Jonas Brothers Eager To Restore Baz Luhrmann To Greatness

The Jonas Brothers are nothing if not high-concept, making their ambitious plot to recruit down-on-his-luck auteur Baz Luhrmann the kind of cinch everyone can agree on. More »

Nicole Kidman Adds Her Voice To The 'Australia' Pile-On

You don't kick a dingo when he's down (or maybe you do, to dislodge the baby from its jaws? We always forget), but Nicole Kidman has done just that by piling on the beleaguered Australia. More »

Baz Luhrmann Adapts to His New Role as 'Black Hole of Cinema'

The aftermath of any disaster requires a period of quiet reflection followed by intense investigation. Or, if you're as ambitious as Baz Luhrmann, you combine the two in one expanded whining binge to THR.

Is Baz Luhrmann Actually Going To Make a Great Gatsby Movie?

Baz Luhrmann takes a long time to make a movie. His Australia came out seven years after Moulin Rouge!, which came out five years after Romeo + Juliet. The gestation periods are so long that nothing is ever set in stone, in terms of his future projects, until cameras have started rolling. Which is why we chuckle a bit and scratch our heads when Nikki Finke says that the Aussie is definitely doing a Great Gatsby movie for his next endeavor. Nothing is ever definite with this man! Look at some other Luhrmann rumors that haven't—but may still!—come to fruition. More »

What to Say When Your Movie Flops, Australia Edition

What do you do when your big sweeping Oscar-hopeful epic that cost $130 million dollars does a shallow swan dive at the box office? You completely change the party line on the entire movie! Well, that's what Fox is doing about Australia—Baz Luhrmann's continental Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman period romance—at least. Though the film initially was being thrust at us as Titanic but with Aborigines and a lot more plastic surgery, it's now been shifted (or downgraded) to an artsy "adult" (not that kind of adult) flick. So its disappointing $20 million Thanksgiving numbers aren't disappointing at all anymore! More »

Australia Does Not Celebrate Thanksgiving

We hate to say we told you so, but Australia—Baz Luhrmann's sweepy weepy about his homeland in the 1940's—is not doing so well at the ol' box office. Nikki Finke reports that it's basically tanking, ceding top honors to such unambitious, unartsy fare as the darkening Twilight and this weekend's most likely top dog (and we mean dog), Four Christmases. More »

Baz Luhrmann Sends Modest Proposal For Multiplexes Not to Ruin 'Australia'

For those early viewers still nursing lukewarm responses to Australia, Baz Luhrmann has a note making the rounds that hints your projectionist might be to blame. While it's hardly uncommon for anal directors to personally attend to details of test screenings and premieres, a tipster has passed along something you don't see every day: Luhrmann's personal directions to theater managers on how not to screw up his epic when it opens Nov. 26: More »

'Australia' is Reeeeally Long, and 6 Other Notable Lessons From the First U.S. Reviews

Stateside critics have finally seen Australia, and the reviews are in! Kind of, anyway; we've mostly been sorting through first impressions, rough blog sketches and less-then-soaring anti-summaries ("Some kind of lethargy virus had taken over my system," wrote Jeffrey Wells), but we think we have enough to go on to figure out where Baz Luhrmann's epic may sit among this fall's most anticipated releases. Your one-stop cheat sheet follows the jump. More »

So How Is That Australia Movie Anyway?

Fans of big old sweeping historical, romance, adventure epics (like us) are mostly pretty excited for Australia, Baz Luhrmann's (Romeo + Juliet!, Moulin Rouge!!) new 1940's set ode to his home country, starring native son and daughter Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. It's the most expensive movie ever made in Australia, and is the Great White hope for its tourism industry. Well, it finally premiered last night in Sydney and sooo how is it? According to early critics, it's pretty good! Stirring and exciting enough, romantic enough, not as treacly as its big, grand trailer (above) may make it seem. We'll give a little digest of the reviews below. More »

Baz Luhrmann Clarifies: Australia Still Not Finished

The producers and the director of the Nicole Kidman-Hugh Jackman epic Australia are on the same page — just days before its Australian premiere on Tuesday, Australia isn't done. Luhrmann renewed the debate over exactly how unfinished the film is on the LAT's The Envelope blog, revealing that at the end of the "emotional cinematic banquet" there will be a death of some kind, even if he's not quite sure yet who buys it. Meanwhile, Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman tried to dismiss the controversy over the $130 million dollar film's "six endings." This barely counts as optimism when it comes to the film's still-ongoing editing process. Since they are shutting down a street in Sydney for the premiere, should the local authorities prepare for a riot or can Luhrmann deliver in time? More »

Australia Longs For A Happy Ending

Two weeks before Australia's Nov. 26 release date, Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann, who's worked four years on the $130 million dollar production set in the Outback, still doesn't know what movie he's making. After a rough cut was recently screened for critics who hated the film's downer ending, the studio reacted by putting pressure on Luhrmann to alter Australia. Fox is more keen on recouping the film's massive budget with what it hopes is a traditional crowd-pleaser. It appears Luhrmann has already complied with their demands, but is Australia destined to die even if its lead characters don't? More »

'Australia' Inches Closer As Baz Luhrmann Caves to New Ending

Not much has changed in the last week since industry observers filed a missing persons report on Australia; Baz Luhrmann's $130 million historical romance is still officially unfinished with only nine days to go before its homeland premiere and 16 days before it opens worldwide. Again, Baz, don't hurry on our behalves, but! We learned a lot more over the weekend about those "mechanics of stotrytelling" so troubling the director in his quest to put his Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman epic to bed. And massive spoiler aside, it should make for a roiling eternity of second-guessing, DVD revisionism and studio-hating from Luhrmann loyalists. More »

Whereabouts of 'Australia' Uncertain as Fox Buys Time For Baz Luhrmann

Director Baz Luhrman's historical epic/romance/tourism ad Australia is set to premiere Nov. 19 in its home country before opening wide here Nov. 26. It has a press junket in LA scheduled in between. And as of this writing, it has Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and $130 million worth of Fox's Oscar hopes tied up in an unfinished bundle in Luhrmann's editing bay. No one has seen much more than a couple stirring trailers and, according to Anne Thompson, an unfinished print that screened without effects for a lucky Oprah Winfrey audience (none of whom, of course, were critics). So with less than three weeks before the studio expects to introduce it to the world, what's taking so long? More »

Baz Luhrmann Ads Propose Australian Tourism as Salve for Shattered American Lives

Baz Luhrmann's boundless ambition may have met its match in a new pair of TV spots commissioned by Tourism Australia, an organization still reeling from its failure to entice international visitors two years ago with its bikini-clad representative scolding, "Where the bloody hell are you?" This time around, the tourism board opted for the more cheerful specter of an Aboriginal child whose fistful of fairy dust cures everything from burnout to bipolar disorder, all graphically allayed against the backdrop of America's inclement urban hellholes. Luhrmann's quick-cut horror show not only disappoints as a short film, but also tosses back in our face all the romantic tourist goodwill he'd accrued through his sweeping Australia trailers — themselves a far more uplifting endorsement of young native kids' rejuvenating powers, if Nicole Kidman's burnished features are any indication. Back to the drawing board, Baz! Judge for yourself after the jump. [YouTube] More »

One For The Books

· 2008's summer box office has exceeded all expectations. Go get drunk! It's on Hollywood! [THR] More »