Comedy ‘Now Add Honey’ hits sweet spot as CinefestOz opener

The CinefestOz Film Festival opens tonight in Western Australia with the premiere of Now Add Honey.

Hamish Blake and Lucy Durack in Now Add Honey.

The CinefestOz Film Festival opens tonight in Western Australia with the premiere of Now Add Honey, the new comedy by the creators of Upper Middle Bogan and The Librarians, Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler. It stars Butler, Portia de Rossi, Hamish Blake, Lucy Durack, Angus Sampson and Erik Thomson and promises, one would expect sight unseen, a good time. Which brings us to the opening-night conundrum faced by all Australian film festivals. All reports heading Reel Time’s way suggest the Melbourne International Film Festival opener this year, Paul Cox’s Force of Destiny, didn’t appeal to the broad audience as might have been hoped. Sydney’s opener, Ruben Guthrie, had a mixed response post-screening but it got away with it on the night because it had some big laughs and nice shots of the home town. MIFF had its own issues with Sue Brooks’s latest, Looking for Grace, pegged for the opening slot due to its minor MIFF co-funding. But it was selected for competition at the Venice film festival and had to be bought out of Melbourne. First, perhaps it’s time we need not be so parochial about screening an Australian film on opening night. Some years, the timing or quality just isn’t right. And given the sector is so nervous about pleasing “stakeholders”, you’d think the one night stakeholders will attend is the one where you screen the best, not the most local, film. Second, MIFF should probably not be investing in Australian films but leaving it to Film Victoria so we don’t have these inefficient bungles where distributors, producers or Screen Australia have to buy out MIFF to allow their film to screen where it will get the best result — as happened when eOne wanted The Sapphires to open straight after MIFF. It is ridiculous that MIFF didn’t acquiesce for the good of both films, and that money is shuffling between film bodies rather than being spent on the success of the films themselves.

Anupam Sharma’s Australian film unINDIAN, has been selected to have its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival. The film, starring Brett Lee and acclaimed Indian actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, is a cross-cultural romantic comedy due for release in Australia in October. It also stars John Howard, Tiriel Mora, Maya Sathiamoorthy, Arka Das with a special appearance by Pallavi Sharda. The film’s director, Anupam Sharma, says in a statement: “For a film which was never intended to be a festival film, it is an honour and a pleasant surprise to be selected to Montreal and also have the world premiere there.”

Wasted On the Young director Ben C Lucas has begun principal photography in Western Australia on his science fiction thriller, OtherLife. His cast includes Arrow star Jessica De Gouw, Kidnapping Mr Heineken’s Thomas Cocquerel and TJ Power. OtherLife is based on the novel Solitaire, by Kelley Eskridge, about a software engineer who creates a substance allowing the instant creation of new memories. It has been adapted and written by Eskridge and Gregory Widen (Highlander, Backdraft), Lucas Howe and Lucas. The director describes OtherLife as “a contemporary science fiction”: “I was determined to shoot this movie in Perth and I am beyond excited to be back working with such a fantastic cast.” De Gouw also has starred in the American NBC television series Dracula . Cocquerel stars in the coming Red Dog prequel, Blue Dog, which also was shot in Western Australia.

The reboot of the National Lampoon series, Vacation, starring Ed Helms and Christina Applegate, slipped into the top spot at the Australian box office in a tepid weekend by 2015’s standards. It earned $1.6 million ahead of the better performing (by screen average) boxing drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Southpaw ($1.5m). Other new releases included Hitman: Agent 47 ($993,000) and the Woody Allen film Irrational Man, which earned a meagre $217,000 from 89 screens. The surprise of recent weeks has been the anime film Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ , earning $1.5m in three weeks for anime specialist Madman Entertainment.

The Adelaide Film Festival has selected Beck Cole, the local filmmaker of Here I Am, National Film and Sound Archive chief Michael Loebenstein and Toronto Film Festival programmer Jane Schoettle to its documentary jury for the festival, which runs from October 15 to 25. And the Screen Producers Australia conference, Screen Forever, has confirmed the drama commissioner behind hit Humans on British broadcaster Channel 4, Simon Maxwell, Voltage Pictures’ vice-president Babacar Diene (producer of the copyright precedent-setter, Dallas Buyers Club), A24 chief operating officer Matthew Bires, All3 Media International head of acquisitions Maartje Horchner and acquisitions executive Emily Gotto will be guests for its November conference.