The Week In Film Oz writers pull no punches Browsing the submissions made in response to Screen Australia's draft guidelines, there are some that make for interesting reading. One of the most strongly worded is the Australian Writers' Guild's document, which is critical of a perceived lack of commitment to the development and support of up-and-coming filmmakers. The AWG has criticised the draft guidelines for: 'Making the eligibility requirements for recognising experience prohibitively and inequitably high so as to exclude all but a select few screenwriters' and 'Abandoning first-time and emerging screenwriters completely.' The full text is available as a PDF document at Screen Australia's website. Quantum of Solace There's an embarrassment of riches out there for action fans and arguably most of the sizzle is on the small screen, in computer gaming. Hollywood has taken note, with recent film adaptations of computer games like the Resident Evil franchise, Hitman and Max Payne. While a lot of the results have been indifferent, there's no escaping the fact that gaming, to a significant degree, has defined what the modern action hero is: efficient, skilful, focussed. Character takes a back seat to tone—darkness, gallows humour— and flamboyance isn't a big feature. Interview with Daniel Craig and Marc Forster, 'Quantum of Solace' Jason Di Rosso spoke to Quantum of Solace star Daniel Craig and director Marc Forster about taking the Bond franchise into darker territory. Youth Without Youth Youth Without Youth smacks of vanity project from the first poetic moments to the last, and whose vanity lays a stronger claim to the big screen than Francis Ford Coppola's? After all, the director of The Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now has earned the right to flaunt his creative independence and explore every eccentricity. He's said he has a more exciting time crossing the foyer of a modern cinema than watching the films inside, so we can safely assume that Youth Without Youth is his answer, after a ten year break, to the formulaic tedium he abhors in the multiplex blockbusters. Fugitive Pieces Based on a novel by Canadian poet Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is the story of a man haunted by childhood memories of his Polish Jewish family, taken away by the Nazis. He was saved by a Greek leftist academic and ends up, years later, in Canada, where he channels his survivor guilt into a career as an academic and writer, but finds his quest for love a rockier road. Interview with Jeremy Podeswa, writer-director, 'Fugitive Pieces' Jason Di Rosso spoke to Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa about his new film, Fugitive Pieces. American Teen American Teen is a beautifully made documentary with a feature film aesthetic and a cast of wonderful characters. Charting the highs and lows of one group's last year in high school, director Nannette Burstein gives us America the land of the free, the brave, but mostly the aspirational. Right at the start we are told America may be a meritocracy, but high school is a caste system with the queen bees and sports jocks at the top of the greasy pole and everyone else sliding round the other end. Jake, the boy with the acne and braces and vivid alternative reality, struggles against his reputation as a super nerd as he tries to get a girlfriend. Hannah, who lives with her grandmother and dreams of becoming a filmmaker doesn't fit in with the blondes, but bears her misfit status, for the most part, proudly. LESS

Asia Pacific Screen Awards winners The Week In Film Ginnane gives Oz films a serve The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) kicked off their annual conference on the Gold Coast, with a spirited address from the president, Anthony Ginnane. The Wackness The Wackness owes its strange title to hip hop slang -- `wack´ meaning bad, poor, crap. Not that this film is set in some gritty `hood. This is about a young, white, middle-class kid from the Upper East Side who happens to love hip hop. He´s just graduated high school, he has almost no friends, he hates his parents. Wackness. Interview with Jonathan Levine, writer-director, 'The Wackness' Jason Di Rosso spoke to Jonathan Levine about his fascination with hip hop culture's influence on white middle class kids. Sex Drive I have no doubt at all that most twelve-year-olds I know will think that Sex Drive is really cool. After all, you should see what they send each other on their mobile phones these days. But Sex Drive is a horror ride through the lewd Babylon of American youth culture, and as such is unsuitable for viewing by anyone over 35. I was shocked and at some times appalled by the language alone in this latest coming-of-age comedy from that puzzling, scary and complicated entity they call the US of A. Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts Australian filmmaker Scott Hicks was approached by Philip Glass´s manager to make a film to commemorate the composer´s 70th birthday. The result is a solid portrait that should engage both fans and newbies alike, shot by Hicks himself, cinema verite style. Interview with Scott Hicks, director, 'Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts' Jason Di Rosso spoke to Scott Hicks about his warts-and-all documentary portrait of composer Philip Glass. LESS

The Week In Film Australia hype builds The PR people working to promote Baz Luhrmann´s upcoming Oz blockbuster Australia are clearly ramping up to the film´s release at the end of the month. After reports a couple of weeks ago that the production was struggling to get the film in the can, new reports surfaced this week that the film is pretty much finished -- and Oprah has seen it. The epic is complete bar a few special effects and some final touches to the soundtrack, and the American talk-show host saw it a couple of weeks ago, in preparation for interviews with stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman to air in the US on Monday. The hype is bubbling away nicely -- the $160 million film premieres on November 18 in Sydney and releases on November 26. Hunger What does it mean to use the body as a political protest? Scores have died quite recently in Turkish prisons, protesting the refusal of political status, and the imposition of solitary confinement. Interview with Steve McQueen, writer-director, Hunger An excerpt from a conversation between Movietime's Julie Rigg and Steve McQueen, recorded at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival in front of an audience. Newcastle The surf scene is such an insiders' cult world, it usually intimidates filmmakers more than rock music. Newcastle is the first mainstream Australian feature film to tackle the scene. Genius Deadwood creator David Milch famously fell over with his attempt to capture the surf world, including the drug issues and snarks of professional surfing, in John From Cincinatti. Of course the British did Cornish surfers in Blue Juice, which was all black beaches and grey skies, and the Americans did Blue Crush in Hawaii with girls, which was 'sick as'. But the basic attraction of surf culture is visual seduction: Hot young bods flying along crystal cylinders. Men's Group A group of sad, frustrated men form a support group to discuss their emotional problems in this moody drama from first-time Australian director and co-writer Michael Joy. Set mostly in a Sydney loungeroom, with glimpses of the outside world presented as vignettes or sequences put to music, the film feels a little like watching a group of professional actors workshopping an idea. The key problem here is that the ensemble never really gels -- the tone of the performances is uneven and the pacing feels off. The individual stories are also predictable: there's the dad who can't communicate with his son; the stitched-up corporate type with a brutal, violent streak; the former judge who finds it impossible to look critically upon his own lonely life. While this smorgasboard of male dysfunction no doubt offers something for everyone, the film isn't bigger than the sum of its parts and offers few great insights or dramatic watersheds. Traitor I like Don Cheadle, the star of Traitor -- he was terrific in Hotel Rwanda and always comes across as a man of integrity, without even trying. And that´s a problem for Traitor, written incidentally by Steve Martin, when we´re supposed to wonder whose side Don is on. Come on! It´s Don Cheadle! He plays an American ex-serviceman who is also a devout Muslim (do most Americans really consider the two to be mutually exclusive?) But there´s no real suspense in the questions, Does he love God more than his country? And what´s he doing hanging out with terrorists? Roman de gare This romantic thriller begins in a motorway café with a man watching a couple argue. When the girl is left behind, he offers her a lift and she accepts. He´s played by Dominique Pinon and at first veteran French writer-director Claude Lelouch keeps us hanging, offering various hints as to who this man is: a serial killer, a ghostwriter, a schoolteacher who´s just left his wife and kids. She is played by Audrey Dana and is also ambiguous: a Parisian hairdresser and celebrity junky, it´s a surprise when she takes the man back to meet her family who live on a rundown farm. Dying Breed Another 'men´s group' film which twists the rules of classic buddy culture is the new Aussie flick Dying Breed. It certainly doesn´t stray from the classic horror format -- wilderness, witless city folk, beastly male predators who eat people´s faces and torture nice young girls... It´s text-book gorefest. Give it a miss if you don´t like blood. Screening of New Babylon As part of the Russian Resurrection film festival, there will be a Sydney screening of the 1929 silent Expressionist classic New Babylon, accompanied by the SBS Youth Orchestra playing the Shostakovich score, on November 9. Nights in Rodanthe A weepy, mushy romance starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere as a couple of divorcees who meet in a tiny beachside hotel that´s all ornate shutters and shingles on the roof and looks like something the elves from Lord of the rings would live in. He´s the only guest, she´s the only staff member and, as the ocean heaves and the lightning flashes, they share a night to remember in the 'Blue Room'. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, this is strictly for romantic masochists. Enough tears in the final reel to fill a Hollywood producer´s swimming pool. LESS

The Week In Film Jane Campion to direct Runaway Jane Campion is to direct a film based on a short story by the Canadian novelist Alice Munro. Runaway, published in 2004, is the story of a marriage coming apart and, according to Campion, 'it reveals a lot about dysfunctional female thinking'. Choke When Choke first appeared in American cinemas earlier this year, a couple of critics complained that director Clark Gregg had not played this film sufficiently for laughs. Trash and Treasure: Delia Falconer on Vanishing Point This week's guest is writer Delia Falconer, who's just edited an anthology called The Penguin Book of the Road. We've asked her to pick her favourite Road Movie, and she's come up with the 1971 film Vanishing Point directed by Richard Sarafian. Interview with John Weiley Now to Imax, large-format cinema, digital 3D and some of the issues arising as cinemas once more try to make a trip to the movies an event quite different from home cinema. Death Race In a dystopian future, a private prison pits inmates against each other in a demolition car race to the death, beaming the coverage to a lucrative pay TV audience. A remake of the 1975 flic Death Race 2000 from the Roger Corman production line, this is an orgy of petrol, bullets and violence -- of metal colliding with flesh. Rocknrolla Guy Ritchie´s latest gangster film sees the Russian mob trying to get in on London´s real estate boom, doing business with old school East End crims. But things get complicated when a bag of money and a precious painting go missing, and a junky rock star -- who turns out to be the son of someone quite important -- is reported dead. A series of double-crosses ensues, and it´s all mind-numbingly convoluted. Ritchie´s characters are glamorous underworld fantasies, but he´s incapable of making them resonate; to stand for something. All you´re left to admire is his style -- the chic art direction and camera work -- but it´s a hollow achievement. Centre Stage: Turn It Up A small-town girl fails her audition at a prestigious New York ballet school, but she´s convinced to give it a second go when she falls in love with one of the students. You feel sorry for the real-life dancers on screen here (including Ethan Stiefel, principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre); they're pirouetting and sweating through a film that´s unimaginatively shot and reciting hammy dialogue that even seasoned thesps would struggle with. One for dance enthusiasts only. LESS