Six Of The Best At Tropfest 2000

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday February 25, 2000

Garry Maddox

Your Tropfest legend

$ Gags

@ Contains real stars

% Shopping trolley accident

* Sexual content

! Serious social themes

# John Howard

& Topical Olympic reference

THE RAW PRAWN

# $ &

Warren Holbeck is unemployed. He's so caught in a rut that he tapes the remote control to his hand. But then he decides to give self-employment a try. Writer-director Trent O'Donnell takes a clever comic idea and runs with it like Matt Shirvington. Russell Benson plays Warren with the swagger of the old Hoges.

MEETING MISTY RAIN

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She masturbates, he masturbates. It's an unconventional opening for a tender little love story directed by film and theatre designer Justin Kurzel. The awkward Claire (played by Essie Davis) meets the even more awkward Joe (Syd Brisbane). If you want star power, you'll see photos (!) of Bruce Willis, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Dan Aykroyd.

HOW FAR CAN YOU WEAR YOUR UNDERPANTS FROM THE BEACH?

At last, a film about the pressing issue of whether you should swim in your underwear. Max Forbes (Paul Kelman) is a rebel without a cossie, a man who doesn't want to be confined to the shoreline. A mock doc on jocks from writer-director John Biggins, cinematographer on Occasional Coarse Language, with a voice-over by Justin Murphy making it sound hauntingly like The 7.30 Report.

BROTHER

A rough blast of a film about two brothers running wild in Kings Cross. Shot like a doco by writer-director Angus Strachan, it features two real-life street characters, Geoff Ludbrook and Manu Herewini, with a broken-glass voice-over by Two Hands' David Field.

DESY

A drama about an East Timorese girl found alive by Australian troops and embraced by a new family here. An ambitious short by Heather-Jean Moyes, who has also directed commercials, corporate videos and infotainment TV.

LIFE IN A VOLKSWAGEN

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Last year they won over Tropfest audiences, collecting best comedy, with their low-tech Life in a Datsun. This year Craig Anderson and Bryan Moses have come up with "Australia's sickest sequel". It starts out as an "anti-film" starring an "anti-actor" and proceeds anarchically. Probably the only finalist from a film-maker (Anderson) writing a PhD thesis on the oppressive nature of comedy.