Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 185 i Metro

Helen Mirren The Audience Helen Mirren reprises her Academy Award-winning role as Queen Elizabeth II in encore screenings of the West End production, featuring an exclusive new Q&A with members of the cast and creative team. For sixty years, Queen Elizabeth II has met with each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a private weekly meeting. The Audience is written by Peter Morgan (The Queen) and directed by Academy Award-nominated director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) and was presented in the West End by Matthew Byam Shaw for Playful Productions, Robert Fox and Andy Harries. LIMITED SEASON from July 18 Benedict Cumberbatch Hamlet The fastest selling ticket in theatre history! Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) stars in the title role of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy: HAMLET. Directed…

Whatever your personal thoughts on the last few years of Australian politics, it’s hard to deny that it’s made for great television. We’ve spent our evenings watching as a sitting prime minister was deposed by his own party, only to sow distrust and disloyalty on his way back to a short-lived stint in the same role. By now, that kind of leadership conflict has become endemic to modern Australian politics – all it takes is a dip in the polls, and words like spill and challenge begin to dominate the nightly news. And that’s just at the federal level; look to state politics and you’ll see a New South Wales premier deposed by accusations of corruption, and a Northern Territory chief minister enduring a coup on behalf of his party…

Professionally based in Taiwan, director Midi Z was born in Myanmar (formerly Burma), which provides the setting for his third feature, Ice Poison (2014). The country’s film industry is a fledgling one by international standards, and Burmese filmmakers have long struggled with oppressive government censorship, which has spawned a mix of crude nationalistic agitprop and hammed-up melodrama. Since [2011], however, a transition from rigid military rule to an army-backed civilian government has seen a relaxation of rules and, perhaps, a chance for long-suppressed talent to flourish.1 Restrictions and political upheaval inevitably contribute to a unique cinematic voice and, through Midi Z’s success especially, Burmese stories are making their way onto the world stage.2 Awareness of Ice Poison gained momentum throughout 2014 via a healthy swathe of screenings at film festivals…

Early in Isao Takahata’s 1999 film, My Neighbors the Yamadas, a pair of Japanese newlyweds are toasted at their wedding reception. The groom’s mother delivers a metaphor-laden speech about the couple’s impending life together, which Takahata directs as a charming flight of fantasy. Man and wife don ceremonial headwear like safety helmets before hopping into a sled and barrelling down a bobsleigh track; the iced surface gives way to the pure white frosting of their wedding cake, from which they burst forth into married life. They set sail together ‘under billowing sails’ over the tumultuous sea of life’s ‘ups and downs’ before landing ashore. Their journey continues through familiar scenes from well-known Japanese folktales: recalling the popular story of ‘Momotaro¯’, a giant peach bobs on the surface of a slow-moving…

We’ve all heard that junk food, particularly fat and sugar, is bad for our health. What we may not know is that sugar is devious – it goes by many names and hides in unlikely places. Damon Gameau’s That Sugar Film (2014) aims to expose the true nature of this delicious, dangerous substance – and its message is pretty convincing. My family’s love of sweets runs through our veins like children jacked up on red cordial. Growing up, we’d always have a sugary dessert after dinner – self-saucing pudding, canned fruit, or pikelets with maple syrup and ice-cream. Dessert was a staple, the way veggies were included in every main meal. I also grew up in the 1990s, in a world of Push Pops, Fads and Fruit Roll-Ups – all…

We demand that sex speak the truth […] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness. — Michel Foucault1 A first glance at the promotional materials for My Mistress (Stephen Lance, 2014) may suggest satire, but the story is straight-up romantic drama. The film’s official poster offers a highly exaggerated image of a cougar–teen relationship: one of France’s most recognisable actresses, Emmanuelle Béart, sits sophisticated and severe as Maggie, behind a plainly styled boy-next-door, Australian newbie Harrison Gilbertson, who plays Charlie. Behind them are a padded pleather wall and a painting, Wild Hunt by Peter Nicolai Arbo. The mythological nature of the images on the canvas, along with the…

Maximum Choppage is silly and eccentric – and incredibly important. With each half-hour episode tackling a different genre, it is not only breaking down barriers in comedy television, but also shining a light on the chronic lack of diversity on Australian screens. Boasting a ‘90% Asian cast’,1 the show is different from anything that has come before it. Lawrence Leung, who wrote three of the series’ episodes, tells me that ‘first and foremost we aimed to make a memorable comedy series with awesome characters and stories’. In his own words, the show is ‘a six-part action comedy series set in a surreal, heightened version of Cabramatta. It’s a story where family, love and identity [are] a battlefield.’ The plot centres on Simon Chan (played by Leung), ostensibly a kung-fu master…

The title of Nima Javidi’s debut feature is a near-total misdirection. The Australian city is mentioned only a handful of times throughout – an abstract notion hanging over the film instead of defining it, an idea heavy with hope and possibility. Like most contemporary Iranian cinema, it’s difficult to extract Melbourne (2014) from the country’s fractious political environment. While Javidi, who wrote and directed Melbourne, makes no overt ideological statements through this work, its premise grounds it in the reality of its time and place. Some things are just unshakeable. Amir (Peyman Moaadi) and Sara (Negar Javaherian) open the door to a census worker (Vida Javan). In an only slightly graceless bout of exposition, the couple inform her of their imminent plans to move to Melbourne – ‘the number-one city…

Orthodox Jewish Israeli family, following To Take a Wife (2004) and 7 Days (2008). However, it isn’t necessary to have seen these films to appreciate Gett. The Elkabetz siblings’ third film comes with a lot of clout: after premiering in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2014, Gett was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Golden Globes, and took the top prizes at film festivals in Jerusalem, Oslo and Hamburg. The film has a single setting – the white-walled court building, made more stark by pale lighting – and the camera is stilted and theatrical in its framing. Contrasting with the aural richness of the opening score, there is very little music throughout the court proceedings. Each The musical number that plays over the opening credits of Gett:…

From Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2010) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011), to Sound of My Voice (Zal Batmanglij, 2011) and The Sacrament (Ti West, 2013), films revolving around cults have been in vogue for some time now. One Eyed Girl (2014), the feature debut of Adelaide-based director Nick Matthews, appears to come at the tail end of that cycle but, the zeitgeist being what it is, is just as likely to be at the forefront of the next. Of course, there’s no shame in making a film on a subject that lots of other filmmakers are exploring.1 What matters is what has attracted you to the material, your approach, and what you’re doing with it that other films aren’t. On this level, One Eyed Girl…

Every few years, Australians get a chance to see a Russian film that captures prevailing perceptions of the Eastern European country in the global political context. Rarely, however, are these films dark social parables that are at once critical of the Russian regime and yet deeply infused by a paradoxically very Russian, anti-Russian sensibility. The discourse surrounding Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan (2014) following its wins at last year’s Cannes and this year’s Golden Globes highlights its perversity. While the film was demonised domestically, it was (reluctantly) nominated by the Russian film board as the country’s official entry for the 2015 Academy Awards. The film received substantial funding from the Ministry of Culture, but was subsequently condemned as exploiting anti-Russian sentiments to gain international success. It has also polarised audiences – for…

The films of Zhang Yimou are renowned for their use of colour. The 63-year-old’s early pictures Red Sorghum (1987) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) introduced red as a totemic colour in his cinematic palette. Gong Li, the singular muse for Zhang Yimou’s early career – they made seven films together from 1987 to 1995, during which they were in a relationship – often wore red in dress and on her lips, a motif that recurred even when the director discovered a new muse: Zhang Ziyi, who, in The Road Home (1999), seemingly shares the same red jacket as Gong in The Story of Qiu Jiu (1992). In the former, Zhang Yimou echoed that favoured Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming et al., 1939) device: beginning in grim black-and-white, then ascending…

Three 6-metre-high razor-wire fences separate the mountains of northern Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Every year, thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants attempt to climb over them, hoping to find a better life in Europe. While some are fleeing persecution or poverty, others are seeking new opportunities – for themselves and for the families they’ve left behind. When the migrants storm the border, they do so in the hundreds. Their goal is to outnumber the authorities, so that at least some make it over safely. On every mission, many are beaten back by the military within seconds. Others begin the scramble, only to fall and break their bones. Others, still, fall and die. Some reach the other side. From there, the challenge is to reach shelter before the Spanish…