The world adores matt hayward

I must be honest. Promotional DVDs really annoy me. AOL (and hundreds of other ISPs) have filled tonnes of land fill up with their useless ‘connect to the internet now’ style discs on magazines. It’s useless consumption and as far as i’m concerned the most environmentall unethical form of promotion.

So anyway, yesterday local MP for South Yarra sends me his Vote Clem DVD in the mail. Less than 24 hours ago, I sent him this email

Dear Mr Newton-Brown,

Yours truly
Matt Hayward.

Well bugger me dead! In true politican style, any publicity is good publicity. Here’s his response:

hi matt,
thanks for your thoughts (yes i did read it all!)
No time for an in depth defence now, but I would be pleased to be forwarded
your blog site.
best wishes,
clem
ps any chance of a second preference?!

Credit where it’s due. Always have a smile on your face. It doesn’t change my disposition in regards to the vote, but remember to write letters to your politiicans kiddies. Sometimes you’ll get a response.

What a weekend for warts and all cinema. First of all we had Shortbus. A little sexual epic/human drama and at times acrobatic triumph of a movie! I would say more about the acrobatics, but let’s just say there’s some ‘interesting’ masturbation scenes and i’ll leave the rest to your imagination.  You will know within the first 10 minutes whether you’re cut out for Shortbus or not. If you liked Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the director’s previous work), no doubt you will have some idea what to expect. But whether you can stomach the broad gamut of sexuality on display is another story. I must admit during the more homo erotic scenes, I was looking away!

Shortbus is a bit of a symbiosis, because you couldn’t have the porno aspect without the drama and vice versa. Of the 3 main characters in the movie, a gay couple looking to ’see other people’; a sex therapist whose never had an orgasm and; a dominatrix who desperately wants to become an artist. All the characters meet up at this bizarre Andy Warholesque club named Shortbus, which offers anything and everything.  The journey these characters take is both massively erotic and intensely emotional. There are some really human moments in this movie through which people find themselves through somewhat shared experiences.

No doubt, some will argue that this movie is just trite porn, but it really is far too complex and arty to pass off something like that. But let me tell you something boys, if you think you’re going to get a lot of all girl action, um guess again. This might not be for you champ! Thankfully I can say this movie really gets under your skin. And although repeat viewing mightn’t be a necessesity, you come out so glad you’ve seen it. Adult drama doesn’t get much better than this.  4.5 out of 5.

Fast Food Nation

On the other hand, Fast Food Nation doesn’t have any gory sex scenes. Just gory kill floor scenes in abbatoirs! This documentary-come-drama is not a pro vegetarian manifest. It’s more about the drama of some illegal Mexican immigrants who come to America to work in a meat packing plant. The primary customer of the plant is a fast food chain.

The movie starts with a marketing ace from the restaurant chain, who’s sent to Colorado to find out why a scientific test found so much foecal matter in their burger patties. His investigation parallels our ‘guest workers’ adaptation to both American life and the harsh realities of their work.

For both, some stark realities are discovered and they have to ‘cop it sweet’ to keep their jobs and keep their so-called lifestyle. For the marketing guy, he discovers that he’s pretty much blackmailed into keeping business the way it is, because too many powerful people are making money. Our Mexican meat packing workers find too that they have to take a whole lot of shit if they want to make US bucks.

Suffice it to say, there are some real moments of symapthy for the Mexican workers who sort of live under the surface of American culture. At best they’re only equal in society as consumers, but never as workers or citizens.

Unfortunately the movie does get into factoids and more political stuff, as our Fast Food worker Amber joins the uni set and gets into activism. Enter Avril Lavigne as pretty girl uni student vegetarian activist. Only here does it loose your interest and you can start to see the movie’s documentary origins. Thankfully Bruce Willis and Kris Kristoffersen make up for this by actually acting!

Ultimately this movie has a few dead bits thanks to the factoids and is a little long. If you’re hoping for the mockumentary thing, there’s none of that. Very little humour or irony as well. But in the potrayal of the true human suffering, let alone animal suffering, this movie has succeeded. In being entertaining, maybe not. 3.5 out of 5.

A mate from Canadia came by this little pearler in the states a few months ago. Thankfully, it’s everything an Adam Sandler movie should be. Why do I mention Sandler you ask? Because a cursory look at the credits and you’ll see that the movie is by Happy Gilmour productions. And it’s all the better for it.

Grandma’s Boy is like some sort of modern day American Graffiti, Happy Days, or Detroit Rock City kind of thing. Basically replace the greaser haircuts, motorbikes or your heavy metal for a controller, a bong and an X Box and you’re starting to get the picture. Grandma’s house is all about the pot and the games!

Your plot is basically set around Alex who’s a Quality Assurance tester in the video games industry. His job is to ‘clear’ all levels in video games and identify all the bugs. Life is good until his house mate defaults on the rent and he’s evicted. With only a bunch of neer do well, socially inept buddies, he soon has nowhere else to stay but with his grandmother. She lives in a kind of grandma share house with a mentally disturbed woman with a tackle box of pills and a silver haired nymphomanic.

From hereon in, Alex tries to get the right mix of nanny pampering and stoner gaming. More often than not, he’s too knackered from his ‘chores’, that he’s asleep at his desk at work. As you can tell things get pretty pear shaped and the situational comedy comes on thick and thin.

It has to be said that their adaptation of a games development company seems pretty realistic. Most of the general testers and tragically-geeky-but well adjusted guys. But definitely more so in the two characters that run the joint. The general manager is a complete vegan, hippy freak. But he can’t hold a soy candle to the lead developer, who thinks he’s both a robot living The Matrix dream. It’s with these two nutters that the movie becomes totally believable! If you’ve known people in this industry, you’ll know what i’m talking about. It takes a special kind of insanity to make that kind of genius.

Of course being a Sandler flick, there are the obvious cliches. Linda Cardellini who plays the project manager for the latest game is as achingly perfect and she is beautiful. It just makes you sick what a great chick her character is. Oh and Alex (Allan Covert) bears an uncanny resemblance to Mel Gibson in the early 80s. And of course, what’s his face, Rob Schneider makes a token appearance as the evicting landlord.

No doubt, this will become a modern day stoner epic, in the vein of The Big Lebowsky and Half Baked with a hearty dose of wholesome Adam Sandlerism. I’m glad to say deservedly so. You will laugh, you will cry, you will probably pass the bong . . . I say rock on. 4/5.

For those of you that came in late, The Departed is a remake of Honkywood movie, Infernal Affair starring Andy Lau. Infernal was released circa 2000 was a stellar thriller. Fortunately The Departed has done it justice. Like the original it’s a twisted, sordid thriller of good disguised as bad, bad corrupting the good and so feeds the rich tapestry of life!

In the original, The Hong Kong Triads place a member in the Hong Kong police force and vice versa. This time around, the villians are the Irish Mafia in Boston Massachussets. So most characters (especially Matt Damon’s) talk like Peter Griffin from The Family Guy! Jack Nicholson plays the Irish godfather figure, at the epicentre of both both crime and corruption. Matt Damon plays the cop who rats to the mafia, whilst his nemesis is Leonardo DiCaprio, a straight-edged cop who goes as far as jail time to make himself believable as a mafia henchman.

How this movie differs from the original is in its potrayal of the police. Mark Whalberg (aka Marky Mark) plays one of the grittiest roles of his career, slipping out some choice off colour language as the Police Saraent in the thick of it all. It has to be said he does a damned fine job in playing such a real character. Jack Nicolson, whilst great, is just plain inimitable Jack. I don’t think anyone else could’ve played the mafia boss as well as him. He’s just plain snaky yet likable.

Worthy of praise if the reproduction of virtually all the pivotal scenes and moments of the original. Particularly a rooftop scene, which would be a plot spoiler if I said any more! DiCaprio almost acts out Andy Lau’s original character better than Lau did. 

In summary, this is a movie well worth checking out. For once, an American studio has little to apologise for in reproducing a modern classic. The remake has been rumoured for a while, but thankfully I think they’ve done the original proud. Hopefully it will open a few more people’s eyes to Asian cinema!

5 out of 5. Go Scorcese!