BIFF Magic Night

Thursday was a magical movie night.  First up tonight I attended the world premiere of the documentary 'Show me the Magic' which profiles legendary Australian cinematographer Donald McAlpine.  In attendance was Mr McAlpine, his wife and Jack Thompson, a friend of Don's and patron of APSA.  Plus the director and producers of the doco.

Don McAlpine started his career in Australia quite late in the piece after being a teacher and then filing news reports for the ABC.  He worked on early Australian classics Breaker Morant, Don's Party and My Brilliant Career, which provided a springboard to Hollywood where he worked with director Paul Mazursky quite a bit.  He has a varied resume, never making the same type of film.  He's done action, comedy, Predator, drama and musicals.  I think his work on Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet is particularly good and seeing some clips from the making of that movie makes me want to watch it again.  The movie did a good job of showing what a cinematographer actually does, which is basically lighting and framing the scenes to make it look just right on the screen - dark when you want it dark, light when you want it light, and each actor framed perfectly.  It was also an interesting look at his life, illustrating the saying 'behind every good man is a great worman' quite well, as his wife proves to be a funny, feisty lady who gave up her own teaching career to be with her husband as he travelled the world so that they could hold their marriage together and he could follow his dream.  Not that I advocate that, just that it obviously works well for them.

I had to miss the Don McAlpine Q&A session to speed over to Palace Centro to see 'Following'.  A very good introduction from the 'first films' programmer indicated to us that this first film from director Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins trilogy, The Prestige, Inception) was filmed on an extremely low budget, in between the 9 to 5 jobs of the director, actors and crew, using natural light and minimal sets.  We were thus prepared for what followed, which despite the low budget and low lighting in places still managed to be a complex neo-noir drama.  An interesting concept (a burglar with a motive beyond just stealing stuff, he seems to enjoy messing with the heads of the victims more) with a twist in the tail long before that was trendy, and telling the story out of time but still keeping you guessing.  It's an impressive debut even though not the most thrilling movie we've watched.  However, you can definitely see where he built on the ideas in this film for Memento, his second film which was a really big step up from this one.  'Following' is due to be released on DVD for the first time in the near future, so if you're curious to see where this excellent director got his start, check it out.