FIRST LOOK: ‘AUSTRALIA’

All movie lovers are sure in for a treat this New Year!! Baz Luhrmann’s Romantic Epic ‘Australia’ is slated for release on 1st of January

‘Australia’ is a movie from visionary director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Romeo + Juliet) and stars Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman and the suave and dashing Hugh Jackman.

The movie is a romantic action-adventure epic set in northern Australia prior to World War II. AUSTRALIA centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Belgium. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle drover (Jackman) to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country’s most unforgiving land, only to face the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier. With his new film, Luhrmann is painting on a vast canvas, creating a cinematic experience that brings together romance, drama, adventure and spectacle.

In the tradition of films like "Casablanca," "Titanic" and "Oklahoma," Luhrmann’s AUSTRALIA is a metaphor for the feelings of mystery, romance and excitement conjured by a distant, exotic place where people can transform their lives, spirits can be reborn, and love conquers all.

Particularly appealing to Luhrmann was the idea of creating an epic film set in his homeland that, like the classics that so influenced him in childhood, "I wanted to create a cinematic work that would be similarly inclusive because I feel passionately about having more inclusiveness in our lives.  Bringing people together brings comfort to the heart and soul in this unpredictable world."

"This is the film I’ve wanted to make since I was a little girl," says Nicole Kidman. "It’s the opportunity of a lifetime," Hugh Jackman says.  "I hadn’t done an Australian movie in eight years, so to come back and make a film of this magnitude, scale and ambition – using my own accent! – was a dream come true.  Dream role, dream movie, dream cast, dream director."

Well, with such a great director and such an amazing star cast ‘Australia’ sure seems promising.

- SAMPURN