FMF Trailer

Warning: Wes Anderson + Roald Dahl = Fantastic.

Might Roald Dahl be a better source of book-to-movie gold that even Steven King? While it may be a hard race to call, having grown up on Mr. Dahl's books (like many of us), I'm pleasantly impressed with how well he translates to the silver screen. Willy Wonka & the remake Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, , and his efforts at screenwriting for such gems as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and my favourite Bond, You Only Live Twice. Even Matilda wasn't that bad.
The latest of Dahl's back catalogue to be utilised for the cinematic powers of good is Fantastic Mr. Fox, brought to life by the wonderful Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore). The trailer looks awesome. The cast are the only remaining funny people left in Hollywood. The director is a mildly eccentric genius. Should be great.

FYI, my favourite Dahl book was The Twits, though I'm not so sure I want that to be made into a movie.

Top 8 of 08: Movies

Warning: This list is a relative flop.

Top Films of 2008 (That I managed to see):


8. "Baby Mama" - I know it flopped, but it was far superior to Get Smart and other comedies featuring ex-SNL stars. Fey vs. Poehler is my favourite female comedian combination.

7. "Horton Hears a Who" - Decent adaptation and with all the good humour that adults help to sneakily get out of a kid's movie.


6. "The Magic Hour" - Japanese film by the inimitable Kouki Mitani, set in a faux-1920s about a bumbling idiot who angers a Yakuza boss and has to use a washed-up actor to bluff his way out of trouble.


5. "Son of Rambow" - a schoolground bully and a reject team up to remake Rambo. Think Billy Elliot with more blood (well, and better).


4. "El Orfanato" (The Orphanage) - Spanish thriller about a woman who goes to live in the house that was her orphanage when she was young, only to find the past was waiting for her. Beautifully shot, well told, and jumpy. Avoids the "serial thriller" label well.

3. "Wall-E" - Classic Pixar. A few moments in it made me think it was a bit sell-out, but that was only because the flow of the movie changes quite a bit and in the end it's just a great piece of work.

2. "Iron Man" - Scores higher than Wall-E for dry RDJ lines, fantastic graphics and for restoring everyone's faith in Marvel comic movies.

1. "The Dark Knight" - Not many movies get watched by me more than the 5 times I've seen this, which puts it in good company with LOTR: ROTK, Fight Club and The Matrix. If Gladiator can win best picture, TDK should sweep.

The list feels a bit lacking to me, but that's mostly because Japan doesn't get half the quality movies available around the world (hence I have to wait for DVDs), and when they do they tend to be up to 6 months late. There's a much more promising list of movies of 2008 I want to see:
- Burn After Reading
- Man on Wire
- Quantum of Solace
- Body of Lies
- Be Kind Rewind
- Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
- The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
- Synecdoche, New York
Perhaps the original list is a mite premature.

Isn't She Lovely

Warning: This post contains some damn good political satire.

Is there anyone out there who doesn't like Tina Fey? She's the best answer to series of so-so SNL regulars of late that I've seen in a while. Sure, Steve Carell is gold at times, but Will Ferrell is so tragic it's no longer even slightly funny, and guys like Dan Fogler are just far too like Chris Farley for me. Even if they do well on the show, so many of them do so badly off it that it's not really much of a "launching pad" anymore.

But Tina shows there is a light at the end of the unamusing tunnel. 30 Rock is a great show - great like Scrubs, Seinfeld and Family Guy in their heydays. It's the best thing to happen to sitcoms since Arrested Development, and the day they decided to cancel Two & A Half Men (not yet, sure, but that day will come, and I'll be there with the ticker tape).
Her debut movie lead Baby Mama didn't rake in the box office results, probably because people probably thought it was a real chick flick rather than a comedy-with-minor-love-story, and it went up against Sex & The City and lost. I saw it on a plane a few weeks ago and it was easily better than Get Smart and probably mildly beat Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which also has some awesome comic talent, but the ultimately doesn't use them to their funny-potential). The story is a little predictable but it's not about that - its the sparks flying between Tina Fey and fellow SNLer Amy Poehler (also the mum in Mean Girls) that is worth the watch. Steve Martin is also possibly the funniest I've seen him ever (possibly because this is not a "Steve Martin movie"). Anyway, Fey vs. Poehler. Successful-but ultimately-way-too-uptight-businesswoman in a surrogate mother relationship with white-trash-party-slut. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.

Probably though the role that has put Tina's name on everyone's lips this year has been her parody of Republican VP-hopeful (well, she might hope, but we don't) Sarah Palin. Her feminist address with a parodical Hillary Clinton was eerily spot-on, while also hilarious. But it's the "Biden vs. Palin" debate parody SNL aired last week that has me in stitches.

The pretext for the parody is that neither candidate really debated one another, they merely said what they had rehearsed and come there to say. For Biden it was finding ways to attack McCain (a fair strategy, as people are voting for him and Palin doesn't need attacking, she takes her rifle to her own foot quite deftly). In Sarah's case, she'd got all the lines memorised, but seemed to forget she was supposed to adapt them to the question. Nevermind, she delivered them anyway.
Tina nailed Sarah so subtly in this sketch and yet so obviously that its comic genius. It's a pisstake, but it'd be damn hard to argue any point was slander or political smearing. It's also nice to see Biden made fun of too - after all, this isn't about picking sides, this is about laughing at the stupidity of people!

Here's the vid - my mate Eion says he can't load it, but so far he's the only one who's had trouble. Enjoy.


While we're on the topic of SNL, here's one of my favourite sketches from them: "Maraka", the fantastic parodia de Dora. Es muy hilaranta ;)

2008 - The year movies were awesome again?

Is THIS your card?
Warning: This post is not necessarily region-coded for your country.

I have been thoroughly impressed with the line-up of new movies this year. After a mild 2007 (for those of us not gushing over Transformers, Die Hard 4 was about the only real pant-wetting experience to be had), this year has proven that there is still awesomeness to be made, even if its all sequels, remakes and adaptations.

Although their actual release date may be considered as 2007, last Oscars nominations chilling No Country For Old Men, fantastically-scripted Juno, difficult-to-watch-but-damn-good There Will Be Blood, and the fairly-heartwarming The Bucket List set a standard I didn't think would be met again this year. And yet, starting with the totally fan-boy-pleasing Iron Man, its turning out to be a cracker.

Good reviews abound for the likes of The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Son Of Rambow and WALL-E suggest that we're in for an excellent next few months. Sparsely different genres but they all look fantastic. And right after they all land we've still got:

Hancock
X-Files
The Dark Knight (ooh boy)
Zack & Miri Make a Porno (Kevin Smith!!)
Australia (and yes I am excited about this)

And, although I'll probably have to wait until 2009 to finally see it, THIS GUY is back.
I think I'm going to faint.

Not that there's no rubbish this year. High School Musical 3, Saw V, You Don't Mess With The Zohan and Disaster Movie should well take care of that.

I'm also very stoked about seeing these all in cinema - if they'll be released here, damnit.

Audience wouldn't know talent if it gave them a blowjob

Jon Stewart speaks to what may be an empty auditorium
Disclaimer: This topical post ridicules the cinematic taste of the proletariat.

Gmail spamming news headers managed to catch my attention with this tidbit:

Oscars draw record low TV ratings

I figured it was something like a boycott based on writers' strikes. But no, apparently most of the nominated movies this time around were genuinely unpopular as box office items. I was gobsmacked. Well, at least a little surprised.

On the bill this year we had independent lovable but fairly black comedy Juno, the kind of movie I always wish would win Best Picture but never will, up against the big guns of direction The Coen "Kubrick-reference" Brothers and Paul "what 'norm'" Anderson. No Country For Old Men genuinely deserves its 8+ rating on imdb, and though I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, Lord knows I want to. Atonement and its fellow also-rans are a big "whatever" to me, though I'm curious about Michael Clayton. But anyway, there's a genuine three-horse-race of quality cinematic achievement right there.

I don't understand why these three movies (and other European gems like La Mome failed to perform at the box office. Oh wait; yeah I do. People are sheep. I forgot.
I've been iffy about the Oscars for a while (last year's Departed was good, but in the end its just another remake), but the quality of movies (and the justified awards they received) this year really impressed me. Every Oscar season should be this good. This is how movies should be made, ladies and gentlemen. Don't buy that ticket to Saw 5 or Next Friday After Next (or anything with Snoop Dogg or Hillary Duff as a main character), and start getting into the miracle that is foreign and independent cinema. Your soul will thank you.

Twisted

Disclaimer: This post is not suitable for people who thought Bambi would have been a better movie if the mother hadn't been killed.

I finally watched Saw the other night. It was a movie I had been avoiding due to a misinterpretation of what the film was. I thought it was just a movie about two guys in a room who have to mutilate themselves or face certain death. Well, that's what it is about, but I thought that's all it was. I thought the movie never really left the room. Little did I know that it had a back story and character development like any good thriller or murder mystery.
It's not really that gory – they do a good job of insinuating gore without actually showing it. Only one real "ewww" scene, involving feet and hacksaws.
And, like everyone who has seen it had been telling me, it is indeed quite clever. Not least of all because it packs a nice set of twists up its sleeve.

The sequels, which I subsequently downloaded and watched shortly after, naturally take a step up in gore (pleasing the fans that surely had crowed for it), but they still manage to crank out some nice unexpected endings. If anything I'd say that what happens in Saw 2 and 3 is impressive, although rather...convenient. Everything seems to run according to Jigsaw's(the villan) master plan, which is fair enough – but it seems like he had a lot riding on some events that someone as clever as he supposedly is wouldn't assume to be 100% certain. Then again, maybe he has a back-up plan we never get to see.

Anyway, this got me thinking about what I thought my favourite 10 "movies with twist endings" are. I may well have missed a few, but they would probably be (order irrelevant):

1. Saw (see above)
2. Cypher (damn!)
3. The Sixth Sense
4. Fight Club
5. Memento
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Matchstick Men
8. Infernal Affairs
9. Arlington Road
10. Vanilla Sky

NB: If Donnie Darko can be said to have a twist ending, then that should make the list way ahead of many. Also, The Usual Suspects and Existenz are worthy also-rans, as is Inside Man.

The worst twist movies I know include:
- Gothika
- Secret Window (why, Johnny? why?)
- Identity
- The Prestige (well, its a good movie...but Science is angry. Plus it was very predictable for such an unrealistic twist)

Any thoughts?