da Scriffles

Basically, it's a time bomb from the opening home invasion scene. Law Abiding Citizen will have you on edge the whole time. 

 

Dreamworks new offering still trumped Alice In Wonderland on the weekend.

My first gripe with Robin Hood is the overbearing music written by Marc Streitenfeld - it felt like the music was trying to compensate with noise for the dirty, dull colours. I don't know if it's the English weather or the cinematography or just the cinema's projector but it just didn't jump off the screen. I kept thinking of the grime on the Nostromo (Alien) it was at least BLACK black! This is perhaps half the reason that even the swooping supposed-to-be grand aerial shots of the beach and mountains and valleys looked puny, even on a big screen. It is a big screen after all to fill with LIGHT!

The only thing of beauty was the white steed with the flowing mane Robin rides over hill and dale - mine eye did dote for beauty is not else found here.

The performances are ok. Personally, I think Cate Blanchett might have had more to play off if Robert Downey Jr played Robin - he has light and dark in his performances. Russell Crowe seems to have forsaken his lighter side which I liked most before he went to Hollywood in films like Proof or (dare I say it) The Sum of Us. He has become his own antithesis.

 

 

The highlights of this film are the two or three seconds of humour with the "Merry Men". I didn't expect to accept Russell Crowe as any kind of Robin Hood but this isn't Robin Hood as is popularly known so this acceptance came easily.  But! I had to go and see a real "Iron Man" to shake this Robin Hood. I recommend Iron Man 2 - which (if you can believe it) does serve up more of a story than Robin Hood. Save this one for DVD. I liked the documentary style of subtitles letting us know where we were - at the start. They really went for it at the start with a lot of information being thrown around which is confusing. Robin's boyhood flashbacks. The French, the English ... and they kinda of lost me when King Richard DIED! I mean! The whole story of Robin Hood hinges on Richard's return and we know at the start that he's dead? Then I couldn't concentrate on the story running ahead - I then needed subtitles to give me context.

As the movie progressed and the story really didn't satisfy in any way at all I grew to resent it. The love story's lame. Though Crowe and Blanchett do their best.

I couldn't really understand why the writer would put words in their mouths about "It's not a gift if you have to ask" and then make a point of making each of them ask - it was kinda cute but still annoying. And then they broke the romantic tension by giving away the first kiss and the pledge of love before the most dramatic moment of the film - could've done with a bit more story tension as opposed to the din of music and the blur of hoofs. 

I kept looking for visual pegs in the all the action - the action or battle and chase scenes didn't seem structured - or was it the editing? I didn't like it.

It's not a bad movie - although I saw a young couple grow increasingly frustrated and they left the cinema before the end. You will need patience - alas, not a virtue developed among those of us used to being spoon fed our stories. But it's making money at the Take a look for yourself. You'd better see the movie for yourself. I'd like to know what you think.

 

RED HILL, a film written and directed by first-time feature-film maker Patrick Hughes, is a cinematic masterpiece. This is one Australian film not to miss when Sony release it in December.

The story starts unfurling from the opening moment - a panorama shot of the Victorian alpine country shrouded by white fog.  It is a sheer joy to watch because everything on screen is shot for maximum impact.

If you thought Animal Kingdom was good - you ain't seen nothing! For me, Animal Kingdom was a small television story shot for television but shown on the big screen.

Red Hill is cinema - a big story shot for the big screen.

This is ... will be ... an icon of the Australian cinematic drama, alongside Peter Weir's Gallipoli, Phil Noyce's Newsfront. Perhaps Red Hill producer Greg McLean, who wrote, directed and produced Wolf Creek in 2005, helped Hughes realise the full potential of this film and achieve a level of excellence no one ever expects any more from Australian film. It's a thriller and it's an intense, gory ride - it's like Die Hard on steroids without the cute humour.

Introducing the Brisbane preview, Sony's Australian MD Stephen Basil-Jones, mentioned that it has been called Australia's No Country For Old Men. It may be on par for excellence but it's not as bloody.

Red Hill truly is the vision of an amazing auteur - Hughes edited the film also. His fluency in cinematic grammar lifts a good script to a great film because of the expressiveness of every shot and the extraordinary design - the use of props and locations. This must have been one hell of a shoot with so many different camera angles. There's no sign of laziness or lack of imagination.

Every shot is part of an intricate design to reveal the story, the character of a town, it's police and the city cop who's just transfered into the supposedly sleepy little community. 

It's perfectly cast and the actors give the performances of their lives. The film positively bristles because of the stunning character portrayals by all of them including Steve Bisley, as Red Hill's top cop Old Bill, and Tommy Lewis, as the ultimate human terminator - the town's former top black tracker. 

Hughes works for a multi-award-winning company called Radical Media which produces everything from musical videos, such as Justin Bieber's Somebody To Love, to the amazing new media experiment called, The Johnny Cash Project. They've put up a video of Johnny Cash online and engineered it so anyone can take any frame of the video and turn it into a piece of art in whatever style they like. These frames are inserted into the video to create a new video from the original one which is a collaborative work of online art. You can see every frame and the name of the artists on a timeline. It is worth a look.

 

By the time this film ended (minutes literally take an hour) I'd forgotten my philosophical objections - I couldn't completely suspend disbelief because I was thinking, not feeling and then I got confused about what I was thinking and started questioning myself.

What is reality? That's the question being asked. Take my advice: you don't want to sit next to a kid crunching chips and rustling and slurping for two hours here. Get up and move.

It's the question at the heart of Buddhist philosophy that teaches that this life we live is only a dream - what we experience is a perception of true reality, a dream. 

Inception only almost gets it right - unlike the beautiful Japanese animation Totoro, a tree spirit seen only by children.

Inception takes us to the shore of the subconscious - a nice idea.  Trouble is if you actually reach that place then I believe your mind is still and you are at one with the universe - not a separate consciousness building, loving, feeling, killing, wanting ... that's the whole point of the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. He forgoes the thing he has worked for all his life - release into perfect enlightenment - to remain in the realm of hungry ghosts because his love for her finally overwhelms him on the brink of death. Too late. Now that's tragedy. Inception just doesn't get it right.

Leonardo DiCaprio is great - though he doesn't reach the level of his performance in one of my most favourite films, Blood Diamond.

 And Ellen Page is distracting - she's a charismatic leading lady and this is a minor role that goes nowhere. 

Director Christopher Nolan has shot extraordinary action scenes with suspended gravity effects - it had me leaning in my seat. Thank God it wasn't in 3-D or it would need a health warning.

Absolutely perfect finale - the ultimate finale that is.

But the "revelation", the story resolution, the last piece of the hero puzzle isn't a surprise ... what is surprising is fact that they shatter a woman's entire reason for being and she just let's it go as if it's nothing much really to her that the man she loves has betrayed her in a horrible, horrible way. Interesting reality that is.

Ideas are best when they are simplified to their essence - I'm paraphrasing a line from the film.

 

Seeing Colin Firth and Helena Bonham-Carter hold court in The King's Speech made me think that the UK is producing a fearsome crop of actors who are dominating scripted production - hold the Oscars in London this year.

Admittedly, I haven't seen many recently released movies in the past six months - really don't have the inclination to waste my time. I've been watching old movies: Rocky, Raging Bull, Ghandi, Cinema Paradiso...

Felt so refreshing to see Bonham-Carter don period garb and do beautiful once more - instead of fanciful and fantastic and ugly as in Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter.

But Colin Firth! How I did swoon watching him play Darcy in the 1995 TV series of Pride and Prejudice - his acting was superb! ;)  

Amazing to see him on the silver screen now playing the not-so-attractive Bertie, Duke of York, who became King George when his brother Edward abdictated.

He's so clever you forget he's a star and just think of him as the character because he wills it so. He stammers so well. 

I think my favourite combination of casting would be Colin Firth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gemma Arterton and Leonardo DiCaprio (in Blood Diamond mode) - possibly Gerard Butler (in comedy mode).

And Geoffrey Rush is actually ok too - quelle surprise! Much fun! Who would have known that an Australian would save the British Monarchy hey?

Love that history is on the big screen. Waiting for the sequel.

 

Guess a lot of people watch Rocky trying to find the Eye of the Tiger because when the DVD gets to the part where the trumpet fanfare explodes with Rocky at the foot of those steps the DVD stops dead.

Reckon people play it over and over and over and over.... Luckily it started again. 

 

Little Johnny The Movie is a new Australian animated comedy premiering at Melbourne's Comedy Festival on April Fool's Day.

Digital distribution plus clever marketing targeting a niche audience - with a streaming option available in the US by the looks.

Australian content being pumped out over an Australian digital channel - this is the kind of activity that is under threat, if you heard Robert Tercec speak at the XMedia conference in Sydney last week. Tercec, one of the world's most prolific creators of online content, spoke about Comcast's takeover of AOL as the start of the end for an open internet. I'm more concerned about national sovereignty versus multi-national corporations - & whether governments can learn to withstand the mighty dollar.

With the networks building their channels online they will go into business with the Telcos to control not just programming but the quality of delivery - according to your ability to pay.

Little Johnny seems to embody so much possibility of a great future on an open web - where anyone can produce content find an audience.

While many Australian program producers are still looking to the networks and other traditional distribution models, Instinct Entertainment has taken a giant leap into the unknown it seems with this project - though it really is great content so from that perspective it's not a risk. Though it is in the native Aussie twang which is a no-no for international markets.

 

The cinema page of the website has a demand widget that tallies votes by towns and cities so you can keep track - though I don't know how many votes it will take to get screenings.

Distributor Instinct Entertainment has a swag of merchandising online for the Melbourne Comedy Festival Premiere. They are not, it seems, spending money on P&A (Prints & Advertising) to put the film into cinemas without any guarantee of an audience. Perhaps they are as wary of Australian audiences as Australian audiences are as wary of Australian films.

 

"He's cute as a button and has a mouth like a sewer." 

Not only is there merchandising on sale online but you can stream the whole movie for just $US4.95 - the Aussie dollar is still on par with the USD.

Well, I'm assuming it will go up soon because it's not there at the moment.

If you want to meet the kid from Gallangatta on the big screen in your hometown then you have to raise a posse.

Most people go through their lives without deviating from "the plan" - maybe that's what freewheeling is? Anyway, they don't exercise "free will". 

"The Plan" is written by "The Chairman" and "men in hats" are The Adjustment Bureau. Watch out for the men in hats!

The Bureau steps in when people stray off grid - the whole of humanity is represented as little moving dots on grids in their little black books.

Gives location-based social media platforms like FourSquare and GPS a WHOLE different image doesn't it?

I like this story and I like this film probably as much as Inception but I for different reasons - Inception overthinks while The Adjustment Bureau fails to think deeply enough.

The perfect paranoia film is probably located somewhere between the two - a little bit of action, but not too much, and a little bit of screwing your mind, but not totally screwing it up.

Just how many films justify the existence of paranoia? Shutter Island, Matrix, District 9, Distrubia, Gamer and perhaps There Will Be Blood? Is paranoia a necessary part of free will?

I don't want to spoil the twists and turns so it's difficult to say much but it's directed by a writer - George Nolfi. It's a well structured read.

Let's just say ... "boy-meets-girl", "boy-loses-girl", "boy-finds-girl", "boy-gives-girl-up", "boy-defies-the-odds", chance intervenes to change his fate - so they are extraordinary but it's not all free will after all.

The first-time director wrote and produced various other gems such as The Bourne Ultimatum and Ocean's Twelve. 

All the way through, unfortunately, I was waiting for "the chase scene" - sorry, must be Matt Damon. The chase scene is great but the end is disappointing. 

It's like a flatulent balloon deflating as it fizzes out - I was waiting for a BANG? I guess that's a surprise in itself. Oh well.

Somewhere in the middle of the film my mind invented a different destination when interesting questions are raised.

Does he become president? Does she become a great dancer? Is that all still in the new "plan"? Is the new plan better or worse? No clues. Call me paranoid but I needed satisfaction to be sure.

I'm not saying it is a boring film but it kind of plops the idea on the table in Act 1 as if to say: And there it is!

Act 2: From the TOP! Again. There are these scary guys, see ... !

I didn't realise that Nolfi has adapted a short story by Philip K Dick and nor did I realise that so were Blade Runner, Through a Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, and Total Recall. This is more like Sliding Doors.

However, it's a great way to slip history to the kids in a few quick lines and get them to visit museums and art galleries to turn the doorknobs anti-clockwise and see what happens. ;)