A Review

The Final Destination in 3D

God fucking awful.

0/10

Looking Too Much into District 9

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

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-

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?

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.

Meryl Streep is Delightful

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)

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

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.