Category: Movies

Crank

Morgan Avery

Another Jason Statham action movie, released in cinemas late last year, and coming to DVD any day now.

Crank sees Statham’s character Chev (a low life hitman, trying to get out of the game to be with his dizzy/hot girlfriend Eve) poisoned with a slow acting Chinese-made synthetic toxin, the only remedy?  Adrenaline.  Oh, also every pill he can get his hands on, cocaine off a bar toilet floor, a hefty dose of Red Bull product placement, lots of shooting and bare-assed-hospital-gown-police-motorcycle-jacking, and high-speed car chasing through a mall, blow job (no happy ending) while being pursued by crazy Latino gangsters shooting the hell out of his girlfriend’s car fun.

Plenty of great characters, but I especially liked Dwight Yoakam as Statham’s doctor.

Much better than Statham’s 2002 vehicle The Transporter (the longest BMW commercial you’ll ever see), but perhaps that isn’t saying much.  If you can’t completely suspend your disbelief, you’ll hate it. 

Definitely low brow.  Definitely a good time.  Definitely urinary sphincter.

Now with added ( o Y o ).

The Marine

Morgan Avery

Starring John Cena, The Marine is being released in cinemas March 1st, probably to close again by about the 4th.  If I’d bothered to check iMDB, which rated this stinker 4.2 out of 10, before watching my "review copy", I never would have bothered with this awful movie.

You see, this is a WWE movie, and John Cena is a professional wrestler.  (He actually does a good acting job, considering – not nearly as wooden as you might expect, but this is faint praise indeed.)

The only even remotely good thing about it was Anthony Ray Parker’s role as a psychopathic criminal, and he only counts as a good thing because #1 his character’s name is Morgan and #2 he lived and worked in NZ for such a long time.

Really just don’t.  I’m not kidding.   Not even if it’s free.

Animation Now! (2006)

Morgan Avery

Animation Now! is a bit of a film festival staple, I’ve been going to them off and on for many many years now, it’s a combination of short animation pieces from around the world, and can be pretty spectacular sometimes.

Last year, for intance, they had academy award winning animations included, and the ones that hadn’t won academy awards were still pretty astonishingly good.  For the most part at least.

This year it seemed a lot more hit and miss.

There was one real stand out piece, an Australian short (about 5 minutes long) called ‘In My Day’ (2005), which is a collaborative effort between primary school children, elderly residents, and a local animator from a small town called Natimuk, the older residents tell tales of their childhoods in the town (and in the school) in the 1930s, and the children drew pictures to go with the storie.  Really brilliant stuff.  And the only piece that got applause from the audience.

‘McLaren’s Negatives’ (2005) was interesting, telling the tale of the life and works of animator Norman McLaren.  There was a tiny little Australian one called ‘An Unusual Circumstance’ (2005) which was very sweet.  And there was a horrible, brutal, and really just generally unpleasant piece from the USA called ‘Son of Satan’, nasty nasty stuff.  Another quite nicely made piece was out of Taiwan, and called ‘The Man of the Hour,’ pretty good stuff.

Worst pick of the bunch?  I don’t know.  But ‘Sans Secularity’ (2004) was pretty friggin’ bad.  Otherwise, I guess it would be pretty mean to list all the bad ones, so I won’t bother.  (Also, bad animation is so forgettable you tend to, you know, forget it.)

It was only on once, so I don’t need to bother saying ‘save the price of the ticket for something a bit more reliably good’.

This film is not yet rated. (2006)

Morgan Avery

The first movie we’ve seen so far at this years Auckland International Film Festival, is a documentary which concerns itself with the secretive goings on of the privately run (by the Motion Picture Associate of America) film ratings board.  An unqualified, unidentified, and distinctly shady group of religious conservative "parents" who have effective control over the ratings given to all American movies.

Kirby Dick presents the jaw dropping facts in a sometimes humorous way, as humorous as it can be seeing what these guys get up to. 

I must say, our own office of films videos and publications classification seems like a far more open and honest system by comparison, but I already thought that.  How cool is it that our chief sensor is a publicly out gay man?

With numerous interviews with the film makers who have themselves been affected by the heavy handed (and uninformed) decisions sent down by the ratings board, including from Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, Michael Tucker, Atom Egoyan, and many many others, as well as side-by-side comparisons of what the big-studios get away with next to what smaller independently produced films get snapped for.

The members of the film ratings board are secret, which makes it hard for Dick to talk to them, or about them, so he hires a private investigator, who later turns out to be a gay mother, working with her lesbian partner, we go along on stake outs and car pursuits with these women, follow them into restaurants where they surreptitiously record the day to day goings on of the staff from the ratings board until they end up with a list of all of their names, these identities can then be placed against known quotes from the former head of the MPAA (for 38 friggin’ years!) Jack Kirby, talking about how all of the member of the ratings board are parents of children between 5 and 17 years and so forth.  The reality is somewhat different, some of the censors (for that is what they really are) have no children, they’re virtually divorcees, and a majority of the ones that are parents have grown children (we’re talking 20 – 30 year olds).  Of course, this wouldn’t matter at all if the publicity they spread about themselves didn’t make it an issue.

Later in the piece, Kirby Dick has to submit his own film, which of course includes footage of the censors, their names, video of their homes, and so on, to the ratings board itself, and no one is especially surprised when it comes back with the very highest possible rating.

His only recourse is a supposedly open and transparent appeals board, only their lawyer tells him he can’t take footage, he can’t ask for identities, and so on.  So of course he gets his private investigators on the case again, and it turns out the review board includes several representatives of the American clergy (one Catholic, one Episcopalian) and the rest of the board is all made up of theatre chain owners and film buyers and so on who have such incredibly vested interests, that no more really needs to be said from that point.  (So he just names them, lists their affiliations, and then illustrates how the vast corporate ownership of American media rests, really, with just a few companies.)

I thought it was a great documentary, I would have liked it if maybe they’d had some better cameras (it seems to be shot entirely on video), but the content more than makes up for that.

Highly recommended if you have an interest in media and censorship matters.

It’s playing again only once in Auckland, this Monday July 17th at 8.45pm, check the New Zealand Film Festival website for more details.  And who knows about a longer run at Rialto of somewhere later on down the line.

Super Captain Jack Returns

Morgan Avery

Last weekend we met up with Karl & Louise, grabbed a coffee (actually a couple of big white chocolate decaf mochas), then headed into Imax to watch the ‘enhanced for imax’ print of Superman Returns.  The enhancement in question was a number of 3D sequences.  And it actually worked pretty well.

If you’ve ever been to a movie that used those red/blue glasses, you’ll know how completely useless and sucky they can be.  This didn’t use those.  It used very oversized polarised lenses, kindly designed to be comfortably worn over glasses if required. Things definitely popped more on screen during the sequences when the glasses had to be put on.  But that did require being pulled out of the movie universe by flashing red icons at the bottom of the screen, putting the glasses on for a while, then taking them back off after a while, which didn’t entirely allow me to really sink into the story.

The movie itself?  Well, I guess it felt like a slightly updated version of the Superman movies from the 70s & 80s.  And perhaps they could have updated a bit more to suit the more cynical modern audiences.  Such as what Batman Begins did, with the dirt and the violence and so on.  We’re dealing with bad nasty criminals here, would it kill you to have them swear from time to time?

What Superman did have, was special effects.  A great many.

Right from the opening sequence you could see that the poor CG techs had probably given themselves a few nasty cases of RSI in the production of the film.  It started with the supernova that ate Krypton, and then during the opening credits we travelled along with Kal-El as he made his way to Earth, passing many weird and varied planets and other astronomical thingamabobs.

They clearly did a lot to get rid of the corny, cringe inducing cheese that seems to float around Superman’s oily head, but there was still some there.  Changing Lois Lane for a more interesting actress probably would have made it better.  A bit of swearing from the bad guys, and maybe a bit more visceral violence.  Who says Superman can’t just punch someone’s head off then throw their body into the sun?  Or just pull off their skin?  Burn their eyes out?

What do you mean that’d make him the bad guy.  That’d make him the AWESOME guy. 

I guess my favourite scene was the one with the minigun, Superman flys in and stands in the stream of projectiles, shielding a couple of idiot security guards, and slowly walks towards the gunman.  Bullets ricocheting off his chest strike all over the roof of the building they’re on.  Finally the glowing barrels of the gun spin to a halt, then the gunman draws his pistol, points it directly at Superman’s head and shoots him in the eye.  In super slow motion we watch as the hammer strikes, the charge ignites and the bullet exits the barrel of the gun propelled by a growing cloud of hot gas, it travels the couple of inches to his face, then squashes flat on Supermans eyeball, before dropping to the ground.

What should happen next would be the gristley crunching of the dudes spine being removed, but what does happen next is Superman slightly tilting his head and the bad guy knowing his number is up.  That’s it.  No spine pulling at all.

Other fun was the very quick catch up on Clarke Kent’s development into Superman, discovering his powers and so on, all very entertaining, watching him running through corn fields and gradually adding new twists, jumping higher and higher, and so on.  Charming stuff.

In balance, I have to admit that the movie was rather a lot better than I expected.  If you have the choice, I think you should see the Imax release, the 3d sequences are better than anything you’ve seen in a popular release movie before.

This weekend we decided to see another movie, so on Saturday night we headed (with Louise and Sandra) to De Poste for an early(ish) dinner  – I had Belgian sausages and stoemp and a glass of the exceptionally ordinary Palm Speciale, it tasted like Lion Red to me, exceedingly average and certainly not special, let alone speciale, and Claire had steamed mussels and a glass of some sort of wine I have to confess to not paying much attention to (I was busy with the sausages, forgive me).  Then we headed to meet up with Karl at the Lido, where we watched ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ – this is the second part of a trilogy based, most bizarrely, on a freak*ng theme park ride.

Let’s start with the easy stuff, Johnny Depp is really is a great actor.  It’s not exactly a controversial thing to say, I know, he’s got a huge body of work behind him featuring a broad range of characterisations.  For example, contrast his character from Once Upon a Time in Mexico with his portrayal of Willy Wonka now compare that with his portrayal of Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Go on.  See?  He’s good, and he’s not afraid to play challenging characters.  That’s moot.

This movie, however, I’m just not sure about.

Once again, it’s heavy on the special effects – and they are pretty bloody good.  Davy Jones’ crew featured some amazing CG work, it looked, for the most part, like real things.  (As with other CG, who knows what we’ll think of it in 5 or 10 years, it might looked like something from Nintendo by comparison, but for today, it’s good work.)

As for action, let’s just say that all buckles are swashed.  Including pirates going for a zorb ride in a spherical cage made of the bones of their crew mates while being chased by hordes of cannibal savages.  And an extended sword fight on top of a very large water wheel as it careened out of control through the undergrowth of a jungle covered island.

Let me just sum up by saying that while I enjoyed the movie, and yes it was entertaining – something was missing.  I was left with a slight hollow feeling.  Perhaps if you’ve seen the movie you can share your thoughts on why this might be.

Things that are easy to like:

Trinity of Silver’s Eggs Benedict with Bacon.

I’m not kidding, these were simply the best eggs benny I’ve ever had.  Add organic free range eggs & bacon and you have a lovingly crafted meal balanced with the peace of mind of ethically treated animals. The sauce was just right, the bread was light and crunchy.  Great job.  You should go and try them out.

Kungfu Hustle

Morgan Avery

So it looks like Kungfu Hustle is coming out in general release very shortly (like, tomorrow, I think) you’ll recall that we saw this one at the festival a month or two ago, and really enjoyed it.

You should go see it, it kicks ass. In all kinds of ways.

Books, movies, and ‘stolen’ TV.

Morgan Avery

Oh, other things I did last week, books and movies and, uh, ‘time shifted’ TV…

On Tuesday we decided to kick it to the cheap showing of Mr & Mrs Smith, I actually kind of enjoyed it, but you know… It’s not exactly the highest art ever put on film. For $4, I’m not going to whine and complain.

However, I went to Land of the Dead on Thursday, and that movie definitely wasn’t worth $15. I think Romero is waaaaayyy stale. His zombies just suck by comparison with other recent movies. I mean, look at how scary those fuckers in the Dawn of the Dead remake were, even the lame Rage infected guys in 28 Days Later were better. Stick your ‘intelligent’ zombies up your arse, FAST zombies are terrifying. Also, good makeup makes a hell of a big difference, it’s not the 1980s, so don’t think you can get away with the same lame-ass shitty effects that got by then.

The characters all do stupid bullshit things, soldiers firing on auto from the hip, instead of aiming and squeezing off quick shots… It’s just stupid. It doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t give any credit to the audience. The whole structure of the society they’d put together in the walled city was just fucking stupid. And what idiot pulls wheelies when riding a motorcycle around zombies? The whole thing, it just annoyed me. For these people to have survived as long as they did, that would require that they all be smart and hard, and certainly not reckless.

The acting was great, I thought — except for Hopper — I don’t think you can blame the cast for the direction and the material. Romero just sucks. Haaaarrd. How could that skater guy make his character look like a survivor type, if the first thing he does on being dropped off, is to break open a tiny little wooden shack, go inside, put on headphones loud, and look at the floor? What the hell? Who would do that? Block off visibility completely, then deafen yourself. Awesome. So it was a big susprise when he was attacked and turned? A lame-ass non-surprise, actually.

I like zombie movies, and I was super disappointed. Romero is now officially banned from making any more zombie movies.

However, remakes of his old movies are welcome.

Oh, yeah, I also read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I guess it was pretty good. I’ve got a theory about that whole thing at the end, though.

*SPOILERS*

Dumbeldore isn’t really dead, it was a ruse perpetrated by him and Snape, so now no one will be paying any attention to Dumbeldore while he sneaks around, only to popup right at the end of book 7, helping Harry out with Voldemort.

I also read a Bill Bryson book called A Walk in the Woods, again, I guess it’s kind of good. I couldn’t help the feeling that his friend Katz was way funnier than he was, and indeed that Bryson was actually a really mean and nasty sort of a guy, derision and sarcasm dripping from his spittle flecked maw at every opportunity.

So, two books and two movies. Oh, and some Stargate Atlantis.

I just watched season 2 episode 4 yesterday, and it’s… Pretty crap. You remember how in like season 5 of Stargate SG1, they fell back on that lame old saw of swapping peoples personalities between their bodies? Well, this is like one step up from that. I want them to start using Reed in some really brutal and violent encounters though, he has some real potential.

Oooh, there was also some hot boy on boy action when Dr McKay kissed Dr Beckett. By hot, I mean tight lipped and dry. It might have been more startling if there’d been some open mouthed lip grinding, ideally with slippery slithering tongues and stuff, but no.

In other news, and lastly, I haven’t caught a single episode of the new Dr Who since I downloaded that first episode. Another TV series that’d do way better with me on the team. Blackballing bastards.

Film festival frivolity.

Morgan Avery

So the Film Fesitval finished on Sunday night, and I guess we watched the last movie, otherwise I don’t know why that guy was standing in front of the screen being boring and thanking people for their support before it started…

That last movie, Broken Flowers, with Bill Murray, was probably the best movie we saw, now it’s not like we went to everything, but frankly I’ve got better things to do with my time – a lot of the movies in the festival programme just didn’t look very interesting to me.

It’s the story of Don Johnston (no, Johnston, with a ‘t’), an aging lothario who is surprised one morning — the same morning his girlfriend leaves him, frustrated that he doesn’t want to marry and have kids — with a letter claiming to be from an old flame, telling him that their affair from 20 years earlier produced a son, who has left home to find his father.

Anyway, there is no name on the letter, but his excellent neighbour, who is obviously very keen on mystery novels, gets on the case and sets him up — really — for a journey around all of his girlfriends from around the same time.

It’s hilarious. And cool.

My favourite character aside from Don & Winston, was the lovely young lady in the florists, she was… Lovely?

Funniest, and most naked, would have to be Lolita. She was awesome. Awww yeah.

Third favourite character… Tough, but I’d say it would have to be Don’s tracksuits. You’ll see.

I guess this one is going to be in either wide release, or at least at the Rialto, so I reckon you should go see it.

Now, on Saturday afternoon we also went to the animation showcase ‘Animation Now!’, and it was pretty much the same as it always is, by which I mean there was a bunch of rubbish, but a couple of real gems.

The standouts:

Dialog, from the UK , which is about Mr Scientist who makes a tiny little town full of tiny little people. I didn’t think this was the right presentation for the story though, I think it would have made a good interactice piece.

Insomnia, from Latvia, this one was really really good, I thought. The story of a man getting some milk for his cat, before he sleeps with her, after she, er, turns into his wife. Really nice pacing, super good.

Populi, from USA, completely strange and cool. The animators construct a funny little man in a variety of ways – wood, paintings, welded steel rods, copper, etc, and send him on travels around the place, spinning and rotating and having a great time. You’ve got to see it — and possibly on the big screen — to understand how well this goes.

The very best, in my humble opinion, was:

Little Things, also from the UK, in my head I think of this one as ‘the days’, and it’s just… wait, I’ve used too many booster words already. Just take it from me, Little Things works, it tells a series of stories, ties them all together, and blows everyone up. Very fun.

The one I’m not really going to talk about:

Ryan, from Canada, this one won an Oscar last year, and I downloaded and watched a copy then. Sure it’s good, what do you want me to say?

An ejaculation of digital trivia…

Morgan Avery

Right, I’ve been saving up for a week or two, but I don’t really want to write too much right now, so you just get the key points and no jokes.

  1. Went and saw ‘Kung fu hustle’ on the opening night of the film festival, it was… Choice. From the same guy that brought us Shaolin Soccer — only better. Oh yes.

    So many of the characters were awesome, like… The fairy tailor… The loudmouthed (hur hur) chain smoking land lady. The scene where the landlord goes flying out of the window and tumbles spinning to smash into the ground, oh man, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

    Just see it.
     

  2. We went and saw ‘The Edukators’, this was billed as a cross between, uh, ‘Run Lola Run’ and something else, this is complete bullshit, it’s nothing like ‘Run Lola Run’ whatsoever. It was also way too long, and a ctually pretty terrible for a while there in the middle. When it was being good, it was really hitting the notes, when it wasn’t, oh boy.

    Booorrring. Especially the entirely unconvincing and childish argument the anarchists are trying to use on Hardenberg. Maybe all anarchists are childish and self-centred, I don’t know, I can’t say I’ve spoken to a hell of a lot of them. Do anarchists even exist?

    Oh, of course some moments were great and funny and entertaining, it was just that whole middle 30 minutes or so. Oh boy.
     

  3. I’ve finally managed to get Claire to come with me for Korean food, she still doesn’t really like it (except for Korean BBQ) but as long as she gets pancakes, she’s happy. We’ve eaten Korean about 3 times this week. Happy.
     
  4. Tonight we went and saw ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, I think this is from the same people that brought us ‘Spirited Away’, it’s really good. Even though it did get a bit weird and Asian-style-incomprehensible towards the end there. (*spoilers* For example, why did she tell Calcifer to smash the castle to bits?

    I think Calcifer was one of the top characters, I also liked the sludgy men, and the doggy. (Of course.)
     

  5. Oh, I’m building a new website somewhere on the internet, if you find it you get no prize. Oh, but do let me know you found it. (Hint: the address is really really bloody obvious.) I’m mostly using the new site to build something completely invisible for a Quirk site, so I’m not doing much work on it that’s visible or for me, or entertaining, or whatever. (Actually, don’t bother looking, I’ll announce the address and function properly later on this week, maybe early next week.)
     
  6. I really want Labour to pull finger out, I don’t want a National government, Don Brash is an idiot, I couldn’t possibly face three years of him saying "aaaah" in his horrible cartoon character way. Also, hate John Key.
     
  7. I’ve got loads of work to do right now, very little of it for clients so it doesn’t immediately make me much money, but it’s almost overwhelming me, and I really want to get everything done — stuff like the new site, for example, which should be rewarding in a personal and long term way. But a pile of other things as well.
     
  8. Boobs are great. ( o Y o )
     
  9. Oh, last thing, and this one is really important, we’ve found the absolute perfect movie time drink. Get a ‘tall’ (or larger) cup of decaf white chocolate mocha. So fucking good. Starbucks, Esquires, even that place in Borders (Gloria Jean’s?), they’re all fine. Yummo.

    (We’ve tested this one 4 or 5 times now, and it is now and established fact that this is quite simply the BEST movie drink.)

Touch your own void.

Morgan Avery

No beer today.

Last night we went to an Auckland Film Festival movie called Touching the Void… It’s about a couple of brit climbers who got into a bit of trouble on a South American mountain in the mid 80’s fantastic story, excellent movie… That Boney M bit was genius.

But.

I don’t think I can face going to any other movies in the festival, as the Civic is simply the most shit movie theatre in the whole city of Auckland.

The seats are dreadful, and ruin the experience for me, when this is combined with the near flat floor, making for roughly zero good positions to sit when watching the movie, and the whole experience is very nearly ruined.

So, I recommend the movie, but if you ever have a choice between seeing a movie in the civic, and seeing it somewhere else, see it somewhere else.

We are… We’re not going to see Fahrenheit 911 atthe festival, we’re instead going to watch it at Rialto (I don’t know why they even have it on at the festival when it’s in general release so soon, probably because that fucker Ant Timpson didn’t get the rights for it and hold it up for years, dirty bastard), the seats at the Rialto are only slightly better, but the experience is massively improved. (For really good seats & theatre design go to St Lukes.)

Accomodation for the weekend has been booked, looks like we’ll be staying in National Park one night and skiing Whakapapa, then toodling over to Ohakune for a couple of nights and skiing at Turoa. Seems like a pretty good balance. Just as long as I get one of those delicious Red Bull & Jagermeister things from Schnapps while I’m in National Park. We’re staying in the place with the climbing wall, so I’ll have to try to convince the girls to give that a go — Claire was into it last time, but I’m not sure if Louise likes to do that sort of thing.