Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 13 of Scream 2 (0:40:32-0:42:15)

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



SCENE 13 of Scream 2
Length: 1min 43secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Mickey, Hallie, Derek, Dewey Riley, Chief Hartley, and Captain Downs (Timothy Hillman)
Pop Culture References:

• None
  

This is quite a vital scene. It gives us more time to eventual killer Mickey as he plants the seed of doubt in Sidney's mind over Derek. The whole scene, Dewey's involvement too, is build to create the red herring of Derek, while at the same time screaming at audiences, in retrospect, to look closer at Mickey.


"It's the easiest interrogation of my crime-filled life."
Teehee. As one of America's most active serial killers (according to Debbie Salt) I wonder if that has actually happened that often?


This is another cute little, seemingly throwaway, moment that helps build that sense of closeness between these friends. Like Randy's puppy dog eyes!


"That poor girl."
And it's bits like this that really do make us like Sidney as much as we do (and you can't build an entire trilogy around someone that's unlikable, especially a horror trilogy where the urge to scream "JUST KILL HER ALREADY!" is constantly there). That's where so many horror movies go wrong; having a central character that is inherently unlikable and instead of cheering them on to defeat the bad guy, you kinda just want the movie to be over because you know the "final girl" will never die.


I know his character is an insane psycho killer with crazy hair, but don't you just wanna make out with Timothy Olyphant right there? I love Sidney's face when he queries - and rightfully so - why anyone would go back into the house, although I query why anyone (we're discussing Derek here, remember?) would go back into the house and leave Sidney outside all alone where any knife-wielding madman could jump out at her and kill her. Hmmm.


She's all "oh shit!"


This is Jerry O'Connell's ow face (hopefully not to be confused with... well, you know.) I have nothing of value to add here other than: he looks funny (lol).


This here is Captain Down, played by Tim Hillman. We won't see him again after this scene so let's just mention him here, shall we? As a matter of fact, Scream 2 is Tillman's only acting credit. He usually works as a location manager and he was indeed the location manager on Scream 2 (but neither Scream nor Scream 3).


I tried to get a shot of Jerry O'Connell's confused face, but it instead came out looking like his i'm-intoxicated-and-i'm-trying-to-follow-your-conversation-but-now-i'm-bored face. Agree?

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12

Review: Limitless

Limitless
Dir. Neil Burger
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 105mins

There is a scene right smack bang at the start of Neil Burger’s Limitless that zooms in on a dishevelled and raggedy-looking Bradley Cooper crossing the street. His voice-over intones that the reason he looks so homeless is because, wouldncha know it, he is a writer. Not necessarily a struggling one – a small, but convenient, New York City apartment with a sink of overflowing dishes that suggests he can at least afford food, plus a book deal with cash advance suggests otherwise – but a writer nonetheless. Being a writer, for Hollywood, means depressed, untidy and a general mess in the whole life-having department.

Cooper’s Eddie Morra walks the street looking alternatively drug addicted or in need of shelter. He stumbles about in tracksuit pants and with long, greasy hair trailing down from his scalp. As a writer myself, I can say that I have never looked like this. In fact, despite the precarious financial position that many of us find ourselves in – including the adult ones who have grown up, don’t include take out as their dietary staple and maybe even married – many of the creative types that I know are some of the most stylish people I know. I, for one, would never walk to the shops in trackies and smelling of canned fish, let alone around New York City.


Of course, this is all a rather silly sticking point to centre a review of Limitless around. Especially since this film features stuff like: the positive side of drug addiction; Bradley Cooper drinking blood and stabbing people in the eye with hypodermic needles; bizarre going nowhere subplots about a murdered skank (both this and Barney’s Version, out next week, feature a murder mystery subplot that literally goes nowhere); Abbie Cornish using an eight-year-old girl as a weapon and all sorts of other silliness you could only ever expect to see in a movie.

And yet Limitless doesn’t go far enough for my liking. When the absurdity really hits the fan in the final act, I couldn’t help but wish the entire movie had been as loopy. The sounds of horror and hilarity at the aforementioned blood-drinking scene by the crowd I saw it with was amusing in itself. The hyperactivity suggested by the wonderful opening credits sequence is there throughout the film’s entirety, but it strikes me more as a film that realised its inherent silliness a bit too late into production.


With his first solo lead role, Bradley Cooper makes a good enough go at being another in a long line of hunky, if not exactly rangey, actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Phillippe (both of whom are, against time and space, starring together in an upcoming movie). Cooper has a bit of a brighter spark than those two and it must be said that he looks great in and out of a suit, so there is that too. Abbie Cornish is, surprisingly, the film’s greatest asset, no matter how underutilised she is. Cornish hasn’t been this bright eyed and beautiful yet, having usually been stuck with portraying miserable or quiet and introspective types in the past. With Limitless and the upcoming Sucker Punch, perhaps she’s coming out of her shell a bit, and for that I would be very thankful.

Audiences likely won’t overdose on Limitless - it is not a never-ending series of ridiculously entertaining absurdity like, say, The Green Hornet - but what’s there is perhaps just good enough to get a slight buzz. C+

Review: Griff the Invisible

Griff the Invisible
Dir. Leon Ford
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 90mins

It’s inevitable that Griff the Invisible will get compared to Matthew Vaughan’s Kick-Ass and other films of that kind. Doing so commits a great disservice to Griff, as it actually appears to align itself more with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s bouncy soufflé Amelie. Griff the Invisible is about two socially awkward and self-isolating people whose burgeoning relationship becomes a tale of whimsy and magical fantasy, yet one that never forgets the harsh reality of the cruel world around them. It’s a film that asks potent questions about important topics, but will first and foremost charm viewers with its oddball humour and romanticism. Griff the Invisible is a treat.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine

Review: Battle: Los Angeles

Battle: Los Angeles
Dir. Jonathan Liebesman
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 116mins

Battle: Los Angeles is a thoroughly depressing and numbing event. You’d be forgiven for crying after witnessing it purely out of sadness for the art of cinema.

Aliens are colonising the Earth and Los Angeles is the American military’s last stand. Two hours of bombastic combat later and I think we all know who is going to come out on top, but to quote the poster for Alien vs Predator ‘Whoever wins, we lose’. We being the moviegoer, who has to sit through this endless parade of sequences designed like video game levels, nauseating handheld camerawork, soldiers screaming identical dialogue at one another and deafening sound design. If the visual effects are nice, scene after scene of grenade and gunfire between gung-ho American marines and robot invaders soon puts any visual pizazz to rest.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
Truly. To call this movie "depressing" is allowing it to get off lightly. At one point on my walk from the train station to my home I had to stop and was all but on the verge of tears. TEARS! I wouldn't let this film defeat me though and I promptly finished my walk home and wrote this review. Personally, I'm quite proud of that Alien vs Predator reference.

Truly a despicable movie. I hate every single thing about it. I even hate the marketing, which not only aims to position it as the first in a long line of terrible Black Hawk Down-meets-District 9 style lobotomies, but also alludes to a back story that is never, for one single moment, mentioned.


And then there's the main poster - or, at least, the one being used in Australia - that brought about unfair comparisons to Deep Impact. I know I am a bigger fan of Mimi Leder's asteroid-on-path-to-Earth film than most, but even leaving that film to the side for a moment, even Michael Bay's Armageddon had quiet moments, you know? Battle: Los Angeles has one quiet scene and during it, quite tellingly, I dozed off for about 30 seconds or so.


Hmmm. Writing about Battle: Los Angeles is making me sad again. Let's move on... F

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 12 of Scream 2 (0:37:47-0:40:31)

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



SCENE 12 of Scream 2
Length: 2min 44secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Ghostface, Derek and Dewey Riley
Pop Culture References:

• None
  

Going back to the idea of Scream 2 following in the near exact blueprint of Scream - scene for scene, as it were - this is, quite obviously, the sister of the moment in Scream where Sidney gets attacked in her home. Up to and including the suspicious, if convenient, boyfriend and last minute arrival of Dewey.


I get Sidney's curiosity about who's behind the new killings and why they're doing it, but gurrrl, what you doing pickin' up that phone? Get the fuck outta there!


Okay, now this part annoys me. Derek is standing outside - ya know, keeping Sidney safe? - and turns around to ask "you about ready?" And instead of waiting for an answer he just turns back around and walks down the steps. Ignoring the fact that Sidney wasn't only going inside to get her jacket, which he could clearly see she was now wearing. AAAGH!


"Hello Sidney. Remember me?"
See, now the trailer for Scream 2 features Ghostface saying "it's time, girlfriend", but that appears to have been changed to "it's showtime." I prefer it the other way since it does link into Derek as a suspect and Billy from the first film. However, watching the trailer just now (below) you can tell that the voice of Ghostface that appears at the start has been rerecorded specifically. The line "don't you know history repeats itself" is said entirely differently by Mickey during the big climax.


Oops.




Derek: The Great Protector!


I had literally never noticed - which is surprising since I've seen this film so many times - that there's still Cici's blood on the knife. I always thought this was Mrs Loomis attacking Sidney since she only seems to care about getting even with the original Woodsboro clan and we saw Mickey running towards the Omega Beta Zeta house alongside Hallie... so, I guess they're using the same knife? Or Mickey scampered away during the stampede? Hmmm.


Ghostface stabs the front door, breaks a vase, knocks over a chair and tips over several lamps. It's like how they make all the suspect characters where similar black boots, ya know? Except they must make all suspects wearing clothes have cover the majority of their body since the killer must obviously have bruises and scratches all over. Must. Yeah, okay, probably not.


I almost expect Derek to stupidly drop his mobile phone at this moment. I know that Derek ended up not being the killer like originally planned, so I'm glad there's not a lot of stuff that points to him like there is with Billy in the original.


Oh hai Dewey!

The expression of his face here is quite humourous, no? Was Dewey ever legitimately suspected as the killer here? I don't think so. Sure, he could have faked the limp, but... although, yet again, someone trying to protect Sidney ends up deserting her and leaving her by herself to be attacked. We'll discuss this more when it comes to Scream 3, but isn't that just silly?


Silly men. No wonder they each end up maimed. Silliest of all is when Dewey yells out "Sidney, he's in here!" What's she supposed to do with that information? And it's not like Ghostface isn't known to be sneaky and, like ya know, disappear and appear somewhere else with no regard to space or time logic.


!!! I love these two, don't you?


I love that if you look at the wound the blood is just flowing out of it! lulzomg, right? Juicy.


I like to imagine Sidney is saying to herself "Oh crap."

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 11 of Scream 2 (0:36:38-0:37:46)

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



SCENE 11 of Scream 2
Length: 1min 8secs
Primary Characters: Gale Weathers, Dewey Riley, Debbie Salt and Joel the Cameraman
Pop Culture References:

• None
  

Ack! My apologies for this project always getting to hopelessly pushed aside. Unfortunately life gets in the way and slows me down (that and I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from season 1 episode 1 right through to the series 7 finale so I am guilty of putting TV I've watched before ahead of this project - my bad).

Especially since this scene is so short, I'm not sure why I didn't just do it earlier and get it out of the way. That "complete the project by April 14" idea looks laughable in retrospect.


Got this shot completely by accident and yet I absolutely love it. Don't you love it, too?


I love that they legitimately tried to pass Gale off as a suspect. I guess at the time it made sense, it just makes me chuckle in retrospect. The whole "Gale emerging out from behind the news van" thing seems so obvious, and then Debbie Salt say "Gale, you're just getting here?"

But, of course, doing stuff like that takes the focus off of the real killer standing right there in front of us. I wonder if anybody suspected that Debbie Salt was the killer back in 1997 as they were watching it for the first time. Kudos if you did.


"It's happening again, isn't it?"
These two are totally all "secret rendezvous behind the van after the next shot, okay?" - you can see it in their eyes. Also, how very giant-from-twin-peaks, no?



"Don't fuck with me!"
I somehow don't see the giant from Twin Peaks saying this, however.


Indeed, Joel the Cameraman. Indeed. That is most definitely the appropriate response to that line.


"Courteney Cox is... The Closer's sister/CSI's newest recruit/SVU's worst enemy/etc"

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10

Review: Rango

Rango
Dir. Gore Verbinski
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 107mins

It’s the curious fad of live action directors making animated films. Sure, Roger Zemeckis merged the two in his 1988 masterpiece Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but it wasn’t until The Polar Express in 2004 where he jumped on the train – pun unintended – completely. Quentin Tarantino briefly segued into the realm of manga during Kill Bill, Richard Linklater experimented with it on two occasions, George Miller won an Oscar with the tap-dancing penguins of Happy Feet, whilst Wes Anderson and Tim Burton have taken time out of their own whimsical quirky lives to make Oscar-nominated stop motion animation films. Is it just that these directors felt the domain of animation was the best way to tell their stories, or is it – as I suspect – that the world of “cartoons” have come such a ways that they are routinely watched, studied and discussed with more vigour and enthusiasm than most live action work?

Joining the ranks now is Gore Verbinski, whose first animated venture appears to be a bizarre mash-up of resume - Mousehunt, The Mexican and Pirates of the Caribbean. In Rango we have a subversive pseudo-parody western starring the voice of Johnny Depp – the most alive he’s been, on screen or not, in quite a while – as a chameleon lizard who stumbles upon the plot from Chinatown in the desert. There is philosophical roadkill, jokes about promiscuous inter-species sex, references to High Noon, Salvador Dali, weird walking cactus, Las Vegas and a killer rattlesnake. Oh, and a character cameo worthy of a double take. And I’m not even talking about the Hunter S. Thompson moment that will baffle adults just as much as it will children.


Rango is at its greatest during its first hour, where gags fly thick and fast and the action is exciting. Within minutes of being introduced to Depp’s pet lizard character he is waxing philosophical with a half-dead armadillo (voiced by Alfred Molina). No sooner is he running for his life inside an empty bottle from the claws of a carnivorous bird and then making cute with a weird orphan (voiced by Isla Fisher) before becoming the new sheriff in a dying desert town.

The plot moves so quickly at times, with so many characters fluttering in and out of the action that the film’s last act of self-discovery – as is common in animation – feels like its dragging its feet. Perhaps Verbinski and screenwriter John Logan (with story credit going to Verbinski and James Ward Byrkit) didn’t anticipate how these two different paces would co-exist, which they don’t quite.


What does work though is the animation. The first of its kind from Industrial Light and Magic – the visual effects house that’s the home of George Lucas, this is certainly a step up or seven from Nickelodeon and Paramount’s previous efforts Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Barnyard. The animation work here is simply stunning, as you would expect from ILM, with every crevice of Rango’s skin, every curve in the dehydrated terrain and every breath of the wind looking like a million bucks (or $135million). It easily rivals Pixar’s Cars and Wall-E as the most gorgeous computer animation ever created. That Roger Deakins was hired as “visual consultant” probably helped somewhat with the unconventional animation angles and viewpoints as well as conception of shots. The look of Rango truly is something to behold. So much so that even when the story lags, there is still plenty of latch on to. B+

Review: A Heartbeat Away

A Heartbeat Away
Dir. Gale Edwards
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 91mins

I know it’s a bad sign when I am already looking around me within 30 seconds of a film beginning to gauge whether an audience is as taken aback as I. Such was the case during the opening credits of A Heartbeat Away, a film that takes mere minutes to stamp itself as Australia’s answer to The Room; an episode of SeaChange as directed by Tommy Wiseau. What begins as a potentially misguided, amateurish effort winds up a startling, discombobulating moviegoing experience that I shan’t too soon forget. A Heartbeat Away is an appalling effort from everyone involved that will have you questioning what everybody was thinking.

If you want plot, you get plot! And repeated over and over again, too! Set in Montague – because Shakespeare is exactly what this movie needed more of – A Heartbeat Away positions itself as a fantasy fable about a young rock musician who must take over his father’s ailing marching band after said father is nearly killed in a car accident. There’s enough quote unquote wackiness and quirkiness to fill the MCG, but nothing can quite prepare you for the amount of eye-popping awfulness that eventually presents itself for ridicule and mocking.


Much like The Room, it appears to have been directed by someone so hopelessly amateurish who knows not a thing about filmmaking, up to and including working with actors, dialogue, pacing, editing, cinematography, sets and plain old good taste. Gale Edwards is normally a stage director, apparently opera is her forte, and this makes so much sense in retrospect since she is probably used to dealing with overflowing stage presence in another language. Maybe Edwards has no idea how people actually talk in the real world? Maybe she’s never watched a movie since Star Wars in 1978 when swipe cuts were fancy and page roll edits were like something from the future.

Or, more likely, Edwards hasn’t seen a movie since 1983 when Flashdance was all the rage. How else to explain the inexplicable sequence where a young, attractive girl played by Isabel Lucas (as in played by an alien from Mars) dances to an awful pop tune surrounded by spotlights whilst wearing the costume wardrobe to Perfect.


I literally could not even begin to describe all the scenes from this movie that defy space, time, logic and reasoning. Like when Sebastian Gregory’s Kevin states that the marching band’s new routine must be top secret and yet they practice outdoors. Or how about the music store, in this town of surely no more than several thousand, that is somehow able to stock priceless guitars and somehow remains open for business despite there never even being a single customer? Or how about Colin Friels, who suddenly starts talking in a new accent as if he got bored on day and felt the need for a change? Or how about, strangest of all, the use of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to show off how young and hip the marching band really are. “Play something new and now! The Arctic Monkeys! Red Hot Chilli Peppers!” Kevin tells his ramshackle collection of old fogies. They probably were new and now when the dust was blown off of Julie Kincade’s dilapidated screenplay. To further show how hip this movie is to the young mindset of its lead character, there are musical sequences set to Amii Stewart’s “Knock on Wood” and Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park”.

There’s really no excuse for how this screenplay got so far. The press screening I was at featured howls of laughter, which says a lot from a group that is usually quite reserved. My personal favourite – it’s A Heartbeat Away’s own “I definitely have breast cancer” moment – was when Lucas’ artistic Mandy says she’s leaving town and “going to Sydney to study law”, as if she was just going to hop on a train, knock on the front door of a university and say “I’M HERE TO STUDY LAW! EDUCATE ME!” It’s truly some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a very long time, but it’s actually quite insulting that this gets made and somehow released through a major distributor when there are plenty of talented writers and filmmakers out there who can’t catch a break. Never mind, those involved – behind the camera, at least – will surely never set foot on a film set again and, for that, we can all be grateful. F

Review: Wasted on the Young

Wasted on the Young
Dir. Ben C Lucas
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: 2011
Running Time: 97mins

Wasted on the Young is quite a different kind of film for Australia at the moment. It’s a slickly produced look at the disintegrating moral compass of today’s youth, produced with an edge that audiences should respond to.

Set in a privileged suburb of Perth in a world where adults are non-existent, much like homework it would seem, and rich children have the lay of the land. Any moment spent outside the walls of their space-age private school is occupied by scheming on how to spend their weekends, where they can get their next drug stash and how much booze they can stomach in between making fun of nerds and geeks. Sure, it’s a grossly exaggerated version of modern day high school, but Ben C Lucas’ off-centre thriller gets much more right as it does glaringly wrong.

Read the rest at Onya Magazine