Joyin

Ottos team up for Aussie film
Mon Oct 26, 2009

Father and daughter acting talents Barry and Miranda Otto will star together in the new Australian film, South Solitary.

Written and directed by Shirley Barrett (Love My Way, Love Serenade), the film follows Meredith (Miranda Otto), a 35-year-old unmarried woman who arrives at a remote lighthouse island in 1928 with her uncle and new head keeper (Barry Otto).

Bad weather and misadventure leave her marooned with her only companion - the sullen and withdrawn assistant keeper Fleet, played by Marton Csokas (Romulus My Father).

A tender, faltering courtship ensues.

Shooting on South Solitary has started in southern Victoria and will continue over the next six weeks at Cape Nelson and Cape Otway.

The feature is produced by Marian Macgowan (Two Hands, Death Defying Acts) and Miranda Culley (Catch A Fire), with Sarah Radclyffe (The Edge Of Love, Les Miserables) as executive producer.

- AAP

Movie crew filming in Warwick


MOVIE scouts arrived here last year in search of a towering tree and failed to find what they were looking for but they did discover a timber trestle bridge.

Yesterday they returned with a cast of internationally recognised actors and a 70-strong crew to film scenes from the art house movie The Tree under the railway bridge on the Old Allora-Warwick Road.

Location manager Peter Lawless, who was the Australian scout for the recently released Mao's Last Dancer, said our bridge was perfect for the movie.

“Why Warwick? Well the city had a great timber trestle bridge on a line which could be temporarily controlled in a location that lent itself to this film,” Mr Lawless explained.

“We also shot some scenes on Warwick's pedestrian bridge over the old railway line.”

In fact so impressed was the renowned location scout with our city he went as far as recommending it for the movie's central township.

“But, unfortunately, Warwick was a little too majestic and large for our producer,” he said.

The French-Australian production has been based at Boonah.

The film tells the story of an eight-year-old girl, who loses her beloved father, and comes to believe his spirit, lives in the high branches of their Moreton Bay Fig.

Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC) economic development officer John Randall said having movie scenes filmed here boosted the local psyche.

“It's great for everyone; we all walk a little taller after something like this,” he said.

In response to the interest from film-makers he said the SDRC was in the process of developing specific procedures to ensure they were “film friendly”.

The Tree stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who played the wife of Sean Penn in 21 Grams alongside Marton Csokas, from Lord of the Rings fame, and Aden Young, who recently starred in Mao's Last Dancer.

The film is expected to be released next year.

To date there is no talk of an advance screening in the Rose City to get a glimpse of our railway bridge in all its glory

IT might not have the grandeur of Baz Luhrmann’s epic film Australia, shot in Bowen, but an Australian/French film has Ipswich in the grip of movie fever.

The cast and crew of The Tree, starring Cannes Film Festival award-winning actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, have made Ipswich their home while shooting takes place in and around Boonah.

On Monday, Rosewood residents enjoyed their fair share of celebrity spotting when the first full-day shoot took place at the Rosewood Hotel.

The Tree, also starring Marton Csokas who played Lord Celeborn in Lord of the Rings and Aden Young in Lucky Country, is the story of eight-year-old Simone who believes her dead father’s spirit has taken up residence in a Moreton Bay fig tree on the family property. Australian co-producer Sue Taylor said production started in Boonah in mid-August, with cast and crew spending much of their leisure time in Ipswich.

“A lot of our people have young children so they have taken them to the (Workshops Rail) museum and really enjoyed it,” she said.

GAINSBOURG is in Australia and began filming the Australian-French co-production, The Tree, in Queensland this week. It is the second film from writer-director Julie Bertucelli, whose Since Otar Left won the Critics' Week Grand Prize at Cannes in 2004.

Starring opposite Gainsbourg are Marton Csokas and Aden Young, with newcomer Morgana Davies, Penne Hackforth-Jones, Gillian Jones, Arthur Dignam and Tom Russell. The Tree is adapted from Judy Pascoe's book, Our Father Who Art in the Tree, about an eight-year-old (Davies) who believes her dead father's spirit lives among the branches of a Moreton Bay fig.
Filming is due to start this week in the small town of Boonah, south of Ipswich

The film will be released later this year. It premiered at the Cannes film festival in May, where the ecumenical jury gave it a special "anti-award" for its misogyny, while the festival jury named Gainsbourg the festival's best actress.

Alice In Wonderland Cast:

Mia Wasikowska as Alice Kingsley
Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter
Helena Bonham Carter as The Red Queen
Alan Rickman as The Caterpillar
Anne Hathaway as The White Queen
Michael Sheen as The White Rabbit
Stephen Fry as The Cheshire Cat
Timothy Spall as The Bloodhound
Crispin Glover as The Knave of Hearts
Christopher Lee as The Jabberwock
Noah Taylor as The March Hare
Matt Lucas as Tweedledee / Tweedledum
Marton Csokas as Charles Kingsley
Eleanor Tomlinson as Fiona Chataway
Frances de la Tour as Aunt Imogene
Lindsay Duncan as Helen Kingsley
John Hopkins as Lowell Manchester
Jemma Powell as Margaret Manchester
Austin James Wolff as The May Pole Dancer
Barbara Windsor as The Dormouse
Tim Pigott-Smith as Lord Ascot
Geraldine James as Lady Ascot
Eleanor Gecks as Faith Chataway
Lucy Davenport
Leo Bill as Hamish Ascot

Alice In Wonderland movie will hit theaters in March 5, 2010.

It's a case of curiouser and curiouser in the career of Kiwi actor Marton Csokas.

His Hollywood kickoff was playing the role of Celeborn, husband of elf queen Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), in The Lord of the Rings and now he has a part in Johnny Depp's movie Alice in Wonderland.

The film, directed by Tim Burton, has a star-studded cast including Depp as The Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter playing the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway the White Queen, Christopher Lee the Jabberwock and Stephen Fry the Cheshire Cat.

Last week, backer Walt Disney issued the first photographs from the film due out in March next year showing Depp, Bonham Carter, Hathaway, and a relative newcomer Australian Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice.

Csokas, who first came to notice when he played bumbling doctor Leonard Dodds in Shortland Street during the 90s, plays 19th-century writer Charles Kingsley in the film.

Worth noting is that the list of supporting actors in this beast has real depth: Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Crispin Glover, Marton Csokas, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Michael Sheen, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Lindsay Duncan. Oh My!

REST IN PEACE ...Natasha - she passed away




My prayers & thoughts go out to Natasha's family

Actress Natasha Richardson had an accident while skiing in Canada.
Actress Natasha Richardson - a member of Britain's Redgrave theatrical dynasty - was reportedly severely injured while skiing at a Canadian resort and has returned to New York with her husband, actor Liam Neeson.

The Debt (2010)
Director:John Madden
Starring - Helen Mirren & Sam Worthington

It's the English language remake of Israeli crime thriller Ha-hov. Alongside veteran hottie Helen Mirren, Worthington will play a Mossad agent hunting down a Nazi war criminal. The original film focuses on Rachel, one of three Mossad agents tracking down "the surgeon of Treblinka" 35 years after she and her comrades faked his death.

( The Couple )

( Still Together )

French actress, Eva Green, right, and partner, New Zealand actor Marton Csokas, arrive for the London Film Festival world premiere of the film, Franklyn, Thursday Oct. 16, 2008, London. The film traces the fates of four characters, Jonathan Preest played by Ryan Phillippe, an atheist vigilante, young artist Emilia played by Eva Green, Milo played by Sam Riley and Gulf War veteran Peter, played by Bernard Hill. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

Marton and Eva attend a Play " Kicking a Dead Horse " at Almeida Theatre - Islington, North London

( From the Big Apple )

( On stage )

Wishing Him A Wonderful Day ...filled with All He Loves

Dark matter
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
The Pillowman has been garnering rave reviews upstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre for over three weeks now. Star Marton Csokas sat down with Garrett Bithell.

One of the blackest of black comedies ever written for the stage, Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman has been taking Sydney’s theatre community by the throat upstairs at Belvoir Street since June 4. Hot on the heels of his sensational Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the play marks Craig Illot’s directorial debut for Company B.

Set in an unnamed totalitarian state, the play follows the brutal interrogation of a largely unpublished writer called Katurian after a series of child murders in his town mimic the plots of his short stories.

“It’s not a very pleasant world,” Marton Csokas, who plays Tupolski, one of the sardonic policemen who interrogate Katurian, tells SX. “It’s an absurd world and a severe place to inhabit and yet, because of that, an immense amount of humour comes out.

“Katurian has a sense of humour and rebellious attitude in order to counter the misplaced crimes and the misplaced guilt that are put on him.”

The Pillowman is a challenging text. McDonagh has confronted the theme of artistic legacy – the importance of what we leave behind and whether it should be more important than what we do here and now, and ultimately the issue of literature’s ability to outlast tyranny.

“For some people it’s confronting and of course we’re all different, so I’m not keen to hype that up,” Marton says. “My personal opinion is that the more frightening, the more ludicrous, the more repressive the totalitarian regime is, the more liberating the laughter will be.

“The absurdity, the hollowness, the futility, eventually becomes so despairing and so unbearable that you laugh. And that’s where humour is our saviour.

“It’s imperative that we embrace the things we don’t like about ourselves – the overwhelming fear that can envelop us, the despair, the meaninglessness – not fight them, or look for the sunny side all the time, or run away from them. Embrace it – and from there comes the joy as opposed to escapism.”

The Pillowman had its world premiere in 2003 at the Royal National Theatre, and subsequently received the 2004 Olivier Ward and an Evening Standard Award nomination for Best New Play. McDonagh’s other plays include The Lonesome West and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and his short film Six Shooter won an Academy Award in 2006.

Marton received wide acclaim upstairs at Belvoir Street last year for his role as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? He is also an accomplished film actor, recently starring in Aeon Flux, The Lord of the Rings and The Bourne Supremacy.

“In film, some people go out of their way to fuck you up,” he says. “It’s an interesting exploration of human behaviour. You get egos at work and they’re like viruses and it’s not pleasant. But having said that, when you’re on good film it’s hard to beat.

“What I like about the theatre is that usually the writer has toiled and laboured, and the ideas are oftentimes of greater substance and it has levels and layers. Coupled with that you have the live experience, which very enjoyable – well, sometimes it’s more enjoyable than others!”

John McCallum | June 06, 2008
The Pillowman
By Martin McDonagh. Company B. Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, June 4. Tickets: $54. Bookings: (02) 9699 3444. Until July 13.

THIS dark fairytale, about the fate of a writer of dark fairytales, is stuffed full of ideas but it is curiously disengaged from the real world. It is set in an imaginary police state but has little to do with politics or power. It includes the details of several gruesome child murders, told in a sort of jolly Grand Guignol style but, for all its black comedy, it isn't very disturbing, which is a bit disturbing.

Martin McDonagh's play opens with the writer, Katurian, being tortured by two comic policemen who are interested in the mysterious and evocative Borges-like fables he writes. It soon becomes clear that they are investigating a series of murders that seem to be based on his stories. He has a simple-minded brother whom they are apparently torturing in the next room. Beyond that I won't say anything because the plot depends on a series of revelations that make up much of the interest.

Craig Ilott's production treads the line between comedy and horror without bringing the two together, except in brief moments in the powerful emotional relationship between Katurian and his troubled brother Michal, played very well respectively by Damon Herriman and Steve Rodgers.

Marton Csokas and Dan Wyllie, as the policemen whose vaudevillean relationship parallels the serious relationship of their victims, are funny, and they have some great nasty lines of dialogue and business. But their characters are based on a comic-duo stereotype that is simplistic parody.

The brilliant set design by Nicholas Dare creates a bleak prison interrogation room, with long walls of grey concrete bricks that keep suddenly opening to show, in bright colour and a mockingly fantastical style, the scenes of horror.

In one of the best of these reveals is a most beautifully staged murder but it turns out to be just another story.
Jethro Woodward's fine sound design is understated and brooding, swelling in volume in some scenes to alert us that all is not well.
We listen to many of Katurian's dark stories, which he is obsessed with passing on to the world, at the cost of his life if necessary.
At one point he refers to his work, perhaps self-mockingly, as "somethingesque". The word sums up McDonagh's glib style. It has no voice of its own, it's all pastiche, and yet it purports to have something to say about violence against children.



SEE Next 2 post for pics ..A must see piece of theatre

No story is ever just a story. The stories we tell reflect our life experiences, even if we are not aware how. For these stories to come out, a writer will often have to go through shit. Sometimes, a whole lifetime of shit.

Anyone who saw playwright Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Belvoir St Theatre in 2003 is unlikely to forget it. Bodies were hacked to pieces with more blood than a Tarantino flick. McDonagh's The Pillowman is a lot less bloody but no less horrific.

Katurian (Damon Herriman) has been detained by detectives Ariel (Dan Wyllie) and Tupolski (Marton Csokas). The detectives have 400 of his stories in their possession. The treatment of kids in these stories make Bill Henson’s photography look like happy snaps. Kids have been killed as described in the stories and Katurian, along with his retarded brother Michal, are the main suspects.

Katurian does not usually write about his own life. The one exception is the tale of a boy who was doted on by his parents as he began to write. Next door, his brother was constantly tortured for seven years. Gradually the stories became darker.

Plays that examine the nature of writing can become self indulgent and pretentious. This is not the case here. Each of us can reflect on the events that have made us who we are. Would it be better if we hadn’t lived through the darkest times?

McDonagh once again shows us his unique blend of black comedy and sheer terror. The banter of the detectives is reminiscent of Tom Stoppard, jumbled and slightly absurd. McDonagh knows how to use a running gag as a tension breaker and the gags never outstay their welcome.

All performances are outstanding. Wyllie adds roughness and a touch of sarcasm to Ariel. Herriman is warm and genuine as Katurian. While Steve Rodgers shows just the right amount of naivety as Michal.

At approximately 2 hours 40 minutes it is worth the late night. The blend of comedy and horror makes this playwriting at its best. Members of the Sydney constabulary should see this play before raiding any more art galleries.

Thanks to MCN for theses great pic's of Marton in Rehearsal
http://www.marton-csokas.net

( Mr Woof )