The Gun in the First Act

Good Luck Getting to Sleep After This One

2009-12-01T22:51:00.005+11:00

POSTER QUOTED, BITCHES!

Having finally been discovered, after... er... not posting for an entire month, a quote from my Paranormal Activity review has been put on posters that are up all over the country. "Good luck getting to sleep after this one", and "possibly the scariest movie ever made".

That second quote I didn't actually say. The closest I came to actually saying that was "one of the scariest movies of the decade" or "one of the scariest movies in years". Reading back, I was getting a little repetitive, huh? No matter. "Good luck getting to sleep" is all Gun in the First Act.

Paramount Australia, if you're reading?

I will accept free passes to more of your films, and be your poster-quote whore. I will put Peter Travers to shame. I am metaphorically standing on a street corner in high heels and a short dress for you people, waiting for the tinted windows of your limo to roll down, if it means free passes.

Think about it.

Due to a chronic lack of money and overabundance of brokeness, until tonight, I hadn't been to a movie since early November. Tonight's movie was a free preview of Where the Wild Things Are which I'll totally review soon, I swear. Hence a lack of posting. Well, there are some movies from TIFF yet to be tackled, but I don't have a lot to say about them. An Education was fantastic, but it has been discussed everywhere by everyone, and Women Without Men is Iranian, so I'm not cultured enough to say anything smart about it.

Also I saw The Hangover on a flight back to Sydney and it was pretty overrated. I found myself wanting to know what happened more than wanting to sit through more unamusing gags, so fast-forwarded through the film to get to the end. It strikes as something aimed at people who would non-ironically enjoy Las Vegas. I am not such people.

New Moon also came out. I haven't seen it, but shall review it anyway.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Awful.

1/10

No matter, though. I shall return to the warm, glowy bosom of cinema very soon.

Get Excited

2009-10-30T12:38:00.002+11:00

Finally! What Women Want is getting a sequel! What Men Want! Starring Cameron Diaz, in Mel Gibson's place!

Hang on, did I say "finally!"? Typo. I meant "sweet fucking Christ, why?"

Dear Saw: Suck It

2009-10-27T00:33:00.004+11:00

This weekend marked the international release of the latest goddamn Saw film, creatively titled Saw VI. It also saw the wide opening in the US of Paranormal Activity, which I have been harping on about since seeing it at the Sydney Film Festival earlier this year. Guess which came out on top at the box office?

Go on. You can have a minute.

Paranormal trumped it. Saw VI is cowering on a corner, presumably shackled to some horrible device, and Paranormal Activity is pointing and laughing. Saw VI made under $16 million - less than Saw made, the previous lowest grossing film in the franchise - while Paranormal made $22 million, taking it to a $62 million dollar total.

The world is finally getting over that franchise. Today is a good day.

In related news, I rewatched Paranormal Activity this evening, at a free, buzz-gathering screening before its December opening here in Australia. The session was kind of a mess. There was no one to introduce the film, so people used to having ads and trailers before a movie - most of the audience - were unsure whether they were watching the movie when it started with no fanfare. This was not helped by the lack of audio, which didn't start until about thirty seconds into the film. The audience, too, was quite obnoxious, with some members forcing disdainful laughter at parts which would have been much more atmospheric had they shut the fuck up.

Nonetheless the film works on a second viewing. Not as well, and it doesn't have the lasting effect that makes you afraid of the dark for the first night or two after watching it, but its got enough atmosphere to sustain it as a very good horror film, even knowing what's about to happen.

Now we just have to crush the Final Destination franchise (the first film was decent, the second and third were fun, the fourth was the laziest script ever printed on paper) and put a stop to 98% of remakes, and the horror world will be good again.

TIFF Part Six: Bitch Slap Review

2009-10-21T15:32:00.005+11:00

Hey look! Another review! Already! I hope you all feel special, because you are. To me.

Bitch Slap

Bitch Slap is, perhaps, the cleavagiest action film of all time. There are so many big-breasted women in bikinis and low cut tops on display that it deserves a new word to be invented to describe it. Our three lead characters are introduced with their boobs before their faces are even shown. In slow motion. Decide for yourself if that's a recommendation or not.

In a film that is a proud and shameless homage to Roger Corman, we meet our three leads, in the middle of the dessert. Hel (Erin Cummings) is a high powered and bitchy professional business-like woman, with big tits. Camero (America Olivo) is a psychotic lesbian who flies of the handle at every turn, with a huge rack. Trixie (Julia Voth) is a naïve and kind stripper, with enormous bosoms. The reason for mentioning the assets (boobsets?) of these women is because this is the purpose of the film. These three women have a scheme, a hostage, secrets, and a penchant for sex and violence.

The film has a convoluted structure, constantly flashing back to reveal occasionally relevant parcels of information, and yet halfway through the film it becomes apparent that no one – on screen, or in the audience – knows what’s going on. The audience isn’t supposed to; we’re just to watch the cleavage and noise. This is deliberate. The performances, also, are bad across the board, but they’re supposed to be. There just isn’t any way that the cast could be that bad; Olivo, in particular, snarls or yells all of her lines in place of acting and picking an appropriate tone for any given scene. If director Rick Jacobson had wanted a more subtle performance from her, he would have asked, and she would have given it. He didn’t. While the desert portion of the film was shot on location, the flashbacks where green-screened. This was due to limitations of budget, the filmmakers decided to highlight this artificiality rather than hide it. This is distracting, and that is the point. And while the stunt choreography, by Death Proof’s Zoe Bell, is quite good, the editing is too choppy to appreciate it. But when the purpose of the film is its loudness, this must be a choice of the filmmakers too.

In short, everything that is wrong with Bitch Slap is supposed to be wrong with Bitch Slap. It’s best to look at the film like a home movie some fifteen year olds got together to make, except they’re not fifteen year olds, they’re established television producers and filmmakers, and most backyard movies don’t have Lucy Lawless cameos. The film was written Jacobson and Eric Gruendemann; the two worked together on both the Xena and Hercules series of the nineties, so Kevin Sorbo gets an appearance too. The two made this film together wanting to have a riotous time and they definitely succeeded in doing that, at least during production. Bitch Slap, if nothing else, looks like it was a lot of fun to make.

The most interesting part of the film is that, despite the endless low cut tops on display, despite the result of a character being blown up is that her clothes get skimpier while she is uninjured, despite every female character making out with every other female character, there is no actual nudity. This film is perfect for anyone who loves Maxim magazine but is terrified of proper sex. Then again, thinking about this film is not the point of it, at all.

Bitch Slap is a deliberately bad in a way, say, Snakes on a Plane wasn’t. Whereas that film was made as a bad movie as soon as producers picked up on everyone wanting it to be a bad movie, Bitch Slap was made as a bad movie from the get go. It can’t be rated on its quality, because it isn’t supposed to have any. And so how much you enjoy the film depends on how willing you are to go along for the ride, how good a mood you are in, and how much of a teenage boy you are at heart. Therefore, feel free to ignore this number.

3/10

The filmmakers, and the cast, and Zoe Bell (second from the right), were all on stage for this one. All I remember of it is that Bell is adorable and all of them made a bunch of sex jokes.

Meanwhile, check this trailer out:

You see how it almost looks like it has a plot? All those lines in this trailer that look like they’d move a story forward, or at least offer exposition? There isn't much, but look hard. That stuff is not in the film. Jacobson must have had a much more coherent movie on his hands, which he decided to get rid of to make a messy, cleavagey pile of noise. More power to him, I suppose.

More to come!

TIFF Part Five: [Rec] 2 Review

2009-10-21T14:28:00.005+11:00

Job hunting etc etc etc. More posts coming and so on and so on and so on.

So, as you may know, Spanish horror film [Rec] was radcore. That was the consensus. How does its sequel live up? Midnight Madness was the perfect place to find out.

[Rec] 2

The original [Rec], a Spanish film remade in the US as Quarantine, has a reputation as one of the scariest films of all time. It is not an unearned one. Part of the found footage subgenre of horror – think Blair Witch, Cloverfield and the excellent (and finally getting a wide release) Paranormal Activity – the film took place in a Barcelona apartment building that quickly became overrun with 28 Days Later style ‘zombies’. Few films rival its intensity, particularly in its final half hour. It is a rare horror film with a climax as scary as (if not scarier than) its build up. The writers and directors of the first film, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, took a risk, banked on its success, and made a sequel.

Set minutes after the first film, [Rec] 2 takes us back inside the zombie-infested apartment building of the first film, now with a group of SWAT-type soldiers and a doctor from the health department. One of the team carries a video camera; most of the footage comes from here, but this time around it is intercut with the headcams of the our characters, and, later… well, that would be telling.

[Rec] has a well-deserved reputation of being a terrifying film. Beyond the sheer unrelenting nature of the action, what worked so well was how trapped in the film the audience felt. Just as the characters were trapped in the building, we were trapped in the camera’s point of view. If something happened – and it would, and did – the camera could never cut away, because we were watching uninterrupted takes of found footage. So the multiple points of view in play in [Rec] 2 could, in theory, lessen this effect. This is not the case. [Rec] 2 comes very close to matching the intensity of the first film. Aside from a gear change halfway through the film, introducing new characters, the film does not relent. Upon entering the building, our characters go straight to the location of the climax of the first film. This final act of [Rec] was a rarity in horror, in that it matched the levels of fear of its build up, and where this scene took place was a huge part of that. When [Rec] 2 takes us directly to there, we know we’re in for terror. The climax of [Rec] 2, is should be noted, comes very close to being as memorable as its predecessor, although it goes for extreme creepiness over nerve-shredding terror.

More than this, [Rec] 2 is more than just a rehash of its predecessor. While few moments echo the first film, this sequel builds on and changes the mythology of the first film in huge and unexpected ways. Balagueró and Plaza could have got away with copying what they know, but they turn expectations around, so what we thought we were dealing with in the first film is something else altogether. It is a risky move that plays out to great effect, adding another level of dread to and already very scary movie.

The biggest problem of the film is the lack of a character to get us into the film. The SWAT characters are mostly interchangeable, and Jonathan Mellor, as the health department doctor, is too shifty to become a likable character. [Rec]’s Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco), the lead character of the first film, was a great character who easily allowed an audience access to the film. Such a presence is missing here.

Nonetheless, [Rec] 2 is scary enough, and has enough shocking turns of plot, to make it a very good film. It would have been hard to come close to being as good as the first, so that it doesn’t quite get there cannot be held as a sleight against it. It almost gets there, and that’s a thing that’s worthy of praise.

8/10

Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were present for a Q&A - that's them there - but getting into detail on that would be spoiling the film. It was revealed that they made the first film with no plans for a sequel; I asked how much of deepening of the mythology present in [Rec] 2 was planned in part one; the said very little. They also said there were no current plans for a third film, although there are now rumours of a third without Balagueró and Plaza’s involvement.

Meanwhile, Paranormal Activity, which I mentioned in the review and well near shat my pants during earlier this year, is going really well, having passed the $30 million mark in the US box office. That sort of things happens when you actually release a film rather than letting it sit on the shelf, Paramount. It has a wide release in the states, at last, after a city-by-city roll out. It's coming to Australian cinemas in early December, but its local distributors seem to want to go the viral route here as well, and appear to be having free screenings all over the place. If you go to university, or know someone who does, I'd advise seeking out their film society to enquire if they have tickets to a pre-screening of it. They just might.

More to come!

TIFF Part Four: The Loved Ones Review

2009-10-04T19:07:00.008+11:00

I'm on holiday; leave me alone.

The Loved Ones

It was, of course, not the first Australian horror movie – it wasn’t even the first of this decade – but Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek is rightly seen as responsible for the revival of the country’s genre cinema. In terms of pure horror, there has not been a great Australian film since. Some have been quite good: McLean’s own follow up, crocodile flick Rogue, was a lot of fun; Storm Warning had some intensity. On the whole, however, the films have ranged from adequate to appalling. Enter Sean Byrne, and The Loved Ones.

Brent (Xavier Samuel) is a high school student in a country town. A stoner and self-harmer, he has almost climbed out of a depression caused by a tragedy six months earlier that he feels responsible for. He has a goofy best friend Sac (Richard Wilson), who is courting Holly (Victoria Thaine), the goth daughter of the local cop, and a girlfriend Mia (Jessica Macnamee) willing to put up with his stunted state. He also has a would be suitor, Lola (Robin McLeavey). A shy, pink-clad thing, Brent turns down her invitation to the school dance. Brent doesn’t know about Lola’s past, her father (John Brumpton), or what he will do for her.

No Australian horror film since Wolf Creek have reached the levels of intensity that The Loved Ones has; no Australian film in memory has reached its levels of violence. Brumpton – his character is credited only as “Daddy” – is a skin crawler, with his clear lust for his daughter and his willingness to oblige her every twisted whim. Lola herself is spectacular, with McLeavey going all out for her performance. She is breathtaking, scary, unstoppable and hilarious, and deserves to be remembered as a horror icon. Her performance is fearless, and her final moments in the film are mesmerizing. Everyone else is very good – our hero Samuel does fine work in what is, for a lot of the film, a silent role – but it is McLeavey who steals the film. And just wait until you meet Bright Eyes.

Byrne, like Greg McLean before him, has made a bold and brave first feature, unafraid to mess with audience expectations, and to have them writhing in their seats. His script turns the high school movie on its head, while his direction pushes the audience right to the edge, and then further.

The Loved Ones is as intense as a horror movie can get while still holding onto its humanity. It is the best Australian horror film in years, and one of the best from anywhere in the last decade.

9/10

This film - rightly so - won the audience award for Midnight Madness. The reaction on the night was amazing, so it wasn't a huge surprise, as great as it was. For me, this film was one I knew little about, and my excitement levels were low.

After the film, they were high.

There's something special about seeing a great local film that does enormous amounts with little money, especially if they're genre movies. The budget wasn't made explicit in the Q&A, but it wasn't high, but the film looked amazing.

Enough gushing. The film is released in Australia early 2010, and hopefully it will make it in overseas markets as well. It's not for the faint of heart, but if you like your horror intense, you've got something to look forward to.

TIFF Part Three: Survival of the Dead Review, With Added Zombie Walk!

2009-09-26T00:35:00.001+10:00

Three things:

Stuff goes on in Toronto that can be described as "rad". One such thing - and it goes on elsewhere, including in Sydney - is an annual zombie walk, where people make themselves up as undead, and shamble through the city's streets.

George A. Romero, the man responsible for zombie as we know them, is now a Canadian citizen, living in Toronto.

George A. Romero's latest film, which was shot in Canada, screened on the third night of TIFF's Midnight Madness program.

These three things come together. The zombie walk is ordinarily in October, but an extra event was organised to celebrate Romero's new citizenship and he premiere of his new film. Zombies of Toronto walked through downtown, arriving at Dundas square to be greeted by Romero before a free public screening of Night of the Living Dead. His first film. Later that night, his newest.

Survival of the Dead

It is without question that George A Romero is the godfather of the zombie film. His slow-moving, mindless creatures are iconic and unforgettable. Sure, we have the creatures of Return of the Living Dead and their cries of “brains”, and the more recent development of zombies running, but Romero’s creatures are the classics. After the 1968 release of Night of the Living Dead, he made one zombie film a decade; the 70s had Dawn of the Dead and the 80s Day of the Dead. Then, after a quiet, this decade has had the man bring zombies to cinemas three times. It should be something to celebrate. While 2004’s Land of the Dead was decent, Diary of the Dead, Romero’s found-footage style reboot of the series, was a mess. It does not bode well for Survival that it uses a minor character from that film as a launching pad.

Said character is Crocket (Alan Van Sprang), a former army man who now leads a small troupe around the zombie-ravaged land, trying to survive using general amorality. We are also taken to an island off the coast of Delaware, to a pair of feuding Irishmen, Patrick O’Flynn and Seamus Muldoon (Kenneth Welsh and Richard Fitzpatrick) and their kin. O’Flynn has been traveling the island, killing the infected and the undead without mercy, while Muldoon believes that there must be a cure, or a fix to the problem. O’Flynn is banished, and soon meets with Crocket and his crew, before the whole group takes a stolen ferry to the island.

As expected, amongst the anarchy, social commentary is at play. Romero’s target in Survival is conflict. Not just war; this metaphor can be applied to something as large as that, or, on a smaller scale, the two main opposing sides of western politics, or any opposing fundamental beliefs. O’Flynn and Muldoon opposing viewpoints, neither of which is wicked at heart, but their conflict is so strong that what their fighting is about is overshadowed by the fighting itself, and the destruction that comes with it. It’s a worthy message for the film, and a relevant one, but the film itself is the opposite of that. Romero is an important filmmaker, and his past work has earned him deserved and everlasting respect, but Survival of the Dead is a tired film. The scares are barely there, and arrive with cheap shock sound effects. The characters are for the most part weak, speaking flat dialogue. The gore is fine, but good zombie effects are not a rare thing. There are some fun moments, and the characters of O’Flynn and Muldoon provide some laughs. Overall, however, this film is, unlike its moral, unimportant and uninspiring.

It is heartening to see a director, going into old age, continuing a filmmaking career with the same soul and passion forty years after starting. Perhaps he is messing with his audience: a major sequence of Survival involves the question of whether a zombie will or will not bite a horse. It takes guts to put that kind of surrealism into a horror movie. The film’s final shot, too, is a killer. But it might be time for the auteur to move on. Not away from filmmaking; not even away from horror. Perhaps he needs to find a new theme, to tackle something different. Romero should not be written off, but he needs to make better films than this one.

4/10

Some more pictures of the zombie walk, and of Romero at Survival:

This guy is done up as a zombie from early in Dawn of the Dead. Technically, he's in blackface, but it's a pretty excellent costume.

Security at the event, backed up by police officers on bikes - in the background - was handled by people actually dressed up as Umbrella Corp guys from Resident Evil.

George Romero and Colin Geddes after the film.

More to come!

TIFF Part Two: Daybreakers Review

2009-09-24T09:50:00.000+10:00

I continue to be a bad blogger. Here's the second of the Midnight Madness lineup: the Australian/US co-production, Daybreakers.

Daybreakers

The Spierig brothers had a minor hit on their hands five years ago with Undead. As poor a release as this film received in its home country, it still brought them attention: a pair of brothers from Brisbane had managed to write, direct and produce a micro-budget film look much bigger than it really was, with the the vast majority film's extensive special effects handled by the Spierigs themselves, on their own computers. It was a huge effort, creative and impressive. The film itself was not great, with muddled plotting and mixed performances, but it served to show the brothers as filmmakers with great promise.

Promise fulfilled.

Where Undead took an original spin on zombies by throwing aliens into the mix, Daybreakers takes the fast-becoming-stale vampire mythology and gives it new life. We are introduced to a dystopia populated by vampires. Vampirism spread like a virus to the point where humans are almost extinct - and vampires are almost out of food. Running out of blood is causing the vampires to turn into psychotic and dangerous bat-like creatures. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is a doctor and researcher working for a blood production company, trying to create an artificial blood while becoming increasingly aware of his conscience, to the chagrin of his brother Frankie (Michael Dorman), and boss, Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). A chance encounter with a group of humans on the run - among them Lucy (Claudia Karvan) - leads Dalton to Elvis (Willem Dafoe), a vampire who has been cured.

The world of Daybreakers is endlessly inventive. The brothers fashioned a witty and believable update of our own world and how it could be adapted to suit a population who cannot go in daylight. A lot of dystopic films are creative in this way, and that's all, but Daybreakers is also a very solid genre action piece. We have sequences ranging from an intense attack by a malnourished vampire, to car chases, to huge shoot-outs. All the while the plot, and its intruiging turns, powers along.

Daybreakers may not quite be a film to rise to the top of the dystopia subgenre, but we do have a crowdpleaser that isn't stupid, a great Australian action movie, and a return to the highs of Australian genre filmmaking.

8/10

Advice if you're going to TIFF, or any film festivals with a lot of Q&As: get a camera with a zoom.

Left to right: Colin Geddes, the Midnight Madness programmer, The Spierig Brothers, Sam Neill, and Willem Dafoe, introducing the film.

After the screening, Dafoe had to leave. I asked if they had always planned to make the film an American-set one. They said that with the budget they wanted, it always would have been the only choice. Neill chimed in that he was playing Canadian, not American.

And from the night before, Jennifer's Body. So many fucking photographers. This is just a handful, blocking the view, just to see Megan Fox standing on stage. They didn't even stick around for the film or Q&A, they just wanted an image of her, standing on a stage. Just to make sure that she can, I guess.

And the Q&A. We have Geddes, director Karyn Kusama, Megan Fox, Johnny Simmons, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, Diablo Cody, two producers, and Jason Reitman.

It was a pretty lively Q&A, mostly dominated by Kusama, Cody and Fox, with some loud remarks from Reitman. Reitman produced here, and was also showing his next film as director, Up in the Air. That looks to be a quieter drama, so Reitman was letting loose here, with his first horror crowd. Seyfried and Simmons were adorably shy. Kusama and Fox spoke of having no idea what some of Cody's dialogue was even about.

It was an enjoyable enough session, except for the idiots who wouldn't stop shouting their questions about the film's lesbian moments, sounding like drunk patrons at a strip club begging for another little bit of titty, while the girls on stage just want to go home. There are plenty of those places in Toronto, guys. Head there.

More to come!

TIFF Awards: Aussie Aussie Aussie!

2009-09-20T15:19:00.002+10:00

More reviews to come - I promise - but a huge congratulations is in order. For the first time this year, Midnight Madness films had their own People's Choice award. The runner up? Vampire dystopia flick Daybreakers, from Brisbane's Spierig Brothers. The first prize? The Loved Ones, an Australian horror film from writer/director Sean Byrne, which came from nowhere to wow everybody.

It's good to feel proud of Australian genre cinema.

TIFF Part One: Jennifer's Body Review

2009-09-12T09:38:00.001+10:00

I've been a bad, bad blogger. Currently in my hostel in Toronto. Before that, Vancouver, seeing friends I've not seen in a long time, which was wonderful. Before that, Portland, which after two nights became my favourite city in the USA. But now, Toronto. I was there three years ago but am seeing more of the city this time. It's big; bigger than I remember. It is not as welcoming as it seemed last time, although the hostel (The Clarence Castle) is great. Even if it is far away from Ryerson University, where the Midnight Madness screenings take place.

Midnight Madness seems to open with the big ones. in 2006 it was Borat, and this time, Jennifer's Body and its accompanying media circus. Megan Fox is the titular Jennifer, and dozens of photographers were there to confirm that, yes, she can still pout, and, indeed, still has breasts. Of the actors on stage for the Q&A, it must be said, she held the room better than the others, and even managed to be, once or twice, funny. Adam Brody didn't say that much, and Amanda "The Only Good Thing in Mamma Mia" Seyfried and Johnny "I Was in Hotel For Dogs and Will Soon Be in Scott Pilgrim; How's That for a Trade Up?" Simmons were charmingly shy. Writer Diablo Cody was as outspoken as you'd expect, and director Karyn Kusama ran things well. The Q&A was amusing enough, but the endless questions to Fox and Seyfried about lesbian shit grew tiresome.

So how was the film?

Jennifer's Body

For a genre seen to be so aimed at males, it is worth noting just how many main characters in these films are female. Jennifer's Body has women in the roles of writer (Diablo Cody), director (Karyn Kusama), hero (Amanda Seyfried) and villain (Megan Fox). It's refreshing, and should happen more often; perhaps it could next time result in a better film.

Needy (Seyfried) and Jennifer (Fox) are long time best friends, now in high school. Needy is dating Chip (Johnny Simmons), while Jennifer sleeps around while wielding power over her friend. As best friends, they don't match; Needy is the high school movie version of a nerd while Jennifer is the high school movie version of a beautiful and popular girl. And yet, they share a bond. This bond leads to Jennifer dragging Needy to a seedy bar to see a band, headed by Nikolai (Adam Brody). a fire burns the bar down, and an in-shock Jennifer by the band. When she returns, she's different. And covered in blood. And, it seems, demonic.

The two most audience-grabbing things of this film are the presence of Fox, and a script from the writer of Juno. Fox is fine; the way she plays evil is bored and pretty, which suits the character; she is almost playing a murderous version of her own public persona. Cody's script is a bigger issue. Juno split audiences, but those who like it do so not just for its wordplay, but its heart. Her TV series, The United States of Tara, proved that the heart of Juno can be, at least in part, attributed to Cody's writing. Her script here, however, just has the wordplay. Jennifer's Body is funny enough to be a decent - but not brilliant - comedy, but is too self-aware, winking too much at the audience, to pack any emotional punch, or to be a very good horror movie. Points are also lost for unnecessary narration and flashback structure. Scream proved that self-aware horror can be scary; the Buffy series proved that funny and self-aware can also be emotionally arresting. Jennifer's Body seems content to be without these elements. Kusama's direction takes Cody's script to the next logical level; scenes that could have been scary are played, instead, as parodies of horror tropes. Questions can also be raised about how much of the film was constructed around public awareness of Cody and Fox rather than being created in a more organic way. Were the Cody-isms increased upon the success of Juno? Would the lesbian elements have been so played up were Fox not so fetishised by the media for being hot and pouty?

Seyfried, as usual, is very good, and Needy and Chip's relationship is cute and believable. Cody's script, as much as it lacks what it needs to be a good horror film, is far more frank and honest about sex than any teen film in recent memory. JK Simmons and Amy Sedaris are as funny as expected in small roles.

Jennifer's Body is a servicable comedy with okay gore, loosely explained paranormal elements, and a few great one-liners that. It could have been a memorable horror film, but isn't. It isn't as bad as its soundtrack - full of Fallout Boy-inspired pop-rock - would suggest, but on the echelon of great high school horror films, Jennifer's Body won't rank very high.

6/10

I owe some reviews. They're be here soon, I swear.

A Review

2009-09-04T17:24:00.001+10:00

The Final Destination in 3D

God fucking awful.

0/10

Looking Too Much into District 9

2009-09-04T04:11:00.006+10:00

I'm in Vancouver! Alas, too busy holidaying to write much, and the battery on my computer lasts under three hours, so even on long trips I can't write much.

The plane journey, by the way, had a decent selection of films. Not being an idiot, I opted not to watch The Proposal, My Life in Ruins, or 17 Again, but (re)watched Jackie Brown, In the Loop, and (for the first time) saw Adventureland, which is decent but should not be advertised as a comedy. I also started State of Play, confirming that it's not nearly as good as the miniseries it's based on, but the plane landed before it finished.

Also I saw Up in a three-dollar theatre in the delightful city of Portland and it turned me into a giant girl. Review to come.

Review!!!

District 9

It’s a subversion of the typical alien invasion movie. Set not in an American metropolis, but Johannesburg. With aliens that are neither unstoppable and malevolent nor good and wise, but, rather, lost and confused. With a hero who is not a muscle-bound action hero, a wise-cracking pretty boy, or a beautiful but deadly woman, but a character whose nearest cultural touchstone is Murray from The Flight of the Conchords. Using, for a significant chunk of the film, a documentary aesthetic. Here we have a film that turns so many sci fi tropes upside down that it should be brilliant. It isn’t.

District 9 takes us to Johannesburg, twenty years after an enormous spaceship began hovering over the city. Inside the ship were about a million alien creatures, lost and starving. In the city, they were met with hostility, and moved into a huge slum: the District 9 of the title. An initiative has begun to relocate the creatures (or, as a speciesist term would have them, “prawns”) to a new, cleaner slum, hundreds of kilometers from the city. Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharto Copley) is the hapless middle-manager type, and CEO’s son-in-law, charged with heading up the operation of getting the aliens out of District 9.

As mentioned, the first section of the film is set up like a documentary. We have interviews with Wikus and others involved with the relocation, as well as experts and lecturers on the aliens. The footage seems to come from some unknown crew interviewing people; from news broadcasts; from people within Wikus’s corporation filming; from CCTV footage. As the story develops, the film does away with the documentary style, switching to straight narrative. The story goes to places a documentary could not, so, little by little, it is abandoned. Here is the catch 22 of the film: the documentary is the most successful part of it, and it is what undermines it.

A documentary style – even a fake documentary style – suggests realism. Its aim is to make you believe in what you are seeing, and make you relate to a film set up as pure fiction. There are things that might be excusable in an ordinary film that documentary style films cannot get away with, because they’ve told you they’re real. Take the creatures themselves. They are designed to be somewhat grotesque – very well designed, it must be noted – and, yes, alien. But they are simply too human. They might resemble walking prawns, but they have arms and legs; they stand upright; they have recognizable eyes, and mouths that they eat with and talk and vomit out of, and they urinate from the same place humans do. We are asked to identify with the aliens, so of course they had to have recognizable features. But for creatures from another planet to have evolved so similarly to humans? It’s too much to take. So too are the films other contrivances; the plot conveniences that occur too easily, to move the story forward. An ordinary sci-fi thriller could get away with these things, but not one that is, even in part, presented as a documentary. Furthermore, the way the documentary style is discarded makes it seem as if its purpose was not social commentary, or realism, or satire, but an easy way to get mass amounts of exposition onto the screen, as if it were too difficult for ordinary dialogue to set up more than twenty years of history, so direct-to-camera interviews were used instead.

Things get worse once the film crosses into pure action territory. The action itself isn’t directed with enough drive or tension. It also, like executive producer Peter Jackson’s early work, moves towards over-the-top, gross-out violence. Alien weapons used make things and people blow up, and the film asks us to enjoy seeing people explode into goo. This splatter comedy is incongruous with the documentary section of the film, even though it doesn’t occur until we’re watching an action movie, complete with mismatched buddies and a precocious and tech-savvy child. This is the film’s final downfall. What started out so different – if flawed – ends up in a place no different to any other action movie. The end of the movie is open, yes, but that feels less like shunning convention and more like setting up a follow-up film.

It’s not without merit. Copley does fine work, playing for both laughs and pathos. For this to be his first acting role is a feat. The apartheid commentary is, despite being a little heavy handed, is a worthy enough message. The animation, too, is very good, especially for the thirty million dollar budget. Director Neill Blomkamp shows promise; with tighter direction of action sequences, could yet make something great. This is not that film. This has not changed the face of sci fi cinema. Perhaps we can hold out hope for the obvious sequel.
4/10
Totally alone in that opinion. There must be something I'm missing here. It wasn't just a film that didn't live up to its huge hype, though. It was just flat-out not very good.

Leaving

2009-08-31T00:35:00.003+10:00

This will be brief, non movie or TV related, and (mostly) rant-free.

I'm leaving the country tomorrow, until early October. The purpose of the trip is the Toronto International Film Festival, but will also feature appearances from Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago and San Fransisco. Plus due to funds Toronto will be also, largely, about actually seeing Toronto, which is good as well. I won't be seeing as many movies as I'd like, although have tickets to all ten Midnight Madness screenings. I was at the festival in 2006; Midnight Madness was the highlight, so I'm happy to be seeing those. Especially since Rec fucking 2 is on, and George Romero will be there. Also playing is Jennifer's Body, possibly offering the opportunity to throw things at Megan Fox. Plus I'm happy to be spending the time with my girlfriend, who doesn't have a huge desire to see a lot of movies. There will be hand-holding and finding all the places that feature in Scott Pilgrim.

Upon leaving the house tomorrow morning, I will never return to it. It has been sold; when I'm back in Sydney, I'll be living elsewhere. So tonight marks my last night in my house of about fifteen years.

It's strange.

And my bedroom is all boxes and empty shelves; it's quite offputting. It's also alerted me that I own way too much shit, and will have to have a garage sale once I get back.

So the next update will be in Portland, and will feature a review of District 9 and, maybe, Inglourious Basterds (now seen in full!) as well as whatever I'm stuck watching on the plane. Fingers crossed Bandslam!

And so, goodnight!

Inglourious Bas-

2009-08-22T20:05:00.001+10:00

This should be an Inglourious Basterds review. I went to see it today, at a cinema in Sydney's north-east, Warriewood. It's all fancy and stuff, because the first four rows of the cinema are reclining armchairs. According to the ad that they play, it's "unique".

Except for every Greater Union/Event/Birch Carrol and Cole with a "Gold Class", Hoyts with a "La Premiere" or Reading with a "Whatever the Fuck They Call Their Fancy Seats" has the exact same fucking thing, except those places also bring you hot food if you pay too much for it.

Nonetheless, a recliner is a recliner. It's better than sitting on the top level of the State Theatre in a seat slightly less wide than you are, next to a loud fat fucker.

The other thing that would have been ideal for this particular screening was the film making it all the way through without it fucking up so badly as to make the film unwatchable. At the two hour mark. With half an hour, or less, to go. It happened at a point that made narrative sense. The dialogue - at this point in German, so it was subtitled - became muffled. One of the characters in this conversation was on morphine, so it could have been a stylistic choice. Then it continued. For too long, and beyond this conversation. When characters were speaking in English, and so were not subtitled, they were almost impossible to understand. It wasn't a stylistic choice. It was a fuck up.

As an apology, I suppose you could call it, the cinema offered... a ticket to a later session so we could see the end. Good work, management! For future reference, an indication of half-decent customer service would have been more than allowing those disappointed by not seeing the end of the film the opportunity to do so, because (as you'd hope those who run a cinema would know) watching a film is more than just finding out how a story ends; it is the entire experience of watching it, beginning to end. It might have been pretentious for David Lynch to put no chapter stops on the Mullholland Drive DVD, but the dude had a point. Therefore, the managers of a good cinema would have, yes, given a ticket to a later session of the same film, but also, as an apology, given a free ticket to a film that (were all to go according to plan) would be watched, at once, in its entirety.

I admit to being a Tarantino whore. Yes, his work can be self indulgent. Yes, Death Proof was almost all dialogue with a couple of action sequences. But what dialogue. What self indulgence. He may be making his films entirely for himself, but fuck me if they're not more entertaining and more stylish and more enjoyable than eighty percent of the dross out there. There probably was not a film this year I was looking forward to more. Also playing at the same cinema today: The Ugly Truth. GI Joe. Could they not have fucked up? Would the people who paid to see those pieces of shit have even noticed, provided that big things blowing up and/or pretty people continued to be paraded in front of them? I doubt it. It seems, if God exists (and He probably doesn't), then He isn't a film fan.

ABBA: Why?

2009-08-19T00:28:00.004+10:00

I was coerced into watching Mamma Mia on Sunday, as a trade-off for making my girlfriend watch Timecrimes. Although she actually liked Timecrimes. It's pretty rad. Some might argue that my not being an ABBA fan, female, or post-menopausal puts me so far out of this film's target audience that for me to review it (i.e. rip it to shreds) would be unfair.

I don't care. It's going to be a large one.

Mamma Mia

There is a conflict inherent in watching this film. As it is a musical, characters frequently break into song, and when they do, they sing ABBA. Yet the band ABBA is never mentioned. One assumes in a world where it is normal to break into "Take a Chance", ABBA would be mentioned at least once.

Unless it's a world where ABBA doesn't exist.

If this is the case, could one just not associate with people who break into song, and then live in a world that is without ABBA? That would be heaven.

The scene is set on a Greek island. Amanda Seyfried plays Sophie, a girl who is American despite living in Greece for all of her life. She lives with her mother, Donna (Meryl Streep), who runs a hotel, and is about to marry Sky (Dominic Cooper). Sophie, however, does not know who her father is. By stealing her mother's diary, she realises her father could be one of three men: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth), or Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). In this musical universe, they don't have birth control. Sophie, pretending to be her mother, invites the three men, hoping to have her real father give her away at the wedding. The presence of the men causes havoc, and singing. Also in play are Donna's friends and former band members, the drunk and brassy one (Julie Walters) and the drunk and thrice-divorced one (Christine Baranski), as well as Sophie's two friends, who do so little that they deserve no further words.

The film was directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Catherine Johnson, as was the stage musical the film is based upon. Between them, there is little cinematic experience. It shows. The film is loud and stupid, with the camerawork resembling what a fifteen-year-old girl with a handycam might do with the material, with crash-zooms and smash-wipes at inappropriate moments, and the most obvious and unsubtle of choices at every turn. The story has as much tension as a Mr Men book, with almost no conflict save for characters keeping secrets, telling lies, and telling others to keep secrets and lie for little reason beyond the opportunity for cheap farce. The point may be the music above the story, but a modicum of suspense or surprising plot turn or two would not have undone the movie. There has also never been a film with so much squealing in it, and that includes every horror film ever made.

The singing and dancing vary in quality. Baranski, with stage experience, does fine work. Streep is likable enough, and having enough fun, to maintain some dignity when in a role with none. Seyfried is as delightful as she always is, with a strong voice to boot. Brosnan is so bad as to almost make the film worth watching for his singing alone. His voice is so terrible it makes you wish he'd been dubbed over by anyone, even the lead singer of Nickelback. The dancing is occasionally fun but more often lazy; the choreography of "Dancing Queen" consists of Street, Baranski and Walters, as well as a bunch of Greek women, skipping down to a dock. The extras on the whole are terrible, only slightly better than the chorus in a third-rate high school play. There is also a bizarre fantasy sequence - put to the song "Money, Money, Money" - where being rich is equated with the ability to drive a ship.

There's a definite audience for this film, where all that matters are the bright colours and ABBA numbers. Outside of that group, there is some mild curiosity value, a couple of reasons why the film might not be a total loss: Amanda Seyfried's adorableness; Pierce Brosnan's awful voice; the gayest stag party ever, involving shirtless men in flippers dancing on a wharf.

To be fair, it's silly and light and fluffy and harmless. It isn't the worst film of all time. An ABBA musical was never going to be high art. It's something that you can turn your brain off to for ninety minutes. Can one really ask for more than that?

Yes.

3/10

Just to be clear: I know I'm a prick. But Mamma Mia has now outgrossed Titanic in the UK. United Kingdom, what's wrong with you? You produce so much good stuff, why do you feel the need to balance that out with shit?

I have never understand ABBA. I understand that they're liked, or even loved. But why, of all bands, do they have a revival every fourteen seconds? A lot of acts were producing shitty pop music in the seventies! A lot of these acts, surely, were as campy as ABBA. What makes ABBA so groundbreaking so that they're one of the most resilient bands on the planet? If anyone cares to explain, they will be duly rewarded.*

Finally: Mamma Mia has revealed a weakness in Meryl Streep. A chink in her armor. For those who thought there is nothing she cannot do, this film begs to differ. Meryl Streep cannot pretend to drive a car against a projected backdrop for shit. For those unlucky enough to have easy access to the movie, whack it on. Skip to the scene where she's driving Christina Baranski and Julie Walters back to her villa. And wonder just how the fuck it is that the car is actually remaining on the road.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go work on my Journey musical, Streelight People.

*With a thank you.

Idol is as Nasty as Radio (Part Two)

2009-08-17T17:55:00.001+10:00

In Part One, I talked about how Idol is great because the humiliation of sad people is hilarious.

But there was a special twist. One of the show's judges, Kyle Sandilands, will be gone in a few weeks. He was axed before the show began, but isn't offscreen just yet. He was axed because of something that had nothing to do with Idol.

He was cut for something that was covered extensively, especially in Sydney. The best coverage was by Media Watch, the episode of which can be downloaded in mp4 or wmv. Sandilands and co-host, Jackie O, helm a very popular breakfast show on Sydney radio. "Breakfast with the Stars", it's called. Kyle and Jackie O are the stars, but that word also refers to how exciting it is that they get to interview Lady Gaga and other such fuckers.

They also have tasteless stunts. That Media Watch episode talks about a stunt where a niece and aunt, who had never met, were forced to cry and beg on their knees to be able to spend any time together rather than the niece being sent back home to the US. An earlier episode of Media Watch highlighted games where, for example, people were challenged to pick their lover's genitals out of a line-up.

You know. Classy stuff.

When they're doing stuff that is just tacky - like the genitals thing - it's stupid, but harmless. Emphasis on stupid, but not discounting harmless. It's hard to see the appeal, and you would hope that parents with young children would press the off button, shutting the show down would be unnecessary censorship, as painful as its popularity might be. When they're playing with the lives of real, flesh-and-blood people, that's when flags should be raised.

Like what happened a few weeks ago.

The stunt was a lie detector test. Someone would be strapped to a lie detector, while a "loved" one would ask them personal questions. In this case, it was a mother strapping her 14 year old daughter in, and asking her questions about her sex life.

Here's where the red flag should have been raised. This should never have happened. It should never have been allowed by people managing Kyle and Jackie O, let alone the hosts themselves. Regardless of whether or not it went badly (and it went very badly), this should be what got the radio station in trouble, and child protection called on the girl's awful mother, before anything else.

The mother (who is, no doubt, the worst person involved here) asked her daughter if she'd had sex. Then the girl said she was raped, and that her mother already knew. Following excruciating silence, Kyle said the words he will forever regret, if he is capable of such emotion: "Is that the only experience you've had?"

The comment seems to owe more to Kyle's shock and - let's face it - stupidity more than insensitivity, although having the girl on in the first place shows insensitivity was in play as well. Jackie O (always playing nice, just like Marcia Hines on Idol) then ended the broadcast.

Then, uproar. The pair have been absent from radio since that week, although they return tomorrow, now on a seven-second delay. And Kyle was axed from Australian Idol.

It's not unexpected, but is giantly hypocritical on Idol's part. They claim Kyle has become to controversial, and Idol is a family show. Well, no. In early weeks, at least, it's a show that traffics in humiliation, just like Kyle and Jackie O's radio show, and that was the reason he was hired. It would be refreshing if Australian Idol's producer's were open about pressure from the owners of the format, and fears of commercial interests, rather that yelling that it's "for the children". If it were for the children, sixteen-year-olds wouldn't be allowed to make fools of themselves on the show.

So, Kyle's gone from Idol. It's unfair, but at least we saw the partial downfall of an egomaniac. That's always a lot of fun. If only it were for the right reasons.

Meanwhile the girl from the stunt has had her family further sell her out to A Current Affair, the Nine Network's alleged current affairs program. They've claimed she was lying. Maybe she was. Maybe she's a difficult child. But it would be good is the family would sort out such issues behind closed doors, with professional counsellors, rather than grabbing for fame in the process of "trying to help". It would be good for radio producers to put a leash on their hosts when the get into the habit of playing with people's emotions and lives for the entertainment of listeners. It would be good if television producers had quiet words with people without the talent needed to become musicians, rather than sending them through to be heckled to tears on camera in front of millions.

But that's the fame-hungry time we're living in.

27 Lessons

2009-08-12T23:06:00.003+10:00

So the gods of pay TV have delivered Katherine Heigl's opus, 27 Dresses, to my screen. She's pretending to be a likable. There are a lot of lessons, not just about cinema, but about life.

Like all women, above a career, or friendship, or anything else, are thinking about their wedding day.

And that women can't drive! They're too busy thinking about their relationship dramas to focus on the road.

Oh, and having a singalong to an Elton John song does not make a movie Almost Famous. Almost Famous, you see, is an excellent film, while 27 Dresses is as bad as films get.

Meryl Streep is Delightful

2009-08-11T17:47:00.004+10:00

Here she is, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert. Julie and Julia isn't at the top of my must-see list, but this interview is both hilarious and adorable.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Meryl Streep

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Meryl Streep

Idol is as Nasty as Radio (Part One)

2009-08-11T12:45:00.006+10:00

Australian Idol resumed for another year on Sunday, and while taking a quick break from Deadwood I accidentally caught a bit of it. Deadwood contains more foul language than was once thought to exist, murder, torture, thievery, and backstabbing, and yet Idol is the nastier show. While this post relates to Australian Idol, with a few name changes, it would work for any of the shows in the franchise.

The first few weeks of the show are the "open" auditions. The judges travel from one major city to the next, sitting at a table while a line of would-be singers perform unaccompanied (unless they bring a guitar with them, which seems uncommon) their own covers of already bad pop songs. The judges are Marcia Hines, a singer, Ian Dickson, a record executive, and Kyle Sandilands, a radio personality, and 2009's most satisfying claimed scalp, even if he doesn't quite deserve it. More on that in Part Two.

So, number one, only one of the three judges has any form of musical talent. Okay, they seemed to be joined by Brian McFadden of Westlife this week, but Westlife doesn't classify as music. Marcia also is "the nice one", so her comments to those the judges reject are limited to apologies. Dicko and Kyle both play the part of "the pricks". Dicko is "the slightly wittier prick", perhaps, but they're still pricks. They tend to judge people immediately: God forbid you enter the room as a fatty. When an attractive person reveals themselves as having an awful voice, that's more of a disappointment. "You're a lovely looking girl, but..." If you're unattractive, and can't sing? Better be wearing a raincoat, or your clothes will reek of bile after walking away from the panel.

But these people hope one day to be singing professionals, right? It's clear they won't make it. They're just getting a wake-up call! Besides, it's funny! How did they really think they could get a record contract and national exposure?

Because Idol's producers said they could.

Dicko, Marcia and Kyle aren't the first that the hopefuls audition in front of. Off camera, they perform in front of vocal coaches, and the producers. The producers decide who actually gets to the judges, and who makes it to TV.

Who do you think the producers send through? The good ones, of course. The ones with musical talent, and the ones who can do that Maria Carey pitch-shift thing which Idol suggests is a sign of talent. Just seeing those guys be judged would be boring, though, so they send through the freakshows as well. Many of these guys would be in on it; never thinking they'd make it, but hey, being on TV for a couple of minutes would be cool. Then there are the innocent ones, who have been sent through by producers and therefore given the idea that, hey, maybe they'll make it. Maybe this is their year.

It's not, of course. The people spat upon by the judges don't deserve music careers, as much as they don't deserve to be humiliated. Even Marcia's nice girl act rings false, since she knows that those auditioning have been given false hope by her own producers. Because this is what the dwindling audience of the show is watching for.

So, these people come in. They sing badly. Sometimes even in ways you never thought people would ever sing. They get called worthless. Then they leave the room. Then they cry.

Now that's entertainment.

(to be continued)

The Tonally-Uneven Bones

2009-08-06T12:17:00.003+10:00

Peter Jackson's King Kong came out in 2005, and we're finally getting a new film from him in a few months. King Kong is a rare non-evil remake, produced because of Jackson's long-held love for the original rather than studio executives, in a dark room, chanting "money money money" over and over in front of a mirror while holding a candle and turning in circles until Michael Bay appears.

I'm pretty sure that's how one summons that guy, anyway.

Now Jackson has made The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold's heartbreaking novel. It's a novel narrated by a 14 year old girl, who watches her family and murderer after her death.

There's a trailer out. You might be able to find it on YouTube but Apple seems to have an exclusive on it so those will be taken down. Studios don't like people to advertise their movie for free without their permission, so stop breaching their intellectual rights, thieves!

It gives stuff away. The killer is never a mystery, so the reveal in the trailer is not a spoiler. The trailer does show some pretty late-in-the-story stuff.

Also, it's an artless mess.

It starts out looking like a family drama, before we are told it's about a girl's murder, by the girl herself. Gear shift! We're now in some technicolour, fantasy-world heaven which for the most part looks pretty, and also contains a superimposed flower on some ice for some reason.

Then suddenly it's Zodiac mixed with a Rear Window knockoff, with a dash of "I know who killed my daughter!" melodrama.

This doesn't bode ill for the film. A bit of dodgy CG imagery is forgivable this long before release; just think of how bad Kong looked in the early trailers for that film compared with the final version. It does, however, speak poorly for the hacks at Paramount who cut the trailer. Sure, New Line have fucked over Jackson in the past, but they've never made his films look bad to the extent that this trailer does.

A great story shot by a great director, though. There's no need to worry, unless the person who conceptualised this trailer gets a deal to make their own film.

Drag Me to Bruno

2009-08-04T15:50:00.003+10:00

The Nine Network have just launched a new drama series. It's called Rescue: Special Ops. I haven't caught it, and won't seek it out, but it's just great that it has such a thrilling title. Rescue: Special Ops. So out there! A team of writers must have come up with that one! I'm going to pitch the network a police drama now, called Cops Arresting People.

Movie reviews!!!

Bruno

Bruno, Larry Charles and Sasha Baron Cohen's follow up to Borat, is a film with many issues. Should these issues matter when the end product is hilarious? Well, kind of.

Yes, the film is very funny. Cohen's Bruno is a gay, Austrian fashion-obsessed TV host who heads to America after being shamed at a Milan catwalk event. His reasons for going to the US are to discover fame, which is where the first of the film's big two themes comes into play. The obsession with celebrity, and people's desire to be celebrities (or for their children to be), are mocked without mercy. There is also a brief trip to the middle east: Bruno decides he will achieve fame by solving Palestine/Israeli crisis. The second target arrives when Bruno heads to middle America: homophobia. Here, Bruno meets army cadets,a macho karate instructor, small-minded hunters and preachers who "cure" homosexuality. Cohen makes it his mission allow these people to tie there own nooses by playing to their worst, cliche-ridden fears.

It doesn't sound hilarious, but if you know Cohen, you'd be aware it often it is. The laughs come from Cohen's outrageous caricature as well as his victim's often unbelievable reactions, such as stage parents agreeing to let dangerous things happen to their babies for a photo shoot, or the gay converter's blank response to being told he has "amazing blowjob lips". It's also often shocking and upsetting; the audience reaction in the final wrestling match is downright scary. And while the majority of the real people embarrassed and vilified in the film do deserve it, you can't help but think perhaps a few aren't reacting to Bruno's sexuality, rather the cameras filming him and making it clear to them they are being pranked. This is a minor quibble; a bigger issue is the constant question of who is in on the joke. What is on screen tends to be funny either way, but thinking about what's real and what isn't takes you out of the movie.

It's very funny, and worth seeing, even if it is too similar to Borat, following to the letter the exact same plot arc, to the extent that Bruno is even left by his assistant character halfway through the film, to be reunited for the climax. And with the reliance on shock humour, it is difficult to imagine it being as good on any subsequent viewings. It's a good enough film, but just the once.

7/10

I'm quite weirded out by some reactions to the film. People have been disgusted by it. I understand that it's not to all tastes. I wouldn't send my mother out to see it. But people who have bought their tickets... did they not know? Did they not see the rating, or any of the endless publicity before the film's release? It's hard to imagine they didn't know what they were getting into. Were they expecting a Merchant Ivory production?

One woman at the end of my screening said to her friend "That was so shit it was funny!" She had been laughing all the way through, but it seems that she thought that the film wasn't in on the joke of itself, as if Bruno was a serious character and the audience was enjoying it the same was as a Uwe Boll film.

People are strange.

Drag Me to Hell

After Spider-man 3, Sam Raimi could have tackled another big-budget film, or a smaller, more restrained effort akin to his work before that trilogy such as The Gift or A Simple Plan. Instead, he traveled back even further into his past to bring Drag Me to Hell, a callback to his glorious Evil Dead days, hinted at by the surgery scene in Spider-man 2. While it copped a PG-13 rating - the same as the Spider-man trilogy - it's almost as much fun as his early work: over-the-top, violent, gross, and ruthless. In other words, it's great.

Alison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a former country girl now angling for a promotion at the bank where she works, while dating a well-bred college professor, Clay Dalton (Justin Long) whose parents disapprove of her. In an effort to seem tougher for her boss (David Paymer), Christine refuses a mortgage extension to an old gypsy woman, Mrs Ganesh (Lorna Raver). Ganesh promptly attacks Christine in her car, gums her chin (!) and curses her to three days of torment before being taken to hell, for eternity.

There's not a lot below the surface of this film. There's no subtext; it's not a metaphor for anything. The plot is just an excuse for a series of horror sequences which tend to be frightening, stomach-churning and hilarious in equal measure. Lohman does fine work treading the admittedly predictable path from meek to badass, while showing a gift for comedy: see her reaction to the question "you mean you have a cat... right?" Lorna Raver is hysterical as Mrs Ganesh, and Dileep Rao is amusing as the psychic Rham Jas who tries his best to help Christine.

There's a lot less blood, and stop-motion has been replaced by CG, but the spirit of the Evil Dead series has returned to Raimi, and it's something to celebrate.

9/10

Then yesterday I watched Evil Dead 2 again. It's still amazing. Now I just need to get my a sexy, feature-packed import of Army of Darkness.

Finally, I highly recommend reading the source novel A Simple Plan. The movie is very good, but the book is amazing, and has ten times the tension.

Coens!!!

2009-07-31T00:11:00.005+10:00

Everyone likes the Coen brothers! Even the people I've met with a strange, seething hatred of No Country for Old Men dug on Fargo. Here's the trailer for their latest, A Serious Man.

It's weird.

Any ideas what it's about? And yet, it looks amazing. An ad for a film which sets up a tone but gives away almost nothing. Amazing!

Here's hoping copyright claims don't get this one removed, like what happened with the Saw goddamn VI trailer I put up. I understand a studio wanting to protect their property - even though copyright laws need big overhauls to fit in with the digital age - but taking down a fucking advertisment? For your film? It's a fucking ad! Ordering its removal means less publicity! You know, the thing the ad was designed to create? Why not bad people from saying the film's title for fear it might breach your intellectual property rights? See how that goes down.

Meanwhile I was going to write about Channel 10's new show The 7pm Project, which is a comedy panel show where the brave decision was made to load the cast with mostly non-comedians, but it was too easy a target even for me, and I felt bad.

That said, I would advise checking out the video page to check out the interview of Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols. It's the worst-shot interview, possibly, ever. It looks like the camera operator was white water rafting while filming.

Back soon with Bruno and Drag Me to Hell reviews!

Go FVIck Yourself

2009-07-24T16:04:00.001+10:00

I don't know why the fucking Saw sequels, which insist on continuing, keep up with the Roman numerals thing. It seems to be an attempt to add some sort of class to the series. There's no need; there's no class, there never will be. Just epileptic editing that's supposed to be... scary? I think? It's surprising they even continue with numbers, since every one of these movies is the same.

Or... are they?

Take a look at the video below. Saw is gettin' politicky!

So Saw Siks is for universal healthcare! And, it seems, it's highlighting the dangers of unsafe playground equipment. Thanks, Saw, for bringing the issue to light for people who might not think about the more important things when they watch their entertainment. Sure, they might enter the cinema looking for blood and entrails, but they'll leave the cinema enlightened, having deep political discussions among themselves as they rise up and say "we are the future!"

Or maybe they'll just head to a CD store and buy the new Megadeth album*.

That clip though, is so ridiculous, the movie should be hysterical fun. On paper. A stupid, sermonising villain, over-the-top violence, idiot characters. The Final Destination, for example, is pretty much guaranteed to be a riot. The Saw movies, though, actually thing they are about something more. They think there's a life lesson wrapped up in the mayhem. Like after school specials for Fangoria readers. That just drains the fun right out of it.

Bring on The Final Destination! Saw IV, go fuck yourself.

*I have no idea if this band still exists or how much crossover there is between their fans and Saw enthusiasts. It just seemed to fit.

Harry Potter and the Thing with the Bits

2009-07-21T23:21:00.002+10:00

Harry Potter is back again; the books have finished their run but the movies will be continuing into 2011. Two more years, gang, then peace, unless Daniel Radcliffe decides to nude it up on stage again. If that happens, it may never leave the news cycle.

Unless you're Helen Keller, you know that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has hit cinemas. Helen Keller died before the whole Harry Potter thing so she'd have no idea. A group of us went to the Parramatta megaplex to see it; something that's usually best to avoid. I saw the second Pirates of the Caribbean film there; if that wasn't bad enough, the guy next to me a) smelled, b) had his phone on, and not on silent, c) answered his phone when it rang and carried on a conversation and d) made this fucking clicking noise with his mouth every time something dramatic happened. I had a good lawyer, and didn't go to prison for murdering him. Also there was a baby in the audience - at 9pm session - that didn't get removed when it cried.

This time there was a baby again, and, again, it cried. Luckily for the baby, I'm a lousy shot. Meanwhile, there were these awful giant bogans a few rows back; during the pre-movie ads, they laughed at this fucking Cadbury ad:

Despite it being one of the creepiest ads in the history of time - not in a clever way, but in a stupid way - they were laughing throughout the whole thing, almost losing control, enjoying it so much you'd thing they were watching George Carlin and being blown at the same time. "That was the funniest thing I've ever seen!" the larger of the two said, who should have been made to pay for two seats. No, it wasn't. And it doesn't even have anything to do with chocolate. Very clever, Cadbury, you had a viral hit with that nonsensical drumming gorilla. Please go back to just making ads about your actual product now, rather than ones that make a good argument for the culling of child actors.

Then the movie started!

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Like the characters within it, the Harry Potter series continues to grow up. No longer are they boring, childish pieces of shit, slaves to their source material. Since Prisoner of Azkaban, when Alfonso Cuaron took over from Christopher Columbus, the films cannot be written off immediately - no surprise when switching from the guy behind Stepmom to the guy behind Children of Men. They still vary in quality, and all are flawed, but they now have actual merit; something which didn't seem possible in those first two films.

Once again, David Yates (who directed the brilliant State of Play miniseries) is at the helm, as he will be for the rest of the series. He's a good choice, handling action scenes well, and has made the series darker, both in tone and visually. We start in the a few weeks after the last film, when Sirius Black, godfather to Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), was killed. He is introduced by his mentor and principal, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) to an old teacher Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) before staying with best friends Ron (Rupert Grint), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron's sister - and Harry's would-be girlfriend - Ginny (Bonnie Wright).

Upon returning to school, Harry becomes aware that Dumbledore has plans for him which involve Slughorn, and on enrolling in his class, he comes across a mysterious textbook belonging to someone who calls themselves the Half Blood Prince. Meanwhile, teacher Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) has been tasked by sisters Narcissa Malfoy (Helen McCrory) and Bellatrix LeStrange (Helena Bonham Carter) with helping Harry's enemy, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) carry out a deed on behalf of Voldemort, the villain of the series. Double-meanwhile, Harry and his friends are more and more becoming slaves to their hormones and teen romance. It should be noted that Alan Rickman and Helena Bonham Carter typically bring anything they're in up a level; that's no different here.

The main complaint from fans of the books seems to be that the Harry Potter films diverge too much from the novels. The thing is, novels and films are different beasts. The most faithful of the films - the first two - are by far the worst. So, once again, Half Blood Prince takes many liberties, often at its own betterment. We still have a very long film, clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, but it zips along, not bogged down by minuscule details. The subplots have varying levels of success: Ron's romance with the smitten Lavender Brown (Jessica Cave) wins the most laughs; also funny is Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), although she isn't given a huge amount to do. Harry's relationship with Ginny doesn't fare as well; Harry goes through very little inner torment here and doesn't move forward as a character, while Ginny isn't a character at all, so much as a pile of molecules that needs to smile more. Or exude any emotion; it doesn't matter which one. Whether this is the fault of Rowling's source material, Steve Kloves' adaptation or the lack of charisma Bonnie Wright has as an actress is hard to say; it's an even mix of all three. The result is that the film's central romance falls flatter that Wright's acting.

The two central plotline have similar variance in their success. The questions raised and answered by Harry's Slughorn mission offer some intrigue; the mystery of the Half Blood Prince, none at all. Draco's torment at his would have been more interesting if more centralised; their backgrounding removes much impact. Draco goes through much more than Harry in the film, so more screen time, perhaps at the expense of the mystery that surrounds him, would have served the film better. The biggest issue, however, is how anticlimactic it all is. While devotion to the novel would have been its downfall, the film excises the final battle of the novel, leaving the film without a final action sequence or, well, a climax.

This is symptomatic of the entire film. We're almost at the end of the series, so the movie is all build-up with little payoff. What remains feels more like an episode of the continuing Harry Potter serial rather than a film in its own right. It's a shame it couldn't have been both. It's an entertaining enough episode, to be sure, but in the end, not a memorable one.

6/10

Take that, innocent child actors!

Then after the film I had a go at a guy who came up to us and complained that the film was too different from the book. It was fun; he'll be released from hopsital in the next couple of days.

So That's the Problem...

2009-07-17T01:12:00.003+10:00

Right now, on late night TV, there's an extended ad for some range of exercise DVDs or something like that; some weight loss scheme involving ridiculous dance.

The voiceover guy says it's so incredible because you're moving your body in three dimensions.

There you go, fatties! You've been staying in 2D too much! Silly fatties.

Now Vivaca A. Fox is talking about her "booty going up a level". Time for bed!

Harper's Island Was Sort of Fucking Ridiculous

2009-07-17T00:57:00.004+10:00

Heavy, ruinous spoilers follow, but it doesn't matter. There's no need to seek this one out.

Harper's Island, the thirteen episode long slasher television show which has just finished its run, was terrible. There's no question. It's a terrible show which my sixteen year old self would have loved, but he wasn't the brightest. It's not even so bad it's good; there's a sprinkling of campy trash throughout the series, but not enough to make it watching for that reason. Sure, there are some stupid tropes: a little girl who does double duty as being creepy and in need of rescue; a lead character with a tragic past; a strange man with a scarred face. But those things are laughable without being actually funny.

So then, I have no idea why I watched it to the end, and, more than that, really wanted to know what happened.

The show was about Abby Mills (Elaine Cassidy, a young Parker Posey but not funny), who goes to the island she grew up on for the wedding of her best friend Henry (Christopher Gorham). It's a week long celebration culminating in the ceremony, but plans change when the a copycat of the serial killer who murdered Abby's mother starts killing the guests. Promos promised, sort of awesomely, that at least one person will be killed each episode. Sometimes more! If this isn't a tipoff of the quality, how about that every episode's title was an onomatopoeia of the sound of that episodes big murder? Episode one was called "Whap". Episode eight? "Gurgle". It's amazing. It's just a shame there wasn't an episode called "Spurt, Spurt". Or "Ungh!". There was a "Ka-Blam", though.

Also there's a death caused by a dude accidentally shooting himself in the leg and then keeling over immediately; then his friend buries him without telling anyone else, and then later, that dude gets thrown into a furnace. It's brilliant.

Look beyond that it's a network TV show, thus staples of the slasher genre - nudity, gore, swearing - got downgraded to bikinis, offscreen violence and splash of blood, and a couple of "hells" and "damns". More important is that slasher movies tend to be short. More than one hundred minutes is stretching it. Without ads, Harper's ran at five hundred and forty minutes. So, you know those stupid bits between death scenes in bad slasher films where plot and characterisation are attempted? There's a lot of that. Subplots with exes, flirtations, adultery, and even a big bag o' money. Not even a HBO-sponsored truckload of skin, graphic violence and enough foul language to make Al Swearengen blush could make that into good TV.

Slasher movies have to decide if they want their characters aware of any threat. If they aren't, it gives more room for them to banter and less time for crying over lost loved ones, which is kind of a buzzkill. We're watching for the violence, not the mourning! If they are aware, it's usually more believable, but characters running around scared gets repetitive after a while. Harper's goes both ways; for the first half of the series, characters get knocked off while the rest of them go about happily planning their wedding and having little dramas. It got increasingly entertaining to think about just how long these people were going without stopping to ask "Hang on, where did she go?" Halfway through, the father of the bride cops a spade to the head that splits his skull in half in the middle of the wedding rehearsal; this tips the rest of the characters off. Then the show becomes a series of increasingly more unlikely reasons for characters to split up and move around the island.

The show presents itself as a mystery; episode ten the revelation comes: the man responsible for the murders seven years earlier - Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, apparently taking time off from being creepy with Starbuck - is alive and back to his old, stab-happy ways. This feels like a cop out until it's hinted that there is a second killer. Cop out number two comes when we find out that Henry, the groom, is the other killer (and Leoben's son - Cylons can spawn!) which was obvious for one reason: not once in the series run had we had a close up of the guy underscored by ominous music. The show had never once hinted that he was the killer, so of course, it had to be him.

The brilliant part of the reveal, however, was his motive:

He was sad because he was adopted. So his friends and family and the friends and family of his wife to be, they had to die.

Take that, adopted kids!

Okay, it was a little more complicated than that; he wanted to start a life alone with his best friend (and, it seems, half-sister). Which is still quite a weak motive, and not as funny as the adopted thing is on its own.

The moral of the story is Harper's Island is lame, but had an audacity that was almost admirable. Its premise seemed interesting, but never would have worked; you can't really ask people to tune in for an hour each week to be scared by a continuing story; horror shows work much better as anthologies or procedurals, not serials. Don't take that as a recommendation of Supernatural, that shit still stinks. But to try something that would never work, in the name of making a super-sized slasher film? Almost makes you proud. Not enough to make it worth a recommendation. Or to refrain from telling people that it sucks. But enough not to wish death on its creators. Good work, Harper's!

BOOM

2009-07-15T00:15:00.006+10:00

This is brilliant. io9's take on 2012:

2012 actually looks like it has something going for it. Not quality, of course, but shit blowing the fuck up like shit has never blown the fuck up before. It's a pity that there is a plot to it, please that will be without point. Soon there will be a time when special effects porn (click that for a great article by David Foster Wallace) will do away with attempts at story. No one cares about that.

Did anyone go to Transformers 2 to watch Shia LaBeouf chasing artifacts all over the globe? Did the audience for The Day After Tomorrow sit on the edge of their seat waiting for Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid, as father and son, to reunite? Or, for that matter, take any environmental message home with them? Of course not. They were sitting there to watch stuff being destroyed. Roland Emmerich and his cohorts should do away with all pretence and just feature that. I would actually consider making the trek to the movies for 2012 if it were, say, forty minutes long and just features explosions, rather than intercutting those sequences with John Cusack pissing away his career. Of course the shorter length would have to mean a cheaper ticket, but it would be much more satisfying as well.

That clip's porn music has given me a hankerin' to go watch some Boogie Nights.

How About... None of Them?

2009-07-08T23:11:00.005+10:00

Can you pick Australia's Perfect Couple?

Fuck. I have to reevaluate what I know about relationships. It turns out that to be a "perfect couple" isn't about compatibility or trust or love or any of that stuff that, you know, logic suggests. It's about how quirky in a network-friendly way you are - "we're virgins!" "we argue a bit!" "we're different heights!" - and your ability to go through idiot fucking challenges!

And, of course, a handy tolerance for Jules Lund.

Jesus.

Not that I've worked in television for that long, but there's no way anyone on this production (bar the contestants, of course) cares about what they're creating. The production offices of this little gem aren't filled with proud people, safe in the knowledge they're creating something people will love and remember. They groan at every batch of rushes that get shit into the system.

No one's demanding a constant stream of high art, Australian television, but how about something that won't give its audiences a brain embolism?

I should thank my lovely girlfriend Tina for alerting me to the existence of Australia's Perfect Couple. One thing we can agree on, as a couple? This fucking show will be worse than Hitler. I wonder if that qualifies us to be on it?

Swears!

2009-07-07T21:06:00.004+10:00

I've just started watching Deadwood. I should have started a lot sooner.

It's very good.

Park Chan-wook Can't Lose

2009-07-05T20:31:00.000+10:00

There's a cinema in the markets at Chinatown in Sydney. It's nothing fancy; the threatres aren't huge, the seats aren't amazing, and it's on the third level of what's not the nicest-looking mall in the city. It does, however, have the tendency to show Asian cinema that often doesn't play anywhere else, and some of the films that do go on to regular cinemas do so months later. Case in point: The Host played there in September of 2006, and then hit other cinemas in March of the following year.

Later this month, Park Chan-wook's Thirst premieres at the Melbourne International Film Festival. It was playing in this cinema in Sydney last week.

Thirst

Park Chan-wook's latest film isn't exactly a follow up to Oldboy, his most well known work. There have been a couple of films in between, not to mention his addition to the anthology film Three Extremes. Thirst, however, seems to be the one whipping up the most attention since Oldboy blew audiences away.

Here, Song Kang-ho - also from The Host - plays Sang-hyun, a priest who volunteers in Africa for an experiment where he is infected with a fatal virus, a test patient for doctors hoping for a cure. A blood transfusion seems to save him, but he comes to realise it has turned him into a vampire. Meanwhile, he has become involved with a family he has knew as a child, and begins a flirtation with the adopted daughter Tae-Ju (Kim Ok-bin).

Park doesn't re-invent the vampire here; they have reflections and seem unaffected by crosses, but there's no revolutionising of the mythology. Instead, there is an abundance of style, in both where the story goes and its staging. There's some striking stuff on display. You'd expect no less from Park, and he doesn't disappoint. As for the story, it goes in many directions you wouldn't expect, and the plot turns shock as much as the sometimes very gory imagery. Song puts in fine work as the conflicted Sang-hyun, but Kim is incredible, running the gamut from shy and quiet to completely unhinged, and more.

The problem with Thirst is its length. It runs for a little over two hours, but feels longer. This is a result of the way the plot turns: there are a number of scenes that feel like endings, which instead go into new plot threads. As a narrative, it's messy and frustrating, and often difficult to get a handle on. The complaint, then, is that the film is too unpredictable. As complaints about films go, there are far worse. It's like having too much of a great dish on your plate. The freewheeling narrative just leads to more Park Chan-wook directed mayhem. Even if as a story it can be less-than-satisfying, all the sequences that result are breathtaking enough to make this point moot. When the film does end, too, it feels right; it's a great scene, with an unforgettable final shot.

The popularity of Twilight is disheartening (at best), but with Thirst and Let the Right One In gracing screens in the last couple of years, we can be sure that the vampire film is not a lost cause; the good ones just take a little finding.

8/10

Also coming soon to the cinema: Bong Joon-ho's Mother. Transformers fucking 2 may be dominating the box office, but we're still in a good couple of weeks of cinema.

Deal or No Deal Still Exists; Humanity Weeps

2009-07-03T17:56:00.002+10:00

Deal or No Deal, despite all reason, and the Geneva Convention, still exists. It is a show of breathtaking stupidity. For those unaware, the way a contestant plays on this game show is by holding a briefcase.

That's about it.

Okay, there's more, but if you don't know, I could not be bothered explaining it to you. There's no skill involved, unless willingness to take risks is counted as a skill. (It's not.) In Australia the show is hosted by Andrew O'Keefe, who is the Antifunny.

The show had been scrubbed from my mind, but I inadvertently caught a bit of it today, and... it's grown stupider. If the show used to be as smart as, say, Paris Hilton, it's now as smart as Paris Hilton were she hit by a bus but survived, unable to communicate save for a few gurgling noises as she tries to say "don't you have any pink hospital gowns?"

First of all, it's the special Dancing With the Stars* week, where the celebrities** from that show play the game for home viewers. Today, it was Rob Mills, known for his time on Australian Idol and a brief fling with Paris Hilton, before her tragic bus accident. He's on a game show to promote the reality show he's on due to his fame from being of a reality show. If that circle of inanity wasn't enough, the show itself has increased its audience participation tenfold. Picture a game show audience. Picture the people who take time out of their lives to go to a studio and watch people open cases. Now picture them holding their arms in front of them in the shape of an X, collectively yelling "NO DEAL!". Picture them holding both arms up, on either side of their heads, rubbing their fingers together with glee, yelling "DEAL!" The contestant makes those gestures back at them, giving them validation, like the participant in the middle of a bukkake circle saying "thanks" at the end of it.

Never validate an idiot. No good will come of it.

*They're not really stars. There's a blind guy and the host of Today Tonight, and that's it.
**Really, they're not.

"I'll Be Back" Isn't the Greatest Movie Quote of All Time

2009-07-03T14:32:00.007+10:00

This month's Australian Empire Magazine has published what is sure to be the most definitive "Greatest 100 Quotes of All Time" list ever. That's it, everyone. It's settled. The pinnacle of screenwriting is a steroid-fueled Austrian robot saying "I'll be back". Anyone who wants to be the next Kaufman, Tarantino, Allen or Whedon? I hope you paid attention.

These lists are stupid. Even if they aren't voted for by the public, they still are. This one was, which is why Twilight features - at ninety-six, but it's still an abomination. "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." Good work, Stephanie Meyer. You've captured the motherfucking zeitgeist.

The issue is, for the most part, these lists never are about the "best" or "greatest" quotes of all time. They're about the best remembered quotes of all time; the iconic ones, the ones that would most quickly be put in an Oscar montage. "The Best Remembered Quotes of All Time", alas, just doesn't have the same ring to it.

So, "I am your father" (number five), "show me the money" (thirteen), "rosebud" (forty) and "to infinity, and beyond!" (fifty-seven) aren't, on their own, clever bits of writing. Great moments, some of them, with context, but on their own? As lines of dialogue? "Greatest"? "All Time"? "Of"? No.

There is some gold present: "don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love", for example, from Annie Hall is a great line context or no, and it get eighty-ninth spot. But for the most part, these lists are pointless, no matter who votes in them. Because a script is more than just a collection of quotes, one after the other, but more than that, because "I'll be back" just isn't that fucking clever.

Hacked to the Rafters

2009-06-30T22:55:00.010+10:00

Oh yes. The puns keep on coming.

Packed to the Rafters, the Australian dramedy, was one of my favourite punching bags of last year. Largely because, despite being labelled as such, it contained neither dram, nor edy. Worst of all, however: it's called Packed to the Rafters. To the uninitiated, this might seem inoffensive enough. A bit of a cliche, perhaps, but a title's a title.

It's about a family named Rafter. A family with grown children who all at once move back home, or near enough to it, making the home... Packed to the Rafters. Get it? Get it? Far be it for me to complain when I myself use puns as post titles (including this one) but this Goddamned show has not a hint of irony to it. It's soaked through with saccharine and Australian viewers lap it up like the last drops of water in the desert. Bad punning is an artform, but the producers aren't going for that. They were aiming for clever, and thought they hit a bullseye. Alas, they hit the bullseye of the next target over. Further, the characters were named for the purpose of the terrible title. It would be more forgivable (although not much more) had the characters been named Rafter already, they were searching for a title, and somebody's cartoon lightbulb went off, but that's not the case. It's so constructed that it needs a sledgehammer taken to it.

The twist is: I hadn't watched an episode of the show. The title was enough to put me off watching it, not to mention the advertisements. I had only seen clips. Snippets of episodes. It was enough.

An example from last year:

The father character, played by Erik Thompson, has some wacky suburban cricket rivalry with another player. There's a big scene on the field, which culminates with Thompson's opponent getting a cricket ball to the groin. Kooky music ensues. Oh! Those Rafters!

The very next scene has Rebecca Gibney's mother character talking to her daughter, played by Jessica Marais. It's a sad scene; you can tell, because Gibney looks sad. Her daughter has left a long term relationship, and her former partner, she reveals... is on ice. This makes sense, because ice addiction is very common in middle-class suburban Sydney.

Then, Gibney asks:

"Are you addicted to ice, too?"

So we have a comedy scene, as broad as they get, followed by over-the-top sad family melodramatics. Shows such as Six Feet Under have mastered the tone-shift, but the Rafters are not the Fishers, nor will they ever be. This juxtaposition is as jarring as a rape scene in the middle of a Disney movie.

Tonight, however, I watched a full episode. It was unfair of me to judge the show without sitting through an entire one. Also, I was waiting for the lottery results, which were delayed to trick even more people into watching this tripe.

I didn't win, in more ways than one. Here are some highlights:

A psychic. They've brought in a psychic, who has made predictions for what's to come. If it wasn't enough to add a stupid supernatural element to proceedings, the show's audience also needs things telegraphed, because just watching stories unfold is too damn hard!
The daughter character - having curbed her ice addiction, it seems - has a high school reunion. Not wanting to be embarrassed for being - sacre bleu! - single, she makes up a boyfriend. Jesus Christ; I'm surprised she didn't name him George Glass.
At the reunion, the man she has roped into pretending to be her boyfriend, a dopey friend of her brother, threatens to humiliate her further by being a dumb fuck. Happily, some music starts, and he dances; the daughter dances with him, they both look silly, and she realises it doesn't matter what people thing of you. A nice moral! What have we all learned today, children?
Gibney's forty-something character is pregnant. Not only does this pass for a plot twist, but name a single show that hasn't been ruined by the addition of a baby.
A character bags out Juno. Be a better show before you start pulling that shit, Rafters.
The music. Dear God. If you've ever had trouble with the music in Gilmore Girls, don't watch this show within arm's reach of sharp objects. It's so happy and goofy it makes The Wiggles sound like Norwegian death metal.
There's a voiceover. A narration. Why? Because there's a voiceover in every single episode, by a different character. Not used creatively. Not used ironically, or to be funny. Just. Fucking. There. In case thinking about the things that happen in the show are too taxing without a bit of help.

The saving grace here is: I can now trash the show without fear. It's a kind of freedom. But please, Packed to the Rafters, could you at least tone it down a little? You make it difficult to defend Australian cinema and television.

I'm going to go watch some Frontline.

Have some clips!

3D: Changing the Face of Cinema

2009-06-28T21:27:00.017+10:00

3D is fucking rad. This is an objective statement, like “water is wet”, or “Nickelback are evidence of Satan’s reign on Earth”. What’s not there for a filmmaker to love? You get to make the audience feel like shit coming from the screen will hit them in the head, and they just sit there with their glasses on, covering their face from nothing! It’s enough to give any director a boner or, in the case of Jane Campion, a lady-boner.

The My Bloody Valentine remake proves just how fucking rad 3D is. There are pickaxes coming through the screen, an eyeball popping out, and titties with nipples that would damn near take your eye out were it not for the glasses.

So “fucking rad” does not always equal “good”, then.

My trusty associate Sam and I rented out My Bloody Valentine: 3D on DVD for a shittastic film experience. We put on our 3D glasses – one lens red, one cyan, and with an ad for Saw motherfucking VI on the side – put in the disc, and prepared to have our minds blown.

My Bloody Valentine: Sort of Blurry would be a more accurate title. The 3D used in cinemas today involves polarising glasses; none of that two-colour crap. This 3D can’t be recreated on a home system because most people don’t own two projectors capable of playing films at forty eight frames per second synced up and aimed at a special polarising screen. And if anyone does, I hate them. Therefore, 3D on any DVDs they release today have to use to the old two-colour system, so even if the effect works, the film looks terrible and washed out. Also the effect doesn’t work. It’s two-and-a-half dimensions, at best. Perhaps even less. I’m starting to doubt even the film’s second dimension.

If you check out the IMDb Message Boards – always a fun place to go if you feel like losing all faith in humanity and can’t get Fox News – you’ll see people confused that the 3D glasses they stole from the cinema aren’t working on their DVD. Why? The same reason they won’t make a book magically leap off the page and act itself out in front of you if you read it with them on: they’re not made of fucking fairy dust.

We lasted fifteen minutes before flipping the disc over to watch the 2D version. Sam actually only lasted a couple of minutes before removing her glasses, but I was in the mood for a headache so kept them on until we changed it. What happens to a 3D movie when you watch it in 2D?

This does:

Every part that’s intended to be in 3D yells at you: “LOOK I’M COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN!!! OOOOH SCARY! BOO! BOO!!!!”.

Here’s some more, but these are from Friday the 13th Part III and Jaws 3, because they’re funnier. They have the red/green effect on them, but you get the point.

Go out and see Friday the 13th Part III if you haven’t already: it’s the greatest bad movie of all time.

So the film calls attention to itself for all the wrong reasons. In a hilarious way, but this still wasn’t the intention.

Coraline is a film that does 3D right. How? It doesn’t draw attention to itself. It’s a great film, but not because of the 3D effect. It’s great in a way that works no matter how it is viewed. There’s not a beat in it that won’t work if watched on a regular DVD on a small screen. So for all this talk that 3D is going to change the way we watch movies, the only way it can be done without making it feel a total and complete gimmick is to make it invisible. That somehow doesn’t sound like changing the face of cinema to me.

The fun of seeing all the shitty 3D is reflected in the rest of the content of the film. It’s the most violent American slasher film in quite a while where the violence is of the fun variety, where a girl gets a pickaxe through the skull rather than being tied to a chair and tortured with it for twenty minutes. The body count is intense; so many people die or are found dead in the first fifteen minutes it feels like you’ve been dumped in right at the climax of a bad eighties slasher. The whole film feels out of the eighties, except this one has the dude from Supernatural in it. Advantage: eighties.

Hopefully director Patrick Lussier is a complete imbecile with no idea how to make a film – it’s more enjoyable to laugh at that way – but he probably intended to make it as ridiculous as it is. There’s a ten minute chase scene with a completely nude, just-fucked girl, which also involves the slaughter of a big-titted midget, and it’s even funnier if the man behind the camera thought he was making cinema, not schlock. I have a bad feeling that the fucker knew all along, though. A shame.

There is still joy to be found in the film. It has a flimsy mystery that ends when – spoiler! – the fucker from Supernatural, heretofore the hero, is revealed to be evil because he’s got some multiple personality shit going on, and then, even better, attempts to play evil, despite being about as threatening as a hungry Labrador puppy. And by the way, writers: multiple personality disorder twist? Really? We’re still not fucking past that? That’s over, guys, stop the fuck using it. There’s also the most ineffectual final girl in the history of horror cinema, essayed by Jaime King, who enjoys staring at a door where a killer just was rather than running; who, while running, will run into a freezer; and who thinks a good way to save your husband from a madman who she has witnessed kill a whole bunch of people is to stand pointing a gun and crying at it. Your husband is from Dawson’s Creek, so I understand her desire to see him die, but it’s still weak. Kudos, Ms King.

So, if you watch the film, skip the glasses, even though you’ll still get a kick out of the 3D. And don’t do it alone. Not because it’s scary. It’s less scary than Hotel for Dogs, or an episode of Supernatural. It’s just a lot more fun if you’ve got someone with whom to wallow in the spectacular mediocrity that is My Bloody Valentine.

Nottest 100

2009-06-28T18:23:00.010+10:00

Australian radio network Triple-J has been seen as the voice of the youth of the country for the last few decades now. There are claims otherwise, but the network plays less mainstream, more independent music, and has broken a lot of young bands into popularity.

Every year they have a Hottest 100 countdown, where the most popular songs of the past year, as voted by the station's listeners, are counted down on Australia Day. This year, there's an extra countdown: the Hottest 100 of All Time.

Somehow I think some non-JJJ listeners have been voting on this one.

The voting system works so that you can vote for a song from a list on the website. If your song of choice isn't there, you can type it in, and it will be added to the list. Which is why we have the following:

She is an inspiration, after all. Okay, so commercial music is going to make this list; that's to be accepted. Madonna and Kylie Minogue are sure to have spots, even if they aren't what the station usually plays. That's fine; they're important enough figures to warrant being placed. But...

Celine? Really, Australia? Surely that's as bad as it gets.

...oh.

To be fair, the live version of Animals is so much better than the studio recording. But can someone reassure me that I'd Come for You is using the g-rated meaning of the word "come"? Please?

The Twilight motherfucker? He's not pale, creepy and unemotive enough for one medium, he has to branch out into music?

Hahahaha. Someone thinks Sigur Ros have more than one song.

"Fuck you," says one Crowded House fan. "I want to vote for all of their songs.

There is, however, one thing we can all agree one. What song should be number one. It's a song that has changed a lot of lives, and made the world of music - nay, the world at large - a better place. Not just a great song - and it is, no question - but a fucking important one. This shouldn't just be top ten, it should get the first spot. No, they should invent a new numeral, because "number one" isn't even good enough for this song, this music of heavens. For this must be what it sounds like when angels hum a song, just for you.

Bands, singers, composers: bow down before Numeriklab, for the NCIS Theme has made all other music meaningless.

Revenge of the Shithouse

2009-06-25T13:31:00.004+10:00

I haven't seen Transformers 2 - why does it need a stupid subtitle? - and probably won't. If I do, I'll buy a ticket to a different movie and sneak in. It's a hulking pile of shit that doesn't deserve any more box office than it's already going to get.

Yes, I can tell this sight unseen. I'm so good, I haven't even seen the first one and still know.

But here's a review from Pajiba that sums everything up rather well.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 11

2009-06-24T11:49:00.008+10:00

It had to happen some time. The last day of the festival, and three films to finish it off.

Nollywood Babylon

Nollywood refers to the Nigerian movie business, one which has boomed since the early nineties and is now only second to Bollywood as the largest film industry in the world. There are hundreds of these movies released every month, filmed on the cheapest stock available: these days, that means digital video. It’s fascinating stuff, and has allowed directors Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal to explore many aspects of not just Nollywood but Nigeria itself: the poverty, the religious fanaticism, the superstitions. Nollywood Babylon, however, opportunity wasted. The film is worth watching for its subject matter, but as a documentary, it’s too unfocused to be called a success. It opens up the world of Nollywood, but there are other documentaries out there on the subject that are, hopefully, more adeptly handled than this one.

5/10

I’ve already discussed my experience of Che at the State Theatre, but here’s an actual review!

Che

Soderbergh’s second film of the festival was two films in itself: a four hour long biopic of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, played by Benicio del Toro, divided into two films. The Argentine deals with his time as a guerrilla in Cuba, helping Fidel Castro (here played by Demián Bichir) overthrow the Batista regime. The Guerrilla follows his similar struggles in the jungles of Bolivia. The whole thing is played in a straightforward manner, with both films focusing on the drudgeries of the campaigns - living off the map, the dangerous battles - more than the politics of them.

The films are based on the writings of Guevara himself, so they have authenticity (save for a jarring Matt Damon cameo in The Guerrilla). This can make for a challenging four hours: by showing in miniature Che and the guerrillas living in the jungle, we really get a feel for how hard this life was. The consequence is that both films are made up of largely slow-moving scenes of said difficulty, punctuated by (quite thrilling) action sequences. Del Toro disappears into the role, and he's surrounded by similarly impressive, for the most part lesser-known character actors. It's all very admirable: Soderbergh has made a movie with an anti-commercial movie with a sizable budget which mixes very well made action set-pieces with slow character study. It is, in fact, more admirable than it is successful as a cinematic experience. A worthy film, and worth seeing... but just the once.

6/10

From a highbrow study of one of the 20th Century's most important and divisive figures from an indie auteur to... Nazi zombies. Should be the most perfect way to end the festival, right?

Dead Snow

Nazi zombies. Nazi zombies, chainsaws, disembowelment, and snowmobiles. In motherfucking Norway. This should be the greatest movie of all time. It should be a movie so amazing that they stop teaching Citizen Kane in film theory classes; this becomes the film that defines cinematic storytelling for a generation; perhaps for all time. But on the pantheon of horror-comedy, Dead Snow is not alongside Brain Dead, the film it wants to be. In quality, it's closer to Club Dread. Or Cut.

Tommy Wirkola's film has a group of eight medical students holidaying in a remote cabin in the Norwegian mountains. We know from the start something's wrong, when one of the eight doesn't arrive at the cabin, attacked and killed in the opening scene. The others are none the wiser until the arrival of a man credited as The Wanderer (Bjørn Sundquist) but who should have been named Mr. Fucking Stupid Exposition. He tells our group that the land they're on was once overrun by Nazis who terrorised a nearby town, but were killed by its vengeful inhabitants. He soon leaves, and the Nazis - now, without reason, undead - arrive.

Dead Snow redefines the term "one-note". It's a movie made by a fan of horror films, which can often lead to greatness - see Shaun of the Dead - but it can also lead to a Rob Zombie film. There's plenty of mayhem, a lot of violence, and a surprising amount of intestinal matter on display. Somehow, though, it's just not as fun as it should be. It aims to be so over the top that it's funny, but it doesn't get there. The biggest sin of the film is wasting the Nazi zombies. How do we know the zombies are Nazis? Other than Mr Fucking Stupid Exposition talking about the Nazi infestation, they have swastikas on their arms. That's it. There could have been some boundaries pushed. There could have been some really off-colour humour at play. It doesn't help that the film is Norwegian, so every last character is so Aryan that they'd make a card-carrying KKK member blush, but the bloody destruction of already dead Nazis could have been so much more satisfying if there was some sort of revenge at play. They're barely even zombies! They run, they talk, they fucking plan things! A film that promises Nazi zombies essentially delivers neither of these things!

There are a few fun moments, some creative gore, and there are worse horror-comedies around - Lesbian Vampire Killers has recently clawed its way to the top of that shit heap. Dead Snow, however, just isn't the romp it should be.

4/10

And thats it. The festival ended not with a bang, but with the splutter of a dying chainsaw.

Lessons Learned

Che Guevara must have been the hungriest Marxist ever.

Franke Potente of Run Lola Run can pass for South American.

With Dead Snow following Cold Prey (and Cold Prey II!) Norwegians really like naming their half-arsed horror movies after the weather.

Sydney Film Festival: Days 9 and 10

2009-06-23T23:54:00.012+10:00

Friday Night: it was time to watch some dudes fuckin'.

Humpday

Lynn Shelton's American refreshingly indie indie has a simple premise: two straight guys decide to make a porno where they sleep with each other. It managers to be as funny as it sounds, but not quite in the way you might expect.

Mark Duplass, of the mumblecore movement, plays Ben, a man just starting to try for a child with his wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). It's his last stop on the train to being a fully licenced suburbanite, when his college friend Andrew (Joshua Leonard, of The Blair Witch Project) knocks on his door at 2am, a drifter looking to reconnect. When Andrew ends up at a party full of free-spirited creative types, Ben joins him, and they are informed of a high-brow art-porn short film festival. In their drunken and drugged state, they decide to make a film together; Ben even books a hotel room. Over the next two days, the two refuse to back down to each other, both wanting to save face; neither wants to be seen to be boxed in by boundaries of sexuality or lack of artfulness.

It's a three-hander. All the humour in this film comes not from bawdy sex jokes (not that there's not room for that in cinema) but from the interactions of the three core cast members, who are uniformly hilarious. The Internet Movie Database doesn't have a writer credited; this may be a mistake, but the naturalness of the dialogue indicates that the film was fully improvised. It's also very easy to identify with the characters; the threat of becoming just another suburb-dweller is scary; this is what our characters are fighting against. While low-key indies of this type can be so low-key as to be impossible to get into, this has enough forward momentum and humour so it avoids that trap.

8/10

Saturday brought two more films, and two (!) sightings, at last, of Hugo Weaving.

The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh deserves credit for, in between studio efforts, experimenting with both storytelling and film distribution. The Girlfriend Experience is his latest effort, starring Sascha Grey as Chelsea, a high-class prostitute offering the experience of the title to her wealthy clients, while juggling a having a boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) and her business in a time of economic crisis. There's also a subplot of Chris going to Las Vegas with a group of businessmen as he tries to get ahead in the gym industry.

The Girlfriend Experience is competently done; it's got a handheld digital aesthetic that might put some people off but gives a nice sense of immediacy to proceedings. The acting is fine; Sascha Grey is carries the film well enough, but Chelsea is such a shut-off, unemotive character that this can't have been too much of a challenge. The themes explored are interesting enough: central is the idea of having a loving relationship when one party openly sleeps with a lot of other people, even if there is no emotional connection to those outside the relationship. It's also perhaps the first film to explicitly, and frequently, reference the current financial crisis. But the film is bogged down by an irritating, cut-up structure. It's not a difficult to follow story, exactly, even if it's not clear at what point in the story Chelsea's sexual encounters fit; perhaps this is the point. But it serves as a barrier to a viewer getting emotionally involved in the story. Again, perhaps this is the point, but it makes the movie an worthy experiment about a collection of interesting themes, rather than something to rush out and see.

5/10

Following The Girlfriend Experience was my only retrospective film of the festival.

Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright is an important film in Australian cinema history: were it not for Wake in Fright, there might not be Australian cinema today. While that might be an overstatement, the film kickstarted an industry that was nearly dead, with a willingness to show Australians in a light far from flattering. It took Ted Kotcheff, a Canadian, to do it.

John Grant (Gary Bond) is a teacher; an Englishman trapped at a school in the Australian outback. It's the end of the school year, and he's going to Sydney to see his fiance. To get to Sydney, he has to pass through the town of Bundanyabba: "The Yabba". He encounters the locals, among them the friendly but pushy digger Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), depressive Jannette (Sylvia Kay), and alcoholic Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence). Stranded there due to some foolish gambling attempts, John finds himself sucked into the town's fixation on a lifestyle of drinking, violence, and little else.

There isn't a huge amount in the film's plot that would classify it as a thriller, but that doesn't stop it from being an unsettling experience from start to end. Kotcheff captures the alcohol-drenched lifestyle from a sober point of view and drags his audience in, only to leave them in harsh sunlight at the end of it. The atmosphere of the film is spot on. Performances are uniformly excellent, especially Bond's headstrong and cold Grant and Pleasence's disturbing Doc Tydon. He's a character who's hard to shake from your mind after leaving the film. On a technical point of view, the film looks great: it was once thought lost, with only edited VHS and poor-quality bootlegs available. But the film was found in full form and remastered to perfection. Even if it wasn't so important to Australia's cinema history, Wake in Fright would remain vital viewing. A lost gem found.

9/10

After the film there was a question and answer question with Kotcheff, editor Anthony Buckley (responsible for tracking down the film) and actor Jack Thompson, whose first major screen role was in Wake in Fright. The story of tracking the film down is as amazing as the film itself: Buckley travelled the world to find the lost reels, arriving in England a week after it has been shipped away. He followed it to Pittsburgh, where it was in a vault marked "for destruction". Had he been a week late, the film would be gone forever. They discussed the restoration process. It had to be done frame by frame, as an automatic digital clean-up would remove flies from shots. Kotcheff talked about Chips Rafferty, an Australian actor who died after Wake in Fright was released. While other actors would drink non-alcoholic beer, Rafferty refused, drinking glass after glass with no effect.

Kotcheff's work on Weekend at Bernie's was not discussed.

Lessons Learned

10am is too early for a film.

Or at least for a film as disappointing as The Girlfriend Experience.

Obliiiiige him!

2009-06-23T23:26:00.001+10:00

Bidness is a-boomin'!

Six reviews to go...

2009-06-20T13:02:00.005+10:00

...until the end of the Sydney Film Festival coverage. But right now, I'm going to watch My Bloody Valentine 3D.

It's going to the classiest DVD viewing event of the year.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 7

2009-06-17T21:53:00.005+10:00

Five fucking films. Five of them! Due to an abundance of spare tickets, Day 7 was deemed random shit day, where a bunch of films I knew little-to-nothing about were picked. That’s sometimes where one finds gold at a festival. Sometimes it isn’t.

That covered four of the films. The fifth was a last minute addition: realising that the two hour break in the day coincided with the only time any of my friends would be actually in a movie, I decided to try to get a ticket, even though it had been sold out. That movie was Coraline, and there was a spare ticket: thank you, whoever overbooked! Then, the realization. Five fucking movies.

Let’s start with the ones I didn’t make it through. This shit’s all out of order; I’m Tarantinoing it here.

Parque Via (Film Two)

This is one of those films where a person (often elderly, as is the case here) wanders around doing nothing, while the filmmaker tries to rely on their presence alone to warrant the existence of the film, and its reason for being in front of an audience. Here, it actually works to some extent. Nolberto Coria (a non actor, of course) does somehow carry the film while doing not much. He wanders around a sprawling mansion, to be occasionally visited by a prostitute (you see her pubes, that means it’s arty), but largely doing mundane tasks. This is somehow not quite tear-your-eyes-out dull. It’s not thrill-a-minute, but oddly watchable.

But I was hungry, and didn’t have any other time in which to hunt and gather. Sorry, Parque Via. Apparently it kicks into gear in act three. DVD, ahoy!

Everyone Else (Film Five)

Everyone Else, written and directed by Maren Ade, is another fine film. It concerns a young German couple, Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger), on their holiday, staying in Chris’s married-with-children sister’s unoccupied house. Focused on small moments and quiet lies, it’s an interesting look at the couple’s avoidance to become like the everyone else of the title. Minichmayr and Eidinger are both great in their roles; Minichmayr brings a particular life to things.

But it was late; Coraline’s 3D glasses made things a tad headachey; the late-running of Coraline, as well, meant a bad seat, right at the front – neck strain! – so Everyone Else became another casualty. A shame; it deserved better treatment.

And back to the start.

Tony Manero (Film One)

Raúl (Alfredo Castro) in his fifties and living under Pinochet in Chile. It is the late seventies, and he is obsessed with Saturday Night Fever. The film begins with Raúl entering a lookalike contest for John Travolta’s character in that film: Tony Manero. He also choreographs and dances with a small group, including his sometimes-girlfriend and her daughter, at a ratty bar, and occasionally dabbles in unexpected and horrific acts of violence, usually to help further himself in his quest to become Manero.

So it’s an odd film, but a fascinating one. The reign of Pinochet is ever-present but for most of the film kept to the outskirts. The focus of the film, and it’s main character, is on a disposable piece of American pop-culture: this is a clear commentary on America’s help to Pinochet at the time. Intellectually, then, there’s definitely a lot going on; entertainment-wise, the film can be a bit distancing and slow moving, but is difficult to pull away from. It would probably work better for a viewer with understanding of Chile’s recent history, but is engaging for those willing to be patient with it.

7/10

The Beaches of Agnes (Film Three)

Agnes Varda: we meet again. After The Gleaners and I, her well-regarded but annoying and pretentious documentary, we’ve not had the best relationship. So a film both by and about her, won’t be my best friend. And this documentary could be accused of being self-indulgent, but with the life Varda has led – before and after she started being a filmmaker – you can’t begrudge her this. As well as jumping, often out-of-order, through her life, the film allows her to exhibit her various filmic fascinations; odd framing, what happens outside the frame, and so-on. Varda made the film after turning eighty, and she still makes a lively and funny (and sometimes heartbreaking) screen presence and storyteller.

8/10

Then, the battle. Coraline was having its Australian premiere; a red carpet event with Teri Hatcher present. There had been a red carpet event earlier in the festival – for the Australian film Cedar Boys – but that was a sadder affair; the carpet ran about three metres in length tucked away at the back of Greater Union’s lobby, it was roped off but not security was needed. It was more of a red rug affair, really. This was a little bigger, with about two metres of the lobby allocated for thoroughfare. With the gawkers wanting to catch a glimpse of the Desperate Housewives star (people still watch it – I was shocked too!) that gave a path of about half an inch wide for people who just wanted to get to their damn movie.

Coraline (Film Four)

The much-loved Nightmare Before Christmas, despite being more associated with Tim Burton, was actually directed by Henry Selick. His latest has him tackling the ideas of another cult hero: Neil Gaiman. Both films are striking in their style, and both have rather simple stories. But while Nightmare was tiresome with uninspiring songs, Coraline is a delight, in its visuals, humour, music and characterisation.

Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is the daughter of a pair of garden book writers who have just moved across the country to a large house made up of three apartments, the other two inhabited by strange, deluded folks. Her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgeman) are caring but busy; this coupled with her mother’s tendency towards impatience makes them, in Coraline’s eyes, neglectful. Coraline discovers a small passage in the house that leads to another version of her world; a world where Coraline gets everything she wants, where her parents are devoted, where everything is magical, including her neighbours, and everyone has buttons for eyes.

The story is simplistic, yes: another Alice in Wonderland coupled with mother-issues tale from Gaiman. It’s handled with swiftness, fun and enough horror and creepiness (for a children’s film, at least) to make it entertaining. But it is the visuals which lift the film: this is perhaps the most gorgeous stop-motion film to hit cinemas, and such a feast for the eyes that the story almost doesn’t matter. Almost. The 3D – although the glasses are annoying – improves these visuals even more, even if an occasional break is needed. Outside of Pixar’s stable, this might be the best American animated film in years.

8/10

Lessons Learned

I can’t do five movies in a day. I’m not the man I was in 2006.
The Nightmare Before Christmas was, in that case, all Tim Burton’s fault.

Sydney Film Festival: Special Edition

2009-06-15T13:03:00.006+10:00

More proper reviews to come; here's a special one in the meantime.

The Guy Sitting Next to Me During Che

Sydney's State Theatre is a fantastic venue, ornate and huge; inside, it's difficult to believe such a cavern can fit into the city's CBD. It not, however, the most comfortable of venues. Multiplexes such as the nearby Greater Union have a lot less going for them aesthetically, but for the two part, four hour experience that is Steven Soderbergh's Che, one almost wishes for a more comfortable, if tackier, venue. One also wishes not to be seated next to a hippopotamus.

Hippoman provided an interesting and unpredictable cinema experience. Many questions were raised during the time seated next to him. What is that noise he's making? Will he cover his mouth next time he coughs? How far into my seat is he capable of spilling? The answers: it wasn't clear; if he felt like it; as far as he pleased.

Not everything about him was discovered. Hippoman wore a jaunty hat, and his moustache was trimmed. He took care of these aspects of his appearance, and yet not his most noticeable flaw: his girth. During intermission, he left behind the bag with the name of the store from which he had bought his feed: Sugar Fix. It would perhaps have been more appropriate had his snackage come from Fruit and Vegetable Fix instead.

For all his flaws - his coughing; the snore-like sounds he made despite not being asleep; the picking of his nails; and so on - his phone never rang. He didn't commit the (pun intended) biggest crime of cinemagoing, just a (pun intended) large number of smaller ones. It was almost something to be thankful for. Almost.

2/10

Technical Difficulties

2009-06-14T10:03:00.005+10:00

FUCK YOU, ACER!

Yeah. My computer's having issues. The spacebar doesn't work properly, and the geniuses at tech support claimed it to be a software issue, said "wipe the computer completely and everything will be fine!"

Not the case.

I had more typed but the computer fucked up - again - and it was lost. I bagged out Michael fucking Bay and everything, it was great. Really, he's the fucking worst.

Coverage of the festival will continue shortly. Hopefully with the use of a computer that functions properly as a fucking word processor.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 6

2009-06-10T23:50:00.005+10:00

Canadian horror and Japanese animation were on the cards for day six of the festival, with a special guest appearance by the freezing fucking cold that's just hit Sydney town.

Pontypool

Pontypool is half of a great film. Then it doesn't so much derail as jump to a new set of tracks completely. It's easiest to refer to it as a zombie movie, but it's not, in the same way that 28 Days Later isn't. Here the threat is an infection that causes a vicious madness in people, spread not through the air, or through biting, but through language.

Steven McHattie is Grant Mazzy, a grizzled radio announcer posted in a small radio station in a church's basement in the Canadian town of Pontypool. He's always at odds with his producer, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle). Also at the station is Laurel Anne (Georgina Reilly), the technical controller back from Afghanistan. On a cold Valenitine's morning, the three are together in the station when a series of ever-more-strange reports start leaking in.

Here's where the film works best. The claustrophobia and confusion is palpable as it's not clear if there is a growing threat outside, if there is even a threat at all. Tension is created – fittingly enough, given the film's focus on language – through words alone, sometimes from voices from the outside, sometimes through the three core characters speculations.

There are two snags the film hits. When the threat does come to the church, it's just not as scary as when it was just talked about, even though this is when our characters are in actual danger. The film is based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, who also wrote the screenplay. What the madness does to people seem as if it would come off as more effective in the book; here, speculation suggests that the budget just doesn't allow this to completely be shown. This third act slump is a common affliction in horror, and it doesn't destroy what came before it. The bigger snag comes with the arrival of a character to the studio, one talked about previously in the film. He arrives as a bizarre deus ex machina spouting unnecessary exposition that somehow manages to confuse things more than before he arrived. His arrival brings an absurdism not present in the first slow burning part of the film that doesn't quite leave even after he does.

Nonetheless, the strength of the concept and the first half (not to mention McHattie's performance, and his amazing voice) of the film make this worth seeking out. The rest seems like it would work better in novel form, so perhaps Pontypool Changes Everything is, even moreso than the film, one to track down.

6/10

I'm not what you'd call an anime fan, so asking me for an opinion on most anime films for me is like a vegan commenting on a cheeseburger. Nonetheless, here it is:

The Sky Crawlers

Mamoru Oshii's work is beloved by anime fans, and even has crossover appeal. Ghost in the Shell had robot sex or something in it, and who doesn't love a good bout of robot sex? His latest, based on the manga series by Mori Horoshi has fighter pilots in permanent adolescence in an alternate reality that mixes today's world with that of the Second World War. Well, that's kind of cool too. Also they smoke and occasionally fuck, but never with robots.

The Sky Crawlers is rich in ideas and plot elements which leak out over the course of its two-hour running time. Our main character, Yuichi, is trying to find out what happened to the pilot he replaced at the academy, while audience is trying to figure out exactly how the world we're watching functions. That's a problem. Most of the characters know most of what is revealed; even Yuichi knows much of what's going on, and his investigation less resembles detective work than sleepwalking into explanations. But the fact that information known to every character in the film is kept from the audience is frustrating rather than intriguing. It's a shame since these ideas are interesting; if the world was set up clearly early in the film, we could have been in for a deeper examination of it. The animation is quite stunning, although the mix of intricately detailed backgrounds with rather basic character design is nearly as distancing as the film's plot and snail-like pace.

It's not a total loss: the aforementioned concepts have some merit, and late in the film a character has a great monologue on the nature of war. The airborne battle scenes, too, are quite stunning, although it's often difficult to tell who is fighting who – given the film's themes, this maybe a deliberate choice. It's not enough, though; not to justify the film's running time, nor to recommend it to anyone who isn't an anime fan.

4/10

I have watched Perfect Blue and Paprika and enjoyed them, and Spirited Away was really, really quite pretty. For the sake of full disclosure. But on the whole, anime? It leaves me chilly.

Lessons Learned

If you're worried about seeing someone you don't want to talk to at the festival, wear a hoodie! There's no disguise more perfect or subtle.
French Canadians are dangerous. I think that was the moral of the story in Pontypool, anyway.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 5

2009-06-09T23:14:00.004+10:00

Still no Hugo Weaving, the bastard. I had to settle for gritty Australian convict cannibalism and fake blaxploitation instead.

Van Diemen's Land

Alexander Pierce has influenced a lot of entertainment of late; it's like he's a volcano and it's the mid-nineties. Earlier in the year, ABC screened a factual film, The Confession of Alexander Pearce, and his legend was used as the basis for the awful Dying Breed, where his descendants are the villains. Now Van Diemen's Land shows his story as it played out: a group of eight convicts, upon escaping their penal colony, resort to cannibalism to stave of starvation. If you ever wanted a film that could make cannibalism boring, Van Diemen's Land has granted your wish.

The Sydney Film Festival's organizers have put the film alongside Dead Snow and Paranormal Activity in the horror strand. Their failing here can't be held against the film; that would the same as begrudging Finding Nemo after being told it was a film noir. It's not scary or fast moving, but it's not supposed to be. It's barely even a thriller: it's a drama. While Van Diemen's Land cannot be faulted for being a genre film without tension, it can be faulted for being a drama without tension. We start the film by meeting eight convicts in the mid-1800s in what now is Tasmania. They escape, led by one who doesn't appear to actually know where he is heading. It is out of desperation that the idea of cannibalism is raised.

The production values here are great. It almost does feel as if the filmmakers – it's Jonathan auf der Heide's feature debut – were dropped into the bushland a century and a half ago, and hired local actors. Authenticity is high; everything's dirty and dangerous, and any romanticised ideas of Australian colonial life are thrown out the window. Here, the straightforwardness of the story lets it down. Events simply unfold without any turns. The convicts walk; one is killed and eaten, they walk some more, then another is offed. Ethical questions aren't really raised, although that may have made this film Alive 2: The Convicts, so we can be thankful for that. It would have helped were we given a character to let us into the story. Pearce himself (Oscar Redding, who cowrote the film with auf der Heide), is the closest to a lead character, but no attempts beyond the occasional arty voiceover are made to help us to understand him. Auf der Heide is happy to just show the slow journey and the forces of nature instead.

The problem is the story. "Convicts resort to cannibalism" makes an interesting sentence, but not a two-hour feature, when that's all that happens. In prose form, with access to the inner workings of the convicts, but that lacks here. Despite the impressive production and the fine acting, this film just doesn't grab. It aims for bleak, but hits dreary.

4/10

Since seeing Van Diemen's Land I've come across more positive reviews than negative, and after talking to other festival-goers who have seen it, I seem to be in the minority in my opinion. Turns out I'm an artless pleb.

Black Dynamite

Jive suckers.

Sick of spoofs yet? When those motherfuckers Seltzer and Goldberg churn out a new [Blank] Movie every thirty seconds that lampoon the most fleeting elements of pop culture simply be recreating them; when the Wayans brothers are ripping of those two, who were ripping them off in the first place; when even David Zucker has lost his touch, by celebrating US conservatism and, even worse, not being funny when he does so, we're in trouble. That's what makes Black Dynamite so refreshing: it won't date, as it actually feels like it comes from the period it's spoofing, and belongs to the genre: 70s blaxploitation. The jokes will still work in a decade's time. Also: it's fucking hilarious. That helps things.

The titular Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White, who also cowrote) is a badass former CIA agent from the CIA who sets out to avenge the death of his brother, after promising in adolescence to their dying mother that he'll never let him die. He follows the trail from his local neighbourhood, soon uncovering a nefarious honky plot that leads to China and all the way to Washington. Black Dynamite is a funny character in himself, but at the same time, is a genuine action figure. This helps cement the film in the seventies, as if it were actually made then – and at times it's easy to forget that it wasn't. It does this as well as Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which takes apart bad 80s television horror, but is even funnier.

There's some slight lag in the middle of the film but laughs still come throughout. The soundtrack, by Adrian Younge, deserves special praise too, not just (as with everything on display) for feeling so period-real, but for being so spot-on funny. Director Scott Sanders has done such good work here, if the film weren't so perfectly contained, I wouldn't complain about him handling a number of sequels chronicling Black Dynamite's further adventures. As it is, the film is destined for cult status. It is deserved.

8/10

I was running out of synonyms for "funny" there. Word suggested "mirthful". Fuck you, Word.

Lessons Learned

Cannibalism isn't as glamorous as Anthony Hopkins will have you believe.
Cannibalism isn't as funny as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would have you believe.
People still have to try a lot harder if they want to beat Dying Breed at being the worst thing inspired by Alexander Pearce

Kung Fu

2009-06-09T19:58:00.001+10:00

Apparently (and apparently is the key word here) David Carradine was killed by a Kung Fu secret society, because he knew too much.

My dream is now to go out in a way that's even half as badass.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 4

2009-06-09T00:23:00.006+10:00

We're having a Hugo Weaving spotting competition at the festival. Whoever sees Hugo Weaving most frequently at the festival wins, and gets to be master of the universe.

So far, I'm losing.

500 Days of Summer

Films have, in the past, capitalized on the delightfulness of Zooey Deschanel, but 500 Days of Summer is the first to use it as a premise. Here, she plays Summer, a free spirited girl who catches the eye of Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a trained architect earning a living by working for card company. This is, at first glance, a romantic comedy, although that's not quite accurate. Tom falls for Summer, Summer seems to return his affections. But while Tom believes in true love and fate, Summer doesn't, nor does she even believe in giving their relationship a name.

The film is Marc Webb's debut feature. He comes from a music video background, and it shows; it's all very visually impressive. There's also some experimentation in storytelling: the film is out of order, with each sequence preceded by a title card of which day of Tom knowing Summer it is. Scenes of his happiest times are put next to his worst. There are other flourishes: Tom finds himself in a French New Wave film; there's a split-screen sequence where Tom's expectations are played right alongside what actually happens.

If this sounds gimmicky, it is. It's not enough to sink the film (and, in the case of the fantasy dance number to Hall and Oates, it can be brilliant) but 500 Day's strengths aren't in its postmodern techniques. The film captures emotions perfectly: that lift from falling for someone; the heartbreak when they don't fall back. It captures these emotions as well as recent films such as Eternal Sunshine and Before Sunset have. When most films labeled as "romantic" "comedies" fall about as far from romance as the Hostel films and are as authentic about relationships as Teletubbies is about rural British life, this comes as a refreshing change.

Gorden Levitt doesn't need to prove himself an excellent actor after Brick and Mysterious Skin, but here he shows he can carry a crowd pleasing film, while Deschanel is wonderful – she'd have to be, as only M. Night Shyamalan can make her otherwise. The films biggest failing comes from Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber's script. It's far from terrible, but it doesn't soar. One-liners should be snappier, supporting characters should be more fleshed out. Tom is the lead character here, and everything we see is through his subjective viewpoint, but we never properly get to know Summer, despite the movie being named for her. It's still well handled enough to be an enjoyable film, but if more effort had been put into these elements rather than the scripts stylistic choices, 500 Days of Summer could have been great rather than merely good.

7/10

By the way, 500 Days of Summer really is Stuff White People Like: the movie. It doesn't belong on the list; it is the list.

Lessons Learned

Hugo Weaving prefers Norwegian nazi zombies to capital-I Indie romance.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 3

2009-06-08T13:29:00.004+10:00

Friday night brought one of the most anticipated films of the festival, based on a brilliant UK series; it was preceded by an Australian short film featuring a number of Australian comedians that may, at first glance, seem a tad self indulgent. Guess which one was better!

The Last Supper

Angus Sampson's short film reimagines the titular last supper as a bawdy work lunch populated by a number of Australia's favourite comedians and Leigh Whannel, the guy largely responsible for the Saw series. It's togas and goblets, but our characters don't fit into the period.

There are a couple of laughs here, and the man who played Jesus – who is the elderly indigenous actor Jack Charles, for some reason – has real presence. However, this is a Tropfest concept stretched out for twice as long as a Tropfest film. When the seven minutes of a Tropfest film often feels like too much, you haven't experienced it for fifteen of them. The film is lumbered with a post-script scene after what feels like the ending that, in the tradition of the film, goes for far too long; then there's more stuff in the credits that, once again, runs too long. Cute concept, but much more (or less) was needed to make it a successful piece of comedy.

3/10

In the Loop

Armando Ianucci's series The Thick of It is probably the best British comedy of the last decade, and one of the most mean-spirited series ever made. It highlights on the spin and inadequacies of government by focusing on its lower levels; members of cabinet, their advisors, and, most memorably, the Prime Minister's Chief Enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi): a terrifying, foul-mouthed Scot, always in complete control of everything around him.

Tucker makes to transition to the big screen for In the Loop, a spin-off feature film that's as good as the series; that is to say, it's brilliant.

We don't quite have The Thick of It: The Movie here. Only Tucker, his second-in-command Jamie MacDonald (Paul Higgins) – an even angrier Scot – and, very briefly, reporter Angela Heaney (Lucinda Raikes) return from the series. That said, most of the rest of the cast return in some capacity, playing new, if similar. A new element is added in the form of the US government: the film centres around relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, and their movements towards a war in the Middle East.

Everyone here is spot on: newcomers to the cast include Tom Hollander as the hapless minister Simon Foster and Gina McKee as his bitchy head of media Judy; on the other side of the pond, James Gandolfini is as scary as he is funny as Lt. General George Miller, and Anna Chlumsky – yes, from My Girl – does good work as a congresswoman's harried assistant Liza Weld. Returning players in new roles – Chris Addison, James Smith, among others – are absolutely as good as they were in series.

The strength of the cast is matched by the quality of the script, and the improvisations they bring to it. In the Loop is one of the most quotable films in years, with some of the finest abusive language ever to hit cinema screens. The plot itself might take more than one viewing to properly grasp: the outcome is clear, but the machinations that lead up to it are so intricate and the film so quickly paced that it takes a second look to work out who's backstabbing who, and when. In the Loop is good enough for a second viewing, however, and a number more. It's fitting that one of the best UK comedy films in years arises from one of its best shows.

9/10

If you haven't seen the series, track it down. You won't regret it.

Lessons Learned

Swearing makes everything funnier.
There is a way to make a Tropfest film even worse.

David Carradine, RIP

2009-06-05T00:47:00.001+10:00

You'll be missed.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 1

2009-06-05T00:06:00.004+10:00

It begins. The only time of the year that Sydney is a city actually worth living in.

It started with a night of double third wheelin': I saw Food, Inc. with friends Fran and Kent, and then jumped ship to Oliver and Amy for Paranormal Activity. It's okay; I got my hand held during the scary bits.

Food, Inc.

This documentary by Robert Kenner should be the next entry at Stuff White People Like. It also happens to be indispensible.

Food, Inc. is similar in substance to 2003's The Corporation, only rather than tackling capitalism as a whole, it focuses on the food industry. There's no one narrator; rather interviews serve as voice-over: most prominently Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore Dilemma. Beyond them, we meet farmers, workers and activists.

Prepare to be guilted. If you've ever set foot in a supermarket or a fast food restaurant, this movie will make you feel bad for doing so. We meat-eaters know where our food comes from; I doubt few people would be unaware that animal care practices these days aren't of the highest standards. Here, it's really highlighted. Not just animal treatment, but how they're fed and kept for the sake of growing animals bigger, faster and cheaper.

Food, Inc. points the finger – and may not be surprised to hear this – at corporations, as well as the government for subsidizing their practices and for the ineffectuality of the FDA. It's all eye-opening, but it wouldn't be a strong film if it left its audience up this creek without a paddle. Fortunately the film offers solutions – what individuals can do to try to make a change. Message-heavy documentaries such as Food, Inc. need this element. If they were simple to list a series of problems, they would almost be rendered pointless.

There's a lot of insight here. We meet a farmer who continues to use organic practices and refuses to go commercial and expand, as well as a former activist whose organic food company is sold at supermarkets all over the US – he has no illusions that the corporations he sells to buy his products for business rather than ethical reasons, but sees capitalism as a tool that he can use for change. We also see how intellectual property laws, of all things, are used against farmers growing crops.

The film is one-sided, of course – we see few arguments defending the food industry – and is certainly preaching to the choir. But if this little, well made, fascinating, troubling and eye-opening documentary – apologies to Stephanie Meyer for the number of adjectives I just used – can make it big, maybe change can be a possibility. If you watch this movie, you'll know why we need it.

9/10

Paranormal Activity

Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a happy, ordinary couple who have just moved in together, who have discovered that the entity that has been haunting Katie on and off since she was eight years old has taken up residence as well. The film is entirely through the lens of the camera that Micah has bought to document what's going on. What some may call a Blair Witch Project rip-off manages to be one of the scariest movies in years. Scary: not grotesque, not shocking, but something to bring back that fear of the dark you thought you lost years ago.

The film is set over a period of three weeks, starting without a studio logo – just a thank you to the families of Lisa and Micah, and the San Diego police for the footage – and ending with director Oren Peli getting the only credit, as the editor. It's not real, of course, but the authenticity – naturalistic dialogue, unknown performers – helps Paranormal Activity to no end. The characters aren't larger than life, but are interesting; Katie has known this phenomenon all her life and is getting increasingly upset by it, while Micah starts the film fascinated by it but as it goes on he positions himself, narcissistically, as the hero.

The structure of the film is the reason it works so well. Micah is constantly filming, often against the behest of Katie. Every night the camera is put on a tripod facing the couple's bed and the doorway into their room. During this set up, we get a subtitle ("Night 1", "Night 3") and a timecode. It's here that the creepiness really sets in. On each of these night set ups, things get progressively scarier – what starts as some sounds and the movement of a door early on gives way to things far worse – and soon the audience is audibly filled with dread the moment these sequences begin, to the point where, by Night 21 (hell, even Night 13) it's almost too much to take.

The scares are lo-fi – no CG demons mugging for the camera – and therein lies their believability, and the terror of the film. Paranormal Activity is the best American horror film in recent memory, and one of the scariest movies of the decade. Good luck getting to sleep after this one.

9/10

This horror subgenre – the found footage movies that can be traced back to Cannibal Holocaust but more recently, of course, to The Blair Witch Project, to the point of accusations of ripping it off – should, by all rights, be dead by now. Yet, against all odds, a number of them continue to impress. Rec was fantastic, Cloverfield was a lot of fun, My Little Eye and The Last Horror Movies weren't great, but interesting. The only out-and-out misfire I can remeber is, tellingly, by an experienced filmmaker. George Romero's Diary of the Dead failed, largely, because he refused to let go of theatrical dialogue and acting styles. And music, for Christ's sake – the music nearly undermined the whole experience on its own. Cloverfield wasn't exactly Curb Your Enthusiasm in how naturalistically it was played, but it still had just enough of an air of realism to make it work.

Sadly it seems that Paranormal Activity is being held to ransom by Dreamworks, who bought the rights to the film years ago. There was talk of a remake, by Peli himself, but now the status of that is unclear. If they're not going to do that, they have a perfectly terrifying film that they should release to an unsuspecting public as soon as possible.

Points for Trying

2009-06-03T17:27:00.003+10:00

I swear this thing isn't going to be entirely about horror movies.

But here are two more.

Acolytes

Is there such a thing as the opposite of a blessing in disguise?

Jon Hewitt's Australian horror film Acolytes is a rare thing: one where the main focus is on machinations of plot. The whole isolated teens being killed off one-by-one thing can still be done well – a recent example being All the Boys Love Mandy Lane – but it's nice to see a horror movie deliberately going in directions not necessarily telegraphed in its opening moments. This, however, is also what leads to its main issue.

Acolytes revolves around three teenagers – actually played by teenagers! – and two older men. Mark (Sebastian Gregory), James (Joshua Payne) and Chasely (Hanna Mangan Lawrence) are high schoolers and not the most model students. James is going out with Chasley, while Mark is clearly harbouring strong feelings for her. James and Mark also have a strange past with a local, older bully, Gary Parker (Michael Dorman) – he did something to them not made clear until well into the film. Meanwhile, the kids come across a body in a shallow grave in local bushland, and track down the man who buried it: a killer named Ian Wright (Joel Edgerton).

It's difficult to tell where this film will go, and that's something to admire it for. It's also its major failing; the film is overloaded with story at the expense of tension. Some scenes that could act as suspense sequences – characters being captured, even a death scene – are omitted completely. It would be better if the story were more compelling than it is, but it doesn't quite get there. A shift of focus could help; we don't ever really get to understand the character of Ian or exactly how he works.

Another issue is that characters often do things not because people would do them, but because they look good on camera. It's all very pretty, but "scary" should trump "aesthetically pleasing" in a horror movie.

Edgerton and Dorman are, as usual, strong. The kids are less so, although Mangan Lawrence shows promise that shines even stronger in The Square, another film where she appears with Edgerton. The boys aren't as strong, although this could be put down to their dialogue and some rather awkward editing near the start.

It's not a great film, but a commendable one. It essentially went straight to video in its home country – it made some film festival showings, and played in one cinema, for one week, in Sydney, before being released on DVD a couple of weeks after – and a long time after its completion. So while it's not brilliant, it deserved a lot better than that.

6/10

So this one practically went straight to video while Dying Breed – a movie worse than a rectal prolapse – got a big cinema release and ad campaign. The only way the Australian horror industry can make me forgive it is if Natalie Bassingthwaite's Prey gets a giant release. That movie looks mind-blowing, with a captital b. For blowing.

Vinyan

Fabrice Du Welz's follow up to The Ordeal is another mixed affair. It stars Rufus Sewell and Emmanuelle Béart as Paul and Jeanne Belhmer, a couple living in Thailand who lost their son Joshua in the 2004 Tsunami. They appear happy, but are quietly falling apart. Jeanne sees who she thinks is Joshua in a video filmed in Burma, so the couple try to go there to find him.

The film starts strong. You can feel the sadness, especially with Jeanne. Once they meet up with various Thai characters, who take their money to possibly help them, it just gets more tragic, as it's hard not to feel that they are being taken advantage of. The tension builds in the first half of the film until a painful moment at the midpoint. From here, the movie should get even more intense, but the opposite happens. The characters and story start to make less sense, and Du Welz shows near-Haneke levels of disdain for the audience as the film goes to strange places – disturbing places, but by this point you're too separated from the movie to be engaged.

It's gorgeously shot, and brave in its lack or traditional horror narrative. Béart is great throughout, and Sewell is reliable – although when he loses it two thirds of the way through, it's uncomfortable viewing when it should be upsetting. The Thai actors are good too, especially Petch Osathanugrah. But Vinyan loses its way too early on, limping to its finale when it should be at its most terrifying.

4/10

I was going to make a crack about Belgians, because Fabrice Du Welz is from there, and then I mentioned Haneke. But it turned out Haneke was Austrian, so I couldn't vilify a whole nation like I wanted to.

Next time, Belgium. Next time.

The Film We’ve All Been Waiting For

2009-06-02T20:51:00.002+10:00

Here's an issue I have with copyright.

If you're a childcare centre and have Disney characters painted on your wall, the company will give you a cease-and-desist order. If you're a writer who incorporates the canon of a classic novel into your own story – such as The Wind Done Gone did with Gone With the Wind a few years ago – the estate of the original author will take you to court.

If you're a movie studio and want to buy the rights to a something kitschy from people's childhood because it'll make a good turnaround, go right ahead, you have the money!

In completely unrelated news, Where's Waldo – will it be renamed Where's Wally in the UK and Australia? – is finally being made into a feature film. But will it be as good as that terrible cartoon from years ago?

No.

Good work, copyright! Protecting creativity!

The Dawn of a New Blog

2009-06-02T01:05:00.005+10:00

Was it a love of film which started this blog? A desire to wax lyrical on all things cinematic, coupled with a narcissistic desire to have people actually read my words? To inform people on the celluloid treats they might just be missing.

Maybe those things are at the heart of it, but they weren't the catalyst.

That would be Lesbian Vampire Killers.

I saw this film, with my friend Sam, for free, thanks to the kind people behind the great Night of Horror film festival, which runs in Sydney every March. They do good work to try to bring the kind of horror films that don't tend to make Australian cinema screens – they're not remakes or Saw sequels, see – like foreign horror films or English-language indie ones. Foreign and indie films seem to exist in the higher range of film respectability, and horror in the lower, so these movies exist in an awkward place.

The point is that the Night of Horror folk are fantastic, and they can't be held responsible. Especially after they showed Splinter earlier this year, which was absolutely tops. This showing of Lesbian Vampire Killers was a press screening, just one with no actual press. The large Fox Studios cinema was less full than a Sydney stadium during an AFL game. Even tumbleweeds were too embarrassed to be there.

Here's some context. Previous films I recently haven't paid for include 17 Again (for a review) and Twilight (for a laugh). I made it to the end of those. So, with that in mind, here's a review.

The first forty-five minutes of Lesbian Vampire Killers

Shaun (Simon Pegg) is having problems. His girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) has just left him, and not even his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) and a few rounds of beers can get him out of the dumps. The pair soon find themselves facing hoards of the undead in this hilarious (and, yes, sometimes scary) horror-comedy directed by Edgar Wright.

Sorry, that's a review of Shaun of the Dead, the film Lesbian Vampire Killers wants to be. It attempts the same character dynamic, the same comedy mix of slacker humour and over the top violence (although mostly without the money-shots), the Edgar Wright smash-wipes. Director Phil Claydon, two writers from Balls of Steel and everyone else involved on the production, down to the runners, get all of it wrong. Here, best friends Jimmy (Mathew Horne) and Fletch (James Corden) have just been dumped and fired respectively, and go hiking in a remote village to forget their troubles. Here they come across a bevy of European girls – presumably from the nation of Genericia – and a lesbian vampire curse. Low-rent mayhem ensues!

The horror elements not working here may have been forgivable. It's a horror comedy that puts the comedy first; a lot of films of the type get away with not being scary. They get away with it by being funny, though, which is the second-last adjective that could ever be applied to Lesbian Vampire Killers. The last is "good". The only way anyone could find this shit amusing would be if Zoo Weekly magazine is a little too subtle for their tastes.

Horne and Corden have been good elsewhere, but not here. Horne brings whiny neediness to heights never before reached in cinema, while Corden's lout is so unlikeable you pray for his death the second the wanders onscreen. The budget is clearly low, but that needn't mean the gore should be kept hidden like it is here. The violence level is high, yes, but for the most part, it happens just offscreen. The only bit of proper gore involves a vampire running around with an axe in her head, but the choreography is so bad of this little action that the moment is completely wasted.

The biggest crime of the film, perhaps, is that it can't even be enjoyed ironically. It's so bad, it's not even worthy of being laughed at. Despite all logic, the movie actually, in its own strange little way, takes itself seriously. The innumerable clichés in the film aren't even used to mock horror conventions; they're just there. It aims for the cult status reserved for Shaun of the Dead when it should be going for the cult status reserved for Uwe Boll or latter-day Shyamalan. It gets neither, existing in a black hole of jaw-gaping misery. (The film's other biggest crime is wasting its title, which could have been attached to a much more enjoyable film.)

There's a scene near the beginning where our two heroes first encounter the four European girls getting into their van. Wolfmother's Woman cranks up while the camera ogles their bodies. Halfway through the excruciating minute this bit lasts, the realisation comes: this is not supposed to be us laughing at these blokes and their reaction to these girls. This is for us, the audience. Our thoughts are not supposed to be "what idiots! They'll never have a chance, but it sure will be wacky to see them try!", but "titties titties boobies titties boobies titties boobs". The girls had good bodies, yes, but this is not an FHM shoot, it's a fucking movie, one that's supposed to be aiming for laughs. There's a perfectly good corner of the internet for that sort of thing, but if it's not funny, keep it out of the comedy. Lesbian Vampire Killers assumes its audience is as stupid as the film itself is.

There's a taboo with reviewing a movie after walking out. You haven't experienced the whole thing, so an honest score cannot be given. Lesbian Vampire Killers, then, is the exception proves to rule. Unless the rest of the film gave a step-by-step guide to ending world hunger, or contained a formula for curing cancer, or somehow actually brought the entire audience to climax, actually made them come where they sat, so they need to wipe up after, then it is of no use to anybody, ever. Apparently it contained a lot of Mathew Horne tied to a tree while James Corden runs around.

I rest my case.

1/10

Proper shit. I guess there's a minor blessing in that a non-franchise non-remake horror movie made general Australian cinema release, but it's still pretty unforgivable. If distributors want to give us a little horror comedy, then the bastards should release Drag Me to Hell.

In happier news, the Sydney Film Festival starts this week, and the line-up is pretty sexy. Not quite as sexy as the Melbourne International Film Festival's list so far – and they have more to announce – but it's a good-looking bunch of movies.

Yeahhhhhh*

2009-06-01T23:25:00.002+10:00

Looks like I'm starting a blog… yeahhhhh….

*I've been walking around quoting David Wenham's Australia character a little too much of late.