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/ 27 February 2009
NOT QUITE THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal reviews <i>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</i>, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
Actor Harrison Ford cracked the box-office whip as his latest Indiana Jones movie grossed a hefty -million from its first day in North American theatres. That bodes well for a movie industry looking to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to help shake the movie business out an early summer slump.
While a frenzy was building amid the sea of fans massed to glimpse Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and the rest of the stars at the world premiere on Sunday, a healthy scepticism was building up at the Cannes festival among film critics who would assess the merits of the movie on show.
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/ 9 February 2008
Family and friends of actor Heath Ledger bade farewell at a private service in his Australian home town of Perth on Saturday, with the media kept away and Ledger’s father appealing for mourners to be allowed to grieve in peace. Ledger (28) died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in his New York apartment on January 22.
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/ 28 January 2008
Daniel Day-Lewis and British veteran Julie Christie underscored their status as Oscars frontrunners on Sunday after winning the top prizes at the 14th Screen Actors’ Guild awards. British-born star Day-Lewis was crowned best actor for his performance as a tyrannical oil prospector in There Will Be Blood.
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/ 23 January 2008
Actor Heath Ledger was found dead at a Manhattan apartment, naked in bed with sleeping pills nearby, police said. He was 28. Ledger, who moved to the United States at age 19, quickly turned away from typical teen films and instead started to build a career on more challenging roles.
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/ 22 January 2008
Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, a gory meditation on moral decline, and There Will Be Blood, a gritty drama about a pioneering California oilman, led the nominations for the 80th annual Academy Awards on Tuesday, organisers said. Get the full list of nominations here.
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/ 18 January 2008
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal reviews Elizabeth: The Golden Age
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/ 5 September 2007
With hair teased into the familiar bird’s nest of frizz, Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Bob Dylan is already being tipped for Oscar success. Yet as Todd Haynes’s surreal biopic I’m Not There was premiered at the Venice film festival on Tuesday, the director revealed that the Australian actor’s decision to take on the role had been far from instant.
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/ 4 September 2007
Two very different movies about the Iraq war are among the favourites for awards at this year’s Venice film festival as it passes the halfway stage, and an unusually high number of male leads have stood out. For pure shock value, Brian De Palma’s Redacted wins hands down, stunning audiences with an uncompromising reconstruction of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl.
Shaun de Waal reviews the latest DVD releases