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Multi-award-winning Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer’s films expand creative horizons in the ways he deals with character, narrative and dialogue. Heads were turned with the Venice Grand Jury Prize-winner Bad Boy Bubby (1993), the story of a 35-year-old man-child who, after being locked away his entire life by his mother, escapes into a “real” world that appears more bizarre than his previous existence.

De Heer’s Cannes Un Certain Regard-winner Ten Canoes (2006) was a riotously funny morality tale set in pre-colonized Australia — the first shot entirely using Indigenous languages. The Survival of Kindness, winner of Berlin’s 2022 Fipresci award, meanwhile, was a gripping dystopian tale stripped almost entirely of any dialogue — but one that still made its message about the horrors of racism perfectly clear.

In the days ahead, the 73-year-old De Heer will turn film watcher rather than maker as he takes up a place on the main competition...

Questions of authenticity and authorship in cinema – who gets to tell what stories — are thorny ones. With his trilogy of films on the Aboriginal experience, The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, Dutch-born white Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer has managed to avoid charges of cultural appropriation. This is due in large part to de Heer’s obvious respect for Indigenous culture and traditions and to his working method, which involves deep collaboration with the communities involved, as well as the on-screen talent, most famously with the late, great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil.

For his new film, The Survival of Kindness, De Heer again takes on the ugly legacy of racism and colonialism. The film, which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, is the story of a Black woman (identified in the credits only as Black Woman) and her harrowing odyssey out of captivity. Shot entirely without intelligible dialogue,...

Loneliness and longing are examined with a forensic and unflinching eye in “Shelter,” a bleak Irish-language drama about a reclusive 20-something man-child who must face the world he has been protected from all his life. but its intensity and refusal to indulge in sentimentality makes it sometimes tough to watch. Adapted from the 2013 novel “The Thing About December” by Donal Ryan, “Shelter” marks a promising debut by writer-director Sean Breathnach and has been selected as Ireland’s official submission for the 2022 international feature Oscar.

The basic outline of “Shelter” echoes films such as Werner Herzog’s “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and Rolf de Heer’s “Bad Boy Bubby,” in which young adult males are suddenly thrust into the world after being cruelly locked away from it all their lives. In “Shelter” it is not imprisonment but willing acceptance of overwhelming parental love that has kept John Cunliffe (Donal O...

Veteran Australian director Rolf De Heer (“Ten Canoes”) is shooting a new film titled “The Mountain,” for which Italy’s Fandango Sales is launching sales at the online AFM.

“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.

“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”

“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.

David Lightfoot, the Australian producer behind Wolf Creek, Rogue and more, died in an Adelaide hospital on Sunday, after suffering a heart attack. He was 61.

News of his passing was confirmed via the official Facebook page for Ultrafilms, the production company he founded in 1997.

“It is with deep sadness that Ultrafilms announces the death of founder David Lightfoot,” read their statement. “David Lightfoot was one of the most experienced and widely regarded production executives in the country…David dedicated his life to the film industry, and was passionate about Australian film and telling Australian stories.”

“David…was a close friend of mine for 20 years and a generous mentor,” Lightfoot’s business partner and co-producer, Sabella Sugar, told Deadline. “He gave so much and he touched so many lives.”

Lightfoot embarked on his career in film in 1982, joining the South Australian Film Corporation after playing cricket for South Australia and spending...

David Lightfoot, an Australian producer behind such films as Wolf Creek, Rogue and Never Too Late, died Sunday in a hospital in Adelaide after a heart attack, his production company announced. He was 61.

With more than 30 years in the industry, Lightfoot was one of the most experienced and widely regarded production executives in his country. He launched his company, Ultrafilms, in 1997.

Lightfoot began his career at the South Australian Film Corp. in 1982 and worked as an associate producer on Bad Boy Bubby (1993), as a location manager on Babe (1995), as a co-producer on The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1998) and ...

David Lightfoot, an Australian producer behind such films as Wolf Creek, Rogue and Never Too Late, died Sunday in a hospital in Adelaide after a heart attack, his production company announced. He was 61.

With more than 30 years in the industry, Lightfoot was one of the most experienced and widely regarded production executives in his country. He launched his company, Ultrafilms, in 1997.

Lightfoot began his career at the South Australian Film Corp. in 1982 and worked as an associate producer on Bad Boy Bubby (1993), as a location manager on Babe (1995), as a co-producer on The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1998) and ...

David Lightfoot, producer of films such as Wolf Creek, died on Sunday following complications from recent surgery.

Lightfoot worked in the screen industry for more than 30 years, beginning at the South Australian Film Corporation in 1982.

His prolific career spanned more than 80 credits in various roles, including associate producer of Bad Boy Bubby; location manager for Babe; co-producer for The Sound of One Hand Clapping and line producer for Japanese Story.

Lightfoot was both producer and line producer for Greg McLean’s 2005 hit Wolf Creek, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

He continued to collaborate with McLean on 2007’s Rogue, and went on to produce Rupert Glasson’s thriller Coffin Rock in 2009.

Mickey Rourke, Matt Hearn, Greg McLean, Cassandra Magrath and David Lightfoot in Cannes, 2005.

More recently, via his company Ultrafilms, he produced Jack Thompson, Jacki Weaver and James Cromwell-starrer Never Too Late with Antony I. Ginnane.

Trigger Warning: This article contains several references to animal cruelty during shooting.

In the summer of 1994, Forrest Gump was released in the United States to wide acclaim, becoming the fourth highest grossing film at that time and winning six Oscars, including Best Picture. Roger Ebert wrote, ‘I’ve never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I’ve never seen a movie quite like Forrest Gump.’ It is curious to read that from Ebert, because just ten months prior in September 1993, a film called Bad Boy Bubby was shown at the Venice Film Festival.

Put simply, Bad Boy Bubby is Forrest Gump on bath salts, imbued with pitch-black humour instead of sickly treacle. While Gump opens in a leafy Savannah park to Alan Silvestri’s melodic score, Bubby begins in a hellish room with no natural light and filthy grey walls, which is...

David Pisoni (L) and Michael Rowan (Photo: Kelly Barnes)

Adelaide Studios’ sound mixing theatre has been named after South Australia’s ‘godfather’ of sound Michael Rowan.

Rowan constructed, operated and maintained the South Australian Film Corp’s sound mixing theatres from the earliest days at the Queens Studios in Norwood in the 1970s, followed by the original mono mixing theatre at Hendon, the first Dolby stereo mixing console in 1982 and the first Foley studio in 1984.

The facility received the Dolby Premier Accreditation in 2012, at that time the only one of its kind in Australia.

Currently the Michael Rowan Sound Mixing Theatre is playing host to Unjoo Moon’s debut feature I Am Woman, which stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey as singer Helen Reddy and will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Sa Minister for Innovation and Skills David Pisoni paid tribute to Rowan’s 40-year contribution to establishing...

Julie Ryan.

Producer Julie Ryan was in post-production for Hotel Mumbai when writer Lisa Hoppe’s script for H is for Happiness came across her desk. She loved it straight away – by page 40, she’d recognised it would make a heartwarming, funny family film.

Due to make its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival next month as the Family Gala film, H is for Happiness is based on Barry Jonsberg’s children’s book ‘My Life is an Alphabet’ and marks the feature debut of theatre director John Sheedy.

It follows Candice Phee, played by Daisy Axon, a 12-year-old with boundless optimism and a unique view of the world, determined to bring her dysfunctional family back from the brink. Alongside Axon (Judy & Punch) are Wesley Patten, who worked with Sheedy on his acclaimed short Mrs McCutcheon, Richard Roxburgh, Emma Booth, Miriam Margolyes, Joel Jackson and Deborah Mailman.

Ryan,...

Stars: Aubrey Plaza, Emile Hirsch, Jermaine Clement, Craig Robinson, Michael D. Cohen, Matt Berry, Maria Bamford, Zach Cherry| Written by Jim Hosking, David Wike | Directed by Jim Hosking

When director Jim Hosking came out with his film The Greasy Strangler in 2016, I was intrigued by the Bad Boy Bubby feel that the trailer showed me, and the odd-ball obscurity of the tone. I didn’t end up liking the film, though. It annoyed me too often for me to enjoy it and I felt like it went the “let’s make a bad movie so people make a fuss about it” route. So, scroll forward to last year, 2018, and the release of Hosking’s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, written by both Hosking himself and David Wike (Out There). It wasn’t on my radar. It wasn’t a movie I can honestly say I had much interest in,...

It’s not exactly Ozploitation, but director Rolf de Heer’s outrageous “experiment” (his words) packs in as much violent mayhem, weird sex and non-p.C. material as any exploitation film you can think of. Its unusual deployment of 31 different directors of photography guarantees a variety of looks as our shut-in hero makes his first grimly comic foray into the outside world. Has some similarities to Paul Bartel’s last film, the similarly obscure Shelf Life. Unreleased theatrically in the Us, it came out on DVD in 2005. Nsfw Here are a few more thoughts on Bad Boy Bubby at Acmi.

The post Bad Boy Bubby appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

A children’s TV show produced for an audience of one – a kidnap victim – pushes the narrative plausibility, but that won’t stop it becoming a festival hit

Inevitably evoking comparisons with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Room, The Truman Show, Dogtooth and Bad Boy Bubby (but not as funny, sincere, resonant, original or weird, respectively, as any of the above), whimsical comedy Brigsby Bear revolves around a young man named James (Kyle Mooney) who has been raised in a desert bunker by Ted and April (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams) ever since they kidnapped him when he was a baby. Ted and April tell him that the air outside is toxic, breathable only through a gas mask, but they can all survive so long as James keeps topping up the bicycle-powered electric generator and doing his maths homework. Sort of like a Steiner school but without the organic food and self-righteousness.

The Water Diviner and The Dressmaker dominated the feature categories at the 19th Australian Screen Sound Guild Awards held at The Establishment hotel ballroom in Sydney.

Russell Crowe.s drama won the prizes for feature film soundtrack of the year, best sound design and Assg members. choice for best film soundtrack.

Jocelyn Moorhouse.s dramedy was feted for best film sound recording and sound mixing .

The Syd Butterworth lifetime achievement award went to James Currie, whose career spans 38 years and includes A Month of Sundays, Charlie's Country, Red Dog, Ten Canoes, Man of Flowers, Incident at Raven.s Gate and Bad Boy Bubby.

The Principal was named best sound for a TV drama series while Deadline Gallipoli — episode 2 was best sound for a telefeature and Only the Dead best documentary sound.

The Greg Bell student encouragement award was given to Alex Gastrell, a recent North Sydney Tafe graduate. The full...

When I saw Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby in an arthouse theatre back in the mid-90s, I was totally unprepared for such raw and nihilistic filmmaking. A violent and dark film, it was clear from that one film that de Heer was a massive, fearless talent. The director, born in The Netherlands but an emigrant to Australia at a young age, has delved deeper into Australian and Aboriginal lore over the years, working with famed actor David Gulpilil on a number of projects, including 2002's The Tracker and 2006's Ten Canoes. The latter film provided one of my most interesting film festival experiences; a tale told in the indigenous language, due to a logistical hiccup the version we saw had no subtitles. With a...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

The world premieres of Scott Hicks. documentary Highly Strung and Matt Saville.s comedy/drama A Month of Sundays are among the highlights of this year.s Adelaide Film Festival.

The program includes the debut features from Bangarra Dance Company.s Stephen Page and Windmill Theatre Company.s Rosemary Myers as well as Jocelyn Moorhouse.s The Dressmaker.

A hit at. Sundance this year, Sam Klemke.s Time Machine will have its Australian premiere at the festival, which runs from October 15-25.

Another highlight is the 21st anniversary screening of Rolf de Heer.s Bad Boy Bubby at the Waterside Workers Hall in Port Adelaide on October 17. De Heer said, .It's startling to think that 22 years after Bad Boy Bubby confounded everyone, including me, by winning five prizes at the Venice Film Festival, and 21 years after it was released to an unsuspecting general public, the film is still ticking away,...

When I saw Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby in an arthouse theatre back in the mid-90s, I was totally unprepared for such raw and nihilistic filmmaking. A violent and dark film, it was clear from that one film that de Heer was a massive, fearless talent. The director, born in The Netherlands but an emigrant to Australia at a young age, has delved deeper into Australian and Aboriginal lore over the years, working with famed actor David Gulpilil on a number of projects, including 2002's The Tracker and 2006's Ten Canoes. The latter film provided one of my most interesting film festival experiences - a tale told in the indigenous language, due to a logistical hiccup the version we saw had no subtitles....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

David Gulpilil gives a bravura performance in Rolf de Heer.s powerful new drama according to the first reviews of Charlie.s Country, which had its world premiere in Un Certain Regard in Cannes.

The Hollywood Reporter.s David Rooney hailed a .delicate but powerful film that functions as both a stinging depiction of marginalization and as a salute to the career of the remarkable actor who inhabits almost every frame..

Variety.s Eddie Cockrell lauded an .atmospheric and cautionary tale of a .Blackfella. caught between two cultures [which] has all the makings of a solid art house performer."

Co-written by the director and the actor while he was in jail and then in a drug and alcohol rehab centre, the semi-autobiographical film stars Gulpilil as an aging man who struggles to understand how he should define himself as an Aboriginal in modern Australia.

Entertainment One will launch the film produced by Nils Erik Nielsen,...

Any list of must-watch films is likely to be so arbitrary and subjective that it buys plenty of arguments, and so it proves with the Taste of Cinema website.s compilation on Australian cinema.

Its selection of 20 Essential Australian Films You Need To Watch overlooks many classics and more than a few stand-outs of the past 30 years.

Writer Liam Clark, a film/literature/music student in Sydney, acknowledges the first-ever feature length film was The Story Of The Kelly Gang in 1906. He then observes, .Since then, antipodean auteurs of the screen have been weaving their imagerial visions into challenging portraits of Outback Australia, racism, crime and hauntingly beautiful stories..

The list omits everything produced before 1971 and there are some questionable choices.

His Essential 20: Strictly Ballroom (1992), Sweetie (1989), Mad Max (1979), Gallipoli (1981), Muriel.s Wedding (1994), Lantana (2001), Snowtown (2011), The Dish (2000), Candy (2006), Dogs in Space (1986), Somersault (2004), Shine (1986), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the...

Eighteen years after the release of Rolf de Heer.s cult classic Bad Boy Bubby, the name Nicholas Hope is still associated with the image of the agoraphobic 35-year-old with bush-like hair, walking tentatively at midnight in Adelaide with his large suitcase. His performance won Hope the AFI Best Actor award in 1994. It also introduced him into a world of celebrity, where fame is not always as intoxicating as it seems.

Constantly being recognized as Bubby used to bother Hope. But now it seems to have become something positive.

.It is a performance and film I.m very proud of. I think for a period of time it held me back so no people could see me outside of that role, but now people can. So now this role just complements anything else..

Hope recalls the day when he was watching Argo, which stars Bryan Cranston. He thought to himself,...

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert has had the greatest cultural impact of any local film released between 1993-1997, according to a new analysis by Screen Australia.

The report, Staying Power: The enduring footprint of Australian film, ranked almost 100 films' longevity by assessing their: primary release, revenues, ongoing access by audiences, acclaim and wider impact.

The report highlighted 20 films that had a domestic box office greater than $2.5 million and/or achieved an international release in 10 countries or more. Aside from Priscilla, the other films assessed were: Angel Baby, Babe, Bad Boy Bubby, The Castle, Children of the Revolution, Cosi, Country Life, Dating the Enemy, Kiss or Kill, Lightning Jack, Muriel's Wedding, Napolean, Paradise Road, The Piano, Reckless Kelly, Shine, Sirens, The Sum of Us, and The Wiggles Movie.

Screen Australia chief executive Ruth Harley, speaking at the Canberra International Film Festival, said feature films have the powerful ability...

Nicholas Hope in Bad Boy Bubby

Nicholas Hope, who played the lead role in Australian cult classic Bad Boy Bubby, has said that film distributors are “frightened” to back “brave” Australian films.

Hope told Encore: “There are Australian film-makers out there who are doing daring things. It’s difficult to say if they are being brave enough. The one thing holding them back is distribution.”

“There are brave films out there that just can’t get cinema release,” he said.

Hope named Bad Boy Bubby in his list of the three bravest Australian films ever made, along with Chopper and Wake in Fright.

“Distributors are frightened of taking on another local film. So it’s very difficult for indie films, which don’t have large budgets and aren’t presented in a certain way, to find an audience.”

In the year Bad Boy Bubby was released, in 1993, the Rolf de Heer...

The Baby

Directed by Ted Post

Written by Aby Polsky

USA, 1973

Shocking and unsettling in breaking a number social taboos, this forgotten gem centres on the kind of dysfunctional family seldom depicted on screen. The Baby is a politically-incorrect pseudo horror film about motherly love gone horribly wrong.

Our story follows a recently widowed social worker (Anjanette Comer) who investigates a strange case of child abuse and discovers a grown man (David Manzy) has been held in a state of infantile his entire life. The grown man still behaves like a baby, dressed in diapers, unable to speak and under the full dependance and care of a mother and her two teenage daughters. The social worker becomes increasinly obsessed with Baby, fearful for his wellbeing under the manipulative, psychotically abusive family who control and torture him for their own benefit.

Ted Post’s The Baby is surely one of the...

Nicholas Hope, who played the lead role in cult Australian classic Bad Boy Bubby, is among the talent available to students at a new acting academy launching in Sydney.

Hope will be joined by Kevin Jackson (The American Conservatory), Bill Pepper (dialogue coach to four Oscar winners) and choreographer Julia Cotton at the International Screen Academy based in Sydney’s Waterloo.

The course will include training in screen and broadcast media – including acting for TV, film, animation, voice-over, gaming, high-end effects, 3D and green screen. The syllabus will also include visits from industry figures in health, law, business, finance, technology, marketing and PR.

The school’s creative director Tony Barclay said in a press release: “Achieving cut-through in such a competitive industry cannot be left to luck. Isa’s main goal is to produce great screen actors who are ready to work from day one across all media.”

“To ensure this,...

A new horror film festival has launched with the inclusion of Australian genre films; The ABCs of Death, The 25th Reich, Muirhouse and Redd Inc.

The announcement:

Monster Pictures, the notorious Australian film distributor behind The Human Centipede franchise, has launched the program for its showcase theatrical film event, Monster Fest.

“The program is a culmination of a year spent searching for the coolest, edgiest and most uniquely twisted films on the planet – we’re sure we’ve got them too, twenty-five of them in fact. You won’t be disappointed!” Neil Foley of Monster Pictures commented.

Opening the festival will be the Australian premiere of The ABCs Of Death, an American/New Zealand co-production that has just premiered at the prestigious Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Closing the fest will be American Mary, a film made by rising horror superstars and identical twins, Jen and Sylvia Soska.

By Marcey Papandrea, MoreHorror.com

While looking back at my viewing for this year, I have seen a lot of genre films, and actually I have seen a lot of really good ones. I had been surprised quite a lot this year, and I wasn’t sure if anything else this could do that. I was proved wrong with Redd Inc. (Inhuman Resources is the Us title), not only did this film surprise me, but also it is one of the best genre films I have seen this year. This is a great film, not just a great genre film, there is so much to enjoy and embrace here.

Our storyline here is very intriguing, with a setting that is very brave and it works like a charm. Six people wake up chained in an office, to desks by a man named Thomas Reddmann (Nicholas Hope), an escaped killer. His...

From the director who brought you the films Bad Boy Bubby, Ten Canoes and The Tracker comes a new feature, The King is Dead!

A happy, unsuspecting couple, Max (Dan Wyllie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic), buy a house in what appears to be a quiet, friendly neighbourhood. Settling in well, they make friends with a nice family on one side and soon meet another more interesting family on the other side. But interesting soon becomes loud, and loud soon becomes intolerable. When the intolerable becomes violent and the police are powerless, Max and Therese attempt to take matters into their own hands.

The King is Dead! is released by Pinnacle Films in selected cinemas on July 12.

Let’s look back, shall we?

Joe emcees.

So we did a thing at The Cinefamily. Because we have a new DVD out. Because Josh poked us with sticks and said we had to. Because we like movie theaters (especially The Cinefamily). Because we wanted to see what would happen if we got a bunch of gurus under one roof, in front of one screen.

Because we like movies.

No one had any clue how it might play out or even if anyone would show up. But, in point of fact, it turned out great and people did show up because the truth is this:

Any night that starts with Joe Dante screening never-before-seen test footage from an almost-happened 1981 version of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, reaches its midpoint with a blooper reel of John Landis trying and failing to record commentary, and ends with Larry Cohen doing impromptu,...

Nominations for the 2011 Nsw Premier.s Literary Award were announced yesterday. including the $30,000 Script Writing Award. The award has been offered since 1990, and past recipients include Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom), Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby) and Chris Lilley (We Can Be Heroes). This year.s script writing award nominees include Shirley Barrett for South Solitary (Macgowan Films), Glen Dolman for telemovie Hawke (The Film Company), Michael Miller for The Hero.s Standard (Knapman Wyld TV, Sbs), John Misto for telemovie Sisters of War (Sisters of War Pty Ltd), Debra Oswald for TV series Offspring (Southern Star Entertainment) and Samantha Strauss for Dance Academy, Episode 13: Family (Werner Film Productions). Last year.s winners were Jane...

This week, we take on three very different flicks hailing from the great nation of Australia, all three of which are way overdue for our coverage. First up, and garnering a bit of Oscar buzz for co-star Jacki Weaver, is the coming-of-age/mob flick Animal Kingdom. We’ll also be talking about the sleeper-hit neo-noir thriller The Square, before moving on to a disturbing, enthralling cult pic by the name of Bad Boy Bubby, a recent Blue Underground DVD release that shares some disturbed DNA with recent art-film cause-célebre Dogtooth.

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One+One Filmmakers Journal, an online and print non-profit publication, is looking for submissions for their upcoming 6th edition, which will be published in early 2011. Devoted to the celebration of filmmaking, they are looking for a wide range of articles that provide a “thorough and critical analysis of filmmaking and its social and cultural effects and implications.” The deadline for articles is February 1, 2011. Submit here. (As a non-profit publication, there’s no compensation for articles.)

One+One actually shares some goals with Bad Lit, particularly in the way they like to combine both an intellectual and a populist approach to analyzing films and film history. They are looking for articles that conceptually have an academic curiosity towards filmmaking, but are written so that they can be enjoyed by all types of film lovers from serious scholars to casual fans.

Articles can also employ a range of styles from autobiographical to...

Who on earth decided that white cats should be the ultimate incarnation of evil? They nestle in the laps of Cardinal Richelieu and Blofeld

So you think women and ethnic minorities get a raw deal in the movies? That's nothing compared to the way cinema discriminates against cats. Dogs are waggy-tailed brown-nosers who save tots from drowning; cats are stuck-up, psychotic and about as trustworthy as a 1940s film noir femme fatale. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is only the latest example of Hollywood's insidious anti-feline agenda. It's a slight advance on the first Cats & Dogs film in that, this time, not all the cats are wicked. But the villain who wants to take over the world is a cat, and the psycho in Hannibal Lecter restraints is a cat. Film-makers love dogs, we all know that. But what have they got against cats?

It's true there's a...

The premise of Air Doll is one than will instantly alienate a lot of people which is unfortunate as it is a premise that Koreeda uses not in the most obvious ‘wacky’ way that people might expect but to investigate emotional subjects. The film is based on a Manga by Yoshiie Goda entitled The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl and centers on an inflatable sex doll who comes to life and explores the world around her.

The sex doll in question, Nozumi, is played by Bae Du-Na, whose performances in The Host and Linda Linda Linda and now this have made it clear that she is a talented actress who will hopefully continue to get roles that afford her the opportunity to show her obvious skills as an actress.

Nozumi is owned by a restaurant waiter Hideo (Itao Itsuji) who mostly treats her as if she were real, buying her clothes,...

With Father's Day approaching, framescourer chooses the cathartic cameos and double-takes that capture dads and their offspring in the same frame

Many of the most intriguing father and son partnerships are divided by the camera: as a director, Clint Eastwood has used his son Kyle's music in a number of his later films; sadly, tantalisingly, John Huston was too ill to participate in Mr North, his son Danny's directorial debut. There are some near misses too: it might perhaps have been a relief to both Brawley Nolte and his father, Nick, that, playing the same character at different ages in the violently semi-Oedipal Affliction, they were safely separated by the buffer of flashback.

Yet it's having father and son in the same frame that really intrigues. To what extent is it representative of the off-camera dynamic? Will either party take the chance to get something off his chest, overstepping some...

Steve Rose on Hollywood's pushiest mums and dads

No wonder Greece is in economic crisis. Family life is plumbing drastic new levels of wrongness over there, if surreal new Greek drama Dogtooth is anything to go by (which, admittedly, it really isn't). The film's parents never let their three teenage kids beyond the walled garden of their isolated villa. And for good measure, they home-school them with surreal lies about the world outside – cats are vicious maneaters, a zombie is a type of yellow flower, aeroplanes are actually little toys. It can't end well, but is the rest of the world any better? Overprotective parent syndrome is never far away in the movies, once your mummy lets you look around.

Meet The Parents

He's technically on the right side of the law, but there's a glint of Travis Bickle in Robert De Niro's twitchy ex-cia dad, who both covets...

Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance by Donna McRae

Low cinematic genres – (as Clover, Williams and Robin Wood and others) have often pointed out – often handle explosive social material that mainstream cinema is reluctant to touch. — Joan Hawkins (1)

Can you make a film about the aftermath of incest and child abuse and its effect on three generations of women in the same family? Would this film contain an inherited ghost running through the narrative that could represent repressed feelings of colonial guilt on another level? Could this film prick the conscience of a nation that might be shuddering in silence for all its past sins? Would you get funding for this film from an Australian funding agency if you didn't have a track record? Would this very serious film fill cinemas, especially Australian ones? Could you get international profile actors to star in your film? Or would Australian film actors like Gracie Otto,...

It is hard to fathom that up until now there has been no academic reference on influential and groundbreaking Australian director Rolf de Heer. With films such as Bad Boy Bubby and The Tracker under his belt, as well as Ten Canoes, which won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes 2006, and the AFI awards for Best Director, Best Film and Best Original Screenplay, there is surely a surplus of fascinating material should one choose to compile it.   Qut researcher Dr Bruno Starrs has remedied the injustice with a comprehensive academic text titled Dutch Tilt, Aussie Auteur: The Films of Rolf de Heer.

You know it's a weird week for DVD releases when the cream of the crop includes a couple of Blu-ray reissues, Fifties throwback horror/sci-fi hybrid Alien Trespass (read Creepy's review here), and Bigfoot-inspired The Wild Man of the Navidad, which garnered one of the higher ratings Foy's doled out in quite some time (review here).

Also included toward the end of this week's list are a couple of compilations, Wicked Women, Wicked Things, and Zombies Rule, which are followed by two for the kiddies (or just the kids at heart): The Batman vs. Dracula and a Scooby-Doo double-feature.

- Debi Moore

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Curious to know what frightful films and devilish discs will be available to view in the privacy of your own digital dungeon this week? Fango's got you covered.

Below the jump you'll find the full list of titles arriving in-stores this Tuesday, August 11, 2009 in our weekly version of the famous Fangoria Chopping List - updated with all the last-minute additions and deletions.

Note: Clickable links lead to Amazon.com

Alien Tresspass - Image DVD & Bd

A flying saucer, ray guns, body snatching and a one-eyed monster from outer space! It’s all here in this action-packed sci-fi adventure! Eric McCormack stars as an astronomer who gets possessed by a friendly alien bent on saving our humble planet. But even with the help of a lovely diner waitress, is he any match for the Ghota, a one-eyed evil alien on a murderous rampage?

Bad Boy Bubby (Bd)

L.A. Weekly called it "disturbing and compelling,...

If you live life a quarter mile at a time you might want to pick up Fast & Furious on DVD or Blu-ray today, but if you don't, well there isn't much else to choose from. Dragonball: Evolution and Miss March are in stores this week along with the animated Green Lantern: First Flight movie and a couple of Magnet imports, Big Man Japan and Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America. Meanwhile, sci-fi junkies are probably eager to revisit the final season of Battlestar Galactica and possibly give Joss Whedon's Dollhouse another chance on DVD, but if you ask me the week's only essential release is This is Spinal Tap on Blu-ray. Fast & Furious [1] (DVD, Blu-ray [2]) Dragonball: Evolution [3] (DVD, Blu-ray [4]) Miss March [5] (DVD, Blu-ray [6]) Big Man Japan [7] Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America [8] Green Lantern: First Flight [9] (DVD, Blu-ray [10]) Bart Got a Room [11] The Green Hornet [12] The Green Hornet...

While there are no mainstream horror releases this week, it's a Huge week for fans of under-the-radar titles, vintage frights, indie and international horror.

There's quite a few re-issues, some titles hitting Blu-ray for the first time, and several collections hitting stores. Below the jump you can view the full list of genre DVD & Blu-Ray titles arriving tomorrow, Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 in this weekly version of the famous Fangoria Chopping List - updated with all the last minute additions and deletions.

The 10th Victim

It is the 21st Century, and society's lust for violence is satisfied by "The Big Hunt," an international game of legalized murder. But when the sport's two top assassins (Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress) are pitted against each other, they find that love is the most dangerous game of all. As the world watches, the hunt is on. Who will become The 10th Victim?

The 10th...

Awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Bad Boy Bubby with its hard hitting content of deprivation, mental illness and incest, shocked its audiences to become one of the most daring and controversial cult films of the 1990s.

Nicholas Hope gives an astonishing performance as Bubby, a demented man-child kept locked for his entire life in a squalid apartment by his depraved mother who uses him for sex. When Bubby who can only communicate by mimicking what others say and do, escapes into the outside world, he soon discovers young women, crime, rock 'n' roll, and pizza. Will this naive 'mad bastard' be destroyed by the realities of our cruel world, or does a higher calling ultimately await him in the most unlikely place of all?

Bad Boy Bubby is released uncensored, uncut, the directors version on 3rd August 2009 for the first time in the UK on...

Horror movies really are like monsters. Just when you think they’re dead they reappear out of nowhere despite the passage of time and the vagaries of the marketplace and critics pens. Great ones have the power to lift you up out of the ordinary world and leave you shaking in disgust, fear, or overwhelmed by dread or a sense of displacement. That’s the reason I creep through the vaults of any studio that will let me in. I hadn’t seen any of these Blue Underground titles before and when they told me that five out of six of the titles I had asked to write about were available I was excited to have the chance to check them out.

First up was Anguish by acclaimed art house director Bigas Luna. Besides the Luna pedigree this film also boasted the talents of a young but still instantly recognizable...

DVD Playhouse—July 2009

By

Allen Gardner

Do The Right Thing: 20th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Spike Lee’s groundbreaking fable about race relations in an ethnically mixed Brooklyn neighborhood during a sweltering New York summer remains as potent, timely and prescient as it was in 1989. Lee is among the cast, which also includes John Turturro, Danny Aiello, Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Rosie Perez (to name a few), that provide the tableaux-like framework for this stunning work. Criminally ignored by Oscar (it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, but did garner nods for Supporting Actor Danny Aiello and Lee’s screenplay), it endures as a timeless classic. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Lee, Ernest Dickerson, Wynn Thomas, Joie Lee; Documentary; Deleted and extended scenes; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.

Coraline (Universal) A young girl moves into an old Victorian house with her parents...

July 07, 2009 * The Deep (Sony) * Grumpy Old Men (Warner) * Knowing (Summit) * Push (Summit) * Torchwood: The Complete Second Season (BBC) * The Unborn (Universal) * The Universe: The Complete Season Two (A&E) July 14, 2009 * The Black Crowes: Warpaint Live (Eagle Rock) * Cheap Trick: Every Trick in the Book (Music Inc.) * Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers Trilogy (Box Set) (Sony) * The Edge of Love (Image) * Explicit Ills (Phase 4 Films) * For All Mankind (Criterion Collection) * The Haunting in Connecticut: Unrated Special Edition (Lionsgate) * I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Sony) * Mad Men: Season Two (Lionsgate) * NBA Champions 2008-2009 (Warner) * Night Train (National Ent Media) * Shark Week: Great Bites Collection (Discovery Channel) * This is Spinal Tap (MGM) * The Towering Inferno (20th Century Fox) * Wild Pacific (BBC) July 21, 2009 * 300: The Complete Experience (Warner) * Coraline (Universal) * Echelon Conspiracy (Paramount) * Google Me (Cinevolve) * The Great Buck Howard (Magnolia...

The Digital Bits also reports that Blue Underground will be brining Circle Of Iron to Blu-ray on 5/19 (the date is tentative). Bad Boy Bubby and Living Dead At Manchester Morgue are also on tap for Blu-ray later in 2009. We're also told that the following titles are among those being planned, but they require a lot of HD restoration work, so look for them in either late 2009 or 2010: Fire And Ice, The Crazies, The Toolbox Murders, Daughters Of Darkness, Vampyres, The Blood Splattered Bride, God Told Me To, The Prowler, The New York Ripper, Maniac and Vigilante.

By Aaron Hillis

Lists are breezy reads, but there can be an unfortunate disposability to the data because arbitrarily numbered "Ten Best" somethings or "Five Things You Should Know About" whatevers literally demonstrate quantity's domination over quality. And now that I've sucked all the fun out of the room, here's a practical but otherwise unranked list of ten auteurist gems . nine of which are already on DVD . that deserve their layers of dust blown off. (Sorry, "Zero Effect" and "11 Harrowhouse," but the list dictates the rules!)

"One From the Heart" (1982)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The fires of over-ambition still smoldering in his belly after "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up was a decadent fiasco that bankrupted him, and might have seemed at the time as if the director had returned half-mad from the Filipino jungles. Epically staged on the Zoetrope studio lot, Coppola's hypertheatrical Vegas romance-cum-musical fantasy stars...

MELBOURNE, Australia -- The Phillip Noyce-directed drama Rabbit-Proof Fence has emerged as the most-nominated film for the upcoming Australian Film Institute awards, which will be handed out Dec. 7 in Melbourne. Nominations, which are voted on by members of the AFI, were set to be announced today in Sydney. With noms in 10 categories, Rabbit-Proof Fence, which chronicles the attempt of three Aborigine girls to escape from government authorities in 1930s Western Australia, has been the most commercially successful homegrown feature this year, with boxoffice of around $4 million. In the best film category, Rabbit-Proof Fence, which Miramax will release next month in the United States, is up against three other features exploring indigenous themes: Australian Rules, which screened at Sundance earlier this year, contemporary road film Beneath Clouds and The Tracker, from Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby, The Quiet Room). Walking on Water, a bittersweet comedy exploring the aftermath of a death in contemporary Sydney, also figured prominently, picking up nominations in nine categories.