Hugh Hugh Hugh!

[MaineWriter]

Hugh on Oprah Winfrey last week...

[MaineWriter]

from the BBC:

Australia's hope for Luhrmann epic

By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney

Australia is putting on its best cinematic face for an epic movie which it hopes will revive its struggling tourism industry and replicate the so-called Crocodile Dundee effect, which saw thousands of international visitors heading to this far-flung planetary corner.

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, the creative genius behind Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge, Australia the movie - premiering in Sydney on Tuesday - showcases the country's best-known stars and most jaw-dropping landscape.

On top of that, the movie is that most genuine of rarities in the Aussie cinematic canon: an extravagant, big-budget, blockbuster of a film - in fact, 10s of millions over big-budget, if the production rumours are to be believed.

Luhrmann is known throughout the industry as the most exacting of perfectionists.

In recent weeks, the 46-year-old Oscar-nominated director has been in a frantic race to complete this homage to the land of his birth, with regular requests to the studio, 20th Century Fox, to push back the release date.

Rumour factory that it is, the whispers out of Hollywood are that the original ending of the film did not test well with trial audiences, because it failed to end on an emotionally uplifting note.

Luhrmann himself has remained tight-lipped, but recently told the Los Angeles Times: “What's interesting is I wrote, I think, six endings in all the drafts I did, shot three, and I ended up concluding the film in a way in which I, probably more than anyone, least expected.

"And there is a death in the ending of the film, by the way, it's a bit of a twist, and I won't give it away.”

The film brings together some instantly recognisable Australian talent. Hugh Jackman plays the male lead, a rough-hewn cattle drover.

Nicole Kidman plays the object of his desire, a feisty English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley.

There are parts for Bryan Brown (Cocktail, Gorillas in the Mist) and the great Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant, The Man from Snowy River).

And the equally great Bill Hunter (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Strictly Ballroom), who is normally the first name on any Aussie cast list.

Riches to rags

Set on the eve of World War II, and filmed against the sundried backdrop of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, it recounts the story of Lady Sarah.

She makes the long journey to Australia having learnt she has inherited a suitably massive swathe of land.

Her guide, as she embarks on an epic journey across this unforgiving landscape, is Hugh Jackman.

The couple, of course, fall in love, offering just the kind of improbable riches to rags romance that's sure to be a winner.

Another pre-premiere rumour has been that Fox wanted more love scenes between Jackman and Kidman.

In a country that is surprisingly needy of international recognition and validation, much is riding on Australia.

The tourism industry is hoping it will essentially become a feature-length advertisement: that Australia, the country, will become the real star of Australia, the movie.

The most recent Australian global tourism campaign, which asked: "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?," was deemed something of a disaster.

Overseas visitor numbers dropped 7.6% in September, and have been stagnant for the past couple of years.

So Tourism Australia has launched a tie-in global advertising campaign, with the catchline Come Walkabout.

So far, the pre-release buzz has the kind of electric crackle that illuminates the faces of producers and promoters.

Oprah Winfrey has been shown a rough-cut edit, and proclaimed it a delight - the most useful of endorsements, as America's incoming President could attest.

She did not hold back when Lurhmann appeared on her show: "Congratulations on your imagination, your vision, your creativity, your direction. Our hearts are all swelling because, my God, it's just the film we needed to see."

Australia opens in the UK on 26 December.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/7733409.stm

Published: 2008/11/17 13:27:58 GMT

[delalluvia]

I have a feeling that while it might not suck, "Australia" will not have enough "Out of Africa" and instead will have too much soap opera a la "Gone with the Wind".    The plot is already something out of a Danielle Steele novel.

[MaineWriter]

Here's an early review:

From Times Online
November 18, 2008
Review: Australia, the movie

(Twentieth Century Fox)

Nicole Kidman and Brandon Walters in Australia, the movie
Anne Barrowlcough, Sydney

It has every Australian cliché you could hope for, from kangaroos and Nicole Kidman to aborigines going walkabout and, yep, Waltzing Matilda. There is even, within moments of the opening scenes, Rolf Harris's wobble board.

But Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited, and over-budget epic Australia manages, against the odds, to avoid turning into one big sunburnt stereotype about Godzone country. Instead, in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly, beautiful and breathtakingly cruel.

Described as a cross between Gone with the Wind and Out of Africa it bears, in fact, little resemblance to either movie – apart from a similarly spectacular landscape as Out of Africa and a plot line that loosely resembles that of Gone with the Wind.

In this case, Lady Sarah Ashley, a passionless English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman), inherits a vast cattle station in the Northern Territories only to find that the station is the target of a dastardly takeover plot.

Much against her will, she is forced to enlist the help of a local stockman known only as Drover (Hugh Jackman), to save the station by driving her huge herd of cattle hundreds of miles across the Kuraman desert to Darwin. Which is then bombed by the Japanese.

In the worst Mills and Boon tradition, Lady Sarah – whose emotions are as frozen as Kidman's forehead – and the rough neck Drover loathe each other on sight but, as they endure the harsh and rather dusty travails of the cattle drive they quite quickly fall in love. She even teaches him to dance. Under a boab tree.

But if it sounds shallow and predictable, Australia is, in fact, anything but.

The cliches are saved by little jokes and asides, as if Luhrmann is saying 'Yes, I know, but what can you do?' In an early scene, as the newly-arrived Sarah drives toward her station, Faraway Downs, with Drover, a herd of kangaroo lopes alongside their vehicle.

As Sarah “oohs” and “aahs” with melodramatic wonder, a shot rings out and one of the kangaroos falls, killed by an Aboriginal stockman riding, literally, shot gun on the roof of the car. The horrified aristocrat spends the rest of the trip staring at the hind leg of the kangaroo hanging disconsolately over the windscreen, and the trails of blood that trek through the dust on the glass.

Later that evening she pops her head out of her tent door to behold the kangaroo being roasted for dinner plus (more importantly) the sight of a half naked Drover soaping himself down; a scene that will only do for Jackman what James Bond's swimming briefs did for Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, and will ensure Jackman as Craig's only viable cinematic rival as the heart throb du jour.

But what gives the film its heart is something else entirely. This is also the story of Nullah (Brandon Walters), a mixed race Aboriginal boy left orphaned by the inhumanity of Australian law. The 1940s was the time of the Stolen Generation, when mixed race children were banned from living either with their Aboriginal families or within the white community, but were taken from their homes to be brought up in church missions.

Nullah's increasingly frantic attempts to escape from the 'coppers' and his symbiotic relationship with his grandfather, the mystical King George, played with awesome power by the renowned Aboriginal dancer and musician David Gulpilil, is treated with a stark honesty and is what actually makes this film truly Australian in both its best and its worst sense.

Brandon, 13, was discovered by Lurhmann in his local swimming pool in the West Australian town of Broome and he plays Nullah with a combination of mischief and tragedy that may turn him into the real star of the film, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that he has never acted before.

Australia is reported to have gone $US30million over its $US100 million budget and right to the last minute there was speculation that it would not be finished in time for its Australian premiere.

Australian audiences – who are already in love with the film – are guaranteed to flock to the box office but Luhrmann needs the American market if he is to break even. If all else fails there is always Jackman, stripped to the waist, under the shower. That if nothing else should pull them in.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5178513.ece

[MaineWriter]

And another:


Baz Luhrmann musters an outback epic

David Stratton | November 19, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

BAZ Luhrmann's operatic approach to narrative is equally at home on the stage as it is on the screen. But the deliberate world of artifice and exaggerated reality that was a trademark of his earlier films, especially Moulin Rouge, doesn't work as successfully when transposed from an interior setting - a dance hall, a nightclub - to the spectacular reality of Australia's outback.

Initially, this gets the director's long-awaited epic, Australia, off to a shaky start. As the characters are introduced, there's a forced jocularity and a theatricality with which some of the actors visibly struggle. Fortunately, at about the 20-minute mark, the film settles down into what it should have been from the start: a romantic melodrama set in 1939-41 against breathtaking backdrops and a homage to the golden age of Hollywood.

The director's aims aren't entirely frivolous, however; there's a serious agenda, as revealed in the opening titles, which describe in frankly superficial terms, presumably with an eye to an uninitiated overseas audience, the meaning of the Stolen Generations.

Nicole Kidman, who worked well with Luhrmann on Moulin Rouge, plays the haughty Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat whose wayward husband, Maitland, owns a small cattle station, Faraway Downs, in the Northern Territory. Suspecting that the only reason Maitland lingers down under is because he's involved with Aboriginal women, Sarah makes the long journey to the territory to discover that Maitland has been murdered, apparently by King George (David Gulpilil), a tribal magician who wanders the district.

She also discovers that Maitland's untrustworthy station manager Fletcher (David Wenham) is in league with the territory's all-powerful cattle baron, King Carney (Bryan Brown) to steal the cattle from Faraway Downs and ensure the property is for sale at a rock-bottom price. Determined to thwart these machinations, Sarah enlists the help of the station's drunken accountant, Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson) and a rollicking character known only as Drover (Hugh Jackman) to help her drive the cattle to Darwin where the armed forces, preparing for imminent war, have urgent need of meat.

Matters are complicated by the presence on Faraway Downs of 10-year-old Nullah (played by an impressive child discovery, Brandon Walters). The boy is King George's grandson, but he's of mixed race and (as we're reminded more than once in a sometimes repetitive screenplay) belongs nowhere. As Sarah becomes more and more motherly towards the child, his fate seems to lie with the authorities, who want to place him in the care of a white family, or with his grandfather, who wants him to go walkabout.

With considerable help from computer-generated material, Luhrmann creates a genuinely spectacular saga with this often impressive film; a cattle stampede towards a precipice and a Japanese bombing attack on Darwin are among the highlights. Still, given the status of his distinguished collaborators on the film's screenplay -- Ronald Harwood, Richard Flanagan and Stuart Beattie -- it's surprising so many cliches have found their way into the story. Given Luhrmann's fondness for old movies and popular songs, it's not surprising he manages to make frequent reference to The Wizard of Oz (which was released in 1939) and its famous song, Over the Rainbow, unlikely as this channelling may seem at first.

Given the considerable budget supplied by 20th Century Fox, it's no real surprise that all too often Australia seems aimed not at Australian audiences but at international, especially American, ones. Native flora and fauna are used in ways that once used to bring a chuckle or two in local cinemas and Australian slang is employed rather too insistently. The character of the all-powerful cattle baron, well played by a rascally Brown, is straight from any number of Hollywood westerns and the romance between the fish-out-of-water heroine and her dashing employee is also familiar from movie classics of the past.

Yet for all its flaws -- and Australia is not the masterpiece we hoped it might be -- the film is easy to take. This is partly because it looks so magnificent, partly because Luhrmann's vision is so stimulating and partly because the actors are, for the most part, so engaging in their roles.

The supporting cast is a rollcall of Australian acting talent, though some of them appear in blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos: among them Max Cullen as a drunken denizen of the Territory Pub, Bruce Spence as a conservative doctor and Arthur Dignam as a missionary. Barry Otto, as Carney's gofer, Ben Mendelsohn as an army officer, Ray Barrett as Sarah's old retainer and Tony Barry as an outback policeman have somewhat more substantial parts. Particularly good is David Ngoombujarra as Drover's loyal stockman.

There has been a great deal of speculation about the ending and whether it would be happy or sad. More curious is the extremely perfunctory, and barely explained, elimination of one of the film's key characters and, in the process, the abrupt termination of one of its most engaging performers.

Despite the behind-the-scenes pressures, and they were probably considerable, the result is clearly Luhrmann's vision. And though the film is, perhaps inevitably, uneven, the good news is that Australia soars more often that it plummets.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24671640-15803,00.html

[MaineWriter]

Love it, or loathe it ... this is Australia

Michael Bodey | November 19, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

BAZ Luhrmann's sweeping epic Australia finally premiered in four locations last night as its director hosed down the country's outrageous expectations for the film.

"Not everyone's going to love it, not everyone's going to see it," the director said of his $180 million film starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and newcomer Brandon Walters. "All we can do is do our best and invite everyone to the party."

No matter what anyone thinks of the film - and initial reviews are positive without being effusive - Luhrmann knows how to throw a party. After viewing the 165-minute film, audiences in Sydney, Darwin, Bowen and Kununurra emerged to toast the biggest Australian film ever.

"It's not meant to be the second coming but it is meant to be let's have some fun and enjoy it, and that's what I came here hoping for," said Kidman, who plays an uppity English rose who falls in love with a rough-hewn drover, played by Jackman.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Kidman said. "Rarely do you get to make a film that you've dreamed of doing since you were little which is to be part of the Australian cinema and I haven't really had a film that's done that in a big way. The simplest thing to say about this is (it's) a celebration - for me and hopefully for this country."

Such is the film's scale, Australian screen royalty such as Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and David Gulpilil play relatively minor roles.

"It's a big one," Gulpilil said, before announcing it would also be his last film. "This movie is bigger than Superman and Indiana Jones. This movie Australia is a true Australian movie."

Its initial impact was on Sydney city residents when a chunk of George Street was closed to accommodate crowds and guests.

The film also premiered in key shooting locations: Darwin; Kununurra, Western Australia; and Bowen, Queensland.

Australia takes place in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in the years leading up to and during World War II.

At its core is a touching story about an indigenous child, Nullah, played by then 12-year-old Broome local Brandon Walters, and Luhrmann's declaration at the top of the film that it concerns the Stolen Generations.

The film's indigenous liaison officer, Steve McGregor, said Luhrmann had worked with "respect". "There were aspects in the film that weren't culturally appropriate, and once that was pointed out Baz accepted that and said how much can we navigate our way through and still enhance the story," Mr McGregor said.

Brandon looked rightly bemused at an occasionally shambolic press conference before the premiere. He should expect further chaos; despite Jackman and Kidman's chemistry, Brandon is the best bet for an Academy Award acting nomination.

He admitted he hadn't heard of Kidman before the film and "I felt a bit scared when I first met her".

Kidman is now scared for Brandon. "I feel very protective of him. If the film does really well, he is going to need a lot of protection," she said.

Luhrmann said he had auditioned about 1000 Aboriginal boys before choosing Brandon for his talent, charisma and strength of his family. Brandon's father, Paul, appeared overwhelmed by the hubbub yesterday.

The film's importance to the Australian film industry is being overstated. Australia is created by one of this nation's few true auteurs and funded by a major Hollywood studio, Twentieth Century Fox (owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Australian). It will have little effect on the vast majority of Australian films, which are made for less than a tenth of its cost.

And predictions by local executives that the film would beat Titanic's record box office take of $57 million in this country were premature and unhelpful. The fervour only heightened as Luhrmann conceded he had struggled to meet the deadline for a November 26 Australian release.

Yesterday he joked that he had to be taken from the mixing studio on Saturday night in a straitjacket.

Jackman and Kidman viewed the film for the first time last night. For Kidman, it might signal a hiatus from the screen. "I'm in a place in my life where I have had some great opportunities but I may choose to have some more children," she said.

She agreed the film's expected success might be helpful after a run of commercial failures. "I have a quirky taste ... but that's my body of work and I'm not going to apologise for it," she said.

Australia opens on November 26 and is rated M.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24673499-2702,00.html

[MaineWriter]

Baz a bit sad, a bit glad as he lets baby go

James Madden and Lex Hall | November 19, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

NICOLE Kidman was excited. Hugh Jackman was pumped. Little Brandon Walters thought it was cool. But for Baz Luhrmann, walking the red carpet in Sydney last night was a curious mix of relief, joy and sadness.

"I have been full of trepidation all day," Luhrmann said before the world premiere of Australia.

"But you know, we have all given so much into this film that it's time to let this child of ours go, and release it into the world. We're a bit glad, a bit sad."

There was no such ambivalence from the 2000-plus crowd who last night packed George Street in Sydney's CBD for a glimpse of the film's stars.

Despite persistent rain, the enthusiastic crowd -- many of whom had queued for three hours for a good vantage point -- were rewarded for their patience with a steady stream of movie stars, models, rock stars: Jackman and Kidman, their spouses Deborra-Lee Furness and Keith Urban, Jennifer Hawkins, Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch, Jimmy Barnes, Collette Dinnigan and Ian Thorpe.

Former rock star Peter Garrett was there in his current incarnation as Arts Minister, as were Liberal frontbenchers Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop.

Jackman and Kidman both expressed their excitement before last night's screening, as it was the first time they had seen the final cut of the film.

"I'm actually really looking forward to seeing it with a big crowd; that's how I wanted to see it," Kidman said.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Jackman and Luhrmann spent more than 40 minutes on the red carpet, chatting to scores of journalists and posing for photos with fans.

Looking sharp in a navy three-piece suit, Jackman said he was overwhelmed by the reception.

"Tonight is a celebration," he said. "This is not a red-carpet; this is a one-off for me.

"And it's particularly special for me because the George Street cinema strip is where I used to come and watch movies when I was a kid."

Asked if he was sad about leaving Australia to live in New York, Jackman said: "I never leave Australia -- I'll always be back."

His wife Furness, in a striking, silver Lisa Ho-designed gown, said the premiere was "the biggest night for the Australian film industry for a long time".

"There's a great sense of national pride, which is fantastic; I'm really proud," Furness said.

Urban also told of his pride in his wife's work, but played down comments made by Kidman earlier in the day that suggested her movie-making days might be over.

"I wouldn't give much credence to that," Urban said. "She's a free spirit."

For Walters, the 13-year-old Aborigine who stars in his first film role, his first walk down a red carpet was "cool". He admitted that he was "too excited".

Walters said the best thing about making the film was "all the friends I made".

"But it was pretty hard work too," he added. "Sometimes I worked five hours a day."

Even seasoned actor David Wenham was struck by last night's reception.

"I can't remember one this big in Australia," Wenham said. "It reminds me of Los Angeles."

Luhrmann was among the last to enter the cinema, having spent almost an hour on the red carpet. Looking relaxed, he said the extraordinary hype surrounding the film did not add more pressure on set.

"I know that this film can't possibly live up to the hype, but the hype isn't important," Luhrmann said.

"But if the film makes a big difference to one person's life, then that in itself is an achievement."

Luhrmann did concede that the big test for the film would be whether American audiences warmed to it, and he would be promoting Australia in the US until March.

"Then I will be reclaiming my life, I'll take the family on holiday," he said. "I want to go walkabout."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24673489-15803,00.html

[MaineWriter]

From the premiere...Hugh, his wife Deborra, and fans.

[MaineWriter]

Hugh, Deborra, and David Gulilipil

[MaineWriter]

a few of Hugh and Nicole