Father Geek here... Well ol'Latauro couldn't do it. He couldn't wait till it opened like he had planned... a press screening of Sith seduced him to the darkside... just like Harry... just like Father Geek, and Quint, and Moriarty, and Alexandra DuPont, and tons of others who swore (beforehand) that they would wait to see it with a roomful of brother & sister geeks. The temptation, the sirens cry, the... DARKSIDE was just tooooo powerful! Annnnnd we all just crumbled when faced with the reality of a free, very early preview screening of the latest Star Wars opus...

I've got a bad feeling about this.

AICN-DOWNUNDER

Back on the SIN CITY topic, as I still receive regular emails about it, it seems the release date is now July 14. IMDB.com, Village Cinemas, and most every place has pushed the release date from August to the marginally-sooner July. While it's almost a step in the right direction, it won't matter to all the people down here who have already downloaded it. Thanks to the people who continually offer to send me a copy of the film on CD or over the net, but I'll wait. Sigh.

Speaking of telling you things, there was a really nice moment during the Tori Amos concert in Melbourne the other night. She played a tribute to the recently-late Paul Hester, the awesome drummer of the awesome Crowded House, by performing the House hit "Don't Dream It's Over". It was a definite highlight of the night, and everyone in the crowd really appreciated it.

Oh, and I saw REVENGE OF THE SITH on Wednesday. Want a review? Down you scroll...

NEWS

* It looks like Joel "No Bar" Silver may be looking to shoot WONDER WHEDON in Australia. Makes sense, given Silver shot the MATRIX films, GHOST SHIP and HOUSE OF WAX here. Also, with SUPERMAN RETURNS, GHOST RIDER and, er, SWAMP-THING all having lensed down south, perhaps there's some special superhero tax exemption we don't know about. (It would certainly make more sense than the so-called tax cuts announced this week! Am I right, folks?) At the moment, everyone's going on about how secretive the casting supposedly is, but with the script not yet completed, there's no way they'd begin casting or production! I mean, who'd do that? Hey, who likes DEVIL'S ADVOCATE?

* GRANDFINAL is a local film currently in development. Set on the day of the AFL Grand Final, it's an Altmanesque tale of interlocking stories, all of which reach a crescendo when St Kilda wins the grand (I might have added that last bit). I'm wondering how much international appeal the film will have given it's about AFL. Actually, given it's Aussie Rules and not Rugby, I'm wondering how much appeal it will have outside of Melbourne... oh well, carry on!

* YEAR OF WONDERS has just been approved by the AFC. Based on the novel by Geraldine Brooks, the story follows a 17th Century English village in the throws of the plague. The film will be directed by Pip Karmel (ME MYSELF I) and produced by Phillip Noyce (star of last week's Next Week joke).

* AUS$2.7 million is a reasonable amount of money for an Australian film, and a really ridiculous amount when you're talking about kitchenware. For a start, while a good set of cutlery and nice glassware can set you back a bit, you'd still be left with nearly all the $2.7 million, and even you wanted to completely refit your kitchen, you'd still be left with an enormous amount. That amount could be better spent refurnishing your entire house, or better yet, buying an altogether new house. With the remainder, you could take a nice holiday somewhere, or maybe even donate it to charity. Basically, if you were setting aside part of your weekly budget to replace your kitchenware, you'd probably go with a smaller figure than $2.7 million. Much less than half, even. $2.7 million is a ridiculous amount to spend on kitchenware, and anyone who does so should be given a strict talking-to by those closest to them.

* AUS$2.7 million is reasonable amount of money for an Australian film, but this is no ordinary Australian film. This is a co-production between Australia and India. AN INDIAN SUMMER begins shooting in October or November depending on its schedule, and is produced by Anupam Sharma and John Winter (the latter of whom was responsible for one of the best Australian films, RABBIT PROOF FENCE, and one of the worst, A MAN'S GOTTA DO).

* Hey, speaking of co-productions with Asian nations, Australia will also be working alongside China for the film LONG, LONG IS THE ROAD, FAR, FAR IS THE JOURNEY. Yikes. Convoluted, convoluted is the title. The film will likely shoot in Shanghai and South Australia next year, and will be produced by China-based Australian producer Barry Plews, whose phone number pops up when you Google his name.

* Regular readers will recognise the name HERMAN THE LEGAL LABRADOR - now you can recognise the name by seeing it on your DVD shelf! And I'm not sure if that made much sense! To pickup your copy of the animated short that's playing at festivals everywhere, go to http://www.nakedfella.com/buy/preorder.shtml

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS

NSW FTO FFWS

If you love acronyms as much as I do, then you'll be ambivalent about me expanding on the above subtitle. The New South Wales Film and Television Office is after submissions for Round Four of the New Feature Film Writer's scheme. If you have less than forty-five minutes of produced screen credits, you are eligible (in the application sense, not the bachelor sense). Contact the FTO well before the June 10 deadline, and you could find yourself with a big enough budget to refurnish your entire kitchen.

28TH WORLDFEST FILM FESTIVAL

The film festival, held annually in Harryland, has given its Platinum Remi Award (the top spot for the short drama flicks) to Melbourne-based Writer/Producer Natasha Pincus. Pincus, who also happened to have made a film to go along with the award, was selected from over 1 400 entries. Her film, EMMA AND THE BARISTA, is about a girl in her late-20s whose only refuge is a city laneway café that makes the perfect coffee. If that's not a Melbourne film, I don't know what is. Oh, maybe that AFL one I mentioned earlier.

BOX OFFICE

There's not much chance that any of these films will be upstaged by 9 SONGS or THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, but they've only got one week of dominance left before all five spots are taken over by EPISODE III. which isn't the biggest crying shame in the world.

1. KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

2. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

3. XXX 2: THE NEXT LEVEL

4. THE INTERPRETER

5. IN GOOD COMPANY

RELEASED THIS WEEK

The first in what we hope is a serious of sexually-explicit films featuring Michael Nyman finally gets its day in the Australia sun, Raimi's biopic of Humphrey Bogart takes a turn for the horrific, the German equivalent of FIGHT CLUB is all ironic with its weird spelling, we get the greatest film ever shot in Bhutan, and all the actors who missed out on getting roles in MONA LISA SMILE band together to get Joan Allen drunk.

9 SONGS

BOOGEYMAN

THE EDUKATORS

TRAVELLERS AND MAGICIANS

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER

REVIEWS

STAR WARS - EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH

(MINOR SPOILERS)

My father got a call on October 27, 1977, from his friend Des who told him he'd just seen the most amazing film ever, and he had to meet him down at the cinema in two hours. So dad went down there and he's in the foyer looking around for Des when the theatre doors open and a crowd of people pour out. Through the crowd came Des, fresh from his second consecutive viewing. He sees my dad and says, "Come on, it starts in a few minutes," and heads straight to the ticket box.

I always feel a bit odd talking about STAR WARS with people. Reading reviews from people like Harry, Moriarty, and Kevin Smith, I feel like being born a few years after NEW HOPE's premiere meant I missed out on something. STAR WARS never affected me the way it affected the generation that's ever-so-slightly before me. I've watched the films a zillion times on TV, but that's on a small screen, and I was watching them from such a young age that I don't remember a time without STAR WARS. It's always been there, thus the impact is somewhat lessened.

For the past few years, I've bought advance tickets to the prequels, but most of the excitement I felt was feeding off other people. I liked PHANTOM MENACE the first time, but was bored the second. I really dug ATTACK OF THE CLONES the first time around, but it didn't really stand up to a second viewing. I bought tickets for SITH the moment they went on sale, and I'll be seeing it on the awesome V-Max screen at Knox. It's purported to be the biggest screen in the Southern Hemisphere. It's where I saw MATRIX REVOLUTIONS and RETURN OF THE KING, so it seems only fitting I should see out the prequel trilogy there as well. The problem is, I bought the tickets and I wasn't excited. I wasn't anticipating it with excitement. It was just something I was doing because it was STAR WARS.

I went along to the media screening on Wednesday, expectations still around zero. I've seen the (possibly) last ever STAR WARS film.

It kicks fucking arse.

That's the only way I've been able to describe it to people. It absolutely rules. It's so good, I actually like MENACE and CLONES more than I used to. It improves the prequels! It provides a believable link between the trilogies. They connect now, and not just because they're both called STAR WARS and have the same character names. No, they now feel like the same Universe.

From the awesome opening (it's really as good as everyone's telling you), to the phenomenal ending (that, aside the lame robot doctor, and the unintentionally hilarious Vadar "NOOO!!!", rocks), it's almost as if Old Lucas broke through the body of New Lucas and gave him a sense of cool again.

See, I'm not a Lucas Hater, nor a Prequel Apologist. I think that the SW vs LOTR argument is one of the most worthless things someone can waste their breath on (same with SW vs TREK). I'm annoyed at what's been done to the original trilogy, and aghast at the contempt with which Lucas has treated his fans. Denying them the films they love is like snatching away candy from a baby (not the most inaccurate simile for many SW fans), and it's why I've refused to buy the recent SW box set. They're not the films I grew up on, and I feel a sense of discomfort when I watch them. (Also, I think that the oft-discussed decision to have Greedo fire his gun is one of the dumbest things in film history, completely emasculating and undermining Han Solo... this, more than anything else, has prevented me from owning the new box set.) Bottom line is, I don't think Lucas is an evil Sith Lord or anything, I just question most of the decisions he's made over the last decade or so.

But in SITH... man, oh, man... Here we see the promise from the OT. This is adventure, adventure and tragedy. Sure, the romance between Anakin and Padme still drags, but you don't care. The rest of the film is so good it doesn't make a difference.

I think the biggest problem with MENACE was not Mr Binks, but with the fact that there was no Han Solo character. There was no rogue, no one particularly interesting to watch. In SITH, Ewan Macgregor steals the show. He's always been good in the prequels, but he always seemed a little bored. He was given the unenviable task of packpedalling Guinness's performance, and admirably managed to imitate but not mock him. Here, he's knocked the charisma up to eleven. This is, hands down, my favourite Ewan performance ever, and given how much I love the guy's work, that's saying something. Obi-Wan is the guy kicking arse all over the place, and the film is always at its best when he's on screen.

The only thing in SITH that's better than Ewan is the other mac, Ian McDiarmid. I had a bit of a JERRY MAGUIRE moment watching the trailer (as in, "You had me at 'unnatural!'"), but that's only a taste of what he delivers in the film. He chews up the scenery (or greenscreen) with an intense ferocity, and revels in every single line he has. There's a real menace to the satisfaction of a man who knows he's fooled everyone in the galaxy. The small part of you that always secretly enjoyed seeing the Empire take over will flip out when Palpatine's plan comes to fruition.

There's so much more to say, but it's all mostly redundant. When it comes to STAR WARS, all anyone really needs to know before reading a review is where the reviewer stands on all previous installments, and, consequently, how does this one stack up? STAR WARS is a zeitgeist, and beyond telling you "it kicked fucking arse", anything I say would be fairly redundant. Which might make you wonder why you just read fifty paragraphs.

I'll just add that I'm now feeling a lot better about STAR WARS as a whole. While there is still a truckload of perplexingly bad ideas crammed into the films, the entire series now has a uniformity to it that I really like.

Remember those opening night tickets I have that I wasn't that excited about? I now cannot frigging wait.

NEXT WEEK

- Richard Attenborough comes out of retirement to make a film about Carl Jung's largely undocumented attempts to cure insomnia early on his career, in THE JUNG AND THE RESTLESS

- Renny Harlin to remake Chan-Wook Park's SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE in America, with Chad Michael Murray as a detective hunting a deadly serial killer

- David Koepp, Frank Darabont and Tim Minear hired to script STAR WARS EPISODES VII-IX respectively (note: not a joke, just wishful thinking)

Peace out,

Latauro

AICNDownunder@hotmail.com