Tom Hanks fights off Somali pirates in Captain Phillips, Keri Russell searches for Mr. Darcy in Austenland and Domnhall Gleeson and Bill Nighy travel in time in Richard Curtis’s new rom-com About Time. Dan interviews outgoing NZFC CEO Graeme Mason.
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In New Zealand we have a conservative government and our Film Commission has just been reviewed. In the UK, the new Conservative-Lib/Dem government decided to just shoot theirs in the head:
This decision could prove devastating to an entire generation of film-makers; for all its ups and downs, the Film Council has got involved with the likes of Armando Iannucci, Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Peter Mullan, Sam Taylor-Wood, Kevin McDonald and Pawel Pawlikowski. How much credit the council can take for their film-making is up for debate, but it has at least functioned as the connective tissue between such disparate talents.
(There’s a section on the demise of the UK Film Council in The Guardian and more reaction at the excellent aggregator Mubi.com/Notebook.)
Because privileged white males haven’t had a fair suck of the sav in recent times when it comes to arts funding it seems only fair that the Film Commission should try and redress that injustice with the new Tom Scott-scripted comedy Separation City.
Aussie Joel Edgerton plays Simon, a normal kiwi bloke who has a gorgeous intelligent wife, a beautiful house on the beach in Eastbourne, a job steering affairs of state for a cabinet minister and a mid-life crisis caused by nothing more dramatic than a lack of action in the bedroom. He falls for beautiful cellist Katrien who may or may not be Dutch or German but has the cut glass English accent of London-born Rhona Mitra (last seen in skin-tight leather as a vampire in Underworld 3).
