Straight To Video

Look! It's a thingy!

2006-11-16T11:02:00.000+11:00

A few months ago or some such Glenn told me to do this thing. So here we go!

1. Popcorn or candy?

I'm not a big food-buying person at the movies- it's too expensive. If I'm going to take food in I'll usually buy a hot lunch and take it in hidden in a backpack. Shhhh! But if I had to choose, I'd buy Maltesers or something- popcorn makes me too thirsty.

2. Name a movie you've been meaning to see forever.

Plan Nine from Outer Space! I rewatched Ed Wood the other week, and have never seen one of the man's films! Worse still, I've owned three of his DVDs for about eight years now or something. It was eight bucks for three of them (Plan Nine and two others, I forget which) so I had to get them.

3. You are given the power to recall one Oscar: Who loses theirs and to whom?

Man, just one? I'd take back all of Crash's, especially the one it stole from Match Point. And I'll also go back a few years and stop Finding Neverland's dull-as-fuck score from stealing Thomas Newman's fantastic work on Lemony Snicket. I'd probably take away all of Neverland's nominations, actually, because that film shat me.

4. Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe. Which will it be?

Donnie Darko's Halloween costume is pretty hardcore cool. Not for wearing in day-to-day life, though... Perhaps if I'm feeling formal, I could be a member of Kill Bill Volume One's Crazy 88. Those dudes dress swanky.

Maybe Carrie's prom dress. POST pig's blood.

5. Your favorite film franchise is...

The American Pie franchise was looking a bit dicey, but then Band Camp came along and HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK. And now there's a fifth one coming! HUZZAH!

Only, not really. Seriously, they are doing a fifth one. Why? WHY?

Lord of the Rings is pretty high up there, if only for the fact that it didn't falter; almost every other franchise has at least one dud. They need to release the other two Night Watch movies here, too, so I can see how that stands up. Crazy Russian subtitles are awesome. Is the third one even finished yet, though?

6. Invite five movie people over for dinner. Who are they? Why'd you invite them? What do you feed them?

- Kate Winslet, because of all her awesome. Can someone have more awesome? She's talented, funny, not a famewhore, and she's real purdy. And she delivered some of television's finest ever comedy when she appeared on Extras.

- Paul Thomas Anderson. As well as trying to tap his talent, together we can plot the death of Paul WS Anderson- the EVIL Paul Anderson.

- Charlie Kaufman. I wonder if he's as insane as his scripts suggest he is? We'll find out.

- Joss Whedon, because yes, I'm one of those. I'll die before calling myself a Browncoat, though. Browncoats freak me out. Seriously, they're like "I have my special Serenity with a slipcase cover, and I have the regular version which I'll keep for mint, and I also imported it from America even though that edition has fewer features, and next week the one I ordered from Belgium should be here!" WHY??? But really, Joss is a funny, funny clever man who will take me under his wing or at least give me advice. Or I will destroy him.

- Jon Brion. He can play music to entertain us, if he feels like it. Or if he wants to be fed. Plus PT will have someone else to talk to.

And we're having nachos. I make fantastic nachos.

7. What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater?

They should be punished by all people in the cinema, the manner of punishment depending on how far away the people are sitting from the talker. So the people furthest away, they only get to administer a nipple cripple upon the the talker. Closer to him or her (and let's face it, it's most likely a him) they get to kick the talker in the head. Closer still, the innocent movie patrons are given tasers, to use at their leisure. For those really close, they get to get all Hostel on the fucker.

8. Choose a female bodyguard: Ripley from Aliens. Mystique from X-Men. Sarah Connor from Terminator 2. The Bride from Kill Bill. Mace from Strange Days.

The Bride, probably, because she'll fight dirty, AND she's way sassy. Although why not just get Mystique to look like the other four?

9. What's the scariest thing you've ever seen in a movie?

Other than, like, all of An Inconvienient Truth, you mean? I have trouble getting scared in movies. Suspiria freaked me out, but that was because of the absolutely insane soundtrack. There was another movie I saw at Toronto called S&Man. It's a documentary on the nature of horror movies but then it starts to get in your head and the ending really sticks with you. Really, truly. I hope it sees the light of day because people really should see this.

10. Your favorite genre (excluding comedy and drama) is?

Horror! Horror horror horror. Horror? For serious, though, no PG-13 slashers. It's been discussed before, but what's the point? If anything it's also worse because it's inviting eight year olds to see these movies where people get killed, and they get killed violently, we just don't see it! And then they do the fucking double-DVD-dip when they release the film "Unrated". Word of advise- generally we Aussies don't get a choice when a DVD gets released "Unrated". And in general we get the longer version, only it's called "Uncut", and it's got THE SAME RATING as the original release. Fuck that shit, man.

But also, I'm getting tired of gorenography. Gore for gore's sake? No thanks. I like gore but it is NOT a replacement for atmosphere. My favourite horror movies of late are the ones that make me sad. Wolf Creek made me sad. You like the characters getting killed, they aren't just fodder. Shit, even the UK's Severance was sort of upsetting, and that was a horror-comedy! Now that shows talent.

11. You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year. How do you wield this power?

Whole lotta horror. BUT there are conditions. As mentioned above, no PG-13 shit, unless it's a ghost story that doesn't need blood or sex or swears. And also nothing that replaces atmosphere with blood, because atmosphere is always better. Lucky McKee will get a movie actually distributed to cinemas. Although Angela Bettis has to feature heavily, because those two work fantastically together.

I'd also be greenlighting some (many!) indie comedies, because I'm a sucker for those things. Also one or two mainstream ones, preferably directed by Judd Apatow. Nothing by any dickhead who has ever directed an Adam Sandler movie, or that Wedding Crashers wanker, he can go away. And I'm not going to ban members of the Frat Pack, exactly, but they're not allowed to do anything self indulgent. Which is pretty much as effective as a ban, I guess. Those guys are capable of being funny but it seems they'd much rather just appear on camera having a good time that no member of the audience is allowed in on.

Finally, I'd greenlight a bunch of Australian genre flicks. And I'd give them a decent budget. Not a stupid amount, but enough. The horror rules above still apply.

12. Bonnie or Clyde?

I've never seen it! I know that's awful. I'll say Bonnie, because Faye Dunaway was pretty great in Chinatown. Although it should be noted that Warren Beatty has this hilariously full of shit thread at the IMDb. Check poster's history, she just posts at the pages of Beatty and his movies and costars. The best part is, I don't think she's just bored and making it up, I think she's a legitimately crazy person. That's always more fun.

13. Who are you tagging to answer this survey?

If anyone read this thing who hasn't been tagged already then I'd be putting their names here. But that doesn't happen!

Wherein Simon Invites Goths and Emos to Beat Him Up

2006-11-06T23:13:00.000+11:00

The Nightmare Before Christmas... I have to say...

...I don't get it.

Last night, when I should have been finishing my two essays, I saw the movie in 3D. If you're wondering, one of the essays is now finished, the other one contains a wholly answered question but falls short of the word limit by a few hundred of the little bastards, so I have to wank them in there somehow. So there was guilt involved, while seeing the movie. Quickly replaced by a sense of "huh?"

It's not AWFUL. It's cute. It's got spirit- you can feel the hard work that went in there by all the members of production who wholly believed in what they were doing. I appreciate that they've really gone pretty dark for a film that only just deserves its PG rating. The animation, obviously painstakingly done, is pretty gorgeous, especially when Oogie Boogie's underground lair goes all glowy.

But why is Jack Skellington on t-shirts and backpacks and hats and keyrings and everything else that'll fit a Disney logo on it? Why is it a sign of pride amongst so many of the young folk, asks this twenty one year old? One dickhead from Fallout Boy says "YAY NIGHTMARE!" and BOOM, it happens? I thought the Nightmare phenomenon predated that group's (unexplainable) popularity.

I know picking apart the romance plot of a kid's film is sort of stupid, but hopefully admitting that now will save embarrassment later. It's from 1993, so I'm not going to get all worried about spoilers, plus you know it'll end happy even if it is xCoRe DARK. So, Sally, we're led to believe, is pretty much held prisoner by wheelchair dude all her life, but loves Jack from afar. And then she escapes! And she gives him a flower or something! And then somehow he knows her name later on but just speaks to her like any girl from town... and then later he realises he loves her and they kiss on that curly hill thing. I... the... wha? Could there have been a scene where they... talk? Where wheelchair guy says "Okay, you can be free" maybe, and then Sally says "Hey Jack! I gave you those roses earlier?" There are scenes missing here!

The Corpse Bride, that worked. Not a complicated romance, but one that flowed. Jack and Sally, that didn't flow. At least throw in some conflict, more than just "hey, I didn't really notice you all that much before, but come to think of it, I want to spend the rest of my life with you!"

The Christmas stuff, the misunderstanding about the holiday, that was cute. Not hilarious, not jawdropping, but cute. Cute I can deal with here. The songs, on the whole, pretty unspectacular. This came out at around the same time as Aladdin and The Lion King, and the songs there were on the whole much catchier.

And yes, this was the first time I had seen it, and I should add that I do normally like Burton's stuff. Ed Wood's pretty genius, and the Corpse Bride was fun, and Sleepy Hollow is an old favourite, and so on and so on and so on. I even really enjoy Mars Attacks!

I don't know, I guess the comparison to The Corpse Bride didn't serve the film well. I know that people generally seem to prefer Nightmare, but The Corpse Bride felt, to me, like a classic story being told pretty well. Nightmare was, on the whole, sort of messy.

I'm serious, though, someone explain what I missed. Because I must have missed something.

That wasn't written like a review, but I'm going to give it a score anyway.

6/10

On the 3D size of things, it was... decent. Impressive, considering it's not a film originally designed for 3D, althought I think I would have preferred to see a film that as designed for it, because that could have utilized the medium more.

Seventeen dollars, though.

Seventeen dollars!

Movies are too expensive in this country as it is. As a student I normally pay around eleven bucks. An adult will pay around fourteen. I know our dollar isn't worth that much but we're still paying through the nose. If you want to see a 3D movie, though, and you want to see it with those glasses that break really, really easily, you've got to empty out your wallet something shocking. Seventeen dollars is the adult price, which is what I paid because they don't offer student tickets to 3D movies. Why? Because they're fuckwits.

Apparently only children want to see 3D films, so they get their discounted tickets, and then they have to take their parents with them. Which, you know... the kids aren't paying anyway, why do they deserve a discount? I don't get the time to earn much money because I'm out BEING A STUDENT so give me my damn concession rate! No parent is paying for my tickets! Especially since I'm studying to, hopefully, make the cinematic world a better one. Maybe, maybe maybe, I hope. That's the aim. Right now. If I'm lucky. If God exists, and likes me. (Which, for the record, He probably doesn't, and if He did, He probably wouldn't.)

The point is, though, 3D is a novelty that's not worth paying that much for. It's half a ticket more, pretty much, and I'd rather just be able to see more movies.

Now to finish off, I'm going to depress you, using my good friends at Flixster, a site I keep returning to for reasons I can't for the life of me explain.

Basically what we have here is the Flixster movie quiz, where people can ask their own questions and then you answer and get points. Maybe there will be a picture of Johnny Depp. Next to it is the question "Who is this acter from Pirats of the Caribeen and Pirats of the Carribeen 2?" And then you've got to choose from a list. There used to be questions where you actually had to type in an answer; I guess that got too difficult.

The upshot of these pictures is, more people know the name of Nicholas Cage's fucking car in fucking Gone in 60 Seconds But It Feels More Like 18 Hours than who starred in Some Like It Hot. More than that, a significant number of people believe that Paris Hilton starred in Some Like It Hot.

To quote Sarah Silverman, WHAT THE COCK IS THAT SHIT?

For the record, I guessed the Gone in 60 Seconds answer, that's the only reason it's correct.

Anyway, I'm going to go suicide now, because really, there's no more point, is there?

University is the Devil

2006-11-03T23:40:00.001+11:00

The university year is this close to being over, I can feel it. Just two more essays to hand in and an exam and it's all done. Yesterday I had sixty percent of my film subject due, including but not limited to: a short film script adapted from a short story (I did Chuck Palahniuk's "Obsolete", if you're wondering), this shitty sound design piece, and a group pitch of a short film where a couple of the group members I had complained about a whole bunch made a surprisingly good, if thematically iffy, poster, with a big giant spelling error on it. Fantastic. So many stories about that group assignment, so little time to tell them.

One of the essays is a sociology one, and the question I chose involved choosing a paranormal movie or TV show and explaining what it says about female power. So, I chose Carrie. Because Carrie is fantastic. I've watched the prom scene about five times this week; it's insane and it gets sadder every single time.

So I meet with my tutor about the essay, and I tell her, I'm doing Carrie. So she goes to get out her materials for the Sex and the City question. Easy mistake to make, I guess, considering how much that show has been talked about in this class: far too much. Then it turns out that she hasn't the fuck HEARD of Carrie. My first thought was "who hasn't heard of Carrie?" I know it's not famous like, say, Casablanca or something, but I thought it was on par with maybe The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in terms of recognition. "You know, the one with the girl, and she's got telekinetic powers, and they pour pig's blood on her at the prom...?"

Nothing!

And Carrie is even MENTIONED in one of the readings, and this tutor is supposed to be a feminist, and I can't think of a horror movie a feminist could find more to talk about in! It's effing madness.

Also effing madness is The Core, which I just half-saw half of (while I was essaying away) as it was on TV. I don't understand why this movie isn't way more of a cult comedy. Some scientists travel to the Earth's core in some crazy heat resistant drill-car-thing because the core stopped rotating. So they go to make it rotate. And then (OMG SPOILER!!!!) they get rescued by whales in the end. Really, really fake CG whales. And Aaron Eckhart and Aaron Eckhart's chin overracts a bunch when one of the token ethnics bites it. And yells at Hilary Swank.

So I looked it up, of course, and the DVD has a director's commentary, so now I have to hire it out, because what the fuck can he say about this movie? "Oh, DJ Qualls really owned this scene. Those tears? Those tears are real. Jesus Christ, he does have a big nose, doesn't he? It's bigger on camera, you don't notice it quite so much in real life."

"Oh, on this day we had a little trouble because Swank wouldn't come out of her trailer. Apparently she was in there quietly weeping and stroking her Oscar, saying something about it not being as easy as Halle Berry had told her. But I sent a runner in to remind her about her paycheck and she came out and she fricking gave it her all."

But them the folks at my local Blockbuster might think I'm hiring it for non-ironic purposes. It's a dilemma.

Anyway earlier I mentioned that I wrote an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's "Obsolete" from his novel "Haunted". Here's someone else's try at it, or, as I like to call it, How to Overuse a Narration. Seriously, dude, show, don't tell.

Although I also found a pretty fantastic short called Still Life, so the world of student-made messed up shit is still alive and kicking and it has some skill.

Whoa.

2006-10-19T01:41:00.000+10:00

The Departed was, like, crazy amounts of good.

Toronto Round-up At Last!!!!!

2006-10-14T18:32:00.000+10:00

Whoa! It arrives less than a month after I got back. It could have been worse. Hey, I've been busy. Don't you judge.

You may have gathered, I kind of dug on the Toronto International Film Festival. And it wasn’t just the thing of seeing nearly thirty movies in ten days (although that was neat) but the whole experience- the city, meeting new people, the atmosphere, the industry involvement- all were fantastic.

I guess mostly it was the movies, though.

Favourite Movie

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

I had an unashamed love of this movie, even if it wasn’t the most high-brow of the festival. It was the third Midnight Madness screening, but the first completely normal one for me- one that, you know, didn’t fuck up the projector (I’m looking at you, BORAT) and was at the regular location- the pretty great Ryerson theatre. BUT MORE ON THAT PLACE LATER.

As a horror fan, Mandy Lane threw me for a loop. It takes an audience familiar with the (usually rather rigid) conventions of a slasher film, and throws their expectations out the window. It’s admittedly not the most terrifying movie, but it’s slick and stylish and goes for the jugular. I likes.

Honourable Mentions

Severance

For Your Consideration

I feel sort of bad having a slasher movie (even though it’s awesome) taking top honours, which is why it says “favourite movie” and not “best movie”. So I’ve got another category, for the film of the highest actual quality. Y’know, so I don’t seem like just a gorehound.

Best Movie

Little Children

The more I think about this one, the more I like it, and want to see it again. This one I missed the start of, so wasn’t quite as engrossed in it as I should have been. In a movie with such a relatively low key plot (the A-story is basically about an adulterous couple) there’s such a huge feeling of dread that builds. It’s a great achievement on behalf of Todd Field- he did similarly well on his last film In The Bedroom. Kate Winslet, too, goes from strength to strength, and should appear in every movie ever, if possible.

Honourable Mentions

Paris Je T’aime

Day Night Day Night

Worst Movie

The Abandoned

And this should say worst movie I got to the end of, because As The Shadow was far worse, but I didn’t get to the end of it. The Abandoned, however, was a failure, if a sort of noble one. I’m glad it’s a horror movie that’s not a Japanese remake, or a PG-13 bloodless slasher flick, later to be released on DVD “unrated”, with a few extra f-bombs thrown in and a drop or two of claret. Co-writer/director did try, I’ll give him that. But then he failed. This was a dreary, dull affair with a dull protagonist who is alone on screen for as much as two thirds of the thing, leading me to want to scream “die, already!” so the damn thing could end. An interesting concept, two, with the two leads encountering zombie doppelgangers, but as a whole it just didn’t work. Maybe if it were a short, rather than a far-too-long.

About an hour into The Abandoned the walkouts really began to pick up, with maybe a fifth of the audience gone before the end, and I think very few staying for the Q&A. You could really feel the apathy of the audience. I felt bad for the movie even as I wasn’t enjoying the thing. It was this odd clash of emotions: “Give it a chance!” with “PLEASE END NOW I’M BORED.” Oh well: they can’t all be winners.

Best Audience

Midnight Madness

That is to say, the Midnight Madness audience when the film is a good one. When the film is a bad one, you feel it, because everyone in the room, everyone, was anticipating something to get the blood pumping, so a movie really falls flat.

When it’s good, though, it’s electric.

It’s the Ryerson theatre, although this is apparently the first year it’s been there. It’s a theatre in a college, so it doesn’t really feel like a cinema, although it still works. It’s also helpful that while it seats 1200 people, it’s difficult to get a bad seat. Even right up the back and right up the front aren’t as bad as cinemas I’ve been in that hold half that many people. Mandy Lane got a standing ovation. Severance director Christopher Smith had his movie Creep screened at Midnight Madness in 2004, so when his name came up in the opening credits, the crowd went off. That happened for nudity and key moments of gore in a few movies too. At the end of Black Sheep, everyone yelled out “baaaa!” in unison.

Although it wasn’t a stupid audience. It wasn’t a Scream 2 opening scene audience. When I saw The Hills Have Eyes at the beginning of the year, there were these four guys at the front who would just shout out “YEAH!!! KILL HIM!!!” and so forth every time something loud of violent happened. It didn’t strike me as something they were necessarily that into, as much as they were just putting a show on for each other, as in, “look how macho I am”. Then they’d probably go home with Metallica blaring out their car stereos while they deny to themselves their sexual feelings for one another. That’s the impression I got. With Midnight Madness, it wasn’t that loud and moronic, and it felt a lot more real. And it turns out to be one of the best possible ways to see a movie.

Best Q&A

For Your Consideration

Pretty much the whole Christopher Guest crew appeared here- Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Catherine O’Hara, and the rest, for half an hour- longer than most other sessions- and the only downside was that it couldn’t go for longer. These guys are the kind of funny that makes you jealous, and they play off each other as well as a group of comedians who have been together for a decade for some, a quarter of a century for others.

Here they are:

Kids: if you’re going to anywhere where there will be a lot of Q&A sessions, GET A CAMERA WITH A ZOOM LENS. Here’s the Mandy Lane crew:

Bobcat Goldthwaite, director of Sleeping Dogs Lie. You can't tell, but he's holding up a Degrassi shirt:

Here’s the CN Tower, the largest free standing structure in the world:

…that one actually turned out okay. I got far too many of that damn building, and then forgot my camera for the infamous Borat screening. I deserve to be shot.

The one director photo that did turn out okay was one of Guillarmo Del Toro after Pan’s Labyrinth, a movie I couldn’t enjoy because I was far, far too close to the screen.

Festival lady: giving me the finger, picking her nose, or both?

Get ready for it, but here’s Kate Winslet. Kate with Patrick Wilson (from Angels in America and Hard Candy), Todd Field, and someone else from Little Children. With Kate. Kate Winslet.

Get ready.

It’s pretty spectacular, so I hope you’re sitting.

Get a zoom lens. Really, truly, get a zoom lens.

Although I got some okay (comparitively) shots of Laura Linney, coming out of Jindabyne just before I saw S&MAN.

Work it, Linney!

Best Canadians

Canadians: nice lot! I like them.You can be lining up for as much as two hours for a movie, so a willingness to talk to strangers helps past the time. Helpfully, everyone else in line also has this willingness. Waiting for Mandy Lane, a girl named Anna introduced herself to me by saying “hey, wanna play rock paper scissors?” which is just a great way to introduce yourself to a stranger, it turns out. I talked to a girl from York university and a guy who played Aladdin at Niagara falls, and we bonded over love for The Colbert Report and hatred for King of the Hill. Every time that damn theme song starts to play, you just leap for the remote.

I definitely plan on staying longer if I ever get back there, getting to know some people more, and, you know… getting very drunk with strangers, something that is difficult when you’re on holiday with your dad. (A holiday I am eternally, unspeakably grateful for.)

I also developed a minor obsession with a lady from the “Show Our Volunteers Some Love” ad that played before every film. She clapped way, way too much; extras who overact are pretty hilarious, and if you see the same one do it three, four, five times a day, it’s really difficult to look away.

Even the homeless are friendly! One guy said “What’s the best nation in the world?” “What?” “A DO-nation!” He was only after a quarter; he got a dollar.

The only bad Canadian I really encountered was the dude from the photo place. As well as just giving shitty customer service, he couldn’t spell my last name. After I spelt it for him! He thought I said “i” instead of “r”, and then I corrected him and he changed the “k” to an “r”! He will die, if I ever return to Toronto. His blood will be spilled all over the lower ground floor of the College Park centre.

Biggest Disappointments (Because I missed them)

Babel

The Lives of Others

Babel I wanted to see but couldn’t fit it on the schedule, and figured it would be getting a wide release anyway. The Lives of Others I heard about at the festival, and it sounds fantastic, and is being compared to The Conversation. …not that I’ve seen The Conversation. But I really want to! And Babel I think we’ve all heard the awesomeness of. And despite not really enjoying 21 Grams all that much (why’d they drop that film into a blender? It could have worked chronologically, or at least quite as seemingly randomly out of order! Crazy Mexicans…) Babel really appeals.

Most Surreal Moments

I’ve told the story. The projector breaks down twenty minutes into Borat, and then Michael Moore can’t fix the projector. Michael Moore was trying to fix the projector. And Larry Charles is with him looking like a Rabbi! I don’t understand how that shit wasn’t planned.

Also of note was the world premiere of Black Sheep. It’s a midnight screening, but there’s still a red carpet, because it is an event. As a small Kiwi horror comedy, the cast isn’t all star, nor can the lot of them really be flown to the other side of the world. The director is there, though, with one cast member. Also:

Sheep on the red carpet. Everyone’s seen the shot of Borat with his donkey, but it wasn’t the only crazy opening.

While waiting for Paris Je T’aime, an flying for Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival got handed to me. The best part was that it was handed out by a woman pushing a stroller that, yes, did contain a baby. Awesome.

Also these two things made me laugh. Nothing to do with the festival, just Toronto being crazy wacky.

That's right, kids. Present your student ID, get ten percent off at a sex shop! You can do this before or after your quickie divorce.

And that’s it. I've just got a couple more shots to finish up with.

The biggest stars, obviously, don’t mingle with the audience after a screening, but for the more independent movies, it does happen. And if you ask, you can get a photo with them!

Black Sheep: actor Oliver Driver and director Jonathan King.

Please try to ignore the thumbs up. I’m not usually that much of a dickhead.

Suburban Mayhem: star Emily Barclay and director Paul Goldman.

Also, those two happened on the same day. I didn't wear the same thing the whole time I was in Canada.

And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed the show, I did. Get to the film festival if you can; get to any film festival near you. You won’t just see films in advance, you’ll meet like minded people, and you’ll swim in love of cinema. Only try to think of it worded in a less wanky way.

I've been neglectful...

2006-10-02T23:43:00.000+10:00

Sorry about that. I've just had a week of uni spent mostly doing uni work and being sick. And working on my vampires-and-Hillsong screenplay that I'm working on just so I can say I've written something feature length. And... uh... seeing movies. Whoops. I am nearly done on my Toronto round-up thingo, not that it's that exciting, but I thought I should finish it off. This delay almost makes it seem like it should be something halfway impressive. Don't worry: it's not. Really.

I've just watched the Australian modern-day adaptation of Macbeth and the spiritual sequel to Anchorman, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Neither satisfied.

Meanwhile, TV is either satisfying me, or getting me very excited. IE:

Hot.

I have trouble with the fact that such good TV and such bad TV can exist within the same universe. And that the makers of bad TV get paid to make more of said bad TV. It's kind of depressing. I just saw an episode of that Mandy Patinkin show Criminal Minds. It's about FBI agents who solve murders. Startlingly original, I know. The most striking thing about it was how heavy-handed the direction was. Music screams "OOOH!!! TENSION!!!". Lingering camera shots drop anvils on the heads of viewers saying "THIS GUY MIGHT BE EEEEVIL".

LOOK! SOME CHILLING DARK IMAGERY!

There was even some superimposition of this shot in a Satanic cult lair of a red mask or some shit, the camera at a dutch angle, it was painful. It felt I'd been transported back to the early nineties, except I was a child then so might have found the whole thing to be minorly scary, which was not the case here. It made me appreciate the Law and Order franchise more, for fuck's sake, because even those shows aren't that tacky. Poor Mandy. I hope they're paying him a whole lot. And not just because he has to work with Greg, from Dharma and Greg, although that on its own must be a huge kick in the teeth.

Film: This is the end

2006-09-24T18:43:00.000+10:00

Here are the final five review from the Toronto Experience. This second last day began later than usual, at midday, as opposed to nine thirty or so, like most others. Sleep in!

The whole day also took place at the Ryerson theatre, which was my favourite venue. It was just at a university in downtown Toronto (funnily enough called Ryerson University) so there wasn't a candy bar, but it had a nine number of seats- a little over twelve hundred- but it even at the furthest back you got a decent view. The best place to sit was either right at the front of the verandah area, ot halfway down the lower part, if you actually want to get decent photos of the Q and A sessions.

Something I learnt far too late.

Black Book

You know those films where you have a protagonist is a really nice soul, and they just want to survive and do good in this world, and then they get kicked, and then kicked again, and then just when you want to walk out of the cinema almost just so you don’t have to see this person suffer anymore and then they get kicked once more? Black Book is one of those!

Carice Van Houten plays Rachel Steinn, a Jewish woman from Nazi-occupied Denmark at the end of the Second World War, who loses her family in a failed escape attempt. She disguises her Jewish heritage with bleaches hair, then joins a group of freedom fighters, and seduces a high ranking Gestapo officer for the cause.

Director Paul Verhoven is known for the sex and violence in his films, and Black Book is no exception. But this is a spy movie, and a thriller, and a tragic drama. It’s also pretty good, if occasionally melodramatic. Van Houten gives a pretty great performance, and the plot goes to many unpredictable places. In fact, almost a little too much- it becomes sort of difficult to keep track of exactly who is double crossing who. On top of this, it does too go on a little too long.

And despite these flaws, it is wholly absorbing. You do really feel the sadness, especially towards Rachel’s final challenges. It’s also at times pretty thrilling. The war genre too is one I don’t often like, so Black Book really does stand out and suck you in.

8/10

The Fountain

To be honest, really, I have no idea.

I’ve missed Darren Aronofsky’s first film Pi- it’s difficult to come by in this country- but adore Requiem for a Dream. I understand that Pi has some similarities to Requiem, but The Fountain shares pretty much nothing with that film, beyond being weird. I haven’t seen Requiem in a while, so maybe there were some that I didn’t notice.

Anyway, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz married couple Tom and Izzi. Respectively, obviously. Izzi is an author dying of cancer, and Tom is a doctor or researcher or something trying to find her a cure. We also see two other timeframes: Jackman as a Spanish conquistador searching for the tree of life, with Weisz his queen, and Jackman as a space traveller travelling to save a dying tree in a bubble-like spaceship, who frequently gets visions of the modern-day Weisz. Yeah, I know.

The easy stuff out of the way first. The film is gorgeous to look at. Really, obscenely pretty, in lighting, design and composition. If nothing else, The Fountain has this. The music too is great; Aronofsky has brought back Clint Mansell for this. Jackman and Weisz both serve the film well, although Jackman gets a little melodramatic towards the end, although he’s supposed to.

So, technically, very good. Film is story, though, and I’m not sure about the story here. I don’t mean I’m not sure as in it’s a bad story, I just really don’t know. The past-story is pretty much, in the film, supposed to be the book Izzi is trying to finish. The future-story may be part of this book too, or in the imagination of Tom, or it may just exist on a purely symbolic level, or it may be a combination of all of these things. On occasion I even doubted the reality of the present story. This movie is almost pure symbolism. It’s so arty it could be a museum installation, although those generally don’t contain A-list stars and budgets of this size. The symbolism will help in repeat viewings, although I don’t know that the rest of the story will. The overt artistry of this film was certainly distancing, and the story of a man grieving for his dying wife was never for me as sad as it should be. And Aronofsky, that man can do sad.

But it’s pretty impossibly to judge this film on a first viewing. I’d definitely recommend seeing it to all people open to non-mainstream cinema, and it’s a sad fact that this doesn’t mean everyone. Even then I think this will cause frustration for many people, although there will also be many people who immediately adore it. It is a film I’ll need to see again, and I do want to see it again, which is something in its favour. Although I don’t know if Aronofsky has sacrificed character for art and meaning. Give it a few more viewings. For now, though, I really don’t think I can give this one anything. See it.

?/10

Severance

The final night of Midnight Madness did not in any way disappoint. Severance has been described as “The Office meets Deliverance” and that’s not far off. A mostly British team of workers for a huge American defence corporation are in the Hungarian countryside for a team building getaway. A fallen tree blocks the road, leading the team down the wrong path, without their bus or its angry driver. They are soon at what is clearly at the wrong lodge, and are soon set upon by its tenant: a survivalist with many weapons and booby-traps and the skills to use them.

And it’s funny. Really funny, and impressively suspenseful. This is another horror film with characters you like who could, for the most part, die in any order. We have the bored and possibly anorexic Maggie, played by the ever-reliable Canadian actress Laura Harris (who was fantastic in Dead Like Me and delivered the finest moment of 24 in the entire run of that series), the hilarious drugfucked Steve, played by Danny Dyer, and the boss’s pet Gordon, played by Andy Nyman, who’s very Nick Frost-esque, among others. All characters have something to like about them, even the useless team leader played by Tim McInnerny.

The blend of comedy and horror here is near-perfect. It’s been compared to Shaun of the Dead, a comparison it deserves, despite not quite reaching those heights -if only because I hold Shaun is such high regard, considering it to be not only hilarious but heartbreaking and one of the most perfectly paced films I’ve ever seen. There is certainly a bigger focus on horror here, though, managing to be scarier than Shaun of the Dead on many occasions.

Really, the only thing I didn’t like about this film is its over-reliance of loud sound effects to produce scares. It’s something that really annoys me in a lot of films, but here I could look past it; for whatever reason it didn’t feel as cheap, I guess because the horror actually feels like a threat. Severance is good at being scary, and good at being funny, and I pray for cult status, because it’s deserved.

9/10

And then the last day arrives at last, with just two movies. I know, but the plane was at give, so we had to leave. And interesting choice of movies, both pretty slow movies, but both in their own unique ways.

Day Night Day Night

This was possibly the most intriguing movie I saw at the festival, and it’s not clear why it didn’t get more attention. The lead character here is never named, but she’s played brilliantly by Luisa Williams. The time we spend with her is a day, a night, a day, and a night.

This movie is a very slow moving one, but it’s captivating from the start. The woman arrives at a bus station and then is taken to a hotel. It is there she waits, for what we don’t know. All we do know is that at the opening of the movie, the woman whispers to herself that she has chosen exactly when and how she will die. The second half of the movie takes place in Times Square, and it becomes some very suspenseful cinema. It’s a strange experience which almost borders of being numbing.

Day Night Day Night takes who could have been a faceless plot device in another film and places her front and centre. We have no idea what her purposes are at the start, but as they become clearer, we are continue to be fascinated by her both despite and because of her actions. They whole movie rests on Luisa’s performance, which is fantastic, especially for a first time actress, but director Julia Loktev should also be commended for the engaging subtlety of her film. Also remarkable are the Times Square scenes, apparently filmed with real people rather than hired extras walking around a closed off section pretending to be real. This adds a heightened realism which makes these scenes even more intense. I don’t know what the market for this film will be, if it will be seen in many theatres, but it certainly deserves to be, if only to expose Loktev and Williams to the world.

8/10

As The Shadow

As the Shadow is an Italian film about a woman who works as a travel agent by day and studies Russian by night. She doesn’t have much in her life, until she grows closer with her teacher and eventually forms a relationship with him. He then asks her to let his distant cousin from Ukraine stay with her for a few days, which she reluctantly agrees to.

Thrilling, huh? That above paragraph is a little more than half an hour of screen time. What an ordinary film could have done in perhaps fifteen minutes, or less, is padded out with scenes of our protagonist washing her hands and walking around, and then shots of the Ukrainian cousin walking around, and then the woman and the cousin sitting having dinner and practising Russian. It’s sort of a slow film.

And slow can be good, I know. It can be dreamlike or surreal or just slowly pull you into the film. You can gently get to know a character in a slow film, learning their quirks and growing to love them. Or maybe the film is just plain pretty, and a joy to look at. But As the Shadow is just dull. Painfully, alarmingly, stunningly, irredeemably fucking boring.

There’s nothing here to make you like any of these characters. They’re not awful people, there’s just absolutely nothing interesting about them. The story isn’t a hugely interesting one. Claudia, the lead, begins to grow suspicious of Olga, the cousin. Is she really a cousin, or is she more? But there’s no intrigue for the viewer because you don’t care because you don’t like any of these people and you just want to be away from their depressing little lives. And the film is no joy to look at. The Italy presented here is sort of ugly, but not in any sort of gritty way. Just, once again, boring. Characters are occasionally shot through glass, with a reflection in front of them. That might have been director Marina Spada trying to be deep or symbolic or something. I was minorly impressed that there was no camera reflected in the glass, but that’s about all. Kudos for that. Spada didn’t write the pointless script, Daniele Maggioni did, but Spada willingly shot the thing, so she deserves punishment too.

After about forty minutes the prospect of dealing with any of this for an hour or so more was too much, and so my final film of the festival was also my first walkout. So who knows, the movie might have picked up, but its first half was unforgivably dull. Maybe there was some huge character revelations or twists or some sort of thrilling car chase followed by a lesbian orgy. Maybe there was a cream pie fight, that might have been vaguely amusing. I don’t know, nor do I really care. And since it was a walkout, feel free to disregard my rating. But if you do ever get the chance to see this, and then you take that chance, and then you are awake for the duration of the film, assuming you didn’t give up partway through because you are clearly stronger than me, don’t say you weren’t warned, because you were. Skip it.

1/10

So, certainly an anticlimactic end to the festival, but a great festival it was nonetheless. Mext up will be the festival round up, with photos and my picks of the fest and all that shit. I'm currently watching Sheitan, which was the final Midnight Madness film, which was missed at the festival, but is already on DVD here. Weird.

It's also shaping up to be one of the most fucked up movies of all of Toronto! Always a bonus. I think I'm going to have to watch a festival of entirely G-rated films just to clense my soul after all of these.

TV: That remote in your hand is a crack pipe!

2006-09-22T00:22:00.000+10:00

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Wow. Never watched enough West Wing to get into it- badly scheduled here- and Sports Night fared even worse. But this, this is good. The speech? Fantastic. That could become a classic TV moment. It felt like you were watching it actually go down, like this is a show that had been on air for years and now someone is tearing it down. So many characters are winners. I don't think we've seen enough of the Big Three to get a feel for them yet, but the rest are immediately great. With so many shows, even great shows, you need several episodes to really get into its characters, but here it was immediate. This one's going to be a keeper.

And I mainly posted this to say one thing:

Aaron Sorkin, you are a beast.

Every episode. Every episode! He's writing the whole season! The whole of many seasons, I guess, if it continues, which it will, because wow. Like what tends to happen with heaps of British shows, except those tend to have seasons about eight episodes long. And this is just the norm for him! Oh my Christ. Beast.

Film: Bestiality (hilarious!) and men with video cameras (terrifying!)

2006-09-21T00:35:00.000+10:00

Here are the second-to-last lot of reviews. The final five shall be coming soon, and my Festival round-up and awards. The Torontonies? I don't know.

There were supposed to be photos, too, but Blogger was decided to be a fuckwit, so whatever. Picture them in your mind.

...maybe try not to picture too much from Sleeping Dogs Lie.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack

This is a likable little Spanish movie about family and loyalty and decisions. Jorge is a business school graduate with a brother in prison and a father with dementia he must care for. At the same time that a childhood sweetheart returns from travelling, his temporarily sterile brother sets him the task of impregnating his also incarcerated girlfriend so she can move to the prison’s relatively luxurious and safe maternity ward. Meanwhile, Jorge’s best friend Israel begins to question his father’s and his own sexuality upon spying his father getting an erotic massage from a man.

This is sometimes sad, sometimes sexy, sometimes funny, and, as mentioned, just plain likable. I questioned some of the character motivations, and it won’t change lives, but it pretty much won me over. Recommended.

8/10

Pan’s Labyrinth

I can’t say a lot about this movie, if only for the fact that I was in the front row, and the screen was approximately thirty centimetres from my face. A bad situation, worsened by the enormous size of the screen, worsened still by the subtitles, which proved to be stunningly difficult to read. This is a sleight against the design of the theatre, not the film or the subtitles. I’ll have to re-view this one to fully appreciate it.

What I got what was that the film is stunningly designed, on all levels. Guillermo del Toro is quite a visionary. The only film I’ve seen of his is Hellboy, which was okay, but I didn’t fall in love with it, although apparently (obviously, really) his indie films are better, and will now be sought out. The film takes place in civil war era Spain, telling the story of young Ophelia (Ivana Baquero, very impressive) as she deals with her new fascist army captain stepfather, terrorising everyone he can, the impending birth of her half brother, and a new (possibly imaginary) fantastical world she keeps being taken into to do increasingly difficult tasks. Both the real and the fantasy worlds are given fairly equal weight in the film, and both provide fear and fascination.

I’ll need to see it again, and perhaps familiarise myself with del Toro’s work as well beforehand. This was a very well made film, which I look forward to enjoying more than a did this time around in the future.

8/10

Guillermo del Toro, by the way, is a funny bastard. His Q&A answers were long and informative and funny, and really seemed to make the Festival worker mediating the session. He seems to have had a very odd childhood, both in reality and in imagination. He’s also pretty self deprecating, having a crack at his 1997 film Mimic.

Sleeping Dogs Lie

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Sleeping Dogs Lie is about a woman who blows her dog. It’s also a smart, sweet, moving and funny relationship comedy.

Amy, played by Melinda Page Hamilton, is the woman. The incident happened years before the events of the movie, in an apparently uncontrollable fit of boredom. Her boyfriend John (Bryce Johnson), upon proposing, decides he wants complete honesty, the disclosure of their deepest secrets to one another. She is unwilling to tell him at first, but then does while they are staying with her parents. Unfortunately, he doesn’t react well. Even more unfortunately, her drugfucked brother overhears her confession.

The films deals surprisingly honestly with emotional issues of truth in relationships, and if our stupid past acts really say anything about us. It’s also very funny, often in an extremely cringeworthy manner. At times it reminded me of Meet the Parents, if Meet the Parents was more than a cheap vehicle for the humiliation of Ben Stiller, and if the relationship in that movie was one that an audience could actually care about. It helps that Melinda Page Hamilton is almost alarmingly adorable and innocent looking, and that Amy and John’s relationship, before the revelation, is really sweet.

The film was shot on a microscopic budget, and this is apparent when watching it. The music is at times annoying. Filmmaker Bob Goldthwait is a better writer than he is a director, although he is adept at both. I think a bigger budget and longer shoot could have him producing even better films. All in all, this is probably the sweetest dog blowjob movie you’ll ever see.

8/10

S&MAN

S&MAN (pronounced “Sandman” or maybe “Sampersandman”) is a study in fear. Literally: it’s a documentary about horror movies, and why people like them, why people willingly allow themselves to be scared or disgusted like this. Rather than focusing on popular horror movies- although these are touched upon- the subject of S&MAN are fake-snuff producers August Films, microbudget horror/porn hybrid filmmaker Bill Zebub, and the make of the S&MAN series, Erik Rost. Also thrown in are interviews of Carol J. Clover, author of “Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in Modern Horror Films”, as well as a married couple, one a sexologist, the other a forensic psychiatrist.

The three profiled filmmakers all provide interest. The kids behind August Films are surprisingly friendly considering the subject matter of their films. Also of note is the fact that their fans always write to them asking to appear in their movies- as the victims, not the villains. Bill Zebub is just a character. He looks every bit the death metal freak, with a strange fixation on Christian imagery. His films seem to consist entirely of naked girls on crucifixes.

Erik Rost, however, is the standout of the documentary. His movies consist of him holding a camera, stalking women, whom he eventually “murders” on camera. He claims to audition these girls at first without their knowledge, and is completely unwilling to let director JT Petty interview or even meet any of these girls. It seems at first that he is just continuing his S&MAN persona for the documentary, using it as promotion, but as it deepens, you start to question things, thinking there’s something infinitely more sinister going on.

This documentary is both eye-opening in its discussion of the subject matter, and increasingly disturbing in the subject matter itself, to the extent that it moves from a documentary on horror films to a horror film itself. Absolutely fascinating.

9/10

This is the final run, people. Oh, plus I've seen another movie since I got back- one that was playing at the Festival, funnily enough: The Book of Revelation. That should get a write up too, at some stage. Although I really should be doing uni work.

...

Hahahaha.

Being home!

2006-09-19T00:51:00.000+10:00

I survived the trip, even though I was surrounded by seventeen(ish) babies on the plane, one of whom was crying before the plane began to taxi. So that was awful, and an exercise in restraint. John C Reilly and Will Ferrell were on my plane! Not just to promote Talladega Nights, but also to do some (I assume, I didn't watch it) horrible Channel Seven special on fifty years of TV in Australia, featuring, like, Dancing With The Stars fuckers dancing and It Takes Two fuckers singing and so apparently the purpose of the thing was to highlight the fact that Australian TV is pretty much made up of cheap to produce reality bullshit which simultaneously gives famewhores an extra few minutes of undeserved spotlight and fulfils the legal quota of Australian content that must appear on our screens. Network executives could promote new talent creating something great or keep old talent in the industry working on something with, you know, meaning or value.

Or they could just keep the cheap glitz going. Whatever.

Although it should be pointed out that the number one show right now- and not just the number one Australian produced show, but the number one overall- isn't about glitz and glamour, although it is reality TV. It's called Border Security, although I call it "Get the Fuck Out of Our Fucking Country, You Fucking Foreigners!" It chronicles the work of customs officers as they try valiently to keep Australia free of undesirable things and people, and the public laps it right up. Fantastic.

This wasn't supposed to be a rant. Whoops.

So anyway, reviews are forthcoming. I've written a few, having just finished a really scathing one. Those are fun to write! I'm also going to give my own little awards to the films I saw in Toronto, as well as the festival itself, and to some of my experiences of the actual city of Toronto. Watch out, Least Favourite Canadian!

On the plane I saw Friends With Money, which was pretty decent, although probably not quite as decent as its fantastic cast deserved, and Before Sunset, which I've seen a few times before and I will see a few times again, because it's fantastic, and apparently there is a romantic hiding in me somewhere.

Going home...

2006-09-16T14:40:00.000+10:00

The festival has ended for me, meaning I'm missing out on a few more movies including the final two Midnight Madness ones, but it's still been a fantastic run.

I've got nine (I think?) more movies to write up, including a rival to Shaun of the Dead, and! my first walkout of the festival! WHICH MOVIE PISSED ME OFF?

Film: Who Wants Twelve Reviews?

2006-09-14T13:19:00.000+10:00

So, yeah. There are a lot. Three days worth of viewing, in fact, and one of those days was five movies. I've been busy, as you can see. Since so many reviews are here, they're all shorted than usual. Many are just a paragraph! I might expand some of the ones I really liked (or hated!) later, though.

Suburban Mayhem

Emily Barclay plays Katrina Skinner, who is the devil. Not damaged, not crying for help or attention, just evil. At the beginning we discover her father has been killed, although we don't know who did it. We then go ten days before his death, when Katrina, a nineteen year old girl with a child she leaves with the boyfriend she frequently cheats on, decides her dad must die so she can sell their house to get a good lawyer to get her murderer brother out of prison. Nice girl.

This is a black comedy that delivers both darkness and laughs. It's not perfect- frequently the story is interrupted with interviews of the people surrounding Mr. Skinner about his death, an element that almost takes away from the darkness somehow, and that could have been cut. But the film fits together very well in the end. Alice Bell's pretty fantastic script is directed well by Paul Goldman, and Emily Barclay is going to be big, or at least she deserves to be. For those who like their humour black, the film goes to dark places, and hints at places that are even darker.

8/10

Paris, Je T'aime

Sixteen short films from about twenty directors, all about love in one form or another, and all set in modern day Paris. The word here is "awwwwww!" This film is really heartwarming, except when it wants to be heartbreaking. There's not a dud among these, although, of course, some stand out more than others. Gurinda Chadra's, The Coen Brothers', and Alexander Payne's stand out for me. That's right. I liked the Bend it Like Beckham director's one. And I really dislike Bend it Like Beckham! The cast, too numerous to name, so just IMDb it, is amazing as well. Fantastic.

9/10

Black Sheep

As an Australian, I'm legally required to make jokes about New Zealanders fucking sheep. And now they're doing it themselves! The release of a genetically mutated sheep leads to an infection that takes over hundreds of sheep on a farm belonging to arguing brothers, that go crazy and start eating people. The people who survive, in turn, also become ravenous after a time. At first the film seems like it's going to take itself seriously, but soon reveals otherwise, and is very funny, and very gory. It's not as heartfelt as other horror-comedies such as Shaun of the Dead, nor is it as splatter-tastic as early Peter Jackson like Braindead, but it's very, very entertaining. Well deserved cult status awaits this one.

8/10

The next day...

Ghosts of Cite Soliel

This one's a documentary about Cite Soliel in Haiti in 2004, and two brothers who are gang leaders, working for the president. The most amazing thing here was how the crew managed to film in such dangerous circumstances. The characters are all really interesting, skating a moral boundary a lot of the time, but we generally like them despite their willingness to commit violence. The story is an interesting and tragic one, too.

8/10

For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest movies are always fun, but A Mighty Wind seemed more feel-good than funny, so I didn't dig it as much as his other stuff. For Your Consideration is a return to form. Catherine O'Hara plays an aging Hollywood actress who catches wind of her name being thrown around for an Oscar nomination. The usual crew appear, the standout probably being Fred Willard as the host of an Entertainment Tonight type show with Jane Lynch, who plays off him well. Ricky Gervais appears briefly as a studio executive and, while funny, sort of stands out, his style of comedy is fairly different from the rest of them.

This movie could have taken a torch to Hollywood, and it does a bit, but most of the humour just comes from insane characters. Jennifer Coolidge is particularly nutty here. And it might just be the atmosphere- the audience being lovers of Christopher Guest- but I had a fantastic time with this one. It's not up there with Best in Show, but it won't disappoint fans, and hopefully newcomers, at all.

9/10

Ten Items or Less

Morgan Freeman essentially plays himself here: an actor (credited only as "Him") from "that Ashley Judd movie" is left stranded at a supermarket in a poor area of LA when he goes there to research a movie set in the location. He meets Paz Vega's surly and sassy checkout chick who agrees to drive him home, after a few errands are run. This is very Lost in Translation, although more of a broad comedy, from Lemony Snicket director Brad Siberling. It's gentle, funny and sweet.

8/10

I missed the start of the next one, even though it started half an hour late, because of what I assume to be security reasons. I was one of the last ones let in from the rush line, and so I missed both the introduction by director Todd Field and stars Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, and the first few minutes. I know!

Little Children

Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson play suburbanites Sarah and Brad, who meet at a park looking after their children, both being stay-at-home parents, and find themselves increasingly attracted to one another. Meanwhile, a former cop played by Noah Emmerich from The Truman show bullies a local pervert, once jailed for exposing himself to a child.

This is a really odd film, and I mean that in a good way. It feels small and low key, but there is an ever-increasing feeling of dread throughout the film. Performances are all top notch, of course, and the music is by Thomas Newman, so that is as well. There's also a really strange narration, a sort of voice-of-God thing that must have been taken directly from the novel the film is based on, making the experience of watching it feel similar to reading a good book. I'll have to see it again when I've seen the start and so have my bearings to judge it properly, but it's definitely very good.

8/10

It started late, so as such, it finished late; about twenty minute before Midnight Madness, which doesn't happen in a cinema near where I was. So I had to dash out, missing the Q&A just as I missed the introduction. And it might have even been worth it were the next film not my least favourite of the festival so far...

The Abandoned

Rated MA15+ for loud noises. Here a woman travels to Russia to go to the property of her deceased birth mother, whom she had never met. There she meets her brother, the undead version of her brother and herself, and a whole lot of loud noises. A sort of neat premise and some decent atmosphere are ruined by how dreary the whole affair is, and it's not dreary in a good way. Another major problem is that the woman is the lone character for about half the total running time, and she's not that interesting a character, so you never care. Not even a few decent scares save this one.

3/10

And then the day after...

Short Cuts Canada 5

This was a number of Canadian shorts. Some were faily dull and wanktastic, others were better. The standout by far was Ninth Street Chronicles, a coming of age tale seemingly set in the mid nineties about a young girl who keeps accidentely causing trouble. It was funny and unpretentious. Also interesting were Patterns 2 and Patterns 3. The story was a little weird but the production design was pretty spectacular and they were shot pretty strikingly.

Cashback

This is a chick flick disguised as an edgy piece of cinema. Sean Biggerstaff plays an art student dumped by his girlfriend who develops insomnia and gets a night job at a supermarket. He passes the time by fantasising about stopping time, leading to some impressive scenes of him walking through a frozen world, but the film ends up being about him falling for a checkout chick, and then it all gets very formulaic. There is also far, far, far, far (far!) too much narration in native Scotsman Biggerstaff's fairly awkward English accent that grates more and more. The supporting characters provide relief, though, because they're actually interesting and funny. This also serves to highlight how dull the lead is, though. Visually impressive and often funny, but ultimately too cliched.

6/10

The next screening was pretty nuts, because the director was there, and he's been getting these fun little death threats. So security was there to check our backs, and stayed throughout the screening to make sure no one pulled out a weapon, I guess.

Death of a President

This is a documentary about George W. Bush's assassination in October 2007. It's very impressively put together, using both existing footage and specially shot scenes with actors (we have fake interviews, mocked up CCTV, and even actors digitally inserted into real news footage) , to create a documentary that feels almost real, and very scary. The film is impressively centrist in its view- it portrays George Bush not as a monster but also presenting protestor's very valid views of him. I thought it was going to focus more on the international ramifications of his death (Dick Cheney replaces him- uh oh) but looks mainly at the investigation into who is responsible. An extremely interesting concept presented as a rather good piece of cinema.

8/10

Trapped Ashes

Six people, most strangers to each other get trapped in an old house on a Hollywood studio, and to escape, they have to tell real stories of terror. This one had five directors (four horror stories are told, and another director did the 'wrap-around' segments), including Joe Dante, of The Howling, and Sean Cunningham, who did Friday the 13th. This is essentially and excuse to salute B-horror, and it would have worked better if more than one of the stories told here were worth watching. The first, "The Girl With The Golden Breasts", by Ken Russell, is hilariously over the top and just a lot of fun, and the rest of them range from average to something of a chore to watch. I appreciate the homage, though, and the copious nudity.

5/10

And then three more movies today. And then another in about an hour. This is getting tiring!

Film: Everyone should love Mandy Lane

2006-09-11T13:16:00.000+10:00

In a way this was my first Midnight Madness movie. The first one, of course, crashed so surreally. The second was skipped to see the first one, again, only in full this time. But this is the first full length one seen at the right location- the Elgin, where Borat screened, is gorgeous but way too classy for this stuff. Ryerson University feels like home for Midnight Madness, especially last night.

Before the film, in the line, a guy in his thirties or forties and an older woman approached everyone in the line, asking why they chose to see this movie. The guy I think must be a producer, and the woman, as it turned out, is the screenwriter’s mother. I asked her if she’d seen the film before; she hadn’t. I also asked what she thinks of her son writing a horror movie like this. She said she didn’t expect such a thing to happen. I really want to know what she thought of it. Hopefully they’ll whack her on a commentary track.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the boys do love Mandy Lane. She’s beautiful (Amber Heard, who plays her, really is), and effortlessly so. She’s sweet, but switched on as well. Rather than hanging with the jocks and cheerleaders like they expect her to, however, she hangs with a cynical emo kid. At a jock’s house at the end of summer, though, tragedy strikes. Due to this, nine months later, Mandy has moved on to ‘cooler’ friends, and the now-blonde best friend is ignored and hated by her.

Her and her new friends, who all at a superficial level seem to be stereotypes, head to an isolated ranch for a weekend of debauchery to celebrate the end of their second-last year of school. And then, wouldn’t you know it, bad shit goes down, because it seems someone loves Mandy Lane a little too much.

The brief description I’d read had me interested in this, but it came as a real surprise. It’s a slasher flick at heart, although that’s what so deceptive here. Halfway through, you realise things aren’t happening in the right order. Slasher flicks are often so formulaic, even many of the most highly regarded ones you know, to an extent, what’s going to happen. Factors are interchangeable, but so much of it remains the same. Here, that’s not the case, so you realise you’re completely lost, and you don’t know where it’s going to go next. It seems such an obvious thing to do; I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before.

The film also features a pretty likable bunch of fodder. The reason I liked Wolf Creek so much was because of how much you grew to like the kids before the carnage began, and it’s a similar deal here. We don’t have a forty five minute set up like in Wolf Creek, but you care about them a lot more than in most other movies of this sort. Many of the kids in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane are deeper than they initially seem, the film dealing with body issues, peer pressure and other things faced by teengs

Another element is how frank these kids are. They really are heading off for a weekend of debauchery, with sex, drinking and drugs. These elements aren’t superfluous to the plot, though; characters actually act drunk, and the sex actually effects the plot.

While it’s not the scariest movie in the world, although the unpredictability does lend it a certain atmosphere and it is pretty frightening at times. You really don’t know who is going to die, and when. The horror itself is very impressive. This is not PG-13 horror, thank God, and there’s no way to edit it down into that horrible state. Nor is it torture-porn, where the violence often becomes so much that it kind of mutes itself out. The gore, it is good. On top of this, it allows itself to be subtle at certain times. I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t actually notice the first time the killer appears.

Writer Jacob Forman and director Jonathan Levine are ones to look out for. Forman created something surprising and memorable, and Levine seems remarkably young but has a great eye. He's given the film a really desaturated look, but the darks are too dark, and the lights are too light, making the look suitably uncomfortable. He's also chosen a really fantastic soundtrack.

I was extremely impressed and surprised by this movie. I don’t know when it will be out, the sooner the better, because there is a lot more to say about it. This is going to be a pretty big cult flick, I think, and it really, truly deserves it. Mandy Lane has managed to be my favourite film of the festival so far.

10/10

There was a brief Q&A after. The film hasn’t been picked up yet by any distributors, but hopefully this will happen soon. The whole cast bar Mandy herself and one other guy (Anson Mount, who played the ranch hand Garth) were present, and it was the first time they’d seen the film. They all seemed really into the project, if a little distanced because it was filmed more than a year ago. The director really is excitable and clearly has a passion for horror, which a horror director really needs to have. I really want to see this one again.

Today I saw Suburban Mayhem and Paris, je t’aime, both of which impressed. And now, it’s time for the Kiwi horror film, Black Sheep. It’s about zombie sheep! A ram-zom-com?

Film: You crazy zombie!

2006-09-11T12:48:00.000+10:00

I've just realised I'm less than twenty four hours from seeing Christopher Guest and the crew in action, now with added Ricky Gervais.

Sweet.

Yesterday, there was Ten Canoes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Fido, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. That is to say, Australian Indigenous, angry Irish, Canadian zombies, doomed American teenagers.

Ten Canoes

I'd missed this one back home, and it had been recommended to me enough to make it seem worth more than just DVD.

Director Rolf de Heer has managed to film a really authentic feeling tale of Australian Aboriginals, before their (pretty devastating, for them) contact with the Western world. The tale opens with a man, played by David Gulpilil, narrating in English a tale of his ancestors as they make canoes to hunt geese. In turn, one of these men tells a tale to his brother of a long time ago, a tale of love, and revenge. All dialogue in the film is spoken in a native tongue.

This is a pretty remarkable achievement. The film is in black and white for the first story, and colour for the flashback. The colour is good, but the black and white feels really old, intentionally, and this works to great effect. The acting, largely by unprofessionals, is good, and the whole thing is pretty funny.

So, while it was well done, I wasn't blown away. Once again, I think it was me, but the narration felt overused, and I wasn't completely drawn into the story. Not to an extent that I wouldn't watch it again, and the narration was done with purpose; it almost felt like being told the story around a campfire. So while not something I could call a fault, really, just something I'm not used to. It's well made, though, and more than that, it was good that it was made. Hopefully it'll lead to films made in a similar vein.

6/10

I had to skip the Q&A I cross the city for The Wind that Shakes the Barley. It's won the Palm d'Or, if I have my capitalisations correct there, and gets a good write-up, but it's a period drama, which is a genre (like historical epics) that I often can't get into. So, how did it fare?

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Ken Loach loves the social commentary. Not that I've seen a Ken Loach film, other than twenty minutes of Sweet Sixteen when it was on TV, but, you know. I've heard things.

The film tells the story of two Irish brothers in Ireland's post WW1 war against England for independence. Cillian Murphy's Damien is to be a doctor in England until he decides to stay in Ireland to join with his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney) in fighting the English army. We then follow their ups and downs (downs, mostly) through the next few years of Ireland's history.

All the acting is pretty top notch. Cillian Murphy continues to go from strength to strength. The history explores a story ripe for telling, as well. The best thing about the film is how currently significant it is; it's about people fighting off an invading power; the leading power of the world. There are some great small moments, like when an imprisoned Damien talks to a British soldier, who isn't an army, just someone following orders. Really interesting things are explored. The final few moments of the film, too, are heartbreaking.

And yet I sat largely bored. A lot of this was my unfamiliarity with the material, but I just couldn't connect emotionally with it very much, as tragic as the whole thing is.

If there was a larger focus on the relationship of the brothers, the emotional core of the film, I would have connected more, but this would have taken the focus off the social issues being explored. It also didn't help that we're physically kept at middle distance the whole time; Loach seems to have decided to avoid close-ups, making it a somewhat chilly experience at times. But it's a skillful production exploring pertinent issues, and that's worth a lot.

6/10

We were then to see Deliver Us from Evil, but I chose that before realising there was a Canadian zombie comedy starring Carrie-Ann Moss (who I love for her Memento work rather than that big trilogy thing she was a part of) and... and... Billy Connelly... as a zombie.

I had to see Fido.

Fido

Fido has a really interesting premise. We're in an alternative past, a version of the Pleasantville-style fifties, where zombie uprising (Romero style, of course) had occurred in the twenties. The world has adapted. The zombies still rise- if someone dies, they become one, but a collar has been created that tames them, takes away their craving for flesh. This has created a new purpose for them: slaves.

Our story concerns Timmy (K'Sun Ray), an unpopular ten year old boy. His parents Helen and Bill, played by Carrie-Ann Moss and Dylan Baker (really, really, really, really creepy in Happiness) are the only people on their street to not own a zombie. This becomes embarrassing for Helen when the head of security for ZomCom- the government-like corporation that created the collars, as well as many other items for better living in a world of zombies- moves in across the street. So she caves in, and buys a zombie, who Timmy befriends and names Fido- Billy Connelly, silent here except for moans. The problem is, the collars don't always work as well as they should.

The premise here is pretty great. Fifties suburbia is always ripe for parody, and here we get current satire thrown in as well- ZomCom always reminds citizens that they need them for safety; anything bad within the neighbourhood is quickly covered up so no one finds out that ZomCom if fallible. The satire is mostly spot on, too, although the script seemed a little uncertain on whether the collars that kept the zombies in slavery were a good or a bad thing.

It is a horror comedy, though. The film is funny, although it’s far from being Shaun of the Dead. There are a few pacing issues, although the insanity of the premise always keeps things at least amusing. The horror is never scary, nor is it intended to be. It does keep the humour nicely dark, though- throwing zombies into Pleasantville always would be, though. The darkest element is possibly Tammy, the zombie a neighbour uses as a sex slave. And even that, somehow, in Fido’s own twisted way, turns out to be sweet. Somehow. And while the film doesn’t build to absolute carnage, as fun as that would have been, that may have made things too similar to Braindead. Moss plays the kooky fifties mother capably, Connelly is very good despite his silence, and Baker does uptight and repressed really well.

It’s not the funniest horror-comedy, although the characters have enough heart to make up for this. It won’t set the world on fire, going down in horror history. In a word, it’s cute. Yes, I just called a zombie movie cute.

7/10

The Q&A revealed that this one won’t be out until early-to-mid next year, but it seems its going to get some decent marketing.

The final film of the night was All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. This is too long already, though, so like I did last night, in a fit of geekery, I’m going to give that its own post.

One quick thing...

2006-09-10T16:37:00.000+10:00

ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE.

Film: And now I need to bleach my eyes...

2006-09-10T11:51:00.000+10:00

The third movie I saw today was 2:37, which I've already reviewed. Although, now I think I'll give it an eight, not a nine. Eight's still good, mind you, it's just a bit too flawed to be a nine. Before that, Taxidermia, from Hungary, and before that, Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love: Juvenile A.

Then the night ended with either Borat, or The Host. WHICH DID I CHOOSE?

Anyway, when the Miike film is the least disturbing one, you know there's trouble.

Big Bang Love: Juvenile A

I thought I was familiar with director Takashi Miike, but then I realised that I've only seen a few of his seventy eight thousand (...ish) movies.

The ones I have seen have largely been his typical super-violent ones, although One Missed Call was more his take on J-Horror and his Three... Extremes segment Box was a very low key emotional horror.

Big Bang Love isn't horror at all, though: it's full-on arthouse territory here. Seriously, he even goes all Dogville for one shot.

It's about these two teenage boys in juvenile prison, and at the start, one of them is strangling the other with his hands. As detectives investigate, we flash back through style and striking visuals to see what led up to this (depressing pasts and homosexuality) and if the boy found strangling really is the killer.

This was just too arty for my taste, so I appreciate it a lot more than I actually like it. Like I said, visuals are pretty stunning, the ideas here are really interesting, about the past, and the future: next the prison is a pyramid and a rocket. Like I said, it's arty. Also, it's the future.

So, it's well done, and intruiging, but I couldn't get into it. I can't call the movie flawed, nor can I give it a high mark. Sorry, Miike, but it's not you, it's me.

5/10

Taxidermia

Believe me when I tell you what I'm about to say shouldn't be taken as a throwaway line. I've seen a lot of movies. I dig on horror, and black comedy, so I've seen some pretty gross stuff. I haven't yet seen those low budget late seventies zombie/cannibal ones that are banned in a bunch of places, nor that Miike one Ichi the Killer where in the trailer someone gets their nipples sliced off, so maybe you should keep that in mind. But...

Taxidermia is the grossest movie I've ever seen.

Move over, Eli Roth and your torture-porn pals. Step aside, early-era Peter Jackson. You, the chick from Audition, put those needles away. Taxidermia is here.

And, okay, this maybe wasn't more psychologically troubling than, say, Mysterious Skin or the works of Todd Solondz, but on a visual (and aural) level it was something else, to such a degree that it was almost on those films' level, if not right there with them.

I talk so much of the gross not only because that's all I remember, but because that's pretty much all there is here. It's just grossness. That's the point. There is regular blood and guts here (although it's not a horror film), but there's also vomit, blubber, erections, a money shot, extreme close-up nudity, AND necrophelic-bestiality!

The film can be divided into three parts, one for each man in three successive generations of one family. One, a chronic masturbator, the next, a speed eater, and then, the taxidermist who gives the film its title. We are given glimpses into their lives, through covered eyes a lot of the time, and I think we're supposed to laugh, and like them in their own weird ways.

I'm pretty sure that there's a point to the movie. I can't figure it out, but it was making a comment on something. It had to be, otherwise it's not offering much. It had some genius camera-work, like the revolving shot of the bath, and a sort of sense of whimsy to it that made me think it was like the really, really, really, really, very, extremely disturbing version of Amelie. And it is occasionally funny, and often very inventive. Which makes me think it must have been more than just shock for the sake of shock.

Although I can't figure out how. And I mostly didn't enjoy it. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets banned in Australia, and that would suck, although I can't think of anyone I would recommend this to, because it is unpleasant. Even if I am conflicted because it's not without merit. So, while I never plan of seeing it again, I'm sort of kind of glad I have, because it's an experience, and at least that's something.

4/10

Then there was 2:37, with another Q&A, and Thalluri briefly mentioned those little accusations being made against him, although his reception here was really positive. Then hours passed, until the decision had to me made: which midnight movie to see? Both starting at midnight, of course they clash. Neither screening was either film's last at the festival, although all other screenings of both films clash with other choices, so the one not chosen won't be seen until my return to Australia.

Fortunately, one cinema in Sydney has The Host right now, and should still be showing it when I return.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Believe me when I tell you what I'm about to say shouldn't be taken as a throwaway line. I've seen a lot of movies. I dig on comedies of most kinds, as long as they don't feature Adam Sandler or Martin Lawrence. We're talking from both sides of the Atlantic, foreign language, Australian stuff when we get it right (which is more not than often). From not and from the past, although I haven't seen as many screwball comedies as I could have. But...

Borat is the funniest movie I've ever seen.

(Maybe.)

Comedies often take the approach of throwing so many jokes in that even thought they hit and they miss, they are so numerous that you forget about the misses. Borat is like that, only with very, very few misses, and some that hit so hard they hurt.

Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's creation (coming after Ali G, who I don't mind but am not a huge fan of) travels from Kazakhstan to America with his producer Azamat in order to learn cutural lessons in order to improve his homeland. He begins his quest, but is soon sidetracked when he decides to travel cross-country to meet and wed Pamela Anderson.

If you've seen Borat's shows, you know what's happening here. He sets up interviews with people unaware of what's coming to them, and either frustrates the hell out of them or reveals how horrible they are. There's also a lot of Borat in public, terrifying innocent civilians, to hilarious effect, and scenes of Borat planning and discussing with Azamat.

To tell of all the funny would be time consuming and largely redundant. If you like Borat, you'll love this, and if you don't, there's a good chance you'll love it anyway. A lot of it is pretty cruel, but some of it's angry, exposing some people for the bigots they are, and leaving them completely unaware of what they've just done, right there on camera. Although the funniest scene is one that is planned; a fight, halfway through the film, which is absolutely and completely insane and brilliant.

Although a lot of it may have been the atmosphere. Being surrounded by fifteen hundred people all there because they know they're going to have a good time can lead to bias. It's also pure comedy, and while it is comic genius, it's light on story, which seems like a stupid complaint, but in my previous funniest-of-the-year, Little Miss Sunshine, had a huge emotional core which lacks here. Finally, the biggest test will be if it stands up to repeat viewings. It'll remain great, I'm sure, but how much of the humour relies on that shock of first time viewing?

For now, though, I love it, and I want it to go down as a classic, and I want everyone to see it. Cinematically, perhaps it's imperfect, but comedically, it just might be.

9/10

Today, I've seen Ten Canoes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and skipped Deliver Us From Evil to catch Fido. Later on tonight, I'll find out why All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Stupid White Man can't save movie

2006-09-08T16:09:00.000+10:00

So, the line for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is a few hundred metres long. Borat himself is there, with a donkey. I was too far down the line but I think he actually rode the donkey.

And then the movie plays. The theatre seats 1200, and it's full. Two sections, ground and verandah, and we're on the verandha. The Midnight Madness dude does his intro, then Borat appears to much applause and does his, and then the movie starts.

And then the movie stops, twenty minutes later. Twenty really, really fucking funny minutes later. But the projector didn't like it, so it stopped.

Nobody's happy, and then Borat reappears to appease everyone, and it works. That's down the bottom section, where the verandah crew can't see. Shortly after he's left again, on my section, Michael Moore walks past. Michael Moore and an entourage including who I thought was a rabbi, and they go into the projector booth.

And then Michael Moore starts trying to fix the projector.

This goes on for a while and everyone is chanting and taking photos. The projecter, by the way, is behind a big sheet of plastic. It's not just the lens poking out of a hole at the back of the theatre, you can see the whole room from the theatre.

After a while he fails, and walks back out again. A minute later, he appears on stage, with the rabbi. Only he's not a rabbi, he's the director, Larry Charles. So Moore and Charles start doing a Q&A while the projector is being fixed, and they're both pretty funny. Then the Midnight Madness dude keeps giving updates, white are "one more minute", then "five more minutes", then "it may have to be rescheduled".

Moore and Charles also point out Jay Roach, who produced, and who directed the Austin Powers movies, and, unfortunately, the Meet the Parents movies. Also pointed out is the agent who was the basis for Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage.

Michael Moore doesn't get any boos for his politics, or for being a loudmouth. Although he does cop some for asking everyone to leave Tom Cruise alone.

Then Borat reappears and starts to do his Q&A, and also asks a girl in the audience "how much?"

The film, in the end, doesn't work, and will be repeated tomorrow at midnight. But hopefully there will be more than one repeat, because I have The Host at that time. I'm sure they'll take into account how many people have midnight madness passes, though.

So, only got twenty minutes of a movie, but it was the nuttiest movie screening I've ever been to. Thanks, Toronto.

Film: I Want a Third Pill

2006-09-08T11:26:00.000+10:00

The festival begins.

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema: Parts 1, 2 and 3

That title's a mouthful, and the movie itself, if this were a real word, is a brainful.

What we have here is documentary filmmaker Sophie Fiennes taking us through the thoughts of psychologist (or pschyo-analyst, or guy way smarter than me, or something) Slavoj Zizek as he talks about the meaning behind some of his favourite films, and of cinema as a whole. We watch him talk about The Birds, Vertigo, Psycho, Fight Club, all the films of David Lynch, Three Colours: Blue, a couple of Charlie Chaplin films, and a lot more. And if that sounds too dry, he talks from within the films he talks about. He discusses Psycho from Norman Bates' cellar, Blue Velvet from Dennis Hopper's den of creepy sex, The Birds from Tippi Hedren's speedboat.

It's all fascinating stuff, and Fiennes puts it together fantastically. She matches some scenes perfectly to the original, like Vertigo, sitting in Scotty's apartment. Other times production values show, with what I assume is MiniDV footage not standing up next to the film segments we watch, but it's not at all jarring, just understandable. Fiennes occasionally gives us candid glimpses of Zizek as well, making him more likable. Not that he wasn't already.

So, style is good. What about substance?

Zizek is, as mentioned, way totally smart, but he's also funny. As he boats to the island of The Birds as Tippi Hedren did, he says "I know what you're thinking: I want to fuck Mitch.". After showing the scene from The Conversation where blood rises from the toilet, he likens the black of a cinema screen before the feature begins to a toilet bowl, and viewers waiting for something to rise from it. "Basically, we are all watching shit!"

I occasionally find psychological analysis of films to be jarring- I encountered some real wank about Alien last semester at uni. Here, though, what Zizeg says is never too implausible, even if it isn't my favourite type of film theory.

Although the film is too long. It's two and a half hours, three parts put together. I think it was intended to be on TV (although now the hardcore pornography that appears in part two would prevent that on most channels), which would suit it better, because there's so much in it you feel weighed down (in a good way) by the end out part one. It's all pretty interesting stuff, it's just tiring.

It's definitely worth a watch, but aim for DVD rather than at a cinema, if it makes it to a cinema near you. It was fantastic to watch some classic scenes on the big screen, but a pause button would have been a pleasure.

8/10

Next, I'm seeing Borat. Apparently it's so funny it hurts. Sweet.

These films have been modified to fit your screen. Also they suck.

2006-09-07T13:17:00.000+10:00

Am I aloud to review movies I saw on the plane, even if I only saw two minutes of them, just because they're shit?

Okay, I won't. But seriously, The Da Vinci Code, shut the fuck up.

Tom Hanks: Maybe the letters are out of order, just like the numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence!
Amelie: An ANAGRAM?!?

Stunning dialogue there. Doesn't stand out at all like you're trying to clarify things for the audience. It felt like a big screen CSI, for fuck's sake.

To be fair, my powerful hatred of the book makes me somewhat biased. Okay, the 140 pages I read, I hated. The prose, dialogue and characterisation were so poor I don't care if it reveals the meaning of life wrapped up in the most unpredictable plot twist imaginable, I couldn't handle it.

And Ron Howard, he executive produces Arrested Development. How could he display such terrible taste here?

Anyway, whatever. Jihad on Dan Brown!

That was the flight from Australia to LA, where economy class has those little screens, so The Da Vinci Code could be clicked away from. The flight from LA to Toronto, there were no such options.

Just My Luck.

Morbid curiosity got the better of me here, so I caught about twenty scattered minutes of this on. We're supposed to like Lindsay Lohan's horrible character in this movie while she glides through life, and then sympathise with her when she gets all unlucky. She kisses some unlucky guy and their luck switches, or whatever. It's as clever as it sounds. And one of the pieces bad luck that befalls her? She eats scraps of bacon off a stranger's plate at a diner. She just... picks it up... and eats it. There's a difference between being unlucky and being a fucking moron.

And the unlucky guy, he's the manager of the band McFly, and also he works at a bowling alley. I don't know. And McFly are a real band, apparently. Imagine a pop-punk band... except even WORSE than that. At least they're not pretending to have street cred, though, because if they were, appearing in a Lohan movie would be... wow.

Anyway, it was pretty stunningly ordinary.

Tomorrow, however... Tomorrow begins the movie run of awesomity. Get ready.

Toronto: The List

2006-09-05T22:15:00.000+10:00

Go here to find out more about these bastards!

10 Items or Less

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

As the Shadow

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

Black Book

Black Sheep

Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Cashback

D.O.A.P.

DarkBlueAlmostBlack

Day Night Day Night

Deliver Us From Evil

Fiction

For Your Consideration

Ghosts of Cite Soleil

Pan's Labyrinth

Paris, Je T'aime

Princess

S&MAN

Short Cuts Canada 1

Shot in the Dark

Sleeping Dogs Lie

Suburban Mayhem

Summercamp!

Taxidermia

Ten Canoes

The Abandoned

The Fountain

The Host

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Severance

Sheitan

Trapped Ashes

2:37

Maybe I'll come back later and add links to these things, but, effort! I have to get up at 4am. Leave me be.

Anyway, I may miss a couple because I'm leaving before the last day of the festival, unless plans change... But Jeebus, my eyes will be square by the end of it. Awesome. People who go overseas to explore foreign lands are suckers, man.

Film: Films Set On Planes

2006-09-05T21:30:00.000+10:00

Tomorrow, far too early in the morning, I board the first of three planes for a commute that will feel three years long. So, fittingly, the last two cinema visits before these flights were Snakes on a Plane and United 93. You know, those movies with bad shit going down on planes?

Whoops.

Snakes on a Plane

If you're thinking "that looks SO stupid", don't see it. If you're thinking "this looks REALLY scary and cool!", don't see it. And also go sterilise yourself. If you're thinking "this looks like so much motherfucking fun, motherfucker!", you've got the right state of mind, and you may enter.

Here, you pretty much know what you're in for. The hype has told you, the trailers have told you, more than anything, the motherfucking title tells you: Snakes on a Plane. It's stupid, it's nonsensical, it's fun.

A serious review of the movie would point out how ludicrous the story is. Nathan Phillips from Wolf Creek and his horrible American accent witness a mob hit while on a surfing trip in Hawaii. The mob somehow track him down, but so do the FBI, who whisk him away to LA, accompanied by Samuel L Jackson and some cracker. Even with a decoy plane in play, the gangsters figure out what plane he's on... and put snakes on it. Bad snakes! Angry snakes.

Stupid, yes? Also stupid is the attempt to give many many minor characters their own subplots. Films can juggle a lot of characters- look at Short Cuts, or if we're sticking with the action genre, Battle Royale- but in a film with screenwriting this lazy, the subtle-as-a-jackhammer exposition and revations of character come off as laughable. And when the internet hype kicked in it seems that they supplemented these moments via reshoots with over-the-top violence and sex and swears. A reshoot included a moment so awesome I'm giving it its own paragraph.

Snake on a tit.

So despite deep, occasionally intentional flaws, this was some of the most fun I've had in a cinema this year. I saw it with a group of friends- I wouldn't advise doing otherwise- and we laughed and high-fived when the snakes arrived, and high-fived more when Sam Jackson finally said that line you already know by now. It was just a pure good time. And yet...

There is something really inorganic going on. This was designed to be a cult picture like The Chumscrubber was, and that was pretty ordinary. And it's not even the best bad-fun movie out there- I was reminded of Deep Blue Sea, that movie with the super-smart sharks, a premise that seems subtle and clever compared with a snake-ridden plane, which was more fun and less up itself. Although the most fun I've ever had with a bad movie was Uwe Boll's House of the Dead, although that was because of the remarkable level of ineptness at all levels of that movie. Please do seek it out, if you haven't already, and don't turn it off too early, or you'll miss the bit where Boll splices shots from the video game into the middle of action sequences. Spectacular.

So, it's hard to rate. Overall the existance of a movie named Snakes on a Plane is more fun than the actual experience of watching it, but watching it is a good time as well. It's too manufactured, for sure, but seriously...

...snake on a tit.

6/10

United 93

It's a hard watch. That really goes without saying. But it's an amazingly done hard watch, and that's what's important. And it's probably also a movie that I'm not mature enough to review well, so I apologise in advance.

You know what it's about, so I needn't repeat that. It spans just the morning of September 11 intersplicing people boarding the flight bound for San Fransisco that would only make it as far as Pennsylvania with those working in various air traffic control centres. As the situation worsens, we focus more and more on the passengers of the flight until the tragic, intense and bloody end.

Writer/director Paul Greengrass here has created something more realistic than any "dramitization" in a documentary has ever been. This is not just due to the unknown cast- in some cases, air traffic controllers are playing themselves- but also because of the style of the film. Dialogue was worked out through improvisation in rehearsals. Here we have no protagonist, no character arcs, no big characters, no witty dialogue. That morning on that plane was just normal people trying to fly across the country without engaging with anyone around them, and that's what we're given.

The movie is intense all the way through, and not just everyone knows what happened. There's a sense of foreboding that builds and builds. When it reaches its climax, we're not given a clean version of bravery, of people standing up for their country. It's people who don't want to die lashing out, and it's raw and painful. And it's acted subtly and very well.

Although it might be too soon.

United 93 handles the situation, from both sides, with as much sensitivity as possible. I believe the families of victims were involved, and, as mentioned, people involved on the day were present as actors. But I can see this movie, its mere existence, being painful for both families of the victims, as well as for Muslims. We can never discount how many people will be dickheads who miss the message of the film and abuse innocent people.

A question worth asking is whether or not we needed this movie. It's not a story that has to be told- everyone is familiar with the events. I can't see else this story could have been made, though. Big actors and increased characterisation would probably just make this movie really tacky. I guess I'll find out how that works when I see World Trade Center, although no one can accuse me of being an Oliver Stone fan, so I might be biased there.

So while it may be too soon, it's good that this was the first cab of the rank. It's a very well made movie without any feeling of cashing in to it. If you're willing to sit through the experience, it's highly recommended.

9/10

So there are my last two reviews before heading to Toronto. If I die on the way there, kill every snake you can. I want to be avenged.

TV: Bring Us Colbert!

2006-09-03T18:54:00.000+10:00

Since I have three assessments for uni due in the next two days, I've been looking up The Daily Show on YouTube, because I'm a lazy prick.

We only just got The Daily Show here this year, what with Australia sucking and all. It's on TheComedyChannel which is like Comedy Central only with added really, really awful Australian skit shows. The Wedge isn't on there yet, thank God, but it's still got SkitHouse. And that's something no one should have to suffer through.

Anyway! A while ago the free-to-air channel SBS had a weekly edition of The Daily Show but now we get the real thing, and only a day or so after its US air, including the bit at the end where he crosses to The Colbert Report. But no Colbert Report! It's the definition of travesty.

The point is, here's a bunch or reminders of Stephen Colbert's and Jon Stewart's awesome!

Meanwhile, can someone give Samantha Bee her own show?

(fin)

Film: We Got Motherfucking CLERKS!

2006-08-31T22:04:00.000+10:00

It ended at midnight. It should have ended about an hour earlier, which is why I was getting on a bus to get home, instead of a train, but the trains had stopped running. Waiting for the bus, me and my friend were approached by an odd little man.

"Want a toke?"

He was being charitable with the joint he was smoking outside the Queen Victoria Building, which was nice of him. We said no, but another guy waiting for the bus ended up deciding not to catch it, opting to hang out with his brand new friend. It was appropriate, considering the movie we'd just watched.

Clerks II

It's really sad that this is the first Kevin Smith film I'd seen in a cinema. I first became a fan after Dogma was out on video- I know that's late, but I'm young, I don't think eight-year-old me would have appreciated Clerks when it first came out. For whatever reason I didn't see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back at the movies, and I skipped Jersey Girl like everybody else. Jersey Girl remains the one Smith film I haven't seen; not that I refuse to see it, I'm just rather lazy.

Clerks II is funny. That's what matters most here. The funny is either broad or film-geek specific (including a showstopping Silence of the Lambs reference), so it worked for me. It's not nearly as dry as Clerks was, but this is a vastly different film to Clerks. It's not a bad thing. The films compliment each other, they just sit apart. Thinking back, I think the best comparison I can make (and this is a really weird comparison, so forgive me) is that Clerks II is to Clerks what Before Sunset is to Before Sunrise. Except with a donkey show.

It's like revisiting old friends, this movie. Smith clearly saw it that way, which had a minor downside. To watch this movie you have to accept that Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) are not only still clerks, but they're not working a fast food place. The Quick Stop burned down, you see, so they had to movie elsehwere. So they're in their thirties and flipping burgers. These guys, no doubt, I can see in dead-end jobs, but the two of them doing this sort of work requires a rather large suspension of belief. But then, so do many many other films, so, look past it. These guys are still so much fun to watch- especially Randal- that it's worth it. He's still the adorable ball of hate he was in Clerks, only now he has a workmate to torture (rather than his customers) in the form of Elias, played by Trevor Fehrman.

Elias brings my biggest disappointment in the film, in that it's horrible that he's never been in a View Askewniverse film before, and this might be the last one. He's a fantastic new edition, the polar opposite of Randal- a naive Christian with a very positive world view. His obsession with Lord of the Rings brings some geekery, geekery heightened when Marshall from Alias cameos and discusses the trilogy with him.

The other major additions to the cast come in the form of the two women who hold Dante's heart: Rosario Dawson's Becky and Jennifer Shwalbach Smith's Emma. Character-wise, Rosario fares better; Emma is sweet, but extremely controlling, and Becky is a funny, sarcastic firecracker who looks like Rosario Dawson. Rosario Dawson! I know some people don't dig on her, but I do, here especially.

The new cast members are great, as are the returning Jay and Silent Bob, and Randal is better than ever. The weakest link, it's a shame to say, is Dante. O'Halloran is by no means a movie-destroying presence, but his inexperience as an actor combined with the whiny nature of the character of Dante (although we only ever meet Dante when he's having a bad day) does provide a minor flaw in the film.

So, it's a very good film. It has an almost alarming amount of plot compared to its predecessor, and could be accused of over-sentimentality, but it's still definitely worth watching. It's not nearly as groundbreaking as Clerks, nor will it be as remembered. But it was never going to be. So it's best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. And the adorable dance sequence. And the donkey show.

8/10

And then Kevin Smith spoke for two and a half hours. While wearing Silent Bob's green overcoat and shorts. He's a pretty fantastic storyteller, although I would have enjoyed it more were I not checking my watch for the last half hour. I was going to miss my train! And then I did.

On the news front, he said his next film will be a horror movie. He didn't go into details, unfortunately, but he said he wanted to do something completely different. He's also got one coming up called Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers, which will be a comic book type movie. He also didn't rule out returning to the world of Jay and Silent Bob, with perhaps a Clerks 3 visiting Dante and Randal as forty year olds. Although seeing Jay and Silent Bob as forty year olds would be sort of a downer.

He also said that a lot of plans he makes simply don't come to fruition... so don't hold your breath for any of that above stuff.

He told stories of Jason Mewes, and his struggles with drugs, and his own struggles with Mewes's struggle with drugs, and somehow it was funny at the end. He's all clean now, though, so, happy endings.

The best bit of the session was when a guy from New Jersey took the floor to ask Smith a question.

Jersey Dude: Hey, my old English teacher's claim to fame is that he once dated your sister.

Smith: Your English teacher? What was his name?

JD: He was Mr Jackson*.

Smith: Did you ask him is she did anal?

Yeah. All class. (The * is because I forgot the dude's teacher's name, because how am I to remember that shit? I'm writing this a week later. None of the words are actually verbatim, although Smith's final line is.) And then it turned out that Smith actually dated the teacher's sister. No word on whether she did anal, though.

He went on for hours and I could rack my brains and try to remember other shit, but it's funnier when he said it, so why bother? Seek out the Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs if you want to hear him, though, I've heard good things. Plus he's got a blog somewhere. I can't remember, go google it. Maybe kevinsmith.com. Plus, whack on one of his commentaries. Those are gold, especially when he bags out Ben Affleck.

Last Friday I saw Snakes on a Plane, and today I saw United 93. Both had planes. Both had dangerous situations. And yet... somehow... they were different. I can't quite put my finger on how, though.

Silent Bob Isn't

2006-08-23T02:08:00.000+10:00

Tonight I saw Clerks 2 followed by a Q&A with Kevin Smith. These things are normally the same price as any movie ticket, but this was $35, because the talk afterwards was to go for ninety minutes.

Then it went for two and a half hours. Man, that was a marathon. I'm tired, and start uni early, and so the report on this should be up in a day or two, hopefully.

The movie, I really, really liked. Although perhaps a Kevin Smith fan watching a Kevin Smith film with about one thousand other Kevin Smith Fans (it was a really big theatre) isn't the best way to objectively view a movie. Oh well. I had maybe the most fun I've had at the cinema this year.

Film: Maybe I'll Just Sit Here and Bleed At You

2006-08-17T22:03:00.000+10:00

I'm drowning in a sea of bad television here, and I don't know that I can take it. Two televisions where I am have Pay TV- something I don't usually have access to- and The Daily Show starts in mere minutes.

One TV currently has CSI. The other? Law and Order. A fun fact: crime shows are shit. Call this a matter of opinion, I call it fact. We are in the days where TV drama is adapting and advancing. Showrunners nowadays, if they so choose, pretty much have the power to basically have their own neverending movie. Story arcs have more time to play out than in movies, and twisting a story, making a huge revelation, can have a devastating effect, in a really good way. They can take their characters where they want to, giving them arcs that last years, creating their own world and if they're talented enough this world is unforgettable for viewers.

Or they can carbon copy the same story week after week, with minor variations, with character development limited to Grissom going from clean-shaven to bearded. I give you: CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, Law and Order, Law and Order Special Victims Unit, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Cold Case, on and on and on forever. People have the opportunity to watch the exact same story, ten times every week. What joy.

At least I watched a fantastic movie today. And now I gush horrendously.

Brick

If you're on the internet and reading a movie site, you've heard of Brick. This is the opposite of if you're a member of the Australian public, because nobody anywhere is advertising this gem. And it is a gem.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt would have a career best performance here had he not starred in Mysterious Skin. He plays Brendan, a high school outcast- although it seems he was the one who cast himself out. He investigates the disappearance of Emily (Emilie de Ravin), his former girlfriend, while inhabiting a universe where people talk like they're from a 1940s detective film, and making me wish in my high school people talked like they're from a 1940s detective film, because it's really cool. This teen neo-noir makes Veronica Mars look about as noir as a Wiggles concert. (Not that Veronica Mars isn't still completely fantastic.)

The plot of the film can be hard to follow. It's not as hard to follow as the plot of the film I last reviewed- Miami Vice- but even if it was, you care here. You want to know what's going on, who's playing who. This is down to not only the formerly mentioned (really fucking cool) dialogue, but also how enormously entertaining the characters are to watch. Lukas Haas plays the villain The Pin as both low key and threatening, while Nora Zehetner is the femme fetale of the piece: the seductive, dangerous (and hot) Laura.

So, the writing's great. The acting is strong. The direction matches in quality. Not only is it an extremely assured and confident turn for the first time writer/director Rian Johnson- and with difficult material- but it looks great. This is thanks to the photography as well, but the fact that this cost just half a million dollars does not show at all.

I'd been looking forward to this film for longer than I can remember. As the fantastic buzz trickled through the one thing I didn't hear much about (and this only comes as a shock to me after seeing the movie) was the music. Nathan Johnson and the Cinematic Underground- a band I hadn't head of before Brick- have put together a fantastic score. The CD Soundtrack cover tells me they used kitchen utensils and broken pianos, and, against all odds, it's beautiful. The characters Brendan encounters have their own themes, and as the film progresses, the themes vary. It helps the story but on top of this it's just great music, especially Laura's theme.

The reason everything comes together so well is the fact that it's all played straight. This could have just looked completely stupid- the thought of teenagers spouting hard-boiled words like this brings to mind an amatuer high school adapation of Kiss Me Deadly or something, but from the first moments the dialogue feels somehow natural.

This isn't our universe these kids are inhabiting; it's not supposed to be. It's a romanticised version of teen angst; everything is as big as it felt back then. And it's fantastic. And finally, the closing line is a killer.

10/10

For the sake of truth in journalism (not that this is journalism), I wrote the first half of this entry two days ago, with the review just finished tonight. So the review was not written on the night of crime show doom. Rather, it was written the night David Tench Tonight crashed and burned. Andrew Denton, hang your head. Or just blame network interference. And whose idea was it to open the show with Pat Rafter being interviewed? Nice guy, sure, but boring! I wouldn't have wanted to watch a legitimately funny interviewer handle him, certainly not for half an hour. Really, was this ever going to work?

I edit for correction: apparently there were two guests tonight, the other being Ella Hooper, of the band Killing Heidi, if they still exist. So that's slightly less ludicrous than a half hour interview of one (uninteresting) guest. Still: must be funnier, Mr Tench.

Also, I ended up getting to watch not only The Daily Show, but also Kenny vs. Spenny, the greatest Canadian show ever, so that rant is also sort of a lie. I wrote it before I got to watch these things, though. And not that I've seen another Canadian show to compare Kenny vs. Spenny to, but I doubt they'd compare. But, the stuff about that genre of drama being shit still stands, and always will, forever and ever.

TV: Bryan Brown, You're On Notice

2006-08-14T16:03:00.000+10:00

Tonight, almost a year late, premieres Two Twisted (Channel 9, 9:35), producer Bryan Brown's follow up to Twisted Tales, an Australian Twilight Zone-esque anthology series from the mid nineties.

It's a year late, so let's go back eighteen months, to when it was then only supposed months away. Brown put forth a call for scripts for the series from anyone willing to write one. There were rules, mostly for budgetary and time limitations. The script had to be no longer than twenty-two pages, could only feature two major characters (although other minor characters were allowed), only three locations, and a minimum of nighttime exterior scenes. On top of this, every script was required to have a twist. The scripts were due in May 2005, with the show slated to air late in the year. Obviously, this didn't happen.

So, I wrote on and while waiting for the rejection letter (which ultimately came in the form of the script being mailed back and its name not appearing on the list posted on the show's website), Twisted Tales was re-aired.

I remembered really liking the show. It originally aired in a time when I was, I shamefully admit, big into the writings of RL Stine, so it appealled. Hey, remember that Fear Street where there were wicked and sinister goings on around Fear Street? That was great.

Years after RL's influence had worn away, I'm watching the original Twisted Tales, week after week. With both the old and current series, two air at a time, but in its repeat form, four are put back to back. And they're awful. Almost stunningly so.

Maybe it's a case of the stories aging really badly. Maybe it was always bad, and it's just one of those things that everyone has, where you remember loving something, only to revisit it years later to find out how bad it really is. Maybe it was the stories. There was one where this robot, played by Kimberly Davies (from Psycho Beach Party!), went around killing people, and I think the twist was that she was a robot, despite it being obvious from the start. In another, possibly the worst of the lot, a man is jealous of his ex wife's new life, and in the end, dances with air, or a blow-up doll, or a something else I forget. I don't know, it was really stupid. And then I got rejected.

Not that I'm bitter.

I shall be watching eagerly tonight. Television drama has become a lot more cinematic, even since the mid nineties. Australian TV drama has... given us McLeod's Daughters and... more Home and Away and Neighbours... but also some stuff that's not complete worthless shit, like Love My Way on Foxtel. Let's hope Two Twisted falls into the latter camp, quality-wise. Tonight, Melissa George stars. Uh oh.

The main thing I'm watching for is the quality of the scripts themselves. If there is a single story that ends in "and it turns out he was DEAD ALL ALONG" I will throw a brick through the TV screen. If a single story ends with "and it turns out his OTHER PERSONALITY DID IT. Because he had MORE THAN ONE OF THOSE", I will through a brick through the TV, and then I'll deliberately breathe in all the tiny shards of the shattered cathode ray tube, which will shred my lungs, killing me painfully.

Not that I'm bitter.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday (ABC, 9pm), we finally get Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's spectacularly good Extras. It's maybe as good as The Office. Maybe. Kate Winslet's episode, which will air in a week or two, is maybe the best episode of TV ever. Maybe. Winslet's final few moments of the episode are some of the finest minutes I've ever witnessed on a screen. Possibly.

It's pretty hot.

Watch it, or better yet, buy the fucker. Import it from England, or wait until Thursday, when it's available here, or if you're not here or in England, choose where you want to import it from, and then do so. But keep in mind that our DVDs are marked by huge glaring ratings symbols, like this:

Although if you're buying NCIS, you've got bigger issues to contend with than ugly ratings symbols.

Because it's shite.

In conclusion, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Kate Winslet are all better than you.

Miami Vice

2006-08-10T19:05:00.000+10:00

I went into this one as neutral as I get before entering a cinema. I had no idea what the series of Miami Vice was all about, beyond cops who wore white suits, or something. I'm over this remake of seventies things, but was allowing to ignore that here because of the involvement of Michael Mann, who executive produced (produced executively?) the original series, making it more than just a quick lazy cash in. And while I do like Michael Mann, I don't regard him as highly as a lot of people seem to. Keep this quiet, too, but I think Heat was overrated. So, it was not a complete clean slate I went in with, but the positives and the negatives in my mind mostly balanced each other.

Miami Vice

Miami Vice presents us with these two cops, one of whom is played by Jamie Foxx, and the other by Colin Farrell. They're undercover, but don't do accents or wigs or fake beards or anything like that, at least not while we're watching. They do things. There's drugs involved, mostly, that's what they're trying to stop, and there are guns too, and money, and sex, and white supremacists. I really don't know, though, because I stopped following the whole affair.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Miami Vice. Acting isn't stunning, but it's not awful, so it does the job. There are a couple of pretty funny one-liners, but they don't undercut what is an almost overly serious film. Similar films have felt like the plot is there just to take us from one action sequence to another, but I didn't get that impression here. It was advertised as an action movie, which it isn't, but a few sequences, particularly the one at the trailer park, were suspensful enough.

Miami Vice was shot on HD, making it feel very realistic. This is one of the least slick hugely budgeted films I've seen, and that's the point. There's no running away from explosions in slow motion. For a while it seemed like it would, in fact, be explosion-free. And while it's gritty, that's not to say it's without gorgeous moments. There are some stunning visuals, the one that stood out most being a huge waterfall that cascades beside the main bad guy's villa.

This sums up the main problem of the film, though. Firstly, the fact that my favourite thing about the film was a few of the beautiful locations (and some Naomie Harris side-on nudity), and secondly, the fact that I just called the main bad guy "the main bad guy". I cannot remember a single character's name, not even the leads. I do remember the main woman was played by Gong Li, because her first name is Gong, and that amuses me. The plot was rather obscenely difficult to follow, but the fact that I didn't care about the fates of any of the characters, or what they were fighting for, made me just give up on attempting to figure out what was going on.

So, I cannot say that writer/director Michael Mann dropped the ball. Maybe the film just wasn't a fit with me, which is not something I can exactly fault it for. A second viewing would probably clear up a lot of the plot issues, and perhaps a clearer plot makes for an increased interest in the characters within it. But, really, I could not be bothered.

5/10

The next movie I see will probably be Brick. I saw it at the Sydney International Film Festival, and loved it there, and am very much looking forward to loving it again.

TV: The Wedge needs to follow Yasmine out

2006-08-09T00:08:00.000+10:00

In perhaps the worst news in the history of Australian history, The Wedge has been renewed for a second series. If you consider that to be good news, stop reading, because I hate you. If you have no idea what The Wedge is, you’re not Australian, so I envy you. Now, accuse me of hyperbole here, but I do think this show is possible one of the worst every screened in this country. And we even get According to Jim down here. We have a show hosted by someone named Hotdogs.

It’s a sketch show. It’s called The Wedge because the skits are about recurring characters of a fiction suburb called Wedgedale. It’s supposed to allude to wedgies, I guess, which is would be cutting edge if conceived by a first grader.

I caught five minutes of it- all I could handle- tonight. We’re at a spelling be. An adult dressed as a child walks to an oversized microphone. A disembodied voice says the word is ventriloquist. The child character then spells the word without opening his mouth.

No, it’s not funnier when you see it.

No, that’s not as awful as it gets.

We have these two bogan (that’s Australian for hick) women who sit at pokies and… make various noises, this sportsman who creates scandals while his lawyer tries to explain them away at press conferences (with hilarious results!!!), and this fat British girl. There are others too, I guess, but I try to scrub my mind clean of them.

There was a glut of these sketch shows here a few years ago, and these tended to rely on punchlines. Sketch after sketch remained joke free until the very end, when BAM! It hit… and then usually wasn’t very funny. Not offensively bad, just not all that funny, which is something any comedy usually needs. I’ve watched an episode or two of How I Met Your Mother and that’s minorly watchable without being funny, but that’s a unique case, and it might just be the lingering effects of the thing I had for Alyson Hannigan in Buffy. Red-haired and quirky is hot.

So The Wedge seems to be a response to these shows, being catchphrase and repetition based. The pokies woman seem to say “lucky” a lot; a sportsman always gets words wrong, making his lawyer’s words of defence meaningless. Over and over and over. Oh, they say “lucky” in a high pitched voice, if that increases the humorousness of the situation. (It doesn’t.) Sameness is a substitute for humour.

Plus, it’s mean. I like my humour as dark as it can get, but only when it’s clever, or there’s at least there’s a love or sympathy for the characters or situations. The Wedge wants to be Little Britain, but as awful a character Vicky Pollard may be, Matt Lucas, who plays her, loves her, as should the audience, unless they’re humourless prudes. The Wedge is the televisual equivalent of Nelson Muntz pointing at someone stupid or poor or fat and saying “ha ha!”

Network Ten is the channel responsible for renewing this abortion of comedy, but they’re also the ones who have just cancelled a reality show of similar quality- Yasmine’s Getting Bukkak- sorry, Yasmine’s Getting Married. This mercy killing happened after just four episodes- less than a week- after the premiere. Yasmine is your average girl in her late twenties: bubbly, career-minded, willing to find a man to marry in the space of nine weeks so the search and ceremony can be aired in an act that’s about an inch away from prostitution.

Or, that’s what she would have done, had the show lasted more than a week. Ten is still willing to pay for the ceremony, though, should it eventuate.

Now, I may get things wrong here, having only watched about twenty minutes of the show in total from a couple of episodes. But I’m not getting payed to write this thing, and I don’t have a strong gag reflex. The show was aired live, with a panel consisting of a regular hostess and three or so different famewhores per evening, who would dissect the things they saw. The things they saw involved Yasmine- who didn’t appear to ever pop up on the panel- whether she be organising the nuptials or going on dates. Now, these dates were decided by the viewers. People voted on who the Yasmeister would see judging by snippets of about fifteen seconds in length, with guys trying to be witty (in a Perfect Match sort of way) on why Yasmine should marry them. So you vote and Yasmine dates and decides for herself if it should go any further.

One thing never addressed was how Yasmine could get to know these guys, really get to know them, on the dates with a huge camera in her face and a boom mic above her head. Or maybe they had radio mics, I don’t know. There was likely a director and lighting crew just offscreen, as well. And this is supposed to be Yasmine deciding who she’ll be with forever!

There was also something intensely creepy about the way the panel dissected Yasmine’s every move. If I were Yasmine- and thank fuck I’m not, because can you imagine the humiliation?- and I saw these people watching me like this and talking like they know me, I’d be intensely creeped out. But then, she signed up for it.

And now it’s gone. It was on nightly but is now replaced by Futurama, which would be awesome if I didn’t have the DVDs already, but an episode of that cartoon I’d seen one thousand times before is still an improvement on Yasmine’s little debacle. The best part of the situation is how, now, it's like Yasmine never existed. "Who's Yasmine? Futurama's on in the 7pm timeslot, silly!" It's so unceremonious, especially after the extreme hype generated for the show. Months ago, the ads began, and now, no mention. It's all very Big Brother. The 1984 'character', I mean, not the show. Nicely done, Ten. Now you’ve just got the world’s worst sketch show to queef out, and the world will be right again.

Sorry, Yas.

Thank You For Smoking

2006-08-07T00:38:00.000+10:00

A flip of a coin had decided that I not attend a Q&A of Thank You For Smoking, but a second session the night after allowed me to eat my cake and have it too. I'd also heard that sitting in the session for the first night- the one I wasn't at- was Richard Wilkins, currently battling it out with Angela Bishop as Australia's most irritating TV personality. And we have a lot of reality TV contestants still vying for fame, so that's a pretty impressive achievement.

Thank You For Smoking

Satire should be two things: funny and smart. Thank You For Smoking is both these things, but it's not the best film of the year.

Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, tobacco lobbyist. He'd be completely hated if he weren't such a good talker. He runs rings around those we should like, those trying to take down the industry, while flat out lying about the deaths it causes. His closest- only, in fact- friends are the other Merchants of Death: Mario Bello as an alcoholic alcohol lobbyist and David Koechner as thegun mad lobbyist for everyone's right to bear arms.

In one scene the "MoD Squad" fight over whose industry in fact causes the most death- Nick proudly accepts his victory. And yet, we like them. William H. Macy plays Nick's most vocal opponent, Senator Ortalon K. Finistirre, and he's likable too, if only because he's William H. Macy... but we still sort of want Nick to win.

At one stage Nick makes a trip to Hollywood from Washington DC, with his son, played by Cameron Bright, who isn't scary in this. This relationship, by the way, becomes the emotional anchor in the film. He makes this trip to visit super-agent Rob Lowe, to try and make smoking in the movies sexy again. For a while here it looks like this will be the film's main plot, until it sort of fades away. And this is the biggest problem of the film- we have good characters, we have the funny, but we never really get a huge driving plot. It's based on a book by Christopher Buckley, and the fact that it's from a novel really show. This sort of loose plotting works in book form; less so on film.

The whole time watching this movie there was a speck on the screen. It was dust on the lens of the projector, probably, and it kept distracting me, and maybe a more engaging plot would have helped me to ignore this speck, but my eyes just kept moving back to it.

And that sounds like a really harsh judgement, a judgement reserved for a much less enjoyable film. I did have a lot of fun here. It's nicely dark, although it could have been a lot darker, and I barely scratched the surface of how good the cast was. There's also Katie Holmes, but try to look beyond that. Besides, this is pre-crazy, and she gets to say "fuck" a bunch, even if she is too young for a role of an unscrupulous hard-hitting reporter.

So there's a lot of fun to be had here. It could have been tighter, but there are a lot of laughs. Plus, it really made me want to read the book.

8/10

The Q&A began with two short films from the director Jason (Ivan Jr) Reitman, the first of which had the worst boom work ever. Seriously, the microphone was halfway down the fame sometimes, and this was not just some MiniDV thing shot by a bunch of teenagers who'd seen too much Jackass and decided to skateboard naked and blindfolded down a hill into a creek, it was professional and on film and expensive! It was very distracting.

Reitman was funny, as a comedy director probably should be, riffing with the audience well. He mentioned how closely he did stick to the book- he wrote the script too- the only part added being Nick's relationship with his son- this was considerably less present in the book. He'd wanted to adapt the story since the nineties, and finally got the opportunity after the short film of boom got him the attention he needed around Hollywood.

He found his cast to be a dream to work with- William H. Macy apparently gets it right on the first take, every time. Reitman found himself doing second takes with him just because they had the film. He didn't mention the Katie Holmes crazy, but I think this was before the whole Cruise thing.

There's a shot in the film of Aaron Eckhart lying semi naked in the lap of the Lincoln Monument. That's perhaps one of the funniest shots in the film, and I've just ruined it for you. You can thank me later. They are first wanted to have, instead, Eckhart floating unconcious in the pool in front of the Washington Monument, but weren't allowed to get this. When the Lincoln Monument moment was concieved, they found out they weren't allowed to film that, either. Reitman instead took a shot on his digital camera, and Eckhart was blue screened onto that, later. So a shot in the finished film is taken directly front a normal digital camera. I liked that story.

Reitman's next film sounds like it'll be decent. It's called Juno, and it's about a young pregnant girl and her relationship with the people she plans to adopt the baby out to. This sounds like the plot of a painfully saccharine Hallmark Channel film, or one of the subplots in the final season of Friends- you know, that season that aired about five years after that show was still worth watching- but he's describing it as a pretty dark comedy. Sounds a lot better now.

Next time I'm going to doing a special TV edition. Except without the "special" part. The second worst show on Australian TV has been cancelled... while the worst show on Australian TV has been renewed for another season. Stay tuned.

2:37

2006-08-04T19:39:00.000+10:00

The decision was nearly impossible. Last Monday night in Sydney, there were two question and answer sessions: films being screened followed by a chat between the audience and the director. Both these films were ones I had been waiting on for some time; the Australian high school drama 2:37 and the US satire Thank You For Smoking.

2:37 was written and directed by Murali K. Thalluri. Thalluri is twenty one. He was even younger when he made this movie. Until this month it had been nigh on impossible to find information about the guy and how he managed such a task. Thank You For Smoking was also directed by a first-timer: Ivan Reitman's son Jason. While it's also being hailed as an impressive debut, there's no way it could have as interesting a backstory as 2:37- I wonder how Jason managed to get the funding?!?

But 2:37 is Australian, and while Australian films have been improving of late (last year was fantastic, this year might be just as good) it's still a risky bet, especially from a filmmaker with so little experience. Thank You For Smoking is getting a lot of good reviews and seemed to be just my kind of dark comedy.

So a coin decided for me. 2:37 it was. It was arranged. And the next morning, I found out that there was a second Q&A screening of Thank You For Smoking on the Tuesday night- review to come later. Thank you, trusty coin flip!

2:37

Giving too much away here would be criminal, so I'll only tell the first few minutes. At the start of the film, we have the discovery of a body in a high school. We don't see the body, just the blood, but we understand that someone has taken their own life. We then go back to the beginning of the day, where we are introduced to six students at the school. If you were in the shoes of any of these kids, you might consider taking your own life too.

2:37 is being compared to Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Both feature long following shots, with time constantly overlapping with multiple points of view, and both end in tragedy. Elephant shows kids meandering through the day, bored and disconnected. 2:37, however, isn't light on plot like Elephant- not that this is an attack on Elephant, which I quite enjoyed. The kids here are all at the peaks of occasionally unimaginable crises. We are presented with pretty huge plot twists over the course of the film, although these relevations that aren't quite as unpredictable as they could have been, being minorly foreshadowed early in the film. The two biggest turns in the film I had predicted to some degree, although the friend I saw the film with didn't.

The narrative is interspersed with black and white interview footage of the six students. A lot of the exposition is handled in the scenes, which could be seen as something of a cop-out, but fortunately it doesn't interrupt the flow of the film and allows for some characters to reveal parts of themselves that wouldn't be seen otherwise, with the film having such a limited timespan.

Quality of the acting varies. Melody, played by Teresa Palmer, probably fares the best here. She resembles Abbie Cornish and is perhaps just as fantastic an actress. Charles Baird, as "Uneven" Steven, is also great, and will break your heart. The weakest actor is Frank Sweet, son of Australian TV star Gary, who himself appears briefly as a teacher. Sweet the Younger, however, has the most difficult character to work with. Marcus is a slightly awkward, extremely academically focused boy, pressured by his father (unlike his sister Melody, who is ignored) but there's more to his character than this, making it a very difficult role to play. I'll also make special mention of Clementine Miller as Kelly, a character with relatively little screen time, who judging by her performance here deserves to have big things coming her way. All of the actors were inexperienced when they filmed, so even the weaker performances can't be faulted too heavily.

And now for a complaint I never thought I'd make for a film: 2:37 has too much swearing. Or perhaps it's not that there's too much of it, it just often seems randomly placed in the film, f-bombs interrupting the flow of the dialogue far too often. Now, I love a good swear, I really do. But all the characters here overuse it, and this is probably where Thalluri shows his age. The dialogue all over is the weakest part of the film.

That said, this is a stunning debut. The story is brave, the camera moves through the school like a dream, and the whole film, although few experiences would be nearly as melodramatic, really does bring right back what it was like to be at school and to feel completely alone. The film is flawed, without doubt, and perhaps from another filmmaker these flaws would be less exusable, but with the film's background taken into consideration, and the passion for the project that is so so clear when watching the film, I have to give this high marks.

9/10

This is one of the times I'm happy with the Australian film industry's shitty marketing practices. The official site of 2:37 is here, and it contains cast and crew information, a tiny image gallery, and the trailer.

Do not watch the trailer.

I've not seen the trailer play before anything. The film's R18+ rating (an equivilant to NC17) would be a limitation, but even so, before it was slapped with this rating they could have played it before Cars if they wanted to. While this trailer doesn't appear to give too much away, but it gives big hints. You'll be watching for certain moments, and it is likely to make you realise things that are revealed towards the end before the halfway point. It's well cut, but also paints 2:37 as a much faster paced movie.

(On a side note, at least it's a much better trailer than the one for the upcoming Brisbane-set 48 Shades, which is apparently based on a book called 48 Shades of Brown. This trailer is indeed a lot of shades of brown, from the voice over that feels like it belongs over a movie from the early eighties or earlier to the fact that it contains an arse shot of that annoying guy from the Greater Union ads. I think beneath it lurks a film that might be decent (not great, but decent) but people who judge what they'll see based on trailers alone will give this one a miss. And I've seen it screened twice in front of movies. Including Over the Hedge for some reason. Oh yeah, and www.48shades.com is a porn site, as I've just discovered. I don't know why it's called that.)

The final credit in the film tells us that the film was not at all government funded. Most Australian films get at least some money from the government, so there's a reason this was pointed out to us, and it was something addressed in the Q&A. Thalluri applied for a grant, but being so young and so inexperienced, he was understandable (even he admits this) turned down. So, in order to make the film, he basically doorknocked the richest people in Adelaide (his hometown, and the Creepy Murder Capital of Australia) and asked for cash.

What really came through in the Q&A was just how determined Thalluri is. He was a really energetic speaker, and funny, but also willing to tell extremely personal stories about his life. You can read all about his life on the website, and all of this stuff he talked about, really candidly, in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people.

He talked about the casting process- rather than have intimidating auditions, that would weed out good performers who may just be too nervous for this, he enrolled in acting classes and found his actors that way. Another thing he mentioned was how he wanted the film to be set anywhere. We're not presented with a typical view of Australiana, so the only thing that really gives away where we are is the accents- watch the film without sound and it could be a school anywhere in the world. A question I didn't think of until after was why Thullari has given us the whitest school in Australia. Even the extras are caucasian. I've never been to Adelaide- maybe that's a less multicultural place than Sydney- or perhaps because the school appears to be fairly affluent it's a comment on that, I'm not sure.

As mentioned earlier, the film is rated R18+, the highest rating a film can get in Australia without being porn. Thullari mentioned the rating being a shock to him, but I'm going to be controversial and say the film deserved the rating. The suicide scene itself is very graphic, but beyond the suicide scene, there are themes and scenes that would be perfectly at home in a Todd Solodnz film. Watching 2:37 is, at times, a difficult task. If it didn't get an R rating, it would have got MA15+, meaning anyone could watch it if with parents.

But more than anything, Thullari said he wants the film to save lives, meaning the most important audience is teenagers. And teenagers really should see this film. I do believe it could save lives. Thullari said he'd willingly create an edited version of the film, one suitible for a lower rating, although I can imagine this to be a very hard thing to do. So, beyond an overhaul of our ratings system, I'd suggest everyone under eighteen, get a fake ID. Or find a cinema that isn't particularly strict on ratings laws. Wait to DVD and rent it out- kids who work at video stores don't care about ratings. This film should be seen.

Just this morning, as I'm editing this, I've seen newspaper ads for the film, which doesn't open for almost two weeks. It's getting advertising, at last. It could be a successful movie. Or its target audience could just go see Click again. Let's hope its the former.

Bandwagons Are Fun

2006-08-04T18:29:00.000+10:00

Maybe I'll become addicted to this thing. Perhaps I'll forget it altogether. All I know is that the internet, and specifically, Web 2.0 (according to the mega useful communications degree I'm doing) allows for anyone and everyone to create their own little world on the web despite how uninteresting that little world might be.

So here we are.

I'm a Sydney university student (but not a University of Sydney student) who wants to get into film who watches films and loves film. Also, TV is neat too, when it wants to be. So that's what this will be about. I'm going to the Toronto Film Festival in a month's time (just don't tell my uni that) and decided that I should keep some sort of log of things seen, and figured, hey, why not copy my friend Glenn and do a whole blog devoted to everything I watch?

And that's the story. Coming soon: reports from the two Q&A screenings I attended this week- 2:37 and Thank You For Smoking.