Karaoke Horror – Rabies (film review)

Everything about this 2011 movie from Israel is crisp. The camera work is lean and clean, capturing everything in gorgeous colour and clarity. The acting is competent, believable and they all look great. The script is clever and has plenty of twists and turns.

So why does the Rabies fail at so many levels? It’s film karaoke, folks. The perfect backing track is there. Everyone knows the words like they wrote them. Everyone can sing/act/pretend in a note-perfect way through the whole song. But no-one is Quentin! Or Madsen! Or Uma! Or Liu!

I don’t know if the directors (Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado) shot scenes once, twice or a hundred times, but there is plenty to love about the look of the film. Just like you love the look of a hot young redhead singing a great version of Janis Joplin on American Idol, or a striking metrosexual singing Bowie with guts and passion.

But where is the USP? What really stands out about this movie? To be honest, just that it is an almost perfect copycat horror-thriller.

Rating: 2 stars

Brilliance sans Frontiers – The Zero Hour (film review)

This 2010 feature film from Venezuela is an astonishingly good telling of a ‘stock’ storyline: good boy becomes bad, then becomes good, then vacillates, then ….. in the end!

And watching the movie it is impossible not to switch between your expectations of how the many storylines may develop. Secondary characters become major, major characters meet unexpected ends, and all the whole you’re not exactly sure which of the many sides you’re on.

The script is TIGHT! The action zooms along right from the opening sequence, yet this is not in the style of dazzle-with-explosions (and forget the rest). The humour comes from an extraordinary tense and dangerous situation. Spoiler warning: there is lots of death. But nonetheless the script carries each character through their moves with remarkable skill and clarity. In many cases just a few words can speak volumes.

Writer-Director Diego Velasco must surely have a wonderful potential for the future based on this fantastically good movie. And fantastic is what I love from movies, so here’s hoping there’s lots more to come from a new star of the Latin-American melting pot.

Rating: 5 stars

Lost in Translation: See How They Fall (film review)

Pretend all they like but some French films are poor and get significant praise despite being pretentious flops.

This travesty of cinema is laden with cliche after cliche: the idiot-savant, the dour businessman, the reckless metrosexual, the misunderstood wife.

Plus, of course, dark close-ups, dark transitions, dark sequence captions and dark character expositions. Did I mention dark?

But seriously, See How They Fall is cinema 101 and I wouldn’t care if the director was the son of a whole line of brilliant cinema patriarchs. It is nouvelle-crap.

Although it is from 1994 that does not mean the previous hundreds of years of storytelling should be ignored. So sorry, but them’s the breaks! The non-dark, non-closeup camera work saved what little day there was in the film, so just hauls it out of the 0 star trashcan.

Rating: 1 star

Sight Unseen – Two Months of Film Trailers

There are definite swings and roundabouts in the release schedules of movies, and we appear to be heading for a feast after the past 6 months of mostly famine. Herewith a Dazzling Dozen of potential highlights, although we have reservations about some being able to achieve their hype!

A Dangerous Method – David Cronenberg
Relationships between doctors and patients take on more extreme ramifications when the doctor is a psychoanalyst. Kiera Knightley plays a wonderful role as the crazy/sane/victim/yearner who challenges the opposing ideas of Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender).
Potential = 5 stars

The Descendants – Alexander Payne
George Clooney again, yet here he swings between convincing parent and his usual persona. His struggle to connect with his two daughters when his wife is ‘absent’ in various ways is well drawn. With Judy Greer, Amara Miller, Shailene Woodley.
Potential = 4 stars

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – David Fincher
The American version of the film, with Daniel Craig as Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth. A fantastic book and a great Swedish film version will probably remain as the best entry to the Millennium trilogy. Even the trailer for this US version is weak.
Potential = 2 stars

J. Edgar – Clint Eastwood
Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Eastwood about an American icon! Um, no. Every character and every scene in the trailer looks wooden, obvious, hackneyed and overlong. And that’s just the trailer! With Naomi Watts, Dermot Mulroney, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench (all playing typecast roles).
Potential = 1 star

The Ides of March – George Clooney
Presidential hopeful who discovers the dirty side of politics! Um, no. Even Ryan Gosling, Clooney, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood couldn’t drag me to see this, even if they knocked on the door in person.
Potential = 1 star

In Time – Andrew Niccol
Science Fiction of the Thriller type pits Justin Timberlake against a corrupt regime that allows life or death on a fickle whim. His struggle is eased by the support of Olivia Wilde and Amanda Seyfried, while Vincent Kartheiser and Johnny Galecki handle the bad guy roles.
Potential = 5 stars

Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin
Reclusive folks up in the hills who run a little cult! Hell yes! But seriously, this trailer looks a hundred times better than all the other films of the same ilk. With John Hawkes, Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson.
Potential = 4 stars

Melancholia – Lars von Trier
Another thriller with a sci-fi twist, with Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg as two very different sisters who have extra stress on their relationship when a new planet is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. With Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, Alexander Skarsgard.
Potential = 5 stars

The Rum Diary – Bruce Robinson
Hunter S. Thompson is a rich vein for salacious yet enticing stories, and Johnny Depp brings the film alive with a gonzo portrayal, ably assisted by a plethora of brilliant actors, actresses, script lines and director. With Amber Heard.
Potential = 5 stars

The Skin I Live In – Pedro Almodovar
Antonio Banderas in a chilling role in a trailer that reeks quality and tension. Obsession and corruption are interwoven in a combination of science fiction and chiller. With Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes.
Potential = 5 stars

Straw Dogs – Rod Lurie
This remake, with James Marsden and Kate Bosworth, will in no way compete with the original – which was both groundbreaking and inspired. However, this version will appeal to a whole new audience, especially with the support of James Woods and Alexander Skarsgard.
Potential = 4 stars

The Thing – Matthijs van Heijningen
Promoted as a “prelude” to John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film of the same name, the trailer positions Mary Elizabeth Winstead to take over the fantastic Sigourney Weaver role of inspired-woman-against-evil-alien-thing! On the strength of the trailer alone, Winstead achieves this level of magnificence. With Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen.
Potential = 5 stars

TARA MOSS books

SPLIT – Mak Vanderwall in Canada and a fairly obvious tale of the psycho twin brother with a passion for killing teen girls. Wrapped with a lot of feminine self-doubt and tedious replaying of ‘emotional’ events of the past. The love conflict with the taciturn Aussie detective is wooden, as is his character. Oh, and the heroine survives many close scrapes.

HIT – Mak Vanderwall in Sydney and Melbourne with a fairly obvious tale of super-rich boy with a passion for hurting teen and pre-teen girls, the ‘accidental’ death and the story fizzles out half way through. By then the expert assassin that only the super-rich can employ strides in to kill more girls while the corrupt police aid in the eventual cover-up. Oh, and the heroine survives many close scrapes.

Summary – much of the writing is okay and some characters have depth. But there are long sections of explanation that are all tell and no show. There are often instances where the competent and capable world traveller heroine is wracked by self-doubt. In fact, the main characters do not grow and develop, which leaves this reader uninterested in what happen to them. So I wouldn’t bother reading any other Mak books.

A month in the cinema

July 2011 was not great for films that could make Best of the Year lists.

SUPER 8 – five stars
This one film achieved so much of what is possible with a great script, extremely talented acting and skilled directing. Compared to everything else we saw in July, Super 8 warranted all the superlatives, including the ones bestowed on the other movies even though they don’t deserve them.
The skill of the young actors was drawn out cleverly by both the storyline and the directing. The increasing drama and danger was shown on the faces and in the dynamics within the group of youngsters, with no false steps or lapses. Anyone looking for signs of a healthy movie industry can take great heart from this super cast.

LITTLE WHITE LIES – three stars
Ensemble pieces, especially of the French variety, can throw rich characters into a melting pot and achieve some great performances. The star of Lies is Francois Cluzet who can portray a dozen emotions with slight facial changes. And when he explodes the whole impact is tremendous theatre. In fact, all the men provide sterling performances, the clever pacing of the storyline giving them all opportunities to shine. The weaknesses revolve around the women’s roles, especially when the hackneyed Marion Cotillard character becomes pregnant, even though much is made of the condom scene earlier.

SLEEPING BEAUTY – three stars
Apart from falling into the same trap as Special Treatment (see below) of very out-dated stereotypes of the men who frequent special services, a number of other subplots rang true. “Stuff” happens to people like Emily Browning’s central character, as if the ability to navigate modern life is no longer taught or learned. The dysfunctional parent card does not need to be played every time, especially as we know most parents – most people – have varying degrees of future shock (and pace-of-change slippage). The director played one very false card, however. There is nothing in the central character’s background that would make her scream so long and loud about a dead body.

THOR – two stars
The special effects and storyline hold together much better on this movie than the two below, and some of the acting even strays from wooden. And, at times, there was even a little concern about the human characters. Yet the guts of the story has no real depth because all the set pieces were just that, not giving us anything or anyone to really care about. A shame.

GREEN LANTERN – one star
It seems many comic-to-film attempts fall on the same stony ground – the special effects barely match the comic art and the human characters fail to achieve the grit of the source. Here’s a quick checklist of ways to fail:
- pretty boys playing the lead roles
- pretty girls who are not allowed to act
- special effects that light the screen but not the story
- slipshod story continuity
- paper-thin villains that hold nothing of their comic origins
Don’t know why but it seems the Marvel comics translate to film better than D.C.

TRANSFORMERS – one star
See above – plus how come the all-powerful “bad” transformers can kill, it seems, millions of other humans except the fumbling so-called heroes. And destroy every other building except the one the heroes are inside. Just a plain, dumb movie that even a 5-year-old would think was weak.

SPECIAL TREATMENT – one star
Despite the wonderful cinematography, the cardboard cutout characters failed to interest or impress, leaving the film a vapid and sterile exercise, just like the lives portrayed. The attempt to draw comparisons between the prostitute and the psychoanalyst failed, the supposed links so shallow that the screenplay could have been written by a high-school student of literature. The fat, rich men and the passé fantasies were trite and lacking in any update of the last 100 years. The hype was not met.

The rest is silence …

In other words, I have been busy with travel and life redirection. So took a rest from blogging. Not so much from desire but necessity. The rapid decline of the United Kingdom in the past 2 years is understandable and was clearly predicted.

One of the main problems in the UK is the news media. The shocking collapse of responsible, researched and objective reporting is so obvious:

• BBC News is now pointless celeb pandering, and usually to its own shows
• UK newspapers like the Mail (the Daily Fail) are Tea Party of the American kind
• UK newspapers like the Sun (the Currant Bun) are puff pastry that will please the least tasteful spin doctors
• Talk radio is babbling while Cameron-Clegg fiddle and burn

So, no worries. As long as you sell up and move to any country with a half-decent political system and a strong and independent news media.

Priority Pass saves the day at Melbourne Airport

After a harrowing wrangle with Air New Zealand at Auckland airport, I finally arrived at Melbourne airport with my luggage intact and, just, most of my wits intact too. In time honoured English tradition, “yah, boo, sucks” to Air New Zealand and their baggage blackmail.

You see, trusting travellers, you can fly inbound to NZ with just about any airline with all sorts of bags and weights. But if you try to fly outbound with Air New Zealand they will blackmail you to pay at least $NZ50 or miss the flight! It seems Air NZ don’t want passengers!

But, after being fleeced by a combination of what turned out to be lies and blackmail, I did arrive at Melbourne. Once there and with a few hours until my connecting flight, I went for a relaxing walk in the fresh air to clear various grumpy thoughts.

Back in Melbourne airport I zoomed up to Virgin Blue’s The Lounge, a partner with Priority Pass. There I was treated to food, drink, soothing chairs, a shower and, once I’d recovered enough, a speedy broadband to allow me to catch up with family and friends. And, of course, to write this post.

I really recommend both The Lounge and Priority Pass to regular travellers. The low fees and high quality services are very welcome. You can see more on Priority Pass here.

Melbourne impressions part 1 – 2010

01 the wind is dominant and fickle, taking pleasure in antagonising pedestrians as it swirls, its cold and powerful tendrils attacking at will

02 Melbourne entices with modern and elegant features, reflected everywhere with often beautiful and extravagant high heels

03 the people are friendly and helpful, like the vast majority of Aussies, with just the Chinese keeping a degree of separateness which, of course, adds variety and contrast to the modern metrosexual style of the majority

04 colonial architecture rubs shoulders on most city streets with modern glass and steel descendants, and on many areas the Yarra acts as both a geographical and generational boundary

05 long before 3D became popular the graffiti of Melbourne has filled gaps, spanned buildings, added depth and focus to bland concrete slabs, changed your perspective and redefined vistas with funk and style

06 cyclists, runners, walkers, trotters and even more cyclists are ever-present on Melbourne streets and sidewalks, a constant reminder of the youthful approach to life and rampant fitness that takes the many hills with ease

07 trams and trains shuttle everywhere, the veins and arteries of the sprawling city, the yellow taxis acting as busy bees in between the bulk services, the whole a lattice cake spread over many square miles filled with the peaks and troughs of buildings as if the cake had risen in some places but slumped in others, each peak a sugar coating over crisp architecture

Stick Shift Paradise

For any petrol heads who wish for some good old days of touring car thrills, New Zealand is a driver’s dream. Just recently I had the opportunity to travel around Northland and the roads are wonderful.

Northland, New Zealand

By that I mean they are perfect for an E-Type Jag or any other stick-shift touring car with a responsive engine and a stable chassis. The photo (right) shows the unspoilt nature of many areas in Northland.

The long, sweeping curves on the roads are excellent for the pure enjoyment of man and machine, while the long, undulating straights provide refreshing glimpses of vibrant and ever-colourful scenery. The second photo (below) looks amazing but there are many “million-dollar” bays just like this all around New Zealand.

When you reach a section of road that winds up or down a hill – or even near-mountain – car and driver have opportunities to shine. You can “power drive” through the twisting, sometimes sharp corners. I would never suggest that you “power drift” or “power slide” into those corners, but the temptation is certainly there!

Northland, New Zealand

Another feature on many roads in NZ is the blind rise, with the ever-present question of “what will the road do next?” Will it gently curve to left or right, or will a sudden decline be followed by a hairpin?

The gears become the stars as you find the need to decelarate from 100 km/hr down to 35, sometimes in a split second if a sharp corner has not been sign-posted in advance.

There are also many occasions when the two-way highway reduces down to one lane for a narrow bridge, and you discover if you will have right-of-way or the opposing car.

Gears and engine need to be in perfect sync to slow, check, sweep around a curve onto the bridge, and then accelerate away on the other side. There are so many examples of this type of driving pleasure available that it would take a long book to explain them all (and maybe that’s a travel book for later).

If you have a passion for the type of driving that can now be a rare opportunity in Europe or America, head on down to New Zealand for some old-school auto enjoyment.