Sione, Tremell and V

Sione's Wedding
Wow - I was one of the few people I know who wasn't all that impressed by what I considered immature and unimaginitive trailer content, but in the context of the film it all works REALLY well. Seriously. See this movie. It's fuckin' hilarious.
B, or 3.5 out fo 5

Basic Instinct 2
Wrote a review here, and the writing of said review is the only reason why I attended the screening. I didn't expect something good. But... it's the entertaining kind of bad. Honestly. And it wasn't boring crap like Underworld: Evolution, it was actually compelling in parts and I didn't feel like walking out at all, which was a surprise.

A generous C- or 2 out of 5 because the more it sucked, the better it was.

*If you haven't seen V For Vendetta yet, don't read the rest of this post until you do.*

V For Vendetta
I didn't give the above warning because this passage is filled with spoilers. There are some VERY MINOR things mentioned that spoil LITTLE BITS, but that's not the point. I said it because I don't like telling people that a highly-buzzed movie is really great before they see it on the basis that raising already-high expectations can turn even a "very good" movie into somewhat of a disappointment. Sin City was one such example for me; a film which after repeat viewings grew on me immensely, but which I was unhappy with after first seeing it when it failed to live up to my expectation that it would be a "classic" as per its IMDB rating and pre-release buzz.

The negative:

V is a flawed film. There's sloppy writing in terms of coincidences (V meeting Evey, then her working at the right place to help him escape the next day; a scientist from Larkhill happening to speak to Steven Rea's character in her role as a coroner JUST BEFORE they learn who she really is through unrelated means, and just before she's "taken care of" by our masked hero).

Then there's the letter Evey reads from Valerie, a former captive at Larkhill, in which her life before the rise of the evil government is described in a way which reminded me of Team America's satirical description of a pre-American-invasion of Iraq as a place where the rivers were made of chocolate and everyone was happy and free. Seriously: I know they're trying to put a human face on what happened at Larkhill and the effects on people's lives of the government's control in general, but unrealistically romanticised elements in this backstory didn't exactly add to the film's genuinity. And the flashback where we see her parents' overly-stereotypical reactions to her coming-out seemed amateruish as well in its attempts to make us "feel for her" and believe more strongly in the idea of being true to oneself regardless of what might happen (a recurring concept in the film). The sequence wasn't up to the skill seen in crafting the rest of the film.

The positive:

Everything else. It gains more and more momentum as it goes and the finale is spectacular. The balance between the story of V as an idea and V as a person is, for the *most* part well-balanced. It's cool. Mr. Rea and Mr. Fry are awesome. The vision of the future isn't that far-fetched (just add where the EU is justifiably-feared to be headed by many, the anarchy in New Orleans last year and our tendency to not learn from past mistakes in human history - and BANG, you're there) making things all the more interesting. And while this film isn't quite up to the brilliance of another fight-against-a-future-vision movie Brazil (which I have no hesitation in declaring a masterpiece because movies that good can't not live up to expectations, no matter how high), it's pretty fucking awesome.

A strong B+ or 4 out of 5.

w00t! So glad it was all I hoped for. Seems like a lot of high-profile movies recently (Batman Begins, Revenge Of The Sith etc.) are actually meeting or beating expectations which makes a change from years of constant disappointments. For George Lucas AND The Wachowski Brothers to go from Jar-Jar and the Matrix sequels to their most recent efforts is indeed a good sign. Maybe even a miracle if you believe in that sort of shit.

Google

The Post That Ends With Tim Burton

Economics
Test tonight. Argh. Eeek. Wish me luck. Or not, because it won't actually empower me with the answers to questions that I simply don't know. Luck's actually pretty useless.

Dennis Wins
Yesterday I listened to some Led Zeppelin & Pink Floyd in an effort to determine who I liked more. I watched Prison Break instead of going to stats. Went to my 204 tutorial. Watched Boston Legal.

On the other hand, yesterday Dennis did this.

Indeed it would seem that Dennis had the better day. Oh how I must become involved in one of these short film projects in some way. It's like... enlightenment and gaining of contacts all rolled into one giant ball rolling around inside an 80s-era house. And fun and newlyness if newlyness is a word. Hmm. Next time the email says they want people with a license I'm replying anyway in case other shit pops up like set-work.

Google-Burton

V For Vendetta...Opens Thursday

Hard Week Of Uni
Last week was the busiest its been for me at Uni outside of exam time. Argh! I thought taking 4 subjects was going to make life easy this semester, especially as the 4 include Stats and Macroeconomics, both still stage one courses (gotta love the lag of a conjoint). Turns out the stage two Arts ones are enough to keep me occupied... then I have an Econ test this comng Wednesday to *start* studying for. Worse yet, after skipping my lectures to work on my essay for Hollywood & Its Others it still sucked, still went way over the word limit and barely had any relevance at all to anything; I'm quite sure my main point in fact rested on the film supposedly doing something it didn't really do. Oh dear.

Final Week Of Card
Took yesterday off from Uni-related matters and watched shitloads of free movies while I still could (ends on Friday). Here's an update of movies I've seen recently and their grades:

The Pink Panther D+
(mildly amusing at points, stupid, you can see most jokes before they happen, dumb)
Four Brothers B-
(saw it a second time on DVD; good movie, really well-worked ending, still think the "Mum flashbacks" are cringe-worthy in their sentimental over-happy feel... they feel out of place though I can see what they were going for. recommended rental)
Lord Of War B
(entertaining flick about a major arms dealer, his rise, and his fall in his personal life as a cost of what he does; was I supposed to end up not liking Cage's character? because I did, and it all ended up feeling a tad like the journey of the film was to "Destination: Care For What's Happening In The World")
Underworld: Evolution F
(oh dear god... an incredibly boring waste of time about all sorts of nonsense featuring a main villain who looks like what he is: a guy in a costume. nothing of interest happens and I would have walked out but had to see if the ending or anything after the first hour would somehow redeem it ever so slightly, like K-19)
The Weatherman B-
(very strong B-, almost as good as Lord Of War; this movie's a solid down-to-earth dramedy where things don't all turn out all happy and typically Hollywood for the lead character, and the movie is more fulfilling for it)

Google
One of the best episodes of anything ever:

Fake Llama

Did You Know?
I prefer to sit on the right-hand side of the bus.

Unsolved Mysteries
Today I noticed a small cut on the top of the knuckle of my left index finger. It appears as though it has been there for perhaps a day or so, still looking "fresh" but beginning to heal a little. I had never seen or felt it before. It's origin remains unknown.

Free Company
In Britain in the 1960s, so says my Macroeconomics lecturer, a smart man came to two conclusions about a publically listed company. The first was the the share price was severely undervalued. The second was that the risk-adverse company had a wealth of uninvested funds sitting idle in its bank account earning ordinary interest. The man proceeded to buy the company at its overly-low share price - hence buying it for far less than it was worth - and then paid for this company-acquisition by using the funds from his newly acquired company bank account. In essence, he purchased a company (now worth the difference between the actual previous value before his purchase and the price that he paid from the company's own funds, and thus worth something in the form of assets used to run the business) which was making healthy profits, for free.

Observational Study
It's odd how something you wouldn't normally give a rat's testicle about becomes intriguing to people because of a hoopla which is created around it. In Stats 108, data was collected from a random sample of students in the lecture theatre pertaining to each person's guess of the lecturer's age. The sample was then used to establish a sample mean and spread, and consequently used as an example of how this sample data can be used as an estimate of the corresponding population mean and spread (ie. how close the sample would be to the actual average age guess of everyone in the class). Well anyway, having conducted this age-guessing exercise, almost everyone (myself very much excluded) found themselves whinging at the fact that the lecturer wouldn't offer up as an irrelevant side-note his actual age. It kept coming up over the course of the two days that we covered the topic, and it kept ending in a collective groan of disappointment from 400 or so stats students.

Back up a second. These people went from presumably not caring to suddenly "needing" to know the man's age? An hour earlier, had I gone around and asked everyone if they cared how old he was, I doubt anyone would have said yes. Actually, they'd probably tell me to quit asking stupid questions and/or throw shit at me, and fair enough too. What changed between then and now? "Hype" was created out of nothing: building up the underlying question - which itself was irrelevant to the class exercise - to a point at which it became (unreasonably) intriguing. I found this interesting in that it mirrors what happens often in real life - artificial hype being generated around something out of thin air, and the so-called "masses" mindlessly becoming interested in this "thing" just because of this hype. Think Pop Idol shows and Paris Hilton :p Do these interested people not stop to think about the fact that they're interest lies in a knock-on effect which has simply lead from widespread "hype" to a feeling that one should be interested, as opposed to having a grounded logical reason for being so?

Google
Break over for me. Back to essay-writing.














The llama on the right is a sculpture.

Date Movie Was Worse

Gigli. Rhymes with "really." As in "really sucks."
So Gigli popped up on primetime TV last night, probably because the cheap-asses at TVNZ wouldn't have had to pay much to screen it and not everyone in the population had (as yet) heard how bad it is. They'll know all too well now. Anyways, I watched it because I felt that, as a movie buff, it was my duty to see what all the negative fuss was all about.

I'm going to be honest here. This movie doesn't really stand out as being that much worse than your typical bad Hollywood movie so as to deserve to be singled out as "the worst movie ever" by so many - the fact that the movie featured the infamous pairing of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez is probably the main thing that elevated it from typical-crapness to a level of notoriety. I have seen worse. Kind of. Date Movie comes to mind, because that was thoroughly unbearable.

On the plus side, Gigli is coherent, which is more than I could say for Advent Children or The Ring Two. Also, it features Christopher Walken making one of the most pointless cameos ever as a detective of some sort (I like crazy shit like that, and as I'm scraping at the bottom of the barrell this scene is considered a "plus").

Walken's character:
"Man, you know what I'd love to do right now? Go down to Marie Callender's, get me a big bowl - pie, some ice cream on it, mmm-hmm good! Put some on your head! Your tongue would slap your brains out trying to get to it! INTERESTED? SURE?"















More good stuff: At one point we see the blown-out brains of a criminal drip into a fish tank and then a fish swims up and eats bloody brain matter. That was quite cool. Oh and Al Pacino is fucking awesome in his... one scene. Basically, like Walken, he bursts into the movie quite suddenly and randomly and is never seen again. But he makes an impact. He comes in, yells at everyone, shoots the guy I mentioned (the guy whose brain-bits get eaten by fish) and acts all smart and cocky and confident and yells at Bennifer. That was sooooo the highlight of this movie.

Wow, I managed to drag out 2-and-a-bit whole paragraphs of "good things" from this movie. Quite a feat. Now for the negative.

For starters, back to the Pacino scene, the situation for Bennifer is defused awfully. All of a sudden J-Lo steps in and unconvincingly (both in what she says and the way she delivers it) "convinces" Pacino that she and Asslick did the right thing, and that Pacino needs them to clean up the mess of the situation. She doesn't do enough to convince him. Yet he's "convinced." Gee. Close call.

The big problem: This movie is a film in which nothing happens. It tries to be a relationship film about Asslick and his big-assed lesbian partner-in-crime. Some movies work well despite nothing happening because there's good material driving the characters etc. to make the film work on a different dynamic to your typical plot-driven drivel. In Gigli, not only does nothing happen, but the elements driving it - the relationship stuff - are pathetic, rendering the entire thing boring. The dialogue is laughably bad. The chemistry is non-existent. In fact, as an extension of that last point, not only do the characters not work as a duo but neither Asslick nor J-Lo (both with the help of the god-awful script) make their characters bearable as individuals away from each other. Boring boring boring stuff.

Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"If by some fuckin' miracle long shot you haven't heard of my reputation let me tell you who the fuck I am! I am the fuckin' Sultan of Slick, Sadie! I am the rule of fuckin' cool! You wanna be a gangster? You wanna be a thug? You sit at my fuckin' feet and gather the pearls that emanate forth from me! Because I'm the fuckin' original, straight-first-foremost, pimp-mack, fuckin hustler, original gangster's gangster!"

Oh dear god.

This movie gets a strong D- or 0.5 out of 5. How does it rise that much above an "F"? For one thing, "D" movies like Madagascar and The Longest Yard aren't much better. Add to that: Al Pacino, the fact that I was able to watch it without switching it off, and the so-bad-it's-good factor (see Ben Asslick quote for evidence of that last one). "So bad it's good" movies get a "D-" by default because they have that redeeming element of enjoyable-watchability to them, and as such are better than Date Movie-esque complete failures.

Retard character:
"She's like the ones at the Baywatch. They make my penis sneeze."
Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"You got a good sense of humor, you know that?"
Retard character:
"God bless you."
Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"Thank you."
Retard character:
"No, not you, stupid. When my penis sneezes, I say, 'God bless you'... God bless you, penis."

You have to see this movie to believe it.

Google
This cat just saw Gigli:

Munich Still Tops

Best Of 2005, Revised
After some assignment work at uni I watched the complex and intellectually-engaging but rarely-emotionally-resonant-when-it-needs-to-be Syriana today (B). It's a film which does the job well in terms of representing a world where human life is swept aside in favour of corporate and political objectives as per the experiences of Bob Baer, but oversimplifies the "martyr" subplot and tries too hard to manipulate the audience with a contrived child drowning that forces the character drama too much.

So with pretty much all of the "top movies" of 2005 that I'm likely to see now seen, here's an updated list of what I consider the best films of last year.

1 Munich
2 King Kong
3 Batman Begins
4 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
5 The Constant Gardener
6 Brokeback Mountain
7 Good Night, And Good Luck
8 Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
EDIT: Hustle & Flow in at 9th, forgot it despite just watching it a couple of days ago.
9 In Her Shoes
10 Crash
11 Sin City
12 Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire
13 Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
14 The Wedding Crashers
15 Syriana
16 Capote
17 Red Eye
18 A History Of Violence
19 Serenity
20 Walk The Line

Every film in this list is worth seeing, guaranteed. Unless you're David and the movie's Serenity.

Google
Blogspot won't let me put any pictures on today - which is a shame: I had a picture of a screaming cat that I found by typing in "hamster" into google. The connection is a mystery.

English people are leading in the triathlon

Workload
Things to do:
Stats online test (worth 1%) DONE as of an hour ago; due Monday. Got 100% because I kick ass.
Media Analysis assignment (worth 4%) will do tomorrow; due Wednesday
Hollywood assignment (worth ?) will do this week; due Friday
Economics test (worth ?) will study for next weekend; test on Monday-week
Stats assignment (worth 4%) will do next weekend also; due Wednesday-week

New Zealand won the Sevens last night
The problem with my adherence to this subtitle-implementing blog format is that I occassionally say what I need to in the subtitle itself and have little else to ramble on about underneath it. In this case I did quite well though in the previous sentence. To further lengthen this paragraph, the score was 29-21, and was New Zealand's second gold medal at the commonwealth games. I might also add that this is one of the few events where the winners are the best in the world, given that perennial athletic giants like the United States and North Korea can't compete because they are run by ruthless dictatorships instead of the Queen.

A History Of Violence is violent, not very historical
In irrelevant news, the traithlon is on TV right now and it's very close during the first half of the cycling (middle) stage.

I thought A History Of Violence was really compelling for the first hour but once the truth comes to light the last half-hour is kind of... simple. Oh and violent of course.

I admit, as a warning, that this movie is graphic in everything it does (and Cronenberg was quite right in taking the approach because it's effective), but if you don't like that it's because you're a wuss so I don't really care if you watch it and are all shocked and taken aback. Know why movie restrictions stop at R18? Because when you're 18 the law says you should be able to handle anything, and if you can't deal with this film I think there should be a system in place whereby such people have their ages legally wound back a few years. At 18 you can suddenly do all sorts of crazy shit, and if you can't handle fiction then what the hell are you doing being given responsibility in the real world?

B or 3.5 out of 5

Question: How does William Hurt get a supporting actor nomination at the Oscars when he's in the movie for about 4 minutes? It's a cameo if anything. Val Kilmer was miles better in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang which you have just been reminded by this sentence to rent.

Google

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang Is Out On DVD, So Rent It You Twat

Hustle & Flow
After bombing in New Zealand, today (after just 2 weeks) was the final day that Hustle & Flow was screening at SkyCity Queen Street (Waiting lasted just one week, so I've missed it...grr). I caught the 3:20 session after handing in my stats assignment (Finally done! Now just 2,785 things left before the end of March...).

Awesome movie. For a film about a pimp and his hos (hos? hoes?... hose?) living it tough, that's quite an achievement. What this movie is really about at its core however is wanting more out of a dead-end existence, dreaming of bigger things, making an effort to turn these dreams into a reality, and eventually (and most-impressively in execution) the way in which a character who does everything he can is crushed to see that what he's been dreaming of just simply isn't going to work out like he planned (these are themes similar to some that I'm keen to explore also in my writing, so I found the story of particular interest). It's a film about facing reality and essentially about trying no matter what anyway (I'm a bit "meh" on the application of that to the ending, though I do realise it would have been far too gloomy if nothing went right. I like gloomy).

The complexity of all that in relation to the lead character D-Jay (Terrence Howard in a deservedly Oscar-nominated performance) is something you need to see the film to understand because words really can't do justice to the scenes when (and after) he finally meets up with the famous rapper (played by Howard's Crash co-star Chris "Ludracris" Bridges) who he's been pinning his music-career hopes on, given how they are climactic (sp?) and how they are driven by both the narrative and emotional momentum of what came before.

Anyways, I guess you might not be able to catch it at the theatre now but when it comes out on DVD I strongly urge that you check it out. Seriously.

B+ or 4 out of 5. Keep in mind that B+ means a movie is FUCKING GREAT and that I don't give them out lightly.

If I catch Syriana before it finishes I'll make an adjusted Top 10 or maybe Top 20 list for last year's movies given that I'll have seen most of the supposedly good shit from '05 after that. Hustle & Flow will very much be on these lists.

Google
Today Google found me a picture of what may or may not be a rabbit/cat/dog/rug.

Stats Is Long, Interesting

Experiments, Observational Studies & Survey Biases
First major assignment of the year; Stats 108. It's a set of questions, some of which are stupid and pointless, that takes ages to answer. I've already written over 2,000 words with 2 of the 5 sections still to go (albeit both are more graphs and charts etc. so it shouldn't be too much more writing... I hope). But given how long its taking, it's actually surprisingly interesting on the whole. I think I'll take a few more stats papers in future.

Good Night, And Good Luck
Good movie. Very good in fact. Glad to see there is still a market for films like these given they haven't made them like this very often since the glorious days of 70s film drama. My mouth waters just thinking about that era...

This movie is quite reminiscent of All The President's Men, the ending in particular, though GNGL is a little less conventional than even that equally not-over-dramatised reporters vs powerful persons drama. Tis truly another great effort by Clooney (after the promising direction applied to the mostly average Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind; think Francis Lawrence's stand-out style in Constantine but on a less-substance-lacking scale in COADM).

Google
Today Google found me a picture of a cute little hamster and his rifle. Awwww.

Day In The City II

Deja Vu?
It seems fitting that an attempt at some sort of "form revival" should begin with a report mirroring one from a couple of months ago when my posts here were bearable and/or Pulitzer-worthy. Indeed Saturday was a break from the labour of uni work (well, I've had one kind-of-assignment that took me a whole three or so hours to get done) and saw me take a trip into the city, which given the geographical location of uni nearby probably isn't worth getting all that excited about.

Things of note that I saw
StarMart was selling 2 Aero bars for $3. This was advertised as a special. Since when is paying $1.50 for a chocolate bar cheap, let alone so cheap that one would shell out to get two just to enjoy the supposed savings?

Here's an Aero egg apparently. I found it on Google. We can't get them here in NZ yet I don't think. On the inside it looks like something retrieved from the ocean.










I rebelled and went to Munchie Mart, a store whose name I still can't help but cringe at even after more than a year of saying it. I maintain it should be relabelled "Get Shit Here", which is not only more representative of the function that the store performs, but is also more appealing to the target audience who have apparently been mistaken as a bunch of seven year-olds by the store's current owners. At Munchie Mart I got 2 Aeros for $2.50, saving $0.50. But I really got more than just a couple of rectangularish blocks of chocolately goodness and a silver coin in change. I got a feeling of satisfaction at having not bowed down to the so-called convenience of a convenience store, walking that extra mile (quite literally) and *earning* the confectionary reward at the end of the journey. I also learned that Munchie Mart is open on Saturdays, and that people come into Uni on Saturdays for no apparent reason. Possibly to visit Munchie Mart.

There was a small film crew making a student film on that level of the Commons. What struck me as the difference between the collective efforts of Dennis, Simon and myself and the project I was witnessing in utero was that they had this cool torch thing for lighting purposes. Ooooh. I must aspire to their level of professionalism before I can truly become a Jedi. That's my new word for making it as a filmmaker because I see a lot of parallels between Luke learning from Yoda on Dagobah and students learning to make better movies. All that stuff about belief and doing-not-trying and size not mattering seems relevant, although fighting an imaginery Darth Vader in a cave is slightly inconsistent with my theory.

What A Surprise
I saw four movies yesterday. One was very good (In Her Shoes, second viewing), two were good (Downfall, Wolf Creek) and one sucked ass (Firewall). But I shall not bore you with details. Go to IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes if you want to know what people think of these films. Just keep in mind that when they disagree with my opinion, they're wrong.

Free Pie
I'm a pie muncher. Well not really, but Jesters is awesome and it's nearby to the cinema where I spend a day or two most weeks so naturally after a while I'll have reached a point where I've had 10 of their pies. Lucky for me that time was last time I ate there. And I had a card that lets me redeem a free one for every ten that I buy, and hence I redeemed it yesterday. I still had to pay 30 cents for Tomato Sauce, so my Aero saving came in handy.

The pie was fairly good. But the service was not. They have a pile of metal forks and knives wrapped up in napkins from which I normally recieve a pair. But it seems that when you're getting a free pie you become a substandard citizen in their eyes. I was given the pie in a bag despite not ordering it as a take-away, and then when I asked for cutlery and a plate I was given a PLASTIC set of cutlery when the pile of normal cutlery was sitting right there. Wtf? Overall, I'll give Jesters at around 12:30 yesterday a:

C- or 2 out of 5.

Been much better before, and I highly recommended the place if this is your first, tenth or somewhere-in-betweenth pie, but if it's your free one then expect to receive backlash as a secret built-in price that they don't tell you about when they offer you the deal.

Reflection

Wow. Yesterday my blog hit an all-time low of... 4 visitors and the first thing I did this morning when I came to realise this fact was look at the entries on the main page. No wonder. What happened? Has the enthusiasm of this blog's early days faded away? Has splitting time between this and writing up the occasional piece for I Love Lamp lead to an anemic bleeding of creative juices, leaving nothing but dry, cold, unattractive movie reviews as the only things worth writing about here? Man. Uni's started, and I've barely written a thing on it. What's more, I used to post like... twice a day. Now it's more like three times a week. Argh. For those of you who are still here, I apologise. I think the slump in quality seems to have began in mid-February. It shall end here.

The Post Where I Cheat And Steve Lopez Makes You Laugh

My posts are becoming short and infrequent. I really have no time left to write anything tonight either, but as part of a determined effort not to let that stop me, I shall cheat and link you to the best thing I've read in a while on some other site. This is from Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times and if you've seen the movie Crash and didn't feel the Best Picture Oscar win was warranted, this may go some way to ease the pain with some sharp and, well, comforting humour - just to let you know that you're not alone in your criticism ;)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-lopez8mar08,1,1907743.column?ctrack=1&cset=true

As I pulled into the parking lot, Latino, Asian, white and black patrons were coming and going without apparent incident, but it was early. I got out of my car, looked both ways, and dived for cover when I saw an Asian driver enter the parking lot. Whewwww! Still in one piece, I spied a suspicious black man standing in the parking lot next to a car. Burglar?Or was it worse? Was he reaching into the glove box for a pistol, planning to knock off Yoshinoya and pistol-whip customers for their teriyaki chicken bowls?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And where does he work? South-Central L.A., he said. He's got a cellphone shop, and his customers are black and Latino, and against all odds, none of them have attacked each other or beaten him over the head. If you can believe him.

I Have Better Things To Do

Date Movie
Considering how little time I seem to have with all the assorted goings-on that I'm currently caught up in, I was rather foolish in deciding to spend a couple of hours after class at the cinema before going home the other day, perhaps even regarding my original plan to see Syriana. You see, the lines were surprisingly long. And because of that, by the time I got to the front of the queue the damn movie would have already started. Not wanting to miss five minutes of what has frequently been described as the most complex and confusing plot ever conceived, I looked at the monitors above the counter to see what else was starting. Hustle & Flow - could have seen that. But if I wasn't seeing Syriana then I wanted to be home for dinner so I could get on with at least one-third of the 6,418 tasks that awaited me. What was short? Oh look. Date Movie. Maybe that could be funny, like the Scary Movie movies?

Maybe not.

This is the worst movie I've seen in seven years. It has three good sequences, totalling maybe 2 minutes, in its entire running time (Napolean Dynamite, Kill Bill, Mr. & Mrs. Smith parodies that randomly work really well). Not a single scene smoothly connects with the next. Awful. Awful awful awful. Complete and utter failure. Even when Scary Movie 3 has jokes that fall flat (which happens frequently) you're still chuckling often enough to be entertained, and the movie actually works as a movie. Date Movie is a disjointed pile of crap. Absolutely awful on every level. I prefer The Ring 2 and Advent Children to this movie. Seriously. They were better incompetent failures.

F or 0 out of 5.

The Academy Are Shittier Than Even I Thought

Crash Wins Best Picture; Category Renamed The George W Bush Award
Urgh. What the farcical-fuck? Seriously. They give Titanic the award over L.A. Confidential and As Good As It Gets in 1997, followed in 1998 by Shakespeare In Love over Saving Private Ryan. Since then there have been a few minor indiscretions, but none as unforgivable as labelling a movie as contrived and relentlessly heavy-handed as Crash as the best picture of the year.

The Producers
I've anticipated this eagerly since seeing the trailer, but I feel now that the transition from broadway musical to movie has not been a smooth one. The spontaneous zaniness of that medium just doesn't work as well on the big screen without some tweaking, and it just felt too much at times like I was watching said stage musical as opposed to a movie adaptation. It's all very over-the-top and rarely laugh-out-loud funny: it's just loud instead. It is entertaining though, but it seriously drags in the final act following the end of the premiere for Springtime For Hitler.

C+ or 3 out of 5.

Better than the last three movies I've seen. Could have been much better. I wish it was. Also: How did Will Ferrell get a supporting actor nomination at the Golden Globes? I know they like to support comedy more than the Academy, but that's taking things too far. He's hardly in it, and like the rest of the movie is basically just "loud." Lane and Broderick do really well in the lead roles though.

Person A Is Evil, But Actually Inconceivably Good Too

I'm in the middle of a company meeting and paying no attention. This entire thing is being written while I'm supposed to be discussing important company details. Right now it's expansion plans or something. I dunno. I just count and record the money that comes in.

Bram Stoker's Dracula
A mainly faithful but far too romanticised adaptation of the novel, Dracula is a beautiful movie with great imagery and cinematography and sets which is let down by an uneven tone. It starts off almost camp and certainly comical in parts with the way in which Keanu Reeves meets Oldman's ancient Dracula at his castle as the strangeness initially unfolds and, while entertaining, this makes the film more difficult to take seriously when it needs to be. It fails to be horrifying when it comes across simply as odd; it fails to be captivating as the epic tale of love and lust that Coppola tries to spin and which a film which begins so far off-course desperately needs to get back on track. Very, very uneven. Perhaps the very definition of uneven. I'll give this movie a C-.

And I must ask, what the hell happened to Mr. Coppola after the seventies? The competence in crafting near-perfect cinema which he exhibited in all four films between The Godfather and Apocalypse Now seems to have withered and left behind a director who certainly knows how to pull off the visual style but without the substance to back it up. Crushingly disappointing. But I loved the creepy detached shadows.

C- or 2 out of 5.

The Island

Second viewing of this movie. The premise is interesting. The first 20-30 minutes are intriguing and entertaining. But once the light-humour fades and the action kicks in, this is largely a flat, cold encounter with a moderately interesting conspiracy to keep things running. I will say this though; The Island, and not Narnia, should have grabbed the third visual effects spot in the Oscar nomination list. The action in this movie is at times quite stunning, pushing the limits of what is technologically possible, even if in the context of the narrative it becomes tiresome and repetitive after a while as the film drags on. And it does drag. The pacing and structure of the story is awful. And for all of that I liked it more than Dracula. Let's face it, everything I just said could be mentioned as flaws of any average action movie, and that's exactly what this is. So it gets a:

C or 2.5 out of 5. Being a little generous.

Mindhunters

Awful. Actually most of the movie is bearable. But where it leads is awful, making no sense as Person A is revealed to apparently be the killer, tries to kill person B while saying threatening "I'm a killer" type things and apparently revealing a motive for it too, only to then get knocked out by person C who is the real killer. And when Person B kills off Person C, Persona A wakes up and is all friendly and they walk off together as if all is well. Wtf???

It is left to the viewer to speculate from the murky revelations that Person A actually thought Person B was the killer and hence tried to kill Person B (ie. they thought each other was the killer) but this is not played out well on-screen at all; it is executed in a way which intends the viewer to think Person A is the killer like Person B suspects and simply takes it to an absurdly contrived extent that there is no way Person A would still suspect an obviously innocent and accusing Person B, nor would Person A say what they do say if they were in fact innocent as we are eventually expected to believe. Before this ending, it's okay. But so what if you end up with a bad taste in your mouth?

D+ or 1.5 out of 5. And I'm being verrrrry generous with this one.

I need to see a good movie. Now.

Keanu Reeves As An Englishman? Coppola Says "Yes"

Hindsight
Editing is going okay I guess. By not planning my shots before the film and now editing what I'm stuck with, it's been a great way to gauge both what extent of shot planning I need when I set out to do something more carefully organised and less spontaneous, and at the same time has given me an idea of how better to shoot angles through the extent of how well those that I have do or do not connect with each other smoothly. Some of the cuts in my film are going to look choppy and awful. Meh :p

Coppola
Saw Bram Stoker's Dracula on Prime last night. I love it and hated it in parts. Will elaborate more upon this later as it's a Francis Ford Coppola film and as such I have much to say.

Horizon
My next film will be After The Zombies, a z-movie about the final two survivors out of an originally-large group of uni students who have been trapped in the library basement for 200 days after zombies took over the world while they were taking an exam.

I Am An Inarticulate Psychic

I Think My Thought-To-Speech Processor Is Broken
So I've begun editing my short film My Eyes Were Clearer On Sunday (where the f***?! who the...?! what the...?!) and I came across a sound byte of me saying quite possibly the most inarticulate thing ever uttered by a director on set. As a testament to Mr. Rikky Manocha's divine acting prowess, he nailed it the following take despite my garbled directions. I can only assume I was rather successfully telepathically telling him what I meant to say while I burbled:

"Okay, how about we - we do the same shot we just did, okay? Okay, so you look at - down at your bag, okay? And then when you look at him... (long pause) then, like... give his bag a glance, okay? And then you'll just turn back to normal. Okay, no you won't turn back to normal, cause... s'v's'v'say(???)... so don't worry about it, yeah (really long pause) okay?"

Apparently, it was okay.

My Random Oscar-thing, Part III:
I've been posting here on an incosistently frequent basis and as such shall get through less categories than I had originally intended before Sunday's Oscar ceremony in the States. But now to add to Star Wars for greatest ever single-film Achievement in Special Visual Effects and North By Northwest for Best Original Screenplay, I'll finish up with a completely pointless, sparsely-commentary-ed quickfire list of other movies I'd award shit to in an entirely hypothetical all-time Oscar-type scenario that has no reason to exist.

Best Picture: Apocalypse Now (still only seen Redux)
2. American Beauty
3. Pulp Fiction
4. The Godfather: Part II
5. The Godfather

Best Director: Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back)
2. Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now)
3. Sam Mendes (American Beauty)
4. Ridley Scott (Alien)
5. Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation)
6. Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia)
7. David Lynch (Mulholland Drive)
8. Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey)
9. Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull)
10. Stanley Kubrick (The Shining)
11. Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo)
12. Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai)
13. Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver)
14. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather: Part II)
15. Sergio Leone (Once Upon A Time In America)

Yes. In my opinion The Empire Strikes Back is the greatest directorial effort of all-time. Flawless. And while I had to stop somewhere, Tarantino comes in at 16 for Pulp Fiction (the film is really, really, REALLY well directed (pacing, music, shots all come together really well at times) but I think it's screenplay overshadows that a bit as it is truly the driving force of the film. He's still one of the three or four best in the business overall though, in my view. Spielberg's another one up there who hasn't had any individual effort really stand out enough for me.

Well, that was nice and incomplete. Adapted Screenplay? Who knows. Actors? Maybe next Oscars. Must go do finances / edit On Sunday My Eyes Wer - whatever I called it. It's a really random name. Or is it? Only time will tell what deeper meaning it holds and what secrets of the universe it shall unlock.

Girl at counter / Movie Advertisers think I'm gay

Gold Card 2?
Entering my Oscar predictions for the Village competition tonight, just polished off some final research. Am very sure on at least 9 categories out of 16, so should be able to get a similar score to the 13 I got right last year. If I win it again, I think next year I'll find an online betting thing and put money on most categories :p As I probably won't win again, I won't get my hopes up.

The competition is on the Village website. If you enter, I advise against the following and say nothing more until it closes:

William Hurt for Supporting Actor
Judi Dench for Actress
Syriana for Original Screenplay
Batman Begins for Cinematography

Watched Some More Movies, No Surprise There
Hostel... is pretty good actually. Gory movie. Lots of gratuitous nudity and violence. So what? It's that type of movie. Eli Roth (director) is awesome, and I look forward to what he does in future.

C+ or 2.5 out of 5.

Also watched Brokeback Mountain. This movie is great, and I don't mind now if it beats Munich on Sunday because they're both terrific. It's quite a minimalistic movie and what really made this film so impressive was the complete control in crafting what it did mainly through subtle actions and seemingly insignificant moments and... I'll end up rambling off an incoherent list, so basically it's a film "at that level" above your typical forced-action dialogue-driven conventional hoo-hah that Hollywood normally pumps out. It's a film that achieves what it achieves in a gradual, calculated manner, and that in my eyes is a mark of a truly competent creative team behind a film in that they knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it / get there over a two-hour plus timespan within which to tell said story. That was rushed, and as such awkwardly written. My review I mean. Not the movie. These last 3 sentences exemplify this.

That said, and while I found few flaws (an occasional "hmm..."-edit especially in the first "part" aside), I just wasn't WOWed enough to give it an A. I guess I just didn't leave the theatre in tears so to speak (then again, the only time I have was when I saw Return Of The King and that was because I forgot to take a leak before it started...the pain...). It's an

A- or 4.5 out of 5.

Would have said more but low on time. Watch Brokeback Mountain, it's great.

Oh yeah, and when I asked for the ticket the girl gave me a distinctive and very much purposeful "funny look". Seriously. I was shocked. I guess she expects only talking animals to buy tickets for Ice Age 2.

Also, one last related thing I just remembered: first trailer they played was exactly the one I predicted and I almost laughed when it actually came up straight after the commercials - Kinky Boots (which predominantly features a drag queen).

What's with the narrow view on who watches certain types of movies??? Can't a film student be interested in a Best Picture nominee and hold onto his sexual orientation at the same time???