• The Dictator0May 17, 2012

    The Dictator

    An equal opportunities offender
  • Chronicle0May 06, 2012

    Chronicle

    Pretty fly for a white guy
  • Shame0May 02, 2012

    Shame

    This film should swap titles with Sex and the City

Batman [1989]

By
Edo
Published: 19 May 2012 1:49 PM UTCPosted in: Blog, MoviesTags: , , ,

Batman is a crime-fighting comic book super hero created by Bob Kane that has captured the imagination of readers and has been a part of popular culture for over seventy years.  While the Dark Knight has a long and illustrious history in print, he also has a pretty solid legacy in film also.

Tim Burton’s Batman, released in 1989, was not the first movie adaptation of the Caped Crusader but it is definitely the film that kickstarted the contemporary Batman movie legacy.  Audiences love Batman so much that despite heavy saturation (seven films in two decades) and one stinker at the box office (Batman & Robin), the appetite to watch Batman films remains so high that The Dark Knight grossed half a billion dollars at the box office.

It’s interesting to go back and revisit Tim Burton’s original Batman film.  I hadn’t seen it myself in a long time.  In fact, I think I saw the film before I had ever read a Batman comic.  The film is still held in pretty high regard and both Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson are widely praised for their respective performances as Bruce Wayne and The Joker.

The film begins with a quick recap of Batman’s origin.  A young Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents get gunned down by a low-rent criminal in front of a movie theatre.  Flash forward to present day and a mobster by the name of Jack Napier is set up by his boss for having an affair with his girlfriend.  Instead of being killed though, Batman intervenes and during the scuffle, Napier falls into a vat of acidic green goo.  He survives but requires plastic surgery on his face.  The surgery is botched and Napier is scarred with a permant smile on his face.  He rechristens himself as the Joker and becomes Gotham City’s new crimelord.  Batman, Gotham’s dedicated crime fighter, investigates the Joker and discovers that he was the very same guy that killed his parents all those years ago.  What a coincidence!  The two face one another and realize they are each responsible for the other’s transformation.  They fight and good triumphs over evil. The end.

I’ve gotta be honest and say I didn’t really care for this film.  I don’t think its aged particularly well at all and I think that most of the adoration for the film today is clouded in nostalgia.  A lot of my lack of enjoyment of the film stems from Burton’s treatment of the source material.  Clearly Burton has an idea in his head of what a comic book adaptation should be and in his mind, its something thats largely targeted at children or young teenagers.  I had forgotten how basic and rudimentary the dialogue in this film was.  The script is just a notch about the Adam West tv show but I think adults jumped on board mostly because of the gothic window dressing which in 1989 was fresh and appealling.

What bugs me is that Burton really takes liberties with the character of The Joker.  In the comics, The Joker is a physical manifestion of anarchy and chaos.  We never learn his real name, identity or origin because its not important.  He is not interested in money or power.  He’s obsessed with Batman and is a highly intelligent psychopath.  In the film, he’s given a name.  He’s given a crummy and unnecessary origin story.  His makeup is removable and he is basically a Dick Tracey style villain.  By comparison, I’m a much bigger fan of Heath Ledger’s portrayal.

The film also has some pretty dreary choreography when it comes to Batman’s fighting and use of gadgetry.  It can be easy to forget how far modern day fight choreography has come as Hollywood embraced ideas and concepts from Hong Kong martial arts and more stylized auteurs like The Wachowski Brothers.  In Batman, its stunt school basics 101 as Michael Keaton rather stiffly throws one straight arm punch after another at henchman who stand in a line waiting to be hit.  He shows as much range in movement as the action figures.  Only the scenes with the Bat Mobile have some sort of finesse about them that holds up today.

Aside from Tim Burton’s gothic set design, Batman is a pretty bland film to watch today.  Keaton has a good presense as both Bruce Wayne and Batman but he doesn’t have much to work with when it comes to the script.  Jack Nicholson of course looks like he’s having the time of his life.  For me, I can respect the importance this film has and we wouldn’t have the Christopher Nolan trilogy without this succeeding first but man…it’s just not aged well at all.

TV Show Round Up: Survivor One World Finale, Veep

By
Edo
Published: 17 May 2012 11:04 PM UTCPosted in: Blog, TVTags: , ,

Survivor: One World Finale

Survivor: One World ended up being a pretty terrible season.  It’s probably one of the bottom five in the show’s history.  The final episode didn’t really improve much and in fact, the lead up to the final Tribal Council pretty much summed up just how dreadful some of the contestants were.  Christina, the self-styled ‘underdog’, simply rolled over and decided that she would get voted out making no attempt to scramble and save herself.  A frustrated Jeff Probst took her to task at the final tribal council.  You could see that he couldn’t believe what a damp squib the season was finishing on.  I imagine he was thinking my goddamn ratings.  How the hell are we going to make this look exciting in the edit?!

In the end, Kim was a deserved winner of the million bucks.

It’s funny.  We’ve had plenty of seasons recently which were highly entertaining but fans felt that the wrong person won.  I don’t think anyone could dispute that Kim deserved to win here but I think everyone was desperate for her to have a competent foil to play against.  Unfortunately it just wasn’t to be.  Every seasons needs pawns and thats what Kat, Christina, Lief were presumably cast to be.  Unfortunately, it turned out that short of Troyzan, just about everyone else completely lacked any tactical nouse either.  Well, except for Colton and he left for medical reasons in Week 4.

In short, a disasterous season that will hopely have producer Mark Burnett looking at the current recruitment model (2-3 fans, 16-17 cast per season) to make sure we don’t have a repeat with Season 25.  Every season needs pawns.  But the best pawns are the colourful characters who are whacky and/or think they are running the game.  The worst kind – Lief, Christina etc. – are bland, have nothing interesting to say, make wasteful/nonsensical votes and lack any sort of competitive drive.  A genuine ambition to win the game surely must be a minimum entry barrier for the show.  For Tarzan to get so far into the game and freely admit to not caring about winning…thats when the show has some major problems.

Veep – Episode 103 – “Catherine“

I felt that Veep was a show with potential and for me, episode three was the one where it really came together and made me a genuine fan of the show.  I absolutely love the show’s portrayal of the weird isolated world that career politicians live in.  Tony Hale is really coming into his own as Gary and this is easily his best role since playing Buster in Arrested Development.  The scene in which he provided trivia for Selina as she met guests at her party had me rolling.  The show is also great for hidden/background gags.  I didn’t notice the moment in the picture above where Selina’s face matches her photo on the TIME magazine cover until someone on Something Awful commented on it.  The ensemble cast is really strong too.  Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky and Timothy Simons are all great at exchanging barbed insults.

A fun bit of trivia:  Selina’s daughter Catherine is played by Kiefer Sutherland’s daughter.

The only thing that bums me out about Veep is that I read absolutely zero buzz about the show on my social network feeds.  I feel like no one else is watching this show which makes me worried for its future.  Apparently the ratings are good however (three times higher than Girls) and hopefully its audience will build through word of mouth.

This is the funniest new show of the year, people.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

By
Edo
Published: 16 May 2012 11:11 PM UTCPosted in: Blog, TFW Book ClubTags:

Although he’s been a pretty well established author for some time, I only discovered Malcolm Gladwell for myself about a year ago, when I read What The Dog Saw, an eclectic collection of his articles from the New Yorker.

Blink was an earlier book of his, published in 2005 and carries the full title Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.  It’s a pretty dreadful title.  Personally, it evokes memories of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7 when Jason Alexander authors the book Acting Without Acting.

In Blink, Gladwell explores what the human brain is capable of determining in the blink of an eye.  As it turns out, quite a lot.  He begins with the story of an American museum that procures a valuable ancient Greek statue.  They have carefully checked the statue before buying it from the owner using a variety of techniques including carbon dating the material and checking the history of ownership.  And yet despite all their checks and safeguards, an arts expert viewed the statue for a split second and immediately determined it was fake.  How did they do it?  And what other information are experts in their field able to determine intuitively?  How does an expert tennis instructor predict when a player will double fault?  How does a police officer know when a perp is reaching for their gun?

As Gladwell is able to do in his own inimitable style, he weaves together a tapestry of tales, each exploring the thinking behind subject matter experts in a range of disciplines – marriage counsellors, tennis instructors, Coca Cola marketers, police officers etc. – and explores what they are able to determine in a split second decision.  Gladwell has a knack for making anyone feel like an armchair expert on the topics he discusses.  His work is consistently informative and thought provoking.  His research into this book uncovers interesting people (a marriage counsellor who, in 15 minutes, can predict whether a couple will stay married with 85% accuracy) and explores interesting concepts (why did New Coke fail?  Do you need to be a certain height to be a CEO?)

As it turns out, Gladwell isn’t purporting to claim that everyone becomes an expert in their field and can make accurate split-second decisions.  He devotes a chunk of his book to the death of Amadou Diallo, the unfortunate victim of overzealous police officers who shot him 40 times before realising he wasn’t armed.  An interesting discovery that Gladwell reports on is that police officers are less inclined to shoot hastily when they work alone.  Working with a partner makes them more protective (overprotective?) and likely to shoot a suspect pre-emptively.

I find Gladwell’s work to be endlessly appealling and I can power through his books pretty quickly.  Blink is no exception.  It’s a breezy holiday read and gives you plenty of weird and wonderful concepts for your brain to digest.

The Prognosticator Checklist – Manchester City win the EPL

By
Edo
Published: 15 May 2012 10:52 PM UTCPosted in: BlogTags:

Manchester City’s incredible last gasp win on the final day of the English Premiere League means I can check off another prediction that I made at the start of the decade – that a new club would win the EPL.

My remaining sporting predictions are rather less likely to occur:

  • A man will run 100 metres in under 9.5 seconds.
  • Scotland will qualify for a World Cup.

Still plenty of time though.

Brett and Ange’s Wedding

By
Edo
Published: 15 May 2012 10:39 PM UTCPosted in: BlogTags:

Jen and I just returned from a long weekend away in Palm Cove, in Far North Queensland, where we attended the wedding of our friends Brett and Ange.  I first got to know Brett through work and his upbringing was one of those thats not too disimilar to people associated with TFW.  He spend time in his teenage years and early twenties growing up in South East Asia – Thailand, to be specific.  Something about that upbringing seems to almost invariably bring about a common bond and instant kinship with people.

The wedding party was a small, intimate affair with just forty people or so.  It had a nice international flavour to the proceedings.  People made the trip from Hong Kong, Singapore and interstate to be there.  Most people spent the better part of a week in Palm Cove.  It’s a terrific location to get away from it all.  It’s got a warm tropical climate and the entire town is comprised of resorts and nice places to eat.  All the locals are super friendly and we passed the daytime relaxing by the poolside and the nights eating well and having a few drinks with the other wedding goers at the local RSL.

Now that we’re back in Brisbane, it’s back to business as usual.

Well…not quite.  I’m going to start looking around at buying my first car and we’re seeing a mortgage broker as we’re getting closer to our plans for buying our first home.

Getting old.  Doing grown up stuff.  That’s me.

Nu Nu

By
Edo
Published: 13 May 2012 7:45 PM UTCPosted in: Blog, Food and DrinkTags: , ,

Nestled in Palm Cove at the Peppers Resort is Nu Nu, one of Australia’s most decorated regional restaurants.  The eatery has a casual, unassuming decor that fits in right at home with the rest of the Williams Esplanade.  The plastic deck chairs remind me of the Serasa Yacht Club that I went to as a kid.  The menu, put together by Nick and Jason Rowbottom, uses local ingredients which are sourced and documented in surprising detail in their menus.  Nu Nu has a versatile menu, its Modern Australian, caters for vegetarians and vegans, and incorporates both meat and seafood.  There is a certain creativity to the dishes but they are better known for doing hearty, tasty dishes that champion freshness of ingredients.  There’s not too much fuss about the presentation of the dishes.

For breakfast there we had:

Coconut hotcakes with sweet banana, coconut sugar caramel and coconut sorbet

North Queensland mudcrab omlette, watercress, ginger, caramel, white pepper broth

For lunch, we had the five course banquet:

Chikki chikki chow chow cocktail

Pacific oysters, freshly shucked on ice

Hot smoked red emperor miang, chilli, green papaya relish, Yarra Valley salmon caviar

Crispy fried chilli salt pork ribs

Nu Nu icecream


Nu Nu was a restaurant so nice, we went there twice.  The staff were friendly, the breakfast is deserving of its reputation as one of Australia’s best (thinking about the spannercrab omlette makes me salivate even now) and the prices were reasonable.  If you ever visit Palm Cove in Australia, Nu Nu is a must.

Free Comic Day

By
Edo
Published: 07 May 2012 6:40 PM UTCPosted in: BlogTags: ,

I don’t read many comic books any more.  I used to be a pretty avid reader when I was a kid and then for a brief time during the early 2000s but nowadays, I’ve whittled down to just a couple – I keep up with the new trades of Fables and The Walking Dead and thats about it.  These are usually released in 6-8 month intervals so I’m normally only picking up comics once or twice a year at most.

Having watched the recent Avengers film, it got me pining for some Marvel superhero stuff, the kind that I used to read as a kid.  Sadly, I couldn’t find any in my home.  I’m not sure what happened but somewhere along the way when I moved houses in Brisbane, I must have chucked out all my old Marvel stuff.  I didn’t have a single Marvel comic left!

I went to the comic store on the weekend and was greeted with a line out the door.  As it happened, I had inadvertantly gone during Free Comic Day.  It was worth the wait though as I got a dozen old Marvel comics for a buck each, four free comics and a healthy discount on four Joss Whedon Astonishing X-Men trades.

Most of the Marvel single issue comics have pretty terrible storylines but I like the artwork.  As for the Whedon stuff, its like reading the storyboards for the Avengers film.  The quips, wisecracks and one liners are almost exactly the same.  In short, exactly what I was looking for.

Scream 4

By
Edo
Published: 07 May 2012 6:24 PM UTCPosted in: Blog, MoviesTags: ,

Considering the original Scream single-handedly revived the horror genre in Hollywood fifteen years ago, its somewhat ironic and perhaps fitting that the franchise has now mimmicked the sequel fatigue of the cult classic films it took influence from.

Scream 4 is a really unremarkable horror film.  There is nothing special about it.  It’s predecessors and dozens of contemporary horror films have been more creative, more interesting and more pointed in delivering any form of social commentary.  Given that the original film was a razor sharp satire of Eighties horror, its kind of depressing that this version is just a paint-by-the-numbers example of a lazy sequel.

The film appears to be made by people who have seen many horror films but don’t understand what made the best ones so good.  It has a real workmanlike pace, with a death every ten minutes.  It’s so predictable that it lacks any tension whatsoever.  It’s most unforgivable crime is that its boring.  It’s a looong two hours.  Scream 3 was pretty bad and Scream 4 just kills the franchise dead.  So I expect at least two more sequels, maybe straight to DVD ones, before anyone has the sense to leave this once great franchise alone.

NBA Jam: On Fire Edition

By
Edo
Published: 05 May 2012 9:22 AM UTCPosted in: Blog, GamingTags: ,

Reviewed on Playstation 3.

Arcade sports titles and basketball video games owe a great deal of their heritage to the NBA Jam franchise, a once great series that I can remember playing extensively on the Super Nintendo and Sega MegaDrive.  The game’s accessible arcade gameplay and snappy Nineties one-liners (‘BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA’) gave it a charm that meant long after the franchise became dormant, people were still fondly pining for a new installment.

Sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for.  EA Sports revived the NBA Jam franchise three years ago with a full retail release.  Then last year they followed it up with a digital download version called On Fire Edition for $20.  During a Christmas sale, I picked it up for $10.  Using a free PSN voucher I got with Uncharted 3.  I still feel slightly ripped off.  I can’t imagine what it’d be like to pay a full $100 for this game when it was first re-released.

The presentation of the game is nice enough and the boom-shaka-lakking is still there.  It’s just that in 2012, the gameplay feels shallower than a 99 cent iPhone game.  You just take turns dribbling the ball to the other end of the court before pressing two buttons to do an over-the-top slam dunk.  The gameplay is tissue-thin in depth.  Winning a game against a friend feels almost completely up to chance.  Back then, it was enough.  Nowadays, its aged pretty badly.  Pass.

50/50

By
Edo
Published: 05 May 2012 9:10 AM UTCPosted in: Blog, MoviesTags: , ,

50/50 is a semi-autobiographical film written by a guy named Will Reiser who was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties.  The film walks a tightrope – it is a comedy about cancer.  Fortunately, it is a tactful and good-natured film and you suspect that a lot of the film’s observational humour about how relatives and friends cope with the Big C ring true because Reiser can draw on actual experience firsthand.

There are certain people you can cast to play the lead in a film like this and Joseph Gordon Levitt is just about perfect.  The kid from Third Rock From The Sun has grown up to be an immensely likable actor and he has sort of ended up as the Noughties version of Michael J Fox – a relatable everyman character you can rely on should a script call for one.  Levitt plays Adam, a writer for public radio who is given the unfortunate diagnosis.  Whilst dealing with cancer, he must also contend with the occasionally overbearing support from his best friend Kyle and his mother Diane who insists on moving in when she hears the news.  To complicate matters further, not everything is working out the way it should with Adam’s girlfriend Rachael.  If there’s a recurring theme at the start of the film, its that life’s day to day complications don’t cease to be, even when you have a potentially terminal illness.

The film has a nice restraint about it.  It’s consistently funny, has tinges of sadness throughout but doesn’t fall to the temptation of grand-standing its finale.  I liked it.  After writing this short review, I googled Will Reiser.  He has been in remission for six years now and is living a normal healthy life.

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