AICN Downunder: Latauro's Preconceived Notions Vs. STAR TREK!

You whistle really loud.

AICN-DOWNUNDER

Spare a thought for Eric Bana: this year has seen him voice a supporting character in a claymation movie, make a documentary about a car he owns, and appear as the villain in a STAR TREK movie. Jesus Christ.

Hang on -- sorry, I'm being informed it's no longer the 1990s... okay, so the above things are actually good. What, is 2009 Opposite Year? Bana doesn't have a huge role in MARY AND MAX, Adam Elliot's follow-up to his Oscar-winning HARVIE KRUMPET, but he's terrific in his role, and the film itself is unmissable. His documentary, LOVE THE BEAST, has been a commercial hit, and certain discredited film critics thought it was pretty damned good. As for his role in STAR TREK... well, I don't want to give anything away. You might have to scroll down to the bottom to read my thoughts on that.

But on the way make sure you read some local news-y items I've put together.

NEWS

In news that surely can't be relevant to anyone not living in Victoria or New South Wales, it seems the GREEN LANTERN film will film in Sydney instead of Melbourne. NSW Premier and Minister for the Arts Nathan Rees called a press conference a week or two back to gloat to everyone about the coup. The film officially begins pre-production in July, with serial Bond rebooter Martin Campbell at the helm. Though no casting has been finalised, AICN-Downunder understands that Warner Bros is giving serious consideration to every actor who ever lived.

And if you think the last story barely qualifies as news, you're going to love this one: apparently JOHN CARTER OF MARS was looking at South Australia as a possible location. Not the craziest thing in the world -- RED PLANET apparently filmed here, and the SA desert has been used by non-filmy people to genuinely simulate the Martian landscape. But, according to Screen Hub, producers were miffed at the media reports of the location recce, and decided on Texas instead. I do wonder, however, if a major big-budget film would compromise its best interest because it's pissy at some local reporters, but there you go.

There's a local, low budget effort I'm looking forward to catching: RE-LIVING OFF THE LAND. Check out the trailer by clicking here.

AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS

2009 Cannes Film Festival

Two big coups for local productions. Firstly, Jane Campion's BRIGHT STAR (about poet John Keats), starring Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, will play in Official Competition. Campion's film will be competing with a lot of unknown directors such as Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Ang Lee, Ken Loach, Gasper No, Park Chan-wook, Quentin Tarantino, Johnnie To, and Lars von Trier. Meanwhile, SAMSON AND DELILAH, which recently premiered in Alice Springs, is playing in the Un Certain Regard section. It's a huge coup for the film, but its inclusion won't be of surprise to anyone who's seen it (click here if you missed my ringing endorsement of it a few columns back). AICN-D's fingers, toes, and inexplicable protrusions are all firmly crossed in support.

FANBOYS Melbourne Screenings

I'll be catching a screening of it some time next week, but for interested locals, FANBOYS is finally getting an Australian release. Melbourne geeks can catch the film in a limited run at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image from Friday the 5th of June until Sunday the 21st.

BOX OFFICE

Some local news outlets have been excited at the strong performance of MARY AND MAX, and I was looking forward to touting this, but I think they were referring to relative strong performance for a bleak Australian claymation. In addition to the below five, Australians also saw (6) KNOWING, (7) DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION, (8) PINK PANTHER 2, (9) PAUL BLART: MALL COP, and (10) INKHEART. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go jump off a bridge. (Side note prediction: the fifth FAST AND FURIOUS film will be called FAST V FURIOUS. Get it? As in "versus", but also the Roman numeral five? Just getting my theory in early so I can gloat later. Fine. Shut up.)

1. FAST AND FURIOUS
2. MONSTERS VS ALIENS
3. 17 AGAIN
4. RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN
5. THE BOAT THAT ROCKED

RELEASED THESE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS

A page from a Target catalogue gets the big screen treatment, Natalie Imbruglia makes a film about the state of the Australian film industry (BOO YAH!), Vin Diesel and Paul Walker sign on to a sequel that two definitive articles avoided, Dylan Moran stars in a fillum with him in it, another of Kubrick's old scripts gets dug up, Brendan Fraser continues his career seppuku, Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in the BEING JOHN MALKOVICH sequel, DreamWorks cashes in on B movie goodness, Steve Martin snatches his seppuku sword back from Brendan Fraser, a foreign character drama presumably serves as an audition piece for a future TWILIGHT sequel, and last year's Un Certain Regard winner finally emerges.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS
CLOSED FOR WINTER
FAST AND FURIOUS
A FILM WITH ME IN IT
FIRED UP
INKHEART
JCVD
MONSTERS VS ALIENS
PINK PANTHER 2
SUMMER HOURS
TULPAN

REVIEWS

STAR TREK

(very mild spoilers -- nothing you won't have seen in early coverage, though)

I'm pretty sure Paramount has an intense dislike for me.

First, they greenlit "Enterprise", an horrific, pathetic attempt to appeal to a wider audience. Not only did it fail to do that, but it turned a faithful viewer such as myself off completely. Then they greenlit STAR TREK: NEMESIS, a film so bad, I just spent five minutes trying to come up with an analogy to adequately illustrate how bad it is (clearly, I failed). As someone who continued to support and enjoy the franchise through "Voyager" (underrated) and STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (also underrated), this was a dual slap in the face. Or a two-handed slap on either side my face. Whichever you prefer.

If that wasn't bad enough, the new STAR TREK movie was premiered in two place at once: Sydney and Austin. As the Melbourne-based Australian writer for an Austin website, it felt like I was being deliberately taunted.

However, I could be wrong about this. Maybe Paramount doesn't hate me specifically. And hey, if I'm wrong about that, maybe I'm wrong about a lot of things. I had a lot of preconceived notions going into TREK the other night. Maybe I should examine some of them.

Prequels Suck: Again, a lesson taught by "Enterprise". The vast majority of prequels really, really suck. They don't work because we already know the ending, and most writers don't seem to be clever enough to make that impediment work in their favour. They are either confined by the events they are leading up to, or they abandon these constraints and make a hash of the continuity (continuity = fidelity of story, by the way; it's little to do with fanboyish obsessiveness). The rest of the time, they rob mysterious characters of their mystery. Almost invariably, prequels suck. Though there are probably many exceptions (please, point them out in the talkback below), I will now cite STAR TREK as being the key exception to this rule. Before STAR TREK, I never felt I needed to know the origins of Kirk and company. Somehow, TREK refreshes itself, abandoning the self-conscious shackles that "Enterprise" suffered from, breathing new life into characters without betraying their roots.

Alternative Timeline Stories Don't Normally Work: I love a good parallel universe story as much as the next guy, but I really hate the way a lot of science fiction uses it as a crutch. Instead of exploring what the concept of a parallel universe could mean, most of them seem to begin with the idea of "Hey, you've seen parallel universe stories before, haven't you? This is another one of those". It evokes lazy writing, and serves as an excuse to do whatever you want with the story without regard to continuity of character. Except here. Rather than using rushing through an alternative timeline scenario in order to do whatever they feel like, the writers weave a story thathinges on disrupted history, on altered destiny, on changed fortune. The level of exploration that this idea receives is of a quality I'd expect from Asimov or Dick or Ellison in a glorious old paperback of short stories. I really didn't expect this sort of genuine science fiction to exist in a tentpole studio blockbuster.

The Cast Doesn't Look Right, Especially Karl Urban: John Cho is Korean, not Japanese. Anton Yelchin was only cast 'cos he has a Russian name. Karl Urban is a Kiwi who looked Nordic in LORD OF THE RINGS, and in no way resembles DeForest Kelly. Oh, it feels so good to be wrong. For a start, to hell with it, John Cho is great as Sulu. Yelchin is spot-on as Chekov. Karl Urban is utterly perfect as McCoy, nailing the voice, the temperament, everything. He's possibly my favourite actor in the film, which is saying something, given how much I enjoyed everyone else. I wasn't expecting Chris Pine to get close to Kirk; it was such a huge expectation, I didn't even think to burden him with. Somehow, Pine does everything Shatner did as Kirk, but gives him an extra, rebellious, youthful edge that fits beautifully with what we've seen already. Quinto is brilliant as Spock, and not just because he looks like him. I always hate the "half human" thing that all "Trek" franchises (and many other franchises) subscribe to, because it feels like a lame attempt to make them "relatable". You know, as if the ten other human characters weren't relatable enough. But here, Spock's duality is essential to his story, and it brings an added arc that Spock didn't have seem to have in the original series (although it did emerge as the movies progressed). Zoe Saldana is brilliant in capturing Uhuru's essence, and Simon Pegg is utterly perfect as Scotty. (Side note: when Pegg was cast, did anyone else have a flashback to Pegg in "Spaced" saying that all odd-numbered "Star Trek" films suck? I really hope they put that clip on the STAR TREK (XI) DVD as an easter egg...)

Cloyingly "Clever" References To Appease The Fans Will Also Suck: Actually, though this thing is chock-full of references, you'd never know it if you were a newbie. We actually get to see the Kobyashi-Maru test, but you'd never know it hadn't been invented for the purposes of this film, rather than referenced decades ago in an earlier incarnation. You don't need to go in knowing about the history of the pre-Kirk Enterprise, and who Christopher Pike is; again, he may as well have been invented for the purposes of this film. In fact, the references used in STAR TREK are so deft, there's even a reference to the "Enterprise" show that I loved. That was something I never thought possible.

It Might Have Some Lame Jokes, But They Won't Be Funny: Okay, this isn't really a preconceived notion I had beforehand -- I'm just including it so I can talk about how damned funny the film is. All the jokes work, and there are a lot of them. They found a funny angle on Chekov's accent, for crying out loud! That old chestnut, and it still worked! And the main characters get funny, in-character gags, it's not just all left to Simon Pegg. I was not expecting it to be this consistently funny.

Paramount Can Pour As Much Money As They Want Into It, The General Public Will Never Like STAR TREK: Prepare for conventional wisdom to be thrown out the window. Paramount's been trying to get a TREK that will appeal to Joe Q. HateTrek for years, and their last two attempts failed so dismally, I thought the task impossible. STAR TREK will turn this on its head. People who have never seen TREK before are going to love this. I guarantee it. I mean, I'm not even nervous about making that claim. You're going to see people going back to watch this again and again, even if they've never liked the series beforehand.

TREK Is Dead. This Film Cannot Be Great. The Most It Can Hope For Is Not Sucking: Truly, this is what I was feeling going in. "Please don't suck," I was thinking, and that was the high watermark I wanted it to live up to. I didn't think any of it would work. Prequels, alternative timelines, reboots, more attempts to appeal to a wider audience (presumably, again, at the expense of fans); it all just looked horrible to me. I was not expecting this film to be great. I did not expect to come out wishing I could go back in and watch it all over again. (And I've sneakily booked myself into another press screening in a few days...) I did not expect to love this movie, but love it I did. Director JJ Abrams, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, you have all done a tremendous job. I really, really, did not think it could be this incredible.

Paramount Has An Intense Dislike For Me: Nah, they don't really. I was just steamed about the whole NEMESIS, "Enterprise", and Sydney/Austin thing. Given the sheer brilliance of this new movie, I would say they like me an awful lot.

NEXT WEEK

- Guillermo del Toro reveals the third Hellboy movie will see Big Red become a heroin-addicted jazz musician in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARMY

- Extensive reshoots will see John Travolta and Denzel Washington out to get Australian actor David Wenham, in the retitled THE TAKING OF WENHAM 1 2 3

- The Weinstein Company announces Elijah Wood will no longer be starring in any of their movies after the actors knocked on Harvey's door during the worst possible moment of his Passover seder

Peace out,

Latauro
AICNDownunder@hotmail.com