Brisbane International Film Festival '08

[slickstu]

OK, here we go. First day (Friday) was a bit tough having worked the night before only to come home to a restless bub resulting in me getting to bed at about 3am and then up again at 7am when Vixen goes to work. Then drop off bub at Granma's, spend the morning helping a mate shift some stuff out of storage, check out Wanted over lunch (lunch consisting of a large popcorn and a medium Solo) then back home for a 45min power nap before hitting BIFF in the evening. The first feature starts and it is abundantly clear that making it through to the end of the night is going to be seriously tough (the last feature, Romero's Diary Of The Dead, begins at 11:15pm). So, 1 bottle of orange juice, 1 medium cup of Coke, 1 ice coffee milk, 1 Subway sanger, 2 packets of pretzels, 1 packet of pork crackling and 5 Panadeines later, and I'm as surprised as anybody to be still conscious when the final credits roll at 1:15am the following morning. Man, I am so hard core!

So anyway, the first cab off the rank is.............

Not Quite Hollywood (Australia)
It's not just the Italians that did it. It's not just black American film makers who did it. And it's not just the Japanese and Koreans who do it. Us Aussies used to have an exploitation "genre" film industry as well. Due to the pioneering efforts of the late Don Chipp in the 1970's (and some political lobbying from a young David Stratton who was the director of the Sydney Film Festival at the time), censorship restrictions were relaxed on films and a new "R" certificate was introduced. This newfound artistic freedom was exploited by the film industry resulting in a slew of movies flaunting softcore sex, nudity and violence. Retrospectively coined "Ozploitation" by the director of this documentary, Mark Hartley, and subsequently adopted by Quentin Tarantino (who contributes heavily to this film), the genre thrived until the mid 1980's when pompous film financing bureaucrats decided that it was more appropriate for Aussie film makers to make "important" films. It's not all doom and gloom, however, the "genre" film is currently undergoing a minor renaissance thanks to the success of the likes of SAW (albeit funded on American dollars) and Wolf Creek.

For fans of the genre, Not Quite Hollywood is a wet dream come true as it features just about every tit, arse and severed limb featured in the films it reveres. It opens with a great credit sequence consisting of a montage of iconic Ozploitation images set to an driving Oz Rock soundtrack (Rose Tattoo's We Can't be Beaten, if I remember correctly). It features just about every important player this side of the grave - sadly some of the pivotal personalities have since passed away, most notably Tim Burstall and Richard Franklin (to whom this film is dedicated) - the list of contributors includes Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, George Miller, Lynda Stoner, Barry Humphreys, George Lazenby, Greg McLean, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Antony Ginnane, Fred Schepisi, Roger Ward and the list goes on and on and on. Covering every avenue of the genre from sex comedys to horror to action flicks, the film chronicles the forgotten guilty pleasures of Australia's golden age of cinema. It's a monumental achievement and an important Australian historical document.

8.5 out of 10.

Rather aptly, the next contender is.........

Alvin Purple (Australia)
Before Confessions Of A Window Cleaner there was Alvin Purple the water bed salesman only too happy to demonstrate his product. Tim Burstall's 1973 seminal (heh) sex comedy would influence comedys for years to come, from the aforementioned Confessions.... to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen, though it has clearly been influenced itself somewhat by Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man.

Average Joe, Alvin Purple (Graeme Blundell), tries to get ahead (heh) as his undercover talents are continuously being taken advantage of by predacious females. Double entendres fly everywhere and, despite the vintage of the jokes, most of them stick. The film goes off the rails towards the end with an overlong courtroom sequence, a totally superfluous car chase scene and a skydiving sequence but it draws to a nicely appropriate (and amusing) conclusion.

Good solid bawdy entertainment.

7.5 out of 10.

[slickstu]

Diary Of The Dead (United States)
I'm a little ashamed to admit it but prior to this film I hadn't seen a Romero zombie flick. But given the widespread reverence for the man and his movies, I think it's fair to say that this is not his best work (at least I hope so).

Diary Of The Dead is highly derivative, it's clearly a response to the reality-TV generation and with it's kid-with-a-video-camera-recording-how-the-shit-went-down it is almost a carbon copy of Cloverfield. The only imaginative bits are the odd innovative zombie kill.

The film is loosely cloaked in a morality lesson about film makers and journalists standing about filming the carnage when they could be putting the camera down and lending a hand to the victim but the film is too piss-taky to be affective as a horror let alone a social commentary. Some of the dialogue is truly awful: "It used to be us against us. Now it's us against them; except 'they' are us!" God save us!

The films final thesis likens our barbaric treatment of zombies to that of minority groups; commenting on how easily we turn on each other, prosecuting those we don't understand. "Are we worth saving?", it asks.

Who cares? I just wanted a scary zombie flick.

6 out of 10.

[slickstu]

Funny Games (USA/France)
I haven't been this shaken by a movie since Takashi Miike's Audition and Michael Haneke's Funny Games (remade from his own 1997 film) is supremely superior to that. It is difficult explain how utterly terrifying this film is as the story is so simple. That it achieves this with so little violence (and what there is is mostly implied) is a major achievement. It is to the credit of Haneke's direction and the superlative performances from the entire cast (which includes Tim Roth, Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt) that the humiliation and mere threat of violence as it is depicted here is so unbearably unsettling. The film is not for the feint hearted and is clearly not for every audience but for those who love their psychological horror, this is one to get the heart racing (I spent the whole picture listening to the pulse pounding in my chest).

I've deliberately avoided giving any synopsis whatsoever as to do so will rob the film of some of it's impact. It's best to go into this completely blind for maximum effect. In any case, as a horror fan I cannot recommend this high enough.

10 out of 10.

P.S. It's also worth noting that the short film, Jerry Can, which played with this feature, is also very good. If Shane Meadows were an Aussie, perhaps this is the sort of film he would make. Definitely worth a look if the chance arises.

[slickstu]

Patrick (Australia)
The next entry in the festival's Ozploitation programme, 1978's Patrick has the misfortune to follow directly after the outstanding Funny Games session and it pales significantly by comparison. Patrick (Robert Thompson) is a comatose patient whose only sentient response is the ability to spit.........that is until he develops psychokinetic abilites. Experimented upon by the slightly sinister Dr Roget (the late Sir Robert Helpmann) he develops a crush on his sympathetic nurse (Susan Penhaligan) and it's not long before he's using his supernatural abilities to intimidate his rivals in romance and the hospital staff who exploit him.

As a psychological thriller, this is a fairly average one. The script, at times, is perplexingly illogical and the shocks are largely ineffectual with the exception of it's one final money shot.

5 out of 10.

[z1gg33]

Slick I take it you do this in some capacity for a living? or just a mere movie fan/buff as you write extremely well which I am sure has been mentioned before.

nice one... oh the good old aussie films were t & a was the norm
Not Quite Hollywood (Australia) i hope i get to see this

[slickstu]

It's just a hobby, mate. I write for a local website () though I did write for Filmink for a couple of years. A couple of years ago I did try to make some dollars from it but found you had to be a journalist to make decent money out of it. I basically despise journalists so a Journalism degree was out of the question so I became a projectionist instead.

And definitely see Not Quite Hollywood if you get the chance! Let's get the Aussie film industry back where it belongs: in the bedroom, in the outback in a hot V8 or penned in a remote location with a machete-armed misfit. Let's get the Alvin Purples, the Mad Max's and the Turkey Shoots back and show the world once more what the Aussie film industry is all about!

[slickstu]

Tokyo Gore Police (Japan)
This splatter cheapie from Japan is firm z-grade schlock which evokes the extreme anime from the 1990's (Wicked City, in particular, comes to mind). Starring the "kiri kiri kiri" chick from Audition, Eihi Shiina (who flew in from Japan to present the film), the film takes close to an hour to really kick into gear with the bizarre fetish brothel scene, a sequence which includes a hooker with amputated nipples and a croc vagina! But generally it's all pretty naff stuff with cheap makeup effects, scant plot and very little dialogue (which is probably a blessing). If you're in the mood for this kind of silliness then all's well, otherwise.........

5 out of 10.

[z1gg33]

It's just a hobby, mate. I write for a local website () though I did write for Filmink for a couple of years. A couple of years ago I did try to make some dollars from it but found you had to be a journalist to make decent money out of it. I basically despise journalists so a Journalism degree was out of the question so I became a projectionist instead.

And definitely see Not Quite Hollywood if you get the chance! Let's get the Aussie film industry back where it belongs: in the bedroom, in the outback in a hot V8 or penned in a remote location with a machete-armed misfit. Let's get the Alvin Purples, the Mad Max's and the Turkey Shoots back and show the world once more what the Aussie film industry is all about!

Champ that is so awesome to read.... I totally agree with all you have written regarding jorno's I am concerned with the fact of "cash for comment" I feel that the media has too much influence which is another topic/thread altogether I must get in your ear and find out what its like to be a projectionist as various family members have suggested to me to go down this road- I have no idea whats involved at all

And your spot on with the Australian film industry I gladly spend the ticket price to see something that's local even frankly if its under par. sorry for off topc and the rant, I'll def check out your website too

[slickstu]

Are you in Brissie by any chance, mate?

EDIT: Here's some stuff I posted on another forum about getting into projection:

[z1gg33]

Are you in Brissie by any chance, mate?

EDIT: Here's some stuff I posted on another forum about getting into projection:

no left 10 years ago.... although have thought about getting back up that direction as I'm over cold weather...yes I'm south of the hot weather

cheers for the link, will have a perusal at it with great interest

[slickstu]

Global Metal (USA)
Following on from his excellent Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, anthropologist metalhead, Sam Dunn, examines how heavy metal music has contributed to globalisation. Um.......okay. It sounds a bit high-brow for the metal crowd but what it all boils down to is that metal tends to go hand in hand with social freedom and cultural globalisation. Make of that what you will - perhaps it's the ultimate expression of artistic freedom or maybe the final anarchic butt**** of decent society pre-empting the impending apocalypse (the Norwegians would probably prefer the latter).

The film begins with Sepultura in Brazil and works its way through China, Indonesia, India, Japan and finally Iran where metal is outlawed and is only available via MP3 downloads. Dunn puts this point to a visibly uncomfortable Lars Ulrich, much to the delight of the audience. (Apparently he's fine with it......or so he says.)

By far the most interesting segment is that shot in Japan who must surely be the most courteous, cheerful metal fans in the world. It's a country where schoolgirl headbangers fiercely gesticulate the devil horns before collapsing into a fit of sweetness and giggles; a country sporting metal-inspired anime such as Death Panda.

Ultimately Global Metal is not as interesting as its predecessor but it's always hard to beat an origin story. Nevertheless, like its forebear, the film is informative and there's still plenty to enjoy for metal fans and non-fans alike.

8 out of 10.