Tuesday 12 March 2024

CINEMA REBORN ANNOUNCES ITS 2024 PROGRAM AT THE RANDWICK RITZ AND HAWTHORN LIDO

 


For its sixth edition, Cinema Reborn will screen 17 classics on the big screen at Ritz Cinemas in Randwick (1-7 May) and Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn (9-14 May). It will be the first time that Cinema Reborn’s program will be presented in Melbourne after five seasons in Sydney, where its audience has grown every year. 

 

Since 2019, when Cinema Reborn was first presented at the Ritz Cinemas Randwick, a tremendously supportive relationship has developed between the Ritz Cinema’s management and staff and the remarkable team of film-makers, critics, archivists, scholars and cinephiles who devote themselves to presenting Sydney’s annual season of restored classics. The expansion to the Ritz’s sister cinema in Melbourne, the Hawthorn Lido, is a natural outcome of the audience growth in Sydney and the clear interest to bring Cinema Reborn’s program to a new audience in Australia’s second largest city.

 

On behalf of Lido and Ritz Cinemas, Head of Marketing Jaymes Durante said, “It has been a privilege to help present Cinema Reborn at the Ritz over the years, and it brings us immense pride to bring the festival to Melbourne for the first time in 2024. Through Cinema Reborn, our audiences will be treated to a world-class offering of important restorations and rarely screened cinema treasures which will enrich our city’s cultural offering and will surely become a milestone event in the annual film calendar.”

 

The vast majority of Cinema Reborn’s films are restored in 4K Ultra High Definition, the current pinnacle for film restoration. This year’s selection comes from Italy, France, the UK, USA, Mali, India, Syria, South Korea, Belgium and Australia.




Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

International classics include Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967); The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1952); La Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000); I Know Where I’m Going! (Powell/Pressburger, 1947) and Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1957).

 

From Hollywood, Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959); Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978); and The Suspect (Robert Siodmak, 1944).

 

There are two World Premiere restorations at Cinema Reborn 2024: Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939),and Australia’s own Three to Go (Brian Hannant, Oliver Howes, Peter Weir, 1971).

 

Also from Australia, Body Melt (Philip Brophy, 1993); Journey to the End of Night (Peter Tammer, 1982) and Light Years (Kathryn Millard, 1991).

 

 


Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)

From South Korea, Sopyonje (Im Kwon-taek, 1993); from Syria, The Dupes (Tewfik Saleh, 1972); from Mali, Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, 1987); and from India, Ishanou (Aribam Syam Sharma, 1991).




Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)


For more information 

Cinema Reborn's website already contains a set of pungent and insightful short notes on the entire program. Over the next few weeks, the website will publish essays on each of our 2024 titles, written by some of Australia’s best known film scholars, critics and cinephiles. As well, a number have been written by highly regarded international critics and commentators. Bookmark https://cinemareborn.com.au and keep checking for newly-posted pages on each of our titles. Regular news updates will be posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

 

Information about Cinema Reborn’s program is also now available in a 16-page booklet free on the shelves of the Ritz Cinemas Randwick and the Lido Cinemas Hawthorn. 

 

Venues

The Ritz Cinemas’ and Lido Cinemas’ websites each contain pages devoted to Cinema Reborn, with comprehensive notes on each film we are screening and ticketing links. 

 

Admission Prices

Cinema Reborn charges standard cinema ticket prices for all sessions, including opening and closing night selections. Ritz and Lido Movie Club Members are eligible for member’s discount. Details of Club membership and the concessions on offer are at the Ritz Club Membership Page and at the Lido Club Membership Page

 

Bookings Now Open

To make a booking at the Ritz Click here and to make a booking at the Lido Click here.

 

CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Cinema Reborn’s work over the years has long been sustained by the generosity of our donors who help us make up the shortfall between our income and the costs of obtaining and screening our program. The Cinema Reborn 2024 page on the website of the Australian Cultural Fund enables our supporters to make a tax-deductible donation. All donations great and small are very welcome. The Australian Cultural Fund page can be found If You Click Here

Vale Micheline Presle - Barrie Pattison shares some fond memories of the great French star MICHELINE PRESLE

Micheline Presle, Le Diable au Corps

With the death at 102 of Micheline Presle, we have severed what must be the last link with classic cinema. Who else starred in films by Pabst, Lang and Dieterle, Marcel L’Herbier and Jean Negulesco, Sacha Guitry, Jacques Demy and Sam Fuller, opposite Ramon Novarro, Gérard Philipe, Tyrone Power, John Garfield, Paul Newman and Errol Flynn? Her performances were a dominant element in the best work of several heavyweight film makers – Jean Delanoy’s Les jeux sont faits, Joseph Losey’s Blind Date/ Chance Meeting and particularly Claude Autant-Lara’s imposing Le diable au corps. That trio alone make her a major figure. 


Establishing herself as a lively juvenile in French films before WW2, Presle became de facto the leading female star of their Occupation Era film industry, with Danielle Darieux, Michele Morgan and Simone Simon off in Hollywood for the duration. 

 

A post-war Hollywood stint of her own proved a disappointment, ending with the dreadful Adventures of Captain Fabian directed by her husband William Marshall for Republic from a script by Errol Flynn, and she never really regained her dominant status but that didn’t prevent her ploughing on through whatever came her way. 

 

Micheline Presle, Hardy Kruger, Blind Date/Chance Meeting

She never stopped working.  She even outlived her talented daughter-director Toni Marshall, who had cast her in several of her films. I once had the audacity to try to recruit the star of Le diable au corps for a horror film I planned shooting in Australia and the Movie Divinities were on my side. She’d just seen Food of the Gods where Ida Lupino, who she regarded as a member of her peer group, had taken on a similar role. I explained that I’d seen Presle do just what I wanted, animating the exposition with her Banditi Italiani and The Prize performances. She could see that, was charming, read the script and gave me a letter of intention to appear. It is one of my great regrets that I never had the chance to watch Micheline Presle through the view finder performing in my work, when the project fell by the wayside after I scaled down the ambition on the production we finally shot. 

 

At least we still have her films. I’ve been on Micheline Presle’s case for a lifetime and there’s still a long list of promising titles that I haven’t been able to watch.  It’s always a pleasure when one comes my way, though now that will be shaded with regret.                                                                                                                                  

 

It is unsurprising that no mention of her death has been made in the Australian media I've seen.

Tuesday 5 March 2024

For Silent Film aficionados in Brisbane - Joel Archer brings back THE ROARING TWENTIES featuring first up GIRL SHY (1924) starring Harold Lloyd


 Good Evening All,


We are so excited to announce that Roaring Twenties Cinema Brisbane will be returning and our new home will be the Arcana Arts Centre in the Garden Bar. 

This stunning private area will include the options for a terrific Menu of Food cooked on site and a Bar that has cocktails and drinks available throughout the film. So you not only get Amazing Films and Live Music now there are some terrific food and drinks options on site.

For our opening night on Thursday 18th of April 2024 at 6:30pm we will be screening Harold Lloyd's Girl Shy 1924 which is celebrating its 100th Birthday plus a mystery comedy short. 

Bri and I look forward to meeting you again for Brisbane's Cheapest Form of Time Travel! Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm over the years. We can't wait to bring you such a unique cinema experience. 

Tickets are on sale now: 


Kind Regards...

Joel Archer (Director of Roaring Twenties Cinema Brisbane)

0409 620 670

Monday 4 March 2024

The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison reports falling about watching DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS (Ethan Coen, USA, 2023)

Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Drive-Away Dolls


I’ve been wondering about Drive-Away Dolls, the movie from the Coen brother who didn’t want to make a black and white Macbeth with Denzel Washington. I noticed a reference to it quite a while back (its credits say 2023) but pretty much the only promotion I’ve seen for its local run is a teaser on the front of a trailer for another movie. That all worked up my curiosity.

What I got was the kind of ferocious bad taste movie you’d expect if someone hired Oliver Stone to re-make The Rocky Horror Picture Show. After an uneasy start, I found myself falling about.

This one is kind of a family affair, one Coen brother writing with his editor wife and directing Andie McDowell’s daughter and Jonah Hill’s sister, to showcase a young woman from Newcastle, New South Wales, called Geraldine Viswanathan who makes a memorably straight faced contribution to all the anarchic stuff. Think Aubrey Plaza without the attitude. She is the required contrast to hard charging Margaret Qualley, teetering on the edge of her stardom. Qualley would have fit right in as a Howard Hawks woman.


It starts off uneasily with Pedro Pascal meeting a grotesque fate in an alley. Attention shifts to girl buddies Qualley and Viswanathan finding themselves at a loose end. Qualley has broken up with her police officer lover Beanie Feldstein, complete with an argument about who gets their wall dildo, while Viswanathan, fresh from her job with Ralph Nader, isn’t all that interested in the Sapphic club scene and plans on joining a birding expedition in Tallahassee, reading her Henry James novels along the way. 

Matt Damon

The ideal mode of transport would be a Driveaway where they take a car to its owner in another city. Turns out that grouchy Bill Camp’s office has a vehicle waiting to be shifted just there – exercise in comic probability. Nobody checks the boot, which turns out to have two suspicious items where the spare tire should be. Eyes widen when that’s unlocked.

Things liven up for Margaret when they stay at the motel where a lesbian soccer team are relaxing with the captain blowing a change partners whistle at half time. Turning down a threesome, Geraldine finds herself spending the night sitting in the office.

Geraldine Viswanathan

Meanwhile comic goons Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson discover that their car has been mistakenly dispatched because how likely is it that two sets of customers would want to go to Tallahassee? This sends those rightful owners off in pursuit, which gets one beaten up by Feldstein because he’s old school and doesn’t want to hit a woman and his mate is blindsided when the address the soccer girls he’s charming gives them turns out to be a rough black music barn.

The girls meanwhile are coasting on a suspect credit card and the luxury El Conquistador hotel’s policy of inclusivity - steamy shower scene. Of course paths converge.

Not the least of the delights is the film’s maliciously misapplied film form. Scene transitions come up as the Henry James pages fluttering, contrasting to a psychedelic montage of fluoro coloured pizza fillings. Miley Cyrus gets a psychedelic number and there’s a glimpse of Senator Matt Damon’s mis-spent college days.

Beanie Feldstein

Drive-Away Dolls
 keeps on playing off audience expectation. It’s an exploitatively sexy film (“at least take off your shirt”) where the only full frontal is a sunbathing bit player. It comes with my all time favourite McGuffin (include monologue about the possibility of an E-Bay sales promotion). They telegraph the introduction of ego-free star Matt Damon with a hoarding of him as the local family values politician. Boy is he going to get it! When the girls confront him, they announce themselves as Democrats.

The pace never slacks with the lesbian frame of reference twisting the familiar situations into something grotesquely fresh. Everyone comes out of it well though it’s not a big budget offering.

I’m sorry they didn’t get about to making this in the nineties the way they planned, when it could conveniently have slid in with the drive-In fare that it burlesques. I would have re-visited it at intervals quite a few times by now. That I would have enjoyed. It’s the highlight of my current viewing.

Sunday 3 March 2024

FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA - NOMINATIONS FOR THE FCCA ANNUAL AWARDS FOR AUSTRALIAN FILM FOR 2023


NOMINATIONS FOR THE FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA ANNUAL AWARDS FOR AUSTRALIAN FILM

THE FILMS OF 2023

 


  

BEST FILM

LIMBO                                                                               

PRODUCERS: RACHEL HIGGINS, DAVID JOWSEY, GREER SIMPKIN, IVAN SEN

THE NEW BOY                                                         

PRODUCERS: CATE BLANCHETT, LORENZO DE MAIO, GEORGIE PYM, KATH SHELPER, ANDREW UPTON

OF AN AGE                                                                       

PRODUCERS: KRISTINA CEYTON, SAMANTHA JENNINGS

THE ROYAL HOTEL                                                         

PRODUCERS: IAIN CANNING, KATH SHELPER, EMILE SHERMAN, LIZ WATTS

SHAYDA                                                                   

PRODUCERS: NOORA NIASARI, VINCENT SHEEHAN


 

BEST DIRECTOR

ROLF DE HEER                                                       

THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS

NOORA NIASARI                                                              

SHAYDA

IVAN SEN                                                        

LIMBO

WARWICK THORNTON                                                    

THE NEW BOY

 


BEST ACTOR     

ELIAS ANTON                                                                   

OF AN AGE                           

SIMON BAKER                                                        

LIMBO

THOM GREEN                                                                  

OF AN AGE

ASWAN REID                                                                    

THE NEW BOY


 

BEST SCREENPLAY

KITTY GREEN and OSCAR REDDING                             

THE ROYAL HOTEL

NOORA NIASARI                                                              

SHAYDA

IVAN SEN                                                                 

LIMBO

WARWICK THORNTON                                                    

THE NEW BOY

 


BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

WAYNE BLAIR                                                                  

THE NEW BOY

ROB COLLINS                                                                  

LIMBO

NICHOLAS HOPE                                                             

LIMBO

HUGO WEAVING                                                              

THE ROYAL HOTEL

 


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

ANDREW COMMIS/RICK RIFICI (UNDERWATER CINEMATOGRAPHY)   

BLUEBACK 

MAXX CORKINDALE                                                        

THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS

IVAN SEN                                                                 

LIMBO

WARWICK THORNTON                                                    

THE NEW BOY            


 

BEST ACTRESS

CATE BLANCHETT                                                          

THE NEW BOY

ZAR AMIR EBRAHIMI                                                       

SHAYDA

MWAJEMI HUSSEIN                                                         

THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS

SOPHIE WILDE                                                        

TALK TO ME

 

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

DEBORAH MAILMAN                                                       

THE NEW BOY

LEAH PURCELL                                                               

SHAYDA

NATASHA WANGANEEN                                                  

LIMBO

URSULA YOVICH                                                              

THE ROYAL HOTEL

 


 

BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

THE CARNIVAL                                                       

DIRECTOR: ISABEL DARLING PRODUCERS: TOM ZUBRYCKI, ISABEL DARLING

THE DEFENDERS                                                             

DIRECTOR: MATTHEW BATE PRODUCERS: ALICE BURGIN, GAL GREENSPAN

THE GIANTS                                                                     

DIRECTORS: LAURENCE  BILLIET, RACHAEL ANTONY PRODUCER: RACHAEL ANTONY

RACHEL’S FARM                                                              

DIRECTOR: RACHEL WARD, PRODUCER: BETTINA DALTON, RACEL WARD

SHACKLETON: THE GREATEST STORY OF SURVIVAL         

DIRECTORS:  BOBBI HANSEL, CASPAR MAZZOTTI 

PRODUCERS: DAVID GROSS, ELECTRA MANIKAKIS, NICK ROBINSON

 

FCCA IS GRATEFUL TO OUR SUPPORTERS AND SPONSORS

 

SPECTRUM FILMS, BUNYA PRODUCTIONS, ALLEN & UNWIN 

& GABRIEL COFFEE

 

RODNEY MARKS AND BENJAMIN MARKS

Saturday 2 March 2024

FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA - An Invitation to all to attend the FCCA Awards Night - Monday 18 March at Paddington RSL



 The most fun-filled Awards Night of the Year.

 An evening of high-spirited speeches and raucous goodwill ...and always some surprises

 

 


AWARDS NIGHT – MONDAY MARCH 18TH 

 

 

FOR ANY FURTHER INFORMATION, BOOKINGS PLEASE CONTACT

 

ADRIENNE at filmcriticsaust@bigpond.com

 

 

 

THE FILM CRITICS OF AUSTRALIA HOPE YOU WILL JOIN THEM TO CELBRATE AUSTRALIA’S CINEMA

 

 

 



 

ADRIENNE McKIBBINS

AWARDS MANAGER

filmcriticsaust@bigpond.com