Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey a woman of courage and conviction. In addition she is rich and she has a big heart. I was born on the same date as Oprah and I must say although I am not as rich as she is, my heart is just as huge. In this blog, I will attempt to bring back news that I find interesting about this woman, Oprah Winfrey.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Oprah Winfrey interviewed Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman’s ‘Australia’

Oh la la ...

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are together in this epic "Australia" only means one thing. It is going to be a hit. I absolutely love Nicole acting and rugged good looks Hugh Jackman.

It is absolutely soooo nice to be so talented as well as good looking, yeah not to mention Hugh's devastating accent.

When I saw Hugh in a romantic comedy with tear jerker's costar Meg Ryan I knew then he is going to be a huge star. and he is.

US talk show host Oprah Winfrey gave the film’s fortunes a boost last week when Kidman and Jackman appeared on her show. “It literally swept me off my feet ...


-- “Australia,” the sweeping epic starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, premiered tonight in Sydney, carrying the hopes of the nation’s tourism and film industries bundled into a tale described by local media as a love letter to the country’s landscape and its history.

The romance, set during World War II, features Kidman as an English aristocrat who leaves her homeland to follow her husband to Australia’s north. Upon finding him dead and their property in disrepair, she undertakes a cattle drive across the country, falling in love with drover Jackman along the way.

The saga, a cross between “Gone With the Wind” and “Out of Africa,” is scheduled for release in the U.S. and Australia on Nov. 26 by News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox.

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, whose other movies include “Moulin Rouge” and “Romeo + Juliet,” the $130 million price tag makes it the most expensive film ever made in Australia.

In the downtown of Sydney -- Australia’s largest city and the film’s first shooting location -- organizers blocked off a section of the main thoroughfare in front of the Greater Union George St. Cinemas for the red-carpet premiere.

Red-Carpet Premiere

Big band music from the period played on loudspeakers in the background, two large-screen monitors were set up on either side of the entrance and two-meter high fencing adorned with banners and logos of the movie’s partners -- including Qantas Airways Ltd. -- ensconced the festivities.

Some fans lined up hours before the premiere. A reporter in period costume and another in tuxedo and black tie jostled for the best shot of the stars as they made their way down the carpet.

Organizers say some 3,000 guests were invited to the premiere. Grandstand seating for 500 people was constructed on George Street while police temporarily halted traffic around the theater ahead of the event.

In addition to Sydney, premieres were also to be held in Darwin and Bowen in the state of Queensland, two of the film’s other shooting locations. A premiere in Eastern Kimberley in Western Australia is planned for later.

The romance between Jackman’s drover and Kidman’s Lady Ashley in “Australia” echoes the bond between Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in Sydney Pollack’s 1985 “Out of Africa.”

Early reviews were mostly positive, with a hint of disappointment from the Australian media.

U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey gave the film’s fortunes a boost last week when Kidman and Jackman appeared on her show.

“It literally swept me off my feet,” Winfrey said. “You just don’t get to see movies like this anymore.”

Criticism

Near home, the Australian newspaper judged the movie “good, but not a masterpiece,” in a review posted to its Web site.

“Like his earlier films ‘Strictly Ballroom,’ ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘Moulin Rouge,’ ‘Australia’ shows Baz Luhrmann as a very theatrical director,” reviewer David Stratton wrote. “He has a great eye for compositions and the film is beautifully shot by Mandy Walker, but there’s theatricality about the film which is a bit off-putting at the beginning.”

The Sydney Morning Herald echoed the Australian, saying ‘Australia’ isn’t bad, but also isn’t destined to be classic.

“At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work- in-progress,” the Herald said. “There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble.”

Golden Age

Tait Brady, executive director of marketing support and promotion at Screen Australia, hopes the film can break a 20- year drought. Australian movies haven’t passed 10 percent of total local box office receipts since 1988, when “Crocodile Dundee II” and “The Man From Snowy River II” helped snare a 17.8 percent share.

“It clearly has to work all around the world, and its potential to reignite the international imagination about Australia like Crocodile Dundee did in Australia is huge,” Brady said. “The international imagination of Australia is still the outback and the beach, and this film plays to that.”

To contact the writer on the story: Malcolm Scott in Sydney at Mscott23@bloomberg.net.

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