Transformers

I should have known.

I am not the demographic this film is aimed at.

I hated it. It sucked. In fact, it was pants.

But I’m really glad I saw it because it taught me a thing or two about the state of the nation.

First things first, why did I bother? Good question. Essentially, I was fooled by the trailer – it actually looked quite exciting and then I came over all nostalgic for Nephew’s company and I sent him a text suggesting we see it together because he is my comic-hero/sci-fi/genre viewing buddy and because I miss him.

In the end he couldn’t come but the dirty, seed had been planted like e.coli, waiting to have me doubled over in regretful agony only a few days later. So I called Phallatia; we both have pay-per-month cinema passes which means we’re more liable to take risks with our viewing. She being a lot younger than me, was brought up on the Transformers TV cartoon and was a big fan. Like that’s an excuse. But it was better than mine.

Well, it was full of robots fighting. I should have known.

I like a bit of fighting – two of my favourite films are House of Flying Daggers and Kill Bill but…but…this was shite fighting. I couldn’t tell the Deceptamoron (baddy) robots from the Automoron (goody) ones and once I’d ‘enjoyed’ the first transformation moment (in the first two seconds of the movie), er…that was it. All the transformations were the same. The robots (to my un-teenage eyes at least) looked the same. I did notice some were smaller. Or ‘cute’. Two robots (goodies) did so much jiving they would have made Huggy Bear blush,

“Racial stereotypes much?” I snarked at Phallatia in the seat next to me.

And because I’m on regime, I couldn’t even comfort eat.




Meanwhile, the rest of the audience made up of teenage boys, young boys and their dads and one or two family groups were having a terrific time. I passed the long hours studying them carefully. I wanted to know what kind of people went to these films. At least my excuse was fairly elaborate. I wish I’d heard Xan Brooks of the Guardian’s answer to the exact same question before I’d wasted my time. He said, “Morons. And there’s a lot of them.” I am a moron.

So what was wrong with this film other than the boring robots, their boring fights, the incessant NOISE and EXPLOSIONS and SPARKS? Everything else.

I think director Michael Bay had better have his excuses carefully rehearsed when he’s reached the front of the line at the pearly gates.

GOD: How can you excuse this pile of sexist, boring shite, Mr Bay?
MICHAEL BAY: I fucked the frame, sir.

Very loud sound of eject chute swooshing Bay to Hell.

If only.

By the way, that is exactly how Mr Bay(tor?) describes his ‘work’.

If I was the frame, I would have smothered him with a pillow and snuck out the bathroom window.

When I’m prime minister, making films like this will be illegal.

The ‘performances’ are worth a mention. Mr Le Boeuf looking bewildered and dorky, which demeanour apparently (in teenage boy fantasies) pulls the hawt chicks and helps him save the planet, has absolutely zero charisma. The floosie playing the lead woman, Megan Pouty, is straight out of an FHM wank centrefold.

“Her mother must be very proud of her.” I told Phallatia. Then, “Does she have to pout every ten seconds?”

Fortunately no one in the audience leant over and told me to shh because they couldn’t hear me due to the burst eardrums from all the EXPLOSIONS.

Megan Chesty gives an extraordinary display of her range, pouting, running really well in slow motion, and straddling a motorbike like a pro.

And wtf was John Turturro doing in this movie? He must have a heavy gambling habit to pay back, or paying bollock busting alimony. Or something. He, like everyone else over the age of teen involved in this sorry excuse for celluloid, was required to do the staring eyes, the table punching, SHOUTING and spitting. And no one should sweat that much even if they are in the desert.

I didn’t realise that watching a pair of toy dogs have sex could be quite this hilarious.

So why did I enjoy it?

Because I learned something. This explains things to me. It gave me a snapshot (admittedly skewed) of the very young male psyche. What they like to see; what they get to see whether they want to or not; the level of violence that’s acceptable in their lives; the portrayal of women they’re given. When I see some girl draped across a motorbike I find it as offensive as the worst Jewish stereotype. And shouldn’t everyone? Somewhere in my brain newsreel footage of a suffragette throwing herself under a horse plays out. I wonder whether she’d have thought twice if she knew that women would be wondering round and round in little circles still and in the 21st century?

The other thing I learned is something hard to define; it’s about the level of ‘concentration’ required when watching anything aimed at children these days. I’ll digress for a moment…a while ago, in my professional capacity, I was searching for information on how to broach the prickly issue of internet-stranger-danger-security for very young kids.

The BBC had a fabulous series of videos aimed at children covering all sorts of things including not giving out your details online etc. But. They were unwatchable. At lest by this old lady. For a moment, and I promise you I don’t mean this disrespectfully, I wondered if this must be what it’s like to have epilepsy. While the ‘characters’ spoke, in the background there was incessant noise. And the mix of sound was such that the talking, which was actually mumbling could hardly be made out over the background. And, for good measure, there where occasional, random, infuriating chirrups and twitters and crashes drowning out the words.

The overall feeling was that none of this was worth listening to, nothing was worth paying attention to fully and it’s entirely ok for people to talk over each other. And this was the BBC. It made me understand certain hyper individuals that I’ve taught over the years, generally male, at least a handful in each class, who are just twitchy and impossible to engage for more than ‘goldfish time’.

So, no surprise that the same thing was in evidence when cock-bearing Michael Bay, had exactly the same thing going throughout this piece of crap film: throbbing music in every moment; people falling over, being humiliated, bullied and loads of fast talking; gibberish exposition giving you no time to say, “Now wait a minute! That doesn’t make sense!”

I can’t believe that parents will bring their kids to a 12A when they are only five or six. In one case, a toddler sat on his mum lap. I asked myself, what did he make of the incessant NOISE, the constant violence, the misogyny (for we must hate women to not entrust them with personality). Ok, the decapitation and eviscerations were of robots and frankly, they deserved it, but they still are what they are. I’m proud of the fact that this bothers me. My own children have a healthy love of zombie films, the more gruesome the better, but they didn’t watch anything like that until they were in their late teens and had a chance to form a context. We mustn’t make the mistake of looking at the world through our eyes when making decisions for children about what they should and shouldn’t watch.

Don’t give this guy your money. Just don’t. Every little counts.

I leave you with this story. Apparently Megan Booby’s audition went like this. Michael Bay asked her to come over to his place and wash his Ferrari for him. And she got the part.

Like I said, her mother must be proud.

Star Trek

It took a second viewing and a lot of deep breaths before I was half able to articulate why Star Trek was such a good movie; there is much to praise but, it won’t surprise you, that which delivers for the sternest, old school fan and yet also engages the husbands, wives and girlfriends who came along for the ride with their Trekkie dates, was the casting.

For loyal fans of the original series, much was familiar to give that feeling of security; and director JJ Abrahams took everything very seriously, consulting advisors along the way on important minutia such as which sides to holster up phasers; just like back in the day, Kirk was beaten up on a regular basis and slammed face down onto dusty surfaces and table tops; there was the same multicultural, multi species crew; and an undercurrent of racism - while Bones only made one ‘dodgy’ comment sotto voce when he refers to Spock as a goblin, most of the unsavoury remarks come from the Vulcans and were directed at the humans and, specifically at Spock who as, half human , half Vulcan (is there anyone who actually needed me to tell them that?) was seen as tarnished and weak by his dual heritage; and the ship made the same sounds: the swish of the bridge doors, the transporter whine and the hailing whistle. And, the guy in the red shirt who beams down to the planet and we know is going to die, he’s there too!

There are some upgrades. The bridge of the Enterprise was a modern take on the 24th century, all white and shiny with, so I read somewhere, more safety barriers than in 1966. The uniforms are the same but different with updated lines still shorty but not as skimpy ; the transporter beam is swirly not speckly and the phasers look less like they fell out of a cracker.

And gone are the dodgy sets.

This is the story of Kirk, McCoy and Spock before the Enterprise. We meet them while they are children and then as twenty-somethings on their first missions for Starfleet. The casting is spot on with the leads bearing enough resemblance to their predecessors and enough flair and personality of their own that they become entirely believable within minutes. All roles are filled with respect and no sense of irony with all parties finding a hook to link them to their predecessors’ performances yet managing to remain themselves. You could sense instantly that the actors believed in this universe and so, by default, did we.

Kirk, the “genius level repeat offender” from the mid west, is played by the gloriously handsome Chris Pine, who brings a touch of James Dean and young Steve McQueen to the role with a slouchy, cocky physical performance which is more of an homage to William Shatner rather than an impersonation. When he takes his place in The Chair, it’s as if Shat in his hey day had been reincarnated.

Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, is a tortured, more emotional Vulcan than we have come to know and who, we are shown, has to learn to get a grip on his impulses; it all makes sense if we understand his origins and how defensive he is under the surface.

McCoy played by the dashing Karl Urban is a perfect Clark Gable impersonation; I had forgotten the sexy Southern drawl from the original series.

We also have Scotty, Sulu and Chekov who bears a striking resemblance to Justin Timberlake and provides a tongue in cheek comic turn where his pronunciation is hammed up to 11 - “wick-tor” rather than Victor.

The baddies are the Romulans; I hadn’t realised on first viewing that it was Eric Bana playing Nero, the rogue Romulan leader in louche, mildly stoner-like performance; a cross between a snake and a Tahitian native in his tattoos. He and his henchmen, dressed in Issey Miyake style coats stride runway style down unnecessarily dangerous walkways with no barriers keeping you form the sheer drops.

JJ Abrahams does a fine job: with slick, even editing and deft pacing he manages to pull off a sense of scale which is vital in ‘space’ with sweeping camerawork and a deft use of swelling music and silences; this is particularly effective in the scene with Kirk senior, where Abrahams creates a beautiful, emotional change of mood caused entirely by the shift in sound from the chaos and buzz on the bridge and the silence of space. The movie, like the cast, is easy on the eye, painted with a pale blues and gold palette which gives a timeless solidity to the scene rather than it being a washed out view of the future, here we could connect.
It’s the perfect fusion of mind and body, ideas and sex.


We never forget that Starfleet is a military organisation and it particularly resonates in these times of the Iraq and Afghanistan situations. One reviewer spoke of how one way Star Trek has been brought up to the minute is that it no longer represents the forward looking, hopeful sixties. Instead this is a movie for the inward looking noughties.

The journey now, isn’t to seek out new lives and new civilisations but to boldly go inwards and find out who you are.

In Star Trek, the characters are on a journey – to find out what their destinies are and without wishing to spoil you, this knowledge is the real climax for the film.



I loved this film; for me it’s everything SCI-FI should be, the perfect fusion of mind and body, sex and ideas. I only wish we’d had a few more domestic details to fulfil my inner geek.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

There are few cultural ‘occasions’ that make me tingly: sometimes I’ll buy a new album the week it’s released; once or twice a year there will be a film I have to see as soon as it comes out; a new series of an old favourite on TV might give me a buzz but books, much as I love them and need them, don’t tend to send me agog at the thought; yet, a few weeks ago, when I saw that Alain de Botton, tonsorially challenged philosopher and geek, had a new book out, I actually got an adrenaline rush. Is this love or should I should get out more?

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is his whimsical study of people at work and you have to trust me that, despite what appears to be ‘dull’ chapter headings and ‘plain’ photos, this is a charming, funny, illuminating and un-putdownable book.

As ever, de Botton is interested in what most of us might at the very least overlook or at the most choose not to articulate:

I was inspired by the men at the pier to attempt a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principle source of life’s meaning.

In a radio interview he explained his desire to answer the question, ‘what are people doing at 3pm?’ Children, he says, are familiar with the roles of postmen, shopkeepers, etc – but what about all those other jobs? Inspired by Richard Scarry’s children books, What People Do? and the details in a Canaletto, de Botton says he wants to show the “human hive”.

Alongside this de Botton untangles his fascination with wanting to know where everything comes from at a time when we’ve inevitably lost touch with producers and suppliers,

We are now as imaginatively disconnected from the manufacture and distribution of our goods as we are practically in reach of them, a process of alienation which has stripped us of a myriad opportunities for wonder, gratitude and guilt.

Each chapter is an exploration of a different arena among them: biscuit manufacture; logistics; aviation; transmission engineering; accountancy and career counselling – areas which hardly rouse the loins and to which we probably wouldn’t have given much thought unless we’d had direct dealings with individuals in the field, yet through his lyrical, intelligent prose finds de Botton celebrates the beauty and humanity in the most mundane and obscure of activities and he shuffles like Louis Theroux’s awkward understudy, interviewing an eclectic range of committed, specialist, interdependent human beings who occupy themselves daily in ways we thought we didn’t care about, allowing us to walk in their shoes for a few pages and bringing us all infinitesimally closer.

One section of the book is a photo-journal where he traces the journey of a tuna from the moment it’s killed on a fishing boat, (he comments with horror that it’s about the same size as his four year old child), to when, as if by magic, it’s consumed by a child in England.

With the picture of the fisherman clubbing tuna to death burnt into my memory, I recognise that I am now a veteran of the blood-soaked processes lurking behind the labels’ serene photograph of a fishing jetty and an azure sea.

He describes the cargo of a car transporter,

These near identical Hyundai Amicas, smelling of newly minted plastic and synthetic carpet, will bear witness to sandwich lunches and arguments, love making and motorway songs. They will be driven to beauty spots and left to gather leaves in school car parks. A few will kill their owners. To peer inside these untouched vehicles, their seats wrapped in brown paper printed with elegant and cryptic Korean entreaties, is to have a feeling of intruding on an innocence more normally associated with the slumber of newborns.

God, Alain, I sigh shifting uneasily in my pyjamas, my coffee untouched, you are such a master of length! And while he weaves those subordinate clauses the way I like it, he keeps the interest up by breaking chapters into numbered sections so that the unfolding of his ideas become like scenes in a play.

Unlike most tomes of this nature, the reader is also spoiled with the visual; the photos and occasional diagrams, play a huge part in the tone and mood. The photographer, Richard Baker , a silent but powerful collaborator, achieves his best work a section on transmission engineering, which might have been entitled ‘A Celebration of the Geek; against your better judgement, you find you are wooed by the elegance of electricity pylons juxtaposed against nature; joining the pylon appreciation society is just a Google-click away.

De Botton can’t help himself; he has to think about everything and make connections with other human beings; this is great on paper but when he articulates his thoughts to their faces, he provides some gentle, unexpected comic moments. One time he watches a woman on a computer; he confides to the reader she reminds him of a Vermeer. Unfortunately he finds himself telling her this. It was a thought best kept to himself for she backs away.

Indeed, this weekend, Mr Sangue and I shared a de Botton moment. We walked down Sangue Avenue with Twiggy the school caretaker and his beard strode towards us, he dressed in Hawaiian shirt, large floral calf length shorts, socks and sandals while she wore a dress straight out of the Hamish mail order catalogue. We exchanged the time of day but, once they were safely out of earshot, one of us said,

“All that was missing was a pitchfork!”

We agreed that we should have told them they reminded us of a painting.

“They’d have liked that.” We grinned, imagining how they would recoiled from us.

American Gothic by Grant Wood

De Botton’s awkwardness in social situations underscores his belief that no matter how much jargon has evolved in the world of work such as in engineering and in rocket science - we still don’t have as clear cut, nor specialist vocabulary for feelings; in the workplace communications are rife with subtleties but when it comes to sharing our hopes and fears, we remain disconnected from others.

In an interview he was asked if he’d ever done a proper day’s work, but as he rightly points out, the job of a writer is to help us walk in another’s shoes – this he succeeds in doing.

I nodded and sighed with middle aged angst when he spoke of the middle classes belief that jobs should somehow be fulfilling whereas the working classes feel work is something to be endured. It reminded me of a compelling scene in a recent series where a half dozen privileged teenagers experienced life in the front life of Indian clothes production. One Indian father slept on the floor under his machine at night and the English youth, shook his head,

“How can you be happy?” he demanded of the bewildered sweat shop worker, “How can this make you happy?”

“I am happy because I am providing food for my family.” He explained defensively through a translator.

De Botton outlines how we often hold the best version of ourselves at work, conducting ourselves with a skill and efficiency often missing from our personal relationships.

His loping sentences, filled with charm and a love of humanity, give me as much pleasure as anything I could read. In his section on biscuit manufacture, he writes,

…in the hands of an experienced branding expert, decisions about width, shape, coating, packaging and name can furnish a biscuit with a personality as subtly appropriately nuanced as that of a protagonist in a great novel.

As he guides us through the agony and the ecstasy of the work place and the mysteries of logistics, I savoured each turn of phrase and connection but managed to resist the impulse to share sections of the book with friends and family lest they brand me a poseur.

Thank you for allowing me this indulgence.

The Boat that Sucked

The Boat that Sucked
Avoid this film at all costs; thanks to my timely warning, mark it down as the biggest pile of pants you’ll never see.

I know there are mixed feelings about Richard Curtis films but I generally fall into the ‘for’ group. I loved Four Weddings, loved Blackadder and, as for the rest of his stuff, while I wouldn’t call it art I’d say it’s mildly entertaining, instantly forgettable, harmless cheese. The Boat that Sucked was, on the other hand, an insult to everyone: women, music, anyone who can remember the seventies and especially freedom fighters everywhere.

Having read a couple of negative reviews, I expected little. The opening scene was a great montage, great music and, I confess, I immediately settled in to enjoy people smoking in a period way but, as soon as the first track faded out and the luvvies began to espouse their inane dialogue, my tiny bubble went ping. The snark-circuitry in my brain got a sniff of freedom and from then on I was all nah-nah-nah-nah: did people really clamour around their trannies in their nightwear of an evening? When did Kenneth Brannagh forget how to act? Where was Hugh? What about people who didn’t smoke – did they listen to the radio too? And if so, what did they do with their hands? Had the ‘dolly birds’ taken a wrong turn from the set of Confessions of a Window Cleaner? What was the point of the floppy-haired youth? How many times is it legal to crack the same, unfunny joke in a movie – I refer, of course, to the frightfully amusing idea of naming one character ‘Twat’. Nearly as funny as having the only girl on the ship be a… and you might want to put your cup down at this point… a lesbian! I know it’s hilarious! (NB, American friends, ‘trannies’ means ‘transistor radios’ here.)

I found I was looking over the luvvies and dolly birds’ shoulders at the décor, the spot-on product packaging and the lesbian’s crocheted waistcoat which looked alarmingly like one of my favourite pieces I often wore in the late sixties over a white polo-neck jumper and above a purple velvet mini-skirt, white tights and some ‘patchwork’ platforms. I thought that memory of a former me had been buried under my new romantic outfits, smothered by my nineties aerobics wear and was never going to make it through into my conscious mind. It seems my belief that I was the coolest was on a par with Mr Curtis’ belief that his film rocked.

I loved the bridesmaids’ dresses complete with pearly nails and short beehives but it didn’t make up for watching this has-been karaoke. What has become of Richard Curtis? I suspect this is what happens when your advisors turn into brown-nosers. Surely someone somewhere in his gang must have known that cinema goers don’t want to suffer a bunch of middle aged men singing into a beer bottle? The performances were hammy and drawn out in scenes that went on as long in perceived time as internal examinations do.

The characterization was clumsy and slip-shod; it was as if a tick-list of ‘types’ had been used as guidance: “Hey!” Curtis might have said, “We could have a character who always gets the girls,” pausing for a round of applause, “And how about one who is stupid but, wait for it, the twist is that occasionally he’ll say something clever!” Gasps from the sycophants.

And what was all this about Freedom? Ok, I was too busy plaiting my dolls hair to read the papers but even I know it wasn’t pirate radio station that represented freedom at this time in history? What about writers in the eastern bloc, women’s lib, strikes, new equality laws etc, etc? I wanted to stand up and shout, “Long live iPods and fuck vinyl!” just because it would have annoyed the hell out of the luvvies. In the year that England won the World Cup, the closest we got to dry land was a piece of Ennio Morricone music and a mild reference to the Vietnam war. Er, that’s it. I would have liked to have seen real people – what was going on while they were listening to the radio? This was beautifully conveyed in Withnail and I – such as in the scene with the demolition ball – and the volume was still on maximum.

Curtis would have us believe that what really counted was that this bunch of miscreants got to shag lots of dolly birds. The film was misogynist - this bollocks about this teenager trying to get sex being post-modernist blah blah doesn’t cut it with me. The scene where they do a real life mock up of the bare breasted women on the banned Electric Lady Land album cover was plain gratuitous and left me feeling embarrassed.

I almost laughed once but it might have been because I was getting low blood sugar. The cinema was two thirds full on the Friday night early show and any laughter just sounded polite and supportive - the woman sitting in front of me who found the film hilarious stood out as much as that one funny moment I alluded to. I suggest she was mashed.

Even the music couldn’t save this empty, meaningless film; I knew the Stones were fantastic anyway and I don’t need that twat Curtis to tell me. Not one track was played all the way through – I’d have more fun dancing in my pants in the kitchen while gazing upon just the one wrinkly face. My own.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was the only actor who came out of this debacle with dignity. The only heavy weight ‘star’, he delivered and understated, believable performance. What a contrast with Emma Thompson who looked so pleased with herself it made me want to hurl in the popcorn bag. Rys Ifans was underused and looked a little embarrassed

One who-cares scene after another, this was a self-indulgent plundering of the dressing up box with the few good ideas nicked from Beatles movies.

Curtis would probably argue that this film was escapist – the only thing I wanted was to escape my seat – quite simply the worst film I’ve seen since Blues Brothers 2000.

Usually I include a film still but I felt this photo I took the other day to be more suitable.

Bearlesque

A burlesque show starring a troupe of hairy men’s men? I had no idea what to expect yet I wasn’t surprised at anything I saw all night.

The bijou, West End venue, held a snug-fitting 75. The tiny stage, dressed modestly with a hat stand and tinsel backdrop, was to become the scene of much hilarity. In a sell-out show, we perched on the back row, closer than you would want to be given the quantities of sweat and loose bear-hair soon to be flying about and well away from the firing line of compére, Fred Bear. He delivered gentle snipes at the front row, particularly to a guy sporting a ‘Paul Weller’.

The ‘premise’ of the show was to educate us in what it means to be a bear: three bears emerged bleary eyed, chubby and partially clad from a cave at the back of the auditorium. Once they’d trekked to the front, stretched, yawned and scratched their bollocks, Fred Bear indicated a row of handsome young, slim men in the audience which, he suggested with a cheeky glint in his eye, “Could be on a stag night, but you and I know - gay.” To him, he said, they represented stereotypical gay men and bearded Fred Bear, wanted us to experience the kind of gay man he was. Dressed in fun fur shorts with a little tail, brogues, long socks and sock suspenders, a collar and tie with his ample, hairy chest and belly on full display – he promised an evening which celebrated the “Rubenesque male form” in song and dance.

My Nephew was the stooge and ‘volunteered’ to be the student on behalf of the giggling audience. Convincingly ingénue and sporting a rugby shirt and a pair of trousers I’d given him a few years ago known as his ‘slayer trousers’ he agreed to learn. Before long he was taking part in a musical number based on The Titanic with lots of slap-stick and visual jokes around the size of the funnel then, just before the interval, he emerged transformed in waiter’s waistcoat, colourful frou-frou skirt with the rest of the troupe and treated us to a hilarious, slick can-can complete with whooping, buttock slapping and splits.

The rest of a delightful evening went by far too quickly; Fred’s gentle banter joined up all the pieces performed by his fellow bears as well as the guest act , a group of four ‘proper’ dancers who performed an at times moving piece that might have been called ‘Make Love Not War’ for that was the message on their underpants.

Later Nephew grinned, “Yes. We hate them. They’re actually good.” After the interval, ‘original’ Bear; Henry VIII made a special guest appearance, Nephew was transformed into an American Beauty, we enjoyed a re-working of the famous dance scene in Singing in the Rain, found out how kinky bubble wrap really can be and finally and best of all, were treated to the scene with the chairs, bowlers and fishnet tights from Cabaret!

It was teasing, hilarious, camp fun. And educational; I now know the difference between regular Bears, Cubs (young Bears – i.e. Nephew), Otters (slim bears) and Polar Bears (older bears with grey hair). What a difference from the one or two occasions in the distant past when I’ve seen male strippers performing to women at hen parties; here I noticed that despite their nudity and cavorting, they were still the ones in charge advancing on the audience making them squeal with barely contained nerves; here all flesh on display was in a “Hey! I think I’m gorgeous.” mood. And how could you deny their beauty? The Bears eschew the gym and eat their pies with no guilt - it was two fingers up at male oppression!

During the interval, I boasted to some guys outside while they smoked and I made a phone-call:

“Isn’t it great? That’s my Nephew you know? I’m so proud!”

“Really? Which one?”

“The cub.” I beamed.

They exchanged looks, “I’m sorry, but he’s gorgeous!” one said.

No need to apologise!

Twilight

I’d read so much comment about how the phenomenally successful books, on which Twiglight is was based, were works of misogyny that I couldn’t approach this movie with an open mind. Yet, I can’t resist a vampire film.




Teenager Bella, is forced to leave sunny Atlanta where’s she’s lived with her mum to settle with her taciturn, police officer father in the cold north of America.

She accepts this with the same passivity as she accepts everything else that is thrown at her. Bella is quite a little withdrawn but despite having no visible personality of her own, on her first day in her new school she manages to attract the friendly attention of the most charismatic, pleasant and beautiful school kids you can imagine. What great kids – shiny, humorous, affectionate, zit free and really hard working!.

Then one day the cool kids (vampires, of course) stroll into the canteen turning heads and, as one reviewer put it, with the entrance of Edward, the romantic ‘lead’, the camera almost falls over at his good looks.

Hopelessly attracted to each other, the lustful glances and hungry huffing soon transform into lying stiffly (in his case, at least) alongside each other, with one foot on the floor in case he is overcome and slips into his real nature and kills her. They are the most undesirable little dweebs I’ve ever witnessed. Edward wears too much makeup – in these days of CGI you’d think they could afford to go easier on the pan stick. He manages a weak but sustained poor man’s James Dean impersonation Angel wings at beginning. To be honest, he was too young for me to even feel vaguely comfortable finding him attractive. Imagine my relief when the ‘evil’ vampires made their entrance. They were easy to spot because they pouted sexily at the camera and wore great clothes. One of the guys, Jason I think was his name, all Brad Pittish slutty pout and swagger, made me breath one shuddery sigh of girl relief,

“That’s more like it!” I breathed into my friend’s ear.

“I knew you’d like him!” she groaned. She had no computation about fancy the fey, ball-less vampire. I, on the other hand, said I’d feel a bit like a kiddy-fiddler if I even acknowledged that he was dashing.

And what did he see in Bela? It confirms my worst fear about men – they hate women with personality and just want a demure little miss who never says boo. The feminists argue that she behaves like an abused wife, totally subjugating her needs and life to Edward’s ‘ways’. While this may have been true of the books (which I haven’t read), it’s a little more even in the film. Neither of them gets what they want. The Jonas Brothers would be proud.
Dangerous liaisons
As most teenage girls in Britain will already know, Twilight - a tale of love between a young woman and a vampire - has now been made into a movie. It will no doubt be a huge hit. But what a shame it's not more like Buffy, writes Lucy Mangan


Unfortunately, there’s only one remotely Buffy-like line,

“Your moves are giving me whiplash.” Bella says when Edward swooshes past her to save her life. Again.

Another writer argues that the film is a wonderful evocation of female lust and is in fact a study in female sexuality:
Bitten by the female gaze
I wanted to hate Twilight, but it subverted its weak source material and provided a rare vision of female desire


In the end, I didn’t really care about the couple so much. What I did love was the cinematography, the cold, cold landscape and pine forests, the bracing beach scene. There was some fabulous altered reality camera work although the CGI seemed a bit ‘fake’ at times. The very silly baseball game was better than quidditch. And, I found myself becoming a little too interested in home décor at one point.



The concept of the vegetarian vampire was amusing and I loved the little domestic details revealed but, in the end, although
I was pleasantly distracted by Twilight - anything it did well, Buffy did better.

Australia

Baz Luhrmann is always a draw but the critical response to Australia has been mixed at best. In the end, a few clips enticed me. I have to be honest -it was the beardiness and yumminess of Hugh Jackman that did it for me but, in the end, the film transcended my crude libido and anyone who fancies a bit of escapism with Baz’s trademark quirks won’t be disappointed.




Set just before WW2, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) leaves England for Australia to her husband’s ranch and drive 1500 cattle across the outback to Darwin. Dressed in lace and pressed lined and carrying a parasol, it’s not long before she clashes with wild’n’dirty Australia.



The first part of the film is beautiful to look at but also uncomfortably camp; Baz is determined to pull you into ‘his’ world, abide by his rules and, as he said in one interview, have you “check your coat at the door.” The music is too loud, each movement has a touch of flamenco and the camera lunges from one scene to another in a way that doesn’t work as well as it did in Moulin Rouge. And people take prat falls while Nicole squeals in indignation every opportunity.

About half an hour in, there’s a very, very welcome shift and the story proper gets going.

Nicole Kidman gives her trademark to some eyes - ‘subtle’ and ‘nuanced’, to others - ‘wooden’ performance as the English toff who’s brought down a peg or two by the environment and transformed into a tough Sheila. Trust Australians to spin the Cinderella story so that she only becomes a princess when she gets rid of her finery and throws away the glass slipper. And what a prince she lands! One review I read had me in stitches with its snarky insistence on referring to Hugh Jackman as “Hugh Russell-Crowe-wasn’t-available Jackman” but this doesn’t do justice to his virile performance. Jackman is wonderful; he has the composure and silence about him of the young Clint Eastwood and…I’m going to stop there or you won’t take another word I say seriously…

Visually, the film is glorious from beginning to end. The breathtaking landscape is painted in super-real colour and everything that can gleam or shine does. We are given plenty of time to enjoy the almost Martian landscape and marvel at the boab trees.

There are many memorable scenes such as when a body falls into the river, the cattle drove, King George, the aborigine grandfather standing on one leg watching from high up which suffuse the movie with its unique and often plain Australian feel which must have the local tourist board rubbing its hands in glee.

At the same time, there’s much to recognise from regular westerns and Baz directs the exciting sequences of the cattle drove with panache giving many stuntmen the classic gig of their lives! The drove is unmistakably the highlight of the movie and I haven’t seen anything like this since Dances with Wolves. It brings the movie and the characters to earth and the story settles into that of little people with massive personalities leading out their intense lives against a brutal landscape and in a dangerous period in history.

The added Australian twist is the dark story of the mixed race Aboriginal children something which, I am ashamed to say, I knew very little about. It was the Australian government’s policy to forcibly remove children from their homes and ‘program the Aborigine out of them’. One of the main threads of the plot is Lady Ashley’s maternal attachment to young Nullah, played by Brandon Walters, whose performance is glowing.

I believe, that despite the self-righteous carping by some critics about the movie, where they say it’s too soft-focus, raising public awareness of these issues is of vital importance. David Gulpili who plays King George is the most famous actor of aboriginal descent; he starred in Walkabout all those years ago and his troubled circumstances to this day serve as a blot on the consciousness of white Europeans whose ancestors have neutered and almost obliterated so many indigenous races worldwide. It’s worth reading Germaine Greer’s article (preferably after you’ve seen the film) for an intellectual, pc, Australian perspective on this issue.

By twisting history, garbling geography and glossing over the appalling exploitation of Aboriginal workers, Baz Luhrmann's film Australia bears more relation to fairytale than fact, argues Germaine Greer


One reviewer said that Baz Luhrman knows very little about real history and more about film history – this is a fair point, the film is sprinkled with endless references to Gone with the Wind, the Wizard of Oz and probably Skippy too! I too know very little indeed about Australian history but I know a thing or two about watching movies; I assume, before the lights go down, that movies are there to entertain and I also expect any movie that has a ‘historical’ element will be twisted to fit the story. It’s not The Truth up there just because it’s bigger than life size and even if the director wants you to believe it is.

Yes, film-makers have enormous power to influence us as do advertising, the media and any political ranting you might be exposed to but we should all know better by now. Question everything – we have that freedom; use it. Baz makes damn clear that you know you’ve entered into the world of the unreal. I heard him talk about how nowadays we’re all too damn cynical and too damn clever for our own goods – there’s a time and a place, hang up your coat, put your feet up and munch on that popcorn and escape from the credit crunch and lack of daylight to chest hair, screen kisses, good guys and bad guys and shiny, shiny landscapes for a few hours. You can pop your cynical coat back on and google the plight of the aborigines once you get home.