Short Straw Goes A Long Way As Australian Filmmakers Head To The Oscars Ceremony For The Fourth Year In A Row

The Age

Thursday January 25, 2007

PAUL KALINA

IN LOS Angeles, the world's movie-making capital, Australia is regarded as a talent incubator.

About 1am yesterday, film school graduates Peter Templeman and Stuart Parkyn learned that their short film The Saviour had been nominated for film-dom's highest accolade, an Academy Award.

It is the fourth consecutive year an Australian short has been nominated for an Oscar.

George Miller's Happy Feet has also been nominated for best animated feature, while Cate Blanchett will have a tilt at the second Oscar of her career with a nomination for supporting actress in Notes on a Scandal.

Miller, previously nominated for Babe, is up against Cars and Monster House, while Blanchett faces a tough race to the finishing line against Adriana Barraza (Babel), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and Rinko Kikuchi (Babel).

The Saviour's producer, Stuart Parkyn, who lives in Elwood, and Perth-based writer and director Peter Templeman met as students at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

They now face an anxious 32 days to see if they will follow in the footsteps of the many Australians who have claimed Oscars in recent years - Harvey Krumpet animator Adam Elliot, cinematographers Dion Beebe and Russell Boyd, designer Catherine Martin and actors Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, to name but a few.

The Saviour is a slow-burn comedy about an evangelist in love with a married woman and is one of five films nominated in the best live-action short category.

Parkyn was taking his new-found celebrity in his stride yesterday.

"I have no great Hollywood ambitions. There are lots of versions of me over there," he said.

Parkyn believes The Saviour is a long shot for the award, which he says normally goes to a drama. He is tipping the Israeli West Bank Story to win.

"I'm assuming I'm not going to win," he said.

Parkyn turns 35 on February 5, a birthday he's likely to remember. That day he will attend a nominees' breakfast where "I could be sitting next to Martin Scorsese".

He admits he would be too dumbstruck to know what to say to the legendary director whose The Departed is up for best film.

While the buzz at last year's Oscars was the preponderance of high-minded serious films (Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich), this year it's the international mix of the contenders, as well as the anomaly of Dreamgirls landing the highest number of nominations while being overlooked for best film and director.

The multi-language Babel, directed by Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, picked up the second-highest number of nominations, seven in all, including best film and best director. Another best-film nominee, Letters from Iwo Jima, is a World War II epic with Japanese dialogue.

The British production The Queen is also nominated for best film and director (Stephen Frears), while its star, Helen Mirren, is a shoo-in for best actress. Meryl Streep is the only American contending for best actress.

Yet Hollywood's new-found internationalism should come as little surprise given that more than half of studio revenue is now earned outside of the US.

The awards will be announced on February 25 and broadcast on Channel Nine on February 26.

THE OSCARS MAJOR NOMINATIONS

BEST PICTURE

Babel

The Departed (below)

Letters from Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

The Queen

BEST ACTOR

Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond)

Peter O'Toole (Venus)

Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness)

Forest Whitaker

(The Last King of Scotland)

BEST ACTRESS

Penelope Cruz (Volver)

Judi Dench (Notes

on a Scandal)

Helen Mirren (The Queen)

Meryl Streep (The Devil

Wears Prada, left)

Kate Winslet

(Little Children)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine)

Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children)

Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond)

Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls)

Mark Wahlberg (The Departed)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Adriana Barraza (Babel)

Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal)

Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)

Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls)

Rinko Kikuchi (Babel)

DIRECTOR

Clint Eastwood (Letters from Iwo Jima)

Stephen Frears (The Queen)

Paul Greengrass (United 93)

Alejandro Gonzalez Iarritu (Babel)

Martin Scorsese (The Departed)

AUSTRALIA'S HOPES

George Miller (Best Animated Feature Film, Happy Feet, right)

Cate Blanchett (Best Supporting Actress, Notes on a Scandal)

Stuart Parkyn and Peter Templeman (Best Live-Action Short Film, The Saviour)

© 2007 The Age

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