Andrei Rublev

"How long will this go on?"
"I don't know. Forever, most likely"

Principly remembered today as the film that brought Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky to worldwide fame, Andrei Rublev is a biopic of the 15th century Russian painter of the same name. I can't say I was at all familiar with who Andrei Rublev was before seeing this film, but it's not really neccessarily a film about this historical figure anyway. Tarkovsky has created a chronicle of medieval life, capturing the fatility of the dark ages and creating a simulacrum of the era that feels like an eerie time-travelling portal into an imagined past. Realistically, we can't ever know what this long-past age was truly like - we're so removed from it by time and knowledge that all we can do is infer from sources that aren't alwats 100% reliable. But even with this in mind... I don't know, I just feel like this is the most likely representation of the middle ages I've ever seen. Everything about it feels disturbingly right.

Andrei Rublev (Anitoli Solonitsyn) was an painter for the church, his talent for religious iconography raised him highly in the esteem of his peers. Tarkovsky revisits Rublev's life and times at different points with such a complete lack of majesty or reverence that it's like the film itself took a vow against pride. Rublev is a humble and pious figure, unassuming despite history's remembrance of him, and he even spends the latter parts of the film in a self-imposed muteness. It's a vow taken as much for his own sins as the sins that permeate his world at his every turn.

It's quite a long film, running at around three and a half hours, and shot in a kind of black and white that's so dreary it seems almost as if the film were made during the years that it's set. I say this as a warning; the film is a heavy undertaking in more than one sense of the word. It isn't boring but it has a pace of it's own, almost hypnotic and transformational, like a mass.

Andrei Rublev begins with a prologue depicting a man attempting to invent the hot air balloon, a strange sequence as it starts almost without a context. Some characters are shown racing against time to commit a blasphemous act in the name of progress as their detractors bay for them to stop. The balloon actually launches with its passenger, prompting a series of freewheeling aerial shots at once both disorientating and godly, and eventually comes down to Earth to kill its pioneering pilot. It's an Icarus-like moment that establishes the nature of the middle ages - a world ruled by chaos, fear, enterprise and God.


I made a few notes on the film and its chapters, so I'll label the rest of this article accordingly. I advise you not to read on if you want to avoid spoilers...

The Jester: Silence falls in an alehouse after three monks (including Rublev) enter it to find shelter. Observing the awkward silence and the lewd antics of the resident clown, one remarks, "God sent priests, but the devil sent jesters". The clown is punished accordingly (in an unconnected act) by soldiers after the holy men leave, reinforcing the values of the era. It's a rough and miserable land of violence and ignorance, and there are at least two ways to interpret what just happened. The first is that the doctrine of the Church gives an idealistic creedence to the tyrany of those in charge, vindicating their power. The second is that this is a dangerously ignorant time where the strictness of religion helped keep chaos at bay. Much of the subsequent screentime continues to examine this theme.

Theophanes the Greek: We're given a sense of who Andrei Rublev is via the thoughts and impressions of one of his contemporaries. It helps place Rublev into the context of his time, and also alludes to the film's ongoing themes relating to intellectualism and fate. This section also helps open up the main narrative strands of the film, elaborating on the characters of Kirill (Ivan Lapikov) and Danil (Nikolai Grinko) - Andrei's fellow monks. Kirill in particular is jealous of the credit that Rublev gets, and leaves their monastery rather dramatically - citing the institution's un-Christian adoption of capitalistic ambitions as the reason behind this schism. Tarkovsky presents it all rather undramatically though, it's filmed dispassionately, as if God is watching petty human events and doesn't attach any measure of importance to them.

This part of the film ends with a recreation of Jesus' crucifixion (reset in the harsh Russian winter), whilst Rublev talks about his faith and view of Jesus. It's an effective coda to the chapter because a lot of this part of the film focuses on other characters talking about Rublev's fame, yet it ends with Rublev himself demonstrating his humility and preoccupation with religion. In a way, this foreshadows the path of Rublev's life.

The Holiday: Rublev and his cohort get caught up in and observe a Paganistic sex ritual. It ends badly for the Pagans when they're discovered by soldiers, and Rublev is left to meditate on the sinful nature of the sex and violence he has just witnessed and was almost a part of. I believe the point of this sequence is to help the viewer step outside of the middle ages and think about the era's values... which is worse? The free love of the Pagans? Or the violence visited upon them for their hereticism?


The Last Judgment: Rublev is ordered (commissioned) to paint The Last Judgment inside a new cathedral by the Grand Prince (Yuri Nazarov) but he finds himself unable to conform to someone else's ideas as he prefers to follow his own artistic instincts when painting. I guess this could be a metaphor for Tarkovsky's work as a director in the Soviet Union - trying to make projects under the strict eye of the State Committee for Cinematography (who would interfere with Andrei Rublev's distribution due to thematic content that didn't gel with the current political atmosphere of the USSR). Rublev's inability to move forward with The Last Judgment becomes symbolic of the frustration that must've been part and parcel of medieval life.

Worryingly, we also see (in flashback) what the Grand Prince does with artists once they've finished the work he commissions - he puts their eyes out so that no one else can ever ask them to replicate what they've done for him. I don't really want to say that this is a further metaphor for the plight of the artists in any era, but I'm sure something along those lines could be read into it.

The Raid: Political machinations between the Grand Prince and his ambitious brother lead to a brutal attack on the town of Vladimir by marauding Tartar warriors. This is probably the most disturbing part of the entire film, a long and drawn out orgy of callousness and cruelty that sees Rublev's adherence to his faith sorely tested. This chapter infamously depicts the onscreen murder of a horse* and also making memorable use of slow motion (such as the scene where Foma [Mikhail Kononov] is shot by an arrow before falling into a stream). Prior to all this we're also introduced to Durochka (Irma Rausch), a mute and mentally disabled young woman who embodies the concept of the 'holy fool'. Whilst in 'The Jester' and 'The Holiday' chapters we see the way religion is used as a tool for power in predominantly violent ways, the character of Durochka balances this view by showing the way religion could also be used a power to teach and protect. Alas, it's Durochka who indirectly puts Rublev in breach of his principles though, as he's forced to kill a Tartar in order to prevent her rape.

Like a lot of Andrei Rublev, 'The Raid' ponders the question of whether people are inherently good or inherently evil. It's not something that answered explicitly on screen, but the actions of various characters (especially Rublev) help explore this idea in trials of evil and sin such as the Tartar attack. The medieval setting is the perfect canvas for this ageless question because it sees the majority of people reduced to their baser instincts via opression, ignorance and hardship. It's no coincidence that Tarkovsky lets the camera wander towards animals on more than one occasion either - they too only know their baser instincts; yet do we interpret their actions in terms of good or evil? The depictions of cruelty towards animals throughout the film seems to suggest that they're more sinned-against than sinners. Or perhaps not sinners at all.


The Silence: We revisit the monastery from the film's beginning, and see a very weary and battered Kirill returning to beg for sanctuary and forgiveness. Unlike the prodigal son, his return isn't so much welcomed as barely tolerated. Kirill has been heavily damaged by life outside the Church though, citing the impossibility of living in the secular world without sin as cause for his suffering. By this point of the film Rublev is firmly observing his vow of silence due to his own sin of murder. Both characters demonstrate the corruption of their ideals, with I guess can be seen as a metaphor for art itself... that it can never exist in a vaccuum and must always reflect the outside world in one way or another. Ironically, this chapter also shows Durochka departing Rublev's company to become the wife of a passing Tartar warrior.

The Bell: The final chapter of the film, and a sequence that works as a miniature story independent from the film's narrative (though still reflects its themes) and also shows the catalyst for Rubleg's rebirth as an artist. Boriska (Nikolay Burlyaev), an orphaned adolescent, exagerrates about his ability to make bells in order to gain protection and food from the Grand Prince's troops. This sees him led into a situation where the Prince 'commissions' him to make a giant bell, and he has no choice but to follow through with his claims.

Boriska is gambling because he doesn't actually know the 'secret' of bellmaking, and will be beheaded if he fails. He doesn't really know any better though, and takes more risks than another might - resulting in great art. He breaks down and weeps at his success, the threat of death and the accompanying stress is a big cross to bear for one so young, and it takes its toll on him only once he is finished. It's a significant and moving allegory that shows Andrei Rublev's real purpose - it's not so much a biopic as a recreation of the times in which he lived and hwo this era informed his work. The bell is a symbolic achievement of something in a harsh and unforgiving time where so many dreams go unfulfilled (such as the ballooon-flight, or Rublev's painting of The Last Judgment) due to tyranny and disorder.

Rublev witnesses this feat over adversity and is inspired to finally let go of his vow of silence and start painting again. We don't actually see any of his paintings during the film's narrative but it ends with a montage of over a dozen of his works. After Andrei Rublev gives us an impermeable sense of context we finally see a collection of the artist's paintings in part and in whole, the film's only sequence in colour.

Tarkovsky's style of filming helps reinforce this sense of context, he establishes a grand sphere of action and interaction in chapters like 'The Raid' and 'The Silence' by moving the camera around in a fairly unself-conscious manner, visiting people in turn or following a character (such as Durochka) as they move around in the environment he's created. Another good example is the bell-smelting scene, with Boriska moving around the smithery as men toil. It's not the same kind of tour-de-force that the epic tracking shots in Goodfellas and Atonement are, it's something more natural and humble than that. It's something that helps establish Tarkovsky's vision of the medieval world as a real and viewable place, an indelible glimpse into another (and thankfully far away) time.


* Footnote about the horse getting killed. It's for real. I'm still not really sure how I feel about this. Some artists (like Tarkovsky) might able to move past the treatment of this poor animal in favour of the end result (the images we see on screen), whereas some might be less dedicated to the 'artistic' side of their job and would never imagine killing an animal onscreen in the name of realism. I guess viewers probably fall into these two categories as well, or (like me) are undecided.

For those who haven't seen this film, they torture a horse by pushing it down some stairs and then shoving a spear in it. I found it fairly distressing to watch (mainly because I knew in advance that it was real). Tarkovsky and his crew seemed to think it was excuse enough to use a horse that was already marked for 'destruction' (they also used a gun to put it out of it's misery after the filming of the scene had finished). Now, is the artistic value of such a sequence justification for the mistreatment of an animal? These days it isn't, especially when so much can be achieved by special effects, but Tarkovsky gained a certain level of infamy from that scene and it's part of an overall ethic that makes that film so memorable. Maybe it's something that can never be definitively excused and is entirely in the eye of the beholder. As I said, I'm not sure how I feel about it, I think the fact that the film was made about 45 years ago desensitises me to it. I don't particularly like that, but there you go.

DIRECTOR: Andrei Tarkovsky
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky. Based on the life and times of Andrei Rublev.
KEY ACTORS: Anitoli Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolai Grinko, Nikolai Sergeyev, Irma Rausch, Nikolay Burlyaev, Mikhail Kononov, Yuri Nazarov

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Seventh Seal is an earlier but equally significant film that deals with religious themes in a medieval setting.
- The famed filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein also made some films about the middle ages in Russia, notably; Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible Part 1 and Part 2.
- A more recent acclaimed film about Russian history is the visually arresting Russian Ark.
- Also see Heart of Glass, a film by Werner Herzog that deals with the finer points of art in an historical setting.
- Andrei Tarkovsky's other most famous films are Solyaris and Stalker.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won the FIPRESCI Prize.

In The Company of Men

This indie flick was fairly well-received (critically) when it first came out and helped launch the career of Aaron Eckhart. I can't say I really like it all that much, but I can see where it's coming from. It was obvious from the outset that this it was made on a fairly small budget... it's amateurish in part, features little in the way of dynamic camera work and seems quite vague at times.

The premise of the film is interesting, to say the least. Two men (Eckhart and Matt Molloy), tired of female rejection and away on business for six weeks, decide to wreak their revenge on women by focusing their manly attentions on the weakest, plainest, most unloved female they can find, and then dumping her after bringing her to as high a point as possible. They find their victim in the form of Christine (Stacy Edwards), a deaf woman who works for their business.

The film works like a series of sketches, ranging from the blackly funny and surprisingly realistic to the expositionary and pointlessly dull. The film is funniest when focusing on the cocky antics of Eckhart's character Chad. He's the more confident of the two men, especially in relation to their workplace - hilariously satirising inner-business and office politics with his antics. Unfortunately, the film becomes very dull in other parts, as if it wanted to make a point of not being a complete comedy. The acting is nothing exceptional, and the plot also seems to lose it's way a bit towards the end.

I'm at a loss as to why I complimented the film's funny parts that much. It makes it sound like it's almost worth seeing. It's not, it's dull and amateurish, and not the brilliant satire it wants to be. The film has some interesting points to make about 'the company of men', but I feel that any message it wants to make is undermined by it's weaknesses.

Director Neil LaBute made his name on this film and has gone on to be a hack of the most supreme order, directing films like the Nicolas Cage-starring remake of The Wicker Man and the American version of Death at a Funeral. I can say this completely objectively because the bulk of this review was written years before he even made these films (back in 2003), and I'm only just adding this reflection now in my 2011 revision of this review... so I didn't like him back then, and time has proven me to be right!

DIRECTOR: Neil LaBute
WRITER/SOURCE: Neil LaBute
KEY ACTORS: Aaron Eckhart, Matt Molloy, Stacy Edwards

RELATED TEXTS:
- This could be viewed as part of a late 1990s spate of dark indie-ish films examining dysfunctionalism and relationships with extreme black humour... other (better) films that come to mind are Happiness, Swimming with Sharks, Buffalo '66, American Beauty, Clerks and Punch-Drunk Love.

AWARDS
Independent Spirit - won Best Debut Performance (Eckhart) and Best First Screenplay. Also nominated for Best Female Lead (Stacy Edwards) and Best First Feature.
Sundance Film Festival - won Filmmakers Trophy (Dramatic). Also nominated for Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic).

Fantasm

Sexploitation doesn't get much more obvious than Fantasm, a series of wordless set-ups leading to sex and nudity. The central premise is that this film is a documentary aiming to help female viewers get off by visualising their fantasies. This means that we're shown ten seperate soft-porn scenes, with each scenario introduced by a supposed academic (John Bluthal) giving cod-psychological explanations behind the fantasies being enacted. There isn't much of a plot, and there isn't much reason to watch it unless you're looking for vaguely humourous retro (soft) erotica.

As far as justification for putting erotica on screen goes, it's pretty feeble (and dull) stuff. The filmmakers know they're not kidding anyone so the professor-character (the only person to really have any actual lines in the whole film) is very tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, these bits go on for too long and are quite unfunny... the only bit that made me laugh was when he first wanders onto the screen while a woman pleasures herself. After a brief moment she suddenly notices that he's there, gets embarrassed and leaves. It seemed to suggest the film was going to strike a fairly successful mix between parody and sophisticated sex stuff, but the rest of the film doesn't really see any further interaction between the professor and the fantasy-sequences. He seems to be a satirical character but as I said, it just isn't funny because he goes on and on and what he says is mostly irrelevant.

The sexual liberation of post-1960s Australia meant that the Australian film industry opened up to a lot of projects that bordered on the pornographic (see the excellent documentary Not Quite Hollywood for more information on this wave of filmmaking). Nearly all of these films, whilst titillating, didn't really take themselves seriously. Fantasm therefore has no real pretensions about being anything othan exploitative - it's all shot in soft, bright light and even features international pornstar John Holmes in one of the fantasy scenarios. Some of the fantasies are a little eyebrow-raising (EG. One white woman's rape fantasy involves a big black man) but the suggestion that the film makes about helping women is pointedly ridiculous - the camera work is largely staged in favour of focusing on the females in each of the scenes, suggesting that Fantasm is aimed primarily at heterosexual males (not that this should surprise anyone).

Fantasm is a very 1970s movie with very 1970s music and very little in the way of substance if you're judging it by the criteria usually used to review mainstream films. It's definitely a film of its time and it's hard to see the Australian film industry producing anything remotely like it now. I was expecting something a little bit more plot-centric or funny, but it's actually barely watchable as far as narrative films go and will probably only be of interest to die-hard ozploitation fans or people with a fetish for borderline pornography made in the 1970s.

DIRECTOR: Richard Franklin
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Ross Dimpsey, based on an idea by Antony I. Ginnane.
KEY ACTORS: John Bluthal, John Holmes, Ushi Dicardo, Clement St. George, Al Ward, Roxanne Brewer, Maria Welton, Shayne, Con Covert, Gretchen Rudolph, Rene Bond, Al Williams, Dee Dee Levitt, Maria Arnold.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Followed by a sequel, Fantasm Comes Again.
- Director Richard Franklin previously made the sex-comedy The True Story of Eskimo Nell. After Fantasm he would go on to make the now-classic ozploitation thrillers Patrick and Road Games.

Operation Pacific

Although made some time after the war, Operation Pacific pulsl no punches when it comes to depicting the Japanese as outright villains in comparison to John Wayne's all-American crew of torpedo-men. This film acts as a propadganda piece that pays tribute to these unsung naval heroes of the pacific theatre. Men who battled adverse conditions such as dodgy torpedos that either blew up in mid-water or didn't blow up at all. In opposition to their valiant underdog-efforts, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour is labelled a 'sneak' attack, and the despicable 'Japs' even dare to fly a white flag as a lure for a trap.

In typical John Wayne fashion, he plays an officer (but not the captain) on a WWII submarine. Being an officer means that he plays a suitably authoritative figure but as he's not the captain it also means he gets to be characterised as 'one of the men'. Also typical of Wayne's military roles, he's thoroughly unlucky in love. Here he plays a divorcee whose baby son died, still actively clinging to his ex-wife (played by a very young Patricia Neal) who left him because he wouldn't open up to her. If you thought it didn't get much more stereotypical than that, Wayne's character is even called 'Duke' (his real-life nickname), making this role perhaps one of his most transparent.

In contrast to the 'sneaky' Japs, the American sailors are beyond heroic. When they're not exasperatedly trying to get their torpedos to work, they're rescuing and babysitting nuns and oprhans. They're so heroic that they even leave knocked out Japanese soldiers alive if they can help it. The latter parts of the film take this a step further by examining the harsh fighting decisions Duke has to make after losing men... he does what needs to be done, no matter how hard. The propanda subtext also ensures these deaths are tragedised in the slightest - it's made clear that these deaths are 'okay' because the men died in service to their country.

Whilst Wayne's casting and character isn't much of a stretch for him, his performance isn't lazy in the slightest. By the early 1950s Wayne was an expert in minimalism and underplaying... witness the scene where an excited young sailor notes the destruction of an enemy sub a little too enthusiastically. He looks to Wayne and the music drops out as he sees Wayne's stony face of disapproval, and then Wayne just winks at him and the tension suddently disappears. I also enjoyed the scene where Wayne has to bail his men out of a Pacific Island prison cell after they have a rowdy night on the town. I laughed at his emotional groan of "Ohhh no" when he first sees the state of his men, and then he smirks as he tries to talk his way out of the fine for disorderly conduct.

Basically, Operation Pacific is two stories in one - the story of Duke's troubled romance with a military nurse (Neal) and that of the action seen by his submarine. There isn't much more to it then that, there's a cool bit where the sub ramraids an enemy ship, and I had to laugh at the bit where the sailors watched a submarine movie starring Cary Grant. I don't really know why, but I just found it amusing... I guess it's a bit like the scene in Last Action Hero where Arnold Schwarzenegger sees the cardboard cut-out of Stallone as the Terminator.

DIRECTOR: George Waggner
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by George Waggner, with technical advice from Admiral Charles A. Lockwood (commander of American submarine forces in WWII)
KEY ACTORS: John Wayne, Patricia Neal, Ward Bond, Scott Forbes, Philip Carey, Martin Milner, William Campbell.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Maritime WWII films are a whole subgenre unto themselves. Limiting myself to just those that star John Wayne, there's also The Fighting Seabees, They Were Expendable, The Flying Leathernecks, The Sea Chase and In Harm's Way.
- George Waggner and John Wayne also previously teamed up for The Fighting Kentuckian.

Super 8

My anticipation for this movie was completely off the scale. There are certain images and sounds and styles that will push everybodies buttons, we call this nostalgia and it's a completely subjective thing, and for me Super 8's trailer did this in a very big way. It called to mind all the great adventure films I grew up on in the 1980s... Explorers, The Goonies, Flight of the Navigator, Gremlins, E.T.; a lot of stuff by guys like Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante. And this is obviously the point behind this film, it's been widely publicised as this kind of experience and the creative team behind it (J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg) have made no secrets about it. So it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. But this is my review and I'm here to tell that this was EXACTLY my cup of tea.

Its 1979 and Joe (Joel Courtney) is the son of a small-town deputy sheriff, Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler). Joe's mother has recently died in a workplace accident and he or his father haven't dealt with it very well, so Joe spends all his time with his friends. Joe's friend Charles (Riley Griffith) is making an amateur film on a super 8 camera for a local junior filmmaking competition, and they convince a girl from their school, Alice (Elle Fanning) to appear in it. They sneak out one night to do some shooting near a railway line, which puts them in the wrong place at the wrong time, and all hell breaks loose. A military train is intentionally derailed by their schoolteacher (Glynn Turman), causing the release of something large, inhuman and incredibly destructive. Soon the army are crawling all over town whilst a series of weird phenomena beging occuring, and people start going missing.

There's some criticism that Super 8 is fairly predictable once you get to the halfway mark, but I'd argue that some films set out to achieve qualities other than originality. Quite frankly, if the selling point of your film is to pay homage to a certain era of filmmaking then you probably aren't going to be overly concerned with doing something different. Normally I'd say this was a waste of time, but in the case of Super 8 it gets so much right that it's hard to get hung up on things like that. I never felt like I could really see exactly where the film was going (except for maybe one or two emotional beats) and it was just so damn exhilarating and goosebump-y that I didn't care if the monster turned out to be a combination of certain aspects of late 70s and early 80s Americana/sci-fi.


Things that I think felt perfect or incredibly well done...

• The young actors playing the kids. No precociousness, no inane pop-culture references, no unrealistic dialogue or poor acting... the kids were all spot on, invoking a golden era of early adolescence where the worst things kids did was say 'shit' or blow up some firecrackers. I'm probably oversimplifying it, but there's a certain innocence captured through the performances of the young protagonists and the sort of dialogue they're given, and Elle Fanning and Joel Courtney were particularly good.
  
• The dialogue is great too... there's always something going in every scene in the sense that while people talk in the foreground other characters are also doing and saying things in the background. It just feels real, and this is a big element of how Abrams was able to (seemingly effortlessly) capture the feel of his homage-films so well.
• The subplots involving the fractured relationships between Joe and his father, and Alice and her father, gives Super 8 an emotional punch that's remniscent of Spielberg's emotive work without going too far over the top. You could argue that these themes also extend to the relationship between the monster and the military, but I wouldn't want to elaborate on that too much for fear of spoiling the film.
  
• The atmosphere is so wonderfully evocative of another time that it begs the question: why don't we get more action/thriller/sci-fi period pieces? I guess it's a double-edged sword... I think I'd only want more of this kind of thing if it was done as well as Super 8, which it probably wouldn't be.

Anyway, this review is a bit rough as I only saw this film about an hour ago and therefore haven't had as much of a chance to collect my thoughts. I just wanted to say how wonderful it is and if (like me) you're a child of the 1980s then you'll love it.

DIRECTOR: J. J. Abrams
WRITER/SOURCE: J. J. Abrams
KEY ACTORS: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Noah Emmerich, Riley Griffith, Glynn Turman.

RELATED TEXTS:
- As mentioned before, this project was highly influenced by a certain style of film popular from the late 1970s right through to the early 1990s. Examples that have been cited included: E.T., The Goonies, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Stand By Me, Close Encountrs of the Third Kind, The Thing (the 1980s remake), Alien, Slumber Party Massacre and Scanners.
- I also saw a bit of these films in there too: Explorers, Flight of the Navigator, Monster Squad, D.A.R.Y.L. and My Science Project.
- Also see Abrams two other big sci-fi films: Cloverfield and Star Trek for more of his lens-flarey goodness.

The Catcher in the Rye

It's hard to review such a well-known and widely-read classic as The Catcher in the Rye with the intention of saying something worth reading. The bottom line is, it's a classic for a reason, and I give it a glowing recommendation. I should probably say a little bit more than that if this is to be classed as a review.

Since its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has proven to be an enormously controversial and influential work in the realm of pop culture... it's resonance can still be felt very much today in films (The Good Girl, Ordinary People) and books (Vernon God Little) alike. Its depiction of teen trauma and disaffection was on the cusp of a wave of rebellion that would come crashing down in the 1950s (the rock n roll generation, Rebel Without a Cause) and forever change the dynamics of the western family, generational interaction and adolescent expectations of society. It's been overdone now but it's cliched because it's true and the book is the seed of this mighty tree of discontent that broke through the concrete. Nonetheless, the anti-social behaviour of The Catcher in the Rye's narrator, Holden Caulfield, has ensured that the book remains eternally on America's 'Most Frequently Challenged Books' list (Most banned books).

As I said, The Catcher in the Rye concerns one Holden Caulfield, an embittered young man who tells us his story in the first person, detailing his sorry misadventures after running away from prep school and telling us how 'goddamn crumby' and 'phoney' everything is. It's a compelling voice, indelibly teenaged; embarrassing and defiant all at once. You might wonder where it's all going (I did) but once the wool is pulled away from our eyes and we're forced to see the narrator's world view in a less subjective manner it all becomes very clear.

I found myself very moved, especially in light of what the book's title refers to - it literally brought a lump to my throat, something I think only one or two other books have ever done before, and I was left reeling! I was genuinely surprised by how this book affected me. It truly is one of the great works of modern western literature. Go find a copy!

The Holcroft Covenant

"You mustn't speak to strangers, it could be harmful to their health"

Michael Caine has a long and distinguished tradition of taking on film roles purely in exchange for money, resulting in some rather average films elevated solely by his presence. The Holcroft Covenant is your typically sensationalist Third Reich-from-beyond-the-grave political thriller, rendered extra boring by its B-grade look and some very unenthusiastic direction from thriller-veteran John Frankenheimer (who really should have known better). In fact, everyone involved should have known better - the film isn't ridiculously bad, it's just very mediocre due to everyone in it not giving a shit.

Caine plays Noel Holcroft, the secret son of a Nazi officer. In fact, it's so secret that Holcroft himself doesn't even know that his dad was a Nazi. Anyway, it turns out that said Nazi teamed up some of his pals at the end of WWII and hid $4.5 billion in stolen cash, to which Holcroft and some other descendents are the heirs. These descendents must all team up in order to legally gain access to the money, with Holcroft being told by a mysterious messenger named Manfredi (Michael Lonsdale) that this money has been squirrelled away for them so that the long-dead Nazi officers can make amends for their war crimes. Of course, it turns out that some evil dudes want this money for themselves and (unsurprisingly) there's a plot to resurrect the Third Reich.

If you're going to sit through this movie then here are some things for you to expect...

• Bad 80s thriller music achieved via cheap and outdated synth-strings.
• Illogical casting... Caine is meant to be about 20-30 years younger than Michael Lonsdale, yet in reality Lonsdale is only about three years older than Caine.
• Lots of dutch angles to let you know that you are watching a thriller. In fact, there is one of these nearly every three or four minutes.
• An inane and simple-minded script. Holcroft is meant to be a regular guy and yet when he's offered $4.5 billion to fix the world's problems he doesn't entertain any thoughts of doing anything else with the money. Also, the script repeatedly gets hung up on irrelevant details in an attempt to be realistic rather than memorable, so we get gormless dialogue about men being known to carry umbrellas and a lot of boring patter between characters that goes nowhere.
• A very poor sense of dramatic timing. Witness the big dramatic moment when Holcroft must come to terms with killing someone, accompanied by the atrocious score.

The basic thrust behind the story seems to be that Holcroft is this everyman character (an architect) suddenly thrust into a world of espionage that he's not equipped for. I had to laugh at him not being able to drive, he comes across as less of a 'regular' guy and more of an indignant imbecile. He's meant to be American but Caine doesn't even attempt an accent (I guess the paycheck wasn't high enough, or he just didn't take it seriously). A lot of the script points towards him being a wisecracking American under pressure, but the way that he's prone to frequent bursts of disbelief wears thin pretty quickly. I mean, he seems to outright disbelieve that people want to kill him, even though someone tries to kill him right at the beginning of the film.


I suspect that some parts of the film were meant to be funny, like the oldboy MI6 character, but none of it really lands in an amusing fashion on the screen. One of the characters actually warns Holcroft, "Please do not attempt to do anything too vividly cinematic", and I'm thinking someone must have said this to John Frankenheimer too. The love interest starts describing Holcroft at one point as "So kind, so brave, so creative" but there's absolutely zero evidence of this on the screen. The Holcroft Covenant is a flat and dull turkey.

DIRECTOR: John Frankenheimer
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by George Axelrod, John Hopkins and Edward Anhalt. Based on a novel by Robert Ludlum.
KEY ACTORS: Michael Caine, Anthony Andrews, Victoria Tennant, Michael Lonsdale, Lilli Palmer, Mario Adorf.

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Holcroft Covenant, a 1979 thriller-novel by Robert Ludlum.
- See also any number of espionage-thrillers featuring a modern Nazi menace, usually based on pulp spy novels. Includes: The Odessa File, The Boys From Brazil, Marathon Man and The Formula.
- John Frankenheimer first made his name with the cold war thriller The Manchurian Candidate. He also dipped into the thriller genre with the films Seven Days in May, French Connection II, Black Sunday, The Fourth War and Ronin.

GoldenEye

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)

The Mission
007 (Pierce Brosnan) fails to prevent the theft of a state-of-the-art stealth helicopter while keeping tabs on former Soviet agent Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen). This allows a bitter Russian General (Gottfried John) to commandeer a Russian tracking station in order to take control of a legendary weapons satellite known as GoldenEye. Bond sees the heat signal of a possible survivor at the tracking station and goes to find her in order to prevent GoldenEye from being used again.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
A new Bond for a new era! Brosnan is perfect casting and gives the role a new lease of life... he's more Moore than Connery, and is a lot more expressive and charismatic than Dalton. As Bond he's cheeky, self-assured and reckless - taking great enjoyment in dangerously dragracing a female driver around winding mountain roads. To paraphrase M (Judi Dench), he's best summed up as a 'misogynistic dinosaur' with 'boyish charms'.

Now that it's the 1990s we get a bit more context to Bond's characterisation - he says that violence and action is what keeps him alive, though Natalya (Izabella Scorupco) perceptively respondes that it's also what keeps hm alone. We also hear about his chidlhood for the first time from another character; he was oprhaned after his parents died in a climbing accident. Despite all these dark allusions though he remains unquestioningly loyal to MI6 during a period of shifting allegiences for England. He also seems endlessly amused by the concept of female equality and is completely resistant to modern ideologies like psychology and female empowerment. There's also a suggestion that he compensates for his failures by taking solace in women and an excessive lifestyle. Surprisingly, he has no qualms about knocking out a female enemy.

He plays baccarat and can pick regional Russian accents, and is brave and quick-thinking enough to freefall after a nosediving plane in order to use it to get to safety. Tellingly, he looks lost when Natalya talks computers - suggesting that he's starting to fall behind the times (despite previous films always depicting his computer know-how as being up to date).

Villainy
The mastervillain behind the scenes in GoldenEye is Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), formerly known as 006 and the bitter flipside to James Bond's loyalty to the crown. He's like the henchman and villain rolled into one - as action-orientated as Bond but also smart enough to orchestrate a grand plan. His base of operation is a radar complex hidden under a lake (echoes of You Only Live Twice) and his plan is to electronically steal the contents of the Bank of England then wipe all traces of it by using GoldenEye. The nature of GoldenEye's impact also means that England will be plunged into chaos by deactivating all electronically-based technology. Bean is more than effective in the role, essentially playing James Bond's evil twin, and it's a cool twist on the nature of Bond villains that fits in with GoldenEye's updating of the franchise.

In cahoots with 006 is General Ourumov, a renegade Russian officer apparently disatisfied with the outcome fof the Cold War. He's pretty much a retread of General Orlov from Octopussy, and is mainly present in the first half of the film to throw the viewer off the scent of 006 being the main bad guy. Ourumov is flanked by the Georgian femme fatale Xenia Onatopp, played with a sexualised sadistic relish by Famke Janssen in her breakout role. The character is more than a little remniscent of Fatima Blush from Never Say Never Again but probably better-executed. She gets off on violence and memorably tortures and crushes her victims with her thighs, and as if that allusion to sex predation isn't convincing enough she also smokes cigars, gambles and likes fast cars.

Alan Cumming also appears in a breakout performance, playing the Russian traitor Boris - a sleazy and geeky computer hacker with tickets on himself. He helps set up the theft of GoldenEye, and even has his own catchphrase, "I am invincible!" (also his last words).

Buddies and Babes
The most notable difference in this category with GoldenEye is that M and Moneypenny have been (thankfully) recast and given some stronger characterisation. Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) only has one scene but she makes more of an impression than any Moneypenny scenes from the last two decades... it's a surprise to 007 (and us) that she has a love life outside of MI6, and this development is used to give the writers cause to explore the 'new' concept (well, new to the world of James Bond) of sexual equality.

A further extension of this is the brilliant casting of Judi Dench as M. Unlike the previous M (Robert Brown) it's made clear that this is a new characte. She's new to her job, having come from an accountant-like background, and she and Bond are only just starting to get to know each other. She's icy and hard, referred to by her underlings as "the evil queen of numbers" due to her reputation as a budget-conscious bean-counter, but prefers to see herself as careful and methodical. She drinks bourbon (whereas her predecessor drank cognac) and warns Bond against pursuing any personal vendettas.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is as gleeful and tetchy as ever, providing some glowing comic relief. Bond is also helped by CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), a Hawaiian shirt-wearing Felix substitute, and Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), a dodgy Russian gangster who's willing to put aside his differences with Bond if the price is right.

The main Bond girl here is Natalya, a Russian IT specialist who gets trapped inside the GoldenEye tracking station after it's destroyed. She's cute but unglamourous, a brainy/girl-next-door type who provides a more homely contrast to Janssen's over-the-top villainess. The production team resist making her an outdated 'women's lib' type, she's unsuited to an action-0rientated lifestyle but also capable enough to not come across as a wet blanket.

Locations
The three main locales for GoldenEye are the former USSR, Monaco and Cuba. The Cuba scenes are just jungle scenes and were actually filmed in Puerto Rico, and Monaco's scenes (in Monte Carlo) aren't really focused on that much. The film is most notable for the use of real Russian locations for the first time in the franchise's history - made possible by the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's dissolution. Most of the on-location filming for Russia takes place in St. Petersburg.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
The main gadget in terms of plot-use is an exploding pen activated by a pre-determined amount of clicks. Bond also uses a laser cutter and a belt with a suspension wire in it that allows him to swing from the ceiling. Q gives him a car with stinger missiles behind the headlights but GoldenEye bucks the trend by having this gadget go unused.

Always handy in a tight jam, Bond uses a trolley full of dangerous explosives as a shield in a room full of Russian soldiers out to shoot him. He also escapes an exploding helicopter whilst tied up by headbutting the eject button!

Licence to Kill
Bond's weapon of choice for much of this film is a machine gun (I guess the handgun didn't classify as 'tough' enough in 1995). He shoots at least three or four Ruskies in the prologue, and does it again in order to escape a Russian prison - mowing down a further nine soldiers like it's a first person shooter. He shoots General Ourumov in order to save Natalya, and shoots down a helicopter in Cuba that also inadvertantly causes Onatopp's death-by-tree-branch. He kills dozens by blowing up the radar complex and also drops 006 to his death (though 006 survives long enough to get crushed by exploding debris).

Shag-Rate
It's pretty clear (but unseen) that 007 shags his psychological evaluator in the Aston Martin while parked in the middle of the road on a bend that overlooks Monte Carlo. It's also implied that Bond 'cements' his relationship with Natalya whilst travelling from Russia, and that they go at it again after arriving in Cuba.

Quotes
PSYCHOLOGIST: James, is it really neccessary to drive this fast?
JAMES BOND: More often than you think.

JAMES BOND: I love a woman who enjoys pulling rank.

BORIS: I am invincible!

JAMES BOND: Governments change, the lies stay the same.

JAMES BOND: What would I ever do without you?
MONEYPENNY: As far as I can remember James, you've never had me.
JAMES BOND: Hope springs eternal.
MONEYPENNY: You know, this sort of behaviour could qualify as sexual harrassment.
JAMES BOND: Really, what's the penalty for that?
MONEYPENNY: Someday you have to make good on your innuendos.

Q: Need I remind you 007, you have a licence to kill - not to break the traffic laws.

M: If I want sarcasm I'll talk to my children, thank you very much.

M: Unlike the American government, we prefer not to get our bad news from CNNN.

Q (as Bond picks up a long sandwich) Don't touch that! (Takes sandwich off him) It's my lunch.

How Does It Rate?
Outstanding. After seeming to die a slow and protracted death throughout the 1980s, Bond comes back with a vengeance and a renewed vigour thanks to a conscious attempt to update the series properly. It's pretty much a soft reboot of the series with new actors as Bond, Moneypenny and M. Not only does the series also acknowledge the changing political nature of the real world, it als incorporates this directly into the plot. The film's prologue takes place in 1989, at the end of the Cold War, and then skips forward to the present day (which seems to be 1998, despite the film's release in 1995). The Soviet Union has fallen and Cold War politics have become obsolete... also, shock and horror, women are now equal to men! It really is the future!

Other welcome 1990s (modern) elements include the attention paid to characterisation of secondary characters like M. There are also references to the Gulf War and the nature of the GoldenEye weapon is firmly rooted in modern EMP technology. Other touches that, for better or worse, reflect the concerns and trends of 1990s thriller-fiction includes allusions to conspiracies (Oliver Stone has a lot to answer for), a predominance of hackers and computers (fears of computer misuse that rose with the popularising of the internet) and overt political correctness. This last part comes via mentions of sexual harrassment, ego compensation and jokes about 'safe' sex and pacifism. As annoying as the politically correct stuff might be, it's nice to see the Bond films addressing concepts like the changing world in a manner that doesn't dilute the central character.

For too long Bond had existed in a 60s vaccuum that seemed to only acknowledge the outside world with tokenistic mentions of computer technology or presenting strong female characters as a novelty. So while it's easy for me to laugh at the way GoldenEye presents female equality as a new thing despite being made in the mid-1990s, it's nice to see the subject broached in such a direct and non-tokenistic manner in the series after such a long silence. To be honest, James Bond was never going to become modernised unless things like that were addressed properly, so it's something that had to be done. It's just a happy byproduct that it happens to make the film that extra bit entertaining. Allowing the character of James Bond to remain essentially the same as he was in 1962 is what ensures the film doesn't sell itself out... the world has changed but Bond hasn't, and he still knows how to kick arse and make an impression.

The use of the Cold War prologue also segues into a great titles sequence that depicts the collapse of the USSR, and the purpose of a character like 006 also allows the production team to explore how the end of the Cold War could affect someone like Bond whilst simultaneously using it show Bond's strength as an action hero outside of the Cold War paradigm. Another thing that shouldn't be underestimated here is the slickness of the cinematography and production values... after Dalton's drab 80s films it's a welcome glossifying of the series that echoes the confidence of The Spy Who Loved Me . Particular attention has also been paid to intelligent scripting, I could be wrong here but there seems to be a higher amount of scenes without Bond - allowing for more setting up of characters and plot beats. There's also a lot of great, witty dialogue and some awesome action set pieces (I have to mention the amazing bungee-jump at the film's beginning here, as well as the wonderfully destructive tank chase through St. Petersburg).

My only real criticism would be that the bulk of Bond's shooting is done with a machine-gun. I know that Bond has used machine-guns before, but this was usually only in full-scale battle scenes. It seems here to be a slight Americanisation of the character, influenced no doubt by the rise of American action heroes in the late 1980s and their reliance on 'bigger-is-better' weaponry. I don't think Bond should really be about the scaling up of action, it should be more about style. On the whole, GoldenEye doesn't forget that (though it does have an increased scope and sense of scale, evidenced by the opening shot on the dam at the Russian chemical weapons factory).

Anyway, I'd put this in my Top Five Bond films. You couldn't ask for a better introduction of a new Bond for a new era, and Brosnan deserves some credit for bringing back the charm of the character so effortlessly.

Visit my James Bond page.

DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
WRITER/SOURCE: Michael France, Jeffrey Caine, Kevin Wade and Bruce Feirstein. Based on the characters created by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Benn, Famke Janssen, Izabella Scorupco, Judi Dench, Joe Don Baker, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, Desmond Llewelyn, Gottfried John, Samantha Bond, Minnie Driver.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Joe Don Baker previously played a Bond villain in The Living Daylights.
- GoldenEye was adapted as the Nintendo game GoldenEye 007, to great acclaim.
- The Bond franchise would be rebooted and 'updated' another ten years later as Casino Royale. It is also the only other Bond film directed by Martin Campbell.

The Palm Beach Story

"That's one of the tragedies of this life, that the men who are most in need of a beating are always enormous"

Screwball comedy takes on some edgy material (for its time) by pitching this quirky story of divorce fraught with laughter. Joel McCrea plays Tom, a ham-fisted and hotheaded big dog on the skids. Claudette Colbert is Gerry, his charming, opportunistic and talentless wife - a magnet for the financial attention of men. As she's stuck with a bristly schlub though (McCrea), she takes it upon herself to get a divorce, matter-of-factly informing him that she's out of love. Tom isn't too happy about this, prompting a cross-country chase as he tries to win her back in his own awkward way.

The film memorably starts out with a dumb-show, moving at breakneck speed to depict a series of baffling events that go unmentioned for the bulk of the film. It's a setup though, paving the way for a gloriously ridiculous ending for which the film has become well known. Along the way we're introduced to a variety of comedic characters and set pieces - a trainride with a drunken millionaire's gun-club, possible romance with a mysterious well-to-do man (Rudy Vallee), a deaf old eccentric who made a fortune in sausages, a put-upon foreigner named 'Toto', etc, etc.

I think The Palm Beach Story stands the test of time for two reasons. The first is Claudette Colbert; her comic timing is impeccable and she never misjudges the tone of a scene. The second is the perfect script construction... if you look beyond the gimmicky beginning and end, you'll see a series of repeated moments and motifs that hold the film together. A good example is the early scene where Tom unzips Gerry's dress and she sits on his lap - the way it's written and the way they play the scene tells you where these characters are at. Later, towards the end of the film, the same actions are repeated but things have changed inbetween so the scene has a completely different tone. It also has added meaning and resonance due to the repetition. We know this when we watch (we recognise the repetition and how it affects us) but we aren't always aware that it's been consciously constructed that way. These scenes are like magnets at either end of the film's emotional scale, and they're the sort of thing that makes a great comedy (or a great film from any genre) work so well.

I guess the one thing that will stand out for most people with this film is the crazy beginning and the way that the true meaning behind this introduction can be missed if you don't watch carefully enough. I missed it, I didn't really get it until the very end of the film, so I'll warn anyone who intends to watch this that you should pay very close attention to the start of the film. Certain things make a lot more sense when you understand this opening sequence!

DIRECTOR: Preston Sturges
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Preston Sturges, with some input from Ernst Laemmle.
KEY ACTORS: Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, William Demarest, Sig Arno, Robert Warwick, Robert Dudley.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Director Preston Sturges and actor Joel McCrea also worked together on two other films, Sullavan's Travels and The Great Moment.
- Sturges and Claudette Colbert also previously worked together on The Big Pond and Imitation of Life.
- Other pre-eminent 'screwball' comedies from the late 1930s/early 1940s: The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, You Can't Take It With You, Theodora Goes Wild, Topper, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Great McGinty and Holiday.

Dirty Dancing

An interesting 1980s attempt to recreate 1950s-styled rebel drama as a period piece. It's a tale of forbidden love, rebellion, backyard abortions and gigolos, and in this sense it's trying to show us the sordid reality of the early 1960s. Dirty Dancing isn't really completely successful at this though, it's nostalgic and lurid 1980s production values seem to steer it more towards pure romance territory, and Patrick Swayze's subsequent superstardom can testify to this.

Dirty Dancing has all the makings of a great chick flick... uncoordinated ugly duckling from the right side of the tracks (Jennifer Grey) has a passionate summer fling where she teaches the resident bad boy (Swayze) the power of self-respect. Said bad boy is named Jimmy, of course, and he's too much of a street-kid to be accepted as good news by anyone. The two also start up a love-hate relationship where they learn from each other and become better people for it. Oh, and there's dancing - lots of it. So the film's status as one of the most popular romance films of the last 30 years shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Sadly, Jennifer Grey never achieved the level of fame that Swayze enjoyed. Shortly after this film she had plastic surgery to change the shape of her nose (her most defining feature) and became so unrecognisable as a result that the studios saw little point in trying to capitalise on the recognition she had gained from Dirty Dancing.

Would I recommend this film? It's not really my cup of tea, I tend to like my romances to be a bit funnier or to have a bit more depth. I can recognise the factors that make this film so iconic though, so I guess it's worth a watch if you're in the mood for a mix of 60s and 80s nostalgia.

DIRECTOR: Emile Ardolini
WRITER/SOURCE: Eleanor Bergstein
KEY ACTORS: Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes, Jack Weston, Wayne Knight, Jane Brucker, Kelly Bishop

RELATED TEXTS:
- Followed by a prequel, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which was basically just a remake with all new characters. Patrick Swayze has a weird cameo in it though.
- Dirty Dancing was also a smash-hit stage show that ran from 2004 to 2009.
- For other 80s dance films, see Flashdance, Footloose, Beat Street, Breakin, Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, Body Rock and, to a lesser extent, Quicksilver.
- Also see Lambada and it's ripoff, The Forbidden Dance.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Original Song ('I've Had the Time of My Life')
Golden Globes - won Best Original Song ('I've Had the Time of My Life'). Also nominated for Best Film (Comedy/Musical), Best Actor - Comedy/Musical (Patrick Swayze) and Best Actress - Comedy/Musical (Jennifer Grey).
Independent Spirit Awards - won Best First Feature.

The Magician

Imagine if, somehow, you could make a documentary about a hitman where you followed his life as he got amongst it. That's The Magician. It's funny, uncomfortably tense and very wrong (but funny!) Ray (Scott Ryan), a Melbourne 'magician' who makes people disappear, has his everyday life documented by his neighbour, Max (Massimiliano Andrighetto). The whole film crosscuts between several subplots involving Ray and Max's misadventures in an inner-city suburbia populated by petty criminals and junkies, whilst Ray narrates the sordid and mundane realities of his life.

For once, it's nice to see a handheld digicam being used to make something other than low budget horror. The cut-and-run manner of filming also means we get to see parts of Australian cities that we don't normally see in the movies. Ray himself (played by the film's writer-director) is a dangerous and larriken-ish figure - a unique voice that gives the film a lot of its colour and also accounts for its genuinely unpredictable nature. It's like Chopper to the Nth degree.

Max tries to treat Ray like a normal person who can be reasoned with (EG. The scene where Ray calls upon a guy who stole Max's stuff, or when Max tries to convince Ray to let a mark sit in the backseat of his car after the mark pisses himself) but Ray is an unknowable commodity, and this is what drives the film. The unsettling but engaging atmosphere is further enforced by the way The Magician juxtaposes a casual, jokey manner with a deadly serious subject matter - tackling pertinent questions such as "how much will it take to eat a bowl of shit" and "will you go to the gay mardis gras?" It's laught-out-loud stuff, easily up there as an Australian crime-comedy classic alongside Idiot Box, Two Hands and Chopper.

DIRECTOR: Scott Ryan
WRITER/SOURCE: Scott Ryan, based on another film by Scott Ryan.
KEY ACTORS: Scott Ryan, Massimiliano Andrighetto, Ben Walker, Kane Mason, Nathaniel Lindsay.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Ryan was initially influenced by the memoir of a New York hitman called Contract Killer.
- This is actually the second version of this film. Scott Ryan had already made The Magician and cut it down to 30 minutes so that he could enter it into a short film competition. The film found its way to Nash Edgerton, who Ryan coaxed on board as a producer. This prompted a complete re-shooting of the film with slightly higher production values, resulting in the released version. Some parts of the original version can be seen on the DVD release as an extra.
- Unfortunately Scott Ryan is yet to appear in or make another film. Back in 2005 when The Magician was released, he spoke in interviews about a follow-up project titled Who Cares Who Knows, purportedly a 'realistic' zombie film. Unfortunately, it never materialised.
- For more Aussie crime stuff see Chopper, Two Hands, Animal Kingdom, Gettin' Square, Dirty Deeds, Idiot Box, Snowtown, The Square and The Hard Word.

FHM Bar-Room Jokes

Let's be honest here, most joke books are pieces of crap. Generally, when I come across a joke book in a bookstore, it's full of lame watered-down jokes that typically get trundled out month after month by your most annoying uncle. Even the so-called 'Adult' joke books or the 'Politically Incorrect' joke books are sanitised to the point of sanitising all the fun out of them.

And that's why I cheered when I stumbled across the FHM Biggest Book of Bar-Room Jokes... as you might imagine, it's a compilation of jokes from FHM. Now FHM is, admittedly, a fairly blokey magazine and may not be to everyone's taste - but I found this compilation to be very funny indeed and a breath of fresh air when it comes to joke books. Mainly because it happened to actually be funny. Sure, I'd heard a few already, but they were good ones so it's alright.

Here's two examples, lovingly typed out by yours truly...

After hours of drinking heavily, Bob is sitting in a bar when, through his bloodshot eyes, he notices a figure sitting next to him. Feeling very jovial, the bloke turns to the blurry figure and says: 'Do you want to hear a blonde joke?'
The figure next to him snorts. 'Listen, mate,' comes a female voice, 'I weigh 175 lbs and am British Women's kick-boxing champion. I am also blonde. My blonde friend next to me weighs 190 lb and is the Women's European arm-wrestling champion. Finally, my other friend at the end of the bar weighs 235 lb and is the Women's World power-lifting champion. She, too, is a natural blonde. Now, do you still want to tell that blonde joke?'
The guy pondered this for a while.
'Hmmmm,' he replied finally. 'Not if I have to explain it three times'.

With his elderly wife, Bill the pensioner goes to the doctor for his annual physical. After testing him with the stethoscope, the physician turns to him. 'Well, Bill,' he says. 'You seem fine but I'm going to need a urine sample, a stool sample and a sperm sample.'
Hard of hearing, Bill turns to his wife. 'What did he say?' he yells.
His wife bellows back, "He said he needs your underwear!'

Anyways, it's around about $10 if you should find it so it's pretty cheap for 300 odd pages of pub-quality jokes. A handy book to have!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Biggest disappointment of the cinematic year of 2003? Yes, I think so. I'm glad I was let down by other people before I went to see this, as going in with expectations as high as they would've been could've been dangerous. I would've been hella angry. It's not the worst film I've ever seen, but it's just aggravating knowing how good this might have been. Even nearly 10 years after first seeing it I still feel mighty disappointed.

Yes, it's another comic book adaptation, this time drawing on all manner of 19th century literary characters and pulling them together in a supposed celebration of pre-modern pop culture. Unfortunately, all the life seems to have been squeezed out of it before it reached the screen. The plot, as I kinda guessed, was full of the usual inconsistencies. There was far too much happening for any sort of even treatment of the many characters (Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker, the Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll, Captain Nemo, etc, etc) and all these literary nods that work so well in the comic world just become crass on celluloid.

As a film, it's strictly paint-by-numbers stuff. It's not even as inspired as Daredevil or The Phantom (eek!). The film has no 'soul'... Connery just goes through the motions, and the rest of the cast, an assortment of almost b-grade actors, give mostly cliched portrayals. The exception is probably Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells' Jason Flemyng), who managed to intrigue me despite his Hulk-ripoff subplot. The direction is all flash and no style - just because something is based on a comic it hardly means that the film should aspire to be two-dimensional and shallow. Also, the dialogue is pure corn.

I think the saddest thing about this film is that it meant the end of Sean Connery's career as an actor. He apparently took on this project after having passed on The Lord of the Rings. When he saw the kind of business Lord of the Rings did he figured he shouldn't be so quick to pass on the flashy modern stuff, and quickly signed up to this film despite not really understanding its appeal. He found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to be such a disappointing experience that he decided to go into retirement, citing his own inability to keep up with modern film trends as reason enough to quit.

DIRECTOR: Stephen Norrington
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by James Dale Robinson, based on the comics by Alan Moore.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Jason Flemyng, Stuart Townsend, Richard Roxburgh

RELATED TEXTS:
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a limited comic series by Alan Moore.
- Characters from this story originate in classic works of fantasy and horror such as Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Sherlock Holmes, King Solomon's Mines, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- Alan Moore's comics have also been adapted for the films V For Vendetta and Watchmen.
- Stephen Norrington previously directed another comic-book adaptation, Blade.
- If you're looking for something as crappy and misjudged as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen then I refer you to the film Van Helsing, which also features the underwhelming Richard Roxburgh as the villain.

Island of Lost Souls

In the tradition of King Kong (well, it actually predates King Kong), this is a fun piece of 'south seas gothic'. Charles Laughton stars as Doctor Moreau in this cautionary Frankenstein-ish tale of nature perverted by science. Dashing everyman Edward (Richard Arlen) finds himself lost at sea after a run-in with a corrupt boat captain. He's picked up by a scientist (Arthur Hohl) with a ship full of animals (plus a man in a gorilla suit) and taken to the island of Doctor Moreau, where heinous experiments in splicing humans and animals together have seen the doctor elevated to tyrannical godhood over his subhuman subjects.

It's a fairly short film, and (conceptually speaking) it hasn't really aged very well due to its antiquated subject matter. Island of Lost Souls comes from an era when theories of evolution were still a relatively hot topic and therefore grounds for exploitation by horror films. Unforunately, it's based on an underdeveloped understanding of evolution so even as a period piece it seems a bit dodgy. Also, the way that Edward naively takes the animal hybrids in his stride and assumes that they're just really ugly 'natives' is embarrassingly old-fashioned and a little too reflective of western ignorance in the 1930s.

On the positive side, Laughton is great as Doctor Moreau - a refined and aloof gentleman-scientist of the old order, carrying a whip and dressed in a white linen suit like some Great White Zookeeper with delusions of divinity (though his black goatee points more towards his true nature as something more demonic). Some of the film's horror aspects are genuinely unsettling as well, such as the disturbing allusions to live vivisection and references to "long pig".

Anyway, it's a pretty fun way to spend an hour or so - one to watch in the small hours of the morning, on a dark and lonely night.

DIRECTOR: Erle C. Kenton
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie, based on a novel by H. G. Wells.
KEY ACTORS: Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Kathleen Burke, Arthur Hohl, Bela Lugosi

RELATED TEXTS:
- Based on The Island of Dr. Moreau, a novel written by H. G. Wells in 1896.
- Also adapted twice more as The Island of Dr. Moreau (in the 1970s, with Burt Lancaster) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (in the 1990s, with Marlon Brando).
- Devo referenced this film in their song Jocko Homo, and Van Halen did the same in their song House of Pain.
- See King Kong for more south seas horror from the 1930s. Also see the TV movie Danger Island.