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Premiering at L.A.'s Dances With Film festival, the ludicrously somber Shooting in Vain — written and directed by two feature-film first-timers, D.H. Nelson and Jared Januschka, respectively — displays its risibility early and often. Sample bit of dialogue, uttered by placid pixie dream girl Raine (Diana Hopper) to her agonized shutterbug boyfriend, Max (Sebastian Gregory): "So you can get all up inside my body, but I can't get inside your head?" A real Bill Faulkner over here.

The navel-gazing pseudo-profundities don't stop there. Check that title, for instance, with its self-assuredly smug double meaning....

Premiering at L.A.'s Dances With Film festival, the ludicrously somber Shooting in Vain — written and directed by two feature-film first-timers, D.H. Nelson and Jared Januschka, respectively — displays its risibility early and often. Sample bit of dialogue, uttered by placid pixie dream girl Raine (Diana Hopper) to her agonized shutterbug boyfriend, Max (Sebastian Gregory): "So you can get all up inside my body, but I can't get inside your head?" A real Bill Faulkner over here.

The navel-gazing pseudo-profundities don't stop there. Check that title, for instance, with its self-assuredly smug double meaning....

While some harrowing epidemics seem as though they don’t directly affect everyone, they ultimately prove to influence the lives of all to some degree as they sweep society. That’s unfortunately the case with the heroin epidemic in America, which is reflected in the new drama, ‘Shooting in Vain.’ The film, which is told through the […]

The post Sebastian Gregory is Shooting in Vain in Drama’s First Dances With Films Trailer appeared first on Shockya.com.

"The truth is elusive, evasive, polymorphic..." An early festival trailer has debuted for an indie drama titled Shooting in Vain, the feature debut of Jared Januschka. This film will be premiering at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles in June, and this is an early trailer to drum up some buzz in hopes of getting attendees interested in seeing it. Shooting in Vain is a look at the heroin epidemic sweeping America, told through the eyes of a struggling artist who lost the love of his life. Sebastian Gregory stars as Max, who returns to his hometown and re-experiences the memories of falling in love with his high school sweetheart. The full cast includes Isabel Lucas, Diana Hopper, Alexandra Park, & Maria McCann. Check it out. Here's the festival trailer (+ poster) for Jared Januschka's Shooting in Vain, direct from YouTube: Still overwhelmed with guilt years after his high school sweetheart's death,...

Exclusive: The Jared Januschka-directed Shooting In Vain is making its U.S. premiere next month at Dances With Films, the indie festival that runs June 7-17 in Hollywood. The drama stars Sebastian Gregory, Goliath‘s Diana Hopper, The Royals‘ Alexandra Park, MacGyver‘s Isabel Lucas and Ryan Shoos. Above is the first-look trailer.

Written by D.H. Nelson, the pic shines a light on the heroin epidemic in America, told through the eyes of struggling artist Max (Gregory), overwhelmed with guilt years after his high school sweetheart’s death, who returns home seeking closure. Instead, he re-experiences the memories of falling in love with her, and the mystery of what happened to her unravels as the past plays again the present.

Januschka also produced via his Januschka Productions along with China Lion Entertainment. Bo An and Jonathan Ward Rau are co-producing, and executive producers are Jiang Yanming, Tom Rau and The Negley Flinn Foundation.

Return to Nim’s Island Contest Giveaway Sweepstakes. This Return to Nim’s Island Blu-ray contest, giveaway, sweepstakes illustrates Return to Nim’s Island‘s release on DVD on April 2, 2013. Brendan Maher‘s Return to Nim’s Island stars Matthew Lillard, Bindi Irwin, Toby Wallace, John Waters, Sebastian Gregory, Jack Pearson, and Nathan Derrick. Return to Nim’s Island‘s [...]

Continue reading: Contest: Return To Nim’S Island (2013) Blu-ray: Brendan Maher, Matthew Lillard...

Family adventure film Nim's Island 2, starring Bindi Irwin, has begun shooting on the Gold Coast.

The film also stars Us actor Matthew Lillard (The Descendants, Scooby Doo), who plays marine scientist Jack, the father of Nim (Bindi Irwin), as well as local actors John Waters (Looking Through the Glass Onion, Offspring), Toby Wallace (Surviving Georgia, Neighbours), Nathan Derrick (Rush, Bed of Roses), Sebastian Gregory (Neighbours, Accidents Happen) and Jack Pearson (Winners & Losers).

The original Nim's Island grossed $US48 million in North America and almost $6.2 million at the Australian box office. While it was shot in Queensland, it did not qualify as an Australian production, unlike the sequel which is now underway.

Nim's Island was a far bigger production, starring Jodi Foster, and was distributed by Universal. The sequel will be distributed in Australia by Pinnacle Films, which has specialised in limited theatrical releases, while international distribution is being handled by Walden Entertainment.

Neighbours bosses have announced that actor and musician Sebastian Gregory is currently filming a guest role on the soap. The 22-year-old is playing the part of Ed Lee, a mathematics genius who becomes an unlikely ally for Natasha Williams (Valentina Novakovic) in an upcoming storyline. Ed will appear on screens for four months, and has been tipped to make a big impact on Ramsay Street life as he introduces Tash to "some of his unusual pastimes". Gregory commented: "He is very different but also likeable - I'm really (more)...

A Heartbeat Away screened at the Australian Film Festival at Sydney's Randwick Ritz on the weekend ahead of its release this Thursday. The feature film debut of Gale Edwards . acclaimed theatre director of such international hits as The Boy From Oz . is a musical addition to the ever-popular genre of the Aussie feel-good. Following in the proud tradition of The Castle, it's up to the local brass band to snatch back their town hall from the evil clutches of property developers.. However, disaster strikes when weeks out from the competition their conductor (William Zappa) is incapacitated leaving his reluctant, rock-n-roll guitarist son (Sebastian Gregory) to lead the band to victory. With Isabel Lucas featuring as Gregory.s love interest, and...

New stills from Rio, The Hangover: Part II, and set photos of Gina Carano beating up Ewan McGregor in a scene for Steven Soderbergh's Haywire

New posters for Super 8, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Hobo with a Shotgun, Hesher and Courageous.

The first trailer is out for Nickelodeon’s Animated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles " TV Series at Entertainment Weekly, and the first trailer of Elijah Wood in the FX comedy series Wilfred.

The first poster for the zero-budget indie feature "Hellacious Acres : The Case of John Glass", a "minimalist black sci-fi comedy set in a post-apocalyptic world"

Paul Sundstrom's Argh! Central is offering weekly movie review cartoons.

How much of a pay rise has Snooki and The Situation gotten from doing "Jersey Shore"? Check out this demoralising infographic.

"Aaron Eckhart, who has been consistently saying he doubts he'd return in "The Dark Knight Rises" as Two-Face,...

From Nirvana (and Isabel Lucas) fans to seventy-year-olds, Gale Edwards’ debut feature A Heartbeat Away targets an unusually wide demographic. Miguel Gonzalez reports.

Originally titled Montague Municipal, the script was submitted by a Queensland Investment Corporation equities dealer, Julia Kincade, to an initiative set up by the Pftc and Pictures in Paradise to find new writers.

“New writers come up with fantastic ideas and they’re very open to changes, which I’m not sure more experienced writers are. The downside is that it can sometimes take a long time, because they’re not full-time writers and they’ve got other jobs,” said producer Chris Fitchett.

Two scripts from that scheme were soon made into films, Blurred in 2002 and Under the Radar in 2004, but the process for this one would be much slower. Chris Fitchett was working on the film as script editor with Brown producing, but both got distracted by other projects.

The Hangover: Part Two

Opens: May 26th 2011

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifinakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong

Director: Todd Phillips

Summary: Phil, Stu, Alan and Doug travel to exotic Thailand for Stu’s wedding. After the unforgettable bachelor party in Las Vegas, Stu is taking no chances and has opted for a safe, subdued pre-wedding brunch. However, things don’t always go as planned.

Analysis: It really wasn't until about three months before its release that Warner Brothers realised "The Hangover" was going to be a hit. Test screening response was through the roof, while the trailer had great reaction after premiering at ShoWest and online. About that time they commissioned director Todd Phillips, along with his "Old School" and "Road Trip" scribe Scot Armstrong, to pen a sequel. Yet they still waited to see how the first one went before fully committing to the follow-up.

The wait didn't last long.

Hoyts Distribution has announced that A Heartbeat Away will have a wide release on March 3, 2011.

“Hoyts Distribution and we filmmakers see A Heartbeat Away as a multiplex film, ” producer Chris Fitchett told Encore in February.

A Heartbeat Away is theatre director Gale Edwards’ first film. It was shot in Brisbane and financed by Screen Australia, Screen Queensland, Cutting Edge and UK’s Quickfire Films.

Chris Fitchett produces, alongside executive producers Chris Brown (Pictures in Paradise), John Lee (Cutting Edge), Gary Hamilton and James Atherton (Arclight Films).

The story is about an aspiring rock guitarist who is forced to take over the musical direction of his father’s marching band just weeks before a major competition. The cast includes Isabel Lucas, Sebastian Gregory, Williams Zappa, Tammy Macintosh and Colin Friels.

Here's the reason why I decided to rent this Australian film: the DVD artwork which features the lovely Tahyna Tozzi. Speaking about the plot, Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful is not the most original thriller set in suburbia that one will see. With that said, the only good thing about this film is definitely the cast's performance.

While the film was shot in Adelaide, the story takes place in an Australian suburb called Sunshine Hills. Behind its veneer of perfection, the town is shaken by three teenage girls' mysterious disappearance. Besides, the prime suspects are the owners (Asher Keddie and Socratis Otto) of the house number 46 to be behind these abductions.

After she had broken up with her boyfriend, Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), the girl-next-door of every boy's dreams, persuades Daniel (Sebastian Gregory), a fourteen-year old boy and also her neighbour, to uncover the truth for her. Obviously, Suzy expects Daniel to do all the legwork,...

Here's the reason why I decided to rent this Australian film: the DVD artwork which features the lovely Tahyna Tozzi. Speaking about the plot, Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful is not the most original thriller set in suburbia that one will see. With that said, the only good thing about this film is definitely the cast's performance.

While the film was shot in Adelaide, the story takes place in an Australian suburb called Sunshine Hills. Behind its veneer of perfection, the town is shaken by three teenage girls' mysterious disappearance. Besides, the prime suspects are the owners (Asher Keddie and Socratis Otto) of the house number 46 to be behind these abductions.

After she had broken up with her boyfriend, Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), the girl-next-door of every boy's dreams, persuades Daniel (Sebastian Gregory), a fourteen-year old boy and also her neighbour, to uncover the truth for her. Obviously, Suzy expects Daniel to do all the legwork,...

Long before David Lynch’s brilliantly subversive Blue Velvet (the trend-setting and utterly unforgettable intro of which you can see here) once again turned the suburban thriller genre on its (severed) ear, the idea of suburban disdain and despair bubbling under an all-too-idyllic surface had been done to death, and beyond. Most film goers will unrelentingly cite 1999's (has it been that long?) American Beauty, which kicked off a trend of dark-side-of-suburbia dramedies every bit as persistent as the slacker-hitmen permanently etched into public consciousness by Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and the imitators that followed. Thumbsucker, The Chumscrubber, Little Children, the list goes on and on, with a few choice flicks bucking the trend and updating the already ambitious but admittedly dated template of Beauty.

So where does Dean O'Flaherty’s Beautiful fall on that scale of mostly tired indies? Unfortunately, the O'Flaherty-penned and directed film is a cluttered canvas...

Isabel Lucas has make a leap from blockbuster action fantasy to feel-good musical comedy with "A Heartbeat Away". The actress known for her Alice role in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" has been tapped as the leading lady for this major Queensland film production by Emmy Award-winning Australian theater director Gale Edwards.

What part she will be playing in the movie has yet to be disclosed. Nonetheless, she will take a part in the story that revolves around an aspiring rock guitarist who is forced to take over the musical direction of his father's marching band just four weeks before a major competition. She is joined by Sebastian Gregory, Williams Zappa, Tammy Macintosh and Colin Friels in the cast ensemble.

"A Heartbeat Away" is produced by Chris Fitchet and marked Gale Edwards' directorial debut in feature film. Of the movie, the helmer said, "It's a charming, funny and moving...

Isabel Lucas has landed a role in a new musical comedy entitled "A Heartbeat Away". It has not been known what role which is played by the Australia-born actress in this film debut for Emmy Award winning Australian theater director Gale Edwards, but she will share screen with the likes of Sebastian Gregory, Williams Zappa, Tammy Macintosh and Colin Friels.

"A Heartbeat Away" tells the story of an aspiring rock guitarist who is forced to take over the musical direction of his father's marching band just weeks before a major competition. "It's a charming, funny and moving human story with some interesting deeper layers," Edwards claims about her new project. The shooting for the film has been kicked off on Monday, February 15 in Brisbane for a 2011 release.

Isabel Lucas, who has her first television role when playing Tasha Andrews in "Home and Away", appears as Alice in box office movie...

Josh Payne, one of the three teenaged stars of the violent Australian thriller Acolytes (now on DVD from Anchor Bay), likens the movie to Wolf Creek—a film he isn’t legally able to see in Australia at this point. But Acolytes (see the first part of this set report here) does indeed spin off from an equally disturbing premise: a trio of teens discover a dead body in the woods and, instead of reporting it, choose to find the responsible party and blackmail him into offing one of their enemies.

“Parents will be freaked by Acolytes because we’re only kids,” says Payne, whose onscreen mates are portrayed by Sebastian Gregory and Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, “but that’s the reason a lot of teens will be able to relate to it.” And he wants it known that he put a lot of effort into his final scene: “Against all advice,...

The Queensland sun beats down and dust blows up from the dirt track when Fango steps onto the first of several locations to witness the filming of the stylish new Australian serial-killer thriller Acolytes (out this week on Anchor Bay DVD following numerous festival appearances over the past year). Virtually entombed in concrete—beneath an overpass that supports a busy highway—one can still hear the traffic, but it’s virtually drowned out by the noise of a fly swarm—perhaps entirely fitting for a film that deals with the stench of rotting corpses and the people who cause them.

Fango freezes just before rounding a corner where a rehearsal is taking place; much shouting stops suddenly, and this writer takes a spot behind the monitors being fed the picture from the Viper camera—the hi-def rig of choice for the likes of David Fincher and Michael Mann. Director Jon Hewitt...

A pair of fright favorites have been announced for Blu-ray release later this year. Dark Sky Films gave Fango the word that Henry: Portait Of A Serial Killer will have its hi-def debut September 29, while Universal Home Entertainment issues the modern zombie-comedy classic Shaun Of The Dead (previously available on a now-out-of-print HD-DVD) on Blu-ray September 22. Contents have yet to be announced, but presumably these will contain all the previous DVD special features; retail price for each is $29.98.

Speaking of Dark Sky, the company also let us know that it has bumped its release of the British gorefest Gnaw to October 13, and confirmed that the much-lauded Deadgirl will hit disc September 15. You can find articles on both these films in Fango #285, which hits the stands any day now.

Anchor Bay issues the well-reviewed Australian psychological chiller Acolytes July 28. Directed by Jon Hewitt from a script he wrote with S.P. Krause and Shayne Armstrong,...

Anchor Bay and Starz have picked up the U.S. DVD distribution rights for the Australian thriller Acolytes , directed by Jon Hewitt. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and is slated to debut on American soil July 28th. It's unknown if Anchor Bay is prepping a Blu-Ray release or what special features will be included. Sebastian Gregory, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence and Joshua Payne star as three friends who blackmail a killer after the discovery of a body in the woods. You can watch a trailer here .

Editor’s Note: This is one of several interviews, conducted via email, with directors whose films are screening at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. “Accidents Happen” Director: Andrew Lancaster Screenwriter: Brian Carbee Primary Cast: Geena Davis, Harrison Gilbertson, Joel Tobeck, Harry Cook, Sebastian Gregory Synopsis: Set in a 1980s New England suburb, director Andrew Lancaster’s stunning debut is a bittersweet drama revolving around a dysfunctional family coping with the consequences of a …...

Editor’s Note: This is one of several interviews, conducted via email, with directors whose films are screening at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. “Accidents Happen” Director: Andrew Lancaster Screenwriter: Brian Carbee Primary Cast: Geena Davis, Harrison Gilbertson, Joel Tobeck, Harry Cook, Sebastian Gregory Synopsis: Set in a 1980s New England suburb, director Andrew Lancaster’s stunning debut is a bittersweet drama revolving around a dysfunctional family coping with the consequences of a …...

Sometimes I watch a movie and can immediately tell what the pitch would have been. Disturbia was "Rear Window, but with teenagers!" or Australia was "Gone with the Wind, but with Aussie accents!" Such it was with Dean O'Flaherty's debut film as writer and director, Beautiful. I can picture the meeting now. "So guy, it's Blue Velvet, but with teenagers... and Aussie accents!" Which just makes the movie even more of a disappointment.

There is a good movie tucked away inside Beautiful and it occasionally rears it's head from time to time to perk the viewer's interest whenever it begins to slide due to unnecessary subplots and ridiculous flights of fancy. It is just that it never sticks around long enough to build towards a successful film. In fact, watching the film is a very bizarre experience, indeed. A bizarro-world mish-mash of ideas and images. Not once does O'Flaherty...

Yeah, sometimes I’m a little slow getting to things sometimes, as was the case with Australian thriller Beautiful, a film that the Quiet Earth boys wrote about a little over a week ago - right about the same time that the sales agent was handing me a screener to the film, which I then knew nothing at all about, saying “Maybe you’d like this ...” Well, that screener was a random selection from the pile last night and yes, yes I do like it rather a lot. A gorgeously shot, seductively slow burning affair blessed with a lead performance from young Sebastian Gregory from Acolytes - watch this kid, he’s going to be a big time star - this one puts a decidedly darker spin on adolescence in suburbia.

Shy and awkward, fourteen year old Daniel Hobson is a quiet boy living on a quiet street in the idyllic,...

When I saw that Sebastian Gregory, a lead actor in the film Acolytes (which is actually quite good) was in this, I was immediately interested. Playing an awkward teenager, the story revolves around a community with a lot of secrets, and while the photography looks fantastic, the whole trailer just landed a big one, and that's me. It's dropping in Australia on March 5th, let's hope we don't have to wait much longer.

Shy and awkward, fourteen year old Daniel Hobson is a quiet boy living on a quiet street in the idyllic, picture-perfect suburb of Sunshine Hills. Viewing his world through the lens of an old camera, Daniel is – like many in the neighborhood – both entranced and disturbed by the sinister rumors that circulate in whispers from house to house.

A third teenage girl has just disappeared without a trace, and while the police don't seem to have any answers,...