Jacki weaves her movie magic again

Weaver and Robert De Niro play the parents of a depressed teacher in Silver Linings Playbook.

Matt Buchanan and Scott Ellis, The Sydney Morning Herald, report

Jacki  Weaver has emerged as a contender for another Academy Award nomination.

After winning acclaim for playing the terrifying crime matriarch "Smurf" Cody in Animal Kingdom, the veteran Australian actress's latest Hollywood movie is David O'Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, a poignant comedy about a depressed teacher (played by Bradley Cooper) who is released from a psychiatric hospital into the care of his parents (Robert De Niro and Weaver).

Fairfax critic Garry Maddox reports that the film has won the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, a prize previously picked up by such future Oscar winners as The King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire and American Beauty.

The film industry bible, the Hollywood Reporter, says Silver Linings Playbook is a serious contender for a batch of nominations, including Weaver for best supporting actress.

Another actress being widely tipped to feature during the awards season is Quvenzhane Wallis, who stars as a sparky six-year-old named Hushpuppy in the American swamp fantasy Beasts of the Southern Wild.

One of the year's most original movies, Beasts opened modestly in Australia last weekend, taking just $121,000 in 24 cinemas.

The biggest splash in cinemas was the animated Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, which took almost $4 million.

The Sapphires a box office smash hit on opening weekend

Aussie flick The Sapphires has been a big success on opening. Picture: Hopscotch Source: Supplied

Neala Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, reports

The Sapphires has enjoyed the best opening for an Australian movie in almost two years, taking $2.32 million at the box office last weekend.

The feel-good musical drama about an all-girl Aboriginal singing group sent off to Vietnam to entertain the troops has put a sparkle into an otherwise dull 2012 at the local box office, pulling in the biggest crowds since teen action film Tomorrow When the War Began opened with $3.86 million in September 2010 and beating the $1.78 million debut of last year’s runaway success story Red Dog.

The Sapphires’ total gross now sits at $2.59 million, with distributor Hopscotch/eOne expecting it to reach $3.4 million by the end of the week.

“The reports we’ve been getting from cinemas is people applauding after each session,” said Troy Lum, managing director of Hopscotch/eOne. “Word of mouth seems to be very strong, so we hope the film is going to have really good legs.”

The performance puts the film at No.2 on the weekend chart behind The Dark Knight Rises with $2.74 million. Lum believes Batman can be defeated: “We might catch it by the end of the week,” he predicted.

“Batman is showing on more screens (500-plus) than we are, but we’re pleased as punch. It’s very difficult in this very studio-driven environment to get a result like this. When you’re punching above your weight the way The Sapphires is, it’s really heartening.”

The Aussie flick has benefitted from advance interest overseas, with a well-received premiere at Cannes, Hollywood heavyweights the Weinstein Company buying the rights for a US release and star Jessica Mauboy catching the eye of American Idol impresario Simon Cowell.

Such “international approval” can do wonders for a film locally – as happened when Melbourne crime drama Animal Kingdom picked up US awards buzz – but Lum believes Australian audiences make up their own minds.
“I don’t think Australians buy into that stuff unless they see it and they think it’s good. While it’s helpful the film played well at Cannes, if Australian audiences didn’t take to it, it wouldn’t have generated the kind of result it did on the weekend.

“My feeling with Aussie films is that people need that personal recommendation. People need to be told, ‘Yes, this is a good movie, you should go and see it’. That has happened with this film – we screened it a lot beforehand, really got it out there and people are talking about it. That’s the best advertisement for a movie.

“The unknown variable for us was whether the film was going to play in the suburban and regional areas. There’s always the danger that you get a really strong result out of the urban areas and not so much anywhere else. But the most heartening thing about the result for us is it is spread out all over Australia. It’s not just playing to upmarket audiences, it’s been embraced by middle-Australia.”

By capturing suburban and regional audiences, The Sapphires has maximised its chances of reaching Red Dog-levels of success.

“We’ve always had pretty high expectations, so I don’t think we could raise them any more,” Lum said. “When you see it and feel it, it’s hard to dampen those expectations. If you see this movie, you feel compelled to tell other people about it.

“No matter how much money you spend on advertising or marketing, that’s really the key.”

The Sapphires opened on 275 screens, slightly wider than recent local hits Mao’s Last Dancer ($2.75 million off 266 screens in 2009) and Red Dog (which at its height was showing on 268 screens).

Red Dog opened on the same August weekend last year with $1.78 million, then increased its takings the following two weekends. It went on to gross $21.3 million, just scraping into the Top 10 of overall box-office takings in 2011 and becoming the eighth highest-grossing Australian film of all time.

However, Red Dog was well ahead of the pack; the next best-performed Australian films of 2011 being 3D cave-diving thriller Sanctum ($3.9 million) and child-migration drama Oranges and Sunshine ($3.8 million). Sanctum, backed by Avatar maestro James Cameron, travelled best, taking $103 million worldwide.

Australian films last year accounted for 3.9 per cent of total box office of $1.09 billion. That was down on the 4.5 per cent of total box office in 2010, when nine Australian films grossed over $2 million, led by Tomorrow When the War Began, Bran Nue Dae, Animal Kingdom and The Kings of Mykonos.

So far in 2012, wedding comedy A Few Best Men (a co-production with the UK team behind Death at a Funeral) leads the way, its $1.8 million opening weekend in January leading to a total gross of more than $5 million.
The Joel Edgerton-starring drama Wish You Were Here is next best with $1.46 million, followed by Any Questions for Ben?, the disappointing comeback from the makers of The Castle, which took $1.43 million.
Animated sequel Happy Feet Two was released last Boxing Day, but took the bulk of its $10.4 million this year.

The Australian movie industry still has some tricks left up its sleeve for 2012.

September 6 sees the release of Kath & Kimderella and Bait.

The former, the movie debut for TV’s beloved foxy morons Kath & Kim, should be able to ride its built-in audience and heavy nation-wide promotion to a strong opening weekend. Bait, a 3D thriller in which Xavier Samuel and Julian McMahon are trapped in a supermarket with a killer Great White shark, is likely to follow in the footsteps of Sanctum and do impressive business internationally. It will have its world premiere on September 1 at the Venice Film Festival.

Mental, which reunites Muriel’s Wedding pair PJ Hogan and Toni Collette, will close the Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday and open the Australian International Movie Convention on the Gold Coast on Sunday. A convention for distributors and exhibitors, AIMC last year built up plenty of advance buzz for A Few Best Men.

Mental opens nationally on October 4.

With Baz Luhrmann’s Warner Bros-backed The Great Gatsby moving to mid-year, local cricket-tour comedy Save Your Legs! (out January 24) appears set to have summer to itself.

The Sapphires also opened in France last weekend (box office results not yet available), with Britain and US releases to follow from November.

Best Australian movie opening weekends of the last three years

1. Tomorrow When the War Began – $3.86 million – Sept 2010
2. Mao’s Last Dancer – $2.75 million – Oct 2009
3. The Sapphires – $2.32 million – Aug 2012
4. Happy Feet Two – $2.21 million – Dec 2011
5. A Few Best Men – $1.83 million – Jan 2012
6. The Kings of Mykonos: Wog Boy 2 – $1.83 million – May 2010
7. Red Dog – $1.78 million – Aug 2011
8. Bran Nue Dae – $1.61 million – Jan 2010
9. Sanctum – $1.6 million – Feb 2011
10. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole – $1.36 million – Sept 2010
11. Daybreakers – $1.06 million – Feb 2010
12. I Love You Too – $874,533 – May 2010
13. Oranges and Sunshine – $681,018 – June 2011
14. Animal Kingdom – $604,319 – June 2010
15. Beneath Hill 60 – $548,371 – April 2010

Enjoying life on 'the list'

"It's all happening so quickly and so weirdly" ... Joel Edgerton.

Giles Hardie, The Age, reports

Joel Edgerton is rapt yet philosophical about his 'overnight' success.

In the past year, Joel Edgerton has gone from Animal Kingdom, via Warrior and The Thing, to The Great Gatsby, becoming the next big thing in Hollywood on the way. But far from being an overnight sensation as some in the industry might perceive him to be, the actor, writer and director from Blacktown has worked diligently at his craft for decades in Australia.

''By the time I got any kind of real momentum in the States, I'd done a tonne of work here,'' he says. ''Now I feel equipped and I feel ready and yet at the same time people over there are saying this guy's a relatively new person.''

Instead of focusing all his energy on Hollywood, the 37-year-old will continue making films in Australia, too. In his latest, Wish You Were Here, Edgerton plays Dave Flannery, a family man whose holiday with his wife (Felicity Price) goes horribly wrong. Shifting back and forth in time, the film gradually reveals the details of a fateful night in Cambodia alongside the consequences back home in Australia. The story also reveals more about Edgerton than he is entirely comfortable with.

Despite being single, Edgerton says his character ''is a lot of me. So the tricky thing becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for me, I find that really hard. I'd rather hide behind accents and funny walks.''

Far from an inflated ego, success has given Edgerton a fresh sense of responsibility. ''There's the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor,'' he explains. ''There's almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put a bit of energy into actually setting a good example. If you're an idiot, if you're behaving badly, then forget rumours and gossip, just think about the examples you set for young children who are working on movies.''

As well as displaying this on-set maturity, Edgerton has developed a good nose for choosing worthy projects and characters that resonate, which is important now with big money offers flooding in. ''It's tricky,'' he says. ''I've never been standing at the top of the tree with tonnes of money thrown at me. I've never really had a profile. So in a way I have this 'nothing to lose' attitude. I don't want to blow it all now by suddenly taking the money and running, having a gun in my hand in every project and spitting out cheesy lines.''

In addition to on-camera success Edgerton has ''been writing a tonne of stuff for years and now it's all starting to come together. He has written One Night Stand for Fox, another unnamed script that will bring him home again to perform later this year, as well as planning to direct a third in the US early next year. ''It's a disturbing suburban Hitchcock-style thriller,'' he says.

Before that, Edgerton heads to the Middle East for a couple of months to work on Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's film about the Navy Seal team that caught Osama bin Laden, a topic he enjoys teasing journalists about: ''I could tell you loads … but I'm not allowed to.''

In high demand, Edgerton is now linked seemingly to every major Hollywood project announced, although big-name roles aren't his ambition. ''I'm on the list that I thought I'd never be on,'' he says. ''I'm not sitting here thinking, 'God, I might get this part' or 'is it too late for me to play Hamlet?' It's really about: who do I get to work with? There's so many people on that list.''

The schoolyard dreamer can be seen lurking within Edgerton as he considers the opportunities that now seem possible. ''I got sent something the other day that Clint Eastwood's directing. I've sent a few audition tapes for Clint's movies in the past but now it feels like maybe I could actually work with him.

''It's all happening so quickly and so weirdly, and it's all shifted so dramatically,'' Edgerton says. ''I don't want to get too bogged down in the seriousness of it all, I want to have the gratitude for it all, because it's kind of awesome.''

WISH YOU WERE HERE

GENRE Drama.
CRITICAL BUZZ Great slow-burn thriller that twists with every new revelation about an ecstasy-fuelled night in Cambodia and its impact on life back in suburban Australia.
STARS Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price, Teresa Palmer.
DIRECTORS Kieran Darcy-Smith.
RATED MA15+.
RELEASE April 25.

Aussie actor lands role in 300 follow-up: reports

Sullivan Stapleton has reportedly been cast in the follow-up to 300. Photo: Roger Cummins

Matthew Burgess, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton is set to star in the follow-up to the 2006 hit action film 300.

Variety reports the Animal Kingdom star is in final negotiations to take a lead role in the film, which is being written by Zack Snyder, the director of the original film.

It is expected he will play Persian 'god-king' Xerxes.

While the follow-up was originally tipped to be a sequel, Variety reports the filmmakers are "still figuring out its positioning" and that plot details are being kept secret.

It is reported the follow-up is yet to be titled, but was previously known as 300: Battle of Artemisia. Movie website imdb.com still lists the film under that name.

Stapleton starred as Craig Cody, one of the three brothers, in David Michod's 2010 crime drama Animal Kingdom. That film, inspired by the 1988 Walsh Street killings, took $5 million at the Australian box office and earned Jacki Weaver an Academy Award nomination.

Stapleton will soon be seen on the big screen in The Gangster Squad, a period film about the mafia in Los Angeles.

The Gangster Squad is due to be released in Australia towards the end of this year.

Jacki Weaver celebrates 50 years of acting

Jacki Weaver has been acting for 50 years. Source: HWT Image Library

Fiona Byrne, The Herald Sun, reports

Jacki Weaver has reached a career highpoint, as she celebrates her 50th year as an actor.

"November 1962 is when I first played Cinderella, I was 15. 50 years -- god!" Weaver said at the Qantas Spirit of Australia party in LA yesterday.

Weaver, 64, who was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role in Animal Kingdom last year, has filmed four US movies since the Oscars and has three more movies lined up this year.

She will also shoot a pilot for a HBO TV series as well as taking to the stage in New York later in the year.

Next month she will start shooting the film, Wild Oats with Shirley MacLaine.

"She is divine. I have met her a few times and she is gorgeous," Weaver said.

She recently finished filming The Silver Linings Playbook in which she played Robert De Niro's wife and Bradley Cooper's mother.

"I was perfectly content with my career (before Animal Kingdom), I was never really out of work and I used to work really hard," she said.

"But I never expected to walk down the street in LA and get recognised all the time.

"I get more recognition here, every second stranger stops me, whereas at home I am just the old bag lady in Kings Cross with my shopping trolley."

She said her publisher was urging her to put pen to paper about her Hollywood fairytale.

"I think is it fair to say David Michod (Animal Kingdom director) has changed my life. Sometimes I think it could all evaporate tomorrow and I would not mind," she said, adding she has read about 50 film scripts in the past year.

"Thirty years ago I would have had more stamina, but I would have been more anxious about whether it would last.

"I think I have more grace because I am older and can accept what happens," she said.

Fiona Byrne travelled to LA as a guest of Qantas

Jacki Weaver's wild ride continues

The Daily Telegraph reports

THEY could almost be sisters - two quick-witted screen stalwarts not afraid to speak their minds.

So it's only fitting that Jacki Weaver has nabbed the role of Shirley MacLaine's best friend in a new US indie comedy.

It was yesterday revealed the Aussie Oscar nominee has signed on to star in Wild Oats, about two old women who flee their small Ohio town for Las Vegas after receiving a social security cheque for $900,000 instead of $900.

Alan Arkin will play the male lead and The Whole Ten Yards' Howard Deutch will direct.

The coup proves the 64-year-old is continuing to capitalise on her "overnight success" status in Tinseltown, where she moved earlier this year with partner Sean Taylor.

Weaver's once-erratic career has skyrocketed since her monstrous turn as a crime matriarch in socio-psycho drama Animal Kingdom.

Hers was the Cinderella story of this year's Academy Awards, even though she lost the best supporting actress gong to The Fighter's Melissa Leo.

Since then she has filmed Jason Segel comedy The Five Year Engagement and is currently working on the Park Chan-wook thriller Stoker, alongside Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska.

She has also just landed a part in The Silver Linings Playbook playing Bradley Cooper's mother.

Aussie films flavour of the year overseas

Story by Jessica Tapp / ABC News website

For the first time in a decade, Australian films have featured at six of the world's premiere international film festivals this year. The head of Screen Australia, Ruth Harley, says Australian filmmakers and their films are becoming more popular every year, thanks in part to the Federal Government's producer offset tax incentive. The head of the Australian Film Critics Association, Peter Krausz, says the success is also the result of hard work, and increased international experience.

PETER CAVE: For the first time in just over a decade, several Australian films have made it into six premier international film festivals.

"Red Dog", a film set in the Australian outback has been the most popular film both at home and abroad.

Critics say Australia's success this year is due to the filmmakers choosing scripts with a broader international appeal.

Jessica Tapp reports.

JESSICA TAPP: It's the audience every film-maker dreams of - the A-list film festivals are held every year in Berlin, Toronto, Cannes, Venice and Korea.

This year, Australia has films screening at all of them.

The head of Screen Australia, Ruth Harley, says Australian filmmakers and their films are becoming more popular every year.

RUTH HARLEY: I think one of the things that's helped is that Australia has got a buzz around it and I think that's because we've had a number of films over the last two or three years attracting significant international notice.

JESSICA TAPP: Ruth Harley says financial incentives like the producer offset, which offers a 40 per cent tax rebate to producers, has helped.

RUTH HARLEY: I do think the producer offset has been really influential and not just because of you know of getting very large films made here, like the Great Gatsby and Happy Feet and things like that, but because there are films, you know we've got bigger scale films coming out of the domestic industry.

JESSICA TAPP: The head of the Australian Film Critics Association, Peter Krausz, says it's not just about the money.

He says the success is the result of hard work and increased international experience.

PETER KRAUSZ: It shows the amount of work that has gone into the writing of Australian films over the last few years and also of making films that tap into a broader audience so they've become more successful.

JESSICA TAPP: Peter Krausz says being selected for an A-list screening will itself provide a huge boost to the Australian film industry.

PETER KRAUSZ: It doesn't matter so much which film festival a film is screened at - to be selected and to be part of a film festival already gives a film a lot of kudos and a lot of marketing potential but also demonstrates that there is a broader audience out there that would be interested in that film but certainly Toronto, Cannes, Venice, Berlin are some of the top festivals.

JESSICA TAPP: Peter Krausz says this year's result is part of an ongoing trend in the Australian film industry. He expects the success to continue.

PETER KRAUSZ: So really in Australia, we're punching above our weight in many respects with the percentage of films that are achieving some sort of success and I think you'll find that with films like the Animal Kingdom, Red Dog, The Hunter and so on, that these are films that have been very well written and very carefully produced but also with the idea in mind that there is a very large audience potential out there and that they will appeal to people overseas because of the ideas and the universality of some of their themes.