Super 8 brings extra to the terrestrial

Whether you're a Lost geek or an Alias aficionado, a Fringe fan or a supporter of the Star Trek reboot, J.J. Abrams' work seems to invoke a sense of fierce loyalty amongst most geeks. His highly anticipated Super 8 has a broader appeal, but will still give a geek-gasm for the Abrarmy. Set in the summer of 1979, it follows Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) a middle school student still grieving the death of his mother after an accident at a steel factory. His stoic father Jackson (Kyle Chandler) pours himself into his work as a deputy to avoid the situation at home and Joe pours himself into working on his friends zombie movie.

When the gaggle of Goonies-esque kids sneak out to film a night scene at the train station, they witness a catastrophic train derailment. Freaked out and feeling lucky to have escaped with their lives, the kids vow not to tell anyone they were there. But that's when things start to get weird. When Deputy Lamb tries to investigate the accident, he's stonewalled by military personal who had mysterious cargo on the train. In town, hundreds of dogs have run away, electrical appliances are malfunctioning and people are going missing. It seems something has escaped from the train and that something is not of this world.
The cast, a combination of newcomers and veteran performers, elevate Super 8 with pitch-perfect performances. Friday Night Light's Chandler is brilliant as he always is, but the kids steal the show. Plucked from obscurity, Courtney is a revelation and able to hold his own against the impressive and charismatic Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota. After her breakthrough performance in Somewhere last year (which was far more deserving of an Oscar nom than Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit), Fanning proves once again she's a young actress with incredible talent. Together as romantically linked characters, Courtney and Fanning create a sense of innocence and humanity that outshines any of the A-grade special effects. After risking everything to save Fanning's Alice from the alien's lair, when Joe mutters the line “I'm just doing the best I can to save you” - it's one of the most touching moments in cinema this year.

Super 8 is a magical, intelligent, nostalgic, thrilling and mesmerising spectacle of a film that stands tall alongside Steven Spielberg's classic E.T. Spielberg serves as a producer on this and brings a sense of grandiose spectacle to the production. But more than anything Super 8 is Abrams love letter to monster movies and the seventies. Super 8's alien is so not the “phone home” type, but rather a homage to the terrifying yet endearing creatures of schlocky sci-fi features and B-grade horror films. Joe is Abrams, who started his career as a model maker and make-up effects guy on low budget flicks and there's such a sense of authenticity to the young characters it feels as if some situations have been plucked straight out of the writer/directors childhood. Like all of Abrams work, the flick is loaded with snappy dialogue and clever clues that let the audience uncover the mystery alongside the characters. Super 8 is everything you would hope. Then a whole lot more. Super 8 is in cinemas Thursday, June 9.

P.S. You MUST stay for the end credits to watch The Case – the hilarious and oh-so-cute Super 8 film the kids were making in the movie.

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Byrne, baby Byrne

Despite a disappointing weekend at the Australian box office, I still reckon The Loved Ones is one of the best Aussie flicks you will see this year and so, I shall continue to harp on about it. This time that harping comes in the form of an exclusive chat with writer/director/producer extraordinaire Sean Byrne. As you can see from the interview, he is quite the lovely chap and definitely a director who is going to tackle a lot of genres with gusto. But what stood out to me most about Byrne is his sheer passion for movies and that, my dears, is something we can all relate to. Judge for yourself below.

Movie Mazzupial: Firstly, where did you come up with this idea? Did you have a really bad experience at your formal?
Sean Byrne: (Laughs) No, it was remarkably normal. Maybe that’s why I had to think of something crazy. It stemmed from desperation really, I had written a couple of screenplays that were too offbeat so I thought I’d have a crack at a horror film because I knew they sold internationally. There’s also a lot of mediocre horror out there, so I thought I could make something good with characterisations that make it stand out from the horror pack.

MM: And the characters, you have created some truly demented ones, particularly Lola and her daddy. It feels like they could go down as iconic horror characters like Freddy Krueger, Mike Myers or Mick Taylor, is that what you set out to do?
SB: These films thrive on the marketability of the villains. I was really looking for some kind of signature and I’ve never seen a father daughter torture team. I wanted to cut through the clutter and the thought of pink satin would be so vibrant and arresting. My 5-year-old niece was going through that stage of development where she’s thinking her prince will come and is obsessed with glitter and tiaras. I thought it would be interesting to take that innocence and mesh it with the awkwardness of being a teenager and raging hormones. Then when it came to her father, I did a lot of research on Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Especially Ed Gein, he’s the psychological profile behind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. Dahmer now isn’t someone that has been tapped into which is unusual given all the horror films out there and some of the things he did with the head drilling.

MM: Now, speaking of head drilling, that scene was a particularly . . .I’m not sure memorable is the right word, but it stays with you.
SB: It’s one of my favourite parts of the film because there’s no safety net. I love watching it with an audience because they have no idea what’s coming. With the film we had one foot in commercial territory and one foot dangling over a cliff, and that’s the cliff part. I was looking to write a horror film and what finally sat me down to write it was the idea of `what if I merged Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, with Carrie and brought the prom to a cabin in the woods?’ I studied Misery too. Princess has Carrie’s vulnerability, Annie Wilkes’ from Misery’s sadism and the spoilt quality of Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a horror film, but it’s not an ordeal for the audience. It’s a rock `n’ roll horror film with a sense of humour.

MM: (Laughs) That’s quite a combination. It looks like you went into the shoot very prepared.
SB: Yes, I came up with 250 page scrap book which had film references, case studies and palette references. I think Kathy Bates’ performance is so brilliant as she’s a woman who’s obsessed with a guy and even though he’s polite when he knocks back her advances, she goes off the deep end. I also looked at the females in films like Carrie, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Natural Born Killers, Single White Female, and got a lot of ideas from that.

MM: The casting process, what was that like? You manage to draw out some incredible performances, Robin McLeavy and John Brumpton in particular, but Xavier Samuel too is fantastic and despite only having a few lines of dialogue, he’s someone that you’re really rooting for to escape.
SB: I was really happy with the casting, we just went through the traditional process. I tried not to go in with too many preconceptions. There’s a point when the writer has to let go and the responsibility goes to the actors who walk in the room and elevate it beyond what you expect. If you don’t care, then you don’t scare. I was adamant in casting actors who understood the craft and I’m really proud of everyone that’s in the film. We talked a lot about not treating this as a horror film, because so often it’s considered disposable. The situation is on the page and by treating it with the integrity of a drama . . . it doesn’t matter what type of film you’re making it comes down to the authenticity of the performance.MM: In the film, there’s both nail-biting suspense and cringe-worthy gore, how important was it to find that balance as opposed to just having another torture porn film?
SB: It was vital. The key word is fun and I wanted it to be a fun, freaky, midnight rollercoaster ride. The audience need to be able to take a breath and have a laugh and prepare for the next white-knuckle onslaught. I could push the extreme nature of the film if it was minced with a jet black comedy sensibility. It becomes deliciously warped.

MM: This is your first feature, it has gone on to be select at over 20 international film festivals, won a swag of prestigious awards and the critics are frothing over it, could you have ever expected a response like this?
SB: I didn’t expect it, but I was definitely aiming for it. I was meticulous in my preparation; we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot and, like most Australian films, not a giant budget. It’s really rewarding to see audiences responding to the beats that had been planned. I was trying to never to be a slave to the horror formula and instead study horror films and be inspired by the work of Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sam Raimi and Disney. We shot in 27 days on a budget just under the 4 million mark, which isn’t too bad, but I wanted a beautiful candy-coloured slick look to it. I’m big fan of Bruckheimer films, I think they have a lot of integrity to them because they say `I’m here to entertain’. The have such a perfect sheen to them that I want to get out of my seat and lick the screen. I think it would taste really sweat. Having that Hollywood glossiness to it helped pushed the horror a bit.

MM: How much of that sheen and glossiness can be attributed to your background in commercials and short filmmaking?
SB: Yeah, definitely, a lot of it.MM: When a debut film gets the response like this has, the Hollywood offers come flying in. Is that the situation you’re in at the moment or have you been batting them off to work on another one of your own projects?
SB: I’m right in the middle of writing another project, but this film has opened a lot of doors for me, both in Australia and in Hollywood. I’ve been sent a lot of scripts and I’m attached to quite a few projects. It’s very difficult to get money for a film, so I need to have a few going at the same time. I’m more interested in material. The next original thing of mine I’m working on is a bent home invasion thriller. That’s the great thing about genre, because it affords filmmakers a great luxury. There’s already an audience and they know the formula, so you’re able to bend it.

MM: Just before I started speaking to you I was reading an article that described you as the `new voice in Aussie horror’. How do you respond to something like that?
SB: I just love cinema and I feel like I’ve got a good range as a director. I want to work in all genres. Horror is a great way to start because so many of my heroes have started in horror, like Spielberg, Coppola, Raimi and Jackson who really got to stamp their own personal style on the genre. I just wanted to create something fresh.

MM: Since Saw and Wolf Creek, there seems to have been a real rebirth of Australian horror, is that something you consciously wanted to be part of?
SB: I wrote the first draft of The Loved Ones before Saw came out, that’s how long it takes to make these things. I knew Wolf Creek opened doors for Australian horror filmmakers because it proved that well-crafted Aussie horror has an audience. But we’re very different films. Wolf Creek was based on a building sense of dread, while we’re a glam horror film. We’re mirror balls and they’re the desert.The Loves Ones is out now.

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Palmer lights up Hollywood

They say when one door closes, another one opens and that was certainly the case when George Miller's Justice League movie was cancelled just a few weeks into rehearsals. Adelaide actress Teresa Palmer (above) was to play super villain Talia al Ghul in the superhero mash-up alongside Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman. Although she was `devastated', the weeks in rehearsal gave her the opportunity to bond with American actor Jay Baruchel, who is best known for roles in Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder.
``It was fortunate for me because I got to know Jay. . .and when we did a chemistry test for The Sorcerer's Apprentice we had already worked together and I got the part,'' says the 24-year-old.
``It's very surreal actually; I never expected to be in a Jerry Bruckheimer film starring across from Nicolas Cage.''

The film sees physics nerd Dave (Jay Baruchel) recruited as the new apprentice to master sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Cage) in a battle to save New York City from the evil Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina). Palmer plays Dave's love interest, Becky, and says the shoot was a unique opportunity to get to know some Hollywood heavyweights, especially Cage.
``Nic is very intriguing person, he has so many layers to his personality - he's funny, delightful, interesting, quirky and so off the beaten track,'' she says.
``And he's just a funny character because he's really intense and quite humourous, and can be quite serious.''

It is the third big Hollywood role for Palmer, after The Grudge 2 and Bedtime Stories, as well as parts in Australian films such as 2: 37 and December Boys alongside Daniel Radcliffe. She says her growing popularity overseas is largely thanks to the work of other Australian actors.
``Americans have really embraced the Australians,'' she says.
``It might have something to do with the wonderful actors before us like Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, and Naomi Watts, who helped paved the way because they were so focussed and wonderful in their work.
``It opened the doors for us.''

Doors are continuing to open for Palmer, who just finished shooting romantic comedy Kids In America (alongside boyfriend Topher Grace) and the Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg produced blockbuster I Am Four. Set on Earth, the alien action film is new territory for Palmer, who says she got to do her own stunts and `play an alien who kicks major bad-alien butt'.
``We're getting pursued by the bad aliens, but my character is sick of running away so she turns around and the hunters become the hunted.
``I got to do my own stunts and I had someone film this one amazing stunt I did.
``I was attached to a harness which was attached to a 60 foot crane and when they said action I had to run and the harness, that was attached to just my leg, would pull me back and I would go flying 60 feet up in the air.
``I had to act like this huge alien, a Piken, was pulling me up and I would be kicking and screaming and trying to stab it with this dagger.''
Palmer is set to make a return to Australian film when she stars alongside Joel Edgerton in Nothing To Say, which begins filming later this year. In the meantime, she is travelling to Africa with charity organisation The Happy Africa Foundation to film a documentary on their work at an orphanage.The documentary will be Palmer's directorial debut, but that doesn't mean she's giving up acting anytime soon.
``Directing, well I'm so interested in filmmaking and philanthropic and this is a nice way to merge it all together,'' she says.
``I'm going to dip my toes in the water with it and hopefully I will be good at it, but I always want to keep acting.
``I'm so ecliptic in every aspect of myself, in my clothes, my taste of music and my taste of film, that I'm all over the shop.
``I love comedy, action, romance, drama, I don't have one specific genre and by being willing to try anything it keeps you mentally stimulated.
``Hopefully I will be able to keep doing that with my career.''

Speaking of career, Hollywood is the graveyard for many a promising young star, with fame and fortune corrupting the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Kirsten Dunst and Winona Ryder, to name a few. But Palmer, who has been based in Los Angeles for several years now, is keeping her feet firmly on the ground.
“Hollywood can be a very addictive drug and it can be a very dangerous world,” she says.
“There are ways to avoid it and sympathise with actors who have peaked early then spiralled out of control.
“It’s an easy thing to happen if don’t have good judgement and aren’t protected by your managers and agents.
“For me it’s surreal to meet these actors and filmmakers that you’ve looked up to for so long.
“I recognise how lucky and blessed I am and I would never take it for granted.
“It keeps me grounded, especially in Hollywood when there is so much temptation.”

It would be easy to let all the recent success go to her head, but Palmer says her friends help her keep a grasp on reality.
“I don’t let work define who I am,” she says.
“I have work and then I have my life.
“I find it relatively easy because I only work for six months of the year then you have rest of time off hanging with friends.
“When I’m working I stay in touch with them through Skype.
“As soon as they call action I’m creating a character, but when they call cut, I go home and I step back into myself.
“A lot of actors do method acting and that doesn’t really work for me.
“I just try to switch off at the door and when I come home for the day I be myself and enjoy life.”

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is out on Thursday. You can watch my video review of the film HERE. Note how I have fulfilled my journalistic ambitions by slipping in the phrase `bat-shit crazy’. Hooray!

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The scales of Justice League

It would have been the Aussie movie that brought together Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the big screen. But Justice League's supervillain was the Global Financial Crisis which wiped the project out just weeks before shooting was about to get underway. Australian actress Teresa Palmer has spoken out about the film, in which she was to star as one of the villains.

Currently back in the country to promote her new film Sorcerer's Apprentice, with Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, Palmer said the cast were devastated about the failed project.
``I know Megan Gale had even got to try on her Wonder Woman costume and it was the same with the Batman and Superman costumes,'' she said.
``I played a villain so I didn't get to start trying on my costume, but we were all in Sydney rehearsing for a few weeks.
``It was fortunate for me because I got to know Jay (Baruchel) who was also playing a villain and when we did a chemistry test for the Sorcerer's Apprentice we had already worked together and I got the part.''

Australian filmmaker George Miller, best known for the Mad Max franchise, was directing the project which is based on DC Comics series of the same name. It sees prominent superheroes within the DC universe unite to fight crime.The film would have included characters such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern. Palmer said she was to play supervillain Talia al Ghul and that like the storyline in the comics, there was a love interest between her and Batman.
``There were a few romantic sparks (in the script),'' she said.
``It would have been great because Batman was played by the strikingly handsome Armie Hammer.
``It was very disappointing and I would still love to be involved in it if something ever did happen again.''The Justice League cast included a batch of relative unknowns in the roles, including supermodel Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, rapper Common as Green Lantern, OC alumni Adam Brody as The Flash, D.J Cotrona as Superman, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Hugh Keays-Byrne as Martian Manhunter, Palmer (above) as Ghul and Baruchel as unknown villain.

Now that Marvel Studios have got Buffy creator Joss Whedon working on an Avengers movie, rumours have been circulating that Justice League might go back into production. Palmer said if Miller and the same studio were involved, she would not hesitate to rejoin the project.
``It was an amazing role,'' she said.
``I got to know George quite well and we did some intense workshops and got to spend a lot of time together.
``It was amazing to spend time with him because he's such a veteran and a prestigious filmmamker and an icon in Australia.
``It was flattering to be working with him so closely.''

Palmer said they discussed working together on his fourth Mad Max film Fury Road but `unfortunately' she was not able to do it due to scheduling conflicts. Mad Max: Fury Road too has hit financial difficulties and although filming was supposed to begin in Australia this year, it has been pushed back to February, 2011. In the mean time, stay poised for full interview with Palmer coming in the next few days and her tell-all about Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay produced alien-actioner I Am Number Four.

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From a "Freudian sex Tarzan" to an adaptation of Ramayan 3392 A.D . . .

Australian-based screenwriter John Collee (above) is not afraid to tackle any project, and I mean any project. From a sexy version of Tarzan to a script for Steven Spielberg on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Collee is known as one of the most versatile wordsmiths in the industry. Renowned for his work on Oscar-winning films such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Happy Feet, he most recently brought Charles Dawrin to life in the new biopic Creation.

But Collee says the highlight of his 23-year career as a screenwriter was working on a Tarzan script with Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican director of Pan's Labyrinth and the Hell Boy franchise.
"Guillermo is a very smart guy and has a great understanding of story.
" I worked with him for some months when he was doing Hellboy 2 and we were going to do a sexy Tarzan.
"A Freudian sex Tarzan.
"It emphasised his experience of seeing a woman for the first time and it was all about sex in the jungle.
"It was great fun, but as you can tell it's probably unmakable.
"It would have been quite an adult Tarzan.''Unfortunately Collee says the Tarzan project was `shelved' as Warner Brothers began work on other films and he and del Toro moved on to other projects.
"Scripts are funny - they pay you these huge amounts of money to write them and then they put them in a vault somewhere,'' he says.

It is a phenomenon the former doctor says he is used to. Several years ago Collee finished a screenplay for Steven Spielberg's big budget take on a famous World War II battle, however, that project too has been locked in a vault.
"It was a script on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, which was like the death star of the second World War,'' he says.
"It was an extraordinarily impregnable fighting machine that this small group of Australian and American men were eventually able to defeat.
"It was a script that I was really happy with, but that one went off the radar too.''

Two Collee projects that have not gone off the radar are Dirt Music, an adaptation of the acclaimed Tim Winton novel, and The Drowner, based on the Robert Drewe book, both which are currently filming in Australia. He also wrote the early screenplay for the up and coming animated action film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole from Zack Synder, the director of 300 and Watchmen. But the pressure is on for Collee's take on the cult comic book series Ramayan 3392 A.D (below), which has a huge international fan base.
"It's a really interesting one and an Indian epic,'' he says.
"It's a religious story at its core, but it's also a kidnap story.
"The Indian hero Rama's lover is kidnapped by the dark lord and it's a mission to get her back.''While the final adjustments are being made to his script and the studio searches for stars and a director, a similar process is happening to Collee's attempt to convert the Onimusha video game series (below) into a live-action feature film.
"It's a computer game set in medieval Japan and I've done a couple of drafts on that,'' he says.
"It's a fantasy about a double kidnapping where a princess and the hero's girlfriend are both kidnapped, so these two men go on a quest together.
"The film got very close to being made and then the global financial crisis happened and everything went pear shaped."

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Collee gets creative

From dancing penguins to sailing the high seas during the Napoleonic Wars, Australian-based screenwriter John Collee brings a young Charles Darwin to life in his latest project Creation (pictured above). I had a chat to Collee a few weeks back about this, that and the other thing, and have put together a neat little yarn on his work with Creation here. However, Collee also told me some crazy stories about collaborations with Guillermo del Toro and Steven Spielberg, and forth coming projects, which I will tie together in another story over the next few days. Stay tuned baboons.

When Scottish-born screenwriter John Collee, the writer behind Oscar-winning films such as Happy Feet and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, sat down to write a biopic of Charles Darwin, he hit a wall. He did not want to portray the English naturalist, who came up with the theories of evolution and natural selection, as just another `boring scientist'. So he turned to the writings of Darwin's great, great grandson Randal Keynes, who presented the scientist in a unique light.
``The Darwin you get on screen is always the guy with the beard and he has always been portrayed as this sober and rather boring intellectual,'' says Collee.
``Whereas the Darwin that comes out in the descriptions by Randal (Keynes) is of this charming, young dad.
``You get this really human perspective which is also taken from all of his kids who wrote stories about him.
``A guy you thought you knew through his science actually comes across as this fabulous family man.''

For Collee, who has lived in Sydney for over decade with his wife and children, this is someone to whom he could relate. He used Keynes biography of Darwin, Annie's Box, as the basis for the screenplay Creation, a new film directed by Jon Amiel. Starring Paul Bettany as Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma, Creation follows Darwin in the lead up to publishing On The Origin Of Species, where he struggles to find a balance between his revolutionary theories and the relationship with his religious wife, whose faith contradicts his work. The couple are also battling to come to terms with the death of their 10-year-old daughter Annie, who had scarlet fever. Despite having seen and achieved many things, Collee says he choose to focus on this chapter of Darwin's life because it `represented something about the modern condition'.
``I like writing films about ideas and there are powerful ideas in this and they crystalise around a tragic event; the death of child,'' says Collee.
``They (Darwin and Emma) were very much in love, they had 10 kids, they were very inter-dependent on each other, but she was completely Christian and he was a scientist.
``The miraculous thing about their relationship was that it worked and that they were able to live so closely together.
``So it's about the resolution of science and religion, and how they find an alternative to the language of religion and of science, with love.''

Having worked with Bettany before on Master and Commander, Collee says although he tried not to write the role for him specifically, but he kept coming to mind due to his `uncanny resemblance' to a young Darwin.
``He came to mind more and more as I wrote the script but I try not to write with someone in mind because of the nature of the business,'' he says.
``But young Darwin looked very much like Paul Bettany and when we were writing Master and Commander Weir had a young Darwin as the model for `the Doctor' and I kept getting the memory of Paul as that character.
``There were lots of things that made me keep going back to him.
``And Paul gave Jennifer the script to read and she then wanted to play Emma.
``Because they're married in real life they bring that context to the roles too.''

Creation opens in cinemas next Thursday, July 15.

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