A new game! and Illustration Friday: Perennial

Last night I had house guests and hadn’t drawn my Illustration Friday picture yet. The topic was “Perennial” and I had been thinking of drawing something associated with Casablanca (“the fundamental things apply/as time goes by” etc). I could recount the plot of Casablanca fairly well, but only ever manage to retain a very hazy impression of the actual scenes in the movie. So we invented a game, and called it “You must remember this”. The rules are: everyone chooses (or has chosen for them) a classic movie which, as members of the human race, they ought to know, and then they have to draw the plot WHETHER THEY HAVE SEEN IT OR NOT.

So here are the results (click on the pictures to see them at full size):

 

March and April Short Movie Reviews

I am using the good/bad rating system this year. It is not an objective ranking – sometimes I like terrible movies, and detest ones that I know are well made.

March

Crazy Heart: Good. Borderline – I liked it for the loving humour of the first half and not the slice-of-life realism of the second. Good music.

Daybreakers: Good. This is nothing to do with the plot or the acting (I can’t watch Sam Neil play a vampire seriously after seeing him in the Eat Red Meat (we like to boogie) commercials) but solely because it was filmed in Brisbane and I spent the movie going, “There’s my office! That’s just down the street! That’s where the cycle path goes under the bridge!”

Alice in Wonderland: Bad. It hinted at a greater story that never eventuated. Johnny Depp was, predictably, good, but I wanted more of the great romance between the Cheshire Cat and the Hat. The costumes were fabulous set-pieces, however, and there were lots of Burton spirals (TM).

Men Who Stare at Goats: Bad. Borderline – it would have been good if it finished 1 second earlier.

Green Zone: Good. Self-contained and concise, a very neatly packaged story but not one that lingers.

How to Train Your Dragon: Good. I had a blast. Wonderful dragons, gorgeous character design.

April

Kick Ass: Good. And unrecommendable. Or Bad, but raises interesting issues. Starts as crude teen comedy and ends as ultra-violent heartwarming family drama.

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang: Good. Barely on balance and Ewan McGregor’s cameo helped with that, as did the accuracy of farm children and the deployment of military nannies. But such an old fashioned movie – it’s hard to get a grip on it.

 

February Short Movie (etc) Reviews

Slum Dog Millionaire – A clever, well-strung together film which was thrilling to watch and had a great soundtrack. Occasionally violent, often joyful, and more entertaining than educational, I suspect, but very good at that. Obviously, I enjoyed it, but it hasn’t really stuck with me and I’m not sure yet why.

Cressida Campbell exhibition – My aunt took us to see this and the works were very lovely: large scale, bold and delicate watercolour woodcuts. The technique Campbell uses is to draw the picture onto the wood, carve out the lines, colour it directly with thick watercolour, then dampen the block and take a print off it. Several prints were displayed with their blocks, and there was such an architectural/design quality to them. Beautiful Australian scenes. I can’t afford the exhibition book, but it is lovely and printed on thick textured paper (although it can’t capture the scale and light of the exhibition).

Gran Torino – One of the few movies where the purpose-written song over the credits didn’t offend. As for whether the rest of the movie did… I was wondering. On one level I enjoyed it, especially the acting which at first seemed amateurish and became really compelling (the casting and simplicity of the movie were good and daring choices), but the sheer quantity of vitriol that Eastwood’s character was capable of seemed so excessive it was caricatured. The movie was meant to be a critique of racism, but I wasn’t always sure it worked, and wanted to get the point of view of someone more nearly affected.  And I found this really great review, and lost the link. It might have been this one from reappropriate, who found it nauseating. By contrast, here’s a review from Geo on Racialicious, who found positives. Whether or not you see the movie (and I did like that song), the reviews are worth reading.

He’s Just Not That Into You – I… liked this. It wasn’t brilliant, and certainly the morality was occasionally absent, occasionally odd and often confused. But it managed to do what most romantic comedies don’t: a well-handled ensemble cast not overshadowed by the bigger stars; a satisfyingly but not excessively intricate plot; and humour that wasn’t (a) crass or (b) all in the preview and left out of the movie. Faint praise, maybe, but pretty high for the genre.

Rachel’s Getting Married – A painful, odd and occasionally excessively self-indulgent film, but with some remarkable performances, a good treatment of the love and nastiness in sibling relationships and some really touching/quirky family scenes: the musicians annoying everyone by playing, the planning of table settings and the dishwasher race were particularly memorable.

Also, music:

Washington Square Serenade - “City of Immigrants” was playing on the radio a lot, and I loved it and it turned out to be by Steve Earle (“Copperhead Road”). I’m glad I bought the album. It’s country seguing into a folky/ballad style which I love – parts of some songs reminded me of Bright Eyes (go figure) and Chumbawumba-not-I-get-knocked-down-again-but-their-folk/political/protest-stuff (this is now how I refer to that band). It weakened in the middle, but there were some stand-outs: “Tennessee Blues”; “Down Here Below”, a Tom Waites/Tom Petty-esque song of New York from the point of view of a red tailed hawk; “City Of Immigrants”  -  “I don’t need to go travellin’, open the door and the world walks in”; “Days Aren’t Long Enough” - a love song which I didn’t like the first time, and then began to listen to on repeat. But obviously my views on the weaker songs aren’t shared, because I see the album won a Grammy for best folk/americana album.

War Child – Heroes – I’m a sucker for rewrites, covers, reimaginings, allusions, spoofs and updates, so I was looking forward to this album of old(er) songs covered by young(er) artists. Nothing stood out like Cat Empire singing “Hotel California” in French reggae-style on Triple J’s Like a Version, but it was still pretty good to hear some of these covers.

 

January (very) Short Movie Reviews

Marley and Me – Better than the preview (which was for a silly comedy) and apparently does justice to the book (which I have not read). More of a heart-warming, life-affirming drama than is usually to my taste, but it was sweet and entertaining and sad.

Yes Man – Better than The Bucket List. And Zooey Deschanel had a nice coat.

The Day the Earth Stood Still – I went in expecting to heckle and although I wouldn’t want to look at the plot very closely at all, I had to admit to Aimee halfway through that I was enjoying it far more than I expected to. As the main character was not required to emote, it was a perfect role for Keanu Reeves (I do like him as an actor, but only in roles which require a flat affect or intense brooding). Jennifer Connelly has been under-utilised in everything since Labyrinth.

Valkyrie – Good enough that after half an hour I didn’t mind that it was Tom Cruise (he’s improving on me) and that by the end, in spite of knowing the ending, I was thinking, “Just this time, please win!”. It never tipped over into a brilliant movie, but it was a good, solid one with some compelling performances.

 

December Short Movie Reviews

Australia. My sister hates it when I begin reviews of movies by saying, “Well, I wanted to like it.” She says, “Did you like it or not – yes or no?”. She liked this one. I… well, it’s more complicated than that. Usually when I want to like a movie it is because it has something – heart, story, special effects, a Big Idea – which deserved a better package. In Australia’s case, I think it was the country that didn’t quite get what it should have. The movie falters. It is sometimes cringe-worthy and sometimes stunning and sometimes painful and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful (the highlight for me was Daisy, riding in her yellow dress) and sometimes unexpectedly effective. Australia is the movie Australia couldn’t make in the ’50s: an epic, beautiful, elaborate, musically rich film that isn’t Bleak and Gritty and Worthy. I hope it does well enough that people aren’t put off trying to do something like this again because the materials are there. But I also think this particular movie would have worked quite well as a miniseries.

Gallery walk. Angela H and I went on the Paddington Gallery Walk – one Saturday in December, seven Paddington art galleries stay open until 9, with wine and beer and cheese. It’s a lovely evening.

Four Holidays. I quite liked parts of this and was touched by two scenes: the very female-centric comedy of the relationship between the sisters, and the scene where the various families are playing word games and the brother and his wife – shown so far as very unappealing people – win hands down because they know each other so well, while the protagonists know very little about each other. It reminded me of my parents who once won a game of Pictionary because my dad drew a palm tree and my mother guessed pinacolada.

Madagascar. Silly. Not (usually) good silly, either. There were some priceless moments with the penguins, but not nearly enough quality lemur scenes. One of those movies where I come out wanting to shake the people responsible and say, “durnnit! you had so much to work with! how hard did you have to try to get the script completely wrong?!”

Twilight. Not as bad as I expected it to be. A few cringe-worthy scenes near the beginning (which aparently make more sense if you have read the book, but are still cringe-worthy), and what I suspect was meant to be the contrast between characters dealing with serious emotional issues and flippant teenagers usually came off as a contrast between overly angsty main characters and teenagers just acting like teenagers, but in general - although not rising above what it was – it wasn’t actually painful.

Frost/Nixon. Great movie and definitely up there with my best for the year. It is based on a stage play and I think this shows in the way everything is heavily dialogue driven – it’s a slightly different dynamic than usual in movies. It was solid and interesting and also entertaining, and there aren’t enough movies like that. It made me want to watch All the President’s Men again.

 

October and November short movie reviews

October

Body of Lies – Workmanlike. It was solidly made, I couldn’t immediately fault it, it was acceptable among its kind and yet it never took off for me. I might have liked it better if I could have seen clearer evidence of Leonardo DiCaprio’s growing love for the country, or if it had concentrated more on technology vs rudimenatry resistance, but otherwise – meh. Didn’t hurt to sit through but didn’t leave me with anything when I walked out.

Max Payne – It might have worked if it had been a fantasy rather than a stock-standard cop story with hallucinations (the hallucinations were pretty cool). It might have worked if they had cast Keanu Reeves instead of Mark Wahlberg (this is not a criticism of either actor, but there is a certain role which Reeves if perfect for (it involves lots of brooding) and it was just painful to watch an actor of Wahlberg’s calibre struggling with the script). And it might have worked if the script had been scrapped and rewritten without using cliches. From conversations I overheard in the cinema foyer, the original game is much funnier and more self-aware. I am trying to make sense of the notes I made, but they were written in the dark two months ago, so I can only make out phrases like: “set ur machine guns to miss”, “how poss, that many ppl w that many bullets can miss one man that many times”, “the van helsing of its genre”, “eye of sauron” (I remember that scene) and “me and my eyebrows” (and I wish I could remember that one).

Burn After Reading – Um. It was like the Cohen Bros decided to make a Wes Anderson film. With sex toys. The acting was brilliant, of course – it was a stellar cast (Tilda Swinton as a pediatrician is truly terrifying) and there were some stunning moments of black comedy, but in spite of having a very funny last few lines the impression it left me with was rather bleak and pointless. I wanted to like it more than I did. Brad Pitt was excellent – he stole the show and given the rest of the cast that is a considerable achievement. He is such a gifted comic actor – I never liked him until I saw Snatch, and in that and Ocean’s 11 and Burn After Reading he has this measured, exuberant, boyish, charming, physical style of acting which is endearing and funny and never tips into gratuitous silliness.

November

Death Race – for what it was… not bad at all, actually.

The Duchess – Why can’t these people just make a Heyer? Seriously. Other than that, the movie was alright. Decently made, not painful, Ralph Fiennes manages to be chillingly sympathetic and Keira Knightly isn’t too bad (I still think that in Pride and Prejudice she was playing Jo March, not Lizzie Bennet).

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – Seen at the Japanese film festival. Time travel which I suspect might actually work. This is apparently the umpteenth remake of movies of the novel which I wouldn’t mind reading. I’m used to the less stylised Studio Ghibli animation, particularly of faces, so this style took me a while to get used to, but I did enjoy it.

Quantum of Solace – Judi Dench is fabulous. Also, I do not think this was a bad movie, although it wasn’t as good as the first. It had the feel of a second part, and Bond is still not quite Bond yet, but I am thinking of it as the second part of an origin/reboot story and I like origin stories. Also, the choreography of the aerial fight scene. But they do need more gadgets.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – I’d heard bad reviews for this, but it wasn’t. My sister and I had a great time. I suspect it is one of those movies that gets reviewed according to a misclassification. It is not a comedy in the American Comedy genre, or even in the British Comedy genre. It is a movie of a memoir which happens to be very funny without always needing to follow the cliches to point that out. It could have been painfully embarassing (social interaction is not the main character’s forte) but instead of bogging down in standard scenes the story and the characters move along. Not perfect but better than I expected and it had Christopher Plummer.

 

An Encyclopaedia of Improbable Games

I agonised for longer than necessary over the theme of my moleskine for the 42nd International Moleskine exchange, but I’m glad I did because I really like the theme I settled on: An Encyclopaedia of Improbable Games. I’ve cross-posted my entry from the exchange blog below.

I am tempted to make the actual game, because it was so much fun doing this part. But I also like just imagining the bits of the board beyond the edges, and what might happen in the game, and how much fun it would be to say, “Okay, bar fight! Isabella wins!”, or throw a Bad Luck Monkey at someone. I was laughing to myself most of the way home on Friday night, when I thought of it.

Crosspost: An Encyclopaedia of Improbable Games

I’m here! Late, but here! My moly is themed “An Encyclopaedia of Improbable Games”, and can be any sort of game: board games, card games, skipping games, dangerous games, bizarre, twisted, excessively complicated games – as long as they’re improbable!

Mine is a proposal for a board game called “Heroine Content – Remix!”, played with dice and turntables and cards and spinners and volcanoes. The title is more than a nod to the Heroine Content blog, and the game takes some of my favourite heroines and throws them into each others’ universes, because I do want to know how Isabella Bird would react if she met Han Solo, or how Anne of Green Gables would cope in a bar brawl in Tibet.

There is more detail if you go through to Flickr and click on “all sizes”, but here are some close-ups of the three visible figures and my favourite cards:

Now I want to make this game! Or at least some Bad Luck Monkey cards…

 

September Short Reviews of Everything Except Books

Tropic Thunder. (Last month’s, but I missed including it). One of those movies I can’t enjoy for a few reasons, but much of which I enjoyed. Most of that enjoyment centred around Robert Downey Jr – I love seeing actors playing “serious” characters mocking themselves (Extras has redeemed a few in my eyes), and it cracked me up watching him overdo the facial tics and movements I had noticed over several watchings of Iron Man.

Not Quite Hollywood. Well. The first fifth was sex scenes from ’70s movies and I didn’t actually look at the screen much. I am glad I stayed though, because the rest was brilliant, one of those generous, outrageous documentaries rich with clips and anecdotes and glimpses of pulp Australian movies I would really like to see (especially The Howling III: The Marsupials heheh), and “Quentin Tarantino: Fan” waxing lyrical over them. I can’t recommend the documentary, thanks to the first part, but I wouldn’t mind having a movie night based on some of the contents.

In Bruge. My sister said the language in this one didn’t count because of the accents. And it was a beautiful, bizarre, hilarious little movie – like Lock, Stock etc, but pretty.

Son of Rambow. A lovely, funny movie about two primary school boys, one raised strictly and without television (Plymouth Brethren) and one a delinquent who decide to film a sequel to Rambo. It was full of adventure, strange French exchange students and flying guide dogs, and felt in some respects like remembered children’s novels, but never like a children’s movie. It was set in the ’80s, too, and the best scene takes place in the senior common-room: it is shot just like all those parties to which previously uncool kids get invited and initiated into drugs and alcohol and tattoos, except the drugs were popping gum and scented erasers and the tattoos were temporary, and the dancing was to Michael Jackson. I would watch the movie again anyway, but also for this scene.

Picasso and His Collection. I went to see this on its last day, and am glad I did. I am less of a Picasso fan than an appreciator, but seeing influences and cross-references and sketches and exchanges between dozens of artists was fabulous. My favourite was the Bakst costume sketch (top left):

The Mummy 3. One good thing: Michelle Yeoh. Awesome, awesome fighting clothes. I want to have greying hair and take on zombie hordes and wear green silk culottes. The rest was dreadful. Oh, except the Yetis. They were unexpectedly kind of cool.

Wall-E. Really, really frustrating movie because I keep wanting to quote it and can’t. There was barely any dialogue! But intelligent (if occasionally problematic) and sweet and lovingly detailed: my favourite feature of Pixar films are the tiny surprises, Wall-E’s collections, the details of mechanisation, the beauty in small and ugly things.

Tattersalls Landscape Art Exhibition. This is on annually in the foyer of our  building and RachelT came over to spend a lunch hour wandering around with me, critiquing and admiring and getting lost in paintings and speculating what we would buy if we had a spare $10k, and what sort of architecture you would need to carry them off.

Holly Throsby Concert. Here are Deb and I – I was not quite as awake as I may seem in this picture. I do not have the constitution for concerts, and it was very nice that Holly Throsby told everyone to sit back down on the floor once she finally got on stage, so we could stay on our sofa and watch and I could try to stay awake by only closing one eye at a time, because it was very enjoyable and I like her music and it was a good concert.

 

August Short Reviews of everything except books, plus bonus rant about Taken

Yes, there is a new blog header. If you’re trying to work out the cryptic meaning, you should know it is a bit of scratchboard I was practising on. That doesn’t mean there can’t be a cryptic meaning (if you really want there to be). On to the main event:

Faithful Writer Conference: The second Faithful Writer conference, held at New College in Sydney, emphasised the “writing” more than the “faithful” this year – based on what I attended, it was a writing conference attended mostly by Christians, rather than a conference about Christian writing, which provided a contrast to last year and I hope they continue to mix it up in future. Mark Treddinick, the keynote speaker, was not a Christian but is a well-known writer, which created an interesting tension between his expertise and the audience’s lack of it, and vice versa. As a literary author, his emphasis was on the writing over the content: “the sentence is the thing”. Coming from a genre background, I am not used to this emphasis on writing over story – quite the opposite! Many of the guidelines, however, are the same. After lunch we broke into workshops. I went to Tony Payne’s “The Art of the Essay”. When he asked why we were there, I said I had spent too long in uni and was there to have my faith in essays as a worthwhile form restored, which he did. Also, we got to read Chesterton and Orwell, and that usually makes a good day even better. And I got to make new friends and catch up with old and eat doughnuts and drink strange drinks at dinner, so I am looking forward to next year. Karen and Rebecca did an excellent job of organising it and Karen very kindly put me up and fed me and took me to book-buying locations.

The Dark Knight: I reviewed this last month. And while I enjoyed it a second time (and parts of it held up *better*), I enjoyed the ‘Half-Pipe’ cinema at Mt Druitt even more. Big soft beanbags, very late at night after the conference, very hard to keep my eyes open.

Hellboy II: I had preview tickets to this and after some frantic calling around (I hate to see good tickets go to waste) Karissa came along. I enjoyed it much more than the first. Partly, I am certain, because of the big screen, but mostly because of del Toro. I’ve been muttering about how del Toro should make Neverwhere, but after seeing the Goblin Market in Hellboy II, I think he already has. So see it just for del Toro’s weirdly beautiful fantasies. And, you know, the rest of it wasn’t bad.

Persepolis: I saw this at the Brisbane Internation Film Festival with Kashelle and Aimee. I loved the book, and this was an excellent adaptation. Still episodic, but with changes as necessary, new scenes, missing scenes (I wish they could have put the footnotes in!). The art and animation were effortlessly true to the style and feeling of the book. See it if you can find it!

Ekka: No takers for my spare ticket! That is always a sad thing, and it feels a little odd to go to the Ekka alone. But it was a pleasant day, not too cold or too warm, and there were many things to eat (strawberries and cream, dagwood dogs, a neenish tart from the CWA stand) and stare at (wigs and cattle and utes and dogs and the very… forthright views of the judges of the contemporary art category) and draw (speed chainsaw contestants don’t hold poses very long) and buy (exotic chutney for my parents and a show bag for Deb).

Taken: The nice review is that it was a pretty good standard action movie, not too choppy in the filming or gory in the action. I will put the scathing review of the characterisation below, as it is quite long.

Bank Job: There are many movies I wish didn’t have sex scenes for my sake. This movie would have actually been improved by taking them out. Once it got them out of its system, it was a good, relentless, twisted, Brit/caper/crime story with a low-budget feel (I kept expecting Australian accents), one or two excellent performances, incompetent criminals you want to succeed mostly because everyone else out to get them is worse, and the bonus of being based on (inspired by) real events, which always makes slightly unbelievable storylines more enjoyable. I’m not looking at the characterisation in this one, because it didn’t creep me out quite as much as Taken.

 

June and July Short Movie Reviews

Obligatory Vanuatu reference: We did go to a series of increasingly bad movies at Namawan Cafe’s free moonlight cinema, but I did not review those here (everyone agreed Total Recall was better the first time). Still, for being away for three weeks, I still managed to see a fair few shows. And if you do have any questions about Vanuatu, or things you want me to talk about, feel free to let me know!

The Painted Veil: Should have been called “Love in the time of Cholera”, and did a very good job of making me lose all sympathy for Norton’s character over the course of the movie. Good acting, nice touching on some issues of colonialism, gorgeous opening credits.

Sex and the City: Actually a very good movie-of-a-show. But I dislike the show.

Turner to Monet – exhibition at the National Gallery: Landscape art exhibition. I did not know Monet painted snowscapes. Forget the waterlillies – the snowscapes are where it’s happening!

Prince Caspian: Way better than TLtW&tW, and though not perfect, I really liked that they didn’t need to resort to flashbacks and that they showed the children having some difficulties with having been grown up and powerful and now being children again, and especially the effect on Susan. Caspian was great, although I kept wanting him to say “You killed my father, prepare to die”, but I think Edmund was the best character.

Hulk: Better than the last rendition, in that the Hulk fit a bit better into his world. Still problematic, especially the end (but the showdown scene in Superhero movies usually is) but I think those problems are in the nature of the story, and Norton does damaged well. I loved the beginning – science from scratch, first principles, making do, what I probably erroneously think of as a steampunk aesthetic (or at least what attracts me to steampunk, do-it-yourself, Antarctic exploration and self-sufficiency handbooks).

Meet Dave: Ow. Um – not the worst Eddie Murphy has made?

Red Tree – Australian Chamber Orchestra: The first half was Shostakovich’s “String Quartet No. 15″ with images from Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, the second Yezerski and Tognetti’s “Red Tree” with Gondwana Voices and images from The Red Tree. The first half was alright. I wasn’t particularly stirred by the music and the images chosen were disjointed and statically presented. The second half, however, was brilliant – soaring voices, incredible close-ups of paint strokes and images so that I felt like falling into paintings and going home to read The Red Tree with a magnifying glass.

Dark Knight: I feel I was expected to like this more than I did. It was very good, and I can’t fault too many things (those I picked up on the first time bore out the second). Ledger and Oldman were both brilliant and I admired how the story kept rolling relentlessly forward. But the ethical dilemmas and mature philosophical questions occasionally tilted a little too far into angst for my taste. I’m more a fan of Commissioner Gordon (the true hero of Gotham) and of other characters who just get the job done.

Hancock: First half: brilliant riff on superhero genre. Second half: okay superhero movie.

Mamma Mia: My parents and Aimee and I saw this (my dad’s choice) and it was just fun. No, the story isn’t blindingly brilliant, no the singing isn’t mindboggling. But it’s all about roaming over Greek islands singing “Dancing Queen” and having a good and carefree time, and we did. My dad sang along. My mother and I cried. I found Shapely Prose’s review very lively and entertaining and it points out many of the reasons the movie does work (but I must include a language warning).

Scheherezade: A Middle Eastern cultural day as part of the festival of Brisbane. Small but colourful and with good food and Balkan dancing, and I sketched and Aimee danced and I sat on a carpet which was wet from the grass beneath and spent the rest of the day wearing my jacket around my waist instead of my arms which were cold.

X-Files – I want to believe: that this could have been a good movie. But it was a very B movie and unrelieved by almost everything that endeared me to the series, and even Skinner’s appearance didn’t help (much). Pretending it bears no relation to the show, it was an alright B movie, if you like groaning every time your predictions are correct.