Batrock

Bee throwing action!

Is it wrong to dislike Mel Gibson’s movies based on his anti-Semitic exploits? Unless that movie condemns Jewish people straight up, probably. It is not right to dislike a movie because of the personal lives of its staff, but it is okay to dislike a movie because of its overuse of slow motion, under use of dialogue for minutes at a time in which nothing but scenery happens, and general spottiness.
Apocalypto is not a bad movie: it is frequently visually and narratively arresting, but never consistently so.

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“Relax, brew.”

Having come hot off the heels of The Queen, it was really strange to see Tony Blair turning the suffering of Africans into diamond money. Before that, I had made jokes about this movie being about Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly wresting diamonds from the hands of a not-so-much-evil-as-misunderstood David Bowie. What I saw was a movie that reinforced for me once again that, while the world is beautiful, humans are ugly. I reflected that I have not seen one movie that has made me want to go to Africa.

Blood Diamond is not going to make you want to go to Africa – at least the Sierra Leone of eight years ago. From the director of The Last Samurai, this is a different movie: Leonardo DiCaprio does nothing to save the people of Africa from themselves as Tom Cruise so nobly did for Japan a few years ago. It’s good, if not great, and very, very long.

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The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, despite being one of my favourite films of 2006, has received only two short mentions on this site, one of which was totally … Arbitrary.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut, filmed in glorious and oppressive low rise. The borders of America have beautiful scenery, but not the architecture to match. The atmosphere is stifling; here is a place where the only releases are friendship and sex. This is a movie about lonely, unfulfilled people, yet it is ultimately about decency and the transcendental nature of emotions.

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Last week I saw Tenacious D at the Hordern Pavilion. They had a really good “He is Real” shirt for the tour, but the ATM at the venue (one ATM at a venue that holds thousands? Good idea!) was broken. The night got off to a sour start as a result. The support act, a pair called TnT … I have no idea how good they were, because they tended to sing about the sort of stuff that appeals to “all young men in Australia except for me” … which indicates they were probably too generic for the rest of the audience, because do you really want to hear songs about going out and drinking with your friends?

The concert itself was fun, although it was strange to see JB and KG stringing a story onto the stage. The songs that I knew went down a treat but, because the danged movie hasn’t been released out here yet, I didn’t know a lot of the rest.
This would not have been a problem had the D not gone electric (me! Judas!). The acoustics were not really calibrated for electricity and vocals, so I had no idea of a great deal of what Jack Black was singing. The band – consisting of the Anti-Christ on electric guitar, Charlie Chaplin on bass and Colonel Sanders on drums – was good, but it all became as so much noise to me.

It was a fun night, but not as much fun as I would have liked. I prefer the D when they treat a concert as a concert rather than a performance – and when using the Saxaboom makes sense!

For this reason, I present to you my write up of December 30th, 2004: the Day of the D.

Contains frequent profanity!

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Not from me, no, these are the 2006 Kaedrin Movie Awards! Mark’s awards are particularly notable in that they embrace arbitrariness without being as thoroughly useless as my own criteria, and that he is actually able to focus on the good of Mission: Impossible III without his brain trying to eat itself from reminding the sheer stupidity of Ethan Hunt finding a tennis ball launcher in Hong Kong in the middle of the night in less than half an hour.

Better yet, it looks to be a daily occurrence! That’ll keep you occupied while I spend my time watching movies about Mexico.

I had been asked what my pick of 2006 was shortly after I finished the 12 Months of Movies feature for 2006. It’s a feature that I probably won’t do at the end of 2007 because I will hopefully have made a proper portfolio this year, although I can’t write reviews for every little thing I see.

What I likely will do is this feature: The Arbitrary Awards! Highlights of the year, picked for categories you’re unlikely to see at any other sham awards ceremony this side of the MTV Whatever awards! (In the UK, the Arbitrary Awards have been nicknamed the “I Want That Ones”).
Keep in mind that this is not a top ten list. It is a collection of movies that I liked and would rank among the best of the year, although not always for the most honorable reasons. The best thing is that some categories actually have multiple candidates (where multiple means “two”).

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Nobody knows the people of England better than she.

It did not take me long to realise that Stephen Frear’s The Queen is a delicate story of Upstairs and Downstairs relations. Here, however, the Upstairs is directly accountable to the Downstairs; Downstairs being as they are, what they want does not always seem the classy option. The Stairs themselves are therefore precariously balanced with reconciling those above and below them, all the while trying to balance their own interests.

What was once a simple and elegant metaphor for English society grew laboured in my telling, but Upstairs is the British Monarchy, Downstairs the increasingly cultureless citizens of England, and the Stairs Tony Blair’s government.

Being as this is a movie about class, it’s no surprise that it’s a classy movie. It sympathises with Queen Elizabeth II, who seems more personable than any of the limited times I’ve seen her (although she seemed quite nice when Rolf Harris painted her). The situations presented are almost entirely based on conjecture about the events of a few weeks in 1997. While they may not be strictly true, they feel genuine; these real world people have become fully realised characters for the sake of a film.
While there are some who will be offended by the idea of an author writing a situation that may have happened (and was pretty well researched), anyone else with a vague interest in the Royal Family and the death of Diana will be well served to see The Queen.

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“‘Let them eat cake’? As if I’d say that!”

I’m in a million different minds about Marie Antoinette. I love the French Revolution, but this is not a movie about the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette exists in a by turns oppressive and decadent dream state, devoid of a story or scenes. Time progresses, new characters arrive and old characters disappear, and then it’s over. The events that lead to its conclusion are barely touched upon, and in this way Sofia Coppola has created an intimate portrait of a woman in such a manner that the audience can’t tell if the film or the queen is the superficial one.

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I can’t believe how inauspicious I made the beginning of 2007. That’s what I get for trusting George Miller. Children’s movies, you see, lead to trailers for children’s films. Some children’s films are good, but you’ll get promos for a lot of dross looking stuff along the way.

Mrs. Potter

I’m not sure what to think of this yet. See my “January and February 2007 preview” for more or less information.

Mr. Bean’s Holiday

Bean is back, with more predictable jokes about falling down and eating things he doesn’t like! Hilarious! At least he doesn’t talk this time.

Happy N’ever After

Nooooooo! Why do we need another movie that subverts fairy tales? The trailer even admits that it’s the most derivative movie ever: “from the producer of Shrek I and II!” It’s another addition to the canon of CG movies that appear utterly soulless, regardless of the quality of the featured cast.
Normally when I do a trailer round up, I put up the pick of the trailers. No such luck here, so I’ll just put up Happily N’ever After in protest of its utterly derivative nature.

I’d say “the sad thing is, I’ll probably go and see it” but fortunately I’ve got too much other stuff to watch. Also the title is too stupid for me to even consider doing so.

Meet the Robinsons

This wasn’t really a trailer, but rather a “Hey people, turn off your phones, you bastards” message. In Australia, at least in my experience, cinema audiences are generally well behaved: you get the impression that if you do anything amiss, you will be taken out and beaten (and rightly so!). Any sort of transgression of the code on your part is generally a great cause of shame; obviously this does not apply to the shameless.
Not all audiences are perfect, but generally we don’t need this sort of warning (last time I saw one of these was at Over the Hedge in July, where they used Open Season to tell you to turn your phones off).

As for Meet the Robinsons themselves? The posters I’ve seen at the cinemas make the film look like it’s all flash, no bang. One of my specialties is supposed to be animation, but I’m finding it harder and harder to muster the enthusiasm.

I doubt I will see any of the three films on offer that fateful night. Except I just remembered that Mrs. Potter was on, and that might glean some attention from me.

Commie Liberal Propaganda for Kids!

I had misgivings about Happy Feet the first time I saw a trailer for it some eighteen months ago. The teaser trailer really said nothing, but I had to wonder how a film about penguins could be visually interesting. Yesterday I swallowed those misgivings and … they turned out to be correct. Happy Feet was not visually interesting. Nor, at one hour and 48 minutes, was its story tight or involved enough.

Happy Feet has some moments of high enjoyment and quite a few good laughs, but to say that makes it a good movie is like saying that a zombie movie is good because it has a couple of zombies in it: meeting the most basic of expectations a scarce few times is nothing impressive. It’s not a terrible film, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it.

That said, I’m looking forward to reports of children nagging their parents to buy them penguins, then proceeding to flush said penguins down the toilet to freedom.

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