Australia - The Expectations Are Enormous
With the final shots of Australia in the can, Bazmark Films II have now released several new still shots from the feature film. To view them (as seen left) in full simply visit our ever-growing gallery.
The stench of cow manure lingering in the air, their faces smeared with dirt and bodies drenched in sweat, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman finally dimmed the lights on outback Australia yesterday, after a gruelling nine-month shoot; wrote The Courrier Mail.
For the better part of ten years Kidman and Luhrmann have brainstormed and dreamed of making such an epic. For this reason it’s understandable that seeing a large phase of it come to completion would create mixed feelings. Nicole Kidman said while she was looking forward to a break over Christmas, the anxiety of the curtain finally falling on the film hit her during a dream on the eve of her final scene. “Last night I was crying in a dream and I think it was a bit of anxiety about finishing,” she admitted. “I am very ingratiated having done this film. I have wanted to do it since I was 14 and I didn’t know what it was, but I knew there was something.”
Meanwhile, on set, looking buff for his Wolverine role beginning in three weeks, leading man Hugh Jackman will film his final scene today. “If you could tick any box off a job, this has got every box ticked,” he said, adding it felt “surreal” to finish. “Part of me doesn’t want to let this go. It’s probably the best movie I’ve ever worked on. It’s hard to let go of.”
When asked about the length of the shoot Baz Luhrmann denied breaking the blockbuster budget, but joked; “It’s a secret - I don’t want you to tell anyone - but I’m not on schedule.” “[However] someone said the other day, as far as epics go, not anything particularly out of the ordinary. Not fast. Not slow.”
And what of the pressure to deliver a hit movie? “The expectations are enormous, the pressure of that (is) not comfortable,” he said. “Will this film be a success? I do not know. Could it be that almighty mistake that one is bound to do at some time? Possibly but … we’ll do everything we can to make it as good as we possibly can.”
sources: Sydney Morning Herald, Herald Sun, Courier Mail
images: Bazmark Films II - James Fisher
December 20th, 2007