Film

There is movement at the police station, for the word has passed around, that there won’t be any piss on Australia Day.

While we’re hardly about to dip our toes back into the dry waters of prohibition on Fair Dinkum Day, the NSW police appear to be flying in the face of our deep seated tradition of inebriation, seeking to ban take-away sales of any beer worth bottling and proposing some sort of two can limit, as if the boundary at the SCG now stretched past Broken Hill.

And while one of our many national shames is indeed the battle of the binge, for me the only thing worse than our inability to keep our elbows from bending is our inability to make a film that looks like it hasn’t just fallen from a blue cattle dog’s bumhole.

Continue reading "Strike me pink it’s the crap OZ cinema drinking game" »

The 1950s was an extraordinary decade. It produced John Howard’s values, Tony Abbott’s existence and Marty McFly’s parents.

It was an age in which men were men and women were women and Supreme Court judges were white. People knew who they were back then and if they didn’t people were friendly enough that you could ask somebody and they’d tell you. Back then you could take all the drugs you wanted, as long as you were a housewife and had a prescription. You do that these days and people say you’ve got a problem.

Yet into this staid world exploded a force with such style, dark good looks and raw sexual energy that the cultural landscape of the entire western world was to be changed forever. I speak of course of the DeLorean DMC 12, a sports car whose fame is only eclipsed by its poor on-road performance and sudden withdrawal from production.*

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: The Tony Abbott tribute edition" »

I felt nothing when Michael Jackson died. It’s not like I didn’t try to summon a tear but in the end the only emotion I could rustle up was ambivalence. This was surprising because usually when a celebrity dies, I do feel sad. Often extremely so.

When Natasha Richardson died, for example, I was deeply affected, even though I couldn’t name a single film she was in. When John Lennon died, I was terribly sad, even though I was only vaguely aware of The Beatles and I was only nine.

But when one of the world’s biggest pop stars died back in June, someone whose music had been the soundtrack to decades of my life, I was oddly unmoved. As much as I tried, I simply couldn’t connect to any great sense of loss or tap into that massive international out-pouring of grief.

Continue reading "This is an excellent piece of Michael Jackson propaganda" »

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991 Spoiler alert: Tenuous links between Kevin Costner, Joe’s mum, and the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival

In 1991 Bryan Adams had a good old fashioned tug at the world’s heartstrings with the smash hit ballad “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. The song was the theme to the classic motion picture Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and was written to express the way Robin Hood felt about Maid Marian. It also, by an uncanny coincidence, describes exactly how my mother feels about me.

This was never more clear than when I went home to Melbourne for the weekend on a racing junket and thought I would pop by the old family homestead afterwards. I won’t delve too much into a description of said homestead except to say that it is the sort of house which does not so much have rooms as it does narrow pathways cut through piles of old newspapers.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Costner in Robin Hood" »

Knight Rider, 1982. Spoiler alert: David Hasselhoff walks into a bar.

Civilisations are built on the backs of great men, and, where possible, great Pontiacs. In 1982, when humankind was still reeling from the release of the Toyota Camry and crying out for a hero, such a man and such a Pontiac answered the call.

His name was Michael Knight and he was to go on to change the face of crime-fighting for a generation, as well as deliver the 2000 Sydney Olympics on time and on budget.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Knight Rider" »

Point Break. Year: 1991. Spoiler alert: Fear causes hesitation.

The death of Patrick Swayze last week wreaked havoc within the media industry. Being the sensitive and well-honed professionals that we are, we naturally wished to present Swayze in a respectful light and only show examples of his best work. As a result all the montages went like this:

1. Water scene from Dirty Dancing
2. Pottery scene from Ghost
3. Field scene from Dirty Dancing
4. Fade to black.

This kind of blatant editorialising is based on the small-minded orthodoxy that classic films such as Road House (42 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) and Next of Kin (43 per cent) are somehow unworthy of Swayze’s legacy.  In fact while reception was largely negative (the combined US box office was $0), more prescient sections of the media realised that history would judge both movies well.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema #9: Point Break" »

Popular science fiction has long explored the themes of race, racial tolerance, isolation and segregation.

Alien species as a metaphor for race is not rocket science and it goes as far back as 1953 with the movie It Came From Outer Space, where the aliens believe their hideous appearance will inevitably lead to conflict with humanity, and reflects the xenophobic thinking at the time, that is the “blacks” would show consideration for the “whites”.

It was the sort of thinking that in turn led to one of the most tragic social-engineering laws of our time - Apartheid.

Continue reading "The alien film that’s a true story - sort of" »

I cried watching Ghost. But then I cried at the end of Platoon, so maybe I’m not the best judge of a movie’s weep-inducing capabilities.

“Ditto,” though, is surely one of the great one-word one-liners. Patrick Swayze‘s character in Ghost, Sam, couldn’t bring himself to tell Molly he loved her, and used the phrase whenever she said “I love you.”

It’s at the top of our list of the most memorable quotes from Swayze, who has died of cancer. He was 57. We’re looking for your input to build the list so add your suggestions and discuss your favourite Swayze moments in the comments.

Continue reading "Patrick Swayze’s greatest movie moments" »

With only four months left until we leave the awkward-to-say noughties behind, why is no-one yet talking about the annointment of the “best film of the decade”?

Despite terabytes of movie blog and opinion sites, all hungry for content, there’s precious little undercurrent for this film or that: no “camps” of bloggers waving the flag for Adaptation, There Will Be Blood, Ratatouille or even the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Quentin Tarantino this week listed his top 20 favourite flicks since 1992 (the year Reservoir Dogs was released) and even that didn’t spur a response narrowing things down to the decade.

Continue reading "You’ve never heard of the best film of the noughties" »

Yes! Stick this in your eye, over-analytical movie critics: Quentin Tarantino has named his favourite 20 movies of his directing career, and it’s a laundry list of pop shtick including Speed, The Matrix, Fight Club, and Team America - World Police, while the closest it gets to a Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is the palatable Lost in Translation. 

To my fellow trashy-movie-loving Philistines who have been hiding in the closet: it’s time to celebrate. Liking movies with bad guys and guns is OK. Quentin Tarantino, one of the finest directors of his generation, says so.

The list includes some off-the-wall Japanese and Korean martial arts and monster flicks - which I haven’t seen and probably won’t, ever - but the rest help make up one of the most quotable lists you’ll see this year.

Continue reading "At last, a movie buff who says it’s OK to love trash" »

That’s all she wrote for ‘newspaper movies’, with the fruitful subgenre to breathe its last once the Russell Crowe thriller State of Play slips this week from Australia cinemas.

No longer will Hollywood stars loosen their ties and roll up their sleeves as scoop-hungry newspaper reporters, no more will veteran character actors bring knowing splashes of avuncular charm to the stock role of the grizzled editor. No longer will the movie news be broken in print.

State of Play, with Crowe as a Washington journalist chasing a far-reaching Capitol conspiracy, marks the end of an era simply because 21st century audiences assume, correctly or not, that news now happens online.

Continue reading "Time to pronounce the death of the newspaper ... movie" »

Whether you love or loathe the Academy Awards, there’s no doubt that winning one of those heavy gold statuettes can be a career-changing experience for those in the movie industry.

It’s not surprising then that the announcement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has lifted the number of nominations for Best Picture from 5 to 10 for 2010 has drawn interesting responses from fans and critics alike.

Some film professionals are delighted that the pool of competitors is being deepened, declaring that this decision will allow more cinematic contenders to vie for what’s undoubtedly the most prestigious prize of the night. Hope for the Australian film industry has even been expressed – but apart from this year’s winner of Canne’s best film, Warwick Thornton’s Sampson and Delilah, that wish is more akin to chasing rainbows.

Continue reading "Double the chance of nomination for an Oscar" »

It’s everywhere: God, the Bible, sinners, commandments, the fires of judgement. The whole theological lot is currently centre-stage in pop culture, news media and university lecture halls across the nation. You can’t even escape religious discussion at the two-star-review end of the cinema.

And that (possibly lower down) is exactly where you find the new Jack Black comedy, The Year One. I haven’t endured such a dense smog of sexual stereotypes, fart jokes and poo-eating since Year 8 sailing camp.

But the film’s real subject matter is religion, ancient and modern and your need to be set free from it. Religion is not only ridiculous but also corrupt, and you must pursue your own destiny, whatever you think that might be.

Continue reading "Year One: a parody of biblical proportions" »