*contains spoilers Phil Brock (15 August 1950-) was one of four brothers brought up in semi-rural Victoria – Hurstbridge outer Melbourne. His father was a bush mechanic and “a good one”. He didn’t have enough money to race as it was in the days before sponsorship… “Dad took us to various motor sports events reasonably…
Read more Stunt Driver Phil Brock on Mad Max, Frenchman’s Farm and brother Peter…
*contains spoilers Another movie, albeit with a computer on a smaller scale, is the forgotten Australian thriller Crosstalk (1982). Here an eavesdropping computer plays peeping tom to a murder in what is a kind of Rear Window with computers and one that was well ahead of its time. In Crosstalk, it is a privately produced…
Read more The Supercomputer Cult of Colossus and Crosstalk (Part Two)
*contains spoilers When did the supercomputer come into being? In fact, has a supercomputer already come into being? Like the movie Eagle Eye (2008), is there already a information gathering supercomputer which can think and pick on individuals – perhaps even determine the outcome of elections in various countries through fudging numbers fed into it.…
Read more The Supercomputer Cult of Colossus and Crosstalk (Part One)
*contains spoilers Name: Sienna Age: 14 Occupation: High School StudentFavourite Movie: My Girl (1991)Starring: Anna Chlumsky, Macauley Culkin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Ackroyd First Saw It: With her grandmother on DVD one night on the couch aged ten or eleven. Plot: A coming of age story of a young girl living in suburban Pensylvania…
Josephine (previously John) Emery (19 February 1947-) is one of a group of filmmakers who was at the heart of the film industry in South Australia when it began to thrive in the late 70s and into the 1980s. She wrote a script for what would become Phil Noyce’s first feature Backroads (1977). She followed…
Read more Screenwriter Josephine Emery on Strangers, Craig Lahiff, Scott Hicks and more
*contains spoilers Penny finds Steiner’s office ransacked and the killer attempts to strangle her but she uses a blunt instrument and escapes him/her/neither. Here the music, or lack of it, drives the tension. Is a life without music/sex worth living? This element seems built in to the tension of the sequence. Of course, after another…
Read more Craig Lahiff’s Aussie Hitchcockian Double Bill (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Coda (1987) aka Symphony of Evil aka Deadly Possession and Strangers (1991) are two films directed by South Australian director Craig Lahiff (1947-2014). The titles of his movies were often one word and the pair of movies are often described by critics as sub-Hitchcock. I think they deserve more praise than that, considering…
Read more Craig Lahiff’s Aussie Hitchcockian Double Bill (Part One)
As a companion piece to the article Frank Howson and the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, we have this interview with the Producer/Writer/Director himself. Melbourne’s Frank Howson (1952-) started in show business on the stage at the age of seven. A prodigious and prolific writer of music, film and the stage as well as other media,…
*contains spoilers In 1969, Larry had a bit part in the Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr vehicle The Magic Christian. A film which poses the question that people will do anything for money, it is extremely over the top and quite funny. Set in England, Larry plays a Shakespearian actor doing Hamlet, who is bribed…
Read more The Cult of Laurence Harvey Forever a Dandy in Aspic (Part Two)
*contains spoilers He was an AC/DC (no, not the band) playboy whose persona would swing between jaunty cynicism to debonair gloom. This together with his modern flamboyancy didn’t really endear him to audiences with great popularity. But enter his gallery of movies, especially towards the end, and there are some minor classics. He is Laurence…
Read more The Cult of Laurence Harvey Forever a Dandy in Aspic (Part One)
