DAGEN Merrill’s Australian film Broken Hill, starring Timothy Hutton and Rhys Wakefield, won the audience choice award on Sunday at the TriMedia Film Festival in Colorado. And seven Australian films have been selected to screen at the influential Pusan International Film Festival. The South Korean event will screen Claire McCarthy’s The Waiting City, Granaz Moussavi’s My Tehran for Sale, Last Ride, Balibo, Jane Campion’s Bright Star and Mary and Max in its world section. The feature film debut from director Rupert Glasson, Coffin Rock, will screen as part of Midnight Passion, the sidebar dedicated to genre films. Heaven knows what South Koreans will make of that diverse lot.

SOURCE: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26078413-15803,00.html

Australian film, Broken Hill, opened to the U.S. audience of Dallas, Salt Lake City, Fresno and Greenville, SC. on September 11th. If your an American fan, you should go and check it out! The film also opens on the 18th in Orlando.

“Broken Hill” features an appealing performance from Luke Arnold. The rest of the movie is a mess, though

Giving “Broken Hill” a bad review is sort of like scolding a cute puppy for piddling on the carpet: You feel bad about it, but you just have to do it or you’ll be cleaning up messes for years to come.
First the good. The movie features an appealing performance from Luke Arnold, who plays an Australian teen dreaming of attending a prestigious music school. He’s charming and slightly geeky and shows flashes of big-screen charisma. And his sweet romance with an American teen (Alexa Vega) is the best part of the movie.

The rest of “Broken Hill” is a mess, though. Overly earnest, frequently corny and featuring a clunky screenplay that telegraphs every event from miles away, the film sputters to its inevitable conclusion.

The story revolves around Australian teenager Timmy (Arnold), who lives in the Outback on a sheep station with his taciturn rancher father (Timothy Hutton, sporting a solid Australian accent), who also coaches the high school’s Australian rules football team.

Timmy’s interest isn’t in football or sheep, though, much to his father’s disapproval. He dreams of composing music and attending a prestigious music school in Sydney. But Dad doesn’t share his son’s dream.

An interesting, if familiar, premise? Sure; it sounds like “Billy Elliot” — the British film about a boy who dreams to go to ballet school — set in the Outback, but the exotic location could be interesting.

Unfortunately, director Dagen Merrill decides to throw in a eye-rolling plot twist that has Timmy trying to turn a group of convicts in a local prison into a sort of orchestra.

So we get a lot of scenes with the fresh-faced and innocent Timmy working with a bunch of hardened criminals. Timmy’s goal: To take his “orchestra” to a national competition of other prison bands, which will impress the music college he wants to attend so much that the school will offer him admission.

Aside from the wrong-headed “let’s start a prison band!” plot, we also never really get to hear what makes Timmy’s music so special until the final moments. You wish Merrill would have included more material about the music.

Aside from Arnold’s strong central performance, Merrill does include some nice moments when Timmy daydreams about leading an orchestra in the middle of the Outback. But those moments are just that: fleeting.

Disappointing too is the way Merrill utterly wastes the talented Rhys Wakefield, who was so good in last year’s superb “The Black Balloon.” Here Wakefield plays Timmy’s best friend, who apparently exists only to be a cheerleader for the budding musician.

So if you want to see a good Australian film, our advice is to rent “The Black Balloon,” “Muriel’s Wedding” or “The Castle” — which are all vastly superior to “Broken Hill.”

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I do apologize that this article wasn’t exactly focused on Rhys, but news has been slow lately. Hopefully something pops up soon!

SOURCE: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20090911/ENTERTAINMENT02/90911005

The Broken Hill premiere was held on August 24th in Melbourne, Australia. There doesn’t seem to be much information online, and I’m not all that sure if Rhys attended, but I do hope he did. As of yet, I haven’t found any pictures, but we will hopefully have some online soon! Also, don’t forget, The Broken Hill premieres in the U.S. on September 11!

Hi everyone, our amazing webmiss, Ida, has been absent lately due to various circumstances and her only connection to the site was via her phone, but it appears she cannot access Rhyswakefield.net through her phone. Lets hope she won’t be away for much longer! Also, I do apologize for not updating the site all that much, I haven’t really been online alot lately, this month has been a really busy one for me! Thanks everyone.