I mentioned Wormwood in my review of Framing John Delorean just a few posts ago (look for Revelation ’19, 2 of 3). Wormwood is a fine example of how a good story can get so wrapped in padding and fancy visuals that the audience loses interest. I stuck it out through the first two episodes of the miniseries and then said to hell with it. I went to the internet for the basics of the story and skipped through to the sixth and closing episode.
Anticlimax city. ‘Yes, I know who was responsible but I’m not telling you.’
I was intensely grateful that I’d kept those three intervening hours of my life. And it was then that I discovered that the best part of Wormwood was the song over the closing credits.
One of these days I’ll have to write a long ranty post about pop music and how hollow it seems today. The music of the Sixties had it all!
Gina and the female veterans who appear in the Pin Ups For Vets calendar also visit veterans hospitals around America. Generally, they’re welcomed as a bright moment in the lives of the old warriors.
The Revelation Perth International Film Festival (for convenience sake, Rev) has been presenting this city with quality non-mainstream cinema for more than twenty years. Rev has a reputation – well deserved – for putting the offbeat, the unsettling, and the plain old WTF on the big screen.
We love the opportunity of being able to bring such unique
ideas and approaches to local audiences and can’t wait to see
what you think with this finely tuned work.
On the unique ideas and approaches I won’t argue. Finely tuned? Hmmm. I thought the opposite. I liked All The Gods in part because it threw a heap of weirdness into the pot and cooked up a coherent whole.
Simon and Estelle are adult siblings living none too comfortably on their parents’ farm. Estelle is apparently catatonic and largely oblivious to the world around her. Simon tends to her with intense devotion, but he has problems of his own. Self-mutilating in the lunch room at work doesn’t win you invites to after-hours drinks with the boys. Simon is also convinced that aliens are coming to rescue he and Estelle from their misery.
I forgot to mention the nuns. Yes, there’s nuns too.
The edge-of-madness atmosphere is reinforced by the casting of Melanie Gaydos as Estelle, though it’s quickly established that Estelle’s looks are the result of a domestic accident and not intergalactic mating experiments.
The movie runs nearly two hours but I was never in the boredom zone. There was just one crazy happening after another. Simon has some damn strange ideas about birthday presents for Estelle…
And that’s my Rev for another year. A reminder that many of Rev’s past presentations are available for online rent or purchase through REVonDEMAND. If you’re a filmmaker, you’ll find contact details on the website too.
Once upon a time there was a man who knew a lot about cars. His ideas and designs were the talk of the industry, and his employers rewarded him well. But as time went on the man’s ideas about cars changed, while those of his employers did not. One day the man decided to set up a brand new workshop where he could build cars entirely of his own design. He would leave his employers behind him and become his own master. And that, boys and girls, is where this fairytale turns all to shit.
Once upon a time (to continue with the established theme) documentaries were the driest of cinema’s offerings. Static camera; deadpan narrating, with the narrator remaining at all times unseen; facts and facts alone, with the absolute minimum of emotion. Then documentaries became arty. Nowadays the typical documentary is a personal odyssey for the film maker, with all sorts of visual effects laid on to impress the audience.
Who may or may not oblige by being impressed. Gregory’s First Axiom of Cinema states that An hour and half’s worth of story told in an hour and a half is entertainment, whereas an hour and a half’s worth of story told in two hours is boredom. Errol Morris serves as an example for both halves of my axiom: Tabloid for the first half, Wormwood for the second.
Framing John DeLorean weaves a complex tapestry of historical footage and interviews with re-enactments of crucial moments in DeLorean’s life and career. And then it takes a step further back to look behind the scenes of the re-enactments. Early on we meet Alec Baldwin in the make up chair being transformed into the older DeLorean – the DeLorean of myth and legend with his impressive silver mane. Baldwin appears as Baldwin almost as often as he appears as DeLorean. (I may be exaggerating there, but not much.)
At 109 minutes Framing John DeLorean comes a little too close to fulfilling the second half of my axiom. It did feel drawn out in the third act. Against that, it does deliver a full serve of story on its subject. If your knowledge of John DeLorean begins and ends with Back To The Future, this is recommended viewing. DeLorean’s story, as they say, is something you couldn’t make up.
The Wind unfolds on the vast open spaces of the American prairie during the 1800s. Lizzy and Isaac, alone and childless, are joined by Gideon and Emma. The newcomers move into the only house for miles around – a house already abandoned by failed pioneers. There is mutual curiosity, and mutual distrust. There are hints of infidelity, and its consequences. And guilt.
There’s nothing out there! That’s exactly the problem. Lizzy can’t bear that nothing. She fills it with monsters from the Id.
The Wind parallels The Witch, with indifferent Nature in both spawning psychological terrors. Call me parochial, but I can’t help making local comparisons; the stories about Australia’s early settlers describe an environment that provided all the terror required, as it was overtly hostile. In his short story The Drover’s Wife Henry Lawson depicted the hardships of isolation without demons and ghosts. The drover’s wife had little time for the monsters of her Id. The harsh facts of living were terror enough.
The drover’s wife would have felt compassion for Lizzy – but her words would have been blunt. Devils? Who cares about devils, you silly woman? I’ve got a blarsted snake in my house!
Despite the cruelty, the malice, and the sick bastard who loves to let one rip in the elevator – we all know one – there are moments of life now and then in which a little purity shines through.
I was discussing an issue with my manager which had spread into other departments and drawn some unhelpful responses. I said that one particular email from another department was just a flat-out STFU.
My manager gave me a funny look. With her voice low, she asked:
Among those arrested was Phil Kingston, 83, a retired probation officer, who has been arrested eight times in the past year for taking part in Extinction Rebellion protests.
Phil, the world’s oldest incel, still hopes to lose his virginity before he dies.
‘Those Extinction Rebellion girls are just my sort,’ he says. ‘My eyesight’s not so good and that’s a real advantage for me. I still don’t know how to deal with the smell, though.’
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