Is Mia Wasikowska the future of Hollywood?

I first became aware of Mia Wasikowska when I caught her in a great little indie Australian film called September. Marking the debut of filmmaker Peter Carstairs, the film is certainly one of the most beautiful that I've seen in quite some time. It's lush photography of the wind swept Australian countryside called to mind the work done by the likes of Néstor Almendros.


In it, Mia stars as the new girl in town whose sun kissed beauty plays a part in the unraveling friendship between the two boys at the center of the film. If the part sounds like a hoary cliche (which, I must admit, is true in theory), the ways in which she and Carstairs handle her role as the central impetus for the straw that breaks the camel's back manages to sidestep any weariness that might come from a motif that has been handled in so many other films before.

Carstairs praised her in an interview published by an Australian news site:

Mia is in an exceptional class as an actor. She is one of those gifted actors who doesn't appear to be doing anything. You just put a camera on her and she hardly moves, but is just so engaging.

I spoke previously about my love for this film here.

A few months after I saw September, I began to notice the name Mia Wasikowska popping up in quite a few places (remarkable considering the name's length). She starred in the eternally troubled Australian crocodile flick Rogue, co starring Michael Vartan and fellow up and coming Australian Sam Worthington, and was recently critically lauded for her work on the HBO series In Treatment, a role that required her to go toe to toe with Gabriel Byrne.

All of this is impressive, but what prompted this post are the three high profile projects she is attached to over the course of the next three years. This year sees the release of Defiance, Ed Zwick's World War 2 themed appeal to the Academy starring Daniel Craig. In 2009, Mia will appear as pilot and prodigy Elinor Smith in Mira Nair's Amelia Earhart biopic opposite Hilary Swank. Smith is known for a number of reasons, most notably for becoming the youngest woman to fly solo at age 15 and for becoming the youngest person to earn a pilot's license in the U.S. at age 16.


News came out this week that Tim Burton has chosen her to play Alice in his 2010 release of Alice in Wonderland, rumored to co star Johnny Depp (a safe bet considering recent history).

Now relocated to L.A., the 18-year-old actress ruminated on her recent success in the same article containing the praise from Carstairs:

It's all been a huge learning curve and really unexpected to be where I am at the moment. I want to just do my job and do it well

If history repeats itself, she will continue to do just that. Vanity Fair can tout Emma Roberts on the cover all it wants as the future of Hollywood, but I suspect that the future might just be with Mia Wasikowska.

Hooray for Australian Cinema! (Part 2)

Peter Carstairs' September is a much better film than it has any right to be. The plot, when read as a 3 sentence synopsis, sounds like every coming-of-age tale you've ever read or seen, but this movie really is so much more. In his impressive first outing as a director, Carstairs' manages to take the story of the friendship between two boys, one white and one aboriginal, in 1968 Western Australia and use it to both critique Australia for its intolerant past and celebrate it for all its resilience and beauty.


The fields and skies of Australia have, in my admittedly limited experience, rarely been filmed as majestically or lovingly as they are here. Most of the action, wisely, takes place outdoors, in the middle of windswept fields and on the roof tops of farm houses. Every scene is full of Australia. At times, it's the film's third lead, for no scene in this film would have worked nearly as well transplanted elsewhere.

The two leads, Xavier Samuel and especially Clarence John Ryan, have the added benefit of being relatively unknown (to me, anyway) and do a fine job navigating their way through the adolescent akwardness of their characters. Mia Wasikowska, as the inevitable object of one character's affection, is filmed just as adoringly as the scenery around her and manages to leave an impression despite her relatively limited screen time.

The best performance, however, is given by Kieran Darcy-Smith as the father of Xavier Samuel's character, a man struggling to be both a realistic businessman and a progressive thinker in a situation supporting neither.

There are weak points, mainly with the adult Aboriginal characters who are too underwritten to make the film a truly balanced exercise, and a few scenes suffer from clunky historical dialog, most notably in a classroom discussion of the Apollo missions. Overall, though, the film's high points much outnumber its fumbles.


Not much more need be said about the plot. Twenty minutes in, it's doubtful you won't have already guessed where this is all going. The boys build a boxing ring for playful sparring, thus they come to blows for real near the end. One of them has a crush on a girl, thus this girl will cause a wedge between them (though maybe not in the way you expect). This is classic 'Chekhov's gun'. But, in the end, this film is really about Australia: its majesty, its history, its people.

One minor quibble: I would just like to say that never in my life have I seen a pair of bright red boxing gloves in the window of a small country grocery store. I haven't exactly visited a lot of small country grocery stores, but I would be very surprised to see them there.

Hooray for Australian Cinema!

Since I'm over here in Australia for a little while longer, I've decided it would be a great idea to look up some great Australian films. If anyone has suggestions, I'd much appreciate it. (And yes, I plan on checking out Jindabyne).

Anyway, first up was The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.


I guess some people could find this offensive or something (those people need to lighten up), but I loved it. It's completely over the top while still finding time for moments of honest to god tenderness. It's so damn refreshing nowadays in a comedy full of eccentric characters for the makers to still respect the characters and treat them like human beings. When directors treat characters with spite, with no real sympathy (ahem, Running with Scissors), it shows, and doesn't make for a good movie. In Priscilla, the three leads may be over the top, but they're not just clowns we're supposed to mock for being that way. The relationship between Terrence Stamp's Bernadette and Bill Hunter's Bob is actually, GASP, sweet. We're not supposed to think it's hillarious that these people could have feelings for eachother. There's humor involved, sure, but not the type that scoffs at the two of them for the way they feel.

Hugo Weaving...how did he gut stuck pidgeon-holed as Mr. Smith? He's great in this, and it's 180 degrees from his most famous role in The Matrix. Stop working with the Wachowski brothers, Hugo. That's my advice to you.

My favorite part of the movie, though, has to be Guy Pearce. Which leads me to Today in Great Movie Quotes:



"Oh, for goodness sakes, get down off that crucifix. Someone needs the wood."

I'm totally on the Guy Pearce bandwagon. I hope the rumors are true, and he's reteaming with his The Proposition director John Hillcoat on the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Anyway...



Paint has never been hotter.

Oh...and I can't not mention the costumes. Major credit belongs to Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel for the outfits they were able to dream up.


Best. Oscar. Dress. Ever.