Odds & Ends
Monday, July 30, 2007
MIFF Report, Part I
A good start to MIFF this year, with two enjoyable sessions on the weekend. Before I get to my reports, though, it is worth noting that Paul Martin is keeping what looks to be a very helpful running list of films that are nearly sold out. The Best of Norman McLaren I had thought this retrospective of Canadian animator Norman McLaren might be the cinematic equivalent of eating my greens, but this was unexpectedly enjoyable. This selection of McLaren's films alternated between highly abstract animation and little comic skits done in a semi-animated style using human bodies. I'm not usually keen on abstract films, as the lack of any meaningful framework in which to assess the work leaves the artist completely unaccountable to the audience (who can ever say whether the work is of any merit?) Yet McLaren's work defied my expectations, especially surprising given that one long slog is hardly the way to appreciate this kind of film. The shorts are remarkable for the level of energy and inventiveness they achieve in an intrinsically painstaking artform: the earliest of the shorts, Stars and Stripes, felt so contemporary in its confrontational explosion of movement and colour that it was hard to believe it was from 1941 (some sources list it as 1940 or even 1939). Other highlights included Blinkety Blank and the jazzy Begone Dull Care, but the really startling film is the last, Pas de deux. It starts as a simple shot of a ballet dancer, with occasional freeze frames to give a Nude-Descending-A-Staircase kind of look, but becomes steadily more beautiful as it progresses. It left me seriously contemplating the Norman McLaren DVD set.   Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog) Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn is one of his most mainstream efforts: a prisoner-of-war movie (from a true story) about US navy pilot Dieter Dengler's escape from a POW camp during the Vietnam War. It's pretty conventional material - even star Christian Bale has been here before, in Empire of the Sun - but it's very well done. The performances - from Bale, and also Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies as fellow prisoners - are extremely solid, and Herzog's eye for the landscape is as good as you'd expect. (I'm just glad someone had the courage to let Herzog film in a jungle again after Fitzcarraldo). It falls a bit short of greatness, though: there are enough little moments of eccentricity that you can feel it's a Herzog film, but not enough of that really off-kilter sensibility to lift it to quite the level of his best work. Last year's MIFF offering from Herzog, The Wild Blue Yonder, was a much less successful film but showed more hints of something truly brilliant (and Herzog has been wonderful as recently as 2005's Grizzly Man). Still, it's well worth catching when it gets its mainstream release, and should be Herzog's first really successful fictional film in years. It screens again at MIFF on 4 August. Labels: animation, herzog, miff Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 30.7.07 - 1 comments  
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Perils of Rebranding
Filler text to fix the fomatting problems in blogger - hopefully you shouldn't be able to see this but if you can please ignore it.  Labels: buzz bunny Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 26.7.07 - 0 comments
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Kids
Yes, I'm going to give some thoughts on the final Harry Potter book. It's sort of film related; this is obviously going to be one of the major film releases of 2009 or 2010. But I'll be the first to admit that's just an excuse to jump on board the subject of the week. (Major spoilers for the final Harry Potter book follow). Most of the way through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I was thinking the suits at Warner Bros must be cursing: the first three quarters of the book isn't terribly suited to film, despite the frequent magical / action interludes. The fact that the book eschews the Hogwarts locale for most of its length robs the film of the setting that has united the series thus far, and the long months of travelling that the kids do is going to mean a lot of passage-of-time montages that are going to be tough to keep interesting. But then when I got to the final battle, I could practically see the trailer unfolding in my head. Rowling has delivered a marketer's dream: imagine now the scenes of good and bad wizards lining up for battle, big rallying speeches about the fight for Hogwarts, and Return of the King-style mass magical battles. If the trailer for the movie does not feature Professor McGonagall's line near the climax - "Hogwarts is threatened! Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to the school" - or some sort of variation on it, then I'll eat my Sorting Hat. As to the book - well, I enjoyed it. The first four books still have a certain something the last three lacked, but it certainly builds to a rousing conclusion. A fair few of my predictions - about R.A.B.'s identity, Snape's true allegiance, and about one of the Weasley twins biting the dust - came true, but an equal number didn't. (I thought Hagrid was almost certain to die, for example). Rowling has said that she spared one character she originally planned to kill, and killed one she originally planned to spare: I suspect that means she swapped Fred for either Hagrid or Neville, both of whom I considered in mortal peril before the book's release. A minor disappointment: the resolution of the Snape storyline. Snape's death was far too abrupt, and Rowling didn't give us the confrontation between Harry and Snape that the series needed. Imagine if Harry had confronted Snape in the presence of another Death Eater: Harry would be accusing Snape of treachery; Snape would want to clear his name, but be unable to without blowing his cover. That would be much more dramatic than what we actually got. It would be nice to think that the director of the film will take the liberty of making such a change. What I really didn't like was the final chapter (the flash-forward), and hopefully they'll ditch it for the film. Who wants to see adult Harry and Ginny, or Hermione and Ron? It takes the charm out of a happily-ever-after ending, and the stuff about their kid's names is too cute and obvious. Frankly, what makes the teen-romance stuff in the series bearable is the kind of sweet nostalgia value to it: it would be much more satisfying seeing Harry and Ginny (and Ron and Hermione) together as the teens we've spent time with than flashing years forward to see them as adults. Similarly, I'd much rather the conclusion of the book show me Draco's immediate reaction to Harry's act of mercy than the lingering awkwardness 19 years down the track. This problem will only double on film (because the flash-forward would require a new cast or some kind of awful make-up job), so I hope we just go out on our heroes as teens. Incidentally, the title of this post is inspired my docket from when I bought the book; I almost prefer the bookstore's title:  It has a kind of Scooby Doo-ish quality that works well, I think. Which makes me sorry Rowling didn't go with my preferred line for Voldemort's dying words: "I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!" Labels: harry potter Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 24.7.07 - 0 comments
Saturday, July 21, 2007
MIFF Busting
The Melbourne International Film Festival starts next week. I'm hoping I'll have a better experience than last year, where the films I caught were a fairly mixed bag, and the film I enjoyed the most was a fairly unexceptional kung fu flick. (See here and here for my comments at the time). Things are already looking up this year: the experience of working out what I could see has been made much easier by the festival organisers finally listing session times in the main part of the program, with the description of the films. Once again I'll be getting a mini-pass, which gets me ten movies: work and other commitments don't allow me to get any more hardcore than that. The following list is my fairly random selection of what I'm going to see, unapologetically based upon my own interests, so you should treat it as such and not take it as a list of recommendations. A couple of other things things to note: I'm not one of those people who avoids movies that will be opening commercially; if anything, because of this page, I aim for those films because it means I can have a head start in covering them when they do come out (the two New Zealand features and the Herzog film are sure to get a local release, for example). And if you're after a wide sampling of world cinema, I'm not your man: I'm a genre-cinema freak and there's no use pretending otherwise. Check out the lists from Paul Martin, over at the Melbourne Film Blog (here), and Mathieu Ravier at Last Night With Riviera (here) if that's what you're after. So with those caveats, here's my very haphazardly chosen program: Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog) I'm a big fan of Herzog, and it's been a while since he's had a high-profile fictional feature (it has been his documentaries, such as Grizzly Man, that have received most attention of late). While the plot - a POW story from the Vietnam war - isn't really my kind of thing, this has received good reviews from overseas and Herzog's name is enough to get me in the door. El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) One of the classic midnight movies is getting a single 11:15pm screening. This one is going to test my commitment, because my hunch is this is going to try my patience the way no film since Last Year at Marienbad has. But anyone who has read Danny Peary's evisceration of this film in his book Cult Movies, or seen the much more positive coverage in the documentary Midnight Movies, will be curious to see this landmark of independent cinema. Monkey Grip (Ken Cameron) A chance to see a really important Australian film that I've never seen. Run, Rabbit Run (Bob Ellis) This is a film by Bob Ellis about Mike Rann. I'm seeing this just because Bob Ellis is such an interesting figure and because the political angle interests me, but I think this is a real roughie. Eagle vs Shark (Taika Waititi) This is a New Zealand film about awkward, nerdy romance; it's a recommendation of a colleague and is supposed to be very funny - although I was disappointed to find it isn't actually about an actual contest between an eagle and a shark. Black Sheep (Jonathan King) Another high-ish profile NZ release, this is a horror movie about killer sheep, and looks like being something of a guilty pleasure. Hopefully it won't be Baaaaaaa-d. The Best of Norman McLaren (Norman McLaren) A retrospective of the very important Canadian animator. I've read a lot about McLaren over the years but seen very little of his stuff, so this is an ideal chance to fill a gap. Manufacturing Dissent: Michael Moore and the Media (Debbie Melnyk, Rick Caine) I've written about the criticisms of Michael Moore before (here), and find the subject of truth and honesty in documentaries very interesting (so see also here, here, and here). I'll be interested to see if this is just the standard anti-Moore hack job or something a bit more nuanced. Billy the Kid (Jennifer Vendetti) A character study of an awkward teen, this forms party of my nerd program (with Eagle vs Shark). This is just a gamble based upon the interesting write-up in the program. These character study documentaries can be very good or very dull, so fingers crossed. Radiant City (Gary Burns) A Canadian documentary about suburban sprawl. This is indulging my urban planner interests. So that's my program, for what it's worth. I plan to repeat my pattern from last year of doing capsule reviews through the festival, if you're interested in hearing how I go. Hopefully there's nothing as bad as Tideland this time around. Incidentally, Nobody Knows is playing as part of the Hirokazu Kore-eda retrospective; I reviewed that on its original release (here). Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 21.7.07 - 1 comments
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