Archive for film
February 25, 2008 at 3:34 pm · tag/s : film, mp3, music, stuff
I haven’t seen Juno but according to wikipedia Anyone Else But You, the first track on the first album by The Moldy Peaches (which was released on September 11, 2001), is central to the film and a version is performed by the two main characters. The song was also used in a mobile phone TV-ad in France featuring Zinedine Zidane during the World Cup in 2006 (which Italy shouldn’t have won because they didn’t deserve to beat Australia) and in an Academy Award-nominated documentary about quadriplegics who play wheelchair rugby, called Murderball. I can see the first connection, but the other two have me stumped.
Anyway, it’s a good song. Listen to it.
January 8, 2008 at 9:55 am · tag/s : film, melbourne, strange
one of the joys of melbourne on a monday : until 4pm the nova cinema in carlton only charges $5.50 admission. of course you are not the only person who knows this and the 4pm session of todd haynes‘ i’m not there is completely sold out. haynes is a seriously film literate director and he knows a thing or two about bob dylan too. although whilst his songs are the backbone of the film, of course it is not a film about bob dylan. it is an anti-biopic : a crazy ramshackle assemblage of references. dylan’s name is never mentioned, and there are six different actors playing the bizarro not- dylan. only one of them tries (too hard) to look like him : cate blanchett, who apparently used a sock down her pants to make her walk like a man. should have used a rolled up towel. does not convince. but doesn’t matter. only her attempts at amphetaminized not-dylan irritate. film half succeeds. which means it half fails. unfortunately it is the second half. and that means you leave the cinema with a bad taste in your mouth. and it is too long. that means you spend the last third of the film wishing that he would please just shut the fuck up and you leave the cinema with a full bladder. the film is so laden with signifiers it ultimately collapses under its own weight and you leave the cinema dazed. but then haynes has a degree in semiotics so i guess he is allowed. is it a masterpiece? no - but if you know and love (or hate) dylan you should see it anyway. why? this review by larry gross explains it better than i ever could. three and a half stars.
December 19, 2007 at 9:44 am · tag/s : film
as a certified lazy slut, i am always supremely happy to find someone else has done some work which i would have had to do, but for a while there i really thought that it would be up to me to write a lengthy polemic about the most over-hyped movie of 2007, the ridiculous into the wild by sean penn which everyone seems to love, including the increasingly unreliable david (4 1/2 stars) and margaret (5 stars) on the movie show at the movies. maybe it is me but was it their move to the abc, or their advancing age which is turning these two into sentimental old bores? i used to make a point of going to see movies david gave zero or half a star to since they were bound to be worth seeing, but the old bore loves just about everything he sees these days and as for margaret, is it possible that matron is adding zoloft to her drip? thankfully after wading through thousands of gushy words on the subject of this most tedious of films i discovered an erudite review on a blog called Antagony & Ecstasy where tim brayton opines that
I have hardly ever seen a film so little thought-out as Into the Wild, which jams incoherent styles together like Play-Doh molded into some monstrous chimera of cinematic technique.
aah : relief … ok that’s two and half hours of my life i will never get back, i am off the hook, and judging by the comments on tim’s post, not the only one who is completely non plussed by people who should know better calling this self indulgent folly a masterpiece.
July 8, 2007 at 8:25 am · tag/s : australia, blog, film, free, travel
i like to go to events which are free, especially when its gratis status has not come about through sponsorship by a large multinational company. although often as not it is as much of a waste of time as an event where you do have to pay, at least i have only wasted time and not money, and mostly i am just looking for an excuse to get out of the house and to do some walking. making a decision to attend an event based on whether it is free and whether comfortable seating is provided and whether it affords an opportunity for a walk is as good as, or better than, deciding to attend on the basis of a review, or the reputation of the performer/s or director. however this only works in large metropolitan centres : in regional areas free events are just about always crap.
free films at the art gallery of new south wales
June 25, 2007 at 8:05 am · tag/s : blog, film, travel
posts are going to be a bit thin on the ground around here as i am currently in sydney doing an artist/writer in residence gig at ashfield municipal council in the inner west. apart from the fact that the only way to connect to the internet is via dial up (or by wifi in the local mcdonalds :|) all my blogging gumption is being absorbed by my ashfield blog.
interested readers may head there for some blogging action. (i am currently researching fruitbuns.) meanwhile in an update on my previous post about the sydney film festival. only a waggan would entertain the idea they can just turn up for a film at the sydney film festival half an hour before it starts and get in. oh except i did and there was one ticket left for oscar winner red road. one of the most affecting films i have seen for a very long time, and all i really want to say about it is : see this film. it is probably best if you see it without knowing anything about it, but if you want to read a superbly written review (warning : spoiler ahead) there is one by erica abeel on filmjournal international. however i missed out on the bridge which was sold out, and the rain, tiredness and back soreness prevented me from venturing out on sunday, the last day of the festival. so it goes. (oh yes : it took vonnegut’s recent passing for this johnny come lately to finally start reading slaughterhouse 5. so it goes. i am really enjoying it. in its 1969 review of the book time wrote : “For Vonnegut, man’s worst folly is a persistent attempt to adjust, smoothly, rationally, to the unthinkable…”)
edit : oops … those three words are only ever meant to be used in the context of death.
May 29, 2007 at 1:25 pm · tag/s : australia, blog, film, travel
a mouthwatering line up at the sydney film festival next month - unfortunately (or fortunately!) i am (only) going to be there for the last weekend. is the glass half empty or half full? well, i am going to miss a swag of goodies including david lynch’s inland empire which i also missed in new york last year; some very interesting looking docos : the killer within, a walk into the sea : danny williams and the warhol factory; and some intriguing music films : anton corbijn’s biopic on ian curtis called control, shut up and sing, a doco on the dixie chicks’ run in with the american media over the iraq war, a doco about a record the grauniad has called one of the dozen greatest albums of all time : born sandy devotional by the triffids.
on the other hand i’ll be there to see adrienne shelly’s film waitress, the feminist thriller red road (a kind of prequel to italian for beginners, which i loved), the bridge, a doco about the many people that suicide by jumping off the golden gate bridge, miss universe 1929 (For over 20 years, award-winning filmmaker Peter Forgács has examined the private histories of European families between 1930 and 1960, primarily using found footage.) and the monastery : mr vig and the nun (Mr Vig is the owner of a rundown Danish castle. His dream is to turn his rambling home into a Russian Orthodox monastery. The Russian Patriarch sends a delegation of nuns to assess the building’s suitability. Despite the leaking roof and dodgy heating, the nuns return the following summer lead by the young and determined Sister Ambrosija. She is alternately frustrated and charmed by Mr Vig’s recalcitrance and make-do approach. He, in turn, is struggling to accept that to realise his dream he must let go, forfeit his home and his vision.)
and then there is a thing called academy : R.Luke DuBois’ algorithmic programming technology enables an entire feature film to be shown in a perceptible way within the span of a single minute. Academy takes each film awarded the Oscar® for best picture over 75 years, compresses them, and shows them back-to-back in a magnificent play with memory and history. This fascinating project is simultaneously a savvy critique and a celebration of accelerated culture and diminishing attention spans. It also renders visible the historical changes in cinematic structure, timing and technologies.
woa … bugger twenty four hour psycho! this is what busy people need!
May 3, 2007 at 6:52 am · tag/s : film
the weirdest thing about seeing spider-man 3 was that we, the rural cousins in wagga wagga, were apparently only the third place in the world to see it. yeah we beat the americans baby. the second weirdest part was having to hand in my mobile phone and seeing it put in a plastic bag with a number and into a box with everyone else’s mobile phones. for some reason this made me uncomfortable, thinking of my phone with all these strange mobiles on top of him. the third weirdest part was being in a cinema with security guards parading up and down the aisles looking for people with mobile phones or video cameras who might be secretly filming the film. i guess the reason for this is that the film is so crap that if bits of it were to appear on youtube no one will go and see it.
because what a tedious waste of time and US$258 million spider-man 3 is. “A complex web of secrets, vengeance, love and forgiveness…”? i don’t think so. a cliché ridden, run of the mill love story, which includes every narrative device used in hollywood for the last forty nine years, except acrophobia. no one seems to have any fear of heights. although the awful kirsten dunst does a lot of screaming, it is more because bits of buildings and cars keep just missing her. and the ones that do hit her, just bounce off without causing any injuries. it can’t be her charisma that’s protecting her, because she ain’t got none. what a tepid character. and as for the insipid toby maquire, all he’s got going for him is a slightly cute mouth, which he pouts continually like a starlet. the chemistry between dunst and macquire is less than zero. and as for the other bimbo bryce dallas howard? do they have a bimbo factory somewhere out in the new mexico desert?
stan lee would be turning in his gr… but wait : he is still alive. he was one of the executive producers! how sad it would be to get to the end of your life and then to have to prostitute yourself and your much loved creation, to make a few bucks to pay for your bypass operation (say). ah, but, i was told, the special effects were great. i wouldn’t know. i don’t care. but why can’t we have great special effect AND a great story? is that too much to ask?
and where oh where were the walkmen? on myspace they claim to have a song on the film’s soundtrack…
April 2, 2007 at 8:39 pm · tag/s : blog, film, text
jairjun points to an issue of Granta which has an essay by the famous dutch writer Maarten ‘t Hart (that’s a genuine apostrophe in his name) who claims he was “hired as rat-trainer for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu in 1979.” they didn’t get on. sadly granta doesn’t believe in putting its texts online, although the same issue has an online extract from a piece by atom egoyan (one of my heroes) about his apparent admiration for the actor who began his career as peter in jesus christ superstar but who counts such films as weapons of masturbation (“It’s Armed & Ready To Blow!”) amongst his more recent starring rolls
March 20, 2007 at 7:40 pm · tag/s : australia, film
possibly the worst film ever made in australia (and there have been some stinkers!) is surely somersault by cate shortland (2004) - it is a complete mystery to me how it won so many awards - so sam worthington is ok in a blokey sort of way, and the decoder ring soundtrack is pretty good but best actress? abbie cornish may well be perfect as the next bond girl but she is completely out of her depth as “a young girl learning the differences between sex and love” (oh please!) in somersault - ok if you need a wistful looking blonde who doesn’t mind wipping off her gear in front of the camera, then she is your man - but if you are after someone who can sound convincing when she says : [insert heidi’s sudden and unlikely moment of insightful eloquence about 4/5ths of the way through the film here] you are in trouble
homeless lite the grauniad calls this unlikely cliché ridden story featuring lots of unsympathetic characters with almost no discernible motive for how they behave, for what they say and what they do - this rubbish took seven years to write? cate shortland dares to mention fassbinder’s immortal fear eats the soul and tim hunter’s river’s edge in the same breath? larry clark’s kids? i don’t feel well … your average home and away writer could pull something superior out of their arse during any normal working day and i couldn’t help but be reminded of tash in the episodes i have endured out of solidarity with my son
mind you i hope the nipple tweaker on this film received an award for doing a grand job : in the many scenes which feature cornish’s mammary glands, the perky pertness of their areolan aspect are evidence of a tweaker with their finger on the pulse
January 6, 2007 at 7:49 pm · tag/s : blog, doubt, film, people
when in new york* i.j.oog reads … the brooklyn rail - and you can even read it in wagga wagga : the current issue of this not-for-profit free monthly magazine features a great interview with albert maysles, who made the controversial documentary gimme shelter, talking about his work :
A true documentary is shot with no control. You might even call it the uncontrolled cinema.
yeah but no but yeah - as jean-luc godard told maysles in 1963 :
the eye behind the camera should be the eye of the poet. Because if the poet wasn’t there, it would be just a camera.
The Brooklyn Rail - Uncontrolled Cinema: Albert Maysles
* even if he never leaves manhattan :)
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