Father Geek here marking the exciting "Return of...", "Son of...", "Bride of...", "Revenge of..." The AICN Downunder Report, our weekly week-ending column from our very own Termite-Mound burrowing, Great Barrier Reef diving, Kangaroo boxing, Foster's guzzling Editor Latauro .

This guy needs info folks!!! Annnnd he needs it quick!!! Sooooooo please send him anything you've got... Rumors, Gossip, Backroom smoke, hell even the Facts. Lay some Scripts on him, Set visits, Location locations, Cattle Calls, Festival passes, Press passes, Sneak Preview passes, World Premiere passes. Give him some help!!! Some input!!! Some T-shirts, Hats, Posters, Groupies, CDs, DVDs, VHSs, even Keychains, or Bottle-openers... he needs to feel some love, get some feedback, stroke, or something... anything!!! Sooooooooo do ol'Father Geek and yourselves a great big favor and send in whatever you've got that you want ballyhooed to Latauro right away... like yesterday already.

Shit, it IS yesterday already... or is that tomorrow already? I can never get that quite straight... Is Today yet to arrive, or has it already passed... I guess it depends which side of the fence you're on?

Slooooooow news week. Slooooooooooow. It’s like the MATRIX guys (?), rumors rumors, have turned their bullet-time effects on the film industry and everything’s moving at snail’s pace. I can’t even make up bullshit to pad out the column. Oh, wait, there’s my PHONE BOOTH review. Guess I can...

AICN-DOWNUNDER

by the Lovable... Laughable... Lazy... Lactating (well, maybe not)... Latauro ...

It was only recently that I was looking back at the STAR WARS films and pondered how sad it was that classic films don’t get made anymore. There are many interpretations of the word ‘classic’; in this particular case I’m talking about iconic, stuff-of-legend, BIG films. The sort of mantle that only STAR WARS was able to lay claim to until recently.

Many things can be attributed to the resurgence of the current BIG FILM; TITANIC’s mega-budget and mega-er-box office has been praised/blamed by many. Regardless of the cause, you got to wonder if, like all other genre fads, we’re being saturated?

I’m in the camp that could wax lyrical about the majesty of the LORD OF THE RINGS films, I find myself trying to love the new STAR WARS PREQUELS films more than I actually like them, and after last week’s review my divided opinion on THE MATRIX is obvious. But with *every* big film having to be a trilogy these days (Bryan Singer has claimed he envisaged X-MEN as a trilogy, David Twohy is making three Riddick films, Warners can’t get a Superman because they want an actor for the next seven years, etc) is this going to spell the death of what should be a rare, carefully-planned film event? The classic trilogy?

When teen horrors became the fad, it didn’t matter how many URBAN LEGENDS / SCREAMS came out because Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson come up with another idea they can still make it. Why? Those films cost nothing to make. You can have nine flops in a row and still make a profit on the tenth.

But with the bigger films (the mythic trilogies, the comic book superheroes), a flop can spell the end. BATMAN AND ROBIN brought many a franchise to their end. X-MEN revived them. (It could be quite accurately argued that B&R simply ruined DC’s franchise, whilst X only revived Marvel’s.)

I’m not going to say anything new about the situation, nor am I trying to. The excitement I felt at the FELLOWSHIP premiere was unlike anything I’d experienced with film. I wasn’t old enough to see any of the original STAR WARS films, and love them as I do, I don’t rightly feel part of its true fanbase. The people who say it changed their worlds. I wish it had, but age was against me.

My point is this: the big mythic trilogies are now inciting the response of ‘Oh, another one’, when they should be the landmark events that define generations of film.

Wiser heads than mine have spoken more eloquently on the subject, so I’ll sign off now and let you get on with the column. Enjoy.

NEWS

* Marvel Comics’ MAN-THING will film in Sydney later this year. It will be directed by Brett Leonard (he of VIRTUOSITY and THE LAWNMOWER MAN). Written by Hans Rodionoff (er, THE SKULLS II), the film concerns a guy who’s both a MAN and a THING. Or something. Too... lazy... to... research... properly...

* I didn’t report this last week ’cos I thought it was old news, but it’s spread like wildfire so here it is for the sake of completionism (Lat's made-up word of the day): Baz Lurhmann’s ALEXANDER THE GREAT will film in Australia because of concerns over first-location Morocco being targeted for terrorism. In meetings with Bazmark representatives, Muslim fundamentalists have agreed to avoid blowing up Australia until after the principal photography wrap party.

AWARDS AND FESTIVALS

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

In a win that got a lot of media coverage in Australia (and, seemingly, ZERO anywhere else... even on this page’s list of Cannes winners), local short CRACKER BAGwon the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film. Directed by Melbournian Glendyn Ivin, the film concerns a young girl determined to put on a fireworks show. Congratulations to Glendyn, who, despite this being his first film/award, claims he feels he’s hit the pinnacle of his career. Nevertheless, hope there’s more to come.

BOX OFFICE

The Wachowsers continue to hold onto the box office until... hm... what IS the next big event film? It’d be HULK, right? Well, Matrix is going to continue to rake in the big bucks. Meanwhile, PHONE BOOTH entered at number two, while WHALE RIDER displayed some impressive sleeper staying power.

Annnnnd the winners are...

• 1. THE MATRIX RELOADED
• 2. PHONE BOOTH
• 3. WHALE RIDER
• 4. X2
• 5. HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS

RELEASED THIS WEEK

A young Chinese girl learns to read Balzac, John Travolta handles the truth, producers finally work out how to cast Will Ferrell in a teen gross-out movie, Elizabeth Darko does typing duty for James Ballard, and the French create a movie franchise out of the Parisian garment-manufacturing industry.

Here they are...

• BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
• BASIC
• OLD SCHOOL
• SECRETARY
• WOULD I LIE TO YOU AGAIN?

REVIEWS

I haven’t seemed to inspire a suitable amount of talkbacker vitriol yet. In an attempt to incite some sort of reader jihad, thus forcing me to live at Bono’s palace for the next few decades, here is the newest regular AICN-D feature...

PHONE BOOTH Review...

My flatmate from a couple of years ago was really angry one night upon coming home. When I asked him what was wrong (actually, he never needs much prompting), he told me about a car in front of him stopping for five minutes to stare at a car accident on the other side of the road. It was a side of human nature that made my friend furious. I told him that we all possessed this obsession with the horrific and grotesque. My point was underlined a week later when we hired BATMAN AND ROBIN to keep us grounded and remind us of the world’s horrors.

Since then, Joel Schumacher (and Akiva Goldsman, let’s not forget him) has been, in my circle, the punchline to a joke nobody wanted told. Sure we’ll rag on Paul W.S. Anderson, Raja Gosnell, et al, but it’s always Schumacher we come back to. Why? Because he has the ability to turn the intriguing into formulaic quasi-boring (8MM), and the terrible into worse (BATMAN AND ROBIN). He’s really bad.

It was for that reason that I was aghast by the news that he’d be directing PHONE BOOTH, a script that had one of the tightest high-concept premises I’d ever seen. This was a chance for some bare-bones quality filmmaking, and I was hanging out for Michael Bay to get the gig. I wanted to see Will Smith in A Michael Bay Joint this holiday season.

Schumacher got the gig, and I dismissed it. When positive reviews started coming out, I perked up. When Harry called it perfect, I was confused. The line I told my friends was ‘the script is director-proof!’. That was the only logical explanation. If the film was perfect, Schumacher must have been UNABLE to alter it.

There’s no such thing as director-proof. Schumacher not only directed a brilliant film; he directed it really well. There are moments where I felt like shouting, “get your hand off Fincher’s leg!”, but otherwise the direction is original, vibrant, and perfectly-paced.

Full-points go to Larry Cohen (the scribe) who wrote a tight script that, for all intents and purposes, stays within a one-metre-by-one-metre-by-three-metre space. But the fact that a talent I’d never heard of wrote such a compelling piece doesn’t affect me the way that Schumacher’s direction had. I dwell on this point because up until now I would have laughed at phrases such as, say, ‘Thank God Schumacher was the director’.

Farrell is spot-on – I can’t imagine Smith or Jim Carrey in the role – as is the rest of the cast. Even small roles have an unexpected ring of truth to them. I can’t hear anyone than Jack Bauer voicing the assassin. Everything fits. And I’m astounded.

After a split-second of hesitation, I think the moment of me being sold was the opening narration. Unnecessary? Possibly. But there was an air of classic 1950s ‘what if?’ about it. I was almost expecting to hear Rod Serling announce ‘Colin Farrell has entered... the Twilight Zone’. I was brought back to real-time thrillers that began with ROPE back in 1948. Henry Fonda calmly twisting jurors in TWELVE ANGRY MEN. That tight 80-minutes-to-make-your-point that keeps you on your seat... provided it’s done correctly.

It’s strange seeing this so close to seeing RUSSIAN ARK. ARK was a film that could have gone the obvious route – played out a real-time scenario, thus ‘justifying’ the single shot. BOOTH could have been told over a day, or over three, or over a week. It could have jumped forward several hours in order to develop characters. Have them ‘change’ because of on-screen events. But it doesn’t need that. You see all the change you need to in the face of Colin Farrell, on Radha Mitchell, on Forrest Whitaker. We don’t need to see Farrell setting Katie Holmes up in an apartment, or see Whitaker’s wife leaving him. Real-time has forced them to go in the opposite direction of lazy Hollywood ‘thrillers’ and cut the excess fat.

I’ll end with a quote from Michael Bay, as revealed in a press interview with Colin Farrell. During the first pre-production meeting, while Bay was still attached, his first question is said to have been, ‘How soon can we get him out of the booth?’. Thank God Schumacher was the director.

NEXT WEEK...

- Protesters cite the apparent ‘Zionist control of the Matrix’

- John Lasseter is blacklisted for ‘glorifying the effects of peace’

- Upcoming dart-throwing film DARTED is seized by the CIA for giving away US military operation secrets

Peace out,

Latauro