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RN 1/2: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

By Audio and Rancho Notorious

Dominion Post and Newstalk ZB review­er Graeme Tuckett joins Dan and Kailey to talk about Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s vam­pire mock­u­ment­ary What We do in the Shadows which is out this week­end across New Zealand (September in Australia) as well as meta-sequel 22 Jump Street which goes into it’s second week­end here and open­ing week­end across the Tasman.

This week’s Australian cor­res­pond­ent is Chris Elena and he’ll be giv­ing his impres­sions of the recent Sydney Film Festival and telling us about shoot­ing and edit­ing a short film on film.

Also, we’re joined by joined by Kiwi play­wright David Geary from Vancouver, Canada, who has just spent an even­ing with Oscar win­ner Oliver Stone at the Vancouver Biennale.

There are also a num­ber of utterly non-gratuitous men­tions of Game of Thrones in the pro­gramme that will no doubt be extremely help­ful for search engine optimisation.

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Before Midnight poster

Review: Before Midnight, The Lone Ranger, This Is the End, The Internship, Camille Rewinds, The Place Beyond the Pines and Thérèse Desqueyroux

By Cinema and Reviews

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Midnight, 2013.

As is so often the case at this time of year (usu­ally related to 48 Hours com­mit­ments) I am a little behind on my review­ing. This week­end I caught up on a lot the actu­al watch­ing (although apo­lo­gies to John Davies who sent me a screen­er of Remembrance that I haven’t yet sat down and watched) so now I will try and rustle up anoth­er one of my trade­mark col­lec­tions of “Capsule Reviews of Questionable Utility”.

Before Midnight posterOf all the movies I’ve seen so far this year, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke’s Before Midnight (after three movies I think it’s fair to cred­it author­ship sev­er­ally) is the one that has stuck in my brain the longest. In it, we catch up with the lov­ers from Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) as they reach the end of an idyll­ic vaca­tion in Greece. Hawke’s Jesse is won­der­ing wheth­er he should try and spend more time with his teen­age son who lives with his moth­er in the States. Delpy’s Celine is about to start a dream job back in Paris where they cur­rently reside with their two ador­able daughters.

They are at a cross­roads but, as the film makes clear, when are we ever not? Delpy is mag­ni­fi­cent, cre­at­ing a won­drous, beau­ti­ful, insec­ure, infuri­at­ing and right­eous woman who is sim­ul­tan­eously proud and frus­trated at the role she has found her­self play­ing. Watching her I was think­ing about a couple of rela­tion­ships of mine that I ended. Maybe I was a little bit hasty. Maybe I was­n’t really listening.

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Review: Hit and Run, The Watch and Hysteria

By Cinema and Reviews

Readers of last week’s column will know that I am cur­rently over­seas on a quest, a mis­sion – a pur­suit if you prefer – hop­ing to dis­cov­er a new kind of cinema. After a week at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado I am now in New York and have got a clear­er idea of what that vis­ion should look like.

I think I’ll name this new cinema good cinema and it’s main char­ac­ter­ist­ic will be the absence of films like Hit and Run and The Watch, two of this week’s new releases. Is it pos­sible to redefine rub­bish like this out of existence?

Hit and Run movie posterThe first is a Dax Shepard van­ity pro­ject about a man choos­ing to give up his place in a dull wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme so that his girl­friend (Kristen Bell) can get a job in the big city. In the space of a single day his pre­vi­ous iden­tity as a top get­away driver is revealed to her and his new iden­tity as a dreary small-town non-entity is revealed to the dim­wit­ted but single-minded hoods who he rat­ted out.

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Review: The Hunger Games, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Hunter, 21 Jump Street, The Raid and In Search of Haydn

By Cinema and Reviews

Of all the massively suc­cess­ful fran­chise con­ver­sions from best-selling-books-that-I-haven’t‑read, I’m pleased to say that I like this Hunger Games film the best. I’ve been jus­ti­fi­ably scorn­ful of the Harry Potter films in these pages and down­right dis­dain­ful of Twilight but – while still not reach­ing out much to me per­son­ally – I can say that Hunger Games actu­ally suc­ceeds much more on its own cine­mat­ic terms.

Jennifer Lawrence basic­ally repeats her Academy Award-nominated turn from Winter’s Bone as a plucky Appalachian teen forced to risk everything to pro­tect her young sis­ter while her trau­mat­ised moth­er remains basic­ally use­less. In this film, though, the enemy isn’t tooth­less meth deal­ers but the full force of a fas­cist state where the 99% is enslaved in vari­ous “dis­tricts” and forced to pro­duce whatever the dec­ad­ent 1% back in Capitol City require in order to keep them in their Klaus Nomi-inspired makeup and hair.

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Review: Moneyball, The Ides of March, Shame, Weekend, This Means War, Romantics Anonymous and Big Miracle

By Cinema and Reviews

This week Philip Seymour Hoffman fea­tures in two new American sports movies, one about their most ven­er­able – if not impen­et­rable – pas­time of base­ball and the oth­er on the modern-day equi­val­ent of bear-baiting, the pres­id­en­tial primar­ies. In Moneyball, Hoffman plays Art, team man­ager of the Oakland Athletics, left behind when his boss – Brad Pitt – decides to throw away dec­ades of base­ball tra­di­tion and use soph­ist­ic­ated stat­ist­ic­al ana­lys­is and a schlubby Yale eco­nom­ics gradu­ate (Jonah Hill) to pick cheap but effect­ive players.

Hoffman steals every scene he is in but dis­ap­pears from the story too early. Having said that, Pitt and Hill do great work under­play­ing recog­nis­ably real people and all are well-supported by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin’s script which has scene after scene of great moments, even if some of them lead nowhere (like poor Art’s arc). Moneyball might start out a sports movie but it’s actu­ally a busi­ness text­book. If the place you work at clings to received wis­dom, exper­i­ence and intu­ition over “facts” then organ­ise an out­ing to Moneyball as fast as you can.

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Review: Get Him to the Greek, The Last Station and Amreeka

By Cinema and Reviews

Get Him to the Greek posterForgetting Sarah Marshall was one of the sur­prise pleas­ures of 2008. An Apatow com­edy that was rel­at­ively mod­est about it’s ambi­tions it fea­tured a break-out per­form­ance from English comedi­an Russell Brand, play­ing a ver­sion of his own louche stage persona.

As it so often goes with sur­prise hits, a spinoff was rushed into pro­duc­tion and we now get to see wheth­er Mr Brand’s brand of humour can carry an entire film. Get Him to the Greek sees Brand’s English rock star Aldous Snow on the comeback trail after a failed sev­en year attempt at sobri­ety. Unlikely LA A&R man Jonah Hill (Knocked Up, Funny People) sells his record label boss, Sean “P Diddy” Combs, on a 10th anniversary con­cert fea­tur­ing Snow and his band Infant Sorrow at the Greek Theatre of the title.

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