Anybody who reads my blog (hi... five of you!) will know I like to follow Australian film. I am from Australia and I am deeply connected to my country's industry. Thankfully taking a break from movies about drug dealers, drug users, wife abusers, crooked cops and philandering husbands (five of Australian film's favourite topics) is Mary and Max, a claymation film from Adam Elliot, the director of Oscar-winning Harvey Krumpet. It debuted as the opening night film at Sundance recently. Wallace & Gromit this is not. From the film's IMDb plot outline:A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.
And that's just the beginning! It features the vocals of Phillip Seymour Hoffman (as Max), Toni Collette (as adult Mary), Barry Humphries, Eric Bana plus several others that only Australians will recognise (Renee Geyer and Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, anyone?) I, for one, can't wait to see what Elliot does and the trailer (below) looks wickedly dark and funny. Hopefully a distributer picks it up for international release. I wonder if the animation branch would respond to it like they did Harvey Krumpet or if they would pass by it for, oh I dunno, Lame Dreamworks Cartoon 7.
It is released in Australia in April.
