Australia's Oscars - the AACTAs -move to a prime time screening on Channel Ten

AACTA President Geoffrey Rush with Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe at the 2013 AACTA Awards. Source: News Limited

 

 

 Neala Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, reports

The AACTA Awards are moving to prime time.

The AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards have in past years struggled to find a broadcast home worthy of their place as Australia's answer to the Oscars, but today it was announced that Network Ten would broadcast the third AACTAs ceremony at 8.30pm on Thursday, January 30.

Announcing the partnership in Sydney today, AACTA President Geoffrey Rush said, "The reception and ongoing support of AACTA and the AACTA Awards activities both here and abroad over the past two years has been magnificent. I look forward to the continued opportunity to elevate and celebrate Australian screen achievements."

Ten was also the telecast partner for the awards in January of this year, but did not broadcast the event, hosted by Russell Crowe, until 9.30pm.

The big movie winners in 2013 were The Sapphires and Wish You Were Here, while Howzat! and Puberty Blues dominated the TV categories. Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman also attended the event.

Fourteen feature films are currently in competition for the 2014 AACTAs, with screenings to begin today so member voters can whittle the field down to the final nominees.

Next year's AACTAs will again be split over two days at Sydney's Star Event Centre, with an Awards Luncheon on January 28 focusing on more technical categories followed by the glitzy Awards Ceremony on January 30.

Cate Blanchett's conspiracy thriller Blackbird moves to the US after director David Mamet location scouted in Sydney

Cate Blanchett arrives at the Blue Jasmine premier in Deauville, France. Picture: Getty Source: Getty Images

 

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Cate Blanchett's JFK conspiracy thriller Blackbird, due to start filming in Australia in January, has moved offshore.

Writer-director David Mamet, who visited Sydney last week to scout locations, has decided to relocate the shoot to the US, according to Inside Film magazine.

The news comes just weeks after Blanchett confirmed the project had been green lit.

"We've been talking for a couple of years about doing this, so I'm thrilled it's actually happening,'' she said in Sydney during an interview to promote the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine, for which she is a hot favourite for an Oscar nomination.

"(Mamet) wouldn't be coming here if the crews weren't magnificent.''

Blanchett landed her first major stage role opposite Geoffrey Rush in the acclaimed 1992 Sydney Theatre production of Mamet's Oleanna, for which she won a critics award for best newcomer.

Blackbird would have been the first feature the 44-year-old actor had shot in Australia since Cabramatta crime drama Little Fish, with Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving, in 2005.

The harbour city would have doubled as Los Angeles in the film.

Penned by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright-turned filmmaker, it's the story of woman who discovers some dark family secrets when she attends the funeral of her grandfather, a Hollywood visual effects artist who moonlighted for US special ops agencies

Two other high profile international projects, however, are still due to start filming in the coming months.

Angelina Jolie's drama Unbroken, starring Jack O'Connell as US Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, rolls out on October 21, according to IF.

And the Kate Winslet and Judy Davis tragicomedy The Dressmaker begins production in rural Victoria early next year.

Set in the outback in the 1950s and billed as a gothic tale of love, hate and haute couture, it will be directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse (Proof).

Cate Blanchett to make her first film in Australia in eight years with David Mamet

Cate Blanchett in a scene from Woody Allen's film Blue Jasmine. Hopscotch Entertainment Source: Supplied

  

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Cate Blanchett is to film the JFK conspiracy thriller Blackbird in Sydney early next year.

It will be the first feature the Oscar-winning actress has shot in Australia since Cabramatta crime drama Little Fish, with Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving, in 2005.

The harbour city will double as Los Angeles in the film, written and directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, about a woman who discovers some dark family secrets when she attends the funeral of her grandfather, a Hollywood visual effects artist who moonlighted for US special ops agencies.

"We've been talking for a couple of years about doing this, so I'm thrilled it's actually happening,'' said Blanchett on the eve of the Australian premiere of Woody Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine, for which she is being widely tipped for an Oscar nomination.

Blackbird will be filmed in Sydney so Blanchett can be near her family - the 44-year-old actor has three sons with husband Andrew Upton - although some exteriors might be shot in LA.

"(David Mamet) wouldn't be coming here if the crews weren't magnificent,'' Blanchett said.

Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the acclaimed 1992 Sydney Theatre production of Mamet's Oleanna, for which she won a critics award for best newcomer.

During her time as co-artistic director of the STC, Blanchett and Upton attracted some of America's leading talent to Australia, including director Steven Soderbergh and Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Blanchett, who deemed Kevin Rudd's 2008 ideas summit so important she attended just days after giving birth to youngest son Ignatius, said she was disappointed climate change wasn't higher on the current election agenda.

"The nature of the 24-hour media cycle means that what we are getting at the moment, what we are being fed, is the gaffes and the slip-ups and the missteps,'' she said.

"And I am not particularly interested in feeding the white noise of that cycle with my own personal views.

"I think what the voting public is interested in, and I am part of that, is access to the policy details and the issues in order to make an informed decision.

"I certainly wish that climate change was on the election agenda because I know there are individuals on both parties that know what a pressing issue climate change is but the problem is it requires great leadership."

Cate Blanchett an Oscar 'cinch' for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett plays New York socialite Jasmine in the film Blue Jasmine. Source: Supplied

 

 

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Cate Blanchett has established an early lead in this year's Oscar race for best actress.

Industry commentators have been tipping Nicole Kidman's Grace Kelly and Naomi Watt's Princess Di as the sort of glamorous transformations that are likely to attract the attention of Academy voters.

But Blanchett's chances got a shot of adrenalin over the weekend with the record-breaking limited US debut of Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.

"No one has started 2013 Oscar talk quite like Cate Blanchett's unanimously acclaimed performance in Blue Jasmine,'' said respected industry website Deadline Hollywood.

The film had the best US per screen average of the year ($US100,000), eclipsing Allen's Oscar juggernaut of two years ago, Midnight In Paris.

"Oscar voters also got to see the film this weekend and turned out in droves to the Academy in Beverly Hills on Saturday afternoon with a near-capacity crowd that, according to my spies, gave the film a strong reception,'' wrote awards commentator Pete Hammond.

And packed special screening for the Screen Actors Guild Nominating Committee gave Blanchett and co-stars Andrew Dice Clay and Peter Sarsgaard a standing ovation.

The film is boasting a 85 per cent fresh rating on the critics' site Rotten Tomatoes.

"It's probably always risky to make a bold prediction about anything Oscar-related in the middle of summer'', wrote Hammond.

"But Blanchett seems a cinch for a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as a New York socialite in the midst of an emotional free fall after losing everything in a Madoff-like financial scandal perpetrated by her husband.

"It's the kind of complex stuff awards are made of."

Hammond is also tipping Allen and Blanchett's co-stars Sally Hawkins and Bobby Cannavale as possible Oscar contenders.

Blue Jasmine opens in Australia on September 5.

Cate Blanchett's powerhouse return in Woody Allen's new movie "Blue Jasmine"

Cate Blanchett at the New York premiere of her new Woody Allen movie Blue Jasmine with actor Michael Stuhlbarg, left, and comedian Andrew Dice Clay, right. Picture: Getty.

 
 

 The Daily Telegraph reports

When Cate Blanchett was last in New York, in between her nightly performances in the acclaimed touring production of "Uncle Vanya," she would slip uptown, to the East Side, to stealthily research her role in Woody Allen's latest, "Blue Jasmine."

In it, Blanchett plays Jasmine, a socialite in breakdown, a modern Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett played a few years ago on stage, the "detritus" of which she says stays with her), distraught and destroyed by the betrayal of her Bernie Madoff-like financier husband (Alec Baldwin). On Jasmine's stomping ground, the Upper East Side in Manhattan, Blanchett bent her ear to the neighbourhood's accents of affluence.

"I drank way too much wine sitting in restaurants by myself," says Blanchett, sitting in a New York office in a sleeveless emerald green top and skirt.

The polished refinement, though, is only a small element - a surface that cracks - to Blanchett's enormously layered performance in Blue Jasmine. Her Jasmine is, as she says, "a fragile, combustible cocktail of rage and guilt and fear." Penniless in San Francisco, where she's forced to stay at the working class home of her sister (Sally Hawkins), Jasmine is a vodka-swilling, Xanax-popping mess of self-loathing, denial and panic - a woman in free fall who can't bear to face herself in the mirror.

Like many of the 44-year-old actress' best performances, including her Oscar-nominated turn as Elizabeth I in 1998's Elizabeth, Jasmine is a mix of ruthlessness (she's brutal to those she considers inferior) and quaking vulnerability. The performance has been called a lock for an Academy Award nomination, which would be her sixth.

The role's complexity is partly in the film's A Streetcar Named Desire structure, toggling back and forth between before the downfall (in New York and the Hamptons) and after (San Francisco). Blanchett carefully charted Jasmine's unraveling across the flashbacks: "You don't want to flat line," she says. Jasmine is thus many people, radiantly elegant for some (Peter Sarsgaard, as a moneyed suitor) and condescendingly bitter to others (Bobby Cannavale, as her sister's blue-collar boyfriend).

"People talk about actors pretending, but you watch people and a certain person walks into a room, that person who's speaking to you one minute completely changes," says Blanchett. "We're constantly morphing into different outward manifestations of ourselves. That's what I find curious about people. It's just that as Jasmine progress through the story and her situation becomes increasingly desperate, those social identities become increasingly fractured and they're not able to be a cohesive, functioning person."

While Woody Allen is known for giving his actors wide berth, that such a powerhouse performance comes in a late film of his - a period mostly defined by lightness and international settings - comes as a staggering surprise. Though Blanchett immediately committed after a brief phone call from Allen, she, too, wondered which direction the film might go.

"The challenge was one of tone, particularly when I began to hear what the casting was like," she says, noting that comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Louis C.K. ended up giving unexpected, natural performances. "I did think: Is this more in the line of Bananas or Interiors? Which way is it going to swing? He did say to me three weeks in, 'You know, this is a serious movie.'"

Allen had proclaimed his interest to work with Blanchett at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. She was the obvious choice, he says, for the part he had written based on a ruined New York family his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, told him about. (Allen says Madoff "never figured remotely" into his thinking.)

"I needed a great actress and when you think of great actresses in the world, Cate comes into mind immediately," Allen said in an e-mail from France, where he's shooting his next film. "Cate is one of those people that are great, she was great before she met me and she will be great after. I really have very little to say to her."

Blanchett knew not to expect a lot of feedback from Allen, "so I wanted to come in with enough to offer," she says. Of the details of her character, she says: "None of this was discussed or seemed to be of interest to Woody."

"I'm not particularly needy as an actor," says Blanchett. "I'm not doing it because I want to be told that I'm good."

Other directors and actors have confirmed that. Anthony Minghella, who directed her in The Talented Mr. Ripley, once swooned over her in an essay, calling her "a natural comedienne, a whole body actor." Geoffrey Rush has said she "has a constant amorphous physicality."

Many have rhapsodised over her phosphorescent skin (as Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings films she literally glows) which slights her fiercely observant eyes. Her shape-shifting, from Bob Dylan in I'm Not There to Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (which won her sole Oscar), is legendary.

"You have to find a point of connection, but I'm not interested in reducing the character to my set of experiences," says Blanchett. "That's the way, hopefully, you keep expanding as an actor, that you're constantly challenging your understanding of how people think and behave."

Her presence on screen, though, has been rarer in recent years. Five years ago, Blanchett and her playwright husband Andrew Upton, with whom she has three sons, began leading the Sydney Theatre Company. Their stewardship as artistic directors, which Upton will continue solo for several more seasons, has been roundly applauded, including those productions of Streetcar and Uncle Vanya. She recently finished a run of Jean Genet's The Maids before flying to the US to promote Blue Jasmine.

"I hope I've become a better actress through simply concentrating on theatre," she says. "I went to a theatre school with no hopes or particular aspirations to work in the cinema. It's a small industry and I'm a bit peculiar looking. I didn't think I was that girl."

Asked whether she missed the movies while focusing on work at the STC, she quickly answers, "No." She acknowledges she was "a bit burned out" from back-to-back film work before taking over the theatre: "I was so bored with myself, which is a frequent feeling I have."

Instead, she relished the chance to run the company where she started out after drama school: programming a year of plays, tackling major roles, giving young playwrights a showcase and being part of a country's cultural discourse.

"People talk about it like it's a great sacrifice," she says. "Are you kidding me?"

Blanchett does, though, have a number of films lined up. She's shot two Terrence Malick films, and stars in George Clooney's historical thriller The Monuments of Men, which does not have an Australian release date. She's also signed up for a movie with David Mamet and another with Todd Haynes.

"In a way, I've come back with renewed passion for it all," she says before insisting: "I never want to work. Even when you're presented with these great opportunities, I think, 'I really love being in my pajamas with the kids.'"

So why does she keep saying yes?

"The offers!" she exclaims. "Woody Allen picks up the phone, what am I going to say? I'm not going to be that schmuck who says, "Mmmm, maybe not.' I get out of my pyjamas and I go to work."

Diana star Naomi Watts is starting to turn heads with her highly developed style and glamour

Naomi Watts (as Diana, Princess of Wales) visits Australia in a scene from film Diana.

Briana Domjen, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

Once a fashion wallflower, Naomi Watts used to fade into the background alongside more established style-setters like Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman.

But, as the King Kong actor's star power has risen in Hollywood, so has her sense of style. Adopting more daring looks for the ruby rug, fashion commentators agree Watts has revamped her style and is quickly emerging as a fashion favourite.

"Whatever the reason, Naomi has seriously turned up her glamour wattage on the red carpet," GQ Australia editor Nick Smith says.

Smith believes her impressive style evolution has something to do with her recent stint as the world's most adored princess in the highly-anticipated flick Diana.

"Perhaps it's the pressure of playing Princess Diana in the upcoming biopic," he says.

"Surely playing one of the world's most memorable style icons would have you taking stock of your own style.

"Looks to me like she's following one tried and tested rule of fashion: the one of less is definitely more."

Following her Oscar nomination for the Thai tsunami drama The Impossible, Watts has come into her own on the fashion front.

But it's not just her stunning style that has come to life, Watts also seems to be paying more attention to her blonde locks. Gone are her schoolgirl-style ponytails in favour of neatly coiffed hair.

The mother of two has come a long way since her 2011 faux pas when she was critiqued for wearing an unflattering cream parachute dress at the 25th annual Israeli Film Festival VIP reception.

These days, the multiple award-winning actress is impeccably dressed in high-end labels including Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana and Alexander McQueen.

During the recent 3rd Annual Summer Party On The Highline, Watts looked perfectly polished in a button-down See by Chloe shirt dress and at the Up2Us Gala at Tribeca Rooftop in New York City this month, Watts turned heads in Burberry.

However her biggest fashion feat yet was the ultra-glam lace Stella McCartney jumpsuit she wore to the designer's Spring 2014 Collection Presentation in New York this month.

"The one-shouldered lace Stella McCartney jumpsuit looks so sexy and chic on Naomi," designer Jayson Brunsdon says. "With sleek black accessories and smooth hair she looks spectacular but so effortless."

Having known Watts for more than 20 years, Brunsdon has watched the movie star's style develop.

"Naomi's style has evolved into a super chic, clean and sexy minimalist approach that suits her personality perfectly," he says.

"Naomi possesses a minimal, clean and sexy approach to fashion that perfectly complements her personality and body type.

"She's never afraid to embrace something new but she makes it all look effortless and chic."

Huffington Post says Americans need to dress like Australians

Cate Blanchett playing it cool in wool and sequins - and somehow managing to look chic. Picture: AFP Source: News Limited

 

Americans need to learn a thing or two about style from Australians. That's according to hugely popular US news site the Huffington Post, who reckon we're known for our "unbeatable surfing conditions, adorable dingoes", and our "great fashion sense".

While we don't necessarily agree our dingoes are 'adorable', we have to say they're right on the money when it comes to style.

We're not saying all 'ordinary' Americans dress badly - just that they're not led particularly well from their celebrities, who seem to think it's OK to walk the red carpet in outfits that look like they came from mum's dress up box.

So, as a service to red carpets everywhere - American celebrities, here's what you can learn from us.

Here's Ke$ha trying to do the little black dress.

Source: Getty Images

 

Maybe she should take inspiration from Nicole Kidman - still a fresh take on the LBT, but much classier.

Source: Getty Images

 

Britney Spears attempts simple cool with her loose hair and bad fake tan.

 

Source: Supplied

But Naomi Watts shows how perfectly groomed hair and porcelain, natural looking skin can win any day.

Source: Getty Images

 

 

And while we don't expect Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher to dress up while they're having a day off - getting out of your old tracksuit isn't too much to ask.

Source: Supplied

 

 

Just take inspiration from Elle Macpherson, who manages to look effortlessly cool, even after a long flight.

Source: News Limited 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Debicki touted as the breakout star of The Great Gatsby

          

Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki pictured at the Sydney Theatre Company this week. Picture: Ruttyn Sam Source: The Sunday Telegraph

 

Jo Litson, The Sunday Telegraph, reports

You could say things are going well for Elizabeth Debicki. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind for the 22-year old Australian actor, who is being hailed as the breakout star of The Great Gatsby.

She's been to the Cannes Film Festival for the movie's opening, walked the red carpet at the Sydney premiere and rubbed shoulders with the famous at exclusive events including a Prada dinner hosted by Anna Wintour.

And she's still found time to rehearse for a production of Jean Genet's The Maids for Sydney Theatre Company with Cate Blanchett and French film star Isabelle Huppert.

It's enough to go to a girl's head, but Debicki seems unaffected by all the glitz and glamour.

"Someone asked me: 'How do you stay grounded?' " she says. "Well, it's a bit bizarre but I feel very normal. I just feel busy and tired. And happy.""I think that's one of the best things to keep you grounded after a whirlwind press junket: waking up and coming to a theatre rehearsal and standing at the foot of (the play) and saying: 'I'm not sure how to do this'," she says.


"I've been asked if I've been recognised (on the street). The answer is no. I don't look anything like myself in (Gatsby). So life is pretty normal."

She is at the Wharf Theatre, rehearsing Genet's dark play about two maids who act out a fantasy ritual of murdering their mistress.

Genet was inspired by the true story of French servants Christine and Lea Papin, two quiet sisters who in 1933 murdered their mistress and her daughter.

Debicki plays the mistress. She describes starting rehearsals with Blanchett and Huppert as "daunting and thrilling".

"Surreal is my buzzword in my life at the moment. It's very strange when you meet somebody that you've admired for so long," she says.
"I did spend the first few days pinching myself. I kept looking at Cate and Isabelle because I'd watched their films. I'd met Cate before when I came to talk about the play with her and Andrew (Upton). We had a cup of coffee and it was like: 'I'm having coffee with Cate Blanchett'." 


Director Benedict Andrews has no doubt Debicki belongs in their company, describing her as "an astonishing talent" and "the real deal".

Debicki was born in Paris to a Polish father and Australian mother, both classically trained dancers. They moved to Melbourne when she was five, where her mother still runs a dancing school.

She trained as a dancer but by 16 was too tall for ballet - she's 1.9m - so turned to acting. A few months after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2010, she was cast in Joanna Murray-Smith's The Gift at Melbourne Theatre Company.

During The Gift, she auditioned for the role of Jordan Baker in Gatsby. Baker is a professional golfer who lives a reckless, glamorous lifestyle.

"It was the most fun I've ever had playing a character," Debicki says. "I think Jordan is a fabulous role. She's just a party girl. There's something really liberating about playing someone who is so reckless. I just inhabited her bold 'whateverness'.

"That was how I survived such a massive shoot. I got amazing costumes, amazing jewellery, great wig. I just had a great time."

Debicki has nothing but praise for the film. "I think it's beautiful. I'm so proud of it," she says.

She's been signed to US agents, but is coy about her future. "I'm really focussing on getting through this play," she says. "Then I can see what the future holds."

The Maids, Sydney Theatre, June 4-July 20. Bookings: 9250 1777

Cate Blanchett, Emma Watson 'in Cinderella remake'

Actress Cate Blanchett was an elf queen but she's set to become an evil step-mother in her next role. Picture: The Australian Source: AFP

The Daily Telegraph reports

Cate Blanchett is set to play an evil step-mother.

The actress, 43, has signed on the portray Cinderella’s nasty step-mum in a big-screen update of the classic fairy tale.

And Emma Watson is reportedly in talks to take the title role in the Disney film, which will be directed by Kenneth Branagh, according to showbusiness bible, Variety.

Variety reports while the actress, 22, does not yet have the role, she is in very early talks with the studio to play the character.

While Disney would not comment on the discussions with Watson, the studio also reportedly considered actresses Gabriella Wilde (The Three Musketeers), Saoirse Ronan and Alicia Vikander (Anna Karenina), but couldn’t lock down deals due to scheduling and other considerations.

Cinderella will be written by Chris Weitz, who penned About a Boy.

Meanwhile The Harry Potter star is about to be seen in the Sofia Coppola film Bling Ring, about the gang of teenagers who robbed the homes of stars such as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

Cate Blanchett fell for playwright husband Andrew Upton at first sight

Andrew Upton and wife Cate Blanchett / Pic: AFP Source: AFP

The Daily Telegraph reports

They are a Tinseltown classic odd couple. He a dishevelled playwright, she a red-carpet glamazon.

But Cate Blanchett has described for the first time the day she met husband of 15 years Andrew Upton and how it was "love at first sight".

The Oscar-winning actress - who was not able to attend last night's Sydney premiere of The Hobbit - said she fell almost instantly for Upton after meeting him on the Australian production of Russian play The Seagull at the Belvoir Theatre in 1997.

"The most romantic moment in my life was meeting my husband," she told The Sun newspaper.

"Love at first sight? Yes, it was. He proposed two weeks after we met. A straight, old-fashioned proposal."

The pair - who have three children Dashiell, 11, Roman, 8, and Ignatius, 4 - were married in December that year, just before Blanchett started filming her breakout role in Elizabeth, for which she got an Academy Award nomination. "We didn't have time for a honeymoon because I had to leave Australia for England to film Elizabeth," she said. "It meant I was on my own (as a newlywed), in places like Newcastle.

"So we thought we'd stretch it out over the next 50 years in instalments.

"We have taken it when we can. I did the film The Talented Mr Ripley in Italy and only worked about two days a week during a Roman summer, so that was a fantastic place to catch up on romance."

Blanchett, who lives in Hunters Hill, has eight film projects in the mix for next year.

A very merry affair for little Bilbo's big premiere

Bilbo Baggins's adventure will span three epic films / Pic: Warner Bros Source: Supplied

Elle Halliwell, The Daily Telegraph, reports

The celebrity set was in holiday mode at the Sydney premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey last night.

With most having begun their Christmas break, there were more than a few glasses of wine taken into the two George St Event Cinema theatres screening the 3D Peter Jackson epic, which opens on Boxing Day.

Sophie Lowe, Lincoln Lewis, Stephanie Rice, Maude Garrett and George Houvardas walked the red carpet in place of the film's Aussie stars Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, who had already made an appearance at the film's world premiere in New Zealand.

"I thought it was great; it was really moving in parts but also funny and I was transported to a different world, which I love doing when I'm watching films," Lowe said.

Lewis said it was just one of the blockbusters he planned to see over the holidays. The Hobbit set a new record for a December release in its opening weekend, pulling in just shy of $100 million in the US as fans flocked to take in the prequel to the Lord Of The Rings saga.

Blanchett gives blessing to Baghdad tale

 

Cate Blanchett

Ed Gibbs, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Cate Blanchett helps ensure a female voice in the fast-emerging Middle Eastern film industry will be heard around the world.

While on a break from the global roll-out of The Hobbit – in which she revives her Lord of the Rings character Galadriel – Cate Blanchett has used her industry clout to help push a bright filmmaking talent into the international spotlight.

Heading the jury of the IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Award, at this year's Dubai International Film Festival, Blanchett awarded the $US100,000 prize for up-and-coming directors to the Iraqi-born, British-based documentary filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi. The award, she said, could well have a profound effect, in an industry that remains largely influenced by men.

“There's a constant focus on how you can get the films out to an international market [here],” the Oscar-winning actor told Fairfax Media, prior to the announcement this week. “The wonderful thing about this initiative is that the film festival's not just about celebrating the films that have already been produced and showcased, but [also] about giving filmmakers, emerging voices a kick-start and a vote of confidence, which is fantastic.”

Pachachi fought off three male contenders in the finals, and will see her narrative feature debut, Nothing Doing in Baghdad, go into production in 2013. The script, consisting of overlapping stories, is set in the troubled Iraqi capital in 2006, some four years into the US-led invasion.

Dubai – the last major international film festival of the year – finishes this weekend with the Middle Eastern premiere of Wayne Blair's The Sapphires. In a program dominated by Arab Spring-related films, it has showcased several other rising female voice. Among them the Saudi-born, Sydney-educated Haifaa Al-Mansour, whose feature debut, Wajda, is the first feature made by a woman in Saudi Arabia.

“When I started working, I felt so invisible in Saudi, especially as a woman,” she said. “I'm small as well. Even the taxi drivers, they don't listen to you. There is no training in Saudi. I did my masters in film in Sydney [University], but it was mostly theory. So I learnt a lot on set.”

The German co-production, which received backing from a Saudi prince, was fraught with difficulties, not least while shooting outdoors. Pivotal street scenes in the conservative and rarely filmed Muslim nation had to be directed by the filmmaker via walkie-talkie from inside a van. The tale, of a bold young girl who challenges the status quo, is due for release in Australia in the New Year.

Another Middle Eastern filmmaker, BAFTA winner Sally El Hosaini, is premiering her Arab-UK cross-cultural drama, My Brother the Devil in the Middle East as well. The acclaimed film features a pair of siblings at loggerheads, one of whom discovers that he is gay. It is also due for release in Australia in 2013.

Blanchett confirmed for Hobbit premiere

The Hobbit

Cate Blanchett returns ...

The Sydney Morning Herald reports

Australians Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Barry Humphries will all attend the world premiere of the first Hobbit movie in New Zealand next week.

Warner Bros has announced the stars who will attend the first screening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in Wellington.

Blanchett plays Elf Queen Galadriel, Weaving plays Elf Lord Elrond and Humphries plays the Goblin King in the latest installment of the epic series.

Filmmakers Sir Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will also be joined by Martin Freeman, who plays the central role of Bilbo Baggins; Richard Armitage, who stars as the dwarf warrior Thorin Oakenshield; Andy Serkis who plays Gollum and Elijah Wood who plays Frodo Baggins.

There may be a nearly 10-metre statue of Gandalf the Grey above Wellington's Embassy Theatre, but the actor who plays the character, Sir Ian McKellen, won't be there to see it for himself.

McKellen said he was sorry he could not attend. "I know they (the cast) will have a wonderful welcome from the fans and I envy them. As ever, my heart is in Wellington, and I send my love."

Wellington is spending $NZ1.1 million ($A871,943) on activities in the week of the premiere, temporarily calling itself "The Middle of Middle-earth".

The film is released globally on December 14 and in Australia on Boxing Day.

Cate's smitten with gay partner

Cate Blanchett and Sir Ian McKellen at London's Dorchester Hotel. Source: Supplied

The Daily Telegraph reports

Cate Blanchett has found herself a gay husband ... and it's Sir Ian McKellen.

The Sydney Theatre Company CEO - who was seen arriving back in town yesterday - has gushed about how much she loves her co-star.

"I only briefly worked with him in Lord Of The Rings and in my very small part in The Hobbit it was mainly with him," she told Empire.

"He's just a god amongst men. It's a highlight of my career getting to act with him. He's a wonderful man and one of the most extraordinary actors. I honestly think he's one of the best of all time.

"I'm smitten. If only he were straight ... In another life. Maybe in some different universe we're blissfully happy together."

The towering blonde returns to Middle-earth as Galadriel in Peter Jackson's epic, and was relieved her part was small because she needs to juggle family commitments with any acting job she takes on.

She filmed her part in New Zealand in just 10 days.

Most powerful players in Australian film

Joel Edgerton, Actor Photo: Anthony Johnson AWJ

The Sydney Morning Herald reports

Winning awards, financing movies or scoring magazine covers is no longer enough to be a major player in the Australian film industry. Rob Lowing crunched the numbers to discover who the real heavy-hitters are.


1 SAM WORTHINGTON (actor, 3796 points)

Avatar is just the gift that keeps giving. Sam doesn't set the photo agencies alight and his Clash of the Titans was undermined by a ballyhooed sequel Wrath of the Titans and a Raspberry Award nomination for worst ripoff. But solid dramas The Debt and Man on a Ledge helped. And no one seethes as cinematically as our Sam …
Year ahead: steady

2 CHRIS HEMSWORTH (actor, 2540 points)

The 29-year-old went stratospheric because of his roles in 2012's top-grossing film (so far), The Avengers, and also Thor and Snow White and the Huntsman.
Year ahead: up (thanks to sequels to the above).

3 GEOFFREY RUSH (actor, 1540 points)

Rush's combination of box-office gold (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; The King's Speech) is boosted by a willingness to return home for local gems (Bran Nue Dae; Eye of the Storm).
Year ahead: steady

4 MIA WASIKOWSKA (actor, 1145 points)

The 23-year-old has barely been seen home recently, moving steadily from blockbusters such as Alice in Wonderland to smaller dramas such as Jane Eyre, Albert Nobbs and The Kids are All Right. She's back for the lead in Tracks.
Year ahead: up

5 STUART BEATTIE (writer, director, 1086 points)

The internationally renowned scriptwriter (the man behind the characters in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) made his directorial debut with the AFI Award-winning Tomorrow, When the War Began. Pity about that Razzie for Beattie's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra script.
Year ahead: up

6 LIAM HEMSWORTH (actor, 823 points)

Chris's little brother scored his own lucrative franchise (The Hunger Games), was anointed into the action-man club (The Expendables 2) and rated ''hotter'' than his brother (photo-agency-wise) thanks to his high-profile romance with Miley Cyrus.
Year ahead: up

7 GUY PEARCE (actor, 621 points)

Film critics like him more than the photographers but Pearce's consummate acting skills shone in Hollywood sci-fi (Prometheus) and Oscar winners (The Hurt Locker,The King's Speech). But he was happy to come home for juicy supporting roles (Animal Kingdom). His latest, Lawless, has already racked up $48 million overseas.
Year ahead: steady

8 ROSE BYRNE (actor, 517 points)

Byrne has barely been home since her Two Hands break-out success and she doesn't rate with most local photo agencies. But she had a monster hit with Hollywood's Bridesmaids and her trashy pop star stole Get Him to the Greek.
Year ahead: steady

9 EMILE SHERMAN (producer, 468 points)

Wins at the Oscars and the BAFTAs (and that worldwide box-office) made the The King's Speech producer our biggest behind-scenes player. He also produced Oranges and Sunshine and his coming projects include the adaptation of Robyn Davidson's desert memoir, Tracks.
Year ahead: up

10 CATE BLANCHETT (actor, 412 points)

No local movies for Cate (but sterling theatre contributions). Her Robin Hood box-office and ''warm'' photo rating keeps her a point above co-star Russell Crowe.
Year ahead: steady

11 RUSSELL CROWE (actor, 411 points)

Just two outings in the past three years (The Next Three Days, Robin Hood) mean Crowe missed the top 10. A lead role (singing?!) in the coming Les Miserables could change that.
Year ahead: up

12 HUGH JACKMAN (actor, 314 points)

Maybe Australia (the movie, not the country) soured photographers' favourite Hugh on coming home. He's spent recent years hosting the Oscars (and rappelling in to help Oprah) and on US fodder such as Real Steel. Next up: Les Miserables and that Wolverine sequel.
Year ahead: steady

13 NICOLE KIDMAN (actor, 284 points)

What the god of movies giveth, he taketh away: Kidman earned big box-office for the woeful Adam Sandler comedy Just Go With It but copped a Razzie nomination. Rabbit Hole's Oscar nomination soothed the pain of another Razzie nom (worst screen couple, alongside Nicolas Cage in Trespass) and iffy box-office for Nine.
Year ahead: steady

14 ABBIE CORNISH (actor, 283 points)

Bright Star earned her raves, that relationship with Ryan Phillippe got her into the mags. Reviled Sucker Punch and Madonna's tepidly received W.E. couldn't dim the lustre of Limitless's worldwide take.
Year ahead: steady

15 JAMES WAN (director-producer) 258 points)

Wan and long-time collaborator Leigh Whannell's Saw movies were (dis)credited with starting the recent glut of torture-porn flicks. Wan clawed back some creative respect with Insidious. The world waits to judge Wan's next, The Conjuring.
Year ahead: down

16 LEIGH WHANNELL (actor-writer 256 points)

Yes, it's true. Thanks to the combination of co-executive producing the Saw franchise, and scripting and acting in housebound horror hit Insidious (starring Rose Byrne), the 35-year-old vaults past better-known peers.
Year ahead: down

17 TERESA PALMER (actor, 239 points)

Solid global box-office for I am Number Four was backed up by a great turn in local flick Wish You Were Here. Now to prove she's not just another pretty blonde …
Year ahead: steady

18 GEORGE MILLER (writer-director, 186 points)

The Happy Feet Two maestro also produced via his renowned company Kennedy Miller Mitchell and both it (and he) stays firmly based in Sydney. If that Mad Max sequel, with The Dark Knight Rises star Tom Hardy, finally unreels …
Year ahead: up

19 NAOMI WATTS (actor, 161 points)

The only name to earn an unequivocal ''hot'' from the photo agencies (especially for pics with husband Liev Schreiber and kids), Watts enjoyed steady returns (and great leading men) with J. Edgar and Fair Game.
Year ahead: up

20 JOEL EDGERTON (actor, 139 points)

The hard-working drama star has had a dream run, with local hits Animal Kingdom and Wish You Were Here, and Hollywood outings Warrior and The Thing. His The Odd Life of Timothy Green just opened to $50 million in the US. Next up: Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby adaptation.
Year ahead: up

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY …

Baz Luhrmann has been quiet, preparing to unleash The Great Gatsby - so expect him to figure in this list again soon. Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver and Hanna star Eric Bana got pipped at the post, as did up-and-comer Bojana Novakovic (Devil and Burning Man) and Rango voice-star Isla Fisher. And after a few bad years (box-office and press-wise), Mel Gibson scored less than also-rans such as Sanctum's Richard Roxburgh.

HOW WE RATED THEM

We collated our master list of films made and/or released January 2010 to October 2012 from the Screen Australia, Box Office Mojo, Urban Cinefile and IMDb databases, cross-referencing releases with Empire and FilmInk magazines.

For the films' producer(s), director, writer, and five top-billed actors (and we began with a list of 422 names), we awarded two points each per $1 million earned at the Australian box office; one point for each $1 million earned elsewhere in the world (global box office was the telling factor); plus points were also given for major award wins (including Oscars, BAFTAs, AACTAs), major festival appearance and/or prizes (including the Sydney, Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Venice and Toronto festivals), and magazine covers (sampled 2011-2012 from Who, New Weekly, Empire, FilmInk and so on). Voice animation work also counted.

We asked Sydney photo agencies, including Jamie Fawcett's PhotoNews, to rate our top 40 (hello, Naomi Watts). We awarded bonus points to internationally known ''names'' who returned home (good on you, Guy Pearce) and deducted points for Golden Raspberry Award mentions (sorry, Nicole).