Roller derby, Julie + Julia, spoonflower
On the weekend I went to my first bout of the roller derby. It was insanely cool, the crowd was packed with geeks, the costumes were adorable, the game exciting and exhilarating. Plus there was beer! I went with a bunch of friends from work, since Goldie Scorn of Brutal Pageant is the sister of one of them, and I brought Steve too. We ran into a few more people we knew and it was awesome.
I can’t really describe it accurately, except to say that along with Pro-wrestling, this is my favourite spectator sport now. Except of course, that the girls in roller derby aren’t pulling their punches, they’re really bashing each other. Why don’tyou go and check out these awesome Videos care of Simeon?
(am slightly tempted to get fit, rolling and try out for the roller derby.)
Last night I saw Julie and Julia which is the movie of the book of the blog. As you might expect, the storytelling got rather meta. That aside it was a very good movie, the leads did wonderfully and the food was enticing. Flashing between Julia Child in France learning to cook and Julie Powell in 2002 cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s book the movie didn’t pull any punches with the emotional lives of either character. It was refreshing, somehow, to see a movie in which a modern woman doesn’t have everything sorted out and sits down and cries for no good reason.
Yesterday was also a birthday present day. I received the threadless tees I bought with cash from Will and Paula, and the custom printed spoonflower fabric courtesy of Svend and Star. The fabric is so pretty, really vibrant colours and I’m really happy with the designs I chose. Check it:
I’m not sure if you can see it, but the fabric on the right is little cameo portraits of the characters from Little Red Riding Hood. Cutes!
Can’t wait to get sewing and make some pretties with the fabrics.
But first, having spent over an hour trawling the internets for American literary agent informations, I must go and write some of Rain’s story. Turning the internet off in 3, 2, 1…
Another route to finding calm…
I really like this article from the Positivity blog about criticism, especially this bit:
“A man interrupted one of the Buddha’s lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, “If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?”
“To the one who offered it,” said the man.
“Then,” said the Buddha, “I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself.”
Troll 2
Bad movies. What makes a bad movie so good?
In the case of Troll 2 it’s the terrible script, the bizarre plot choices, the awful acting, the ridiculous Goblin Queen and the way the dead Grandfather is some kind of magical time stopping Jedi master.
The premise is that a family is taking a trip to the country for a holiday. Joshua, the youngest, sees his dead grandfather quite a lot. Grandpa Seth likes to tell Joshua stories about Goblins and how evil they are and how they like to trick people into eating stuff that turns them into a half plant so they can eat you. Of course the town they are going to is Nilbog, kingdom of the Goblins (“it’s Goblin backwards!“) and even though Joshua pleads with his parents to turn back, they arrive. The people in the town are all creepy as and the food they have left out for the family is all weirdly green and decorated with green goo. Seth freezes time so that Josh can pee on the food and stop his family eating it….and it kind of goes downhill from there.
I think I enjoyed it more having already seen the Best Worst Movie doco and knowing some of the stories behind it. Like that the director and most of the crew didn’t speak much English so the actors didn’t always know what was being asked of them. Or that the guy playing the spooky store owner was high as a kite during the filming and has since been treated for mental health issues.
It’s like watching Snakes on a Plane , you just have to forget about things like plots that make sense and enjoy the ride. It’s a good ride. There’s even cornography.
I think Manos: the hands of fate is still my favourite bad movie though. Troll 2 did have some genuinely unsettling stuff in it, and it gave me weird dreams. Whereas Manos is just….so sweet. Somehow.
Film Festival reviews – second week
Double Take
A strange little film. It mashed up footage of Alfred Hitchcock with news reels, clips from his movies, adverts for coffee from the same time and new footage shot with Hitchcock lookalikes. I enjoyed it very much, but Lee was bored.
It was a kind of potted history of the cold war, but mostly it was about Hitch and it also told a story about what Hitch would do if he met his exact double. Hard to explain, really, but good.
The Black Pirate
A restored print of the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling action movie, accompanied by Neil Brand playing live on a grand piano. It was an awesome performance.
The movie itself was amazing, completely over the top and fun with impressive stunts and some incredibly camp moments from nowhere. Although I guess we might have brought that to it, with our modern sensibilities and knowledge of fan fiction.
Info.
Dogtooth.
How do you describe a movie like this? It’s about a weirdly controlling family where the three 20-something ‘children’ aren’t allowed to leave the house or grow up at all. It was light and funny but also very dark and strange. There were some moments of shocking violence and some touching moments where the family showed real togetherness. I was surprised about how many people walked out of this movie, I mean, it was nasty, but it was no Piano Teacher
I’m glad I saw it, just because it was an experience. I’m glad that Lee didn’t choose to go, because he would have hated it.
info
Animation for Kids
I enjoy seeing this animation collection because you know the shorts will have a story line to them, because otherwise the kids will get bored. Overall it was a great collection this year, and I really enjoyed several of them.
Here are my highlights that I could find on Youtube…
Catchy They Might Be Giants song (embedded in a podcast). “Oh no no, I never go to work!”
This is a sweet little song about how hard it can be to get a present for someone, gorgeously animated with paper and collage.
And the trailer for the 25 minute ‘Lost and Found’ about a boy who has his life invaded by a penguin. It was gorgeous.
The Artist’s Life
A French film about trying to make it in a creative career. There was a young girl trying to make it as a singer, an English teacher struggling with writer’s block for his second book and an actress who has become type cast after a stint voice acting for a long running anime. It was gentle and funny, with most of the frustration coming from the characters doing themselves exactly no favours. Lesson learned from this movie? You take any opportunity that comes your way and you run with it!
I love watching movies about the creative process though, it’s always so inspiring.
The Sky Crawlers
An anime movie about an alternate world where there’s a constant war going on. Over the course of the movie some strange truths were revealed, and it was very beautifully animated but overall I have to say it dragged. I was bored. Nothing much actually changed after two hours. Disappointing, but pretty.
Film Festival reviews – Wednesday – Sunday
Best Worst Movie
A documentary about Troll 2, 20-ish years after the film was made. The documentarian was the child star of the movie and managed to track down all the other actors. The star of the documentary was George Hardy, the guy who played the father. George is a dentist and full of life and humour. He was a great centre point for the story, watching him as he discovered the cult following and signed autographs for the fans he didn’t know he had was a joy. Generously peppered with excerpts from Troll 2 and interviews with the writer and director made me and Lee rather desperate to see the movie. I have since bought it on DVD off Trade Me. Watch this space for a review, not sure it will ever beat out Manos: the hands of fate for my favourite worst film, but I’ll let you know.
A Christmas Tale
Our first disappointing movie, this was a french drama about a family reuniting at Christmas following the news that the matriarch has a rare disease and needs a bone marrow transplant. Kind of reminiscent of The Royal Tenenbaums but not as quirky, it gave us background on most of the characters. I was disappointed that the black sheep, Henri, was the default star of the movie, because I found him unsympathetic. Sure, it sucked that his sister caused him to be banished from family gatherings for five years, but it’s hard to be on his side when the first thing he does when reunited with her is to verbally abuse her. That said, it was a great film; beautifully shot and with plenty of humour, it was just very long.
The Secret of Kells
An Irish animated feature set in medieval times and following Brendan a boy monk. The Northmen are terrorising Ireland and the Abbot, Brendan’s uncle, is preoccupied with building a stronger wall around the settlement. Brendan is more interested in illuminating manuscripts and becomes involved in creating the Book Of Kells. The story is highly mythical, with him befriending Aisling, a fairy, quite early in the movie. The best thing about this film though was the design, it’s highly stylised and beautiful. The snowflakes are shown as Irish knots, the smoke is curled and braided, the characters are extreme caricatures.
Several of the frames were so stunning I wanted big prints of them to put up on my wall.
Movie website pretty pretty.
Departures
We were a little late for Departures because I wanted real food for dinner and it wasn’t quite quick enough in the half hour in between Kells and this. The food was great though, stuffed chicken breast, winter veges and beans. Nom.
Anyway, the movie was lovely. It’s a Japanese film about a cellist whose orchestra is shut down. He and his wife move back to his home town and he accidentally gets a job at a casketers, who are the people who prepare the body and put them into the coffin, working for the undertaker. It was very beautiful and moving, and perhaps hit a little close to home with the funeral we attended on Tuesday, but I loved it.
Departures movie website. I also found out today that it won the Academy award for best foreign language film. Well deserved.
Dead Snow
It’s a movie about zombie Nazis. Do I need to say any more?
I was a bit worried at the start that it was actually going to be scary, and I wasn’t ready to cope with that at 11.15pm after a long and hard week. However, it was just as funny and silly and hilarious as a Norwegian zombie Nazi movie should be. I laughed my ass off, fell in love with the bad-ass characters and can quite thoroughly recommend it.
In fact, go and watch the trailer now!!!!!
Coco Avant Chanel
Lee bailed on this one to audition for another community theatre production, so I took the Lovely Chelle with me instead. We had a good time, although the movie was quite sad. Audrey Tautou was her usual graceful and charismatic self, the other actors were also very good. Pretty fashions, pretty locations. I’ll watch it again I think.
Adventureland
Written by the guy who wrote Superbad (which I haven’t seen), this is the story of one summer, after finishing college James is set to go on to post-grad study at Colombia, but it turns out his father has been transferred to a lower paying job. James takes the only job he can get, working the sideshow games as a carnie at Adventureland. There he immediately makes geeky male friends and falls in love with Kristen Stewart.
It was a gentle, funny film with some real heart to it. It kind of reminded me of watching Garden State, except the characters were younger and dumber. I really enjoyed it overall and would recommend you seek it out when it comes back. I did feel sorry for the lead though, since it seemed like James was written for Michael Cera and he was directed to act like Michael Cera.
Film Festival Reviews
Wellington Film Festival, movies I’ve seen Sunday – Tuesday of the first week.
The September Issue
A documentary about how the September Issue of 2007 is made at Vogue. Focussing in on Anna Wintour, who The Devil Wears Prada was based on, and the people around her. This was pretty much perfect documentary making – funny, entertaining, interesting.
I also liked how they made Anna seem like a real human being, in addition to being completely terrifying.
Trailer.
Ponyo
The new Haoyo Miyazaki film based on The Little Mermaid. Ponyo is a goldfish who is fascinated by the world of humans, she meets a little boy and decides to become human. For those who have seen Miyazaki films, this was more Totoro than Earthsea, which was a relief in a lot of ways. I didn’t enjoy Earthsea that much. Ponyo was lovely, funny and sweet and sad but overall very beautiful. Highly recommended.
Japanese trailer, no subs, but you can see the pretty.
My Year Without Sex
An Australian film about a family, told in chapters for each of the months of the year. The mother has a brain anyeurism at the start and the rest of the film is about her healing and the family coming to terms with the way their lives have changed. It was pretty gentle, given the subject matter. Not nearly as depressing as say, Muriel’s Wedding. I loved the way they showed the emotions of all of the characters, it was very real without being cloying. I loved the humour and the fake-outs.
Trailer
Kisses
Two Irish ten year olds run away from their troubled family lives and spend the night in Dublin. It was a film where I was expecting terrible terrible things to happen, but it was actually pretty lovely. The child actors were superlative, especially cheeky, outgoing Kylie. The boy’s role was more understated but equally moving. It’s a bit sad and a bit lovely and a bit scary. Overall I enjoyed it a great deal.
Actually, this trailer is a bit spoilerific. I wouldn’t recommend you click on it unless you’ve already seen it…
Moon
Lee didn’t come to this, and I am very sad about that, because it was a fantastic film. It’s about Sam Bell, who has been working alone in a station on the moon for three years with only a robot for company. The robot is voiced by Kevin Spacey. Sam is about to go home, but the time alone has begun to tell on him. To say anything more (or indeed to link to the trailer) would give too much away. It’s a well paced movie, a character study more than an actioner, but with plenty of strange things and mysteries. Steve said the plot was too inevitable but I was too invested in the atmosphere to mind.
It should be coming back, and I urge you to see it and to avoid spoilers as much as you can.
Dedication
Behold, Jenni’s Angels’ 48 hour film for 2009!
Genre: Revenge
Required Prop: a rock
Line: “It doesn’t fit”
Character: Alex Puddle, an exaggerator.
Dedication.
Higher quality and more share-able on Vimeo, but I don’t seem to be able to embed from there.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Frances Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie of Dracula is a strange mix of faithfulness to the source material and total liberties. It is confusing to watch just after reading the book.
I was pleased with the dialogue, letters and diary entries that were lifted straight from the book and I love the way they kept Joanathan’s hair going grey from suffering. I didn’t mind some of the changes, like the increased sexual content. That could never be included in the 1897 book after all, and the vampire and sex connection is pretty universal.
The one thing I really disliked was the whole reincarnated love/romance between Mina and Dracula. As you may recall one of my favourite things about the book was the loving and strong relationship between Mina and Jonathan. I feel she is a weaker character in the movie because of her emotional turmoil. I can see why the choice was made, after all it’s much more dramatic, but it makes me sad. She didn’t want to become a monster in the book, she fought solidly on the side of good.
It’s also kind of confusing how they’ve kept in all the truly monstrous things that Dracula does while also trying to make him sympathetic with his back story and his true love. I guess if they want to make him sympathetic they shouldn’t show him turning into a thousand rats or a huge manbat thing. Or killing all the people in the boat that brings him to London.
Some of the stuff in the movie is pretty cheesy, Lucy’s nightie for one, and the way blood spurts out of the walls when Dracula finally kills her. The special effects are rather good though, and there was a lot of very spooky stuff. Love the music too.
Also Van Hellsing is a little bit creepy. I don’t mind it too much, but he is quite frightening to Mina when they first meet. Anthony Hopkins is wonderful though, isn’t he? He can make you believe anything.
I have to laugh at Dracula’s fabulous gold lame dressing gown though.
Our 48 hours heat
Heat 8, Wellington 48 hours furious filmmaking competition 2009. I’m making special mention of how the prop was used in each review since I was impressed with the diversity of interpretation.
*By Another Verified Idiot Murder 101
An educational film set in an educational institution. Some good laughs in this one, and generally the format of the classroom final exam in murdering worked well. I thought some shoddy editing let them down. Spooky implied reality with the cloned victims though. Rock used to kill someone by a Goth after voodoo didn’t work.
* He who likes boats You Are My Rock
This was a real time movie that was both confused and confusing. They made some funny jokes with time ticking past and nothing much happening but then it seemed to be trying to tell quite a sad story. Just at first I thought it was going to be a Memento homage, but it wasn’t. I don’t think. The flashbacks didn’t give us any extra story. The rock in this one….well, there was a rock on top of Mt Vic. Or it might have been the girl. Not too sure.
* Head on a Stick Arborgeddon
A freaking fantastic nature run amok film which totally nailed the genre. Our hero is creeping through the office the suspense is racked up as a body is dragged away. Evil plants are attacking! So many good moments….so many awesome bits. Plus a jump scare right at the end. Loved it to bits. The rock was a game of rock, paper, scissors and quite nicely used.
* Helen and the Cockroaches Pun’s Labyrinth
I found myself thinking while I watched this, that I could have tightened up the script some. Overall a sweet comedy about too shy guy going to pun world to learn to be funnier. Terrible puns all the way through, looks like the team had a heap of fun making it. The rock started out as a paperweight and then turned into Duane Johnson The Rock wrestling action figure. Someone had to do it. Awesome.
* Hi-Deaf Blink: and You’ll Miss
A conspiracy film that hit its beats well, showing the conspiracy to be true and then how those in power can manipulate the naysayers. Lee found it difficult to follow, but I got the whole story. I wasn’t sure there needed to be quite that much drug use or swearing in it. Didn’t add that much. The rock was drugs though, which is a clever use.
* HMS Awesome The Brothers Cage
Nice twist on the family movie genre, this was about a man who is told that Nicholas Cage is his brother. It was a bit weird and stalkerish but good acting and script fully had me on side by the end. It was lovely. The rock was thrown into the ocean at an emo moment.
* icwProductions Notes
I loved this movie, and was gutted that they were disqualified. A romance film about an awkward writer trying to find love. Mostly by being set up by ‘Pud the bud’ Alex Puddle. His next door neighbour leaves him notes, that he corrects the spelling on. It was very honest and sweet and well acted. The notes were wrapped around rocks, apparently cute girls next door have an endless supply of rocks in their handbags.
* ID TEN Ts So Many Reasons
A one man team animated film of the M. Night Shyamalan Big Twist genre. A quiet, clever little film with a nice twist. I believe the rock was right at the end….
* Jato unit Faith in a Recession
Horror Film, starts with a dead body in a bathtub. The man in the apartment doesn’t answer the phone. A hippy walks in, he’s an angel. The other guy is a devil and they’re going to fight over who gets the soul of the dead guy. Devil: “He’s a suicide, he goes to Hell.” Angel “Hey, it’s a recession, we have to diversify.” These guys really lifted their game this year, I thought this was a very clever and nicely shot film. I especially loved how they turned the required line into a ‘yo mama’ joke. There were rocks when the Devil switched locations to a more hellish landscape than the botanic gardens.
* Jenni’s Angels Dedication
I’m still too close to this to watch it objectively. Some sound issues meant a couple of Jon’s important lines weren’t too clear and I noticed the gladwrap but otherwise I found it very moving. Again, pretty much biased here. The rest of the audience laughed at our one or two little jokes, but once it got serious there was respectful silence. I was pleased with how it went down. It’s so much harder to judge than a comedy audience reaction though! We had a diamond ring being a rock.
All in all, I feel like it was a really high standard over the whole heat.
the 48 timeline with twitter
I have included my twitter updates to give the post a timeline. I find it helpful, hopefully you won’t find it annoying.
Giffy picked up me and Nick around 5.30, there was a lot of horrible traffic in Wellington due to rush hour and heavy rain. We went straight to Norm’s. The lovely Svend picked up Maverick’s pizza for us, of which I was only able to eat two slices. There was happy chatting catch up with Regan, Chelle, Steph, Norm and the others filtered in in the next hour. Then I got the call, Lee and Jon had gone to pick up the elements….
We have been given revenge movie. Not feeling that confident but cheerful 
7.10pm
I didn’t feel very good about the genre. I mean, sure, I like watching the odd revenge movie, but generally you have a lot of time in a feature film to build up sympathy for your character before something awful happens that leads to the revenge. 5 minute revenge film? Hard call.
The other elements were as follows: Character: Alex Puddle, an exaggerator.
Prop: A rock
Line: “It doesn’t fit.”
Brainstorm was long and tricky but we’re doing a Film noir writer revenged by character. 10.30pm
We spent a lot of time at the brainstorming talking in circles. In part because the revenge movie is very formulaic and how do you get a good twist on it? Morgue wrote his impressions of the brainstorming (and indeed the whole weekend here. The writers retired to Steph’s house to nut out the script. We were all feeling a bit daunted, but conversation in the car sparked some good ideas.
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