Brilliant!


Saw the film today. Very impressive jump from Roy Hollsdotter to Noise. Love seeing a great Australian film, even better when it's shot in Melbourne.

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Hey Fruzzl where did you see this film?

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It was released today (May 3rd) in Australia. Is not a mainstream release which means I cant see it unless I go up to Melbourne.

Seems worth it though?

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Its showing in Sydney

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Just saw this film at the Jam Factory in Melbourne - best Aussie film I've seen in ages, possibly the best ever (but will have to watch it again). Brendan Cowell was superb and very charismatic. Can't wait to see it again.

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One of the only reasons I wanna see it - besides the great reviews - is the fact that it was filmed in cinemascope (AKA 2:35.1).

Not a lot of Aussie films are filmed in that aspect. Back in the 70's/80's most of the films where (ala Crocodile Dundee), and they where great hits. Hopefully this will be too.

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The cinematography in this was one of its strengths - it's terrific.

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I saw it at Nova cinemas in Melbourne today and thought it was pretty good. Well worth a look at!

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Lavinia. I saw it today. A pretty good effort. Very atmospheric and the cinematography was excellent. Personally I found it a bit heavy on the social realism. And there was an aspect which confused me. (I won't go into that right now because of spoilers.)

One question for those who've seen it - what was the significance of the tinnitus?

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I can't say what the Director's intention was of giving the protagonist tinnitus, but as someone who has suffered it long term, his condition and the scenario fitted together well. Tinnitus causes a sense of social isolation, a feeling that you can't identify with peers and family because they don't understand what you are going through. Graham appeared to suffer this emotionally as well as physically being removed from a supportive environment by his supervisor and placed on his own in a caravan with only minimal contact with his collegues.

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GeorgieGirl-1^

Good post!

My father suffered from tinnitus as he got older -- he thought he had gotten it from artillery firing when he was in the Army.

It used to drive him crazy. Listening to classical music on headphones, though, seemed to help him somewhat.

William Shatner also suffers from tinnitus. He said he got it as a result of special effects noise from the original Star Trek show.



"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois

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Completely agree, it's brilliant. Saw it today, 30/5, in St Kilda. It's amazing you mentioned the cinematography because it is utterly brilliant. It's amazing the cinematographer is from Hungary, because if you see his name and title, he is accredited in Hungary. He brings a European sensibility, or claustrophobic feel, to a uniquely wide-open-spaces Australian film.
By the way, you know the strong muscly drunk guy, is it his girlfriend who is found murdered in the ditch? I didn't understand.
Maia Thomas is great, I hope she doesn't sell out and currently do some US garbage she will regret later.
Brendan is terrific!

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Yeah andyfellini - the drunk guy was her fiance (Fiona's). That's why the shop keeper was keen to help him out and said "don't make it worse" etc.

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I just saw it then at the Rivoli...hahah what a nerd, I'm straight home and onto imdb. :)

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i saw it the other night at the rivoli...then had to jump on a lilydale train to get home.

didn't find that disturbing at all!

:S

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Saw it on Saturday at Newtown. It was very good, very slow moving but built up to a stunning conclusion. Very non-Hollywood, which made it even better.

Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention Joel Barish

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We saw this last night at the George in St Kilda, and so I just had to add my voice to all the other positive comments. I was actually fairly shocked at just how good it was - I was expecting to like it, but not this much. As the reviewer on the main screen said, it was a lot more than the sum of its already considerable parts.

Great acting, great script, brilliant direction, beautiful cinematography, really amazing score... the whole production hangs together so well, and was so tense throughout. I love how in a lot of Australian films there's always slow, lingering shots of inanimate scenes - bedrooms, couches, kitchens etc.

It also really captured a lot of the atmosphere of the western suburbs, without resorting to compromise or hysterics. And I say that as a pom ;-)

I'm looking forward to the DVD release. Congrats to everyone involved.

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Awesome movie. luckily for me i had time to kill while my car was being serviced or i would have overlooked it being an low budget film (which by the way had no impact on the quality of performance!!) definitely great for those who are sick of the hollywood predictable type movie. totally didnt know what to expect.

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I work at a movie cinema in Bendigo and it played there. Saw it the other night. Its probly the best Australian film ever. No exageration there



http://www.myspace.com/eugi_bear

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"definitely great for those who are sick of the hollywood predictable type movie. totally didnt know what to expect."

Let's see... mass murder, serial killer, dead women in the weeds, drunks, drunks fighting, cops bumbling and stumbling, (I could go on)... Gee, that is so refreshing compared to those "Hollywood predictable type movies".

You're right, Mr. Poster, I didn't know what to expect. I watched the film and I still don't know what to expect. This one was a big yawner.

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Interesting movie, although I can't help feeling it's a little pointless. I don't feel changed by this movie as I do all my favorite movies. But I feel as though the aim of this movie was to be awe inspiring.

Did anyone walk away from this movie feeling altered with a new view on life? Or is it just a weird and interesting movie, that we may decide to watch again a few years down the line?

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I don't think you have to be changed by the movie necessarily, at least that is not a requisite for me. It was well-acted, cohesive in a way that the subtle things fit together seemlessly, it wasn't a run of the mill, seen it all before film, and to be honest it wasn't an American film, so all that together made it a great experience for me. I like to see other cultural groups putting together quality flicks. Certainly the best of the best might change you or have some deep impact, but that kind of experience should be reserved for only a few films. This film moves into my "here's one you have never heard of that I highly recommend" category.

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I just bought It on Dvd, but I originally saw it at a cinema I work at in Bendigo, so the release wasn't that small. Its incredible. For some reason I found it a little boring when I watched it at home. The big screen definetly enhanced its.....goodness.

Hi

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matsimela^

Good post :)

Yeah...I don't see why the quality of a film has to be about whether the viewer is 'changed' by it or not.

It IS called entertainment, after all.

Sometimes I just want to watch a movie for a few good laughs, or to see exposition of an interesting story, or to see premium performances or beautiful cinematography or whatever.

So, yes...there are many reasons for a movie being good and/or worth seeing.

I think this movie is both :)

Cheers :)



"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois

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I agree that this movie was trying for..... something, what isn't made entirely clear, and this is part of the pretension of this piece.

In a review on the main page, the writer states that this film is like a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing. More like all the pieces that tell you what the jigsaw is actually a picture of.

"What's truth got to do with it?"
"What's truth got to do with anything?"

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It was alright. The front page has a review saying 'more than the some of its parts'. I'd say the exact opposite: it's less than the sum of its past. While some of the cinematography was unnecessarily, distractingly flashy, at other times it was beautiful. The characters are well sketched. There are some stand-out scenes in the film, and at times it's very intense. But there are just as many misfires, the least forgivable of which being the ending. Noise juggles many themes throughout, the most notable being the isolation of Graham and others lack of understanding of him (represented by his tinnitus) and the struggle to do the right thing and be a decent human despite the difficulty in doing so and the negative consequences it may bring (seen in Lavina's actions on the train in the beginning and highlighted in Graham's speech about heaven and hell). And yet, the ending didn't let the themes mesh together as they should, instead reaching for the profound, and tragically missing. The final message the ending gives off seems to be that this one cop has a lot of bad stuff happen to him. It almost drags down the rest of the film.

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Thought this was the best Aussie film I'd seen all year - in fact for far longer than that. Great character study, really well structured and as for the soundtrack - awesome.

I'm not one for supporting Aussie films just because they are Australian - this is just a quality film that deserves a bigger audience. I found it a riviting watch.

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I agree totally - one of the best Aussie movies ever made.

I thought the scene towards the end in the caravan between Graham and Lavinia (Brendan Cowell and Maia Thomas) really powerful.

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shut up *beep* for brains

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I think I didn't get it. I liked it, it's well performed, but what's its message? Is it about the cop or about the murders? There's a few plotholes here and there. Once you see Craig you know he's the killer, they didn't even bother changing that, so when you see him at the end you sort of know what's gonna happen.He even looks like the identikit on the caravan wall. Can they make it any easier?? And then all those questions. Why did he leave Lavinia alive and then write "Dead meat" on the picture? Why didn't he kill her back then?(was it because he run out of bullets?)What's the connection between the train murders and the girl found by the road? It doesn't really solve the mistery.And then Graham's illness. I thought it was going to play a more important part, yet in the climax of the story he can hear perfectly. Is it supposed to be a thriller?
I liked the darkness of the film, the originality of not playing by the typical thriller standards, but the end is very disconcerting. It's good but not the best Aussie film ever like some posters mention, no way..

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I'm from the United States, therefore no expert of Australian films, but I continue to be impressed with the few I have seen (other than Australia, which IMO wasn't that good.) I like thriller/horror/dark and those films that I've seen (again admittedly few) I am appreciative that the filmmakers overall seem to expect their audiences to be intelligent and to leave room for multiple interpretations or ambiguity.

I like that so much better than having everything pointed out to me and spelled out. I love that actors have real and not Hollywood-plastic faces. I like that they didn't explain what happened to the witness, why she was spared. I like the happenstance-appearing nature of the final scene. I thought it was beautifully filmed.

I had some quibbles -- some of the background of the shots were so busy they distracted from the action, there were a couple of characters I could have used more explanation for who they were but all and all, great movie.

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Love seeing that this was appreciated way back when it was released.

I feel it's a forgotten classic, it's still one of my favourite Australian films of all time.

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