Your Essential Guide to Surviving Baz Luhrmann's `Australia'

From Cinetopia, Jim Schembri, November 28, 2008

You've been hearing about it for over a year. You've read the stories, seen the ads, watched the interviews, downloaded the promos, heard the gossip - but now the moment of truth has arrived. It's finally time for you to join your fellow citizens and dutifully file into the nearest multiplex to bear witness to the epic cinematic masterpiece that is definitely not Baz Luhrmann's Australia.

To help you through the ordeal here is a quick checklist of items to take in with you:

A Handful of No Doz: That first hour can be really tough to get through. These should help perk you up.

Large Oriental Hand Fan: In the camp-fire scene where Hugh Jackman pulls off his shirt to reveal the kind of ripped torso you usually see only in high-end gay porn you're going to need some air circulation quick smart to keep you from swooning.

Small Plastic Beach Bucket: To catch any drool resulting from the same scene.

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The King of Kong

Bryan and I watched The King of Kong (imdb) a few nights ago. It's a documentary about the rivalry between a guy with a massive ego and stupid hair (Billy Mitchell), who had held the world record for highest Donkey Kong score for 20 years (-ish, I don't remember exactly now), and an extremely likable science teacher and family man (Steve Wiebe), who one day decided out of nowhere that he was going to break the record for Donkey Kong, just to prove that he could.


To be honest, I didn't think it sounded that interesting. Video games aren't my thing after all. But Bryan wanted to watch it and I had nothing better to do... Anyway, it turned out to be a really nail-bitingly good cheer-for-the-underdog kinda movie. I highly recommend, even if you're not into gaming.

Kenny

Bryan and I went to the movies on Saturday night, our first such outing since we arrived in Melbourne. We went to the Hoyts Cinemas at Chadstone, just a short drive from our house. I think the complex is quite new, and that is clearly reflected in its movie theatre. When we lined up for our tickets there was a very efficient system to direct people to the next available counter. I was quite impressed with that and the long line that I grumbled about initially moved very quickly indeed. When we got to our ticket counter, we were told that our seats would be located on the aisle in the middle block of seats, and would that be ok? We were surprised about the assigned seating and thought that it might help to keep things orderly in the movie theatre, but as it happens it didn’t matter. The theatre was only about a quarter full and everyone was seated in one cluster at the back of the middle block. Some people had problems locating their aisle and seat because the numbers were hidden on the side of the arm rests. Speaking of arm rests, you could lift them up and potentially have a cuddle and/or catapult your drink from the drink holder towards the person sitting behind you. The seats were nice and comfy with high backs too. I didn’t even notice that there was very much advertising on before the movie. Overall it was quite serene compared to some of the in-your-face flashy and noisy pre-movie material shown in North America main-stream theatres.

Anyway, what about the movie? We saw Kenny, an Australian made mockumentary about a middle aged guy with a lisp, who works for a company that delivers and installs portable toilets for events and festivals. This movie is seriously good, and hilarious. Its right up there with The Castle as far as its portrayal of Australian humour and values is concerned. Not to mention its quoteability. I also liked that it was filmed in Melbourne and the fact that I already know Melbourne well enough to identify parts of it from the movie. See it, see it, see it!

Truly delusional

Here's a headline that just caught my attention: "Karr wants Depp for movie role". That's right, it seems that John Mark Karr, the guy who wishes he was the killer of 6 year old JonBenet Ramsey, wants a movie made about himself and JonBenet, with Johnny Depp in the lead role. Ha! Apparently Johnny's people haven't responded, and I'm pretty certain they won't. Which is a shame because Karr reckons the movie could rake in a billion dollars. I think Billy Ray Cyrus might be a more appropriate in the role actually.

For fans of the best Australian movie ever made

If you haven't watched The Castle yet, what the hell are you waiting for? But don't bother with Miramax's butchered Americanised version, go straight to the original release.
Anyway, for those of you that have seen and enjoyed this wonderful movie, you may be interested to know that the Kerrigan's Bonnie Doon holiday home is available for anyone to rent. Its located not too far out of Melbourne, so you can guess where I'm going to go on my holidays next summer.
Thank you to Jo for bringing this very important development to our attention.

Tom Cruise you are OUT of control

Ok, he's completely lost the plot now. Not to mention an ego so overinflated its going to burst quite spectacularly very shortly. Look at this:

It's totally redonkulous - like he just saved the world from an asteroid or something. He's played one hero too many and now I think he believes he's a superhero. I really do. I absolutely REFUSE to see the stupid movie. I refuse! However, if someone kidnapped me and forced me to watch it on pain of sticking needles into my eyes, I would agree to watch it. But only if I could jump up and down on my seat during the movie and shout "I love this woman movie!!!!" (Erwin helped me with that joke last night).

Update May 6: Last night Erwin was telling me how he went to see 'The Stupid Movie' (as it shall henceforth be known), but the movie was late starting because a girl was badly injured during the previous showing, and had to be wheeled out on a gurney. We think the girl was jumping up and down in her seat shouting "I love this woman movie!!!!". And bless her heart for doing so, but here's where I think it turned to tragedy - when she jumped up, the movie seat flipped into the upright position, she had nothing to land on, fell down and hit herself on the cupholder... or something like that. When CSI call asking about it, put them in touch with me and I'll tell them my theory.

When VHS turns bad

Last night Bryan and I decided to go out for dinner at Baru - previously one of my favourite brunching spots, but now limited to serving dinner only. Well it turns out they serve fabulous dinner as well as fabulous brunch, so I feel better about the loss of brunch.

After dinner, we popped next door to Limelight to pick up a movie. After deciding that a 156 minute movie abou the downfall of the fuhrer would be too much for an Easter Saturday, Bryan selected Stranger than Paradise. He described this to me as an independent, avante-garde, black comedy by one of his favourite directors, Jim Jarmusch, back in the 80's. This movie was rated overall 7.5/10 on IMDB, and 90 % fresh on rotten tomatoes. We were quite looking forward to it. So we walked up to the man behind the desk and asked him for "Stranger than Paradise". He looked it up on the computer and told us it was only available on VHS, and would that be ok? We said yes it would be ok. So he went into the back room to get the movie. We payed for it and we left.


We got home, we put the VHS into my antiquated TV-with-built-in VCR unit, snuggled up under blankets and started to watch. Some awful music started playing, stupid images appeared on the screen, and this title appeared "Strangers in Paradise". After calling Limelight to tell us they had given us the wrong movie, we checked on IMDB to find out if the movie we had come home with was worth watching. It wasn't.


Here's a user comment from IMDB "Worst anti-fascist musical ever made. This is mostly a political statement with some of the worst directed and staged song and dance numbers ever. Since the film is 50% song and dance, would it be too much to ask for the dancing to match the beat or the singers to lip-sync properly? The director, writer, and producer of STRANGERS IN PARADISE, Ulli Lommel, also stars as a mesmerist from WWII Germany named Sage, who is cryogenically frozen in the 1940s to escape Hitler (also played by Ulli Lommel). A group of crazy California fascists thaw out Sage in the 1980s and try to get him to hypnotize gays and punks into being upstanding citizens....".

Need I say more? It was horrible. Rated on IMDB at 5.6/10 (quite generous I think). Rotten Tomatoes apparently didn't find it worthy of a rating, but one user reviewed it and gave it 3/10.

Anyway that was my Saturday night.

North Country

For the first time, I went to see a movie by myself last night. That was a big step in itself. I felt pretty strongly that I wanted to see this movie regardless of whether anyone was available to see it with me.

I'm not going to write a review, but...North Country, starring Charlize Theron and the legendary Frances McDormand, is the (inspired by a true) story of women working in a Minnesota mine, sexually harrassed, even attacked, by their male co-workers on a daily basis. Only one of these women is willing to speak out, despite attempts by people at every level of the company to step on her. She eventually pulls enough people together to file a class action lawsuit against the company, which sets a precendent for legislation of sexual equality in the workplace everywhere.

What scares me is that this did not happen very long ago. The lawsuit was won only in 1998, 10 years after it was filed and 23 years after the abuse began. Right up until the end the mining company (Eveleth Mines, in real life) was fighting the lawsuit, labelling the women as either "nuts or sluts". This makes me angry, but that is the main objective of the movie. In the end I was left with great respect for what this woman achieved, although there is still a long way to go before gender equality is truly reached...

I think back to my undergraduate days working in a grocery store for an Italian family, propositioned frequently by the boss' son and married brother-in-law, and slightly ostracised for telling them to piss off, as the boss and the other girls pretended not to notice. I wonder why I stayed there for 3 years, and put it down to needing money to get through university and there being very few other casual jobs available, but also knowing that I was better than that. And when I try to understand why they picked on me, I think it was because I was a university student with a lot more than a career in a grocery store ahead of me.

Anyway, I'm heading out now to buy the book.

Enron

Bryan, Rhonda and myself saw Enron: The smartest guys in the room a few nights a go, and it was really good. I fully recommend it, especially if you enjoyed The Corporation. Being fairly left-wing, it made my blood boil to see the greed, the lies, the coverups, the blackmail, and the unbelievably dodgy internally projected mark-to-market accounting that took place under the guise of "just business" at Enron.
I'm getting really tired of hearing about self-professed corporate hotshots doing dodgy inside deals and then blaming it on someone else when the shit hits the fan. Conveniently though, the corporate hotshots have always moved their share of the profits into untouchable funds by the time the criminal investigations start. Its happening far too frequently these days. And what are untouchable funds anyway? How is it terrorist organisations can have their assets frozen but Kenneth Lay can't?

Little things

Hooray for Canada! The world's third nation to legalise same-sex marriage. I love living in a progressive society.

I'm currently reading the Da Vinci Code (I know I'm the last person on Earth to read it, but I was waiting to steal a copy from my sister), and I seriously, seriously love it. I can't put it down. I can't wait for the movie. Audrey Tautou is playing Sophie Neveu!

My friend Rosei gave me a package of TimTams in Boston, one of Australia's finest chocolate products. I love TimTams and I love Rosei for bringing them!