Old, Older, Oldest

I haven't just been watching insiped kids' movies, chilly, porcelain art films and meditative journey's through time. No, I do occasionally give myself time to see movies made before the invention of the DVD and thank heavens for that because the only film I've seen from 2011 that even approaches the brilliance of the follow trio of films has been Meek's Cutoff - a movie that has gotten a barely there release, even by Australian standards.

Beginning with David Cronenberg's frighteningly prophetic Videodrome seems as good a place as any, doesn't it? As I slowly make my way through the man's oeuvre I find myself becoming more and more of a fan. So much so, actually, that as I viewed the recently launched trailer for his latest, the Freud and Jung psychoanalysis A Dangerous Method, I kept hoping for something deliciously wicked to happen like - oh, I dunno - Michael Fassbender dissolving into a giant vagina made of goo and thorns.

Nevertheless, Videodrome is a crazy psycho-sci-fi-horror flick that paints a lurid, grotesque picture of a mentally decaying civilisation, which, in a neat twist, has turned out to be a spot on prediction of the future. Made in 1983, it presents a world where executives of a niche television network play amongst themselves trying to push the boundaries of taste and to tell you any more would be silly because, even though it's nearly 30 years old (!!!), to witness its hallucinogenic mindfunks free of knowledge is still the best way to go.

If you must - or if you've already seen it - how about this trailer! Created on a Commodore 64 with graphics that look like a long lost Lime record cover, it's certainly a relic of its time.


James Woods plays James Woods as always, but how great is Deborah Harry? She pops up in the strangest of places (usually Canadian) and yet is always a treat. As the seductress with an interest in the burgeoning kink scene, Debbie's "Nikki Brand" is a wonderful creation and it helps that she can play it so very well. Cronenberg is so enamoured with Harry's lips that they become the centrepiece of what is arguably Videodrome's most famous sequence. I love how smouldering she looks on the two ace Videodrome posters below. The film as a whole is just terrific though. Ugly and menacing, yet never stifling and claustrophobic. It's science fiction at its most fascinating and mind-blowing. Long live the new flesh Videodrome! A


I recently had the chance to see Victor Fleming's 1939 epic Gone with the Wind on the big screen and, without hesitation, I jumped at it. Screening at The Astor Theatre with overture and intermission in tact - the only thing missing was Marzipan creeping around the lobby (she was at the vet).

What is there that can be said about Gone with the Wind that hasn't already been said? And I'm not just saying that because I can't be bothered typing much about it, but because there really isn't much to say that wouldn't just sound like heavy squeals - VIVIAN LEIGH! THE COSTUMES!! THE SETS!!! VIVIAN LEIGH!!!! EVERYTHING!!!!! VIVIAN LEIGH!!!!!! ETC!!!!!!! You get the deal. Seeing it on a big screen was, needless to say, a bit better than a DVD on the TV (and, on at least one viewing, with the wrong side of the disc in, resulting in watching a hefty chunk of the film's second half before everything else. Oops.) I lost track of the amount of times my face lit up with a grin as big as Tara witnessing those images projected onto a cinema screen for the first time. Tomorrow is another day... A+

Lastly - just last night in fact - I immersed myself in The Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's famed 1925 silent film about the mutiny on board the titular ship and the effects - albeit fictionalised - it had on the nearby port town of Odessa. It's an astonishing film, and one that is constantly surprising in its use of editing and cinematography, not to mention the curiously numerous moments of homoerotic imagery that Eisenstein, a gay man, put into the film. Querelle eat your heart out! Okay, maybe not that much...


As someone who finds his resistance to silent films deteriorating with each subsequent viewing, I was shocked by how little it felt like a chore to sit through as some silents can be. There was only one instance of my biggest silent movie pet peeve where a character speaks for what feels like a lengthy moment of time and yet only one brief title card of dialogue appears on screen afterwards! That's a win in my book. Much like the best silent films I have seen - Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Nosferatu, Pabst's Pandora's Box, Lang's M and Metropolis - it has a vibrancy and a strength of storytelling ability that belies its origins. It's why I don't care for DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance, both of which are unwieldy, excessive and over-wrought. For all the "he invented [insert camera trick]!" praise that Griffith gets, I couldn't help but feel that watching this film, and in particular the "Odessa Steps" sequence, was more akin to watching cinema for the first time. It's such a striking, deeply powerful piece of filmmaking that actually had be gasping. It's amazing how techniques seen hundreds of time since can still have such an impact like they do here. I'd heard about the "Odessa Steps" scene and everytime I saw those steps I thought to myself "is this is?" When it began, however, I could tell "oh, this is it!" and was instantly swept up, just as I was the rest of the film. A

I, unfortunately, feel like I could barely find time to watch all 74 minutes of Battleship Potemkin once this weekend let alone twice, which is what I wanted to do. I have heard the Pet Shop Boys' score to the film long before I'd seen the movie itself and now that I've seen it I really did want to watch it again with the sound on mute and their 2007 electronic synth driven music score on the speakers. It's a thrilling 69 minutes worth of music from the Boys - credited as Tennant/Lowe for some reason - and would be interested to see how it plays alongside the monster of a film. Has anybody done it or, better yet, been a one of the rare screenings featuring the Pet Shop Boys' score? People have done the same thing to Metropolis, which would be another fascinating combination given science fiction and synthesisers go hand in hand.

If you're at all like me and are curious, here is a video that somebody uploaded. Very interesting.

Review: X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class
Dir. Matthew Vaughn
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 132mins

After The Last Stand and Wolverine failed to recapture the X-Men franchise’s excellence, Marvel have decided to go back in time and show us the groovy beginnings of what would eventually become the “X-Men”. Or, as the case may be, not so groovy. Set in 1962, men and women of all creeds have begun to develop super-human powers. As the changing tides of the world’s social and political landscape take hold, these so-called mutants must discover their place in the world. They must choose either good or evil.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
In the review I call this movie X-Men: Muppet Babies, X-Men: Groovy Mutants and X-Men: Born This Way amongst others. Lady Gaga is an unofficial sponsor of this movie, I'm sure of it!

Judi Dench and the Buxom Strumpet

When I was writing my review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides I was researching on IMDb and came across this...


Ignoring the incompetence of IMDb's predictive search function and somehow not seeing the "(2012)" beside the title, I had instead just assumed it was one of those British TV movies from the late '80s or '90s (perhaps from the makers of The Darling Buds of May) before either of the two were big names internationally. I had no idea that it was actually an upcoming movie about zombies! Apart from Dench and Anderson it will also star Ian McKellen.

I guess Dench didn't want her Jane Eyre co-stars Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender to have all the horror movie fun with that vampire movie they're making with Tilda Swinton and Jim Jarmusch.

When Bad Posters Strike: X-Men: First Class

Who knows how I'll feel by the end of 2011, but as of right now? I didn't expect the poster for Barney's Version to be trumped so quickly as worst poster of the year.

I have sat here for the last 45 minutes trying to come up with some reasoning behind the sheer awfulness that is the posters for X-Men: First Class. I can't come up with anything. I am speechless. I am without speech. They are truly beyond words. I think I just have to show them to you and maybe I will have thought of something - anything - to say.


Oh. That took quicker than I thought.

But seriously, what are these? Why are James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender trapped inside the crotch of their adult selves like when Fry drank the Trisolian King in that episode of Futurama. Did adult Magneto drink the liquefied version of his younger self? That's stupid. THESE POSTERS ARE STUPID.

I'm baffled that anybody saw fit to release these upon, ya know, eyes. Did nobody within 20th Century Fox not think these were, ahem, slightly amateurish. These are disastrous and I would expect more for a film of this nature. I don't expect much from films like How She Move or Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, but to see this level of design from a film of such size as X-Men: First Class? Unforgivable.

Of course, now when I look at them I just laugh, so maybe they're not entirely worthless after all? Need a pickmeup? Look at Jessica Alba pretend to be scared and look at these X-Men: First Class posters!

Well Played, Poster: Jane Eyre

Earlier this year the Mark Romanek adaptation of Never Let Me Go released a poster that a lot of people on the internet collectively wet their pants over. I did not. I never posted about it at the time, but over at InContention I wrote: "As a movie poster this makes a great book cover. Not sure how this at all sells a movie of any kind of anybody though. Who’ll see that and go 'yes, let’s see that movie.'" I still feel that way, and judging by the film's scant American box office not many others were all that interested in seeing the movie that's supposedly about a couple of children running down a pier. Maybe they were running towards something that the poster was simply unable to convey? I don't know.

Moving on though, today comes a poster for Jane Eyre, the latest adaptation of which comes from Cary Fukunaga. He made a splash last year with Sin Nombre, but that Mexico-set film never received a release in Australia so I have nothing to go on. The advertising materials I have seen for it certainly suggest a very different film to his sophomore effort.


There are several things that I love about this poster, which was just released through Focus' Facebook page. I like how they're not shying away from the fact that it's a period film with girly costumes and dainty hair stylings and yet haven't shied away from making a visually stylish design. Films such as The King's Speech, The Young Victoria, Changeling and so forth could learn a thing or two about not forsaking personality and design in the face of stifling period detailing.

I do think the poster looks like a book cover - in case you were wondering why I brought up that Never Let Me Go story - that could feature the sticker "Now a Major Motion Picture starring Mia Wasikowska", but a book cover that can still work as a movie poster due to its visuals and cinematic scope. I think the colours are gorgeous and colours we so rarely see on a poster, they immediately make me think of the colour palette than Fukunaga will be using to show the moors of the British isle.

Most of all, however, I love that look of Mia Wasikowska's face. It makes me suspect there's a lot going on within her and makes me anticipate what she will do with the character. I find it interesting that the release date is March of next year, which is hardly the time of year where you expect a prestigious literary adaptation with period costumes. In fact, Wasikowska has this in March and Restless (poster and trailer here) for Gus Van Sant in January. She's giving me Nicole Kidman vibes right now, working with quite auteur and artistically arresting directors that (judging from their release dates) don't quite fit into the model of what Oscar-bait prestige films.

I must say though, it's this part of the poster would probably have sold me on the project anyway.


Isn't that an amazing cast?

Michael Fassbender in 1080p

I'm the first to admit that I still don't truly understand Blu-Ray. All I know is that the image quality is better. Yes, I am that technomologically adept. I don't even know if that "1080p" thing in the title up there is correct terminology! It doesn't help that I don't own a Blu-Ray player and so I've never actually had any firsthand experience with a movie in Blu-Ray (actually, I did watch 30 Days of Night on a PS3 once, but the movie was so bad that I kinda didn't notice anything substantial about the image quality) and so don't really have any desire to read up about them. I do love looking at Blu-Ray comparisons at sites such as DVD Beaver, however, and it is almost enough to make me wanna go out and by a player. Alas, I am poor and couldn't afford a player let alone the discs to watch on it.

I mention all of this because Andrea Arnold's fantastic Fish Tank is already out on Blu-Ray in the UK - it's Australian released is later this month, stay tuned for your chance to win tickets right here by the way - and I wanted to highlight this particular screencap that I came across. Isn't it heavenly? Commence drooling!


Click it and Michael Fassbender will grow before your very eyes!