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Review: Oz the Great and Powerful, Samsara, Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away, Great Expectations and The Sweeney

By Cinema, Reviews, Wellington

It’s a ques­tion that has been burn­ing away inside all of us for nearly 75 years – how did the Wizard (who wasn’t really a wiz­ard at all but a car­ni­val show­man with a knack for gad­gets) get to Oz in the first place? You neither, huh? Ah well, this least essen­tial ques­tion has now been answered by Spider-Man (and Evil Dead) dir­ect­or Sam Raimi and his team of pixel-wielding min­ions. As a pre­quel to the beloved 1939 film star­ring Judy Garland and a dog called Toto, Oz the Great and Powerful is not without risk. Other attempts to recre­ate L. Frank Baum’s magic­al world have been either com­mer­cial or artist­ic fail­ures – The Wiz, for example, or Return to Oz.

Casting the human smirk, James Franco, as the car­ni­val magi­cian trans­por­ted to the land of the yel­low brick road by a hot air bal­loon (via tor­nado) is also a risk but it even­tu­ally pays off, even though Franco’s boy­ish fea­tures are start­ing to look a bit ragged. Escaping vari­ous romantic and fin­an­cial pres­sures back home in black and white Kansas, Franco’s Oz finds him­self blown off course to a technicolor(ish) fant­ast­ic­al land where a proph­ecy sug­gests he will pro­tect the peace-loving cit­izens from wicked witches but also gain con­trol of the palace for­tune. Guess which one appeals more.

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“a record of a place and an age”

By Asides, Cinema, NZ

The city of Christchurch has appeared in fea­ture films infre­quently. Philip Matthews uses those appear­ances as a way in to under­stand­ing the cur­rent – earthquake-devastated – state of the place:

How will we remem­ber these places that have gone or are going? Photos and museum records, memor­ies, ref­er­ences in lit­er­at­ure (Kate De Goldi on Radio NZ some weeks back, in an emo­tion­al dis­cus­sion of her city in fic­tion and poetry) and maybe in film too. What can cinema show us of the lost city?

[From second sight: Lost city: Christchurch on film]

Lovely writ­ing, and important.

Wellington Film Society - new season starts tonight

By Cinema, Wellington
201103071237.jpg

Wellington Film Society opens tonight? You don’t say!”

All over the world it is volun­teer organ­isa­tions like the Wellington Film Society that keep the flame of film art alive so that cinephili­acs like me can get a decent pal­ate cleanser every Monday night after a week­end of Hollywood tosh.

I can’t recom­mend Society mem­ber­ship highly enough. Your mem­ber­ship fee equates to around three bucks a screen­ing (33 Mondays!) and your mem­ber­ship gets you enough dis­counts (at the Film Festival and par­ti­cip­at­ing cinemas) that it doesn’t take long to pay for itself.

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Preview: 2010 Wellington Film Festival

By Cinema, Wellington

New Zealand Film Festival poster 2010It’s nev­er been a tough­er time to be run­ning a film fest­iv­al. In addi­tion to the usu­al com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions of just selling enough tick­ets to stay afloat, each year brings with it fresh wrinkles to be accom­mod­ated. The win­dow of avail­ab­il­ity of titles shrinks every year because dis­trib­ut­ors don’t want to sit on their invest­ment. There’s increas­ing pres­sure to get films into cinemas before down­load­ing des­troys the mar­ket and less time for films to build a deserving inter­na­tion­al buzz.

In pre­vi­ous years films like the Argentinian Best Foreign Language Oscar win­ner The Secrets in their Eyes might have been tent-pole fea­tures for a Wellington Film Festival but have already been and gone from loc­al cinemas so it’s incum­bent on dir­ect­or and chief pro­gram­mer Bill Gosden (and his cohorts) to dig deep­er to find more gems for our annu­al mid-winter fix.

People keep ask­ing me, Dan, they say, what sort of Festival is it, this year, and I have to answer that I really don’t know. I’ve only seen 19 out of the 160+ movies in the book. That’s not enough to know any­thing, really, about the Festival as a whole. It’s less than 15% of an enorm­ously rich and diverse smör­gås­bord of poten­tial goodies.

As usu­al, I asked the Festival people to feed me the unher­al­ded and unknown, the films that might miss out on atten­tion from the big media, and they did. As might be expec­ted, not all of them worked for me but I have some sug­ges­tions for films that I am assured will not be com­ing back on gen­er­al release later this year.

AB7288B0-44D3-4906-A3B7-6966FC3D2C18.jpegIn the drama sec­tion I was very affected by Honey, a beau­ti­ful Turkish film about a young boy with some kind of learn­ing dis­order, des­per­ate for the approv­al of his teach­ers, class­mates and his tacit­urn bee­keep­er fath­er. A fine example of slow cinema, I feel cer­tain that you will be absorbed by its beauty and the mira­cu­lous cent­ral performance.

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Boy, oh boy. No updates for a while

By Cinema, Wellington

I’ve been ser­i­ously busy since Christmas put­ting togeth­er a show for the Wellington Fringe (which has gone along very nicely, thank you for ask­ing). It’s called “The Immortals” and you can find out all about it here. There are only three more per­form­ances and after that I’ll be retir­ing from act­or­ing so if you are inter­ested in see­ing me per­form this week­end is your last chance.

I’ve man­age to file about four reviews for the Capital Times but haven’t had a chance to annot­ate, illus­trate and linky them up for you good people, an omis­sion which grieves me but that I can­not rem­edy until later in February (or maybe even March).

In the mean­time, one of my favour­ite film­makers appeared on my favour­ite pod­cast the oth­er day. Here’s the video ver­sion of Taika Waititi’s appear­ance on The Sound of Young America with Jesse Thorn, recor­ded live from a crowded hotel room in Park City, Utah, dur­ing Sundance.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9369790[/vimeo]