This Week in Australian Cinemas

A fairly blah set of releases this week, as all of them are niche films. There is some bright spots though that look intriguing. Plus, we get (for the second week in a row after Children of Men) a decent-profiled film debuting here weeks before the US. Still, I'd much rather have Marie Antoinette, Volver, The Fountain, Babel, The Queen, etc at the same time as the US that two films before. Bah. I hate distributers more than... something else I hate.


Fast Food Nation, 2006, dir. Linklater
Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation arrives on Australian screens a full three weeks ahead of the US, so, umm... yay. However, I doubt that this film will be anywhere near as good as Children of Men. However, it has a very large cast, which is very interesting. Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bruce Willis, Patricia Arquette, Bobby Cannavale (let us ogle him yet again), Wilmer Vanderrama, Paul Dano (from Little Miss Sunshine if the name isn't familiar), Ethan Hawke, Luis Guzman, Kris Kristofferson, Avril Lavigne and Cherami Leigh. The film was shown in competition at Cannes, but that's never a guarantee of quality. Still, I might check it out.

Spellbound With Crossword Puzzles Wordplay, 2006, dir. Creadon
Worldplay is one these new-age hipster documentaries like Mad Hot Ballroom that are trying to follow in Spellbound's giant massive near-unpassable footsteps by taking a typically geeky/boring/silly/niche recreational activity (here, the New York Times' crossword puzzle) and make it and it's participants appeal to a mass audience. The problem is that Spellbound is freakin' SPELLBOUND and it's damn hard to beat that. Still, this could prove to be an entertaining DVD rental.

The Grudge 2, 2006, dir. Shimizu
A look at director Takashi Shimizu's IMDb filmography is quite startling. He has three Ju-On: The Grudge film's listed (they would be the Japanese version of the franchse) plus the two American versions (still set in Japan though). I really think it's time for Shimizu to give up on this franchise already. Not even Wes Craven directed more than one Nightmare on Elm Street (until Wes Craven's New Nightmare but that's a whole different beast). I don't know what it is with these Japanese horror directors. Hideo Nakata of the Ringu franchise is the same. Notice how I'm not talking about the actual movie? Yeah, that's because the original American Grudge (well, all of them really) is one of the worst movies I've seen in a cinema for a long time. Like, was there even a plot until the last 10 minutes? And I got sick of the whole 10 minute vignette leading up to a predictable scare involving those stupid white-faced dead people, after the second one. Ugh. And why is Teresa Palmer (left) who was impressive and recently AFI nominated in 2:37. Blah.

Suburban Mayhem, 2006, dir. Goldman
Speaking of AFI nominations, Suburban Mayhem from director Paul Goldman (who recently made Australian Rules) received 12 nominations. Emily Barclay is looking pretty solid for the win I think. She really impressed me in 2004's New Zealand film In My Father's Den and was the best thing (and AFI nominated again) for the TV movie The Silence. This film is about Katrina, as she plans to murder her father and then... do stuff? I'm not really sure. It's gotten a very mixed responce (some say it's great, others most definitely not). But, seriously, that poster is brilliant. So good that I want it for my wall even if the movie is shithouse. I'm definitely gonna seek this movie out.

No. 2, 2006, dir. Fraser
This is an adaptation of a one-woman show, yet it has a big giant cast. Talk about adapting to the cinema! No. 2 is a New Zealand film (one of their highest grossing ever, I believe) that bares are striking resemblance to many other ethnic-minority films. The one where the old matriarch decides to put on a big giant feast. This time the woman is selecting a successor, which must be something of native New Zealand culture that doesn't make sense to me. But, whatever. It stars African-American legend Ruby Dee as the matriarch. Looks more DVD-friendly to me, but who knows.

Trust the Man, 2006, dir. Freundlich
So me and my two besties (Hi Hannah and Georgie!!!) go to the movies a lot on Tuesday's because it's cheap ticket Tuesday. They've mentioned on numerous times that they want to see this movie because it has Julianne Moore and Maggie Gyllenhaal (two actress I definitely l-o-v-e) but something just keeps making me resist it. There are many directors out there who fall into the Woody Allen lite category (most recently, Ben Younger and his film Prime), and Bart Freundlich definitely looks to be in that category with this film, which also stars David Duchovny, Billy Crudup, Garry Shandling and Eva Mendes. It just seems like such a DVD movie. But, I do love me some Moore and Gyllenhaal (and in Moore's case, there's no lost children in sight!!!)

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, 2005, dir. Ireland
All I'm gonna say is: THIS LOOKS AWFUL. At least Ladies in Lavender looked mild. This one looks like a barely reanimated corpse limping around with no place to go.

Women of the Sun: 25 Years Later, 2006, dir. Weis
This is a follow-up documentary to the 1981 Australian mini-series Women of the Sun, which followed four Aboriginal women. Seems like it should've been put on TV though.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: 3D, 1993/2006, dir. Sellick
On October 31, The Nightmare Before Christmas gets a 3D release. However, it's an incredibly limited release so I probably won't have the chance to see it. DAMN YOU!!!!

BOX OFFICE
1. The Departed (2)
2. BoyTown (1)
3. The Devil Wears Prada (4)
4. Little Miss Sunshine (3)
5. Children of Men (1)
6. Crank (1)
7. Step Up (4)
8. Kenny (10)
9. Garfield 2 (7)
10. The Covenant (2)

The Departed remains at #1 in it's second week with $1.8mil, falling only 28% - a great hold no matter what. It still has the best per screen average in the top 10 (beating Little Miss Sunshine by $500) and looks to stay at the top next week considering the releases on offer.

New Aussie comedy BoyTown scores the best debut for the Australian film all year (and the best since Wolf Creek at the end of 2005) with (and this is the exact number) $998,719. So close to $1mil! Hopefully this will have some decent word of mouth, but I fear they released it at the wrong time. The film is aimed more-than-somewhat towards teens and uni students, yet as of right now they're all in study and exam mode. The Devil Wears Prada slides another 37% to just a few hundred thousand under one million. It has so far grossed $13.6mil with much more in the tank. This movie is a definite big motha hit and as of now is the highest grosser in the top 20.

Little Miss Sunshine slips a scant 10% in it's second week of national release. It so far as $2.3mil and will definitely reach at least $4mil, but will hopefully go higher. Children of Men debuts at #5 with just under $800,000 (it grossed $2000 less than LMS to miss out on fourth spot). That may not sound good, but considering the only advertising I saw was a trailer in front of The Departed, it's pretty good. Where was the TV campaign? Crank debuts one spot lower but with only $432,000. It'll be a distant memory in a week.

Step Up hangs around because there's nothing for teenage girls. Kenny moves back into the top 10 in it's tenth week, with a rise of 4% in takings. It now has $5.6mil and should hit at least $6.5mil. Now that school holidays are over, Garfield 2 falls 69 laughable per cent. The Convenant falls 58%.

Elsewhere, at #11, World Trace Center is going to go down as a big miss in Australia. It barely has $2mil and has the fourth-lowest per screen avarage in the Top 20. New entry Don at #15 does great with an average of over $8000 and An Inconvenient Truth approaches $3mil. Irresistable falls 39% in it's second week and will approach $300,000 by the end of it's run. Everything else is dead weight kids films that are dying now that school is back in. Debuting outside the Top 20 was Roberto Benigni's The Tiger and the Snow which debuted with a laughable $22,000 and an average of $1,128. Go back home, Roberto!