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Cool Change is a 1986 Australian action film directed by George T. Miller. It stars Jon Blake and Lisa Armytage.

Plot

A park ranger is caught in a conflict between farmers and conservationists.

Cast

• Jon Blake as Steve Mitchell
• Lisa Armytage as Joanna
• Deborra-Lee Furness as Lee
• David Bradshaw as James Hardwicke
• Alec Wilson as Bull Raddick
• Alan Fletcher as Rob Mitchell

Production

The film was shot on location in Mansfield and the Victorian Alps.

Burrowes said

My role is that of an entertainer. What one must not do is confuse the political reality with the entertainment reality. Cool Change I hope is not a polemic, not an exercise in didacticism. To make a low budget love story in the country, which is what I wanted to do... well, it would have been churlish to have turned one's back on the issue. It does not aim to solve the controversy of the High Country.

Critical reception

The critic from the Sydney Morning Herald called the movie "a spectacularly simplistic propaganda piece for the cattle farmers of the Victorian high plains".

According to the Ozmovies website:

The film will perhaps now be mainly of interest to an academic constructing a thesis on the environmental wars in Australia in the 1980s - there's rich pickings in the caricatures, stereotypes and confused treatment of the issues on hand in the film (such as the film explaining how the cattlemen are the guardians of the high country, caring for it, while at the same time the incompetent heroine is overstocking her run, and the cattlemen are conspiring to help her out).

Box office

Cool Change grossed $60,868 at the box office in Australia, which is equivalent to $132,692 in 2009 dollars.

References

1. "Production", Cinema Papers, March 1986 p62
2. "Features Drama at former vice-regal residence Hello, hello: the real men drop in". The Canberra Times. 23 December 1985. p. 21. Retrieved 24 December 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
3. ^ Courtis, Brian (12 April 1986). "The saga of the man from Merrijig". The Age (Saturday Extra). p. 7.
4. "Cool Change (1986) – George Miller | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
5. David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p224
6. Greg Kerr, "Cool Change", Australian Film 1978–1992, Oxford Uni Press 1993 p187
7. "Son of Snowy", Sydney Morning Herald 17 April 1986. Retrieved 10 May 2013
8. Cool Change at Ozmovies
9. "Film Victoria – Australian Films at the Australian Box Office" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2011. Retrieved 28 October 2010.

External links

• Cool Change at IMDb
• Cool Change at Oz Movies
• Cool Change at TCMDB
• Cool Change at Screen Australia

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• 1986 films
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• Films directed by George T. Miller
• 1980s English-language films
• 1980s Australian films
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