Merrick here...
Here's Latauro with entertainment news from the Land Downunder, where where beer does flow and men chunder.
Here's Latauro...
If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
AICN-DOWNUNDER
Once again, I gotta show my true colours and profess my true identity as a complete "Doctor Who" geek. Totally obsessed with it. Doesn't mean I can't tell the good from the crap, though. My obsession doesn't hinder my ability to judge each episode on its individual merits.
That said, this Saturday the ABC here in Australia will begin the new series beginning with "The Christmas Invasion", the first full episode featuring David Tennant as the Doctor. I gotta tell you, it's my favourite episode of the series. Ever. The fannish purist part of me hates myself for saying it, but it's brilliantly-written, building anticipation and introducing the Tenth Doctor in the most satisfying way possible. The BBC is one episode away from the Series Two finale, and there's some incredible stuff to look forward to. (New Zealand begun playing the new series only a few days ago.) So if you've never watched the show before, I implore you to give it a go. Just try this one episode and see what you think. Trust me.
Okay, cheers for the indulgence. Now onto what you actually came here for...
NEWS
The three or four of us who thought Ang Lee's HULK was brilliant (we had purple pants made up for meetings) have been listening with varying degrees of concern and anticipation to the talk about which direction the sequel will take. The popular theory was that they were going to start from scratch, ignoring the first film as well as SUPERMAN III and IV (apparently everyone's doing it now). Now, according to Moviehole and Superhero Hype Boards, Avi Arad has told SFX Magazine that Bana isn't necessarily out, as we all thought he might be. Sure, Bana hasn't heard a word out of the production despite the contract clause requiring him to return for the sequel if the right strings are pulled, but it's not a definite denial. So, hot off the presses: producers haven't ruled out considering Eric Bana for a role in HULK 2! And to think people told me I wouldn't be able to find anything to write about this week... pfft!
Are you an actor whose career is diminishing a little? You want some publicity to spruce up your IMDb trivia page? Take a holiday to New Zealand. Every actor who visits the islands inevitably finds themselves rumoured to be in the next Peter Jackson production. Now before you book your ticket, Mr Schneider, and find yourself linked to the part of Covenant Grunt, it doesn't always result in a role. Sure, Denzel Washington turned up in New Zealand as was suddenly playing the dead girl in THE LOVELY BONES, but the truth soon outed. Washington told New Zealand newspaper The Dominion Post that he was actually meeting with Mr Jackson to discuss the possibility of Weta Digital doing the effects for the next film Denzel will be directing. IMDb has his next film listed as THE GREAT DEBATERS, a true story about a man in 1935 who inspires students to form a debating team. And I'm guessing there's a dragon or griffon or something in there, or will be once Weta's done with it... Big up to scooper "HC" for the heads-up.
Variety is reporting that the Weinsteins have picked up US distribution rights to LIKE MINDS, a serial killer film starring Richard Roxburgh and Toni Collette. Hang on, what? How did I miss this? Oh yes, the Australian film industry's complete inability to build up any sort of pre-release anticipation of our product. That's how. Well, the film, which was made for $8million (approximately one hundred and seventy-four times larger than the median) will premiere at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival, and find its way to Australian cinemas come October.
The FFC just approved the budget for DISGRACE, an adaptation of J. M. Coetzee's South African novel about a professor who has an affair with a student and becomes embroiled in post-Apartheid politics. John Malkovich will play either the professor or the student (no, it's the professor). The script was written by Anna Maria Monticelli (LA SPAGNOLA) and the film will be directed by Steve Jacobs (also, funnily enough, LA SPAGNOLA). Filming is set to begin... NOW!
Finally, there's a big non-controversy not-quite-brewing about LORD OF THE RINGS. Remember those films? We're not done with them yet. The other week, we told you about (or reminded you of) the new DVD editions that will combine the theatrical editions with the extended cuts. Well, included on the DVD will be barely-before-seen documentaries about the making of the film from NZ filmmaker Costa Botes (who co-directed FORGOTTEN SILVER with Jackson). What's the problem? New Line made some cuts to the documentary without consulting Botes. Such cuts include Orcs singing "Stand By Me" (cut for music rights reasons), actors swearing a lot, and shots containing certain volcanoes that New Line had promised the local Maori population it would not show on film. Judging by Botes's reaction, it's like cutting the shark out of JAWS or the unintended funny out of THE DA VINCI CODE. If you're up for a double or triple dip, you can witness the massacred footage this August. Cheers to stuff.co.nz and Black Magic.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
2006 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
At 11am, tickets went on sale. At 11:15am, I'd booked most of my films. At 11:30am, I was on the phone to the MIFF operator asking why my bookings hadn't worked. It was a rich, full day for everyone involved. Nevertheless, if you're not sick of AICN-D's Melbourne-centricity because you yourself live in Melbourne, you might want to start making your bookings. There are far too many unmissable films playing this year; quitting your job may not be a stupid idea. Head to http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/ to make your bookings.
4TH ANGRY FILM FESTIVAL
AFF is getting bigger (and angrier) with each passing screening. This coming Tuesday (July 11th), the festival returns to 393 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy (First Floor). Rock up at 7:30pm, have your $10 ready ($8 concession), and check out the films that made the cut. For more info, check out http://www.angryproductions.org.
THE GARTH METHOD
Australian feature comedy THE GARTH METHOD has been getting quite the reception around the traps... so much so that the film is now playing regularly here in Melbourne. Want to rock along and enjoy a satirical mockumentary, simultaneously supporting a local filmmaker and a worthy charity, and, on top of all that, enjoy a beer during the film, head to http://www.thegarthmethod.com and follow the instructions.
9TH REVELATION PERTH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
AFTERLIFE, a nine minute film from director Dean Francis, will play at the West Australian film festival this July. The following month (August, for those who've begun the weekend's drinking), the film will scoot over to the US to play at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival.
BOX OFFICE
The Stan of Meel enjoyed its solitary week as king of the box office before its inevitable swindling by pirates (both internetty and Johnny Deppy). As for spot number two, Creationists have another card up their sleeve: try as it might, science can not explain why anyone went to see Adam Sandler's CLICK. (Conversely, you could use this same evidence as proof of the non-existence of God. Debate it in talkback below!)
1. SUPERMAN RETURNS
2. CLICK
3. OVER THE HEDGE
4. CARS
5. THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT
RELEASED THIS WEEK
Wim Wenders sends Sam Shepard in search of Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Adams is impregnated with an Oscar nomination (take a second to picture that), Jerry Bruckheimer is given the keys to Fort Knox, Kiefer Sutherland has twenty-four hours to end/start bloodshed between the British and the Maoris, and Colin Friels shoots some guys.
DON'T COME KNOCKING
JUNEBUG
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
RIVER QUEEN
SOLO
REVIEWS
It's not like I don't have enough reviews for you below, but there should have been one more. Car trouble prevented me from seeing the new Australian film JINDABYNE, which I'd been looking forward to for a while. For those who don't know, it's about a group of friends who go on a fishing trip, find a dead body, and don't report it until their trip is over. For those (like me) who thought it sounded a lot like one of the plots from Robert Altman's SHORT CUTS, it is: both films were based on the short story by Raymond Carver. Anyway, I'll try to catch it soon and get a review up.
FACTOTUM
I wasn't sure if I should review this or not. By the time I got around to using the in-season passes, FACTOTUM was pretty much in its final days. What would be the point in reviewing it if nobody would then have the chance to see it? Anyway, yesterday I noticed that it hadn't come out in the US yet, so for once, Yanks, this one's for you. Happy Independence Day.
I didn't know who Charles Bukowski was before I saw this film. I've since learned he's something of a counter-culture icon; an author I probably should have heard of by now. Still, you don't need too much background info going in. Matt Dillon is Henry Chinaski, a man who -- through circumstance or choice -- cannot hold on to a job. He switches work nearly as often as he switches women, and the only consistency in his life (aside from drinking) seems to be his writing. He's always writing stories and sending them in to the literary journals he considers worthy, though never with any success.
If you're wondering what the plot is, that's pretty much it. In fact, when my companion complained that the film had no resolution, I pointed out that there was nothing to resolve. The film is more of a character study than a narrative, and it takes great joy in lingering in its own world. The problem is that it spends a little too long lingering, and even the more patient viewers will find themselves wishing for a little more action. And by "action", I don't mean car chases, but... well, anything really.
Beyond the lack of narrative drive, however, the characters themselves are pretty interesting (which is a good thing for a character piece). Dillon's Chinaski isn't always the nicest guy in the world, and you don't always like him. In fact, there are some specific scenes where you'll downright hate him. Still, watching him interact with any of the characters, from Lily Taylor's Jan to Marisa Tomei's Laura to Fisher Stevens's Manny, fascinates you. He's such a strangely insular character, you're drawn in wondering how on Earth he's going to react. Not to draw too lazy a comparison, but it's a bit like the anticipation whenever a character approaches Johnny Depp's Raoul Duke in FEAR AND LOATHING: he's so insulated in his own world, you have to see what he's going to do when somebody normal tries to engage him. Now, Chinaski isn't anything like Duke, but he definitely has his own ideas about the world and how it works.
Thinking back on the characters, it occurs to me how delightfully ugly they all are. Not so much that it'll put you off the film, but everyone you meet (rich, poor, happy, successful) is fairly pathetic in their own right. Nobody really seems happy in their own life (not even Real Estate Agent Joss Whedon Lookalike). It is, I presume, a characteristic of Bukowski's work, because there's something so terrifically integral about it, as if merely showing you these characters is the whole point. Which, as I think I established before, it is.
If you're a fan of character studies, this one is pretty good. Dillon, Taylor and Tomei are all on top form, as you'd need to be for a film like this. I still think director Bent Hamer could have put a little more work in to keep things moving, but overall it's an interesting film that easily deserves a look.
THE BOOK OF REVELATION
There's a balancing act that you experience with some films. A year or two back I attended a somewhat questionable screenwriting seminar with a producer and screenwriter from America (it was a gift from a family member, so I felt compelled to attend). They quite confidently stated that an audience will make up its mind about a film within the first minute of screen time. I spent a long time thinking about that concept, weighing it against my own experience and the experience of people I knew, until I decided that it was complete bollocks. THE BOOK OF REVELATION goes for 117 minutes, and I'm still not sure what I thought of it. It's a film I couldn't quite put my finger on; I wasn't sure where it was going. It was well made, sure, but I was waiting for that titular moment of revelation that would dictate whether I'd enjoyed the film or not.
As it turns out, THE BOOK OF REVELATION is a somewhat ironic title. Nothing is directly revealed, and there's not really a book. It doesn't really answer the questions it raises, but I'm not one hundred per cent sure it raises those questions in the first place.
Director Ana Kokkinos says the film is "not easily categorised and defined". That's true as an audience member, but part of me wonders if Kokkinos had a point to make with this film. She says the film is about reversal: man as victim, woman as perpetrator. I'm struggling with this concept, because I'm not sure if the manner in which it was explored justified the film at all. I'm not saying it didn't -- I won't, in this review, describe the film as pointless or meaningless -- but I'm honestly searching through my memory of it so I can discover if there was one that I missed completely.
I won't delve too far into the plot. The basic premise is described above in the quote from the film's director; you don't really need much more going in. Superficially, it's terrific. All the acting (particularly that of Tom Long, Colin Friels, Greta Scacchi and Deborah Mailman) is impressive; the cinematography is rich; the score is superb. All the surface elements were there, which is a good thing given I don't know whether I would have survived to the end without them. Most films are required to have a point, and to at least let the audience in on what that point is at some point. Without that point, that purpose, you need something to keep us hanging on. Yes, there's a mystery of sorts here, but you realise almost immediately that it's not one that will be explicitly solved. Consequently, the elements that keep you in your seat throughout are those aesthetic qualities (acting, cinematography, etc).
I'm also curious as to whether this film counts as pornography. It has some pretty explicit images. A quick check of the accepted definition says that pornography is sexually explicit material intended to cause arousal. REVELATION is fairly, well, revealing when it comes to the sexual abuse of our protagonist, but I don't think that -- like Winterbottom's 9 SONGS -- it's supposed to arouse us. Sure, there'll be people who will be turned on by its particular brand of masochism (just like there are people who will get turned on by Imax nature documentaries about squirrels mating), but it'll be a small minority. It's disturbing stuff (especially at 9am...), and the only group who are really going to get off on it will be the Australian Family Association. Somehow, I think REVELATION will get a lot of free press from the AFA, who will no doubt set out to protect children from a two hour art-house film they'd otherwise be clamouring to see. Ahem. Sorry, a bit off-topic there...
I had absolutely no idea what I was in for going into this film, and, ideally, that's how all films should be experienced (I only skimmed over the review AICN-D published a couple of weeks back because it contained such massive spoilers). While I'm not sure if I enjoyed it, or if I missed the point entirely, or if it really had a point to begin with, I do want to recommend it. Many films of this nature have one singular screenwriter. This film had two (Kokkinos and Andrew Bovell), and it was based on a book by a third party (Rupert Thompson), so we can be fairly sure that it wasn't an entirely insular and self-obsessed process. I mean, with two screenwriters there must have been discussions about the point and the direction and the meanings. Somewhere, someone must know why there was a pressing need to make this film. Some of you are going to hate it, some of you are going to love it, but it's worth going in to discover which way you'll go. It's a film that deserves a healthy amount of debate, and I'd really like to hear some more takes on it.
The film premieres at the Melbourne Film Festival, and will be released around the country in August.
COURT OF LONELY ROYALS
If there's one thing that SOLO made me realise, it's how much this country is lacking in good genre films. Sure, there's a place for the teenage-girl-living-in-the-outback-going-on-a-journey-of-self-discovery films, but those places seem to be every third spot in the local release schedules. Why aren't we funding a more diverse range of local films?
Rohan Michael Hoole's COURT OF LONELY ROYALS does something that may throw you at first: it has an interesting premise. Shocking, no? The film begins at a cafe with a sign stating: "Trespassers will be executed." It's a sign that appears to be cute until we're suddenly introduced to its literalness. This is one of those films that feels like it's set in the very near future, or perhaps even a very similar alternate reality. Politics and law enforcement are a lot heavier-handed, and seem to work in opposition to the criminal fringe elements whilst still using it when convenient. The story centres on three people whose moral centres are fairly ambiguous. They engage in prostitution and murder; jobs that prevent them from really connecting with anyone, no matter how hard they try.
This film has a style all its own. The end credits thank a lot of well-known directors who were clearly big influences to Hoole, but there's no direct aping. The fantastic opening sequence sets up a jarring, disjointed style that appropriately reflects the lives of the characters, and this style is continued throughout the film (though, thankfully, it pulls back before it becomes overwhelming). The colour palette is pushed in every scene, and we're left with a world that doesn't look quite right. I found it amusing watching Melbourne in the GHOST RIDER trailer, but seeing my home city in COURT just feels wrong. There's something disturbing about the way the town is presented, something unwelcoming. It fits the mood of the film perfectly, and sets up the film's world better than any expository dialogue could ever hope to do.
Years ago, my friends and I hired a bunch of videos (as we did every weekend) and watched as many as we could before we fell asleep. The last film of the night was THE USUAL SUSPECTS, which we knew nothing about at the time. All my friends fell asleep early on (it was pretty damned late), and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes open. The now-famous end sequence of that film was so powerful that it actually pulled me out of my stupor. Imagine the sleepiest you've ever been without being asleep, then watching the end of SUSPECTS for the first time. I knew I'd witnessed something powerful, but I didn't know what it was. That's almost what COURT feels like. There's a disjointedness to the film that's reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai's FALLEN ANGELS: you feel like you're being pulled either into or out of a dream even as you're staring at the screen. I know I missed many of the salient details, but it didn't matter; the film had pulled me in and I was just standing around, checking out the world. Imagine you're playing a link-up video game with some other people. While they're off fighting the big battles, you're over in a corner admiring the scenery and just checking everything out. I know it's an exceedingly nerdy analogy, but that's the way I watched the film. I can pick up story details and the specifics of plot mechanics in a second viewing.
The film certainly clicks along at a good pace without any significant dips in the narrative, but the highlights are the opening sequence and the closing scene. The ending of the film appeared, at first, to be a fairly stereotypical indie film ending, and I felt the film losing me. Then something happened, and it changed gears. I don't want to overhype the ending because it's best enjoyed without expectations, but the final scene is so delightfully understated that the entire film was, in my estimation, raised up a few notches. There's an unexpected subtlety to it, and I still can't figure out if it was incredibly depressing or incredibly hopeful. No doubt you'll all come away with your own interpretations.
Hopefully, this marks the beginning of a new trend in Australia: filmmakers with something to say, and the talent to say it. Keep your eyes open for this one.
NEXT WEEK
- James Caviezel to star in a sequel to his 2003 film THE HIGHWAYMEN, this time hunting down a British character actor who's killing off his competition in THE NIGHYWAYMEN
- Jamie Foxx and Kanye West to star as a pair of millionaires who set out to save Broadway and diss hos who are only after their cash in GOLD DIGGERS OF 2007
- Michael Apted signs on to a new film due for release in 2068, the documentary 112 UP
Peace out,
Latauro
AICNDownunder@hotmail.com
