Archive
BUCKLEY’S CHANCE – Christopher Gordon
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Buckley’s Chance is an Australian action-adventure film for children, written and directed by Tim Brown. The film stars young Milan Burch as Ridley, a teenage boy from New York who moves with his mother Gloria (Victoria Hill) to live with his estranged grandfather Spencer (Bill Nighy) in Western Australia after his father dies. Ridley hates his new life, mourns for his father, and resents his grandfather, but soon things get much worse when Ridley gets lost in the Outback. With only a dingo dog named Buckley for company, Ridley is forced to make an arduous journey across hostile territory trying to reach home – while, on the other end, Spencer and Gloria frantically search for the boy. The term ‘buckley’s chance’ is an idiom in Australian slang, meaning ‘something which has a very small chance of succeeding,’ and likely dates back to the 1800s and a man named William Buckley, an escaped convict who somehow survived the burning temperatures of the Outback and lived with a tribe of Aborigines for more than 30 years – a real life episode which partly mirrors the events in this story. Despite some lovely cinematography, the film was unfortunately not well received by reviewers, who especially criticized its juvenile tone and Bill Nighy’s accent. Read more…
MAO’S LAST DANCER – Christopher Gordon
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
An acclaimed Australian film directed by Bruce Beresford, Mao’s Last Dancer tells the true life story of Li Cunxin who, having been born in poverty in rural China in the 1960s, was selected to attend the famed Beijing Dance Academy to study ballet. During a trip to the United States in the 1970s, Cunxin began to question his Communist upbringing, and ultimately defected to the United States, where he went on to become one of the most acclaimed male ballet dancers in the world, dancing with the Houston Ballet for 16 years. The film stars Bruce Greenwood, Kyle McLachlan, Amanda Schull, Joan Chen, and Chi Cao as Cunxin, and features a superb original score by Aussie composer Christopher Gordon. Read more…
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD – Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon and Richard Tognetti
Original Review by Peter Simons
The movies of Peter Weir have had some interesting musical choices. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Maurice Jarre was his composer of choice, contributing electronic scores for films such as The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast and Witness. For his last major movie, The Truman Show, he combined new and old Philip Glass recordings with an original score by Burkhard Dallwitz. Weir’s latest movie, the sea-faring epic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, follows a similar vein, with multiple composers credited. Iva Davies, Christopher Gordon and Richard Tognetti teamed up to write a score that is certainly atmospheric, and has a fair share of enjoyable tracks, yet for some reason is not very memorable. The soundtrack album is a mix of new music by the three composers, several tracks of traditional folk music, and a handful of classical tracks by Mozart, Bach, Vaughan-Williams and the like. The result is a mixed bag – in the negative sense of the word. Read more…
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