This is from Twilight friend Karen Holley who lives near Sydney, Australia and just went to see the movie this weekend at the Sydney Film Festival where they had the premiere and Q and A. She had to travel by train in order to see the movie there. I can’t thank her enough for sharing her experience and thoughts on the movie. I have read that it is gritty, dirty and violent which is such an opposite of Twilight. Looking forward to seeing it myself next week.

Thank you Karen

Well, I’m back from my The Rover outing and as promised will tell you what I thought (without spoilers of course).

The session at The State Theatre was scheduled for 11:30am so I made sure I was there by 11am should Robert be making an appearance.  When I arrived, the lady who was handing out movie flyers (grabbed one for you too) assured me that both Robert and Guy would be making an appearance in the foyer around 11:10 (very excited on hearing this) plus she said there would be a short Q&A in the theatre today after the movie as well as the other longer one at Town Hall (even more excited!).  So, I waited and I waited and then she said, these celebrities can be a bit arbitrary with their timing so maybe they will have the photo shoot after the movie.  So I waited until around 5 minutes before the movie was due to start and they were a no show.  I took my seat (not too bad a position) and shortly after Margaret Pomeranz appeared (movie critic who would be moderating the later Q&A) said there would be no Q&A after the movie here, but then went on to bring out David Michod and Liz Watts only for about 2 minutes just to introduce the film.  Insert sad face here on not seeing Rob or Guy.  So, I watched the movie which, in my opinion, was very bleak, very violent and loaded with bad language (a million million miles away from the likes of Twilight).  Guy Pearce was scary good and had clearly fully immersed himself in the character.  So now onto Rob.  Without giving too much away his character was a little simple minded and whether it was intentional or not, was quite difficult to understand as he used a fairly thick southern accent plus he really seemed to mumble a lot of his lines.  Again, this may have been intentional but if I was at home watching it on DVD I’d be continually rewinding to try and work out what was said.  Robert was also made to look fairly unattractive with grotty teeth and filthy clothes (I will need a good dose of Edward to cleanse my memory of Rob in this!).  The movie’s running time was a little under 2 hours and if you’re feeling particularly depressed on that day, I would recommend this as a movie not to see.  It was, as they said in the promos, Australia after collapse of (I’m assuming) the economy.  Very bleak subject matter for sure.

Once the movie was finished I hung around till the end of the credits and then tried to go back out into the foyer but an usher asked if I was seeing the next movie (whatever that was) and when I said no, was directed out a side door and into an alley!  So I moved with the sea of people back round to the front in the hope that Guy or Robert were there in the foyer but sadly, no.

Later on just before the Q&A session at Town Hall, armed with my camera again, stood outside the doors 15 minutes either side of the 3pm start and did not see any celebs, 2nd sad face to be inserted here.  I can only assume that they came in thru a back door or at some other point of entry.