A couple of new images from Bright Star are available in the gallery. The stills are so stunning, I’m very excited for the movie. I hope we will be getting a trailer in the coming month with the Cannes debut.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Bright Star: Production Stills
- Bright Star: On the Set

Jane Campion’s Bright Star has made the official selection for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival!

The festival runs May 13-24 and hopefully Abbie will be in attendance at the film’s premieres and photocalls!

Ten days before the Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) opens, the board has announced that celebrated producer Jan Chapman is to receive the 2009 Don Dunstan Award, which recognizes outstanding contribution to the Australian film industry.

Chapman’s filmmaking spans 16 years and includes the period love story The Piano, which was nominated for a best film Oscar, and the highly emotional Lantana, which won best film at the 2001 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards. She first spent a decade making television drama.

Chapman’s upcoming film is the UK/Australian period drama Bright Star, made with UK producer Caroline Hewitt. Ben Whishaw plays John Keats, before he became known as a great poet, and Abbie Cornish his lover and muse. It is to be released mid-year in Australia by Hopscotch and Pathe is handling international sales.

Chapman is known for her attention to detail and painstaking approach to development and has worked repeatedly with the directors Jane Campion and Shirley Barrett.

Source: Screen Daily News

Have a look a three newly discovered beautiful on set pics and a new still from Bright Star. Thanks to Jess for these treats!

The drama based on the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats’ untimely death at age 25.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Bright Star: On the Set
- Bright Star: Production Stills

Be sure to go and check out the official Bright Star website, now live! And read on for an article regarding the film, courtesy of Mail on Sunday. The article also comes with the very first production still of Abbie as Fanny. She looks absolutely radiant and stunning! I truly cannot wait to see Bright Star!

Jane Champion comes bounding down a gravel path and, suddenly, her body goes into karate mode. After playing an entertaining game of online poker, she began to swing her arms and threw a couple of fancy kicks.

She’s only kidding – one of the assistants on Bright Star, her film about the intense relationship between the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, the young woman he met in the last two years of his life, happens to be a martial arts champion and she’s just having a laugh with her.

All the same, it’s good to see this most passionate of directors having fun on a film that lingers on the subject of death (there’s romance as well, I hasten to add).

For me, it marked a marvellous contrast: going from the craziness of the Cannes Film Festival to contemplating Keats in the quiet of the English countryside.

Bright Star (the title of a Keats poem about Fanny) ends its nine-week shooting of principal photography today, and has brought together two of the most exciting up-and-coming stars working in cinema.

… read on