Cinema rants

When I was younger I would, occasionally buy some popcorn when seeing a movie. But usually I’d eat the popcorn during the trailers, during the stuff that doesn’t matter, where you can watch or eat or whatever.

The Day of the Doctor was 75 minutes long. Most movies are at least 100 plus minutes long.

Recently (fine, in the last 5+ years) if I’ve wanted to see a movie in the cinemas I’ve been waiting until it’s on its last few weeks of release, so I could go to the cinema and have space around me, so I’m not next to people chewing like a cow munches grass in the field or rustling around in a bucket of chaff and grains getting the last few bits out of the bucket.

The woman next to me in the cinema was younger than me (I found out through engaging in friendly conversation), though over 18 and also...I don’t know how to say this without sounding critical, but significantly larger than me and only just within the dimensions of the cinema seat.
I, at first engaged her in conversation and didn’t really pay attention to her bucket of popcorn, 2 bags of Maltesers and another packet of something that I couldn’t see or immediately identify. And a Vitamin Water.
Then, whilst chatting to me she started to eat, and then asked me a question (about Doctor Who) with a mouthful of Maltesers.
That’s when I wanted to quit on reality. Instead I did the next best thing and pulled out my phone and retreated to twitter.

People vomiting in front of me and people talking to me with a mouth full of something. Two things I cannot deal with.
Actually even the latter, if they’re at least a table’s width away from me I think I could deal with it. She was less than 20 centimetres away from me.

A bucket of popcorn, I’m not being deliberately facetious, it was a bucket size of popcorn. There were other sizes, I saw other people carrying other sizes of popcorn.
Two bags of Maltesers and something else unidentified.

I admit, I was glad that when I booked my ticket I decided to err on the side of caution and get an isle seat. This was in part because I thought it’d be busy but also because I have long legs and like to stretch out down the isle.

If I had been trapped next to the bucket of popcorn I think I may have screamed.
The talking to me with a mouthful of Maltesers almost sent me over the edge.

I would, I think have preferred to sit next to a child waving a sonic screwdriver about, they would have had more decorum.

75 minutes is not long enough to need a bucket of popcorn, 2 bags of Maltesers, an unidentified bag of something else and a Vitamin Water.

If it’s a normal length of movie, 100 plus minutes then maybe, understand going with one of those things.

But if you were watching The Day of the Doctor or indeed any 75 minute show at home, would you need or want that much stuff?

Fast & Furious 6 review

Hands down one of the silliest movies I’ve seen in a while.
And Battleship is one of my favourite movies.
Fast & Furious 6 was very silly, so much so it pushed suspension of disbelief to breaking point and beyond.

The thing about Battleship is that it knows it’s a silly movie, it’s a movie based on a board game.
It’s got aliens in it, there’s ships, most of them aren’t battleships (spoiler; there’s only one ‘battleship’ in the movie Battleship), the rest of the ships in Battleship are destroyers or other sorts of vessels.
Actually all this information is given in quite a simple way with a bit of footage and a short bit of dialogue so you understand the difference between a destroyer and a battleship. It doesn’t however impart the difference between a boat and a ship. But generally you can put a boat on a ship but you can’t put a ship on a boat.

Returning to the topic for a moment....
I watched this on blu-ray, and used the fast forward button more than a few times, it was the only way to get through this movie, (even my favourite movie Battleship I usually skip through the soccer scene at the start).

Fast & Furious 6 carries so much baggage from the previous films that its title/opening credits sequence serves as a “Previously on” for the movie.
Small mercies at least it wasn’t a character having a flashback sequence of all the salient events of the previous movies, that would have been worse, even more so if it included a voice over.

Fast & Furious 6 takes itself too seriously and it’s a film that shouldn’t be serious it should be a movie that knows it’s a bit silly, or at least know that what they’re up to is at least a bit silly. Aside from one mention of ‘James Bond shit’ there’s no acknowledgement that the events within the movie are practically impossible and outside the bounds of ‘normal’.

The setting for most of Fast & Furious 6 was London.
Maybe they were running out of interesting locations to shoot. My first thought was that there was some sort of money deal that meant they could shoot there. But skipping through the Wikipedia article for Fast & Furious 6 there doesn’t seem to be the word “concession” used anywhere in the article. “Tax” is used once in relation to them shooting in the Canary Islands who gave a tax rebate of 38%.

The early ‘Fast and Furious’ movies were a fun mix of fast cars, soundtrack and vaguely good looking people doing stuff in a vaguely real way. This movie just smashes a lot of the suspension of disbelief out of the way. It’s definitely not helped by the way it treats physics. Optimistically I would say that physics are treated in a cartoon fashion. But it’s the way they play it so very straight whenever they ignore the laws of physics. There are jumps and catches mid air and then when they land it’s against a car’s windscreen or something.
I probably would have had less problem with it if they had some of the characters, after having done this do the movie-style thing of coughing up or spitting out some blood. Giving you some vague indication that they were hurt rather than just shrugging.

With Fast & Furious 6 I just couldn’t help while watching the scenes in London, just thinking, that The Italian Job, the original 1969 one not the really quite awful other film from 2003 also of the same name, that was the best car heist film. It’s got everything in it, some great quotable dialogue, some great uses of cars. Iconic cars at that; Minis.

Also, I never really noticed how god-y Fast and Furious 6 is. Maybe I never really noticed it in the previous films, but there’s a fair amount of god-related stuff in the films which could have been avoided, so it was obviously a deliberate choice to have them in there.

Finally. I didn’t like any of the characters in this film.
Some like Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) playing Hobbs I couldn’t work out why he was in the movie. I seem to recall he was in the last one. Johnson is cartoon like in his presence on screen, and that’a against Vin Diesel who is also almost cartoon like. Both are buffed up, except Johnson is too much, just him being in a scene throws out any believability.

Going back to Battleship, with its silliness, basic plot and lots of explosions and big soundtrack with AC/DC on it, it makes you understand and like the characters very quickly.
It’s quite economical with how it establishes everything (even if there’s a soccer match at the start which wastes about 10 minutes of the movie). Most of the characters in Battleship are likeable, there’s moderately interesting and you kinda care about them.
I didn’t really care about any of the characters in this movie, the biggest emotive response I had to the characters was fining them irritating.

Double finally, as all movies seem to have a post-credits sequence then I’ll write a final paragraph after ‘finally’. Things that make little sense; Paul Walker’s character flying back from London to the US to be locked jail up to find out information that could probably have come to the characters with some hand waving and tech-related sort of scenes in London. Location choices; RAF Bentwaters standing in for NATO base in Lusitania, Spain. I recognised this one because it’s been used on Top Gear. It’s also only shown on an overcast day and at night. If it weren’t for the onscreen graphics you wouldn’t know where it was (ok, fine there was dialogue indicating that the characters were going to Spain). That overcast day could and should have been either re-shot on a sunnier day or had the sky repainted to make it look sunnier. There’s enough movie short hand that exist that says Spain = sunny. Not overcast. Even in a moody military scene involving NATO Spain it should have been sunny, otherwise it could have been anywhere.

Dalek films at The Astor Theatre

On Saturday night (3rd August, 2013) I saw at The Astor Theatre the two 1960s Dalek films; Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. Both I’ve seen multiple, closer to countless times on both VHS and DVD.

I went to see them again, in part because I have never seen them ' the big screen' before and also because, as part of my 'be more social' self-motivation thing have gotten onto meetup.com and found some people who share similar fascinations, thoughts and cultural touchstones that I do.

One of them ‘The Melbourne Sci-Fi and Fantasy Meetup Group’ had a meet for this screening of this double feature. Although several people RSVPed on the site only three actually attended, well 4 including myself.

Screenshot: Dr. Who and the Daleks (used under fair use)

It was an absolutely squally night for it with a lot of rain coming down leading up to the start and at the end of the night. I don't know about during, I was in the cinema. The rain paused long enough for me to talk to the theatre and back to my car between the downpours.

Even with only 4 people I had a good chat with the others who'd come along.

Watching the movie in a cinema with other people who also appreciate it is a new experience for me and my appreciation of these two films.

Screenshot: Dr. Who and the Daleks (used under fair use)

It was interesting to look at Dr. Who and the Daleks with a fresh perspective, as it’s a film I’ve not seen for at least 5 years, probably more than though, though the DVD has been sitting on my shelf, so I could watch it if I wished to.

With Dr. Who and the Daleks, I never really appreciated its comedy. I just mostly saw it as an adaption of the TV story upon which it's based. Even later on having read about it and knowing that the “Ian” character in the movie is there as more of a comedy role than that of a 'hero' character that the TV series Ian was.

But watching it alone the humour isn't really there for me, or rather I saw it but didn't recognise it as comedy humour.

There is a lot of slapstick humour to Ian's performance, in almost all of his scenes he is doing some simple physical comedy, usually falling over/into/onto/sitting down onto something. It seems obvious thinking on it now, but it took watching it with a group of people in a cinema to really appreciate the comedy of it, or the intended comedy.

It’s something I just didn’t really notice watching it alone and away from other people who notice (and laugh) at the comedy.

There’s also unintentional comedy in the movie that simply comes from it being a very 1960s movie. The opening titles and music is very incredibly 1960s.

Dr. Who and the Daleks is very efficient with its story telling, another thing that I never really noticed the last time I watched it.

Having somewhat recently watched The Daleks, the TV story upon which the movie is based it seems almost rushed. The TV story is 7 episode long with each running around about 25 minutes giving the story 175 minutes to run.

Dr. Who and the Daleks has a running time of 79 minutes.

Dr. Who and the Daleks is not a continuation of the TV series, instead it’s its own stand alone series, a different universe to the TV series of Doctor Who.

In what seems to be less than 5 minutes all the main characters are presented; Dr Who played by Peter Cushing the scientist who’s a bit childish (and yes his name is “Dr Who”), his granddaughter Barbara who’s probably early to mid-20s, his other graddaughter Susan (sometimes called “Susie) and Ian. Susan and Barbara are established as being quite smart with Dr Who being a bit childish through them each reading science books and Dr Who reading an Eagle comic, commenting to himself “most exciting”.

Screenshot: Dr. Who and the Daleks (used under fair use)

Only Susan really gets to show off her intelligence that’s introduced in the opening moments of the movie, Barbara, who is shown to be pretty tough (more so than Ian) isn’t shown to be quite as smart as Susan or Dr Who.

The wallpaper has owls on it. That was the other thing I noticed when watching it up on the big screen. The Whos (I guess that’s their name) have owl wallpaper.

Why Dr Who has built a time machine within a Police Box isn’t really explained. It seems to be the classic reason of “why not?”.

Nevertheless there’s the establishment of its larger within than without, some good WTF expressions from Ian played by Roy Castle.

The standout performance across both movies and individually in each is Roberta Tovey in the role of Susan.

She has to do a lot of the technical dialogue, Peter Cushing does some of the explanations of Tardis (it’s not in either film “the TARDIS” as it is in the TV series. Whenever it’s mentions it’s “we need to get back to Tardis”.) Given how much younger she is than Carole Ann Ford was in the role it’s fairly commendable what she does. She’s got a lot of dialogue with most of the major players in the first film; the Daleks, the Thals and the main cast and is convincing in it.

Screenshot: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (used under fair use)

In the second film Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D . Tovey’s Susan is in someways more mature than Ford’s Susan Foreman role in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Mostly down to her age. There’s one scene in the TV story when Susan meets the rebels of London and Dortmun asks Foreman “and what do you do?” and she replies “I eat” and then giggles. Which would have been fine dialogue for Tovey’s Susan, but not for Ford’s Susan who 6 episodes later gets partnered up and left behind by the Doctor in a post-invasion-apocalyptic London.

Tovey’s Susan in Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. is actually quite mature given what happens to her and what she faces.

Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. wasn’t as much a revelation as the first film was to me.

It still has some humour, though it’s more obvious humour than the first.

It’s also a much darker story, set on a post-invasion Earth with the Daleks ruling it. Although not as grim as the TV version of the story The Dalek Invasion of Earth makes it out to be, it’s still several steps darker than the first film.

Screenshot: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (used under fair use)

The one thing that I noticed was the music, how much more there was of it in this film. There was music and sound effects in Dr. Who and the Daleks, in that film it was present, though not obvious. In Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. it was present and a member of the narrative; there was an obviousness to its presence in the film. It signalled scenes more so than the previous film did.

There were a few other notable things between the movies I noticed. The plunger control for Tardis, which Ian comedy falls onto in the first film is also present in the second. Not something I realised, mostly because I don’t think I’ve ever watched these films back to back.

The journey in Tardis is momentary in the first film, in keeping with the pace of that film it happens almost, though not quite instantly. In the second there is a sense of movement and travel in Tardis as they journey through time, that camera at an angle shifts from side to side as though on a boat.

At the end of Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. there is also a neat illustration of time travel, while of course the whole film presents time travel, but at the start and its end it shows one outcome – the bank robbery successful and with Tom Campbell being hit over the head seeking help in a Police Box – Tardis. In the second outcome at the end Dr Who puts him back a few minutes earlier before the robbery takes place and Campbell is able to knock out the getaway driver.

Campbell does not encounter himself, despite going back ‘before’ he encountered Tardis the first time. So it’s a little vague on some of the intricacies of time travel, but does neatly illustrate what Tardis can do.