Harry Potter and the Thing with the Bits

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...

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

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

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?

Swears!

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

It's very good.

Park Chan-wook Can't Lose

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

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

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

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!