peteg's blog

Toy Story

Wow, I am slow to see this one, 15 years after it made such a splash for Pixar. It is parked at #149 in IMDB's top-250, understandably enough. I liked the two-track humour, but was hoping for more of the adult track to be integrated with the story, as I remember it being in Shrek. The whole thing felt a bit twee, to be honest.

...And Justice for All

I saw this 1979 Pacino vehicle a long time ago, probably on video tape. It's a fun but not particularly subtle or plausible drama set around the courts of Baltimore, or perhaps a subtle comedy saddled with excessive melodrama and obliviousness. Pacino here is just slightly smaller than the movie, and perhaps this is one of his last efforts where he tries to do more than just channel his inner-Al, enjoyable though that often is.

Saboteur and Citadels with Albert, Sandy, Pete R., Ilan, Nitzana, Maria, Alan.

Huge turn out for the first games night I hosted, and for once Pete R. didn't spill his drink. We began with Saboteur, after which we tried to learn how to play Citadels. (I bought it at Mind Games in Canberra for Sandy, for her birthday.) Hopefully next time we'll get though a complete game of it. Fun, fun, fun...

I also bought a copy of Bridges of Shangri-La, which I will play when I can find two or three other people who are up for some anti-social analysis-paralysis. I have fond memories of playing it with Sus's husband Magnus many years ago.

City Hall

A seriously mediocre political thriller. Pacino phones it in, and Cusak is yet to hit his High Fidelity straps. The requisite romance subplot is a fizzer.

In the heat of the night

A Sydney Poitier classic, rated at 8.1 on IMDB and unbelievably not in the top-250. Rod Steiger got an Oscar for being the police chief here, after playing Mr Joyboy so well in The Loved One a few years earlier. I somehow managed to pick the person who did it, which is unusual for me; perhaps the murder plot is pedestrian. I also found the racism a bit one-dimensional, and the peripheral characters a bit flat.

Edward O. Wilson: Anthill

Mr Ants wrote a novel, and so I had to read it. It was extensively reviewed a few months ago, most memorably by Margaret Atwood, who showed not only the requisite respect for the author but a beautifully sensitive contextualisation of the work itself. Read what she wrote, it is spot-on.

I will simply add that the central novella is worth the price of admission, as is Wilson's keen observation of the South's proclivities.

Dick Tracy

As cartoonish as Batman, but otherwise forgettable. I didn't get any of the humour in this at all. The acting is so-so, and Warren Beatty quite wooden. There are good reasons that it is largely forgotten. I don't understand why Pacino got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but in any case he didn't win.

Brides of Christ

Like The Thorn Birds, they don't make them like this anymore. In this case it is easy to see why: the last big piece of drama that I can remember the ABC funding (and producing?) was Changi, superficially structurally similar to this. We can thank the funding cuts and crap management of the Howard era for the current situation of outsourced mediocrity.

The first episode is nigh-on perfect, and though the later episodes flag a little the standard is kept high. All of the actresses are brilliant, with perhaps Josephine Byrnes and Brenda Fricker being the standouts. The young Naomi Watts is just a little too histrionic and bloody-minded for my tastes; some of her mannerisms are familiar from her later work, but she learnt subtlety after this one. Harold Hopkins puts in an appearance as a worn-out husband, and Russell Crowe as a gung-ho mechanic.

Has there been anything in Australia in the past twenty years that would be worthy of this sort of treatment?

The French Connection

Hackman got an Oscar for his efforts in this one. I don't know, it's all a bit too Dirty Harry for me. At least it doesn't patronise its audience even at its most artificial. The cinematography is pure 1971.

Old Shure e2cs die, replaced by Sennheiser CX300-IIs, news at 12.

The old Shures have been failing for more than a year now; actually the wiring in the left driver came erratically unstuck quite early on, and more recently the right one is going the same way. It makes for a a less than pleasant listening experience.

I initially decided on some Klipsch S4s, which Techbuy has for about <$100 /> delivered, based on a pile of reviews. However they wouldn't supply them for about three weeks, so I plumped for these middle-of-the-road Sennheisers instead. The Apple store was selling them for <$70 />, but their store at Bondi didn't have any in stock, so I ended up at Hardly Normals where they had a huge pile of them for <$59 /> each, the cheapest I saw anywhere.

Buying these kinds of earphones is a pain as none of the shops will let you try before you buy, putatively for hygiene reasons, and hardly anyone has several pairs of similar phones and writes a sensible comparison of them. Almost all online magazine reviews find something positive to say about what's under review, and owner's comments tend to be biased by their shopping experience, or what happened when it broke, or buyer's remorse or the avoidance thereof, or whatever.

All I'm going to say is these things produce muddier sound than the e2cs did; I think I could do without the bass booster.

Saboteur with Albert, Pete R. and Sandy.

First games night in a long time for me, having been away and all. We played most of a game of Scotland Yard, abandoning it when it became apparent that with only four detectives it is just too hard to corner Pete R.. Afterwards was Saboteur, which was fun. I cleaned up by chance; it is a game where it pays to be stingy when others are generous or suspicious.

Unforgiven

Clint Eastwood's first Oscar success, from 1992, deservedly. Suspenseful, character-driven, a new play on old clichés. That the Man With No Name is reborn was always on the cards; it was going to be about the how. Hackman hams it up a little.

Batman

Nicholson has a lot of fun here. Burton keeps everything moving, and the cinematography is perfect. The plot is comic-book pure.

Scarecrow

I saw this one ages ago. It features a Godfather-era Pacino in a comedic role, and a pre-Lex Luthor Gene Hackman doing his best to be sensitively tough. Driven by dialogue, which is sometimes sketchy. There is a washed-out early 70s realism to the cinematography. Not bad, but it does drag at times. A counterpoint to Cool Hand Luke, perhaps.

In the Year of the Pig

This is the pick of the anti-Vietnam War docos I've seen so far. I struggle to believe it was made in 1968, while LBJ was in power and Hồ Chí Minh still alive, as the level of cultural awareness canvassed here far outstrips that of the U.S. Government as represented by McNamara, Rusk et al.

Like Hearts and Minds, many injudicious comments are made, but these are counterbalanced by erudite commentary from some people who do know South East Asia, including at least one US Senator. Perhaps most interesting is the Frenchman Paul Mus, who demonstrates a keen understanding of Vietnamese culture and aspirations. He died soon after the movie was released. Also David Halberstam puts in a suitably literate and awestruck appearance.

The iconic footage of Madam Nhu, Uncle Ho, LBJ, Bảo Đại, Ngô Đình Diệm, Curtis LeMay, ... is priceless, as are the images of the Vietnamese people during wartime, especially around Hà Nội. There is much less war porn here than in the typical doco.

Topical: The Journal of Vietnamese Studies had a forum on Paul Mus in 2009.

David Marr, Quarterly Essay #38: Power Trip, The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd

Marr can write, there's no doubt about that. The question is whether he can analyze. Rudd is driven by anger? Well, maybe, but what does that tell us? Obsessed by detail, unable to delegate, an oppressive boss... one wonders that the government has managed to do anything at all. I was relieved when Howard went down in 2007, but my small hopes for this lot had evaporated well before I read this. Crabb's efforts have definitely reduced readers' expectations of the commentariat.

Crikey develops this argument further. I concur with the observation that Rudd is more boring than angry. This essay does not explain why Rudd decided to fill his void (if there was one) with generalist political power rather than make money ala his wife and Turnbull.

Probably all you need to read is contained in this excerpt in the SMAGE. I don't think the full version is worth twenty bucks. If you're desperate for more, you can read Judith Brett's take in Inside Story.

Incidentally I did buy Quarterly Essay #36: Australian Story: Kevin Rudd and the Lucky Country by Mungo MacCallum, and found it so feeble that it defied a write-up. Mungo claims to hold on to reality with both hands but seems to have little familiarity with evidence. This journal's glory days are long gone.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

At the Chauvel with Rob at their show-and-tell with one of the writer/directors Judith Ehrlich. I think she was out here for the Sydney Film Festival. It opens more broadly this coming Thursday.

I'd been meaning to see this film since I first heard about it more than a year ago. It is well-constructed and occasionally riveting, with some great selective quoting of Nixon. They could have dropped some of the worn-out war porn though. There is a degree of self-absorption here that is also vaguely troubling, but it is difficult to communicate the nuance of political influence without sliding to extremes.

Much was made during the discussion of the recent hoopla around Wikileaks and its founder Lassange, and also the similarly-recent legislation in Iceland to protect whistle blowers. There seems to be little to learn from this film about connecting to the general population in ways that might change policies; Ellsberg's big impact was to get the Watergate investigation started, which was also a fortunate accident for him as it allowed the court to dismiss the charges arising from his leaking the Pentagon Papers. As always with technicians, he failed to understand how little the people care about details and proof.

Ellsberg is very similar here to what he was in Hearts and Minds, which is perhaps unsurprising as his life has been in some kind of stasis since 1971. (Ehrlich stated this quite flatly.)

I wonder if Ellsberg's book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers is worth reading.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I remember Bob Carr calling this one a turkey when it won an Oscar (or something) back in 2000. I have to agree, the cliches are tedious and there is no depth. All the flying looks totally fake, the fighting is ho-hum, except perhaps between the two women. Oh sure, it's a form of dance, in which case I'm watching the wrong movie. Capriciousness robs everyone and everything of possibility.

The Karate Kid

On the strength of Dana Stevens's review of the remake; I can barely imagine that Jackie Chan is as funny there as Mr Miyagi was here. Having an Okinawan protagonist was apposite then, and I wonder if the Beijing setting, the fresher prince, the kung fu, etc. will satisfy. This was perhaps the Gran Torino of its day.

It has the cheese, and all that other wonderful 1980s stuff. The ending is a bit abrupt, and the whole thing is totally implausible, both of which add to its charm. I liked the lead boy, he reeked of east coast meets west, but his opponents were banal. Shue is vapid and game.

Another Slate article on the cultural import of this film.

Hearts and Minds

An anti-Vietnam War doco from 1974. There is some iconic footage here, and some stupendous comments from people who should have known better. I am keen to see more of the Saigon from that era.

The summary at Wikipedia is quite good.