Chris Lilley in deep water, again (yawn)

So, the ABC and Chris Lilley (creator, writer and star of Summer Heights High) have to appolise because a joke on their show offended the parents of a girl who died from a drug overdose? A joke that was written and filmed before the girl overdosed? From NineMSN:

The ABC has been forced to make an embarrassing apology to the family of Annabel Catt — the woman who died from an drug overdose last year — after it aired a comedy with a similar storyline and character.

Comedian Chris Lilley's popular Summer Heights High this week featured a schoolgirl named Annabel who died of a drug overdose.

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott today apologised to the Catt family, saying the blunder was an "unfortunate coincidence" and not meant to make reference to real-life tragedy in any way.

"We apologise that this has caused further distress to the family," Mr Scott said in a statement.

"In hindsight, we feel we should have alerted the Catt family to the situation in advance of the broadcast."

Annabel Catt died in February after she took a lethal dose of paramethoxyamphetamine (PMA) at a music festival on the Gold Coast.

In an episode Summer Heights High screened on Wednesday night, a character named Annabel Dickson dies of an ecstasy overdose.

She is later referred to as a "slut" by a drama teacher Greg Gregson, played by Lilley.

Mr Scott said the decision to use the name 'Annabel' was made some time before the Catt tragedy occurred.

"Eleven days after the production had been completed Annabel Catt's tragic death occurred on February 18," he said.

Mr Scott has refused to pull the remaining episodes of Summer Heights High despite continuing references to the character.

Although I'm curious as to when this girl died. Was it "last year" or "February 18"? Because I doubt filming of the series has been finished since February 2006! I mean, it's sad for the family that this coincidence brings up memories, but jesus christ, if every network had to apologise to families for similaties in storylines then 90% of drama series on right now would be having to do it. It's why they have that disclaimer at the end. Ugh. If Lilley had named the character "Rebecca" I sure we'd have another family coming out of the woodworks saying the same thing.

By the way, Summer Heights High is amazing and brilliant (and most definitely not, to quote Mr G, a "bummer heights high").

Eli Roth and the Attack of the Critics

I was reading Dave Poland at The Hot Blog bring Eli Roth to task about violence in cinema and was intrigued by what I read. Also frightened. And bewildered. I was also a bit happy. Hopefully if Poland is any indication (which, let's face it, he isn't a lot of the time) then maybe - just maybe - people will actually get out there and make some mothafuckin' noise about this shit. From what I have read about Hostel Part II (as if the "Part" makes it sound like some important addition of a story that needed to be be told all over again) - and Poland makes a case for it himself - it is utterly absurd that this movie is rated a mere R in America. It's rated R18+ here in Australia too, but our R is the equivelent to America's NC17. However, here that rating is not seen as a reason to go into damage control - there've been lots of box office hits rated R18+. What will it take for a film to get an American NC17 rating based on violence? Will it take an actual on-screen murder? Or is that not enough? They'll give something like director Bernardo Bertolucci The Dreamers an NC17 based on nothing but a dick shot and a sex scene, yet all these horror films of late are deemed socially acceptable for anyone as long as they have a parent with them. How considerate.

Poland's review of Hostel Part II is scathing. It's worse than a bad movie. It's an offensive demeaning one. In referring to a much-discussed scene in which Heather Matarazzo is hanged upside down:

And then, I watched a scene that was the most disgusting, degrading, misogynistic, soulless shit I have ever seen in a movie that is going to be released widely in this country.

...

You have to remember, this is a movie. Not only did Eli Roth come up with this inhuman idea that has no meaning whatsoever other than his masturbatory fantasies about raising the bar.

...

And not only did he think of this, but he hung an actress, however willing, upside down and naked, gagged and bound, screaming, as nothing but a piece of objectified meat as Roth's camera moves her breasts in and out of frame like some sort of sick porn tease. This is not the first time a director has done something horrible to an actress, but as the scene dragged on, I felt as though I was watching Ms. Matarazzo being raped on a spiritual level. This director did not identify with her as a human in the scene ... she is just the target for a bloody gag.

And about Eli Roth himself.

Eli Roth became a little less human to me.

...

I never did respect Roth's work. Now, if he and I crossed paths, I would refuse to shake his hand.

Ouch. I've discussed before my ill-feelings towards Hostel Part II, what with it's niggling focus of tortured women, it's desire to advertise towards young males and a desire to be grotesque for no reason (although Roth is now putting on a cover of "subtext", which is the most ridiculous thing I've read all week). And as the anticipation for this apparently quite revolting freakshow gears up (My man Ja is completely guilty of that, teehee) I get not only continuously nauseated, but also continuously interested in actually seeing it merely so I can insult it some more out in front of the "but you haven't even seen it" argument. Maybe on a Cheap Tuesday? Ja joked that an entry about Eli Roth wouldn't be the same without a negative comment from me, and that's because he makes me angry. He's a deluded wanker. If he wants subtext in a movie, then maybe actually put it in there and not just disguise torture scenes as some allegory to the war in Iraq.

I hope more than enough people can show restraint and not see this movie. Roth has said that this will be the last Hostel film but, quite frankly, I'll believe that when I see (or not as the case may be). Even if Roth isn't directing, there will be more. And his insidious attitude* will continue to perforate through the filmmaking universe.



*Let it be known that I know Roth isn't the first, and won't be the last (unfortunately), person to make this type of film but it's just a fact that he's a damn good punching bag (who even knows the name of anyone involved with the Saw films?) And I know that these types of films have been around for a long time, but back in the '70s when the films Roth is seemingly trying to recreate in all their glory, these films were shown in driveins and were "underground". They needed violence to attract a crowd. But with movies going out to 3000 cinemas every week and with the internet, these movies market themselves. It's not fun knowing that there are 15-year-old boys out there thinking to themselves "aw man, that bitch is gonna get cut up!" with a thrill and excitement to it.

For me, horror films are split into two camps. Those that are scary and terrifying and are like punches of adrenalin (even stuff like The Last House on the Left from the '70s falls into that camp) and then there are the fun variety. The slasher ones, mostly. What they lack in genuine frights, they gain in being a sorta fun way to spend an hour and a half. But then there are ones like Hostel and the Saw movies. Those that aren't made to be scary (although they're marketed as being such), nor are they made for teen-thrill fun. They're made to have their filthy destructive energy out there. It's a disturbing trend having them out there in the mainstream and that people are going to these movies for the excessive gore, not the scares or the thrills. They're going to watch people get murdered.

I toyed with the idea of turning comments off for this entry because I'm sure at least one person has something to say against my thoughts, but I've left them on. If you feel so inclines as to defend these movies then go ahead. It'll be more entertaining than anything found in an Eli Roth film.

XXX Torture Porn

**Sorry for this being one big chunk of text, but you'll understand why soon. The thought of posting images to make an example just isn't worth it quite frankly.**

This started out as a simple reply to an entry at My New Plaid Pants featuring a newly released image of Heather Matarazzo gagged and hanging upside down, but it started getting way too long for a comment so I thought I'd just post something here instead. It's incredibly rushed and not at all structured well, but it's 1am so I don't care. This entry contains spoilers to the original Hostel I guess, not that there's much to spoil. People die gruesomely. Yawn. Anyway.

I've been reading some of these articles that have been popping up alot lately about violence in film and the whole "torture porn" subgenre that's emerged (as if it's only a NEW thing in horror, geez). Usually I just let the writer continue their deluded attitudes about horror films (well, the majority of horror films) and think that they're looking way too much into the issue when most people just go to horror movies for some jumps and scares and to frightened witless by something that isn't actually happening in the world as we know it.

But the more that I think about Hostel 2 the more I get kind of repulsed at the idea and the more that I really start to think Eli Roth is quite a repulsive man.

I don't generally buy the whole misogynistic angle that writers seem to take to horror movies, but then again neithr do I always buy the idea of directors that say it's all about female empowerment (well, certainly not in this day and age), but that's not the point. I do however think there's something incredibly disgusting about what Eli Roth is doing with this film. He is, in my opinion, selling the film as being about the torture and murder of young women. Pure and simple. Just like those quite revolting posters for Captivity, I think Hostel Part II is praying on the desire to watch young attractive women be murdered. As if the entire point of the movie is just to observe some sick fantasy. And considering the plot of the movie being rich people enacting murder fantasies there's certainly credence to that theory.

Eli Roth is, clearly, a man that relishes in violence but I'm not sure if it's in a particularly healthy way. There doesn't seem to be any noteworthy skill to what he decides to put on the screen. Like, he seems to be getting off on just having the ability to kill people for the sake of it - just as the Saw movies do equally reprehensively I think.

Maybe I too am just over-thinking the situation like the issue writers I typically think are being myopic, but it really does make me feel kind of sick. To be honest, in the original we actually didn't see all that much of the males tortured, but in the end he decided to have the woman kill herself and have the good looking American get away free and easy basically. In Part II it just seems to be all women, all torture, all the time. The IMDb lists a lot of females that are, probably to Roth, ripe for the taking. I may decide to watch the film on DVD and it may prove to not be this, but that doesn't make it appear to be anything more than just the classic Scream quote - "Some big-breasted girl who can't act who's always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's insulting."

Taking a look at the poster archives for Part I and Part II also brings up another frightful element to Roth's party. The original film had posters that showed a man holding a chainsaw, another showed some tool of some sort and another involving a man with a drill placed in his mouth. Only the third one is particularly nasty (ignoring the international posters). The posters for the second film are of a particularly more grizzy variety. Ignoring the "slab of beef" I implore to you look at this one and not think it's sick. I refuse to post it on here because I just think it's detestable. I guarantee a whole swag of 15-year-old boys would see that on the Internet and go "sweet!"

I dunno, it just worries me. I didn't like the original much at all, I thought it was sort of silly and only attempted to be scary in the last 20 minutes or so (and even an untrained monkey could wrangle suspence out of that). I will usually defend gory movies. I think there's a place for them. But I do think there gets to a point when it is simply a sick director playing out his sick fantasies for people to watch under the guise of "it's just a movie."

Anyway, New Young Pony Club just came on iTunes so I'm going to finish this now because the song makes me happy and hopefully I can just get the repulsiveness of this stuff out of my mind. Until, of course, the movie opens and tonnes of young men go to the movie and cheer everytime someone gets their face blown away with a blowtorch or something. :/

[Holy shit, the conversation really drags on in the comment section. Have a gander if you're interested and leave a thought. It's incredibly interesting.]

An Open Letter To Everyone Who Didn't See Grindhouse

Dear People Who Didn't See Grindhouse,

From the bottom of my heart I thank you. I thank you a thousand times over. Thank you for completely fucking us over. Thank you for ruining it for everyone else. Thank you for destroying one of my most anticipated moviegoing events of the year. Thank you for making us pay double to see what you could have seen for the price of one. Thanks a lot. I hope you're really freakin' happy!

Love, Glenn

PS; If you didn't see Grindhouse but frequently have good taste in films then you are exempt from my burning hatred. The rest though... I hope their eyes explode from watching Norbit on DVD too many times.

From MovieHole

As discussed in this weeks Caffeinated Clint, the heavily anticipated "Grindhouse" has been pulled from its May release slot in Australia and postponed till later in the year - at which time it will be split into two separate movies.

Roadshow Film Distributors confirmed this today, in the following email :

In keeping with the theatrical release plans for all territories outside of the US, GRINDHOUSE will now be released as two separate theatrical features:
DEATH PROOF directed by Quentin Tarantino and PLANET TERROR directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF is premiering in the Cannes Film Festival in May. The Australian release of DEATH PROOF will be later in the year and will be followed by the release of PLANET TERROR.

Sad indeed. How about we fuck off a few of the Norbits, Night at the Museum's and Wild Hogs' and make way for some original, fine-ass, content again? I suppose we should probably start with writing in a new rule for studio employees : 'no former accountants to play studio development chiefs'.

Also, they're remaking Fame. I... I... I... *cries*

2:37 vs Elephant

A while back (in January) I discussed a film from 2006 called 2:37 by Mulari K Thalluri. In that review of sorts I mentioned how the film basically imitates Gus Van Sant's much better Elephant. It bugged me, but Elephant was such a good movie that if Thalluri was going to ape the style of something I guess I was glad it was that.

Just today I got an e-mail saying I had a reply to that entry, so I check it out and it was some (anonymous) person directing me to a YouTube video entitled "2:37 versus Elephant". You can check it out below. It really is starting how much Thalluri copied from Elephant (down to the piano scenes featuring an elephant themselves, gay kisses and scenes of guys entering the female bathrooms). I still could never call 2:37 a great film - it's similarities to Elephant are just too distracting - but it is a good one. it's well-intentioned and well-made and features a strong debut cast.

Watching the video below doesn't reveal the central "mystery" (I guess that's what it is) of 2:37 (who commits suicide at the end), in fact the only spoiler really is about who is the closet gay. I must say though after watching this clip I noticed down the side (where they have similar clips) that someone has, shockingly, posted the suicide scene from the end of the movie. All 9 minutes and 39 seconds. Quite frankly, that's disgusting. Why on earth would someone post that. It was definitely one of the more disturbing things I have seen in a cinema in the many times I've been. Scarily, it's been favourited by 11 people. If you're desperate to see what I'm talking about (not sure why you would be) then click here, but otherwise just watch the clip below.

They should make a sequel to The President vs David Hicks. Really.

Fully Sick (no, really)

That title heading will be lost of a large number of readers, but 'tev. So, entries have been slow the last couple of days because I've been incredibly sick (I didn't even touch the computer yesterday, and that means it was bad), but I'm on the mend now so that's a good thing. In fact, compared to yesterday, I'm feeling positively spritely (if that's even a word). Anyway. I've updated my sidebar with new movie viewings and such.

One of the movies I watched recently (in the miscellaneous viewings) was Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (thanks for Adam from Crumb by Crumb for the hookup). The banned 1987 Todd Haynes film about Carpenter's singer Karen Carpenter. I was telling my friend Georgie about it and then just casually dropped into the convo that the film (all 43 minutes of it) is "acted" entirely (well, mostly) out of Barbie dolls. As soon as I said it I turned around and walked off. When I returned a minute later she was still a bit confused. But it's great. Watch it. But, er, I guess we're not meant to discuss it and keep it all hush hush right? Cause it's banned. Right?

Tempting

So, when I saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ I was, to put it lightly, repulsed. How could a man so clearly devout to God and Jesus turn his film about said people into a grotesque unspiritual affair. I can grant him the desire to wish to portray Jesus' crusifiction as realistic and bloody as the Bible presents it, and I don't usually have a problem with violence. My problem with it was that for a movie about God, Jesus and faith, there was no spirit. It just felt like I was watching a man get filetted to death and nothing more. That's not something I want to see.

So it was with curiosity that I approached Martin Scorsese's controversial 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ. Taking a much broader canvas, a much more biopic-friendly (if you will) glance at a hypotheticised life of Jesus. Last Temptation if you're unaware, strips the myth of Jesus and recasts him as a mere human. A man who has fears, desires and intimate thoughts. It was this very idea - that Jesus wasn't entirely omnipitent and sin-free and had sexual desires - that lead to countrywide (in the USA anyway, who knows what happened elsewhere) protests and calls for the film to be banned. But isn't that a bit silly and hypocritical? How come these audiences (y'all know who they are) could protest a movie that sympathises with Jesus and asks audiences to follow him on a spiritual journey of discovery (that eventually ends with Jesus realising that the way of the devil is no way at all) yet Hardcore Smut Porn Passion of the Christ pulls in some of the biggest box office of all time?


It's not my place to guess what was going through the minds of these people (apparently, some of the groups that spearheaded the campaign against the film have since revoked it and claimed it as a testement to their religion), but I can't help but imagine they were the same people who have tried to get so many films banned without even seeing it.

What I saw, and I am coming from a completely unbiased point of view - I'm neither for or against religion althought I do have my own beliefs - was a masterful recreation of a time and place and a man who would go on to change the world (whether he was really a messiah or not is not the point). It shows a man struggling with his demons (literal demons. Satan is right there), yet who comes out the other side of his life redeemed and, yes, "accomplished". To me, there is more spirit and faith in The Last Tempation of Christ's notorious fantasy sequence (in which Jesus flashes to a life of marriage and fatherhood with Mary Magdalene), than there was the entirety of The Passion of the Christ.

Whether you're religious or not isn't the matter with Scorsese's film (for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination). Just think of it as the story of man who fought his demons for the (some would say) better of mankind. The film is visually truimphant, as is Peter Gabriel's haunting and stunning music. The Last Temptation of Christ is a grand operatic exercise in storytelling of the highest order. Leave your beliefs at the door and let the film wash over you. You'll be better for it. A

This was just another "review" by me where I typed out random thoughts without cohesion or sense. Oh well. Dems da breaks, as they say.


^idiots in '88^

Ellen is a Classy Gal

No, not Ellen DeGeneres - the actress. Ellen Burstyn. She has come out about her Emmy Nomination. Ya know, the one for which she was nomianted for a 14-second performance in the Annette Bening-starring Mrs Harris (here's a ponderer? Would Bening's Oscar chances be better if Harris received a theatrical release instead of only having Running With Scissors to rely on?).

In an interview with AP Radio, the 73-year-old Academy Award winner spoke publicly for the first time about her Emmy nod: "When they told me I was nominated for that I went, 'What, are you kidding?'"

Burstyn's cameo in Mrs. Harris lasted 14 seconds, with her speaking a total of 38 words.

"I thought it was fabulous," she said. "My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and, ultimately, I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear."

Ellen is so awesome. I can't wait to see her on the big screen again in Darron Aronofski's The Fountain out here in January. THat movie has gone through a lot so it'll be good to see anything on the big screen, let alone Burstyn, who was one of the original cast members who also managed to be cast in the remodeled version. If you remember The Fountain was originally to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Now in a slightly ironic twist, Brad and Cate co-star in Babel, out now a mere couple of weeks before The Fountain arrives in US cinemas, a full two or three years after it was originally meant to. Also, let us remember, Brad had that hilarious gross beard for the movie. That was also when he was still married to Jennifer Aniston. My, how the times change.

Abbie! What are you doing!

Abbie Cornish!! Don't become the next Sienna Miller. You're extremely talented (you just won another Best Actress prize!) I can forgive you for being in A Good Year because normally you'd think Ridley Scott would make a decent movie. But now you're making a Hollywood movie with Ryan Phillippe... and sleeping with him?

I know you've denied it and I believe you, but please don't get suckered in to all this. You're awesome.

Plus, umm.. there's totally better guys out there than Ryan, okay?!