Proving George Clooney doesn’t suck
I never got in to ER; I didn’t like Clooney’s Batman in the slightest. I got very impatient with my friends who thought Clooney was sooo dreamy.
Pft.
Then I saw O Brother, Where art Thou?
I still don’t think he’s that dreamy (although Danny Ocean was more convincingly so), but this movie showed me that Clooney has real acting talent. I loved this movie – and I rewatched it today, for the first time I think since I saw it at the flicks – as I have been cooking all afternoon in preparation for my darling’s birthday party. Gosh it’s good! Firstly, the soundtrack – which I own – is one of the best soundtracks overall ever. Clooney and his two cronies are fantastic, convincing and sympathetic and inimitably entertaining. John Goodman is cool as Cyclops, I don’t know who it is plays Tommy, who sells his soul, but he’s great too… and Holly Hunter, not my favourite actress in general, is perfectly prim.
I love the cinematography, too: the juxtapositions, the close-ups and wide angles… in general, one of my favourite movies. If you haven’t seen it, you ought! And, of course, I loved the Odyssey references, which were stronger for me this time around.
It’s just so wrong
So very, very wrong.
My love and I both had crap days. We both got home tonight feeling the need for utter mindlessness, so when we discovered The World is Not Enough waiting for us, it felt like fate.
It’s just such utter crap!
Denise Richards – Dr Christmas Jones – argh! What an embarrassment to the sorority of Bond girls everywhere!
Even Sophie Marceau is pretty crap. And I loved Hamish Macbeth, but Robert Carlyle is also quite average.
As for Pierce Brosnan… well, it’s reaching Roger Moore levels of stupid one-liners, in this one. The stunts aren’t quite as daft as they get in the next one – and the speed boat chase is pretty cool – but still, I feel quite impatient watching it a second (third? Can’t remember) time.
Perfect, though, for a Monday night with the need to do nothing.
Call yourself a space fan?
If you do, and haven’t either seen In the Shadow of the Moon or made plans to do so – hang your head in shame!
Seriously, one of the best things I’ve seen at the cinema in ages. Ages and ages.
Take as many of the Apollo astronauts as are still alive (as far as I can tell; except Armstrong, who has apparently been basically a recluse almost since we got back to terra cognita), and make them talk about what it was like becoming an astronaut, flying in space and to the moon, and being home again. Splice this with genuine, rarely-seen before footage, and you have a spellbinding nearly-two-hour movie.
There’s no interviewer shown, so it’s just the blokes in their own words (and it is, by its nature, very blokey – there’s maybe two women who speak in the whole thing, and they’re in interviews from the sixties). All the men are given identical, nondescript backgrounds behind them – and they’re all only shown from the torso up. It’s almost like they’re floating in space, or outside of real time – which sounds daft, but bear with me: they’re utterly divorced from now – they only exist with relation to the space programme; they don’t interact with anyone except the viewer; and there’s nothing to date the film, except their clothes which are utterly nondescript as well. It was a fascinating way of compiling them.
The footage shown… well, I had to watch until the end of the credits to make sure it was all genuine NASA footage, with no CGI, because I’ve got a bit cynical in my old age. But, apparently, it was all real – and it was awesome. And so much that I, at least, had never seen! Views looking out as the stages separate – the moon buggies – that Earth-rise… I got goosebumps at several points, it was all just so beautiful. And there’s real audio too – Armstrong’s famous bit, of course, but also stuff from inside the command module (footage from there, too): it was almost funny listening to Jim Lovell’s voice, because I could almost recite his words along with him c/o Apollo 13. And I really did get goosebumps when they showed the first men who went around the moon – Apollo 8 maybe? – and they read from Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.[1]
Probably the person who was most interesting to listen to was Michael Collins – the poor sucker who got stuck in the Command Module, while Neil and Buzz went walking. He was fascinating, and a great speaker. Eugene Cernan, too, was also great… actually they all were, pretty much.
I cannot stress it enough: if you like this sort of thing, you really should try to see it on the big screen. Yes, it will be OK on DVD – but some of that footage just looks so much more impressive when it’s huge![2]
[1] And then to hear that some woman sued them, when they got back to Earth, for mixing church and state… hilarious!
[2] We sat in the second row, in a tiny little cinema… it was insane, but very cool.
The Jane Austen Book Club
I am not, generally, a fluffy movie kind of gal. However, I agreed to go see this movie with two of my very good friends (I realised the other day that I’ve known them for 10 and 11 years! Amazing!) at the Moonlight Cinema. Sadly, Al had to pull out at the last minute, so it was just K and me: right up the front, with blanket and very tasty food, and a bottle of moscato.
Overall, I must admit to enjoying the movie: five women get together to read the six Austens, through various means and for various purposes. A bloke joins them as well, for the obvious reason – getting into the pants of one of them, although it was more refined than that.
A couple of things occurred to me, which I thought I’d share here – mild spoilage:
1. The bloke is a sci-fi buff, and has never read any ‘classics’: in fact, the bloke first meets up with the woman for whom he joins he bookclub, he’s at a scifi con (SwanCon! woohoo!). One of the funnier moments of the movie comes when he first turns up with all six books in one: in case they’re sequels. This is such a classic scifi idea; it makes perfect sense to me. It’s also very interesting to see that this scifi buff is perfectly capable of reading, understanding, and communicating ideas about ‘great literature.’ There’s also an interesting sideline in him convincing the woman to read scifi, at first Ursula le Guin. She refuses for a long time, before he shames her into reading them and she, of course, loves it.
2. Singleness is a huge issue. One of the women is middle-aged-ish, and another is going through a divorce; one is in a troubled marriage, one is a lesbian with fairly tempestuous relationships, and the other has been married six times (currently divorced). So how to deal with being single, and what this means for a woman, is explored a bit (although not great depth). This is not my issue, and as far as I was concerned this was simply part of the movie. The interesting part, I realised, was that there was no mention of Grigg’s singleness. He was in his mid-thirties, at least, and single, but this was never an issue. Not once. Because it’s ok for men to be bachelors, but women are spinsters – bachelorettes just don’t cut it.
3. The last thing to mention is the conclusion. I quite liked the end – I am totally fine with happy endings, even sappy endings, sometimes. The thing that bugged me here was the scripting! It was appalling! There were so many other possible ways of communicating the same idea – even I could have written something better! Anyway… grrr. Nearly spoiled a good movie.
too much Stargate? Never!
I am lucky enough at the moment to have little bit of what I choose to call play money. My natural Scrooge tendencies are too painful to go into here, but suffice to say that splurging – even on thins that I really want and will get a lot of joy out of – is something I struggle with. So I thought long and hard, and eventually decided it would be worth it: I bought the 59 DVD box of Stargate: SG-1. This is a crazy extravagance; I know someone with them already – although theirs are pirated, and of course I don’t have easy access to them. Plus, this comes in a lovely big box, complete with tacky raised circle (aka stargate) on the front.
Anyway, it arrived on Thursday. We watched the entire first season on the weekend – my love didn’t get into show until about season 2 or 3 when we watched it the first time (oh, did I mention that I’ve already seen the whole lot?), so he enjoyed watching that; I also discovered that first time through I missed a disc – three or four episodes, including the wonderful Antarctic episode. We’re now into the second season, and we’re trying to limit ourselves to only two… or so… episodes a night. Hard, though…
Couple of things of note:
* Samantha is cringingly nerdy in the first couple of episodes. I am so glad they sophisticated her.
* Teal’c is fairly painful in these first few seasons; his facial expressions are just ridiculous. And not always convincing.
* Michael Shanks. Daniel Jackson. *sigh* Wonderful!
* Richard Dean Anderson. Jack O’Neill. As above!
I said something to my love as we watched an episode – something about enjoying the interaction between Jack and Samantha – and he turned to me, in ridicule, and asked whether I had bought 59 DVDs just for the sake of a few, frustratingly brief, interactions between the two.
Well, duh.
Planetary alignment
Yes, you guessed it, I am spending tonight watching the first Lara Croft film. Whee! It does have a brilliant opening, I must say. And some of the action sequences are marvelous. I love the bungee scene, between floor and mezzanine; giving her the bungee cord makes it at least vaguely plausible, unlike some other scenes of this type. And, you know, who doesn’t love a sexy archaeologist (talking about Alex West, aka Daniel Craig, of course – with a bad American accent)?
But seriously. A planetary alignment I can just about come at, on a fantastical level; it’s not a new idea, and there are alignments of two or three (I’m including the sun and moon here) every now and then. But a meteor that strikes at the exact moment of the alignment? Not even I’m that gullible. And I don’t think it adds to the story, either – it’s not necessary for the plot to work.
Oooh, just got to the massive Buddha getting up and angry; very cool.
And Jolie’s hair? So very fake.
Mummies and romance
I watched The Mummy a couple of days ago, and The Mummy Returns tonight.
I’d really like to be able to say that I watch and enjoy them because of my joy at seeing archaeology and egyptology on the big screen, getting a cool rep; for the awesome FX; and for the manic action sequences.
Part of that is true – I leave it to you to figure out what’s a big fat lie from that statement. But the truth is, I like those movies for the same reason I like the original Star Wars movies.
Yes, it’s partly the action and the explosions – particularly in Star Wars. But the reality is, I watch them for one main reason: Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and their relationships with Evie/Leia.
This is my big guilty secret, that I am trying to come to grips with, and which outing myself here will hopefully help: I am a sucker for romance. It has to be surrounded by action, and explosions, and preferably lots of cool FX and a scifi bent; the heroine has to not be a wimp and the hero has to be a real hero (being a rogue helps as well) – and I love movies with no real romance, too – but, still, a bit of romance done well is not something I object to.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last decade or so building up an anti-romance persona; it hurts to tear it down! And there are certain friends to whom I will never admit this, ever. Because they will never let me live it down. Like they still tease me for getting married, after saying I never would (six years today). Kate – stop scheming right now!
The Golden Compass
I took my sister to see this the other day (although I guess she could have taken herself, given she’s 21 years old; guess there are some things it’s up to a big sister to do, though…). We’d both been looking forward to it a lot. It has such a great cast! It should be an amazing movie.
Can you tell where this is going?
The chick who sold us the tix asked if we’d read the book, and when I said I hadn’t, she informed me that it might be hard to understand. I realised as I walked away that actually, I have read the trilogy – just a few years ago, and the details are quite fuzzy. My sister has indeed not read it.
Anyway, there are lots of people who have reviewed the movie, so I won’t bother to go into details of the plot and characters. Suffice to say that I was a bit disappointed. I enjoyed it and all, but I wasn’t utterly overwhelmed, which is what I’d rather hoped. One telling instance might have been that I asked my sister half way through: wasn’t Robert Deniro meant to be in this? She pointed out to me that I was thinking of Stardust, which I haven’t seen. Oops.
The effects were very cool – very cool; I thought Nicole Kidman was good, as was Daniel Craig (what you saw of him); Eva Green seemed stilted, and the girl playing Lyra was a bit odd in places. The story didn’t feel like it went anywhere.
Whenever the sequel/s come out, I imagine I will go see them, for completeness’ sake… but I won’t be gagging for them, like I was LOTR (but that’s a different instance anyway, for me…).
DOA; or, How to Watch Unexpected Movies
Oh. My. Goodness.
When out shopping today, I decided to act on impulse and visit JB to finally buy The Mummy, because I only have this taped off TV. I expected that I would be able to get it as a double with The Mummy Returns, which I was fine with. Turned out that I could only get it as a trilogy, with The Scorpion King. OK, I figured – haven’t seen the latter, I’ll deal with it; it was $4 more than The Mummy by itself. Plus, it was 20% off all DVDs, which was even better. For that reason, we had a look around the store for anything else that caught our eye, which is how we ended up with the Blade trilogy as well. Then, on the way out, my darling saw the stall where they have the multiple-movies-in-one-case. There was one with The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Scorpion King, Van Helsing (I can’t believe we didn’t already own this!) and The Hulk (meh): back went the trilogy I’d picked up, because this 5-set cost less than it did! And while we were there, we got a second: Doom (not seen… not sure), Pitch Black (love it; love Claudia Black!), Chonicles of Riddick (same; plus Judi Dench in such a cool, out-there role), Serenity (do already have it, but you know – it’s Serenity!)… and DOA.
I’d never heard of DOA: Dead or Alive, and my question is this: did it ever appear in Australian cinemas? Because it’s the sort of thing I certainly would have thought about going to see, although perhaps not busting a gut to get to; but I’d never heard of it before I saw it on this DVD cover. And heck, it has Holly Valance in it! Clearly, it was going to be (as my love says) qualitah.
What it turned out to be was a fairly cool 75 minutes of fun fighting choreography. There is a plot in there – somewhere – but it was fairly transparent, not to mention flimsy, and in many ways was essentially facilitating bikini-clad women fighting either blokes who knew not what hit them, or each other. It really was very cool choreography, though, and there was barely a 5-minute block without a fight scene. And Holly Valance’s opening scene had me in absolute hysterics; never has a woman putting on a bra been quite so hilarious. I’m not sure I’ll watch it again – except maybe with friends who will appreciate the gloriously insane and kitsch nature of the film – but it’s definitely one to loan out and wait for the reaction from.
Kenny
Oh my.
I’ve only just seen this little Aussie battler – I was dubious when I first saw the trailers, then heard rave reviews from various people, but never got around to it.
It is brilliant.
I can’t begin to describe it properly. If you haven’t seen it, and you’re not embarrassed by poo-talk, you must see it. It captures Australia beautifully. The family relationships in particular are so true that they’re heartbreaking – and they actually are all family! That’s amazing – and that they didn’t kill each other in making it. Kenny himself… well. Quintessentially what we’d like to think Aussie working class blokes are like, but not so stereotyped as to be unbelievable. I think the sheer brilliance of this is that I know Kennys. Quirks, surprises, and sheer bull-headed determination and all.
His insights into Aussie culture – and seeing festivals and the like from behind, as it were – are pointed and exact, and at times quite disturbing because of their truth. Driving past the Calder Raceway every day as I do, the hoons shown there were a bit scary – again, because it’s just so true. And, reflecting the quote from the start, it really does show just how little attention is paid to people who are – for all we like to think we live in a glorious, flat, classless society – treated no better than servants ever were in the hey-day of rigid class division. Those were the bits that made me squirm; not the frank and easy talk of poo (“regular as clockwork, that’s me…”). But Kenny just goes on, and does his job, and enjoys his job, while the people who think they are his betters act like right knobs.
This is The Castle for the 00s. It had better go down as one of the more insightful looks at Aussie culture – as well as being very funny. And the cinematography too – it really does look like a doco; it’s magnificently done.
Randomly Yours, Alex 