Glenn here looking at an upcoming film from my home country. I may live in America now, but I am still very much interested in what Australia is producing (as I and many of my fellow countrymen can attest, it's probably against my better judgement to do so). One title I've been keeping an eye on is Jonathan Teplitzky's The Railway Man. There a was a minor fuss a few years back when The King's Speech producers were denied Australian funding and, thus, when it won Oscars it was unable to be classified as an Australian co-production despite its producers being Australian and its others local ties. Well, the funding bodies learned their lesson and are officially on board with The Railway Man, a British/Australia co-production from the memoir by Eric Lomax.

Nathaniel showed a bit more faith than others in the project by listing it in several of his Oscar categories. Other prognosticators don't seem to even know it exists! I've been skeptical that the film would even see the light of day in 2013 since the Australian media love being able to hail a star vehicle such as this as "ours", and yet there hadn't been a peep in terms of trailers, posters, or a release date. They'd be all over it ("Our Nicole Returns Home!" read headlines during production) if there was anything to actually talk about. Well, it's Australian distributor has finally put it onto the schedule and they chose the biggest day of the year - Boxing Day, 2013. [more]

Kidman on set of The Railway Man

Arguably the most competitive and busiest moviegoing day of the year in Australia, The King's Speech, The Iron Lady and Quartet are all adult-oriented titles that started their huge box office on this post-Christmas day while the young kids were all off enjoying Tintin or The Hobbit or whatever other kids' fare was on offer that year. Putting it out on this day is a big sign of faith in Transmission Films and gives me hope that maybe the film is more than just a polite, dour WWII period drama that we've seen before. I'll always have faith in director Teplitzky either way, his prior films Better Than Sex (with David Wenham) and Burning Man (with Matthew Goode and Rachel Griffiths) are both highly recommended and there's little reason to expect he'd fumble the ball with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman of all people on hand.

To be honest, I'm surprised Harvey Weinstein hasn't picked the film up yet given his success with somewhat soft-edged war dramas (The Reader, The King's Speech for example) and we know Firth and Kidman likely had to sign their souls away once they won their Academy Awards under his watch. He surely has a lot on his plate this year (including another Nicole Kidman project, Grace of Monaco - perhaps she doesn't want to market two films in one season?) There's no word yet on an American distributor let alone release date, although I probably wouldn't be surprised to see it play in Toronto and be picked up there. Surely there's somebody out there that thinks there is money to be made from Firth, Kidman, and WWII.

If the world outside of Australia does get to see The Railway Man in 2013, will you go alone? Is there an awards future in it? Will you watch anything Nicole Kidman makes or are you a more discerning Kidmaniac? Have you seen Jonathan Teplizky's other films (because you really, really should)?

So many unanswered questions...