GOT BEEF?

Plate up! …

TELL IT TO HER FAMILY, TONY

Tony Abbott from 2002 …

“If we’re honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband – not withstanding all of his faults you find he tends to do more good than harm,” he said.

“He might be a bad boss but at least he’s employing someone while he is in fact a boss.”

Yeah, right.

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Author Terry Pratchett’s plea for the right to die in dignity and peace, beautifully read by Tony Robinson …

TONGUES ON FILM – JANUARY 2010

Here are just a few of the films I’ve seen this last month …

“VAN DIEMEN’S LAND” (2009)

Based on the confessions of Alexander Pearce, Australia’s most notorious convict (I thought our most notorious convict was Dennis Ferguson), it follows the fates of eight convicts on the run who find themselves stranded in a foreign, unforgiving and unyielding wilderness and, as their meager stocks of supplies run out, they begin to look upon their unsavoury fellows as, well, savouries.

Ellery Ryan’s cinematography is so jaw-droppingly awesome, it sometimes threatens to overwhelm the film. There were several points during when all I could think was, “How the fuck did they get a camera and crew there?” However, the environment portrayed is the main character in this film and the fates and lives of the eight puny organisms scuttling about in its undergrowth are barely relevant.

There’s naught in the way of exposition here, which is to say, this is not for the simple of mind, you have to pay attention. Director Jonathan auf der Heide avoids focusing on the obvious topic, that is, the cannibalism, and instead presents a grim tale of human nature and the instinct for survival. Excellent stuff.

David Stratton had this to say …

“It is, indeed, a terrible story, but perversely that story unfolds against some of Australia’s most spectacular scenery. And if ever a film was a labour of love, this one clearly is: the actors, all excellent, are obviously undergoing considerable punishment, not to mention the unseen members of the production team, the sound and camera crews and so on. Unarguably, Van Diemen’s Land poses a formidable challenge for audiences, but it’s a challenge well worth meeting and a film you’re unlikely ever to forget.”

Four stars for David.

“I SELL THE DEAD” (2008)

Two eighteenth century graverobbers can barely keep up with the demand for fresh corpses and then they begin to dig up a few things that would’ve been better left un-dug. A vampire, some ghouls, zombies, and an icy little alien, straight out of Close Encounters, who gets zapped up into space as it begins to thaw out.

At which point in the proceedings, you are permitted to exclaim “What the fuck??!”

This is simply enormous fun, a film that harks back to the days of the Hammer and Amicus anthologies from the 60’s and 70’s with more than a passing nod to George Romero’s “Creepshow”. Despite it’s bottom of the barrel budget, it looks marvelous, the period trappings are perfect and everyone is suitably grubby and disheveled. And, unlike some “horror comedies”, “I Sell The Dead” doesn’t set out to pull any sort of self-referential, “cool” in-joke tricks.

Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessendon play the graverobbers, and Ron Perlman turns up as well (check out Ron’s lazy-arse sooky dog in the “Making of” doco on the DVD).

Yes, you should watch this. Is good.

“A PERFECT GETAWAY” (2009)

Some psychopaths are stalking and killing young honeymooning couples who’ve gone a-hiking in Hawaii.

Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich are a honeymooning couple.

There’s a big “twist” the last third. A really, really big twist where things and people turn out not to be what and whom we thought they really were.

Guess what that is?

Yes. That’s right.

You’ll have it about forty minutes in, anyway.

What happens, the filmmakers, they get a time-worn and threadbare scenario (young couple in peril somewhere remote), and then they go, “What if it’s this?!” and then they think “that” constitutes a movie, when in fact all they have is a “this” and nothing else.

Then you have a script which tries way too hard to be clever, and just winds up being irritatingly “clever-clever”, with random in-jokes about screenwriting thrown in. And then you’ve got a couple characters who simply aren’t credible, they’re comical and belong in a completely different movie, so the whole tone of this movie goes seriously out of whack.

And then, when they throw in the big twist, the “this” that’s the only thing they’ve got, you don’t go, “Oh, wow!”, instead you just feel a mite insulted, and inclined to respond, “Do you really think I am so fucking dumb and undemanding that I’m going to be satisfied with that lump of bollocks you’ve just chucked up there as an excuse for a credible fucking twist? It’s a cheap and lazy-arse cheat is what it is and it makes a nonsense of the first third and you ought to be bloody well ashamed of yourselves. Just PISS off …”

…

…

Milla looks nice. Steve Zahn’s always good. Hawaii seems a pleasant place, lots of greenery.

“FEAST III – THE HAPPY FINISH” (2009)

Sunday afternoon, housework done, 32 degrees outside, turn on the air-con, turn off the brain and watch a dumb little monster movie.

I was halfway through a bottle of wine when it started and halfway through a second by the time it was over.

I don’t know if watching movies like this whilst getting pissed makes them any better or any worse, but it certainly does numb the impact, so I don’t remember too much about this movie, and I think that may be a good thing.

I might have said “Oh, for fuck’s sake” a few times during.

What else?

…

…

It was in colour.

And it had lots of fluids in it.

Me too.

“TAKEN” (2008)

Liam Neeson plays a former spy with “a set of very special skills” who goes to the rescue when his daughter is kidnapped in Paris by a bunch of unshaven Albanians intent on selling her off to the highest bidder.

This is a “punk” film.

“Punk” in the sense that it has only one chord to play and it plays it over and over and over and over again.

It’s also one of those movies where one guy with one gun gets pursued all over the bloody place by dozens of men with dozens of guns, none of whom can shoot for shit.

And there are times when you wonder, “Hang on, what happened to … ?” and “Who was … ?” and “What about … ?”

Yet, despite this, “Taken” does succeed in getting the adrenalin pumping, the editing is top-notch and it has no pretensions to be anything other than what it is – a furiously paced action film. Lots of people die and Neeson wears one expression throughout – grim determination.

And lots of people die.

Lots.

“ORPHAN” (2009)

Director Jaume Collet-Serra contacted the art department at Warner Bros. upon seeing the poster for his film “Orphan” for the very first time …

“Yes, this is Jaume … You think because I am Spanish that I am a fool? You think this is a joke, yes? Why do you make a poster for my movie which makes it look like a Chucky film? Why? I am not intending to make a fucking Chucky film, I am making the thriller, not the fucking Chucky film … I have a good story, it is not Hitchcock but it is alright, I have some good actors, we are not having a big budget, but we work hard to make a nice thriller with a decent twist at end and what do you do? YOU MAKE IT LOOK A FUCKING CHUCKY FILM WITH YOUR FUCKING ARTWORK, LIKE A HORROR MOVIE FULL OF DOLLS WITH FUCKING KNIVES! –”

“Jaume – ”

“I would not see my own movie with this poster, it is shit, you shame me, you shame my mother … I piss on the Warner Brothers. ”

“Jaume –”

“NO! DO NOT SPEAK AT ME! … This is WORST POSTER EVER! … You have testicles like peanuts, little pebbles …”

“Jaume –”

“NO! … I hang up now. You are a cock. Goodbye.”

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Michael Uniacke in the SMH …

… In 1999, a complaint was made against cinemas alleging that their failure to provide captions on movies amounted to discrimination under the Disability Discrimination Act. There have been about 50 further complaints since, and all have run out of steam. No one has been willing to risk financial ruin by pursuing a complaint against cinemas via the Act to the Federal Magistrates’ Court …

… In the 17 years since the enactment of the Disability Discrimination Act, the grand result of 50 complaints and fruitless negotiations with cinema chains is that 12 cinemas in the entire country show three screenings a week of captioned films. The cinemas decide what films will be captioned, and show them all at off-peak times …

… The cinemas’ attitude reveals a chronic lack of imagination. They are locked into a point of view that a person with a disability is a nuisance. Effectively these cinemas are saying to Australia’s millions of deaf, hearing-impaired, blind and vision-impaired people: shut your bleating and be grateful while we do what we decide is best for you …

My mother is deaf.

She’s deaf, not retarded, and she’d quite like to go to the movies from time to time as would her friends in the association of deaf people she belongs to who regularly organise social outings and get-togethers.

I’d bet if cinemas were to devote one day’s sessions per week of major release films with captions, those sessions would be just as full as usual, and possibly more so, attended by both the hearing and the deaf.

Why do the cinema chains think this is such a big ask?

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Steve Clemons on The Washington Note …

America needs to invest in itself.

In 2010, the cost of America’s Iraq engagement will still run more than $150 billion. And add to that $100 billion plus for Afghanistan.

One QUARTER OF A TRILLION DOLLARS is what the US is spending on two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan that together have a COMBINED GDP of just $23 billion.

That is lunacy. Americans have a US President who is going to say tonight — we cannot afford our future, we cannot afford investment in ourselves, but we can afford to bail out Wall Street financiers, and we can afford to pump $250 billion into two small countries abroad, but we can’t afford to do the right things by American working families — who deserve far better.

THREE LITTLE WORDS …

I hate dentists.

SO THAT’S THAT, THEN

No health care for you.

You people are weird.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST …

The home page of today’s New York Times …

HAITI – BIG NEWS …

The home page of today’s News.com. site …

Not so much … 

The current state of major Australian on-line news media?

Sucks.

TONGUE OF THE DAY

A word, courtesy of colourNOmovement in comments …

“CLIOCIDE” – the “silencing” or symbolic killing of collective historical-political or historical-disciplinary identities and identifying practices by historical or discipline deficient “scientific” coding practices. The suppression, destruction, rewriting or denial of history.

(From Greek mythology, Clio was the Greek muse whose task was to watch over the course of human history.)

Thanks, cNm.

UNSPEAKABLE

Shameless.

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Would you? …

The late Alan Clark, Tory historian and amoral wit, once drew up a list of the occasions on which it is permissible to employ the word fuck in polite society. One of his examples was, “What the fuck was that?” as uttered by the mayor of Hiroshima.

Yes, you probably would.

STEREOTYPES

Given the recent outrage generated both here and in the United States by an allegedly racist television commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Australasian Melon Growers Association and Share Croppers Union have now scrapped plans for their own commercial after concerns were raised about its content.

Smelly Tongues has been fortunate enough to be the sole media outlet in possession of a copy of the commercial which we can now share with you …

TONGUES ON FILM – DECEMBER 2009

Here’s just a few of the films I’ve seen recently …

“TERMINATOR SALVATION” (2009)

One of the dumbest bits of dialogue you will ever hear in your life is in this movie.

A Resistance fighter says something to the effect of “I want those pilots back on the line to me even if they’re dead!”

Jesus Christ on a cross.

Big, dumb, stupid popcorn movie that has so many inconsistencies of logic, listing them all would take a book.

Worth watching for Sam Worthington, who acquits himself nicely (accent slips on a few occasions), and effortlessly steals the show from Christian Bale whose whispery, raspy “tough guy” vocal affectations are really beginning to give me the shits something fierce.

Nobody talks like that.

Cut it out, Christian. It’s fucking crap.

“PRIME CUT” (1972)

Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, and Sissy Spacek in her debut screen appearance in this 70’s exploitation action flick from Michael Ritchie. It cost me 8 bucks from a department store and with a cast like that …

From the opening credits, the look of the film, the score by Lalo Schifrin, it’s apparent this hard little nut wants to belong to the same class, for example, as the original “Taking of Pelham 1-2-3”, Siegel’s “Dirty Harry” and “Charley Varrick”, “The Getaway”, “Bullitt”, “The Outfit” and others of that ilk from the same era.

It wants to. And fails.

Hackman plays a crooked meat-packing and slaughterhouse kingpin who’s decided to fuck over the mob in Chicago. Marvin plays the mob enforcer sent to sort him out. Spacek’s the eye candy.

There’s little in the way of suspense in this film, just a series of set-pieces that don’t add up to anything resembling a cohesive exercise in storytelling. And its casual and quite brutal attitude toward women, a misogyny regrettably typical of the time and the genre, makes for uncomfortable viewing at times.

So it’s up to the actors …

I could watch Gene Hackman in anything. Anything except this, perhaps.

Hackman’s one of those guys, you’d swear he must’ve popped out of his mother’s womb with a half-bald mop of curly hair and a moustache bawling about people picking their feet in Poughkeepsie. Hackman is (unofficially) retired. What a lazy sot.

Lee Marvin’s retired too.

He’s dead.

Lazy sot.

Sissy Spacek was 23 years old when she did this, and she brings all the eager and nervous energy of the newcomer to what is a rather thankless role, and lights up the screen every scene she’s in in spite of the material. Gorgeous.

Spacek’s neither dead nor retired.

Not a lazy sot.

“DEADGIRL” (2008)

“Brilliant”? Bullshit.

Garbage. Utter garbage. Repellent, repugnant, misogynistic trash featuring a bunch of characters you will not give a fuck about, and when it’s over, you want your 90 minutes and the rental fee back.

Rex Reed of The New York Observer said this …

“Written by a weirdo named Trent Haaga for no other purpose than to outrage, Deadgirl is part S&M porno, part supernatural chiller, and worthy only if you’re interested in how far movies can go before the police arrive. It is not recommended for anyone concerned about mental health, especially their own. The filmmakers are calling it “depraved, poignant and genre-busting,” but I suggest they look up the definition of “poignant” again and substitute “perverted.””

Andrew O’Hehir from Salon …

“I’m not going to use up valuable Internet bandwidth to defend the morality of a film that is so consciously calculated to shock the shockable. Sexual violence and sexual slavery are terrible crimes, and depicting them in a fictional context, no matter how fantastic or how surrounded by quotation marks, is always going to be problematic for many viewers. I doubt that many women (or many men) who have survived sexual assaults will be entertained or titillated by the spectacle of this film’s nameless zombie chick (the brave actress who took this wordless part is named Jenny Spain) being repeatedly raped, beaten, stabbed and shot.”

I was not shocked by this film. I’ve seen enough horror films in my life to know the difference between shock for the sake of shock and something with a point, a plot, a story. This film has none of those things, and that is why it sucks rhino dick and sucks it big time.

Try “Teeth” instead.

“HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE” (2009)

After receiving the script for this film (known as “Horsemen” in the U.S.), Dennis Quaid rang his agent …

“Sammy, it’s Dennis. Dennis Quaid.”

“Dennis! The fuck are you?”

“What’re you sending me shit like this, Sammy? Who do think I am, Nicolas Cage? Val fucking Kilmer? Why did you send me this?”

“Dennis, Dennis, listen … It’s money in the bank, alright? Michael Bay produces. Money in the bank, y’know?”

“But it’s fucking rubbish. It doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense, Sammy. The whole thing falls apart in the last third, there’s no resolution, there’s nothing there that ties into anything that went before, it’s like a loose stool in a fucking toilet bowl, it’s all over the pla-”

“It’s a trip to Canada Dennis, take the kids, play in the snow, eat salmon every night, fucking Canada Dennis, what’s not to like?”

“I’m expected to whore myself for a snowball fight and a plate of fucking salmon, Sammy?”

“It’s the movie business, Dennis. You’re no-one if you’re not a whore this business. Y’oughta be grateful you ain’t in the music business Dennis, those fuckers are fucking animals. You get a stash of money, Dennis, buy yourself a yacht, refit the kitchen, whatever, take a vacation somewhere exotic, okay? Listen, I can put a buncha riders in the contract … you can bring the wife up, the band, the family, a nice lodge with an open fire, personal assistants for everyone out the fucking ass … someone to iron your underwear, hold your dick when you pee, alright?”

“ … ”

“Dennis, Dennis, Dennis … Dennis … Den … Listen to me, D … listen to me … Do the movie, Dennis. You’ll be good in it. You’re always good. If the movie’s shit, you’ll be the only thing in it worth watching, I know that, you know that … Listen, fee up front, okay, the money up front, in full, whaddya say?”

“ … ”

“Dennis?”

“I’m making a movie about a bunch of fucking assholes who like hanging people off fucking hooks, for Christ’s sake … It’s not exactly “Far From Heaven”, is it? It’s not “Smart People” or “In Good Company”, I liked those, I was proud of my work in those. I was in “The Right Stuff”, remember that, Sammy?”

“That wasn’t me, Dennis, that was someone else … Listen, you do this, I got something lined up for you, it’s gonna be huge, trust me. Fucking huge.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t go into the detail right now, Dennis, it’s all very hush-hush, but I swear to you, I swear on my grandmother’s grave, you do this shit, I can get you this other thing.”

“Ah, FUCK!… Fuck. Fuck …Fuck … Fuck … Fu-”

“Dennis?”

“ … yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah … alright, fuck it, whatever … Sort the contract. Money up front and don’t forget those fucking riders, Sammy, I want ‘em all, alright?”

“You make me proud to be your agent, D. And this other thing …?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You wait, Dennis. It’s full-blown epic shit! … I promise. There’ll be Oscars this movie, believe it.”

“Well, it better be a GODDAMN sight better than this SHIT I’m about to do, Sammy, it damn well BETTER be, or I’m getting ANOTHER FUCKING AGENT, OKAY!!?”

“Trust me, Dennis. Trust me. It’ll tear box-office ass, this thing. You just wait and see.”

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Eugene Robinson writes in The Washington Post …

Under new rules prompted by the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, airline passengers coming to the United States from 14 nations will undergo extra screening: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

For our first quiz of the new decade, which country doesn’t fit with the others?

The obvious answer is Cuba, which presents a threat of terrorism that can be measured at precisely zero. Cuba is not a failed state where swaths of territory lie beyond government control; rather, it is one of the most tightly locked-down societies in the world, a place where the idea of private citizens getting their hands on plastic explosives, or terrorist weapons of any kind, is simply laughable.

There is no history of radical Islam in Cuba. In fact, there is hardly any history of Islam at all. With its long-standing paranoia about internal security and its elaborate network of government spies and snitches, the island nation would have to be among the last places on Earth where al-Qaeda would try to establish a cell, let alone plan and launch an attack. Yet Cuba is on the list because the State Department still considers it — along with Iran, Sudan and Syria — to be a state sponsor of terrorism.

The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has been an almost four decade long policy failure. It has achieved absolutely nothing. As Robinson concludes …

 ” … it’s difficult for me to believe that Obama fails to see how insane our current policy really is. He needs to change it — and he can begin by ceasing to pretend that looking for al-Qaeda terrorists on flights from Cuba is anything but a big waste of time.”

(To maintain your stability of mind, it is not recommended that you read the comments appended to Robinson’s piece – I read about half a dozen and felt like bashing a puppy.

Do not bash the puppy.)

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Sam Shepard, the thinking man’s Viggo Mortensen, is about to publish a new selection of short stories, “Day Out Of Days”.

One of the stories is described as follows …

A man traveling down Highway 90 West gets trapped alone overnight inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where he is tormented by an endless loop of Shania Twain songs on the overhead sound system.

The horror. The horror …

TONGUE OF THE DAY

Peter Jackson, director of “The Lovely Bones” …

“In making the film for ourselves, I personally have no interest in witnessing or watching or filming a fourteen year old girl being murdered and raped, and so when I read criticism where people say why did we leave out the murder scene, I’m thinking, how much of the murder and rape did you actually hope to see? I mean, were you looking forward to that? Have we disappointed you by not actually including that? Well, we’re really sorry, but there’s a lot of internet porn that you can go enjoy to your heart’s content, but don’t expect to come and see it in our film. We’re entertainers, and I don’t find anything about the murder of a fourteen year old girl to be entertaining in the slightest, so therefore it’s not in our movie.”

A-fucking-men.

A VERY SMELLY CHRISTMAS

Nothing seems more effective at inciting religious hatred than these loud-mouthed bullies, these pious little shitheads of faith who are forever shouting from the rooftops at the rest of us about their fucking beliefs and what it all means and what it all stands for.

These self-absorbed, self-righteous cunts who take it upon themselves to present their understanding and interpretation of their God, their messiahs, their fucking prophets and fucking books full of fucking fairy tales as if they, and they alone hold the key to absolute truth and the meaning of life and if you don’t agree with them, if you question them, if you even attempt to point out a few obvious irrationalities in their faith, somehow you’re the one whose soul is stuffed to its rancid brim with hate.

So fucking fragile are they that, when a handful of people write a handful of books questioning the basis of religious belief, it’s not just a handful of books, it’s a “WAR ON RELIGION!!1!”

And not content with just going about their business and leaving the rest of us to go about ours, these smarmy-faced self-anointed protectors of “our” morality now feel they have the right to dictate to us what we may read and see on the internet, or even what films do or do not get made.

Hate?

How’s this for hate? Excuse me while I go piss up the gaping anus of God, take a dump in the holy water and wipe my arse with pages torn from your holy books and then bugger a nun with a nail-studded crucifix.

Get out of my fucking life.

…

…

…

Dickheads.

…

…

…

Now, having got that off my chest, please take the time to listen to this gorgeous piece of music from Transglobal Underground & Natacha Atlas, “Sky Giant” which is my not-so-smelly Christmas gift to all of you who read this crap …

“The earth was like a marble and I was a giant on it” …

That’s better.

See you next year. 

TONGUE OF THE DAY

The righteous wrath of pissed off parent Tèa Brennan …

You know, I wish that politicians would stop using MY children, and their so-called protection, as an excuse for pandering to the religious right. You know what? My kids surf Youtube. Unsupervised. Because I have TAUGHT THEM to have a fucking brain and know how to use the internet responsibly.

It’s this little thing called parenting – you know, where you need to make HARD DECISIONS about morality. HARD DECISIONS about education. HARD DECISIONS about how to turn them into decent, sensible & functional human beings.

IT’S HARD.

That’s why it’s called parenting and not “sitting idly”.

I am getting shitted off with this generation of parents – who paradoxically, on one hand,  thrust their neurotically over-parented, micromanaged, over-extra-curricularised precocious little turds into society with no social skills, thinking that they are so much more important than other people, unable to do anything without it being part of a program, or a structured activity… where, these batshit crazy people have somehow become NORMAL in the name of “protecting the children”.

These idiots purchase devices like wipe warmers, designer organic t-shirts for $200 and Mensa tests for their 2 year olds (who, by virtue of learning to sit up a whole month early, is the next Albert fucking Einstein)…

And then, on the other hand, also fail to do the basic stuff like, you know, teaching their kids manners, self respect and basic protective behaviours.

Because parenting is more than just veneers, gimmicks & products. It actually takes effort.

Bravo.

And Bernard Keane of Crikey on how to to write to Ministers …

WORLD WIDE WEB RAPED BY SENATOR OF STUPID

“I choke your intertubes”

A Song for Stephen