Birdemic: Shock and Terror - A Movie Review

Hahahahaha! Wow, what did I just watch? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once those ending credits start rolling in Birdemic: Shock and Terror, this is what you will be thinking. This is also assuming that you aren't driven completely insane by the experience of seeing it through to the end. So because I've managed to come out the other side of this experience with my mental faculties in tact (arguably) I've decided that I shall dedicate a blog post to reviewing it. Let the madness begin!

So Birdemic is an independent film by James Nguyen and is billed as a romantic horror film, which is rather ambitious description. The Fly was a romantic horror film and Birdemic doesn't even hint at that level of excellence. It would be like calling Playschool an opera or Jerry Springer a wildlife documentary. A more apt genre for Birdemic would be ironic cult comedy. But really it almost defies genre. The plot is straightforward enough. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, birds start attacking people in flocks and suicide bombing petrol stations, boy and girl decide to drive aimlessly until the problem goes away. Along the way they rescue some children and meet a cast of colourful characters, who each shares their experiences and explanations regarding this killer bird outbreak. If it sounds dumb and simple that's because it is. It's an extremely easy movie to follow because it focuses entirely on the present tense. The background of the characters is weak, the movie completely lacks direction and motivation and any conflicts that come about along the way are easily resolved and quickly forgotten. What's more the birds never actually feel like a threat. They can't seem to get into buildings and are easily fended off with guns and even coat-hangers. In fact in one of my favorite scenes one of the bird attempts to dive in through the windscreen and just crumples up uselessly against it on impact.

From a technical standpoint the movie fails perhaps even harder. All the cutaway shots are extremely jarring so that during conversations characters standing a foot away from each other seem to be located in different dimensions. This isn't helped at all by the acting, which is astonishingly bad. I honestly don't even understand how acting could be that bad. It's unfathomable. These people belong in a museum or a research facility. Everything is just so robotic and awkward that it makes the acting in porn look Oscar worthy. Lots of the transition and establishing shots are needless and linger on pointlessly, much like me trying to dance with girls at clubs. This is more than I can say for the musical cues, which are on several occasions stopped abruptly as if the musician had been recorded in secret and had just discovered the tape recorder in the lamp shade. And the birds! Oh dear Esther do those birds look bad. Just some horrid tangled messes of brown and red imposed uncomfortably on top of the scenery like the fat kid at school who used to sit on you and fart.

So the plot is dumb, the script is bad, the characters are bland and the production is a nightmare. But you'll probably be surprised to learn at this point that I actually really enjoyed this movie. Sure it's terrible. But it's terrible in a well-meaning and hilarious way. It's not a cynical attempt to wring money from a popular franchise or cash in on a notorious celebrity. It's not promoting evil or spreading propaganda. And it's certainly never boring. I've laughed harder, more frequently and more genuinely at this movie than so many other movie that were actually intending to be comedy. And there's actually something quite gentle and adorably well-intentioned about this movie. Writter, director and producer James Nguyen has never had any training or experience and funded this project almost entirely. The film almost plays out like a love letter to the films that inspired it, namely The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock and An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. Throughout the film there are nods to the importance of renewable energy, hybrid cars and it even hints that the aggressive nature of the birds has something to do with climate change, with birds attacking primarily at gas stations and non-green forms of transport. I found all this to be rather sweet, if completely poorly handled. So despite the fact that is an abomination of film I'd still recommend watching it. Because it's hilarious, harmless, well-meaning and strangely fascinating.

Ranting in a Brand New Format

Just some updates on things that have happened. Firstly, sorry about the past few weeks with no updates. I've had weddings and graduations and all sorts of wild shit going on. Secondly, I've been meaning to post this for ages but here's a YouTube series I've started up and am occasionally playing around with. Here's the latest one.

Enjoy.

Or not.

RideBack: A Review

Over the years I've reviewed quite a bit of anime and as I have done so I have observed a lot of tropes and recurring trends. Why does every anime have to have an irritating kookie character? Why are there so many animes that just stop rather than conclude? Why didn't it tie up any of the loose ends? Why the ditsy blonde girls with giant wobbling breasts that bounce merrily in all directions? Why do anime series so often drag on for far too long? As the years have gone by I have grown to begrudgingly accept some of the crap that comes with anime because there are still anime series I will enjoy immensely in spite of it. But in recent years I've been seeing anime that actually manages to completely avoid these standards and shine brilliantly as examples of how anime should be done. These have included 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' and the superb '5 Centimeters Per Second' . I can now add 'RideBack' to this list.

At its heart RideBack is a story of regret, passion and personal growth. Set in the very near future, Rin Ogata grew up with one ultimate goal on her mind, to be a famed and talented ballet dancer just as her late mother was before her. The anime lays very strong and simple foundations at the beginning, from which the rest of the plot is built. A recent military conflict has placed complete global control in the hands of a military organisation called the GGP. Alongside this background knowledge we see the graceful Rin dancing in a lead role on-stage, before an accident injures her and robs her of that dream.

RideBack has plenty of beautiful and elegant animated sequences.

The story takes place soon afterwards, with Rin and her best friend moving away to university together. It is here that Rin stumbles upon the University's RideBack club. The RideBack is a sort of cross between a motorbike and a robot. If you can imagine piggybacking on a robot ice skater then you've pretty much got the idea of how it works. Anyway it turns out that Rin's ballet skills make her an exceptional RideBack driver and as it awakens sensations she once experienced dancing, she finds herself taking quite a shining to this new pastime. But this passion comes at a cost as events place Rin in the middle of a growing conflict between the shady, militant government and a terrorist, resistance group.

I don't think I've ever factored this into a review before, but RideBack is visually gorgeous at times. I mention it here because the animation does so much to assist the story. With all the dancing and the RideBacking, movement and elegance really plays an important part in the story and is often used to express the mood of Rin or the tone of the anime itself. For an animation, something completely artificially produced, it is an extraordinary feat to choreograph so many sequences capable of eliciting real emotional responses.

Something I didn't really notice until towards the last few episodes is just how strong the supporting cast is. You will find yourself caring about the well-being of even the minor characters. Additionally, every character has a purpose. There's no filler or comic relief characters in there obnoxiously hogging the screen-time and generally getting on my nerves. In fact the entire story arc itself is very much like that. Concise yet deep and beautiful. It actually reminded me a lot of the incredible game 'To The Moon' that I reviewed a few weeks back, albeit without the tears. The series runs at only twelve 25 minute episodes which is the perfect length for it. This is about half the length of a traditional anime series and I'd like to applaud Madhouse studio for not padding it out to meet this trend.

As a protagonist Rin is perfect. She is a very fine balance of interesting, sympathetic and human traits. She is vulnerable but possesses the strength to overcome her trials. She is beautiful and elegant without ever being sexualized. She's passionate but never overbearing or tedious. She's a strong female protagonist but is never specifically or obviously pitched as one. And all of this aside her personal journey is sympathetic and engaging. The way the narrative weaves together her memories of her mother teaching her important dance and life philosophies and her present day trials as an outlaw are incredibly well realized. All the while the audience is acutely aware that she is unknowingly a part of something much bigger than herself. This is the story of a pawn in a large-scale game of chess trying to make it to the other side of the board and become a queen.

What RideBack reminds us is that anime doesn't have to always pander to silly archetypes and conventions. It doesn't have to be all panties and mood swings. Anime is just another form of expression and this is the kind of anime series I could confidently recommend to someone who has either no interest in anime or is openly critical of it. Oh and make sure you check out '5 Centimeters Per Second', you won't believe something so good could happen in just one hour.

Rope Me Into Your Schemes

It was around midday of Tuesday last week, while my housemate was at uni and I was home alone, that I heard the knock at the door. A chirpy man from India or one of its neighboring countries stood before me adorned in the all-black uniform of EnergyAustralia and brandishing a tablet PC in his left hand. In passive, friendly and yet forceful manner he proceeded to grill me about my current electricity and gas providers. Before I knew it I had somehow been handed a phone and I was now talking with customer services and signing up for a new gas and electricity contract with EnergyAustralia (and yes they do spell it as one word with two capitol letter just like that). How the fuck had this happened? Looking back I think it was just me initially thinking the man was from my provider and was making a customer courtesy call to make sure I was getting the best deal from them or whatever. Then after realizing this wasn't the case a combination of my natural social submissiveness and this mans powerful salesmanship meant that this train was now moving way too fast for me to stop. Lucky for me this suited our household because what EnergyAustralia offered us was indeed a better deal that would ultimately save us a reasonable sum of money in the long term. So from my point of view I saw this outcome as a win-win situation. On the one hand I got a better deal. On the other hand I had learnt a valuable lesson about myself and vowed to correct this behavior now that I had been made aware of it.

I knew you were trouble when you walked in.

Skip forward a few days til Thursday. I was in the C.B.D. and was about to head home when I remembered several grocery items we were in need of at home. As I approached the entrance to the supermarket I was stopped by a pair of young ladies selling raffle tickets at a little bench set up just outside.
"Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?"
A raffle, I thought, how quaint. As I imagined all the attention I'd get on Facebook if I uploaded a series of photos of myself posing seductively with a wheelbarrow full of groceries I'd won in a raffle, I asked the lady the first of two key questions.
"What's the prize?"

Turns out there were a few prizes, a number of sizable cash prizes as well as a million dollar prize home! Fuck, forget Facebook likes, I thought, people will actually like me in real life with that. Impressed so far I asked the second key question.
"How much are the tickets?"
I might just go nuts here and buy like 50. I won't look insane because the money is being donated to a hospital and I could just as easily come across as charitable.
"It's $30 for 150 tickets."
My heart sank a little. Everyone is forced to buy in bulk. This means that to get the competitive edge I'd really have to do a number on my bank account. But nevertheless I went along with it and agreed that $30 this one time wouldn't be a stupid amount to spend for a good cause where the prize is also so impressive. The odds of winning would also be much better than with the lottery or pokie machines. So I proceeded to fill out the little form so that I could be contacted if I won something and properly billed for the tickets. Then about halfway through I noticed something.
"Umm...excuse me. It says here 'I understand that this is not a one-off ticket purchase' and 'I understand that this is an ongoing monthly financial commitment'?"
"Oh yeah" she said "there's a draw every month and this is just making sure you're always in it. You can call us anytime and change this. You can drop down to $5 a month later on if you like?"
It was then the penny dropped. I had been played expertly by this woman and not in a fun sexual way. I knew that I was in deep but if I was an assertive enough person I had been presented with a way out. I didn't have all the facts when I was signing up and we both knew it. It would be perfectly reasonable of me to say "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of that and I'm really not interested."
So I opened my mouth and said "how do I pay for this?"
"Credit card or direct debit."
"I'll do card then."

You lost. Thanks for playing.

So the past week has been one hell of a week for teaching me a personal truth to which I had been previously unaware; I am a massive sucker. That's not to say I'm gullible and believe everything I'm told, but that I don't posses the social and personal confidence to challenge the person trying to rope me in. Which in a way is somehow worse, because I'm acutely aware that I'm making a bad decision I'll regret while I'm still in the process of making it. My life is Peep Show and I'm Mark Corrigan. However, all is not lost. I still have an ace up my sleeve. This is something I actually discovered many years ago now after a friendly German exchange student managed to charm me into donating money to the heart foundation. I might find it really hard to stop the pretty lady or the polite foreigner from roping me into these schemes. But at the end of the day, after we've said our goodbyes and I've been thanked for being such a kind person (sucker) I can still quite confidently call up to organisation and cancel my membership over the phone. Because no matter how friendly, charming and coercive the people they send out for the face-to-face stuff you can be almost certain that they'll still have an unhelpful, moody twat manning the phone lines who you will happily and easily be able to say no to.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - A Movie Review

Last week I reviewed To The Moon, a beautifully underplayed and subtle game that moved me to tears and compelled me to recommend it to anyone I could make listen. This week I'm reviewing a movie that the internet has been banging on about for ages and that is desperately trying to touch and inspire everyone with all the subtlety of an brooding teenager writing suicide poetry in blood. Yes this week it's The Perks of Being a Wallflower that's wandered unknowingly into my dungeon and  I plan to show it just how little love I "feel it deserves". But before we dive in I just want to make it absolutely clear that I'm reviewing the movie and not the book. It should also be noted that I don't give a flying fuck about the book and all predictable attempts to convince me that the book is superior or that the movie "missed the point"  will be met with contempt and rejection. Or to put it in terms you might better understand "in this moment, I swear the amount I don't fucking care is infinite." Now on with the show.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a 'coming of age' movie by the producers of Juno, who are still as desperate as ever to get audiences everywhere to like their taste in music. We get it guys, you like Sonic Youth. Congratulations on being so alternative. It stars Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and oh my fucking god Emma Watson. Speaking as the only person on planet Earth who is largely indifferent to Emma Watson and has no strong desire to fuck, marry or be her best friend I must admit that she is, along with the other leads, good in her role. Although I did find it unashamedly fan-servicing when her character first appears on screen in this sudden, out-of-place close up as if the whole cast and crew are preparing the audience to squeal with Emma Watson-adoring glee. It's like the scene was shot for her entrance to get a standing ovation. I bet they fucking wanted that.

The plot follows a freshman at high school called Charlie who's only friend recently committed suicide and who has mental issues stemming from a big dark secret that you'll have to wait until the end of the movie to discover. Although quite frankly given how heavy handed the plot is at times I wouldn't be surprised if you managed to figure it out long before then. But anyway Charlie ends up in the company of two senior year students who befriend him and open him up to the world. Their names escape me but all you need to know is that one a playful, quirky gay man and the other is the gentle love interest who is trying to escape her past of sexual promiscuity and feelings of worthlessness. From the get go the movie is packed with personalized mix-tapes that express true feelings, the sharing of vinyls and books, heads being poked out of moving vehicles and drugs being taken to indicate that a character is being tipped over the edge. All the while the musical soundtrack butts in with all the producers favorite songs to cry or feel whimsical to.

Which brings me to one of my two main criticisms of this movie. It's never, ever even remotely subtle. For a movie that dishes out enough pretentious quotes to crash tumblr it certainly expresses no faith in its audiences ability to pick up on things. "Oh I didn't tell you this before but those two have a history of fighting over guys." "Oh by the way I lost my virginity at 11 to my dads work colleague and I've fucked a lot of people since then." "Oh I love you. Let's kiss and then ignore our feelings for the rest of the movie like idiots." Fucking chill out movie. And this brings me onto my other criticism which is that all the meaty issues within the movie are often only touched upon. Heaven forbid you take some time away from celebrating how cool it is to be a hipster and actually develop your key plot points and relationships. For example towards the end of the movie there's a scene Charlie shares with his English teacher that I realized I was supposed to care deeply about but just didn't because this apparently deep and respectful relationship was largely developed off-screen. I even know from the moment that fucking English teacher was introduced that he was going to be an inspirational friend and father figure and I still managed to be surprised when it actually happened. It's kinda funny how it's always the English teacher that ends up adopting this role isn't it? Nobody ever gets all "Dead Poets Society" for their woodwork teacher do they? But I guess in this plot it makes sense because Charlie wants to be a writer. Oh did I not mention that? Well that's because I fucking forgot. Want to take a guess why I forgot? Because it's barely ever mentioned.

What might surprise you deeply at this point is that I actually don't hate The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I kinda thought it was fine and probably would have gone a little easier on it if it wasn't so bloody impressed with itself. At it's core The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a good movie that deserved to be better but was let down by the mishandling of important plot points and the appeals it makes to the egos of its target audience. For a movie that says "You see things.You keep quiet about them. And you understand." it sure tries its hardest to make sure you understand things by shouting them at you.

Review: To The Moon

For anybody out there who has ever held a deep longing to see me in tears I have some frustrating news. I'm afraid that in the early hours past midnight you just missed a golden opportunity to peer in through my window and see the swollen man-tears that cascaded down the contours of my face, illuminated by the gentle blue glow of my computer monitor, as I played the hauntingly beautiful To The Moon.

If you take anything away from this review, or even this whole blog, it should be this. Go out and play To The Moon! I cannot emphasize the value of this experience enough. It's only $10 on Steam. If you can't buy it for whatever reason find a YouTube video of someone playing through it and watch the whole thing. It's only about 3-4 hours long and well worth every second you dedicate to it. Just do whatever it takes to experience this story. Your level of gaming experience is irrelevant. Your feelings about video games as a form of entertainment is irrelevant. This goes beyond such worthless boundaries. Fuck target audiences, the target audience is anyone capable of feeling.

So yeah I like this game. And now that I'm all done with my grand romantic gestures it's time to talk about why I recommend it so highly. I think it's pretty safe to say you'll discover extremely quickly whether or not you'll like To The Moon. The game opens with a delicately beautiful piano piece playing as the camera pans away from the scenery of a cliff-side lighthouse overlooking the ocean with a full, yellow moon hanging overhead; to a scene of two children playing the song in a large house just a short walk away. This tranquil moment is then suddenly ruined by a sudden smashing noise. The camera cuts away to introduce the player characters Dr. Rosaline and Dr. Watts, a bickering odd couple who work for an agency that is hired to help grant the wishes of dying people by making minor alterations to their memory via advanced simulation technology. Or some shit like that. Like an episode of Doctor Who the details only matter if you're ignoring the bigger, more important picture. What's interesting to note is that although you play the game and drive the plot as these characters they are by no means the main characters. It's an interesting and effective story telling device in a game to be essentially playing the role that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The real stars of the show are Johnny, the man who hired the agency to have his wish fulfilled of visiting the moon (although he can't explain why), and River, Johnny's recently deceased wife who's life is explored through Johnny's memories.

The soundtrack is also supreme and plays a vital role in the narrative

Actually it's worth mentioning at this point that much of the games story is told by traversing back through Johnny's memories of key moments in his life as the player characters try to figure out how best to alter Johnny's memories in order for him to die thinking he's lived out his dream. It sounds very complicated when explained like this but rest assured the game is gentle in taking players by the hand and guiding them along this journey. The game presents many intriguing mysteries quite early on in the plot. Many things are introduced that you know are eerily significant puzzle pieces and it is a pleasure to gradually watch them come together and be explained. Little throw away things from early in the game will take on a whole new level of significance by the games end, and it's these moments in particular that choked me up. The story is expertly told and none of the elements feel overdone or heavy handed. The dialogue moves from reflective, moving and mournful to genuinely charming and funny to strike this excellent balance in tone throughout the story. Nothing is ever jarring or sudden and writer/director Kan Gao should be applauded for taking the time to carefully develop his characters and narrative in ways that are natural, subtle and respectful. So much of this could have been easily mishandled, pushing the tone into melodrama territory as we so often see in video game narration. But by the standards of any media format this story is superbly told and well worth anybody's time.

In fact it's ironic that it will perhaps be video game players who may find the game most lacking. This is because the gameplay is almost none-existent to the point in which the game basically plays itself. A simple point and click interface is used for controlling your characters and navigating them around what is essentially one big, easy treasure hunt. There's probably a fairly strong argument that could be made that this barely qualifies as a game at all and is instead more of an interactive story. But honestly who gives a fuck what it is? From the outset I was so captivated and emotionally invested in the story I barely noticed the gameplay was so scant, and then when I did I didn't care. I'm actually inclined to applaud the gameplay for being so simple and allowing anyone capable of navigating a DVD menu the opportunity to fully engage with what To The Moon offers. I honestly love video games as a medium for both entertainment and expression but when something like this offers up 3-4 hours of genuine human moments then as long as the gameplay isn't broken or detractive I don't give a shit how I move the story along. I'd burn myself to move a story like this along.

So as I've by now made perfectly clear, To The Moon is a brilliant experience for anyone regardless of how you choose to specifically classify it. It's cheap, it's a relatively short investment and it's easy for anyone to experience to completion. If there exists any such creature parading under the guise of a human being who isn't even slightly moved by the experience offered here then I honestly pity them and would rather they were sent somewhere far away from me. Preferably the moon.

Why Can't I Read Anymore?

Fun fact: When you read the Holy Bible upside down it reveals conspiracy theories about The Beatles.

Many people who haven't known me long are often surprised to learn that before I was a chemistry nerd I was also an arts and literature nerd. Throughout high school I read a variety of books, I wrote song lyrics, short stories and poetry. I did quite a lot of drama and did 4 units of English for the HSC, which included the composition of a sizable major work. 

I think this surprises people because for whatever reason, especially at university level, people align themselves with the major faculties and tend to ignorantly lash out at the others. My biggest guess is that these people have commited to a career associated with this field and are determined to justify this choice by ruthlessly attacking and disregarding the specialties and fields that differ most from their own. I've personally been the victim of sneers from arts students of a university I don't even attend, who were quick to judge my character based on my "inferior university".  I'm personally guilty of cheekily winding up some of my closest arts friends, but I do so only in jest with no malice or ill will behind it. But all of that aside I was once very heavily aligned with the arts and humanities. I was once hoping to become a librarian and was enrolled briefly in a Bachelor of Communications. Looking back on this recently something has struck me about my more recent years and I find myself asking myself one simple question.

 

Now just to clear this point up right away, of course I can actually read. I posses the necessary mental faculties and skills to read books, even more challenging ones. But over that past few years or so I've found that reading a book takes a considerably longer amount of time. I'll often start a book enthusiastically like a puppy who knows it's time for walkies, but it's not uncommon for me to clean up a desk several months later to find a dusty copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a bookmark a third of the way through. I was fucking enjoying that book too. To this day I want to finish it and have every intention of picking it back up again, but why did I stop? Not only to I find even the most engaging books "putdownable" but I also manage to spend weeks on end wrapped up in enough other things to make me forget I was reading it.

In an attempt to explain this and shift the blame from myself I've come up with some explanations to my behaviour. Firstly and most simply understood, I blame the internet. Of course I've had access to the internet all the time but as soon as connections become fast and accessible enough for chumps like me to use social networking sites and stream television a non-trivial ammount of time has become dedicated to being online. Not only that, but it has meant that I am used to instant gratification. There's never a moment gone by where I feel like I'm completely "on top" of the vast amount of potentially, personally interesting media that I can readily access at any time I see fit. It used to be that we had to fit ourselves into the schedule of entertainment such as tv and when we were free if nothing was on we could easily turn to reading, because reading was one of the first sources of "instant gratification'. Before the internet nothing could really compete with it.

Maybe if more women wanted me to read I'd be more consistent?

The other problem is perhaps even less conquorable and that is this. I'm going to die. I don't know when and I don't know how it will come to happen but there's no escaping the knowledge that my time on this earth is finite. As a consequence of this I am accutely aware that I will not be able to enjoy all the media out there, or even all the entertainment that would likely appeal to me. My leisure time is as limited a resource as fossil fuels and the knowledge that each choice I make regarding how I spend my free time may mean I never ever get around to the other option makes it very appealing to avoid making the choices at all. And books fall short in this respect because they have the disadvantage of being long. Books are a long term investment in a way that a movie, a song, a TV show and even a video game manage not to be. A book is a large scented candle whilst other media are fireworks. One pleasantly burns away over many hours whilst the other is desperate to instantly stimulate.

But despite this knowledge and these hurdles I've been starting to rework my reading muscles and have managed to get through sizable books like Steve Tolt's A Fraction of the Whole. As I type I am 160 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo and have strength in my conviction to see it through to the end. With a small pile of books to follow it up with I'm quietly hopeful that I will manage to burn through many more candles before I'm snuffed.