Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man from the ass-end of the globe, Latauro! He's got a bunch of goodies for ya' this week. Enjoy!!!
People don't throw things at me any more. Maybe because I carry a bow around.
AICN-DOWNUNDER
I totally missed it, but last week marked my third year writing this column. I mention it because (a) it's AICN's 10th anniversary, and it's clear the majority of that success came from my contributions, and (2) I couldn't find anything else to discuss. Hey, I've seen new Australian film CANDY! Scroll down for the buzz.
NEWS
About a month ago, my housemate picked up a book I'd been slowly walking past in Borders for years. BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE had a cover that evoked RESERVOIR DOGS and OCEAN'S 11, a title that was ripped off by Adam Shankman, and a plot that sounded pretty nifty: a group of young card counters made an unbeatable (and largely undetectable) strategy for beating the casinos at blackjack. With an anoymous invester, the group scored millions of dollars until bad stuff inevitably happened. It's all a true story, and, my housemate and I agreed, would make a terrific film. Well, Australian flimmaker Robert Luketic (um, LEGALLY BLONDE, WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON and MONSTER-IN-LAW) thinks so too, and will try to get this film out before he begins work on DALLAS. In the hands of a competent filmmaker, 21 (the film's new title) could be pretty cool. In the hands of Luketic, I wouldn't count my cards before they hatch. I'm hoping the law of averages means he's due for a good film, but I'm not wild on the odds. Hey, those are card-related entendres! News Limited, here I come...
AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
I KNOW I'M NOT ALONE
Michael Franti, the man who tore down Joni Mitchell's parking lot and put up another parking lot, won the Best Film Award last year at the San Francisco Film Festival with his film I KNOW I'M NOT ALONE. Ever wanted to know what it was like to see a musician travel to Iraq and Afghanistan in search of understanding? And have you wanted to question him afterwards, and have those questions met with answers? Well, you have some pretty specific and obscure ambitions. But you also have the chance to fulfill them! Franti and film will be in Melbourne on April 11th, Sydney on Thursday April 13th, Byron Bay on April 15th and Darwin on April 20th. Make bookings via this site right here!.
BOX OFFICE
AEON FLUX managed to hit number two on previews alone, and then rest got there via voodoo. Actual voodoo.
1. WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
2. AEON FLUX
3. THE PINK PANTHER
4. WALK THE LINE
5. THE SHAGGY DOG
RELEASED THIS WEEK
Charlize takes post-Oscar advice from Halle Berry, Jeff Waflow makes an unfaithful remake of THE WEEPING CAMEL, Maggie Gyllenhaal... wistful sigh..., Italy proves it can do more than just big budget blockbusters, and Gore Verbinski discovers a genre he hasn't smothered himself in.
AEON FLUX
CRY_WOLF
HAPPY ENDINGS
MANUAL OF LOVE
THE WEATHER MAN
REVIEWS
SHE'S THE MAN
Before the screening, I stopped in at a large coffee chain to buy a coffee. Now, normally I'm not a fan of the coffee than coffee chains produce, but this one in particular (and I'm not going to mention them by name... at least, not until they start giving me free shit) makes a pretty good brew. Not brilliant, but you can definitely drink it. Having not slept much the night before, I purchased the largest size available, and headed a few doors up to the Roadshow screening room.
The coffee was very enjoyable. Maybe it was because I hadn't had one in days (which is a feat in itself), but I really enjoyed my coffee. It was great.
So, now that I've discussed everything I liked about the new Amanda Bynes film SHE'S THE MAN, let's move on to the negative aspects.
I wasn't going to bother with SHE'S THE MAN. For a start, it wasn't a film I'd ever be likely see under my own steam, and I couldn't see it being of much interest to the non-perverted section of the AICN readership (the size of that section is entirely up for debate, by the way). Then I noticed it was based on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", and with a sudden flashback to my enjoyment of TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, I decided to go along anyway.
The first half of the film is truly terrible, with practically no redemptive features. The characters are so broad that simply calling them clichéd would be giving them too much credit. The way the whole cross-dressing plotline is introduced is wholly unbelievable, the decision arrived at as if a whim. Amanda Bynes is clearly trying her hardest, but her performance in the first half is mind-numbingly irritating. Julie Hagerty embarrasses herself by playing an animatronic version of herself. Badly.
Then, the film reaches the halfway point, and things don't look so bad any more. Maybe the coffee had spread to my system and was giving me that sense of euphoria you usually get from your addiction, but the film got a little better. David Cross appeared, and actually got me to laugh out loud (though both of these instances occurred during what were clearly ad-libbed lines). There were a few scenes here and there that could have been worse -- not the greatest compliment in the world, but the slight improvement in quality was noticeable.
The less said about the rest of the characters and the actors who play them, the better. It ends exactly the way you expect it to, with the last act all about going through the motions. And poorly-realised motions at that.
This review really shouldn't surprise anyone. It's not a film that's aimed at anyone in the vicinity, and trashing it is really a bit too easy. I was hoping it would be a surprise, something I could recommend despite the marketing, as I enjoy being positive about a film more than being negative. (Hell, if I'm going to lose four hours out of my day to head into the city for a film, I *want* it to be good.) So, here are my recommendations: if you are a particularly stupid tweenage girl who idolises Hilary Duff, thinks "Oh, hell no!" is the funniest punchline ever, and whose world was rocked last year by the reformation of the Backstreet Boys, then you'll probably find something to like here.
For the rest of you, I recommend: coffee.
CANDY
I really can't express how great it is when I get to talk about the greatness of an Australian film. I mean, you go into these things *wanting* to love them, even forgiving things you would be jumping on if it were from foreign soils, but when you're sitting in a really beautiful little theatre in Fitzroy and watching one of the best films of the year and it's Australian and you know you get to tell everybody about it... well... it's a pretty sweet feeling.
CANDY is a film by Neil Armfield (known in Australia mostly for his TV work) about drug addiction. It features a pretty impressive cast: Heath Ledger (from the TV series "Roar"), Abbie Cornish (from the acclaimed Australian film SOMERSAULT), Geoffrey Rush (pirate), Tony Martin (the serious one), and Noni Hazlehurst (John Jarratt's ex-wife). Oh, and it's really, really good.
It's very easy to dismiss films about drug addiction. I've not yet seen the Cate Blanchett-as-druggie film LITTLE FISH, mostly because friends advised me not to. "It's just another film about drug addicts," they said, eerily in unison. More in-depth dismissals of the film echoed my sentiments on most drug-related films; they fall back on the addiction as a character device, they use it as a crutch. Much in the same way that guns appear so frequently in films because they are the ultimate deus ex machina, "drug addiction" is the button you press when you want your character do something potentially unreasonable, but don't want to take the time to show why.
The other warning bell is TRAINSPOTTING. It's possibly the most famous non-Cheech film about drug addicts, giving an all-encompassing explanation (via narration) about what addiction is. It's an amazing film, worthy of the accolades it's received, but it also raised the bar so high that any film discussing a similar issue would be compared. Usually unfavourably. I've read many interviews with Ewan McGregor where he's expressed confusion as to how the film could have encouraged people to get into heroin when it so clearly showed the drug's destructive nature. While I see his point, it can't be denied that TRAINSPOTTING is a fucking cool film. I mean, it's awesome. The film starts with a cool-as-ice voice over delivered in Ewan's hip Scottish accent with Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" belting out, lots of cool cuts, and all with a group of pretty young things (they're dirty, but they're pretty) running away from The Man and acting tough. Yes, the dead baby crawls on the roof, but all the audience members who are likely to get addicted to heroin in the first place are only half-watching this bit while they daydream about looking like Ewan or Jonny.
CANDY does not make drug taking cool. In fact, even when the characters are enjoying it, there's still something very unsettling and real about the way it's presented to us. It's not preachy, but it's not fun for us, either. Armfield always shows us what the world looks like on the edges, even if there's a glorious haze surrounding the character in the middle. We're not allowed to enjoy the moment, and we're not allowed to hear pumping music that reminds us we're watching a film. We're the friend sitting in the corner.
The brilliant conceit of the film -- and one that normally annoys the piss out of me in movies -- is the three chapter titles we're presented with. We start with "Heaven", move onto "Earth", and end in "Hell". It's almost a bit smart of writers Neil Armfield and Luke Davies to put these in, as I didn't feel any sort of shift at any point in the film. Yes, their lives are complete crap by the third act, but that's what they were like in the first act; they just hadn't realised it yet. From the first, beautiful, layered, rich opening shots, they're already too far gone to come back. The opening sequence shows us two beautiful people enjoying a ride at an amusement park, and it's incredibly sad. At this point, I knew the film had something to do with drugs, but didn't know anything more... yet I felt saddened. There was something going on in that sequence that I can't put my finger on, but I knew they were both too far gone to come back.
Though I never watch the show (and everybody says this, but I really cannot sit through it), Aussie soap "Neighbours" isn't as badly-written as everyone thinks it is. Sure, it's badly-written, but not always for the reasons its barrel fish-shooting detractors seem to think. Listen to the dialogue -- the dialogue that has fallen flat before the poor actors even have time to get it out -- and imagine it written down on a page. The scariest thing for a writer, I've found, is to imagine an awful piece of dialogue as it would appear in the script, and realise that you could easily have written it and believed there was nothing wrong with it. We're so inundated with overseas product, that most writers tend to write for American accents. We write dialogue that would sound fine coming out of Morgan Freeman's mouth, but awkward coming out of Jack Thompson's mouth. We have vastly different speech patterns over here, and the biggest problem with dialogue in everything from "Neighbours" to the occasional moments in the otherwise-fantastic LOOK BOTH WAYS, is that we tend to write to the sounds that are more familiar to us. CANDY is one of the few Australian films that avoids this completely. At no point did I have trouble believing that any character could have said any line of their dialogue. It may sound like all the filmmakers did was avoid a pet peeve of mine, but it really made all the difference.
Consequently, the film is graced with not a single bad performance. From the main stars to the minor parts, the alchemy works. Heath Ledger is better than he's ever been, and it's a pity he's taking time off after the one-two punch of this and BROKEBACK. Ledger's always been very good in mostly-mediocre movies (before these films, my favourite of his films was actually TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU... no, really), but two great films in such close proximity (held apart by CASANOVA, which I'm hoping to catch at some point) have really demonstrated what he can do. When many actors would have played wounded or vulnerable, Ledger goes for pathetic. He avoids theatrics, he avoids grandstanding, and makes Dan so real, I was convinced he'd studied at least two of my friends.
I'm shocked to discover I've actually been enjoying Abbie Cornish's work for years. A quick peruse over her filmography shows me that despite not having seen SOMERSAULT, I've seen her in ONE PERFECT DAY, THE MONKEY'S MASK, "Life Support" and "Wildside". I can't quite believe they were all the same person, but if what I'm reading is correct, she's got a hell of a lot of range. Playing the titular character in CANDY, Cornish is never overshadowed by Ledger (something that would have easily happened to a less-experienced actor). She knows exactly what her character symbolises, and she plays to the meaning at every point, but all without losing her grounding. Cornish has the task of dancing backwards in heels; she manages to match Ledger's naturalness whilst still being the almost-mythic embodiment of everything Dan has done in his life. It's an impressive feat.
The supporting cast of Geoffrey Rush, Tony Martin and Noni Hazlehurst is superb, and when the credits ran it occurred to me that it's a pity there's only four acting categories at the AFIs. Someone's going to miss out. Sure, the awards have little-to-nothing to do with the product, but I find they're very useful when used in the abstract to describe how impressive someone or something is. I'd call it a five-person showreel, but it's more than that. This isn't TRANSAMERICA, where the laziness of the script is saved by the brilliance of the performance. No, everything in this film works. Everyone, from composer Paul Charlier, to cinematographer Garry Phillips and production designer Robert Cousins deserves every accolade they get. It's rare that I believe a world so completely, so thoroughly. In fact, if it weren't for the two instances of the boom dropping rather obviously into the frame, I'd describe the film as technically flawless.
It's worth mentioning at this point, as I peruse what I've written so far, that I don't personally know anyone associated with the film. I've no vested interest in the success of this film, beyond the possibility that the next guy might have things a bit easier, and we'll get another film of this calibre. But to maintain my integrity, I should also point out that film's problems. Aside from seeing that boom twice, it's worth mentioning that this isn't an easy watch. You're not going to come out feeling sunshine and roses, but you won't be reaching for the razor blades, either. It's a film you'll be hearing a lot about, and if you see it, a film you'll be talking a lot about. It goes beyond the dubious title of "Best Australian Film of the Year (thus far)"; it's one of the best films of the year, period.
NEXT WEEK
- Werner Herzog turns his docu-eye to a "Making of TROY" DVD extra WHO LET THE GODS OUT?
- Warner Bros. saves money on legal documents by getting actors to sign contracts stating they will *not* be in forthcoming BATMAN BEGINS sequel
- George Clooney confirms the script for OCEAN'S 13 will be adapted from George Nolfi's period piece TWO ELIZABETHAN-ERA GRANDMOTHERS DISCUSS GENDER-RELATED PHILOSOPHIES USING SIGN LANGUAGE
Peace out,
Latauro
AICNDownunder@hotmail.com
