Young Adult is the second feature film collaboration by writer Diablo Cody (Diablo – good lawd) and director Jason Reitman – their first was the infinitely irritating smart-arse ‘hipster’ indie hit Juno, but let’s not hold that against them. Everyone deserves a second chance.
Especially when they’ve cast Charlize Theron as the lead. Continue reading
I’ve wondered, dear reader, about myself and these annual Awards. I really have. I mean, it’s not very nice, is it, what I do? Who sees off the year with a bitchfest?
I would embark on an expansive treatise of self-justification, but I know concentration spans have universally shrivelled, that the web is no place for introspective meanderings and expansive written self-expression. Why then, should I sabotage myself? Would you have me leap lemming-like from the clifftops of injudicious bloggerdom to dash myself on the rocks of readership oblivion?
I will not do it. You get no explanations. You get no apologies. All you get is what you deserve, this year with a lot more pics and a lot less text. See, I’m learning. Dumb it down, graphic it up. So here ya go, leaner and meaner than ever. Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, I give ya…
The BR Bitchfest Awards for 2011
I Know Nussink Award:
Murdoch and son
Slapper Of The Year:
Wendi Deng
Look at that speed-blurred hand action, and note that sign of a real pro – the fingers splayed to enhance the possibility of eye damage to the target Continue reading
You won’t find any carefully ordered ‘Ten Best/Worst Movies’ lists here. Ranking movies like that has always seemed to me a simplistic folly (apples ain’t oranges). Besides, how do you make such determinations if you haven’t seen every movie released in a given year?
And what are ranked lists like this really worth anyway, unless the critic
a) precisely sets out their assessment criteria, and
b) gives some idea of their movie critic credentials (call me elitist, but I give more cred to an educated opinion than an uneducated one – especially in these days when every second bozo is a self-appointed expert on movies, food, music etc). Continue reading
I hereby announce a change of format to this year’s annual Boomtown Rap Awards. Traditionally served up in one big putrid pile, the Awards will this year be divided into 3 segments posted separately:
The Awards are still random, organised only according to personal whimsy. Still skewed to my areas of personal interest, and seasoned with wry wit (it’s my ferkn blog so I can say that) and a liberal sprinkling of vitriol. Still unfair, undisciplined and uncouth. And doubtless, still unrecognised and largely unread. Que sera sera. Your faithful scribe labours on regardless. Continue reading
An informed but self-opinionated movie buff I often talk to about films (make that get talked at) went on a rant when I made the mistake of mentioning Melancholia. “Self-indulgent, self-important, pretentious, tedious rubbish” he thundered. So negatively impassioned, so damned heated was his tirade, that I couldn’t avoid concluding that it was something personal. A thing about the writer/director, Lars Von Trier, mayhap? Not so unusual. Lars has a reputation as a bad boy of cinema and a bit of a nutter, and excels at putting noses outta joint.
He also has a tendency to self-destruct. Look no further than his stupid remarks about Hitler during an interview at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. He was clearly playing his anti-PC enfant terrible card for all it was worth, but deadpan irony is often unrecognised as such – and there are some topics, Lars, that you just gotta leave the hell alone if you value your career. Which maybe he doesn’t. Really. In the same interview he declared that Melancholia “may be crap… there’s quite a big possibility that it might not be worth seeing.” I like that. Continue reading
I’m late with this review. Been focusing on migrating the blog across to its own domain. The use-by date of my useful recall of movies is pretty short, and I fear the deadline may have passed with this one. So, will have to go for broad brush strokes, not detail.
That said, Toomelah is a haunting film that stays with you long after viewing, not least because of the astounding performance of its 10-year-old lead, Daniel Conners. Continue reading
If only they had talked about Kevin! This irritating film is all dressed up in arthouse gear, with somewhere interesting to go. Problem is, it just doesn’t go there!
The opening scenes are impressive. A heaving mass of revellers at a tomato festival in Spain (probably) squelches and slops around bareskinned in a shallow sea of red pulp (symbolic prefigurement: something bloody this way comes!). In their midst is Eva (Tilda Swinton), who comes in for some special treatment as she’s passed around on high, borne on the hands of the crowd. Tilda doesn’t do happy all that well, but she seems to be enjoying herself here in an alien-lands-among-friendly-natives kinda way. Continue reading
Burning Man opens with a shot of a bloke with his back to the camera standing over a naked prostitute, furiously and fruitlessly masturbating. Soon after, we’re taken on a hellride of chronologically scattered moments of the troubled and frenetic life of the lead character Tom (Matthew Goode), culminating in a spectacularly impressive and almost hallucinogenic slow-mo car crash shot from the driver’s perspective. The car rolls, Tom ends up upside down and bloody, with the contents of the cabin – fruit, vegetables and cuts of meat – tumbling, splitting and splatting around him. Leaking petrol ignites and a firewall rears up, encircling the car wreck and alluding quite terrifyingly to the title of the movie.
As we later discover, the masturbation and rollover scenes are metaphorical renderings of the results of Tom’s desperate efforts to cope with the downward spiral his life has taken. And I have to say, this riotous display of rapid-fire editing and filming pyrotechnics that kicks off the movie is nothing short of breathtaking. BUT… Continue reading
I’m a reverse snob. You know – someone who professes not to care about shallow shit like fashion and social status. Well, it goes further than mere indifference. Contempt is closer to the mark.
Of course, I realised at some stage I was kidding myself. I cared enough to have a strong attitude on this stuff, didn’t I? And chose my clothes to present a self-image that on some level expressed who I was, or thought I was. I gradually came to the conclusion that the only people who really don’t care about their appearance are those who have given up on society and themselves. The rest of us wilfully project a chosen self-image, and therefore nod to fashion of some kind, whether we like to admit it or not. Continue reading
Ned (Paul Rudd) is the odd one out among his siblings. He has opted out of city life for small-time biodynamic farming. His three sisters are entrenched in New York. The oldest, Liz (Emily Mortimer), is immersed in mothering her 7yo son River (Matthew Mindler) according to Sound Parenting Principles, and is ignoring warning signs that her marriage to pretentious doco film maker husband Dylan (Steve Coogan) is dying from malnutrition. Careerist middle sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) is a journo for Vogue. The youngest, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), is a hip young thang with a string of lovers in her wake, who seems to have settled down with lawyer Cindy (Rashida Jones), a stabilising force. Continue reading