Posts tagged ‘film’

As the world anxiously awaits my in-depth review of Serenity, sensible folk know there’s only one reviewer who can really be counted on as completely reliable. Yes, Mr Schembri, reviewing in The Age‘s ‘eg’ section. His (complete) thoughts follow:

Totally forgettable, throwaway exercise by director Joss Whedon (Buffy creator) who appears to have stapled together two episodes of his failed sci-fi TV show Firefly. A group of space pirates get involved in one of those civilization-saving space adventures that involve a lot of poorly delivered jokes and crummy digital effects of spaceships that look like cereal boxes.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a One-and-a-half-star review. So, now you know, folks — SEE THIS FILM. Jim amusingly gives Transporter 2 three and a half stars on the same page, noting that the lead actor never has more than one expression, that the main character gets “emotionally attached to a kid” (which sounds new and exciting) and lavishing all his praise on the action sequences (fair enough, of course). But this anti-TV snobbery seems weird.

“Poorly Delivered Jokes”? Can I maim him? Just a little?

I noticed today an interesting upcoming movie that I hadn’t previously heard of, while reading a fascinating TIME interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. Neil Gaiman is famous for writing the Sandman comic, his novels Neverwhere and American Gods, and writing a fantastic book on Douglas Adams called Don’t Panic.

He also wrote an episode of Babylon 5 one time, but unfortunately he got in late and wrote it in season five. On the upside, it did at least make his script look far better for all the crap hanging around it.

I’m assuming most people here know who Joss Whedon is.

Anyhow, I had a point, and it’s this. Mirrormask is a new film written by Gaiman, and involving the Jim Henson creature shop. According to Gaiman in the above interview, the creation of the film went something like this:

the brief with Mirrormask was Henson coming to us and saying, in the Eighties, Henson’s did The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They were family fantasy films. They cost $40 million each. We’d like to do another one. We have $4 million. If we gave you that $4 million, could you come back with a movie, and we won’t tell you what to do? As deals go, it’s that bit at the end […] that was, okay, yes, I will happily take not enough money to make a huge fantasy movie and try and make a huge fantasy movie with it.

That could sound good or bad, depending on how you look at it. However, looking at the trailer, I reckon it’ll end up pretty good. Or at least, pretty pretty.

A few weeks back, I was checking all my nifty RSS feeds when I noticed that Whedonesque.com were announcing preview screenings of the Firefly movie, Serenity, in Victoria. I rushed over (in an internet sort of way) and booked me some tickets. Of course, the screening wasn’t in a sensible place like Southland or the Jam Factory; it was in Knox City.

I had a look on the Melways to see how far away that was. It didn’t seem so bad, I thought, but I was looking at the map of the whole of Melbourne, and nothing looks too far on that one. And so it was that we were still driving ten minutes after the preview screening was supposed to start. People who know me will have a good idea of how stressed I was, though it wasn’t showing as much as usual in my driving, I flatter myself (probably without justification).

My brother’s friends were already there, and making the sort of panicky phone calls that I would have been making had I been in their shoes. Everyone else was bagging them though so I joined in and pretended like I wasn’t a stressbag.

Knox City, it turns out, is arranged like a segmented fortress, and not every car park links up with the others. Cue more panicked driving, panicking, rushing about, until finally I run into the cinema, give my credit card, get the tickets, run up to cinema 2…

And find a queue a mile long, populated by a group of nerds ranging from our high-class level to 50-something fan-club presidents. The 50-something fan-club president was actually standing next to us in the queue and insisted on talking to us. Friendly, if somewhat irritating. Once we got inside we discovered that while the huge nerd contingent didn’t look huge, there were enough of them to make the cinema smell rather like a meeting of the Doctor Who Club of Victoria.

On the way in, a man swiped a metal detector over us a few times, and our phones were taken; thus disabling our cunning plan to record the film with camera phones taking 5 minute movies at a time. They looked at us suspiciously when we each handed in 6 phones but they didn’t say anything.

Damn that Michael Moore. He’s spoiled my innocence. I used to be able to watch documentaries and think I’d learned something. Now I’m so mistrustful my brain develops layers and layers of “take that with a pinch of salt” that end up feeling like I’ve taken nothing away at all.

Or maybe they just don’t make documentaries that well any more. I’ve just watched the Tony Robinson documentary on The Da Vinci Code which pretty much attempts to discredit every single thing the book says — fair enough I suppose, but it does it without interviews with the Catholic church or any other church. It discusses the idea that Magdalene and Christ were married yet doesn’t talk to any of the prominent Anglicans who have suggested such a thing.

Basically, whenever it talks to anyone on either side of the fence, they’re either engaging in guesswork, or clearly loonies. And there I was, wanting to know THE TRUTH. It’s depressing being an adult. I hope all the cool stuff I used to watch about Egypt was all true. Otherwise I’m very upset.

I’m typing this through my iMac. Oh, the whiteness. Oh, the speediness. And suddenly I have an awesome TV in my bedroom, kind of.

I’d write more, but I’ve got settings to fiddle with.

Oh, and Revenge of the Sith was quite good.

I apologise for the steady stream of Doctor Who reviews, to all of you who don’t give a rat’s arse. I promise to have a Hitchhikers and a Star Wars review out at some point. That second one isn’t necessarily mine. Or maybe we’ll all do one. I don’t know.

Doctor Who premieres in Australia this weekend. It’s getting a good amount of publicity it seems.

I’m all anxious waiting for my iMac. 2-3 weeks, they said. Well it’s 2 weeks and one day and I can’t stand it. If it comes the day before my Optics assignment is due there’ll be hell to pay. I’d better do it in advance. Oooh yes I will.

Having been reading Darth Vader’s blog, I’m all hyped up for Revenge of the Sith. Not that I’ve got unrealistic expectations, mind you. The only things I’m looking forward to are:

• Darth Vader’s voice.
• Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, the star of the show.
• The cool lightsaber fights.
• The tying into the old films.

Screw quality dialogue, good acting, any of that crap. Who needs them? I don’t. Well, I do, but for one day only I’m suppressing that part of my brain. Father’s Day gave me plenty to chew on while I’m watching Hayden Christiansen struggle through Lucas’ dire words.