| Reference Type |
The Sydney Morning Herald
newspaper
|
| Title |
South Solitary Movie Shot in Tasmania |
| Chapter/Web article title |
A Wild and Woolly Adventure |
| Author(s) | Karl Quinn |
| Town |
Sydney |
| State |
NSW |
| Country |
Australia |
| Publication Date |
27-07-2010 |
| Citation Date |
02-05-2012 |
| Site URL |
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/a-wild-and-woolly-adventure-20100726-10smf.html |
| Comments |
Like many newspaper articles in the entertainment section this article is interesting and easy to read. The article is central to the weather as it plays an enormous part in the film unveiling characters personalities and thus begins by talking about the weather as to what was expected wet, cold and grey creating an atmosphere of emptiness and loneliness. However that is not what took place instead Portland experienced a 40 degree heatwave. This is notable as it shows the difficulties of Australian film in using the environment at hand in that no matter how charted or researched it is, it can certainly surprise. This discussion is placed in the article to set readers up as it details "watching the film, you can practically feel the cold whipping off the Southern Ocean, sense the isolation on that island lighthouse - even though it wasn't filmed on an island at all." This is the point where the article begins to change and the focus becomes on Miranda Otto as an actor rather than the film, and the focus is taken away from Australian film and rather her success in America it is easy to see how as an issue that Australia cannot compare on a global scale to America. The success of Miranda Otto in America is wider than in Australia, possibly due to the greater publicity of award ceremonies and greater movie budgets, effects within those movies making them more appealing to audiences and therefore more popular. The article tends to favour America in many aspects, and underneath it all hints to the fact that Miranda at her age would be better off with a career in America because of the greater number of roles. Although a interesting article is generally not particularly intelligent and doesnât add value to the Australian industry. Being the Sydney Morning Herald it would be likely that it would support the Australian industry however this is not the case perhaps for audience/reader purposes. It is clearly influenced by American film and only adds support to my discussion in terms of Australian environment which is discussed briefly at the beginning of the article. |
| Synopsis |
Miranda Otto tames Victoria's wild west in her latest film that also stars her father, writes Karl Quinn.
WHEN you spend six weeks shooting a film on location at a lighthouse on the Victorian coast, you have the right to expect abysmal weather. Some rain, some cloud, a bit of fog, lots of wind: that's not too much to ask, surely?
But when the cast of Shirley Barrett's South Solitary bunked down on the Shipwreck Coast last October, they didn't exactly get what they'd bargained for. ''We got a heatwave,'' says Miranda Otto, who stars in the film, set in the blustery 1920s, as a rather lost but relentlessly upbeat woman called Meredith.
''We'd been doing the wardrobe fittings here in Melbourne in the months before the shoot, and it was freezing and raining, and they're saying: 'I hope you're going to be warm enough; one day you're going to have to fall in the water. We'll get you a wetsuit, we'll get you thermals, we'll get you layers and layers.' They'd studied weather charts for 100 years to be sure they'd get enough of the skies and the weather they needed. And then we arrived in Portland and it hit 40 degrees; crazy hot weather.''
Miranda Otto as Meredith in South Solitary.
You'd never know it, though. Watching the film, you can practically feel the cold whipping off the Southern Ocean, sense the isolation on that island lighthouse - even though it wasn't filmed on an island at all; the externals were shot at Cape Nelson, on a headland near Portland, and the interiors at Cape Otway lighthouse, near Apollo Bay - and touch the tension as it ripples between Meredith and her lighthouse-keeper uncle, played by real-life father Barry Otto.
So, how was it playing opposite the old man?
''Great. It was fun, because we were playing characters quite different to us. Dad is not the strict taskmaster, the put-them-down dad. He's the ⦠complete opposite to his character, and that made it fun.'' It's the third time she's worked with her father, in fact. ''The first thing we did together was Dead Letter Office, about a girl who's looking for her long-lost father ⦠It was very emotional. It's harder to do something that's closer to your own relationship.''
She's acted with her husband, Peter O'Brien, too, in the Lindy Chamberlain mini-series Through My Eyes. ''He was a lawyer, cross-examining me,'' she says. ''It was much more interesting for us to use the relationship in that way than to play husband and wife. That would be a bit strange.''
Though she looks younger, Otto is, at 42, at that age when roles traditionally become a bit thinner on the ground for women. She's not struggling for work, she says, but admits ''the opportunities change''.
In America, where she's enjoyed considerable success, many of the best roles for women in their 40s are in television rather than film.
''The biggest audience for films is women over 30, yet so much of the time you hear producers say, 'We're looking to target 15-year-old boys in the midwest', and you're like, 'Really? Do you not want anybody else?' ''
Otto thought she'd landed the perfect job in 2007 when she scored a part in Cashmere Mafia, alongside fellow Australian Frances O'Connor and Americans Lucy Liu and Bonnie Somerville. ''I loved it,'' she says. ''I loved living in New York, I loved the girls, the people involved in the show, I loved doing something that was mainly women talking to women about the things women talk about. I don't see enough of that on TV.''
But the show lasted only seven episodes, a victim of indifferent ratings and the protracted writers' strike that winter. ''It was a really ideal job, kind of hard to top, really. And great clothes, too,'' she says, a little wistfully. Just perfect for lighthouse weather.
|
tags:
add tag Please Wait...
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
