Australia

[polkablues]

First snap: Kidman in new Baz flick
Source: The Daily Telegraph

THIS is the first picture of Nicole Kidman looking grand as cattle queen Lady Sarah Ashley in Baz Luhrmann's sweeping new $120 million epic Australia.

The Oscar-winning beauty, 39, plays an upper-crust English aristocrat who heads Down Under just before World War II to confront her skirt-chasing husband - only to find him dead.

This leaves her in control of a massive Northern Territory cattle station the size of Belgium.

Kidman joins a massive cast of top Aussie talent with Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, John Jarratt, David Gulpilil and Bill Hunter all hand-picked by Luhrmann.

Filming began in Sydney this week at the 150-year-old Strickland House in Vaucluse, which is doubling as Darwin's Government House.

Kidman and a bearded Jackman were earlier spotted brushing up on their riding skills in Centenntial Park. Riding is an essential part of the film - the pair fall in love as Jackman, playing a rough stockman, helps her drive 1500 cattle across the property.

Shooting takes place over five months with the production moving to the tiny North Queensland mango town of Bowen later this month.

The coastal community is now bustling with construction workers as more than eight town blocks are taken back in time.

Stockyards, shacks, old-fashioned cottages, shops and even a hotel have been erected at the oceanfront site.

A 93-year-old sugar cane locomotive called Homebush has even been enlisted to play a significant role in the flick. The loco started chugging around near Mackay in 1915 and was kept in mint condition by sugar company CSR.

Homebush will stay in Bowen until the end of next month - CSR even had to arrange for train tracks to be laid in the town's main street to complete the illusion.

But getting Bowen ready hasn't been all smooth sailing.

New Idea magazine made a classic blunder when it ran a photo purportedly of Bowen's main street with inset snaps of Kidman and Jackman.

Unfortunately the picture is of the main street of Roma - an inland Queensland town at least 1000km to the southwest. It also features a series of distinctive bottle trees, which can't even be found in Bowen.

Bowen Shire Mayor Mike Brunker was not amused.

"Of all the beautiful photos of Bowen they had to go and use one of Roma,'' he stormed. "(The photo) has even got bottle trees in it."

She looks like River Phoenix in "Last Crusade".

[MacGuffin]

[polkablues]

Just looking at that picture, you can tell the role was intended for Russell Crowe.

[cine]

in australia i guess it'll do alright..

in north america, however, this will make a grand total of zero dollars.

[hedwig]

that's true because i'll sneak in.

[Gamblour.]

in australia i guess it'll do alright..

in north america, however, this will make a grand total of zero dollars.

Yeah, it reminds me a bit of this Eddie Izzard bit about The Great Escape and including Steve McQueen as the only jeans-wearing American among all the Brits, because us Americans can't relate to anything solely about the British.

[cine]

yea, the title makes the movie far too polarizing for anyone to care.

[Pubrick]

polarizing implies that ppl care.

god, canadians, eh. fucking morons.

[cine]

and now i NEWWWSAAAUTHHWALLLES myself.

[MacGuffin]

Luhrmann's Australia Set for November
Source: ComingSoon.net

20th Century Fox has set a November 14, 2008 release date for Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Set in northern Australia prior to World War II, the film centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.

The only other movie scheduled for the date so far is director Tim Story's The Patriots, a drama with Forest Whitaker, but a week earlier, on Nov. 7, Madagascar: The Crate Escape and Quantum of Solace open. A week later, on the 21st, comes Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

[Kal]

Yeah, Madagascar and Bond will not make enough room for this... I'm sorry for Baz but this looks like it may the 2008's Alexander.

[MacGuffin]

[Kal]

bomb

[edison]

Trailer

[MacGuffin]