And now the list no one's been waiting for

Here's a list of the best (and worst) movies I watched in 2010. I wrote the list once and then lost it, which is why you're getting it in March.

They're probably not new ones... in fact since most of them are from SBS1 and 2, there's a good chance they aren't.

Best (in no particular order)
MR73
Der Untergang
Caché
Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire)
Ben X
Out of the Blue
Rien de personnel
Låt den rätte komma in

Weirdest
The Science of Sleep
Linkeroever

Worst
Peindre ou faire l'amour - oh god, what a waste of Daniel Auteuil
... and of course there were so many others that were just so nothing that I've forgotten about them; like the one about the three women who decide they'll each go to a brothel, or that dreadful slasher film with Cecile de France in it.

My Little Pony as famous film characters

My favourite is the stormtrooper.

Link

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Recently I...

...read some Kurt Vonnegut short stories that I printed off on 7 March 1998. (EPICAC and Long Walk to Forever). See, when I say "I'll get to it" I do mean it.

...watched "Pump Up the Volume" again. It may be an indicator of my age -- did I mention I'm now 39 (!?!?!) -- but I really like this movie. I just worry the the next 4 years in the US will be like this.

...wagged work twice in the past fortnight.

...watched "WarGames" again. What a cool movie.

...I can't think of any more. I'll post again soon, I promise.

And of course, I posted again to my blog for the first time in 4 months. Kung-fu S, where are you? No one can do this without you.

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Charleton Heston is Soylent Green

Story.

Get your hands off me you dirty ape!

Now someone can pry his rifle from his cold, dead hands.

But seriously, I know at least one of my readers was a fan of Soylent Green, although I believe your women were called "conversation" and not "furniture", if I recall correctly.

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Fascinating New Thing

So I got out of the shower at about 7.50 this morning. As I was getting dressed, I could hear Sky News coming from the lounge room (I was a few minutes behind 'live to air') and they're talking in those tones where you know there's breaking news and somebody has died. They're talking about some role from some movie, and it sounded like they were talking about "Brokeback Mountain". So... someone from Brokeback Mountain is dead. Please please please, tell me it's not Jake.

I wasn't that big a fan of Heath Ledger. I did like his 'couldn't give a shit' attitude. I will be very interested in seeing "The Dark Knight". But I haven't seen a lot of the films they've been talking about all day; I kinda saw "Brokeback Mountain", in that I was in and out of the room as Boycat's Mum watched it.

But I really liked "10 Things I Hate About You". I'm a sucker for a remade Shakespeare film. The title of this post is a reference to the Semisonic song ("f.n.t.") that plays during the paintball scene in that movie.

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I've been thinking about time. When did Neil Armstrong land on the Moon? The Americans say one thing, we say another. When an Australian dies overseas, when do they die? New York time or Perth time?

At least September 11 happened on September 11, unless you were in New Zealand.

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Canonicity 2

Thanks for the link, interesting discussion, but what do you think?

My personal opinion is that deleted scenes sitting on a DVD listed as "Deleted scenes" are not canon, but if at a later stage they are integrated into the actual episode, they become canon.

I'm not sure about the canonicity of scenes that appear in one version but then are deleted in a "director's cut".

And what about stuff like "Blade Runner", where there will be (is?) a third version. What really happened in that movie (no spoilers please).

Did Greedo really shoot first?

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Top Gun

Jeez guys, I know about Sleep with Me, my point was I've never really subjected myself to Top Gun before (not a fan of Tom Cruise, 80s rock or militaries blowing shit up). The issue is not how smart Tarantino was for seeing the subtext, it's about how could people not be talking about the homoerotic subtext (supertext?) from the day the movie was released, it's so bleedin' obvious.

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Misc 071003

I watched Top Gun last night. How gay is that movie?

Is anyone else suffering through a plague of moths?

Can the Queensland Roar's bad record against New Zealand teams continue? I'll be there Friday night to see if I ever get to see a Roar victory live.

It'll be 32 degrees here tomorrow. It's only October, for god's sake.

Anyone gonna buy the new Radiohead album? (Apparently, yes.)

Happy Sputnik day (for tomorrow).

Sulu gets his own asteroid.



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Another Girl Another Planet

The Sci Fi Channel is using The Only Ones' Another Girl Another Planet as music in one of their advertisements.

I first heard this song on a movie soundtrack that my sister, Anne*, had - I think the movie was called "That Summer" but it's really hard to find details about it. The listing on IMDB seems about right, but it doesn't have soundtrack info, so I can't be sure. Bob-speaking will know.

Anyway, whatever the movie was called, the soundtrack was fantastic - it was the first time I heard the Undertones (the song was probably Teenage Kicks) and it had The Only Ones of course, and many more that I can't remember right now.

I've often thought that this was the best soundtrack for any movie I'd never heard of.

*Anne was way ahead of the game musically; before they got stolen she had the Go-Betweens' Lee Remick and the Riptides' 77 Sunset Strip 45s.


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The Avengers (Movie)

Nine years late, I've seen The Avengers movie. Yes, it's garbage. And the worst thing about it: Uma Thurman. What were they thinking? Some of it is quite droll, but they needed someone a lot better to play against Ralph Fiennes.

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What a let down, they're just cartoons

If you hadn't seen them yet, here is the page showing all 15 of the U.S. Star Wars stamps.

http://www.uspsjedimaster.com/main/vote/view_stamps.html

What a gyp - they're drawings. And Artoo doesn't even get his own stamp - even the gay robot gets his own stamp. R2-D2 has to appear with Leia in the famous "Artoo is a postbox" scene.

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I was going to do 'even more updated', but I figured, nah.

Thanks for the info, Syme. I saw the stuff about what someone said at a Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con somewhere on wiki, but I couldn't find it again.

I knew that Serenity didn't make its production costs back - but who knows, the DVD might sell well...

I agree, a new format could be considered to be going forward. And he has every right to return to Buffy, his most popular series; but, it's still going back. Forwards plus back equals?

I was going to ask what the B5 reference was about. Now there was a show that milked it way past its use-by date. (And you know what happens to milk past its use-by date.) It lost me when, after compressing the 5-year story into 4 years, it then tried to expand it back to 5 years. "I know let's do a couple of stories about characters that only the hard-core fans care about." Oh, and let's do a prequel movie where all of our characters miraculously turn up in the same place years before they knew each other...

Still, it's disappointing to only have about 13 episodes of Firefly to watch, when you know there could have been more. And River really only kicks ass in, what?, one episode and the movie? Shame.

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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I... [UPDATED]

Has anyone heard rumours about a Serenity 2? Apparently Summer Glau or someone was at a Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con in Brisbane, and she said something which fanboys have taken to indicate she's seen a script for Serenity 2.

See Comments - Syme seems to think that going back to Buffy is going forward. Ha.

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Saturday Evening

>>>>Happy Birthday to Boycat's Aunt.

>>>>My Bombay Express correspondent reports seeing some of the formerly-G.C.-Bulletin-reading commuters now reading the new tabloid Courier Mail on the train in the mornings.

We get the paper home delivered (I figure that since I already spend hours online collecting overseas news, should let the local stuff come to me) and it's been harder to get my chance to read the paper since it got rid of all the separate sections. Once I get my hands on it, though, it is easier to read; mostly because you don't have to keep track of whether or not you've read all the separate sections.

>>>>The Souths Logan Magpies are almost ready to go out and lose to the North Queensland Young Guns in the Qld Cup.

>>>>Surprise, surprise. Alan Moore apparently doesn't like the movie of V for Vendetta either.

>>>>More on JT Leroy.

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Let's beat hippies with truncheons

Some band should do a remake of The Song Remains the Same. Led Zeppelin did something with that movie that no one has ever tried again. For good reason.

Let's allow the band to do wanky fantasy sequences over interminable '70s guitar or electric piano or drum solos; the lead singer banging away on a tamborine. Robert Plant; we get it.You like Lord of the Rings. As if Misty Mountain Hop wasn't a big enough clue. Jimmy Page; we get it. You luuurve Satan. Peter Grant; what a character!

I love the bit in the guitar solo in Dazed and Confused where Jones and Bonham just look at each other as if to say "Where's he going now?" "I don't know. Just go with it."

"No comment is more incriminating than a comment." "Is it?" "Yeah." "No comment."

But I just think of Mr Dark using my pink paisley Telecaster to play Stairway to Heaven at a school mass.


I'm not sure if I was in that band, but I remember playing Tom Apelt's 12-string acoustic. I went out and bought my own soon after.

"Does anybody remember laughter?"

Wow! So now we're at the drum solo where Bonham plays them with his hands. Classic!

Carpentry with a fag hanging out of his mouth. Racing hotrods and dragsters. Fantastic.

Now Jimmy Page brings out the theremin.

And then they hop into their limos, drive to their private plane and fly away...

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Team America: World Police

I don't see too many new fillums any more. I haven't been to the cinema in yonks. We get two "Foxtel Box Office" movies per month (use 'em or lose 'em) included in our package, though. They're in the new window between the six-week video-store-only window and the premium-cable-movie-channel window. We've had trouble even watching them, however, because we often check the listings and think "do I really want to waste one of my two free movies on that?".

Well, when it's the 12th of the month and you only have two days - none of them a weekend day - to watch one more movie, suddenly it doesn't have to be a movie that we both will watch. And that movie was Team America: World Police...

But I still can't be buggered writing a review; it's been a lot of years since I sat down and did one of those. Instead, here are my notes:

Cairo bazaar like the cantina in Star Wars. Love the empath who only 'feels' the bleeding obvious. Of course, the 'Arabic' is standard South Park 'Arabic' - derka derka blukumlukumbluk mohammad jihad derka derka. World Police reminded me a lot of the South Park episode where Cartman was playing westerns with Clyde Frog - I was waiting for Salma Hayak to turn up "Oh no, my clothes have fallen off..." Kim Jong Il's panthers were awesome. Slavery, f**k yeah!

What's not to like about this film? It's a dead-on parody of a blockbuster, by which I mean every piece of overwrought music, every "I value you as a friend" was exactly what would be in a live-action taking-itself-seriously version of Team America. The puppet sex and the standard Matt and Trey gay jokes probably wouldn't be.

But try watching any other "patriotic" movie now and not have some part of it jump into your head. We watched Air Force One yesterday. Well, I played Solitaire on the computer while Boycat's mum watched it, and I swear there were several times where the only appropriate thing to do was to launch into a verse of "America, F**k Yeah!"

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