At The Movies: April 9 / 16

Naomi Watts will be interviewed about her new film The Painted Veil on At The Movies, April 16.

Other films to be reviewed this month include Global Haywire with an interview by cartoonist Bruce Petty, plus Prom Night, Gone Baby Gone, Semi Pro, Edge of Heaven and Street Kings.

‘At the Movies’ – EP 9 – APRIL 9
GLOBAL HAYWIRE + i/v with director Bruce Petty Featuring commentary from Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Tariq Ali & Robert Fisk and starring Barry Otto & Robyn Nevin Written, directed and animated by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker and cartoonist Bruce Petty, Global Haywire is a wholly original approach to one of the most important questions of our time. Why have we have reached the present crisis point between East and West? Petty gathers a committee of real and animated figures to investigate. Evidence is heard from students and luminaries such as Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and Robert Fisk. A wealth of archival footage and issues from globalisation to diminishing oil reserves and terrorism are thrown into this animated mixing pot. Petty’s brilliant satirical creation suggests that madness is indeed at the heart of our global situation, and takes just a touch of visual mayhem to put the point across.

Bruce Petty is one of Australia ’s best-known political satirists and cartoonists and he is the only Australian to have won an Academy Award for animation. Petty’s work as an illustrative journalist has taken him to many of the world’s trouble spots such as Vietnam , Timor and Pakistan , as well as to the United States for regular first-hand coverage of the elections. His work has appeared in the pages of The New Yorker, The Mirror, The Australian, Punch and The Age and on the ABC and his previous film work includes the short films Leisure and Human Contraptions. Global Haywire marks Bruce Petty’s feature film debut.

PROM NIGHT – Donna’s senior prom is supposed to be the best night of her life. After surviving a horrible tragedy, she has finally moved on and is enjoying her last year of high school. Surrounded by her best friends, she should be safe from the horrors of her past. But when the night turns deadly, there is only one person who could be responsible … a man she thought was gone forever. Now, Donna and her friends must find a way to escape the sadistic rampage of an obsessed killer, and survive a night ‘to die for.’

HOW SHE MOVE – Following her sister’s death from drug addiction, a high school student is forced to leave her private school to return to her old, crime-filled neighbourhood where she rekindles an unlikely passion for the competitive world of step dancing. Directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid

GONE BABY GONE – directed by Ben Affleck, starring Morgan Freeman, Casey Affleck. Dorchester, one of the toughest neighbourhoods in all of Boston , is no place for the weak or innocent. It’s a territory defined by hard heads and even harder luck, its streets littered with broken families, hearts, dreams. When one of its own, a 4-year-old girl, goes missing, private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don’t want the case. But after pleas from the child’s aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everything — their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives — to find a little girl-lost.

SEMI PRO – starring Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson. Jackie Moon, the owner-coach-player of the American Basketball Association’s Flint Michigan Tropics, rallies his teammates to make their NBA dreams come true

EP 10 – APRIL 16
EDGE OF HEAVEN + i/v with director
A college professor, Nejat, travels from Hamburg to Istanbul to find Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay), the Turkish daughter of his father’s friend, who he wants to help financially following an unexpected tragedy. He learns later that she was deported from Germany for her activism and has since become a political prisoner. Whilst in Germany , Ayten befriends Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska)and she and her mother Susanne (Hanna Schygulla) become entangled in the consequences.

PARIS – directed by Cedric Klapisch The story begins with Pierre (Romain Duris), a young man unexpectedly confronted with his own mortality. For the next 24 hours, his tour through the city will weave with those of his beloved sister (Juliette Binoche), his neighbours (some known, some not), their friends and workmates, and their interconnected stories of love, familial bonds, loneliness and compassion come together in unexpected ways.

THE PAINTED VEIL +i/v with Naomi Watts… Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil is a love story set in the 1920’s about a young English couple, Walter (Edward Norton), a middle class doctor and Kitty (Naomi Watts), an upper-class woman, who marry for the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai , where Kitty falls in love with someone else. When Walter uncovers her infidelity, in an act of vengeance he accepts a job in a remote village in China ravaged by a deadly epidemic, and takes her along. Their journey brings meaning to their relationship and gives them purpose in one of the most remote and beautiful places on earth.

STREET KINGS – Actor Keanu Reeves stars as Tom Ludlow, a veteran LAPD cop who finds solace in the bottle after the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he’s been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to uncover an extortion conspiracy that runs deep with the department.

At The Movies airs 10:00pm Wednesdays on ABC1.