The Elvis trailer is here from Baz Luhrmann; two Bombshell stars reunite for Barbie; the Melbourne International Film Festival announces a huge prize. Plus: Fargo will be back. All in today’s very Australian Movie News Rundown.
But First: Sean Baker, director of Red Rocket, one of my two favorite films of the last year, gives A24 a tour of his movie poster collection.
Fargo Season 5: FX just announced a fifth season of the captivating Noah Hawley series. There’s no casting news yet, but FX says it is “set in 2019, when is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours?”
Elvis Lives: Baz Luhrmann has unveiled his new trailer for Elvis, starring Austin Butler as the once and future king of rock ‘n’ roll. Luhrmann says he’ll take us back to a time when Elvis wasn’t an institution, but “punk” — because absolutely no one knew what to make of this very strange, hip-swiveling boy from Tupelo. The trailer, which also features Tom Hanks truly going for it as Elvis’ brilliant but shady manager, Colonel Tom Parker, is here:
Bombshell Reunion: Kate McKinnon, who appeared with Margot Robbie in 2019’s terrific Bombshell, will work with her again in Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s new film based on the Mattel doll. Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script, which we suspect will be rather subversive. Robbie is producing through her company, LuckyChap Entertainment, along with Tom Ackerley. She’ll play Barbie, Ryan Gosling will play Ken, and McKinnon will play a mystery person. Deadline exclusively broke the news.
Happy Late Valentine’s Day: As a lucky fellow married to the wise and beautiful publisher of MovieMaker, Deirdre McCarrick, I always root for couples who work together. The Barbie project involves at least three: Gerwig and Baumbach, Robbie and Ackerley, and Ken and Barbie. Here’s a big story we did on LuckyChap.
Even More Australians: This transition works best if you know Luhrmann and Robbie are Australian. Okay? Here we go. The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced a new Best Film Award that carries a prize of AUD$140,000 — about $100,000. That’s the richest feature film prize in the Southern Hemisphere, and one of the most generous in the world. Up to ten films will compete for the Best Film Award, and all genres are welcome, from fiction to documentary to animation. The Competition films will be Australian premieres of a director’s first or second feature-length film, and the winner film will be decided by a jury of prominent international and Australian guests. More information is here.
How You Like Them Apples: “Alcarras,” from director Carla Simon, is the winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear, it’s biggest prize. Jury president M. Night Shyamalan praised the film for “its extraordinary performances, from the child actors to the actors in their 80s, for the ability to show the tenderness and comedy and struggle.” The film is a rural family drama set in Alcarràs, Catalonia, and here is a a clip that reveals nothing whatsoever.
Speaking of Apple: In the latest episode of the Low Key Podcast, Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie and I discuss the Netflix Kristen Bell parody The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, a Netflix miniseries so compelling that we start talking about a bunch of movies we can barely remember the names of. You can listen on Apple or Spotify or right here:
Interestingly: In the next episode of the podcast we’ll talk about Steven Soderbergh’s Zoë Kravitz drama Kimi, which is exactly the kind of movie The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is parodying, yet it 100 times better than The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It also has a shorter name. As the author of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Elvis + Barbie? This Rundown feels like an early 2010s Lana del Rey song of the sort that might pop up in a Baz Luhrmann movie.
Main image: Austin Butler as Elvis Presley at his ’68 Comeback Special, from Warner Bros. Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann. Photo by by Hugh Stewart.
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