This is What Geoffrey Rush's 60th Birthday Cake Looks Like

This evening I was fortunate enough to attend the 2011 Melbourne International Film Festival media launch. A look at some of the wonderful feature films, documentaries and shorts scheduled for the festival was only part of the fun though - and I will be discussing the guide in much more details in the days to come! MIFF patron and Melbourne/Australian/acting icon Geoffrey Rush was on hand to give a wonderful speech about how it feels to share a 60th birthday with the festival. Rush is a master at droll wit and knows how to get an audience on side even through a speech that he knows most people don't particularly care for.

At one point they wheeled out a delicious looking cake for him and, thankfully, we got to have a slice during the post-launch mingling. When I pulled an Oliver and asked for more they gave me a giant chunk that I stowed away under my wing and took home. If you ever wanted to know what Geoffrey Rush's birthday cake looked like, here it is!


I shall be devouring it soon!

Eye of the Poster

Last week I attempted to attend a screening of Fred Schepisi's upcoming The Eye of the Storm. Having been very much looking forward to this adaptation of Patrick White's novel, I was excited to get to see the film so early out from its September release date. And with a cast like Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush - who, as an aside, was at my screening of Sleeping Beauty last week! - I think that excitement is understandable, yes? Yes. Nevertheless, I was travelling from Geelong that day and, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, there were major rail fuck-ups. I ended up sitting on that blasted V/Line train for 160 minutes! By the time I eventually got to Melbourne I quite literally just walked to the next platform and got on a train back to Geelong. Being stranded at freakin' Aircraft is not fun. Aircraft, the limited amount of it that I could see from the train window, does not look like a fun place to visit.

But this will not become a vitriolic blog entry about V/Line, it just won't! Let's move on.

Being three months out from release - conflicting reports say either 8 September or 15 September, does anybody have a solid date? - the advertising has been quiet. We saw a trailer last year, and now we get this (admittedly, for now, low quality) for it. It has stripes. Stripes and strangely simplistic blocking there in the middle. I like the idea of Rampling looming large over the poster, but it's just been produced all wrong. And do we really need another film poster to utilise that time-honoured tradition of someone standing serenely on a beach as they look off into the distance? No. No we don't. At least stripes me we don't get any giant floating heads above that serene beach.

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Dir. Rob Marshall
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 128mins

These days a trilogy just isn’t complete without a fourth entry to screw up everybody’s DVD shelves of collectable boxsets. Just last month audiences were treated to Scream 4, a sequel that transcended it’s obvious grab-for-cash qualities by reuniting the original trilogy’s director, screenwriter and (surviving) stars. Horror franchises are rarely given such liberties with their fourth instalments as they usually spin off into silliness and irrelevance. Now even Hollywood blockbuster trilogies aren’t safe, even after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull irked multiple generations of new and old fans alike. Movie series’ such as the Bourne titles and X-Men are getting mutant forth entries. Does nobody respect the sanctity of the movie trilogy?

First though we get Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth instalment of the popular franchise that began on such a high of swash and buckle with The Curse of the Black Pearl and ended in excessive blather with At World’s End. Rob Marshall has picked up directing duties from Gore Verbinski, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom must still be stuck on that cliffside shack because they didn’t show up either, although Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush do return as Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa respectively. Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio are still here for writing duties, but they’re clearly working on fumes as On Stranger Tides feels excessively tired and been-there-done-that in almost every regard. Apart from Penelope Cruz’s cleavage. That’s new and special. And in 3D too.


Oh, 3D. Granted, I haven’t seen Clash of the Titans, which is apparently one of the worst uses of 3D on record, but Marshall’s film marked the first time I actually sat there hating the use of this third dimensional technology. Even in films like The Green Hornet or Pixar’s work where the 3D has been used unnecessarily it was never actually flat out bad and never did I actively start to dislike the movie for using it. The tinted glasses do this film no favours whatsoever, making an already dark and interior film look decidedly darker. Unlike the James Cameron produced Sanctum, the caves of On Stranger Tides are rendered muddy and lifeless due to the 3D. There is no depth provided by the technology; in fact, I was able to take the glasses off for a good 40 minutes or so and found no issue at all.

These films are traditionally bright, colourful and vivid with their use of colour and there are stretches of On Stranger Tides that are no different with its lush, tropical greens, yellows and blues. They don’t need the extra technology to look more impressive – nature is the greatest CGI after all. It’s needless and actually disruptive to the film’s quality.

I guess I should just be thankful that this film’s running time is a much more friendly 128 minutes rather than the absurd 170 of At World’s End. Marshall certainly did well in keeping a fine eye on the editing suite, directing the shortest film of the franchise. Marshall, it must be said, as always, has delivered a film of fine technical merit – Penny Rose’s costume design is yet again the unheralded champion, can you believe she hasn’t received a single Oscar nomination for her efforts on this franchise? – but he cannot save the film from its unnecessary, rather ho-hum atmosphere.


The cast are merely going through the motions, although Rush eats so much scenery in his early scenes I was frightened he’s get indigestion! Cruz and Ian McShane make acceptable, if unremarkable, newcomers to the franchise, but Sam Clafin is no Orlando Bloom and you know something’s not right when you write that in a review.

Perhaps it’s just a case of not being able to recreate the initial sensation that came with seeing The Curse of the Black Pearl, but this franchise should just stop. Not even the trademark fight choreography or Cruz’s delicately-placed crucifix can save it. At least the endless parade of sequels that horror franchise’s get don’t cost the GDP of some small nations! The excitement, or even the vaguest of interests, has gone and it’s going to take more than a few fresh faces to get it back. C

A Tweet for a Poster

Last week I posted a comment on Twitter regarding The King's Speech. With the film's American release imminent we still had not seen a poster and I was eagerly awaiting one. Take a look:


I wasn't making that quip for laughs, but because I honestly believed it would prove prophetic. And, whadaya know, we got the official poster (via Cinematical) today for The King's Speech and if this isn't "dull and boring" then I don't know what is!


Quite literally, the only compliment I can come up with is that at least the actors' names are in the correct position with their faces. So much dire Photoshopping! Everything looks so old! And cheap! Everyone's eyes looking in different directions! ETC!!!

Please, Jeremy Saunders or someone - come to the rescue!

Eye of the Trailer

Fred Schepisi has returned to Australia to direct his first film here since Evil Angels (otherwise known as A Cry in the Dark or the Meryl-Streep-puts-on-a-bad-Aussie-accent movie) in the late 1980s with The Eye of the Storm. It is an adaptation of Australia's only Nobel Prize-winning novel and stars Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis and Charlotte Rampling. The plot goes like this: two well off siblings return to the bedside of their ailing, domineering mother, thus providing ample opportunities for hilarious (read: "hilarious") fish-out-of-water situations.

As familiar as that plot may sound, the real juice in the tanker of this movie is watching two of Australia's finest actors, Rush and Davis - the latter of which has become criminally underseen in recent years - go at it hammer and tongs on the big screen with some (hopefully) juicy material. Adding Charlotte Rampling and Colin Friels (not shown in the trailer, unfortunately) to the proceedings doesn't hurt, now does it?

I had not been made aware that a trailer had been released recently, but it has and so here it is with thanks to TwitchFilm. It certainly looks like an acting showcase (although I imagine those who are not a fan of Geoffrey Rush's shtick will not be anticipating more of the same) in what will hopefully be an entertaining film. The trailer is definitely WIDESCREEN so if it is too small below click the Twitch link above or, for an even larger viewing experience, it is at Inside Film as well.