8th February 2008.
Well the first blog down under for 2008 is a short one. You see January is a funny old time in Sydney. Summer has kicked in, the crazy tropical weather doesn’t know whether to be gloriously sunny or bombard us with lightning storms and torrential rain. Every other business seems to close down for the most part of the month and the beaches are jammed packed with tourists. Add to this, thousands of people descend on the city for the NYE celebrations followed by the Sydney Festival. This year brought us a Beach Boy-tastic free gig by Brian Wilson, Bjork belting out her hits on the Sydney Opera House steps, Sufjan Stevens playing at the beautiful State Theatre and the world’s best theatre, art and performance happening everywhere. Add to that Australia’s travelling music festival the Big Day Out making its stopover and Australia Day taking place at the end of the month and you have a busy month on your hands. Not much time for movies you would think and to a certain extent you would be right, but January was also the month that delivered Grindhouse to the discerning Sydney based cinema-goer.
 Sydney is pretty much starved of independent cinemas. A couple of years ago saw the closure of the Valhalla Cinema, Sydney’s Scala, and the Chauvel. After much protesting the Government invested money in the cinema and the revamped Chauvel reopened last year. It is here where Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s horror double bill made its Australia debut for a two week run. The screenings also inspired a collection of other Grindhouse screenings, each accompanied by an episode of the vintage Flash Gordon television series. How could you resist any of the following? Umberto Lenzi’s Woman From Deep River aka Cannibal Ferox, Jack Cardif’s demented The Mutations, Renee Dalder’s 1976 foreruner to the Eighties slasher film, Massacre at Central High and the delightfully gory Incredible Melting Man.
In terms of announcements there is good and bad news. On the bright side
Alex Proyas, director The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot has announced his next project Knowing will be shot in Melbourne. The film stars Nicolas Cage who plays a teacher who discovers a time capsule buried in the Ground years previous. He soon realises that a lot of the predictions that the children made have come true including a recent tragedy. Upon further investigation he discovers that his family is linked to some upcoming events that will change the world forever. The plot sounds worrying like the atrocious Next but with Proyas on board as a director lets hope that Cage’s star power isn’t given more importance than a decent, believable plot. The film begins shooting at Central Studios in March.
 On the down side George Miller’s Justice League of America has fallen victim to the writer’s strike that is presently crippling Hollywood. Despite the fact that pre production was underway and many of the superheroes had been cast Warners chose not to let the actors options lapse and put the project on indefinite hold. The actors, including Adam Brody, model Megan Gale and Arnie Hammer Jnr are free to take jobs and potentially leave the filmmakers in the lurch if the project does get green lit later in the year. Many reasons have been given for the film’s false start, apparently Warners Execs like Kieran and Michele Mulroney’s script but think it needs more work before the film can shoot. Tax breaks have also been mentioned but for the moment, as Variety has said, Justice League is no longer faster than a speeding bullet! Watching the news today it seems that the strike may well be over so it will be interesting to see what happens.
That’s it for the moment so until next time, when I’ll look at the state of the horror film on Aussie DVD.
Be lucky
Dave.
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