Category Archives: fillums

You know that Scorcese film the Departed? When I went to see it at the cinema it struck me as so ridiculous I laughed out loud during the really serious parts. I mean, really – am I the only who thought that film was completely shithouse? I mean jesus, the RAT running along the (window sill? I forget) at the end – surely I wasn’t the only one who laughed out loud?
Any film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson is heading for crapsville. I like Mark Whalberg, but Matt Damon?!
TELL ME I’m not the only one who thought that film was utter crap?!

We went to see The Prestige at the Astor (a double session! What excellentness!) and it was GREAT. I mean, it was AMAZINGLY GREAT. If you can get to this before it goes off the cinema (good luck), do so immediately – it’s really worth it for the mood of a big screen. And this film is all about spectacle, so it’s worth it.
Will write more when I have more time.

I was a fan of the original television series.

The strange, angular characters and odd storylines really appealed. Not to mention the female protagonist. I liked the way she was ‘sexualised’ but not in a conventionally sugary way.

But I also liked the film version.

Watching the extras on the DVD now, there are some interesting things working in terms of body shapes and aesthetics of movement. It’s a very white, European aesthetic at work – lots of pointed toes and extended legs and arms.
But you can’t help but think about issues of gender and body and sexuality when you’re watching an ‘action’ film, whether we’re talking about female or male actors and characters. I was recently seriously annoyed by a comment from a peer about these sorts of female characters – that they were, simply, sexualised eye candy for computer game playing adolescent boys. Because for me, these type of female characters (from Lara Croft to all the Milla Jovovich characters) are exciting and interesting and far more than just eye candy.
I think that my main criticism of that comment is that it suggests that male action characters are somehow not sexualised (because, obviously, the female body is always the object of desire, the male is always the subject). And that a woman being physically active or violent or acrobat is somehow inherently sexual or sensual because she is a woman. And that this somehow mediates the affect of her violence.

Sure, there are some fairly heavily sexualised images in the representation of female action figures.

But then, there are a range of ways of sexualising women and associating them with sexualised symbols.

Whether they’re ‘feminine’

or ‘masculine’

or really ‘masculine’.

But I do think, despite these things, that when the protagonist is a woman, and when she is a powerful character, the phrase ‘sexualised violence’ is too simple. Surely, Charlize is one seriously sexualised body flipping and fighting her way through that film. But the fact that she is a character I feel comfortable imagining myself to be (in a classicly psychoanalitic moment) suggests that there must be some sort of feminist pleasure to be found in these sorts of characters. And that there must be more to them than simply a little hawt body action for teenage boys to scope.
As even my undergrads have well and truly gathered, audiences are active. We make active use of the images on the screen. And so I can make Aeon the type of female character who doesn’t make me uncomfortable.
Aeon herself is an interesting characer, as a result of her original placement as an animated character in an MTV text who died quite regularly.

If you’ve ever seen the original animation, you’d know that Aeon (and her co-characters) aren’t entirely comfortable.

They don’t fit nicely into archetypal ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’. The program was difficult to watch. The characters were difficult to live with.

I know that there are problems with the film. I know that it didn’t bring with it all the subversive and interesting aspects of the animation. But I think that for someone like me, who has seen the animation, the film cannot help but echo the animation – the two are inextricably linked. Intertextual. Cross-polination (to use an image from Aeon Flux the film).
Charlize herself carries interesting echoes of sexuality and the body and speculative fiction.
And Aeon Flux is far less disturbing than silly films like Ultraviolet, though no where near as interesting as Razor Blade Smile.

This week has seen The Squeeze fiddling with a very old Mac – a blue and white G3 – for Crinks. It’s frankenbox now as we’ve desperately scrounged memory to make it fast enough to run imovie. Thing is, it’s a piece of shit that’s not worth the plastic it’s made of, so it’s been kind of a struggle. But you know Macsluts – they can’t let go of Mac crap. Gotta hoard it. In evidence: one of the little rubbery stops/feet on my ibook has fallen out. I hadn’t noticed, but it’s worrying The Squeeze.
At any rate, Crinks was overjoyed with her new digital freedom and asked what The Squeeze would like in repayment.
As I explained to her:
[with husking voice]: “One day I’m gonna come to you with a difficult proposition. And you will remember this.”
Don Hamleoni can afford to be generous with the skills of others.
Tonight we went to see The Family Stone which I really enjoyed, mostly for the elder Wilson brother (I would marry those Wilson boys), but also because it provided me with some chick-slapstick. There’s nothing I like more than women falling down. Followed perhaps by serious pathos. I laughed a lot at Claire Danes falling down some bus steps. More than anyone else in the crowded cinema. The Squeeze takes inordinate delight in my laughing inappropriately in the cinema – it’s the naughty side of him. I blame my mother for my strange sense of humour. I can’t help it. Puns, black humour, slapstick. It’s the simple stuff I like.
I have continued our cinematic journey through Important Films We Haven’t Seen, this week themeing them ‘men movies’, in honour of the Squeeze, who’s been a bit poorly. The other week it was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was great, and I caught part of Easy Rider on telly the other night, which I have fond memories of (“Have you got helmet?” “Yeah, i got a helmet”).
I think we should get China Town out next, and then Mean Streets and The Outsiders because I want to get to Rumble Fish which I adored as a teenager.
This week there was Hunt for Red October (nothing makes a sicky bub feel better than a submarine movie – he regularly rewatches Das Boat in the middle of the night to comfort him when he can’t sleep), followed by Godfather III, which did not please us as much as I or II, both of which we loved (though I wins by a nose).
Last night we watched Raging Bull. It took hours and hours, and we were a bit bored by the end. Sure, it’s great and all, but still…
In other news, I have of late been susceptible to bouts of furious rage, usually in response to meaningless acts or events. Asking me to find out which film I’d like to see was enough to cause a mighty shouting and raging last night. The day before it was the garage clothes line’s being canibalised for a party (in November). Yesterday it was not having the door answered when I demanded it.
The poor Squeeze is, for the most party, the hapless victim of this senseless fury. He is a walking definition of the word stoicism. If it weren’t for the ‘shut up!’ voice and the dance of derision, he’d no doubt have murdered me by now.
I blame it all on thesis-completion anxiety and an overwhelming paranoia about my extension application.
Though it may also perhaps have something to do with all these gangstah films we’ve been watching…

I’ve been thinking about Russia a bit lately. The other day I saw a documentary about living in Moscow on SBS. Basically, the story was about ‘business stealing’ in Moscow. It seems that if you have a bunch of private security doods (ie private police force), you forge some proof of ownership documents (including those documenting the sale of a business), have a contact or two in the government, you can simply walk into a business with your private police force and take over. Then it belongs to you. If you sell it on, the person who buys it legally owns it, because they bought it in good faith. There are next to no legal options for the person whose business you’ve stolen. And if you want some land somebody’s house is on, you simply burn down the house. Because, under Russian law, if your house burns down, you no longer own the land.
There are some corruption issues in Russia atm.
Then we saw that Night Watch film. And I thought about the people in that documentary when I saw that film. I bet the ordinary Moscow citizens wish there was a watch for Russian businessmen and politicians.
And then I was thinking about the Russian lindy hoppers. Each year at Herrang there are a bunch of Russian lindy hoppers. They’re subsidised by the Herrang organisers because the Russians are so economically rooted. As a consequence, there are some seriously kick arse Russian lindy hoppers. I wonder about this… should Australian visitors to Herrang be sponsored as well, because they don’t have the money to travel to Herrang? I know that the Swingapore people offer scholarships to promising dancers each year – they have all their dance classes paid for, and have to do classes in all sorts of dance styles (not just lindy) at the studio, which does salsa, hip hop, etc as well as lindy.
And then there are a few Russian people living in my area – I hear them talking in Russian on the tram or bus every now and then.
On a slightly different tack, I knew a Polish woman about my age (or a bit older) when I was at unimelb. She told stories about compulsorary military training when she was at high school. It was like me having to learn to use a machine gun and a rocket launcher. She told this story as well (and I paraphrase):

When I was in primary school, we had to go a long way to school each day. In winter, the snow was very heavy and it was hard to get there. We used to catch a bus that was old and didn’t run very well. One day the bus didn’t come because it had been blown up. So we couldn’t get to school on the bus any more – we had to walk. In the winter, we often couldn’t get to school at all

And this was a story by a young woman just like me, sitting in a conference room with a bunch of other pgrads who were going to be hosts at the open day. Can you believe that story?
I often think about how Poland wants to become part of the EU (I don’t know if they are yet – I haven’t checked). And about Turkey. The other night we saw a film on the ABC which starred Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald, which was an odd, quiet film about a shy, awkward English public servant who worked for the councellor of the exchequour (sp?) and met a girl in a coffee shop whom he invited to come with him on a business trip to Reykjavik in Iceland. Turns out it was the G8 meeting. And they were discussing extreme poverty. And this girl is so outspoken about poverty she’s asked to leave. It was an interesting film. Mostly about this man’s utter discomfort with human relationships, and with this girl’s obsession with children. It was called The Girl in the Cafe. We only saw it by accident, but it was interesting.
Iceland seems cold. I once saw a film called Cold Fever about a Japanese guy who has to travel to Iceland to do some rites in memoriam to his parents who died there. That film is quite lovely – sort of cold and still and eery.
Yeah, anyway, there’s no point to all these stories, really, I’m just kind of thinking about these cold, snowy countries and places I haven’t been. But have seen in films and on telly.