Latest news with #Weir
Sydney Morning Herald
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The haunting Australian mystery that still captivates 50 years on
August marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous Australian films of all time – an atmospheric mystery about three schoolgirls and a teacher from an elite women's college who go missing on a day trip to Victoria's Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day, 1900. Picnic at Hanging Rock, based on a 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, launched the international career of the great director Peter Weir and remains a landmark for many of the cast and crew. And the restored version, released in Europe, the US and Australia this year, proves the film has lost none of its haunting power. The questions continue to linger long after the lights come up. Where did the missing girls and their teacher go? Why did the ethereal Miranda, played by Anne Lambert, know she would not be around for long? Did it really happen? Weir, now 80, went on to direct masterful films including Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show. To celebrate the anniversary, he and some of his collaborators reflect on making the film and its significance. They reveal why the restored version is 12 minutes shorter than when Picnic became an international hit in 1975, how it went from filming in February to being released in August the same year – unimaginable now – and a new plan for a stage musical. The genesis In 1973, Gough Whitlam was prime minister, the Sydney Opera House was opened and there was what Weir calls 'furious excitement in the air' as the emerging Australian film industry came alive. He was working on the screenplay of his first feature film, The Cars that Ate Paris, when TV presenter turned film producer Pat Lovell visited. She handed him a book and said she wanted to film it. 'I glanced down at the title, Picnic at Hanging Rock,' Weir says. 'I read it in one long night and knew I had to do it.' Lovell, who died in 2013, once said she thought Weir was the perfect director because his 1971 short feature Homesdale showed 'he had a capacity for seeing the unusual and the sinister beneath typical, everyday events'. 'I read it in one long night and knew I had to do it.' In the year before shooting Cars, Weir supervised work on the Picnic script. David Williamson was down to write it until a scheduling clash; Cliff Green took over. Weir thought the challenge with Picnic was to create a similar feeling to the novel. 'It's not literally taking the words to the screen,' he says. 'As the director, it's rather like putting music to a libretto for an opera. So I had to compose with images – the kind of music that I'll make – that becomes the film.' The other issue was the unresolved mystery about the disappearance. 'This was at the same time its great originality and its greatest danger,' Weir says. 'The audience expected a solution. How to divert interest away from that expectation? Fortunately, I had two years to think about it.' The day after Lovell and Weir optioned the film rights, they visited Hanging Rock, about 80 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Weir says he felt 'a power in that pile of stone', adding 'one of my first impressions was what looked like faces carved into the living rock, like those monoliths on Easter Island – a trick of the light I thought I could use. Revisiting years later, a ranger told me tourists often take home bits of rock as a souvenir. Curiously many later mailed them back, saying they got 'a bad feeling' from their chunk of Hanging Rock.' Casting the film With Cars producers Hal and Jim McElroy on board, Weir auditioned teenage girls, but found it was trickier than expected. 'In Sydney and Melbourne, they seemed too sophisticated, except for Anne Lambert,' he says. He says he found girls who seemed more suited to the 19th century in Adelaide. 'They seemed to be from another era – a simpler time,' Weir says. '[So] that's where most of the cast came from.' 'What's extraordinary is that it still has such a life force – how it still speaks to people.' Lambert, who was 19, was working on TV series The Class of '74 at the time. 'I was probably one of the oldest,' she says. 'Karen Robson [who played Irma] was 17.' The look Weir worked closely with cinematographer Russell Boyd, who was inspired by Australian painters of the 19th century including Tom Roberts, to capture the particular Australian light that makes the film so distinctive. Another inspiration for Weir was early colour photography by France's Jacques Henri Lartigue. 'Russ went off and had to work out ways he would produce this kind of special atmosphere,' he says. 'It ended up with Russ in the wedding department of David Jones, buying bits of veil to try to find different ways of netting the camera'. Diffusing the light created the atmospheric look they wanted. The shoot Lambert thought at the time that they were making something special because the film 'was so different to not only what I'd done but what was around generally at the time'. Her many fond memories of the shoot included meeting Lindsay, then 78, after a scene on the rock that left her doubting her performance. It was an odd meeting. 'She just threw her arms around me and held me, spoke into my ear and said 'oh Miranda, it's been so long',' Lambert says. 'She was obviously very moved. 'When we came apart, I could see she had tears in her eyes. I wasn't quite sure what was happening but I somehow found it incredibly validating. Any doubt about myself felt like it was just washed away.' Camera operator John Seale, who went on to join Boyd as an Australian cinematography great, remembers Hanging Rock as an eerie place to shoot. 'The wind works its way through those rocks, which Peter put into sound and the music was hinting at … as though the rocks were talking to you,' he says. 'That's what he got magically into the film: that the girls were carried away into a different sphere.' Seale loved seeing Weir and Boyd work together. 'Watching them put the visuals together for the film was a real privilege,' he says. 'I remember thinking, 'Oh gee, I'm working with some of the greats'.' Mind you, Seale adds that he joked with Weir recently that they didn't really know what they were doing in those early years of the Australian film renaissance. 'Peter laughed and said, 'We didn't. We just made them',' he says. Jacki Weaver, who played school staff member Minnie, describes shooting the film as a 'magical time'. She realised Weir was a visionary director. 'Look at his catalogue of films – they're amazing and all so different from each other, as well as from most films,' she says. Despite her doubts, Weir appreciated Lambert's performance as he edited Picnic. 'She disappears with the other girls quite early in the story and I found on a first cut I missed her and decided to 'bring her back', at least in a dreamy way, to keep her presence deeper into the film,' he says. The screening So how did it get to cinemas so fast? 'The two years before I began the film proved invaluable – a lot of time to think the thing through, a lot of problems worked out,' Weir says. 'That preparation showed in the first cut of the picture – it was there. That was why we could keep to a tight delivery schedule.' Weir remembers that it was exciting but tense showing Picnic to an audience for the first time and wondering whether it was working. Positive reviews and strong box office in Australia – joining Alvin Purple as the country's biggest hits – and later Europe indicated it was. But it was four years before it was released in the US. 'They seemed unsure how to market it,' Weir says. Enduring success In her enigmatic way, Lindsay was the first person close to the film who thought it would have a special life. 'She said 'this film is going to be highly significant for some of you',' Weir says. As beautifully as the film is made and as compelling the story is, Lambert says its success owed something to the times. 'There was something about the way Picnic was received that was a celebration of us finding out cultural identity, finding our voice, being able to tell our own stories,' she says. 'What's extraordinary is that it still has such a life force – how it still speaks to people.' Watching the restored version before a Q&A with a German audience, she found herself transported. 'That indefinable thing it has – that atmosphere – is extraordinary,' Lambert says. 'You see different things every time you see it. This time it was all about Sara [played by Margaret Nelson]. I was really so moved by that storyline and her performance.' After the film inspired a TV series (starring Natalie Dormer, Lily Sullivan and Samara Weaving) and this year a Sydney Theatre Company play, Weaver says there are now plans for a musical. 'I got an email asking if I'd talk about the experience of making it,' she says. A true story? One enduring myth about the film is that it's based on a true story. Lindsay was ambiguous in her introduction to the novel, writing that since 'all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important' whether it is fact or fiction. Loading Weir thinks it was 'either a metaphor or something personal' for Lindsay. 'What's true for me is the disappearance,' he says. 'For a person to disappear, it's the most terrible thing because for those left behind they're neither dead nor alive. There's no closure.' The distributors played off the ambiguity. Weaver says that doing publicity 'we were discouraged from saying that it was a piece of fiction'. But there is no doubt it's an invented story. When Lindsay submitted the novel for publication, then-junior editor Sandra Forbes suggested it would have more impact by deleting a final chapter that suggested the disappearance involved a type of time warp. Lindsay agreed, which left the ending a mystery until the final chapter was published after her death in 1984. The director's cut While many director's cuts are longer, Weir made Picnic shorter when, sitting with an audience, he realised the middle needed tightening because the tension was dissipating. He went to Lovell and the financiers and said he wanted to cut 12 minutes before the European release. Loading 'They thought I was making a joke – 'You want to cut a hit film?' they said. I said, 'Yes, it will only be better'. They didn't agree.' It was not until Picnic was released on video in the 1990s that Weir cut the 12 minutes. As well as trimming scenes that were too long by 10 or 15 seconds, he lost two whole scenes after the disappearance. 'They were quite nice scenes but, for me, it was losing the eeriness, where you dipped into the wrong kind of slowness,' he says. So why was Australian film so vibrant that Picnic was shut out at the 1976 AFI Awards by The Devil's Playground and Caddie? 'We worked in complete freedom in the 1970s and were stimulated by the great films being made around the world and shown at our festivals,' Weir says. 'That was our film school.'
The Age
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
The haunting Australian mystery that still captivates 50 years on
August marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous Australian films of all time – an atmospheric mystery about three schoolgirls and a teacher from an elite women's college who go missing on a day trip to Victoria's Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day, 1900. Picnic at Hanging Rock, based on a 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, launched the international career of the great director Peter Weir and remains a landmark for many of the cast and crew. And the restored version, released in Europe, the US and Australia this year, proves the film has lost none of its haunting power. The questions continue to linger long after the lights come up. Where did the missing girls and their teacher go? Why did the ethereal Miranda, played by Anne Lambert, know she would not be around for long? Did it really happen? Weir, now 80, went on to direct masterful films including Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show. To celebrate the anniversary, he and some of his collaborators reflect on making the film and its significance. They reveal why the restored version is 12 minutes shorter than when Picnic became an international hit in 1975, how it went from filming in February to being released in August the same year – unimaginable now – and a new plan for a stage musical. The genesis In 1973, Gough Whitlam was prime minister, the Sydney Opera House was opened and there was what Weir calls 'furious excitement in the air' as the emerging Australian film industry came alive. He was working on the screenplay of his first feature film, The Cars that Ate Paris, when TV presenter turned film producer Pat Lovell visited. She handed him a book and said she wanted to film it. 'I glanced down at the title, Picnic at Hanging Rock,' Weir says. 'I read it in one long night and knew I had to do it.' Lovell, who died in 2013, once said she thought Weir was the perfect director because his 1971 short feature Homesdale showed 'he had a capacity for seeing the unusual and the sinister beneath typical, everyday events'. 'I read it in one long night and knew I had to do it.' In the year before shooting Cars, Weir supervised work on the Picnic script. David Williamson was down to write it until a scheduling clash; Cliff Green took over. Weir thought the challenge with Picnic was to create a similar feeling to the novel. 'It's not literally taking the words to the screen,' he says. 'As the director, it's rather like putting music to a libretto for an opera. So I had to compose with images – the kind of music that I'll make – that becomes the film.' The other issue was the unresolved mystery about the disappearance. 'This was at the same time its great originality and its greatest danger,' Weir says. 'The audience expected a solution. How to divert interest away from that expectation? Fortunately, I had two years to think about it.' The day after Lovell and Weir optioned the film rights, they visited Hanging Rock, about 80 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Weir says he felt 'a power in that pile of stone', adding 'one of my first impressions was what looked like faces carved into the living rock, like those monoliths on Easter Island – a trick of the light I thought I could use. Revisiting years later, a ranger told me tourists often take home bits of rock as a souvenir. Curiously many later mailed them back, saying they got 'a bad feeling' from their chunk of Hanging Rock.' Casting the film With Cars producers Hal and Jim McElroy on board, Weir auditioned teenage girls, but found it was trickier than expected. 'In Sydney and Melbourne, they seemed too sophisticated, except for Anne Lambert,' he says. He says he found girls who seemed more suited to the 19th century in Adelaide. 'They seemed to be from another era – a simpler time,' Weir says. '[So] that's where most of the cast came from.' 'What's extraordinary is that it still has such a life force – how it still speaks to people.' Lambert, who was 19, was working on TV series The Class of '74 at the time. 'I was probably one of the oldest,' she says. 'Karen Robson [who played Irma] was 17.' The look Weir worked closely with cinematographer Russell Boyd, who was inspired by Australian painters of the 19th century including Tom Roberts, to capture the particular Australian light that makes the film so distinctive. Another inspiration for Weir was early colour photography by France's Jacques Henri Lartigue. 'Russ went off and had to work out ways he would produce this kind of special atmosphere,' he says. 'It ended up with Russ in the wedding department of David Jones, buying bits of veil to try to find different ways of netting the camera'. Diffusing the light created the atmospheric look they wanted. The shoot Lambert thought at the time that they were making something special because the film 'was so different to not only what I'd done but what was around generally at the time'. Her many fond memories of the shoot included meeting Lindsay, then 78, after a scene on the rock that left her doubting her performance. It was an odd meeting. 'She just threw her arms around me and held me, spoke into my ear and said 'oh Miranda, it's been so long',' Lambert says. 'She was obviously very moved. 'When we came apart, I could see she had tears in her eyes. I wasn't quite sure what was happening but I somehow found it incredibly validating. Any doubt about myself felt like it was just washed away.' Camera operator John Seale, who went on to join Boyd as an Australian cinematography great, remembers Hanging Rock as an eerie place to shoot. 'The wind works its way through those rocks, which Peter put into sound and the music was hinting at … as though the rocks were talking to you,' he says. 'That's what he got magically into the film: that the girls were carried away into a different sphere.' Seale loved seeing Weir and Boyd work together. 'Watching them put the visuals together for the film was a real privilege,' he says. 'I remember thinking, 'Oh gee, I'm working with some of the greats'.' Mind you, Seale adds that he joked with Weir recently that they didn't really know what they were doing in those early years of the Australian film renaissance. 'Peter laughed and said, 'We didn't. We just made them',' he says. Jacki Weaver, who played school staff member Minnie, describes shooting the film as a 'magical time'. She realised Weir was a visionary director. 'Look at his catalogue of films – they're amazing and all so different from each other, as well as from most films,' she says. Despite her doubts, Weir appreciated Lambert's performance as he edited Picnic. 'She disappears with the other girls quite early in the story and I found on a first cut I missed her and decided to 'bring her back', at least in a dreamy way, to keep her presence deeper into the film,' he says. The screening So how did it get to cinemas so fast? 'The two years before I began the film proved invaluable – a lot of time to think the thing through, a lot of problems worked out,' Weir says. 'That preparation showed in the first cut of the picture – it was there. That was why we could keep to a tight delivery schedule.' Weir remembers that it was exciting but tense showing Picnic to an audience for the first time and wondering whether it was working. Positive reviews and strong box office in Australia – joining Alvin Purple as the country's biggest hits – and later Europe indicated it was. But it was four years before it was released in the US. 'They seemed unsure how to market it,' Weir says. Enduring success In her enigmatic way, Lindsay was the first person close to the film who thought it would have a special life. 'She said 'this film is going to be highly significant for some of you',' Weir says. As beautifully as the film is made and as compelling the story is, Lambert says its success owed something to the times. 'There was something about the way Picnic was received that was a celebration of us finding out cultural identity, finding our voice, being able to tell our own stories,' she says. 'What's extraordinary is that it still has such a life force – how it still speaks to people.' Watching the restored version before a Q&A with a German audience, she found herself transported. 'That indefinable thing it has – that atmosphere – is extraordinary,' Lambert says. 'You see different things every time you see it. This time it was all about Sara [played by Margaret Nelson]. I was really so moved by that storyline and her performance.' After the film inspired a TV series (starring Natalie Dormer, Lily Sullivan and Samara Weaving) and this year a Sydney Theatre Company play, Weaver says there are now plans for a musical. 'I got an email asking if I'd talk about the experience of making it,' she says. A true story? One enduring myth about the film is that it's based on a true story. Lindsay was ambiguous in her introduction to the novel, writing that since 'all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important' whether it is fact or fiction. Loading Weir thinks it was 'either a metaphor or something personal' for Lindsay. 'What's true for me is the disappearance,' he says. 'For a person to disappear, it's the most terrible thing because for those left behind they're neither dead nor alive. There's no closure.' The distributors played off the ambiguity. Weaver says that doing publicity 'we were discouraged from saying that it was a piece of fiction'. But there is no doubt it's an invented story. When Lindsay submitted the novel for publication, then-junior editor Sandra Forbes suggested it would have more impact by deleting a final chapter that suggested the disappearance involved a type of time warp. Lindsay agreed, which left the ending a mystery until the final chapter was published after her death in 1984. The director's cut While many director's cuts are longer, Weir made Picnic shorter when, sitting with an audience, he realised the middle needed tightening because the tension was dissipating. He went to Lovell and the financiers and said he wanted to cut 12 minutes before the European release. Loading 'They thought I was making a joke – 'You want to cut a hit film?' they said. I said, 'Yes, it will only be better'. They didn't agree.' It was not until Picnic was released on video in the 1990s that Weir cut the 12 minutes. As well as trimming scenes that were too long by 10 or 15 seconds, he lost two whole scenes after the disappearance. 'They were quite nice scenes but, for me, it was losing the eeriness, where you dipped into the wrong kind of slowness,' he says. So why was Australian film so vibrant that Picnic was shut out at the 1976 AFI Awards by The Devil's Playground and Caddie? 'We worked in complete freedom in the 1970s and were stimulated by the great films being made around the world and shown at our festivals,' Weir says. 'That was our film school.'
USA Today
11 hours ago
- Climate
- USA Today
What makes coastal California's Crescent City so vulnerable to tsunamis?
Crescent City, California, residents are breathing a sigh of relief after its latest tsunami warning was downgraded to an advisory. Crescent City, a redwood-tree lined coastal California community, is known as the tsunami capital of the country. The city has experienced more than three-dozen tsunamis in the last century. Once again, tsunami waves ‒ luckily modest this time ‒ reached the town, peaking as high as 4 feet near city shores before dawn on July 30, according to the National Weather Service. The waves came just hours after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest tremblors in recorded history, struck off Russia's east coast, prompting tsunami waves in Hawaii and along the West Coast. "It was a long night for all of us. We were fortunate this time," Crescent City Manager Eric Weir said during a morning briefing on July 30. "There was significant tsunami surges. We're still dealing with those now, but it did stay within the banks." The July 29 tsunami warning was initially expected to last as long as 30 hours in Crescent City, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Weir said the waves caused significant damage to a harbor dock as it lifted decking off the pilings, but the rest of the city was spared. "Downtown is at a high enough elevation that it is open," Weir said, about an hour before the tsunami warning was downgraded to an "advisory" for Crescent City, one of the last West Coast communities considered still at risk. City officials still advised locals to stay away from the harbor, beaches and waterways due to continued wave activity. "Conditions have started to improve," city officials said in a Facebook post. "But the ocean is still angry." Coastal calm: Tsunami evacuation orders lifted in Hawaii, threat to West Coast eases Crescent City's deadly tsunami history What makes Crescent City, a town of about 6,700 residents located about 25 miles south of the Oregon border, so tsunami-prone? Crescent City is vulnerable because it is located near the southern end of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a major fault line capable of producing dangerous tsunamis and intense earthquakes, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. Several published studies also indicate that a Cascadia Subduction Zone tsunami can cause severe damage and inland flooding. In 2011, the earthquake in Japan spurred waves of more than 8 feet, destroying Crescent City's harbor. "The water went out to a low tide, but each wave was coming back in and it was getting higher and higher," Max Blair, 79, a volunteer at the Del Norte Historical Society located near downtown Crescent City, recalled to USA TODAY on July 30. "The harbor was a whole different story." One man died during the incident as the harbor docks were smashed and dozens of boats sank, causing an estimated $50 million in damage. The harbor was eventually rebuilt as the first "tsunami resistant port" on the West Coast. Another deadly tsunami struck Crescent City in 1964, triggered by a massive earthquake in Alaska, killing 11 people and injuring 35 others. The tsunami destroyed nearly 300 buildings and homes, causing between $11 million and $16 million in damages. The incident is considered one of the most devastating tsunamis in U.S. history. "I've heard and read about it," said Blair who's lived in Crescent City for more than 30 years. "I hope we never get to experience anything like that one."
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
5 O.C. players help SET 18U girls win USA Water Polo Junior Olympics gold
IRVINE — Corona del Mar High graduates Didi Evans and Reagan Weir weren't quite sure where to go after the high school girls' water polo season ended last winter. The club season before college, with Evans headed to Princeton and Weir bound for Stanford, amounted to a free agent period. But the young women soon found their destination in the Saddleback-El Toro Water Polo Club and coach Ethan Damato. 'SET welcomed us with open arms,' Evans said. 'Immediately, I felt like part of the team. There was no transition period. We just really, really blended with them. It was like we had been playing together for years.' The result was a gold medal, SET's third straight in the 18-and-under division. SET Black beat Regency 8-5 in the title match Sunday at Woollett Aquatics Center. Evans had a goal and three assists in the final, while Weir also scored. Laguna Beach graduates Siena Jumani and Kara Carver, as well as incoming Breakers senior Brooke Schneider, also contributed for SET. Carver, bound for USC, capped her junior club career by earning her eighth Junior Olympics gold medal. 'It's just an incredible experience,' she said. 'This team is like no other, and I just loved being a part of it. It was really nice to have this be our last game and our last club experience before college, and going out on a win.' Jumani, a goalkeeper bound for UC Santa Barbara, made six saves in the first half of the title match before Clarysa Sirls played goalie in the second half. She also helped the Breakers win the CIF Southern Section Division 1 title in February. 'It's like the perfect ending for everything,' Jumani said. 'We've just had fun throughout all of it.' Christina Flynn scored three goals in the final and earned MVP honors for SET, coached by Damato, the former longtime Laguna Beach coach who recently was hired to guide the JSerra girls' water polo team. SET had lost to top-seeded SOCAL in group play on Friday, but beat SOCAL 10-9 in the 18U semifinals earlier Sunday. Weir scored the equalizing goal, then Evans netted the game-winning counterattack goal after stealing the ball up top, helping SET beat SOCAL for the first time in four meetings this year. 'I saw the opportunity and I took it,' said Evans, who could say the same about joining SET for the title run. The Corona del Mar 18U girls finished with gold in the Classic Bracket on Sunday, beating San Clemente 12-5 for the title at Yorba Linda High. CdM went a perfect 7-0 in the tournament, including an 18-10 semifinal win over North Irvine Black.
Express Tribune
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Ryan Gosling previews Project Hail Mary at Comic-Con with first look at alien bond
At San Diego Comic-Con 2025, Ryan Gosling presented early footage from Project Hail Mary, Amazon MGM's upcoming space survival epic based on the novel by Andy Weir. Gosling was joined by directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, screenwriter Drew Goddard, and Weir himself. The preview began with Gosling's character, Ryland Grace, waking from cryogenic sleep aboard a deserted spacecraft. Alone and disoriented, Grace's journey soon takes a dramatic turn when he encounters Rocky, a spider-like alien rendered through a blend of puppetry and digital animation. Their unlikely bond forms the emotional core of the film. Gosling, who also serves as a producer, spoke about his connection to the material, describing it as 'funny, heartbreaking, and hopeful.' He credited Weir's storytelling for blending emotion and science in a way that felt both personal and cinematic. The film also stars Sandra Hüller, Milana Vayntrub, Lionel Boyce, and Ken Leung. For Lord and Miller, Project Hail Mary marks their return to feature directing after more than a decade. The movie is slated for theatrical release on March 20, 2026, and aims to blend intelligent science fiction with deeply human storytelling.
