MIFF Blogathon: Day 15 (Don't Be Afraid of A Tribe Called Sleeping Sickness)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Bi, Don't Be Afraid
Dir. Dang Di Phan
Running Time: 92mins

A sumptuously detailed exploration of four different generations in Vietnam, Dang Di Phan's gorgeously lensed Bi, Don't Be Afraid [Bi, dung so!] slowly crept up on me and surprised me like another Vietnamese/French co-production from many years ago, The Scent of Green Papaya. Told generally from the point of view of Bi, a 9-year-old boy who live with his doting mother, alcoholic father, single aunt and dying grandfather. He associates with the lithe, teenage boys at a nearby factory more than kids his own age and watches curiously as they express their masculinity by stripping off in the turgid heat as much as possible. His aunt, meanwhile, develops a crush on a young student and his parents deal with their potentially crumbling marriage in the shadow of a dying patriarch.

The cinematography by Quang Pham Minh is divine, capturing the Vietnamese countryside in an assortment of lush greens, rustic golds and smoky greys while at the same time capturing great moments in picturesque ways. Two boys devouring a watermelon or the rain-soaked aunt cowering amongst reeds are just two that spring to mind as memorable, lasting images. The casual "slice of life" narrative drifts along in an almost dreamy manner and this debut film by Phan has a delicate balance that suckered me in. B+

Sleeping Sickness
Dir. Ulrich Köhler
Running Time: 91mins

A curious film is Ulrich Köhler's German/French co-production set in Cameroon. Split into two distinct halves, it always holds its cards very firmly to its chest. I was in constant thought of "where is this going?" and while it may not have gone somewhere I particularly understand, I appreciate it's ripe storytelling and visually arresting take on the tricky material.

Initially starring Pierre Bokma as a German doctor, Ebbo Velten, living in and running a treatment centre for the titular disease in Cameroon, Sleeping Sickness [Schlafkrankheit] takes a sudden detour and focuses of French doctor of Congolese descent, Jean-Christophe Folly as Alex Nzila, visiting Africa for the first time to conduct a report on Velten's study. The contrast of white man living in Africa and black man visiting for the first time is deftly handled by Köhler and the juxtaposition is never obvious. The final scenes, set amongst the deep black nighttime jungles, are mysterious and ambiguous. I was definitely perplexed by Sleeping Sickness, but found it constantly involving. B

Melbourne Shorts (Program 2)
Dir. Various
Running Time: 100mins (cume)

A much more entertaining batch of shorts than program 1 (although that may have to do with the fact that I was sitting with the incredible Mel Campbell, laughing our butts off!), this second collection of short films about Melbourne spans 1954 to 1979 and looks mostly at how the future (so, er, today) will look at the city of the past.

Beginning with Geoffrey Thompson's 1954 short Planning for Melbourne's Future (19mins) and the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Authority's (so no actual director?) Loop (14mins) from 1973, the two films provide laughs a-plenty for Melburnians who deal daily with public transport fiascoes. As narrators explain the daily, worsening struggle of transporters cramming into trains and trams like sardines on their way to work and talking about how they need to make changes for the future I couldn't help but laugh. You can watch it at The Department of Planning and Community Development. Loop is particularly well edited and photographed (despite the poor quality of the print) and despite a truly bizarre lapse into comedic narrative that had my howling with laughter, they're wonderfully made shorts that really do provide a history lesson of this amazing city.


The City Speaks from 1965 was next, produced by The Housing Commission of Victoria and it was just as dull as the title and production house would allude to. I drifted off at some point during this 21min film and can't even really remember much about what I did see. The score was terrible, too. Far better was Gil Brealey's Late Winter to Early Spring (12mins) from 1954. A black and white silent film that follows several people - a grandmother and two kids, two women of different class waiting for their dates and a homeless man - around the botanical gardens. It's lovingly lensed and surprisingly creative in its compositions that bristle with humour and style.

Peter McIntyre's Your House and Mine (23mins) is a 1958 short that was produced in tandem with a local architectural digest magazine. It's horrible dated - "In [the late 1800s] during the dying days of the Aborigine" !!! - and, subsequently, hilarious short that examines what Australia's defining style of architecture and where it fits into the development of our ever widening cities. It's got a charming style, brisk editing and ridiculously comical narration. The program unfortunately ended on a bit of a dud note with John Dunkley-Smith's Flinders Street (11mins) from 1979. It's not much more than a curiosity, a document of what this iconic Melbourne landmark and its surrounding areas looked like at the time. I had no idea there used to be a cinema next door to the Young & Jackson pub on the corner of Flinders and Swanston! For what it's worth, the cinema was playing Superman, The Jungle Book and Saturday Night Fever. What makes the film especially bizarre is the presentation where two boxy 16mm screens are presented side-by-side. One has sound and is in colour, the other does not. The two screens more or less film the same stuff - walking from corner to corner around the area - with one a minute or so behind. It's curious stuff and I'm not sure it worked, but it was certainly interesting to see the big skyscraper that was demolished and replaced by Federation Square or the way the train station itself and the famous clock facade has changed so little.

You can read more about Flinders Street at Senses of Cinema.

Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
Dir. Michael Rapaport
Running Time: 98mins

Warning: Beats Rhymes & Life is dangerous to your health!

I dare anybody who see this film, Michael Rapaport's debut as director after a career in acting, and not want to investigate the entire recording career of A Tribe Called Quest. The groundbreaking New York hip-hop group of the late 1980s and early 1990s is given 98 minutes of love and affection in this documentary that is unfortunately conventional, but never boring. The music of A Tribe Called Quest - as well as the other assorted artists who are featured as inspirations of or inspired by the band - is so infectious and each song a masterpiece of construction and craft that I can easily forgive Rapaport's lacklustre direction. As the twentysomething white girl down the aisle said during the credits: "That was dope!"

Dope, indeed.

It's hard to see documentaries being made out contemporary hip-hop artists that would allow them to be portrayed as such funny, interesting people as Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed and the especially touching Jarobi White. These were men that never particularly flaunted their success and sung about pertinent issues. The live musical sequences are energetically captured, but like the rest of the film, they're hardly mindblowing. Fantastic animation throughout is about as close as The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest gets to being truly cinematic, but the beats, the rhymes and the life of A Tribe Called Quest make this film a delightful experience. B

MIFF TALES
The awesomeness that is MIFF was exemplified today when, after leaving Sleeping Sickness at The Forum, I ended up running into not one or two, three or four, but five wonderful fellow MIFF-attending critfolks. I see these people pretty regularly - well, not Simon from Quickflix since he lives in Perth - but there's something so metropolitan about just turning around and spotting someone you know.

I should also point out that with two days left of the festival, the end is coming right at the perfect time. My legs appear to have not adapted well to their almost perma-bend-in-uncomfortable-seat position and my dickey knee has been acting up big time. I injured it years ago and it hadn't bothered me in a very long time, but I guess 54 films in 15 days (two more on Saturday, four on Sunday will bring me to the magic 60!) has not been the best for it.

Meanwhile, I love that the "closing night" festivities (Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and an elaborate party with drinks, drinks, drinks and probably some celebrities who discuss how great it is to see Melbourne filmgoers out in force seeing films whilst probably not letting slip that they didn't see any apart from their own. I love how completely and utterly Australian it is to hold the closing night festivities on a Saturday night when the festival doesn't actually end until Sunday night. Certainly gives people who aren't filming it up on Sunday the chance to get completely shit-faced and not have to worry about work in the morning. Well done Australia, you rock!

MIFF Blogathon: Day 14 (Familiar Triangle Wars of Tyrannosaurus X)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Familiar Ground
Dir. Stéphane Lafleur
Running Time: 88mins

A film of such little consequence that when I tried to tell fellow MIFF attendees what I had seen earlier that day the title of this film, and in fact much of the plot too, had mysteriously exited my brain. I had only chosen it as filler and it's brief 88-minute run time sounded like heaven for my 11am brain. Still, Stéphane Lafleur's Familiar Ground [En terrains connus] is quite an airless experience. It drifts along doing its own merry thing, never so much as raising the temperature of its cold, wintery Canadian backdrop. It never raises a sweat because it never does anything, or even attempt it, with any weight to it.

Francis La Haye and Fanny Mallette star as Benoit and Maryse, still dealing rather unsuccessfully with the death of their mother five years earlier. I only know this because that's what the MIFF guide tells me. The guide also tells me there's something about "a man from the not-to-distant future", but, in all honesty, I think I drifted off during the one minute he was on screen (one minute according to fellow attendee and blogathon-er Jess Lomas). Apart from a somewhat intriguing ending, there's just nothing in Familiar Ground to mull over. I can't even be enthused to use the title in a witty pun. D+

Innocent Saturday
Dir. Aleksandr Mindadze
Running Time: 99mins

Remember when I labelled Wasted Youth as worst of the festival? Well, step aside Wasted Youth, for Aleksandr Mindadze's terrible Innocent Saturday [V subbotu] is here to claim the title. Not just worst of the festival, mind you, but one of the worst films I have ever seen, period. It's a frustrating and muddle account of the Chernobyl reactor disaster as told through the eyes of some of the stupidest film characters you will ever lay eyes on. Why yes, the nuclear plant across the river is on fire and about to explode, but you know what? I need to shop for shoes! Or, even better, I need to join a rock and roll wedding band and play for tips until the wee hours of the morning. This all makes complete and perfect sense, doesn't it?

I could look up who the actors were in this drivel, but I'd rather not. All I know is that the lead actor looks somewhat like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Diego Luna and that I can't fathom why he would want to remain in the film's setting to try and save these horrible, retched characters. Outside of How I Ended This Summer I can't think of any more idiotic beings than these. The apparent love interest is, to put it bluntly, a dumb, pathetic shell of a real woman. Superfluous and superficial to the nth degree, I feel comfort in knowing this wicked character probably died a slow and painful death due to radiation poisoning. Same goes for all the rest, really. They're idiotic dolts and clearly all the years of living near a nuclear reactor has fried their brain cells into not wanting to evacuate a city on the brink of disaster. The MIFF guide tells me that this represents the complacency that nuclear powered countries seem to find themselves in (hello Japan putting nuclear plants on active fault lines!) but this reading is incredibly hard to decipher out from the nauseating hand-held cinematography and loud, incessant barking of dialogue. It's a disaster all right! F

The Triangle Wars
Dir. Rosie Jones
Running Time: 90mins

The world premiere of The Triangle Wars happened today at MIFF to an overwhelmingly positive response! What more would you expect, however, from a theatre full of viewers who are obviously on the same side of the filmmakers? I went into Rosie Jones' documentary The Triangle Wars not knowing all that much about the redevelopment of the St Kilda foreshore area known as "The Triangle" - I've never lived in St Kilda, nor do I ever visit there, so I didn't particularly follow - but now that I've seen this film I can safely say that I still don't know all that much because Jones and her collaborative producers have gone out of the way to present their film as biased as possible.

Now this was surely their intention all along, but I find it somewhat discouraging to find a documentary to be so blatantly one-sided. I sat there wondering what all the fuss was about over this triangle of land. I understood the objections by St Kilda residents, but I also started to consider the hundreds (thousands?) of jobs that the development would create, the business it would stir amongst the area and the tourism it would entice. Of course, Jones doesn't explore any of that, instead wishing to merely document the rabble raising that the so-called "UnChain St Kilda" action group caused.


Now, don't get me wrong - I more or less agree with the idea that giant malls would dilute the sunny charm of the St Kilda foreshore, but when presented in the manner that it is here I actually began to turn against it. The rally sequences have a sort of chest-thumping energy to them that sparks memories of my own protest attendances and there are some eye-opening talking head style interviews, but a bland television aesthetic - this will look much better on the TV than the highly-pixellated look that the cinema exhibition gave us - and lousy, dull narration (was it by Rosie Jones herself?) harm it greatly.

Almost everyone seen on screen in this documentary looks like the upper-class, privileged arty folk that I find so hard to relate to. It must be nice to just decide to become a council-member on a whim. Do these people even have jobs? The weird, creepy demonisation of the film's "villains" was also particularly off-putting, including a meanspirited and insulting slow motion take of one councilwoman dancing at a function. There was something that irked me about The Triangle Wars far more than it's rather inoffensive premise would suggest, but as audience members around me laughed and jeered as their enemies strutted about I couldn't help but feel there isn't much to the film for those who aren't St Kilda radicals. C-

Tyrannosaur
Dir. Paddy Considine
Running Time: 91mins

On day 11 of the festival I was privy to Peter Mullan's Neds, in which he had a small role as a drunk, abusive father. In Paddy Considine's directorial debut, Tyrannosaur, Mullan takes the lead role of a drunk, abusive man. It's a stretch, I'm sure, but he does it so well that we can forgive the typecasting. Thankfully, the film around him is equally impressive as Considine has written and directed this film with solid aplomb. Where it could have easily descended into true, honest miserebalism, Tyrannosaur explores the way damaged souls can connect through not only their collective anger, but through spicy humour and barbs of steel.

Starring Mullan and Olivia Colman as oddly connected souls - he a former abusive husband, she a currently abused wife - who help each other deal with the demons that dwell inside them. Colman is truly stunning here as Hannah and she tops it off with a climactic scene of dramatic power that tore my heart out and stomped on it, wringing tears in the process. Can the best actress Oscar campaign start right now, please? The film is beaming with compassion in the face of enraging violence with surprisingly clean cinematography by Erik Wilson, Tyrannosaur is a dark study, but it's dinosaur title is apt: it's a monster. B+

X
Dir. Jon Hewitt
Running Time: 85mins

"From the director of Bloodlust" is certainly an opening line that should spark wide-eyed fear in anyone, however I found myself curiously entertained by Jon Hewitt's lurid, sex-drenched tale of hookers on the run. I will be reviewing this in full at some later stage, but for now let me just say how much fun I had with X! It's bathed in flesh and neon with over-the-top flashiness to mask over the utterly ridiculous screenplay ("you're now a bowling ball!") by Hewitt and actor Belinda McClory (she was "Switch" in The Matrix!)

X features a great lead performance by Viva Bianca, wonderful cinematography by Mark Pugh as well as stunning sound design and music, plus electric editing by Cindy Clarkson. The Sydney locations are captured with glorious vividness and the nudity is frank and upfront. If the violence gets too much then, well, it is set in the underworld although any call of misogyny can be easily counterclaimed: these women get their own back! I had a blast with X and it's the best Australian film I have seen during the festival. B+

MIFF TALES
It can be amusing getting the reactions from others after a screening. I've been in the minority on a few occasions throughout the fest - including, to some degree, X which many seem to have tolerated, hated or moderately enjoyed - but the universal hatred for Innocent Saturday has been refreshing and unlike anything I've experienced so far this festival. I haven't spoken to a single person who liked it. Not even a little bit! I sat next to Greg Bennett of Sounds Like Cinema and we both let out exacerbated sighs are numerous point and once out on the street there was uncontrollable laughter in between loud proclamations of "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" Several others, including a stranger who waltzed over to myself and Jess Lomas after the screening, were all baffled by the degree of awful we'd just witnessed.

With only three days left of the festival, it really is sinking in that after Sunday I won't absolutely have to see three of four or (like today and tomorrow) five films throughout the day. I won't have to arrive home at some terribly late hour and somehow fit it blogging, eating, watching Masterchef (of course) and general relaxation. In fact, I'm surprised I made it through today so well with only some brief microsleeps during that movie I saw first that I've forgotten the title of again since I'd been up since 8am for reasons that I will explain later (it involves interviewing someone and WOW what an interview!)

And now it's 2:05am and I am so incredibly tired. Good night!

MIFF Blogathon: Day 1 (Kings of Comedy, Depressed Planets and 1950s Melbourne)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

The King of Comedy
Dir. Martin Scorsese
Running Time: 109mins

Amidst the 250+ feature films at MIFF is a series of retrospective titles from throughout the 60 year history of the festival. It was, perhaps, fitting to start my festival with one I had already seen and loved since it's always great to get a festival off to a good start. Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy may seem like a curious title to screen, but watching it again and it makes perfect sense. This brutal satire on celebrity is as pertinent today as it surely was in 1983 when originally released and remains one of Scorsese's finest works. In fact, I rank it just below Taxi Driver as his best film, so you know I liked it a lot!

That screenplay by Paul Zimmerman - a BAFTA winner for Best Original Screenplay, one of only a few award season wins, further cementing its reputation as a under-cherished gem - is truly a thing of beauty, filled with so many barbs, awkwardness and genius exchanges. It's shocking to realise that Zimmerman would only go on to write one other screenplay (the 1988 Giles Foster comedy Consuming Passions).


Of course, a large part of this film's success rests with the cast. While Jerry Lewis and Diahnne Abbott are wonderful, for me it's all about Robert DeNiro and Sandra Bernhard. DeNiro's Rupert Pupkin is such an uncomfortably character to be around, and yet his goofy innocence remains charming. Even once he's well and truly fallen off the deep end I can't help but still be entertained by him. It's this tricky skill that makes this one of DeNiro's very best performances. Who can't laugh at the whingeing exchanges between Pupkin and his off screen mother? And Sandra Bernhard... Sandra Bernhard! Her borderline insane performance as stalker Masha is one of my all time favourite performances. It's my understanding that a lot of her part was improvised, with her brand of comedy did not endearing Bernhard to co-star Jerry Lewis, but it's exactly this tension that makes those final scenes as well as they do. Such a rich and rewarding film. Isn't it about time this film was finally raised to classic status like Taxi Driver or Raging Bull? A

Melbourne Shorts (Program 1)
Dir. Various
Running Time: 69mins

This collection of six short films were introduced to the sold out crowd as being a way of exploring Melbourne's past on this 60th anniversary of the festival. What we got was a bit of a mixed bag. Beginning with Darrel Wardle's's weird is-it-a-pisstake-or-not The American (10mins) from 1959, which proposed to look at the ways America's superior manufacturing and invention has changed other cities across the world. It was followed by Douglas White's 1966 dialogue free Life in Australia: Melbourne (19mins), which followed the casual comings and goings of Melburnians as they do everything from go to work, purchase TV Week and go see William Castle's The Busy Body.

By far the corniest of the lot was Melbourne Wedding Belle (10mins), a curiously wannabe technicolour short about various members of a bridal party making there way to the wedding. Colin Dean's short had most of the dialogue narrated and written in a rhyming fashion as if they're lyrics. It was good for a few laughs at how completely silly the whole thing was, especially the strand about the old lady who just needed a new pillbox hat. The final short was David Greig's Sunday in Melbourne (19mins), an incredibly tedious exploration of - you guessed it - Sunday in Melbourne. It's by far too long and generally quite pointless, using the advantages of a short film structure to no effective use whatsoever. Although it does work as a compare and contrast piece if you look at the differences between a Sunday in Melbourne in 1958 and 2011. Perhaps knowing its shortcomings full well, the pompous narrator tells the audience at film's end that most people find Sunday remarkably boring.


The two best shorts, however, were Malcolm Wallhead's The Cleaners (16mins) from 1969 and The Melbourne Concert Hall (19mins) from 1982. The former was a rather gorgeously photographed look at one of the dirtiest of professions. The latter - the most recent of the shorts in both programs - was a rather simple documentary short on the building of The Melbourne Concert Hall in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Much of the information given by the talking heads was rather fascinating and anybody with a love of architecture should try and seek this short film out. I liked the factoid about the building being designed to last for 150 years! Pertinent now since they're remodelling it right now for a 2012 unveiling. My favourite part, however, was the way they mixed construction footage with musical pieces, to provide a rather lovely contrast. Reminded of Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, actually.

Hopefully program 2 towards the end of the festival yields better rewards.

Melancholia
Dir. Lars von Trier
Running Time: 130mins

Lars von Trier announced that there would be "no more happy endings" and, when you think about it, there was really nowhere else for the notorious Danish troublemaker to go than Melancholia. It's a film that takes the debilitating cruelty of depression to it's next logical step. There's little doubt that von Trier's metaphors here are obvious, but it's what he does with them that allows him to remain one of the most fascinating, important and down right excellent filmmakers in the business. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Lars von Trier is the greatest working director in the world right now. Just my own subjective opinion, but if I can't share wildly expressive opinions on my own blog then I might as well just give up.

Opening with a 10 minute prologue that begins with a close-up of Kirsten Dunst's pillowed face that then proceeds into a spectacular visual effects reel that I'm sure Terrence Malick would appreciate, Melancholia then splits into to halves: Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Justine suffers from depression, this is plainly obvious once she wipes away the cute smile that audiences will recognise from Bring It On. Claire suffers from caring too much and her anxiety towards Justine, the rapidly spiralling wedding she helped organise (with a deliciously ridiculous Udo Kier!) and the lingering mysterious presence in the sky above.

The performances are universally excellent, with Dunst especially proving that von Trier's faith in her was well deserved (something that her lingering fans like myself knew was never a worry). Gainsbourg, the first of von Trier's leading women to return to the Dane's backlot of fun, is also wonderful as this nervous, tightly-wound woman. Manuel Alberto Claro's beautiful cinematography does wonders with shadow and light, using the idea of this foreign light-emanating source to create painterly pictures. The sound work and visual effects are also worth praising to the heavens.


No matter how much I was liking Melancholia, however, no matter how much it had impressed me, nothing prepared me for the gut punch that is the final scene. As von Trier's vision of a truly apocalyptic portrayal of the burden of depression comes to its natural, yet poetic, conclusion, there was something so deeply effecting that I found myself unable to breath. The final shot is certainly one for the all time lists in its brave, devastating imagery. Much like the rest of the film it will be something that lingers with me for quite some time and that is why I cherish Lars von Trier so much. A-

A Look at Magnificent Obsessions: Hollywood Dames from Screwball to Sirk

Screwball comedies and the lush melodramas of Douglas Sirk are hardly two genres of film that one would normally associate with each other. However, a new retrospective at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne has done just that.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
I take a look at Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? and Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, while fellow Trespass writer Melissa Wellham handles Douglas Sirk duties with Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life. The seasons of screwball and Sirk movies runs at ACMI from 19 to 31 May and I can't recommend it enough!

When a Spoiler Calls

The Scream franchise is known for several things. Perhaps most notable of all is an opening kill that's as shocking in its violence as it is in its chuztpah (Hollywood stars, franchise stars and meta set-ups are the sorts you'll find there) with echoes of Psycho and When a Stranger Calls. Down at the other end of the film reel, Scream is known for the big reveal of who has been wearing the Ghostface mask for the past 100 minutes or so. It's a well-oiled machine that proved to be just as entertaining now as it had been between 1996-2000. Scream 4 features, surely, the most insane and twisted final act of the franchise!

So you could imagine my surprise and shock when a prominent Melbourne-based, but nationally published in Fairfax newspapers such as The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, film critic - a very big fish in this rather small pond - went and announced who the killer was within the opening sentence of his review! I immediately went to Twitter and Facebook and announced this abhorrent unprofessional act.


Before long people were asking me "surely you're kidding" style of questions, but as someone who had laid eyes on Jim Schembri's review personally I was most definitely not. Those who hadn't seen the film thankfully avoided it thereafter, but those who had already seen it (the local press screening was the Monday night) clicked over and saw it for themselves. As another critic tweeted "Jesus, he really does give it all away up front doesn't he. Should be a sackable offense", quickly followed by other people too numerous to count spouting words like "brutally uncool and cruel", "really arrogant", "utterly jerk behaviour", "appalling" and "Schembri's a prick" as well as many a retweet to people around the globe. Luke Buckmaster of Crikey tweeted "the spoiler in Schembri's review of Scream 4 is the worst spoiler I've ever seen."

Only the sight of [redacted] getting all kill-happy in the frenzied, formulaic final-reel bloodbath makes this totally unwanted, utterly predictable franchise stretcher marginally worthwhile.

Utterly unbelievable, isn't it? Also, "unwanted"?

Buckmaster took it upon himself, when I didn't have the time to, to get proof of this embarrassing move because by later that evening the review had been altered. Schembri and his editors subbed out the offending spoiler and replaced it with a less obvious spoiler, but still a line that would raise an eyebrow if you knew anything about the franchise and its penchant for surprises. And then there is, of course, the picture caption which still makes the killer's identity a cinch to pick. Scream 4 is the fourth instalment of this franchise and Jim has been doing this job long enough to know he shouldn't go about revealing movie twists. Did he do this to The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game, too?

Only the sight of [redacted] getting caught up in the frenzied, formulaic final-reel makes this totally unwanted, utterly predictable franchise stretcher marginally worthwhile.

Luckily for The Age, and so forth, Schembri's review didn't go to print until Friday, by which time that too had been edited to feature the new opening sentence. And while all websites that carried the review were carefully changed, Fairfax do not have the ability to edit Google!


src - Crikey

Surely this would be enough for this critic, a man I see from time to time at media screenings so the awkwardness will not be lost on me, to admit his mistake? A mistake, might I add, that is highly ironic since it was just last year when the man got in trouble by his own paper for saying The Age's ethical standards had become an "optional extra rather than an ethos" (courtesy, again, of Crikey.) But, no, Schembri decided to make this following tweet available for all to see on his Twitter account for all to see, implying that not only was his Scream 4 review spoiler free now, but that it always had been.


An email to the man himself (as someone who he alluded to thinking "abuse is cool" I felt it finally warranted one) was met with a vague illusion to a future article to appear on his blog at The Age, Cinetopia, detailing what happened, something later confirmed by his Twitter account.


That's it! Turn your gobsmacking mistake into a risible claim for fame and web hits! If he calls the spoiler reveal as some pseudo-meta take on the Scream franchise then I think I'll, er, scream.

Meanwhile, apart from the aforementioned Crikey article, Jim Schembri has been taken to task by the likes of Jess McGuire at DefamerAU, Brisbane film critic Matthew Toomey at The Film Pie and a wave of Twitterers. Making the spoiler reveal even worse is that for a long stretch of 14 April - the film's release date here in Australia and a full day before American release - Schembri's review appeared right at the very top of Rotten Tomatoes, meaning anyone from Melbourne to New York, Paris to Rio could have innocently clicked on it not know they were about to have the film's major twist revealed.

Scream 4 is, after all, a movie in which the TV spot claims to feature "a terrifying secret that can't be revealed until the very end!"


"The very end" or "the very beginning of a review", pretty much the same it appears for Mr Schembri. The film's director, Wes Craven, even tweeted this telltale message for every one of his 74,000+ followers:


So while we wait on this so-called "full story" from his side of the controversy, we can all just sit back and wonder how one man could be so silly as to think nobody would notice or care that he spoiled a major release's big twist. No matter what one's opinion on a film is, that doesn't give you the right to ruin it for others. Whatta dope!

Review: Smash His Camera

Smash His Camera
Dir. Leon Gast
Year: 2010
Rating: PG
Running Time: 87mins

Ron Galella made a name for himself by taking photographs of celebrities when they didn’t want them to be taken. He is a paparazzo and, like the literal Italian translation for the word, he buzzes around his subjects like a mosquito. Leon Gast’s (When We Were Kings) documentary Smash His Camera charts the 80-year-old’s career, which has seen him taken to court by Jackie Onassis in 1972, get punched in the face by Marlon Brando in 1973 and exhibited in the New York City’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art in 2007. He’s a man that looks incredibly feeble, but once on a footpath with a celebrity he’s quick as a whip. His storage room is filled with boxes and boxes of photographs of every celebrity imaginable; there’s an entire box dedicated to photos of “Jackie Onassis with windswept hair”.

Read the rest at Trespass

Smash His Camera has a very limited season at Melbourne's ACMI theatre, in Federation Square. They've been on a role lately with exclusive titles like this, White Material (season ending tomorrow) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which begins its season in a couple of weeks), yet again confirming that they are one of Melbourne's true treasures. But you knew that already, didn't you?

OnyaAid - We've Got Your Back

Tomorrow is Australia Day and while I'm stuck at home today with a crook neck, I will most definitely be heading out tomorrow to Honey Bar in South Melbourne for OnyaAid. Onya Magazine is - as I hope you're aware - a local online magazine devoted to featuring only Australian content and products. I was recently made film editor with a mission to cover as many Australian releases as possible. If you're in the area do swing by and help the victims of the Queensland floods, which have devastated the region. It's all just a tiny way of helping, but helping nonetheless.

The Full Blossom of the Evening: Some Thoughts on Twin Peaks

Please note that although this blog entry discusses a lot about Twin Peaks there are no actual plot spoilers if you haven't seen the series and wish to do so. Feel free to keep reading.


I noticed today that David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has made its way to Blu-Ray. That's great news in one respect for fans of the series and the film, but it's disappointing to note that this release still doesn't include the two hours of deleted scenes that David Lynch excised from the finished product. I know the history of why we've never seen them - legal wranglings between the European production company and New Line Cinema - but it's still a damn shame!

Nevertheless, seeing the Blu-Ray release reminded me that I had never spoken about "Laurathon", an event held in November at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) here in Melbourne. I love living in Melbourne, have I mentioned that before? Yeah, I do, because of events like this! 9 and a half hours of Twin Peaks goodness on the big screen in a room lined with red curtains and a seemingly endless supply of donuts at our disposal. It began with the pilot episode, which is - in my humble opinion - the greatest episode of television ever crafted. So, really, not that big of a deal. Alongside that episode they screened episode 7 ("Realization Time"), episode 14 ("Demons" where Laura's killer was reveals), episode 30 ("Beyond Life and Death", the series finale) as well as the movie prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

That pilot... will it ever be topped? Who knows what television has in store for us, but it's just a slice of perfection, that pilot, isn't it? So many memorable moments that are forever branded upon my brain. If I had to choose but just two - my two favourites - I would have to go with Ronette Pulaski's walk across the train tracks since the imagery is so frightening with those "twin peaks" in the background and the tattered dress that'll make you really question where the series is going. Secondly, I'd choose the school sequence towards the beginning, starting with Audrey's smoke in the locker, her flitter of fingers in home room, the screaming girl across the school yard and that eerie tracking shot down the corridor towards Laura's homecoming photo in the displace case. The entire scene really captures that feeling of other-worldliness... I can recognise it as the real world, but there's a quality there that just feels slightly alien. The characters act just slightly off, don't they? Twin Peaks was always the best with it straddled that line delicately. Both are viewable below.


Episode 14 is - here we go again - probably the second greatest episode of television that I can recall. In fact, just the other day I was at my mother's house and turned on the Foxtel and what should be on? Episode 14 of Twin Peaks! Needless to say I rewatched it even though I've seen it many times, including as recently as a month earlier. Such powerful stuff, and yet, in everything that happens in that episode, you know my absolute favourite moment? Favourite of moments above all?


"I want you /
Rockin' back inside my heart"
There's something about that moment that speaks to the innocence and the childhood that these characters (Donna and James) have lost, and that Laura had lost long ago. It's a moment is minute beauty surrounded by so much doom and gloom. Love.It. Plus, the song is pretty great, too!

The final episode? Yeah. I can't even go there.


Of course, the movie is something else entirely, isn't it? Yowza! I'd never seen it on the big screen with a proper sound system, and it's a glorious thing to behold. Admittedly, I am a huge fan of the film - I'd rank it somewhere behind Mulholland Drive as my favourite David Lynch movie - unlike some people, but to see it projected onto the big screen is an experience to treasure. Lynch knows how to work sound and he certainly turns the volume up to 11 here.

The final 30 minutes are, of course, some of the toughest cinema you'll ever see. Fire Walk with Me is rated R18+ for a reason (equivalent to America's NC17 if you'd like). The culmination of two series worth of mystery, intrigue and wonder combined with the film's near-apocalyptic sense of menace and dread, all rolled up into a terrifying package. The sort of horror you don't even find in more traditional horror movies. Scarier, too.

And that ending... wow. As much as I would be intrigued to see where Lynch would go by picking the story up again 25 years later (and it most certainly will remain a rumour, but an interesting one nonetheless with Laura's "you will see me again in 25 years" comment don't you think?), I think the final few minutes of Fire Walk with Me (below) are the perfect coda to the entire Twin Peaks saga. If you watched everything in a through line - pilot episode through to Fire Walk with Me, despite their flip-flop narrative - then I can't imagine a more apt ending. Laura and Dale, the two driving forces of the show, together in the black lodge as Angelo Badalementi's haunting synth score floats overhead, an angel appearing as if by pure virtue of David Lynch's oddity and then.... the laugh. It's just perfect. I know I'm typing similar things a lot in this entry, but it's one of my all time favourite endings.


Speaking of Twin Peaks - obviously - I recently did a piece for Trespass Mag that looked at the fates of the actors and their subsequent careers after the untimely demise - or was it perfectly timed? - of the series. Whilst I was at Laurathon I gave a little bit of a vox pop soundbite to the Boxcutters crew (Australia's best - only? - TV-themed podcast, run by exceptional people I'm glad I know in real life) and you can listen to it here.

I'm Wrapped in Plastic

I won't be around today since it's Laurathon! The amazing Melbourne cinema hub ACMI have a nine hour Twin Peaks marathon featuring various episodes, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and panel discussions. It's going to be glorious! A full report will (hopefully) be in order.

I hope Bob doesn't get ya while I'm away!