The NSW country town of Canowindra (population 2500) has become the fictional Nathgari during filming of Kim Farrant’s mystery thriller Strangerland, which stars Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes as a couple whose two teenage children go missing in the desert. On Monday, locals shovelled red dirt into giant fans to create a dust storm that traps the couple. While the town has been starstruck over Kidman, Hugo Weaving, who plays a cop, has also been popular, even going ballooning with Fiennes on Sunday morning. After a week in the town, filming shifts to Broken Hill.

Disney enlists Captain Australia

As Captain America: The Winter Soldier shows, Disney specialises in cleverly localising its movies for international audiences. After six actresses, including Australia's Jessica Marais, re-created Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character in the animated Planes around the world, the studio held a Facebook competition for an on-screen list of what Captain America needs to catch up on after missing the years between 1945 and 2000. In 12 countries, 5.4 million fans voted for what they wanted on the list. Australian and New Zealand moviegoers see: ''AC/DC, space travel, Steve Irwin, Skippy the bush kangaroo, Tim Tams, Thai food, Star Wars/Trek, Nirvana (band) and Rocky (Rocky II?).'' A Disney spokeswoman describes the competition as a ‘‘clever way to engage with Marvel Facebook fans’’. The shot of the list resonated even more in the movie with the appearrance of actors Callan Mulvey, Alan Dale and a brief shot of Julian Assange in a news montage.

Film awards split down gender lines

The Australian Directors Guild has announced the nominees for its annual awards, with Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby) up against Ivan Sen (Mystery Road), Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man), Kim Mordaunt (The Rocket) and Zak Hilditch (These Final Hours) for best direction of a feature film. In the feature documentary category, all six nominees are women: Sophia Turkiewicz (Once my Mother), Rebecca Barry (I am a Girl), Heather Kirkpatrick (Mary Meets Mohammad), Juliet Lamont (Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls), Lynn-Maree Milburn (In Bob We Trust) and Kaye Harrison (The Sunnyboy). The winners will be announced on May 2.  

Not exactly selfless, but Ellen's Oscar pic almost priceless

How valuable was Ellen DeGeneres' famous selfie at the Oscars? Samsung marketer Maurice Levy, whose team organised the product placement in the telecast, has told the MIP-TV conference in Cannes that photo with Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep and other stars was worth somewhere between $US800 million and $US1 billion because of the massive sharing on social media. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 43 million viewers saw the pic being taken with a Samsung phone on the broadcast and the tweeted photo was seen by 37 million people.

Meet the filmmakers bonanza

A burst of Q&A sessions will interest cinema fans in Sydney and Melbourne over the next week or so. Comic Josh Lawson, whose directing debut The Little Death is in post-production, speaks at the Australian Film Television and Radio School's Friday on My Mind in Sydney on Friday April 1; in Melbourne, Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope – creators of The Librarians and Upper Middle Bogan as well as the forthcoming feature Now Add Honey and the mockumentary Little Lunch – talk about their recent projects (details). At Melbourne's Como, director and star Ralph Fiennes will be fielding questions after a screening of his film The Invisible Woman on Wednesday April 16. Director Jasmin Kozowy will be talking about Generation A, her documentary on the educators who are battling to build a new Afghanistan, at the Palace Verona the same night (details). Director Sophie Hyde and star Tilda Cobham-Hervey will field questions after a screening of 52 Tuesdays, the Sundance prize winning drama about a teenage girl whose mother is going through gender reassignment, at Sydney's Chauvel cinema on Tuesday April 15; the pair will do likewise at Melbourne's at Cinema Nova on Tuesday April 22 (details).

Multiplexes cream the lion's share of the take

Last weekend's box office shows just how much multiplexes funnel audiences towards big movies. The top two movies – Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($6.01 million) and The Lego Movie ($5.7 million) – were on an estimated 55 per cent of the country's 2000-odd cinema screens and took almost 70 per cent of the box office. On Saturday, the Captain America sequel had up to 18 sessions in some multiplexes.

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