GEORGE MILLER + SIMON LEWIS

House of Crouse

On the Saturday June 8, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet George Miller. He has made pigs talk and penguins tap dance. He’s been a doctor and a film director. Among the bold-faced names on his resume are the titles “Babe: A Pig in the City,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Happy Feet” and “Lorenzo’s Oil.” One name, however, looms larger than the rest. “Mad Max.” He returned to theatres recently with “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” his fifth Mad Max inspired film in 45 years. A mix of Norse and Greek mythology set against an apocalyptic backdrop, and set 15 to 20 years before the events of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a high-octane origin story. Kidnapped from the Place of Great Abundance by Warlord Dementus’s (Chris Hemsworth) henchmen, young Furiosa (played by Alyla Browne as a child, Anya Taylor-Joy as an adult) vows vengeance for the death of her mother as warlords Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and Dementus vie for supremacy of the Wasteland. It's a pedal-to-the-metal epic, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” follows the big-block engine power of “Fury Road” with a film that brings a backstory to the strong-willed Furiosa (Taylor-Joy). As expected, Miller delivers a high-octane apocalyptic tale with a fierce Taylor-Joy and charismatic warlord Hemsworth, that features action scenes that’ll make your eyes pop out of their sockets. We’ll also meet Simon Lewis, author of the book “Making 'A Bridge Too Far” which takes a deep dive into the making of what many people call, the greatest World War II movie of all time. Just ahead of the 80th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, which happened in September 1944 when the Allies attempted to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands in the hope of breaking the German lines, comes the book which details the making of the movie based on the famous military maneuver. In recreating Operation Market Garden on film, director Richard Attenborough enlisted a company of actors and trained them to behave like soldiers. These actors underwent weapons training and were trusted to bring authenticity to their roles, a groundbreaking approach that hadn’t been tried before.