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By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Wellington

Loath as I am to let the real world inter­vene in this little oas­is of semi-relevance (and as uncom­fort­able as I am about pimp­ing my com­mer­cial activ­it­ies here), I feel bound to let you know about a couple of import­ant enter­tain­ment options I have a role in.

Firstly, my com­pany, Miracle Pictures, is pro­du­cing the 6th Latin American Film Festival which gets under way with a Gala Opening Night at the Embassy Theatre on Wednesday night (18 April, 7.30pm). There are a lim­ited num­ber of tick­ets avail­able to the pub­lic and they will go on sale on Monday morn­ing from the Embassy Box Office. Sales will be made on a first-come, first-served basis and will be cash only (due to the Embassy not want­ing to mix my money with theirs for com­plex account­ing reas­ons). Tickets are $20 and for that you’ll get to par­take of some spon­sors product (Corona Extra and caipar­in­has cour­tesy of Scorpion Distribution) plus wine from Argentina and Chile and food from the region cour­tesy of the Latin American Embassies in Wellington.

Oh, and there will be a film screen­ing as well: The Sacred Family (La Sagrada famil­ia) from Chile. The film is rated R16 (Drug use, sex scenes and offens­ive lan­guage) which bodes well for a suc­cess­ful night, I’m sure you will agree.

This year’s fest­iv­al fea­tures 8 award-winning fea­ture films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru (plus two pres­ti­gi­ous shorts). The offi­cial fest­iv­al site is here and there you will find details of all the films and screen­ings in each centre: Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch.

48 Hours logoI also want to let y’all know that regis­tra­tions are now open for this year’s “V” 48 Hours, offi­cially New Zealand’s largest film com­pet­i­tion. I am man­aging the Wellington end for the fourth straight year.

Shoot week­end is May 18 – 20; Heats are at the Paramount between 23 and 31 May; Wellington Grand Final will be at the Embassy Theatre on Thursday 7 June.

Following that, the final­ists from each par­ti­cip­at­ing city (plus the Peter Jackson-selected wild­cards) go head-to-head “live” on C4 on Friday June 22.

All the inform­a­tion you need to take part can be found here. We have space for a few more teams than last year but when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Review: 300, The Namesake, Stomp the Yard, Vitus, TMNT and Meet the Robinsons

By Cinema and Reviews

One of the bene­fits of a marginally-classical edu­ca­tion is that when someone makes a film about King Leonidas and The Battle of Thermopylae I have a vague idea what they’re on about before I go in but noth­ing could pre­pare me for the sheer vis­cer­al “total” film-making on dis­play in Zack Snyder’s extraordin­ary 300. Involving and repel­lent by turns, it’s a thrill­ing test­a­ment to full-on mas­cu­line male man­li­ness; unspeak­ably viol­ent of course but extreme in almost every oth­er way ima­gin­able too.

Based on Frank Miller’s $80-a-copy graph­ic nov­el (recre­ated frame for beau­ti­ful frame in many cases), 300 fol­lows Leonidas and his hand-picked Spartan army as they try to defend a dis­in­ter­ested Greece from a mil­lion Persians, their slaves, ele­phants and transexuals.

Leonidas is played with con­sid­er­able star-making cha­risma by Gerard Butler (Dear Frankie); Aussie David Wenham nar­rates as if he got punch in the throat as well los­ing an eye in the battle and the beau­ti­ful Lena Headey as Queen proves that Spartan women were made of the same per­fectly formed but psy­cho­lo­gic­ally incom­plete mater­i­al as the men.

Fresh from the Showcase, The Namesake is a lov­ingly rendered (if over­long) adapt­a­tion of the nov­el of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri fea­tur­ing Kal Penn (giv­en name: Kalpen Modi), vet­er­an star of juven­ile rub­bish like Epic Movie and Van Wilder. Penn proves he really can act as Gogol Ganguly, New York-born Indian search­ing for an iden­tity that does­n’t involve his embar­rass­ing first name.

In the ini­tially bewil­der­ing Stomp The Yard, Columbus Short plays DJ, a young hood­lum and gif­ted dan­cer who is giv­en one more chance after the death of his young­er broth­er in a dance-related brawl. That chance involves enrolling in Truth University, the legendary African-American centre of learn­ing and cul­ture where the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Michael Jordan set the highest alumni standards.

At Truth he finds his dan­cing skills are tested in the National Steppin’ Contest (a kind of team dan­cing unique to Black America) and his romantic skills are giv­en a tweak by the beau­ti­ful April (Meagan Good). I’m about as far away from the tar­get mar­ket for this film as can be ima­gined but, once I’d worked out that this dan­cing stuff was actu­ally ser­i­ous, I quite enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, Vitus is a little sweetie from Switzerland about a gif­ted child who des­per­ately wants to be nor­mal. A lovely per­form­ance from twinkly Bruno Ganz is worth the price of admis­sion and Teo Georghiu as 12-year-old Vitus really has the chops to make that old joanna sing. Remarkable.

Finally a couple of dis­pos­able items for the school hol­i­days: TMNT is actu­ally the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it boasts video-game qual­ity anim­a­tion and a slum­ming Patrick Stewart on villain-voice-duty. I found the turtles really annoy­ing but, then again, they are teen­agers. It’s sort of the point.

Much more enter­tain­ing is Disney’s Meet the Robinsons, an anarch­ic affair that unlike oth­er anim­ated films has a kind of impro­vised qual­ity, boun­cing along chuck­ing jokes in ran­dom dir­ec­tions and a few of them stick. 12 year old orphan Lewis is a gif­ted invent­or des­per­ate for a fam­ily. When his latest inven­tion is stolen by mys­ter­i­ous Bowler Hat Guy, young hot-head Wilbur Robinson arrives from the future to help set things straight (and help Lewis find his mother).

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on 11 April, 2007.

By Asides and Cinema

On the day before Black Sheep is released in New Zealand, surely there can be no more per­fect news than this:

By inject­ing human cells into the fetus of a sheep, sci­ent­ists have cre­ated a sheep that’s 15% human. To the chag­rin of human-animal hybrid fans, the sheep does not have human fea­tures. (via Boing Boing)