After Yoo mentions the Constitution during his lecture, and asks the students if they have any questions, an Australian comedian from the show Chaser's War on Everything is seen wearing a black-hooded robe and standing on top of his desk with his arms outstretched, recalling one of the most iconic images of U.S. torture captured in the now-infamous Abu Ghraib photos.
What's the Kraziest TomKat in Hollywood up to these days? According to an Australian news report, making local film crews sign Don't Ask Us About Scientology agreements on the set of Holmes' new movie, for one thing.
Edwina Pearce, a spokeswoman for the Cancer Council Victoria, which produced the ad in Australia, said the boy, whom she identified only as Alexander, shed real tears.
You don't kick a dingo when he's down (or maybe you do, to dislodge the baby from its jaws? We always forget), but Nicole Kidman has done just that by piling on the beleaguered Australia.
The aftermath of any disaster requires a period of quiet reflection followed by intense investigation. Or, if you're as ambitious as Baz Luhrmann, you combine the two in one expanded whining binge to THR.
Baz Luhrmann takes a long time to make a movie. His Australia came out seven years after Moulin Rouge!, which came out five years after Romeo + Juliet. The gestation periods are so long that nothing is ever set in stone, in terms of his future projects, until cameras have started rolling. Which is why we chuckle a bit and scratch our heads when Nikki Finke says that the Aussie is definitely doing a Great Gatsby movie for his next endeavor. Nothing is ever definite with this man! Look at some other Luhrmann rumors that haven't—but may still!—come to fruition.
Down Under Over the Moon: Variety's panic piece yesterday about Australia's underachievement at home drew a typically polite letter of dissent from an Aussie exhibitor. "I just wanted to say that as a regional independent with three prints of Australia between our two locations, we're over the moon with the results on the film," wrote It's comfortably the largest opening week numbers we've seen in several years outside of school holiday periods, and word of mouth is stellar," said cinema proprietor Peter Howard. OK, great! Can we pleeeeease have our sad ending now, Fox? [Variety]
We hate to beat a dead kangaroo here, but that Australia is showing signs of becoming an epic flop. It's not even doing well in Australia! The country where it was filmed and takes place and was, we suspect, named after! Variety reports that the film has basically done good but not great business since it opened Down Under. Was it overhyped? Variety seems to think so:
What do you do when your big sweeping Oscar-hopeful epic that cost $130 million dollars does a shallow swan dive at the box office? You completely change the party line on the entire movie! Well, that's what Fox is doing about Australia—Baz Luhrmann's continental Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman period romance—at least. Though the film initially was being thrust at us as Titanic but with Aborigines and a lot more plastic surgery, it's now been shifted (or downgraded) to an artsy "adult" (not that kind of adult) flick. So its disappointing $20 million Thanksgiving numbers aren't disappointing at all anymore!
We hate to say we told you so, but Australia—Baz Luhrmann's sweepy weepy about his homeland in the 1940's—is not doing so well at the ol' box office. Nikki Finke reports that it's basically tanking, ceding top honors to such unambitious, unartsy fare as the darkening Twilight and this weekend's most likely top dog (and we mean dog), Four Christmases.
Welcome back to a special holiday edition of Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and/or stillborn at the movies. And this Thanksgiving, we're grateful for a slate of Wednesday releases granting us a reprieve from another day of Twilight chatter. Not that any of them will surmount last week's blockbuster, but we have a quick and dirty forecast for long weekend's hits, sleepers and subplots, including a glimpse at the biggest disappointment and underdog to come. As always, our opinions are our own, but are easy to bake for that last-minute dessert idea. The full recipe is after the jump.WHAT'S NEW: Speaking of recipes, Four Christmases sure has a fresh one! Mix Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. Add two cups of diced ensemble players including Robrt Duvall, Jon Favreau, Kristin Chenoweth and Sissy Spacek. Flavor with ball-kicking, pratfall and baby-vomit jokes. Bake for two hours. Serve lukewarm. It's good for about $40 million over five days. Transporter 2 is a little simpler hors d'oeurve for the guys out there, with Jason Statham liberally seasoned with bullets, quick cuts and decibels, turning out $18 million before the main course on DVD. But if you're allergic to the multiplex, you may be best best suited to skip ahead to this week's new home video releases; the art-house kitchen appears to be closed to deliveries for the holiday weekend. THE BIG LOSER: Australia is almost three hours' worth of the expansive (and expensive, at $130 million) hisorical epic no one makes anymore. And despite Oprah Winfrey's lavish endorsement, there's a reason for that: It's one in a generation that actually finds any traction in the two female quadrants whose repeat viewings push it toward box-office longevity and, almost necessarily, Oscar luster. Fox needs half a Titanic here (thus its Hugh Jackman heartthrob push at non-starter Nicole Kidman's expense) to make this work, and for the sake of the studio and director Baz Luhrmann and all involved, we hope they get it. But the middling, $26 million reality — especially on Twilight's likely second week at No. 1 — is what it is.
Hugh Jackman picked up his Australia co-star Nicole Kidman's infamous late-night slack Monday on Conan, offering his host an impromptu run through some of the perplexing Aussie phrases littering his Outback epic. The accompanying tutorial includes a few samples for your learning pleasure, but please: the Sexiest Man Alive's choice of "budgie smuggler," "shut the door," and any other homoerotically-tinged vernacular herein are purely coincidental. Expect Jackman's beleaguered wife to mount yet another vehement bathroom-stall defense of his straightness by the end of the business day. [NBC]
Nicole Kidman's cringe-inducing appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman last night is continuing to serve up some aftershocks, and during the star's appearance on Regis and Kelly today, Regis treated Kidman as though she were promoting her late-night trainwreck, not Australia.To be fair, Kidman (made up to look like an insane cross between a pilgrim and the Baroness from The Sound of Music) attempted to be diplomatic about the appearance, but Regis refused to have it, placing the blame for the encounter squarely on Letterman. Careful, Regis — a war with Dave is one that few walk away from as the victor. Just look what happened to John McCain! [Live with Regis and Kelly]
