Ooh ooh. Bruce Beresford’s adaptation of the best-selling book, Mao’s Last Dancer starts filming in China next month.

Bruce is directing. Cast include Kyle McLachlan, Joan Chen, Jack Thompson and Aden Young. Choreography by Graeme Murphy. Screenplay by Jan Sardi who wrote the screenplay for Shine. Dancers include Madeleine Eastoe (current Australian Ballet Principal Artist), Camilla Vergotis (former Australian Ballet Principal Artist, current Hong Kong Ballet Soloist) and Steven Heathcote (former Australian Ballet Principal Artist).

It’s this sort of project that makes me yearn for my other life a little. Can’t wait to see what that collaboration of great story and amazing team of filmmakers and artists will produce.

I would like to say that I think “Underdog” has been harshly judged by our star rating. I watched it last night with my nephew and thought it wasn’t that bad! If you are after a silly, non animated movie with a cute talking dog then give it a go!

Another awards ceremony over and the winners were mainly as expected with a few nice surprises thrown in.

Australian documentary filmmaker Eva Orner won the Oscar for best documentary. Orner, 38, from Melbourne, produced the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, a film critical of the US war on terrorism. Congratulations Eva. Other Aussie contenders missed out on the Golden Man in a year where the Acadamy seemed intent on recognising the dark side of American society.

As expected “No Country for Old Men” cleaned up, “Atonement” hardly got a mention. Javier Bardem playing the killer in No Country for Old Men deserved the Oscar, Joel and Ethan Coen were like a couple of mute gamer dudes up there on the stage and I must say it annoys me when people refuse to put an effort in for their audience. Maybe they are just shy but I seriously doubt that! Having said that, I loved the film and felt it deserved to get the gong. I know a lot will disagree with me.

There were a couple of refreshing acceptance speeches from the winners of best Original Song from the movie “Once” Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Best Original Screenplay writer Diablo Cody who penned “Juno” also made me laugh and cry a bit! Tilda Swinton couldn’t quite believe her gong and gave Cate (who was up for it for her portrayal of Bob Dylan) a disbelieving look as she headed for the statue on offer. Marion Cottilard was a surprise recipient of best Actress for La Vie en Rose.

I look forward to catching the films I missed as they come into the store, am hoping that we are able to get hold of “Taxi to the Dark Side” quick smart.

Oh and all the performances of songs from “Enchanted” bombed badly. I hope someone in planning land realises this and doesn’t program big musical numbers for the cavernous Oscars stage without the big chorus, song and dance support. All and all I felt like it went on way too long as usual but am always horrified when people’s acceptance speeches are drowned out the microphone turned off mid sentence. Now that’s just rude! ‘Spose you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I am sure I heard an Aussie accent during the acceptance for Best Visual Effects winning “The Golden Compass”. Can’t seem to find out if Ben Morris is an Australian or not.

Here’s the full list of winners:

Reuters reports here and here that Sony has out maneuvered Toshiba, and secured Blu-ray as the next generation DVD format. Toshiba have indicated they’ll withdraw from their HD-DVD initiatives .. although the industry still waits on an official statement to be issued.

This is great news for everyone! HD is rapidly going full circle: we can now buy HD TVs, receive HD TV broadcasts, watch HD movie previews over the web, and record our own movies in HD. But the final step - burning our HD movies to disc, and watching the latest studio-release HD films - has forced consumers down 2 incompatible format paths - Blu-ray or HD-DVD. And that hurts. It’s hard to choose which way to go, understand why there is a difference in the first place, and then fork out good money for a format that might go the way of Betamax. But no more!

At APPLEBOX, we have a limited selection of Blu-ray discs, and are lucky to make our money back on these titles. In Fairfield (Melbourne), the awareness and penetration of Blu-ray players (mainly PS3’s) just isn’t high enough. But with this latest development, give it 18 months and I think it’ll be another story altogether. Marketing will crank up, player prices will drop, disc prices will drop (currently $10 more than a standard DVD), and all studios will release to Blu-ray. And if you’ve ever watched a high def DVD on a nice flat panel - it’s fantastic!

Ultimately Blu-ray is good for us stores as well. The files sizes are much bigger (4 gig vs 1 gig) so pirating Blu-ray discs will be harder (ie, bigger downloads) and probably continue as standard def or below. The difference in quality between a pirated movie and the real thing will become more obvious. It will also put pressure on VOD services, as streaming 4 gig of movie down our weedy broadband pipes will break your ISP limits and bring tears to their eyes.

So bring it on! At last there’s a single path forward for watching High Definition movies. And hat tip to Chris for sending the Reuters link my way.

UPDATE
In the comments Andrew Pascoe reports that it’s now official! Toshiba have issued a statement and will cease production of HD-DVD units by March.

Not one if you feel like being uplifted. The story of a young woman released from prison and her struggle to regain her life and daughter. Brilliant performances and quite a realistic gritty film that gives real insight into the plight of paroled parents. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Sherry with brutal honesty often portraying a woman you would rather not see but are somehow compelled to stick with.

Pixar does it again. Not quite the genius of “Monsters Inc” but a great film for adults and kids all the same. You can’t help but wonder how they get you to love the whole rat nest in the end but those rats are lovable without losing their rattiness. It is the Chinese year of the rat and I am a rat myself so maybe that has something to do with it…..

I digress. A great animated feature that ticks all the boxes.

The Oscars are coming up, the award presentation is back on, the writers strike is over and life in Hollywood is letting out a collective sigh of relief. Our Cate has once again done well in the nominations list. So get that champas on ice and get ready to see who will get the gong this year.

Reeltime has hit the skids. From The Age:

RECENTLY appointed ReelTime Media chief executive Andrew Wilshire has conceded the company’s lofty video-on-demand ambitions are over after handing control of its core operations to an administrator.

Jim Zavos has quit his directorship, terminated ezyDVD’s agreement with Reeltime and isn’t saying anything.

Ummm .. call me naive, but what happened to a little thing called due diligance? Or did Reeltime misrepresent their position to Jim Zavos? It’s of course easy to look back and cry ‘obvious’, but Reeltime’s strategy always looked shaky to me. John Karantzis used to trumpet the licencing rights he had secured via Hollywood as a core asset to the business. And yep, they are clearly needed - but what about the basics of movie delivery? How are people going to watch their movies? Perhaps it’s classic chicken and egg, but for my money, the delivery of a video feed to TV is crucial to a VOD strategy; it comes first. And the delivery lies firmly in the arena of consumer electronics. Your bog standard DVD player rules supreme. At $40 for a commodity player, every electronics company does one from Sanyo to Bang & Olufsen.

To break into movie downloads, you need to solve the delivery problem. But to solve it you need a convergent device with the basics of internet, wi-fi, movie selection, movie storage and of course play capability. This isn’t easy to come by! Reeltime thinking they’ll just whip one up for the tiny Australian market, pitch it at a great price and watch their business grow was never going to work. Video Ezy has the same idea for their set top box, and sorry, but that won’t work either.

To break past the view-it-on-my-computer early adopters, watch Netflix as they partner with LG. Lesson: let a bona-fide consumer electronics company handle the hardware. Apple are probably the only company that can attempt their own device, and I think the Apple TV is perfectly placed for their strategy. It’s small, relatively cheap and focused on one thing - video delivery. And then there’s Microsoft’s XBox, which whilst primarily a gaming console, tries to cover movies as well. Yet with a prodigious hardware failure rate, the Xbox is bloated, noisy and expensive when all you want to do is watch a movie.

Forget broadband, licencing, even viewing costs - I see the key issue in Video on Demand is the playback experience. Once that is solved, and robust enough to be commoditised down to an off-the-shelf player below $200, only then will VOD finally begin to deliver.

In the meantime, Reeltime tried to tread water and reserve itself a place in a future market. However, along with AU Anytime, Reeltime has now expired. All that we have left in the Australian space is Bigpond Movies Download … it will be interesting to see how long Telstra keep that afloat.

They are releasing Clubland in the US this month and renaming it “Introducing the Dwights” and it is rated R!!!! Sometimes they are just wierd over there….

For all those fans of Tony, Carmela and the gang and the Bada Bing!. It may not be obvious enough that we have just received the FINAL episodes of The Sopranos. It is part two of season 6 and we have it. I have to of course wait until you have all got your fix to watch it! So come on down and see how this famous family wind up…..