Two films down and a career going up and up

 Daniel Henshall on the red carpet with cast member Felicity Ward. Photo: John Woudstra

Kark Quinn, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

Daniel Henshall is fast becoming a veteran of the red carpet. The 29-year-old actor was at the Jam Factory last night for the Melbourne premiere of the new Working Dog comedy - Any Questions for Ben? - just days after strutting his stuff on the crimson strip at the Sydney Opera House on his way to collect the best actor award at the inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards. Not a bad way to start a film career, really.

The award came for his debut role as serial killer John Bunting in Snowtown, as grim and impressive an Australian film as you will ever see. Any Questions for Ben? is a different proposition, a comedy about a 27-year-old playboy with the lot (Josh Lawson) who runs smack into what the filmmakers call a ''quarter-life crisis''. Henshall plays the hero's mate Nick, a triathlete who, he says, ''starts the story thinking his life is not that great and ends it realising it's actually pretty good''. It is, he adds, ''a very nice-guy role''.

Two weeks after Snowtown wrapped, Henshall was in prep mode for the Working Dog film, the first from the Melbourne crew behind The Castle, The Panel and Frontline since The Dish in 2000. ''It was a relief to jump straight into another project,'' he says of the move from the darkness of Snowtown to the lightness of Any Questions. ''It gave me a chance to forget about it.''

Henshall says he's long been a fan of the Working Dog crew. ''I've been watching them since the age of seven. My favourite sketch is still Rob Sitch and Mick Molloy in Shitscared,'' he says.

As for the dilemma at the centre of their new film - which was known during production as 25, the rough age of the characters - it's genuine, Henshall insists. ''Doing press for this film I've had a lot of questions from older people, basically asking, 'What's this quarter-life crisis bullshit?' But it's real. A lot of people aged 25 to 30 have been given so many opportunities and done so much, they've travelled the world, they've got the uni degree, they're four or five years into their career, and they don't know who they are.

''They seem to have it all, but they just don't know who they are.''

He's right, of course. We're all rapidly learning who Daniel Henshall is, though.

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.

New blood straight to the top

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

RISING star Daniel Henshall is over the moon at being nominated alongside Geoffrey Rush and Willem Dafoe in the new-look AFI awards.

Henshall has been nominated for best actor for his chilling film debut as serial killer John Bunting in Snowtown .

Other nominations in the category are Rush (The Eye of the Storm), Dafoe (The Hunter) and three-time AFI winner David Wenham (Oranges and Sunshine).

"I'm quite speechless," Henshall said after nominations were released in Sydney yesterday.

"It's an absolute privilege to be nominated with the likes of these guys ... I have been watching them for years."

Daniel Nettheim's Tasmanian thriller The Hunter led the field with 14 nominations.

Winners of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (formerly AFIs) will be named at the Sydney Opera House on January 31.

The awards have been held in Melbourne for the past decade.