I went and saw a preview of Away We Golast week with the yoga teacher. For those who don't know it's the story of a young couple, unmarried but happy, who discover one day that they are going to have a baby. As well as the usual excitement and anticipation news like this inevitably brings it also sets them off on a search. Essentially this is a road movie, with the central couple setting out really to find some part of themselves with the baby as an excuse for that, an encountering along the way a variety of strange and interesting and unpleasant and lovely people along the way. Where do we belong in all this seems to be the unspoken question throughout, who are we, what do we want, where are we going?
Of course for all their looking they don't find the answer in the people they meet. Often they discover what they don't want in the cynical or the strange or the loopy esoteric; and once or twice happen across a life that they look upon with envy, perhaps that is us they wonder, perhaps that is what we should become. But as they think that they see the hidden unhappiness, like a blight upon a flower, or witness the sharp pain that is part and parcel of any close relationship, the risk we all run for caring too much.
Ultimately they find their own way, informed by their travels but within them all along.
It's branded as a comedy, but while there are a few laugh out loud moments it's more of a gentle and whimsical journey following this ordinary, pleasant and somewhat lost couple. It stars John Krasinski, from the American version of The Office, and he's good - he has a future I reckon. I didn't know the actress who played his wife, Maya Rudolph, but she was fine too. There's a show turn by Maggie Gyllenhaal (there's an actress I find sexy) as the weird, new-age mother, and a few other faces you'd know.
It was co-written by David Eggers, the novelist, and directed by the noted English director Sam Mendes.
Now I'm not a big fan of Eggers (who also co-wrote Where The Wild Things Are), and while I think Mendes is a good director this is not really his genre. I enjoyed the movie without thinking it great. The yoga teacher thought it was a bit long and slow. I thought it was better than that, but, though worthy, I couldn't really connect with it.
Otherwise I thought it odd that Montreal was seemingly bereft of French speaking people and was fascinated by the soundtrack, which is pretty good. There is one singer who pops up throughout the movie who reminded me of Nick Drake in both style and sound. It wasn't, I knew that, and I stuck around after the movie finished just to check out who it was - Alexi Murdoch, not someone I'd come across before, but someone I'll look out for from here on in.
Final verdict? Good, not great. A couple movie, but not for the starry eyed expecting a flirty rom com. This is more earth bound than that.
The other night I watched Fahrenheit 451 on TV. I settled down on the couch and watched for near on two hours enjoying every minute of it. It's the classic story written by Ray Bradbury about a society where books are banned and firemen go about starting fires - burning books - rather than putting them out. It follows the familiar dystopian path, the unquestioning hero (Montag), a fireman, leading a comfortable life with his shallow wife within the system, conforming without ever stopping to wonder how it all adds up. Then that changes. Slowly Montag begins to wonder and to question. His curiosity is piqued and a kind of consciousness dawns as he begins to read the books he is charged to destroy. He finds they are not the disruptive evil the pervasive voice of society would have him believe. On the contrary he discovers that books contain knowledge, history, context, wisdom even. In his growing knowledge he realises that his life is empty, and in place of real feelings and real thoughts society has been fed a thin pap to keep it compliant and ignorant. Inevitably he rebels, and there is the story.
I imagine this story being made today and the variety of special effects that would be employed. Truffaut did not have the benefit of those in 1966, but then he was not a director interested in effect - his was a study of character. I suppose the movie is a little dated in parts now, but overall it has aged well because Truffaut kept it small. I don't know if a modern version were made if it would have the same simple power. Though it is an allegory Truffaut did not make it overtly political, and the moral of it - if that be the word - is not spelled out to us (as it doubtless would be today), but is shown for us to witness and understand.
Truffaut is helped by his two leads in this movie, which just so happen to be two of my favourite actors from this era. Oskar Werner has such a sensitive face, and was a very sensitive and accomplished actor. I watch him on screen and can't help but think the man portraying these roles was himself a gentle, intelligent man of discernment. Off screen I gather he could be fiery, and he died an alcoholic, but I don't doubt that he had lovely depths.
Julie Christie by contrast was just straight out beautiful. She was one of the movie actresses I first fell in 'love' with, particularly in Dr Zhivago. She has the most beautiful cornflower blue eyes and a beauty that can appear both refined and common. There was a period of about 10 years from the mid-sixties where she was a great star and appeared in a score of iconic movies. I could watch her all day.
It was a good night for TV. Straight after the movie of another classic book, Slaughterhouse 5, appeared. It was a great night to be on my couch.
I got home last night and flicked on the TV and watched the end of an odd movie before the next one came on. The next movie was Fun With Dick and Jane, the seventies version with George Segal and Jane Fonda. For those who don't know it's about a high flying executive and his young aspiring family, big house in the 'burbs, in-ground pool being dug, when he gets laid-off. He tries for benefits and to get another job before, in desperation, he starts to hold up stores with his wife.
It's pretty well a comedy, though perhaps with a bit of a satirical edge. It's fun and well made and very seventies in a way; and last night watching it resonated with me pretty strongly. What is crime after all but free enterprise taken to an extreme?
Anyway I was watching it when I realised that while the news will feature the odd convenience store hold up, they're pretty infrequent these days, and very rarely does a bank get robbed. When I was growing up banks were robbed all the time - not now. Is it the increased security and technology that have made it too risky? Or is simply that there is a different class of crim these days?
Whatever, I went to bed thinking worse comes to worse a ram raid on an ATM may not be the worst option - though not with the Audi.
Look, the world needs people like Mike Moore, people to speak for the little guy, and against entrenched interests be they political, financial or corporate. That he exists to ply his trade is does not necessarily make for a healthy society maybe, but it's solid proof of a strong democracy.
I saw his latest film in preview last week, Capitalism: A Love Story. I went with Whisky, a good capitalist if ever there was one, after we spent the couple of hours before sitting in the sunshine and drinking good European ales on one of the prized balconies of Cookie. It was a lovely day for it, so much so that I briefly considered canning the movie altogether and ordering another round of drinks, but no...
Moore is as he always is, the happily unfashionable nerd, bearded, plump, and wearing his baseball cap - I don't think I've ever seen him out of it. As always he is a character in the drama, the shambling maverick poking his nose into other people's business and making a point - occasionally comical - about the inequities and evils of the world. This time he took aim at capitalism in general, and capitalist America and the fat cats on Wall Street in particular. That's a popular target and he loaded up and fired.
I like Mike Moore, I 'enjoyed' (if that's the word) Fahrenheit 911, and I think he's important. Given that he has about 2 hours to propose a theory, develop and 'prove' it, he has to stick to the headlines with a few colourful leads thrown in. There's information there, but it's presented simplistically and with an angle I'm guessing he has no apologies for. He's an entertainer at the end of the day. No-one wants to go to the cinema to be lectured to or be forced to wade through all manner of facts and figures. He joins the dots and paints the picture and lets you feel the outrage. He loads up but his approach is scattergun.
That may seem like a damning indictment, but it shouldn't necessarily be seen that way. I think it's sensible when going to watch shows of this sort to go in with an open, but critical, mind. I always ask myself what I'm not being told. Sure, there's generally plenty presented on one side of the argument - but where is the other side? Turn on a current affairs program tonight and you'll see what I mean - it's sensationalist, tabloid TV, designed to indoctrinate you to a particular view.
So is Mike Moore a tabloid journalist? I don't think so. For a start Mike Moore is a lot smarter than most tabloid journalists, and unlike most, is a true believer in what he does. He might share some attributes with them - the sensational claims, the odd sentimental manipulation, the occasional simplistic analysis, but generally it is better informed and more intelligently reasoned. Generally he has something important to say, something worth hearing - the counter-balance to 'conventional' opinion.
To an extent this explains some of my disappointment with this movie. I thought about half of it was great, but the other half was crap.
Lets start with the crap first, and the sweeping, tabloid-esque assertion that capitalism 'doesn't work'. I almost groaned eating my popcorn on hearing that grandiose claim. It begged the question, if capitalism isn't it, what is? A few times in the course of the film he touched upon socialism, but I don't think he was really suggesting that was the solution. Rather - and this is very much the way of the tabloid media - he was pointing out the problem by and large, without propounding a solution.
To say capitalism is wrong is plain stupid, no matter which side of the political fence you're on. It's such a broad, facile statement to make as to be meaningless. Right there and then some credibility was lost, for the problem is not capitalism as such - it is the way it is regulated and governed. That's the real story, and ultimately the story he told.
We have had a global financial crises not because of capitalism, but rather because of the absence of controls and appropriate regulations in the American market. Once upon a time they were there, some of them at least, but in the spirit of unfettered free market economics they were removed. Australia, a capitalist country, suffered not nearly as much as the States, and almost entirely because we have the governance they don't have in the shape of prudent fiscal and banking regulations, and sensible government policy.
Capitalism is built upon the profit motive, which gives the impetus to a system that in its purest form will benefit everyone working within it. In that ideal state it is a dynamic, living organism that needs none of the artificial stimuli that socialism and its ilk need to get going. There is no need to prod the beast into action because it is forever on the prowl searching for more, searching for better, because that is where the pay-off is. The beauty of capitalism is that it is self-perpetuating; the peril of it is that it should do so without any control.
There are hundreds of different economic philosophies and schools. By and large they measure and theorise about economic triggers and management. Many are at odds with each other and are perpetually evolving - economics is big business these days, even if it is an inexact science. A few would argue that rampant capitalism is a good thing, in much the same way that Gordon Gekko pronounced that greed is good. That's a hard argument to sustain in these economic times when it is greed and unfettered financial markets that have led to the mess Moore documents in his film.
In essence the difference in the two arguments is the difference between having an untamed tiger in your front yard and one toilet trained and taught not to eat the natives. What would you rather? Yet this is what has been allowed to happen. By removing the natural and proper constraints from the market the tiger is shitting in the laps of the big corporations and chewing on the natives - the poor punter in the suburbs.
The real issue is not capitalism then, but greed, and Moore knows it. Accordingly he takes aim at Wall Street and the fat cat banks and brokerages, and the insidious influence they have had on government policy - now that's a story worth exposing. He quite rightly comments on the obscene salaries and bonuses of senior management at a time when lowly workers are laid off without getting their full entitlement. And he exposes the absolute lack of government oversight on the billions of dollars paid to bail-out half these corporations. All in all the picture is bleak. It is a story of incompetence at best, and corruption at worst. It is an American story, and in some part at least Moore is right, there is something sick in American society today that allows these things to occur. It's not capitalism though, it's greed and it's the decline of the social contract.
I trust people will be smart enough to overlook the more extreme elements of the movie and see them for what they are: pure sensationalism. Whether we want to or not we can't live without the financial markets, and without Wall Street everything would grind to a halt. The real story is how greed, mismanagement and rampant de-regulation led to a global disaster. And in a way it's all about the need to return to human values - something I think any intelligent person would applaud. In that Mike Moore is right - it's time.
After I cancelled a date last night (something I may or may not write about at some point) I was left at a loose end. It's not unknown for me to be home alone on a Saturday night, but it's usually something I've planned and scheduled. Sometimes it's just nice to have a nice meal and then sit back and watch a good DVD or maybe some sporting event you've been looking forward to. That was not the case last night.
As is so often the case when plans change last minute I felt a bit aimless. I had a light meal and then I wandered around, watching a bit of TV, reading the paper, speaking on the phone. I ended up at my Mac for a couple of hours re-rating songs on my iTunes and refining my playlists - always fun, but hardly exciting.
I wandered out of my study at a little after 9. After checking the TV guide I quickly established there was nothing worth watching - as Bruce says, 57 stations and nothing on. At that point I went to plan B which was to check some of the shows I had recorded previously, but none of them appealed, so plan C it was.
Plan C was going to the bottom of my DVD drawer to find one of the DVD's I had burnt at sometime in the past and not yet watched. I actually intended to watch a retro favourite of mine, a minor classic from the seventies, A Touch of Class. Don't ask me why, but I loved this movie growing up, thought George Segal was great and Glenda Jackson just the acerbic, quick witted and intellectually sexy woman I favoured. All that and I couldn't find the damned DVD.
My hand instead lit upon The Big Lebowskiand after a moments reflection I thought, yep, that fits.
I'm tempted to claim that The Big Lebowski is one of those movies you either love or hate, except that wouldn't be true. It's one of that type of movie if that counts for anything. I figure it's going to rub a lot of people up the wrong way. Likewise it has cult following and figures in a lot peoples lists favourite ever movies. I like it a lot, but I don't lurv it.
It was the perfect movie for last night. I watched it again laughing at the convoluted, slightly screwball plot and the great characters, slightly crazy Walter with anger management issues; John Turturro in his hilarious (somehow 'hilarious' always feels an ironic concept these days, though I don't mean it here) cameo as the purple clad, hair-netted pederast Jesus; the German nihilists; and of course the Dude, Jeff Lebowski.
I tend to think there is a little bit of the Dude in all of us, and if there isn't, there should be. I watched it again feeling a little wistful myself, yearning to let myself go and become the happy, slacker slob that the Dude is. He goes bowling with his compadres, he cruises, he drinks his white Russians and has the odd acid flashback, and he's happy getting around in his bath robe and shorts. He's a good dude, easy and fun. He doesn't ask for much and is happy with what he's got - until someone pees on his rug.
I went to bed happy. At my best, or worst, I'm just a complete a slob as the Dude, and that seemed something to be proud of. Remember, the Dude abides.
Wednesday night is comedy night in the H household, and we're lucky because there are some decent comedies on pay TV at the minute.
The two Aussie comedy's are good value. The Jesters has Mick Malloy in it, which is a big plus in my book. I once nearly choked with laughter watching him do stand-up at the old Continental back in 2001. It takes a sly, cynical look at comedy TV and the off-screen machinations. Pretty good.
Better I think is :30 Seconds. This is an extremely clever, dare I say it, jaded view of the advertising industry, reputedly written by ad agency insiders. Joel Torbreck is terrific as the witty, cynical protagonist with a conscience. He's not above bending the truth in service of his clients - like any good advertising man - but is genuinely sympathetic as the lead character. In particular I find many of the dilemmas he comes to grips with common to me (and I also think I should have gone into advertising). He's backed up by some pretty good actors and some interesting characters. Stephen Curry is great.
Of the American shows there's not much I can add about 30 Rock. It's a terrific show and Alec Baldwin deserves every award he's got - he's spectacular.
The final show is Better Off Ted. Another very clever, subversive comedy about corporate ethics and lifestyle. This has a lot of great, occasionally surreal, moments. Great performances all round too, but the stand-out for me is Portia de Rossi. She really is a talented comedienne.
On a lazy Sunday afternoon while reading the newspaper and waiting for the league grand final I watched three Doris Day /Rock Hudson movies in a row.
I don't remember watching any of their movies for many years, and the only one I could vaguely remember was Pillow Talk. Watching them again yesterday was an act of nostalgia as much as anything else, but it was interesting in other ways too.
First thing to note is that the first movie Day and Hudson made together - Pillow Talk - was the best of the lot, and each film after was worse than the one before.
Secondly, Tony Randall is great, and greatly underrated. No-one plays the slightly inadequate, occasionally neurotic sidekick than him. He was made for it.
Thirdly, the first two movies in the series are similar, both have the characters of Day and Hudson at loggerheads, and both concern mistaken identities. And both - like the Hollywood formula it is - have the two combatants falling in love with each other.
Fourthly, in these first two movies Rock Hudson plays the good looking man about town, the ruthless and cynical playboy. He looks the part alright, and carries it off fine - but how strange it is to realise that as he was making these movies he was a closet homosexual. I guess it's a not uncommon story, but it's more piquant considering in PT he briefly pretends to be gay, exclaiming about colour swatches, recipes and his mother. All very clichéd, and ironic in hindsight.
I guess the fifth thing to be said is that for all the innuendo these are pretty wholesome movies. Hard to imagine anything else with Doris Day and her big, blonde bouffant.
My final comment actually relates a little to the previous. It's fascinating to look back up to 50 years on at a different, more innocent time. It seems that way anyway. And it was interesting to me having watched Mad Men recently - which is set in the same era - and comparing them. You can't go past the authenticity of a movie made in that time, obviously, but somehow the detail in these films seem not nearly as vivid as they do in Mad Men. And maybe that's because in making the films in that time they were oblivious of what they took for granted, while in Mad Men they focus on the cultural mores and tastes of a time which seems far distant now.
The verdict on all this was they were fun enough to watch, but I'm happy to leave it another 20 years to see them again.
Before I leave the subject of old movies there are a couple of others I caught briefly that are worth commenting on.
In the early to mid seventies there were a spate of big budget disaster movies - Earthquake, Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and others, including the Airport series. A feature of these films is that they were chock-full of stars and superannuated ex-stars and the occasional would be star, including the odd character popular at the time but since disappeared into deserving oblivion (that's a good title isn't it? Oblivion: The Movie). Most are pretty cheesy, none are terribly intellectual, and the worst pretty awful.
The worst of them I think are the Airport movies, which are laughingly and entertainingly bad. In fact they pretty well fall into the 'so crap that their fun category'. Two of them have been on TV in recent weeks - Airport 75 and 76. Both are silly, and unlikely, and occasionally histrionic. Of course there are square jawed heroes working against time, quirky characters, ridiculous scenarios - a mid air collision with a helicopter coming to the rescue, and a rescue from the sea bed. As always there are oddly cast characters - in Airport 75 for example, there is Helen Reddy, obviously fresh from some recent success, playing a guitar strumming nun who plays to the critically ill little girl played by Linda Blair.
Man, it's bad, but you have to laugh. They don't make movies like they used to.
The only reason I agreed to see Julie & Julia was because Fong had free preview tickets, and because I like cooking and food, and besides I'd read some good reviews of it even though it didn't seem my kind of movie. Fong and I walked into the Westgarth cinema full of women and the odd token bloke. Mm, chick flick I thought.
I gotta say though that from the very first moments I was enchanted by this. The opening scenes are set in colourful French streets of the early '50's. The larger than life Julia Childs drives along with her devoted husband beside her, gushing and laughing and speaking clumsy French as they make their way to their new French home - and, as it turns out, a new destiny.
The counterpoint to this action is the modern story, the Julie of the title. She's a would-be writer who can't finish a manuscript, disenchanted with her job and lumbered with some horrid friends. She lives above a pizzeria in Queens with her husband, searching for some meaning. She happens upon the idea of a blog about her passion, cooking, and sets herself the task of cooking her way through Julia Childs French cookbook each day for the next year in an act of enforced discipline and devotion.
It's an interesting concept and it works well enough but what really makes it compelling are the characters.
Julia Childs is like your loud, eccentric, fruity voiced frumpy but irrepressible aunt who's a dab hand with a sponge cake. She's impossible to dislike, someone who sees the best in everything and approaches life with an cheerful gusto. She shares with her husband a lovely relationship. I watched feeling both moved and inspired. I thought this is how it is meant to be, and in fact I found much of this movie gently life affirming. Streep is marvellous as Childs, and Stanley Tucci is a favourite.
The modern couple have a recognisably modern relationship. They are close and loving even as they weather the occasional storm, and it is interesting to compare and contrast the two eras.
In the end I felt uplifted by the whole thing, much to my surprise. Let's face it, there are a lot of elements to this story which appeal to me. I love France and Paris, and just the sight of those streets again made me wistful to be there once more. I love food too. I'm not sure if I could be described as a gourmet - perhaps so - but in any case I found much in the description and preparation of these classic recipes that was both fascinating and mouth-watering. Finally it is the spirit of the piece that seduced me. That's the way to live, that's the way to be. I left the cinema breathing deep of the evening air, looking about me as if all was new, embracing it.
I saw the trailer for 2012 before. Pretty spooky stuff, but the thing that struck me was a meteor shower that was just like what I dreamed last week.
Doesn't look like a terribly uplifting movie - movies about the end of the world rarely are. It is a Roland Emmerich production though, so you can be sure it's going to be over the top. Question is, can you go over the top when you're making a a film about the end of civilisation?
Have been watching Generation Kill the last few weeks and enjoying it pretty much. The one thing that keeps going through my head though as I'm watching is curiosity as to how authentic it is to how it really was.
For those who don't know it;'s all about a Marine reconnaissance unit in the early days of the Iraq invasion. Off they go trundling into Iraq amid random mayhem, brutality and destruction. There are some good soldiers portrayed in the show, but by and large it watches like slightly surreal road trip into a strange culture where the natives shoot at you. Sometimes.
I know the Iraqi's where no great shakes at resisting the allied invasion, but you have to think watching this that if they were half organised and had a bit more fight in them it may well have been a lot uglier for the allied cause.
I can't believe this is how modern war is waged, but maybe that's what happens when you have the overwhelming superiority in technology and firepower - the grunt on the ground who used to do all the work now becomes a random element. Tactics make way for overwhelming force; expertise and discipline are secondary to indiscriminate technology.
As a student of military history a lot of it just doesn't sit right: it's not how it should be. There's fuck all discipline in this unit but that of the ridiculous variety. Otherwise there's a kind of barely contained anarchy, loose cannons, incompetent and nutty officers, ambitious commanders, and chaos. It's war as dark comedy.
They cruise into Iraq having a singalong, shooting up anything that moves like hoons shooting up road signs, amid disorganisation and confusion. You could understand if maybe if it was a national guard unit, but these are marines, the elite supposedly - and yet most of them come across as spoilt kids or anal pricks. In between a few of them know what they're doing, but they're pretty well powerless to make a difference.
Overall, very entertaining, but not sure how much to believe. How things have changed if true, but that's a sign of the times and of the changing generations. Yet you can believe it somehow when you remember the times that were and are still, the ballyhoo at the time, the chest thumping and political posturing. That's what I have to remember I think, have to imagine the Iraqi war as described by Joseph Heller. That's it I think, that's the point. Iraq: a brutal, cheap and callous farce - and funny if it were not so deadly.
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