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While Cate Shortland came on our radar with 2004’s “Somersault,” she had a healthy TV career prior to that, helming episodes of “The Secret Life Of Us” and “Bad Cop, Bad Cop.” And between “Somersault” and her 2012’s feature “Lore,” she helmed the TV movie “The Silence.” Now, she’s set to embark on her biggest small screen effort yet.

Continue reading Cate Shortland To Direct 8-Part TV Miniseries ‘The Monaro’ at The Playlist.

Cate Shortland on the set of 'Berlin Syndrome'.

Berlin Syndrome filmmaker Cate Shortland is prepping an eight-part series for Matchbox Pictures.

Titled The Monaro, the series will focus on six women in the 1830s and is based on a true crime case, the director told If.

Shortland will shoot in the titular region, east of the Snowy Mountains, where she also shot her debut feature, Somersault.

.It.s one of my favourite places in the world to shoot so I wanted to do something again there,. the helmer said..

Shortland is an experienced writer for TV, having written episodes of The Slap, Devil.s Playground, Deadline Gallipoli and The Kettering Incident, but this will mark the first series she has directed since The Secret Life of Us in 2003.

She also helmed TV movie The Silence, starring Richard Roxburgh and co-written by Picnic at Hanging Rock.s Alice Addison,...

If you're a fan of Teresa Palmer (Lights Out, Hacksaw Ridge, Warm Bodies), you're not going to want to miss Berlin Syndrome because she gives her best performance yet. I had a chance to see the movie at Sundance, and I thought it was a solidly made thriller. This is also a really great trailer that perfectly captures what this movie is. 

While holidaying in Berlin, Australian photojournalist, Clare meets Andi, a charismatic local man and there is an instant attraction between them. A night of passion ensues. But what initially appears to be the start of a romance suddenly takes an unexpected and sinister turn when Clare wakes the following morning to discover Andi has left for work and locked her in his apartment. An easy mistake to make, of course, except Andi has no intention of letting her go again. 

In my review, I said:

"The film is...

“Berlin Syndrome” is a different kind of serial-killer thriller: one that slows the predator/prey process down in order to focus on the clinical and psychological details. Imagine a version of “The Silence Of The Lambs” that’s entirely about Buffalo Bill and Catherine Martin, the woman he traps in his pit. More importantly, imagine if the post-‘Lambs’ wave of movies about murderous madmen cared more about the would-be victims than their tormentors.

Continue reading Cate Shortland’s ‘Berlin Syndrome’ Starring Teresa Palmer Is An Unbearably Intense, Slow Burn Thriller [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Chicago – Of the various genres of films, the psychological thriller is one of my holy grails. A story that highlights the psychology of its characters and their wobbly emotional states, few modern filmmakers dare to compete with the masterminds – Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and more recently David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky – or fail when trying to.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” – along with films like “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Se7en,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Pi,” “The Shining,” “Memento,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Misery” and “The Usual Suspects” – do the genre true justice. Fast forward to today, though, when we ask ourselves: Who is Joel Edgerton?

He’s an Australian actor – yes, an actor and not a writer or director (until now) – who you may or may not know. He’s on the poster for 2011’s “Warrior” with Tom Hardy and...

Toronto International Film Festival. Glenn is in Australia but he's seen Monday's premiere "Lore".

Australia isn’t a regular player in the Academy’s annual game of Best Foreign Language Film. We’ve only submitted five films prior to 2012: Clara Law’s Floating Life (1996), which I have never seen; Steve Jacobs’ La Spagnola (2001), which is fun, if slight, immigrant comedy; Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes (2006) a fabulous film that was the first ever filmed in native Aboriginal dialects; Tony Ayres’ The Home Song Stories (2007), which features an incredible performance by Joan Chen; and Samson & Delilah (2009), Warwick Thornton’s groundbreaking indigenous drama about two teens escaping their remote lives only to stumble upon tragedy at every turn. Thornton’s film was the closest Australia has ever come to snagging a nomination, having managed to find a spot on the nine-wide shortlist. As great as that film was, however, its...

After impressing audiences with the quietly devastating Somersault in 2004, Cate Shortland (pictured) followed up that effort with the 2006 ABC TV telemovie The Silence, starring Richard Roxburgh and Emily Barclay. After quite the absence, Shortland's now back behind the camera, however, with a new film that has just begun shooting in Germany.   The film is called Lore and it's a co-production with Germany (and UK participation), based on Rachel Seiffert's Booker-nominated novel, The Dark Room, which explores the dark terrain of Nazi-ruled Germany and the Holocaust.   Adapted for the screen by Shortland and British writer Robin Mukherjee, the film is set in the spring of 1945 as the German front collapses and the Allied forces take control.

The Hangover: Part Two

Opens: May 26th 2011

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifinakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong

Director: Todd Phillips

Summary: Phil, Stu, Alan and Doug travel to exotic Thailand for Stu’s wedding. After the unforgettable bachelor party in Las Vegas, Stu is taking no chances and has opted for a safe, subdued pre-wedding brunch. However, things don’t always go as planned.

Analysis: It really wasn't until about three months before its release that Warner Brothers realised "The Hangover" was going to be a hit. Test screening response was through the roof, while the trailer had great reaction after premiering at ShoWest and online. About that time they commissioned director Todd Phillips, along with his "Old School" and "Road Trip" scribe Scot Armstrong, to pen a sequel. Yet they still waited to see how the first one went before fully committing to the follow-up.

The wait didn't last long.

SYDNEY -- A single crime-scene snapshot paints 1,000 dreadful words, and The Silence expertly taps into the mysterious allure of a vintage photo collection to tell the story of a traumatized cop's redemption.

The enduring fascination with police procedurals guarantees this moody Australian mystery an audience, and an artful mounting by the team behind the coming-of-age drama Somersault broadens its appeal beyond the "Law & Order" fan club.

Originally made as a two-part TV drama for Australia's public broadcaster, the ABC, Toronto is screening a feature-length version that will air on pay TV in Australia this year.

As with the dreamy Somersault, director Cate Shortland uses textured visuals and a varied palette to articulate the characters' feelings for them -- particularly useful for Detective Richard Treloar, who is gagged by the twin traits of being male and a cop.

The female perspective -- the screenwriters and producer also are women -- means Silence is just as much about the trouble Richard has communicating his inner torment as it is about solving the 40-year-old murder that anchors the elaborate plot.

Richard Roxburgh is superb as the repressed detective, whose life started to unravel the moment he failed to stop the fatal shooting of a female informant. Suspended from active duty, he now is working at the police museum, curating an exhibition of crime scene photography from the 1960s.

He seems at ease with the mute, two-dimensional nature of the dead-eyed stares and blood-spattered corpses that surround him, and soon becomes intrigued by a dark-haired beauty who repeatedly crops up in the background of a series of crime scenes.

Curiosity turns to obsession when he comes across a picture of her murdered body laid out on a Sydney Harbor wharf and he launches his own investigation into the cold case.

As he begins to spend more time with the dead, he pushes the living away, particularly his girlfriend and fellow cop, Helen (Alice McConnell), and a clumsy but compassionate police psychologist named Juliet (Essie Davis), assigned to counsel him back to mental health.

When his No. 1 suspect -- a retired cop and boxer (Tony Barry) -- turns up dead and Richard is hauled before his former colleagues in the homicide squad, his quest to tie the past to the present takes on a new urgency.

Shortland and her Somersault cinematographer Robert Humphreys have created a fractured world that mirrors Richard's crumbling psyche. Black and white photos seem to watch from every corner, little noir dramas from the city's past. The banality of the details belies the horror of the crimes. So it is with the familiar streetscapes through which Richard wanders, visions of the mysterious woman in the blue silk dress haunting the edges of the frame.

The atmospheric visuals are grounded by naturalistic performances, including a standout turn by Emily Barclay (who stars in Suburban Mayhem, also in Toronto) as Richard's smart-mouthed young assistant.

Beyond the densely plotted whodunit, Silence plays as an empathetic look at the way men construct layers of barricades to hide emotional pain. Even as the strands of the murder mystery are tied together in a too-neat bow, thanks to Roxburgh's raw vulnerability the final moments are heart-breaking.

THE SILENCE

ABC Enterprises

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. and Film Finance Corporation Australia present a Jan Chapman Films production

Credits:

Director: Cate Shortland

Screenwriters: Alice Addison, Mary Walsh

Producer: Jan Chapman

Executive producers: Miranda Dear, Scott Meek

Director of photography: Robert Humphreys

Production designer: Melinda Doring

Music: Anthony Partos

Co-producer: Anthony Anderson

Costume designer: Emily Seresin

Editor: Scott Gray

Cast:

Richard: Richard Roxburgh

Juliet: Essie Davis

Helen: Alice McConnell

Evelyn: Emily Barclay

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 104 minutes...