Breaking away from the big-screen act he perfected with his brothers Keenen and Shawn over the last decade in the hit films White Chicks and Little Man, Wayans has returned to the mockery of one of his franchise starter, Scary Movie, for his latest comedy, A Haunted House. “They did something special with the first Paranormal Activity film, like they did with the first Blair Witch movie. They did a really good job spinning the bullshit, making you believe the house was haunted,” Wayans tells SCREEN-SPACE while in Sydney for a series of sold-out stand-up shows. “But by the time Paranormal Activity 3 came out, I was thinking ‘Man, this is getting bad.’ It was time to make fun of them.”

The film is a typically low-brow but occasionally hilarious send-up, with elements such as set design and narrative beats taken directly from the Paranormal Activity series as well as recent hits The Devil Inside and The Last Exorcism. Wayans fans won’t be at all surprised to learn the film is full of sexual innuendo and base crudity and that’s exactly the way they like it. “I make it for the kids, who don’t care too much what’s right and what’s wrong in the eyes of grown-ups, who just want to have a good laugh,” he says. “But I also make it for the 30 and 40 year-olds who still have that little kid inside of them and who want to be a little naughty and a little crass.”

It is a formula that has proved enormously successful for Wayans; budgeted at around US$2million, the film became a sleeper hit Stateside, grossing nearly $45million. The final tally is doubly impressive given the film took a critical savaging from the mainstream media, very few of whom have ever sided with the young comic’s popular appeal. He takes their disdain philosophically. “I think sometimes critics tend to overthink comedy. I think they should watch some comedies with a paying audience and watch the audience reaction,” Wayans theorises. “Then they can say ‘Well, it wasn’t my thing, but the audience seemed to love it’. That would be the fairer thing to do with a lot of comedies, because what makes each of us laugh is such a subjective thing. Some people think themselves too intelligent, or too above, a good fart joke.”

Body functions are just one of the many avenues explored by Wayans and his co-stars David Koechner, Nick Swardson (pictured, right, with Wayans), Cedric the Entertainer and Essence Atkins (“She had a baby five weeks before we started filming, but she still got on the rig and let us pull her around. She was incredible.’) Free-wheeling their way through many improvised moments, the cast push a lot of boundaries in terms of physical humour; in one scene, Wayans enjoys a wild sexual encounter with two stuffed toys. Wayans agrees that there’s not much he won’t do for a laugh. “Oh man, I go there! I’m absolutely happy to go there,” he says with laugh. “Comedy has always got to be all or nothing. But you have to have layers, of course, and I think with this movie we accomplished that.”

He is also proud of the way he and first-time director Michael Tiddes adapted the clichéd use of the camera in found footage films for comedy impact. “The style of the movie we were sending up, all that handheld stuff and the CCTV footage, was able to be used to our comedic advantage,” he explains. “We were able to let a group of very funny people just do take after take of really funny stuff, just non sequitur, bizarrely funny shit that, if it worked, we would use it. Absolutely the aim was to do a comedy version of a found footage movie.”

A Haunted House opens in Australia on May 30. Follow Marlon Wayans on Twitter here.

Steven Spielberg’s 1941 holds a very special place in film history as one of Hollywood’s most grand follies. The 1979 production, which comedically chronicled one night of mayhem when Los Angelinos were convinced Japanese forces were launching an attack on Hollywood, ran way over budget and opened to scathing reviews, leaving co-financiers Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios in the red on a film that was greenlit to give the super-hot director total creative control on a scale he had never known.

It was to be the third feature for a young costume designer named Deborah Nadoolman (pictured; right), who had honed her craft on the low-budget comedy The Kentucky Fried Movie and the surprise smash hit, Animal House (both directed by her future husband, John Landis). Now one of Hollywood’s most revered costume designers with credits that include Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places and Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, the two-term President of the Costume Designers Guild spoke to SCREEN-SPACE of her experience on Spielberg’s enormous spectacle.

“The first thing I should say is that Steven really gave me carte blanche,” Nadoolman-Landis says from her West Coast home, prior for leaving for Melbourne to oversee the launch of Hollywood Costume, a collection of iconic outfits that she has spent five ears curating. “He had come to a screening of Animal House and had fallen in love with the film. So he called me to come in and talk about designing on 1941. I had never designed on a movie of that size. My entire CV at that time was Kentucky Fried Movie and Animal House.”

Spielberg has since admitted that his self-belief was running rampant at the time, after the one-two box office punch of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Clearly taking its inspiration from Stanley Kramer’s frantic 1963 farce, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the director was in charge of a cast that included Hollywood bad boys John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd (both pictured; right) and Treat Williams, veterans Toshiro Mifune, Warren Oates and Slim Pickens and wide-eyed stars-in-the-making Bobby Di Cicco and Dianne Kay. For Nadoolman-Landis, it was clear her director was going to need all the help even her limited experience could offer.

“He was a still very young,” she remembers. “He had Jaws and Close Encounters, both of which I had adored, but he had not had a lot of experience with costuming or with costume designers. In fact, on those films, I don’t think he had even had a costume designer!” Conversely, 1941 would use 100’s of extras, all of who required fitting for a very specific time in American history; the key characters include a troop of USO girls, a tank crew, some zoot-suiters and a Japanese submarine crew. “He was going to be making a period film and he had no idea what to do,” she says with a laugh, tempered somewhat by hindsight.

“He and I sat together, and got on very well at that first meeting. He told me that the film was going to be as Spielberg/Nadoolman co-production,” she says. Thrilled to be offered a gig on a major studio production, the breadth of her task soon dawned upon Nadoolman-Landis. “I had read the script and, at that time, I was like ‘Oh, my goodness!’, this is going to cost a fortune. At the time, the budget was like $22million, but…well you know, right. A huge film.” (pictured left; Spielberg on-set with actor Ned Beatty, centre).

“After the meeting, I was walking to my car and it just struck me, ‘How am I going to do this?’,” she recalls of a moment when the pressure to make real a vast directorial vision consumed her. “My last costume budget, on Animal House, was $50,000 out of a $2million budget. On 1941, my budget was going to be $250,000! I ran to a payphone and called my boyfriend, John Landis, and cried ‘John, this is going to be such a huge movie and I’m in way over my head’ and I really did start spinning out. And John said, ‘Just realax. It is the same job.’”

Thirty-four years later, Deborah Nadoolman-Landis would recognise it as a defining moment in her career perspective. “Costume design, whether its on Kentucky Fried Movie with $15,000 or 1941 with $250,000, is exactly the same job. And that’s what I took away from 1941. Steven and I had a fabulous time working on the movie, as we did on Raiders of the Lost Ark,” she says.

Spielberg’s costly flop went through a number of re-edits and has emerged as cult favourite for many, though still carries the stigma of being associated with a flagrant period of excess in Hollywood history (it is often spoken of in company with infamous bombs Inchon, Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar). However, Nadoolman-Landis has no regrets, emerging from the production with the utmost respect for her colleague. “I just think he is terrific and adore him as the captain of the ship,” she says, fondly recalling the production and its director. 

Deborah Nadoolman-Landis has curated Hollywood Costume, which begins a 4 month season in Melbourne on April 24 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. 

The 'post-apocalyptic' genre is a tough one to freshen up. What differentiates The Mansion?

Andrew: The post-apocalyptic genre is so popular right now and we feel it taps into much of the same fascination people have had with westerns. It's like the neo-western in a sense. The two genres share a lot in common, in that they basically put modern humans in a paradigm of lawlessness and then watch to see how they treat each other. When you watch a western, you know the genre instantly. There is no need to explain the setting at the outset..."In the late 19th/early 20th century America, the west was a lawless, uncivilized land, etc..." We all know the deal and there's no need to over explain. I think the post-apocalyptic genre has reached that point. There's no need to explain, we all recognize that human life and the societies we've constructed can be quite tenuous. We have a lot of extinction anxiety, which is what accounts for the fact that our movies, tv shows and video games are all obsessed with the genre. What differentiates The Mansion is that it doesn't try to explain what happened to civilization. I mean, it hints that there was a plague, but it just accepts that you hopefully know the genre and don't need over explaining. Also, it's an intimate film that hopefully portrays what life would really be like after the fall of society. There would be a lot of waiting. Life would be quite slow and there would be a lot of vigilance in dealing with other humans. 

Is it a pessimistic film? It could be interpreted as suggesting that society implodes without a structured order or government control in place.

Andrew: I suppose it is pessimistic in that people treat each other pretty poorly in the movie. But don't want to over think it too much, because the truth is when we make movies and tv shows about the post-apocalypse we're just playing with the idea. We're not taking it very seriously. We like adventure movies and thrillers, because they are entertaining and let us pretend. But if we really wanted to honestly explore our darkest fears about the end of the world, there would be no swelling, anthemic music and heroic grandiosity. We would all split our time between being terrified and bored out of our minds. I guess The Road did that pretty effectively. But I wasn't interested in doing a bleak film like The Road. I grew up on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Terrence Malick. I wanted to do something more fun and hopefully a little bit thoughtful.

The ensemble seems very tight. What was explored during the rehearsal period?

Andrew: Our cast had a natural chemistry from day one and there weren't any rehearsals. We have always felt that bad acting is the achilles heel of small indie films and that it's worth the time and investment in picking solid actors to sell the story. 
Lilly: But that they had such a strong chemistry between them right off the bat was something we really didn't anticipate. A lot of this we attribute to the trappings of being a low budget film. We rented a house for them all to live in and it really paid off. They actually lived together, in a real suburban Georgia house throughout the shoot. So, they lived together in their post-apocalyptic house scrounging for food and struggling to survive by day, then rode home together, made dinner together, and basically spent time bonding by night. I think this is significant, because we really couldn't have afforded to put them up in their own hotel rooms. But it really played into their dynamics in the film-- they were a real family, on and off camera (pictured, l-r; Kanso, cast members Carter Roy, Chris Kies and Sebastian Beacon, and Robertson). 

How difficult is it to direct a child actor in scenes such as the final confrontation? This extraordinary young actress seemed to be very in the moment. 

Andrew: We based the character of the young daughter in the film on our niece Eva (pictured, right). She was always in our minds and so when it came time to cast the role, we decided why not just use Eva. We know her, we're a close family, we all speak the same language... so why not? We did entertain casting experienced young actors and auditioned the part with a handful of kids, but Eva was a natural and she really wanted to do it. Working with her was a fantastic experience because she's a real kid. She's not an actor. So you didn't get a young performer, you got the reactions and reads of an actual kid, which really felt right for the often solemn mood of this close family unit living in isolation. There was an austerity to how she carried herself that worked really well for the film. As for the final scene: this was one of the final scenes of the film, so Eva was very seasoned by that point. Plus, there wasn't much for her to do beyond clinging to her mother as a sadist held a gun to their heads, so, I think she pulled it off pretty effectively.

The Mansion - Trailer : www.themansionfilm.com from Passerby Films on Vimeo.

Describe your first experience of being submerged in the cosplayer’s world. Did you have to confront your own preconceptions, even prejudices, about the cosplay universe?

My first experience with cosplayers was through a local convention that was near my house. I was walking my dog and kept seeing people dressed in various costumes all heading towards the Vancouver Convention Centre. Being an avid gamer I recognized many of the costumes so I decided to follow a few of them to see what was going on. It was a beautiful summer day so most of the convention goers were outside near the waterfront playing glomp (a flying, tackle hug game) and having their pictures taken by fans and random tourists. I ended up running home and grabbing my own camera and came back to take my own photos of the cosplayers. I had always known in a very small way about the cosplay universe but had never been to a convention or known anyone who indulged in the hobby. I suppose I was most surprised by how social the event seemed to be and having always feeling a bit like an outsider myself I could relate to them and really got excited by the social aspect of the hobby. I couldn't help thinking that I wished it had existed when I was younger and if it did that I would have known about it. I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid/teenager and got made fun of and picked on a lot for it, I was even told by a camp counselor once that'd I'd be going to Hell for playing D&D. I knew by the end of the weekend of that convention that I wanted to make a film about cosplayers.

How did you select the three personalities in your film? Were there others who you chased but said no?

I met Danae aka Rifa first. She was working on set with Matthew Tingey our films Co-Executive Producer/Camera Man. Matthew mentioned to Danae in passing on set one day that he was trying to help me get a film about cosplayers off the ground when she informed us that she herself was a cosplayer and had won awards for her costume designs and she wanted to be involved since she could help us get our foot in the door of a universe that generally is very wary of outsiders, especially a documentary film crew. I immediately brought Danae on board as a n associate to help us find the cosplayers we would follow. Her first choice was Lucas aka Twin Fools since they have many mutual friends and Danae knowing about Lucas beginning his transition from female to male figured he'd be a great personality for the film, she was right. I don't recall when we decided that Danae needed to be one of the cosplayers we follow and not just help us find the cosplayers but then our search was for a "noob" to the hobby, hopefully someone who'd never cosplayed before, so we put ads on local cosplay forums that we were looking for someone to fill those shoes. We ended up with 2 girls to be our potential noob and after meeting with both of them and their families we knew that Lily aka SecretAttire was our girl. There were no other cosplayers that were considered, we felt lucky to have what we got really.

What were you confronted with on that day when a key participant backed-out of the project? Did you ever consider that the film may not come together after that happened?

Truth be told he never said to us that he was backing out of the film, he just made it increasingly difficult to get him on camera. Our last convention we all went to his group of friends basically made a wall around him and would heckle the film crew as we tried to shoot. I never felt like the film wouldn't get done but I realized I had a huge valley to fill if I couldn't get that final interview.

Your past work Wastings and Pain also addressed an outsider’s world, one of disconnect from what is considered ‘normal society’ or ‘respectable behaviour’. What do you believe draws you to these fringe worlds and unique individuals?

I was a punk rocker in my teenage days, before there were stores in the mall where you could buy your "punk" clothes, so I always had the attitude that I wasn't part of 'normal society' and was always questioning what is 'respectable behaviour'. While I wont tell you which way to feel in my films I do like showing that people you may not relate to or think are dirty, crazed drug addicts or living on the fringe of society's norms are really not very different than you and I at the end of the day.

With the film finding festival exposure and word-of-mouth spreading, what have been the initial reactions to My Other Me from the cosplay community?

The reactions have been mostly positive from cosplayers. The negatives we've heard is that there isn't enough about the costume making process in the film but I felt strongly that there are hundreds of fan made mini-documnetaries that delve into the costume side of the hobby much more than I wanted to. I wanted this film to be about the people not necessarily their costumes.

Your cast is a who’s-who of great genre actors – Tony Todd, Sonny Chiba, Michael Biehn, Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, James Duvall. How did your script (co-written with Destin Pfaff) get to all these iconic names?  

When you go out to attach actors to your script, you have to go through this wall that is the agencies and it can be a very disheartening experience because there is a lot of politics and money involved. We were, and still are, a very small budget film and when we got the script to Tony Todd, his representation said that he wouldn’t be interested because it just wasn’t a big enough budgeted project. So we hung our head and wandered the streets because he really was our ideal for this role. Then a couple of weeks, later we got a phone call from our casting director who just said, “Tony Todd is in, he wants to do the movie.” And we said, “You mean, he wants to talk to us about it?” and she said “No, he’s in, he’s doing it because he loved the script and is dead set on making it happen.” The amazing thing about this group of actors and how professional they are is that they pretty much all said they didn’t want to stray to far from the material.

Arguably stealing the film is Mark Hamill (pictured, below) in one of the most hilariously villainous turns in recent memory. Where did this character come from?

When Mark first read it, he thought the violence was so extreme. But then his kids got a hold of it and they told him, “Dad, if you don’t do this, don’t complain that you don’t get the roles that Malcolm McDowell or Steve Buscemi gets!” So he read it again and read it in character, allowing the devious side of the character to take over, then came to us and said, “Oh, I get it! I’m the comic relief!” He’d mentioned he wanted to do like a Truman Capote thing, very flamboyant and high-pitched, which I was fine with, even though it was written more as a Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon type of thing. Mark blended the two and came up with this bizarre character. He walked this fine line between the comedic and the over-the-edge sadistic.

Some may argue that the role that the role of Sushi Girl, bravely played by Cortney Palm, is a very submissive, even exploitative one. She’s naked, unable to react to all the violent machismo around here.

The idea was to have a completely vulnerable character as the eyes and ears in this scenario, sort of (the audiences) window into what was going on.  In that regard, she was 100% crucial to the story. And I purposefully wanted to have the naked girl in the movie to make a statement about exploitation in general. What would be more exploitative than a naked girl covered in sushi with all these violent guys in the room attacking each other and she can’t do anything about it. Remember, if she moves she’s dead, there’ll tear her apart, so we went from there.

Essentially a single-setting film, how did your camera create drama and tension within four walls? What filmmaking techniques did you need to employ to bring energy to the setting?

We broke up big scenes into little mini sections and concentrated on giving every little self-contained scene a different vibe. Everything existed under the same umbrella, as it were, but we wanted to create the feeling that each scene represented a different setting. We wanted to shoot chronologically, as well, because things do get messy and we wanted to show progression, where things started out a lot prettier and softer but is stripped down by the end, where things have gotten very gritty and grimy.

Yes, it does get messy. What boundaries and principles did you apply to your use of violence in the film?

I was of the mind that the best way to present the audience with horrific types of violence is to say ‘less is more’. Back in the 1970s, which is a period of filmmaking that I reference specifically in this film, the mechanical effects were not nearly as good as they are today, where you get lots of practical effects, often melded with CGI. Yeah, it might be shocking in the short term, but in the long run it just doesn’t impact anymore. What I wanted to make sure was that the violence in Sushi Girl was not fun, but that it was devastating and horrifying. The ideas we employ are really very caustic and I think that is what has gotten under people’s skin. We applied the approach that Hitchcock took with Psycho, in that a lot of what you think you see is actually done with editing and framing. When people say, “Oh, it’s so violent”, I take that as a compliment because it means it has been effective. It means they don’t like feeling that sensation.

Kern Saxton will appear with writer/producer Destin Pfaff and cast members Tony Todd, Noah Hathaway, James Duval and Andy McKenzie at the Australian premiere of Sushi Girl on April 19 and the panel discussion Slice and Dice on April 21 at the Gold Coast Film Festival; the Sushi Girl team will also be appearing at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo, April 19-21, at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

The artist in Thanatomorphose finds a potent sexuality as her condition worsens. How do interpret the co-existence of these two elements in your work and the horror genre overall?

It is an interesting question because while I was doing researches for Thanatomorphose I’ve found out that there are several states of mind in the mourning process, either when you lost someone or know that you will die. One of the typical reactions a large amount of people tend to have is an increase of their libido to counterbalance the impending death, which is very interesting when you work in the horror genre. It is as if life was fighting death right until the end. And for me it made sense that the main character in my film, who is kind of death inside, slowly comes back to life while her body decays. Her own materiality makes her aware of her existence and that was one of the many aspect I wanted to explore in the film.

Regarding the horror genre overall, sex has always been an important element of the genre for many reasons starting with the transgressive quality inherent to both subjects. I did my Master’s thesis on body fluids in gore and pornography. Both genre focused on the body as a cinematic object and consequently share similar ways of filming and types of storytelling. A lot of renowned directors have made the parallel in their films before me (David Cronenberg, Jörg Büttgereit, Dario Argento to name a few) but I wanted to push this to its logical extremes. Sex, or more aptly reproduction, is the only answer to death.   

We’re only that: flesh and blood. Sex is how we came in the world. Then we die. Between the two, we try to cope with the meaningless of our existence by telling stories and doing what we believe are the best things. In the end, we’re only organic matters, coming from nothing and going back to nothing.

Tell me about the on-set environment. It looked to be a bleak, dark, confined space. Was there ever moments when the relentless nature of the horror or the content of a scene made the work day tough?

That was one of my main tools as a director to put the actors and the crew in the right mood. We had a lot of fun shooting the film but by the end we were all exhausted as much by the work as by the psychological state the film putted us in. I think it shows in the film, the acting, the bleakness, etc.

I think that to properly write, direct, and edit a film you must be in the right emotional state, the one that corresponds to the feeling you’re trying to convey. It must come from the heart. If you don’t feel it as the creator, I highly doubt that you’ll make the right choices. As the great editor Walter Murch once said, emotion is the first rule to follow when editing a film and I think that goes for all the other aspects of production.

The hardest part when making that kind of film is always how much of yourself you put in it and how much darkness in yourself you have to get out to get the proper tone and feeling. That requires a lot of energy.

And, extending the last question, tell me of the relationship between actress and director on a film like Thanatomorphose. You asked Kayden to go to some very dark places in this role, which would have required a huge amount of shared faith and trust.

Kayden and I discussed a lot in pre-production about what I wanted and how I wanted to shoot to get it. She knew that it was going to be difficult. I gave her references to see and feel what Thanatomorphose was about: movies (from Buttgereit’s Nekromantik 2 to Grandrieux’s La vie Nouvelle), books (Camus, Kafka, Dostoeivski), and music (Silver Mount-Zion and the Guild of Funerary Violins). She understood exactly what I was aiming for. She was exhausted but she kept giving all that she had. It was impressive.

We shot the film in chronological order over a 21 days period. We did that for 2 reasons: continuity and special effects. But I think it helped her in feeling the same way as the character, to be as exhausted as the character. It comes across when watching the movie.

Why is ‘body-horror’ still such an effective subset of the horror genre? Why are even the most hardened horror watchers still rattled by scenes of decomposition or body fluids?

For me, great horror films always use the body as an excuse to talk about something else, be it our fears or our human condition. Every body horror film is about the body as an object, a commodity. How do we treat our body and disconnect ourselves of it in the process. And how do we reconnect to ourselves trough our body. Thanatomorphose is a body horror existential film and I had to shoot it in respect to the subject. Horror cinema is one of the most visual genre. It is all about bodies, textures, organic matters, and it main subject is ourselves. What interest me – and I think what interest a lot of horror watchers - is the human condition and this genre allows to explore it in the most extreme ways. 

“I drew on what I loved most in the sci-fi genre,” Evrensel tells SCREEN-SPACE via email from his home in the Great White North. “A huge inspiration was Dark Star, the John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon low budget masterpiece. I think it deserves a lot more credit as the prequel to Alien.” Also citing the likes of Scorsese, Lynch, Kurosawa and Werner Herzog as heroes (“I’ve been meaning to rewatch Herzog’s Nosferatu”), the fanboy-at-heart melded pop-culture iconography to tell the story of the outer-space garbage ship caught in a life-or-death struggle with a villainous slug-like alien and a shifting time-space continuum.

“In doing some homework I discovered the fascinating spider web of collaborations between of many of the sci-fi artists, writers and directors of the 60 through the 80s, and how so many of my favorites had found ways to work together,” he says, also acknowledging the lasting impact of tomes such as the Dark Horse Alien comics and authors such as the late Jean Giraud (aka Moebius).

That said, he is quick to point out that his Saskatchewan-shot debut, starring recognizable genre faces such as Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings), George Takei (Star Trek) and Kristen Kreuk (Smallville), is very much a singular vision. “There is a lot of reference and homage in there, some hidden and some really on the surface, but it was always my firm goal to avoid making the film itself a homage, or worse, a parody,” says Evrensel (pictured, right; on-set). “My goal was to make it stand alone, proudly unapologetic as a low budget sci-fi comedy, and have a story non sci-fi fans could enjoy as well.”

Just how low-budget is hard to determine, as the film has a polished sheen and ironic B-movie nods that hardly indicate monetary stress. But Evrensel is not shying away from the effort it took for him and his crew to get his vision on screen. “If you knew the budget we had for things like props and costumes, you'd really appreciate the miracles that our crew pulled off,” he says. “The trick for the film was to avoid predicating the drama on anything that was expensive, like smoke and fire and explosions and instead to do as much with performances as possible.”

The experience has led to a steep learning curve in industry practices (“Getting sales in a marketplace that tends to compartmentalize films is a challenge right now”) but Evrensel is buoyed by enthusiasm from the genre crowd. “We're getting great responses from the festival circuit,” he says, stressing that young filmmakers should do all they can to hone their craft then present it with elan.

“Tell a strong story with interesting characters and prove yourself with whatever tools you have at hand,” Evrensel imparts, referencing forgotten shorts from the likes of Kubrick and Scorsese as inspiration. “If you do your homework and raise the flag for a well planned, well written project, you will find support in the film industry. Make stuff you are proud of and you'll probably become the kind of director that other people will want to work with.”

Read the SCREEN-SPACE review of Space Milkshake, which screens at the A Night of Horror/Fantastic Planet Film Festival on Thursday April 11 at 9.00pm

Her latest project, the highly-anticipated TV mini-series Top of the Lake (pictured, above), features breathtaking South Island locations from her native New Zealand. The city of Queenstown and several vivid, remote wilderness regions of the Otago district are utilised to stunning effect. At the other end of her homeland you will find the majestic cliffs and fierce seas of Karekare Beach, in the Waitakere district of Auckland on the North Island, used to symbolic perfection in her breakout film, 1993s The Piano.

But it is in The Water Diary, a little-seen short film that was part of the 2006 portmanteau film 8, that Campion most directly addresses her landscape. The project, which also featured directorial efforts from Gael Garcia Bernal, Gus Van Sant, Mira Nair, Wim Wenders and Gaspar Noe, came to fruition under the guidance of French producer Marc Oberon. It was Oberon’s aim to provide artistic support to United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals, a vast humanitarian endeavour designed to eradicate such dire social ills as poverty, hunger and child mortality by 2015.

Campion immersed herself in an Australian outback scorched by drought and the tensions it brings to a young family living on the land. Seen largely through the eyes of two early-teen daughters, The Water Diary puts a stark, honest face on the social impact on the rural sector of extended dry periods. Filmed at Nimmitabel in the New South Wales southern highlands with a beautifully detailed visual acuity courtesy of DOP Greig Fraser (Bright Star; Zero Dark Thirty), it is heartbreaking study in the consequences on real people of our leaders refusal to address the changing climate.

Jane Campion had undertaken a self-imposed exile after the troubled shoot and subsequent commercial failure of her American effort, In The Cut. The 8 project would inspire her to write again and return to the director’s chair. Proving to be a turning point in her career, she would go on to receive some of the best notices of her career for 2009s Bright Star, a Palme d’Or nominee. That film's success afforded her the confidence and artistic freedom to write (with longtime collaborator Gerard Lee) and direct (with Garth Davis) the 300 minute-long Top of the Lake (pictured, right; Campion directing star Elisabeth Moss). Following it’s jubilant Sundance premiere, trade paper The Hollywood Reporter called Top of the Lake, “…an edgy, disturbing and altogether first-rate crime drama.”

Tellingly, one Top of the Lake review noted in particular Campion’s use of the setting to convey mystery and foreboding. “The landscape,” wrote Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times, “which is huge and powerful and makes mites of men, does much of the work for her.” It suggests that Campion, reunited with the creative energy she draws from her picturesque settings, is back on solid ground as one of world cinema’s most compelling directors.

Following a screening of the first two episodes of Top of the Lake, Jan Campion and Gerard Lee will front a Q&A session at the Cremorne Orpheum Cinema this Wednesday, March 20. Tickets available via the Popcorn Taxi website and at the venue.

Fate has dictated that A-list fame would prove elusive for the Alabama native. He passed on the Kathryn Bigelow films Near Dark and Point Break; was cast as the lead in James Cameron’s take on Spiderman only to have the project collapse; and, got to the final two for the role ultimately played by Stephen Lang in Avatar. Regardless, Biehn will be forever remembered for a series of action film performances in the 80s and 90s that left an indelible imprint on the key movie-going demographic. Most notable amongst them were his collaborations with directors James Cameron (The Terminator; Aliens; The Abyss), William Friedkin (Rampage; Jade), Franc Roddam (The Lords of Discipline; K2), Michael Bay (The Rock) and Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror). His seething villain ‘Johnny Ringo’ from the George P Cosmatos western, Tombstone, is an audience favourite.

He has a particular fondness for Australia, having worked with director Carl Schultz (Blue Fin; Travelling North, Careful He Might Hear You) on the 1988 apocalyptic thriller, The Seventh Sign (pictured, right, with co-stars Jurgen Prochnow and Demi Moore). “I thought Carl did a great job directing that movie,” says the 55 year-old, talking to SCREEN-SPACE from his Los Angeles office.  “It was a movie that was not marketed properly. Sometimes you make a movie that is a great work but, for whatever reason, just can’t find an audience. But a lot of people come up and talk to me about that film, saying how much it means to them. I’m very proud of that film.”

Having established the production company BlancBiehn with his creative partner and wife Jennifer Blanc-Biehn, he was under no illusion that The Victim was any kind of ground-breaking vision. “It was so small and we had such a small amount of money, we just wanted to make this little grindhouse, exploitation movie,” he says of the film, which has played prestigious genre festivals such as SITGES, Horrorfest and Fantasia. “I wrote it in three weeks and during that time we also did pre-production on it. We rolled that into a twelve day shoot, working twelve hour days.”

Biehn also takes on acting duties as backwoods loner Kyle Limato, a dark figure happiest when humanity is kept at arms length. His life is upended when a scratched and muddy stripper named Annie (played by Blanc-Biehn) screams for help late one night; her friend, Mary (Danielle Harris) has been killed in a particularly graphic bout of rough, outdoor sex (the film opens on the act, so be warned) and Annie is a witness. Complicating things are the identity of the killers – two corrupt cops, played by Biehn’s friends Ryan Honey and Denny Kirkwood.

The shoot was tough, he readily admits, but having worked with the reputedly volatile likes of Bay, Friedkin and Cameron (pictured, right, on the Aliens set with Biehn and actor Ricco Ross), Biehn knew how to crack the whip when needed. “If you took the three of them and wrapped them together on their worst day, that would’ve been me when shooting The Victim,” he says with a laugh. “We were literally running from shot to shot, with me screaming the entire time. Not at anyone for anything they did wrong, but just ‘Get out of the way’ and ‘Who’s talking?’ and ‘Shut the fuck up’, stuff like that.”

Most mainstream critics have not warmed to the film’s grunginess, but genre sites are trumpeting The Victim. “Frankly, I never even thought it would be reviewed,” says Biehn, genuinely humbled by the acceptance the film recieved. “It got reviewed by the New York Times and I’m like ‘What!’ I couldn’t believe it. It played the genre festivals and it started getting good review after good review through outlets like Ain’t It Cool News and Huffington Post and San Francisco Chronicle.”

The film’s success has been reinvested into their production company, which has several new projects set to shoot. Especially ambitious is an English-language remake of the acclaimed Chilean thriller, Hidden in the Woods. Biehn has shown tremendous faith in the original director, Patricio Valladares, taking him on to helm the Americanized version. “He is very young and enthusiastic and I want him to make it in English,” Biehn says.

Such bold commitments fit well with the BlancBiehn business plan (pictured, right, Biehn and partner, Jennifer Blanc-Biehn). “We are focussed on making small movies now, quality films but films that can also turn a profit. We grew tired of going out on casting calls or just waiting to be called in for acting gigs,” he says. “We’ve created this company so that we can make all our own calls and make our own movies. Maybe, if we make enough of them, we can one day make a big one. Or maybe not, because making these small ones are a lot of fun.” 

Transmission Films will release The Victim in Australia on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on March 27.

Records were set in the Best Actress category, where 85 year old Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) and 9 year old Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) represent the oldest and youngest nominees ever in that category. Although a handful of nominees came from the international sector (Amour; the Brit pics Les Misérables and Anna Karenina; and, three Australian acting nods) or were low-budget indies (...Beasts; the documentary Chasing Ice), the finalists were mostly from the not-unexpected pool of studio pics that have figured heavily in the award season to-date.

Building what many analysts believe to be insurmountable momentum is Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, which leads the pack with 12 nominations. Coming in the same weeks as its sweeping of the BAFTA categories, the historical epic’s leading man, Daniel Day Lewis, seems to already have the Best Actor trophy in his cabinet. In line with many of the recent end-of-year honours, other leading contenders include Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (11 nominations); Les Misérables and Silver Linings Playbook (both with 8 nominations); Argo (7 nominations); and, Amour, Django Unchained, Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty (each with 5 nominations). Filling out the field are Beasts of the Southern Wild (4), Anna Karenina (4), The Master (3), The Hobbit (3), Flight (2) and Snow White and The Huntsman (2).

As is often the case, the list of names not nominated makes for far more compelling reading. We break down the major categories below. The ceremony will be held on February 24 at the Dolby Theatre inside the Hollywood & Highland Center.    

BEST PICTURE
It’s early-season release and only-ok box-office took some of the lustre off Beasts of the Southern Wild’s awards momentum, so credit to the Academy for keeping the little film’s dream alive; Moonrise Kingdom wasn’t so lucky. No consideration here for what the public loved (The Avengers, Ted, Magic Mike, The Hobbit, Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises all missing out). The Hollywood Foreign Press corps love for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen also, oddly, did not resonate with Oscar’s voting body.
Amour, Argo, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life Of Pi, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook.

BEST DIRECTOR
Much noise is being made about the omission of Argo’s Ben Affleck and Zero Dark Thirty’s Kathryn Bigelow, but Tom Hooper (Les Misérables), Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained), Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master), Robert Zemeckis (Flight), Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises) and Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) could all rightly feel aggrieved.
Life Of Pi - Ang Lee, Lincoln - Steven Spielberg, Amour - Michael Haneke, Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell, Beasts Of The Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin.

BEST ACTOR
Even with his film scoring 11 nominations, Life of Pi’s leading man Suraj Sharma was left out, though he is in good company. Jean-Louis Tritignat (Amour), Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained), Bill Murray (Hyde Park on the Hudson), John Hawkes (The Sessions), Richard Gere (Arbitrage), Anthony Hopkins (Hitchcock), Matthew McConnaughey (Killer Joe) and Affleck again were all rightly in the running. Beasts... Dwight Henry couldn’t ride that films good favour to recognition. But this is looking the night’s sure-thing category, with Daniel Day Lewis’ towering performance as Lincoln a lock (pictured, left).
Denzel Washington – Flight, Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook, Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln, Hugh Jackman - Les Misérables, Joaquin Phoenix - The Master.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
No clear front-runner, as is often the case with the support players (hence left-field surprises like Kevin Kline for A Fish Called Wanda). Arkin may take the career-vote honours; Waltz and Jones (who did his best work this year in Hope Springs) are past-winners; Hoffman is also Oscar friendly but The Master was wildly divisive. De Niro may takes home the gong, ensuring a trophy for Silver Linings Playbook, which may get swamped elsewhere. Glaring omissions – Leonardo Di Caprio flavoursome bad guy in Django Unchained; John Goodman, who was superb in Argo, Flight and Trouble with the Curve; Javier Bardem’s Skyfall villain; McConaughey again, for Magic Mike or Bernie.
Alan Arkin – Argo, Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained, Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook, Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master, Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln.

BEST ACTRESS
It was too much to hope that the LA-centric AMPAS voters would honour two French actresses here, thus explaining the absence of Marion Cotillard’s highly-touted turn in Rust and Bone; Riva was favoured. The octogenarian aside, the category reflects a refreshing acceptance of the new young wave of leading ladies; no Meryl Streep (Hope Springs), Maggie Smith (Quartet), Helen Mirren (Hitchcock) or Judi Dench (Skyfall, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).
Emmanuelle Riva – Amour, Jennifer Lawrence (pictured, right) - Silver Linings Playbook, Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty, Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Naomi Watts - The Impossible.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Will probably be the category that allows AMPAS to tip its hat to the love it/hate it musical Les Misérables; Hathaway’s better-than-expected turn as Catwoman will also help her chances. Notable no-shows include Nicole Kidman, who had season momentum for her sad small town tramp in Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy; National Board of Review winner Ann Dowd from Craig Zobel’s Compliance; and, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s reforming alcoholic in James Ponsoldt’s Smashed.   
Amy Adams - The Master, Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables, Helen Hunt - The Sessions, Sally Field – Lincoln, Jacki Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook.

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Some big names missed out here - Ice Age 4, The Lorax, Rise of the Guardians, Madagascar 3, the wonderful Hotel Transylvania. Brave has the popular vote and Pixar has the runs on the board, but the pick of this category is Frankenweenie. Will AMPAS honour the brilliant career of Tim Burton with a nod for his pet project (no pun intended)? Good - the category contains three hand-configured stop-motion works; bad - a tad all-American. Apparently no room for short-listed works such as Japan's beautiful From Up on Poppy Hill, France's The Painting or U.K's A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman (below, the film's trailer).
Brave; Frankenweenie; Paranorman; The Pirates!; Wreck-it-Ralph.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Hobbit could find no love in this category, and it needed to as an indicator as to which side of the ‘brilliant/indulgent’ argument the Academy sided with. Hard to see where Beasts... will find traction if not here, but there is the behemoth that is Tony Kushner’s Lincoln script to contend with. The ‘old-man institution’ tag fits the Academy’s bias when superb portraits of teenager angst such as Stephen Chbosky’s reworking of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower are overlooked.   
Chris Terrio – Argo, Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin - Beasts Of The Southern Wild , David Magee - Life Of Pi, Tony Kushner – Lincoln, David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
If AMPAS want to honour Haneke with more than just the night’s Foreign Film honours, it will be here. Would be too edgy for the voting members to honour another of Tarantino's ‘n-word’ littered scripts. John Gatin’s Flight over Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is this categories most egregious miscalculation.
Michael Haneke – Amour, Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained, Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola - Moonrise Kingdom, Mark Boal - Zero Dark Thirty, John Gatins – Flight.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Claudio Miranda’s contribution to the mostly-CGI Life of Pi is hard to pin down to casual observers. Richardson perfectly captured old-school western iconography through his lens and may be Django’s sole winner. But if Lincoln takes picture honours, these top-tier tech categories could easily follow suit.
Anna Karenina - Seamus McGarvey (pictured, right), Django Unchained - Robert Richardson, Life Of Pi - Claudio Miranda, Lincoln - Janusz Kaminski, Skyfall - Roger Deakins.

COSTUME DESIGN
Heartening to see the specific skills of Ishioka and Atwood honoured in otherwise poorly received works; would have been entirely fair to see Kym Barrett’s and Pierre-Yves Gayraud’s work on the equally maligned Cloud Atlas similarly honoured. Maybe Les Mis, probably Lincoln.
Anna Karenina - Jacqueline Durran, Les Misérables - Paco Delgado, Lincoln - Joanna Johnston, Mirror Mirror - Eiko Ishioka, Snow White And The Huntsman - Colleen Atwood.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
As great as it is to see outside bolters like 5 Broken Cameras (pictured, left) make the cut, the absence of Bully, West of Memphis and, in particular, The Imposter, hurts this category’s credibility. With several awards in the bag already, expect Searching for Sugar Man to pip the The Gatekeepers.
5 Broken Cameras, The Gatekeepers, How To Survive A Plague, The Invisible War, Searching For Sugar Man.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Inocente, Kings Point, Mondays At Racine, Open Heart, Redemption

BEST FILM EDITING
William Goldenberg’s masterful touch with Ben Affleck’s handheld aesthetic will earn Argo the nod.
Argo - William Goldenberg, Life Of Pi - Tim Squyres, Zero Dark Thirty - Dylan Tichenor, William Goldenberg, Lincoln - Michael Kahn, Silver Linings Playbook - Jay Cassidy & Crispin Struthers.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Not even the Harvey Weinstein touch could up mega-hit The Intouchables into consideration. Haneke’s time has come; Amour will win. But why no Asia Pacific films in the mix? Are AMPAS members missing out? Or is the region’s cinema just in a creative lull? Hong Kong’s Life Without Principle, India’s Barfi! and Thailand’s Headshot all must have come close, right?   
Amour – Austria, Kon-Tiki – Norway (trailer, below), No – Chile, A Royal Affair – Denmark, War Witch - Canada

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
The vastness of the task she faced and the skill with which she brings it off should ensure Lisa Westcott’s efforts on Les Misérables are rewarded.
Hitchcock - Julie Hewett, Martin Samuel, Howard Berger; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Peter Swords King, Richard Taylor, Rick Findlater; Les Misérables - Lisa Westcott.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
He has four Oscars, but John Williams hasn’t won since 1994 (despite being nominated 17 times since then!) Certain to be one of Lincoln’s gongs.
Anna Karenina - Dario Marianelli, Argo - Alexandre Desplat, Life Of Pi - Mychael Danna, Lincoln - John Williams, Skyfall - Thomas Newman.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
The year’s sleeper hit, Ted, gets its only nod here so may be rewarded (director Seth McFarlane has clearly wooed AMPAS power-brokers to get the hosting gig). But Adele’s Skyfall theme song is a classic Bond tune in a year when Bond hit big and celebrates its 50^th anniversary.
'Before My Time' from Chasing Ice, 'Everybody Needs A Best Friend' from Ted, 'Pi's Lullaby' from Life Of Pi, 'Skyfall' from Skyfall, 'Suddenly' from Les Miserables

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Traditionally where the historical epics are rewarded, meaning this category is between Anna Karenina (did enough voters see it?), Les Misérables (did enough voters like it?) and Lincoln (will the inevitable backlash have kicked in by then?). Probably Lincoln...
Anna Karenina, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Les Miserables, Life Of Pi, Lincoln

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Having only seen Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare and Paperman (pictured, left), it’s tough to make a call. Paperman accompanied Wreck it Ralph into cinemas and offered more magic over its few minutes than all of the feature presentation, so I’ll side with it for now.
Adam and Dog, Fresh Guacamole, Head Over Heels, Maggie Simpson In The Longest Daycare, Paperman.

BEST LIVE FILM SHORT
Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Curfew, Death Of A Shadow, Henry

BEST SOUND EDITING
The ultra-realism of Zero Dark Thirty does not come easy and its stunning soundscape may see it take the category here. Although, the same could be said of Argo...
Argo, Django Unchained, Life Of Pi, Skyfall, Zero Dark Thirty.

BEST SOUND MIXING
Skyfall’s five nominations mean that it has already wowed the tech guild AMPAS members, so expect it to take a few of these below-the-line honours. Unless it’s a Lincoln sweep...
Argo, Les Miserables, Life Of Pi, Lincoln, Skyfall.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Given the whole movie is a ‘special effect’, this will be Life of Pi’s trophy. The Dark Knight Rises and the otherwise well-received The Amazing Spiderman were unlucky.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , Life Of Pi, The Avengers , Prometheus , Snow White And The Huntsman.