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Keywords: Film

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The unsung hero of great Australian films

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 29 June 2018

    Film buffs might regret there's not a more detailed technical breakdown of Bilcock's craft. Still it it is a warm-hearted tribute to the art of editing, the process by which a film takes its final form, often as different from what was shot as the footage isfrom the original script; and to one editor whose sense of character and audience is hailed by these directors as defining their films.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Chickpeas and peace in the Middle East

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 26 June 2018
    2 Comments

    'If only we could sit down with Palestinians for a bowl of hummus, all the problems would be solved,' says my Israeli friend, as we wipe hummus down with warm pita. He isn't the first to say this. Indeed, a film was made about the virtues of hummus, which asked if a regional love of hummus be the recipe for peace. Personally, I'm not so sure.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A heartbreaking tribute to the work mothers do

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 16 May 2018
    2 Comments

    Tully is a funny film, with a serious core: a tribute to the labour of child rearing, a dissection of the substantial physical and emotional burden of this work, and a 'show-don't-tell' critique of the social norms that frequently sees that burden fall, still, primarily on women.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Another dog day for cultural appropriation

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 April 2018
    1 Comment

    The commentary around the film's appropriation of Japanese culture has been sustained and substantial. At least these allusions are for the most part detailed and respectful; that the hero is named after a defunct American video game company is less palatable. Trickier still are the creative decisions related to language.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gay teens and white privilege

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 April 2018
    4 Comments

    For gay teens and those who known them, the film is vitally affirming. But there's baggage that comes with its treatment of these themes that undercuts its efforts to engage the experience of alternative sexual orientation. Simon may be gay, but he is also explicitly a privileged white man.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Women's divine rights

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 23 March 2018

    We know how this is going to turn out historically: the 1971 referendum is successful. There is a certain quaintness to the film that makes it feel off the pace of the current conversation around women's rights. But there is an engaging frankness to its attention to the sexual liberative dimension of women's self-agency.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New ways of gauging films' feminist cred

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 22 March 2018
    1 Comment

    The Bechdel test, which deems there must be two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than men, has become shorthand for gauging gender imbalance in films. But it isn't always a good test. If you take the rules literally, Suicide Squad, which is aggressively misogynistic, passes on a technicality.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mental illness does not equal violence

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 22 February 2018
    11 Comments

    Many films and TV shows use mental illness to explain violent behaviour. The stereotype is so ingrained that after the recent Florida shooting, Trump said he would deal with 'the difficult issue of mental health', but didn't mention guns once. In reality, people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims than perpetrators of violence.

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  • MEDIA

    Where are the Asians on Australian screens?

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 06 February 2018
    2 Comments

    Does watching this ridiculously premised film full of obnoxious characters, complete with smatterings of Singlish, make me feel culturally represented? Yes. There are threads of cultural recognition in the Southeast Asian locations and the Chinese customs that resonate, as well as the cultural mobility of various characters.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Brutal Aboriginal fable in the postwar outback

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 January 2018
    6 Comments

    Aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton exercises his visual mastery to its fullest in order to elevate a straightforward story of outback brutality and racial prejudice to the proportions of myth.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Alienation and angst in the age of Instagram

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 25 October 2017
    1 Comment

    On the face of it, it's a cautionary tale against relying on social media as a source of relationships and self-identity. That's a fairly retrograde take-home though, and the film is actually more than that; it's an exploration of loneliness and isolation that is universal despite a context that is very much of this moment.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Courting women's and gay rights

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 September 2017
    2 Comments

    The showdown between Bill Jean King and self-styled 'chauvinist pig' Bobby Riggs came at a time when King and other women tennis pros were protesting against unequal pay, and while King herself was coming to terms with her identity as a gay woman. A film about the match and its context should have plenty to say to present day socio-politics of sexuality and gender. But this one suffers from an identity crisis.

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