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With the possible exception of Tom Hiddleston, who has been the subject of a media frenzy since arriving with girlfriend Taylor Swift, the cast of Thor: Ragnarok seem to be enjoying the early days of the shoot on the Gold Coast.
Mark Ruffalo, a prolific social media user who usually focuses on serious environmental and political issues, has shared a comic clip from the set showing off the Hulk's giant green hands and another one in what he calls his "man-cancelling suit."
Hi again. Here's another sneak peek at a day in the life of a #Hulk on the set of #Thor3 @thorofficialhttps://t.co/ojM5YPxSif— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) July 12, 2016
Chris Hemsworth, who is playing Thor again, has also taken a light-hearted approach with an Instagram post about having requested a rollercoaster for the shoot. "It's just a little something on the perks list that comes with being Thor," he says.
Thor 3 has begun #wheresmyhammer #thor3 #rollercoastersrock @taikawaititi
A video posted by Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) on Jul 5, 2016 at 3:57pm PDT
Kiwi director Taika Waititi, who started the shoot with a welcome to country from the Yugambeh people attended by Hemsworth and Ruffalo, has shared his own goofy moment - Thor's unliftable hammer sitting on a toilet, captioned "thanks a lot dude".
Thanks a lot dude. @chrishemsworth pic.twitter.com/f0SNw2GY3K— Taika Waititi (@TaikaWaititi) July 7, 2016
Traditional welcome to country by Yugambeh people on the set of #Thor 3 in Queensland.Pic by director @TaikaWaititi pic.twitter.com/Gu7qrapmyW— Allan Clarke (@AllanJClarke) July 7, 2016
Waititi has every reason to be cheerful. His latest film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, continues to perform strongly. In this country, it has overtaken Whale Rider to become New Zealand's biggest home-grown hit with $8.4 million.
Julia Gillard film still planned
Film has "a more profound life" ... Julia Gillard.
The future for the planned television drama about Julia Gillard's term as prime minister looked bleak after all the country's networks passed on it.
But producer Richard Keddie still plans to turn the story into a feature film starring Rachel Griffiths.
"I'm working really hard on that; it's my number one priority," he tells Short Cuts. "It will be about our first female prime minister and what we did to her."
With time passing and another federal election over, Keddie, who has previously produced the political dramas Hawke and Curtin for television, believes the film has "a more profound life" now.
"The idea was to rush it out originally and tell this story about something terrible that happened," he says. "But the idea now is actually to do a much deeper study into what happened ... the role of everyone involved.
"I was also really shocked at the Sarah Ferguson project [the ABC documentary series The Killing Season]. I think she got it quite wrong; I think she missed the story, she missed the truth."
Vietnam War thriller and erotic love story in Screen Australia funding
Screen Australia's announcement of more than $3 million in funding to encourage more women in film and television brought to light some fascinating projects.
One that caught Short Cuts' eye was the film The Last Flight, a thriller about Pan Am's last commercial flight into Vietnam at the height of the war in 1975.
Unjoo Moon is to direct Joan Sauers' script about "the untold true story of the five brave air stewardesses who volunteered for the heroic mission to rescue over 500 civilians."
Then there is Del Kathryn Barton's film The Flower, about an accountant with "an increasingly intense erotic fetish for flowers".
The Archibald Prize-winning artist tells Short Cuts it's a boundary-pushing love story that will be extreme and sensitive.
"It's a combination of animation and live action," she says. "At this stage, between 20 and 30 per cent animation and that will really help to define the very unique look of the film that I'm hoping to create."
Also sounding promising is writer-director Sarah McCarthy's The Sound of Mumbai, based on a true story about a music teacher on sabbatical in India who discovers a children's choir in Mumbai's harshest slum and stages on a concert of songs from The Sound of Music.
Brazilian doco among Academy's first award nominees
First it won the Australian documentary competition at the Sydney Film Festival.
Now Dan Jackson's topical film In The Shadow of the Hill, about a Brazilian slum being cleared ahead of the 2014 World Cup and Olympics, has been nominated for best feature documentary at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards.
In the first nominations to be announced for the sixth awards in December, it is up against Eva Orner's Chasing Asylum, about the federal government's hardline treatment of aslyum seekers, Nickolas Bird and Eleanor Sharpe's Remembering the Man, about the real-life love story dramatised in Holding the Man, and Lizzette Atkins and George Gittoes' Snow Monkey, about war-damaged children in Afghanistan.
Del Kathryn Barton and Brendan Fletcher's charmer Oscar Wilde's the Nightingale and the Rose (produced with Angie Fielder) is nominated for best short animation against The Albatross (Joel Best, Alex Jeremy, Alex Karonis), The Crossing (Marieka Walsh, Donna Chang) and Femme Enfant (Bonnie Forsyth, Grace Lim).
Nominated for best short fiction film are Bluey (Darlene Johnson, Heather Oxenham), Dream Baby (Lucy Gaffy, Kiki Dillon), Homebodies (Yianni Warnock, Charles Williams) and Nathan Loves Ricky Martin (Steven Arriagada, Llewellyn Michael Bates, Bryan Chau).
Dory becomes a big fish
Marlin and Dory in the sequel Finding Dory.
Finding Dory continues to dominate Australian cinemas, adding another $5 million over the weekend to top $40 million.
Given its handsome cinema average of more than $11,000 on its fifth weekend, it is expected to crack two significant marks any day now.
When it takes another $2 million, it will overtake Deadpool to become the year's highest grossing movie then become Pixar's biggest hit in outright dollar terms when it passes Toy Story 3.
The Legend of Tarzan opened strongly with $4.2 million, averaging almost $13,000 a cinema.
On limited release, Ivan Sen's outback drama Goldstone opened with $184,000, reaching $338,000 with previews, and Wayne Blair's Iranian Revolution drama Septembers of Shiraz took $14,000 in four cinemas.
