(l-r) Scott Glenn and Mimi Leder on location in Broken Hill.
HBO.s critically acclaimed The Leftovers returns to Foxtel this week after shooting a large chunk of its third and final season in Australia last year.
The show tracks the impact of The Sudden Departure, in which two per cent of the world.s population vanished without a trace, on those left behind.
As the show.s regular director and Ep Mimi Leder (Deep Impact) puts it: .If you.re going to do a show about the end of the world, what greater place to go to than Australia, which is practically at the end of the world to us (laughs)..
Leder and the production team, including creators Damon Lindelof (Lost) and Tom Perrotta (Little Children, Election), on whose novel the series is based, were inspired by the Australian films of the 70s.
.Season two was very much inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock,...
HBO.s critically acclaimed The Leftovers returns to Foxtel this week after shooting a large chunk of its third and final season in Australia last year.
The show tracks the impact of The Sudden Departure, in which two per cent of the world.s population vanished without a trace, on those left behind.
As the show.s regular director and Ep Mimi Leder (Deep Impact) puts it: .If you.re going to do a show about the end of the world, what greater place to go to than Australia, which is practically at the end of the world to us (laughs)..
Leder and the production team, including creators Damon Lindelof (Lost) and Tom Perrotta (Little Children, Election), on whose novel the series is based, were inspired by the Australian films of the 70s.
.Season two was very much inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock,...
- 4/20/2017
- by Harry Windsor
- IF.com.au
Interpublic’s media agency group Mediabrands Australia has today announced the acquisition of mobile marketing firm Mnet Group Limited.
Mnet is a specialist mobile marketing business which has developed mobile and tablet apps for companies like Fox Sports, Virgin Australia and the Australian Open.
Henry Tajer, executive chairman of Mediabrands, said the acquisition would help the group better integrate mobile solutions into its offerings across the company’s various media agencies.
“It’s the natural next step for us at Mediabrands, having mobile capability is in our view the last piece to our puzzle,” he said.
“We have a very, very aligned view on mobile being probably the most significant impact on the broader marketing sector, and having the skills and capabilities to be able to offer our clients mobile marketing solutions is critical to maintaining relevance.”
The company employs more than 40 people in Los Angeles, Melbourne and Sydney.
Mnet’s management,...
Mnet is a specialist mobile marketing business which has developed mobile and tablet apps for companies like Fox Sports, Virgin Australia and the Australian Open.
Henry Tajer, executive chairman of Mediabrands, said the acquisition would help the group better integrate mobile solutions into its offerings across the company’s various media agencies.
“It’s the natural next step for us at Mediabrands, having mobile capability is in our view the last piece to our puzzle,” he said.
“We have a very, very aligned view on mobile being probably the most significant impact on the broader marketing sector, and having the skills and capabilities to be able to offer our clients mobile marketing solutions is critical to maintaining relevance.”
The company employs more than 40 people in Los Angeles, Melbourne and Sydney.
Mnet’s management,...
- 2/1/2013
- by Nic Christensen
- Encore Magazine
This article, written by respected cinematographer Robert Humphreys Acs, originally appeared at the Australian Cinematographers Society website. For more information about the show, visit The Strange Calls. .
The Strange Calls is a six-part TV drama series written and directed by Daley Pearson and produced by Tracey Robertson and co-produced by Leigh McGrath for Hoodlum and the ABC.
Bumbling city cop Toby Banks (Toby Truslove) is demoted to night duty in the sleepy beachside village of Coolum. Working out of a run-down caravan on the outskirts of town, he meets Gregor (Barry Crocker), town cleaner, board game collector and paranormal authority. They team up to investigate The Strange Calls . bizarre late-night phone calls that expose the paranormal mysteries haunting the sleepy town. A place where men turn into chickens, mermaids fall in love with locals and cats return from the grave.
We shot The Strange Calls using a single Arri Alexa camera from Cameraquip.
The Strange Calls is a six-part TV drama series written and directed by Daley Pearson and produced by Tracey Robertson and co-produced by Leigh McGrath for Hoodlum and the ABC.
Bumbling city cop Toby Banks (Toby Truslove) is demoted to night duty in the sleepy beachside village of Coolum. Working out of a run-down caravan on the outskirts of town, he meets Gregor (Barry Crocker), town cleaner, board game collector and paranormal authority. They team up to investigate The Strange Calls . bizarre late-night phone calls that expose the paranormal mysteries haunting the sleepy town. A place where men turn into chickens, mermaids fall in love with locals and cats return from the grave.
We shot The Strange Calls using a single Arri Alexa camera from Cameraquip.
- 9/4/2012
- by Robert Humphreys ACS
- IF.com.au
Sometimes great actors and promising material don’t always add up to cinematic excellence, and unfortunately this is the case for the Willem Dafoe vehicle, The Hunter, director Daniel Nettheim’s first feature in over a decade. Based on the novel by Julia Leigh, writer/director of the chilling Sleeping Beauty, Nettheim’s film favors a naturalistic Survivorman aesthetic and empathetic sensibility over Leigh’s subjective sterility, but while embracing a coarse lined with heartstrings, his big reveal lacks the pull necessary to make the film a real success.
The 2011 Tiff/2012 Rotterdam selected film features Dafoe as Martin, a hired mercenary posing as an embedded university biologist while actually a hired gun instructed to hunt down the fabled Tasmanian tiger, a species thought extinct, but also coveted by a biotech company named Red Leaf for their mysterious genetic properties. With help from a semi-sketchy local (Sam Neill), he takes up...
The 2011 Tiff/2012 Rotterdam selected film features Dafoe as Martin, a hired mercenary posing as an embedded university biologist while actually a hired gun instructed to hunt down the fabled Tasmanian tiger, a species thought extinct, but also coveted by a biotech company named Red Leaf for their mysterious genetic properties. With help from a semi-sketchy local (Sam Neill), he takes up...
- 7/10/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Willem Dafoe is magnificent as a lone hunter in this gripping existential drama set in the wilds of Tasmania
Hunting is a longstanding metaphor in the movies. From the great explorer films of the early years such as The Lost World and King Kong, through to westerns, and later classics such as The Deer Hunter and White Hunter Black Heart, directors have used nature and the chase to depict man confronting his inner self, wrestling with his wild ego and his civilised id.
The latest of these is The Hunter, an Australian film set entirely in one of the last great wildernesses, Tasmania. Not to be confused with Steve McQueen's last film of the same name (although I'm sure echoes are intended), it's based on a book by Julia Leigh, the writer who made her own debut as a film-maker at Cannes in 2011 with the neo-feminist erotic curio Sleeping Beauty.
Hunting is a longstanding metaphor in the movies. From the great explorer films of the early years such as The Lost World and King Kong, through to westerns, and later classics such as The Deer Hunter and White Hunter Black Heart, directors have used nature and the chase to depict man confronting his inner self, wrestling with his wild ego and his civilised id.
The latest of these is The Hunter, an Australian film set entirely in one of the last great wildernesses, Tasmania. Not to be confused with Steve McQueen's last film of the same name (although I'm sure echoes are intended), it's based on a book by Julia Leigh, the writer who made her own debut as a film-maker at Cannes in 2011 with the neo-feminist erotic curio Sleeping Beauty.
- 7/7/2012
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Willem Dafoe is as reliable and dependable as actors come, taking on ambitious projects that often hew away from the commercial, most notably the controversial horror Antichrist. Teaming with veteran TV director Daniel Nettheim, Dafoe unveils yet another facet of his skill set as a quiet, sensitive soul for Aussie indie thriller The Hunter.
Dafoe plays Martin David, an American mercenary who is hired by a military biotech company to hunt down the presumed-extinct yet recently-sighted Tasmanian Tiger and collect tissue samples from it. He has a few months to discover it before competition arrives if, in fact, they are not already there. While on his excursion, David lives with a local family, Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her children, Sass (Morgana Davies) and Bike (Finn Woodlock). Slowly, he begins to bond with them, and upon learning that the children’s father, Jarrah (Marc Watson-Paul), disappeared...
Willem Dafoe is as reliable and dependable as actors come, taking on ambitious projects that often hew away from the commercial, most notably the controversial horror Antichrist. Teaming with veteran TV director Daniel Nettheim, Dafoe unveils yet another facet of his skill set as a quiet, sensitive soul for Aussie indie thriller The Hunter.
Dafoe plays Martin David, an American mercenary who is hired by a military biotech company to hunt down the presumed-extinct yet recently-sighted Tasmanian Tiger and collect tissue samples from it. He has a few months to discover it before competition arrives if, in fact, they are not already there. While on his excursion, David lives with a local family, Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her children, Sass (Morgana Davies) and Bike (Finn Woodlock). Slowly, he begins to bond with them, and upon learning that the children’s father, Jarrah (Marc Watson-Paul), disappeared...
- 7/6/2012
- by Shaun Munro
- Obsessed with Film
Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter is a dark, brooding film that depends just as much on scenes of silence as it does on scenes of dialogue. Half of the film is simply a man hunting in the woods, setting traps and trying to find signs of his prey, while the other half incorporates a more human element into the story. Both of these are interesting parts of the story, which makes it unfortunate when they don’t end up getting put together particularly well.
Martin David (Willem Dafoe) has been hired by a company to travel to the outback of Tasmania, Australia in order to hunt the last known Tasmanian Tiger from which he’s supposed to collect samples and then destroy the rest. While there, he stays with Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her two kids. Lucy’s husband mysteriously disappeared in the wilderness not long before Martin’s arrival,...
Martin David (Willem Dafoe) has been hired by a company to travel to the outback of Tasmania, Australia in order to hunt the last known Tasmanian Tiger from which he’s supposed to collect samples and then destroy the rest. While there, he stays with Lucy (Frances O’Connor) and her two kids. Lucy’s husband mysteriously disappeared in the wilderness not long before Martin’s arrival,...
- 7/3/2012
- by Jeff Beck
- We Got This Covered
In their 2006 book "Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger," authors Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson, then researchers at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, talked about becoming obsessed with a stuffed Tasmanian Tiger that they would walk by every day in the museum. It became "something akin to amorous fervor," and eventually they decided to take a trip to Tasmania to see if the tiger, which officially became extinct in 1936, when the lone survivor died at the Hobart Zoo, still existed somewhere in the wild. It's a mysterious kind of animal – lithe, beautiful, angular – that inspires this kind of devotion, even decades after its extinction. And it's a nearly mythical kind of eeriness that seeps into "The Hunter," Daniel Nettheim's dark and deeply haunting film based on the novel by Julia Leigh, about a man (Willem Dafoe) obsessed with finding the tiger, no matter the cost.
- 4/3/2012
- by Drew Taylor
- The Playlist
The Film Critics Circle of Australia has announced its nominees for its Annual Awards for Australian Film for 2011.
Burning Man scored the most nominations, with a spot in 10 of 11 categories.
The film is director Jonathan Teplitzky’s third film and tells the story of an out-of-control chef who is struggling with a life crisis.
With the second most nominations was dark thriller Snowtown in eight categories.
The Hunter starring The Willem Dafoe and directed by Daniel Nettheim and The Eye of the Storm starring Geoffrey Rush and directed by Fred Schepsis both received seven nods.
Red Dog, the year’s highest grossing Australian film for 2011, received only three nominations, including best direction for Kriv Stenders while Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach received four.
Ivan Sen’s Toomelah and Julia Leigh’s debut Sleeping Beauty both received one nomination for actors Daniel Connors and Emily Browning respectively.
Animal Kingdom...
Burning Man scored the most nominations, with a spot in 10 of 11 categories.
The film is director Jonathan Teplitzky’s third film and tells the story of an out-of-control chef who is struggling with a life crisis.
With the second most nominations was dark thriller Snowtown in eight categories.
The Hunter starring The Willem Dafoe and directed by Daniel Nettheim and The Eye of the Storm starring Geoffrey Rush and directed by Fred Schepsis both received seven nods.
Red Dog, the year’s highest grossing Australian film for 2011, received only three nominations, including best direction for Kriv Stenders while Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach received four.
Ivan Sen’s Toomelah and Julia Leigh’s debut Sleeping Beauty both received one nomination for actors Daniel Connors and Emily Browning respectively.
Animal Kingdom...
- 4/3/2012
- by Colin Delaney
- Encore Magazine
In their 2006 book "Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger," authors Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson, then researchers at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, talked about becoming obsessed with a stuffed Tasmanian Tiger that they would walk by every day in the museum. It became "something akin to amorous fervor," and eventually they decided to take a trip to Tasmania to see if the tiger, which officially became extinct in 1936 when the lone survivor died at the Hobart Zoo, still existed, somewhere in the wild. It's the kind of mysterious animal – lithe, beautiful, angular – that inspires this kind of devotion, even decades after its extinction. And it's this kind of nearly mythic eeriness that seeps into "The Hunter," Daniel Nettheim's dark and deeply haunting film based on the novel by Julia Leigh, about a man (Willem Dafoe) obsessed with finding the tiger, no matter the cost.
- 3/11/2012
- by Drew Taylor
- The Playlist
It seems controversy leads to awards. The two big winners at last night.s inaugural Aacta Awards were thriller feature film Snowtown and TV drama series The Slap. Both renowned for their controversial nature, the film and TV series netted four and five gongs respectively.
Snowtown, about Australian serial killer John Bunting who befriends a 16-year-old, was honoured in the Best Direction (Justin Kurzel), Best Adapted Screenplay (Shaun Grant), Best Actor (Daniel Henshall) and Best Supporting Actress (Louise Harris) categories.
The last two awards were particularly impressive as neither actor had appeared in a feature film before. While Henshall had previously acted in such shows as Out of the Blue, it was Harris. first ever acting role.
The four gongs awarded last night at the Sydney Opera House brings the film.s tally to an impressive six Aacta Awards after receiving Best Editing (Veronika Jenet Ase) and Best Sound (Frank Lipson Mpse,...
Snowtown, about Australian serial killer John Bunting who befriends a 16-year-old, was honoured in the Best Direction (Justin Kurzel), Best Adapted Screenplay (Shaun Grant), Best Actor (Daniel Henshall) and Best Supporting Actress (Louise Harris) categories.
The last two awards were particularly impressive as neither actor had appeared in a feature film before. While Henshall had previously acted in such shows as Out of the Blue, it was Harris. first ever acting role.
The four gongs awarded last night at the Sydney Opera House brings the film.s tally to an impressive six Aacta Awards after receiving Best Editing (Veronika Jenet Ase) and Best Sound (Frank Lipson Mpse,...
- 1/31/2012
- by Sam Dallas
- IF.com.au
Australian cinematographer Don McAlpine (Acs/Asc) received two standing ovations after tributes from longtime colleagues Jack Thompson and Bruce Beresford at the inaugural Australian Academy Cinema Television Arts (Aacta) awards yesteryday.
McAlpine was awarded the coveted Raymond Longford Award for a lifetime achievement in cinema. McAlpine’s career spans over 50 films including Moulin Rouge and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Breaker Morant and most recently Mental.
The ceremony, hosted by Sigrid Thornton, was the first for the newly formed academy. The ceremony also included the announcement of the Australian academy’s international awards to recognise excellence in film. The announcements were made during a live cross to actress Jackie Weaver at the G’Day USA Gala in Los Angeles.
Further awards for both Australian cinema and TV and the international awards will be presented on January 31 at the Opera House.
The Winners
Raymond Longford Award
Don McAlpine
Byron Kennedy Award...
McAlpine was awarded the coveted Raymond Longford Award for a lifetime achievement in cinema. McAlpine’s career spans over 50 films including Moulin Rouge and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Breaker Morant and most recently Mental.
The ceremony, hosted by Sigrid Thornton, was the first for the newly formed academy. The ceremony also included the announcement of the Australian academy’s international awards to recognise excellence in film. The announcements were made during a live cross to actress Jackie Weaver at the G’Day USA Gala in Los Angeles.
Further awards for both Australian cinema and TV and the international awards will be presented on January 31 at the Opera House.
The Winners
Raymond Longford Award
Don McAlpine
Byron Kennedy Award...
- 1/15/2012
- by Brooke Hemphill
- Encore Magazine
The Hunter has lead the Aacta Awards with 14 nominations including best film.
The film, by Daniel Nettheim, is also up for best direction, adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, production design, costume, original music score, and visual effects. Meanwhile, Willem Dafoe, Frances O’Connor, Sam Neill and Morgana Davies are all up for acting awards.
The film has currently made just over $1m at the local box office.
It’s the first year for the re-launched AACTAs, formerly the AFI awards.
The technical awards will be given out at a luncheon on 15 January at the Sydney Opera House, with an evening ceremony for the more ‘public-friendly’ awards held at the Opera House on 31 January.
Running against The Hunter for best film is Red Dog, Mad Bastards, The Eye of the Storm, Snowtown and Oranges and Sunshine.
The Eye of the Storm, was second in the nominations race with 12, of which six are...
The film, by Daniel Nettheim, is also up for best direction, adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, production design, costume, original music score, and visual effects. Meanwhile, Willem Dafoe, Frances O’Connor, Sam Neill and Morgana Davies are all up for acting awards.
The film has currently made just over $1m at the local box office.
It’s the first year for the re-launched AACTAs, formerly the AFI awards.
The technical awards will be given out at a luncheon on 15 January at the Sydney Opera House, with an evening ceremony for the more ‘public-friendly’ awards held at the Opera House on 31 January.
Running against The Hunter for best film is Red Dog, Mad Bastards, The Eye of the Storm, Snowtown and Oranges and Sunshine.
The Eye of the Storm, was second in the nominations race with 12, of which six are...
- 11/30/2011
- by Colin Delaney
- Encore Magazine
The opening shots of Daniel Nettheim‘s The Hunter show Martin David (Willem Dafoe) in a hotel room, seemingly unable to look more out of place if he tried. Coupled with glimpses of high-tech equipment strewn throughout the room, we start to get a grip on who this guy is. And it’s good that he’s being put front and center this early on, for The Hunter is, above all else, a character piece about a man living in a dangerous environment that he was meant for.
Written by Alice Addison and based on the Julia Leigh novel of the same name, the story follows David as he’s sent to Australia by a biotech company, with the task of finding a Tasmanian Tiger. No small goal – they are thought to be extinct, and the area that they may live in is quite hostile. After being sent down to...
Written by Alice Addison and based on the Julia Leigh novel of the same name, the story follows David as he’s sent to Australia by a biotech company, with the task of finding a Tasmanian Tiger. No small goal – they are thought to be extinct, and the area that they may live in is quite hostile. After being sent down to...
- 9/9/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
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