FilmartDD

Ethylester is right. Far more persuasive player (not listed by IMDb) than James Dean, director with more feeling and understanding than galumphing Nicholas Ray, this is about a Rebel With a Cause. And the rest of us, like his family and that school, need to know about that cause.

Not listed in Halliwell, not in Videohound, not in Maltin, not even old Scheuer. What is it that conceals good little Canadian (and Australian, and New Zealand) films from view by the world?! There is still a genre of the 70 minute small production ("indies" I suppose): audiences need these little true films, community groups need to discuss them, the film schools need to be showing little gems like No Reason to Stay to students and potential directors, instead of all that Tarantino.

Seen at Sydney Film Festival June 2010 in a giant picture palace from 1929, the State Theatre in Market St in Sydney centre. The director was present and gained much applause.

All above comments are correct as to the content of the film. Great stuff.

But further, the film is beautiful visually and aurally. No matter the absurdity or wickedness being discussed, the cinematographer and recordist have captured it with style and distinction.

The cartoon moments are admittedly unnecessary, but everything else is top-rate, unlike so many current documentaries based on cheap video -- yes, Michael Moore's and dozens of others' -- so ugly as film in themselves.

So often cast as a dour villain or stern-faced sheriff in his sound era westerns, J.P.McGowan here brings genial and knowing good humor to the role of foreman Buck Peters. He shows an easy authority among the ranch hands, then goes into ironic self-effacement when the dragon sister arrives. In his mid-fifties and getting heavy in build, with more than one hundred and eighty roles behind him (and that counts all his appearances in The Hazards of Helen as just one!), JP takes readily to the humorous business at the ranch which counters the serious purpose of Hoppy's mission as the film develops. Not a big role, but one that the Mulford fans would have insisted on being done to rights. As a much experienced producer of inexpensive but popular light dramas himself, JP may have enjoyed working for the veteran producer Harry Sherman. He would have enjoyed, too, the adroit and vigorous direction of the sole sequence in which he appears, set in front of the bunkhouse. All in all, the audience sees a different and happy side of J.P.McGowan, Hollywood's first Australian.

Based on a real life story which had half of Australia glued to the news as it unfolded. But overshadowed in the marketplace by the slightly later MR RELIABLE starring Colin Friels, a good enough light drama. The appeal in SHOTGUN WEDDING is its darkly humorous view of humanity, both the unfortunate miscreant who precipitates the events now spinning wildly out of anyone's control and overall the operations of our media-driven society. The picture of police and state forces is deliciously unflattering.

Comparisons could be made with Billy Wilder's seriously bleak humor in THE BIG CARNIVAL (ACE IN THE HOLE) and with Pacino's bewildered little-man innocent abroad in DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Aden Young does his gutsy guy at odds with the world well. Surely Zoe Carides is the sexiest female on the Australian screen.

Ace director Sol Hogwash gets into scrapes a la SAFETY LAST with both cameraman and director hazardously sliding in and out windows high above the traffic filled street - no trams, but plenty of fancy turning in intersection. Studio driver (Billy Bevan using moustache to usual effect) spies thro' keyhole on the star who seems to be in the bath, but revealed simply on couch. Billy lets the studio lion loose, frightening the stylishly dressed and slinky star and her uppity elder male patron. Somehow, the limousine takes off with lion, not lady, with much tussling in the back seat amid traffic. Lots of rushing about antics and pulling faces by a cast who had done this stuff before, but get a kick out of sending up their workplace, it seems.

No doubt about it, Ivan Sen is the most talented film-maker working today in Australia. Others gain passing publicity, but Sen already has a notable body of work . Everybody, demand to see Sen's short film WIND in 35mm. This man has pure cinema senses -- pictorial, musical, content-wise and with actors. There is hardly a word spoken that matters, it is all in the aching faces, the hesitant gestures and the bleak settings of the country road. In politics and personnel administration, BENEATH CLOUDS would speak with humanity that cannot be denied, far more powerfully than any speeches, procedures or texts. Evidently not released to video overseas, no picture in IMDb's box - pity that basic business follow-up has not occurred for this fine film.

Seen at Adelaide Film Festival whose wide screen brought out the puny personal concerns of workers caught up in a giant enterprise of fake construction and make-believe experience. As a reflection on life realities in China today, yes a good dash of cold water. As personal stories, not very engaging except for the charmingly sensitive lead actress. But I wished they would get on with it, just crank up the pace. An over-riding impression of blue-ness remains with the viewer: it is sad without being bitter, but I'd have liked more bite, more red. Director has a big and important thing going: he plays with the falsity of the world in a cinema tradition going back to Melies, and that's real film-making.

A small but charming essay on small-town family relationships, where we know the people but never know them. In this case, the circumscribed life of the inner suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, just across the Parklands of the title. Apparently calm and bucolic, the parklands seethe with strange happenings, and this policeman dad knew something, something dangerous or merely odd? His daughter just has to find out, what is this strange compulsion? A cross between KINGS ROW and Virginia Woolf, Cate Blanchett displaying that fey fragility, the faded thirties elegance of a going-nowhere colonial capital, an unresolved air of mystery -- a satisfying fifty-minuter with a young star who soon made it big.

It is Tim Bottoms all the way, from over-active athletics to fear-numbed sickness. Director Margolin gave his young star a clear open go, and he certainly went places. The other roles are mainly TV-actor style. Ellen Geer gives expert body language as the Principal. I'd have liked to see more of the young girl-friend, who does have winsome charm, yet pops out of the story for a long time without enough explanation. May this originally have been written as a miniseries? The Albuquerque backdrops and clean air give a shining character to the look of the film: finally I figured why the team are the "Dukes". Full marks to the writers for relying on plain humanity and avoiding hokum.

Awkward in fitting English actors into a faraway setting, and yes, over-coloured in Technicolor: so this English director caught some of the paradoxes of Australia, the raw young country less than 100 years settled in Boldrewood's yarn. Three things Jack Lee (who died only c2003) understood and expressed more fully than perhaps anyone, English or Australian. First, the wild irresponsibility of the bushranger released from society's constraints (Peter Finch's manic side caught this brilliantly). Second, the special eternal power of the ancient bush country (in this case, the Flinders Ranges, also the setting for 2002's The Tracker). Third, however briefly seen, the deep calm and perfect attunement to his country of the native man Warrigal, so that in this raw place, it is only the dispossessed who has ownership - a nod here to the real-life horseman Johnny Cadell, a screen natural.

What a breath of open air and joyful hope this film from the faraway "Dominion" of Australia would have brought to British children worn out from near six years of war 1939-1945, and continuing material shortages in every aspect of life! The sunshine, outdoors sights and sounds, freedom to roam, all had a powerful emotional impact. Ralph Smart caught something of Australia as Australians even now think it ought to be. Chips Rafferty looked and sounded just like the mythic Aussie outback male: capable, good-hearted, courageous and humorous. A fine achievement by the Children's Film Foundation, which was itself an expression of optimism as Britain emerged from a hard-draining war.

The producers wrote films by Hitchcock and Carol Reed, and it shows. A lightweight suspenser, with the charm of impeccably urbane Fairbanks and that Paper Doll lady (surprisingly, Jack Hawkins lacks a light touch). Marvellously photographed by Robert Krasker-- how did he fit it in with The Third Man -- in the Dolomite Mountains (see contemporary report in Sight and Sound magazine). Little recognised, but this is cinematic st

Seen in a 16mm print from the 1939 release (not necessarily the 1975 restoration listed by imdb), the sheer sincerity of the film-makers appealed highly. Intelligent art-gallery audience loved it - shown on 40th anni of Hart's death. Sound was coarse (expected) but loud and consistent in quality with image

John Ford adopts and works within the conventions of this homespun genre. As he did with the genre of every film he made. Yes, racial stereotyping -- but Ford knew it was, and let you see it for what it was. Yes, sentimental and corny, but knowing and loving that way, presenting it for what you the viewer want to make of it.

After seventy years, still so funny, so affectionate, so insightful. And topical for 2003: is there any better depiction of populist politics, or expression of faith in the democratic mystery of the common man?

The art that conceals art. Try to see it on a film-projected screen. I'm off to look at THE SUN SHINES BR

The only film that could waste the talents of Gloria Grahame AND Vittorio Gassman! And of the great trombonist Jack Teagarden. But gave a splendid New York-at-night opening to cinematographer Biroc (yes, he later of ON THE WATERFRONT

First feature film by Cecil Holmes, a New Zealander who came to Australia just before our TV started. Big in energy and ambition, Holmes threw a lot into this picture (his word) with a dedicated cast and crew -- they were all tired of English and US film travesties being made in this country. Black and white visual poetry by Ross Wood, dean of Australian cinematography at that period -- unforgettable. There's a good still in Pike and Cooper's book Australian Film 1900-1977, published by Oxford UP. Probably no 35mm prints remain anywhere in full length of 69 minutes (yes, it was low budget, but it was quality). Classically forceful sequence in a bar where the piano-man can overhear the secret -- now that was imaginative sound! Robert Allan, the sound man, was also a New Zealander. In the language of the film's 50 years ago, "A Good Try".

Seen years ago at the Sydney Film Festival in the full power of black-and-white Scope 35mm, the memory has never left me. Even on Tv in the tremendous, properly subtitled Classics on Australia's wonderful SBS network, still heartrending and awesome. This is the most intensely dedicated female in the history of movies. Bette Davis, eat your heart out. Joan Crawford, vanquished at last. Condoleezza, we know where you come from!

Seen in the fifties, even then a powerhouse wallop from mid-early sound period, when camera had been freed again but the glory of strong images remained with experienced directors like, say, Lang or Capra. John Ford just before THE INFORMER, with a congenial Fordish cast. Oh, that John Carradine!