Why Tommy Is Smarter Than 80% Of Australian Filmmakers

You'd think my last blog on the Aussie film industry might have changed a few minds. I mean, I'm not so modest as to think that the Who's Who of the Australian entertainment industry don't read my blog. Why, just last week I got an e-mail from Molly Meldrum asking me if I was free on a Saturday night. What a nice man. What a nice, unmarried man.

Anyway, I must have thought wrong, cause they're still doing the same shit. This week, the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) approved $54m bucks of funding for five new Aussie films, which is kind of like lending a box of tissues to a 15-year old boy - you ain't going to get much back. In fact, by my calculations, only one of these movies is going to be worth watching. Let's take a look at them, and see if you can pick it.

The first is called The Black Balloon, and to my disappointment, has nothing to do with the Goo Goo Dolls best song. Instead, it's a, wait for it, 'coming of age' film starring Toni Collette. Because that's the problem with the Australian film industry. Not enough 'coming of age' films. Toni plays a heavily-pregnant mother of two kids, one of whom is autistic. Semi-hotty model Gemma Ward plays a hotty, the only part of the film that makes any financial sense. Oh, but wait, it gets better. It's based on the life of its director! Now, all we need to do is murder the director and replace them with someone who isn't an uninteresting, pompous tosspot, and we got ourselves a movie, see.

I love you Gemma, even if you look like the Martian equivalent of Kate Hudson

The second film is called The Children Of Huang Shi. Let me repeat, the second Australian film that just got $10 million from the Film Finance Corporation of Australia is called The Children Of Huang Shi. It's about a British journalist and an Australian nurse who save orphans during Japan's invasion of China in 1937. It will be shot in China and Melbourne, and post-produced in Australia and Germany. Flaming blazes, chuck another Alf Stewart on the barbie, cause that movie just can't get anymore bloody Australian, crikey.

The cast and crew of The Children Of Huang Shi.
Mega awesoma Crocodile Hunter-domo!

The third film is a thriller called Acolytes, by a guy named Jon Hewitt. I don't know anything about this movie, but he spells his name 'Jon' without an H, so I'm going to assume the movie is going to be shit.

The fourth film is a drama called September. According to the article, it's "about the friendship between two 15-year-olds - one white and one black - in Australia's wheatbelt in the late 1960s." Woah. Hold your horses, director Peter Carstairs. Friendship? Late 1960's? Wheatbelt? Could such an exciting combination of things exist?! If this is a coming-of-age story too, I think I might just shit myself in anticipation, and then make a coming of age story about said shit.

But... what lies BEYOND the wheat?


(More wheat)

The fifth and final film, Daybreakers, is by the creators of the critical and financial success Undead. It's being financed by successful American film company Lion's Gate, and is a 'big budget vampire movie'. In case you couldn't tell by how I used the words 'success', 'successful' and 'big budget vampire movie', this is the one I think will actually, you know, have people watch it.

And just a tip, people who make shitty movies - maybe if you made more films like Undead, and Wolf Creek, and The Castle, and Lantana, and Crackerjack, and less 'coming of age' stories about a "struggling inner-city writer and the Phillipino manboy she meets while visiting an art gallery run by her troubled executive best friend only to discover that her salvation lies within herself following a battle with depression and drugs", maybe then you wouldn't have to rely on $54 million bucks from the FFC to make SHIT MOVIES THAT NOBODY WANTS TO WATCH!@#


WHY DO I KEEP HAVING TO REPEAT MYSELF, AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY PEOPLE

GOSH!~