Father Geek here in the Texas Hill Country Geek Headquarters Compound chained to my giant old oak rolltop computer station (a part of AICN's new improved security procedures). Oh, well, at least that put an end to those annoying body cavity searches each and every evening when leaving our barbed wire enclosed complex. Ahhhh, here comes the day's ration of lukewarm oatmeal (Oh how I miss the S.O.S.)Well, our chief corperate beancounter swears it will improve productivity... raising the BS level of the writing staff 10 fold. You field staff guys & gals don't know what you're missing...

All those things I can do. All those powers. And I couldn't even save him.

AICN-DOWNUNDER

It's been fairly quiet in the Australian film industry these past two weeks. I mean, controversy-wise. Aside from right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt's vendetta against Phillip Noyce's RABBIT PROOF FENCE (yes, Andrew, Phillip Noyce is the FIRST FILMAKER EVER TO ADAPT REAL-LIFE EVENTS SO THEY WORK AS A NARRATIVE), there's not been much that's stirred the pot of... um... debate.

So here's the news.

NEWS

* Okay, I held off reporting that Nicole Kidman was going to be playing opposite Russell Crowe and Geoffrey Rush in EUCALYPTUS because I didn't believe it. Or, if she was, I was expecting it to be a supporting part. But no, it seems like Ms Kidman will be playing the romantic female lead after all. Why did I doubt the validity of the rumour? Because I know that the production had been looking at some unknown actresses, and had been concerned that at least one of them was too old for the part. At twenty-four years of age. Those of you who have your "Pocket Celebrity Guide to Facts About Our Nic" will surely know that on June 20 this year, Nicole turned thirty-seven. But she don't look a day over twenty. Why the sudden jump? There were rumours going around a short while back that EUCALYPTUS was in trouble and may be shutting down production. Then we were told everything was jim dandy. Then the Nicole rumours started up. So my guess is that they're doing some rewrites to accommodate for the change, but that Dr Chase Meridian will indeed headline the flick.

* Brandon Routh has been cast as Superman. We all know this. The film will begin shooting in Australia next year (editorial note: that's the first time in the year and a half I've been writing this column that I've written that without feeling like a retraction would be printed the following week). But what of plot details? What of story spoilers? RETURNS will not be an origin story, as both the original Donner films and "Smallville" have covered this territory well enough. It will serve as a sequel to SUPERMAN and SUPERMAN II, but may fudge over the disasters of III and IV. Kevin Spacey is rumoured to be playing Lex, and has confirmed in interviews that he's up for the part (which would make sense, as he and director Bryan Singer both got their big-big breaks in the same film). But here's an interesting one: Moviehole in Australia is reporting that Zod, Non, and Ursa may be returning. And that Terence Stamp has been approached. Complete and total bollocks? Not necessarily. The filmmakers have repeated that this is a sequel to SUPERMAN II, and the film is called SUPERMAN RETURNS. But the most important question has yet to be answered: will that awesome super-monkey thing end up in the film?

* BOOMERANG DEAL, written and directed by Phillip Marzella, has already snagged Harry Connick Jnr as its male lead, as we reported recently. But it's a love story, and presumably they need a second actor. Unless Harry is playing both roles, and it's a weird-arse David Lynch-style metaphor for masturbation in today's self-absorbed world. Okay, so the film is none of those things and Thora Birch has signed on. Will it be a fish-out-water comedy with two Yanks stumbling around the outback? And didn't KANGAROO JACK already cover that territory?

* Robert Luketic, he who rose from the depths of Melbourne to give us LEGALLY BLONDE, will next bring DALLAS to the screen, based on the TV series "Dynasty". Why do we need such a film? Because all of you post-modern types still walk around nudging each other and asking "Who shot JR?", believing it to be a rhetorical reference to kitsch television. Which it is.

* Back on Nicole, she's signed on to Wong Kar Wai's 1930s period piece THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. So long as Chris Doyle is lensing, I'm there.

* Miranda Otto will star with Tom Cruise in The Beard's WAR OF THE WORLDS. The flick starts shooting in a few weeks.

* WAKE IN FRIGHT was an important 1971 Australian film, directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Donald Pleasance. For the past decade, the search has been on to find the original film print, and only now has it been discovered. Somewhere in Pittsburgh, a shipping container labeled "For Destruction" contained about sixty cans of film. Could well mean that a special DVD edition may come to stores soon, hopefully with the film's necessary brutality intact.

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS

Renee Webster received the SBS Television Eat Carpet Award for her short film SCOFF at the World of Women International Film Festival. The award was handed out this Saturday past in Sydney. For those who don't know, Eat Carpet is a long-running (and under-appreciated) weekly series on SBS showcasing short films from Australia and around the world.

RELEASED THESE PAST TWO WEEKS

The true-life story of 70s newsreaders is finally brought to the screen in a fitting biopic, form-fitting latex meets fire, a film about soccer hooligans is so boring it's unlikely to keep the attention of any actual soccer hooligans, a French film utilises a "motif", poor boy meets rich girl (and not much else happens), Nathaniel Kahn builds a portrait of his architect father (see what I did there with "builds" and "architect"?), Jonathon Karsh builds a portrait of a disabled mother (see what I did there with "builds" and "disabled"?), we get the only shark film to come out in the past year that doesn't feature vegetarian sharks, the greatest subtitle in the history of sequels has audiences running to the cinema, Richard Gere stars in the most eagerly-awaited remake since audience screamed "Why has nobody remade GET CARTER with Sylvester Stallone?!?", the grandmother from TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE is brought to life with a magic movie ticket, the latest anime decides to follow the Miyazaki route of no excessive sex or violence (you've got a lot to answer for, Hayao), and Reese Witherspoon stars in an adaptation of a crap magazine.

Sooooo here's what's new on the big screen downunder...

• ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY
• DEMONLOVER
• THE FOOTBALL FACTORY
• INTIMATE STRANGERS
• THE NOTEBOOK
• MY ARCHITECT
• MY FLESH AND BLOOD
• OPEN WATER
• RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE
• SHALL WE DANCE?
• SINCE OTAR LEFT
• STEAMBOY
• VANITY FAIR

REVIEWS

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

This is a film probably none of you have heard about. I've emailed Harry, Father Geek, Moriarty and Quint to let them know about it, but they all claimed to have "no time for zombie films" and went on to extol the virtues of RAISE YOUR VOICE, or HILARY DUFF FALLS DOWN FOR HUMOUROUS MOMENTS IV. Don't worry, Garry Marshall's getting royalties.

I have not had the honour of viewing "Spaced", but everyone tells me it's total penis (in the positive sense). I'm going to have to catch it now. SHAUN is brilliant. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not your friend.

The idea of a couple of English piss-pots caught in a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD scenario but not realising it for ages because they're just not aware enough is genius. That they think every zombie they come across is simply a drunk is inspired. It lives up to its premise too, setting up numerous story strands and minor plot details that you know will pay off later.

But what's surprising is how deftly it handles the dramatic and horror elements on top of the comedic. The horror is genuinely scary at moments, moreso than, say, FREDDY VS JASON which was sold more on its fanboy appeal than genuine frights. And the drama when Shaun is forced to kill someone close to him is deftly handled... and much more full-on than I was expecting. Even the ending manages to be funny and poignant simultaneously.

It's truly the work of brilliant minds, and, we pray to the Gods of Film, the first of many from these guys.

THE NOTEBOOK

As geeks around the world cried "Oh, the irony!" in Wookieese, George Lucas complained loudly at the colourisation of old Three Stooges films. His argument was that the films were funny for their time, and by updating them visually younger audiences would lose that perspective and not "get it".

THE NOTEBOOK is beautifully shot, very well acted, and calmly paced to within an inch of its life. But it just don't work for me. So many people have told me tales of weeping uncontrollably, fairly Manly Men have proclaimed it to be the best film of the year, everyone seems to have fallen in love with it. Only, for Latauro, this film was from the wrong side of the tracks.

See, I was sitting in the thing waiting patiently for the twist. The New Thing. After all, this was rich girl meets poor boy and parents don't approve. It's a story as old as time itself. And if it was worth re-telling, surely there would be something new to add. Nope. Not a thing.

Perhaps Young Nicholas felt that the New Thing was the bookending of the story with the two old peeps. When the credits roll at the end, it becomes clear where they were going with it, but for the most part I was hoping that it would be a case of mistaken identity. That the stupid "twist" at the end of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would be put to better use here. Nope. Not a chance. It's all unsurprising, from start to finish. Entertaining and well-told, but still... why was I watching?

Once again, we're shown a character who suffers from Hollywood Mental Illness. Gena Rowlands does a terrific job, but we get what we got in the astonishingly awful BEAUTIFUL MIND: a person suffering from delusions whilst managing to be completely aware that they're crazy, so express their desire to get better. It's not like these are two personalities grappling for control of a body. It's the same damn person, and even when she does remember who James Garner is (and haven't we all had trouble with that in recent times?), she acknowledges that she "went away" and hopes she can stay longer this time. It's the way dementia is written by people who have had no encounter with it whatsoever. So we feel relieved that the person we knew and loved is still in there somewhere. It's cheap.

Look, this isn't a bad film. It's impressive at times and very good at others. But to be the film it wants to be, it needed to have been made sixty years ago by Frank Capra with Donna Reed and Montgomery Clift. It needs to have been made before we were saturated with this plot, so we could look back on it and cite it as the best version of itself. Not that I'm suggesting Cassavetes should (or could) have done that, but it's a film that should be looked back on. And I should point out, I'm in the minority as someone who wasn't blown away by it, but it still puzzles me that it was made now.

COLLATERAL

Hey, while we're on the subject of films that are okay but overrated...

Perhaps it was built up too much for me. Perhaps everyone going on about how great the flirtation scene between Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett-Smith in the cab raised my expectations too high. Perhaps all the talk about how brilliant the club scene made me think it was going to be something more than a well-executed (pardon the pun) shoot-out.

See, none of it's bad (except the cinematography, but I'll get to that later), it's just didn't do it for me. Tom Cruise wasn't scary or intimidating. He was Tom Cruise being cool. Jamie Foxx, I felt, gave a far better performance, far more nuanced. When Vincent arrived, it stopped being an interesting character piece and instead turned into a Hollywood hitman flick. And I don't even have a Cruise bias. I think he was brilliant in MAGNOLIA, and totally lost in the character. Here, he's hoping that his grey hair and unshaven look is enough to carry his usual shtick. It isn't.

The film is well-written for the most part, right up until the third act when it becomes the train scene in SPEED or the motorboat race in FACE/OFF. Suddenly we're in need of a big action set piece. But it doesn't lose itself completely. The film is as believable as it can be under the circumstances of its plot, but it does too much straddling at the end. Like it's trying to maintain its credibility whilst still conforming to the third act high concept thrill.

I'm torn with the cinematography, trying to work out if Mann was going for the gritty video feel, or if he honestly thinks that HD is better than film. This is an argument that's going to find its way into every review of any film utilising HD up until it becomes a more standard practice, so I may as well contribute. HD is not even close to the depth and clarity of film. It cannot handle movement. It cannot handle fire. It looks cheap. Now, I'm prepared to accept that Mann wanted it like that on purpose, and God known Australian Dion Beebe is one of the best DoPs working today. After all, I sung the praises of BOURNE SUPREMECY a few weeks ago, and Greengrass shook the camera like there was no tomorrow - and I'm not going to criticise him for not knowing what a tripod is. But regardless, COLLATERAL looks cheap.

I wanted to like this film a lot more than I did. Sort-of like with THE INSIDER or HEAT. Now, I'm a big fan of both of those film, but I don't love them as much as I want to. There's always something missing. Mann has his own sensibilities, his own way of looking at the world through film. So do all good filmmakers. My favourite director is Soderbergh, who absolutely has his own way of looking at things. But Soderbergh's style is completely in tune with my own preferences, whereas Mann's is not. Mann's style is not a bad one, but I don't think I'll ever completely fall for anything he makes.

NEXT WEEK

- The entire cast of "West Wing" is replaced by James Spader, who as of next season will single-handedly play every role in federal government

- Paul WS Anderson signs on to write the new STAR TREK film, promising to disprove critics who claimed the franchise couldn't do any worse than Rick Berman

- In an attempt to find a Michael Caine film that hasn't been remade, producers have signed Kal Penn and John Cho to the remake of HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK

Peace out,

Latauro

AICNDownunder@hotmail.com