Author: Alex Doenau

Alex Doenau is an Australian film and book critic based in Sydney. His interests include video games, Pokémon, and amiibos as far as the horizon.

I can’t read what they’re saying

I bought The Queen on DVD yesterday. It was an easy choice, in that the DVD was cheap and the film is, for all intents and purposes, fantastic. My Grandmother has frequently lamented that she had missed her chance to see it at the movies, and so I was going to share the love.

I looked at the back of the case when I got home, and saw that the DVD boasts no subtitles. What is wrong with some films that we can’t get freaking subtitles on them? It seems that this problem falls largely on the side of British films. Gosford Park, for instance, held no subtitles and, despite being an Altman project, was at least honorarily British.
I can lend this movie to my Grandparents but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to fully appreciate it simply because they might not catch everything – although, given that the cast speak the Queen’s English, it would be less difficult than several other films.

I will not lie to you, though, my motives are not entirely altruistic. In my house, we watch everything with subtitles. The moment we got a TV with teletext, I turned those suckers on. My parents complained at first, but then they realised that the subtitles were useful and so they stayed. If I’m watching a DVD with my parents, then I’ll turn on the subs. A lot of the time, I’ll watch stuff by myself with subtitles. It helps me focus, and they’re just something that you’ll always expect to be there.
It angers me, therefore, when I do not see them on a DVD. Especially on something as high profile as The Queen. You won an Academy Award for Best Actress, damnit! You aren’t going to win any awards for subtitling, The Queen, and you could have had them in the bag!

In the new world order, DVDs without subtitles will be punished. The Queen will be first against the wall.

I used to hate Microsoft, but I’ve turned that situation around 360 degrees!

My XBox 360 appears to be taking something of a nap. A nap with its friend the Red Ring of Death. Now, I don’t think that the life span of an innocent console should be a mere eight months, but that’s all that me and my companion were gifted with. I’ve composed an ode to it:

Two of a kind
That’s what we are
And it seemed
Like we were always winning
But as our team
Is torn apart
I wish we could go
Back to the beginning

The time has come
It’s for the best I know it
Who could’ve guessed that you and I…
Somehow, some way
We’d have to say goodbye.

Somehow today…
…we have to say goodbye.

I’m choking back the tears, now. I’ll miss you, old friend.
Actually, that may have been the time that I thought I was freeing my Pikachu, but our bond could not be broken.

So the bond between myself and my 360 will not be broken! We have had too many good times together! Also 120+ hours of Oblivion, at least sixty of which were pure masochism!
To this end, and also to the fact that the mythical beast was still under warranty, I called the 360 hotline today. This call, of course, connected me to India. Across the bad connection I gave my details, and I was told that it is suspected that my power supply is at fault. The light is the wrong colour.

It will be good if I don’t need to replace the HD or the console itself, because then I would presumably lose my saves, and have to play through everything in Dead Rising again. This was a happy thought at first until I realised that I had spent an entire weekend in a room watching My Name is Earl one one half of the screen and playing Dead Rising on the other to earn the incredibly tedious Zombie Genocider achievement.

Let’s hope that my 360 lives, and does not become one of them and I have to run it over with a jeep kindly left here by a group of convicts! I will keep you posted as to my console mortality … and then weep if I have to restart Enchanted Arms if I ever want to see the ending.

More Than Meets The Ear

I don’t care much for Transformers, myself, and have only vague memories of an incursion into a Autobot melting plant that survives from my youth. I was more of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan, always.

That said, this fellow is awesome:


Optimash Prime

Artoo-Potatoo is also pretty cool, and this is infinitely better than the fairly lame “Spider-Spud” that they’ve also got going on. “Peter Parker Potato”? Please! Only if it can brush its hair over its eyes and punch its red headed potato blackmailed ex-girlfriend in one of the most embarrassing scenes ever committed to celluloid!

I’m going to see Transformers for masochism value (and out of curiosity to see if Optimus Prime dies – everyone wants him to), and I almost bought this toy today. Key word is almost: I decided that I couldn’t really justify spending $25 on a novelty potato. The fact that such pointless artistry exists in this world warms my heart.

Heroes 22 & 23

“Landslide” & “How to Stop an Exploding Man”

What, did people honestly expect me to write about these Heroes? When your penultimate episode is so lacklustre that you couldn’t be bothered to even watch the finale until almost a week after the fact, something is wrong.

Fortunately for Heroes, I failed to be disappointed. I yelled at the screen and felt a little angry, but it’s impossible to be disappointed when you can’t raise hackles enough to care.

Spoilers

The Great Walk Out

My brother says that he walked out of Tales from Earthsea about two thirds of the way through. This is a concept that I find quite alien.

My friend Phill tends to give up on DVDs if he doesn’t like them in about ten minutes. My cousin Jonathan generally gives a movie he watches at home the chance of half of its running time to prove that it is worth his while. This seems like a decent enough deal. I have a hard enough time watching DVDs in the first place, so if I fear something won’t be worthwhile I generally won’t stick it in my player.

Yet walking out of a cinema seems somehow wrong to me. In theory, one would have spent money on a DVD as well, but it’s not the same level of commitment as going into a cinema, sitting down and then enduring a movie with an audience. If I was a walker out, I would not have endured Rampo Noir to completion. As it stands, I’m surprised I managed to consume the entirety of Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai on DVD at a friend’s house. Then, I’m a movie masochist: I’ve seen 300 twice.

What I want to know is, what kind of person walks out of a movie? Are they serial walkers? What does the movie have to do to offend them so? Does it have to suck, or does it have to simply mention sucking off? What is the mentality? The only analogous situation I can think of was the Popcorn Taxi for Fast Food Nation last year when people walked out of the Q&A session because it was getting late and Linklater was being stubborn in his boringness.

The human condition calls for all things to come to an end: can you leave a movie hanging?

Image: Google Top Ten for “Cinema Walk Out”. I don’t know either.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Because “Pirates from a Whole Bunch of Places” would detract from the franchise.

Not being disappointed is fun. I summarily failed to be disappointed by At World’s End, but at the same time it was not quite as fun as it should have been. More Jack, I say! More hilarious character interactions! More delivery on expectations of exposition!

Given the depth of the potential of the Pirates franchise, it’s incredibly easy to give a list of things that could have been done better of featured more. So, while this was a very enjoyable film, I find myself drawn to the lack. Still! Still indeed. No spoilers this time: they are for a later edition. This is most definitely a “lite” write up.

Pro Tip: Stay until the end of the credits!

Pirate Fever

Call me “King Crazy”, and I’m sure you do behind my back, but I am King Excited about At World’s End. The situation is so bad that my parents, who never go to the movies, have seen it and I have not. In nigh on two hours, I will be basking in the Piratude.

It looks to me like our friend this movie is not going to review very well. I’ve seen things that have said that it’s more of the same, others that say it’s less of the same. If I turn out to love this here movie, I’m not making any apologies for it.

The majority of the things that people complain about in these movies are precisely what I love. I enjoy their “bloated”, overblown super natures. The end of Dead Man’s Chest was an excellent screw with the audience moment that pretty much vindicated the movie that had come before it. Basically I am not entirely certain what I’m saying here, but on one level I’m saying that Pirates, like death, are the next great adventure.

Last movie I was super excited about was King Kong, which was ultimately underwhelming. With Pirates, though, I believe that my feelings will be legitimate. That said, expect me to return to the internet in six hours, furious. I’m nothing if not arbitrary.

The Devine Comedy of The History Boys

The following does not take on a review form; it is a response to an editorial from the Sun Herald columnist Miranda Devine. I do not make any personal attacks on her, fortunately, but I felt a pressing urge to deconstruct her grossly inaccurate words about The History Boys that turned, once again, into an attack on homosexuality’s place in society.
(But she has a gay friend! That means she’s beyond reproach! … As long as she keeps this friend away from children, everyone will be just fine! No need to panic!)

I will write a review of the movie later; it eventually came to grab me, and I teared up at the end. As I cite specific examples of character conduct within, this will contain spoilers. It’s a slightly edited (ie less profane, because apparently profanity weakens an argument) version of something I originally wrote for my journal.

Tales From Earthsea

“It’s all right; they have wings.”

Going into a movie expecting the worst can sometimes turn out in one’s favour: when a movie is not, in fact, terrible and can perhaps even be termed “entertaining”, this is a victory. Tales From Earthsea is one such movie.

The problem with being made by Ghibli is that a certain standard of excellence is expected. The problem with being made by Miyazaki Goro is that the film is forced to live in his father’s shadow. For my money, I enjoyed this movie infinitely more than I did Howl’s Moving Castle.

Tales from Earthsea probably sucks as an Earthsea movie – consultation with my mother reveals that an enormous amount of this movie makes no sense from an adaptation perspective, and Ursula K. Le Guin agrees with this – but otherwise it’s a perfectly engaging, albeit generic, Ghibli fantasy film.

Should we go outside?

Yes, it’s another entry about ads! I wouldn’t mention it, but it combines several of my loves: Joanna Newsom, The Chaser, and balls of wool.

Frequently when I go to the movies, I’m being told to visit other states. I’ve gone to the movies, people! I don’t want to go visit Melbourne or become an accountant! (seriously, there’s one recurring ad which is essentially “Become an accountant. See the world”)

Yet there has never been a more compelling reason to visit Victoria than the fact that they give you a giant ball of wool with which to navigate:

I was struck not only by the novelty of featuring Joanna Newsom’s intricate and mesmerising vocals in an ad, but also the very careful editing that features none of her more interesting vocal gymnastics. She’s a controversial figure, is our Joanna.
The idea of traipsing about a city with a ball of wool is intriguing indeed, and exactly the sort of thing you’d use in an Ad Road Test:

Disaster city.

(If you’re wondering what Sprout and the Bean sounds like in its entirety, below is its music video. Sometimes I give until it hurts.

Joanna Newsom isn’t to everyone’s tastes.)