The opening cries of “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba” to a rising sun still sends shivers down the spine almost 20 years after The Lion King’s initial release. Anyone lucky enough to attend a screening during the 2011 release will likely remember the revisit for the ambience as much as the film. Children of a new generation experiencing it for the first time, feeble singing coming from the person in the [...]

Furry red monsters.  Super-powered Zebra-men. The apocalypse.

No, I haven’t been driven mad by lack of sleep. These are all things that made appearances in the films I’ve been watching over the last four days, along with a butt-naked warlord, a disgraced New York politician and about half the population of Earth. And although the days have begun to blur together as the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) rapidly approaches its [...]

Exhausting. That’s the word I’d use to describe my weekend. At this point I’m roughly half-way through my Melbourne International Film Festival experience, with the six festival films I saw over the past two days (five of them in the span of less than twelve hours!) bringing my grand total to an even sixteen overall. So without further adieu, let’s dive in to what I’ve been up to.

When you [...]

Judging purely by the quality of the films I have seen, days five through nine at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) have been a marked improvement on my bumpy days one to four. With a combination of intriguing documentaries, moving dramas and one outrageous comedy, in the last five days I have seen six films, almost all of which have managed to live up to my [...]

Missed screenings and faulty projectors have ensured that my first few days at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) have gotten off to a bit of a rough start. Yet as I wearily type this at quarter-to-one in the morning, in full awareness that I have to get up in six hours so I can be on time to University, I rest assured in the knowledge that it [...]

After twelve incredible feature films, the movies of Pixar are beloved the world over for their dazzling animation, heart-warming stories and their perseverant heroes; not once, however, has Pixar told a story with a female lead character or called upon the talents of a female director to call the shots…until now. Upon the release of promotional screenshots, all eyes have been captured by Pixar once again, this [...]

For film journalists and bloggers, the year 2010 doesn’t really come to an end until the night of February 27^th in the US — or the morning of February 28^th in Australia — where anybody who’s somebody in Hollywood will be seen walking the red carpet for the 83^rd Academy Awards.  Usually, though, the winners are dictated by the dozen or so award ceremonies that preceded the Oscars, which makes [...]

No one can deny the sheer film nerd excitement and anticipation surrounding the release of the Coen brothers’ take on True Grit, which rode into Australian cinemas last week. To have Joel and Ethan at the helm of a (Western) project starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin, it’s a nigh-on pants wetting excitement. Wondering what filmic magic the Coen brothers have in store for [...]