Before he became the writer/director of the edgy Australian teenage drama Wasted on the Young, Ben C. Lucas spent many years as a videogame designer, forgoing his passion for filmmaking under the assumption that it wasn’t a practical career to pursue. And he’d be right; few filmmakers are lucky enough to make a living out of what they do, particularly here in Australia. Yet in his mid-20s, Lucas came to [...]

It’s been over seven years between drinks for Peter Weir, the seminal Australian director who was last seen the helm of 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the enthralling maritime epic that earned ten Oscar nominations and walked away with two. For his latest epic The Way Back, Weir has left behind the high seas to take on virtually every other terrain imaginable, recounting the true(ish) [...]

If it wasn’t for his mum, director Tom Hooper wouldn’t have had anything to do with The King’s Speech, the critically lauded film starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. That’s because she was the one who first introduced Hooper to David Seidler’s screenplay, which charts the unique friendship between the stammering King of England, King George VI (Firth), and his [...]

If you’re an independent filmmaker, you could learn a thing or two from British writer/director Gareth Edwards. His feature debut Monsters, an alien-invasion movie set in Mexico, is the kind of film one would expect to cost tens of millions to make. Yet Monsters was made on just half a million, which is is about what one CGI flower cost in Avatar. Well, thereabouts.

The ever-resourceful Edwards cut [...]

Writer/director Sean Bryne’s feature-debut The Loved Ones is the latest homebrew horror to hit Australian cinemas, a genre that our film industry nails — both figuratively and literally — time and time again. In this gleefully gory outing, the polished nails belong to teen “princess” Lola (Robin McLeavy), a fantastically insane serial killer who tortures her prom date Brent (Xavier Samuels) with playful malice. You can read our [...]

The Hola Mexico Film Festival has already made its way through the US and now lands on our shores for 2010 with a diverse range of films covering both upbeat and dark parts of Mexican society. I was lucky enough to talk with festival creator/director Samuel Douek (pictured left) ahead of the Adelaide leg about filmic love, Carlos Carrera and national film crises.

Cut Print Review: [...]

In the midst of all the explosions, car chases and shootouts that make Tomorrow, When the War Began one of the biggest Australian films in years are two emerging  Melbourne actors, Caitlin Stasey and Deniz Akdeniz.

Stasey, the 20-year-old actress who is best known as Rachel Kinski on TV’s Neighbours, stars as country teenager Ellie Linton in this adaptation [...]

Independent American-Canadian filmmaker Vincenzo Natali first burst on to the scene in 1997 with the surreal, low-budget psychological thriller Cube. The film gathered such a large cult following, it spawned two sequels, Cube 2: Hypercube and Cube Zero that Natali did not return to direct. Instead, he began developing the story for an original sci-fi horror film we now know as Splice.