KATE WINSLET: Labor Day, Frank Francis news http://tinyurl.com/yfuuh4k http://tinyurl.com/3r8cx8k #winslet @sagawards

Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener Join Charlie Kaufman’s Frank or Francis

By Kyle Buchanan and Claude Brodesser-Akner

Charlie Kaufman has already lined up an impressive cast of actors for his wild new movie Frank or Francis — Steve Carell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, and Kevin Kline have long been attached to the project — and now he’s added two name actresses, both of whom did some of their career-best work with a Kaufman script.

Vulture hears that Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener have come aboard Frank or Francis; the former was nominated for an Oscar for the Kaufman-penned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while the latter got her first Oscar nod thanks to Kaufman’s script for Being John Malkovich.

Both of those screenplays were directed by other people, but Kaufman will be helming his own work for Frank or Francis, a very meta musical comedy about a director (Carell) who becomes obsessed with the message board commenter (Black) disparaging his movies on a Hollywood website.

And though Kaufman’s script is positively scathing when it comes to the Academy Awards (Cage plays a washed-up actor who serves as the emcee of the event), we should note that with the new additions to his cast, he’s now got an ensemble that includes three Oscar winners and can boast a bounty of eleven total nominations. Not bad!

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/201….twitter_vulture

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Kate is nominated for her performance in MILDRED PIERCE.The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) will air live on TBS & TNT on Sunday, January 29, 2012 simulcast live coast to-coast on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, at 8 p.m. (ET), 7 p.m. (CT), 6 p.m. (MT) and 5 p.m. (PT) from the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles.http://www.sag.org/http://www.sagawards.org/http://www.sagawards.org/awards/nominees….rs-guild-awards

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries

. Laurence Fishburne
Paul Giamatti
Greg Kinnear
Guy Pearce Mildred Pierce Monty Beragon
James Woods

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
. Diane Lane
Maggie Smith
Emily Watson
Betty White

Kate Winslet Mildred Pierce

SAG Honors for Stunt Ensembles

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Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet & Josh Brolin, will shoot in Massachusetts this summer

by Christine on January 26, 2012

Director Jason Reitman is gearing up for his next project, Labor Day, which will star Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.

The movie is based on Joyce Maynard’s book of the same name and is set on a late summer Labor Day holiday weekend in the 1980s. It opens with a divorced, depressed single mom (Winslet) who encounters a large, bleeding man (Brolin) while shopping with her 13-year-old. He asks for a ride and against their better judgment, they agree. Meanwhile, they learn that police are searching their town for an escaped convict. The story is mostly told through the eyes of 13-year-old Henry, who spends most of his time daydreaming or watching TV.

As we reported last month, there have been rumors that the movie would be filmed in the Boston area next summer and now, based on the casting call below, it looks like the rumors are true.

Chrystie Street Casting recently issued a casting call for the part of Henry, which Reitman has stressed is crucial to the movie because, we’ve got to find someone very special. He has also implied that he has not ruled out using an unknown actor for the role.

But, the casting call also confirms that the movie will be filming in Massachusetts in June. You can check out the complete listing below:

Chrystie Street Casting is casting Labor Day, a feature film. Chrystie Street Casting has cast the films Young Adult, Precious, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting, Cider House Rules, Pineapple Express, The Wrestler, and 200 other major films, as well as the TV series Pan Am. Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air), dir.; Suzanne Smith Crowley & Jessica Kelly, casting.

Shooting begins June 2012 in MA.

Seeking�Henry: boy, 13 years old (submit ages 10-14), Caucasian, a true innocent, has taken over the role of caretaker and protector to his fragile and reclusive mother Adele, an observant boy who understands his mother�s loneliness, but is too young to understand why he cannot entirely fill it, when a new man enters the picture the friend-less Henry is both exhilarated by the relationship and threatened by the prospect that he is no longer needed by his mother, LEAD;

Eleanor: girl, 14 years old (submit ages 10-14), Caucasian, a skinny girl, a product of a broken home, newly moved from a big city to live with her father and is already bored with the small town entertainments, an intelligent girl, learned how to get what she wants with wit, calculations, and her newly developed sexual awareness, to Henry she is the mysterious hot girl who seems to know everything about the world that he doesn�t, LEAD;

Barry: boy, 15 years old (submit ages 12-17), Caucasian, mentally challenged, could be Down�s Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy, the wheelchair-bound son of Evelyn (the lead character�s only friend), can only communicate through gurgles and mumbles, is perhaps more engaged in the world around him than his mother realizes, seeking actors who have either condition described above, supporting role.

To be considered, email recent pix, age, and contact info ASAP to labordaycasting@gmail.com. No phone calls. Professional pay provided. SAG Film Agreement.

If you have any scoop about Labor Day or its filming locations, let us know at olv@onlocationvacations.com!

http://www.onlocationvacations.com/2012/…. s-this-summer/

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Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society auditions held
25 January 2012 Last updated at 04:03 ETOpen auditions are being held to find a child to appear in the film adaptation of the novel, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.Filmmakers are looking for a girl from Guernsey to play the part of Kit, who is aged between four and six.The character is the adopted child of Juliet Ashton, who will be played by Kate Winslet.The open auditions are due to be held on Saturday at St Sampson’s High School between 09:00 and 14:30 GMT.

Last week it was confirmed some of the scenes would be filmed in Guernsey.

Theatre schools in the island have been approached to put forward girls for private auditions on Friday.

Kelly Valentine Hendry, who is responsible for the casting, said they were looking for a natural and previous experience of acting was not necessary.

She said there was no need to book for the open casting, that only one parent could attend per child and those girls attending should take along a small box containing three items they particularly like or find interesting to talk about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-16709291

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fromhttp://www.twitter.com/@SamBirrell_1D

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Mildred Pierce (US – BD RA)Jonathan checks out the HBO miniseries based on the James M. Cain novel..Having it all would cost her everything. But for Mildred Pierce (Oscar winner Kate Winslet), success was worth the price. As a struggling single mother in Depression-era Los Angeles, Mildred is determined to fulfill the demands of her eldest daughter Veda (Evan Rachel Wood), surpassing societal expectations and the betrayal of lovers along the way. In this acclaimed 5-part miniseries, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Haynes transforms the original James M. Cain novel into an epic movie event. (From the HBO synopsis)

Mildred Pierce

I admit I wasn’t sure to expect with Mildred Pierce. I’ve never read the James M. Cain novel and I haven’t seen the acclaimed 1945 film starring Joan Crawford. Right from the start you can tell this isn’t your typical miniseries. If it weren’t for the episodic structure, everything about Mildred Pierce would feel like a cinematic experience thanks to the strong production values, top notch performances and a talented director like Todd Haynes at the helm.

Choosing to do Mildred Pierce as a miniseries was a great call. I can imagine the story fitting into a two-hour film, but with five hour-long episodes Haynes and his fellow writers have the privilege of fully developing every character and their relationships to Mildred. These relationships, specifically that of Mildred and her daughter Veda, are what make the series intriguing to me.

In many circumstances a character like Mildred Pierce would be difficult to sympathize with. She’s afraid of being seen as a waitress by her daughters. She has a lot of pride and the values she imposes on her children are elitist. It’s part of the reason her daughter Veda is so difficult to please. Her plight doesn’t come close to comparing with The Grapes of Wrath’s Joad family. Yet Kate Winslet, through her extraordinary performance, makes the character identifiable. I’ve always been impressed by her, but I swear she’s just getting better with every new project. Even if Mildred’s struggles early on feel minor, watching her accept the crumbs of her former life and be treated like a lower class citizen still feels like a punch in the gut.

The story unwinds at a pace that is sure to lose some viewer’s interest. Where some will be bored, I found the pace to be measured; leaving room for reflective moments and nuance in the performances. There is melodrama, but it’s inherent the story and the performers pull it off with grace and humility. Chances are if you feel on board for five hours of heavy Depression-era drama, you won’t be too deterred by the pacing.

Kate Winslet isn’t alone. She’s in great company with players like Melissa Leo, Guy Pearce, Brian F. O’Byrne, and Evan Rachel Wood. Wood in particular does great as the older Veda Pierce. Veda is such an irritating character that praising the performance feels difficult, but that should say something about how good Wood’s performance is. Morgan Turner, who plays the younger Veda, deserves a lot of praise for her performance too. She’s got a bright future in this business. Leo is great, as always. Here, she plays Mildred’s friend and serves as the voice of reason whenever Mildred’s blinded by her pride. Brian F. O’Byrne is one of those guys who I know I’ve seen in other movies but have never taken the time to get familiar with his work. He’s great here as Bert, Mildred’s ex-wife. The cast does a terrific job of selling a story that might otherwise be difficult to like, and without their efforts and the strong production behind the picture, this miniseries could’ve been a disaster. Haynes does some of his best work behind the camera. He knows well that the style and flair that made some of his motion pictures so memorable doesn’t belong here, and he approaches the material with a subtlety and focus that feels like a perfect match for the material.

Video

HBO releases Mildred Pierce with an impressive 1080p transfer. Each one-hour episode takes up approximately 13 GB of the two BD-50’s. I went into Mildred Pierce not expecting much from the video transfer, knowing that it was filmed on 16 mm. Well it certainly shows right from the start as detail is relatively low and the overall image is flat in appearance. But it serves the old fashioned elements of the story well, giving it an aged appearance. The film maintains a very consistent, thick grainy appearance that looks much nicer than most digital transfers from 16 mm sources. Occasionally the grain is distractingly harsh against bright backgrounds, but this is so infrequent and an expectation of the format that I don’t hold it against the transfer. Much of the movies colour palette is a mixture of olive green and golden hues (much like the HBO packaging), so colours never quite look natural. The scheme reminds me of Amelie, but where that movie used it to create a warm atmosphere, it’s used to give Mildred Pierce a dated, dreary look. It’s a very fitting look that suits the series well, but it won’t make for a reference-level video presentation. Outdoor scenes are much brighter and have more natural colours. Compression artefacts scarcely make themselves apparent and were only obvious to me when closely studying screen caps.

Audio

Mildred Pierce gets the full treatment in the audio department with a surprisingly strong DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. From the opening credit music the sound quality already makes itself known with a deep bass that puts the LFE channel straight to work. In fact all of the music in the show has a great depth to it, despite being older songs. The actual show scenes themselves are more dialogue-driven, and volume levels are perfect for hearing what characters have to say. Most of the spatial effects are restricted to the stereo channels, but they’re well balanced. I noticed some things occurring on one side of the screen are balanced appropriately to the left or right speakers, where most 5.1 mixes keep most of the on-screen noise front and center. Environmental noise makes up the entirety of the rear channels. The diner that Mildred works at early in the show is filled with the sounds of customers having conversations and the sounds of silverware and plates shuffling around. You can hear the noises of the city quite well too during outdoor scenes. It’s a surprisingly immersing mix for a drama miniseries, and I can’t imagine fans of the show will be disappointed with how it sounds on their systems.

Extras

The Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Todd Haynes, Writer Jon Raymond and Production Designer Mark Friedberg is only available for two episodes; part three and part five. These are some of the more eventful episodes. Since the commentary doesn’t start until part three, a decent chunk of the episode’s commentary is dedicated to explaining the origins of the production. It’s the kind of a stuff a behind-the-scenes featurette should cover, but once Haynes and company get through that territory the rest of the commentary track is incredibly informative and much more relative to what is happening in the episodes. For the most part they stay away from technical details, though there is some talk about set preparation and the filming process. The commentaries are mostly structured around the characters and how they chose to develop them and adapt them for this version of the story. They also cover some stylistic choices, pointing out some observations that weren’t apparent to me when watching the episodes. Overall I found it very worthwhile and I learned more about the creation process than I ever could’ve asked for. I found myself wishing for more commentary tracks on the other three parts.

Inside the Episodes (23:26, HD) is a series of five short interviews with director Todd Haynes. Each one is approximately 4-5 minutes and they are episode-specific. I recommend watching them following each episode of the series, as Haynes has a lot of wisdom to share about the making of the episodes and his approach to the characters.

Making of Mildred Pierce (29:01, HD): This is a structured, polished behind-the-scenes documentary that I’m assuming was made for airing on HBO. There’s interview footage from the actors and the filmmakers, as well as set designers and producers. Pieces of interviews come at you at a rapid pace while footage is shown from the set. Things start off with the interview subjects praising Kate Winslet and her talents. Then it goes into the look and feel of the movie, covering some of the excruciating detail that went into set decorations and the process of shutting down a street in New York and making it look like California. From there it goes into costume design, which an unbelievable amount of time and attention was given to. Mildred Pierce is a story that covers a wide array of classes and types of people, and seeing how much thought went into portraying these individuals really helped me to appreciate the production more. The next segment, titled “Surviving the Great Depression”, which takes a look at the Depression-era aspect of the story and how the writers approached it. “Mildred & Her Men” is dedicated to various relationships Mildred has with men in the story. I wasn’t too crazy about this segment. None of the observations couldn’t be arrived at by watching the series, but it’s still neat to hear the actor’s takes on the characters. Lastly, the documentary looks into the relationship between Veda and Mildred, which is what interested me most in the series. Hearing the creators take on it was enriching. This isn’t the longest “making of” feature, but it’s packed with plenty of valuable information that will easily satisfy fans of the series.

Overall

While I was very impressed by Mildred Pierce, I can’t recommend blindly purchasing it unless you’re a huge fan of the cast or of Todd Haynes work. It’s a very well-made take on the story with great production values and a perfect cast, but the pacing and the melodramatic material isn’t bound to click with everybody. If you are already a fan of Mildred Pierce, then don’t hesitate to pick up this home release from HBO. The video presentation is as good as any 16 mm transfer is bound to look, and the DTS-HD audio presentation serves the material well. The extras are valuable, though I wish there were commentary tracks for all five episodes instead of just two.

* Note: The above images are taken from the Blu-ray release and resized for the page. Full-resolution captures are available by clicking individual images, but due to .jpg compression they are not necessarily representative of the quality of the transfer.

Review by Jonathan Hogberg

http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/mildred-pierce.html

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Kate Winslet still believes in the “beauty” of marriage
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 (London)The 36-year-old actress, Kate Winslet – who was married to Jim Threapleton from 1998 to 2001 and director Sam Mendes for seven years from May 2003 – admits commitment can be tough but she still wants to be with someone for the rest of her life.Kate – who is currently dating tycoon Sir Richard Branson’s nephew Ned Rocknroll – said: “I still believe in the beauty of committing yourself to another person and, at least, in the idea of marriage as an expression of that commitment.”Living with someone will always be a challenge, but you hope to be able to find someone whom you can spend the rest of your days.”Kate maintains a close relationship with Sam for the sake of children Joe, eight and 11-year-old Mia – her daughter with Jim – and while the aftermath of the split was difficult, she says they are all very happy now.

She told Britain’s OK! magazine: “It’s not the easiest situation being a single mother, but Sam has been very good in helping me with the kids.

“They’ve been spending time with both of us and even though it was hard at first, we’re all doing great. I’ve never felt better. I’m very happy with the work I’ve been doing and I’m enjoying my time with my children, who mean the world to me.”

http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_story.aspx?….ood&nid =170032

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Brian McFadden and Vogue Williams talk engagement as Kerry Katona says it’s a rebound

Also in this week’s OK!

Kate Winslet chats about moving back from New York, her marriage split and saving lives at the Necker Island inferno.

http://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/view/44707/

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Roman Polanski�s Carnage Gets A New UK Quad Poster Of Doppelg�ngers
January 23, 2012
By Kenji Lloyd
http://www.heyuguys.co.ukPremiering at the Venice Film Festival last September, Roman Polanski�s latest film, Carnage, is just a couple of weeks away from coming out here in the UK. If you�ve missed our coverage of the film so far, you can catch up on it all right here, most recently including the UK trailer towards the end of last year.With the release now imminent, Empire have a great new UK quad poster to share with us, featuring the film�s four principals front and centre, twice. So we get to see Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz, each doubled up.

�A showdown between two kids: about eleven, in a local playground. Swollen lips, broken teeth� Now the parents of the �victim� have invited the parents of the �bully� to their apartment to sort it out. Cordial banter gradually develops a razor-sharp edge as all four parents reveal their laughable contradictions and grotesque prejudices. None of them will escape the ensuing carnage.�

Co-written by Polanski and Yasmina Reza, based on her original play, Le Dieu du Carnage, the film has received mostly positive reviews, and received two Golden Globe nominations, as well as winning Polanski the Little Golden Lion at Venice last year.

Carnage will be out in UK cinemas on 3rd February. The film has had its Oscar-qualifying run in the US already, and has been to a number of European countries already as well, and now we�re very close to getting to see it too. Here�s the new UK quad poster to whet your appetites. As usual, click to enlarge.

http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2012/01/23/rom….-doppelgangers/

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irgin Media posted this image today!http://blog.virginmediapioneers.com/wp-c…./01/storify.png

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http://s794.photobucket.com/albums/yy229….January%202012/

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Branagh movie WILL be filmed in GuernseyIt has been confirmed the film version of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society WILL be filmed in Guernsey, subject to the support of the States, and will star Kate Winslet.As Channel Television has previously reported, renowned actor-director Kenneth Branagh (below right) was in the island at the start of the year to scout for locations.We can now reveal that up to five weeks of filming will take place in the island – mainly exterior scenes, with the rest shot in London.

The film, likely to be called simply, ‘Guernsey’, is based on the best-selling book and Kate would play the lead role of a writer who travels to the island and writes letters to her publisher about the members of the Potato Peel Pie book club, which was set up during the Occupation – and wasn’t quite what it seemed.

The decision to film part of the production in Guernsey follows efforts by the island’s head of tourism, Jason Moriarty, who broke off part of his holiday in America last year to visit film producers in Hollywood to argue the case.

Movie productions have been put off filming in the Channel Islands in the past because of high taxes they usually have to pay here.

http://www.channelonline.tv/channelonline/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=497874

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Book Review: So Brilliantly Clever
By John Gardner
5:00 AM Thursday Jan 26, 2012So Brilliantly Clever by Peter Graham
Awa Press $42Even without the impetus provided by Heavenly Creatures, the film that set Peter Jackson, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey on the road to stardom, the murder of Honorah Parker by her daughter Pauline and her friend Juliet Hulme would still have been one of those crimes that exert an enduring public fascination.As Peter Graham points out, matricide by daughters is very rare. Where it occurs, it is typically committed by daughters who themselves are elderly and have reached the end of their tether.This shockingly brutal crime was committed by teenagers, well educated and, in Hulme’s case, from a family that moved in the higher levels of Christchurch society. Added to this recipe was the fact that Hulme was of striking good looks and there was apparently a lesbian relationship between the girls.

Include the later revelation that one of the killers had become a very successful writer of bloody murder mysteries and it’s easy to see why a New Zealand crime became an international sensation.

The broad facts are well known but Graham’s workmanlike account fills in a wealth of detail. The Hulme household was virtually dysfunctional, in the sense of providing what a teenage girl needed emotionally. Juliet’s health was poor and she spent a large amount of time separated from her parents.

Her father was a very odd fish, a scientist who later went on to play a leading role in developing Britain’s hydrogen bomb, and who came to New Zealand as rector of Canterbury University College. Her mother, who was a part-time marriage guidance adviser who broadcast on family matters, was having an affair with the lodger who was by her side throughout the girls’ trial.

Parker’s father had abandoned a previous wife and family and was not legally married to Pauline’s mother, a state of affairs rather more shameful over 50 years ago than it is today.

Graham’s research is thorough and he has been reluctant to let any of it go to waste. Did we really need to know the architectural history of Christchurch Central Police station or that Britain’s civil defence budget rose from �9 million to �51 million in 1938?

He does, however, present a convincing picture of the moral and social climate of the Christchurch of the time, a background against which the murder must have seemed beyond belief. But if this book is strong on the background, the essential fascination of the case is, as Peter Jackson realised, the unlikely and fervid relationship between the girls.

They created a classic folie a deux, inhabiting a fantasy world in which they were creatures of unique genius and beauty. They dreamed of marrying film stars, of being opera singers and great writers. Such runaway escapism is common for teenagers but Hulme and Parker had no brakes. When Parker’s mother seemed to be the bar to their being together when Hulme was due to leave New Zealand, the idea of killing her gave them few qualms. The attack was ferocious and their attempts to present it as an accident were laughably clumsy. Their continued lack of remorse and the grotesque lack of reality in their assessments of their own talents and intellects chilled those who dealt with them.

Insanity seemed an explanation but given their clear understanding that their actions were wrong it was never likely to be accepted as a legal defence. Graham is a barrister and we are given a thorough grounding in the relevant law and he is clearly as fascinated by the conduct of their trial as by the crime.

Guilty verdicts were inevitable and the two served jail sentences that seem remarkably short by current standards.

Graham tracks what can be known of their subsequent lives which hit the headlines again when Hulme was discovered to be a best-selling thriller writer under a pen name.

The fact that the author of the crime stories was an actual murderer did wonders for her already solid sales although, if the extracts Graham prints are typical, the writing hasn’t developed much since she wrote her reams of adolescent tosh.

Book Cover:

Graham casts a cold forensic eye on Hulme’s later accounts, in which she distanced herself from the murder and left the responsibility to Parker who continues to live a very private life.

But for all the research and the investigations of psychological states and personality disorders the truth is elusive. The mystery remains of how these girls found it in themselves to commit a staggeringly brutal murder without compassion and apparently without denting their belief that they were “so brilliantly clever”.

John Gardner is an Auckland reviewer

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10781352

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�”For any US readers who want it: what I found was either a seller wouldn’t ship internationally or it would cost $30 for shipping from AU/NZ. I did find a site, fishpond.com.sg, that ships internationally for free…although will take 2-4 weeks. Hope this isn’t against GoodReads rules to post that, but it was either that, or start begging GoodReads readers in that area for help!”

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13044722-so-brilliantly-clever

http://www.fishpond.com/Books/So-Brillia….lliantly+clever

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Sensational murder revisited
PHILIP MATTHEWS Last updated 15:10 12/11/2011Peter Graham author of a new book on the Parker Hulme murders at Hulmes house at Canterbury University.
Juliet Hulme
Pauline Parker
Peter Graham first thought of writing a book about the horrific murder of Honorah Parker by Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme way back in 1975. He was a junior lawyer in Christchurch and the murder was just 21 years old, still in the living memory of many.

Among them was Brian McClelland, a Christchurch lawyer who acted as Hulme’s junior counsel during the High Court murder trial in 1954. Two decades after the trial, Graham was working as McClelland’s assistant.

Naturally, Graham heard all the stories. He heard about two teenage girls in 1950s’ Christchurch, their vivid fantasy world and their belief that the mother of one was the only obstacle to their brilliant ambition: to go to Hollywood and become movie stars. He heard about the plot they devised: it involved a brick in a stocking and an afternoon trip to Victoria Park in the Port Hills. He heard about the result: two murder charges, one trial and two prison sentences. Then what happened to the pair? At that point, no-one really knew.

It was a sensational story for the 1950s, with shocking revelations about the parents – unmarried in one case, adulterous in another – as well as the girls, aged 15 and 16, who were widely believed to be in a lesbian relationship. Reporters came from Britain, the US and Australia and filled the old Christchurch Supreme Court building.

There was the insanity defence that failed. Years later, McClelland would tell Graham that he really did think Hulme was certifiably mad – but he was less sure about Parker.

The young lawyer was intrigued. Who wouldn’t be? Graham would meet people who had known the Hulmes socially. Juliet’s father, Henry Hulme, a distinguished British scientist, had been rector at Canterbury University College and the family had lived in the grand Ilam homestead.

Graham applied to McClelland’s old law firm, Wynn Williams and Co, for the case file and “and they said they had lost it or thrown it out”, he remembers. He is amazed at how many files, photographs and exhibits relating to the case seem to have just vanished over the years, disappearing from legal offices, court registries and police stations.

The idea went on the backburner, largely because Graham then left for Hong Kong, where he spent 30 years working as a barrister. When he returned to Canterbury, he and his wife settled in Dunsandel. They have an apple orchard, run a store and sell cider; in this charming rural environment, Graham turns his mind to vile crimes.

Indeed, Vile Crimes was the title of his first book, which concerned a story that rocked Timaru in the 19th century. Tom Hall Junior, local businessman and nephew of former premier Sir John Hall, was arrested in 1886 for attempting to poison his wife, Kitty. His wife’s lady-help, Margaret Houston, was also charged. Then, Hall was charged with another crime: the murder of his father-in-law.

Vile Crimes appeared in 2007 and was well-reviewed. Looking back, Graham sees it as “a good dummy run” for his more complex second book, which appears this week. The book, So Brilliantly Clever, tells the Parker-Hulme story.

Much has happened to this particular murder story since the 1970s. Graham doesn’t have a theory that might explain the huge burst of public interest in the Parker-Hulme case in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Michelanne Forster wrote a play (Daughters of Heaven) that premiered at Christchurch’s Court Theatre in 1991. Three years later, Peter Jackson released a film about the case (Heavenly Creatures), but his version was just one of approximately five competing Parker-Hulme screenplays, including a screenplay by British author Angela Carter, titled The Christchurch Murder.

At around the same time, New Zealand academics Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie published a book called Parker and Hulme: A Lesbian View. But it was Jackson’s film, written with his wife, Fran Walsh, which really put this bizarre Christchurch story back on the international stage. It also led to the inadvertent outing of successful British crime writer Anne Perry, who was revealed to be Juliet Hulme, now living in Scotland under her new name. Several years later, it was discovered that Pauline Parker was also living in the UK under a new name – Hilary Nathan.

Are we now living through another of the periodic bursts of interest in this case?

In 2009, German director Dana Linkiewicz released a documentary on Perry, titled Anne Perry Interiors. Young American actor and film-maker Alexander Roman flew to New Zealand and interviewed Graham, Forster, Laurie, Glamuzina and others for his own Parker-Hulme documentary, Reflections of the Past. Now there is Graham’s book, which is set to be the definitive account.

And it won’t end here – Joanne Drayton, who wrote an acclaimed biography of Christchurch crime queen Ngaio Marsh, is understood to be working on the authorised Anne Perry biography.

In the Linkiewicz documentary, the now 73-year-old Perry comes across as an isolated and imperious figure, still reluctant to discuss “the thing that happened” in Christchurch in 1954. Graham found the film to be “fascinating, in a weird sort of way”.

When Graham was in England on research, he tried phoning Perry and “got the bum’s rush”.

“I had written to her first, which was probably a mistake,” he says. “I thought I would just say, I’m a New Zealander and I come from Christchurch and I used to work for Brian McClelland. I thought that might gain her interest, but I think it’s actually the other way round. She seems to be very wary about New Zealanders. A New Zealand journalist who had met her told me that. They were chatting away happily until she said she was from New Zealand and Anne Perry froze.”

As for Hilary Nathan, the murderer formerly known as Pauline Parker, Graham went to the village in Kent where she was reported to have lived and “snooped around”, but made no serious attempt to contact her. By then, she had moved on, anyway – to Scotland.

Despite Nathan’s proximity to Perry, Graham doubts the two women have seen each other again.

“I didn’t want to disturb Hilary Nathan, really. I felt she had done nothing to court publicity. She was quite a different kettle of fish from Anne Perry.”

It’s possible the outing of Perry did her writing career no harm at all, especially as murder stories have been her specialty.

But the media pursuit of Parker/Nathan seems altogether sadder. As Graham’s book shows, after the success of Heavenly Creatures, international journalists staked out Auckland’s Catholic bookshops. They had been tipped off that Parker converted to Catholicism while in prison. They were right about the Catholicism, but they were on the wrong side of the world.

Neither Perry nor Nathan was interviewed by Graham. Many key players have died since the trial: the three remaining parents of Parker and Hulme, plus the lawyers, police officers and medical witnesses. The world of the well-to-do Hulmes can be easily reconstructed, but “Pauline’s parents are a bit in the shadows,” Graham says. “We don’t know too much about them or what they thought.”

Pauline had an older sister, Wendy. Graham knows what happened to her – she still lives in Christchurch.

“I’ve never tried to contact her either. I know her name and I know her address, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, really.”

But it would be an interesting perspective on the case. “If she was prepared to speak, it would.”

Graham was about seven when the murder took place. He has no memory of it, although he remembers earlier events, such as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. “I assume that we were not encouraged to read the paper. You might have to start explaining what a lesbian was and all that sort of thing.”

Much of the reason that the crime received so much international attention was to do with Henry Hulme’s status.

“Imagine today if the daughter of the vice-chancellor killed somebody. It would add to the interest of the story.

“They seemed to be ‘normal’ girls. They were educated, they were bright. They were in 3A. It was written about in Time magazine – that’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it.”

The case also coincided with the earliest stirrings of 1950s’ moral panic over wayward teenagers. That point reminds Graham that Monte Holcroft wrote a very good editorial in the Listener, saying that the crime wasn’t part of anything greater, than “these were just two weird, morbid girls living in a world of their own”.

And then there is the crime of matricide itself. “It is highly unusual” for a woman to be killed by her daughter, Graham says. “It is really, really unusual – a rare, rare crime. Although I think a lot of teenage girls think about it.”

As with the Jackson film, and other accounts, one of Graham’s key sources was Parker’s diary for 1954. His friend, Christchurch lawyer Chris McVeigh, made an application to the High Court on his behalf. Not everyone gets to see it – documentary-maker Roman was turned down a few months later.

Parker’s writing is both brilliant and notorious. Heavenly Creatures viewers will know it from Melanie Lynskey’s voice- over as Parker, full of wonder and exaltation over her and her friend’s sheer magnificence (the titles of Heavenly Creatures, Daughters of Heaven and So Brilliantly Clever all refer to the girls’ descriptions of themselves).

There is the chilling entry written on the morning of the murder – “The Day of the Happy Event” – when Parker wrote that she felt “very excited and the night before Christmas-ish last night”. “It’s the diary that puts the case into a category of its own,” Graham agrees. “What’s fascinating is being able to trace their warped little minds.”

But only Parker’s diary appeared as evidence during the trial, which meant that her words have come to define the story. Graham is convinced that Hulme also kept a diary, and that it was destroyed.

“It was always suspected,” he says. “The reason I feel so confident saying it, was because somebody I know was at the homestead and ran into the old guy who had been the gardener. They got into conversation and he said he burnt Juliet’s diary and was asked to by the father. He would have been acting under orders from Hilda [Juliet’s mother]. Circumstantially, there’s a lot to show that Juliet did have a diary. I would imagine that her diary would have been far more over the top than Pauline’s.”

He believes Hulme was an equal player in the plot. The idea to kill Honorah Parker came from Pauline Parker but Hulme went along with it happily.

“They were very pleased with themselves. They were proud of what they had done. They thought it was a tremendous achievement.

“She took a lot of killing. That surprised them greatly, I think. They thought just one whack on the back of the head would be it.”

Essentially, they learned that murder is not as clean or as easy as it looks in the movies. One of the achievements of Graham’s book is to reveal just how horrific the killing of Honorah Parker was, which Heavenly Creatures largely skips over. She was held down by the throat as she was bashed with a brick. Her lower denture was half-buried in clay. Her jaw was at an angle, her skull was exposed in places. The tip of the little finger of her left hand was hanging by a piece of skin, indicating that she had tried to defend herself as her daughter and her daughter’s friend killed her.

It all happened in a quiet park on the edge of Christchurch on an afternoon in winter.

“When you look at that spot it is so incredibly isolated. You’re miles from anywhere. Pauline had been there before, six months earlier, not with Juliet but with another girl. I suspect she must have thought then that this would be a good spot for a murder to take place.”

As well as being a lawyer with a fine writing style, there might be another reason why Peter Graham was so well-placed to write this book. He knows Christchurch but is not of it. Part of the lasting mythology surrounding the Parker-Hulme story is that it says something about Christchurch – something about class, something about Anglophile aspirations, something about appearances and social climbing. Juliet Hulme was the English girl with upper-class manners; working-class Parker lived in a rundown house on Gloucester St and longed to be part of the Hulmes’ world.

It is easier for someone from outside the city to distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant.

“I think there’s been far too much made of the class thing,” Graham says. “It could have happened anywhere. If it had happened in Dunedin or Auckland it would have been no less shocking. I don’t know that it says anything particularly about Christchurch.”

It used to be said that there was a reluctance to talk about the crime in Christchurch, especially at Christchurch Girls’ High School, where Parker and Hulme met.

“Michelanne Forster told me that when she tried to speak to the then headmistress, in 1990 or something like that, she was told it was a pity that Forster couldn’t find something more positive to write about the school. A typical headmistressy comment. Between the time I started and the time I finished, I felt that had broken down quite a bit.”

In fact, when he popped into Scorpio Books a few weeks ago, he was told that Christchurch Girls’ High School had been the first customer to order a copy of So Brilliantly Clever.

Some accounts of the story have been relatively sympathetic to the girls. Roman has talked of identifying with the pair as Hollywood wannabes. Jackson’s wife and co-writer, Walsh, was said to be the driving force behind Heavenly Creatures – she, too, felt she understood and sympathised with the girls.

What does Graham make of the Heavenly Creatures take on the story? “I’ve only seen it once, and fairly fleetingly. I would like to see it again, to see what I think of it. I can’t really remember it, except in general it was quite sympathetic to the girls.

“I wouldn’t want to diss the film at all. It was brilliantly cast. The characters all looked good. The women who had been their classmates say that Kate Winslet was a dead ringer for Juliet. They thought Melanie Lynskey was rather more attractive than the real-life prototype.”

But of course there is a limit to what a film can tell: “I never felt I got a clear sense of their motivation from the film.”

There are more murder stories to come for Graham. He has started on his next book, which is about another killing but not a New Zealand one. It is a 1916 murder by firing squad – a well- known pacifist was shot with other British Army soldiers in army barracks in Dublin at the time of the Easter Rebellion.

There was a court martial and a commission of inquiry, so there are plenty of records to work from. The victim was a friend and contemporary of James Joyce, so there is a broader context.

“It’s a very good story,” he says. “I thought of looking around for another New Zealand murder, but it’s a tough act to find something more interesting than Parker- Hulme to write about.”

* So Brilliantly Clever: Parker, Hulme and the Murder That Shocked the World, by Peter Graham. Awa Press, $42.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/lifesty….urder-revisited

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