Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 1 of Scream 3 (0:00:00-0:08:20)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 1 of Scream 3
Length: 8mins 20secs
Primary Characters: Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), Christine Hamilton (Kelly Rutherford), Ghostface (voice of Roger Jackson) & "Female Caller" (voice of Beth Toussaint)
Pop Culture References:

• Are there any? Only broad stuff like a similarity to The Shining in the knife/door sequence. Where are they all?!?

For all the talk of Scream 3 not adhering to it's own "all bets are off" idealogy - and, in certain respects (mostly those regarding the three lead characters) that's true - this film did quite a bit that was unexpected. Beginning with this opening scene, for instance, we have a male central victim, the new voice dynamic and a huge location change. By changing the setting from the original "return to Woodsboro" idea (after the Columbine shootings, Scream 3's return to high school killing spree idea was mooted) to Hollywood the filmmakers gave themselves a much larger scale upon which they could work their magic. Some people think that "magic" was a load of ol' tosh, but I happen to love Scream 3. As we'll see, Scream 3 is beloved by me for, at times, being a sort of bizarro world comedy that just happens to have a few killings in it (a few?), but there are times when this film is just as good as it's predecessors. We're back in the saddle, folks!

Oh hai, Cotton! The way I remember the lead up to Scream 3's release panning out is that we'd all kinda figured out that Cotton Weary was going to die and that it'd be great if he were the opening victim. I think all just Scream obsessives eventually (wait for it) cottoned on to the fact that he was going to get the chop very early since, for obvious reasons, all the clips and images of him seen in the trailers and stills featured him wearing the same costume throughout. It's just science.

"You sound a lot like that guy on TV. Uh... Cotton Weary."

The introduction of this new voice curveball was, for a while, quite great. They never really came through with a big payoff with it (unless you count the bed sheet mother scene, which I don't), but for something like this it works well. The only major problem is that by the third film in this franchise we know that whatever's going on on the other end of the line isn't quite right. The moment the switch happens isn't so much a surprise as it is a "yup! i guessed that" sorta moment.

"So, why don't you tell me who you are?"

"You're a naughty boy, Cotton. Now what would your girlfriend say?"

"What makes you think I have a girlfriend?"

*click*

"I know you do. I'm right outside her bathroom door."

Scream 3 takes all of one minute and 52 seconds to get to the ominous, threatening tone. Ghostface is clearly not as interested in playing cat and mouse this time. It's an issue through the entire film, actually.

I do like the parallels to the Casey Becker/Ghostface chat from Scream's opening scene. "Do you have a boyfriend?" "No, why? You wanna ask me out on a date?" and so on. Speaking of Casey Becker... I'll sure we'll discuss it at some point in the future, but I remember I and many others were very disappointed that Casey's house (or, more to the point, the Stab set of Casey's house) wasn't used as the opening or closing scene of Scream 3. It would've been perfect!

And here is Kelly Rutherford. She was a disappointing name for the Scream 3 opening scene then, but I have definitely warmed to her as I'll discuss a little bit later in this piece. Nevertheless, I think she does a good job in making the secondary victim more of an identity than either Steven Orth of Phil Stevens were before. In other news: Why don't Americans use the god damn fan in their bathrooms?

I like how cheesy all the billboards are in this film, whether they're this for Cotton Weary's television chat show or those for Stab 3.

As you probably saw at towards the start of this entry, under the "references" title, Scream 3's opening sequence actually doesn't use any outright. Instead, it takes most of its cues from the first two Scream films. Whether it's the similarity to Casey Becker's dialogue or this shot that mirrors the Heather Graham shower sequence in Scream 2. Thereby making Scream 3 an even more meta; it's referencing its itself.

Oh Hollywood, what the hell is this?

Stab 2 tagline: "EVEN TRUE STORIES HAVE SEQUELS..."

Okay, that Stab 2 tagline is incredible. I'm surprised nobody thought of it sooner for an actual horror sequel. It's stuff like this that makes this project endlessly fascinating; I'd never seen that (the tagline) before! It's so golden that I feel like it's wasted on a brief one second cut away shot. Still, I see it there now!

"Cotton, is that you?"
I like this little tracking shot of Christine. Craven was definitely trying to go with a more voyeuristic look during Scream 3's opening, I think. Trying to get under the same skin that the original did with that brilliant moment when you know Drew Barrymore's Casey is being watched. As great as the Scream 2 opening is - and boy, it is! - it did miss this part of the equation. Meanwhile, the shot of Christine's feet as she walks down the corridor is a reference to something, I am positive of it... I just can't put my finger on it. Can you?

"Okay Cotton, you know I don't like your 'stab' games."

I kinda love this line because of the images it alludes to. The idea that Cotton Weary, a man whose story was morphed into the series of fake slasher flicks known as the Stab franchise uses those very stories for roleplay sex? Does Cotton wear a Ghostface mask? Does Christine pretend to be Maureen Prescott? The mind boggles.

Bam. Helllloooooo Ghostface! It really didn't take long, did it? And, of course, Ghostface's theme song - the one that seems to play whenever he arrives at parties - is that improbably shwing sound effect that happens whenever the knife cuts through air. I don't think knives make that noise outside of being sharpened. I swear that knife gets bigger with each passing instalment, too. By Scream 4 it was positively machete-esque!

Review: The Thing

The Thing

Dir. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 103mins

Enter any debate about “original versus remake” and John Carpenter’s The Thing will inevitably arise. It’s a proverbial trump card in any argument with anybody who says remakes are never better than the original. Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing from Another Planet is a pulse-racing, terrifying, claustrophobic horror-thriller that featured (quite literally) out of this world make-up and visual effects that remain as gruesomely effective today as they were then. So, in this day and age of ad nauseum remakes it’s a pleasant surprise to see the filmmakers of the latest version of The Thing have actually gone down the road of making a prequel rather than an out and out remake.


Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

To Mislead, or Not to Mislead: Surviving Georgia Producer Speaks Out

Last week Stale Popcorn broke the story (for once the word "EXCLUSIVE!" could be hailed about a news item I posted) of the Aussie film with the misleading marketing. If you recall, the trailer and poster hailed a four-star quote from "The Guardian", which was actually nothing of the sort. Rather, it was an anonymous user comment on the film's Guardian website that hailed the low budget Australian feature as a film that "....touches the heart and leaves you with a smile", whilst attributing a 4 star rating a whole four months ahead of it's local debut. Well after we wrote about it here, the story caught on with discussions continuing on Twitter, Facebook and websites Crikey and Cinema Quest.

Well, now producer/actor/distributor Spencer McLaren has spoken to Encore Magazine about the issue and... well, take a look. It's a doozy.

When Encore suggested that attributing the quote to a publication such as The Guardian was deceptive to the public, McLaren claimed: “It was not The Guardian, but Guardian.co.uk. But we contacted The Guardian to let them know. I think, what’s occurred, is it’s been accredited wrong. We’ve had different marketing people at different times. Ultimately it’s our fault as producers to cross-reference, that’s where the responsibility lies.”

He also claims that the initial furor (McLaren only cites Luke Buckmaster - what am I? No good? Oh woe is me!) as "some Machiavellian plot to mislead the public" and that “We’ve now got plenty of great reviews. So it’s not like we need it.” It's this latter quote that strikes me as both dismissively insulting, but also incredibly stupid. If they thought they had a great product that was capable of garnering plaudits from critics then why wasn't Surviving Georgia shown to them any earlier than two weeks before release (the earliest Melbourne media screening was held on 29 September). Why weren't the producers and distributors using grass roots techniques to get word of mouth going? Sending screeners to potentially influential critics and writers in order to get words online? I suspect it's because they knew their film wasn't good enough, that's why. These so called "great reviews" amount to some nice comments at Citysearch and this from Buzz Magazine.

Meanwhile, there has been no mention whatsoever of the issue on the film's official Twitter and Facebook pages, but the offending quote has indeed been removed from the official website and replaced with a simple 3-star review from Empire without an attached quote. Lastly, I went to the Yarraville Sun yesterday to see a movie and what should I see hanging up in several locations? The poster featuring the same four-star review discussed.

Hmmm.

Review: Red State

Red State

Dir. Kevin Smith

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 88mins

As poster boy for the American independent cinema movement of the 1990s, Kevin Smith has found himself lost and seemingly unmotivated amidst the film landscape in recent years. He has churned out a sequel to his beloved Clerks and made the resoundingly lead-footed mainstream wannabe Cop Out, but with Red State Smith has returned to his indie roots, resulting in some mixed returns. It’s certainly an ambitious film and, unlike many of his recent films, is can actually be labelled as competently made, but it still suffers from Smith’s usual bag of frustrating tricks.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

Let me just say that there are two jokes about Melissa Leo's wig in there. I think I restrained myself quite well.

Review: Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer

Dir. Tristan Patterson

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 75mins

Debut director Tristan Patterson has teamed up with legendary film producer Christine Vachon to create bring forth this evocative documentary, Dragonslayer. A film that ducks, weaves and swoops through its world of low-stakes skateboarding competitions as if the camera is as lost as its protagonist. Watching this beautiful film is like being transported to another generation, one soaked in grunge aesthetics straight out of the early 1990s. Dragonslayer looks absolutely nothing like the vision of youth that we so regularly see on film today and if Gus Van Sant says his favourite film of 2011 is anything else then I will be surprised.

The subject of Dragonslayer is Josh “Skreech” Sandoval, a skater who Patterson follows around America (they met at a party at which Sandoval claims to have been on five squares of acid) as he aims to skate through as many empty swimming pools as possible before the chilling realisation of life (he is a divorced father) finally get to be too much. He and his girlfriend sell items in period garage sales to pay for road trips to Oregon, California and everywhere in between, sleeping in a tent in their friends’ backyards and taking advantage of cheap hot chip offers available at roadside diners. The glamourous life this is not, but what comes through thanks to the gorgeous cinematography, rhythmic editing and hypnotic music is a story of this rather simple man living a rather simple life and somehow being more satisfied than any of us could ever imagine.

My initial scepticism of the project – a 75-minute doco about skateboarders hardly sounds promising – were very much put to rest once I actually laid eyes upon it. Eric Koretz’s award-winning cinematography manoeuvres about the American landscapes, both natural and unnatural, with a flowing beauty that was like magic to an Americana tragic like myself. Capturing moments of bliss and hardship without ever succumbing to clichéd representations of either, something that is certainly aided by the fantastic soundtrack. Ace rock tracks that harkens back to grunge, punk and the rise of indie rock with modern day incarnates like The Germs, Bipolar Bears, Best Coast and Little Girls. During scenes of house parties filled with gangly-faced young adults wearing flannel and tee shirts unadorned with popular labels, I actually forgot I was watching a film from 2011. Perhaps funny that this film should come out just a couple of weeks after Nirvana’s Nevermind album celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Dragonslayer drifts about amidst its hypnotising haze despite the hectic editing of Lizzy Calhoun and Jennifer Tiexeira. Despite lacking the initial visceral thrill of Senna, it’s form of vibe and atmosphere is just as potent. Echoes of the aforementioned Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park are perhaps too obvious, and yet pertinent with skating sequences that are crafted like stunning musical sequences and allow the athleticism to be truly appreciated. The way Patterson nestles himself in the culture is just so wonderful; these people never once talk about being “outsiders” or “losers” and the film works hard to show why they’re idols to an entire swath of people who have nobody else to look up to. These people know their future will ultimately not be the brightest, but they’ll be damned if they’ll let that get in the way of life. Dragonslayer is a superb film, a rich breakthrough and ultimately a transcending look at a culture that society (and, yes, even Hollywood) is letting slip away. It’s absolutely one of the best films of the year. A-

Dragonslayer is screening at ACMI until 16 October.

Review: Higher Ground

Higher Ground

Dir. Vera Farmiga

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 111mins

One woman’s struggle to abide by religious dogma in 1970s America forms the basis of Higher Ground, the directorial debut for Vera Farmiga, who also stars in this film as Corinne. The character of Corinne is based on Carolyn Briggs, whose memoir, This Dark World, was the inspiration for the film, and who also co-wrote the screenplay. After an accident nearly causes the death of their infant daughter, Corinne and her husband, Ethan (Joshua Leonard, turn to God. Years of devout worship begin to unravel, however, when the world she inhabits begins to suffocate her and she is forced to question her beliefs.


Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

Surviving Georgia and the Case of the Four-Star Review that Never Was

It seems that once a month an Australian film comes along that goes so under the radar that you'd be forgiven for thinking it doesn't really exist without seeing it with your own eyes. I had heard about the production of Surviving Georgia, the first film by Sandra Sciberras since the small, but nice, Caterpillar Wish in 2006, but that was so long ago that I was instantly surprised to see it pop up on the local release schedule for next week (13 October). I haven't had the chance to see Surviving Georgia as I was busy at the time of the press screening, but those who have inform us that, well, it's not very good. Hardly surprising, but you never fully hope for a bad movie so it's a shame when one just lands with a thud. Especially when it features a cast like Pia Miranda, Caroline O'Connor and Shane Jacobson.

Still, get a release it shall (into 8 cinemas, more than some other more acclaimed films) and good on them for doing so. Just getting a film completed and out there is a win in this day and age, and if the cinematic release acts as nothing more than a token gesture before DVD (a much more forgiving arena for Australian films, I assume) then so be it. The film is being distributed, I believe, by the co-director (Kate Whitbread) and co-star/co-producer (Spencer McLaren), although I may be wrong on that detail, and a recently released trailer didn't exactly set the world on fire - two unrelated Twitter followers labelled it "abominable" within minutes of each other. Take a look for yourself and think "would I rather see this or A Heartbeat Away?" Hmmm, that's a tough one!


So far, so ordinary. It may look bad, but not offensive and barely worth a second glance. Sad, but true. Nevertheless, something about this trailer piqued my curiosity at the time (I saw it play before The Help and promptly forgot all about it), but it wasn't until I received an email from a "Jarrod Sturneiks" just yesterday that it really clicked. In between the many moments of inept acting displayed by star Holly Valance ("you've got to be bloody kidding me" is a snorter, that's for sure!), the dunderheaded title cards, grating budget music choices and the entire film being laid out in front of us, there is a moment of unexpected curiosity when a four star review from The Guardian is referenced.

Considering even Australian critics hadn't had much of an opportunity to see Surviving Georgia at the time, it was curious that this tiny Australian film starring Holly Valance (of all people) managed to secure a 4-star quote from a well-known source such as The Guardian website. Alas, what they have done is in fact used a user review posted by somebody on the film's default Guardian page. Looking at the website in question and it becomes quite clear, rather quickly, that this review by "Lutherfilm" is not an official review by any means and that the producers have misrepresented The Guardian as somehow endorsing Surviving Georgia.

How do they get away with it? The same star rating and quote is featured on the poster, too. One must assume that they figured their film is so small that nobody would really notice and that by not including the actual name of the person who wrote "...touches your heart and leaves you with a smile" they can feasibly get away with it. But, then again, that's like saying CNN endorses radical alternative therapies simply because they feature an interview with somebody who does. Who on Earth knows who this "Lutherfilm" person is, anyway. The comment was posted way back on 18 May, which is coincidental since the film's original release date, according to IMDb, was 29 May. This person's profile features no other activity; they may as well be a stock standard Anonymous and be done with it. There's even a typo in there to look unofficial.

It almost feels like I'm criticising a puppy for peeing on the carpet, but this sort of blatant false advertising does nobody any favours. Not the Surviving Georgia filmmakers, nor any other filmmakers who work hard and get their film out there just to see it fail. Australian films are currently doing quite well at the box office, what with Red Dog and The Eye of the Storm, but this much smaller film obviously didn't have the resources at their disposal, which is hardly their fault. Nevertheless, so much Australian film marketing is grass roots, especially for a film like this, and perhaps I was just looking in the wrong place, but I never heard a peep out of this film trying to get itself out there and raising its profile. If they thought slapping a fake quote on their dodgy trailer was going to cure their film's ills then they were sorely mistaken. If they don't even trust their own product then why should we? I like to try and see as many local films as possible, but for Surviving Georgia I'll make an exception. This one I'll skip.

Review: Footloose

Footloose

Dir. Craig Brewer

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: PG

Running Time: 113mins

Censorship leading to rebellion was hardly an original concept when Herbert Ross’ Footloose premiered nearly 30(!) years ago, but the concept is given a fresh shake in Craig Brewer’s remake. Taking the 1984 original and shaking it of its dorkiness and ugly 1980s veneer, Footloose is a notable exception amongst a glut of disappointing remakes. It takes what worked in the original (the layered plot, the fresh music and the character of Willard) and polishes them up in a shiny new package that finally serves them justice.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
I want to see it again right now, that's how much I enjoyed it! Add it to the pile of films that justify a remake.

Review: Tornado Alley 3D

Tornado Alley 3D

Dir. Sean Casey

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: G

Running Time: 43mins

It was some 11 years ago that I saw my first IMAX film, as well as my first film in 3D. The movie was CyberWorld in which a collection of short 3D animations – including The Simpsons’ famed third dimensional episode – were strung together in a rather lousy way. It was nothing more than a clip reel for the technology, but it worked on my teenage brain. Much has changed since then, with the IMAX brand now expanding to even bigger sizes and screening Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight (I chuckled upon seeing a poster for Real Steel at the Melbourne Museum’s IMAX theatre), whilst 3D has advanced so much that we can now watch it at home on our high definition televisions without the need for those uncomfortable blue and red tinted glasses.

Both mediums are so fully integrated into the cinema-going experience that I was surprised to find sitting down to watch a 43-minute 3D documentary on the IMAX screen actually still has as much novelty value as it once did. That giant screen is still awe-inspiring, as is the idea of these documentarians lugging around the massive IMAX cameras for years at a time to put a barely feature length film to celluloid. Sitting down in an IMAX seat – a genuine IMAX seat, not one of those multiplex quote unquote versions – is daunting and I can just remember

With Sean Casey’s visceral Tornado Alley, the IMAX and 3D formats are put to rather exceptional use, and it works as a telling reminder of the impact they can still have. Audiences have no doubt seen tornado footage dozens, if not hundreds, of times before on their flat 2D television screens, but witnessing it on such a scale – the IMAX screens in Sydney and Melbourne are amongst the largest cinema screens in the world – is completely different.

In Tornado Alley, Sean Casey follows a team of scientific tornado chasers whose goal is to apparently live out the plotline of Jan de Bont’s windy blockbuster Twister and research the hows and whys of tornado formation. Parallel to that he follows his own mission to capture the inside of a tornado with an IMAX camera from inside his reinforced tank. Images of Mad Max are to be expected once you see this less scientific and more macho beast of an automobile that’s for sure. Weighing 14,000 pounds and customised with bullet-proof glass, a 6.7 litre turbo diesel engine and a 92 gallon fuel tank (thank you official website), this car known as TIV2 is built purposely to withstand the impact of being in the centre of a category 5 tornado and can travel at 100mph. There are even spikes that dig into the ground of added holding power! Casey intercuts between these two missions whilst throwing around graphs, charts, weather patterns and other scientific mumbo jumbo to appease teachers taking their classes on field trips under the pretence of “education”.

Usually when a documentarian inserts himself into the film it becomes more about their smugness and desire for attention than anything else, but Casey’s passion for storm chasing is so infectious that it works and his half of the film proves more fascinating than the less chest-beating weathermen that he shares the roads with. There’s grandeur to his half of the film that lifts the film above a mere dry science lesson and with editing reminiscent of a Hollywood disaster movie it’s certainly exciting when that funnel is charging towards the screen. And in 3D, of course.

The IMAX cameras capture astounding images of the American south (known as “tornado alley” due its high frequency of storms) and they look stunning projected onto the big screen. If Bill Paxton (yes, from Twister – oh the hilarity) constantly, and lifelessly, narrating to us about the “warm moist air” had been excised, I would have been more than happy to keep watching for longer than the three quarters of an hour running time. Still, if it’s been a while since your last traditional IMAX experience then Tornado Alley could be an exciting remedy. B

Review: Abduction

Abduction

Dir. John Singleton

Year: 2011

Aus Rating: M15+

Running Time: 106mins

There came a moment as I watched Abduction when I realised that there was no actual abducting going on. None whatsoever, unless you count the audience members’ time and sanity, in which case the abduction is nobody else’s fault but their own. Why the filmmakers titled their film with such a misnomer is just one of the many questions left unanswered by this wholly awful, yet shamefully funny, teen-oriented action thriller from the once great – and Oscar nominated– director John Singleton.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

I haven't laughed that much in a long time!

Speaking of John Singleton though, it was just last week that I watched Boyz n the Hood for the first time. Singleton was nominated at the Oscars for Best Director (and remains to this day the youngest nominee in that category) as well as Best Original Screenplay, and it's easy to see why. I had intended on discussing it, but the enthusiasm was drained out of me when I was doing some research on it and it slowly sunk in that there was so much talent there, but somehow it didn't amount to much. Singleton himself has seemed to have carved out a career as an action director - albeit, a refreshingly colour blind one (but that still doesn't explain the inexplicable casting of a native American in a role in which none of his parents are of the same race) - but I'd like another film with the raw guttural power of Boyz than Abduction. Even if I am as big a fan of 2 Fast 2 Furious as you're likely to find around this neck of the woods.

Still, beyond Singleton, how Hollywood managed to fumble the ball on two generations of stunning black beauties is beyond me. Angela Bassett's role here isn't so much bigger than her stock supporting character in Green Lantern, but Bassett's "Reva Styles" is still a wonderfully rich character, a dichotomy on what many audiences expect a black single mother to be. Nia long, on the other hand, has had a career that never really took off. Great supporting roles in Boyz, Soul Food and so on lead to multiple series on second rate TV series (Third Watch) and has, as of late, only been doing voice work on The Cleveland Show. Not even a red hot role in Alfie could stir up much interest. How sad.

As for the men? Well, sure, Lawrence Fishburne was a part of one of the most successful franchises of all time (that'd be The Matrix), but ten years after that he's appearing on CSI so make of that what you will, and I don't even want to go into the careers of Ice Cube and Cuba Gooding Jr, okay? And despite his leading man looks, Morris Chestnut (perhaps my favourite performance in the film) has, like Nia Long, a career made up of mostly supporting roles in a collection of films that range from bad to middling. Truly disappointing. Still, as they say, we'll always have this one great film and Boyz n the Hood is just that! An electric, at times messy (but all the better for it) look at a culture that so few actually have any real experience of. Full of layered characters that are more than just cliches and performances that match. A-

As for Ab(s)duction? Z+!

Without Sandra Bernhard, I Am Nothing

I had been a fan of Sandra Bernhard for many years now. Having grown fond of this lanky lady through reruns of Roseanne, her outstanding role in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, her brief appearance in Madonna's Truth or Dare documentary,the crazy appearances of Letterman and for her deliciously wicked Excuses for Bad Behavior, Part I album from 1993. I had long tried tracking down a copy of her 1990 pseudo stand-up comedy film Without You I'm Nothing. Having finally been successful, I can say without a doubt that it lived up to everything I had heard from its dearest fans.

Without You I'm Nothing? Without Sandra Bernhard I'm nothing!

Directed by John Boskovich and, quite improbably, produced by Nicolas Roeg, Without You I'm Nothing is very much a curiosity of a film. Similar to Bette Midler's Divine Madness in its mix of stand-up comedy and cabaret style musical numbers, the film is actually not a documentary at all. Filmed several years after the her "smash hit one-woman show" took Broadway by storm (according to her), Without You I'm Nothing sees Bernhard perform her act in front of a crowd of sceptical African Americans and includes feature film effects that wouldn't be possible in a simple films stand-up show like those of the equally provocative Margaret Cho (Without You I'm Nothing, Notorious C.H.O.). It's a risky gamble, especially when her dedicated fans would have gone along either way (it made a surprisingly robust $1.2mil at the US box office), and yet it pays off. Without You I'm Nothing is unique and truly a one of a kind work that succeeds at providing a dramatic platform for Bernhard's stage act.

Bernhard takes on several different personas throughout the 90 minute running time - gay disco diva, suburban housewife, stripper, Earth mother, etc - as she mixes personal memoir with absurd comedy. Like Margaret Cho would do to great affect many years later, Bernhard swings precariously on a tightrope between gags about race and sexuality. In fact, as the bright wordsmith Nick Davis reflected in his piece, she hooked her claws into the issue of white culture's appropriation of black culture long before anybody else did (most notably Warren Beatty with Bulworth. Through a dizzying array of glamourous costume and wig changes (right on through until she all but strips bare during a daring, risqué dance to Prince's "Little Red Corvette" in the final scene), Bernhard creates a character that is as confronting as it is hilarious. Mixed with seemingly non-sequitur sequences of a black woman (played by Cynthia Bailey) walking around time (occasionally naked), a none too subtle recurring joke at Madonna's expense and the constantly bemused reaction shots of the crowd, the film sure does have balls to spare as Bernhard takes her turn at pop standards sung by African American legends like Nina Simon and Tina Turner. That she makes fun of herself in equal measure through her comedy as well as mockumentary talking head interview segments is just some of the reason why she gets away with it.


I can't vouch for the original stage production from the mid 1980s, but the film is an uproariously funny journey into the brilliant mind of this crazy woman. Her spoken word segments are frequently full of tart zingers and fascinating rhythm. I got particularly amusement out of her story of how she used to pretend her mother was a waitress at a bar and after having ordered her meal she would ignore her. Or how about the brand-dropping satire piece that got in on that act a decade before Fight Club. If people are only aware of her insane Masha act from Scorsese's classic 1982 film or her latter day frequenting of LGBT cinema then Without You I'm Nothing could come as quite a shock, but it's place as a defining work of art is unmistakable. A

Terrence Malick and the Days of Heaven

There's something truly exciting about being a cinephile and getting the chance to see one of your all time favourite films on the big screen. This past week I not only saw Jackie Brown on the big screen, but also Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven. It's long been a mission of mine to see it in a cinema at the first opportunity, and the Malick retrospective at The Astor Theatre provided just that and, oh, what a glorious experience it was.

Days of Heaven was presented in a double feature with Malick's first film, Badlands. In some respects this 1973 feature starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek is Malick's most disciplined film; his most structured. Each of the two films are a scant 90 minutes - scant compared to his three subsequent films that have all been in excess of two hours - but it's Badlands that has the most traditional structure of all. Playing out like an art version of Bonnie & Clyde, it bears the unfortunate hallmarks of its low budget and debutant filmmaking talent, and yet is always a fascinating film in many respects.


It's a crucial film in the career of Malick for more reasons than it simply being his first. It shows the obvious beginnings of his obsession with narration, American history, and most importantly of all his desire to explore nature and the way people relate to it, particularly out of refuge or violence. Explored here by the way Sheen and Spacek's runaway lovers can't outrun the law even as the landscape gets farther and wider, but consider also the way nature is used as a destination for moneyless romantics to escape to in Days of Heaven; the way the blood of soldiers becomes a part of the Pacific locations used in The Thin Red Line; the way body and soul are crushed by British settlers in The New World, but are ultimately revived by a simple garden; the way he examines the bruised souls of The Tree of Life through their connection to nature.

It's also a telling reminder that Malick has always been a brash and thrilling filmmaker. Those who have only seen The Tree of Life may be surprised by the thrilling way he films a car chase sequence in Badlands like a lost reel from Vanishing Point (not to mention the gunfight sequences of The Thin Red Line). While it may lack the now commonplace dreamlike cinematography, it does have a wickedly sly sense of humour - love the early comment about Sheen looking "just like James Dean" and the payoff one-liner late in the final act - and a natural, effortless vibe to it that is in stark contrast to The Tree of Life, which felt like it was straining desperately to be Malick's personal statement on the meaning of life. Badlands simply is life. B+

Days of Heaven, however, is the more typical film we've come to expect from Malick. I maintain that this is the perfect convergence of everything Malick has tried to do in all of his other films. He is able to convey so much through his images that he doesn't need the bloated running time that I felt hampered The Tree of Life. Its imagery is simply astonishing with Oscar-winning cinematography by Néstor Almendros that I consider the greatest of all time. So too is the music by Ennio Morricone, whose beguiling combination of peculiar instruments - what sound like pipes, harpsichords, strings and piano - is integrated so perfectly into the sound design of chirping insects, gusty winds and shimmering wheat crops.


Watching Days of Heaven within such close proximity to Badlands, I couldn't help but notice the similarities and striking differences between the two. Why had I not noticed the glaringly obvious similarities within Badlands and the final act of Heaven? As Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Linda Manz take to living as outlaws in nature after a silly, bravado-stroking act of violence, had I simply not wanted to notice? What was Malick trying to say by doing this, I wonder? Badlands has the most traditional plot of all of his movies, so was Malick trying to make a point that he wasn't going to play as nice in the future? Was this his way of retroactively changing a version Badlands that he wasn't happy with? Whatever the reason, it certainly worked and got enough people's attention.

Of the differences though, I found it particularly interesting in the way he portrayed women. Whereas Sissy Spacek was positively meek as a sparrow in Badlands, Brooke Adams has a strong presence, grounded firmly by her deep, throaty voice. Adams' performance is probably the film's finest - one I feel is routinely overshadowed by her most high profile co-stars Richard Gere in one of his gutsiest, Earthiest performances - as she feels most at ease with the locations and the least conscious of Malick's camera. When he catches one of her wide grins there is magic in the air, I swear.

Sometimes movies really are a different experience on the big screen. To have gone without seeing Days of Heaven at a cinema is to have not have experienced what cinema is all about. It magnified my emotions for this 1978 masterpiece to levels I didn't think possible. It is an epic film about boutique qualities (this and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff would be an even more appropriate double feature in the future) and one that will forever move me in ways I can't possibly express. A+

Review: Hobo with a Shotgun

Hobo with a Shotgun
Dir. Jason Eisener
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: R18+
Running Time: 86mins

Here’s a theory I would genuinely like to raise with Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener: If the directors of the 1960s and ‘70s grindhouse titles he so obvious adores had come into prominence today, would they make films as ugly and poorly done as this? Or would they, as I suspect they would, actually utilise the medium at their feet and allow their visions to flourish amidst the mountains of filmmaking possibilities.

Such is just one of the many, many problems with Eisener’s decrepit zombie corpse of a film. It trades on grindhouse cinema tropes from decades past, yet the people that made those films were making honest films through the only means possible. If it meant having to cast a lowly paid coffee shop waitress then so be it, but they surely never asked their cast to deliberately act like they’d just walked out of a lobotomy office. They also surely never made their films look dingy on purpose, drowning out the visuals when it’s been proven what can be achieved on a budget one sixth of the size in Gareth Edwards’ Monsters and plenty of others. Say what you will about the technical exercise that was Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s GrindHouse, but they made films that their heroes would make today if given the opportunity. They made films that took what they’d seen and interpreted it with modern day filmmaking methods. Hobo with a Shotgun, however, is nothing more than mere reproduction, right on down to the tokenistic poster designs and credit sequences.


Jason Eisener’s film arrives in cinemas with unique cache. It’s title and premise alone, as well as nudge-wink Tarantino-esque casting of Rutger Hauer, promised gullible festival audiences (of which I nearly was) a raucous good time, but it’s a rather cynical exercise. The grindhouse cinema Eisener is so desperately copying was made on the smell of an oily rag and a pit of fire in the belly to tell a story nobody else was willing to tell. Eisener’s only fire is to get a career in Hollywood by tricking festival audiences into seeing his film. It’s Eisener’s version of a child stamping his feet and waving his arms wildly exclaiming “look what I can do!” Sadly, what Eisener can do is not much more than sickening, mean-spirited, ugly trash. There isn’t anything energetic or joyful about Hobo with a Shotgun, nor anything brave, exciting and intellectually confronting. It looks ugly, is badly acted and crudely directed because that’s all Eisener was able to ascertain the original films were noteworthy for.

A hobo with no name arrives by train into a new town that is essentially lawless and overrun by criminal thugs. He witnesses the gruesome death of a stranger at the hands of a local gangster and before long sets out on correcting the town of its ills. The audience is asked to laugh along as this old, homeless gent struts about time laying waste to thuggery and hoodlums with a shotgun he purchased with money he wanted to use to buy a lawn mower. LOL, those homeless people are so weird! Of course, the violence is sickening, but always played for laughs. Especially the scene where a school bus full of young children is burnt to a crisp. That scene was hilarious, especially so when they brought it back as an even cheaper gag later in the film!!!


The entirety of Hobo with a Shotgun is nothing more than repugnant crassness, steeped in unpleasant violence and a seemingly endless bag of scum imagery. I was never so happy to walk outside of a cinema and bask in sunlight than I was after the morning screening of this film. Eisener shows such a distinct lack of understanding about film here, but the fact that since seeing it I have read so many fans of the film say “it’s meant to bad!” has made it even worse. Why would anybody want to watch a film that was deliberately made to be as bad as possible? When a filmmaker actively wants people to pay top dollar for a film that they admit is bad just so they can get cool points with the hip kids is insulting. Hobo with a Shotgun belongs in the trash. F

Review: Face to Face

Face to Face
Dir. Michael Rymer
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 88mins

Ten people sit inside a recreation hall fitted with only a collection of sturdy, if uncomfortable, chairs and a table with cups and a jug of water on it in front of an unmanned bar. This is the no frills setting of Face to Face, an unfussy adaptation of the David Williamson play of the same name. Written and directed on a tightly-reigned leash by Michael Rymer (Angel Baby), Face to Face will never be mistaken for the most exciting film of the year, but it’s a bold one nonetheless that rewards viewers with spiky wordplay and tart performances from a cast of big names and lesser knowns.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine
I've noticed quite a few people this year have sworn off watching trailers and I can only hope enough people have successfully avoided watching the trailer for Face to Face. It's on YouTube if you want to search for it and find it, but I'd suggest otherwise since it is one of the worst trailers of the year. Possibly the worst. I hope people who did see it aren't sufficiently turned off so as to swear off seeing the film as it's really quite good (er, obviously, if you read the review). B

Life as Explained by John Waters' Polyester

"The producers of this film believe that today's audiences are mature enough to accept the fact that some things in life just plain stink."
This quote from John Waters' 1981 suburban spoof Polyester really does some up my life some days. And yet, it also reminds me that in times of great mental distress to think of those bourgeois folks who may have money, but who've turned into sour, horrible human beings. At least I'm not one of them. B+

From Ghana to Mexico: Movie Art from Around the World

Okay, so I'm only looking at Mexico and Ghana, but so what of it? The internet is there for a reason. If you wanna look at posters from Bolivia I am sure there's a place to do it. Or maybe not. Does anyone know? Now that I've broached the idea of it, I am kinda intrigued by how Bolivia would sell The Help.

I've mentioned many times that I don't have the same high opinion of the Czech and Polish poster designs that most of the internet does. For every great one like The Birds or Blue Velvet there is another that just gives me a headache. I am of the staunch opinion that a film poster should first and foremost be selling a film, and not be used as some artists canvas to throw a bunch of non sequitur images around and say "duh! it's a poster for Sparticus!" Having come across these glorious pieces of imagery from Mexico (classy, glamourous, old-school divinity) and Ghana (ridiculous, hand-painted, bonkers) I felt the need to share.

Beginning with Mexico, 50 Watts gave us the viewing pleasure of this gorgeous works of key art from the 1940s and 1950s (taken from this far more extensive collection of Mexican and Cuban artwork). They feature vivid strikes of colour amidst delicate plays of light, like that of El Tren Expreso (1955). Striking bold imagery like the one found in Alfredo Crevenna's Muchachas de Uniforme (1951) and Emilio Fernández's La Red (Rosanna, 1953) are so in your face and provocative that they scream for audiences to pay attention. Casa de Perdicion (House of Perdition, 1956), up top, of a woman wearing a transparent gown covered in red chilies is both a seductive tease and a flashy deceleration of intention. Others, such as the Alberto Gout's La Sospechosa (1955), owe obvious debts to Hitchcock and film-noir.


Do check out the rest, they're fabulous.

Fabulous may be a word to also describe the posters from Ghana, although I think it's connotations are a bit different. I can't say these posters are "good", but they sure are entertaining to look at! Awesome Robo collated 70 of them and they are a hoot to scan through. My personal favourites are the one for Don E. FauntLeRoy's (whatta name!) Anaconda 3: Offspring featuring a snake that breathes fire; James D.R. Hickox's Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest that brings all new meaning to the idea of giant floating head posters; Lewis Teague's Cujo that somehow transforms Dee Wallace into a geisha and Cujo himself for a blood-splattered bloodhound canine (so, apt); Rob Bowman's Elektra that somehow transforms Jennifer Garner in Michael Myers; John Woo's Mission Impossible 2 that somehow transforms Tom Cruise into Michael Myers; Ronny Yu's Freddy vs Jason that somehow transforms Freddy Kruger into a who knows what!



I think my favourite of all, however, is the one for Steve Beck's Ghost Ship, which just throws about a bunch of severed body parts in front of an ocean liner. Amazing.


They're all rather hilarious so do check them out. Do you have a favourite?

A Horse, Of Course

The news that Hungary has submitted Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse, his two-and-a-half hour black and white movie about poor folk who eat potatoes, as their Oscar submission filled me with so much delight. More delight than should ever actually come out of that gruelling film, I reckon. You've gotta appreciate a country doing something like this when there was surely something about WWII that they could submit and have an easier chance at recognition. Perhaps the Hungarians saw the out of left field nominations for Yorgos Lanthimos's Dogtooth from Greece, as well as the even more potato-centric The Milk of Sorrow of Peru and thought "Hey, why not?"

Even after the surprise of Dogtooth amidst the Oscar nominations earlier this year, I can't say I hold much hope for The Turin Horse. However, never give up hope! Maybe, just maybe, the foreign language committee branch (or whatever they call themselves these days) will want to humour the Oscar purists and nominate it. Not that it wouldn't be a worthy nomination mind you - I very much liked it, despite the nightclub drag act the screening fiasco had in stall for us - but just an incredibly baffling one that would sure confuse anybody who should happen to blindly go into a screening based purely on such a hypothetical nomination. Not every country has submitted their chosen film, but it's hard to not see A Separation as the already gung ho favourite, yeah?

Thanks to the ever dependable Guy Lodge at InContention, I have been reminded that Hungary - ever the eyebrow raisers, apparently - submitted György Pálfi's Taxidermia several years back, which I am assuming didn't get very far in the Oscar screening rooms. Unless you count the number of sick bags and hurried trips to the nearest sink/rubbish bin/quiet corner, in which case I imagine it was a raging success! The Turin Horse, with it's pared back visuals, claustrophobic sound design, brutally slow plodding pace and dry, very, very dry, sense of humour will no doubt be a tough watch for the supposedly elderly branch members, but if they really want to see fit to bestow nominations upon the most interesting, acclaimed and wellmade foreign films of the year then they could do far, far worse than The Turin Horse. Of course.

Review: Chalet Girl

Chalet Girl
Dir. Phil Traill
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 97mins

No one – so they say – sets out to make a bad movie (unless you’re Hobo with a Shotgun, but we’ll get to that later this week!), but is it possible to set out to make a merely adequate one? Such is the case, surely, with Chalet Girl, a movie that can’t claim to have a single original frame in its reel, and never once approaches anything close to quality filmmaking, and yet never really reaches any particularly glaring level of awfulness. It’s all so merely… adequate, almost as if it’s pleased to be so. In fact, so much of the charm that director Phil Traill manages to eke out of the material is based purely on how mercilessly he and screenwriter Tom Williams plunder clichés and the sincerity with which do so.

It’s hard to imagine that anybody involved in the making of Chalet Girl thought this was anything that would ever have a poster featuring quotes like “exemplary!” and “an astonishing work of cinema!” Made in 2010, I can’t help but presume the screenplay has been lying around gathering dust since the early 2000s when this sub-genre of see-girls-can-play-sports-too! films were all the rage in the wake of Bring It On. Chalet Girl certainly lacks that stellar cheerleading comedy’s ripper script and stellar performances, but it also never raises much of a sweat in attempting to give Bend it Like Beckham a run for its money (we won’t speak of Blue Crush). It’s as if everyone just shrugged their shoulders, somehow produced a film and figured that was that.


If the buzz for star Felicity Jones’ next role, indie romance Like Crazy, is correct then we can be assured that Chalet Girl will only ever be discussed by future generations in a “…starring in teen sporting comedy Chalet Girl before hitting the big time…” context as there’s certainly nothing here to endear it to audiences for any longer than it remains on the new release shelves at Blockbuster. In fact, as I mentioned before, nothing about this film feels particularly like 2011 at all. They couldn’t even sync up the production with the Winter Olympics, which would have provided some relevance to the whole thing.

Jones stars as Kim, a poor (as in “aw, diddums” and “wow, I’m broke!” varieties) teenage skateboarding competitor whose mother dies in a road accident, rendering her father a lazy slob and she a housemaid. Accepting a job as “chalet girl” in the Austrian mountains, Kim finds herself in her own episode of Downton Abbey as she falls in love with the upstairs billionaire’s son, played by Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick with an accent as flip-floppy as Anne Hathaway’s in One Day. Naturally, there’s an upcoming snowboarding competition that she finds herself entering despite having never put feet to snow before in her life. This is, of course, on the nudging of a pro-sportswoman Tara Dakides, which brings the number of snowboarders appearing in romantic comedies this year to two after Shaun White’s appearance in the appalling Friends with Benefits. Whereas he was the antithesis of funny, Dakides appears barely lucid and perhaps on painkillers to numb the effect of Westwick’s painful accent.


Everything in Chalet Girl goes exactly as you expect, right on down to the sex scene that ends with her pulling the sheets up over her breasts and yet he, more casually, lets them lie around his navel. One day somebody’s going to start a Tumblr named “The L-Shaped Bed Sheet” and screencap every single movie in which this strange bedtime habit is enacted. Until then we have Chalet Girl, a film that manages to get by due to being so incessantly clichéd that it somehow becomes enjoyable. If I sound overly harsh towards Chalet Girl, I don’t really mean to, it’s so gosh darn easy. And just think, I haven’t even mentioned Brooke Shields! C+