Red carpet buzz for Aus movie

2008-11-18 14:02

Sydney - Red carpets were rolled out in Sydney and the dusty outback on Tuesday for the world premiere of the epic movie Australia which aims to showcase the rugged continent, its history and indigenous people to the world.

Director Baz Luhrmann's ambitious and grandly named film, the most expensive made in Australia, was released after a blaze of publicity about racing to finish the movie on time and even reports of studio demands for a change to the ending.

Australian co-stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman have both carved out lucrative Hollywood careers, but jumped at the chance to work with Luhrmann, a perfectionist who had not even shown the actors the final version of the movie before the premiere.

"The hardest thing was finishing it," Jackman told a news conference, adding that playing a drover or cowboy in the movie was the "greatest role I have ever had".

Australia is pinning high hopes on the romantic adventure which Luhrmann said he had filmed in the style of Gone With The Wind and hoped would become part of Australian film history.

Revive interest

The Australian film industry hopes it will revive interest in the sector that did well with quirky films like Crocodile Dundee, Muriel's Wedding and Babe, but has slipped in popularity after a few years of bleak, box-office failures.

The tourism industry is hoping it will draw visitors, linking a AU$50m ($32m) international tourism campaign to the movie to differentiate Australia from other destinations.

Highlighting its nationwide appeal, the movie will hold premieres in four locations where the it was shot including Sydney, Darwin, Bowen and at the remote town of Kununurra.

Kidman, 41, who worked with Luhrmann on his last and third movie Moulin Rouge in 2001, said making Australia was a "once in a lifetime thing" for her.

"Rarely do you get a make a film that you have dreamed of doing since you were little, which will be part of Australian cinema," said Kidman, who had left her four-month-old daughter Sunday Rose in Nashville to attend the premiere.

Celebration

"This is a celebration for me and hopefully for this country."

Asked about several steamy kissing scenes with Jackman, Kidman joked: "Obviously we were in character, but it was good to go to work." The two-hour, 40-minute long movie, which is reported to have cost News Corp's 20th Century Fox about $130m, is a World War Two drama set in stunning Australian landscape.

The story is about an English aristocrat who travels to Australia and joins forces with a drover and an Aboriginal child to drive a herd of cattle across Australia.

The movie also focuses on "the stolen generation", when ten of thousands of Aboriginal children were taken away from their families between the 1880s and 1960s to be raised by whites.

Australia's new Labour government this year issued a long-sought formal apology to Aborigines for past injustices, heralding a new era in race relations in the nation.

- Reuters