight Friday, September 7th and the polls are restricted to one vote in each bracket per hour. (If you attempt to vote more frequently than that you'll get a message that your vote has already been recorded). Will your favorites survive round two?

Division 1

Division 2

Division 3

Division 4

Thank you for voting in the Ultimate Slash Madness Tourney. Round Two closes on Friday, September 7th at midnight eastern.

Dig the ladies? Be sure and also check out our sister site...

This article originally appeared in If Magazine #146 (April-May 2012).

I was living in London as a child from about the age of seven and I joined a theatre club, which still exists today . the Unicorn Theatre Club . and the concept of this club is to introduce children to theatre and the joy of theatre. It certainly hooked me in.

I think my late grandmother used to say I was starting to announce that I was going to be an actress from about the age of seven but I do remember things like .astronaut. and .ballerina. . that must have been before seven. When I returned to Australia I was about 9 or 10. I think when a person has to adjust to a new culture, there.s an element of performance involved in fitting in and I think that, and the experience of wrapping my tongue around all the different English dialects, was what I enjoyed.

This week, we had to get the fallout from Bobby Roode threatening the health of Dixie Carter after beating Sting at Victory Road. If only she’d used the ample time she had to get out of the ring to her advantage. And so Dixie joined us to open the show. Dixie made out like she was going to fire the champ, but Sting came out and claimed firing him was letting him off easy. Sting then said that his position as leader was just not working. So he said hes coming back as a wrestler to fight for Dixie and step down as General Manager. He did however promise that he had someone to take the company right to the top. Sting asked Dixie to let him give him the power to the Real Hulk Hogan. Dixie did her best to act conflicted. Later on in the show, in the main event slot,...

Harold Hopkins, who appeared in several important Australian movies including Gallipoli (right), The Year My Voice Broke, Don's Party, and The Club, died yesterday, Dec. 10, at Neringah Private Hospital in Wahroonga, north Sydney. According to reports, his death was caused by the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma.

Hopkins, who was 67, is supposed to have been exposed to the cancer right after finishing high school, while working as an apprentice carpenter sheeting asbestos in Queensland in the early 1960s.

Following on the footsteps of his twin brother John, Harold Hopkins (born on March 6, 1944, in Toowoomba, Queensland) graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1967. He then performed onstage and began his feature-film career in 1969, landing a supporting part in Michael Powell's Age of Consent, starring James Mason and Helen Mirren.

Film roles were sporadic throughout the 1970s — among those was an appearance in Bruce Beresford's comedy-drama Don's Party — though Hopkins...

Australian film Last Dance has begun production in Melbourne.

Directed by David Pulbrook, principle photography began on Monday in and around St Kilda, Melbourne.

The film is Pulbrook’s debut feature film. Pulbrook has had a long history as an editor, beginning his career in the 60s working on episodes of Homicide and Division 4. He’s since edited Gillian Armstrong’s Smokes and Lollies, Kevin Dobson’s Squizzy Taylor, Michael Pattinson’s Street Hero and Ground Zero which he won an AFI for. Most recently he edited Simon Wincer’s The Cup.

The film stars Julia Blake (Innocence, Bed of Roses), Firass Dirani (Killer Elite, Underbelly) and Alan Hopgood.

Pulbrook said of his film: “Last Dance digs beneath the stereotypes to reveal the basic humanity of the two principle protagonists and transcends the tragedy of their pasts and speaks of optimism, possibilities and tolerance. We were careful not to...

Some may recall that when Frank Brittain's The Set was released in Australia in the seventies, it outraged many with its uncompromising look at teenage sexuality and identity at a time when homosexuality was not only taboo, but also illegal.   While the film went on to become a cult classic, the book, upon which the film was based, remained unpublished. That is, until now. The Set's author, Roger Ward, decided it was time to finally publish the novel.   An established actor, particularly of the "Ozploitation" genre, Ward has enjoyed roles in a slew of legendary Australian films including Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, The Man from Hong Kong and Young Einstein, and a clutch of television series such as Division 4, Matlock Police and Homicide.