1,721,547 research outputs found
Australasian horror
No full textThis Australasian horror special issue is an important step forward in putting Australian and New Zealand horror movies on the map of film and cinema studies as a subject worthy of intellectual debate. The journal issue is the first devoted solely to the academic discussion of Australasian horror movies. While an Australian horror movie tradition has produced numerous titles since the 1970s achieving commercial success and cult popularity worldwide, the horror genre is largely missing from Australian film history. While there have been occasional essays on standout titles such as Wolf Creek (Mclean, 2005), an increasing number of articles on ‘Ozploitation’ movies, and irregular discussion about Australian Gothic, overall the nature of Australian horror as a genre remains poorly understood. In terms of New Zealand, debate has tended to revolve around ‘Kiwi Gothic’ and of course Peter Jackon’s early splatter films, rather than Kiwi horror as a specific filmmaking tradition.\u
Horror
No full textThe monstrous landscape and the revenge of nature are recurring motifs in Australian cinema. In the horror genre, the idea of the monstrous landscape emerges from, and builds upon, an established tradition in Australian cinema in which landscape functions not just as a setting for action, but also as a character in its own right. Rather than a picturesque wilderness or countryside, or a serene natural world untainted by civilisation – representations common in landscape cinema celebrating positive aspects of the Australian ‘outback’ – the monstrous landscape is a dangerous, malevolent and threatening force. Drawing upon themes also common in Australian Gothic narratives such as entrapment in a hostile environment, isolation and fear of the unknown (Turcotte, 1988, see also Jonathan Rayner’s essay in this volume), the monstrous landscape acts according to its own logic indecipherable to non-Indigenous Australians and is represented in terms of its alien-ness and inhuman horror
Australian blockbuster movies
No full textDespite a preoccupation with Hollywood studio films in blockbuster studies, the blockbuster movie is not exclusive to Hollywood. Whilst the principal characteristics of the Hollywood blockbuster can take on new meaning in different national production systems, they nevertheless provide a useful framework for distinguishing ‘local’ examples. Drawing on blockbuster studies, this chapter delineates peculiarities in defining high-budget movies in the Australian context, and attempts to understand how high-budget movies are currently discussed in the literature on Australian international cinema. This chapter then examines high-budget Australian movies released between 2000 and 2015, including <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i> (2015), <i>The Great Gatsby</i> (2013), <i>Knowing</i> (2009), <i>Australia</i> (2008), <i>Happy Feet</i> (2006) and <i>Moulin Rouge!</i> (2001), through the lens of their size and scale, superlative status, spectacle and release strategy
Bait
No full textA synopsis and critique of the Australian/Singaporean film, Bait, directed by Kimble Rendall in the horror genre
Razorback
No full textSynopsis and critique of Australian Film, Razorback, directed by Russell Mulcahy in the horror genre
Science fiction
No full textFew science fiction films have been made in Australia by Australians for Australian audiences, with most of the handful of locally-produced films made since the mid-1990s. Yet there has always been a solid Australian audience for non-Australian science fiction films and a strong international niche audience for the genre. While Australia has provided below-the-line crews and heads of departments (cinematographers, production designers, and so on) for many non-Australian science fiction films produced domestically, few Australian film directors have specialised in the genre. This is somewhat surprising considering that Alex Proyas achieved a degree of international success for his gothic science fiction film Dark City (1998), and George Miller achieved international fame following the worldwide success of Mad Max II (1981). Although the science fiction element of Mad Max II is tenuous – and even more so in the case of the original Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) – Miller is credited with creating a new (sub)genre which incorporates science fiction elements and has been widely imitated internationally: the dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie. Nevertheless, Australia has only produced a small number of science fiction movies. In addition to the above films, key titles include: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (George Miller, 1985), Shirley Thompson versus the Aliens (Jim Sharman, 1972), The Time Guardian (Brian Hannant, 1987), The Chain Reaction (Ian Barry, 1980) and, more recently, Knowing (Alex Proyas, 2009), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Iron Sky (Timo Vuorensola, 2012)
Introduction
No full textThis chapter discusses the various ways in which we can understand 'Australian film'. It is the introductory chapter to the Australian section of the second edition of the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand
Knowing
No full textDirected by Alex Proyas, the Knowing is an action-packed science-fiction disaster movie. A well-known Australian director working in Hollywood, Proyas has developed an international reputation for stylised fantasy and science-fiction movies, including the neo-gothic movie The Crow (1994), the complex science-fiction film Dark City (1998), and the adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic I, Robot (2004) which earned almost US50 million and relies heavily upon special effects (including a visually impressive sequence of the world being destroyed) and high-octane action sequences (including a notable plane crash). Knowing’s cast included Australian actors, Rose Byrne and Ben Mendelsohn, and American actor Nicolas Cage. While Knowing received typically poor critical reviews, the movie performed well at the box-office earning over US$183 million worldwide
A Few Best Men
No full textLike most of Stephan Elliott’s movies, A Few Best Men is difficult to discuss without focusing on the director himself. A wedding-gone-wrong comedy, A Few Best Men is Elliott’s first Australian feature film in seventeen years. After directing the low-budget crime-thriller Frauds (1993), Elliott achieved worldwide success as writer-director of the Oscar-winning road movie Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). A quirky and visually striking film about two drag-queens and a transsexual’s journey across the harsh Australian outback in a bus named Priscilla, the movie earned over US$70 million at the international box-office and became an instant Australian classic. Elliott’s career, however, self-destructed soon after..
Australian screen in the 2000s: An introduction
No full textAustralian screen, meaning Australian feature film (including documentary) and television, has experienced significant change since the turn of the century. In contrast to much scholarship before 2000, the contemporary critical project is rarely limited solely to evaluating the Australianness of Australian content within the national cinema paradigm. Approaches to Australian film and television are necessarily diverse, less concerned with totalising narratives around a national imaginary and with problematising national discourses than they are with responding to current trends and configurations in texts, production, distribution, exhibition and consumption. With a specific focus on the years from 2000 to 2015, this collection offers coverage of the diversity of Australian screen during this period
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