Save this Last Dance

It is always strange to see yourself on screen and this time was no different. Aside from always wanting a sip of the champagne they gave me whenever my character appeared, I think I can say a few balanced things about the film

From the start, the producer and director have treated the story with care and dignity. The opening credits are elegant and apt and lead us into the extraordinary world of Li Cunxin. And, wonder of wonders, they found someone in Chi Cao who could act like a dream and dance as well. It was always in our minds as it was being made that if the leading man failed in either of those roles, there was no film. Well, he didn't.

I know for a fact that Chi had to get up and start his work day at 4am to keep himself fit enough to dance as well as he had to. Considering his work day could end around 7 or 8pm, month after month, it was a marathon.

Added to this the insight of a master director in Bruce Beresford and the Camera skills of Peter James, Music by Chris Gordon and Graham Murphy's Choreography, it is a hymn to perseverance and achievement.The tricky politics are beautifully negotiated so that the stormy seas both China and America sailed during that time are treated with care.

I hope this sets off a tidal wave of interest in Ballet again. To watch these exquisite beings whirl around the sets had something of a dream about it and, hours after I had seen this film I was still in raptures about the blissful movements. The last dance is worth waiting for and it is the sum of all its parts.

To see the Trailer of 'Mao's Last Dancer', click here:

Infant Victoria

Australia's history was once described as like 'the most fabulous lies' and that is often true of real life. It can be so incredible that you cannot put it into drama for fear of being thought unrealistic. Strange but true.

Any life lived the way the royal families in Europe lived is very different to our life today but do we really need to have it mushed up and sweetened so that it barely resembles the original? Here is Victoria stomping around and using modern idioms and sexuality that seems very contemporary to me.

The costumes are magical, the sets and settings superb and they could not have better actors or better performances but I felt spoken down to. I saw a documentary about the early life of the young queen which was so much more interesting that I wish they had stuck to the original. The final insult comes with a chatty little pop song about 'true hearts' at the end.

BUT, and its a BIG one, the performances are fab. Both Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend are fabulous as the Queen and Prince Albert and they have a wonderful supporting cast including Miranda Richardson, Harriet Walter and Jim Broadbent. Emily Blunt keeps that lustrous balance between an imperious woman and a young girl in love to a tee and all power to her.

It is a great romance told romantically and at the very least it should stir some historical curiosity about the closeness of the European royals. Here is a scene in which the young queen tries to assert her authority over her husband which I like not only because Emily Blunt plays it so beautifully but because I wish I had the authority of a queen too some times. Even so, I wouldn't be using cockney terms like 'sorted' for all the tea in China.


To see a scene from 'Young Victoria', click here:

Gently Does It

I started off at a disadvantage with this new series because my reaction to Martin Shaw in Judge John Deed was a bit low key. I like him as an actor but the persistent 'Dear old Chappiness' of the show was underwhelming to me. There is nothing worse than well bred film making and I thought it had that in spades. Not that I object to it in Midsomer Murders but...to each their own.

It seemed to me that Shaw's character as the Judge might be a favourite for him and it would be served up again in the new series. My heart sank when the opening shot had him in his boots in the middle of a river doing a 'spot of fishing'. Not to worry, here's a real actor and so Shaw gives us a quite gentle Gently with a touch of a northern accent, the same doggedness his face always suggests and surprise, surprise - humility. His sidekick is a bumptious annoyance who is redeemed by his youthful insight and glaring character flaws - all calmly pointed out by Gently.

I think it is set in the early 1960's so, as with Mad Men, we have the opportunity to thank our lucky stars that we are in the 21ist century. All the smoking, chauvinist piggery and class structures are carefully folded into the stories - each of which so far, have been surprising and beautifully fitting for the time as I remember it.

Most wonderful is the shooting style. I watched a lot of TV at that time and the producers and cinematographers have captured the 'feel' of the films and drama of the era. There is a sharpness and artistry about the lighting of the actors and the way the camera follows them. Took me back to the marvelous black and white movies of long ago - 'Whistle down the Wind' etc. and the fast paced and curiously well costumed series like 'Danger Man' and 'The Avengers'.

It's great and watch how they include mysteries only just now coming to light - such as the recently discovered Jersey Children's Home scandal which formed the spine of the last episode. And here are Smoking Actors again. In 'The Tree' which we are filming now, the lead actors smoke and the director was smitten with anxiety about it. I must say, it can be a hard habit to kick after a production.

To watch a trailer for the ABC 1 series 'George Gently', click here:

September/ December Issues

Oh Jee, its fascinating to research the redoubtable Anna Wintour only to find a number of boring old farts tut tutting about her age. Namely Mr. Morley Safer from American 60 Minutes who must be a cool eighty if he's a day and I'm glad to say, she lost not one ounce of her cool with him.

I wanted to see this documentary, not only to get a bit of perspective on Meryl Streep's fabulous performance in 'The Devil Wears Prada' but because a friend put me in touch with the concept that its all very well to despise other women for being tough when they have, in fact achieved Olympian heights. It might be sassy and fun to do it from the cute perspective of an infant well, a twenty something girl but what would anybody be like in the same position?

I found Wintour fascinating. Her very guarded self, her deliberately flirtatious persona, her extraordinary figure and taste and her all round composure in what must be an ordeal of a schedule.

She has a rogues gallery of sidekicks to wait on her editorial desk at Vogue who, says Morley Safer, form a posse of "obsequious toadies". I doubt that. I think a non-performing toad in that office would have a shorter life span than a cane toad in a Queensland kitchen and the only likely candidate I could find was a large man of very eccentric habits who seemed to be in a twenty four hour personal operetta.

Grace Coddington is a find - Wintour's seditious friend and talented colleague of uncertain age, whose long red hair and jaunty manner betray her great skill as the Creative Director at Vogue. Starting life as a model in England in the sixties, she ended that career after a terrible motor accident which she still bears the scars of. This does nothing to dull her hands-on delight in her work or her schoolgirl glee when she whispers an aside about the 'headmistress'. Some of this film has a distinct St Trinians air.

There is one jarring note. Wintour likes Starbucks coffee which seems strangely out of place. But, if you're interested in women defying the age and age itself, give this one a go. And not just for the Queen B. either.


To see the trailer of 'September Issue, click here:

Oh Balibo

I knew about the death of the five Australian journalists in Balibo but the passage of time had put a lid on it for me - until this movie. Years ago, I had talked to Tony Maniaty about it and he gave me some insight into the situation they had all faced, but nothing prepared me for this....especially Tony's appearance in the film played by a not-very-look-alike actor.

The story is beautifully handled by Robert Connolly who gave the opening and closing scenes to a local Timorese - a fictitious young girl whose testimony to the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission is heart wrenching.

I have never seen East Timor in anything other than angry documentaries or news footage so to see the landscape lovingly filmed was a relief, considering it forms the background to the messy, restless horror of that time. I was impressed by the reality of the reconstructed scenes and squirmed in remembrance of the awful clothes. The cast captures the exuberant recklessness of the team with great charm but it's the knowledge of the oncoming train wreck and the persistence of the doggedly middle aged Anthony Lapaglia that grounds the film.

The end, when it comes for them all is violent and shocking. As bad as the opening scenes of 'Master and Commander' in its realism but I wish they had not included some of it in their trailer. It should come to us with as near a sense of shock as it did to them.

Translate this back in time and place and we could have been reading Greek tragedy. It was certainly not Australia's finest hour.

To see the trailer of' Balibo',click here:

Dali - do's and don'ts

Make several visits to the Dali exhibition in Melbourne. At least two - there is simply not enough time to absorb it all otherwise. When I first tried on Sunday, the line for tickets wound round in several loops so I just had a look at the 'Kiddies Dali' set up in the main entrance. There was a clock with reverse numbers on the wall and a bust of a woman with a poached egg on her head. Plastic lobsters and telephones lay around and the children were having a wild time.
I could have made do with that.

On the way in the man sitting at the entrance made a point of looking up and down the visitors and announcing loudly whether he thought they would enjoy the exhibition or not. He said nothing to me. So, as an obvious Dali ignoramus I wanted to read a lot of the information on the boards set near the paintings. Some of it is in the painful loony elaborations that experts in art can descend to but it does help to know a bit more about his life. I never imagined Dali had a normal childhood with a father etc. but here they both are and the exhibition progresses through to his wonderful electric colours and obsession with the wild landscape he grew up in. Several large panels near the entrance introduce you to this strange part of the north western Spanish coastline and it appears again and again in the work.

I loved a film of an exhibition he did in America in the thirties. It seems very primitive, full of strangely dressed manequins and models swimming in pools of swirling water. Even stranger to know that an exhibition of Whistler's Mother had been the other hit of that time.

His mastery of the techniques of the old masters and absorption of the new made him able to do almost anything. I particularly loved his portraits of his wife Gala - the famous one in colour of her face emerging from circular shapes and a much later pencil drawing focusing on her penetrating eyes.

Near the exit there are tiny lighted boxes of his jewellery with photographs of him at work on them on the opposite wall. I noticed he advised young artists to master the technique of the greats...and after that they will let you do anything. How right he was but sometimes, just sometimes I wished he would cheer up a bit.

To see a trailer of the Dali Exhibition, click here:

The Escapist

When in Los Angeles a few years ago, I went to talk to an agent who represented Brian Cox in America and since then have followed his career more keenly. His translation from English heavyweight theatrical to an international film actor is unusual and he gave us a bit of an insight into this when he chatted to the audience after a screening by Popcorn Taxi recently.

They said he liked a chat and he does. His phone conversation from New York, full of theatrical anecdotes told us about his decision to go to America where he believed he would be a 'character support'- but this film came about after he had expressed a desire to be more. When Rupert Wyatt came to him with a script, he asked him to go back and write him a leading role and, when Wyatt did so he joined the movie as exec. producer and helped get finance for it.

It is beautifully shot and edited and, though full of violence suppressed and real does not step over the border that runs between unbearable and bearable. The camera drifts away when something nasty looks like happening to the beautiful Dominic Cooper and we only cop an eyeful when the most loathed character is roundly thumped and left for dead.

The plot lives on several different levels and in our world of many escapes, it can be taken on all of them. I liked the changes in tense and the weird intercuts between what we hope and what we see. I loved Damian Lewis in another fantastic variation of himself...the first I have seen since the telly production of 'Life'. A very loathsome reptile he can be too. Stranger than that is the Joseph Fiennes character. Fiennes has to go a long way to stop me seeing him as a Siamese cat and cast as he is as a physical heavy complete with scary hood, he does a great job of it.

It is set in the goal which was used for Noel Coward's scene in the original 'Italian Job.' But now it is not bright and chatty as it seemed when Coward sat there in glory, stroking a cat. Dark and claustrophobic, the impression of caged testosterone is palpable.

When this movie was reviewed on Tuesday night on ABC radio, it was described as 'not a Chick Flick' by two cheerful chappies. Well, I suppose that depends on what sort of chick you are. I loved it. Hurry along.

To see a trailer of 'The Escapist' click here:

Alone but not Lost

Here's a man all alone who did not 'beweep his outcast state.' Ian Fairweather, the subject of the documentary 'Fairweather Man' directed by Aviva Ziegler which I saw at a special screening at the Australian Film School, is a haunting and haunted person whose sad eyes follow you out of the auditorium and beyond. After a tormented childhood, unlike modern adventurers, this man went on a solo sea journey for a real purpose and emerged from it a changed and focused artist.

There is an air of discovery throughout this film which coincides with the comparative lack of information about the artist anywhere else - even on the net but for aficionados the power of this strange painter is well known. His transformative journey across the Timor Sea is wonderfully captured and, coinciding with his diary records, creates the world of sense and illusion he endured whilst drifting on his raft, staring at the sun by day and the stars by night as his eyes began to fail but not his mind. He lived for the rest of his life on the perception this journey provided.

Born in Scotland in 1891, Ian Fairweather was a true child of Empire. When his parents sailed back to India, he was left with his grandmother and maiden aunts and, seeing them you wonder how he came out of it alive. The maiden aunts resemble something even Disney, in his wildest dreams could not have cooked up and, in their less than tender care, the handsome little boy spent eight years of his life before he saw his family again. From then on it was the usual catastrophe - boarding school, the army, World War 1, escape, incarceration but finally, lessons in art culminating in his enrolment at the Slade in London.

'Fairweather Man' is a delicate interweaving of drama and documentary with additional footage so beautifully set that the whole is a seamless tapestry. Add to this the marvelous paintings and interviews with friends, family and arts luminaries to present a fascinating insight into one of our greats. I know the raft reenactment provided all sorts of logistical problems for the production but it shows how well a life can be brought back when skillfully handled. As David Marr said of Biography - "It should make you feel as if you have met the person." Watch ABC 1 next Thursday 16th July at 9.30pm and meet Mr. Fairweather.


To see a short feature on Ian Fairweather's painting 'Monsoon', click here:

'Fairweather Man' is available on DVD from: https://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/807426

No Frou Frou

It is always a mistake to have preconceived ideas about a film. I had looked forward to seeing a reconstruction of the early life of Coco Chanel in 'Coco avant Chanel', following the lines of 'poor girl makes good' - with beautiful costumes. Instead you get the real thing.

'Coco avant Chanel' begins with her early childhood in a Dickensian orphanage, progressing through her miserable semi - talent as a chanteuse and on to her not very romantic association with a wealthy french landholder - without an elegant stitch on her. Instead, there was the uncanny likeness of Audrey Tautou to the real Coco and lots of striding, in an odd reminder of Judy Davis in 'My Brilliant Career'. You know she is on her way somewhere but she is so unconventional it takes a while to adjust.

The film shows why she developed her attitude to love and her fierce independence. It is not a comforting nor comfortable vision.

The script is extraordinary and there are genuine Bon Mots including a wonderful allusion to her second lover 'Boy' Capel, who they all adore "because he is English and so elegant." The casting of the two men in this period of her life is very un-Hollywood... Benoit Poelvoordee as Etienne Balsan and Alessandra Nivola as 'Boy' Capel - a Belgian and an American playing a Frenchman and an Englishman. It is strange how often a preconception of nationality is wrong and how observant outsiders can be of a 'type.'

The translation for the subtitles has been done in very colloquial American and is jarring but school girl french comes back quickly when you would rather watch the actors than the subtitles. The next section of her life, moving on to the foundation of her empire and her Post war emergence from retirement to compete with Dior and his 'new look' would be fascinating. Get Judy Davis for that.

To see the real Coco Chanel, click here:

Frank but not Ernest

Settling down to watch the Arthur Upfield telemovie on ABC last weekend, I had expected a fast paced, even racy outback detective story. Oh no, not at all and for a while I thought we'd be stuck in the well worn and extremely dismal 'WW1 vet has trouble with women but hides real affection for lost boy'. I was not sure I could go through too much more of that but this production slips neatly past the cliches while remaining true to the stripped down facts of life at that time.

Robert Menzies gives the sort of performance that takes him way beyond the bleak Rabbit Proof Fence territory his character works in. His stoicism and stolid insistence on his populist talents as a writer are counterbalanced by absolute confidence in his integrity. Moments of conflict and then resolution with his family are highlights but even they are dished out with the same reluctance Upfield seemed to have felt for self glorification. Nevertheless they're there and so we see glimpses of happiness possible on the horizon.

As an avid watcher of crime stories, I often find myself watching violent crime scenes I would consider over the top from any other genre. Responsibility for this fascination is looked at here, as Arthur Upfield's plotting of a 'Boney' story sucks in a sociopath whose subsequent crimes follow the author's pattern. The inclusion of Nicholas Hope of 'Bad Boy Bubby' fame is interesting - his persona curls round his role as the dogged investigator perfectly.

For those of us for whom too much detective telly is not enough, this was a thoughtful exercise.

To see interviews with the writer, producer and director, click here: