I had never heard of The S.P.A.S.H. until today when Matt Riviera mentioned it on Twitter. They are "The Society for the Preservation of Australian Secret Histories, which is an independent organisation dedicated to the discovery and study of undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events that have occurred in Australia since becoming a federation on the 1st of January 1901." Basically they work in showing you things that have heretofore been unseen.
Thing is, it's all a big ruse. I love it!
The S.P.A.S.H., I take it, is essentially a new and interesting way for whoever it is that runs the joint to get their work out there. The first of their "undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events" to be uncovered is the work of cult leader Ray "Millennium Ray" Author" who ran a cult/film studio in the Australian outback. The studio was called Dreamtime 79 and they made many films as a way of getting the Dreamtime cult message to large audiences, an effort that ultimately failed. What we have left is this suspiciously well-preserved series of poster artwork for films such as Incident at Uluru, TasMANIA!, Cemetary Dogs and The Lair of the Lyre Bird.
Some of the absolutely stunning pieces of artwork are shown below, but click here to see the rest of them. If you're going to make up an entirely fictional cult movie studio as a method of showing off your poster designs (including an extensive history) then I think they deserve to be seen.
Is it bad that all of these posters are better than almost all of the posters made for real movies? And that all of these movies have such wonderful titles and delicious artwork that I instantly want someone to actually make them. They would have to be in the style of 1970s and '80s "ozploitation" flicks though. What a hoot!
Of course, the whole thing could be entirely real, in which case...
Julia Dir. Erick Zonca Year: 2008/9 Aus Rating: N/A Running Time: 144mins
A quick search on IMDb for the title "Julia" brings up roughly ten or so other projects with the exact same name, not to mention some called Julia Julia and Being Julia. That one of the Julias stars the likes of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards is like giving any movie there after with that title a push backwards. However, for as many films have been called Julia throughout the history of cinema, it's hard to imagine any of them are quite like the one that Erick Zonca presents. And while many pundits are calling for Meryl Streep to win her third Academy Award for playing a very different "Julia" - Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia - having now seen Swinton storm her way through Zonca's film, I can't help but wonder why everyone isn't screaming to high heaven for Swinton to win her second. Julia Vs Julia would be an interesting notion, sure, but one in which there is an easy and predictable winner: Tilda Swinton.
It's hard to properly explain just how fantastic Tilda Swinton truly is in Zonca's two and a half hour sprawling thriller. It, however, ranks as a performance of such ballsy bravura that it can easily rank alongside Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive, Laura Dern in INLAND EMPIRE and Charlize Theron in Monster as such a towering, all-encompassing beast of a performance. Playing the permanently-sozzled lush title character as if her life depended on it, Swinton charges out of the gates at full speed. Dancing up a storm to the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and Sam Cooke's "Shopping Around" in the opening scene, gyrating on multiple partners and pouring alcohol into her gullet like petrol into a car.
I'm not going to even discuss where the film goes because, quite frankly, half the fun is getting there and not having a single clue as to what it going in (much like Julia herself has no idea what she's doing most of the time, too). Julia is not an "easy" watch, that's for sure, but it's hardly the gritty, miserable experience some may present it as. Sure, Julia is a despicable character for the majority of the films running time, doing everything including drugging children, stealing from gangsters, extorting money from drying tycoons and leaving a kid out in the desert by himself, but even when the viewer's eyes are bulging at the sheer audacity of what Julia has the guts to show, one has to admire it. Where does one, and I'm asking Erick Zonca personally here, get the nerve to write and direct a scene in which a grown woman wearing a mask waves a loaded gun in front of a child's face before tying him up to a pipe and putting masking tape over his face?
Julia isn't just a good film, however, due to Swinton's performance and the sheer audacity of Zonca's convictions. It's a technically efficient film with superb cinematography by Yorick Le Saux, interesting sound design and some sly second fiddle performances from the likes of Saul Rubinek, Kate del Castillo and Bruno Bichir. However, in the end, it really does all come down to Swinton and Zonca who have teamed up to present us with one of the most brazen films of the last few years. It is hardly surprising that the film only a got a four-night engagement at one cinema here in Melbourne. A barely attended four-night engagement, to be exact.
By the time Julia's almost comically perverse trip through Los Angeles suburbia and Mexican border towns comes to an end I felt exhausted and exhilarated and all but jumping with glee. To watch Tilda Swinton act hurricanes in Julia is to watch a master at work giving the performance of a lifetime. And if people do not go and see it because they would rather see New Moon so as to notch up some blog visitor numbers and some sarcastic tweets then so be it, but anybody willing to experience the pedal-to-the-medal bombastic tour de force of Julia will surely be enthralled from start to finish and even if one thinks the dismount that Zonca performs on the character of Julia is a discredit to the her - although I think it sits perfectly in with how the character is presented in early scenes with del Castillo - you surely cannot deny that it's a wild ride getting there and one that is completely and utterly unpredictable in every way. A-
Wake in Fright Dir. Ted Kotcheff Year: 1971 Aus Rating: M (2009 ReRelease) Running Time: 114mins
What’s dirty, sweaty, enthralling, dangerous, thrilling and covered in the orange haze of the desert? That would be Ted Kotcheff’s seminal Australian outback thriller Wake in Fright. A film of myth and legend within the film buff’s landscape for nearly 40 years since its premiere in 1971. Hailed by audiences and even a young Martin Scorsese at the Cannes Film Festival before screening in America and Britain. It was ripped to shreds by Aussie audiences – the miniscule amount of audiences that actually went – and since then the original prints went missing with the film to only ever pop up occasionally on late night television as presented by Bill Collins. The film was thought lost forever and a sad casualty of this country’s capacity for cultural cringe.
Read the rest of this review at Onya. And while you're at it, why don't you send a bit of a congratulations to Sandi Tinghello, the wonderful and lovely editor-in-chief of Onya, for the news that we will be going to print 2010! Great news!
Sure, some may immediately chide at a suggestion such as that and throw around stereotypical suggestions such as Raging Bull, The Wrestler or even Rocky. Maybe Pride of the Yankees or Bull Durham for baseball fans. While those people wouldn't necessarily be wrong per se, I don't believe they'd be right.
Peyton Reed's Bring It Onis the greatest sports movie of all time. Have you watched it since it came out in the year 2000? I actually imagine a lot of people that read this blog have indeed seen it again because I know there's a very dedicated group of fans of that movie. Like Mean Girls, from 2004, it is a movie that shows up all the time on TV and so many people own it on DVD and quickly became an iconic movie for a generation (that's no hyperbole in case you couldn't quite tell). I don't know about you, but if I had to choose I'd rather watch Bring It On right now rather than Raging Bull, as good as the latter is.
From the opening dream sequence ("I'm sexy, I'm cute" - a cheer that entered pop culture) to the tooth brush and bed dancing moments of absolute cuteness to the really brilliant cheer routines and the bonza performance by Eliza Dushku (and, yes, even Kirsten Dunst), Bring It On is filled to the brim with amazing stuff. It has refreshing portrayals of not only gay characters, but also gay/straight relationships as well as broader gender issues. It even has unexpectedly forthright views on sex and the filthy edge it has is balanced perfectly.
Sure, it might not have the bravura filmmaking of Raging Bull or the grittiness of The Wrestler, but I'd wager and say that it's insights into the mentality of athletes as well as its representation of what will do to themselves to succeed is the match for any other sport film you can name. And with energy to spare. Besides, Field of Dreams may make grown men cry, but does it have Spirit Fingers? I think not.
I wanted to embed scenes for you, but I'm not allowed.
THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES 1996, dir. Barbra Streisand
Aah yes, the mirror does indeed have two faces, and if Barbra Streisand has anything to say about it they will both be reflecting her. And hopefully there will be several mirrors and they'll all reflect off of each other there by making it appear as if the mirror has thirty eight faces, all reflecting Streisand.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some Barbra Streisand, especially in front of camera where I think she has incredible presence and the same can be said for this, her third effort as director after Yentl in 1983 and The Prince of Tides in 1991. All three of those titles are wildly different and that is to be applauded, but one just has to watch The Mirror Has Two Faces to realise how absurd it all it. While it's true that the film is clearly an ego booster for Streisand, something that was noted by almost ever critic at the time, it's also so far removed from anything close to reality that it's hard to believe how Streisand ever thought this was flattering to herself.
The laughs start early as Streisand's name appears, appears and appears again in the opening credits. She directs! She stars! She produces! She even writes the love theme!
phew!
The Mirror Has Two Faces is about a shleppy Jewish gal, played by Streisand, whose live-in mother (Lauren Bacall) ridicules her for never going out on dates - this is based on a French film called Le Miroir a Deux Faces and not The Golden Girls - until one day her sister responds to an ad placed by a fellow Columbia University professor (played by an admittedly dishy Jeff Bridges, why have I never noticed that before?) requesting a woman whose looks are not important because he's fed up with purely sexual relationships with vacuous women like Elle Macpherson. Yeah, I know. He must have it tough!
From there these two continue on the most baffling of relationships. They go on dates to the symphony during which Bridges' Gregory brings along a device that presents the music in graphics. It's like those iTunes or Real Player visualisers, but... ya know, incredibly lame.
Don't worry though, it's apparently great fun!
Just look how much fun they're having! It's like it's 1984 and everyone's invited! How can you deny them their fun? You're mean.
I just found video of the scene! It's dubbed, but you still get the pure, unbridled joy that is present in Barbra and Jeff as they watch red dots fly about on screen to the tune of "Carol of the Bells".
Of course, that joy was not meant to last and eventually their relationships hits a snag. They get married, but still don't begin to have sex. They sleep in separate beds and basically just act like friends. She leaves him and runs away (to her mothers Central Park West apartment, naturally). What follows next is one of the few remaining joys left in a world filled with terrorism, war, famine and Ana Kokkinos: THE MONTAGE! And not just any montage, but a mixing of three of the greatest kinds of montages - the fitness montage, the make over montage and the shopping montage. Yes, The Mirror Has Two Faces features a hat-trick of montages. This is very amazing, folks! Just watch as Barbra's character trains in the gym to blossom like her character name, Rose.
Watch as Barbra attends a class and can't stay in time!
Watch as Barbra ride an exercycle in a room all by herself AND MIRRORS!!!
Watch as Barbra pushes herself to the physical limit!
Watch as Barbra eats a carrot omg!!
Of course, all of this leads to the big reveal during a romantic dinner with her husband. And here is where the "wow, she has a big ego" comes in since after seeing the New and Improved Jeff Bridges thinks she's too good looking! Too sexy! Too vivacious! I can imagine Streisand reading the screenplay by Richard LaGravenese and thinking there should be a "Hello gorgeous!" put in just for kicks.
From there Streisand continues to make scenes in which characters mention how beautiful she looks now. My favourite moment is the cafeteria scene between her and Brenda Vaccaro in which she wears the snappy power skirt/suit ensemble seen below second from the left. And that hair. THAT HAIR!
That scene features another memorable slice of dialogue between Streisand and Vaccaro in which Brenda is portrayed as a disgusting fat pig. No, I'm completely serious!
Rose Morgan: I just can't eat a greasy cheesburger in the middle of the day anymore. Doesn't it bloat you? Doris: Bloat me? No, it doesn't bloat me! Actually I thought it went real well with the spare ribs I had for breakfast.
Hah! That's amazing. Streisand's Rose is being blinded by her new clothes and hair and not realising she's becoming a total bitch!
However, my favourite post-makeover moment is most definitely the classroom sequence in which her students are positively agog with expressing their astonishment at their hideously festering frumpy teacher's upheaval.
"Yes, I have breasts. They cannot, however, be the subject of one of your papers."
That is actual dialogue from The Mirror Has Two Faces! Does that not amaze you? I find it hilarious that these kids have clearly been alive for at least 18 years and yet they have apparently never met anyone who decided to change their hair.
These students, however, bring me to the raison d'être for the Cinema of the Absurd entry. Yes, the rest of the movie completely bat shit bonkers for a romantic comedy, but nothing else in the movie quite accomplishes the levels of absurdity needed than the lecture scene early in the film during which Streisand's character gives, quite literally, a stand-up routine to a lecture hall full of university students on the nature of romance, sex and love in novels. I feel the only way I can truly let you experience the glory of this sequence is by showing it to you in full. But, be warned, anybody who has ever stepped foot on a university campus may very well fall out of their chairs laughing.
Did you not love it?
Let's watch it again!
Honestly, words can ALMOST not express the feelings I experienced whilst watching this scene for the first time (and then the second and third and fourth and fifth, no kidding!) Despite the fact that Barbra posits herself as very much the centre of the universe (screencap below), but also that the levels of fantasy in these brief few minutes are just so outlandish that people who have never seen the movie fail to believe such a scene even exists.
How about all that canned sitcom laughter? I've had some humourous teachers in my time, but none made me guffaw at the end of every single line. They all but give her a standing ovation at the end of her skit lecture. I also can't imagine that many students studying literature cramming themselves into a lecture hall to hear such "academic" words as "when we fall in love we hear Puccini in our heads". Oh my. Of course that line of dialogue itself brings about the film's crowning achievement. A single solitary shot. Puccini? Yeah!
I don't know about you, but mentions of Puccini no doubt bring on a bout of pumping my fist into the air and nodding my head in approval. Yeah! Puccuni! Mad props to Puccini, if you like. And, yes, that is indeed an uncredited Eli Roth sitting behind the fist-pumping, moustachiod, knitted tennis sweater wearing douche with early-onset balding who looks like the lead singer of Ultravox. I think even Barbra would be horrified!
Yes, thank you Barbra for agreeing with me!
There's another scene later in which Jeff Bridges' character, a boring fuddy duddy of a teacher, has taken lessons from Streisand on how to get a class interested in what you're teaching and apparently all it takes is to wear jeans and a polo shirt and make baseball analogies. Doing so results in wild hysteria!
I mean, look at the black woman who found his joke ("I'll have to ask my wife", hilarious) so funny that she has to flail her hands about over her face. Or what about the Asian woman two rows back. And, personally, I find the out-of-place old man in the third row to be really creepy and off-putting. He looks like a mummified corpse with a bad toupee.
In conclusion, The Mirror Has Two Faces" (or maybe it should be called Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces: Barbra Streisand) is definitely absurd. It's hard to fathom what exactly Streisand was thinking when she made this movie. It's just an incredibly bizarre experience to watch this movie. It's over two hours long - I even tweeted at the one-hour mark that "I seriously dunno how it will fill another hour!" - and it sure feels like it, but there's enough absurdity to almost make it worth it. Although if you're not quite sure you can make through the entire 126 minute running time (she doesn't stop even when the end credits start to role, although I do admit to guiltily really liking "I Finally Found Someone". Oh my) then simple watch up until the infamous lecture sequence and be done with it. I give it a rating of 4/5 on the scientifically-proven Absurdity Scale.
I just want to end with this image because, really, why not?
Prime Mover Dir. David Caeser Year: 2009 Aus Rating: M Running Time: 90mins
David Caeser's latest film is Prime Mover - his first since Dirty Deeds in 2001 - and it is a movie that could have really been something special, but instead turns into yet another crash coarse through many things that are wrong with Australian cinema. What makes this example even worse is that it starts out so strong, but I can't help but feel that Caeser just didn't have the balls to go through with what he started, which was a crowd-pleasing, fantasy-laden and touching movie.
Set in the rural New South Wales town of Dubbo, Prime Mover again casts Suburban Mayhem's terrors Michael Dorman and Emily Barclay as young lovers. He dreams of being a trucker and idolises the likes of William McInnes and Ben Mendelsohn, fellow truckers who stop by the repair station he works at. After the death of his father, Caeser regular Andrew S Gilbert, he sets out to achieve his dreams by purchasing a big rig and marrying his pregnant gypsy girlfriend Barlcay. It is here that the hyper-fantastical visual flourishes, sweet exchanges and wild inventiveness gives way to miserabalism, drug abuse and dark violence.
As the credits began to role - thankfully - I thought to myself that I must have been so foolish to have thought that after the opening passages that Caeser could have, seriously, been on the verge of making a quasi-Strictly Ballroom for a new generation filled with optimism and an open heart. Whether Caeser felt it beneath himself to make a movie that was filled with hope and sweetness instead of darkness and woe, I'm not sure, but Prime Mover is a big example of why audiences don't go to Australian films. Single mothers living with their abusive mothers, prescription drug users being hauled by their collar and bashed by mobsters or self-destructing losers might be an honest representation of parts of Australian society, but, by and large, people don't want to see them on the big screen.
I'm all for seeing tough depictions of Australian life at the cinema if the movie had actually been good, but it just isn't very well made. Barclay is great as per usual, but other than that performances are weak, especially Mendelsohn who quickly becomes a ridiculous villain. Cinematography is flashy, but quickly becomes repetitive, meanwhile the flashes of visual effects are wonderful, they all but disappear when the film's darker side takes over. That the movie suffers from tonal issues goes without saying.
Prime Mover is just such a disappointment because, at least initially, it felt like it was trying to be something that Australian so rarely is. How discouraged I felt to be slumped in my cinema seat mere minutes later and knowing exactly where it was headed. He may be maligned by some, but Australian cinema needs more creative people with the guts of Baz Luhrmann, but what we have here is a film that is afraid to go to the next level and instead steps backwards into cliche. D+
Into the Shadows Dir. Andrew Scarano Year: 2009 Aus Rating: M Running Time: 90mins
It’s curious to be watching a film such as Andrew Scarano’s Into the Shadows, since a large portion of the film is dedicated to investigating why Australian audiences don’t go see Australian films. And yet I’m sure the one thing Australian audiences want to see less than an Australian film is an Australian documentary on why they’re not going to Australian cinema. Okay, that’s complicated, but I’m sure you followed it.
The Man from Hong Kong Dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith & Jimmy Wang Yu Year: 1975 Aus Rating: R18+ (DVD: MA15+) Running Time: 111mins
The Man from Hong Kong begins with a fist fight on top of Uluru and ends with George Lazenby being - very literally - set on fire. In between there are explosions, kung fu, abseiling, hang gliding, sword fights, grenades, sniper rifles, Chinese food, cars flying through weatherboard houses, nudity, party crashers, assassins, slapstick comedy plus "Sky High" by 1970s one-hit wonders Jigsaw as the movie's theme song! Does this not amaze you?
The plot, what litter there is to be attained in between fight sequences, is this: Some Chinese dude must come to Australia to take a drug dealer back to Hong Kong, but he then becomes involved in some sort of mission to bring down Sydney's biggest drug kingpin. Or something to that effect. It really doesn't matter, does it?
The action scenes, courtesy mostly of Jimmy Wang Yu, are what anybody watching this movie in this day and age is after and they don't disappoint. Apart from the opening scene at Uluru, there is the famous stunt wherein Yu kicks a man off of a moving motorbike and - my favourite - the knife fight in the Chinese restaurant, there are battles with a pack of kung fu experts, a car chase along a cliff and a moment that would cause PC cops today to shudder at the media attention it would receive. While making former "James Bond" George Lazenby look like a profession martial arts expert is a challenge, there are moments when the action is full on. You can tell it's real when the dirty footprints are left on the shirt of a man who has just been kicked in the gut by an agile kung fu master.
In other regards the film is not so much of a success. Acting is generally quite woeful with Yu being the worst offender and his occasional love interests - Rebecca Gilling predominantly - all register nil on a score of ten. At least George Lazenby is having fun! Or was he? At least the cinematography by future Oscar-winner Russell Boyd is lively and the score by Noel Quinlan is energetic and exciting like many scores from this period of Australian cinema. I'm surprised Quentin Tarantino hasn't used bits of the score in his films! Actually, the entire car chase that happens towards the end of the film was, surely, the inspiration for the near-identical scene that Tarantino featured in Death Proof.
One of the film's guiltiest pleasures is watching in shock and awe at how incredibly racist the film is. And while it is the Asian race that bares the brunt of it, the white people are presented as such moronic doofuses on many occasions that I can't help but feel writer/director Brian Trenchard-Smith was an equal opportunist in this department! How does one explain the scene in which Yu is kissing a girl and she mentions her surprise at how good it it, to which he responds with a joke about acupuncture! And just moments earlier the woman was making slanty-eye jokes! Or when asked "do you normally sleep with white women" he replies "Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays." I am not making this up! And then there's the barrage of comments from the white police officers such as "I find Chinese make the best servants" and "I never met a Chinese yet that didn't have a yellow streak." My personal favourite, if you can call it that, was "This is Australia, not 55 Days at Peking!" Er, if you say so, but I was sure I saw Charlton Heston sulking around in the background at one point!
Having seen Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood helps, as witnessing the moments discussed in that award-winning documentary is something to behold. Watch as a car door flies perilously close to the camera after an explosion with the knowledge that it actually was that close! Watch as stunt men (or, usually, just regular actors being paid a pittance) get flung about onto cars and into rivers. Watch as George Lazenby accidentally gets set on fire, resulting in Lazenby being sent to hospital, and watch how Yu interacts with the white women in the cast, knowing now as we do that he actually despised white women and would eat bugs before having to kiss one. He was such a lovely man, I'm sure.
Truly a time capsule worth cherishing for ways that, perhaps, aren't the purest, The Man from Hong Kong is a blast of energy that is sorely lacking within the Australian film industry right now. The size and scope of the entire film is impressive - especially since it was Trenchard-Smith's first feature - and it remains mind-boggling that they were able to get away with half of this. People aren't even allowed to walk up Uluru anymore, let alone stage and elaborate fight sequence! It's a hoot and I don't care what you say! B
The S.P.A.S.H., I take it, is essentially a new and interesting way for whoever it is that runs the joint to get their work out there. The first of their "undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events" to be uncovered is the work of cult leader Ray "Millennium Ray" Author" who ran a cult/film studio in the Australian outback. The studio was called Dreamtime 79 and they made many films as a way of getting the Dreamtime cult message to large audiences, an effort that ultimately failed. What we have left is this suspiciously well-preserved series of poster artwork for films such as Incident at Uluru, TasMANIA!, Cemetary Dogs and The Lair of the Lyre Bird. 
