MIFF Blogathon: Day 10 (The Turin Tales)

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.

Tales of the Night
Dir. Michel Ocelot
Running Time: 84mins

After seeing Michael Ocelot's bright, candy-coloured 3D animation Tales of the Night [Les contes de la nuit] I described it as like being a collection of those 5 minute filler cartoons on ABC1 strung together. Turns out that's exactly what it is! As three people put on plays in their, I'm assuming, magic playhouse during the depths of the night, they invent fantasy worlds with princes and queens who fall in love in front of sets of yellows, greens, reds and blues. It's visually dazzling, but ultimately rather nothing.

The use of 3D is quaint and only in one or two of the stories does it actually serve any use to the story. The animation is quite lovely and found myself getting quite touched by the imagery of the Tibetan story as sun rises over the Himalayan mountain tops. The characters, all animated in silhouettes with slightly bulging 3D eyes, are odd creations, but there are moments of humour to distract and the backdrops are lovely to look at. I dunno, it felt inconsequential in the end. C+

The Turin Horse
Dir. Béla Tarr
Running Time: 146mins

The first potato arrives 20 minutes into Béla Tarr's latest - and apparently last - film. The potato motif continues throughout The Turin Horse [A torinói ló], as does everything else that Tarr decides to show us of the repetitive lives of two Hungarian farmers. We watch multiple times as they awake, put on their masses of clothes, fetch water from the well, decide whether or not to leave their windswept farm or not, boil potatoes, eat potatoes, sit at window, undress, go to bed. This father and daughter live the most humble of existences and this is clearly evidenced by the weathered faces they carry around. Their faces are like bust statues, they're so unmoving and stoney.

As a storm rages around them they must learn to cope with being cooped up inside. He grumbles a lot. It's all very hypnotic and the old cliche line "it's good if you're into that sorta thing" applies here a lot. I was surprised to find that after the disastrous The Man from London that I was, in fact, "into that sorta thing", as I got quite invested in their travails. The Turin Horse's idea of a thrilling dramatic twist is the arrival of gypsies to the land. It's a welcome surprise, dramatically, as well as a sign of Tarr's deeply wicked sense of humour.

The Turin Horse supposes to follow the final days of the horse featured in the tale of Friedrich Nietzsche's eventual insanity. The horse, beautiful creature that it is, does have a pained, powerful screen presence as its bulky frame with spotted fur takes up the majority of the screen. Erika Bók, the actress who plays the daughter, is also a fascinating study. Her face fraught with emotion - or, the lack there of as it sometimes feels like due to her muted actions.


The real star of the film, however, is Fred Kelemen's sublime cinematography. Sitting mostly still for long uncut shots for the majority of the film, Kelemen and Tarr continue to find new spots to place the camera and we eventually learn every nook and cranny of this homely residence. There's always something happening on screen if you allow your eyes to navigate; Kelemen and Tarr reward investigative viewers. Occasionally the camera drifts about the place or flows, following a character out to the well or to the barn, and it moves like magic. Picking focus on something unexpected and following it to its end place. It's a wonderful technical exercise that is perhaps only bettered by the claustrophobic sound design. The wails of the wind are a constant on the soundtrack and there's an oppressive feel to them, too, that almost made me feel like I was there. It attacks from all sides and its a marvel.

Of course, with a film such as this one is bound to find curious stuff to pick at. Like, how about why they don't eat all of the potato? They pick at it and then discard most of it! You spend all this time boiling potatoes without a lid on and then you eat a quarter of it? Seems like such a waste! But observations like that feel needlessly silly by film's end, which - from what I saw of it (more on that a bit) - is a deeply melancholic and troubling conclusion. B+

MIFF TALES
So much drama!

A two film day became a three film day became a two film day. I decided to cancel on Bullhead on Saturday evening due to exhaustion, and picked up Tales of the Night on Sunday to make it up. Alas, my train was late/cancelled and so I missed the beginning of my evening session - Florent Tillon's Detroit Wild City [Detroit, ville sauvage] - and was subsequently locked out. They'd given away my ticket to standby Miffsters. Dissapointing, but understandable I suppose.

However, the biggest MIFF tale of all came later in the evening at The Turin Horse. Much worse than the man a few seats down from me who appeared to be making a bad for himself to lie down on or the re-appearance of the scary wheezing death man for a very brief moment early on, last night's screening of The Turin Horse was fraught with unforgivable errors.

Firstly, the final reel was projected half off the screen for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. Apparently everyone in the projection booth at The Forum was asleep because nobody would fix it! Even more annoying was that nobody towards the front of the cinema would get up off their lazy butts to tell the staff. It was eventually fixed to a round of applause, but by that stage the dramatic alien reveal was ruined and the horse's big moment was destroyed.

Shamefully, that wasn't the worst incident of all! You see, once they'd finally fixed the projection the final 15 minutes of the film was beset with a series of house light errors. First The Forum's weird blue heroin lights turned on and then they started flashing like a gay disco. Various other lights began to strobe and it was like being in several sequence of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (with thankfully less plastic)! From there on various lights throughout the cinema would flicker, strobe, dim up and down, turn on and off and eventually even a big flood light was turned on to the screen making it even more impossible to view what was going on on screen. Streams of people were walking out - 30 had walked out by the 2hr mark and I'd hazard a guess and say the same number walked out during those final 20 minutes out of pure frustration with the issues - and others were hootin' and hollerin'. None of the staff seemed aware of what was going on, either, although I did see one poor volunteer running up and down the stairs several times.

To make matters worse, the lights finally stopped with their impromptu light show and turned off DURING THE CLOSING CREDITS! Yikes. And on top of that, when I asked an usher if we were getting an apology of some kind he chuckled and said to "ask a supervisor". The staff apparently were more interesting in setting up a booth outside to take people's names and numbers than actually fixing the problem at hand. Apparently anybody at the screening can call 9662 3722 for ticket exchanges. Still doesn't help anything when the 2 and a half hour film's final scenes were ruined. The Turin Horse is not a film you should just watch a couple of scenes of. It's a mood piece and to watch the final 30 minutes without the first 120 would be dissatisfying to say the least.

Lastly, there's an all too brief rundown of the festival's days 5-9 by me at Trespass Magazine wherein I discuss my highlights of the period.

An Eastwood Chainsaw Massacre

Clint Eastwood is heading to the cinema and popping on those 3D glasses to watch his son, Scott Eastwood, as he gets set to star in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. Set for release next year, the film is the latest in the most peculiar of horror franchise - no two films are much alike in that cinematic canon - and from the plot description, this one sounds no different. The story, yet again everything that came after the 1974 original (although in a contemporary setting, apparently), and involves Leatherface's cousin (!) and a scheming town mayor leading a lynch mob on the Sawyer residence and then there's a carnival? I dunno, the entire plot sounds rather ridiculous, but I guess by the 7th film in a franchise you have got to start adding something a little bit different to the mix. And, you know, 3D chainsaws! VVRRRRMMMMM!

The cast, alongside this Eastwood fella are all pretty much no names to me, but I'll always be excited about a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie no matter what. It's a sickness, I tellsya!

Scott is a good looking man - much like his father was - so, umm, we've got that to look forward to! Although, I think Clint's going to have to face facts that he'll be watching his son get sliced and diced by Leatherface's favourite weapon since the men in these movies don't tend to make it out alive. Let's face it though, this news is only particularly interesting if you do indeed imagine Clint Eastwood, of all people, popping on down to his local cinema and paying to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. Can you imagine? Oh gosh! Maybe he'll show up at the premiere in support! That'd be incredible and highly unlikely. I get a big ol' grin picturing Julia Roberts watching her niece, Emma, in Scream 4 and laughing wildly at the jokes. Tony Curtis though? Don't you just think he'd be stonefaced throughout all of his daughter Jamie Lee's horror pictures of the late 1970s and '80s? You know Janet Leigh was on board though!

What other respectable famous actors do you think have had to sit through slasher movies they otherwise wouldn't have bothered with simply because of family ties?

Juliette Lewis: Spider-Hunter

I saw this short film - and I mean incredible short - at The Film Experience and absolutely had to share. We love Juliette Lewis around these parts of the internet and we eagerly anticipate anything that she lends her name and wonderfully characteristic face too. Watch Spider Problem below and marvel.

They're Remaking Sarah Jessica Parker's Childhood!

Earlier today I posted another film trailer on Facebook as a part of the "30 Day Film Challenge" - a project that, like every other project I partake in, has taken far longer than I had originally anticipated. For Day 29 I had to list my favourite movie as a child and, without even so much as a second thought, I selected Flight of the Navigator. A Disney movie that was released in 1986, but which I remember most fondly from years of VHS repeats. I loved that movie growing up, and I still do!

Nevertheless, I was saddened to see that there is a remake in the works. Thankfully, that news apparently came through the pipeline all the way back in 2009 and there hasn't been a peep about it since so hopefully they've ditched the idea. I can see how easy it would be to remake, but... ugh. I hate being one of those people who holds their childhood memories ransom to a new generation of moviegoers, but Flight of the Navigator just wouldn't quite feel the same without the endearing dated futuristic visuals, Paul Reubens' voice work as the spaceship and Sarah Jessica Parker's adorableness as a frizzy-haired NASA employee (?!) It's just not right, I tellsya!

Perhaps my continued fondness for Sarah Jessica Parker stems from how ingrained she was in my childhood. No matter how many Did You Hear About the Morgans?', Failure to Launch's or I Don't Know How She Does It's she makes with her Sex and the City residual rom-com fame I'll always fondly remember the '80s movies, which were followed by films like LA Story, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks and The First Wive's Club. And, of course, the brilliance that is Sex and the City (the television series, at least).

It's not just Flight of the Navigator from Parker's youth that Hollywood wants to remake! Her seminal '80s dance movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun (co-starring Helen Hunt, Shannon Doherty and Lee Montgomery - *sigh* Lee Montgomery...) has also been put into the big machine. It seems particularly pointless to remake that one since it's plot has already been recycled so many times to the point of redundancy.

And, seriously, who would want Girls Just Want to Have Fun with this?


Not me!

Anyway, despite all the talk about remakes of Flight of the Navigator and Girls Just Want to Have Fun, the one Sarah Jessica Park teen flick that has indeed made its way down the remake pipeline is, of course, Footloose. Far more famous for it's classic soundtrack and being one of Kevin Bacon's breakthrough movies (alongside Friday the 13th) than for anything Sarah Jessica Parker did, it's still a vital part of her early career. Let's take a look at the poster for Footloose circa 2011 first, shall we?


"This Is Our Time" you say? Wasn't that 1984 when this movie was actually new and original? Hmmm. I like the typeface, but that's about it. Also: No walkman. Disappointing! No matter how average the poster is - and that's all it is: average - nothing could have quite prepared me for how bad the trailer makes this movie look. You truly have to see it to believe it.


Oh boy. This looks like a lame direct-to-DVD sequel cash-in, doesn't it? It's been a while since I saw the original and I'm sure it was made with very intentions, but there's no denying that if it continues to have a life in this day and age then it is as a culty comedy of incredibly '80s-ness. To see the material treated with such seriousness is quite off putting. Dennis Quaid laying down the law over crunk dancing? Oy... The film's star is some dancer/actor named Kenny Wormald who is exactly as famous as you would expect from that name. He, sadly, looks like the typically bland male lead these movies all get nowadays. Kevin Bacon was never the most attractive man, but there was a time when teen movies featured actors that didn't all look perfect. Not that they're not in the same pretty boy file, but I wish Zac Efron or Chase Crawford had ended up making this film like originally rumoured. They would at least give it a bit of pizazz. As it is, it just looks lame.

I think the tweet I made last night says it all:


Have you actually watched Footloose lately? It is not a good movie (apart from the soundtrack.) I can spot several visual cues within this remake's trailer that begs comparison to the original and, sadly, those are the best bits! Sadly, no mention of gymnastics and uneven bars. Nostalgia has a lot to answer for!

The one aspect of the trailer that makes me genuinely curious is the inclusion of Miles Teller. He was so good in Rabbit Hole, opposite Nicole Kidman, and seeing his face pop up here in the Chris Penn role was cause for a double take. If he's having fun and getting a decent pay check then good for him. As for Footloose though? Well, I'll be there with bells on like I am to virtually any dance movie, but I just don't see how it's possible that Footloose will be anything other than one of the worst movies of the year. I would, however, love to be proven wrong!

Dine with Leatherface, Go Nightclubbing with David Lynch

Now here's an unlikely night out to savour. Were you aware that the house originally used to film Tobe Hooper's mad horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is actually used these days as a restaurant? Sitting in the town of Kingsland, Texas, an hour out of Austin, the Junction House (bar and grill?) features a downstairs restaurant and an upstairs bar that even serves chili fries. It's all set in the atmospheric surrounds of Leatherface's abode; there's the chicken bone room, the staircase and the dining hall where Marilyn Burns was famously and sadistically tortured by a family of lunatics and old goons bearing straws (to drink her blood!)

I'd heard about this place, but never really investigated it. Thanks now to AV Club though you can take a virtual tour of the Junction House in all of its refurbished glory. I'd order the prime ribs (served with side of baked potatoes and house vegetables) if I were there, but on Tuesday they have "all you can eat fried chicken", which - let's face it - is hard to pass up! Wednesday's offer of "all you can eat catfish" doesn't sound quite as appetising.


Austin: The Texas Chain Saw... family restaurant?
Put on your freshest mask of skin with a good ol' smearing of rouge and lipstick and chow down!

When you're done digesting whatever the chef prepares you can jump onto your waiting jet plane and travel to Paris where David Lynch is apparently setting up shop with a nightclub based upon 'Club Silencio' as seen in Mulholland Drive. The description of the club, open only to select clientele, sounds nothing like the venue from the film - the one that sees Spanish singers miming to pre-recorded music as visitors convulse in their seats, blue boxes of mystical origin appear willy nilly and creepy old ladies with hyper blue rinses sit in the stalls whispering "silencio" over and over - but it's fun to imagine it anyway.

The nightclub, located at 142, Rue Monmartre, isn’t set to officially open until September. The club will house a bar, concert hall, art library and in-house movie theater. But don’t expect to sip champagne with Lynch and friends during your next trip to France — access to the très private Silencio will be reserved for members only from 6 pm until midnight, with events such as concerts, movie premieres and literary conferences. Then, after midnight, Silencio will make noise as a private club open to a non-member, yet still elite, Parisian crowd.

Oh, that David Lynch! So wacky! What will he think of next? A movie? Doubtful... You know what though, if you're a member of the "elite" that is allowed into Lynch's Club Silencio then you probably can afford that private jet from Texas to Paris, so if you're rich, hoity toity and like a steak just as much as you like discussing art then you really can make a day of this movie-themed adventure. Just don't try and recreate Hilary Swank's final scenes in Amelia on your way there. The gazelles were not so free any more after that!

Shit-Eating Grin

About a year ago I had a light bulb moment that someone should make a documentary on John Waters' immortal, immaculate, iconic muse Divine and call it Shit-Eating Grin! You know, after her famous final scene in Pink Flamingos?!??! Well now someone has come along and made a documentary on Divine and, in sad news to report, it is not titled Shit-Eating Grin. No, it's title is I Am Divine; a simple if fittingly diva defiant title for such a personality.

I Am Divine is directed by Jeffrey Schwartz and I am 100% positive that it will be huge on the festival scene. I do love the poster they released (up there at the top) and below is the new trailer. From the looks of it, it appears the film will be a lot of clips, which can be great fun, but I hope it's more than just a few old video tapes and John Waters' saying what he's been saying for decades. I wonder if they will include this fabulous video that it's important to note aired in prime time on Australian TV. Wow.

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.

Cinema of the Absurd: Teen Witch

TEEN WITCH
1989, dir. Dorian Walker

So, I watched this last night.


No, not just some random awful white rap musical sequence from 1989 teen fantasy Teen Witch, but the actual entire movie! All 93 bizarre, weird and somewhat wonderful minutes of Dorian Walker's cultish flick that can lay claim to some of the worst musical numbers ever put to film. It's like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, but with less talking cats that only ever look real when curiously running away from the camera and more dance sequences involving women with big hair wearing lavender leotards. I mean, if Sabrina had one of those then I sure don't remember it (so it might've been during the "Sabrina goes to college with Punky Brewster no it's true I'm not making that up!" years.

Beginning with an opening credits sequence that looks a lot like my Saturday mornings watching Video Hits, Teen Witch stars Robyn Lively as "Louise Miller", a dowdy and unpopular high school student who, upon her 16th birthday, discovers she's a witch. Isn't that always the way? Louise wants to look and be as popular as fictional freestyle pop musician Shana, a singer that sounds an awful lot like Brenda K Starr and looks a bit like Stacie Q meets Robin Sparkles (it's the bedazzled jacket, I think.)


Eventually she gets too popular and wants things to be the same again, except when she does she's still kinda popular? I dunno. Who knows what anything in Teen Witch is trying to be. The entire movie is filled with these completely random musical sequences that at once don't feel real and yet aren't ever presented as elaborate fantasies. They do nothing to propel the plot ("the plot"), but instead act as a less-than-stealth effort to ship ancillary soundtracks. It didn't work.


My favourite part of this particular scene, set to the song "Most Popular Girl", is the white boy rap (yet again rearing its ugly, bloated head) from the car window as Louise walks around awkwardly trying to be "sexy". Let's remember that Robyn was only 16 years old at the time and she carries the sequence off with as much confidence as a cat in a clothes dryer. Still, the actress went on to appear on six episodes of Twin Peaks so I'm gonna cut her some slack.

Of course, there is a hottie football playing jock that she is just totally in love with who's dating the sexy cheerleader bimbo. His name is "Mark" and is played by Dan Gauthier as some sort of Jake Ryan of 1989. I will give them this: Gauthier is a handsome man. And, yes, even more handsome without a shirt one, which is something we get to discover early on.


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It's my understanding that he got even more, ahem, handsome throughout the rest of his career, if you know what I mean. Especially Illegal in Blue. Ahem. Yes, very handsome. Naked handsome.

Oh, damn! I was trying to not be so obvious!


"Geez Louise!"*
We also discover that the cheerleaders at this frightening school (I'd certainly believe that the town Teen Witch is set in is actually Sunnydale and that the hellmouth is directly below them) are even more impressive than Nomi "Showgirl" Malone or Ali "Burlesque" No-Last-Name at learning choreographed dance moves; these cheerleaders can memorise them before they've even been shown!


So fab! Except not.

It seems silly to poke holes in the logic of a film such as Teen Witch, but there I was doing just that. Whether it's cheerleaders knowing dance routines through freaky mental telekinesis, Louise suddenly becoming a cheerleader or the increasingly perplexing manner in which Louise's witch powers work. Apparently she needs to be wearing a secret amulet, and yet if her teacher hadn't have found it in the school costume department (?!?) then her witchery would never occur. Furthermore, at first Louise just has to say "I wish..." for something to happen and then later she needs to do a spell, and then make a potion, and then use a voodoo doll (a particularly terrifying sequence involving a paedophile teacher walking into a car wash to get a "hot wax" *shudder*) and then... and then... it doesn't make a lick of sense. Louise is seen riding a broom stick on the cover (left) and this DOESN'T EVER HAPPEN ONCE! Very disappointing if you ask me. It also features a witches hat that also never appears. The makers of Teen Witch were clearly not very hip to the Wiccan ways.

The moment at film's end (OMG SPOILERS!!!) where Louise attends the prom and throws her magical amulet away in order to bring her old life back (except it doesn't, it just means she's no longer a witch? because her popularity seems to remain in check!) actually features the movie's best song. And from such a glorious soundtrack, it sure was hard to pick!!!


It's called "Finest Hour" and it's amazing in that '80s teen movie kinda way. I still don't understand why the creepy fortune teller played by Zelda Rubenstein is at a high school prom, but let's just leave that be, shall we?

Oh yeah, and that is Zelda Rubenstein as "Madame Serena", riding that late career Poltergeist spike into the ground with yet another mystical psychic person whatever. She even got on the poster! She wears a wicked shawl and funny hat, which is basically all the character she has.

And don't even get me started on Louise's obnoxious brother, "Ritchie", played by Joshua Miller. The worst movie character I've had the displeasure of watching since Josh Gad in Love & Other Drugs.


But, really, in the end, it all comes down to whether one finds hilarity gold within Teen Witch's most famous ("most"? Only!) sequence: the "Top That!" white boy/white girl rap number. Let's watch it again.


And again.


There really isn't anything about this clip that doesn't ring my bell of fantastic. How about the truly epic fugness of that Hawaiian shirt/blue singlet/capri jeans combo worn by "Rhet"? Actor Noah Blake went on to become kinda cute in a douchey sorta way (he starred on Harry and the Hendersons!), but I'd love to know what he thinks of this. Hell, I'd love to know what Amanda Ingber things especially. She's the actress playing "Polly". You know, the girl who's rapping and yet her lips and the vocals don't seem to quite sync up. Yeah. Wow.


Indeed, Polly. Indeed.

Just as an aside, I love that somebody tried to create links for each individual song on the "Teen Witch" soundtrack! Either they did exist at some point and Wikipedia took them down, or whoever did the editing on this movie's page had a lot of faith in its fandom. "Surely there must be a Wikipedia page for 'Top That!', right?"


Unfortunately it appears that no soundtrack was ever made and yet The Foo Fighters continue to get their music released? What kind of a world is this?

Of course, white boy rap was actually pretty common around 1989, but it's as if everything that could possibly go wrong(/amazing) did. The clothes! The bad singing! The homoerotic vibe! The bicycles! The Vine recently labelled it the third worst musical number of all time, higher than Vanilla Ice in Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze, another all time classic white boy rap moment.

To paraphrase Polly in Teen Witch: Look how funky they are!!


It's impossible to resist the funk.

Teen Witch was apparently intended as a female version of Teen Wolf (why is it that the words "female version of" are almost always associated with really bad movies?), but got changed around and ultimately became the Teen Witch not many of us know and sorta love, but not really.

I particularly like this little factoid from the movie's Wikipedia page:

The production budget for Teen Witch was $2,500,000. The film was released in the US on April 23, 1989 and grossed $3,875 in its opening weekend at the box office, and only $27,843 total in its entire run.

Well done to everyone involved, I say! I imagine the box office would have been better if it had more studded denim jackets, robots and lines like "I'm gonna rock your body like it's Canada Day". Now, see, earlier I mentioned that a character in Teen Witch reminded me of Robin Sparkles. Little did I know that somebody out there in this magical world that we know as "the internet" had actually mashed the two of them together and made the fabulous video below entitled "Teen Witch Goes to the Mall". Amazing.


I can't think of anything better to end this entry on than that. Can you? Actually, not true... watch the video below for the final word on Teen Witch.

Teen Witch is certainly an absurd movie, just one look at Louise's denim jacket with leopard print panels will tell you that! It actually has a charm about it though that will remind many viewers of a certain age of a time of film and TV made for young adults. It's harmless, so it's absurdity ranking is lowered somewhat, but how can one watch "Top That!" and not think it is an eye-popping WTF moment? I give it a ranking of 3.5/5 on the scale of 1-5 thrusting showgirls.


*actual dialogue :|

When a Spoiler Calls, Part II

At the start of this week I told you dear readers about the escalating controversy surrounding Melbourne-based (yet nationally published) film critic Jim Schembri. You see, Schembri had written a review of Wes Craven's Scream 4 that revealed the identity of the killer in the very first sentence. A crime of stupidity if ever there was one, especially from a critic as seasoned and high ranking as Schembri. Read this piece from Monday that explains the whole story as we knew it at the time to catch yourself up because, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Schembri has one-upped himself in the "oh no he did not!" stakes.



Throughout the past week the man had promised "the full story" behind the "Scream 4 meta controversy", as seen above, which followed after a truly bizarre series of ridiculous tweets about time travel and Luke Buckmaster of Crikey. He kept promising and promising and never delivering. Naturally, it emerged at around Midnight on Good Friday when he suspected nobody would notice/care because it's a five-day weekend. It's amazing to think that on a weekend in which people celebrate a man who CAME BACK TO LIFE AFTER BEING EXECUTED that this would be the most ridiculous thing you'd read about today?


Yes, Jim Schembri posted up his "full story" and it's the biggest load of bullshit you're likely to read all week! In the piece titled "How I punk'd the Twitterverse" Schembri muses on how he played a big ol' prank on us Twitter users by outing the Scream 4 villain in his review; "I decided to create a online event. I wanted to become the scourge of the Twitterverse as I led the hordes down a merry trail of cryptic messages and misdirection." Except he didn't lead the hordes down a merry trail of cryptic messages and misdirection. He blatantly gave away the identity of the "who" in a "whodunnit". That isn't being cryptic, it's being an arrogant prick.

"I anticipated that the moment Scream 4 opened, sites such as Twitter would be positively brimming with spoilers", he says before later opining "Twitter wouldn't respect Scream 4, surely. Twitter doesn't respect anything." While it's true Scream 4 spoilers were overflowing on websites like Twitter as well as IMDb, YouTube and even websites like Scream-Trilogy.net, none of the people announcing said spoilers were film critics who get paid by a mega-corporation (Fairfax) to review movies on a professional basis. I'd also hazard a guess that many of them were not grown men who were clearly smart enough to end up as the lead film critic at publications like The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. You don't get a job like that by being an idiot, but you sure can become one afterwards it seems. Still, this is the newspaper that somehow stuffed up today's paper by headmasting it with "THE SATURDAY AGE". On a Friday.

What it all boils down to is that Jim Schembri doesn't like Twitter ("(T)he Twitterverse, in my view, is largely populated by idle minds seeking to engage in banal, repetitive discourse and revel in the cheap thrills derived from being crude, vulgar, ignorant and abusive",) and felt like playing a prank on us. Except, wouldn't it have made sense to ACTUALLY PLAY A PRANK? Revealing the actual, true, real identity of the Scream 4 villain isn't a prank. Revealing the villain as someone who was not the villain would have been a prank. He would have gotten the vitriol is he craves and we all would have had a laugh when we realised "Oh that Jim Schembri was just fooling with us!"

Except here he wasn't just playing with the so-called "Twitterverse". Schembri's spoiler-laden review sat pretty upon the top of Rotten Tomatoes for several hours before, eventually, newer reviews began to push him down the lead page. Still, anybody who clicked on his review for the first day it appeared (it wasn't altered until 8am on Friday - a full day after the film's release and several hours after the print edition went on sale) would have been greeted with a spoiler that would ruin the movie's big climax. That's ANYBODY WHO CLICKED. I supposed Schembri believed everybody who uses the internet must use Twitter (and thus must be evil?), but they do not. Many do not like Twitter and yet they still would have been "punk'd" by this inexcusable social experiment. As another critic stated on, you guessed it, Twitter: "Once you start using your reviews as a forum for anything aside from your views on the film you're reviewing, it's pretty much over folks." Another states it "That piece insults the intelligence", another "How fitting of @jimschembri, on Good Friday, to depict himself as Twitter Christ. He spoiled for our sins, people", and another "I lost a bit of respect for The Age if it actually runs @jimschembri 's lie in print." And, of course, this one that sums up everything I've been saying: "Even if #Schembrigate was a genius twitter experiment, surely that doesn't justify spoiling the film for people WHO DON'T EVEN USE TWITTER".

And, even if Twitter is evil and full of crude, vulgar, ignorant and abrasive folks who are willing to spoil the enjoyment of movies for others then it's quite easy to find Twitter users who are not. I follow 460 people on Twitter and not one of them revealed the identity of the Scream 4 killer. I am followed by 1175 and I'm happy in knowing each and every one of them could go into Scream 4, if they so wish, and not know who the villain is. Unlike anybody who read Schembri's review. His revelation shows a distinct lack of respect for all of his readers, not just those who use Twitter as a valuable social networking tool.

And, for that matter, the irony of Schembri playing a wicked "punk" on Twitter is surely not lost on the man. Schembri himself has (as of right now) 497 followers and he started off the week with significantly less than that. Schembri, however, doesn't follow a single person; no filmmaker, no fellow critic, no friends. Nobody. And, for that matter, until this past week's clusterfuck of time machine tweets the man had never used the site for anything other than self-promotion of his The Age affiliated blog, Cinetopia. And, even further, as the image below shows, he doesn't even Tweet his reviews in any timely fashion! As ever, he's ahead of the technology curve is Mr Schembri.


None of this would have even been necessary if Schembri had have just admitted his fumble and apologised. Instead, he sent us down a ridiculously convoluted rabbit hole of pranks, punks and spoilers. It was obvious from his 1.5/5 review that he wasn't a fan of the movie, and yet in his article he continues to act petty and pouty towards the film whilst treating anybody who didn't want the ending spoiled with contempt.

Nobody likes being insulted, especially by a lame film. But that's how I felt about 10 minutes into Scream 4. ... No originality, no imagination. And predictable. The identity of the masked killer was obvious from the moment you first saw him. Or her. Or it. Hey, wouldn't want to spoil the film for anyone.

No, you wouldn't, but you did and I won't soon forget. Nor will anybody else who sees through his childish tantrum as anything but what it really is: a last minute attempt to save credibility, peddling a topic that his newspaper and other forms of print media are trying to push to their dwindling readers.

Poisin Pen has already written about it and I am sure you'll read a lot more about this throughout the weekend - freelance writers don't necessarily get five-day weekends - and beyond. Just remember, Jim Schembri played fast and loose with his readers by single-handedly destroying years worth of work by Wes Craven, Kevin Williamson, the cast, crew and producers with one sentence of a review. He thought his readers were beyond contempt, played a gag with no thought of the consequences and then admitted to using his position for an elaborate gag that nobody can make heads or tails of (apart from Schembri himself, of course).

He concludes his article by giving Wes Craven, a filmmaker for 40 years (his debut, The Last House on the Left was released in 1972), condescending tricks on how to truly breath life in Scream 4's tagline of "New Decade, New Rules". It may be a new decade, but the old rules still apply to being a film critic and Jim Schembri broke them. It appears doubtful The Age will hold him accountable at all, which is truly sad, since they published this nonsense drivel of his. I guess it's up to us to let him and The Age know that playing games with readers is a cruel thing to do. Especially if they want us to keep paying that $1.50 every morning, right?

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!

Spot the Scream Trilogy Cast Member

Can you see which member of the sprawling cast found within the original Scream trilogy was featured in this 1993 video clip for Dannii Minogue's "This is It"? Aah the things you discover while trolling about Wikipedia. Still, Courteney Cox isn't the only one whose paraded around with music royalty now, is she?


Can you spot her? Find out who it is after the jump!



"Oh gosh, I never thought anybody would actually find out about this!"
Poor Elise Neal!

A Top Ten for Tuesday: Best Renee Zellweger Facial Expressions in Case 39

I don't want to put too fine of a point on it, but this blog entry is perhaps my finest moment. My crowning achievement! I am sure you'll all agree once you've finished processing just how great it is. Really.

No, but in all seriousness... have y'all seen this movie? Case 39 isn't as dreadful as I had heard and had hoped. Instead it was not much more than a mediocre scary child movie. Although, most disappointing of all, there were several moments when I actually thought it could have been something more and yet went nowhere. I think back particularly to the moment when Renee Zellweger's character of "Emily Jenkins" decides her recently fostered child (16-year-old Jodelle Ferland as "Lily") is the devil, and upon bringing this up with Ian McShane's policeman character as he walks out of Sunday morning mass she says "you'll believe it in there, but now out here?" But, as I said, it doesn't do anything with any of the possibly interesting questions it raises and instead just makes Bradley Cooper grow a hornet's nest inside his skull. So nuanced.

Nevertheless, the most entertaining aspect of Case 39 is Renee Zellweger's face. It's a bizarre mix between botched chemical peel and a serious case of bee sting puffiness (I've heard of "bee-stung lips", but this is ridiculous). It's not like Zellweger's face looks so nipped and tucked that she can't show expressions, but something has gone seriously wrong there as of late and now all her expressions are chucklesome and/or outright hilarious. Let's count down my ten favourite, shall we?


10. The Look: "I know what you're up to you evil child, but I can't let you know that."

It's also her "maybe if I look like Dianne Wiest I will be as respected as Dianne Wiest" look, I think.


9. The Look: "My character is a real person. See! This is all the character development I need!"

I love how they've tried to be like the opening credits of How I Met Your Mother by creating a shorthand bond with the characters with one photograph. She's all "yes! somebody cast me in a movie!!" and he's all "what?"


8. The Look: "Sometimes I pretend I'm a fish on drugs."

Perhaps unfair since her character is emerging out of the water after driving her demon child into the river, but it's quite an unfortunate look, no?


7. The Look: "I'm a sexy woman who goes to bars to meet men, won't you hit on me please? *flirt*"

Her love interest in Case 39 is Bradley Cooper. Just think about this for a second, okay? And then remember that Bradley Cooper actually dated Renee Z in real life. Just think about that for a few seconds, okay? Doesn't compute, right? Yeah.


6. The Look: "I just saw you shove a young child into the oven. Also, my hair is really bad."

I'll give Renee this, her character had just seen a small child get put into an oven to get roasted so this expression is quite appropriate.


5. The Look: "Hi, I'm Lindsay Lohan - you may remember me as the star of Mean Girls and I Know Who Killed Me."

Seriously. I can't be the only one who thinks this shot of her makes her look like Lindsay Lohan and that is not a good thing to be reminding anybody of.


4. The Look: "I am Renee Zellweger, apparently, and I am Amish, apparently."

If you showed me this image out of context and told me it was Renee Zellweger, I'm not sure I would believe you. Honestly. Also: What's with all the brown?


3. The Look: "When confronted by an ancient evil demon child always remember what you learnt in lamaze class."

"LOL"


2. The Look: "I am Margaret Cho's mother."

Seriously, whenever I look at this image I think of this...


That is not a good thing since Renee Zellweger is neither Asian nor an old stereotype joke (albeit a funny one).

Oh, yeah, Renee isn't all that funny these days either. had you noticed? Unless, of course, you're talking about...


1. The Look: "My child is a spawn of Satan, plus she smells bad."

Does this not send you into fits of laughter like it did for me? DOES IT NOT?!? I can recall the situation in which this scene takes place and I can't quite figure out how Renee managed to pull this face. Every time I glance at it I laugh and, I guess, that's bonus points for the film. I just wish the film as a whole hadn't have been so stony faced with its ridiculousness.

So Random: Katherine Heigl's Romantic Comedies of Doom

Even as a fan of Katherine Heigl, I have to admit that she's grown incredibly tiresome. I miss the days when she was that spunky, but gorgeous, actress in shows like Roswell and Grey's Anatomy (before it went to shit). While I enjoy 27 Dresses, the standard of her mismatched-pair-that-are-obviously-made-for-each-other rom-coms in which she is increasingly shrill and he (generic "he") is a bit of a douche have become dire.

While it may be sad to have to witness this worsening crisis, at least somebody out there is using it to their advantage. Enter The Onion with this hilarious news video entitled "In Freak Accident, 34 Katherine Heigl Films Released At Once". The hilarity, however, is tinged with sadness at the fact that all the films they invent - not 34, but a fair chunk - look like legitimate Heigl romantic comedies. Especially "Peeping Polly" and "Venus & Mars". The poster for the latter is not only a stinging jab to Heigl (and Bradley Cooper), but to key art designers around the world. Yikes.

Watch and laugh, folks. Watch and laugh.


In Freak Accident, 34 Katherine Heigl Films Released At Once