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By the end of his career, Stanley Kubrick was firmly ensconced in his Hertfordshire home, to the extent that he refused to leave England for anything — even shooting a movie. The director had moved to England back in 1961 to shoot "Lolita" at Elstree studios, and basically stayed put thereafter, eventually buying the now famous Childickbury Manor in 1978 and remaining there until his death in 1999.

The legendary filmmaker's decision to remain in England was at least partly motivated by his distaste for Hollywood studios, and his desire to create without interference. Which is all well and good, and the films that came out during the director's post-u.S. era speak for themselves. But it sometimes made for some frankly absurd scenarios, such as when his final movie, "Eyes Wide Shut," took Kubrick's exhausting methods to a new level. To be specific, Kubrick set out to make a movie that saw...

The clichéd view of genius-level artists dictates that brilliance comes with the heaviest of tolls. The greats, the pioneers — these people are tortured from the crib and grow up unloved or abused. Some can feign happiness, but, deep down, they're driven by grievance and frequently undone by inner demons. Worst case, they bounce from marriage to marriage and neglect their children, who subsequently hate them and wind up writing a tell-all memoir. Best case, they're miserable jerks who can't enjoy the riches and plaudits bestowed upon them.

Except for Cate Blanchett. If everything I've read about Blanchett is to be trusted, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor is an absolute joy to work with and know. She is completely unguarded in interviews. There is no mystery to her. She is, by her own admission, a happily married mother of four whose greatest personal tragedy is that she cannot carve out the...

Everybody has to start somewhere. Cate Blanchett — long before her two Oscars and starring roles in film, TV and on stage — had an oddball beginning in showbiz.

On March 28, 1994, Variety mentioned “Police Rescue,” a big-screen version of the hit Aussie TV series, in which she appeared. It’s sometimes listed as her film debut. It’s not.

After studying theater in her native Australia, she traveled; running out of money in Cairo, she worked briefly on the 1990 Egyptian film “Kaboria,” dancing in a party scene (which is visible on YouTube).

Variety wrote about other projects in which she appeared, like the TV series “Heartland” and “Bordertown.” But she was not mentioned by name until the 1996 review of the 51-minute film “Parklands.” Variety critic David Stratton disliked it and said Blanchett had “little to work with,” but he noted that she “is on the road to becoming Australia’s next prominent actress,...

Peter Carey’s 1988 novel “Oscar and Lucinda” contains a section in which a glass church is floated down a river. It’s such a striking image that one imagines it must have been the spur for the whole intricate story, just as the sight of a large tree borne on a barge, cutting a crisp swath through calm blue coastal waters and trailing an arc of questions in its wake, might trigger a documentary as quietly magnificent and strange as Salomé Jashi’s “Taming the Garden.”

Across an immaculately slow and beautiful 92 minutes, Jashi’s film sometimes recalls experimental essays like Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s “Leviathan,” with similarly outstanding cinematography from Jashi and co-dp Goga Devdariani. Occasionally, with a shot across treetops in which one patch of greenery moves with bizarre animal grace while all else is stationary, it looks like one of Tolkien’s Ents has decided to take a stroll.

“Eyes Wide Shut” is one of Stanley Kubrick’s most divisive movies, but it does contain one of his most iconic sequences: The orgy scene. Vulture critic and writer Bilge Ebiri has published an oral history on the sequence in which assistant director Brian Cook, choreographer Yolande Snaith, composer Jocelyn Pook, and more weigh in on its months-long making. One of the biggest revelations in the oral history comes from Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s assistant who gained fame in front of the camera as Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon.” According to Vitali, Cate Blanchett had a never-revealed cameo in the famous orgy scene as the voice of the mysterious masked woman, played on set by Abigail Good.

“It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitali said of the voice. “We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual. Stanley had talked about finding...

While the envelope rip heard ‘round the world was the Oscars’ most dramatic gaffe Sunday evening, it was not by any means the most heartbreaking one.

During the evening’s In Memoriam segment, in which industry greats who died in the past year are honored, a photo of someone who is very much alive was used. Australian film producer Jan Chapman had to reassure her friends and family that she was not, in fact, dead.

Read More: PricewaterhouseCoopers Takes Fall for Oscar Gaffe

Chapman’s photo was accidentally used to identify Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer and four-time Oscar nominee who died in October. Watch the In Memoriam segment below:

In an email statement to Variety, Chapman said, “I was devastated by the use of my image in place of my great friend and long-time collaborator Janet Patterson. I had urged her agency to check any photograph which might...

Many fans still can't stop talking about last night's big Oscar mix-up, where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunnaway were given the wrong card, and they announced La La Land for Best Picture, when it was actually Moonlight that had won the award. There was also another big mistake that was revealed last night after the In Memoriam segment, where it was revealed that the entry for late costume designer Janet Patterson actually featured a photo of the very alive Jan Chapman. Janet Patterson had passed away in October at the age of 60.

While Jan Chapman's name and occupation were in fact correct on the Oscars In Memoriam tribute, the picture was not, with the Academy using Jan Chapman's photo instead of Janet Patterson's image. Variety obtained an email statement from Jan Chapman, who reveals she was "devastated" the wrong photo was used during the segment. Here's what...

Laura Jones, the winner of the inaugural Awg Lifetime Achievement Award and screenwriter of Brick Lane, will appear in conversation with Holding the Man scribe Tommy Murphy later this month.

Jones has worked with Gillian Armstrong on High Tide and Oscar and Lucinda, with Jane Campion on An Angel at My Table and A Portrait of a Lady, with Samantha Lang on The Well and Jocelyn Moorhouse on A Thousand Acres.

As well as Holding the Man, Murphy has written episodes of Spirited, Offspring and Devil's Playground.

The event will be held at Sydney's Harlequin Hotel on June 28.

www.awg.com.au/index.php?option=com_awgevents&layout=event&eid=137&Itemid=122...

Laura Jones.

Laura Jones will receive the inaugural Australian Writers. Guild Lifetime Achievement Award at this year.s National Screenwriters. Conference.

A joint initiative of the Awg and Foxtel, the Lifetime Achievement Award is decided by a unanimous vote of the Awg National Executive Committee, and recognises significant contribution to the Australian screen industry. .

Jones' screenwriting credits include Angela.s Ashes, Possession, A Thousand Acres, Oscar and Lucinda, The Portrait of a Lady, An Angel at My Table, Hightide and Brick Lane. .

.Laura.s characters and stories resonate powerfully with audiences and bring a uniquely Australian perspective to the world,. said Foxtel.s Group Director of Corporate Affairs Bruce Meagher..

.She has achieved a sustained critical and commercial success throughout an entire career which is a brilliant feat for an Australian feature film writer. We are delighted that Laura is the inaugural recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award..

Australian Writers. Guild President,...

George Miller’s action-epic scoops eight awards including best film and best director.Scroll down for the full list

Mad Max: Fury Road has scooped the pool at Australia’s top film awards, the AACTAs, with George Miller’s high-action epic scoring wins in eight of its 11 nominated categories, including best film and best director.

Jocelyn Moorhouse’s retro western The Dressmaker won the Aacta People’s Choice Award at the Sydney event, and Kate Winslet won the Best Actress award for her lead performance (and convincing accent) as a spiteful Aussie seamstress in outback 1950s Australia. Winslet accepted her award via smartphone video selfie.

Her onscreen mum, Judy Davis, was the odds-on favourite to win Best Supporting Actress, which she did. In another acting gong for The Dressmaker, Hugo Weaving seemed as surprised as everyone else when his name was called to the stage of Sydney’s The Star casino complex.

In other awards...

George Miller’s action-epic scoops eight awards including best film and best director.Scroll down for the full list

Mad Max: Fury Road has scooped the pool at Australia’s top film awards, the AACTAs, with George Miller’s high-action epic scoring wins in eight of its 11 nominated categories, including best film and best director.

Jocelyn Moorhouse’s retro western The Dressmaker won the Aacta People’s Choice Award at the Sydney event, and Kate Winslet won the Best Actress award for her lead performance (and convincing accent) as a spiteful Aussie seamstress in outback 1950s Australia. Winslet accepted her award via smartphone video selfie.

Her onscreen mum, Judy Davis, was the odds-on favourite to win Best Supporting Actress, which she did. In another acting gong for The Dressmaker, Hugo Weaving seemed as surprised as everyone else when his name was called to the stage of Sydney’s The Star casino complex.

In other awards...

Cate Blanchett will receive the Aacta Longford Lyell Award at the 5th Aacta Awards on Wednesday night in Sydney.

First presented in 1968, the Longford Lyell Award is the highest honour that the Australian Academy can bestow upon an individual in recognition of a person who has made a truly outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Australia.s screen environment and culture.

It was originally known as the AFI/Aacta Raymond Longford Award, in honour of the great Australian film pioneer, Raymond Longford.

But the name of the Award was changed earlier in 2015 to recognise Raymond Longford.s partner in filmmaking and in life, Lottie Lyell.

Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving will present the award to Blanchett.

The presentation will also include a tribute from Gillian Armstrong, and filmed tributes from Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford, Ridley Scott and Ron Howard, to name a few.

After graduating from Nida in 1992, Blanchett started...

The Sydney Film Festival has launched a new $200,000 cash fellowship to kickstart the careers of four Australian filmmakers.

The Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship will be the largest cash fellowship for short film in Australia.

Up to four annual Fellowship winners will receive $50,000 each to produce their next short film in 2016 and 2017, to premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in 2017 and 2018.

A shortlist of the best Australian entrants to the Lexus Short Films series will be curated by the Producers at The Weinstein Company, and sent to the Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship jury..

This jury, headed by Sydney Film Festival.s Festival Director Nashen Moodley, will then select the four winners of the Fellowships grants.

Moodley said this substantial new investment would open up vital funding to local filmmakers to enable them to tell their stories.

Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong, whose films include Oscar and Lucinda, Charlotte Gray, and Little Women,...

A performative exploration of Australia’s own Orry-Kelly, perhaps most infamously known as Cary Grant’s lover, Women He’s Undressed is a playful look at the man behind the costumes worn by Marilyn Monroe, Betty Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Rosalind Russell, and Errol Flynn, amongst other legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film’s story is told via an electrifying mix of first-person interviews, performances of Orry-Kelly’s letters, and archival materials, including clips from his films Some Like It Hot, The Maltese Falcon, Les Girls, and Arsenic and Old Lace.

The film’s charms exist in the performative elements contextualized amongst the film’s interviewees. Director Gillian Armstrong (known for her narrative films Little Women and Oscar and Lucinda) paints a picture partially routed in national pride, about a small town boy from rural New South Wales who makes good in Hollywood. The fragmented nature of the narrative...

The Toronto International Film Festival’s prominence on the festival circuit has only grown over the years, with films from numerous different fields having gone on to critical and commercial acclaim. Among the festival’s different categories are Tiff Docs and Vanguard. Tiff Docs allows documentaries to get their own spotlight at the festival, giving acclaimed documentarians such as Michael Moore and Frederick Wiseman a platform for their films. The Vanguard section, on the other hand, showcases films that aren’t easily categorisable into a specific genre. With the Canadian Films lineup announcement having revealed the first set of films playing in each group, Tiff today revealed more of the lineup in each section. The list of newly announced films, with their official synopses, is as follows.

Tiff Docs

Amazing Grace, directed by Sydney Pollack, making its International Premiere

Sydney Pollack’s film of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Amazing Grace.’ Filmed...

By Terence Johnson

Managing Editor

One of the more predictable categories of any Oscar year is Best Costume Design given that the nominees are weeded out so thoroughly that the best/most showy of the final five is usually locked and loaded for the win. But looking a bit deeper into the category, it’s one of the few places that has nominees that are the sole representation for their film, as is the case with The Invisible Woman this year.

Yesterday, I wrote about how bad movies in the tech branches have a reasonable shot of nominations due to how voters view these categories. Which brings us to Costume Design, which historically has been a branch that honors all matter of film. Looking at the history of the category, you can see that a single nomination for a film, like The Invisible Woman is incredibly common. But does that...

Sony Pictures will adapt the classic novel Little Women.

The studio has enlisted newcomer Olivia Milch to write the script.

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women explores the lives of the four March sisters as the Civil War plays out in the backdrop, Variety reports.

Denise Di Novi (Crazy Stupid Love) and Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) have been tapped to produce the feature.

Sony's last effort with the classic tale was released in 1994 from director Gillian Armstrong (Oscar and Lucinda).

The film starred Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham), Winona Ryder (Heathers), Kirsten Dunst and a very young Christian Bale.

Additional details on the adaptation are expected to follow.

Watch a video clip of Armstrong's Little Women below:...

Actor who played many major Shakespearean roles on the stage

Few actors played as many major Shakespearean roles as did Paul Rogers, a largely forgotten and seriously underrated performer, who has died aged 96. It was as though he was barnacled in those parts, undertaken at the Old Vic in the 1950s, by the time he played his most famous role, the vicious paterfamilias Max in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at the Aldwych theatre in 1965 (and filmed in 1973).

Staunch, stolid and thuggish, with eyes that drilled through any opposition, Rogers's Max was a grumpy old block of granite, hewn on an epic scale, despite the flat cap and plimsolls – horribly real. Peter Hall's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company was monumental; everything was grey, chill and cheerless in John Bury's design, set off firstly by a piquant bowl of green apples and then by the savage acting.

The Homecoming...

And now Glenn's report from the New York Film Festival's tribute to Cate Blanchett.

When the powers that be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (my limited knowledge suggests they’re the organisation that runs the New York Film Festival) announced one of the recipients of this year’s special tributes would be Cate Blanchett it was probably hard to find anybody who’d argue against it. Granted, she had no films screening at the fest, but you just try and find anybody who doesn’t think her work in this summer’s Blue Jasmine was a career-topping and undeniably Oscar-bound achievement. A genuine “moment” for the acting craft that Blanchett herself would later acknowledge was like a magical culmination of her years in the profession and her favorite role yet.

After a pair of introductions the assembled audience watched a collection of long film clips to whet the appetite.

Cate Blanchett has already had a pretty great 2013, thanks to Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" and the Oscar buzz reverberating around her title performance. Now Blanchett's year is about to get even better.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced on Thursday that Blanchett will be the subject of a New York Film Festival Gala Tribute on Oct. 2. The festival will also honor Ralph Fiennes, whose film "The Invisible Woman" will screen during the prestigious film gathering. Fiennes' tribute will occur on Oct. 9.

"In the year that many critics are hailing her most recent -- and perhaps greatest –- performance (in 'Blue Jasmine'), the Film Society is delighted to celebrate the career of Cate Blanchett," Film Society of Lincoln Center executive director Rose Kuo said in a statement. "Since her breakthrough in 'Oscar and Lucinda' in 1997, Ms. Blanchett has consistently mesmerized audiences with some of the...

Calling all "Oscar and Lucinda" fans! The New York Film Festival has a reunion of sorts for you. Back in 1997 -- one year before her star-making role in "Elizabeth," that little-seen Australian romantic drama announced 28-year-old newcomer Cate Blanchett to the moviegoing public; the striking actress was then an unknown quantity beside the headlining name of her more seasoned co-star Ralph Fiennes, by then a two-time Oscar nominee and high-end heart-throb. Sixteen years later, Blanchett has done some catching up. The star, who currently chasing her sixth Oscar nomination for Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine," has been named as one of...

The first image from director David Michod’s (Animal Kingdom) second feature film, The Rover, has been released online. The futuristic western takes place in the Australian desert following a worldwide economic collapse and stars Guy Pearce as Eric, a man who has left everything, everyone and every semblance of human kindness behind him when a gang steals his last possession. Eric sets out to track them down and along the way is forced to enlist the help of a naïve, injured member of the gang named Rey (Robert Pattinson). Though the phrase “near-future, Australian-set western” automatically brings to mind George Miller’s masterful Mad Max series, Michod promises that The Rover is going to be “way more chillingly authentic and menacing” than those films. That’s some strong talk, but considering how great Animal Kingdom is, I’m inclined to take Michod’s word for it. Hit the jump...

Check out the latest casting news for the following pictures: Eva Mendes (Sin City) joins How to Catch a Monster, the directorial debut of Ryan Gosling that stars Christina Hendricks and Ben Mendelsohn. Jane Levy (Evil Dead) will join the horror thriller In a Dark Place, directed by Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day). The Rover begins production and rounds out their cast with Susan Prior (Animal Kingdom), Gillian Jones (Oscar and Lucinda), Anthony Hayes (Burning Man) and David Field (Chopper). Son of a Gun also adds new cast members by way of Alicia Vikander (Anna Karenina), Jacek Koman (The Great Gatsby) and Brenton Thwaites (Maleficent). Hit the jump for more on each picture and casting announcement. Bloody Disgusting reports that Mendes will join How to Catch a Monster along with Rob Zabrecky.  Set against the surreal backdrop of a vanishing town, a single mother of two is...

Production is underway on The Rover, starring Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson, in the South Australian outback.

The seven-week shoot began on January 29 and has already attracted the interest of local tabloid, The Advertiser, which ran on-set photos on its front page this week.

The film, written and directed by David Michôd, also stars Scoot McNairy (Argo, Killing Them Softly) who plays Pattinson's brother; Susan Prior (Animal Kingdom, Not Suitable for Children); Gillian Jones (Oscar and Lucinda, The Tree); Anthony Hayes (Burning Man, Animal Kingdom) and David Field (Chopper, Two Hands).

In a statement announcing the new cast, producers Liz Watts and David Linde said: "The South Australian desert environment can be a tough one to work in, particularly for those coming from a Northern Hemisphere winter but both the cast and crew have thrown themselves into the shoot. We are shooting in some of the most haunting and stunning landscapes in the world,...

Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney. Australian actor-writer-director Bille Brown, who performed on Broadway and the West End and in the films Killer Elite, The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader and Fierce Creatures, died Sunday in a Brisbane hospital. He was 61 and had been battling bowel cancer. William “Bille” Brown began his career in the early 1970s at the Queensland Theater Company with Geoffrey Rush, among others. In 1976 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in productions at London’s Aldwych and Haymarket Theaters and with the Chichester Festival Theater and English National Opera. He had two further engagements with the RSC, from 1986–88 and 1994–96. He was an artist-in-residence at the State University of New York in 1982 and made his Broadway debut in 1986 in Michael Frayn’s Wild Honey with Ian McKellen. He returned to Australia to live permanently in 1996. His Australian film credits include The Dish,...

French actress Emmanuelle Béart has been added to the cast of Australian film My Mistress alongside Harrison Gilbertson and Rachael Blake ahead of shooting later this month on the Gold Coast.

The film received Screen Australia funding in November. It’s directed by Stephen Lance and written by Top of the Lake’s Gerard Lee with production by Bran Nue Dae’s Robyn Kershaw and distributed by Transmission Films.

The announcement:

Internationally acclaimed French actress Emmanuelle Béart (A Heart in Winter, Nathalie, Manon of the Spring, Mission: Impossible) will join one of Australia’s rising international stars, AFI Award‐winning Harrison Gilbertson (U.S. independent film Haunt – in the title role opposite Jacki Weaver, Accidents Happen, Blessed, Beneath Hill 60, Conspiracy 365) and AFI Award‐winning actress Rachael Blake (Sleeping Beauty, Lantana, Hawke) in the seductive and touching new film My Mistress.

What starts as a beautiful and strangely innocent...

The Sydney Film School will host its festival with The Sapphires director Wayne Blair as keynote speaker for the event. Previous speakers at the event include Bruce Beresford, George Miller and Phillip Noyce.

The announcement:

Sydney Film School announces that the 16th Sydney Film School Festival will take place 11 and 12 July with Wayne Blair, director of ‘The Sapphires’, featuring as the keynote speaker for the event. Blair will speak at the Awards Screening Night taking place on Thursday July 12th (7pm start) at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington.

Wayne Blair’s debut feature film ‘The Sapphires’ recently had its world premiere at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival receiving a lengthy standing ovation. The Sapphires (screening nationally from August 9th) is about an all-girl Aboriginal singing group who tour Vietnam during the war as Australia’s answer to The Supremes.

Blair is also known for his work on the other side of...

When he was a child, Ralph Fiennes was given the gift of Shakespeare. His mother loved recordings of the Bard and other spoken-word pieces and would play them for her young son. These recordings gave him the freedom and permission to become an artist—and one to whom Shakespeare seems a first language. Now known by the world as Voldemort in the "Harry Potter" franchise, the British actor has over the years caught the attention of Americans for such projects as "Schindler's List," "Quiz Show," "The English Patient," "Oscar and Lucinda," "The Constant Gardener," and—for those who might doubt he has a sense of humor—"Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," as the voice of the gold-digging aristo Victor Quartermaine.Fiennes currently stars as the titular Roman general and family man in the film version of "Coriolanus," which Fiennes also directed. Not surprisingly, the classical language slips off his tongue.

You've seen the portraits in museums: Most royalty, while wielding the most power, were not the best-looking bunch (unless they just had really bitter and vindictive portrait artists).

But while it's easy to glamorize someone's life when their entire existence is predicated on living in opulent mansions and having every wish attended to, we've noticed that Hollywood and their European equivalents tend to take certain liberties with its treatment of royalty, sexing them up exponentially.

With the release of the Oscar favorite "The King's Speech," in which Colin Firth's King George VI tries to overcome a stammer, here are nine actors and actresses that will make you long for the days of feudal systems and cruel, unending subjugation.

9. Emily Blunt, 'The Young Victoria' (2009)

The only film to list both Martin Scorsese and Sarah, Duchess of York as co-producers, "The Young Victoria" looks at the early life of...

I love that a heated discussion over Titanic’s infamous Oscar sweep of 1998 has already begun over at Laurent’s excellent retrospective. I guess it’s just the nature of this particular film. There is something about Titanic that hits a raw nerve in people and they feel a need to defend/criticize it so passionately.

As it happens, I fall in the ‘unconditional love’ category and I’m not afraid to admit it. To this day I have a passion for Titanic, a film that so perfectly matches what a glorious, spellbinding, big spectacle romance against an historic backdrop should be, and those films are so rare, especially when they are made with such precise and meticulous detail from James Cameron.

We shouldn’t be embarrassed over how much we loved Titanic in the 90′s. We should embrace it. So as our third ‘Choose The Winners’ article, we are...

Having explored over the last two days both the Box Office Sweet Spot and the directors with the highest average box-office over the course of their careers, I can't quite let it go until I round up the directors with the lowest box-office average, too (since 1980). Again, to be included on the list, the director must have made at least four films, and I also excluded those directors who didn't have at least four movies in the English language (just because a director like Tom Twyker or Hayao Miyazaki may not be commercially successful in America doesn't mean he hasn't been incredibly successful overseas).

I think the trend that you're most likely to pick up on from this list is that you don't have to make scads of money at the box office to be considered a successful or very well-respected director. Many of the directors on this list have Oscars,...

We did this with Streisand last month and wasn't it a neat way to snapshot an entire career? For Cate Blanchett, currently "Maid Marion Loxley" in Robin Hood, this overview wasn't as simple. She works so frequently that it had to be narrowed down. This career overview is restricted to films wherein she has a leading role or practically dominates in a barely-not-leading supporting role.

The Wedding Party (1997) | Oscar and Lucinda (1997) | Elizabeth (1998)

An Ideal Husband (1999) | The Gift (2000) | Bandits (2001)

Charlotte Gray (2001) | Heaven (2002) | Veronica Guerin (2003)

The Missing (2003) | The Aviator (2004) | Little Fish (2005)

The Good German (2006) | Notes on a Scandal (2006) | I'm Not There (2007)

Elizabeth the Golden Age (2007) | Benjamin Button (2008) | Robin Hood (2010)

ShareQuestions for you

1. Didn't you immediately miss Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) while looking at those? Kinda makes you wonder if she was meant to glitter from the ensemble rather than go for the floating head star vehicle...

Everett Collection Peter Carey

At the New York Public Library last night, as part of the “Live From the Nypl” series, Peter Carey, the Australian novelist, was invited for a talk that turned into a memorial for literate culture. “We have forgotten how to read,” said Carey, author of the novels “Oscar and Lucinda” and “Illywhacker” and two-time Booker Prize winner. “I was thinking recently how extraordinary it is that we really do accept that the population generally is not going to read great literature.”

Carey was being interviewed by fellow writers Edmund White and Claire Messud about his latest novel, “Parrot and Olivier in America” (Knopf), a loose fictionalization of the life of Alexis de Tocqueville. Picking up on Carey’s comments, White said, “I lived in France for 16 years, and I always say France has many great readers and not too many great writers at this moment. And...

Catherine Zeta-Jones is in negotiations to star in the Harry Houdini indie biopic Death Defying Acts opposite Guy Pearce. Described as a lavish period film, Acts centers on Houdini during the height of his career in 1926, when he toured the world, amassing large crowds with his elaborate and daring escape performances. Zeta-Jones is set to play an exotic psychic with whom Houdini embarks on a passionate affair. Helmed by Gillian Armstrong (Little Women, Oscar and Lucinda), the picture is scheduled to start filming in the U.K. later this summer. Tony Grisoni and Brian Ward penned the screenplay.

SYDNEY -- For his second feature, director Rowan Woods again proves himself a master at creating a strong mood. Despite echoes of the bleak territory visited in his debut feature The Boys, a grim dissection of the violence in Australia's underclass, Little Fish manages moments of great beauty thanks in no small measure to the presence of lead actress Cate Blanchett in her first Australian role since 1997's Oscar and Lucinda.

After a series of high-profile international roles including her Oscar-winning turn in The Aviator, Little Fish sees Blanchett shake off her fondness for period pieces and do something rare: play her age and speak with her own accent. Despite dark themes of crime, moral compromise and drug addiction, this midbudget Australian film from a fine indie team should benefit from Blanchett's presence and see solid boxoffice interest on the international art house circuit. The film will be released in Australia on Sept. 8.

Little Fish is set in Sydney's multicultural southwest, an area rife with drug addiction and organized crime. Woods' talent lies in investing s unlikable characters with a huge well of heart and soul. Tracy Heart (Blanchett) is doing it tough. She's kicked a serious drug habit, but the dark, tenuous world of addiction is all around her.

The streets are littered with junkies: Her own brother, troubled amputee Ray (Martin Henderson from "Bride & Prejudice"), is caught up in the drug trade; her weakened father figure (Hugo Weaving from the Matrix and Lord of the Rings films) is bent in a web of heroin abuse; and ex-boyfriend Johnny (Dustin Nguyen) has returned after four years in Canada. Trying to start a new life, Tracy soon finds that the past is about to catch up with her.

This is a tough film grounded in authenticity with the feel of Ken Loach's realist British cinema. Genre conventions are in place -- drug deals, murder, criminals -- yet Little Fish is a character study. Screenwriter Jacquelin Perske skillfully steers the narrative into the interconnected stories of those around Blanchett's Tracy.

Family is at the core of the film. As Tracy becomes increasingly desperate, she's pulled apart by two disparate but related forces. Her brother's illicit drug deals claw her back into the old life, while her mother (a wonderfully crackling turn from veteran actress Noni Hazlehurst) works to keep Tracy on the straight and narrow. This clash provides the film's central dynamic from which the characters' flaws are explored.

Little Fish has a grimy authenticity. Homes feel rigorously lived in, and the costume design is scrubbed clean of even the remotest sense of glamour. Thankfully, none of this stops Woods from taking visual flights of fancy. Danny Ruhlmann's cinematography adds an almost surreal gleam, swirling and tilting as it conveys Tracy's inner conflict. Similarly, the strong presence of the haunting score by Nathan Larson (Boys Don't Cry, The Woodsman) gently tugs the film away from a purely realist approach.

Blanchett is loose, natural and wholly believable as Tracy, a character she imbues with a kind of bruised tenderness. Weaving's hopeless junkie is a brave turn from an always-brave actor: He's physically transformed, rail-thin with a nasty goatee beard and hurtles through a bundle of different emotions as a sly seducer one moment, a desperate wreck the next.

Confrontational, raw and always compelling, Little Fish is a film of rare power and conviction.

LITTLE FISH

Icon Films (Australia)

Film Finance Corporation Australia presents

A Porchlight Films production in association with Mullis Capital Independent, the New South Wales Film and Television Office, Myriad Pictures and Dirty Films

Credits:

Director: Rowan Woods

Screenwriter: Jacquelin Perske

Producers: Vincent Sheehan, Liz Watts, Richard Keddie

Executive producers: Robert Mullis, Barrie M. Osborne, Kirk D'Amico, Marion Pilowsky

Director of photography: Danny Ruhlmann

Production designer: Luigi Pittorino

Costumes: Melinda Doring

Music: Nathan Larson

Editors: Alexandre De Franceschi, John Scott

Cast:

Tracy Heart: Cate Blanchett

Lionel Dawson: Hugo Weaving

Brad Thompson: Sam Neill

Ray Heart: Martin Henderson

Janelle Heart: Noni Hazlehurst

Johnny: Dustin Nguyen

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 114 minutes...

MELBOURNE, Australia -- The cream of Australia's film industry turned out in force for the world premiere of Little Fish, Cate Blanchett's first Australian film since 1997's Oscar and Lucinda, as it opened the 54th Melbourne International Film Festival on Wednesday night. Director Rowan Woods accompanied Blanchett's co-stars Hugo Weaving and Noni Hazlehurst down the red carpet outside the city's Village Theater, along with screenwriter Jacquelin Perske and producers Liz Watts, Richard Keddie and Vincent Sheehan. The film, set against a backdrop of drugs and organized crime in Sydney's southwest, is the first Australian film to have screened after passing through the Film Finance Corp. Australia's new evaluation system, which assesses films for their audience potential and creative worth.