It's A New World Of Cinema

Australian Film On The Comeback Trail

It's taken 10years since the pit of despair leading up to the GFC, but the Australian Film industry seems to have turned around this year. I remember that pit, and long time readers would remember just how bad things got. Since then, the direct investment into film by the government has been rolled back substantially, while the high dollar knocked out the service industry side of the Australian Film Industry, but just as some flowers bloom in the desert at some point, Australian films had a bumper crop this year.

This has been a record year for Australian movies, which have collectively taken $84 million at the local box office, or 7.7 per cent of the total. That's the biggest result ever in raw dollar terms, and the best share since 2001.

What makes it truly remarkable is that just a year ago the local industry looked to be in terminal decline. 

In 2014, Australian movies accounted for just 2.4 per cent of the total Australian box office. Only once since 1977, which is as far back as the Screen Australia database goes, has it been lower; the 1.3 per cent share in 2004 makes that Australian cinema's annus horribilis. 

What's more, last year's result ($26.2 million) came on the back of a poor 2013 as well ($38.5 million, 3.5 per cent share). Had it not been for The Great Gatsby ($27.4 million), 2013 would have been a complete disaster.

You have to give credit where it's due, though it's hard to say just where it goes exactly. 

One of the reasons some of last year's Australian movies failed at the cinema was that people were given scant opportunity to see them. A week or two on a dozen or so screens with scant marketing barely counts as a release strategy when you're up against Hollywood movies on 500 screens with saturation advertising. But that's the fate of many an Australian movie. 

Those that cut through this year, though, tended to benefit from a wide release and hefty promotional spend. The Water Diviner went out on 299 screens, Oddball 289, The Dressmaker 384 and Mad Max: Fury Road a Hollywood-sized 542 screens. 

A wide release means a distributor can target their campaign around a narrow window of time, maximising bang for buck. Shane Jacobson did such a sterling job talking up Oddball it's doubtful anyone in Australia didn't know at least a little about the film by the time it hit cinemas.

But it takes a certain kind of product for distributors to have the confidence to go wide: an appealing story, star talent, good production values. This year's batch ticked those boxes, "but you can't reverse engineer it", says Screen Australia chief Graeme Mason. "If the distributors are spending millions of dollars – literally – putting it out there, they're not going to do that unless they see something commercially appealing in it."

So maybe it wasn't necessarily the quality, it was the marketing spend that backed a more palatable crop of films. In any case, you take any sign you can grab. Maybe there is a case to be made that Australian Cinema is at long last on the comeback trail. 

Paul Byrnes Still Sucks (Sun Still Rises In The East)

I find Paul Byrnes a terribly condescending moralist, mostly because his film cries in the SMH are more moral analyses than actual film crits. And so, he made a moral judgment about Sylvester Stallone and his films years ago, but for some reason he was moved to admit he was wrong about Stallone.

Stallone turns 70 next year and maybe this is a good time for me to apologise to him. For a long time, I thought he was just a meathead, like some of the characters he invented.
When I started writing about movies in 1984, he had become a poster boy for the American right. Ronald Reagan himself declared that Rocky was a Republican. Stallone had already made Rockys II and III, and he had done the first Rambo film, First Blood – which was actually pretty good. In 1984 he was paired with Dolly Parton in a country musical, Rhinestone Cowboy. Some wit declared it the meeting of the two greatest racks in show business. He was becoming a joke, but a very successful one. 

I think now that I was wrong. It's not just the phenomenal box office of his combined films, although that is a lump (more than $4 billion in grosses, adjusted for inflation). Stallone has had a major impact on the way movies are made now – in the way action montages are put together, the speed of the editing, the use of music. He has had an impact on how Americans see themselves, reaffirming their sense of right and might; he has redrawn the Hollywood map in terms of longevity, although he has had plenty of helpers there – from Eastwood and Schwarzenegger and all the other action has-beens who won't die, most of whom turn up in Stallone's Expendables franchise, another phenomenally successful Stallone idea that defies all notions of good filmmaking.

Ugh. Did you see what he did there? He's apologising for being wrong but still puts the boot in. You sort of wonder on what grounds the film critic has been endowed or earned such moral disdain for the practitioner - any practitioner - let alone Sylvester Stallone. I'm not a big fan of Stallone, but I've never held him in contempt or this low in a moral judgment sense. More so, I just don't get the impetus to give this mea culpa just because 'Creed' shows Stallone is still a decent actor given the chance. We knew that long ago, all the way back when the the original 'Rocky' came out. It's not some new discovery or revelation. 

If he's been dissing Stallone all these years even though he knew Stallone was a perfectly fine leading actor all this time, it strikes me as the height of intellectual dishonesty to mount such an apology. Paul Byrnes finally saw a movie with Stallone in it that he actually liked - and felt embarrassed enough to write an apology. It's truly pathetic.