Nicole Kidman Also Thinks She Was Lousy in 'Australia'

It turns out, Nicole Kidman had the same reaction to Australia as the rest of us. In a recent radio interview, Kidman said, "I can't look at this movie and be proud of what I've done...I sat there and I looked at [husband Keith Urban] and went 'Am I any good in this movie?'" While I didn't think it was all Kidman's fault, she sure wasn't anything special and Australia was hardly the movie a lot of us expected. It was bloated, undone by its own desire to be great and meaningful. But the story was problematic for director Baz Luhrmann, who should have placed more restrictions on an "epic" story. Kidman actually says the only two films she's watched in her career are Australia and her other Baz collaboration, Moulin Rouge!, which I find difficult to accept. She doesn't throw her director or her cast members under the bus with Australia, pointing out that Hugh Jackman and young Brandon Walters are "wonderful" in the movie, but countered by saying, "It's just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all." Once again, Kidman and I see eye to eye.

Oscar Visual Effects Candidates Narrowed to Seven

The first Oscar short list for the highly competitive visual effects award has been whittled from fifteen films to seven, and the three most likely winners, at least in my opinion, are still in the running. This award is quickly becoming one of the biggest Oscars handed out every year. It's not in the Big Five - picture, actor, actress, director, screenply - but it has probably become the most coveted technical award every year. That prominence should only grow as visual effects become a more integral part of what we wouldn't traditionally think of as "effects" movies. For example, I think Benjamin Button is the runaway choice this year. Last year, David Fincher's Zodiac was loaded with them, but you'd never notice. And because he's using effects to create more commonplace things, the challenge is much greater than making an army of skeletons. Here are the seven potential nominees, and remember that this list will eventually be cut to three: Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Iron Man
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Voters of the Academy's Visual Effects branch will see 15 minutes of each film on Thursday, January 15th, after which, they'll nominate the three finalists. Those movies will be revealed the following Thursday when all the Academy Award nominations are announced.

The Biggest Flops of 2008

We all know 2008 was a bad year economically. You don't have to look very far or watch the news for very long to see the repercussions of the worst financial and employment market in at least 30 years, and possibly 80 years.

For the most part, movies retained their success seen in previous years. Why is that? It's still a relatively cheap night out, even if you're talking about a family of four hitting a matinee. It's also one of the few things you can't get anywhere else. You don't have to eat out at a restaurant, you can watch the baseball games on TV. But if you wanted to see The Dark Knight, that meant for most of you paying $10 or so to watch it in theaters this summer. Another reason for the success of films overall is that the studios have such specific marketing for them now that they target the people most likely to see that film over another. That can't be the only measuring stick, and in fact, quality was a big factor this year. At least six of the top ten films of the year got great reviews, and the only movie that wasn't critically acclaimed that really even needed good press was Hancock. The others - Indy Jones, Madagascar, and Twilight - all had built-in fan bases, and you could really only argue that Twilight was a bad movie, although I'm not sure I'd go that far. The point is, audiences responded to really good films this year and avoided some junk. But how do we know what's a hit? It's not as easy as just making more money than your movie cost. These are never completely isolated things. A studio or producer could make $40 million on one movie but lose $60 million on another, or a movie with an A-list star and A-list director could have to split a lot of the profits because of contractual incentives, or the marketing could be irresponsibly pricy. A good example of weird movie math came this summer when Jeff Rubinov - whose studio, Warner Bros., is the big winner in 2008 - said that the company was a little disappointed in the performance of Get Smart. Just so we know what we're dealing with here, Get Smart cost about $80 million plus marketing and advertising and all of that stuff, and in the U.S., it made back its money. The movie earned $130 million here at home, plus another $100 million internationally. You'd think an $80 million movie that rang up nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worth of business before DVD and cable kicks in would be a smash. Now, it doesn't work that way for every movie, but it's worth thinking about; how high were the expectations for Get Smart if it fails to meet those expectations at $230 million? Wouldn't expectations be just as high on some of these other films? Some of those figures are easy: Australia is a bomb. It cost at least $130 million and it won't make that much even with the international box office. Considering all the little add-ons, like marketing and distribution costs, Fox spent more on that movie than it can make back. DVD changes those figures significatly, but it's not exactly free to make and promote DVDs, either.

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Baz, Fox Can't Even Give 'Australia' Away

It has not been a dream scenario for director Baz Luhrmann: His new epic, Australia was a huge financial burden for 20th Century Fox, adding up to $160 million in budget spending, according to some reports. Then it was barely finished on time, and it showed up in theaters both dead on arrival commercially and lambasted critically. To date, the film has only made $63 million worldwide. Could one of the reasons for the slow box office be illegal downloading? No, Luhrmann can't even blame the pirates in this case. An article in The Sydney Morning Herald reveals that the film is barely getting any action on Bit Torrent, a combination of the poor quality of the illegally recorded version of the film, Australia's excruciating length, and the poor notices. "The number of 'seeds' - people who have downloaded the full film and are sharing it - is below 10 for most copies of the film but one boasts 400 seeds," observes the paper. At one point, Luhrmann's film was thought to be a potential player at the end of the year, both commercially and for awards. But now all the director and the studio can do is lick their wounds, hope for a bountiful DVD release, which also seems unlikely, and move on.

Baz Luhrmann Takes On 'The Great Gatsby'

I was so looking forward to Australia, as any regular Big Picture reader knows, but man, was that thing a disappointment. The story ran amok, and it could have been great had it chosen to be about one thing instead of three. The ending felt ladled on and supremely unnatural. And I question director Baz Luhrmann, showing the beauty of his homeland, resorting to soundstages and digital effects to alter the color of the sky.

Audiences have responded less than favorably, as well, as it won't come close to making back its budget in the theatrical run. Three-hour-long movies that cost $130 million have a way of doing that.But Baz is moving on, and according to Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily, the next project on the horizon for Luhrmann is The Great Gatsby. If you've never read the book, you're not as enlightened as you should be. And in a way, F. Scott Fitzgerald was laying the tracks for a great movie, even if he didn't know it at the time. The same could be said of his short story that has become The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which couldn't be made properly for decades.

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