Cinema Now
Andrew Bailey
Ed. Paul Duncan
TASCHEN
CATE SHORTLAND
Born 10 August 1968 in Temora, Australia
Withe the lyrical coming-of-age drama Somersault (2004), which swept the Australian Film Institute Awards in 2004, winning thirteen prizes, writer-director Cate Shortland made an auspicious feature debut, eliciting breakthrough performances by Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington as anguished young paramours in a faded Australian ski town. As Heidi, a 16-year-old girl who skips out on her home life after making moves on her mother's boyfriend, Cornish intuits the psychological complexities of a young woman who means well but doesn't grasp the ramifications of her budding sexuality. Arriving off-season in the desolate resort town, Heidi finds work at a petrol station and a surrogate mother in the form of Irene, a lonely woman who gives Heidi longing. But she slips back into her self-destructive patterns of drinking and promiscuity after falling for the handsome but repressed son of a wealthy local farmer, whose own sexual awakening is just as messy. Shot with a handheld camera in and around the Lake George area of New South Wales, Somersault comes alive through director of photography Robert Humphreys' wintry, monochromatic images of Heidi rushing into the cold chill of adulthood, with its nuanced sexuality and frequent disappointments. Cornish, who was 20 when the film was shot, and the first to audition for the role of Heidi, delivers a revelatory performance; she seems to be discovering life's uncomfortable pull in tandem with the character she plays.
FILMS
2004 Somersault
Selected Awards
2004 Somersault: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Australian Film Institute Awards; best Feature Film, Best Direction, Best Script, Best Cinematography, best Actress, IF Awards Australia
2005 Somerasult: Special Mention (Best Dramatic Feature - World Cinema competition: Breakthrough Awards), Miami Film Festival
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Film
Cinema Now
TASCHEN
Robert Rodriguez
Born 20 June 1968 in San Antonio, USA
The self-professed "rebel without a crew" shot action and horror movies on video as a child before creating a daily comic strip during his adolescence followed by a first feature in his early twenties, the notorious El Mariachi (1992), made for $7,000, much of which was raised from Rodriguez's participation in medical research studies. A rousing hit at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and resulted in a studio distribution deal through Columbia Pictures, El Mariachi put the Austin, Texas-based one-man crew on the independent film map, where he was embraced by the same movie geek contingent that helped turned his friend and fellow B-movie obsessive, Quentin Tarantino, into a cause celebre. The two kindred spirits would go on to work together in various capacities over the years, culminating in the exploitation double-header Grindhouse (2007), to which Rodriguez contributed the zombie horror opus Planet Terror. After a string of studio projects, including the blockbuster Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2003) and two Mariachi sequels, Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Rodriguez unleashed his most impressive feat to date, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City (2005), featuring a rogue's gallery of villains and vixens, some of the most visceral screen violence in memory, and a digitally-enhanced veneer that gave the film a kinetic visual edge over countless comic-book competitors. A multi-hyphenate known for his "Mariachi-style" low-budget, no-nonsense, do-it-yourself method of film making, Rodriguez has worked (often all at once) as producer, director, writer, editor, camera operator, musical score composer, production designer and sound editor. His next two features are Sin City sequels.
Films -
1992 El Mariachi
1995 Desperado
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
1998 The Faculty
2001 Spy Kids
2002 Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
2005 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
2005 Sin City
2007 Grindhouse: Planet Terror
2007/08 Sin City 2
Selected Awards
1993 El Mariachi: Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival; Audience Award, Deauville Film Festival
1994 El Mariachi: Best First Feature, Independent Spirit Awards
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn; Silver Scream Award, Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
1999 Berlinale Camera, Berlin International Film Festival
2005 Sin City; Technical Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival
TASCHEN
Robert Rodriguez
Born 20 June 1968 in San Antonio, USA
The self-professed "rebel without a crew" shot action and horror movies on video as a child before creating a daily comic strip during his adolescence followed by a first feature in his early twenties, the notorious El Mariachi (1992), made for $7,000, much of which was raised from Rodriguez's participation in medical research studies. A rousing hit at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and resulted in a studio distribution deal through Columbia Pictures, El Mariachi put the Austin, Texas-based one-man crew on the independent film map, where he was embraced by the same movie geek contingent that helped turned his friend and fellow B-movie obsessive, Quentin Tarantino, into a cause celebre. The two kindred spirits would go on to work together in various capacities over the years, culminating in the exploitation double-header Grindhouse (2007), to which Rodriguez contributed the zombie horror opus Planet Terror. After a string of studio projects, including the blockbuster Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2003) and two Mariachi sequels, Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Rodriguez unleashed his most impressive feat to date, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City (2005), featuring a rogue's gallery of villains and vixens, some of the most visceral screen violence in memory, and a digitally-enhanced veneer that gave the film a kinetic visual edge over countless comic-book competitors. A multi-hyphenate known for his "Mariachi-style" low-budget, no-nonsense, do-it-yourself method of film making, Rodriguez has worked (often all at once) as producer, director, writer, editor, camera operator, musical score composer, production designer and sound editor. His next two features are Sin City sequels.
Films -
1992 El Mariachi
1995 Desperado
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn
1998 The Faculty
2001 Spy Kids
2002 Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
2005 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
2005 Sin City
2007 Grindhouse: Planet Terror
2007/08 Sin City 2
Selected Awards
1993 El Mariachi: Audience Award, Sundance Film Festival; Audience Award, Deauville Film Festival
1994 El Mariachi: Best First Feature, Independent Spirit Awards
1996 From Dusk Till Dawn; Silver Scream Award, Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
1999 Berlinale Camera, Berlin International Film Festival
2005 Sin City; Technical Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival
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