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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 29 June 2017

She’s one of the best young actors in Australia and I recently spoke with Angourie Rice about her performance in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled…

Matt:  You’ve already some big credits under your belt including Walking with Dinosaurs, The Nice Guys and Jasper Jones.  How do land a role this in The Beguiled?  Do they come looking for you or are you still going through a lengthy audition process?

Angourie:  Oh, I still had to audition.  I originally auditioned for the role of Amy but I was too old and I was so upset because I really wanted to be part of this film.  I then read for Jane and I was lucky enough to get cast.  Oona Laurence did a fantastic job as Amy.  She’s brilliant.

Matt:  You’re working here under the tutelage of a great director – Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola.  I realise you’re only 16 years old and so I’m curious about whether you knew a lot about her work going on?

Angourie:  I did actually.  My mum and I are huge fans of Sofia and I had seen all of her films except for The Virgin Suicides.  I love all of her work and I told my mum that I didn’t care if I was an extra in the background… I just wanted to be a part of this film.

Matt:  Clearly your focus is on your performance in the film but are you interested a lot in the filmmaking process?  Do you watch people like Sofia and try to learn a lot along the way?

Angourie:  Definitely.  It was interesting because they shot it on film.  That was a different process and you couldn’t watch the scenes back as soon as you shot them.  That was difficult to do.  You had to trust the performance and that the director liked it.  Her process is amazing.  She’s a very visual director and you can see from her other films how gorgeous all the shots are and how she sets it all up.

Matt:  This is a period piece film which I think is a first for you.  Is that right?

Angourie:  I did do Jasper Jones which was set in the 1960s.  Would you count that?

Matt:  Maybe I’m digging back a bit further but you’re right about Jasper Jones.  With all the 19^th century costumes and ways of life, is there a lot you have to learn to play a character from that period?  Are there subtle things about the way you talk and walk?

Angourie:  Yeah.  We did lots of lessons with the whole cast which was heaps of fun.  We did dancing lessons, we did sowing and knitting lessons, and we did etiquette lessons.  We learned how to set the table property.  There was also a demonstration on how to sow a wound because Nicole has to do that in the film.  We had an historian/doctor to show her how to do it.  It was all fake but that was pretty cool.

Matt:  Are you doing all this during the shooting of the film or was there a lengthy rehearsal period?

Angourie:  That was part of rehearsals.

Matt:  And how did you find the costumes?  There a lot of preparation that goes into each day?

Angourie:  Definitely, yeah.  We had a lot of layers – singlet, corset, petticoat, dress, stockings, boots and sometimes an apron if you were working out in the garden to be practical.  It was hard to do everyday tasks like eating and walking… particularly walking up stairs.  It was worth it though.  It looks great on film.

Matt:  You’re working with some terrific actors here like Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell.  How exciting is it to be working alongside such Hollywood royalty?

Angourie:  It was fantastic.  All of the cast were so talented and brought something new to their character and to the project.  Each one had unique ideas as to what this film was going to be.  It was fantastic to see everyone work and to be on set.

Matt:  You’re in the early years of what we hope will be a long and successful career.  Do you get people giving you a lot of advice?  Trying to suggest what sort of work you should do and how to handle all the glitz and glamor that comes with Hollywood?

Angourie:  Yeah.  A lot of people tell me what films I have to watch as part of my preparation.  I guess a lot of the good advice comes from when I’m doing press tours.  I ask people how to cope with that because the publicity thing is far removed from acting and being on set.  I’m modelling and talking to people and doing interviews like this.  I’m always looking for advice on how to deal with that.

Matt:  You’ve had the chance to attend the Cannes Film Festival a couple of times now.  Is that right?

Angourie:  Three times actually.  I’ve been very lucky.

Matt:  How have you found those experiences?  Cannes seemingly becomes the epicentre of the film world for a week.

Angourie:  It’s so crazy.  It’s like everybody is there.  Every time you cross the street, it’s like a game of chicken between you and a limousine with tinted windows.  It’s insane and sparkly and unreal.  It’s like living in a Barbie world.  It’s surreal.

Matt:  With all of this acting, how do you keep up with your schooling?

Angourie:  With the support from my teachers and family.  I usually have a tutor on set and with technology, it’s a lot easier because I can email teachers and get work.  I still do the same tests and exams as everybody up.

Matt:  What have you got coming up?  What are you working on at the moment?  You’ve obvious got Spider-Man: Homecoming but is there anything else?

Angourie:  I’ll begin filming Every Day soon which is an MGM production directed by Michael Suscy.  It’s based on a young adult book.  I’m really excited about that and the shoot is taking place in Toronto.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 28 June 2017

One of my favourite parts of any film year is award season. It begins in December and culminates in late February with the Academy Awards.

Since I'll never be a member of the Academy, I decided back in 2000 to create a way of recognising my own favourite films and performances. It was somewhat self-indulgent to call them the Toomey Awards but meh, it was the best I could come up with at the time so I'm sticking with the name for now.

You can click here to see the winners and nominees for the past 17 years. I always go off a fiscal year and so the 2016 awards include all films released in Australian cinemas between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017.  This is because (1) I'm an accountant by day, and (2) it helps line up with the staggered release of "awards season" contenders in Australia through December, January and February each year.

Nominations were announced on Tuesday, June 27, 2017.
Winners (in bold) will be announced shortly.


Best Picture

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
MOONLIGHT
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS
SING STREET
20TH CENTURY WOMEN


Best Director

Kenneth Lonergan (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA)
Barry Jenkins (MOONLIGHT)
Tom Ford (NOCTURNAL ANIMALS)
John Carney (SING STREET)
Mike Mills (20TH CENTURY WOMEN)


Best Actor In A Leading Role

Casey Affleck (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA)
Adam Driver (PATERSON)
Joel Edgerton (LOVING)
Dave Johns (I, DANIEL BLAKE)
Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (SING STREET)


Best Actress In A Leading Role

Annette Bening (20TH CENTURY WOMEN)
Gal Gadot (WONDER WOMAN)
Sandra Hüller (TONI ERDMANN)
Isabelle Huppert (ELLE)
Sasha Lane (AMERICAN HONEY)


Best Actor In A Supporting Role

Lucas Hedges (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA)
Lucas Jade Zumann (20TH CENTURY WOMEN)
Dev Patel (LION)
Ashton Sanders (MOONLIGHT)
Michael Shannon (NOCTURNAL ANIMALS)


Best Actress In A Supporting Role

Pauline Garcia (LITTLE MEN)
Greta Gerwig (20TH CENTURY WOMEN)
Naomi Harris (MOONLIGHT)
Hayley Squires (I, DANIEL BLAKE)
Michelle Williams (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA)


Best Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen

GET OUT (Jordan Peele)
I, DANIEL BLAKE (Paul Laverty)
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Kenneth Lonergan)
TONI ERDMANN (Maren Ade)
20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Mike Mills)


Best Screenplay Based On Material Previously Produced Or Published

ELLE (Philippe Djian)
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (Ciro Guerra, Jacques Toulemonde Vidal)
LION (Luke Davies)
MOONLIGHT (Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney)
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Tom Ford)


Best Original Score

ARRIVAL (Jóhann Jóhannsson)
JACKIE (Mica Levi)
LA LA LAND (Justin Hurwitz)
MOONLIGHT (Nicholas Britell)
20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Roger Neill)


Best Animated Feature

CARS 3
KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS
MOANA
SAUSAGE PARTY


Best Foreign Language Film

ELLE
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT
JULIETA
LAND OF MINE
TRUMAN


Best Australian Film

DOWN UNDER
GIRL ASLEEP
GOLDSTONE
JASPER JONES


Best Documentary

LIFE, ANIMATED
THE QUEEN OF IRELAND
TICKLED
WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME
 

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 June 2017

Churchill is about to be released in Australian cinemas and I recently had the chance to speak with star Brian Cox about stepping into the shoes of the infamous leading character.

Matt:  How did this project first come across your radar?

Brian:  It came to me via a small company called Salon Pictures and producer Paul Van Carter.  It came out of the blue.  They told me they were doing a film about Churchill and that they wanted me for the role.  I read the script which was written by a young woman, Alex von Tunzelmann, who is an historian and specialises in historical accuracy.  I felt “this woman knows her stuff.”  It’s such an original take on Churchill but when you examine it, it’s completely on the money.

He went through this difficult time towards the end of 1943 where he was ill and had pneumonia in the lead up to D-Day.  He had doubts about the plan which was related to what happened in Gallipoli during World War I which was a failure and affected a lot of Australians.  He took full responsibility for that.  He actually resigned from the government and went into the wilderness for quite a long time.

Churchill was very ambitious, rather bumptious and a bit of a know-it-all.  He was smart as anything, a great journalist and a great writer.  He already had an extraordinary history in the Boer War.  It was fascinating to me that he had this crisis in World War II which, as is inferred from Alex’s script, never left him.  He felt very bad about it. 

Matt:  An interesting element of the film is that it doesn’t portray Churchill in a positive light.  He’s very stubborn to pretty much everyone around him, including his wife.  Do you think this will be an eye-opener for audiences?  To see a side of Churchill that isn’t as well known?

Brian:  He was certainly stubborn but the interesting thing that came out for me was that after we worked on it for several weeks and had started shooting, the army advisor pipped up and said “you know, we actually put Churchill’s plan for D-Day into a computer at Sandhurst 30 years ago and the result was extraordinary.”  He said the result was that the war would have ended 6 months earlier.

When Churchill had an idea, he was like a dog and wouldn’t let it go.  Unfortunately, it was a shift in time and he was part of another generator.  He was 70, he was quite frail, he’d been ill and he suffered from depression.  Also, the war was getting to him.  The losses were mounting.  You’d have to be deeply incentive not be affected by some of that.

D-Day turned out to be a success but there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of guys died.  Ironically, it was the Americans who came off worst.  I looked at actual videos of people manning the landing crafts and for some, none of their guys even made it to the shore.  At Utah Beach they lost 1,200-1,500 men in the first 20 minutes.  That’s something that kind of stokes the fire of Churchill’s difficult with what happened.

Matt:  Can I talk about the research that you had to do for the film?  Do you have access to any material you hadn’t heard of or seen before?

Brian:  Actors work like detectives.  You piece things together.  One thing that’s interesting in the wake of Brexit, I discovered that Churchill had a plan in the early part of the war to give French people citizenship of Britain and vice-versa.  That would help create a fermented Europe that was beginning then.  He could see the difficultly of what was going on.

Another thing I learned was about the protection of his image and this is where his wife comes into play.  She was fierce in protecting him and did so.  It’s why so much information about Churchill was kept hidden and is only coming out now.

A strong example is that there’s a video of when Churchill sat for a portrait with the English painter Graham Sutherland.  It has a red background which dominates the painting.  Churchill is only in the bottom third and he sits slumped.  He’s probably in his late 70s by this point.  He’s got a button undone on his fly.  It’s a “warts and all” portrait.

The video is of when the portrait was revealed in Westminster Palace.  He’s making a speech and if you look at his wife, she’s closely got her eyes on him.  She clearly has seen the painting but he hasn’t.  When it comes to the moment of reveal, he turns around, looks at it for a moment and says “oh, I see I’m a victim of modern art.”  The painting was given to Churchill and she had it destroyed.  She set fire to it.  That’s to do with protecting the image of her husband.  Her presence in his life was very formidable and very necessary, particularly as he got older.

It’s also worth noting that there are two Churchills.  There’s the private man who had a great sense of humour.  He was child-like at times.  I’ve always said all babies look like Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill looks like all babies.  When you think about it, the smoking of the cigar is like thumb sucking.  It’s a comforter.  This film delves into that private side which all made sense to me.

There was an element of Churchill that was unlikeable.  He was the MP of my home town and so I grew up with a great ambivalence towards him.  He cursed my town.  He made a speech from the railway station that “I will see the grass grow green over the industrial wasteland of this city”.  He was right.  Now though, there’s no question in my mind that just like Mandela and Napoleon, he was a man of destiny and that destiny lay with the success of World War II.

Matt:  Talk us through the physical aspects of your performance.  What was the process for getting Churchill’s looks, mannerisms and voice down pat?

Brian:  I really wanted to try to avoid any kind of fat suit or prosthetics.  I’ve always had a battle with my weight and I’m a diabetic which is also dangerous.  I decided to just let myself go.  I’ve just subsequently lost about 30 pounds in weight.  I’m still broad in the shoulder and in the chest but I don’t have the gut any more thank God.  That was one thing.

I shaved my head and had my hair bleached.  I also had to fill in my chin because Churchill didn’t have a cleft chin.  For me, acting is always an internal process.  Two of my favourite actors are Spencer Tracy and Charles Laughton.  Laughton had this great thing of “thinking a part” and he became the character that way.  Tracy did the same.

Matt:  What are you working on at the moment?  What will we see from you next?

Brian:  There’s a couple of films I’m doing called Being Dead and then another film in Canada with Greg Kinnear, Amy Adams and Blythe Danner called Strange But True.  I’m then going to do a TV series for HBO.  I’ve already shot the pilot.  It’s about a media family who are in the process of deciding the succession plan for their father and who is going to take over when he retires.  It’s a family that owns newspapers and television stations so it should sound familiar.

I play the patriarch of the family.  The first episode is about him giving his empire away but it’s also about him taking his empire back.  The series is called Succession and it has the lovely Australian actress Sarah Snook who plays my daughter.  It’s written by Jesse Armstrong who has been involved with Armando Iannucci and worked on shows like Veep and Peep Show.  It’s produced and directed by Adam McKay who made The Big Short.  It’s really good and they loved the pilot so we go to series between the end of July and September.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 June 2017

The Mummy had its Australian premiere not long ago and while he was in the country, I had the chance to speak to director Alex Kurtzman about his film.

Matt:  You’ve had the chance to write so many big-budget action blockbusters.  How did this opportunity to direct finally come along?

Alex:  I’ve had the great privilege to work with a lot of amazing directors and they’ve been very generous with me.  I got to stay with them on set and see them work and watch their styles.  At a certain point, I developed a strong itch to do it myself – to take what I’ve learned and apply it to something.  I knew I wanted to do a project that I was passionate about and I have loved the Universal monsters for a long time.  When the studio came to me about The Mummy, I was very excited to throw my hat in the ring and they fortunately said “yes”.

Matt:  Have you always had a love for action movies?  Are there films that you look up to and use as a kind of benchmark?

Alex:  For sure.  I love all kinds of movies.  In terms of action references, I grew up in the era of Lethal Weapon and Die Hard.  Those were particularly exciting because they were so rooted in character.  They were big ideas that had small human stories.  The action films that I tend to be drawn to are very similar.

Matt:  Take us through a shootout scene.  There are parts in the film where we see guns being fired, bullets hitting walls.  How do you pull that off and make it look so realistic?

Alex:  For the scene you’re talking about, we shot that in Namibia which is an amazingly beautiful place.  We built that entire town in the middle of the African desert where there’s absolutely nothing.  You’re importing enormous amounts of things.  Those buildings were all rigged to explode, collapse and reset within 10 minutes which was amazing to watch.

We had the most incredible designers and stunt folk working.  It’s a lot of planning which is the short answer.  We spent a lot of time choreographing the sequence in advance and going down to every detail.  There’s real explosions going on and so the actors and crew have to be safe.  What looks very chaotic on screen is very kind of controlled.

Matt:  I’ve seen all kind of stunts in movies but one that freaks me out above all others is an underwater scene – where someone is swimming around trying to find air.  We see that in this film with what does look like Tom Cruise.  Is there any level of danger at all when pulling off a scene like that?

Alex:  The water stuff is extremely dangerous because you’re going so deep and because you have to oxygenate correctly.  There are divers all around and Tom Cruise likes to do everything practically so there are no stuntmen there.  We were in a very large water tank.  If you don’t rise to the surface correctly then you can really hurt yourself.  The actors have to train and learn how to use rebreathers for a long time.  It’s exhausting work but hopefully it gives the audience a really exciting and scary experience.

Matt:  Special effects seem to be able to do everything these days but was there stuff here that you couldn’t pull off?  Anything that was simply too much for the visual effects guys?

Alex:  The fun about working with Tom is that’s never really allowed to be a thought.  You’re always asking yourself how you can deliver something for the audience that they’ve never seen before.

In the case of the plane crash sequence, Tom was excited about doing it in zero gravity and so we shot it over the course of a few days in a real plane called the Vomit Comet.  You fly up towards space at the speed of a rocket and then you free fall for 22 seconds.  In that 22 seconds, as you’re plummeting towards earth, we’re rolling the camera.  The audience is seeing actual people tumbling through a plane that is going straight down.  You see all the movement that you could never achieve with cables or CGI.

Matt:  I have to ask where the sound guys came up with all the spooky mummy noises.  It sounds like a mix between a strong wind and someone screaming.

Alex:  I’ve worked with a team over the last couple of years that are unbelievable.  Our mixers, Christopher Scarabosio and Paul Massey, have done everything from the Star Wars films to Pirates of the Caribbean.  They really know what they’re doing.  We spend a lot of time developing sound.  It’s one of the key emotional experiences than an audience has.  They may not be aware of it but it impacts them massively.

We spent a huge amount of time thinking about Sofia Boutella’s voice and what we wanted to do with it.  We put whispers behind it and augmented it in certain ways so that it had a very creepy effect but still found grounded in reality.

Matt:  This appears to be part of a bigger universe of films that perhaps we’re going to see more of in the near future.  Can you tell us what else is in the works?  Are you in the loop about where the storylines are going next?

Alex:  Yes.  I am very much in the loop.  The next film we’re going to be doing is Bride of Frankenstein.  A lot of people involved really love these Universal monsters.  Bill Condon will be directing.  He’s a massive lover of James Whale and he directed Gods & Monsters which makes him the perfect director.  He just did Beauty and the Beast and he’s such a brilliant, talented guy.  I’m a huge fan and I’m excited to work with him.  I think the idea is to take each of these monsters and give them their own film.

Matt:  Do you have certain plot points that you were told to include in The Mummy knowing that they’re going to be expanded upon in future films?

Alex:  Not so much in The Mummy.  The intention was to open the door a crack but not to overwhelm the audience with too much information about it.  You want to wet the audience’s appetite and get them excited about the things coming up.