Mayhem and Probs

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Phil

Welcome to the third of my semi-regular Content Sponge! posts where I write about the telly, films and (sometimes) books I have ingested lately.

TELEVISION

Doctor Who (Seasons 1-4)

I have deeply disliked Matt Smith as the latest Doctor and his poorly conceived adventures (Spitfires flying in space, multi-coloured Daleks, various stupid hats, pointless babbling) so much, that recently when ABC 2 replayed the seasons 1 to 4 (from its relaunch in 2005 to 2010), I decided to have a look to see if something was off with my sensors. For those playing at home, this was the era of Doctors 9 (Christopher Eccleston) and 10 (David Tennant).

On a second viewing, I still didn’t like the egregiously cute Adipose, the sonic screwdriver that can fix or break anything (except wood), the Doctor’s use of what is more or less magic and I remained unconvinced by the usually excellent John Sim as The Master. (Crappest. Master. Ever.) Seasons 1–4 saw the new Doctor(s) under the aegis of showrunner Russel T. Davies (QUEER AS FOLK, TORCHWOOD). He reconceived The Doctor as a casualty of war who found it difficult to make friends or form relationships. This was the best and effectively most adult part of the show. (3/5)

The show’s creative team changed in season 5. All the touchy-feely stuff has been shorn off in favour of the boys’ own adventures of L’il Matty and his hot girl companions (apologies to the excellent Arthur Darvill). To me, this feels like a retrograde step and an obvious shift back towards DOCTOR WHO’s original young demographic. Clearly relationships in TV science fiction are only for women, gay showrunners and grumpy old Gen X-ers like myself.

 

Sherlock (Seasons 1-2)

Speaking of the new DOCTOR WHO, current showrunner Steven Moffatt (PRESS GANG, COUPLING) is also responsible for the new Sherlock Holmes with Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. Working with Mark Gatis (THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN) the pair have brilliantly re-imagined the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories in modern London. Not only does this television adaptation blow Guy Ritchie’s silly version to smithereens (yes, I like Downey as much you do, but the character is BS), it also makes the 1980s telly version with Jeremy Brett seem rather staid by comparison. Martin Freeman makes a convincing modern Dr Watson and most of the updatings (mobile phone communications, genetic engineering, Watson’s blog) make perfect sense. The first season was good (3/5), the second was even better (4/5).

 

FILM

The Artist (2012)

The 2012 Oscar winner for Best Picture is a funny, dazzling achievement that borrows heavily from many old movies, especially SINGING IN THE RAIN (1952) and A STAR IS BORN (1937). Jean Dujardin, who won a Best Actor Oscar, is perfectly cast as a silent film actor who loses everything. The film can be faulted for being overly sentimental, melodramatic and not really being about anything much. However it makes a modern audience concentrate on silent filmmaking in black and white in 2012 and for this audacious move, director Michel Hazanavicius deserves at least an elephant stamp and a gold star. The Academy went further and gave him the Best Director Oscar.  (3/5)

 

Attack The Block (2011)

Some critics and audiences disliked this sci-fi comedy horror because they felt it glorified criminals. However, I found Joe Cornish’s directorial debut somewhat more subtle and clever than that.  Aliens attack a council estate in South London and a street gang have to defend “The Block”. The setting is unusual, the characters atypical and the dialogue is unlike anything most of us have ever heard at the movies. This fast moving action film has the scariest, cheaply-made aliens I’ve seen in a long time.  Thanks to excellent post-production and top notch cinematography these monsters are the stuff of childhood nightmares; indistinct, many-fanged creatures waiting to tear you apart. (3.5/5)

 

John Carter (2012)

During my sci-fi geek childhood, I knew John Carter of Mars as an heroic Edgar Rice Burroughs character.  JOHN CARTER OF MARS is also the title of the eleventh and final of Burroughs’ chronicles of life on the planet that we call Mars but the natives know as Barsoom. Over the years, many have been captivated by these sci-fi adventure tales, among them Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (FINDING NEMO, WALL-E etc). Stanton wanted to make a big budget version of the Carter story A PRINCESS FROM MARS in time for its centenary. He succeeded in this but critical and audience opinion has been split on how good the new movie is. The big theory on the Internets is that this 100-year-old tale has inspired so much later science fiction that it now seems derivative of its imitators. Certainly it is easy to watch the film and find ideas later swiped by STAR WARS IV, FLASH GORDON and DUNE.

I thought the movie was intermittently exciting, had stunning art direction and effects and some good performances from an excellent cast: Ciarin Hinds, Dominc West, James Purefoy, Willem Dafoe and Lynn Collins. One of my movie buddies said it could have had more joy about it; at times it WAS a little po-faced. I think its biggest weakness was the casting of Taylor Kitsch as John Carter. Although a number of fans have been thrilled by his strapping beef-cake-itude, he was unable to bring much charisma or indeed joy to the central role.  (2.5/5)

Regards,

Phil Jeng Kane

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Nope! Chuck Testa

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Phil

Welcome to the second of my semi-regular Content Sponge! posts where I write about the telly, films and books I have ingested lately.

HOMELAND (2012)

I have seen the first couple of episodes and feel perhaps this was overly hyped as a great piece of television.  I will let the PR folk describe the premise: “Homeland focusses on Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, who returns home eight years after going missing in Iraq, and Carrie Mathison, a driven (and possibly unstable) CIA officer who suspects he might be plotting an attack on America.”

The series’ creator Gideon Raff made a similar show for television in Israel. The co-developers of the US series are former 24 writers, and frankly, this is how the show feels to me–a classy 24. British actor Damien Lewis plays Brody and is excellent as always. Clair Danes is very watchable as the “Starling-esque” Mathison, but I found the premise a bit far-fetched and was never fully committed to the story for that reason. Morena Baccarin who played the chilly lead alien Anna, in the boring remake of the series V, is excellent here in the role of Jessica Brody, the wife who is trying to deal with her damaged husband. Rating - 3/5

 

BOSSY PANTS (2011)

I’m a Tina Fey fan and expected to be amused by her best-selling book, so (weirdly) I had an ulterior motive for reading this. Like many, I don’t believe I read enough and now I’m dealing with the feeling that the e-reading revolution is racing by without me. So I grabbed a Kindle app for my ‘phone and downloaded Bossy Pants. I figured that if I could get used to reading something light in a form that was challenging (the small screen of my ‘phone) then this would help me accept the virtual reading future.

And it did. At first, I was slightly annoyed with the screen size, font size and general non-real-bookishness of the experience, but by halfway through it felt more or less like reading an “actual” book.

If you don’t know who Fey is, she is the mind behind the movie Mean Girls (2004) and the sitcom 30 Rock among other things. Her book Bossy Pants was as funny as I thought it would be. I would have preferred a more straightforward autobiography, but Fey’s essentially guarded nature dictates the style. She tells analytical anecdotes about her childhood and adolescence, shares fascinating insights into her exalted level of show business, but her emotional life is off limits. She clearly exempts herself from the reality TV/tabloid part of the culture with its demand for tears and confession; the tough-minded, professional creative is evident on every page. I really enjoyed this and give it a 4/5.

 

COMMERCIAL KINGS (2011)

If you know what “Nope! Chuck Testa” means then you probably know all you need to about Rhett and Link the self-proclaimed Commercial Kings. If this last sentence seems like gibberish, then get onto the Google, YouTube and Wikipedia and type in “Chuck Testa.”

Rhett McLaughlin and Lincoln Neal are a pair of young filmmakers who originally hail from North Carolina. If you have spent any time at all trawling the ‘net for comedy videos then you have undoubtedly come across their award-winning shorts. This series is basically what happens when viral talent tries to adapt to cable. Their stated aim is to make “legendary local commercials”.  Which of course means intentional stilted acting, weird props and some dodgy selling propositions.

So the series appeals to the “so bad it’s good” crowd. But Rhett and Link don’t want to be viewed only as smug hipsters making crappy commercials; we see them strategising and trying out the products and services they will eventually make an ad for. Two businesses are featured per episode. The results can be weirdly enjoyable and at their best these commercials have a “Tim and Eric” feel without the sexual perversion.

My main nitpick about this series is Rhett, and especially Link, lack a common touch. Their clients run small businesses. They are exposed in this process, while Rhett and Link can seem above it all.  At one level we are encouraged to laugh at the cat lady and the man who loves his chilli dogs. These are American eccentrics with small, strange dreams.  But their dreams and their businesses mean a lot to them, so why does a slight feeling of ridicule permeate this show? Engaging but not compelling – 3/5.

 

UNDERWORLD AWAKENING (2012)

Underworld Awakening is so titled to give the franchise a sense of renewal and to diguise the fact that this is the fourth film in the series.  For the sake of accuracy and to be a little bit annoying,  I have decided to reinstate the franchise’s correct numbering for this review.

The original Underworld (2003) was a pretty good re-jig of the vampire and werewolf mythologies. It wasn’t original but it served up the action and characters with enough variation and visual “jazz handery” to keep you watching. The “Kate Beckinsale is a hot vampire in a catsuit” was also a large element of the movie’s success.

Underworld 4: The Color of Money is egregiously bad.  There has been a war between the Humans, the Vamps and the Lycans (werewolves) and–assuming you’re human– our side won. Vampire Selene (Beckinsale) has been kidnapped and put into deep freeze in a medical lab for a dozen years. She escapes and goes to look for her hybrid vampire/werewolf lover Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman). She finds herself in a hostile new world where she needs sanctuary and friends.  Sadly, she has Gwyneth Paltrow’s knack of getting people to like her. Wherever Selene goes there is someone telling her to move on or attempting to shoot her in the head with high tech weaponry.

However, Selene is an ancient fighter who has skills the equal of the Chuck Norris Internet meme. She is never truly bested in battle because she commands the power of darkness and cutting edge visual effects. Nothing fazes her. In fact, for 95% of the movie’s length, no emotion whatsoever is allowed to disturb Beckinsale’s porcelain visage. Selene’s thoughts and feelings are secret, which is probably desirable in teenage fanboy land; practically nothing affects her emotional equilibrium.

Unfortunately this means Underworld 4: The Recashening has a hero who is difficult to give a toss about. Beckinsale’s Selene is a pouting cipher who fails to engage anyone not interested in her rather mannered sex appeal. By this, I mean she does a lot slightly unnatural posing in shots. There’s plenty of silliness like Selene placing her leg and turning her foot at a visually alluring angle while she primes grenades. If they were taking the piss this would be funny, but U4 is deadly serious about its nonsense

Underworld 4: The Sound of Kerching! is a dumb, roller-coaster ride where things just happen with neither reason nor the laws of physics coming into play.  I hated every moment of this preposterous, lazy film – 1/5.

Phil Jeng Kane

 

 

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War of the Egg Cups

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Phil

My mother is a hoarder, however not the kind you’ll see on reality television. Her home is neat and uncluttered. All the hoarded items are neatly stored away in cupboards. Many of the things she has kept are decades old. I was at my parents’ house on Saturday and I was looking for some teabags and I noticed they were kept in a type of take away container (the T-750) that we used in our family’s restaurant business thirty years ago. Next to that was a plastic cup that I remembered taking with me on a Scout camp in 1979. I fossicked around a little more hoping to find the egg cups that my brother and I used when we were kids, but Mum thought they’d been given away.

The memory of the egg cups loom large for my bro’ and I because they were a constant source of irritation. When I was 8 and he was 6, we fought incessantly over who would get which egg cup. They were standard ceramic egg cups identical in shape and size. Both were banded at the rim and at the base with a thin line of gold paint. The only actual difference between them was one egg cup was pale green and the other was fire engine red.

Naturally we both wanted the red egg cup. My brother was never happier than when he had his dry, hard-boiled egg firmly held by Ol’Red. I felt the same, except I preferred my egg slightly soft. The paleness of the green was the problem. If that shade of green had been a match for the electricity and vibrancy suggested by Ol’Red, then it wouldn’t have seemed such a compromise. But we both knew that no egg tasted as good the moment it got into the clutches of Paley G. Dad said the colour of the egg cup made no difference and we took this to be one of the transparent half-truths of parenthood. He had to say that so we didn’t fight.

As the older brother, I engaged in a variety of tactics to get the red egg cup. I would call dibs, simply grab it first out of the china cabinet or attempt bribery. My mother would have none of it. She made sure we strictly alternated green and red.  Whenever I was stuck on green, I ate with a little less pleasure and fixed my pupils of rage on my brother as he supped on his desiccated yolk, washed down with a side order of gloat.

The battle of Green versus Red was only part of the morning routine. I had to have a tea with milk and two sugars. I had this every morning until I was seventeen when I decided I hated tea. I have since learnt that what I hated was approximately 3300 Lipton teas in a row for more than a decade.

We had to get ourselves out the door by 8.30 in order to arrive at school on time. Mostly we walked the seven blocks, but sometimes we be driven by our two-doors-down neighbour. (The following names have been changed because I’m a control freak.) Mr Peruzza would chauffeur us up to school in his green Ford Falcon XB because we were friends with his son Giacomo. His daughter Nina would also be along for the ride, but we had zero interest in her and her mysterious agenda and motivations.  She probably inherited this quality from her enigmatic father. What he meant or thought was unknown because Mr Peruzza wouldn’t speak to us, exactly. When my brother and I got in the car, he would issue a string of sounds, which I recall being somewhere between a hum and series of grunts. “Good thanks,” was our reply. Then he would fiddle with the radio to tune into John Fryer and Peter Dean and light up another Peter Jackson cigarette.  Some may balk at the idea of our going on a trip in a car filled with tobacco smoke and wearing no seat belt, but if you ask me the greater harm was the Radio 6IX playlist. I don’t believe any child should be subjected to as many rotations of the pop music version of The Lord’s Prayer, by Sister Janet Mead, as we were. If you don’t know it, YouTube it; you’ll find the experience almost as instructional as we did.

When we got a little bit older, I went through a phase of purposely using the green egg cup. I actually became fond of Paley G and found Old Red’s vibe a little too much. I realised that I had overlooked the serenity of green for the garishness of red. I had chosen bustling rouge over zen green. This had to change. I was older and now I could see that I was more on green’s wavelength and colour temperature. I think this and the colour of Mr Peruzza’s Falcon XC led eventually to my painting my room green.

Or maybe I’m just opportunistically grabbing random facts and connecting the dots any which way. After all, isn’t that what we’d expect of a Generation X-er raised on a diet of boiled eggs and white tea?

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Seek Wisdom

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Phil

Today is my birthday. So I beg your indulgence for the rambling that is to follow.

I’m a Capricorn if you believe in such things. Scorpio rising, but credibility sinking for about half of you reading these first sentences. But wait, there’s even more astrology. According to the Chinese, I’m also a Fire Horse. The horoscopically savvy among you can use that to carbon date me exactly. But why bother? I’ll just ‘fess up. I’m 45 today.

Older readers will scoff at my whipper-snappishness. Younger ones will recoil in horror at the thought of my being (and therefore their one day becoming) so very, very old. This age thing is all relative. We know this. A friend asked me yesterday if I felt my age and I don’t, because until your body really tells you how old you are, you can fool yourself that time isn’t passing.

My eyesight isn’t what it was. After 45 years of gravity pulling on my eyeballs, my lenses are slightly slack and so I can’t focus on close items. Reading a ‘phonebook is out of the question no matter how good the lighting conditions are. Fortunately here technology has rescued me with the advent of the Internet. I can mostly read a road map, but here again the digital age means I don’t need to very often. Like many people my age, I need to get out the specs to check small print. Big deal. It’s a minor inconvenience that I don’t need to think about.

When I was at a new dentist recently he asked me how old I was. He told me that my back teeth have the pattern of wear and cracking consistent with my age. He didn’t mention if being fed up to those teeth had contributed to the erosion. I didn’t want to hear about it, but then again he wasn’t saying, “We’ll have to whip all this out and give you a Peter Waltham special”. (Are you with me Curtin FM audience?)

So, like that lovely rocky ridge, the Darling Scarp, I am wearing down slowly; tiny bit by tiny bit. And it’s imperceptible. That’s the cruel and kind thing. I don’t have to check the location of all my bits every morning, like Mr Potato Head or a Lego Man. I am relatively the same from day to day, existentialists.

WE are all relatively the same from day to day. Sorry those older readers who haven’t already left to watch Foreign Correspondent on iView. You are all too aware of all of this. Younger readers, none of this will matter for a good ten or twenty years. That illusion of being bulletproof will take you up to your forties if you’re lucky. Everyone deserves to feel invincible and revel in the delusion that you will be the first one to avoid ageing and death.

And at some level it is about the Big Dirt Nap. How does one fill in the hours between now and then? Becoming indispensable at work? Raising a family? Learning Esperanto? Learning Elvish? Tuck pointing the patio? Teaching a new dog old tricks? There is more than one kind of Biological Clock. Are we using our time in the best way possible? At this point, of my meandering dissertation, I could introduce God, Love or Increased Personal Wealth as one of the big reductive answers to all my questions. However, thanks to my Chinese Buddhist mother and my agnostic, socialist Irish father and my (mostly) free 1980s university education, I am far too pluralist, humanist and unpersuadable to believe in any one idea. Just believing in any idea has been a long struggle for me. (Thank you, 1990s therapy sessions).

When I was 18, I drove my TE Cortina with its 3.3 litre engine and 6 cylinders very, very quickly. I used to try to shave down the time it took me to get from home to uni. I wasn’t really a revhead and my car wasn’t particularly fast or powerful. But it was potentially too much for me. One day, I was driving three of my closest friends through a winding road in one of the newer Northern suburbs. There were no street trees and only a few houses, so I thought I had clear vision of everything up ahead. I was probably driving about 90ks or so and somehow I nearly smashed head on into a car speeding in the opposite direction driven by someone equally young and stupid. I hit the brakes and skidded to halt. The other car just kept driving. The dust subsided and the car smelled of burnt rubber and brake pads. For a few seconds afterwards, the four of us were on pause. We all had the same thought. That was so fucking close. Then we laughed and I drove on.

So a near miss and a non-story. What was I saying? What is my point? Why am I here? Twenty-seven years ago when I didn’t die in my green Cortina, I was a blank slate. Today I feel like a palimpsest – a page that has been written on and erased so it can be written on again. I learn things but some of them don’t stick. I experience things, but some of it just seems to disappear.  At 18, I imagined that I would know more and understand more today.

We have an expectation that this journey is about becoming wise. I couldn’t feel further from it. I don’t even understand the rules of Deal or No Deal.

Seek Wisdom is the motto of the University of WA and as mottoes go, it’s pretty good. I got my degree and diploma from there and proceeded to do very little with them for a number of years. First I had to get a clue.

Maybe certainty only exists in retrospect. Maybe wisdom is the thing we think we need to deliver certainty. If I am wise enough I will understand how to live. Then I will be able to do so with certainty and confidence. I won’t be fearful and I will be able to do…what?

Damn you pluralist, humanist eurasian questioning reflex. Just goddamn relax and believe in your football team, the writings of Dan Brown, the philosophy of Machiavelli, the writings of JK Rowling, the philosophy of Barnaby Joyce.  Relax and put your feet up and have another scotch…egg and let the Rafters, the Bathurst 1000, the Hottest 100 wash over you in a fine automatic Glade aromatic mist.

Nope, I can’t relax. I can’t not think in circles. I am not wise and not certain. I am making it up as I go.

And that will have to do for now.

Phil Jeng Kane

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Glad All Over

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Phil

I was watching CAREER OPPORTUNITIES at 4.30 this morning. Avid readers of my every word (I’m looking at you cyberstalker fangirl) will recall I wrote of this forgotten 1991 John Hughes penned and produced flick in my other blog. And while I was being less-than-thoroughly engaged by it, I was confronted by the image of a character getting up for a midnight snack or raiding the icebox or some other mid-century slang term. And I was instantly annoyed by the fact that he had a plate of fried chicken just sitting there naked on the top shelf of his Westinghouse. Chicken. Plate. Fridge. Boom! (see below)

Who does that? Who leaves cooked, unwrapped meat in the main body of their refrigerator? Who doesn’t whip out the clingfilm or the Glad wrap and seal that sucker into a plastic prison on the plate? Who doesn’t employ a transparent, non-permeable polymer membrane to cover their leftovers and not leave them exposed to the forbidding atmosphere of their Frigidaire? No one? Everyone? Am I merely the product of a germophobe mother and therefore unequipped to judge this seemingly odd food-handling decision? I decided to check on line to see if there were others who. like me, were repulsed at the thought of leaving food unprotected in their Kelvinator. I found an online forum with cheering responses such as these:

  • Absolutely everything in my fridge has a cover of some sort. You can thank my mother for that??
  • I’ve been known to stick a pizza box in there, but I always feel wrong about that — like there’s too much air around the food for it to count as covered.
  • I cover everything. If I put something in the fridge uncovered, I would feel very uneasy about it. The fact that it’s in there, so vulnerable and unprotected, would prey on my mind continuously. I’d probably have nightmares about it.

So I am not alone in finding this behaviour unconscionable. In numerous other places online I also found food safety authorities pointing out that food left unwrapped dries out more quickly and can potentially “stink up” your Fisher and Paykel.

I assume this outrageous flouting of food safety best practice happens in movies for a number of reasons. Firstly, so we the audience, can immediately register that it’s chicken or cold cuts or leftover lasagne. Secondly, the actor is left free to externalise the very essence of pensiveness or worry or whatever they’re supposed to be putting across.

Whereas I’m sure that Dustin Hoffman is more than capable of making us understand that his character is concerned for the whereabouts of his daughter whilst he peels back a layer of tinfoil from last night’s apricot chicken–maybe this is beyond the remit of others of the acting fraternity. The man has won two academy awards, after all.

Similarly, if Meryl Streep were to assay the role of Gertrude in Hamlet, I can see her being all–Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe, what thou hast said to me–all while she removes Wiener schnitzel from a ziplock bag. But she too is a dual Oscar winner.

Whatever the reasons for movies continuing to promote these unsafe food storage practices, I would urge you all to take the prophylactic measure of wrapping your leftovers when abandoning them in your Samsung 2-door. Or better still, follow my lead in buying and using a ridiculous number of faux Tupperware containers from Willow or Décor, but never, ever Ikea.

Phil Jeng Kane

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Out On The Wiley, Windy Moors

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Phil

Isn’t the last day of the year a fine time for beginning things?

Content Sponge! with its superfluous exclamation mark will be an ambiguously titled semi-regular feature on this ‘blog. It will be less about the happiness of sea sponges and more to do with my brief commentary on films and television seen in the last week or two. I review films for AccessReel, but I do see things that I don’t write about over there. I may even use this piece of cyberspace to talk about books read. If I ever finish reading anything, I’ll let you know.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4 (2011)

A high-octane adventure thriller with edge of the seat action that will have you begging for less. OK it was me who wanted less. Most of the folk in the cinema seemed to be having a fine time. Particularly the talky couple behind me who felt every near miss and marked it with an “ooh!” or an “aughh!” and even at one point “Run!”

The chilly Cruiser again playing Ethan Hunt is surrounded by a team of more human spies. Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton make an impression and Simon Pegg effortlessly pulls off the much needed comic relief role of Benjy.  There was so much kinetic jumping around stuff in this flick, that by the climax I had run out of concern for the outcome. However, director Brad Bird has delivered an exciting live-action pic.  (3.5/5)

THE THIN MAN (1934)

Nick and Nora Charles are an attractive rich couple who dabble in private investigation. William Powell and Myrna Loy play characters who trade quips and knock back an alarming amount of alcohol by modern standards.

The Thin Man of the title is the missing scientist that the Charleses are searching for. The ludicrously twisty plot is fun, the banter is amusing and the final gathering together of all the suspects is far more entertaining than when Hercule Poirot does it. There have been attempts to remake this formula, but pre-Cold War and in glittering black and white seemed to be the perfect conditions for this to work. (4/5)

TOPPER (1937)

Marion and George Kerby, another rich and attractive couple (played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant) are killed in a car accident and return immediately as ghosts. They have lived quite self-centered lives so decide they need to do a good deed to travel to the next plane. They fix on the manager of the bank in which George was a major shareholder. Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) is living a life of quiet desperation. The ghostly couple change his world completely by getting him into trouble and encouraging to loosen up and have fun.

This screwball-esque comedy is loosely paced but Bennet, Grant and Young are at the top of their form. Like The Thin Man it revolves upon the very out-of-fashion idea that the Idle Rich make fantastic company. (4/5)

NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM

Ric Burns 8 part 17 hour documentary series is an amazing achievement. It covers the last 400 years of New York’s history and does so in great detail and with a dazzling array of historical opinions. The series was begun in 1999 and completed in 2003. The final episode is devoted to the World Trade Center.

I finally caught up with the last three episodes of the series. Detailing the post war years, the rise of the car, the destruction of the neighbourhoods, the de-industrialisation of the city and the financial crisis of the mid 1970s. The cross currents of political and racial tensions are brilliantly handled. David Ogden Stiers (Charles from MASH) is an excellent narrator even when some of the prose he’s given is less than sparkling. The structure and historical vision of this series make it a gripping watch, particularly in its second half. (4/5)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2009)

Yeah, the Beeb’s new telly version came in two whopper parts and, from memory, seems to be a fairly accurate rendering of the plot of Emily Bronte’s groundbreaking novel. Unfortunately, the stylistic choices of this production made the emotional connection of Heathcliff and Cathy seem ludicrous.

Heathcliff comes off as a whiny emo who, as played by Tom Hardy with long flowing locks, bears an uncanny resemblance to comedian Miranda Hart. You have to partly care about Heathcliff for this story to work, but I found myself thinking, God not you again, whenever he turned up to snipe at Cathy or Edgar and lay some manipulative bullshit on them. Burn Gorman plays Hindley and, as we saw in Torchwood, he likes to turn up the acting to 11. His performance here is hilariously over the top.

This mini-series needed less realism and more of a more dreamlike atmosphere for us to have sympathy with the towering emotions of Cathy and Heathcliff. (2/5)

And A Happy New Year To You All!

Phil Jeng Kane

 

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Things I Learnt This Christmas

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Phil

So here are some loosely assembled thoughts I have had and observations what I made over this Yuletide season, my friends.

I like Christmas. I’m an Atheist, but I still enjoy the celebration. (Stay your keyboards, all those who would explain that Christmas was originally a pagan festival that Christians appropriated. Fine. And while we’re at it, English was a very different language before the Norman Conquest. And Neanderthals were once more successful than Homo Sapiens. There’s even evidence to suggest they invented line dancing to while away the cold nights during one of the Ice Ages.)

On the eve before Christmas Eve, I went up to the very unbusy Garden City, Booragoon, to buy a few things. I ran into several people I knew through my last job. One was a friend who was employed by the City of Perth to be one of the Santa Clauses to ride The Santa Train. Whether you were on The Joondalup line, the Armadale line or out at Mandurah; if you were on the train in the fortnight before Christmas, you could meet Santa.

My friend, the part-time Father Christmas, has two kids, the oldest, a son, is 11 and the youngest, a daughter, is 5. I asked how he had dealt with keeping his identity secret from her. He said in previous years and whenever the job was mentioned in front his daughter; the codename he and his wife would use was “Fat X”. Anyway because there was simply too much Kris Kringling going on this year, with the suit having to be hung out frequently when it was cleaned, they decided to explain to their daughter that there are some people who have to dress up as Santa, as a job, during Christmas.  “So you blew the whistle on yourself,” I said, “Did she get it?” “Not really,” he said.

I asked how he was received on the train. He said that he would shake hands with anyone­­–children or adults–and that some adults were very awkward about his being there and would refuse to make eye contact. One guy did shake his hand, but said, “This isn’t a hand, it’s a fist.” Weird!

***********

On Christmas Eve, the plan was to have dinner with friends. One of my tasks was to supply some Christmas music, so over several days I previewed as many secular Yuletide beats as possible. The anomaly of my Godless world is that I LOVE Christmas carols which are–unsurprisingly–mostly religious in nature. Your modern, non-religious Christmas songs all pretty much bite; seriously, White Christmas is terrible no matter who sings it­ (obviously I don’t mean you Nat King Cole, you could sing the instruction booklet from an Ikea bunk bed and make it swing). O Come All Ye Faithful is my favourite. When the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings Carol of the Bells et al. it is awe-inspiring and gives one a glimpse at the Great Mystery. (Sounding a little Agnosticky here, I know).

But as I found out in my aforementioned former job, whenever I played one of my CDs of choirs singing carols, the response was overwhelmingly negative. And yes, it was Christmas.  “Stop playing those damned carols” was a sentence uttered on more than one occasion. So I knew better than to dig up any of those. My selection was from the “better” Christmas songs (so the pervy I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus was out) and the end was result was a tuneful Christmas cake of tasteful jazz lite hits frosted with some lite rock standards. It was the kind of playlist one might hear in your better municipal waiting rooms.

A friend explained to me that this category of easy-listening Yule sounds is dominated by two people; Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas and Michael Bublé is the King. Mariah’s Merry Christmas album was recorded in 1994 and has sold 15 million copies. Just let that sink in. It’s the biggest selling Christmas album ever. A little known side effect of hearing her All I Want For Christmas Is You less than half a dozen times in 24 hours, is that you’ll play it over and over in your head hundreds of times for the next three days. Trust me on this.

***********

Other random things I learnt in the last few days.

  • You can build a Jenga Tower at least 35 rows high.
  • There is such a thing as too much ham.
  • WHO’S THE BOSS is a terrible, terrible show.
  • When people aren’t at work, their Facebook posts get even weirder.
  • There is no such thing as too many prawns.
  • It’s worth buying bed linen at the Boxing Day sales.
  • THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR is a fine gloomy Christmas film

And speaking of films. During the day of the 24th, I channel-flicked and ended up on IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE the 1946 Frank Capra classic. It was just as George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) was going to college after putting it off to work in the family’s Building and Loan business. And despite having seen the film a dozen times and even owing a DVD copy, I watched it from there until the rousing end when George discovers because he has friends, he is the richest man in the town.

So I learnt that I still feel teary at the end of a corny old movie made 65 years ago and I’m okay with that.

Season’s Greetings

Phil Jeng Kane

 

 

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Send Her Victorious

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Phil

“I think we need a new national anthem,” my brother stated as we drove away from our parents’ place last night. I’ve known my brother (who declines to be named in my ‘blog so “my brother” he shall remain) for more than 40 years, so the abruptness of this assertion, the positing of this notion with no preamble, came as no surprise to me.

“What’s wrong with the old one?” I asked.

“Advance Australia Fair has a bit of a boring tune,” he said.

Then I understood. Mum, Dad and he had just been watching Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson in Blake Edwards’ DARLING LILLI (1970). And not for a dare. When I explained to Mum later that the reason I hadn’t watched most of it was that I didn’t really like Julie Andrews, she wasn’t impressed. No one is. It’s a hideous admission of a stunted emotional life.

I was in the adjacent room on Dad’s computer and I could hear the soundtrack with an awful clarity. There was a scene where what I presumed to be French soldiers sang La Marseillaise. Let’s face it, few national anthems can beat that one. I vaguely heard Dad saying something similar.

However, when I said, “the old one” in my conversation with my brother, I meant God Save The Queen. This is how the conversation went after that.

TJK: You used to sing God Save The Queen in school?

PJK: Yeah, didn’t you?

TJK:We sang Advance Australia Fair.

PJK: For my first three years at primary, every Friday assembly. “Send her victorious!”

TJK: She is Queen of Australia.

PJK: “Hap-py and Glorious!” You never did that? You were only two years behind me.

TJK: No. I missed the free milk programme, too.

PJK: “Long toooo reign over us…”

TJK: Whatever the song is, it needs a better tune. You know what I used to like singing? The Road To Gundagai. Although if you look at the lyrics, the protagonist or the singer seems to be on their way to heaven so that’s a problem. But the song is tuneful. Pleasant. And it mentions Australia.

PJK: Don’t all national…

TJK: I don’t think England cracks a mention for the first verse of God Save The Queen.

PJK: What about the sheep-stealing anthem? Waltzing Matilda.

TJK: Don’t like the tune.

PJK: Queensland version.

TJK: Still don’t like it.

PJK: What if we got someone to work on it, like Tim Freedman from The Whitlams.

TJK: No Aphrodisiac!

PJK: Not appropriate.

TJK: Better than that–Blow Up The Pokies.

PJK: That’s very Aussie.

TJK: Or maybe something about how we want to blow up everyone else.

PJK: That’s too negative.

TJK: Something for the Stop the Boats crowd. Fuck Off We’re Full – of Bogans.

PJK: What about the theme to Kingswood Country?

TJK: Working Class Man sung to the tune of Advance Australia Fair? Or the other way around. Whatever Hillsy does in his act.

PJK: Well, if Adam Hills came up with it, you know it’s good for Australia.

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Film Review: DIRTY DEEDS

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Phil

Going through my archives I discovered a clutch of movie reviews I had written for Geoffrey.com.au. The site is run by my friend Objectman with occasional posts from me, however a number of the reviews were lost in a catastrophic database incident of Y2K propositions, so I’ve decided to re-run them here.

DIRTY DEEDS (2002) AUSTRALIA, 110 mins

Director: David Caesar | Cast: Bryan Brown, Toni Collette, John Goodman, Sam Neill, Sam Worthington, Kestie Morassi, Felix Williamson, Andrew S. Gilbert, William McInnes

RATING: 2/5

It’s 1969 and the American Mafia wants to get a piece of the Australian poker-machine market. Two Chicago Mafiosi, (Goodman and Williamson) are dispatched to Sydney to deal with the local criminals. They clash with crime boss Barry Ryan (Brown) and his organisation. His young nephew, Darcy, just home from the war, wants to make some quick money and becomes part of the firm.

It’s possible for a film to recover from a bad start. And DIRTY DEEDS has one of these. It begins in Vietnam. A helicopter delivers American pizza to some patrolling Aussie soldiers (did the United States Army really serve up pizza in cardboard boxes marked U.S?) and picks up two of the diggers for their journey home to Australia. One of the soldiers is our young hero, Darcy (Sam Worthington). Continue reading →

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Film Review: GLITTER

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Phil

Going through my archives I discovered a clutch of movie reviews I had written for Geoffrey.com.au. The site is still run by my friend Objectman with occasional posts from me , however a number of the reviews were lost in a catastrophic database incident of Y2K propositions, so I’ve decided to re-run them here.

GLITTER (2001) USA, 105 mins

Director: Vondie Curtis-Hall  Cast: Mariah Carey, Max Beesley, Da Brat, Tia Texada, Valarie Pettiford, Ann Magnuson, Terrence Dashon Howard, Dorian Harewood

RATING 2.5/5

Billie, a young girl with an alcoholic mother and an absent father is sent to an orphanage when her mother is no longer capable of looking after her. Billie overcomes this difficult beginning to become a session singer in New York City. There she is discovered by a club DJ who helps her to become a star.

The most disappointing thing about GLITTER is how ordinary it is. I admit that I went to the cinema with high expectations that Mariah Carey’s debut film would hit a level of badness somewhere between Michael Jackson’s MOONWALKER (1988) and Paul Verhoeven’s SHOWGIRLS (1995). Alas it was not to be – sadly for kitsch fans everywhere GLITTER turns out to be merely average and quite adequate in most departments.

The film is set in 1983. The New York club/music scene is portrayed as a drug-free, AIDS-free world where all a girl needs to succeed is loyal friends, a man who believes in her and a bucket-load of talent. Life is not the model for GLITTER, but rather other films, like FAME (1980). Continue reading →

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