Monday Media Madness

As I haven't consumed much media this week, this will be a belated and short post. Curb Your Enthusiasm is available as of a couple of hours ago. Breaking Bad's countdown has begun, July 17^th, mark it down, schedule it – let's hope it doesn't completely suck.

Blow Out

Blow out 

De Palma has a rather un-canny habit of doing incredibly derivative movies with amazing style. Blow Out is essentially a mixture of both Antonioni's incredible Blow Up, and Coppola's The Conversation. The problem with doing obviously un-original works is that the best compliment that can be possibly made is the one of homage, whilst De Palma's work is certainly stylistic in his choice of angles, and Direction, the overall feeling that's reached after watching his work is to wish for the real thing, the real Cocaine, not the PCP.

(B+)

The Trip (Tv Series)

Post-modern, self-reflexive, existential, comic brilliance- this is Steve Coogan's most intelligent work yet, cleverly Directed by Michael Winterbottom, whom has directed both Rob Brydon and Coogan in Tristram Shandy. The series essentially revolves around a simple idea of two friends going on a trip of fine dining for a news paper article, what follows is quite possibly the best illustration of what Sartre meant when he said, “hell is other people.”

(A+) Unmissable viewing.

The New Zealand Film Festival is but a mere week away, the selection and variety as always is astounding:  choosing the privileged handful of films to see is always an arduous task so i'm currently scouring the internet to find what is available online. Currently I have thirty movies I want to see, or would see if i had the time and money - the only movies I'm absolutely sure about so far are: Werner Herzog's new 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia and La Quattro Volte. The rest look amazing but whether I can wrangle people to go is another story, so here's the movies I'm going to try and source over the next couple of weeks.

Werner Herzog outside the Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The Tree of Life: Directed by Terrence Malick, nuff said.

Tabloid: Errol Morris documentary, nuff said.

Pina: Wim Wenders 3D dance documentary.

Incendies: Belgian made movie in the middle-east.

Winter Vacation: Any movie which is described as South Park in slow motion whilst being in Chinese is worth a look.

The Round Up: French WWII flick with Jean Reno and sexy French girls.

Point Blank: French action flick.

Errol Morris (Possibly the best documentary maker ever)

The Screen Illusion: French arty-ness.

A Seperation: Iranian thriller.

Sleeping Sickness: Any movie that references Conrad's Heart of Darkness is worth a look. 

Norweigian Wood: An adaptation of a Hauraki Murakami novel.

Mysteries of Lisbon: HD Portugese period flick.

Silent Souls: Russian bleakness.

Terri: John C Reily comedy.

The Guard: Made by the brother of the dude that made In Bruges.

Happy, Happy: Norwegian sex comedy.

Heartbeats: Canadian hipster comedy.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: American cult drama.

The crazy Dane himself Lars Von Trier. (Has anyone actually met anyone normal by the name of Lars?)

Michael: Twisted psycho kidnap caper, the Director is a big fan of Haneke - anyone see where this could go.  

Sleeping Beauty: Australian erotic fable.

Take Shelter: Michael Shannon's new psychological thriller (he plays the psycho FBI agent in Boardwalk Empire.)

The Turin Horse: An apocalyptic vision inspired by Nietzche.

Once upon a time in Anatolia: Turkish noir thriller.

Bobby Fischer against the world: Documentary about chess champion Bobby Fischer.

Still from 'Bobby Fischer Against The World'

Hot coffee: A documentary about frivilous law suits, and what really happened to the woman who spilled Mc Donald's coffee on her lap.

Windfall: Green energy doco.

Page One: Inside the New York Times.

POM Wonderful Presents the greatest movie ever sold: Morgan Spurlock's documentary about product placement, which is funded entirely from product placement.

Morgan Spurlock's new documentary.

The Black Power Mixtape: The clue is in the name.

Khodorkovsky: Russian documentry about what happens when you are a political challenger to Putin.

Aint in it for my health: Documentary about Levon Helm

beats and rhymes: A hip-hop doco made by Michael Rappaport

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey documentary

The Woman: A highly controversial misogynistic comedy, described as the feel bad comedy of the year.

Still from The Woman

Finally, I'd recommend checking this site over the next week as i'll update what's currently available on-line and link to it - just because you live overseas, or out of town, doesn't mean you should miss out on these movies.

Sunday Media Soup numero dos

'Curb your Enthusiasm's' new series will start in two weeks and from the previews I've seen it looks like it's going to be another quality season, especially when Michael J Fox and Parkinsons jokes are on the menu. Breaking Bad is quite possibly the most anticipated returning show, especially after the amazing cliffhanger it ended on in season three, I'm absolutely drooling in anticipation to see this show again, I'm even attempting to schedule how I'm going to watch the show: do I watch it before bed, or do I save all the episodes up to gorge like a fat person on cake? Too many choices. In the mean time, enjoy this weeks batch of soup.

A fat person eats cake

The Stranger

(Ugh, just ugh. Loud noises!!!) The movie adaptation of 'The Stranger' was always going to pale in comparison to the mighty book by Camus, but one can be a little hopeful with likes of Marcello Mastroianni playing Meursault and Luchino Visconti directing, that perhaps the production will at least be a worthwhile experience. What follows is a very true adaptation of the book that fails to fire in many ways. A couple of saving graces of the movie is Mastroianni's performance and Visconti's direction making the heat another almost tactile character in the movie, but overall the movie ends up being a rather dull, paint by numbers affair that leaves one asking the great philosophical questions of why, in a rather superficial way, like why did they bother? D- (The book however gets an A++)

Marcello Mastroianni as Meursault

Tucker and Dale Vs Evil

A hilarious slapstick slash horror film which turns the horror genre on its head, subverts, satirises and lambastes the horror stereotypes with incredible accuracy and precision. Think 'Shaun of The Dead' with hillbillies, then add a pinch of 'Cabin Fever' and some schlock gore and you have the makings of a classic comedy. A-

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

Falling Skies

Pointless, mediocre, haphazard, sentimental, un-realistic, boring, and trite are just a few words I would use to describe this convoluted power-wank piece of sci-fi faggery - it's a word, at least it is now. The plot line for this new TV series is, aliens have taken over the world and the survivors struggle to fight back: expect melodramatic, cheesy, sentimental father son conversations - and expect to lose the will to live if you manage to sit through a whole episode. F

Noah Wyle plays a father in Falling Skies (Quite possibly the worst show I've ever seen)

The Pink Panther

Peter Sellers is still a comedic god and it's hard to find anyone that gets anywhere near close to matching his slapstick, character acting. The amazing thing about this series is the fact you're completely aware something funny is going to happen, but you can never imagine just how inventive it will be, nor just how big the laughs will be. A- (I'm taking a point off because of Claudia Cardinale's weak drunk acting.)

Peter Sellers as Inspector Closeau

The Mouse That Roared

I could double down on Sellers praise but I'd rather say, that only Dr Strangelove beats this movie at being the best satire ever made. A

That's all for now, next week expect more Visconti, maybe some more Sellers, and maybe even some De Palma.