Jon Bell’s psychological horror short The Moogai was among the winners at this year’s SXSW, awarded the Jury Prize in the Midnight Shorts section.
Starring Shari Sebbens and Meyne Wyatt, the film follows Sarah, a young mother who becomes terrorised by a malevolent spirit she believes is trying to take her children.
It was produced by Kristina Ceyton, Taylor Goddard, Samantha Jennings, and Mitchell Stanley for Causeway Films.
A feature film version of the concept is in the works, having received Story Development Funding from Screen Australia.
Prior to its international premiere at SXSW, The Moogai nominated for an Aacta Award 2020 Best Short Film and won the Erwin Rado Award for Best Audience Short Film at Melbourne International Film Festival last year.
The SXSW Jury said it was “proud” to recognise a film which affected it “on so many levels”.
“The Moogai is a haunting, psychological thriller that...
Starring Shari Sebbens and Meyne Wyatt, the film follows Sarah, a young mother who becomes terrorised by a malevolent spirit she believes is trying to take her children.
It was produced by Kristina Ceyton, Taylor Goddard, Samantha Jennings, and Mitchell Stanley for Causeway Films.
A feature film version of the concept is in the works, having received Story Development Funding from Screen Australia.
Prior to its international premiere at SXSW, The Moogai nominated for an Aacta Award 2020 Best Short Film and won the Erwin Rado Award for Best Audience Short Film at Melbourne International Film Festival last year.
The SXSW Jury said it was “proud” to recognise a film which affected it “on so many levels”.
“The Moogai is a haunting, psychological thriller that...
- 3/21/2021
- by Sean Slatter
- IF.com.au
Review by Sam Moffitt
Being the first is not always a good thing. Many ground breaking artists who introduce something new into the cultural mix do not always fare well after they have changed the rules and the game. Take, just as one example, Orson Welles who changed forever how movies were made as well as radio drama and stage productions. Although Welles made out better than Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira, the subject of the incredible and unforgettable documentary Vampira and Me.
H Greene first got to know Maila Nurmi when he interviewed her for a documentary called Schlock! The Secret History of Hollywood, (a good documentary in its own right.) Nurmi had grown distrustful of just about everyone, and with good reason. Yet for reasons Greene doesn’t even speculate on she trusted Greene and gave him almost two hours of interview time and discussed every last moment of her bizarre,...
Being the first is not always a good thing. Many ground breaking artists who introduce something new into the cultural mix do not always fare well after they have changed the rules and the game. Take, just as one example, Orson Welles who changed forever how movies were made as well as radio drama and stage productions. Although Welles made out better than Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira, the subject of the incredible and unforgettable documentary Vampira and Me.
H Greene first got to know Maila Nurmi when he interviewed her for a documentary called Schlock! The Secret History of Hollywood, (a good documentary in its own right.) Nurmi had grown distrustful of just about everyone, and with good reason. Yet for reasons Greene doesn’t even speculate on she trusted Greene and gave him almost two hours of interview time and discussed every last moment of her bizarre,...
- 9/7/2015
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Christine White, a prolific actress best known for her role in the classic "Twilight Zone" episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," has died in Washington, DC at the age of 86 on April 14, 2013.
According to her obituary in the Carroll County Times, White appeared in more than 50 television and film productions during her Hollywood career. She worked mainly in a 25-year period between the 1950s and the 1970 with roles in such productions as "Father Knows Best," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Perry Mason," "The Untouchables," "The Fugitive" and "Bonanza." The actress' final credited role came when she played a secretary in the 1976 biopic, "James Dean."
Of all of these roles, none were more memorable than White's part in one of the most famous of "Twilight Zone" episodes. Starring a young William Shatner, the episode focused on a man with a fear of flying that starts to seem reasonable when he spies a monstrous figure destroying the plane's wing mid-flight.
According to her obituary in the Carroll County Times, White appeared in more than 50 television and film productions during her Hollywood career. She worked mainly in a 25-year period between the 1950s and the 1970 with roles in such productions as "Father Knows Best," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Perry Mason," "The Untouchables," "The Fugitive" and "Bonanza." The actress' final credited role came when she played a secretary in the 1976 biopic, "James Dean."
Of all of these roles, none were more memorable than White's part in one of the most famous of "Twilight Zone" episodes. Starring a young William Shatner, the episode focused on a man with a fear of flying that starts to seem reasonable when he spies a monstrous figure destroying the plane's wing mid-flight.
- 5/20/2013
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Pop2it
★★☆☆☆ Sumptuous looks and an enticing central subject may be enough to attract audiences to Matthew Mishory's A Portrait Of James Dean: Joshua Tree, 1951, but what it possesses in visual beauty, it sadly lacks in substance. Opening oddly to a prologue involving poet Arthur Rimbaud, we are quickly transported to 1950s La where we meet undergrad James Dean at UCLA. James Preston plays the legendary (yet short-lived) screen star and certainly has the looks of the doomed Hollywood icon, sporting wavy curls and thick-rimmed Ray-Ban wayfarers, capturing an enjoyable level of petulance, with his languished looks.
We see Dean interact with fellow students in acting classes overseen by his theatre professor (David Pevsnor), drunken sex-scenes with other young men and scenes of him hanging by the pool, topping up his tan with predatory agent Roger (Edward Singletary) at his side. This is accompanied by the odd scene in the desert at Joshua Tree,...
We see Dean interact with fellow students in acting classes overseen by his theatre professor (David Pevsnor), drunken sex-scenes with other young men and scenes of him hanging by the pool, topping up his tan with predatory agent Roger (Edward Singletary) at his side. This is accompanied by the odd scene in the desert at Joshua Tree,...
- 5/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
By Allen Gardner
Killer Joe (Lionsgate) William Friedkin’s film of Tracy Letts’ off-Broadway hit about a family of Texas trailer park cretins (Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon) who hire a cop-cum-hitman (Matthew McConaughey) to take out their troublesome mother, then foolishly cross him, is a stinging satire, given double-barreled audacity by Friedkin’s sure, and fearless, directorial hand. Earning its Nc-17 rating in spades, “Killer Joe” reminds us that daring, frank material like this is why movies exist in the first place. McConaughey gives the performance of his career, hopefully redefined after this. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Featurettes; Commentary by Friendkin; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros.) Christopher Nolan’s coda to his “Batman” trilogy finds Christian Bale returning as a brooding Bruce Wayne/Caped Crusader, this time faced with a hulking villain (Tom Hardy) with respiratory...
Killer Joe (Lionsgate) William Friedkin’s film of Tracy Letts’ off-Broadway hit about a family of Texas trailer park cretins (Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon) who hire a cop-cum-hitman (Matthew McConaughey) to take out their troublesome mother, then foolishly cross him, is a stinging satire, given double-barreled audacity by Friedkin’s sure, and fearless, directorial hand. Earning its Nc-17 rating in spades, “Killer Joe” reminds us that daring, frank material like this is why movies exist in the first place. McConaughey gives the performance of his career, hopefully redefined after this. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Featurettes; Commentary by Friendkin; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros.) Christopher Nolan’s coda to his “Batman” trilogy finds Christian Bale returning as a brooding Bruce Wayne/Caped Crusader, this time faced with a hulking villain (Tom Hardy) with respiratory...
- 1/8/2013
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Horror fans should know the name Catherine Hicks well if only for her starring role as Karen Barclay in the original Child’s Play film. Not only does she give her son one of the very worst Christmas gifts in the history of the holiday, she then has to spend the majority of the film running from this possessed killer doll. Fans ate it up and turned this little film into a multi-film franchise that continues to this day (Don Mancini recently announced that filming had completed on Curse of Chucky in anticipation of a Halloween 2013 release). What fans might not know, however, is that Catherine Hicks actually made her feature film debut, alongside Peter Billingsley, way back in 1982 on a horror film called Death Valley.
With Shout! Factory’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray of Death Valley hitting stores on December 11, FEARnet sat down with Hicks to discuss her feature film debut,...
With Shout! Factory’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray of Death Valley hitting stores on December 11, FEARnet sat down with Hicks to discuss her feature film debut,...
- 12/4/2012
- by Scott Neumyer
- FEARnet
- TV rights to Tom Donahue's "Casting By" have been acquired by HBO Documentary Films, following its premiere at Toronto. The film shines a light on casting directors, the "unsung heroes" of filmmaking, and offers a new perspective on Hollywood history; Casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped change the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Afforded the unprecedented freedom and power of the new medium of television, they broke away from the traditional typecasting of Hollywood and brought a new kind of leading man and leading lady to the screen, as in actors like James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, et al. The film includes personal narratives from the...
- 9/13/2012
- by Sophia Savage
- Thompson on Hollywood
"Casting By," the new documentary by "Guest of Cindy Sherman" director Tom Donahue, has been acquired for TV by HBO. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Monday and next screens at the New York Film Festival October 12. Produced by Kate Lacey, Donahue, Ilan Arboleda and Joanna Colbert, "Casting By" looks at the last fifty years in Hollywood by way of casting directors, profiling pioneers in the field like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster, whose ability to spot screen potential helped shape the New Hollywood era with films such as “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” These casting directors helped steer cinema away from traditional conceptions of leading men and women, finding places for actors such as James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman. ...
- 9/13/2012
- by Alison Willmore
- Indiewire
Toronto, Sept. 13, 2012 – HBO Documentary Films has acquired the U.S. television rights to Tom Donahue’s feature documentary film Casting By, it was announced today. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday evening to an enthusiastic crowd and will next be screened at the New York Film Festival. Produced by Kate Lacey, Tom Donahue, Ilan Arboleda & Joanna Colbert, Casting By puts the spotlight on filmmaking’s unsung heroes – the casting director – and takes us on a fast-paced journey through the last half-century of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped change the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Afforded the unprecedented freedom and power of the new medium of television,...
- 9/13/2012
- by MIKE FLEMING
- Deadline TV
Toronto, Sept. 13, 2012 – HBO Documentary Films has acquired the U.S. television rights to Tom Donahue’s feature documentary film Casting By, it was announced today. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday evening to an enthusiastic crowd and will next be screened at the New York Film Festival. Produced by Kate Lacey, Tom Donahue, Ilan Arboleda & Joanna Colbert, Casting By puts the spotlight on filmmaking’s unsung heroes – the casting director – and takes us on a fast-paced journey through the last half-century of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped change the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Afforded the unprecedented freedom and power of the new medium of television,...
- 9/13/2012
- by MIKE FLEMING
- Deadline
It’s undoubtedly true that any “genre” TV series is only as good as its best villains, and the reason for the enduring popularity of HBO’s True Blood (which has its fourth season premiere on June 26th) is the fact that it’s given us so many wickedly entertaining otherworldly antagonists to sink our collective teeth into over the last three years.
So what makes for a good supernatural evildoer? With so many different factors to consider (not the least of which is the talent of the performer inhabiting the role) it’s certainly a tough thing to quantify, but in order to celebrate the return of Sookie Stackhouse and company we thought we’d give it a shot anyway.
Below you can check out Ae’s profiles on ten preternatural vampires, demons, witches, warlocks and other assorted miscreants that have captured the popular imagination on the small screen over the years,...
So what makes for a good supernatural evildoer? With so many different factors to consider (not the least of which is the talent of the performer inhabiting the role) it’s certainly a tough thing to quantify, but in order to celebrate the return of Sookie Stackhouse and company we thought we’d give it a shot anyway.
Below you can check out Ae’s profiles on ten preternatural vampires, demons, witches, warlocks and other assorted miscreants that have captured the popular imagination on the small screen over the years,...
- 6/22/2011
- by Chris Eggertsen
- The Backlot
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