A Review

The Final Destination in 3D

God fucking awful.

0/10

ABBA: Why?

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)

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

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.

Idol is as Nasty as Radio (Part One)

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)

Go FVIck Yourself

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.

BOOM

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?

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?

Deal or No Deal Still Exists; Humanity Weeps

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.

Hacked to the Rafters

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

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

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

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.

Six reviews to go...

...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 5

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
  

The Film We’ve All Been Waiting For

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

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.