Food in the movies

Thanks to you, Martha Stewart.

Lists, thanks and goodbye, 2008

It's been an interesting year for me: personally and professionally. I think it's also been a great year for the world. We've seen the first black US president elected, the Beijing Olympics were a great success, it was the International Year of Languages, petrol prices went up and then down, finally, Kevin apologised, World Youth Day was held in Sydney... and or course, lots of terrible things happened as well, but I'm not going to dwell on those. Best to be thankful for the year we were given, and hope for exciting, eventful, fulfilling times ahead in 2009. Happy New Year!

But now, down to the lists. I love lists.

My top meals of 2008

1. Artichokes


2. Easter cupcakes with mini eggs


3. Damien Pignolet's prawn entree


4. Walnut and lemon fettucine


5. Semolina lemon cake


6. Gunshop seafood stew


7. Ham and cornichons


8. Homemade bread


9. Bloody Marys and sandwiches at Pearl


10. The Mother's Day lunch


11. Dinner at Sono


12. Dinner at Mere Catherine


13. Breakfast at Locantro


14. Dinner at Busshari

My top ten films of 2008

1. Quantum of Solace


2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull


3. The Dark Knight


4. Wall-E


5. Iron Man


6. Cloverfield


7. Slumdog Millionaire


8. In Bruges


9. Young at Heart


10. Roman de Gare

My top ten albums of 2008

1. Thriller 25: Michael Jackson


2. Flight of the Conchords: Flight of the Conchords


3. That Lucky Old Sun: Brian Wilson


4. Funhouse: Pink


5. As I Am: Super Edition: Alicia Keys


6. Priests: The Priests


7. Rockferry: Duffy


8. Back to Black Deluxe Edition: Amy Winehouse


9. I Am...Sasha Fierce: Beyonce


10. 808s & Heartbreak: Kanye West

My ten most annoying things of 2008

1. Traffic


2. Bindi Irwin


3. The continued and widespread use of misplaced apostrophes


4. Humidity


5. Incorrect spelling


6. Creepy TV ads for foot fungus treatments


7. Morons who walk in front of you at the shops, blocking your way


8. Pantry moths


9. Clutter


10. Fruit that goes mouldy before I have a chance to eat it

Truss tomatoes

Don't these look like they could take over the world?

Look at their sprawling, viney, tentacle-like stems. Beware the attack of the killer tomatoes!

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell

That's right.
And to think people LAUGHED when I said I found a 50-cent VHS tape at the primary school trash-and-treasure. Not trash, but TREASURE!!!
It's got claymation, a 2-second shot of nipple, a Mad Max and Skeletor lovechild guy, hardly any dialogue, Jabberwocky quotes, lots of terrible acting and lame fake fighting, a giant rhino from the future, lobster-crab hybrids ripped off from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and a scrawny girl in hi-cut fur pants. Hot.
Looks like we've located the talent for my next creepy movie night.

Luxe dinner and a movie for $25?

We went down to Dendy Portside the other week to catch The Dark Knight. Heath was truly creepy: Nicholson cain't hold a candle to him now. It sure is all happening down at Portside these days: plenty of free undercover parking, cute boutiques and cafes, great view, and best of all, relatively uncrowded (unlike James St or Oxford St) because every man and his dog hasn't worked out how great it is yet.
The Portside Dendy is class on a stick: it's dark, great plush furnishings and you can buy alcohol to take into the movie. Nothing like saying to the attendant: "One adult ticket, please, and a glass of the pinot grigio". Ah. Decadence.
The other cool thing happening down there at the mome is the Dine With Dendy program. For $25, you get a movie ticket and a meal from one of several participating restaurants. Now this would be an awesome idea anywhere (I'm looking at you, Cineplex) but what's surprising is that these aren't your local dodge-city cappucino-and-foccacia dives: some of these are luxy places you'd love to go to anytime. You can choose from Manx, Chez Laila, Byblos, Fresh n' Wild Fish, Sono Japanese or Wilson's Boathouse. They provide a set menu for cinema patrons and you buy a special voucher when you get your ticket, so there's no waiting when you go to your chosen restaurant and they can bring your meal out quickly.
We went for Sono: gorgeous. Beautiful, stark, Japanese austere design, hot towels, perfect staff, sunken seating, incredible million-dollar river view, the lot. They brought us each a crisply-grilled salmon steak, skin on, fresh miso, steamed rice and pickled vegetables; green tea on the side. Rustic glazed earthenware plates and glossy lacquered chopsticks. We felt like royalty.
This is surely the best value deal in Brisbane. It's only available for dinner Sunday to Thursday, but better get onto it before everyone else in town cottons on.

Save Trash Video

Everyone knows Trash Video at West End. Alternative, locally-owned video store with massive collection of rare and hard-to-find and unusual stuff on VHS.

Trash is in some serious trouble these days. Here's what owner Andrew recently sent out:

ELEVEN BAD MONTHS IN A ROW have seen us sink further into debt – six grand’s worth of immediate bills in the shape of debt collector letters, over $25,000 in back taxes, and the Tax Office are ringing us weekly wanting their money. That’s $30,000 we need RIGHT NOW. And that’s to stop us from drowning, let alone treading water. Add another desperately-needed capital injection of $30,000 to $50,000 just to compete with the chain stores in the neighbourhood.
THERE’S THREE OPTIONS OPEN TO US…
1) SELL THE BUSINESS. A heartbreaking option, considering it was my Golden Child thirteen years ago. I guess children grow to adolescence and become more demanding, not to mention a severe financial burden. Maybe someone else can turn the store around. Any takers? Only SERIOUS offers, please. This is heartbreaking enough to have to be polite to vultures looking for what they believe will be easy pickings. I can see the potential and so can others, so please don’t insult me with a patronizing gesture.
2) LIQUIDATE. Sell the collection off in its entirety or piece by piece, and close the business down. The absolute worst-case scenario, but one I may have to face.
3) SURVIVE AND THRIVE. The hardest one to achieve, considering my ever-depleting well of energy, sanity and enthusiasm, not to mention complete lack of capital. Things would need to change and a lot of cash would need to be raised. Drop by the store and BUY or RENT SOMETHING. Just come to us for one week, even if it’s for a token rental from our relatively miniscule selection. Even if we are inherently creatures of comfort and habit, please step outside your comfort zone for one moment, jump on a bus and pay us a visit. You can stop us from going under by choosing to spend your money with us.

IF EVERYONE RENTED $10 WORTH OF MOVIES OR BOUGHT a $10 MOVIE OR POSTER BEFORE THE END OF MARCH, WE HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE OF SURVIVAL. Aren’t you tired of the Brisbane Lament: “I used to really like that place.” We all pay lip service to indie ventures yet spend our money elsewhere. You can reverse the process of independent stores going out of business by supporting them financially.
VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET: do I choose to spend my money at an independently owned store, or am I happy to see my money go to making big business so big it crushes small business in the process? Spend a little cash with us in the next few weeks, and see what difference it makes. Put credit on your account. Even $20 to use down the track whenever you feel the pinch. Or buy credit on someone else’s account, just to say you love them! Adapt and survive. That seems to be the message coming through loud and clear: embrace the DVD explosion. Most emails lament our situation, yet acknowledge the need to transform the business to meet changing economic and cultural patterns. Long-term plans seem to indicate keeping rare VHS titles on the shelves while expanding the selection of quality DVD titles the chain stores neglect. We will still be a niche store catering to a niche market, but potentially capturing a considerable share of that market.
Time to think laterally... Sponsor a New Release DVD. Buy a title from the “SAVE TRASH VIDEO” lists at Avid Reader in Boundary St and JB Hi Fi in Adelaide St (available from Monday onwards), and donate it to the store. We will then give you the equivalent of the receipt in free rentals (plus you get to watch the movie first!), AND list your name on the front cover. You can be a part of Trash history!
Donate your unwatched DVDs and VHS to Trash. Most people watch a movie twice, three times? One customer has even lent us over 60 of his DVDs for an indefinite period - that means over $800 we didnt have to spend on new (and good!) rental stock - in return for free rentals. Owe us money in overdue fees? Please pay all, or even some of the amount. I'm sure we will be grateful as hell and offer to wipe the excess. Or (and this is a simple one), bring those non-returned DVDs back!!!
Donate cash. The time for pride is over. We have put a donation box on the counter, 'cos at this point, every silver coin helps. Loan us some small amount, say $500 or $1000. We will pay it back in six months or a year, or when we can afford to. That way we can plow even more capital into buying new DVD stock. Meanwhile you can enjoy the luxury of free rentals for the period of the loan. Or just write off the amount and call it a gift, its up to you.
We will keep listening to good ideas, get marketing advice. Help us devise a workable advertising campaign. And above all, keep getting the word out that indie stores need your ongoing support.

Volunteer your services for a few hours a week or even once a month. Help us clean, do a leaflet run, offer me an extra pair of hands on an afternoon or evening to put movies away, and get a few free rentals in the process! Benefit Shows. A solution proposed by many, but the sheer time and energy factor to set up and promote an event for possibly very little return, particularly at this moment in the shopís history, precludes me from the equation. If anyone would like to set up an event, or series of events, I would be more than happy to put my name to it.
From Dana: “A Roller Derby, Marathon Soc Hop, anything that Happy Days did.... we do.” Don’t throw away your VHS player, or get a cheap $30 machine from the Pawn Shop. We will even rent out VHS players for a week or weekend at very reasonable rates. Don't allow commerce to hoodwink you into believing DVD is the only worthwhile format. The truth is, DVD is not the indestructable format we believe (check out some of our 20-plus year old tapes and compare them to a six month rental disc, and see if the tapes skip and freeze or just refuse to play on your machine). Also, help us keep our VHS library intact and halt the process of cultural homogenization. If DVD becomes the sole format, your choices are slashed. Once half of our VHS stock disappears from the shelves, you may never see them again.
Keep the Grass-Roots Campaign Rolling To Save Trash
You don’t need a Blockbuster advertising budget to get your message across. Show how grass-roots networks DO work, and make everyone aware how bad it is for small business to compete against the global corporatization of EVERYTHING. Do a blanket coverage of chat rooms, forums, bog sites, email networks. So I guess our future is in your hands once again.
DO WE SELL? DO WE SCUTTLE? OR DO WE WE KEEP GOING IN A MUCH BETTER SHAPE? If you come in and spend money with us over the next two weeks, we have a good chance of surviving the hump, evolving and thriving. If you don’t, we will wither and die. THE CHOICE IS YOURS. But don’t say “Man, I used to really like that place, it’s a shame it had to close down.” Use your power wisely to change things for the better, if that’s what you choose. Whatever happens in the next few weeks, at least you can say we gave it one last try.

True talk. Here's the Trash blog, myspace and website. Let's all support this local worthy business.

Cloverfield

Lordy, I shouldn't have gone to see this. Now I have more questions than answers, but I know that I like it and I want more.
Everything that could possibly be said about this film has already been said, particularly well here, here and here. The geeks on IMDB have also got a lot to say. When's the sequel coming out?

Top movies of 2007

Slate's list of the top movies of 2007 is as follows:


4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Away From Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Host
Killer of Sheep
No End in Sight
Once
Persepolis
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Eastern Promises
Michael Clayton
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
I'm Not There
Lust, Caution

Well, unfortunately I didn't see most of those. In 2007 I was more interested in a sweet filmic escape, rather than more intellectual fare. Maybe that will change this year: maybe not. My resolution is to let it be. To not beat myself up when I don't feel like doing something that I maybe should be doing.

Meanwhile, here's MY top movies of 2007:

The Bourne Ultimatum
Ratatouille
Sunshine
The Simpsons Movie
Zodiac
Death Proof
Die Hard 4.0

Bad Taste: thank you Peter Jackson

A bloodthirsty, low-budget 1987 lame-fest, filled with exploding body parts, ultra-violence (but nowhere near as disturbing as A Clockwork Orange or Battle Royale), fake blood and puke galore. I love it.

Filmed over two years in New Zealand, it was. Apparently he and his mates made the whole thing for just a couple of grand, and all they had to film it with was a old wind-up Bolex camera from the ancient days of yore. I hear that these things only run for about two minutes and so each shot must fit within that time frame.

FABULOUS!

I now own it on DVD. The best bit is when the aliens get one of their own to throw up in a bowl and then they all pass around the bowl of hot puke and drink from it. EW.

Thank you, Peter Jackson: would that we could all begin with such greatness and then move on to casting the hottest man alive, Adrien Brody, in a remake of a disturbing monkey movie, after doing three LOTRs and becoming a Hollywood legend.

Deja Vu: still good, even though we've seen it before

This reminded me of a huge pile of other time-travel movies, mostly Donnie Darko. And it made my brain fry up as I tried to work out the logistics of time travel, and how come he didn't meet himself in the future after he went back, and whether the first reality now ceased to exist now that he has gone back to alter it, and whether at the end he really knew that another version of himself had time-travelled and he was laughing about it, seeing as technically he had no way of knowing that in the future he would come back to this moment, or whether he had some kind of twin-like mystical understanding with his future self in another dimension. Totally wigged me out.
However, good fun. Not his best effort (I still nominate Man on Fire: screw you to the Academy...) and whoever she was, she was reasonable. Unmemorable, though. Notable for the footage of destroyed areas of New Orleans, including a house that was left twisted and skewed across a road, yet with people still living in it. An interesting take on American patriotism in their (and our?) current climate of political distrust, fear, and almost-total reliance on the government.

Silent Sentinel Scandal

Silent Hill
The Sentinel
Notes on a Scandal

Having now crossed these three films off my "to see" list, I will attempt to review all three simultaneously.

The most enjoyable of the three was definitely the last. Great acting from Judi and Cate, which is more than can be said for Eva Longoria in The Sentinel. Who cast her??!?!? Sure, she looks hot, but she is incredibly unbelievably unbelievable as some rookie cop hanging out with Kiefer Sutherland. Suuure. And she is OK playing ditzy depth-less roles in Housewives, but as if anyone would believe she was smart enough to be a cop. She's going out with a basketballer, for God's sake.

Judi and Cate were great, but as a teacher, and as someone who has a close teacher friend who has had very-inappropriate crushes and fantasies about sixteen-year-old boys, it all struck a little too close to home. Poor Barbara: I'm sure there are people out there just as lonely and manipulative and desperate as her (and Judi Dench's portrayal was magnificent) and so it was hard to totally condemn her actions. If anything, Cate's character deserved all she got, for fooling around with a child. Very naughty. Excellent film.

The suspensefulness of The Sentinel got pretty good somewhere in the middle, when no one knew whether or not Michael Douglas was really trying to assassinate the President, and he was just sleeping with Kim Basinger (now SHE is looking hot these days... and she must be, what, about late-forties, early-fifties?), but then it got weird and complicated and annoying and I was contemplating seeing what was on cable instead, but I stuck it out and it was disappointing. So.
Actually, I've never been able to look at Michael Douglas without thinking first "Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and secondly "Falling Down", the 90s film he made about being a societally outcast, psychopathic freakshow, walking through town killing everyone: the one that I really liked.
Now to Silent Hill. This was on the "to watch" list for months. I tend to gravitate towards extremely violent, creepy, gory or horrific films, usually ones that use fast-mo camera action, have creepy big-eyed children in them, possibly dead ones, usually some sort of demonic possession and/or ghosts coming back to kill people, and tend to involve a creepy house or place where all the wack stuff happens.

Some films of the like which I have enjoyed:

• The Others


• The Ring


• The Ring 2


• The Grudge


• The Amityville Horror


• Hide and Seek


• The Hills have Eyes


• The Eye


• The Blair Witch Project


• The Haunting

The downside here is that these movies really affect me badly: I can't watch most of them (you know, the bits when you just know something creepy is going to happen, which is most of the film) and they leave me quite tense and edgy, and not happily, filmically satisfied. Usually though the tradeoff is that I was entertained, and gripped by the narrative, which usually (I said usually) is well-written and effective.

Not so for this little offering. I thought Silent Hill was fairly incomprehensible, after they get to the town and stuff starts to happen. Pyramid Head? Knife guy? Roads disappearing into the fog? What's the difference between the burnt children, and the freaky people with no faces? Are they the ones that Pyramid Head got to? And if the cute little backstory about religious cultists burning people left, right and centre is true, and if the adult Alessa is manifesting her rage in the form of a little girl, how is that little girl also the Devil? So did adult Alessa have twins? To whom? And since when does rage equal superpowers? And what was with that nurse? And how come the town exists in two parallel dimensions? And if the darkness and the bugs turn up regularly, who is operating the siren to warn everyone? God, it was like about forty films rolled into one. Keep it simple, people!

I liked the beginning and the weird armless guy rootling through the rubbish dump, and I was assuming that it would be another great gore-fest about burnt and disfigured survivors of the coal fire exacting revenge on society. Somehow the girl would be involved. That would have been fine, and much more enjoyable. But NOOOO, we had to have some convoluted lame story about Pyramid Head. It was annoying. Maybe it was more for lovers of the video game, and maybe you were supposed to know the game before seeing the movie. Whatever.

Chloe Sevigny is the reincarnation of Rosemary Clooney

Is it just me? It is just me, isn't it... No one else sees this? This inescapable, glaring fact of uncanny resemblance?

Chloe Sevigny is a total dead ringer for Rosemary Clooney. You know, the non-dumb one in White Christmas with Crosby and Danny Kaye? And Vera-Lynn played the ditzy annoying sister? (How come she ended up with Crosby- it totally should have been the other way around).

Anyway, the resemblance only works for the few moments when Clooney sings Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me, when she is all independent and nightclub-jazz-singer, before some man melts her cold heart of independent stone and she falls into her rightful married place. For those few brief minutes, I just love her sassy attitude.

El Laberinto del Fauno

Just beautiful.

Everyone, go and see this. It's perfect!

By the way, I am well aware that Words Have Been Said about how this was a bit of a dud. A disappointment, if you will.

Nevertheless, I loved it. And this is my corner of the universe, and I am allowed to say so if I wish. So go see it.

Dreamgirls

After seeing this on Friday night with my parents and a family friend, some thoughts crossed my mind:

• No one expected this to be a MUSICAL, like a real MUSICAL, where the characters sing their lines and all about how they are feeling right that minute. The first communal freakout moment came when Curtis is all "boot that Effie! She got back, and too much sass! I'm puttin' Deena singin' lead!" and Effie is all running onstage in a huff and then everyone is all hugging her and singing We Are A Family. Groan, but what did you expect? It was never billed as an accurate doco-type account of Miss Ross and the Supremes. Things got worse by the time Jennifer Hudson started stomping around Jamie Foxx in her flat shoes and little gold suit screaming about how she's not going. Slightly harrowing by the end of the song: you could also hear the sigh of relief. Whenever we heard the tell-tale chord and the slow zoom out to mid-shot that signalled another of Jennifer's vocal showpieces, the giggles and the groans started. Plebiscites. No wonder musicals get a bad rap. It may have been a dorky musical with some annoying bits and too much Hudson, but it was done well.



• Hair. I gotta buy me a wig. A big one, like Dusty Springfield, and wear it everywhere, including to the fruit barn on Saturday morning.



• Who was Hudson paying / sleeping with to get superstar billing on this film? Talk about a showpig. It was the whole "and introducing... Aileen Quinn as Annie!" all over again. Yes, she was the lead, but we'll just have to wait and see whether the scraping and bowing pay off, or whether she will choke and become another "couldabeen" Idol reject.



• There should have been more scenes with Little Michael in them. The alternate-reality Jackson Five were... interesting.



• There's lots of talk going around about Diana Ross getting huffy about the accuracy of the story, and Mary whatshername stating publicly that the film is much closer to the true story than anyone knows, but what about Berry Gordy? Is he all that impressed with the portrayal of Curtis as a backstabbing, evil, manipulative, misogynistic money-grubber?



• Gotta git me some sequinned costume outfits to go with the wig.

Oh, Apocalypto

Just saw this at Balmoral. For starters, the gore that everyone's been yacking on about? It ain't so gory. The worst bit was when the temple guy pulled the still-beating heart out of the human sacrifice and showed it to him before decapitating him. And we saw that already in the second Indy ("Kali ma...shakti de!!") although I have to admit that Mel wasn't holding anything back. He even seems to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in slowing down the shots of people getting bashed with clubs, breaking their necks on underwater rocks, having their throats slit with huge stone knives and so on. The story did make me fairly edgy, until about two-thirds of the way through, when Jaguar Paw escapes from the marauding tribe and the huge, climactic, cliched chase sequence begins. Then I could just relax and know that he would make it safely back to his wife and child, because "(he is) Jaguar Paw! This is (his) forest!"

So to summarise: happy(ish) Mayan tribe living happily in forests of now-Mexico, maybe five hundred years ago. Village gets ransacked and torched by another bunch of bloodthirsty warriors who imprison most of the inhabitants and take them on a massive jungle march to the great temple where they are to be sacrificed to the Sun God (crops failing and so on). Luckily for Jaguar Paw, a solar eclipse occurs just as he is about to be sacrificed (gee, that was fortunate). He runs into the jungle and manages to evade, avoid or kill about seven pursuers who want him dead, as well as a panther, quicksand, a leap from a waterfall, a deadly snake, etc, all through his incredible strength, stamina, forest knowledge and self-belief (see above: "I am Jaguar Paw"). At this point I half-expected to see his murdered father appear in the night sky to guide him, in a kind of Star Wars / The Lion King thing, but only because Mel had already shown himself not above making predictable filmic references. There is a part where Zero Wolf nearly gets mashed by a tree felled by some slaves, and he yells out "I'm walking here!" Groan. Nice one. Anyway, Jaguar Paw kills everyone and makes it back to his wife and child who he has stashed in a cave for safekeeping. While he's been gone his wife has given birth underwater (really? the baby looked suspiciously unlike a newborn. Maybe she'd just been storing it for a few weeks under her skirt) and it's happy families once again. Final scene: the Spanish conquistadors are pulling up on the beach, preparing to convert and brainwash the Mayans out of existence. Cute.

So, I felt that this could have been a lot more self-conscious than it was. There was much restraint shown, on the whole, and its already been combed for the historical inaccuracies, documented here, so for those of us who aren't up on pre-Christian Mayan artefacts and culture, it looks very legit. I felt also that Mel could have made the characters seem much more primitive, and perhaps backwards, and perhaps that was the temptation, but he didn't and that added much to their credibility. Jaguar Paw would be right at home here in 2007, with his sensibility, bravery and compassionate logic. Not much call for that gruesome spring-loaded tapir-trap though.

Noticed after the film that there were a few children in the theatre that were DEFINITELY under 15: parents were there, miming out the gore and laughing as they all trooped merrily down the steps. Who sold these kids tickets to an MA 15+ movie? Shame, Balmoral!

However, Apocalyto was lots of fun, educational and intelligent. The more insane Mel Gibson gets (as in "What are you looking at, sugar tits?") the more I am intrigued by him. Quite a guy. This is a real achievement.

My top fifteen films of 2006

There were a lot of films of 2006 that I wanted to see. Some of them I got around to: some I didn't. The ones I did see tended to be the mainstream suburb-trash that weren't that high up o the list. Things like The Fog, Saw II and so on. I would have liked to have dragged myself to see some more worthy filmic offerings, but there you go. We do what we can, and I've listed the ones I missed on my Movies I Want To See list to remind me to get them from the video shop.
Out of the ones that I did get around to, these are the ones I liked the best.

15. Syriana
Thanks, Clooney, for making the most incomprehensible account of connectedness and corruption in the oil industry of all time. I felt like a total idiot watching this. That said, it was a fascinating and gripping film with some gorgous cinematography and excellent actors.

14. Crash
Everyone's talked this one to death, so I'll just say it won the Oscar for good reason.

13. The Proposition
Yay for Aussie films that aren't totally about larrikins, drinking or suburbia. Groan to this film for dragging out the tired old dialogue about Australians' dichocotomous relationship with the harsh landscape, a la Priscilla, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mad Max to an extent, Man From Snowy River, etc. We know it's important, but do we need to see it all again? Yay for David Gulpilil and for Nick Cave, and for this film's non-condescending tone. Bring on the sequel!

12. Superman Returns
Brandon Routh was great, whatshername with the different eye colours was surprisingly competent, and the saving-the-jet sequence was a stroke of CGI genius.

11. Casino Royale
We saw this at Gold Class. Lying in the back row in a giant soft recliner, champagne in hand, lost in an exotic world of fast cars, hot casinos, fast women and hot beaches (yeah, that's right, Daniel Craig emerging from the surf)- who wouldn't love it? Animated opening credits were fantastic, as was the sequence near the start where Bond chases a bad guy through a building site- cranes, explosions, 40-foot leaps...pure awesomeness and decadent escapism.

10. Snakes On A Plane
I don't care if anyone says this was a dud. I know it tanked and failed to live up to expectations at the box office, but it was a couple of hours of stupid, formulaic fun. And it had Samuel L. Jackson in it. I enjoyed it.

9. Brokeback Mountain
Thought it would be a bit self-indulgent, but it really wasn't. Michelle Williams will never do better, and neither will Heath Ledger. How far he's come since Two Hands... even if we discreetly ignore A Knight's Tale, he's really come into his own. Jake Gyllenhaal will go onwards and upwards from this film, assuming he doesn't choke and lose it and do an Ashton Kutcher. A heartfelt and honest story, and all the homophobic under-educated losers who told me "Ew, I just couldn't go to see something about gaybos" should be forced to watch this film, as demonstrated in A Clockwork Orange. They're probably the people whose idea of cinematic heaven is Jackass and Big Momma's House.

8. The Prestige
Oh yeah, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale (remember when he was in Little Women, the 1992 version, as Winona's love interest? And that redheaded Eric guy was the rival suitor? Look who went on to American Psycho and who dropped off the planet after making a few straight-to-video clunkers) and Michael Caine, ALL IN ONE FILM. That's right. Scarlett Johannsen was probably a product of less-than-inspired casting, but what about DAVID BOWIE as the creepy old magician in the woods?!?! GOLD!!! Twists galore, death, Ripperesque settings, mayhem, destruction, illusions and quite a lot of excellently tailored 19th-century mens' suiting. Brilliant.

7. Freedomland
This was surprisingly excellent. Is it a coincidence that Julianne Moore (and Michael Caine!) is in two of my top 15? She was in that really bad 2005 movie where her child goes missing, but apparently there was never a child and she's nuts, then her husband doesn't know her and all the dudes in white coats are looking for her to lock her in the loony bin, then all this stuff happens and it turns out it was aliens. Aliens all along. That was a shocker. Anyway, Freedomland is great. The scene where she is sitting with the older woman on the log outside the shell of Freedomland and she does that monologue? We were both glued to the couch. Time stopped, during that performance. It was inspired. Overall, just a really great, classily-done movie.

6. The Devil Wears Prada
The clothes! The SHOES! How jealous am I of Anne Hathaway? I want to end up like Meryl Streep: formidable, dipped in steel, untouchable, powerful, yet with a killer manicure and as many Balenciaga bags as I can carry. I did have some moral/feminist issues with the closing sequences, and the film's message overall, but I still enjoyed it. It would have been so much better though if there had been no half-arsed attempt at some greater meaning and had just been a two-hour fashion party. Great fun.

5. Pirates of the Caribbean 2
After Johnny Depp has booted that strumpet Vanessa out of the Provencal cottage, along with the two kids, and I am happily installed therein as her able replacement and Johnny's new lover, and in between me making buttered scones and cocoa for Johnny, and us skipping through fields of sunflowers, holding hands and chasing butterflies under rainbows, we will snuggle together on the limited-edition Versace couch and watch old VHS tapes of his Pirates movies, as well as Dead Man which didn't seem to get much press in Australia. It was giant in Europe though. And then I will braid and bead Johnny's hair, and do him some killer eyeliner, and we will re-enact scenes from Pirates 2 , with Johnny as Sparrow and me as Old Squidface Davy Jones, and then we will bitch about how lame it was that Anthony Warlow had to resort to channelling Johnny in The Pirates of Penzance 2006 season (who, in turn, was channeling Keith "I fell out of a palm tree" Richards) because nobody cares about Pirates of Penzance any more because G&S have become ultra-lame and poncy. Thank you, John English. Do you really have two black eyes? Because it looks like you do.

4. Little Miss Sunshine
Ah, wasn't this sweet? Little Olive in her little pageant. The pageant scences really reminded me of Brisbane dance eisteddfods. So many stage mothers, all swooping and squawking, like chicken hawks. JonBenet probably got off lightly. And Steve Carell was just great as the nutcase uncle, and Greg Kinnear is always great. And Toni Collette? She should give herself a big tick for this. Just after seeing this movie, I was really ready to rethink how I felt about her. I thought she had really redeemed herself, after Tokyo Story. Sadly, then she released her debut single, and those reconsidering thoughts were crushed. Just in time. We laughed and laughed all the way through this. Funny, bittersweet, heartwarming, and with the best, BEST, ending of 2006.

3. Thank You For Smoking
Saw this at Noosa. It was totally enjoyable, intelligent, accurate and thought-provoking. Is the tobacco industry really this bad? Oh well, we saw The Insider, so it must be. Great opening titles. I love Smoke That Cigarette by Sammy Davis Jr. but I assumed it was so uncool that I'd never hear it in public. Hopefully, this film will have introduced some more people to the glory that is Sammy. For more information, rent out Sweet Charity, and fast forward through Shirley Maclaine (rest her soul) dancing like a maniac on bridges, in hotel rooms, at her house, in some guy's house that she's dating, all shot at wacko angles in ECU, to Sammy singing Rhythm of Life with a bunch of homeless zombies in a deserted car park. Comes a close second to the glow-in-the-dark street urchin dance in The Wiz.

2. An Inconvenient Truth
I wonder why no one ever elected Al Gore. Apart from how he was illegally shafted at the eleventh hour by the crooked White House election staff and replaced with GWB, the talking puppet, he seems like a really good guy, and someone that would have arrested the damage being done around the world to the environment much earlier (as opposed to Bush's "not at all"). This film made me sit up, open my eyes, and get cranky. I still cynically believe that we're all headed straight to hell in a corporate shopping trolley (with GWB behind pushing), but as soon as electric or hybrid cars come into my price range, I'm buying one. Until then, it's shorter showers and taking the pushbike.

1. Children of Men
Breathtaking. After Alfonso Cuaron made the second Harry Potter, everyone carried on about how he had injected some unnecessary seriousness and gravity into a childrens' film. Hardly anybody said what a FANTASTIC job he had done: it was all "Mexican foreign directors" this and "change of tone" that. Well, now they can all go bite their socks, because Cuaron has made the best film of the year. When he wins an Oscar for this, he should take a photo of himself with the trophy, make photocopies, go see every critic who dissed him for Harry Potter and staple it to ther faces. Children of Men is an accurate and heartbreaking vision of the future. This is exactly what is going to happen to the world. Apart from the excellent script, perfect acting and inspired casting (I never knew Clive Owen was so brilliant), the cinematography is the best I've seen since I can remember. Film students all over the world will be made to watch the flawless tracking shots, crisp, perfectly-backfilled lighting, and the incredible one-shot scenes, filmed from one camera and capturing gorgeously-framed and detailed images. Just the thought of this film brings a lump to my throat. I bet Spielberg is checking on his stock portfolio already. Hold your breath, film geeks, and pray for all you're worth that Cuaron comes back from this with something just as amazing and unforgettable.

Happy Feet: aka The Voiceover Experience

Saw this yesterday. At the risk of sounding terribly glib, facetious, condescending and superior, I will just say: meh.

I was annoyed in the first four seconds when Nicole Kidman's breathy whiny voice started coming out of the mother penguin. She couldn't sing in Moulin Rouge and she cain't sing now, dammit. Hugh Jackman: yes, no one could ever fault him, or his choice in film (except for Kate and Leopold- wasn't that a shocker? Bad move, Hugh) and he is pretty awesome as the father penguin who has a bit of an Elvis thing going. Elijah Wood as the Main Penguin (Mumble): meh. When I think of Elijah Wood it makes me have a sort of double-vision seizure: I think simultaneously of the little nerd in Forever Young who runs around trying to stop a recently-defrosted Mel Gibson from carking it before meeting Jamie Lee Curtis, and hearing Frodo's voice in full freak-out mode screaming "Get off the roooaaad!!" and "Oh, SAAAAM!!" from the scene at the end of the first LOTR when Frodo and Sam are just one wet T-shirt away from full soft-core manporn. So Mumble the penguin had a lot of ...extra meaning for me.

Robin Williams as both the funky Latino penguin and the James Brown preacher penguin was great. I like him, and I had a big crush on him when he was Peter Pan in Hook. But who on earth thought that Brittany Murphy as Mumble's love interest would be a good idea? Lordy. Creepily, Steve Irwin voices one of the elephant seals, as does Tiriel Mora- remember him? He was the hopeless lawyer from The Castle.

So if I stop rabbiting on about the voice casting and talk about the movie itself, then I'll say that the central idea is very timely and very appropriate. Thanks, Al Gore. Penguins have problems because humans are fishing Antartica dry, so loser-turned-hero-penguin swims off to save the universe. He gets captured and kept in Seaworld (one assumes). Life is weird and frustrating until he tap-dances to get the humans' attention, and (this is where you must suspend belief) somehow they interpret this as "I swam all this way to tell you to lay off our fish" and there are a few international fishing conferences, fist-slamming senators, and environmental summits glimpsed through (what else?) a montage (in B&W, no less) and next thing you know, no more fishing, everyone lives happily ever after. Except, one assumes, for the fishermen who make their living this way. Oh well- it's the ANIMALS who are happy, and that's all that matters, right kids?

Meanwhile there's a love story going on, and a backstory about the ancient senior penguins who believe in Mighty Wind Gods and that Mumble's non-traditional sacriligious dancing has caused the fish shortage. They end up with helicopters hurling snow in their faces and being forced to accept that humans both caused, and removed, the fish shortage. I think the audience (the kids, probably) are meant to understand this and think "Ha! Scoff! What a bunch of unenlightened old fools, to think that just because two things occur, there must be a monodirectional link of causality!" I find this concept troubling, and I feel that it promotes a Western-centralised sense of modern infallibility, of total and blinkered reliance on technology, and most of all, a disdain and a reluctance to acknowledge and analyse the cultures of the past, their ways of thinking and of making sense of the world. If I had a child to watch this with, I would be sure to talk with them about the old penguins, and to try to look at some different interpretations. I think even Pocahontas does a better job of valuing the past than this movie, because Disney makes a point of showing us WHY the senior Native Americans hold their beliefs, and HOW their beliefs create stability and balance in their world. The old penguins are just seen as a bunch of naggy, ugly, pontificating, illogical gooseballs. Are kids cluey enough to see a difference? Can they take in the message of the movie, and then form their own (possibly contradictory) opinion?

Ah, so many questions.

Lots of funky dance scenes, though. Stevie Wonder is SO underrated. You'll get mighty sick of R&B by the end, though.

And one more thing: there's a scene where a giant earthmover falls off the ice in a landslide and tumbles to the icy depths. Floating up from the wreckage is a small doll, which Mumble reckons is proof of alien existence. Fair enough. But hang on: does that mean there were people on the earthmover? A child? Did they die? Who the hell would take a child to live on an ice station in Antartica? Nobody cares, because this is a film that values animal rights, youth and modernity, in that order.

The fifty worst films ever

Here's a list that Wikipedia's published, after a 1978 book that professes to name the fifty worst films of all time.
Interestingly, not only did I enjoy some of them, but I actually OWN two: Eegah! (1962) and Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964). They turned up in a couple of DVD packs that I bought from Target earlier this year, released under the Showtime label and titled: Wild Adventure! 20 Great Adventure Movies (a questionable, but entertaining claim) and Family Festival: 20 Great Family Movies (ditto). Each retails for $9.95 and I highly, highly recommend that they be purchased. There are a few other titles in the chain- I seem to remember a horror pack, comedy, a children's pack and so on. I haven't seen the series around for a while, but it's the kind of thing that Sanity and HMV wouldn't be seen dead stocking. Try KMart or the Pov Bin of Crap at the newsagent's.

I could rabbit on about this stuff for hours, but for now I will content myself to provide a list of films featured in these 2-DVD packs, and to discuss briefly the most seasonally-relevant of these films. Must...resist...talking about...Horrors of Spider Island.....nnngh!...I will do that in a later post.

Wild Adventure! 20 Great Adventure Movies

• Bird of Paradise (1932)
• Bride of the Gorilla (1951)
• Chandu on the Magic Island (1935)
• East of Borneo (1931)
• Eegah! (1962)
• Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
• King of Kong Island (1968)
• Mesa of Lost Women (1953)
• Prehistoric Women (1950)
• Queen of the Amazons (1947)
• She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
• Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938)
• Tarzan's Revenge (1938)
• The Incredible Petrified World (1957)
• The Lost Jungle (1934)
• The Snow Creature (1954)
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
• The Wasp Woman (1960)
• White Pongo (1945)
• Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

Riveting, eh? I WILL DEFINITELY be revisiting this list, for more in-depth discussion, but in the meantime this guy has a fantastic list of reviews that are much more technically relevant than mine, and contain juicy and entertaining pearls of background production wisdom.

Family Festival: 20 Great Family Movies

• Africa Screams (1949)
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)
• Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
• Gulliver's Travels (1939)
• Hercules Unchained (1959)
• Jack Frost (1979)
• Johnny the Giant Killer ( 1950)
• Jungle Book ( 1942)
• Kavik the Wolf Dog (1980)
• My Pal Trigger (1946)
• Rescue From Gilligan's Island (1978)
• Return to Treasure Island (1954)
• Santa Claus (1959)
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
• The Flying Deuces (1939)
• The Little Princess (1939)
• The Magic Sword (1952)
• The Painted Hills (1951)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
• The Snow Queen (1957)

There you go: 50 pixellated piles of C-grade ultra-trash for under twenty bucks. I love it!

Now to talk about the reason for the season- Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, starring an eight-year-old Pia Zadora as Girmar (stands for Girl Martian, don't you know) along with Bomar, Momar (Mum Martian) and Kimar (King Martian- but shouldn't his name have been Damar, in keeping with the el lamo naming tradition?)

I thought that this would be a fabulous airborne action flick, as the title suggests. I imagined an Independence Day or War of the Worlds-style Martian invasion, bloodthirsty aliens hell-bent on razing Christmas into the ground: lasers blasting Christmas trees into smithereens, toys going up in smoke, small children reduced to charred corpses and so on. Weeping people running through the streets, woeful presidential radio addresses ("We're done for, citizens. Save yourselves"), puddings going uneaten, mistletoe trodden under alien foot. Then, there'd be an ominous jingling of harness bells, and (pull back to long shot, cue triumphant instrumental) there, exploding through the clouds of sulphuric smoke, would be Santa in full attack mode! Each reindeer with vicious teeth bared, Rudolph brandishing 240 volts of electrified nose, whips flying, an attitude-packed Santa would drive his sleigh right into the carnage, Bruce Willis-style, screaming obscenities, while the elves in the back blasted the living crap out of the Martians with bazookas, before slicing up their gooey carcasses with samurai knives.

Not so. Apparently, in this universe, Santa "conquers" the Martians by showing them the real meaning of Christmas. How saccharinely pukeworthy. The little Martian children are becoming hopeless brain-dead square-eyes (too much Martian TV, you see) and nothing can save them except kidnapping Santa and bringing him to Mars to teach the kinderlings about love and giving. Sap, sap, sap.

Unimpressed, I was. No wonder this one is in the list of the worst films ever: clunky cardboard sets, terrible cliched acting, no plot to speak of, etc. There is one redeeming feature- the campy pink animated opening sequence, featuring the song Hooray for Santy Claus. Get some egg nog in your hand, pin your hair into a beehive and believe that for this moment, it is 1964, the space race is on, and you are watching a modern, contemporary, and technically-masterful film...

You'd saw your own leg off to get out of the cinema...three times

Saw III

We went to see this last week at Carindale. The theatre was full of drunken uni students calling out to each other and swearing loudly and trashily the entire way through. The movie, while containing the usual snappily convoluted plotlines and 180-degree twists, was under-developed, unsupported and over-reliant on gore to provide interest.

For example: in the first 15 minutes we see a female detective investigating Jigsaw's latest serial killing instalment, only to be kidnapped and held as his latest victim (original). She can't get out of the trap in time, and dies. She is never heard of or referred to again. Why is this? What was the point? Use up time? To show that Jigsaw is a big deal and he can even kill cops without getting busted? Why does no one ever replace her on the case? Why even bring the police angle in, if the remaining two hours are devoted to secondary storylines involving Becker's receptionist's self-abuse psychological issues and some guy whose son got mashed in a car accident but who is so wrapped up in himself and his own pseudo-pain that he can't, even for a moment, grasp the concept of moving on? There was no credibility whatsoever in most of the lead characters (not because they didn't try hard, but the script just didn't give them enough support). ESPECIALLY the lead guy, whose son got mashed. He was the most unbelievable character of all. The endless, endless flashbacks (who cares?), the self-indulgent and pratty ultra-modern 360-degree and fast-mo camera work (gets real old, real fast, boys), the meaningless gore in place of meaningful characters...sigh. I want to support those two Aussie boys who made this, but they really do need a slap upside the head.

AND Carindale student tickets are $10.50 (where are you, Balmoral? Save me!) AND the braindead lumps up the back swore and yelled all the way through AND we got trapped in the shopping centre afterwards and had to walk for kilometres through the dark centre at midnight , on my bare feet covered in blisters from my new shoes that I stupidly wore because I thought we were going to a MOVIE and not doing the bloody New York Marathon, and exit through the basement side door and then walk up the carpark fire escape for five stories to reach the car on the top level, but all the fire escape doors were locked (good work if there's a FIRE, say) but we didn't realise that until we had walked all the way up, and we had to go all the way back down to the basement and walk up the car ramps...round and round and round...up and up and up...feet bleeding, grumbling from pointless movie...groan.

An inconvenient film

Went to see this yesterday.

The biggest shocks were that:

-Howard STILL hasn't committed to signing the Kyoto protocol, and
-We can actually do things to turn this situation around.

The film's official website is well-designed and has some real information on what we can do at home and every day to reduce our personal carbon dioxide emissions. I'd like to buy a hybrid car, or even a Smart car, if they weren't so expensive.

I wonder if Howard will see this film. Somehow though, I doubt it. There is an great and fabulous article, written by Richard Neville, about the sad degradation of Australia and how we have become a lemming nation of lapdogs who fear innovation, marching onwards towards that great US flag in the distance. Via the mall and McDonald's.

If being 'unAustralian' means questioning our situation and especially our great leader, then so be it.