Zack and Miri: A Review

Zack and Miri Make a Porno sounds like it should be awesome, but it is a disappointment.

On paper, this movie wins the internet:

The idea of Kevin Smith embracing the style of recent 'Apatow style' comedies should be a 'best of both worlds' type of deal, and the plot - two broke, platonic friends decide to make a porno to get out of debt - sounds tailor made for a filthy, hilarious romp.

But it doesn't really work. The film swings between filth and cheesy sentimentality. It feels like two competing movies a lot of the time.

The premise that pornography has gone mainstream is mentioned in the film, and is unwittingly proven by the tameness of proceedings. The concept hangs there with nothing really to support it. The love story grows to encompass the whole plot, so that the initial idea of the film being made is abandoned without any resolution.

Elizabeth Banks acts well and Seth Rogan is capable, but none of the other characters grow beyond a one sentence description.

Of course, a film like this can often get a pass on all else if it is funny. Sadly, Zack and Miri isn't all that funny either. While there are some great gags, it's not consistently hilarious like, say, Anchorman or Clerks, which both took an obvious concept and rode it for all it was worth.

The Champions

Last night Leen and I watched Queen: Live at Wembly.

I'd never seen it before, but had heard good things.

Not only was it possibly the best live performance I have ever witnessed, albeit through a television screen and the mists of time, but I ached to be in the audience.

When Radio Ga Ga had thousands of people clapping in unison while Freddy holds them in the palm of his hand, I kind of felt like I had missed all the best stuff that will ever happen.

If you ever get the chance to watch the concert do so. It will fill you with awe and crushing despair.

That is rock'n'roll.




Photograph provided by Orange_Beard

Worst ending ever?

Did Battlestar Galactica Have The Worst Ending In Science Fiction History?

Head over to io9 to find out!

My take?













Yep.

Digital Wrong Management

Digital Rights Management software needs to be invisible unless the law is broken, or it will not work.

I struck upon the above phrase while chatting with my brother the other day, and I think I've finally summed up my problem with the whole copyright debate.

I like to watch TV and movies. I do not want to steal them, and I don't want to sell them. With this in mind, I'm cool with the companies that provide these things including software to prevent me from swiping it, but not if it prevents me from using it.

It sounds so simple now, but it's sadly unattainable at present. If I want to watch a movie in my DVD player, then copy it to my computer and stream it to my PS3, I should be able to do so. I'm not breaking the law. but DRM prevents me from using files outside of a narrow definition set by the distributor. The rights being managed are certainly not mine, and that sucks.

Wake in Fright: A Review

Wake in Fright was filmed in my hometown of Broken Hill in 1971. It has been restored and screened in the city this week. The following review was written for the local newspaper, where I happen to work.

As brutal and unforgiving as its outback setting, Wake in Fright is a valuable look at Australia's regional heart.

Filmed mostly in Broken Hill in 1971, Wake in Fright follows John Grant (Gary Bond) as he grapples with a world he is ill-equipped to deal with.
Grant leads an unwelcome existence as a teacher in the Australia outback.
He is heading to Sydney to reconnect with the girl of his dreams, but he has to pass through Bundayabba first.
"The Yabba" as the locals call it, is Broken Hill in everything but name. The film is based on Kenneth Cook's novel which details his experiences in the Silver City.
Well-educated and well-spoken, Grant is an obvious outsider in the Yabba, and he derides the locals and their game of two-up as simple and crude.
Seeking to raise enough money to flee far away, however, he bets big and loses everything. He wakes the next morning penniless and more enmeshed with the Yabba than ever.
Subject to the locals' hospitality, Grant is enveloped in their hard-working, hard-drinking world, and any mention of escape is met with the demand to relax and have another beer.
Wake in Fright is a confronting film that pulls no visual punches. The graphic result of a kangaroo shoot is laid out on screen and intercut with the hunters' joy, and a drunken night out with the boys is heavily implied to end with rape.
The portrayal of outback Australians can be hard to swallow, but ultimately feels genuine. Everyone in town is honest to a fault and endlessly hospitable, but the celebrated trait of mateship has been forged into a frightening point of brutality.
Drinking is a way of life. Anyone will buy you one, but be prepared to drink it down swiftly. Friendly wrestles turn sour. A night out might have you grappling with a wild animal.
When local cop Jock (Chips Rafferty) befriends Grant, he buys him a beer and stares imposingly until it is sculled. Excellent performances and solid direction make moments like these - and there are plenty - feel suffocating and uncomfortable despite the wide-open landscape.
It all conspires to make the Yabba seem welcoming yet terrifying. Grant could easily live there forever, but he may never leave - or return to sobriety - again.
It's not hard to see why a 1970s audience, unaccustomed with seeing themselves up on screen, would've rejected such an unflattering portrayal. Modern audiences may dismiss it as the past, but the message rings true. The brutality of a population that is drinking its way through a hot, dirty existence is food for thought.
The character of Doc (Donald Pleasence) is repulsive. Unable to practice medicine in Sydney due to his alcoholism, he has come to the Yabba where his condition is "barely noticeable". He isn't a local, but he's has been welcomed by all and that is in itself a damning indictment. His character exhibits the most obvious homosexual undertones, but the tension of that with the blokiness inhabits much of the story.
Local lads and good mates Dick and Joe (Jack Thompson and Peter Whittle) loom large as towers of bush masculinity. They drink, fight, drink and shoot together, and seem like genuinely nice guys as long as they aren't too drunk - but they often are. The entire cast comes through as well-rounded and each character feels full.
The scenes of a roo shoot include animals being shot to death on camera. It's disturbing and something that could not be done today. A note at the end of the film informs that the shots were fired by licenced hunters, but it still stings.
Wake in Fright has special significance for Broken Hill viewers, as their city takes pride of place. Watching the city's unique architecture move by in the background is a treat, even for those too young to have seen it back then.
It's a testament to the city's heritage value that, while the city looks different in many ways, its spirit - for better and for worse - remains the same.

SAD

Blogged from the hip

Antici .... pation

God I hope that 'in the oven pizza' is for me.
Blogged from the hip

Post-art refuse

Blogged from the hip

@ art

Blogged from the hip

Star Trek: A Review

Star Trek is a fantastic film, and a shining example of a summer blockbuster done right.


Our local cinema started screening this a month late. In internet terms, it might as well have been a decade ago. So I do apologise for the lateness and lack of relevance, but I like to fill the blog with things that have impacted upon me, so this demands a place.

Above all else, Star Trek is fun. When the lights went up Leen and I were both grinning from ear to ear.
The film moves quickly and wastes no time. It covers a lot of ground, and a fairly intricate plot, all without dragging. I want to see this again already, and it zipped by me in what felt like an hour.

It connects emotionally, it's funny, the effects are great and the action excites. It deserves to be used as the formula for how to make a 'blockbuster film'.

As a Star Trek fan I enjoyed the extra level of in-jokery that permeated proceedings, such as Scotty having killed the dog that appeared in Enterprise and Kirk cheating his way through a test that in the past, had been used as an example of his prowess.
But the joy of this film is that such knowledge is unnecessary. The old characters are recreated lovingly and acted superbly, and they're such a part of the culture that they feel familiar even to people who have only seen them via parody in the Simpsons and such.

The story is a masterstroke of reimagination. The mechanism of time travel effectively recreates the characters and allows a fresh direction without invalidating what came before. The original Spock lives in this universe, and that means that this timeline demands that the last once took place in entirety - you cannot have one without the other. I love that. It's smart.

The plot is unashamedly sci-fi, what with time travel and alternate realities and black holes and such. The mcguffin is red matter and is just that. It receives no further explanation beyond being red and creating black holes, because that's all we need and who cares about the science? Recognition of this fact is welcome.

The movies feels like Star Trek. I was worried going in that the movie would feel so new that Trek would be jettisoned, and I would be forced to admit that the secret to making a good Trek film was to get rid of Star Trek. On the other hand, even as a fan I recognise that the last couple of films have been terrible and stale. This line is straddled expertly.

Kirk and Spock were excellent. The souls of these characters were rock solid and I'm very happy to see them sharing the main role. Scotty and McCoy were standouts for me. I felt like the actors behind them (especially Pegg) were always about to turn to the camera and scream "I'm in Star Trek and it's awesome!". That enthusiasm permeated their performances.
The entire main cast was fun and useful. At the end when they are together as a unit and they're about to head off on adventures, I was genuinely happy for them.

My brother Kyle is a dedicated Star Wars fan who has spent a lifetime creating new and interesting ways to make fun of my love of Star Trek. He made the following statement:
"It depresses me to admit that I enjoyed this film more than I did any of the Star Wars prequels". I thought that in the cinema when Scotty's weird little sidekick came on and did not suck, and when Kirk is running across the surface of Hoth towards the cave where Obi Wan lives.
Star Wars Episode I taught me that alien sidekicks destroy films. Abrahms reminds that this is not the case. I can't help but wonder if that is deliberate.

The action is well done and very much in the vein of Firefly. The lack of sound in space is striking. The idea of this fantastic outer space action being physically filmed also comes across.
The world feels lived in without being squalid. It feels real. Leen pointed out that, after watching hundred of episodes where the transporter is used to do anything and everything, this movie shows the device in a more realistic fashion. It is not perfect, and if it doesn't work, it's serious. Whereas Enterprise rewound things to pre-transporters and robbed the show of a cornerstone of the setting, this one takes things back to when things were still great and high-tech and Trekkian, but before they were pedestrian.

Nero was a great villain. His actions brought about by events beyond his control, he is a twisted chap and not a cutout evil bastard. The idea that he is just a miner whose ship is large yet insignificant at home, but an unstoppable engine of destruction in the past, is great.

Due to me seeing this a month after the rest of the internet, I walked in with a general knowledge that the film was considered excellent, as well as some stray plot points I had failed to avoid under my belt. Burdened with sky-high expectations and robbed of total unfamiliarity with the plot, this film still managed to impress me beyond my hopes. This is very rare, and is to be cherished.

Photo of a thing I want provided by Timm Williams

DO NOT WANT

Blogged from the hip