Word: australian
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...Amazing, too, has been the trajectory of this low-budget Australian horror flick. With a financing history as tortured as its plot (one of the producers had to mortgage his Adelaide home to raise the last of its budget), Wolf Creek was snapped up by the wily Weinstein brothers for international release. Opening in the U.K. in September, it grossed $3 million, roughly three times its budget; late last month it was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Director and Original Screenplay for Mclean. Fueling the buzz were reports of hardcore violence, including finger slashings and execution...
...film, which opens in Australia this week ahead of a February release in New Zealand, has raised as much ire as it has gooseflesh. Loosely based on a number of Australian crime stories, including the notorious series of "backpacker murders" committed by Ivan Milat between 1989 and 1992, the film is seen by some as flirting insensitively with the traumas of true crime. The film begins with the statement, "Wolf Creek is based on actual events?," and Mclean does nothing to make audiences doubt his tale's veracity. "When we show it in the U.S. and France," he says, with...
...safe place. So it would be interesting to have his view on the changes to those ancient rights contemplated in Australia's proposed anti-terror laws, which allow for secret detention without trial and a year's house arrest on the reasonable suspicion of a senior member of the Australian Federal Police. The government says the new laws are vital for the people's protection, but it is worth asking, before they are passed into statute, what exactly they will defend...
...Rouge commander convicted in absentia in 2002 for his role in a deadly train raid; in Anlong Veng, Cambodia. In 1994 fighters led by Chhouk Rin attacked a train bound for the coastal city of Sihanoukville, killing 13 Cambodians and abducting Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, Briton Mark Slater and Australian David Wilson. The three backpackers were executed after ransom negotiations collapsed weeks later. Sentenced to life in prison but free while his case was being appealed, Chhouk Rin fled after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and issued a warrant for his arrest in February. At the time...
...Bali bombings that killed 202, police had already made several key arrests and the first detentions in a sweep that eventually netted all but a few of the plotters. Why the big difference? For one thing, the original Bali attacks?as well as the subsequent bombings of Jakarta's Australian embassy and JW Marriott hotel?involved vehicles, whose metal frames absorbed telltale traces of the explosives used. The most recent bombs were set off by individuals carrying backpacks filled with explosives, which left only tiny amounts of residue for police to analyze, says a security official familiar with the investigation...