Rams (dir. Grímur Hákonarson)

April 11, 2016 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | Documentary, FILM, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

This is a review by our perceptive guest reviewer Melanie.  Thank you Melanie! Bleak but beautiful, amusing yet gut wrenching, this simple tale of running sheep on the harsh and barren rocky highlands of Iceland is a deeply moving experience.  Two brothers, both sheep farmers on the same land but with one brother in the family farm house and the other next door – haven’t spoken for 40 years.  But their competitiveness gives way to compassion when a disaster forces them together.  It’s slow and atmospheric but that just adds to the beauty of the piece. It’s hard to identify…

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Why “American Hustle” Was Stillborn

April 8, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Comedy Film, LIFE |

This sloppy and violently overpraised dud, with its almost obsessional sacrifice of content to form, could have been so much better.  In the early 1980s, director Louis Malle, with the superb Atlantic City under his belt, was developing a film based on the Abscam political scandal, to be called Moon Over Miami.  John Belushi would play the main character, con man Mel Weinberg (essentially the role Christian Bale played in the 2013 film).  Dan Aykroyd would be the FBI man looking to implement a sting operation.  But then Belushi inconveniently took a ‘speedball’ and died on 5 March, 1982.  So crucial were his…

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I Go to Sleep

April 7, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | FILM, Opera, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(Turandot, Metropolitan Opera of New York, 2016) Once again TVC turned up to the Nova Palace in Adelaide to watch another chocolate-box treat in the form of Turandot, Puccini’s last opera, filmed in January 2016 at the New York Met (not the Mets).  This ‘Orientalist’ production based on an original design by Franco Zefferelli (who knew a thing or two about prettying-up a set) is choreographed beautifully, in a yin-tong, Mikado style, by Chiang Ching.  A troika of sopranos have appeared in the run and the HD film (courtesy of the Neubauer Family Foundation – we must invite that family to Australia and show them a good…

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Funny Farm

March 31, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Comedy Film, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(Dir. George Roy Hill) (1988) This low level, cheesy comedy is actually pretty funny, with nice performances by Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith as New Yorkers undertaking a sea change. The main reason we love it is the idea of moving from a nice NY apartment to ‘Redbud’ to write an “action-comedy-adventure” called The Big Heist.  Andy Farmer (Chevy Chase) sits in his ‘writing room’ and types “The” (after doing the title and chapter pages – it’s a bit like Monty Python’s ‘Novel Writing’) and there’s a priceless anniversary scene where Chevy presents the first few chapters of The Big Heist. Poor Mrs…

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JFK

March 29, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | Drama Film, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in"

(Dir. Oliver Stone) (1992) You don’t have to read all 26 volumes of the Warren Commission Documents: the ‘Popular Library’ of New York brought out a handy compendium, where you read all about what a total nut-job Oswald was and how it seems pretty likely he shot the President from the book depository. Enter Jack Ruby, who saved the Dallas D.A. a pile of work, and gave conspiracy theorists a golden goal.  Among them: Oliver Stone, whose film of Jim Garrison’s attempt to charge someone from the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce with conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy is, much as Stone…

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