The anbaric journal of Dan Slevin, gentleman, of Newtown
James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett:
Hammett’s male-speak is the gab of the grift, the scam, the dime hustle. It’s the poke, the probe, the veiled query, the grab for advantage. It’s the threat, the dim sanction, the offer of friendship cloaked in betrayal. Plot holes pop through Hammett’s stories like speed bumps. The body count accretes with no more horror than pratfalls in farce. It doesn’t matter. The language is always there.
(via The Guardian)
fRINGE Underground was started by me and a friend because we felt that no one had taste anymore. I mean, I understand people who fire on all cylinders all day long who want to shut down the engines and escape with a romance novel or slasher flick. But people were no longer seeing guilty pleasures as anything other than pure pleasure. Crap bands, lousy movies, unwatchable TV shows and boring books were rocketing to popularity because people simply didn’t want to think. Thanks to Coldplay, Adam Sandler, The King of Queens, and Oprah’s book club, people with no taste actually thought that simply because they liked what everyone else liked they were digesting quality.
So we started fRINGE to try and offer alternatives that never got any publicity–art films that died quiet deaths, artists that never sold a record, books that never got a fair shake. We wanted to at least be one voice in the wilderness crying out that you don’t have to listen to John Maher when there’s Elliott Smith, you don’t need to waste time seeing a Matrix sequel when there’s Wes Anderson, and while you were watching Everybody Loves Raymond quality shows like Freaks & Geeks were getting cancelled. And if you need Oprah Winfrey to pick your books for you, the only thing you should be reading is an eye chart.
(from Gothamist, Dec 2006)
It’s the school holidays: that time of the year when this reviewer obviously has to atone for the sins of a previous life by sitting through the candy-coated commercialised detritus that we foist on our kids to keep them off the streets.
Firstly, the worst of the lot: Bratz is as toxic as the chinese-made toys that inspired it, a nakedly cynical hymn to consumption, triviality and shallowness. To be avoided at all costs.
Better: Underdog is an undemanding throw-back to those genial Disney movies of the 60s like That Darn Cat or The Love Bug. In this film failed Police-beagle Shoeshine gets special powers following a laboratory accident and becomes a super-hero, saving the good people of Capitol City from nefarious mad scientist Dr Barsinister (Peter Dinklage). The animals are cute, the villains are broadly amusing but the human heroes (including narcoleptic Jim Belushi) are dreary.
Big budget computer animation is on offer in Surf’s Up, a strangely alluring tale of penguins and their love of surfing. Cody Maverick (Shia LaBoeuf) gets plucked from Antarctic obscurity to compete in the annual Big Z Memorial Champs in Hawaii where he gets lessons in life and surfing from a wonderful “Dudeâ€-like Jeff Bridges. You have to respect the film’s total commitment to its own internal logic no matter how perplexing and bizarre that logic might be.
The best of the school holiday specials is Stardust, a British-made fantasy that would like to think it is The Princess Bride but is a little too cocky and a little too knowing to be totally satisfying. Charlie Cox plays Tristan Thorn, a young dreamer in love with Sienna Miller’s haughty beauty Victoria. On a whim he promises to fetch her a fallen star so that she will choose him instead of arrogant twit Humphrey. This involves crossing the wall between Victorian England and the magical land of Stormhold where a comically violent struggle to succeed the old King (Peter O’Toole) is already underway.
Meanwhile, back at the art-house, Hula Girls is an excruciating and twee tale of Japanese mining village women who discover girl power by learning to dance Hawaiian-style for tourists. Set in 1965, and based on a true story, Hula Girls is like a cross between Billy Elliot, The Full Monty and the original Japanese version of Shall We Dance with all the broad, cheap comedy left in and all the soul removed. I hated this, beyond all reason.
Finally, two low-budget indie video productions have just been released, one from Australia and one very local. Five Moments of Infidelity is an ensemble drama from Melbourne about five groups of 30-somethings and how their lives unexpectedly inter-connect thanks to the heavy hand of the screenwriter. Infidelity looks like a high-end training video, the dialogue is trite and the acting is patchy at best.
The local producton is called When Night Falls and is an Agatha Christie-type chiller set in a remote country house where two nurses are caring for an invalid patient. Outside a serial nurse-killer awaits.
While director Alex Galvin orchestrates a couple of good shocks, on the whole the pacing is so painfully slow it felt like the night was going in real time and the am-dram script and acting make it a trial to watch. All involved will do better than this, and I hope they get a chance to, but by putting the film in cinemas alongside professional product the producers are asking for your money and I can’t, in all honesty, recommend that you part with it.
Published in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 26 September, 2007.
Full disclosure: Five Moments of Infidelity is distributed by Arkles Entertainment who I do a bit of work for now and then.
"... most annoying of all, director Paul Weiland gives himself the auteur credit of A Film By. In your dreams, pal."
0.3
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0.3
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0.3
"... really wins you over with smart writing and lovely, understated performances from a terrific ensemble."
0.3
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0.3
"I wish I could have watched it with the subtitles turned off so that I could enjoy the music and art director Silke Buhr’s amazing sense of texture and architectural environment."
0.3
"... the images are ravishing, the performances are uniformly excellent and you could do a lot worse on a wet weekend."
0.3
“... there’s nothing you won’t have seen before and you’ll pick the plot apart some reels before Keanu does.”
0.3The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)
2008-04-19 14:30
“He seems never to have done anything without someone beside him with a motion picture camera which adds considerable visual flavour to an interesting life story.”
0.3
“I liked Nim’s Island and I know one person who is likely to get the DVD for Christmas.”
0.3
“Even if you are not a U2 fan this film deserves to be seen as an example of the potential of 3D to transform the medium.”
0.3
“It’s not great cinema – that’s not Pilger’s bag – but it is essential viewing.”
0.3
“... a cross between Anchorman and Talladega Nights featuring the strengths of neither and the rampant self-indulgence of both ...”
0.3
“Like the forgotten poor in Pilger’s Caracas barrio or the displaced in Darfur, the power to proclaim our existence in the face of ignorant or malevolent authority isn’t just a right, it’s an obligation, and I’m certain that the good Dr. Seuss wouldn’t have missed the connection.”
0.3The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
2008-04-12 14:20
“I was growing increasingly frustrated with the plodding story-telling, and the over-reliance on the well-designed digi-creatures, before a great moment at the climax restored my faith that a proper screenwriter was on board after all.”
0.3
“Gosling’s performance is a thing of wonder but it wouldn’t be half as successful without great work from Paul Schneider, Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson to play off. Kudos to them all. Not to be missed.”
0.3
"I think the key to Dylan is that he is less complicated (and at the same time more complex) than the world would have you believe and he fully deserves a work of art as fine as this one in his name.
0.3Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)
2008-03-22 22:00
“Despite many pleasures, the film is sadly uninvolving for three reasons: the plot keeps the protagonists apart for nearly two hours thus generating very little heat; the mix of accents on offer (Spanish, Italian, Colombian, Brazilian) means it can be hard work following the dialogue and at least one of Señor Bardem’s moustaches makes him look like Groucho Marx.”
0.3
“Goldberg is particularly funny as the grumpy American struggling to appreciate French culture, French cuisine and (particularly) perplexing French attitudes to l’amour.”
0.3
“Earlier this year I said that delightful French rom-com Hunting & Gathering was “too good for the Penthouse”. I wish to unreservedly withdraw that frivolous wisecrack and apologise to the Penthouse as, by definition, it can’t be too good for them if they’re actually playing it. It’s heaps better than anything French they played last year, though.”
0.3
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0.3
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0.3
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0.3
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0.3Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále...
2007-07-28 20:09
“Menzel’s direction is as assured and as witty as you might expect and the lessons among the laughs are happily subtle.”
0.3
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