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Hi Guys.
I've been writing for the Orble network since near the beginning. Lately I haven't been writing as much because I wasn't happy with the lack of quality control on Orble and (what I felt) were some rather dodgy practices.
Anyway, I'm extending an invitation for anyone interested in writing original content for a website I co-run called Duderocket.com. It's not paid work, but if you're interested in being a part of an Australian-based community that discusses film, music, television, politics, comedy and just about everything else, then come over and sign up to the Duderocket.com messageboard, or just shoot the Duderocket team an email outlining what you'd like to write for us.
Happy tidings and good luck all.
I have to confess that I am a huge fan of the TV show of which this film is a continuation. Whilst it's often crass or vulgar (or perhaps because of this) I feel that it captures the modern teenage life of boys so perfectly... we all know a Jay or a Neil or a Will, and so much of The Inbetweeners is recognisable to me that the jokes resonate all the more, evoking a feeling of nostalgia for my not-too-distant younger days. The way these characters interact is 100% spot on - that mix of constant faux-antagonism, shared social awkwardness, and the occasional (rare) glimpses of genuine friendship - it all rings true for the teenage experience. I was sad when the TV show finished, so the prospect of a film that followed up the post-school adventures of these characters made me quite happy.
Neil, Will, Jay and Simon have just finished high school. Dubbing themselves the 'Pussay Patrol', they decide to go on a holiday to the hedonistic Greek islands - determined to party hard and have copious amounts of sex. Upon arrival they find that their hotel is a horrible dive; the proprieter is fishing a dead dog out of the communal well and warns them that shitting on the floor of their room will result in a $50 fine. Each time. The boys go out on the town, and their attempts to get fresh with 'the ladies' seem just as depressing as the hotel. That is, at least until they meet four British girls in a particularly empty bar.
The first thing that I should say is that you don't need to have seen the TV show to appreciate this film. No back story is required, it's basically just a British version of American Pie or The Hangover. For those who have seen the TV show, a familiarity with the characters will only deepen the appeal. Every minor character from the TV series shows up in some capacity (even Fat John), and the exploits of the boys go much further than the constraints of television ever allowed. Some parts of the film won't be for the faint of heart (or stomach) but my sides literally hurt from laughing too hard and frequently. It's not exactly new ground for comedy or unpredictably plotted, but the half-cocked charm of the four leads ensures that the material is approached with buckets of enthusiasm and energy, and the comedy is of a realistic kind that should seem familiar to anyone who had a traditionally mispent youth.
"Why does he hurt us? Our father?"
Terence Malick is a unique voice in the world of cinema, his style of filmmaking is unlike anyone else's, and he has continued to revisit and refine this style over the course of just five films in a 40 year-long career. It seems that he's gathering momentum as he goes, his work as a director is becoming more frequent (if you could call it that) as he gets older, suggesting an increased clarity in what he wants to say and the way that he's saying it. It's hard to attribute adjectives to Malick's filmmaking style, especially as it's such an intensely and purely visual way of storytelling... it's the sort of thing that needs to be experienced firsthand to be understood.
Malick's film The Tree of Life is a project that started life about thirty years ago as a film named Q. Malick worked on this film throughout the 1980s but never actually got it to the production stage. He later revisited these long-held ideas for this film, an epic undertaking that looks at one man's childhood in 1960s America. After tackling war (The Thin Red Line) and America's foundations (The New World), Malick nows tackles faith and life itself, attempting to grasp at the very meaning behind our existence. It's ambitious, and audacious, and I would describe it as an almost holy experience... I don't use that term lightly, nor do I mean it as a piece of hyperbole to demonstrate how much I liked the film. I'm not sure I really liked the film at all, but it definitely left a residue in my mind. I'd describe it more as a work of art than a film.
"If the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, then that's the way He is. He sends flies to wounds that he should heal"
Jack (played as a child by Hunter McCracken, and as an adult by Sean Penn) is the eldest son of Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chaistain). We watch Jack grow from his birth to his maturation as an adolescent, a journey that sees him under the strict tutelage of his father. A friction eventually grows between Jack and his father, mostly due to the father's authoritarian parenting style, and Jack begins to act out as a result. He resents his dad, and the film travels through the contours of their relationship. Meanwhile, we also watch some dinosaurs hanging out together.
Yes. There are dinosaurs in this movie.
Let me clear this up right now, because I went into this film thinking there would be two storylines - one about the family, and one about the beginnings of life on Earth. In a way, this is true, but the dinosaur sequences are quite short in comparison to the main narrative. Malick uses these sequences in the first half of the film to open up questions about life on our planet and the mysteries behind it, but this is abandoned about halfway through to focus on the O'Brien family more exclusively. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I wouldn't want anyone to go into this movie thinking it's about dinosaurs because the dinosaurs barely figure into it. It's funny, but when you think about it there's a whole section of Earth's history (the bulk of it, in fact) that has never been depicted in films... such as the birth of life, and its spread across the planet. Malick depicts this here, and I guess part of the reason for this is to make the viewer think a bit more about context and what they're seeing. It's a process that deliberately forces the viewer to take on a more active role rather than just passively watching a kiss kiss, bang bang-type story unfold. The point of an 'art' film is to make the viewer question or try to work out what they're seeing... to this end, it isn't really straight up entertainment, but this doesn't make it any less worthless as a film (quite the opposite in fact).
Admittedly, I found the shift between the 'life erupts on Earth' sequences to the family-based narrative quite hard to adjust to. The O'Brien narrative doesn't really start properly until about an hour into the film. Malick has this eliptical way of editing that gives his films a unique rhythm that's intrinsically his, and this is also accompanied by these hushed, reverential and slightly unemotional voiceovers that represent stream-of-consciousness insights from the characters. It's an enigmatic and non-linear style that lends the director his trademark. I guess he's getting a lot more confident with this style he singlehandedly developed, hence the fact that he finally made this film after having worked on it for decades.
What I really liked about this film was the way that the relationship between Mr O'Brien and his son was as multifaceted as life itself. Any other film would depict an abusive dad like Mr O'Brien as an outright monster, but here there are no heroes or villains in this film. He's not a cliche, and Brad Pitt does a brilliant job of keeping a handle on this real and complex individual. He's stern and religious, but he's also quite loving and affectionate at times. Ultimately he's a bitter man prone to abuse, a tyrant in his house and a hard man to keep pleased, but I liked the way the film moved past this in a realistic way that few films are willing to explore.
Meanwhile, Jessica Chainstain is suitably aloof as the devoutly religious mother... this character acts as a counterweight to Mr. O'Brien, promoting co-operation between her sons in contrast to his preference for competitiveness. In a way, Mr O'Brien represents science and Mrs. O'Brien represents religion, a central theme of the overall film. Whilst Mr O'Brien is a Christian, he's also a dyed-in-the-woold capitalist and a would-be inventor - representing the enterprise of Man. His wife on the other hand is as enigmatic as faith itself, and both their parenting styles represent extensions of these concepts to a certain degree. It's fitting that the film should use science and religion in such a way, as these are humanity's two main modes of attributing meaning to life, which is what the film is all about.
Sean Penn's role is basically a ten minute cameo. Penn has spoken up in contrast to the critical acclaim the film has been gathering, saying that he thought the story would've been better served by more traditional storytelling methods. You could argue that the story of the O'Brien family is hamstrung by the overly experimental narrative, but who needs another story about an abusive father and his alpha son in the 1960s? I wouldn't want to take Malick's opus away from him in any way, shape or form, so I think the criticism is a bit pointless. The film has a lot more to say than a regular drama... it's like God made a home video. There are these snippets of weirdness, like the image of Mrs. O'Brien dancing as she floats through the air, or a chair moving on its own accord, and I watched these thinking, "What the... did I really just see that?" It literally made me question my own eyes, and even in this age of CGI there aren't many films that can push that kind of reaction out of me.
I'm starting to go on a bit now, but there are at least two more things I loved about this movie. The special effects were actually achieved the old-fashioned way, mostly through fluids and without the aid of computers (especially in the pre-dinosaur bits of the Earth's history) and they look absolutely sumptuous as a result. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, only way more realistic. The other thing I love is the way that Malick films nature itself... he gives his films this hi-tech documentary look that's unlike most other fiction-films.
Two creative giants, Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, teamed up to create the daddy of all film noirs in Double Indemnity. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray were cast against type to play the scheming star-crossed lovers in this dark and twisty tale of murder, suspicion and insurance. Stanwyck had previously only really played 'good girl' roles and was hesitant to take on a trashy femme fatale character, whereas McMurray had made his name in light comedy and didn't feel confident that audiences would be able to take him seriously. The film remains the quintessential example of film noir today, frequently cited in 'best films of all time' lists by a variety of critics, film fans and IMDB
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This is the more expensive aliens-invade-LA film from 2010/2011 (the other being Skyline); a gritty, urban military adventure shot from a grunt's POV. It takes a hackneyed sci-fi concept and heavily leans on Black Hawk Down as source material, and is seemingly also inspired by post-9/11 warfare in Iraq and Afhghanistan to transform familiar American terrain into a wartorn Fallujah City in the space of a few minutes courtesy of some gun-happy aliens. Unlike Skyline, the emphasis here is firmly on realism - a lot of sci-fi aspects (the aliens, their technology, the military's response) are played down and transferred into a modern-warfare framework to keep the film grounded in familiar terms for the viewer. And whilst this idea might make the film more realistic or believable, it unfortunately also makes it rather dull as far as alien invasion films go
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An early low-budget Mexican horror-fantasy from Guillermo Del Toro, one of the genre's (future) masters. Cronos takes the well-worn vampire mythos and re-imagines them with a new back story and context. In this film a vampiric-like condition becomes a side effect of an incorrectly-used alchemic device from the middle ages. This device is a golden scarab beetle-like instrument that houses a rare insect capable of administering 'fountain of youth'-like properties via its venom. However, its use comes with certain rules that, if disobeyed, can lead to bloodlust and an undead-like state of existence
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There's been some degree of critical re-evaluation of Roger Corman's work in recent times, attesting to the maxim that if someone sticks around long enough they'll be accorded the status of a legend. I can't say I'm on board with this view, there isn't really much of merit in Bloody Mama - it's very much a schlockly Shelley Winters veheicle that seeks to exploit the blood and guts glory of Bonnie and Clyde by emulating it in an incredibly vapid and half-arsed way
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Comment by Luke
on Plagiarism
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
As someone who used to write quite a few blogs on Orble back in it's earliest days, I think I can say that the quality control in this place has definitely dropped and it doesn't surprise me that this kind of plagiarism is now running rampant.
I never understood the point of the blog MS Paint Art, it just didn't seem to make any sense to me even when it wasn't copying and pasting articles wholesale from other websites like Brainerddispatch.com.
And then there are countless blogs where someone just talks about an issue (or worse, talks about 'blogging' itself) and asks a question designed to generate commentary and blog 'points'. Where is the content in that? Besides the fact that it's plagiarism, re-reporting something and failing to add anything of substance or depth to it is just a waste of e-space.
This place used to be beautiful, now it's full of spam and dodgy practices. Who's even running this ship? It doesn't look like anyone has even posted in this writer's forum since November last year. I used to recieve money from traffic generated by my blogs, but a few years ago it just stopped being sent to me.