Published at: April 18, 2008, 4:27 a.m. CST by quint
Broken bottles under children's feet, bodies strewn across the dead end street, but I won't heed the battle call, it puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall...
AICN-DOWNUNDER
I've been pretty down on Australian films lately. This isn't so much my fault as it is the fault of Australian films, as they've been decidedly not great. And hey, as I've said many times before, I'm going there wanting to like them. As HEY HEY IT'S ESTHER BLUEBERGER began and the Busby Berkley (thanks, Joel!) visuals kicked in, I thought, "This is awesome!". Then, as the film progressed, "This has potential to return to awesomeness later!". Then, "This could still be okay!". Then, finally, "I wonder where I should go for lunch when this frigging thing finally ends!".
Rather than do the thing I really want to do right now -- that is, write my seventy-third dissertation on what everybody's doing wrong -- I'm instead going to direct you to the best Australian film I've seen this year.
See, I'm pretty down on short films. In that sense, it is me who's being unfair, as I am prejudiced against the form for reasons I haven't fully examined yet. Perhaps it's the fact that I associate them with student films, which are, more often than not, terrible. Perhaps it's the many short film festivals (that I shan't name) whose content drives me to drink with their awful setups and punchliney endings. I don't know. Either way, I'm prejudiced and that's a problem.
Or maybe it's not. Disliking short films certainly hasn't distanced me from them. I still see the Pixar shorts (the ones I eagerly anticipate and always enjoy), I frequently enjoy the international shorts played before films at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and if someone directs me towards a particularly good short film on the web, I've found myself, more often than not, enjoying it. My point is that they've probably got more capacity to pleasantly surprise me, because my expectations are lowered, even if my mind is open.
It is in that spirit that I tell you that THE FUNK is the best Australian film of the year thus far. And it's a short. It's an animation-cum-live action film (I think that makes it a pixillation, a term I'm always able to remember after getting it wrong on a film school exam), that's produced by Melanie Coombs (HARVIE KRUMPET) and directed by Cris Jones. Without wanting to oversell it, it's got the same visceral energy of the opening five minutes of THE KINGDOM, or really any scene from FIGHT CLUB, and doesn't waste its style on an empty container; the effects complement the story of the film, a story that is as simple and straightforward as a seven minute film should be.
The film was played at the launch of the St Kilda Film Festival, a short film festival not as notorious as Tropfest, but probably a tad more prestigious. My moderate dislike of short films is beginning to give way to a real desire to attend this festival, and it's safe to say that THE FUNK was the tipping point. Details of SKFF can be found in the Awards section of this column.
As you'll discover when you read the reviews below, I've had to sit through some fairly disappointing garbage these past couple of weeks, and the fact that most of the recent garbage has come from the US and not Australia hasn't made it any better or worse. I'll be seeing Australian features CACTUS, UNFINISHED SKY and BLACK WATER in the coming weeks (and my fingers are crossed for them tighter than you can imagine), but for now I'd say the best thing we can do for the Australian cinema is hand Cris Jones a feature film budget.
NEWS
In a move that will either (a) plunge the Australian film industry into further disrepair, or (b) do nothing but fill a few column inches, the Australian Writers Guild has resigned from the Australian Screen Council, citing "financial mismanagement" as the main cause. From what I can tell, the problems are mainly bureaucratic, but the rift -- primarily between the AWG and the Australian Directors Guild -- could well cause actual practical problems. What they may be is a mystery to me, as my inability to understand the relationship between bureaucracy and actual getting-things-done means I will probably never become a film producer. But hey, it's a slow news week, so I thought you should know.
Shane Abbess, the director of Australian film GABRIEL, will next be heading to the US to direct the film SOURCE CODE. According to Inside Film, this is part of a three picture deal that Abbess made with Universal. Will SOURCE CODE split audiences the way GABRIEL did, or am I just randomly speculating because I felt the first two sentences didn't really seem long enough? Only time (meaty pause) will tell.
Anyone who visited Melbourne's ACMI during the brilliant Pixar exhibit (seriously, bring it back; I have to go again) may be interested to know that the giant Luxo Jr and ball that stood outside the entrance, has been shipped to San Francisco. It now stands outside the Pixar offices, and can be seen behind John Lasseter by clicking here.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
2008 ST KILDA FILM FESTIVAL
SKFF enters its twenty-fifth year, proclaiming itself to play the best one hundred short films in Australia. Judge this claim for yourself next month, as the festival screens from the 6th of May through to the 11th. Tickets can be purchased by calling 03 9534 6922, or by going to www.palacecinemas.com.au.
ASPEN SHORTSFEST
SPIDER, the short film by the Brothers Edgerton, has scored another festival success by picking up Best Comedy in Aspen. It also got the Hard C High-Five to Lo-Fi Award, but I have no idea what that could possibly mean.
BOX OFFICE
Cool, SPIDERWICK was pretty good and it's number one. That's nearly enough to forgive spots two and three.
The possibly over-hyped but still brilliant SARAH MARSHALL finally gets its release, Ben Affleck achieves actual greatness, I once again refuse to see any film with such a ridiculous grammatical error in its title, an ensemble French comedy/drama set in an apartment (woo hoo!), a slasher remake that isn't in the slightest bit unnecessary, Keanu stars in THE SHIELD: THE MOVIE, next to MEET THE SPARTANS this actually looks good, and Bono fails in capturing all twelve dimensions he occupies.
I must admit to being slightly distracted for the first half hour or so of this film. The IMAX guy who introduced the film said they'd filmed the concert during their tour of South Africa, making me wonder why Bono kept inserting lines of Spanish into his songs. Thankfully, though, there wasn't much room to be distracted, as this film is, hands-down, the finest piece of 3D film work ever released to date.
I don't say that lightly, but nor did I need much time to consider it. I've always dug 3D, even though I've considered it fairly impractical. I loved going to the Astor, donning the blue-and-red glasses, and watching a back-to-back double of HOUSE OF WAX and DIAL M FOR MURDER a few years back. I loved seeing how NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS managed to be transformed from 2D to 3D in a way that I still don't fully understand. But, though I enjoyed those experiences, that Astor double was a glorious mix of nostalgia and kitsch, and my reaction to NIGHTMARE was more an appreciation of a new process.
U23D has real depth. It's not just "this element looks like it's in front of that one", but a real and continuous plane of action, where you -- and you'll have to forgive me for slipping into such a hoary cliche -- really feel like you're there. I have to say, I almost preferred this to any of my real concert experiences. Sure, I can look back at how great it was to be a teen in the mosh pit at Soundgarden and Faith No More (hands up who loved the 1990s! Woo!), and I can say I saw Bob Dylan live (even if I was so far back, it may as well have been Cate Blanchett in a wig), and I suffered the worst sunburn I'd ever had to see Franz Ferdidand, Iggy Pop and the White Stripes at the Big Day Out, but -- with the singular exception of REM (best concert ever) -- I'm not 100% convinced I loved them at the time. I keep going to concerts with the mistaken idea that I'm there to enjoy the music. I keep forgetting about the crowds and the sweat and the strange static-ness of it. Not that I can't enjoy those things, buuuut... this film, this U23D, was the experience that I always imagine a concert is going to be before I turn up.
The music is intense and undistorted, you're inches away from the musicians, yet you also feel like you're sharing the experience from the crowd. And it's different from other concert films because the 3D makes you -- oh God, I'm going to say it again -- really feel as if you're there.
It also gives a chance for Bono to further expand his I-am-Jesus persona. Oh yes, his ego is definitely one of the things that is enhanced by the 3D process, but unlike so many, I don't hate him for it. He's a rock star, for crying out loud. We should want them to be larger than life. This is absolutely the most larger-than-life depiction we have ever seen of any rock star ever, and I just want to kiss Bono for doing it without any humility whatsoever. Absolutely brilliant.
I won't dwell on the music too much, 'cos you either love U2 or you don't, but I'd even recommend those who don't like their music to go along as see it, because the spectacle and the sheer quality of the process makes this film every bit as important to the forthcoming generation of movies as James Cameron's upcoming AVATAR.
Simply put, this is the best 3D film ever made.
SMART PEOPLE
After I exited the theatre, I checked my watch three times. I compared it to other timepieces, like the clock in my car and my mobile phone. Strangely, they were all in sync. Either I'd fallen through a black hole, or SMART PEOPLE was actually only 90 minutes long, and not the 150 minutes I honestly assumed it was by the time it finished.
Seriously, this overlong, poorly-made piece of garbage feels nearly twice as long as it actually is. Part of that is due to the rambling lack of plot. Part of that is due to the ridiculous, obvious, "clever" dialogue. Most of it is due to the most unlikable and uninteresting collection of characters put in a film since... I don't know, what was the last Lars von Trier film?
The obvious rebuttal is that these people are supposed to be unlikable. Dennis Quaid's professor is a bit of a bastard, his adopted brother (Thomas Hayden Church) is a loser with no prospects, his son (Ashton Holmes) is a douche, his daughter (Ellen Page) is a Young Republican, and his girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) is played by Sarah Jessica Parker.
Yes, all of their unlikabilities are on purpose. They were deliberately placed in there. That, however, does not excuse them. Nor does it give me, as a viewer, any reason to care about them. The bad luck that Quaid had comes from his own stupid actions, and I know that sounds like a good setup for drama, and in the right hands it probably is, but here it's just annoying. Page's whole Young Republican bent is presented as a major character flaw, as if we're supposed to laugh when we see a pamphlet with "Why Stem Cells Are Bad" or something like that on it. (I'm not saying there's not humour to be mined from a kid being a Young Republican, I'm just saying EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU is on one end of that scale, and SMART PEOPLE is on the other.)
This film feels like it was written by someone who's never really interacted with human beings before. It comes off like a photocopy of THE SQUID AND THE WHALE or LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Actually, that's a good example. You remember that rift that existed between people who liked LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and those who disliked it? SMART PEOPLE will bring both sides together, for I think we can all agree that this is a film that is essentially meritless. People arguing for no reason apparently equates conflict. Someone being selfish and self-absorbed apparently equates human drama. Characters saying self-consciously "clever" things apparently equates witty dialogue.
Without wanting to jump on any sort of bandwagon, Ellen Page is definitely the best thing about this film. She's got screen presence, and she's got talent, and even though her character was pretty rubbish, she did some great work. In fact, I'm fairly sure I would have walked out had it not been for her. Similarly, Quaid and Church are quite good. Parker is... there.
There's definitely a market for quirky, indie films, but if SMART PEOPLE and MARGOT AT THE WEDDING are anything to go by, there are a lot of passionless people willing to take advantage of this market in a fairly cynical way. Don't get me wrong, I'm still hanging out for, say, another JUNO or SQUID or SUNSHINE, but until then, I'll be fervently counting down the days until I don't watch SMART PEOPLE again.
THE SAVAGES
I'm aware that I just ended a review of a "quirky" indie dramedy by listing other "quirky" indie dramedies, but having just seen THE SAVAGES, I'm going to have to do this again. Now, some of the films in the following list are films that I consider worthless, and others are films I consider close to perfection. This isn't a judgment, but more of a common trend I've picked up on. See if you notice it:
CLOSER (2004): Jude Law plays an unsuccessful writer.
SIDEWAYS (2005): Paul Giamati plays an English teacher and unsuccessful writer.
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005): Jeff Daniels plays a writer whose career has taken a downward turn.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006): Steve Carrell plays a Proust scholar whose career has taken a downward turn. He is now an English teacher.
MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (2008): Nicole Kidman plays a successful writer.
SMART PEOPLE (2008): Dennis Quaid plays an English teacher and an unsuccessful writer.
THE SAVAGES (2008): Philip Seymour Hoffman plays an English teacher and unsuccessful writer. Laura Linney plays an unsuccessful writer.
What might have once been a refreshing alternative to doctor/cop/lawyer/gangster has become even more of a cliche than those professions, because there are fewer places to go. Well, maybe there aren't -- SIDEWAYS didn't stick to as stringent a character formula as the last four films on that list -- but, increasingly, I'm finding the exact same characters with the exact same professions speaking in the exact same way.
Academics are, in these films (and from this point on, let's just assume I'm talking about MARGOT-through-SAVAGES, as I only included the first four to illustrate my initial point), petty and self-obsessed. They're jealous of anyone else's success, and if they experience it in their own life, it's quickly taken out from under them as a lesson in hubris. It's primarily used, however, as an excuse for tangential conversations about obscure literary or theatrical people or works. These conversations are oft presented as if the filmmaker and audience are laughing at these people are their single-minded literary obsessions, when really, this is all the filmmakers want to talk about. These scenes aren't, as they imply, commenting on the human condition, because so few of those films actually seem to understand the human condition, or even humans themselves. No, this academic masturbation that crops up in every third scene is dialogue that actually excites these writers, and putting in a self-depricating or ironic twist at the end of the scene, or even just having everyone shout, is seen as an excuse for getting away with this. "There's a subtext to this, don't worry, so for heaven's sake let's keep in that pointless conversation about THE BLUE ANGEL."
THE SAVAGES is not a failure in my mind, for the simple and fortuitous fact that I saw it on the same day that I saw SMART PEOPLE. THE SAVAGES doesn't directly insult the audience's intelligence the way that SMART PEOPLE does, and for that fact alone, it's the best of the two indie films about to come out in Australia and New Zealand.
As with SMART PEOPLE, the saving graces are the performances, though moreso here. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney may be becoming slightly overused mainstays of this genre, but they're both still very good. They certainly elevate the material, which ranges from Character Gets Angry For No Reason Other Than It's Time For a Shouting Scene to factual ridiculousness (they play a movie for their father that's apparently "from his era", and judging by the film they choose for him, that era would make him about 110 years old... but hey, all old stuff is basically the same).
It's also worth mentioning Philip Bosco, who plays the dementia-suffering father of our lead characters. Bosco comes off the best here, as he not only gives an extraordinary and really quite flawless performance, but also makes us believe him more simply by virtue of not being a recognisable star. It's quite refreshing to see someone I haven't seen a dozen times before, and even though someone like Anthony Hopkins would certainly give just as great a performance, he'd be less believable because we'd all be thinking "Isn't Hopkins good?".
Everything I said in the last paragraph of the above SMART PEOPLE review needs to be emphasised and emboldened. There is a cynical laziness in these types of character-driven indie films, and it's a cynical laziness that undoubtedly rivals the worst action films and lamest comedies you've ever seen. THE SAVAGES actually has some merit to it -- certainly more than SMART PEOPLE... have I driven that point home enough? -- but it's bearing the brunt of my wrath because of the timing of its release. It's symptomatic of a relatively new problem in movies today; this supposed alternative to heartless mainstream cinema is now rotting away at the inside thanks to paint-by-numbers dreck whose titles I'm sick of typing out. It's really not looking like a great year for "independent" cinema.
NEXT WEEK
- David Lynch tries his hand at a franchise, casting Dennis Hopper and Kyle MacLachlan in NATIONAL BLUE VELVET
- Nelvana Limited finds a way to cash in by recasting their popular elephant as a cockney killer in THE DEMON BABAR OF FLEET STREET
- Oliver Stone uncovers evidence that the Kennedys tried to have Fidel Castro killed using a virus designed to inflame his intestinal tract, in CASTRO-ENTERITIS
