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- 57th San Sebastian Film Festival ‘Blessed’ Photocall
- 2010 Sydney Film Festival Opening Night
- Jury Photocall – 12th International Festival des Antipodes
- 12th International Festival des Antipodes

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Chuck star Yvonne Strahovski is in final negotiations to join I, Frankenstein, the action monster movie starring Aaron Eckhart. Miranda Otto, best known for playing Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings movies, also is on board.

Stuart Beattie is directing the Lakeshore/Lionsgate movie, which follows Frankenstein’s monster (Eckhart) vacillating between humanity and monsterdom while being pursued by demons wanting to gain the secret of his reanimated corpse.

Strahovski will play the female lead, a scientist working on reanimating the dead and tricked into working for demons seeking to create an army of the undead.

Otto is playing the queen of the gargoyles who wants to help Frankenstein. (…)

Australian actress Otto starred in the pilot for Locke & Key, which adapted the Joe Hill comic book, and starred in ABC’s Cashmere Mafia. She is repped by Gersh and Management 360 as well as United Agent’s in Australia. (source)

Deadline says that the panel will take place July 22 at 10:30 AM with comic creators Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, as well as Josh Friedman (pilot writer/producer), Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

The show was envisioned as a summer series, then possibly a fall prospect, before Fox decided not to pick it up at all. It was shopped to other cable networks, and finally just killed. But the obvious question is whether good audience response to the pilot might give the series new life.

Here is the official synopsis from the publisher:

Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them…. and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…! Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez. Hill has received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection, the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and Best Short Story, and the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award-2007, among his growing collection of critical accolades. (source)

The awards honour and champion Australia’s most inspirational and innovative women across nine categories, including fashion, beauty, lifestyle, news and entertainment, charity and community, and the arts. All the nominees are successful pioneers in their chosen fields. All nominees have been selected by InStyle.

Winners are chosen by the Women of Style judging panel, which includes: fashion designer, Collette Dinnigan; entrepreneur and environmental campaigner, Layne Beachley; journalist and author, Jana Wendt; director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor; film director, Gillian Armstrong; designer and co-founder of Dinosaur Designs, Louise Olsen; CEO of Harvey Norman Holdings, Katie Page; founder of Bloom Cosmetics, Natalie Bloom; and general manager of communications for Audi Australia, Janet Markus.

You and your friends can vote for Miranda in the Readers’ Choice category on the InStyle website – instylemag.com.au. Miranda is a nominee under the Arts/Culture section. There will be a red-carpet event held in May to reveal the winners.

- Vogue Australia 50th Anniversary Party (31/7/09)

Miranda Otto says there is something primal about being a mother.

She tells the story of her mother running to the rescue when young Miranda was being hassled by some vile children. “She ran out and slapped one of them. It wasn’t a big slap,” she says.

Otto, with actors Frances O’Connor, Victoria Haralabidou and Deborra-lee Furness, was at the Sofitel Hotel yesterday morning talking about motherhood and love.

“If you’re depressed, it’s hard to give,” Otto says. Furness adds: “Some people just don’t have the tools to be good parents.”

They weren’t talking about their fellow actors but the characters they play in Blessed, a film that weaves together stories about mothers and children living in hard circumstances.

Otto’s character is lonely, lost and addicted to the pokies. She loses track of herself and of her kids, who wander the night. Furness plays a hard-working mother with a jobless, emotionally dehydrated husband (William McInnes) and an awareness that her family is more akin to the walking dead than a thriving entity. Haralabidou plays a young widow struggling to put food on the table.

It all sounds pretty grim, but the glue and light of the film is “the universality of motherhood”

The chance to explore the complexities of the mother-child relationship in the new movie Blessed was too much to pass up for real-life mothers Miranda Otto, Deborra-Lee Furness and Frances O’Connor. The three acclaimed Australian actresses join forces in director Ana Kokkinos’ film, adapted from the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class.

Furness plays Tanya, a married mother of a teenage boy. She is the family’s sole breadwinner. Otto is Bianca, who is more like a sister than a mother to teenage Katrina and O’Connor is cast as Rhonda, a welfare-dependent woman whose three children have different fathers. [...]

Otto, Furness and O’Connor all have four-year-old children – O’Connor a son called Luca, Otto a daughter Darcey, and Furness a daughter Ava, in addition to older son Oscar. “It’s a huge responsibility,” Furness agreed. “Because if there’s something dysfunctional that’s going on, you are going to hand it on to that child and that child’s going to hand it on. You look at the characters in this film, like Frances’ character – you can see obviously her mother would have handed on not a very positive message.” [...]

Despite their flaws, Otto said the women were very human characters who she could relate to. “I think we can all find parts of ourselves a little bit, in each of the characters,” she said.

Blessed, which also stars William McInnes, Tasma Walton and Sophie Lowe, opens nationally on September 10.

- Melbourne International Film Festival ‘Blessed’ Premiere (25/7/09)
- Melbourne International Film Festival Opening Night (24/7/09)

In less positive news, Inside Film reports distribution issues for In Her Skin continue to disrupt the film’s release process, issues that apparently are the result of unauthorized editing of the film by international distributor Reliant Pictures:

The Pacific Film and Television Commission’s case to wind up the production company behind local feature In Her Skin was adjourned for a second time this week. The two parties have been in ongoing negotiations since the PFTC launched its action on May 28 in the Queensland Supreme Court. The next hearing is scheduled for July 17.

In Her Skin, starring Guy Pearce and Miranda Otto, has been in limbo for several months after international distributor, Reliant Pictures International, re-cut the film without the involvement of the filmmakers. The delay caused Liberty Films to miss its deadline to repay approximately $2.3 million to the screen agency’s revolving film finance fund and spurred the court case.

The PFTC has also launched a separate case against Omnilab Media (and Mapp Group Holdings), which had underwritten Reliant’s original distribution guarantee, in a further attempt to recover the funds.