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Dead Calm 30th Anniversary


The Dead Calm 30th Anniversary Appreciation Topic. Celebrating the many years of this cult, erotic thriller at sea.

To start I will post reviews, pics, podcasts, and articles pertaining to Dead Calm throughout the years. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Here's a recent interview with Billy Zane discussing the film all these years later. Reflecting on what elements made the film work and how he approached the role as an alpha male with little acting experience owning the role and making it his own.

https://video.buffer.com/v/5cab6b643c92636dbf55f618

Edit: Gradually updating this with podcasts, old and new, for your listening pleasure.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-25-dead-calm/id1397232326?i=1000435008852

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https://m.flicks.com.au/features/is-dead-calm-the-greatest-australian-thriller-ever-made/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Great article today about the film's 30th anniversary. Here's an excerpt:

"It’s impossible to overstate what an impact Kidman has in the role of Rae. She carries the entire film. While Zane is in the showier villain role and Neill is a stoic, almost patriarchal figure (the age difference between Neil and Kidman is no accident, with Zane’s virility a direct challenge to their relationship), Kidman is both protagonist and provocateur, carrying both the audience’s point of view and the challenge of using her then-budding sexuality as a weapon against the preening, needy Hughie. She’s no match for him physically – although, as events proceed, desperation inevitably leads to physical violence – and so it falls to her to use what tools she has to survive.

It’s interesting to wonder if such a plot would fly today, and what kind of reaction it would garner in the current clime. To his credit, Noyce orchestrates Rae’s faux-seduction of Hughie in a deliberately discomfiting way – we’re encouraged to view this as an unpleasant necessity of survival. And yet, thanks to the distance between Rae and John, and the unspoken suggestion that he perhaps blames her for their son’s death, there is a dangerous psychosexual undercurrent in play: spite and resentment and lust and the survival instinct all in flux, creating a dynamic that is at once fascinating and repellent."

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I was one of those that originally saw the film at the cinema when it was first released. The tension, suspense, fear and even the eroticism are more amplified when watching it on the big screen and with the exception of the sexuality those other aspects get diminished when watching it on home media. It's unfortunate this brilliant film's 30th anniversary has been mostly overlooked by today's media outlets because it truly deserves more recognition than what it's getting, I even dare say that it's being forgotten..which is a shame.

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Forgotten, much like all you asshats here.

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That seemed uncalled for. Bad day R_Kane?

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