AICN-DOWNUNDER: RUN FATBOY RUN, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, AND THE TRUNCATED OSCARS

The only serious relationship I've been in ended in a broken collarbone and a dead meerkat.

AICN-DOWNUNDER

Every year, amongst my friends, I would sweep the Oscar picks. I was consistently the clear winner. Then more people joined in, and we started putting in ten bucks a pop and having prizes and hiring a big venue. It's quite the affair now. Naturally, since we started doing prizes, I stopped winning. Stupid irony.

Naturally, last year (the first time I did Oscar picks on TV), I was so off-the-wall wrong, I called the ceremony The Winstons and claimed they took place in November. Also, my prediction of Catherine Zeta-Jones winning Best Actress for INTOLERABLE CRUELTY as a non-nominated write-in candidate several years after the film had actually been released proved to be somewhat misguided.

Anyway, despite sweeping the big six (totally picked Cotillard, woo!), I lost most of the others. I was devastated when the best shot film of all time (ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES) lost out on cinematography, though THERE WILL BE BLOOD looked extraordinary, so I wasn't too bitter.

There was bitterness, though. Oh yes. You see, in Australia, we're naturally on a delayed broadcast. Oh, we can choose to watch it live if we want, but if you want to have a night of drinking and watching and surprises with your buddies, you'll wait until the evening and do everything you can to avoid the internet and the news reports. Many of us go into media blackout so we can enjoy the ceremony the way Gates intended.

The bitterness came from the way the ceremony was treated by its broadcaster, Channel Nine. Nine did the stupidest thing it's done since the year it revealed the results during its commercial break news report. First of all, it only allowed three hours for the event. Secondly, it began it at 8:30pm instead of 7:30pm. I was initially happy at this, thinking it would mean we could skip all of the red carpet bullshit that nobody really cares about.

But no, we got the red carpet bullshit. We got our National Embarrassment, Entertainment Reporter Richard Wilkins, standing on the carpet and making the most inane comments to the clearly bemused stars, I really wanted to stand behind him with a sign that read "He's not with us!". I don't know anyone who doesn't find Wilkins's work utterly contemptible, and I can't imagine the type of person whose standards for People On TV being so low that his appearance is anything but ball-bustingly stupid.

Okay, so we have to sit through half an hour of Wilkins destroying any good will towards our country that Cate Blanchett may have created. Fine. I can deal with that. That's what we have mute buttons for. No, my anger towards this wasted time came only at the end when it became apparent that Nine had just Best Documentary Short and Best Foreign Language Film completely from the broadcast. Just cut them outright!

I've been looking around to try to figure out what else went missing, but it almost doesn't matter. Next year, I'm going to record the live uncut broadcast and play it in place of Nine's bullshit coverage.

Oh, and Jon Stewart rules all.

NEWS

The big news in Australia this week was the publishing of Robert Connolly's white paper entitled "Embracing Innovation". It's been in the pipeline for a while, and is Connolly's discussion of where the industry is and where it needs to go. It's well-written, and it makes arguments that are long-overdue. Whether or not it has any impact remains to be seen -- our film culture is so introspective and entrenched, that I doubt anything outside a massive earthquake will do anything to shake it up -- but it's a good start. Read it for yourself here.

I'm a little nervous about the Australian film BLACK WATER, because it has the potential to be very, very good. Mediocre films are easily ignored, but from what I've seen, this could be one to watch. It just hit DVD in the US, so if you want to see a non-ROGUE Australian killer croc film, check it out and post in the talkback below.

AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS

SONY TROPFEST 2008

I didn't see it, so I can't comment on its quality (though, it's quite clearly got something going for it), but Michelle Lehman took out the top prize at this year's Tropfest with her film MARRY ME. Big kudos to Lehman and the other top tier entrants.

MUFF9

Whether or not you subscribe to Richard Wolstencroft's doctrine of rebellion, there's no denying that MUFF is an aptly-placed counterpoint to the Melbourne International Film Festival. This year, MUFF has set up its own distribution label with Accent Films, this being Accent Underground. Could a big win at MUFF lead to a distribution deal? The only way to find out is to enter your film in to the festival by grabbing a form from here.

AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS 2008

Interested in seeing Oscar nominated film THE COUNTERFEITERS? Beginning mid-April, Sydney (Chauvel Cinema and Palace Norton Street), Melbourne (Palace Como and Palace Brighton Bay), Perth (Cinema Paradiso) and Brisbane (Palace Centro) will get that film plus a bunch others in this year's festival of German cinema. Contact the above cinemas for details on the festival.

2008 SANTA CRUZ FILM FESTIVAL

I'll be checking out Australian short YOU BETTER WATCH OUT in the near future, as it seems to be attracting a fair bit of success. It's just been officially selected for the Santa Ceuz Film Festival, following on from short-listings at the Beverly Hills Shorts Festival, Byron Bay Film Festival, 32nd Cleveland International Film Festival, as well as a nomination for Best Film at the South Australian Short Screen Awards next month.

REVIEWS

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING

Before I begin this review, I'm going to have to give you a warning or two. Firstly, I'm going to be comparing this film to the works of Wes Anderson a fair bit. This is partly because MARGOT writer/director Noah Baumbach worked with Anderson, but mostly because I can't watch Baumbach's films without inevitably comparing them to Anderson's. It's the manner in which they approach the dysfunctionality of families, I suppose. I warn you of this, because I'm frequently irritated when critics focus on a certain thing that may have nothing to do with the film itself (like, say, comparing the film to another film when the film that's being reviewed never asked for the comparison), and yet I feel I'm doing a similar thing here myself. The second warning is that I'm going to talk about Anderson's films as if they are largely perfect. I know a lot of people don't share this feeling, and so I thought I should explain myself so as to fend off the many otherwise-justifiable letters from intelligent readers. I'm still going to get letters from the retards, but that's unavoidable.

I have a great deal of admiration for THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. That almost sounds like a backhanded compliment, doesn't it? Admiration is something you give to "important" films that don't entertain you. However, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE did actually entertain me. What I admired about it was that, despite the fact it didn't fill me with utter adoration that I get from Wes Anderson films, it was covering similar family dynamic territory, only without the artifice that shields Anderson's work. Baumbach's film felt very real, and the fact that it waded into difficult-to-pull-off subject matter without the benefit of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS's beautiful quirks did give me a certain amount of additional respect for Baumbach. In this interpretation, Baumbach essentially had the harder job.

No wonder, then, that I was eagerly trying to rearrange my schedule on the day of the MARGOT AT THE WEDDING screening so I could actually see Baumbach's follow-up to SQUID. With the pedigree he had, as well as the solid cast of Our Nic, Jack Black Doing Drama, and the Woefully Underrated Jennifer Jason Leigh, I felt properly primed for what would no doubt be an excellent film.

The following should explain why it wasn't.

Comparisons to other films may feel unfair, but they're an excellent way to define what works and doesn't work. For instance, everyone in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is messed up in some way or another. Nearly every character is deeply flawed, and those flaws lead, directly or indirectly, to them hurting the people close to them. However, none of the characters are unlikable. Even Gene Hackman's Royal Tenenbaum is oddly lovable, and there's a tremendous amount of earned affection for everyone in the film. SQUID AND THE WHALE may not have made us fall in love with everyone in the film, but it was clever enough to avoid a dislike of them. It would have been terrific if that had been carried over to MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, which is quite a chore to get through given every single moment contains something bad happening to one of the characters, usually at the hands of one of the other characters.

I can't imagine for a moment that we're supposed to care for Nicole Kidman's character, given what a poor mother, sister and person she is. She's often referred to as being "inconsistent" within the film, which ends up reading as "we can make her do and say anything without it breaking character, because her character does anything anyway". It's pretty lazy. Nor do we like Jennifer Jason Leigh's character. We sort-of like Jack Black's character, but that's because it's Jack Black... but not to worry, by the end of the film, he give you enough to work up a pretty solid dislike. Characters unable to be nice to one another? Horrible things happening at every given moment? It's like "Party of Five" as told by Lars Von Trier.

Aside from the unremitting "What horrible thing can we do to these guys next?", it's also filled with some very amateurish and contrived attempts to shock the audience. Defecation, masturbation, pornography, animal slaughter, alluded paedophelia... we get all of these things, and they almost exclusively have nothing to advance the story or the characters. It's just gratuitous. (And you thought only big budget Hollywood spectacle featured gratuity, eh?)

We're also given the plot device of older-man-infatuated-with-young-female-student, which occurred in SQUID AND THE WHALE as well. I'm all for personal experience informing creativity, but I'm starting to feel like I'm just sitting in on Baumbach's therapy sessions, as he covers near-identical plotlines from slightly different angles. And hey, to play my own variation on a theme, that would be fine so long as I liked the characters!

I don't actually have any disdain for Baumbach. I haven't seen KICKING AND SCREAMING yet, but up until MARGOT, I'd been a fan of everything he'd been involved with. SQUID AND THE WHALE was terrific, and I adored the script for THE LIFE AQUATIC. I may harbour a moderate hatred of MARGOT, but he's still two for three.

People can do horrible things and still be sympathetic. In film, it's absolutely essential that they remain sympathetic, particularly if we're supposed to relate to them in any way. I didn't enjoy the time I spent with these people, and I couldn't even take solace in my admiration of the film, because quite frankly, I don't have any.

RUN FATBOY RUN

Attend my formula for making a successful comedy! It's very simple, you just need to adhere to the following steps:

Step one: Cast Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran.

Step two: Attend wrap party.

British comedy has been in an incredible resurgence in the past few years, with "The Office", "Black Books", "Spaced"* and the like putting to shame the efforts of 95% of the world's sitcoms. They couldn't be more different, either. "The Office" took mockumentary form, whilst "Spaced" took a stylised single camera approach, and "Black Books" took the standard fourth wall approach and simply delivered them with the best possible writing and performance. The feeling of a collective wave was helped by the fact that nearly every actor that appeared in the above shows generally appeared in the other two shows as well. "Spaced" and "Black Books" are often considered sister shows thanks to shared producer Nira Park. Casting the overly-charismatic respective leads of those shows, Pegg and Moran, as best friends should be enough to get you buying a ticket to your second viewing before you've seen your first.

Taking off my rose-coloured glasses for a moment (each lens has a heart with either Pegg or Moran in it... it makes the inevitable car accidents oddly enjoyable), the film is actually only pretty good. Due to the fact that both Pegg and Moran have always produced work that is distinctly free of uncontrived bullshit, there's a level of expectation associated with any film that they're in. That expectation (being for something similarly uncontrived) is soon left behind as director David Schwimmer often cuts to over-the-top reaction shots. Oh yeah, Schwimmer directed this. Make all the jokes you want, if you so wish, but I think Schwimmer's fantastic. His comic timing in "Friends" was flawless, and his other work ("Apt Pupil" and "Band of Brothers" being the first things that spring to mind) has been equally solid. I had no problems with Schwimmer's name being on this thing.

Nor did I have a problem with screenwriter Michael Ian Black. I had no idea what he was like as a writer, but I thought he was great in "Ed", and plus Pegg clearly did a rewrite on the script, so really there was no reason to expect anything less than a good film. And the good news is that it is a good film. But the bad news is that it's just a good film.

Schwimmer does a good job here, and there are some moments that are really well directed, but there were just as many moments where I could picture him sitting in the editing room thinking "Man, I'd love to redo that bit...". The frequent mugging for the camera doesn't quite reach pantomime proportions, but those moments would almost certainly have been funnier if they'd been played softer. The style of sentiment and broad comedy also feels more at home in an American film than an English film (that's not an insult; Richard Curtis and Judd Apatow are both brilliantly funny, but clearly work best within their own cultures), and I have no doubt that Michael Ian Black's first few drafts were set in New York. The famous New York marathon must have been the initial inspiration, and it probably only took a few cut-and-pastes to change the locale to London. The only problem is that it needed a bit more work to make the humour fit its new setting, and even though it's frequently funny, it's never as funny as it should be.

Incidentally, big parts also go to Thandie Newton and Hank Azaria. Azaria is great as always, this time playing the straight man, and doing so with as much excellence as the script allows. Thandie Newton is fine in the relatively thankless role as the love interest device. I've never understood the Thandie hate that I've seen around the interwebs, but nor have I been particularly overwhelmed by anything she's done. Here, she's fine, and that's really all that's called for with this part.

One quick mention of the best and worst element of the film, and that's Azaria's character. See, Pegg is trying to win his ex back from Azaria. Easy, right? The antagonistic boyfriend character is always a prick, yeah? Not this time. The script quite cleverly paints him as an incredibly nice guy, and though you love Pegg's character, you kind-of agree that Newton should be with Azaria. He's caring, friendly, an all-round good guy. How are they going to make us want to see Pegg steal her back, wondered I, and how are they going to sell Newton's switch of affections? Easy, apparently. Just give Azaria some dickish characteristics towards the end that go completely against what was established in the first hour or so of the movie. It's pretty disappointing, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected much more.

Look, I'm painting it as a bad film, but that only speaks to the moderately-high expectations I had of the film. It's got some great moments, and as I enthused at the beginning it's worth seeing for any scenes featuring Pegg and Moran interacting. Would I see it again? Probably, but only if circumstance insisted. It's a decent comedy that won't rank with the best, but still stands head and shoulder above the majority of stuff that comes out.

* If you haven't seen these shows, then it's time to start putting together your own Bucket List. Oh, and add "Absolute Power" with Stephen Fry, unless you're adverse to the idea of laughter-induced incontinence.

NEXT WEEK

- Producers take the combined franchise too far, pitting ghosts against big monsters in the literally unwatchable THE FOG VS THE MIST

- Singer/actress Natalie Imbruglia to play a contract killer hiding out in a Pennsylvanian city, in the film 'IN FARRELL

- John Hillcoat to make an outback western about grammatical clauses in THE PREPOSITION

Peace out,

Latauro
AICNDownunder@hotmail.com