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.
I 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.
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.
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)