Wolverine: Keegan's take on a movie that's being bashed

The reviews of Wolverine are so bad, they're intriguing. In fact, I found them irresistible. How in the hell could a bunch of extremely talented people (including Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman) get it so incredibly wrong?

So I went along to the 2:00pm session yesterday at the Megaplex.

Keegan's verdict? For godsakes stop reading the reviews, go and see the bloody movie, and you will discover several things.

The CG effects are nowhere near as poor as the critics are blathering on about. A couple of the shots look a little bit "fake" by the standards of 2009, but in 1999, the same shots would have blown your brains out. (Get real here: a couple of less-than-perfect CGI shots do not make unmitigated crap out of an entire movie. )

There are two, maybe three, genuinely wobbly bits in the plotting. (Get real, again: it's a comic book. Turn a blind eye to the wobbly bits and concentrate on the important element: Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs.) Unless you are terminally heterosexual, and male, or a terminally hetero female in lust for a pixie like Elijah Wood, there is no way in any world that you could call the movie "dull" or "dry." In fact, you may need a bib, because you'll spend just under two hours in a full-on drool.

The plot is NOT "overly complex," and my guess is that the critics who employed this old chestnut as a reason to smack Wolverine with a D or an F spent one half of the time texting and the other half running out to the bathroom and/or parking lot for a smoke. The plot is not complex at all, so long as you're wide awake. The same bozo-grade critics levelled the identical lame criticism at the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Guys, let me give you a tip: drink less at the press meeting before you go to the theater, and stop blaming the movie after you anaesthetised yourself on several gallons of free champagne. I hope you had the hangovers you damned-well deserve.

And no, I am NOT blind to the fact that a couple of the CG shots are less than staggering by current standards; and the plot has a hole you could drive a Mack truck through. However, Hugh Jackman acted his a$$ off, and lived in the gym while making this opus. The results are somewhat spectacular. And in Keegan's not so humble opinion (which comes to you complete with fresh bib), he's more than enough to make up for the shortcomings of the rest of the movie. And I know, I'm biased. I paid for the movie ticket (while critics get theirs free!) so I'm allowed a degree of bias. I bought the bias option with my ten bucks.

Now, let me give you the POSITIVES that 1001 critics are falling over themselves to utterly ignore ... and it beats hell out of me why they do this:

• Fully 95% of the CG work is just fine.
• A solid cast gives sterling performances.
• The dialog is, on the whole, realistic and believable.
• The film offers unexpected, and welcome, humor.
• The cinematography is stunning, with marvelous wilderness locations.
• The sets are extremely atmospheric and evocative.
• It's an ACTION movie, hence the ACTION sequences, and there are plenty ... would you go to the ballet and then call it rubbish because of all the dancing?!
• The SOUND balance is crystal clear, sharp and admirable. I never missed a word.
• The FOLEY work is spot-on. Most of the bozo-brigade critics who're currently rubbishing this movie wouldn't even know what the word "foley" means.
• The film's visual editing is crisp and clear. There is NEVER any ambiguity in the denouement, which is more than can be said for numerous movies which have been lauded by the same critics.
• The film score, or soundtrack music, is extremely good...
• ... and did I mention that Hugh Jackman is the sexiest thing on two legs?

So ends Keegan's verdict. I'm giving the movie 4 out of 5 stars, because you certainly can drive a tank through the most major hole in the plot. For myself, I don't actually give that much of a "stuff" about a couple of off-kilter CG shots; and the remainder of the production is of a very high standard.

So ... why all the rotten reviews?

There are many reasons, I'm sure. Far too many action movies have jaded the critics, since the early 1980s, when Arnie and Sly got into overdrive. Then again, is it vaguely possible that US film critics harbor a deep-seated, possibly even unconscious resentment about the fact that Hugh Jackman is an Aussie, born and bred? More than a decade of massive special effects movies have made some people so "CG happy" that when a shot or two fall short of the expected standard, they bin the entire movie ... which would be like dumping the whole live symphony orchestra performance in the bin because a few individual musicians hit blue notes here and there. I do believe that certain critics have just had enough, more than enough, of these big action movies, and would much rather be watching something else (which is fair enough; I just wish they'd bugger off and review something else, and leave someone who still enjoys actioners to cover them) ... and lastly, I wonder how many of these critics watched the movie with their partner going consistently gaga over Jackman for two hours in the seat beside them, and growled at the screen, "I'll get you for this, you Aussie bastard, if it's the last thing I do!" The pen being mightier than the claw in our own world, they unsheathed their own ballpoint weapon and did their worst -- secure in the knowledge that professional motion picture folk never, never ever respond to critics, no matter what stupidity is printed. Such is the etiquette of the trade. If you're a movie critic, you have an official license to literally babble through your hat and say what you like. And my gods, they do.

Lastly, there's also safety in numbers. When everyone else is calling a certain movie crap, you run the risk of not being "one of us," if you tell the truth and say you enjoyed the hell out of it, and could clearly see the 85% of the movie that was brilliant -- as well as the faults!

Well Keegan -- being Keegan -- is giving Wolverine four out of five stars, and is going to go see it again next week.

And no, I don't like movie critics.

To Hugh Jackman, if anyone significant sees this and forwards it: Cheers, mate. You did good.

Ciao for now,

MK

Updates from Keegan Country

The plot continues to thicken, as THE SWORDSMAN and DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT appear in different editions, at Amazon, from Lulu.com, without me signing anything, paying anything, agreeing to anything. O...kay.

Suffice to say, I have zip, zero, nada, nil as per any idea of what goes on; but I have a sneaky feeling I might just know. And alas, it ain't good news.

Lulu is out there touting for business, right? They're actively pushing books -- mine, among those of numerous other writers, I could guess. They're doing it for nothing?? This can only mean that they, too, are feeling the recession biting, and are actively out there, selling books -- which is something they never did before.

Times are getting tougher, guys.

And audiences are getting harder to please: good gods, have you seen the WOLVERINE reviews?!!! I don't think I've ever seen a movie pounded so hard. Now, I haven't seen the movie -- and might not get the chance to, before the DVD comes out, but I really don't believe any company could spend a couple of years and about fifty million dollars on a project, and have it be as bad as the critics are saying...

• Fans of the many comic books in which Wolverine has featured will rue what has become of their favourite characters.
• Falling somewhere between noble failure and modest success, 'Wolverine' is ultimately a generic Summer film actioneer that will quickly be forgotten
• If, in real time, the dull X-Men Origins prequel actually were the first X-Men film produced, it might have been the last.
• The amount of muscle on display is the film's most remarkable aspect, unless you count how unforgivably dull it is.
• ...A story line that isn't emotionally involving and action sequences that for the most part aren't that exciting, presented within a story that's full of potholes.
• X-Men Origins is really a series of action sequences, the usual mix of bangs, chases and fights, held together by a plot so predictable that you get no points for guessing right.
• It's dull, bone-crushing, special-effects stuff, of interest only to hardcore fans who've probably read it all in Marvel comics.
• Each CGI set piece erases distance, space, weight, gravity and wit. It’s empty, soulless action -- visual noise.
• Everything that happens seems to play out as if following a checklist. It’s Paint by Numbers: The Movie.

Eep. Could it really be that bad? Could it really be that hard to sit in the dark, eating, for two hours, while watching Hugh Jackman smoldering all over the screen and rippling his abs? Maybe these reviewers are allergic to muscles.

Ciao for now,
MK

Mel at the Movies: talking dollars and sense

What a nice outcome at the Oscars! A sorta-kinda gay movie right there in the spotlight ... the award for Best Actor bestowed upon a performer in a gay role -- and richly deserved. Is the cinema-going public changing? Is there a shift in the mindset of your average popcorn-muncher in the fourth row?

Could be. Here's an interesting quote:

Jim Carey and Ewan McGregor play love interests in the upcoming movie I Love You Philip Morris which is based upon a real life incident about a man who falls in love with his cell mate while in jail and escapes four times in order to be with his lover. Some critics worry that the film will be a problematic sell given that it is an overtly gay love story. However, they do like the film.

Several straight actors have played gay, lesbian or trans characters over the last few decades without incident, and without any problem in their careers.

For Carey, this movie makes his first foray into doing so, but McGregor is an old hand at playing gay characters. Adding into that list are Tom Hanks, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and a much longer list. The notion that audiences may not like a movie due to a gay, lesbian or trans story line may be old thinking. While Milk has not been a blockbusting success the same way, say, The Dark Knight has been, it certainly has achieved a certain amount of commercial success, and a great deal of critical acclaim.
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=922&cpage=1

From what I've learned about Philip Morris, I have a feeling the movie might be a tad bit too explicit for the average audience -- and this would explain the reticence of distributors to be involved. It costs a ton of money to strike the prints to get a movie out on the road; exhibitors have to believe they can break even or better.

Now, sometimes it's impossible to second-guess movies. Australia was initially supposed to rival Titanic, and then it was supposed to be the world's biggest ever flop, and now -- hey, it's showing critics and audiences alike that it has enough staying power to be out there earning, long after it was supposed to be getting stamped into the surfaces of a few million DVDs. However, it's not going to magically transform itself into a boxoffice success, though it might break even -- in which case, all the DVD dollars are frosting on the cake. And like The Man From Snowy River, his one will probably "go platinum" on disk.

Why? Well, because Australia cost the grand total of $130m to make, which is a fleabite these days, by comparison with the budgets of "big movies" like the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In the days of yore, it used to be that $1 in $3 of the boxoffice made its way home to the studio that put up the financing, so a movie that cost $130m to make would have to earn $390 to break even...

These days it's very, very different. To begin with, it's $1 in $5 of the boxoffice that dribbles back to the investor ... but increasingly, the studio, the distributor and even the exhibitor are all branches of the same company which, in any case, is owned by something like Gulf Western, Coca Cola, whatever.

So while various divisions of the company might be showing a loss, the parent "machine" that drives this multi-national juggernaut is sitting pretty ... and it gets better.

The DVD revenues associated with movies can, and do, outstrip their boxoffice potential. You have global boxoffice to think about; plus the network TV premier; cable TV; pay per view; the DVD release; the BlueRay release; the TV rerun(s); the Netflix subscription service; and whatever merchandizing you've been able to scare up along the way.

Any way you slice it, movies are huge business, even though box office figures the world over are far from attractive. There's a site which makes fascinating browsing: BoxOfficeMojo.com ... enter in, and prepared to be astounded.

Russel Crowe in A Good Year ... directed by Ridley Scott, himself a legend. Total boxoffice gross: just under $7.5m ... you're not reading that wrongly. Nor did I mistype it! $7,459,300.

Kathleen Turner in her absolute hay day in V.I. Warshawski -- if she can't put bums on seats, who can? $11,128,308.

Johnny Deep and Charlieze Thieron (and I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised if I don't know how to spell that!) ... same bums-on-seats remark. The Astronaut's Wife. $10, 672,566.

Let's face it: if only the top 2% of movies ever broke even, Hollywood would have collapsed by now! The truth? Boxoffice is only part of the picture, and not even a large part.

Australia is at just under $50m, and still earning at the boxoffice before they get stuck into all the rest. Hey guys ... it's not that bad, really.

Little is happening in this neck of the woods. The big news (and terms are relative!) is that I did two posts to Legends today, and here they are:

http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-nine-conclusion.html
and
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/oracle-knows.html

I haven't been able to look at Digital Kosmos for a week, and in this week I'll have to make a decision: gee, do I get five titles up on Amazon Kindle, or do I post to the photo blog. Duh. I'll get back to DK when time permits. Till them -- bear with me, guys!

Ciao for now,
MK

Happy New Year! Start rolling out those barrels...

There's not much to say today except HAPPY NEW YEAR! The old year has seven or eight hours left in it, as I write this. I find myself looking both backward and forward, at the events that surprised, disgusted, delighted and grieved us during 2008, and at the events that ought to get us up on the soap boxes next year.

Ought-eight was the year everybody got rid of George W. Bush; it was the year Americans elected a president of color ... it was also the year when people were hoodwinked by the religious right, into voting against civil liberties and human rights. However, it was also the year when the aforementioned religious right well and truly shot their bolt, and "all came out in the wash." Their lies and perfidy became common knowledge, and as they saying goes, "they can't pull that trick again." Gay marriage rights will be back on the ballot sheet very soon, and this time the people of California will go to the polls with their eyes wide open.

It was the year Heath Ledger died; the year the recession hit the whole world broadside. The Olympics went to China ... China could no longer disguise its air pollution problems. The global climate went bung some more, and did it faster than anyone had ever expected ... but record snowfalls are being taken by some idiots as a sign that there's no such thing as global warming! Apparently, we need to start building "proper" power stations as fast as we can. I read a feature article in the UK's Telegraph online; I read it because I thought the teaser line promised a great joke, and was two thirds through it before I realized, this buffoon is deadly serious, and so are the pea-brains who left comments on the page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html ... don't you love the title? "2008," it says, "was the year man-made global warming was disproved." O...kay.

Well, it certainly was the year that The Dark Knight showed how much money a movie can make at the box office! It also showed that there's a disturbing large part of the audience that's identifying with the psychos, not the heroes. Woah.

But 2008 was also the year when the Vatican said it was fine and dandy to believe in aliens (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KSE100&show_article=1), and at the same time, gay athletes decided not to come out! Of 10,500 athletes in Beijing, only 10 were out, and only one of those was a guy (http://www.theage.com.au/news/off-the-field/10500-athletes-and-only-10-of-them-gay/2008/08/18/1218911546077.html). Statistically, it's far more probably that about a thousand of these athletes were gay or bi, but with the hurricane of Prop 8 going on in the background, who was going to come out?! The time isn't right, not yet, not quite.

Because this was also the year the Dominionists came within tickling distance of the White House. Don't get me started on Dominionists.

It was the year John Barrowman published his autobiography (!), and Aussie TV decided they couldn't show season two of Torchwood because (so they said) there was material which would offend viewers. If you believe a syllable of that.

This year, our prime minister was demonstrated to be a "cradle catholic" with aspirations to build "the great Australian firewall," meaning Aus becomes one of only five countries to deliberately and vastly censor the Internet. The others are China, Iran, Egypt and ... England. Go figure.

The year Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starred in a major flop: Australia ... and Kidman has been blamed for it. Well, who could blame Hugh Jackman when the poor man just can't help looking like this:




See what I mean? Not his fault. Couldn't be his fault. Blame Kidman. It's all her fault anyway. (And yes, even Keegan decided to wait for the DVD ... and I'm not usually swayed by critics. I'll talk about the movie when I've rented the disk!)

It was also the year Will Smith was outed, whether he liked it or not! Kewl. Unless you're Will Smith, of course. Then, well, maybe not so kewl. The year Brad had twins ... I expect he had help there somewhere. The year Michael Jackson's nose fell off -- or was that last year? One loses track. The year Whacko Jacko ... and Mel Keegan ... turned 50. Good golly, what happened to time? The last time I looked at a calendar, it was 1997, and I'll bet Jacko would tell you the same.

It's actually been one hell of a year, and the next one will be just as weird and wonderful.

We live in "interesting times," to borrow from the old Chinese curse!

H a p p y N e w Y e a r ! I'll be back next year,

Cheers,
MK

Wednesday waffles

The world on Wednesday is "business as usual" -- meaning, orderly chaos. Since I'm still blogging in the vacuum, I'll restrict myself to an update, and let you get back to your life!

If you've been following the CreateSpace situation in the last couple of days, you'll be interested to know that we are STILL WAITING for any intelligent response from Customer Service. At this point, we've been waiting for six days, with a jammed, gridlocked shopping cart and no ability to publish a new project -- with Christmas looming just weeks away, and the whole CreateSpace-Amazon "process" taking a month!

For the backstory on this:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/hiccups-in-create-space-process.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/tuesday-morning-blues.html

As Queen Victoria was heard to say on more than one occasion, "We are not amused."

We'll keep you posted.

And speaking of being posted: it just hit us (like the proverbial load of bricks) why the USPS parcel rates have shot up ... the carbon tax applied to airlines. When you ship a person (say, 60kg) from the US or UK to Aus or NZ (say, 10,000km), the tax converts to around A$275. That's A$6.25 per kilo of weight, per one-way trip. Parcels make one-way trips. And this is pretty much EXACTLY what the USPS price rise measured.

Duh.

Okay: grin and bear it -- it's for the planet. So -- so long as the megabucks raised by the carbon tax are spent on planting trees, restoring river systems, cleaning up waterways, enforcing "carbon reinjection" in the oil and coal-to-liquid industries ... fair enough. Get a Mel Keegan novel shipped to Australia, and you probably paid to plant a couple of trees. And that's cool. Puts the additional cost in a different, more acceptable light.

(The other possibility is that the carbon tax funds will be used to prop up corrupt governments and mega corporations which are too rich to begin with. This is not so cool, but only time will tell which way this particular barrow-load of manure is going to hit the ventilators.)

In other news, AUSTRALIA opened overnight ... and the critics are just short of getting out the pistols and taking pot-shots at each other: they're so widely divided, the movie is either phenomenal or rubbish, depending on who you listen to.

I'll have to wait till I see it. It opens here momentarily; the critics' preview was last week, and Aussie critics were just as divided as the Americans. Here's the best roundup of the US critical voice:
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,24709251-5013560,00.html

By the sounds of it -- and being cautious and charitable -- AUSTRALIA looks like it's been fractionally overcooked, with some CGI effects here and there that don't quite work, and if you don't like Nicole Kidman, you're going to find 165 minutes of her tough to endure. To balance all that out, Hugh Jackman is verrrrry nice eye candy, and from what I've seen of the trailers, there's a lot more CGI stuff that does work than doesn't ... and the scenery, panoramic and color saturated as it is, will be advantaged by the big screen.

I'll hold my tongue on the subject till I've seen it.


Last note for today: We're putting the finishing touches to the 2009 Mel Keegan Calendar, which will be produced be Lulu.com -- NOT Zazzle, because Zazzle.com is way too expensive on calendars. I'll be posting again with a "show and tell" about this project, which should be available for Christmas ... Lulu being a helluva lot faster than either CreateSpace (who don't do calendars anyway) and Zazzle.

Ciao for now,
MK

Sunday morning ends and odds

Odds and ends today, and we'll open with a joke:

One sunny day in 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sitting on a park bench.
He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."
The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U. S. Marine, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"
The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, sir!"

...I can't credit the source, because this one has been doing the rounds via email, and I got it at third of fourth hand, but -- whoever came up with this ... GOOD ONE!

A couple of days ago I was talking about the movie Australia, and mentioned that Hugh Jackman would be a sight for sore eyes. (http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-at-movies-australia.html) Thanks to the folks who sent me these (click on the thumbnails for a large image and, uh, enjoy):





My political post today is in the form of a reply to a very good comment on yesterday's post: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/prop-8-racial-vote-and-anger.html ...
I did indeed need to be much more specific about the religious rights I was talking about, and I've taken this opportunity to set out what I honestly do believe. Please take a few minutes to read this additional material ... and thanks to Adam for commenting. Much appreciated.

Anyone remember the name of Ron Cobb, back in the days when he was a political cartoonist, and before he went on to design major motion pictures? Remember this:

Nothing ever changes. That cartoon was drawn about 30 years ago. Gotta make you wonder.

Nice piece of news from Keegan Country: The Swordsman actually went "live" at Amazon.com last week, and we were thinking we would have to start some serious advertising to get sales ... turns out, sales have started all on their own. Nice. very.

The Lords of Harbendane progresses smoothly. Expect the ebook at PayLoads at the end of the month; expect the Lulu.com version (best for Aussies and Kiwis) about five days later; expect the CreateSpace version (best for the US and Canada) about five days after this; expect it to put in an appearance at Amazon about ten days later. (To your right as you read this is a wee small version of the character study of Rogan, the character around whom Harbendane revolves. It's a beautiful piece of work, by Jade as always on my book covers these days. Thank gods for digital artwork.)

What's next for Keegan, after Harbendane? A couple of short stories -- which is unusual for me. I rarely get ideas that lend themselves to short works. Then the haunted house novel I had promised for Christmas '08, and then swapped for Harbendane on account of a minor plotting snafu. Then ... HELLGATE. All of it. Right to the end, by the end of 2009. This time next year, you'll be able to get the whole series either as a sex of six paperbacks or three monster hardcovers. Make a nice Christmas pressie ... tell someone you love what to get you when the silly season comes around!

Ciao for now,
MK

Mel at the Movies: Australia

The posters are up and the trailers are playing for the upcoming "event" of 2008: Jackman and Kidman, together again for the first time, in...



To be honest, I don't go to the cinema much; the last movies I saw on the big screen were IRON MAN and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull ... both of which I enjoyed vastly. (I know some people are rubbishing Jones now, but I personally enjoyed the movie, so, what they hey? It had a great sense of both humor and the ridiculous; it knew when to laugh at itself; Harrison Ford has turned into a likable old codger who, in this incarnation, could go on for a long time. Okay, he's not young anymore. Where is it written that a person has to be young to be likable? Spielberg and Lucas cast an attractive young dude as Jones Jr., and Cate Blanchett gets to strut her stuff outrageously, so who's got a complaint? The movie was FUN, people.)

Having said that I don't go to the theater much, I shall certainly be sitting in the middle of one of the big ones at the Marion megaplex later this month ... Australia is a movie I gotta see.

In the last couple of days I've been watching numerous trailers. In case you've missed them, and are interested (!), here you go:


THE FULL TRAILER

and


A second, different trailer.

...There are about a half dozen trailers and sneak previews circulating right now, each giving a different perspective on the movie. One of them at least is "getting rotten reviews" as a trailer! Peanut gallery critics are not even waiting for the movie to come out -- they've got Australia labeled as a lousy movie because they found the trailer "baffling and incomprehensible."

It's true that if you don't know much about Australian history, you could be confused. It's equally true that Aussies and Kiwis might find the trailer for a movie about the American Civil War to be confusing ... doesn't mean it's going to be a lousy movie: just means that the parochial education -- necessary to understand the visual references used in the shorthand with which movie trailers are crafted -- is missing in folks from way downunder. High duh factor on that one. Same difference with the trailer for Australia. I watched the exact same 90 seconds that had rubbed this person the wrong way, and the footage made perfect sense to me.

What's going to take me to the movies to see this one on the big screen is sheer curiosity: my gods, it's a movie about Australia, with real Australians in it!!! Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, Bruce Spence, David Wenham, Bill Hunter, John Jarratt, David Gulpilil, Ray Barrett, Arthur Dignam ... they're all Aussies!!

It's seldom that a movie about Australia is actually 1) about Australia, 2) done properly and not turned into a pastiche from foreign perspectives, 3) FILMED in Australia, 3) cast with real Aussie actors.

For example ... The Thorn Birds, filmed in Hawaii in 1983, starring Richard Chamberlaine, Barbara Stanwick, Rachel Ward, Christopher Plummer, Jean Simmonds, Piper Laurie, Earn Holliman ... the dramatisation of the crash-hot Australian monster novel of the early 1980s. Not one single Aussie actor in it. Not even filmed here.

The year before ,The Man From Snowy River premiered locally with the kind of pomp and fireworks that are usually reserved for things like Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith...


In its favor were the cast (all Aussies with the exception of Kirk Douglas who played two parts and was actually very good in both ... don't count Gus Mercurio as a Yank: he'd been here for so long, he was as Aussie as any of us by '82), and the cinematography, which was so vast, so sweeping, so color-saturated and amazing ... it looked like a Marlbro country commercial half the time. Sorry, guys, but it did. In the end, the massive cinematography (reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain) looked like the cigarette commercial, and ended up as a detraction.

The big problem with The Man From Snowy River was that, for most of the audience, the whole movie ... all 102 minutes of it ... hangs on about four and a half minutes of action which, admittedly, knocks your eyeballs right out of their sockets. The thing is, you have to wade through 95 minutes of Nineteenth Century Soap Opera to get to this. Now, if you fell instantly in lust with Tom Burlinson or Sigrid Thornton, you sat there drooling for an hour and a half. If you didn't, you kinda toughed it out and waited for this:



There you go: there's The Man From Snowy River in a thimble -- at least, the bit that counts, the bit the greater percentage of the audience remembers. The rest is soap and teen romance, and glorious backdrops. This highspot is well worth the rental price of the DVD, if you have a big-screen TV. Trust me on this: you will get goosebumps.

Not quite what some of us had in mind when we imagined a movie about Australia. Sure, Snowy was as Aussie as the dog on the tucker box -- which, in a big way, was a relief. But ... a movie about Australia?

A couple of years earlier, we came close

"From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget." Whoever wrote that slogan got it right. Gallipoli is less a movie than an experience ... and it's an experience it'll take you a week to get over. Not that it's graphically violent by today's standards: if you're thinking along the lines of Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers -- wrong. To many people (myself included) too much too-graphic violence causes compassion fatigue well inside the 120 minute running length of a movie. What shocked me in Reel One doesn't rouse much of an emotional reaction in Reel Six. Gallipoli is the exact opposite. It's like an exercise in virtual reality. You are there ... you live and work with these guys (Mel Gibson in the days when he was an Aussie, and drop-dead gorgeous, and Mark Lee, who has always been an Aussie, and equally drop-dead gorgeous). And you die with them. The movie stands out in my memory as the most amazing Australian movie done to date ... but I can't watch it more often than about once in three years, because it's almost unbearable, especially in the last ten minutes or so.

Here's the sneak-preview:



YouTube has a couple of uploads of the end, but the good one of them is dubbed from a copy with what looks like it might be Dutch or Danish subtitles. I find this distracting, but give it a shot:



(Yes, of course I have a copy, and I know it line for line. I wasn't at the premier, but I saw it the first week it played here (parts of it were shot in South Australia, so it was a big event here; believe it or not, Mel Gibson used to live in this city a loooooong time ago, before he went well and truly bonkers. I can tell you, the audience was full of very elderly veterans of the actual campaign ... and you had to swim out of the theater. It was that good. That real.)

Australia opens here on November 26th, and I just have to be there. A real Aussie movie, with real Aussie actors and ... everything. From the trailers, it looks like it's going to be tremendous, and certainly Hugh Jackman will be a sight for sore eyes:


I'll talk more about the movie when I've seen it. For now, my recommendations regarding Aussie movies? Gallipoli (keep the kleenex handy), Quigley Downunder (there, now I've astonished you, right?), Man From Snowy River (learn where the fast forward button on your remote is), The Chain Reaction (if you're lucky enough to find a copy) ... and here's hoping that I'll be able to add Australia to this list very soon.