Los Angeles, (IANS) Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki has clinched a Primetime Emmy Award for the Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role as Princess Diana in the hit streaming show 'The Crown'.
This marks the first time an Australian actress has won in the category.
During her acceptance speech, she said, "I didn't write anything down because I'm very superstitious and now I'm in a real pickle, so I'm going to do this quickly. Peter (Morgan), thank you. Thank you for making this show. Thank you for trusting me with this."
'The Crown' is a historical drama television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It is created and written by Peter Morgan, who developed the series from his film 'The Queen' and his stage play 'The Audience', which also focused on Queen Elizabeth.
The series consists of six seasons spanning almost six decades, and begins shortly before the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten in 1947 and ends with the 2005 wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Elizabeth Debicki, who was born in Paris, France, to a Polish father and an Australian mother of Irish descent, became interested in ballet early in life and trained as a dancer until deciding to switch to theatre.
In 2010, she completed a bachelor's degree in drama at the Victorian College of the Arts of the University of Melbourne before she went on to star in several projects like 'The Great Gatsby', 'Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2', 'Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3', 'The Night Manager', and 'The Crown'.
This year’s Sydney Film Festival’s rich offerings of films more than compensated for the minor technical issues that led to some screenings being interrupted.
Out of the 40-odd films I saw, here are my top five, along with some notable mentions and three disappointments (including a genuine dud).
1. The Girl with the Needle
Cowritten and directed by Swedish filmmaker Magnus von Horn, The Girl with the Needle is loosely based on the story of notorious early-20th century serial killer Dagmar Overbye.
But this is no procedural true crime film, painstakingly attempting to recreate crimes with historical accuracy. It’s a stylish Danish nightmare dazzling with cinematic acrobatics right from the opening sequence, in which black and white faces hideously morph, looking at the viewer like deranged figures from a hellish circus. It is, indeed, one of the most terrifying films I’ve seen.
The narrative follows the struggles of new mother Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) as she gives her baby to Dagmar’s informal adoption agency and begins working with her as a wet nurse, unaware of what’s really going on.
Sonne is as self-assured as ever – and none of the actors put a foot wrong here. Seasoned Danish film star Trine Dyrholm is exceptional in bringing nuance to what could have become a caricaturishly evil role as Dagmar. And Besir Zeciri endows Peter, a war-wounded veteran who can only find employment in a circus freakshow, with an unexpected warmth and tenderness.
The Girl with the Needle features some of the most distressing sequences one could find in a commercial film. Its meticulously rendered shades of German expressionism never distract from its smorgasbord of horrors, offering an almost unbearably bleak vision of the world in the aftermath of the Great War. If only all films were this good!
2. Dying
I’d normally suppress a yawn if you told me I had to sit through a three-hour social realist drama about the everyday difficulties of a bourgeois German conductor and his family. Yet writer-director Matthias Glasner’s Dying is a near perfect film (no surprise it won four prizes at the German Film Awards).
The film is complex and engrossing – deeply sad in places and hysterical in others – formally controlled, but underpinned by an anarchic sensibility. It is life-affirming without any skerrick of sentimentality.
Lars Eidinger is astonishingly good as maestro Tom, who is trying to keep his career on track as his family life crumbles around him. He is matched by Lilith Stangenberg, mesmerising as his unhinged sister Ellen. Robert Gwisdek is equally exceptional as the highly strung composer and friend Bernard, while Corinna Harfouch anchors the film’s first section as Tom’s far from maternal mother, Lissy.
At one point, Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 period film Fanny and Alexander is playing on the TV (Tom watches it every Christmas). Even though Dying feels like a contemporary film committed to interrogating the difficulties of being in the modern world, there’s something of late Bergman here as it unfolds across its epic length.
It is a three-hour film about middle-class life, but like a great 19th-century novel, it never feels long. The fact that nothing particularly extraordinary happens is testament to how well-made the film is.
3. Kill
Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s Indian action film Kill is cheesy, sentimental and at first seems remarkably silly.
Commando Amrit, played by beefy TV star Lakshya, is travelling to New Delhi by train with his buddy, fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan). His true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) is also on board and has recently become engaged to another man through an arrangement by her wealthy father, Baldev Singh Thakur (Harsh Chhaya), who happens to own the train company. When a group of 30-plus bandits led by the charming but ice-cold Fani (Raghav Juyal) move to rob the train, Amrit must defend Tulika, her family and the rest of the passengers.
When the title card appears 40 minutes into the film, suddenly emblazoned on the screen, it seems like a distracting quirk at first. But it begins to make sense as the train rolls on. All of the violence and bone-crushing action of the first section is mere preamble, leading to a point of transition from an extremely violent but fun action film, to a much darker – and bloodier – revenge film.
Kill is an exceptionally well-wrought genre film. The kinetic and balletic action recalls the golden era of Hong Kong action cinema, but with hammers, daggers and sickles instead of guns and the frenetic staging of hand-to-hand combat instead of poetic slow-motion footage. It is also a great example of a film being more than the sum of its parts. No element is perfect, yet they come together to transcend these limitations, its flow reaching sublime levels by the end.
There’s also an undercurrent of sadness throughout. We see an India of haves and have-nots, of families of bandits struggling to survive and of the supreme violence sustaining the social and political order. As Fani says to Amrit near the end: “Who kills like this? I killed four of your people. You finished off 40 of my family. You’re not a protector. You’re a monster. A fucking monster.” The title says it all.
4. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Biographical films about celebrities inevitably feel gossipy. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is no exception. But it is so well made (and well-resourced, one would imagine, as it’s produced by DC) that it moves beyond its tabloid-like qualities.
Interviews with Reeve’s friends and colleagues, including Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close and Jeff Daniels, are interspersed with home footage shot by Reeve and his family throughout his career and during his recovery from the near-fatal riding accident that left him paralysed and breathing through a respirator for the rest of his life.
Reeve’s close friendship with “brother” Robin Williams assumes central importance, with the film implying the two men were so emotionally dependent on each other that Williams would probably still be alive if Reeve hadn’t died in 2004.
But the most interesting parts of the film involve carefully assembled archival footage looking at how Reeve’s decision to play Superman negatively impacted his career and personal life. He never starred in another profitable film, and his father and colleagues such as William Hurt loathed his decision to play a comic book character.
This is counterpointed with his post-accident career as a director and disability advocate. Interviews with Reeve’s children add a genuinely tragic sense of pathos to this slick, well-made and emotionally exhausting “true Hollywood” story. It’s everything one could want from such a documentary.
5. Kneecap
Cowriter-director Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap is a riotous, irreverent biopic following the career of Belfast drug-dealers Móglaà Bap and Mo Chara as they team up with high school music teacher DJ Próvai to become the first Irish-language rap group, Kneecap.
The real Kneecappers cowrote the film and play themselves and, given none of them are actors, do so remarkably well. They’re joined by Irish heavyweights Josie Walker, playing the detective who has it in for them, and Michael Fassbender, playing MóglaÃ’s father, an old-school Irish radical who has been on the run for the past few decades.
The film depicts their hedonistic drug use and anarchic disregard for the law in the context of their radical political motivation to speak Irish against the colonial English. And while it may be a bit cartoonish in its presentation of Belfast’s history and the struggle to keep Gaelic alive, it is a music biopic after all.
Kneecap is violent, coarse and laced with infectiously good humour – a genuinely fun film, buoyed by its charismatic stars and lively style. Only the most stringent moralist wouldn’t enjoy this one!
Notable mentions
It’s extremely difficult to pick a top five when 15 or so of the films I saw were standouts. And this is testament to the quality of the festival’s selection.
It was a pleasure watching heavyweight Sean Penn go head-to-head with Dakota Johnson in writer-director Christy Hall’s Daddio, even if the story takes an uninteresting turn in the final third. Despite the banality of the premise – a New York cabbie chats with a passenger – and the inanity of some of the dialogue, this romantic ode to urban life in all its alienated, fluoro-lit techno glory is so well crafted that we happily go along for the ride.
Of the lot, I only found three films disappointing.
The first, Among the Wolves, is a Belgian-French documentary in which a photographer and illustrator lie waiting in a tiny, makeshift building to encounter wild wolves. While some of the footage is striking, the film is let down by its scientific inaccuracy, such as references to the “alpha male” wolf – a term and concept that has long been discredited. Such innacuracy is a cardinal sin for a documentary, which is supposed to inform the viewer.
Though critically acclaimed, Hollywood horror film The Substance – a story of an ageing entertainer who turns to a mysterious substance to stay young (with unsurprisingly horrific ramifications) – feels neither new nor particularly interesting. And while it’s great to see Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid back on the big screen, their caricaturish characters make the whole thing seem like a boring joke: an inflated short film that is both irritatingly silly and painfully didactic.
But rarely does a film so resolutely reaffirm a sense of the absurd hubris of humans as Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed mega-flop, Megalopolis. This cartoonish, incoherent mess set in a dystopian version of the United States, “New Rome”, is howlingly bad in places.
Imagine the worst parts of The Hunger Games and Fellini Satyricon (1969) crossed with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and you begin to get a sense of the kind of self-indulgent, heavy-handed nonsense that is Megalopolis.
Side-splittingly funny moments come courtesy of bad dialogue (“Utopias become dystopias,” actor Giancarlo Esposito says at one point with a straight face). And stilted acting by Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza had the (remaining) audience in stitches. Megalopolis is like one of the great fiascos from days gone by – the 21st century’s Heaven’s Gate – and there is definitely something delightful about the existence of this US$120 million (roughly A$180 million) flop.
But as a dud, Megalopolis is the outlier. And in a year following Barbie, Oppenheimer, Napoleon and Poor Things (talk about heavy-handed cinema), much of the menu of this year’s Sydney Film Festival once again proves there are still good filmmakers out there making good films.
Lore tells a bleak, uncommon, and harrowing tale of a Nazi siblings traverse across war-ravaged Germany in search of their grandmother's home following the imprisonment of their parents. Directed by Australian director Cate Shortland (AFI winner for Somersault), and written by Shortland and Robin Mukherjee, this international co-production screened at the Sydney Film Festival as part of the Official Competition. Recently Lore won the Audience Award at the Locarno Film Festival, and is set to screen at this month's Toronto International Film Festival. Featuring a breakthrough role from Saskia Rosendahl, this is a stirring and emotionally resonating war drama that comes highly recommended. Lore is set during 1945 and the fall of the German resistance. With their SS father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and mother (Ursina Lardi) imprisoned by American and Russian forces, and abandoned to face an uncertain fate, Hannelore (Saskia Rosendahl) takes charge of the rest of her family - her younger sister Liesel (Nele Trebs), twins Jurgen (Mika Seidel) and Gunther (Andrei Frid) and baby brother, Peter - guiding them across the perilous countryside towards their grandmother's house in Hamburg. On the road the children face the punishing conditions, experience distressing sights and find their health suffer, and along the way Hannelore begins to better understand the consequences of her parents' actions, come of age, and accept responsibility for her family. Lore tells an uncommon tale set during an accurately recreated historical period. At the centre of this tale is Lore, our complex heroine. Having been raised in privilege and taught that Jews are not to be trusted and an enemy to her family, she is reluctant to allow Thomas (Kai-Peter Malina), a young man they discover hiding out in an abandoned house, to become their traveling companion. Initially, when he follows the group from a distance, Lore resists his attempts to reach out to her, but ultimately becomes
drawn to him out of comfort and sexual desire and he assists them on several occasions; most importantly passing through patrols. Lore begins to understand what is required for her family to make it, offering up scraps of jewellery and even sexual favors. Thomas aids them without any expected compensation, but his Jewish papers present a challenge to Lore's morality. Her innocence is almost completely lost over the course of the journey, as her confusing adolescent emotions begin to influence her decisions.Sympathising with these characters could have been difficult, but it remains emotionally involving because we understand that the children are innocent and have been raised to accept their parents' political affiliations. Understanding that the children need to have some hope, Lore doesn't reveal their parents' fates, and as a result they are so confused by the situation that they believe they will again be united with their parents at their grandmother's house. The tense atmosphere - which captures a reality as grim as they come and offers up a suffocating level of foreboding - is beautifully conveyed in the stunning photography courtesy of Adam Arkapaw (Snowtown and Animal Kingdom), one of Australia's best DP's. You feel every step the children make through the mud, and can almost smell the stench of death surrounding them. Lore is also very effectively scored by Max Richter, and the young actors all deliver mature performances. Rosendahl, especially, is outstanding. She is a young actress to watch after this career-defining role. The conclusion is powerful because it is evident how much Lore has changed - coming to terms with her family's accountability and adjusting her own prejudices having learned that they never would have made it without the aid of Thomas, considered a friendly to the American forces. The emotions that weigh on her having turned Thomas away, knowing that he would not be welcomed to her grandmother's house, involves heartbreaking revelation. This is a satisfying and very well crafted film from Cate Shortland, and having not seen Somersault, I'd now like to see from where her vision has evolved. Source: The Film Emporium
In many ways, celebrities are just like regular folk, including how they spend the holidays. LL Cool J said he plans on eating - A LOT. He told ET online, "Just stick my face in the plate as deep as possible." "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart says she loves Christmas and is looking forward to having some time off because she's been so busy working. The actress spent November promoting "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" and is also busy promoting "On The Road." "Les Miserables" star Amanda Seyfriend is going home to spend time with her family. "We're going to be opening presents and the same old traditional stuff. It's kind of nice," she said. Her co-star Russell Crowe will be heading back to Australia to spend time with his children. "We'll just be hanging out together - pretty low key," he said. Selena Gomez will go home and sleep and hang out with her grandparents. Check out more in the video below: Source: Starpulse.com
The 2012 Miss Universe pageant night happened December 19 (December 20, MLA time) at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada and Olivia Culpo from USA was crowned Miss Universe. Leila Lopes of Angola crowned her successor at the end of the event. Olivia Culpo bested 88 gorgeous ladies from different countries and territories around the globe. The Philippines completed the 3-peat in the Miss Universe with Janine's placement in the Top 5 and ending up as first runner up, a higher place finish than her predecessors, Venus Raj and Shamcey Supsup. Here is the list of winners of the Miss Universe 2012 pageant: Miss Universe 2012: USA, Olivia Culpo, 1st runner-up: Philippines, Janine Tugonon, 2nd runner-up: Venezuela, Irene Esser, 3rd runner-up: Australia, Renae Ayris, 4th runner-up: Brazil, Gabriela Markus. Special Awards: Miss Photogenic: Kosovo, Diana Avdiu, Miss Congeniality: Guatemala, Laura Godoy, Best in National Costume: China, Ji Dan Xu. Miss Universe 2012 Top 10: Russia, Elizabeth Golovanova, France, Marie Payet, Hungary, Agnes Konkoly, South Africa, Melinda Bam, Mexico, Karina González. Miss Universe 2012 Top 16: Turkey, Çağıl Özge Özkul, Peru, Nicole Faverón, Poland, Marcelina Zawadzka, Croatia, Elizabeta Burg, Kosovo, Diana Avdiu, India, Shilpa Singh, Watch the crowning moment of Miss Universe 2012 Olivia Culpo in the video below: The
year 2012 has been a very good year for the Philippines when it comes to pageants. Our bets in Miss World and Miss International placed in the semifinals. Elaine Kay Moll grabbed a 3rd runner-up finish in Miss Supranational. Stephany Stefanowitz and Andrew Wolff were both 1st runner up in Miss Earth and Mister World, respectively while the country won the title of Miss International Queen 2012 (Kevin Balot) and Manhunt International 2012 (June Macasaet). This year, three grand slam pageants crowned the queens of the host country. Miss World which crowned Miss China was held in Inner Mongolia, China. Miss International held in Japan crowned Miss Japan while Miss Universe which was held in Las Vegas, USA crowned Miss USA. Source: Bida Kapamilya
Kristen Stewart better take heed. Her ex beau, the very handsome Robert Pattinson was spotted flirting with a mystery blonde in a nightclub.
Actor Robert Pattinson has reportedly been seen flirting with an unknown woman. He was spotted at a New York City nightclub with the unidentified blonde, reports tmz.com and the photographs obtained by the site show him flirting with her. The low-resolution images were reportedly taken Saturday night at the Electric Room in Manhattan. Sources inside the venue claimed that Pattinson was with the woman for hours, at one point putting his arm around her, reports digitalspy.co.uk. It has been reported that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have reconciled, following the revelation that she had cheated on him earlier this year with Snow White and The Huntsmandirector Rupert Sanders, who is married to model Liberty Ross. Despite rumours of a reconciliation between the two, an insider has claimed that they will work separately to promote the final "Twilight" movie The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. The promotion entails Australia and Japan visit. Their "Twilight" co-star Taylor Lautner is expected to head to Brazil at the same time. Source: ApunKaChoice.com
Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow has been named the World's Best Dressed Woman, ahead of fashion forward celebs like the Duchess of Cambridge and Rihanna. Paltrow, who will be 40 in a couple of weeks, grabbed the top spot in the list by People magazine and her stylist said the actress owes it to her secret - less is more, Daily Mail reported. The Duchess, 30, was just behind Paltrow on the list, and was hailed for her "flawlessly elegant attire". Hollywood actresses Emma Stone, 23, Jessica Alba, 31, the Kardashian sisters and Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr, 29, were also included in the list. Rihanna scooped the Best Risk-Taking Style Award and Kerr won the Best Street Style Award. Among men, honours went to actors Andrew Garfield, Brad Pitt, Colin Firth, Robert Pattinson, Chris and Liam Hemsworth and singer Jay-Z. Source: Screen India, Image: flickr.com
From the moment Baz Luhrmann announced he was putting together a film based on The Great Gatsby, it was already obvious this wouldn't be your typical literary adaptation. The famously flashy and ambitious Luhrmann has never done movies the way anybody else did, creating a drag queen Mercutio who danced to disco in Romeo + Juliet, setting up a Madonna sing-along in 1899 Paris in Moulin Rouge, and injecting goofy humor and magical realism into the classic epic with Australia. But now that The Great Gatsby's release date has been pushed back to next summer, we are only truly getting a sense of how flashy and over the top the movie might be-- and how it might be much better suited to a summer release than a prestige-y Christmas one anyway. If you remember the first trailer, of course, this seems obvious-- it's a trailer for a film set in the 1920s that uses Jay-Z and Kanye West, for God's sake. Actually, let's take a look at that trailer again before we keep going. The giant CGI shots of cityscapes, the camera panning over the crowd, the tracking shot in on the hero standing in a glass frame-- these are all hallmarks of the summer blockbuster, and Luhrmann certainly seems to be shooting The Great Gatsby with the kind of budget and penchant for spectacle that usually comes with a superhero in tow. According to The Los Angeles Times, Luhrmann pushed for the six-month delay to give him more time to finish the extensive 3D effects-- yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald is going 3D-- and to secure pop artists to contribute to his all-star soundtrack, likely similar to the one from Moulin Rouge that included songs from David Bowie, Elton John, Christina Aguilera, Rufus Wainwright, and of course Madonna. Luhrmann is already making the movie as if it's bigger than The Avengers-- why not toss him in the deep end of summer movie season and let him prove it? After all, when Australia was released in the thick of prestige season in 2008, it was easily drowned out both by more serious films (Quantum of Solace beat it in it second weekend, while Milk was opening in limited release) and the more obviously family friendly stuff that's usually released around Thanksgiving (Four Christmases and Bolt were big hits). HadAustralia been released in the summer, without the pressure of giant Oscar expectations, people might have been able to tune in better to its weird humor and strong performances from Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman that were great, just not awards bait. Though summer movie season is high pressure, of course, it leaves a lot more room for quirky successes than the fall-- just look at this summer's Magic Mike, or even Luhrmann's own Moulin Rouge!, which opened in mid-May in 2001-- opposite Shrek! I have no idea if The Great Gatsby will be any good, and as someone who loves Fitzgerald's novel as much as anyone, I'm good and nervous about how Luhrmann's candy-coated lens will treat the material. But I'm really excited about the film's potential as a summer movie. It's thrilling every summer to see the films that don't take the usual path to success, when something like Magic Mike or, on smaller scales, Moonrise Kingdom andBeasts of the Southern Wild, get embraced by audiences who want something different. Warner Bros. is releasing Gatsby along their much more traditional blockbusters next summer-- the Superman movie Man of Steel, Guillermo del Toro's monster movie Pacific Rim and The Hangover IIIare all due. This is the studio that made hits of both Magic Mike and The Dark Knight Rises this summer. Let's see if their counter programming wisdom can work twice. Source: CinemaBlend.com
Miley Cyrus’s engagement ring from boyfriend Liam Hemsworth is estimated at 250,000 dollars.The former Disney star announced on Wednesday that Hemsworth had proposed on May 31 after a three-year romance.The singer was later photographed out and about in Beverly Hills, California wearing a diamond-and-gold ring on the third finger of her left hand, and an expert has valued the jewellery at a quarter of a million dollars.“Assuming it’s reasonably high quality, I would estimate it at $250,000,” the Daily Express quoted Kenneth Lejman, a senior appraiser at the Gemological Appraisal Laboratory as telling the New York Daily News.Jeweller Neil Lane designed the 3.5-carat piece for the Australian actor.“He wanted something really romantic and beautiful... It’s all handmade with a 19th century cushion-cut diamond,” he said. Source: Screen India, Image: flickr.com
World of technology may indeed be dominated by men. But not a few women also take part in it.Some have a beautiful face like a model. Like these women, which are summarized from varioussources: 1. Jade Raymond Looks Jade Raymond is pretty. He reportedly is a mulatto woman Australia, China, and
Canada.Who would have thought 36-year-old Jade is a Managing Director in the gaming company Ubisoftfame. This Canadian woman became producer popular games like The Sims Online to Assassin's Creed. 2. Marissa Mayer Marissa is not haphazard positions, he was Vice President of
Location and Local Services on the internet giant Google. Marissa makes a charming appearance so ever Women of the Year 2009 version of Glamour Magazine. Graduate of Stanford University is also included 50 women in the world's most powerful version of Fortune magazine.3. Natali Del Conte Beautiful woman
from New York is acting as a senior editor at a leading technology website, Cnet.She also contributed to the websites of other technologies such as TechCrunch and Wired,implying a deep understanding of the technology world. 4. Amber MacArthur Amber today is a career in television. But his background
suggests skill in the technology world.For two years, this Canadian woman had worked at Microsoft as a web strategist. He was also theDirector of Web Marketing at HigherMarkets. 5. Jolie O'Dell Jolie working
