Legends lend valuable muscle to Aussie awards

Robert DeNiro and Russell Crowe attend the Australian Academy Of Cinema And Television Arts' 2nd AACTA International Awards at Soho House. Picture: Getty Images Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph reports

Living legend Robert DeNiro and director du jour Quentin Tarantino last night lent some valuable Hollywood muscle to the first round of the 2013 "Aussie Oscars", the second annual AACTA awards.

While the Sydney festivities will start at a luncheon today and culminate with a red carpet ball on Wednesday night, it was LA's turn to kick off the proceedings at the weekend, hosting a gala at Soho House that recognised international films and their cast and crew.

Hosted by Russell Crowe, the gongs were well-attended, with Natalie Imbruglia, Jacki Weaver and Grant Bowler and his girlfriend Kate Buckwald all frocking up for the event.

Hugh Sheridan was also a surprise show-up, after supposedly pulling out of hosting the Sydney awards, for which Rusty then miraculously put his hand up.

Weaver, who stars alongside DeNiro playing Bradley Cooper's parents in drama The Silver Linings Playbook, accepted the best actress accolade on behalf of her co-star Jennifer Lawrence, who has pneumonia.

"Poor Jen is really sick. She really is sick," Weaver said at the podium.

Both Weaver and DeNiro won in the best supporting actress/actor categories.

Tarantino too, of course, walked away with a statuette for Django Unchained.

Crowe is due to head home to join Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett at Wednesday's extravaganza at The Star casino.

Autumn keeps wolf from Jarratt's door

John Jarrett on stage in TV program, The People Speak. Photo: Nick Wilson Source: The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph reports

Los Angeles is not only bracing for another Aussie invasion - the charge is being led by our most senior actors.

As Jacki Weaver, 65, adjusts to news she is nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, John Jarratt, 60, is preparing to walk the red carpet at Sydney's State Theatre on January 21 with director Quentin Tarantino at the Australian premiere of Django Unchained.

Jarratt has hit the big time late in life since his success with Wolf Creek in 2005, though he had already met Tarantino.

"He was a fan of Wolf Creek but also liked my previous work - I've been around a while," Jarratt said.

"I first had a drink with him at Circular Quay in 2003. It's been fantastic working with him. I've hit a couple of huge goals in my 50s. Wolf Creek has opened a lot of doors and sent a lot of things my way. I've hit my mark much later than Mel (Gibson) did."

He struggles to explain his success at this time in life.

"With Mel it was luck and talent - he shone in vehicles that did well as opposed to John Hargreaves who shone in vehicles that didn't do well. Hopefully talent wins out."

His role in Django, up for five Oscars including Best Picture, is at the end of the film in what he describes as the "penultimate scene before the climax".

"It's definitely great for my career," he said.

Jarratt joins a long list of Australians making an impact on Hollywood this year including Hugh Jackman, nominated for Best Actor, and Naomi Watts, up for the Best Actress for her role in The Impossible.

Nicole Kidman gets boost to Oscar hopes

Nicole Kidman plays against type in The Paperboy. Picture with her are Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey. Picture: Lionsgate Source: Supplied

Peter Mitchell, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Nicole Kidman's Oscar campaign has received a major boost after scoring a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

Kidman was nominated for her sexed-up performance in The Paperboy but also for her role as war correspondent Martha Gelhorn in TV movie Hemingway & Gellhorn.

She will have plenty of mates at the January 27 SAG ceremony, with Naomi Watts and Hugh Jackman also receiving SAG nominations in Los Angeles.

The SAG Awards are one of the major pre-Oscar award ceremonies, with a nomination keeping Oscar campaigns alive, while SAG snubs can torpedo hopes.

Russell Crowe (Les Miserables), Toni Collette (Hitchcock) and Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook) were snubbed by SAG voters.

Jackman, for his leading performance in Les Miserables, is one of the frontrunners for the best acting Oscar and his SAG best actor nomination continues his journey to a possible Academy Award statuette.

Watts, for the tsunami survivor film The Impossible, is also a great shot at an Oscar nomination after winning over SAG voters.

Kidman's nomination for The Paperboy, based on Peter Dexter's book, was one of the big shocks of the SAG nomination ceremony as the Aussie redhead has received little crecognition for the role.

With Kidman also receiving the nod in the TV category for Hemingway & Gellhorn, her Oscar chances have received a major boost.

Kidman, Jackman, Watts, Crowe, Weaver and Collette have another chance to boost their Academy Award hopes on Friday (AEDT) when the Golden Globes nominations are announced - another major pre-Oscar bellwether.

The Oscar nominations will be revealed on January 10 while the Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled for February 24.

Along with Les Miserables, The Civil War saga Lincoln and comic drama Silver Linings Playbook boosted their Academy Awards prospects with four nominations apiece for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

All three films were nominated for overall performance by their casts. Also nominated for best ensemble cast were the Iran hostage-crisis thriller Argo and the British retiree adventure The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Lincoln also scored individual nominations for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role as best actor, Sally Field for supporting actress as Mary Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones for supporting actor as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

Silver Linings Playbook, made by The Fighter director David O. Russell, also had lead-acting nominations for Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as lost souls who find a second chance at love and Robert De Niro for supporting actor as a gridiron-obsessed dad.

Besides Watts and Lawrence, best-actress nominees are Jessica Chastain as a CIA analyst pursuing Osama bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty; Marion Cotillard as a woman who finds romance after tragedy in Rust and Bone; Helen Mirren as Alfred Hitchcock's strong-willed wife in Hitchcock.

Joining Cooper, Day-Lewis and Jackman in the best-actor field are John Hawkes as a polio victim aiming to lose his virginity in The Sessions and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in Flight.

One of the year's most-acclaimed films, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, earned only one nomination, supporting actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mesmerising cult leader. The film was snubbed on nominations for ensemble, lead actor Joaquin Phoenix and supporting actress Amy Adams.

Other individual performances overlooked by SAG voters include Anthony Hopkins in the title role of Hitchcock, Keira Knightley in the title role of Anna Karenina, Bill Murray as Franklin Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson and Argo director Ben Affleck, who also starred in the film.

Actor Maggie Smith had four individual and ensemble nominations. Along with sharing the ensemble honor for Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Smith joined the cast of Downton Abbey among TV ensemble contenders and had nominations for supporting film actress as a cranky retiree in Marigold Hotel and TV drama actress for Downton Abbey.

Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston had three overall nominations, as best actor in a TV drama for Breaking Bad, an ensemble honour for Breaking Bad and a film ensemble honour for Argo.

Along with Breaking Bad and Downton Abbey, best TV drama ensemble contenders are Boardwalk Empire, Homeland and Mad Men. TV comedy ensemble nominees are 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Glee, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie and The Office.

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.

Weaver in fast lane with Lois short film

Jacki Weaver. Photo: Getty Images

Suzanne Carbone, The Age, reports

Jacki Weaver, the actor who proves that being a mature-age woman isn't a hindrance to Hollywood acclaim, can't put a foot wrong. She is starring in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Uncle Vanya in New York with Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh, with critics hailing the cast as ''uniformly brilliant''.

Far from turning up her nose at smaller projects after winning international acclaim for her role in Animal Kingdom, Weaver plays the lead role in a short film called Lois - and, to be precise, it's eight minutes long. Written, produced and directed by Alexandra Schepisi, daughter of Fred Schepisi, the film is the shortest of the shorts screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival's ''Australian Shorts'' program.

With runny mascara smudged under Weaver's eyes for the film's poster, the scene is set for Lois to be ''tipped over the edge'' after receiving a letter. Weaver won't be at Russell Street's Greater Union cinema on August 11 for the screening because she will be in the US filming Labor Day, a drama starring luminaries Tobey Maguire, Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. Schepisi will have her day of labour because she's expecting her first child with husband Jeremy Rouse.

Rise of the new romantic, Jason Segel

Actor-writer Jason Segel and his co-stars Jacki Weaver and Emily Blunt get together in Melbourne to promote their film. Picture: Stuart McEvoy Source: The Australian

Michael Bodey, The Australian, reports

Jason Segel is in a powerful place. The star of How I Met Your Mother made the transition to movies confidently with the help of his mentor Judd Apatow, to such an extent that he has co-written the films Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets and now the romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement.

So is he a writer or an actor?

"I'm an actor mostly because I still like to be invited to the party but not have to throw it," he says, smiling. "But I do enjoy the concept of thinking of an idea when you're sitting on your couch and three years later you're watching it in a theatre. That's just a really neat phenomenon."

Also, he adds, he isn't cast in the roles he wants, so he has to write them for himself. The Muppets was a little different; it was a labour of love to rejuvenate Jim Henson's seminal comic creation. He did so brilliantly with collaborator and director of The Five-Year Engagement, Nicholas Stoller, and Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie, who won an Academy Award for the song Man or Muppet. Romantic comedies are different, he notes: "It's a pretty competitive business"

"There's 10 dudes all vying for three movies so I thought if I didn't write them I was probably going to lose out to somebody," Segel says.

Writing romantic comedy has its own pitfalls. Today's rom-coms are perky at best, tired at worst.

Segel agrees they're "very predictable if you're not careful".

He abhors artificial premises such as "He's a scientist and she hates science! How will they get through it?"

Invariably, a modern romantic comedy will establish a conflict or hurdle between boy and girl and essentially become little more than a chase or countdown movie. Will Katherine Heigl find her love in 90 minutes? Of course she will.

Segel didn't want an artificial premise in The Five-Year Engagement. "If you look at Annie Hall, it's just about two people trying to figure it out," he says. "Same with When Harry Met Sally, it's just two best friends trying to figure out if they should be more than that.

"You don't need one of them to turn out to be an alien or a spy. "And I also don't like plunking two actors together because they both had successful movies the year before, and now let's pretend they love each other."

Segel and his co-star Emily Blunt have had successful movies, or at least been high-profile stars, in the year previously though.

Segel protests they've been friends for four years. Blunt protests a little quicker: "Never an item . . . just pals."

"In my wildest dreams was as close as I ever got," Segel says, sighing.

"It was pretty immediate we discovered we would only ever be friends," Blunt adds.

"It was immediate, you discovered it!" Segel counters.

The premise of their film is simple enough; it's in the title. The duo play Tom and Violet, whose impending marriage is upended by a promotion and a move interstate.

It isn't an artificial romantic comedy premise, as such, because you know the couple love each other. The conflict focuses on how how much of your own identity you sacrifice for your partner's happiness before you realise you've lost your identity. Or, "it's when compromise moves into sacrifice", Blunt explains.

Blunt and Segel work well together promoting the film, which is a relief given work can kill friendships. Blunt agrees. "I've done a film where two people who were friends were not (friends) by the end of it because the process was so frustrating," she says without naming names.

"Oh, Meryl Streep and Adrian Grenier?" Segel asks innocently before adding he wrote the role for Blunt, a first for the 29-year-old Englishwoman.

"It's the most flattering thing," she says. "And I loved the script because I was instantly reassured the comedic set pieces were evened out between the two because normally the girlfriend part can be quite thankless or the straight man role or reactionary."

Segel and Stoller have created relatively solid female characters in the comedy genre distinguished by men behaving badly. Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Sarah was Kristen Bell opposite Mila Kunis and Segel, and the Russell Brand vehicle Get Him to the Greek was upstaged by Rose Byrne's character.

"What I love about Jason is he doesn't write genders; he writes personalities, so that's why his female roles are so cool and funny," Blunt says.

Blunt's character is far more empathetic and active than Segel's in The Five-Year Engagement. And they're surrounded by a terrific comic cast including Community's Alison Brie, David Paymer, Jim Piddock and Australia's Jacki Weaver in her first US role since Animal Kingdom's international success. "I was surprised I'm still in the film because we shot enough for a TV series," Weaver says, laughing. "It could have been four hours long."

Segel harrumphs quietly. The film's length -- at 124 minutes it struggles to maintain its momentum -- was seemingly an issue between he and long-term friend and collaborator Stoller.

"That's accurate," Segel notes. "(But) to tell the story we needed to tell, that's the amount of time that it took."

The Five-Year Engagement isn't a chase movie, he adds, it's about two people who already love each other having a very nuanced problem. It also is another self-exploratory comedy from a generation of comedians willing to explore their own hang-ups. Segel is part of Judd Apatow's posse, having emerged with James Franco and Seth Rogen in Apatow's TV production, Freaks and Geeks, created by Paul Feig, who recently directed Bridesmaids.

This rom-com assesses, with a light touch, the common gen X issue of putting profession before partner. And Apatow's films Knocked Up and Funny People have assessed his 30-something hang-ups before this year's release of This is 40, the self-explanatory comedy starring Paul Rudd, Segel and Apatow's wife Leslie Mann.

Segel observes comedy moves in cycles. The broad Ghostbusters and Stripes humour of the 1980s emerging from teen comedies, then moved into a more socially representative comedy headed by John Hughes's The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Then came the "gross-out humour" of the Farrelly brothers (There's Something About Mary) and American Pie, and broad character movies, starring Jim Carrey based on Saturday Night Live characters.

"They were funny at the time; they don't apply now," Segel says.

"Judd is returning a bit more to that John Hughes style.

"Who knows what the next one will be?" Segel asks before noting he has a hunch and it's the reason he jokes about getting back into shape. The buddy action comedy, such as Beverley Hills Cop or Lethal Weapon series?

"I think we might come back to that," Segel says. "Imagine me fit, I'm 6 foot four, I'm hilarious, I'm lithe and nimble like a gazelle . . . "

"You do have a funny run, though," Blunt says.

"I do have a funny run," Segel agrees. "I got shot in the leg early in my police career."

He has already started writing.

The Five-Year Engagement is in cinemas nationally.

Jacki's long engagement

Jacki Weaver stars in The Five-Year Engagement (second from right), one of the many Hollywood offers since her Oscar nomination.

Liza Power, The Age, reports

Jacki Weaver says she's never been the kind of actor to bemoan a lack of interesting roles for women in their 50s. Last year, the sixtysomething star was nominated for an Oscar for her turn as Janine ''Smurf'' Cody, the matriarch of a brutal Melbourne crime family, in Animal Kingdom.

In the 18 months that followed filming she performed in six plays, including the Sydney Theatre Company's critically acclaimed production of Uncle Vanya, a role she'll reprise when the production tours to New York's Lincoln Centre Festival in July after its rave season in Washington last year.

In between, she's juggled her pick of the 20-odd film offers she's received in the aftermath of her Oscar nomination, a situation she describes as ''very bewildering and hard to believe. But fantastic.'' It's not that she doubted she would still be acting in her 60s. More that ''it feels amazing to be in another country doing it. There's still plenty of work to be doing here at home, but to be doing it in a foreign country and speaking in different accents … is something else.''

Weaver was in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards when Nicholas Stoller (director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek) stopped by her hotel room with a script for The Five-Year Engagement, which stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt. Soon after came scripts for Stoker with Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska, and The Silver Linings Playbook with Robert De Niro. This year her schedule includes four films and an HBO pilot. The offers have been so fast and furious that she's considered relocating to the US.

''I've wanted to live in the East Village in New York since the early '70s. But when I told my manager he said New York was so far from LA I might as well stay in bloody Australia! They talk about getting jet lag between New York and LA, you know. They're so sweet!''

Weaver won her first Australian Film Institute Award in 1971 and has been a mainstay in Australian theatre and television for decades. This year marks her 50th as an actor; she made her stage debut in Cinderella at age 15. Her film debut was Tim Burstall's Stork as the diminutive but sexy Anna. The film's phenomenal success prompted a renaissance in the Australian film industry, with co-star Graeme Blundell later saying: ''Stork proved the commercial validity of Australian film and she was the face of it.'' Weaver has since appeared in such iconic Australian films as Alvin Purple, Storm Boy and Picnic at Hanging Rock.

A ''national treasure'' to many, and a ''national relic'' to the self-deprecating Weaver, her turn in The Five-Year Engagement is being hailed as her ''Hollywood break'', even if she sees it a bit differently. ''To be fair, my Hollywood break was the Oscar nomination. We tend to take awards in Australia with a grain of salt but they take them very seriously in America. It's understandable. I mean, in Australia the film industry is, let's face it, a cottage industry. But over there it's a multimillion-dollar business that employs millions of people. They take awards seriously because it can mean millions at the box office.''

Weaver saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in Melbourne before heading to the US last February, so when her agent told her Stoller wanted to meet her she was chuffed. ''He came to see me at my hotel in Beverly Hills and he was such a lovely young man. I thought, 'Who could resist?''' She plays Blunt's prim English mother in The Five-Year Engagement, the polar opposite of the maternal figure she played in Animal Kingdom. ''They're both bitches, but completely different,'' she laughs. ''But I was really fortunate I wasn't typecast. I had a lot of offers to play evil women.''

Stoker was filmed in Nashville and Weaver says she loved exploring co-star Kidman's adopted home town and marvelling at the innate theatricality of the Tennessee accent. She's a great admirer of Kidman: ''She's such a beautiful person, not just to look at, and a fantastic actress. I don't think she gets enough credit in Australia.'' Most Australian actors don't, she adds. ''It's great [so many Australian actors are thriving in the US]. No one seems to take the industry seriously over here. They think it's some frivolous hobby … We regard the performance industry with suspicion.''

Filmed in Philadelphia, The Silver Linings Playbook required Weaver to work with a dialect coach to master the local accent. She says actors never stop refining their skills and learning, but the process is more appealing when you're on set with De Niro, among others. ''I had to pinch myself. I couldn't believe it.''

Finding herself suddenly in the star-littered orbit of the Hollywood constellation hasn't, however, left Weaver wishing she'd made a bid for an overseas career decades ago. ''I was always perfectly satisfied and content with the career I had in Australia.'' Nowadays, she says, every ''young kid out of drama school goes straight over for the pilot season. But that was something that happened the generation after mine. Going to the US just was never on my agenda.''

And while there might be advantages to arriving in Tinseltown as a mature star, she wouldn't overstate them. Age is no insurance policy against the perils of stardom: ''I think it's possible [to lose your head] in this industry, in any country at any age, if you're too impressionable. [Acting] is a world of rejection and cruelty. It can have huge triumphs and huge lows. Both can be deleterious to your mental health.''

Starting afresh in a new country doesn't mean you begin with a clean slate, either. Weaver arrived in the US to find people as well versed in her acting accomplishments as her private life. ''On the first film I worked on the director kept saying to people: 'Do you know how many times she's been married?' There's no secrets in America. I keep bumping into people on crews who've read my book. I'd have to go to another planet for my life to be secret.''

Not that she minds. She's being pestered by her publisher to write a follow-up to Much Love, Jac, her first memoir, which details her four marriages, three de facto relationships and wickedly endearing life philosophy: ''I believe in sex on the first date. Otherwise, how do you know if a second date is worth the effort?'' she writes.

''Well, the book came out in 2005 and an awful lot has happened since then,'' Weaver says.

In the next instalment she might dwell on the roles she hasn't had the chance to play. ''I love all the old ones. I always wanted to play Viola in Twelfth Night because I haven't done a lot of Shakespeare. And I always wanted to play Nora in a A Doll's House because I think Ibsen is one of the greatest dramatists that ever lived. I thought I'd make a great Eliza because I'm a good transforming actor that can start out really down and out and ugly and can improve a lot, which you can't do if you're too beautiful.''

That would be a brief chapter because ''it's neurotic to regret things you can't change''. A larger section might detail the virtues of enjoying the moment: ''if it all evaporates tomorrow, it doesn't matter; I'm having the best time''.

The Five-Year Engagement opens May 3.

Rodger Corser to keep that huge American deal on hold

The US deal could see Rodger Corser's career heading in the same direction as Simon Baker's. Source: Supplied

The Daily Telegraph reports

It was a scoop blurted out by Jacki Weaver as she and Rodger Corser took to the Logies stage together on Sunday night.

The former Rush star, shooting Puberty Blues in Sydney for Channel 10, has inked a "holding deal" with US broadcast powerhouse ABC - a similar deal to that which helped launch the US careers of Simon Baker and Alex O'Loughlin.

Weaver mentioned the coup briefly during the Logies broadcast on Sunday night and Corser's Aussie rep confirmed the news yesterday, saying Corser cracked the deal late last year and that the ABC is looking for the right project for the Aussie hunk.

The "holding deal" contract means Corser cannot work for a rival network while the ABC hunts down the right project.

Corser, who squeezed his Puberty Blues commitments into a brief suspension of the contract, is fielding scripts from the US and plans to return to Los Angeles once Puberty Blues filming wraps in late July.

It's understood his former co-star on the short-lived Channel 7 drama Last Man Standing, Matt Passmore, also began his US acting career with a similar deal.

Kelpie fetches the top prize at new film and TV awards

Olivia Newton John. Photo: Ben Rushton

Garry Maddox, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

IT WAS one more triumphant yelp for Red Dog. The warm-hearted hit film won the top prize at the first Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards at the Opera House last night.

The comic drama by the director Kriv Stenders about a kelpie who unites a mining town in the Pilbara, loosely based on a true story from the 1970s, added best film to the previously announced member's choice award.

But with Red Dog's directing, acting and craft nominees all overlooked, the intense drama Snowtown surprisingly won four of the stylish trophies modelled on the Southern Cross at the replacement for the Australian Film Institute Awards.

Presenters at the black-tie ceremony included the Australian of the Year and academy president Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett, Mia Wasikowska, Anthony LaPaglia and Jacki Weaver, with performances by Olivia Newton-John and Megan Washington.

Justin Kurzel's dark Snowtown, which dramatised South Australia's infamous bodies-in-the-barrels murders using mostly non-actors from the Adelaide suburbs where the early crimes took place, won best direction, best actor for little-known Daniel Henshall, best adapted screenplay for Shaun Grant and, in the night's biggest upset, best supporting actress for first-timer Louise Harris.

Henshall took the role of serial killer John Bunting to break away from being cast as an ''affable loser'' in TV shows and commercials. He beat three big names - Geoffrey Rush for The Eye of the Storm, Willem Dafoe for The Hunter and David Wenham for Oranges and Sunshine.

Kurzel cast Harris, a non-actor, as the mother of teenage killer Jamie Vlassakis after seeing her arguing in the street about a dog off the chain.

She was considered a long-shot against Helen Morse and Alexandra Schepisi (both for The Eye of the Storm) and young Morgana Davies (The Hunter).

At the earlier craft awards, Snowtown also won won best editing and sound.

The six-time AFI winner Judy Davis won best actress for playing a fragile expat who returns to see her dying mother in The Eye of the Storm, Fred Schepisi's adaptation of a Patrick White novel.

Hugo Weaving, a three-time AFI winner, won best supporting actor for playing a former ''lost child'' shipped to Australia in the drama Oranges and Sunshine.

The Tasmanian wilderness drama The Hunter led the nominations with 14 but won just two - best cinematography and music score - at the craft awards.

In the TV categories, the drama The Slap won five prizes and the Tim Winton adaptation Cloudstreet had eight nominations but won only best young actor for Lara Robinson.

Asher Keddie, who memorably played Ita Buttrose in the mini-series Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, collected the audience choice award for best performance in a TV drama.

Packed To The Rafters collected the audience choice award for best TV program.

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

Schepisi's strength in dynamic roles

Andy Burns, The Herald Sun, reports

ALEXANDRA Schepisi is a woman with great foresight.

After spending some time in the Eye of the Storm, her latest movie role next to Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis, the actress, writer, director, activist - you name it - has turned her hand to short film and locked in one of Australia's hottest exports to play the lead.

Lois, an eight-minute project written and directed by Schepisi, stars Jackie Weaver as the title character, a coup for the indie filmmaker. Weaver was secured before she received the Academy Award nomination for her role as a twisted matriarch in the wildly successful Animal Kingdom.

"She's a trouper. Since her Academy nomination, her life has just exploded. I suppose she could have dropped the project, but she wanted to do the film, so that is good," Schepisi says of Weaver.

Schepisi has film pedigree as the daughter of acclaimed director Fred Schepisi, but stumbled on to directing and writing after noticing a serious lack of strong female roles to play.

"I'm interested in making dynamic roles for women." she says.

Schepisi admires the "sexy and dangerous" direction of Andrea Arnold, who made Fish Tank, and wants to make cinema with female strength. "Andrea is amazing. She makes films that are unique, original and very strong," Schepisi says.

Schepisi expects to wrap the production early next year and enter it in the short film festival circuit.

She is presenting at today's AACTA (formerly AFI awards) nomination ceremony in Sydney, but says she has no clue which films will take out the top gong.

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.