Category Archives: Film & TV

Adventures in Twilight

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Having a bit of spare time at the moment, I set myself the task of having all the Twilight films.

I’d only seen one before, the second film in the saga, “New Moon”, at the time of its 2009 release. At the time I bitched, “It was such a shit film that it made me angry.” I couldn’t figure out who all the characters were and why everyone seemed so bothered all the time.

But now, two years later, I realised that despite my reaction to “New Moon”, Twilight films continued to be made, they were playing to big audiences, and weren’t showing any sign of becoming unpopular. Something was going on there. I had some catching up to do.

I started with the very first film, “Twilight”. Coming into it, I expected I wouldn’t enjoy it. See, I like my vampires a little dirty, like the sexually-charged moonlit Louisiana escapades of “True Blood”. Angsty teen vampires? No, it wouldn’t work on me.

But then there I was, a mere 10 minutes into the film, and suddenly Edward makes his first appearance and I got shivers. I instantly understood. Bella is this very ordinary tomboy-ish girl, and suddenly the most beautiful boy in school has totally fallen for her – and vice versa.

And it’s a really troubled love – what with him being likely to lose control and kill her if things get too hot during a makeout session. But all this sexual caution has one cinematic bonus: Edward’s experiments in sexual restraint produce what is possibly the hottest kiss in any movie ever, and the rightful winner of Best Kiss at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

I was willing to completely surrender myself to the Twlight world.

I then rewatched “New Moon” and I realised that my initial confusion was due to the film being made for fans. Unlike the “Sex and the City” film, there’s no complicated recap of previous events. The film figures you’re a fan and it’s not going to waste your time explaining who the Cullens are.

I still didn’t enjoy “New Moon” as much as “Twilight”, though it made me realise that I’d got one thing out of it the first time. There’s a scene where Bella goes on an awkward date with Jacob and Mike. They’re sitting in a movie theatre, each of the boys trying to get Bella to hold his hand. And that was when I said decided no more adolescent film date experiences, which has been a really good decision.

I wasn’t so enamoured with the third film, “Eclipse”. It started with Edward proposing marriage; it ended with Bella accepting. In the middle there was some drama with the grunge vampires from Seattle, which seemed to be an excuse so that Bella and Edward could prove their love for each other. And Bella got all emo over Jacob’s love.

But despite feeling a little disappointed by these last two films, I was still pretty excited about seeing the forth film in the saga, “Breaking Dawn: Part One”. And it did not disappoint, being at least as good at the first film.

I’ve seen critics complain that the film is a little slow moving, that the wedding takes too long. But the long, slow wedding gives the audience plenty of time to take in the splendour. There’s Bella looking nervous but gorgeous, and Edward looking like the idea of the man every girl secretly wants to marry. And pretty much everyone is really beautiful and things are perfect. Is it too long? Is a perpetually looping animated gif of Robert Pattinson biting his lip too long? No, it is not. It’s as long as it is because that’s how long it has to be. Speaking of animated gifs – this film also contains a scene where Jacob, angry and dripping wet, rips off his T-shirt and storms off into the forest. Aw yeah.

And just in case you thought things would get normal for Belz and Edz after they wed, “Breaking Dawn: Part One” also contains the honeymoon, with its bed-breaking consummation, which in turn leads to Bella’s speedy pregnancy with a weird demon baby, the even weirder demon baby birth, and the vampirification of Bella. OMG, so much drama!

Since I announced my Twilight viewing project, I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve admitted to being fans of the series, particularly some quite grown-up men. People who enjoy the books and the films, do that fully embracing the melodramatic, silly-fun world of Twilight. If you fight that, if you try to take the film seriously, then you’re just going to make it really unpleasant for yourself. It’s like watching a western and getting really angry that the film isn’t a hip hop comedy.

There’s also an argument that Bella is passive, that she should be more assertive like Buffy to be a good role model for teens. But the counter-argument goes that most teenage girls aren’t like Buffy. People in their 30s, who’ve grown in that confidence, are like Buffy. Bella is a dorky 18-year-old girl, who pretty much reminds me of when I was 18, only I didn’t have the vampire-werewolf love triangle or the weird demon baby. Though some of my friends in Hamilton managed the weird demon baby part.

I’m really happy to be part of the Twilight universe now. It’s brought me great enjoyment, and the thrill of anticipation for the final chapter in the series. I’m not about to get a Twilight duvet set, or call my firstborn child Renesmee, but it’s just nice to have this little pleasure in my life.

And most importantly: I’m totally Team Edward.

Topful woman talks about a film

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My favourite film of 1997 was “Topless Women Talk About Their Lives”. Written by ex-Front Lawn man Harry Sinclair and starring Danielle Cormack, Joel Tobeck, Willa O’neill, Ian Hughes and Shimpal Lelisi, it told the bittersweet story of a group of inner-city dwelling Auckland cool kids and their crazy mixed up lives.

It was released in my first year living in Auckland, and I think I secretly wished I had a similarly cool life, rather than feeling really awkward at suburban IRC parties.

14 years later, “Topless Women” has only just been released on DVD, including both the film and the original TV series consisting of 41 episodes of around 3 to 4 minutes each, as well as a good commentary track from the cast and director who have all gone on to proper fancy showbiz work.

I watched the DVD (several times) and have come up with my fave things about the world of “Topless Women”.

The really expensive pizza

Um, that'll be $42.95

In episode eight, Liz is working as a pizza delivery girl. She delivers a pizza – “Hawaiian with anchovy” – to old friend Gary. The pizza (and there seems to be only one) costs $42.95. This sounds astronomically expensive, but pizzas used to be priced like that. Today you could get a ham and pineapple pizza delivered for under $10, but back in the ’90s, they were strangely expensive. So we should be grateful for the pizza wars of the late ’90s, when people realised that pizza was really just shit on a shingle and therefore the pizza companies had no business charging such outrageous prices.

Party good times

Liz prepares for a productive day at the office (seriously)

I peripherally knew people like the characters in Topless Women. Cool kids who’d live in slightly grotty inner-city flats with no hot water (back before there were proper places to live in Auckland central), and life was all about pills and not eating and sex and being creative and abortions necesitated by broken hearts. There’s always a feeling that it can’t last, no matter how amazing it all seems at the time. Sooner or later someone wakes up feeling awful and things slowly get straightened up. Either that or someone ends up dead.

The most beautiful thing

The most beautiful thing

Four years before “American Beauty” introduced the world to the poetry of a lone plastic bag floating on the breeze, “Topless Women” got there first. But instead of the wondrous instrumental soundtrack of “American Beauty”, “Topless Women” has Shayne Carter’s sexy sneer on the Straitjacket Fits’s brooding tune “If I Were You”. And it’s all tied up with the state of Ant’s mental health, Prue’s cheerfulness, and strange goings-on involving Ant’s mum and her girlfriend.

So much drama

Yes, yes, yes, yes!

There’s overlap between the later TV episodes and about half the film. In one scene, Geoff tells Liz he’d make a great dad for her unborn child. In the TV version, while this is going on, a television in the room plays a cheesy soap that Geoff in acting in. Miranda Harcourt is his co-star, doing a perfectly overwrought performance with lots of tears, flailing, a lolipop and so much drama. This is all missing from the film version and the scene plays a lot straighter. I like the TV version better, really laying on the tension.

The ghosts of buildings past

Auckland, looking like a proper grown-up city

Liz lives in a house on top of the Fergusson Buildings and Civic House on Queen Street. It was demolished a few years later as those two buildings were gutted to be rebuilt as the new Queen Street cinema complex. Whenever I’m in the IMAX theatre, I like to wonder if I’m in the space formerly occupied by that house, especially the outdoor area where Liz and Neil kinda, sorta finally revealed their feelings for each other (or did they, etc). And that’s more exciting than any IMAX film.

The soundtrack

Subtitled Niuean appreciation of the Flying Nun back catalogue

“Topless Women” had a killer soundtrack, using the best bits of the Flying Nun catalogue past and present. The commentary track gives credit to editor Cushla Dillon for suggesting Flying Nun tracks. In the TV series, each episode featured one song, carefully chosen to reflect the tone of the episode. The film used a smaller selection, each perfectly working with the story. It was the first time a New Zealand film had such an unashamedly New Zealand soundtrack, and now it’s pretty much standard that New Zealand films have New Zealand songs on the soundtrack.

The not-so-mighty Civic

If you're going to have a panic attack, you might as well do it in style

The pre-restoration Civic features as the location of Ant’s film debut. Little glimpses of its less glamorous past are revealed. Tiled columns at the entrance, burnt orange carpet in the foyer, faux rustic wooden benches, beige interior paint job, curly wooden decorative frames – all the bits and pieces that were gleefully discarded when the Civic was fancied up in the late ’90s. But the old Civic had a slightly creepy feel to it that made it the perfect place for the fragile Ant to freak out over his film debut.

Gift with purchase

Chris Cornell's distorted face makes a cameo

Neil wears a black T-shirt printed with the cover art of Soundgarden’s 1994 album “Superunknown”. These T-shirts were given away free with the CD when purchased from Sounds record stores, so they were everywhere. In fact, they were particularly common in Hamilton, probably due to its rich bogan subculture. I kind of miss this about buying music. Online, you might get a bonus track, but never a physical object. No t-shirts, posters, lighters, six-packs or MC Hammer limited edition baseball caps.

Tropical vacation location

Prue and Mike tie the knot

When the TV series started, there was pretty much no budget, with cast and crew donating their time and filming on the weekend around proper jobs. Then along the way some NZ On Air and NZ Film Commission funding appeared and suddenly horizons began to broaden. Settings expanded from small flats and K Road to multiple locations, day and night, as well as the piece de resistance – the wedding in Niue. It’s not just an excuse for a trip to a tropical location – it perfectly suits that part of the story, removing the characters from their predictable loose-moralled urban setting and transplanting them to a deeply religious Pacific island.

“Topless Women Talk About Their Lives” is available now on DVD. You should buy it. You can also watch the trailer at NZ On Screen, or just celebrate this choice film with the worst birthday cake ever:

Liz works at a computer so that's what she gets on her cake

Part 10: The case of the exploding bear

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There comes a time in the life of any New Zealander from the generation known as “X”, when one must look back and wonder what happened to the Play School toys.

Big Ted, Manu and Humpty now live at Te Papa, the sign at the Otago Settlers Museum says. The bear, the wahine and the curious round gent are most likely enjoying life in the lush, climate-controlled national museum. “Aw yee-yah,” Big Ted no doubt exclaims to Buzzy Bee. “We had a TV show. We were all famous ‘n’ shit. It was platinum, baby. VIP.”

Jemima, the sign also notes, is awol. Is it true that she went to Sydney in the late-80s in order to further her career in television, only to find life in a new country harder than she expected? And is it true there’s crazy old junkie lady staggering around Kings Cross, with dyed ginger hair, muttering to herself about something called “the round window”?

Little Ted, however, can be found at the Otago Settlers Museum. But paying a visit to him will not result in a warm fuzzy wash of Generation X nostalgia, suitable for turning into a Mr Vintage T-shirt design.

This is because Little Ted ain’t got no head. He was ritually decapitated on the last day of filming in Dunedin. “Nya ha ha!” the production crew no doubt evilly cackled as the explosives were detonated, resulting in a cascade of yellow fur and kapok. “Who’s the pretty boy TV star now, eh?”

While the headless corpse of Little Ted is on display at the Otago Settlers Museum, it’s certainly not in a prominent spot. Ted lurks down a dark alcove, well away from the more glamorous parts of the museum. If you want to visit him, you have to seek him out, past the exhibited bucket of KFC, through the eerie hall of portraits of Dunedin’s settlers, and down a narrow corridor that was possibly a route to a fire exit in a former life. Or perhaps you’ll just stumble across him and find yourself a little shocked to see his remains.

Little Ted is a reminder of what can happen to those who are drawn into the appealing world of showbiz. One day you can be starring in a daily television programme; the next you’ve had your head blown up (for a laugh!) by your (former) colleagues.

It’s a cruel world.

Little Ted ain't got no head

A fest of films

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I’ve always had this awkward relationship with the NZ International Film Festival. Sometimes I throw myself right into it, other times I ignore it entirely. In recent years, I’ve found myself overwhelmed by the choice offered in the programme, and cautious of leaping into see some film only for it to come out on general release the next week.

I’d more or less ignored it for the last few years, but this year, with my realisation that I’m still totally nuts about film, I decided to give the film fest a go.

But this year I based my film-going around two basic rules:

  • No planning ahead. All films are to be decided upon on the day and no tickets bought in advance.
  • No films that are due to come out on general release in the near future.

So I took it day by day and this is what I saw:

Best Worst Movie
Best Worst Movie is a documentary about a film that tried to be a good film but ended up a bad film which in turn made it a good film. The film in question is 1990 horror film “Troll 2″ (which has nothing to do with the original “Troll”). After languishing in home video obscurity, the film slowly gained a cult following, and the doco (made by “Troll 2″‘s child star) takes a look at the cast reluctantly revisiting the most embarrassing role on their IMDB profile. It was a little slow in places, but ended up being a joyful, kind-hearted look at films and fans.

The Camera on the Shore
This documentary by Graeme Tuckett looks at the work of New Zealand film-maker Barry Barclay. The only film of his I’d seen before was “Feathers of Peace”, but, as the doco shows, he had a significant career in both film and television work. Sadly, Barclay died during the making of the documentary, but the film includes footage from his tangi, including his friends telling stories about him. The doco’s style just lets the story of Barclay’s life unfold quite organically, without a power narrative pushing things along. The result it a really lovely, moving film about a great New Zealand film-maker.

Tangata Whenua 1
The film festival also included a retrospective of some of Baz’s films. “Tangata Whenua” was a television series from 1974, written and presented by Michael King. The Barclay-directed crew travelled to various parts of New Zealand and let groups of Maori tell their stories. The two episode in this series looked at kuia with moko (there were only 30 left at the time) and the Waikato. It was remarkable seeing footage of the Raglan golf course, with men in walk shorts and knee socks, while the old kuia talked about the great whare nui that once stood there.

Humpday
This was a very talky film, about two old university friends who suddenly become reunited as adults and decide to make a gay porn film together. No, really. The script was clever and focused on the relationship of the two men and the wife of one. The awkwardness and bravado of the conversations got a lot of laughs, though I heard that a daytime session of the same film screened to an almost silent audience. Really, the film isn’t about porn or sexuality, but more about male friendships – and not many films do that well.

Moon
The Tuesday night session (during the 40th anniversary of the first man on the moon!) was sold out, but I got a sweet seat anyway. “Moon” is directed by Duncan Jones (son of some famous guy who wrote some songs about space) and stars Sam Rockwell (who is my boyfriend). Moon exists in a sort of Kubrickian universe, as if the moon of “2001″ had been further explored, mined, and just left to get a bit crappy. The story centres around a man who works on the moon, and his discovery of, ooh, another version of himself. What’s going on, and what does Gerty the computer know? “Moon” is a really enjoyable, tense sci-fi.

Every Little Step
This documentary follows the casting process of the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line”, with the idea of contrasting the ambitious contemporary actors with their fictional counterparts from the musical, as well as interviews with the team behind the original musical. Now, I’ve only seen “A Chorus Line” once so I was really surprised at how moving I found “Every Little Step”. But when you take what is quite an emotional musical and couple it with people are going through similar experiences to the characters, and then consider how rare it is for actor/singer/dancers to get good work, then you can see where the drama comes from.

It Might Get Loud
The Embassy was full of rock geeks – people who I imagine read Q magazine. This documentary was all about rock guitar, told through interviews with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. Mr Page and Mr Edge seem to have reached a comfortable place in their lives, whereas Mr White is still in a very self-conscious place and seems to want most to be an old black bluesman. The three are brought together for a “summit” – talking about guitars ‘n’ shit while seated on old brown couches – and a great highlight of that is seeing the look of glee on The Edge and Jack White’s faces as Jimmy Page rips into “A Whole Lotta Love”.

All Tomorrow’s Parties
Yeah, let’s finish with some more music nerdary. This documentary looks at the 10 years of the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival, where indie bands play at British holiday camps. Most of the footage seemed to have been gathered together from bits and pieces incidentally filmed over the years, and much of the film’s appeal comes from the clever editing. All the film really concludes is that a bunch of bands have played at various ATPs over the years and most people there had a good time. But isn’t that all you really want in a festival?

Horseboy revisited

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Regular readers may remember my post about when, in 1995, I emailed TV2′s late-night news programme Newsnight with a poem about Horseboy, the show’s mascot hobby horse. Marcus Lush read it out on air, making it one of the first viewer emails to be shown on New Zealand television. Or something like that.

Well, recently I had a chance to view that episode. It was pretty much how I remembered it (I’m sure I had video-recorded it and watched it a few times back in the day), and now I’ve taken a few screen shots and added it to the post.

Actually, let’s just pause for some lolz. Here’s a screen shot from that same episode of the Absolut CHOGM map – when Newsnight realised that route of the motorcade security loop in Auckland for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting looked like a wonky Absolut vodka bottle:

absolutechogm

But anyway, watching that old episode of Newsnight – and a few others from late 1995 – it was really interesting to see how they treated that crazy new “internet” thing.

In another episode, Newsnight looked at Auckland art dealers Fox Gallery who had built a website to showcase their art. The interview was filmed at the physical gallery and much of the footage was of actual art on the walls, not online. (Though there were a few crappy shots of the gallery’s website, shown on crusty old Netscape.)

At the end of the story, the URL was shown on screen for interested parties to jot down. It was – steady yourself – http://www.ecentral.co.nz/fox.gallery/fox.welcome.html

Srsly. Remember when URLs used to be like that?

I just googled Fox Gallery to see if it still existed. It doesn’t seem to, but the search results brought up heaps of other Auckland galleries. These days it’s completely unremarkable for a gallery to have a website.

Now, when Fox’s 54-character URL was up on screen, Marcus Lush realised the graphic would actually need to stay up there for a while to give people a decent chance to write it down. So he ad-libbed, saying, “They say the trouble with the internet is that no one’s ever found a use for it. There’s nothing to do.”

And, yeah, that’s almost what it was like back then. There was no Trade Me, no Facebook, no Google. I’d only been online for a few months and while I was thrilled by the obvious potential of the internet, my first website will still about 8 months away and I was still trying to figure out what to do with the internet.

So now maybe the general internet has got to the stage where it’s a bit ordinary and boring; and now if you buy a handbag on Trade Me or watch an old Flaming Lips video on YouTube, people don’t think you’re a “computer whizz” and expect you to be able to fix their PC.

Though there are still corners of the internet that haven’t wiggled into the mainstream yet. For example, as ubiquitous as Twitter may seem, it’s still really hard to explain it to people who haven’t used it; who don’t get why you’d use it, just as 15 years ago they wouldn’t have understood why an art gallery would have a webpage.

But eventually they figure it out.