News Hit

The critically acclaimed Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom will be released in the USA on August 13th, 2010 distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 

Winner of the prestigious World Cinema Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Animal Kingdom will open to audiences in New York and Los Angeles expanding throughout the country over a number of weeks to around 120 cities. On the same date, Canadians in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal will also be able to see the year’s most talked about film.

Animal Kingdom will also premiere in mainland Europe at the Rome Film Festival on October 29th, 2010 with a full UK release through Optimum Releasing later in the year.

National and international reviews have been glowing, in the US, the August edition of Film Comment claimed, “Not since Peter Weir broke through in the late seventies has an Australian filmmaker shown as much promise as Michôd” whilst the New York Times listed Jacki Weaver in their summer line-up article, “Breakthrough Performances”. In the UK, The Daily Mirror will award it 4 stars, calling the film “mean, moody and magnificent”.

Producer Liz Watts says “The critical acclaim and audience reaction to Animal Kingdom have both been overwhelmingly positive. As the film embarks on its rollout in such important territories as the US, Italy, France and the UK, we are hoping that audiences across the world will respond with the same level of enthusiasm that the Australian public has shown.”  

Released nationally in Australia through Madman Entertainment on 3rd June 2010, Animal Kingdom is still holding strong sessions after eight weeks and has earned over $4.5 million to date, as well as holding within the Top Ten of the Australian Box Office.

Image: Courtesy of Apple.

Apple launched their latest add-on product today, the Magic Trackpad, for use with Apple's desktop line of computers. On their site they've asked the question "Why should notebooks have all the fun?"

Finally there is hope for Mac users who want to use a trackpad but don't own a Macbook or a Macbook Pro. The Magic Trackpad communicates with an Apple system via bluetooth and runs on a pair of AA batteries, rechargeable versions of which will come as part of the $99AUD package along with the expected product documentation. The Magic Trackpad can replace your mouse or run alongside it. It also supports all the multi-touch and gesture functions that the later versions of Apple notebooks are capable of.

A great option for owners of previous Macbooks and Macbook Pros without multitouch capabilities, if a Macbook has bluetooth connectivity it too can now have multitouch, fancy settings to fine tune the way you might want to use the trackpad.

As of now, it is unclear if the trackpad will readily work with any operating system other than Apple's own OSX, but that's one for the bookies to seek the best bet on. My tip is that if you're not on a mac you may just have lucked out. Atleast for now.

For a film with a tagline like "Alice in Wonderland with Machine guns" this film is like a mirage in the desert after the recent spate of not-so-great fantasy action films we've had off late. Will Zack Snyder, the director of 300 and Watchmen pull off a super awesome film once again? 

Here are trailers/promos for mega-budget sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, more vampire drama with Let Me In, even more vampire action with Priest, and BBC's modern reimagining of the Baker Street detective with Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement) and Martin Freeman (The Office) and created by Doctor Who maestro Steven Moffat.

Here are the latest trailers for David Fincher's Facebook movie The Social Network, Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Zac Efron-vehicle Charlie St. Cloud and Danny Trejo-vehicle Machete.

News trailers for the Robert De Niro-Edward Norton drama Stone, down-sizing drama The Company Men and John Madden-thriller The Debt.

For a look at the similarity to the 2007 Israeli version of the story, check out this trailer.

We also have glimpses of the latest promos from Comic-Con- Disney sequel Tron Legacy, the Ryan Reynolds-thriller Buried and graphic novel adaptation Red, starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren.

Tron

After just 1 day of release Christopher Nolan's Inception has gone straight to the top of the weekend box office in Australia. The film has earned just over $1.3 million on 413 screens!

M. Night Shyamalan's latest production, Devil, is causing mass outbursts of hilarity at otherwise somber Inception screenings, New York Daily News has reported.

The embattled auteur and "Last Airbender" director is getting jeers rather than cheers for "Devil," the latest sci-fi effort to bear his name. A YouTube video posted by Perez Hilton this week showed audience members laughing out loud at the trailer during a screening of "Inception." The offending moment came when audiences caught a glimpse of the words "From the Mind of M. Night Shyamalan."

Luckily, NBC know how to contain what smells suspiciously like a public relations disaster without calling attention to it:

NBC responded by swiftly blocking the video, stating it breeched copyright issues.

M. Night Shyamalan has come across hard times as of late, with his most recent film The Last Airbender garnering reviews so bad it makes I Love You Too look like Citizen Kane, but with the news that he is shopping around a feature starring Bruce Willis, News Hit remains confident that his career will remain zombie-like, lumbering from cinema to cinema feasting on delicious brains, for years to come.

The 7th annual AICE Israeli Film Festival will take place in Melbourne (17-22 August) and Sydney (31 Aug–5 Sept) at select Palace cinema locations.  

Showcasing the very best contemporary Israeli films and documentaries, the Festival has assembled its finest line-up to date including A Matter of Size, Phobidilia and will open with the Academy Award nominated drama, Ajami.

And keep checking the Festival’s official website for full program and screening details: http://www.aice.com.au/

News Hit has the first trailer for Ben Affleck's next directorial effort, the heist drama The Town.

The Warner Bros. film stars Affleck as a career criminal who falls for one of his victims (Rebecca Hall). The adaptation of the Chuck Hogan novel Prince of Thieves also stars John Hamm as an FBI agent who also develops an interest in Hall, The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner as Affleck's partner and Chris Cooper as Affleck's father.

We have trailers for The Social Network, Biutiful, Howl and Due Date. David Fincher's The Social Network follows the founders of Facebook and features a screenplay by The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful is a crime film starring Javier Bardem as a dying criminal.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl stars James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in this drama exploring the American poet's obsenity trial in the late '50s.

Due Date is the new collaboration between director Todd Phillips and star Zach Galifianakis, this time starring Robert Downey Jr. as a newly expected father attempting to return home for the birth of his child.