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The Invention of Lying… our Apple TV first

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The Invention of LyingWe got an Apple TV last week. It’s an amazing little device that fits in the palm of your hand and sits next to the TV as classy looking as any AV component.

It has a variety of functions (and more when I can get the XBMC add-on running for it), but the core stuff is Apple-related — running media off your computer and running media from online. Works great with iPods/Pads as well, which is handy in our house now. Already we’re watching YouTube stuff on the big screen, streaming downloaded iTunes music and movies on TV, and now we’ve hired our first movie.

Ricky Gervais’ The Invention of Lying is a funny and clever comedy with a lot to say about society, some fun and odd surprises, and an extraordinary cast. The leads are fun, and Gervais is his smirky best — though with far more sweetness than I’d ever expect from him, but the cameos and small roles are just amazing! A not even complete list had us spotting Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Tina Fey, Louis CK, John Hodgman, Christopher Guest and Jeffery Tambor popping up in various places. And some of them were laugh out loud funny in many ways.

Technically, the viewing experience was outstanding. I had to fix a few account things at first, but once done the movie was ready to start watching in moments, and completed without a hitch. I’ve never trusted online media streaming in the past, but whatever Apple are doing with this device they have perfected the process. I haven’t even plugged in the ethernet for the thing — wireless works perfectly already, which I really did not expect to be the case. Streaming just isn’t supposed to work this well over wireless, but Apple makes it so (of course!)

The movie does go to a few odd places (I didn’t expect it to be a treatise on the folly of religion, for instance), but that’s really only a side issue. They create a slyly absurdist world and then take it to the logical conclusion.

So, top marks to Apple TV and pretty good marks to The Invention of Lying. The first of many movies to catch up with now.

Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities… what a disappointment

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Underbelly dvdAfter my much hit “Underbelly character guide”, I kept thinking I needed to write something about the new Underbelly series, and I kept thinking that I really needed to write something about the series. But since it finished last night, I’ve realised the reason I really wasn’t compelled to write much. It just wasn’t that good. Not good at all!

It suffered from a lot of problems. While I think it was generally well-acted and well made, there were a lot of poor choices in the writing and dramatic structure, and I really think the whole historical period they selected just wasn’t dramatic enough — or to be precise, not dramatic in the same way or to the same degree as the first series. They were then forced to fictionalise a lot of it (and I mean very large parts of it, not just smaller elements like the first series likely would have), which is a bad thing, especially if you’ve read anything about the real history like I have (for instance, did you know the last episode zipped through about five years of history… you certainly wouldn’t have known it by watching it).

Then to top it all off, it the second half of the series ended up being set in the same period as one of the best dramas ever made in Australia, Blue Murder. Buy it and watch it if you haven’t — that’s the definitive telling of NSW crime in the early ’80s. And to escape that legacy, Underbelly 2 ended up being full of holes, no Mick Drury shooting (likely Chris Flannery’s most notorious crime), no sign of Roger Rogerson (well, I do think that Samuel Johnson was playing a lamely fictionalised version of him — Jack Smith anyone?? — but that just made it worse) and no sign of Neddy Smith (unless he was an extra on the boat when Brian Alexander got thrown off).

I don’t know how they thought a telling of crime in NSW in the early ’80s could be effective while missing some of the most key events and people. Even then, I think many of the dramatic choices and techniques were poor, such as the massive overuse of narration that seemed to think it was necessary to over-explain everything that happened. And the casting choices were often quite poor… they made a deliberate attempt to skew young with nearly everyone, which made it seem like teen gangsters at some points (Chris Flannery was 36 when he died, I doubt the actor playing him was older than 26.)

underbelly

This is all very well and good I suppose, but I guess the wider audience may have enjoyed it anyway, not knowing a lot about the history and just watching an exciting yarn. But I don’t think it was even that exciting really. There was no real dramatic centre to it — too many disparate stories told haphazardly. The first series worked because it was about a specific group of people over a specific amount of time. It was a gang war between two groups of characters … a clear dramatic focus that made it work, with plenty of personal conflict. And it was largely accurate, with the fictionalising coming mostly in individual scenes, not from large chunks of the story.

This time, the character focus wasn’t even there. I don’t think Terry Clark was anywhere nearly as interesting as they wanted us to think, and his parade of girlfriends just came off as silly girls (not one of them had the character of Roberta Williams, that’s for sure!) Flannery was a caricature (see Gary Sweet in Blue Murder for the better version), and earlier Melbourne stories barely had any time to be noticed, and certainly no focus (why even include those stories? That’s the haphazard nature of the drama right there). Robert Trimbole was probably the most interesting character in the whole thing, but even his story petered out.

There are so many reasons why this new series was disappointing, especially compared to the right choices made in the first series. But it rated through the roof anyway, and we know there will be an Underbelly 3. And I can already tell them what they should cover, especially if they want to avoid the mistakes of series 2. Melbourne, between 1986 and 1989 — a crazy time where the police had declared open season on crims, starting after the Russell Street Bombing in 1986 (that’s your opening dramatic incident right there). After this, police went a bit nuts and started shooting criminals at every opportunity, while bank robbers operated constantly anyway. Plenty of bank robbery action, and plenty of shootouts. Bring back the Victorian police from season 2, drop them in the new story. Biggest incident is after the shooting of Russell Jensen in dubious circumstances in 1988, two young cops were murdered days later as revenge. The hunt for the perpetrators, the gangland infighting, the police investigation.

You’ve got it all there — a shorter span of time, several big dramatic incidents, major characters, one major dramatic drive for the whole series, significant and known history that you don’t have to fake, and a specific way to end it as well. Plus links to both Underbelly series 2 and 1 (one of the crims aquitted of murder of the two cops was a player in Underbelly 1).

Channel Nine, I await your next move, if you are to improve on this year’s attempt.

Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities — 5 out of 10.

Review: The Hold Steady Live… So Much Joy

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The Hold Steady, Metro Theatre Sydney, February 4, 2009.

I’d been waiting for this concert for years really, and waiting for the exact day for months now. And it delivered in every conceivable way. The Hold Steady are the greatest band on earth right now (for me, of course), with such an amazing live sound, such a connection with the audience, and just so much joy to be there. Craig Finn sings and moves like a man possessed, like a guy playing the great second chance of rock n roll. As he says himself, he plays and sings with so much  joy and fun because he knows how priveliged he is, and how much fortune he has to be in the position he’s in. And the audience responds in kind — all kinds of people too — young, old, new fans, jaded old rock junkies. There’s something for everyone that worships at the altar of rock at a Hold Steady show — it is like a religious experience.

To set the scene for the night, I’d actually been sick for several days previously, but my attendance was never in doubt. I had decided to avoid alcohol and keep to my medications to aid recovery, but I didn’t want anything to hamper or damage my enjoyment of the show. Oddly enough, I don’t really closely know anyone else into the band, but as I soon discovered, that really didn’t matter. The Hold Steady are a group that brings people together, and I would meet several people that fell into the same situation and had taken themselves there anyway, content to meet who they met over the night. Taking my lead from the Unified Scene messageboard run by the band though, I did have a few people to meet before the show began, which was great. To Christian, Ren and others that I met over the course of the night, thanks for helping to make it memorable. I met briefly all kinds of other folks on the night too — great rock n roll stories like the father and daughter down from Brisbane just for the show, different generations brought together by their love of the band… “And the kids at the shows, will have kids of their own, their sing along songs will be our scriptures…” — just bringing Craig’s lyrics to life!

Local band The Vasco Era were the support band for the night, and while I’d heard of them, I wasn’t very familiar with them, but they were quite good. A great big sound from just a three piece, they played their hearts out while still knowing who we wanted to see, and they did well. The crowd increased in volume at the Metro Theatre, but never felt packed or squeezed, which I liked. I had managed to situate myself in the very front of the room, just a couple of people from the front, which was a brilliant position. Right in front of me was Franz Nicolay’s keyboard setup, so I knew I’d have some good views.

Cheers bring the house down as the band hits the stage. Craig is a little guy, but his enthusiasm and smile is immediately infectious. He has this brilliant technic of bringing the whole crowd in by changing his view and focusing on different individual audience members constantly, by doing different mimes of lyrics between lines and by bouncing around the stage in every way you could imagine. Galen has the classic bass players’ swagger, but likes to get up front as well. Tad is cool and concentrating with his lead guitar — he’s a great player with his all-Gibson gear, his stare reminded me of The Edge but I did see him crack a smile at least once! Bobby slams away on the drums with an intensity, but unlike most drummers he didn’t seem to crack a sweat. And Franz is possibly the most larger-than-life member of the band, with his snappy beige suit and Daliesque moustache front and left of the stage, slamming out the keyboard and piano riffs like the master he is.

They launched into Positive Jam first as the classic Hold Steady opener, and the first thing you notice about the crowd response is that nearly everyone knows every lyric to every song. The  band’s fans just worship the lyrics, and it’s a key part of the bands sound and support. I have to admit that I thought the mix was a little wrong at first, with the keyboard and Craig’s vocals drowned out in the whole band sound, but either I got used to it or the mix improved as the show went on, because it ceased to be a problem at some point. For me, part of the fun was in knowing every song within seconds, feeling the guitar, keyboard and lyrics wash over me, but often taking a minute to think, “yeah, this is ‘song x’”, despite the fact I already knew the song in every way but title.

From a few scattered tracks off the first album, through Separation Sunday, Boys and Girls in America, and the new album Stay Positive, the band put in a lengthy and memorable set. Highlights abounded, including Tad’s Gibson doubleneck on “Lord I’m Discouraged”, and the energetic sing-along of Stay Positive, Ask Her For Adderall and Chips Ahoy!. I found a set list on the fan forum after the show, and this is what they played on my night:

Positive Jam
Sequestered In Memphis
Constructive Summer
Cattle & The Creeping Things
You Can Make Him Like You
Yeah Sapphire
One For The Cutters
Don’t Let Me Explode
Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night
Massive Nights
Party Pit
Cheyenne Sunrise
Lord, I’m Discouraged
Stuck Between Stations
Chips Ahoy!
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Stay Positive
Slapped Actress

First Night
Ask Her For Adderall
How A Resurrection Really Feels
Killer Parties

And the last thing I noticed was just how pleased and joyous Craig was. He performs like a man possessed anyway, and you could just see how much he enjoyed the adoration he receives from the audience. Not in an egotistical way, but an extremely  humbling way — a guy, who, let’s face it, does not have typical rock star looks, but writes songs like a master and really reaches his audience. He’s in his late 30s, spent the “typical rock star period” in his 20s not really getting anywhere with his band, but is now experiencing the real success that any musician looks for (but in a more grassroots honest way than “typical music fame” these days). As he said he said on the radio a couple of days later, he’s playing for all the desk jockeys that love rock n roll, whether they make it or not.

The Hold Steady are the best band in the world, as far as I’m concerned. And when you sit at the front of their show, with that band, and their fans, you’ll think the same thing too. It’s truly a case of the band and the fans moving together as one. As Craig said, after I’d been in another spontaneous group hug in the crowd, “You and those guys and you and you and you and you and you and me and everybody, we’re The Hold Steady”. The band truly acknowledge the fans, and the fans are there for the band. And that’s how it should be.

Review: Z-Trip in the house

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First concert for the year, and wildly enough, the first of at least two or three scheduled. Z-Trip is one of the world’s top hip-hop (among other things) DJs, and the Sydney Festival Becks Bar at Hyde Park Baracks is an intimate and quality venue to see such a top quality act. We sat about mid-range in the viewing area, but our position was still aces.

The only thing you can say about Z-Trip is that he plays everything and anything. He’s a friendly and engaging performer who speaks to his audience and clearly has as much fun as they are. He travels through all the genres, with lots of hip-hop and a litle house/electronic, but then also tonnes of other stuff, from Michael Jackson to Men at Work. Fun listening all the way, and if you’re keen it’s great to dance to as well.

To start the night, he had something special though. Clearly a big Barack Obama supporter, Z-Trip started the night with a special mix, putting Obama’s day-old inauguration speech audio in with some Daft Punk cuts to create a special “Yes We Can” remix. After years of seeing artists that couldn’t disguise their loathing for Bush (and were happy to share that with their foreign audiences), it was great to see the start of American musicians now happy with their country and their president again. No guarantee that will last of course, but we all know it will never get as intense as it did under Bush.

The only criticism of the night had nothing to do with Z-Trip — late in the show the crazies came out, with several people seriously cutting their feet from I presume broken glass — too much blood there — and a few drugged out nutters being pulled out of the venue. Then, typically for a week night, the show finished at 12.15am but I couldn’t get home until nearly 3am — we really need later trains on all nights, at least during the Sydney Festival.

But that was nothing to do with the show. Z-Trip is an exciting and entertaining DJ that plays my kind of music and does it with enjoyment and fun at the top of the agenda.

Review: Gran Torino

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I’ve been a bit lax with these in the last few weeks, just coasting on link-blogging, which isn’t terrible, but of course, there should be more.

Saw a preview of Gran Torino not too long ago. In what might just be Clint Eastwood’s acting role (although I fully see him working to 100 now), he plays an ageing Korean War veteran and ex-auto assembly worker Walt Kowalski — pretty much all the forgotten people of America rolled into one. His family have largely abandoned him (for many good reasons though), and his neighbourhood is now mostly Hmong immigrants. He refuses any interaction with them, crouched in his racism, anger and bigotry, but a series of events that starts with his wife’s death start to change all that.

Gran Torino, broadly speaking, is really a western — like so many of Clint’s classic roles. It’s a cross between A Fistfull of Dollars and Dirty Harry, decades later, with Clint gradually getting to know his neighbours, and then defending them from a street gang of scumbags who want to recruit his young neighbour. When the young Hmong kid next door Thao (Bee Vang) is baited into attempting to steal Walt’s classic Gran Torino car as a gang initiation, Walt stops him, but then unwillingly allows him to pay off a debt by working for him. Thao is a good kid, but quiet, shy and weak-willed, being bullied by everyone from his family to the gang. Walt gets to know the kid better than his own family, and not only teaches him how to work, but how to defend and stand up for himself. But then the final confronatation with the gang changes everything for them.

The story is both well done but also predictable at times. It certainly doesn’t make it bad, because it gives it the classic western structure of growth, redemption and selfless service, where the “stranger” helps the townsfolk he doesn’t even like to begin with. Clint is excellent in a role you couldn’t imagine anyone else playing, and the largely inexperienced Hmong actors also work well, though the two young leads seem somewhat stilted in their delivery at first, though they get better as the story progresses. The drama can be dark and grim at times, with death, suffering and the mental horrors of war high on the agenda, but there’s also some very funny moments as well (look out for the scene where Walt takes Thao to his barber shop).

The ending is again somewhat predictable, but still poetic and fitting for the story. Gran Torino is a crowd-pleasing story that is immensely satisfying even with some faults, and is certainly recommended for god solid cinema viewing.

Bolt: Not every animation is by Pixar

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“Bolt” was quite a fun movie. I went and saw it with Will this afternoon, and it was a fun kids movie. But evidenced by the above title, of course every kids movie can’t be by Pixar, or at Pixar quality level. That said, this one did benefit by having John Lasseter as executive producer, and there was at least one Pixar touch evident (the closing credits animation).

Bolt is a regular dog that a TV show has convinced is a superhero, to get some kind of odd method acting out of him in their increasingly complicated action plot lines. In this, the movie starts off like “The Truman Show with a dog instead of a person”, which is a clever conceit, then goes into a road movie adventure as he tries to get himself back to Los Angeles to his “person”, his owner Penny. You have the requisite sidekicks, this time a streetsmart stray cat named Mittens and a fat TV-addicted gopher named Rhino. There’s a lot of action — some of it in the end a little too much for my four-year-old son (who probably didn’t quite get the main “fake TV show in the movie” key element that made most of the violence fake), and some cute one-liners, especially from Mittens. Some good character moments again, and an exciting, but understandably obvious, ending.

The characters are fun and well voiced, with John Travolta as Bolt, Miley Cyrus and Penny, and best of all being the less well known Susie Essman and Mittens and Mark Walton and Rhino, both funny and perfect in their roles.

Bolt doesn’t do anything really amazing, but it is an entertaining and fun kids movie with a lot to recommend for itself. Not all animated movies can be Pixar, but I think you can see Pixar’s influence rubbing off on the rest of Disney.

TV: Leverage … familiar and new heist fun

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Caught the first episode of the new TNT series Leverage this week. Have to admit that I’m predisposed to liking it already, as I’m a fan of series co-creator John Rogers, and have followed his blog for several years now. So I’ve been following the making of Leverage for sometime, and been waiting for its premiere.

And it’s pretty good, which I expected. It’s in the same category as other cable series such as The Closer and Burn Notice — they might not be The Sopranos or The Shield, but they’re damn good, damn well-made and damn entertaining dramas, often with some humour.

Leverage is essentially a heist series, about a group of thiefs and con-artists led by an honest ex-insurance investigator, Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton). After being baited into a job that goes bad, they set about conning the executive who tried to get them. It’s both familiar in its approach, but original in its depiction of this high tech world.

After Ford is recruited, he meets his team, series regulars Hardison (Aldis Hodge), Eliot (Christian Kane), parker (Beth Riesgraf) and later Sophie (Gina Bellman). While elements of this will seem familiar (a couple of older series, plus the obvious Ocean’s 11 connection), the dialogue entertains and the characters are drawn with vivid immediacy. All the thieves are kind of crazy, but that’s the point.

There’s all kinds of fun touches, from the geek references (read Rogers’ blog long enough and you know where they’re coming from) to the high tech gadgets and trickery (another Rogers favourite, though no doubt co-writer Chris Downey plays his part). All the actors are good in their roles, and the first story is entertaining while have some good twists.

The scenario of taking down corporate wrong-doers seems familiar, yet I can’t really place any other major examples of it. TV is full of crime drama, but mostly it’s either the mundane reality of murder, drugs and theft, or the extremely stylised world of evil genius serial killers. Leverage is somewhere in-between — and in an age of half the planet being screwed over by corporate malfeasance, it seems particularly timely to have a show about a gang determined to take down this category of usually very hard to catch criminal.

As said earlier, it’s a familiar genre and the show has familiar touches, but it’s well done (never underestimate how hard it is to do pop entertainment very) and very entertaining to watch. Will definitely be following this series.

The end of The Shield

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Just watched the last episode of The Shield… spoilers follow:

Damn… pretty hardcore, yet real. A lot of big moments, but it stayed in the right realm of reality for the show. Vic  sort of does get away with it, and yet his life is destroyed. His family hates him and is gone, his team is gone, dead or betrayed, and he’s trapped in a new job that is virtually a jail.

And in a lot of ways he’s ended up like this because of his complete lack of morality. He still can’t see what he’s done as wrong, and he still can’t change. Shane was a screw-up and gutless, but at the same time, his actions at the end, while truly awful, were the actions of a man with a really guilty conscience. Someone who, if nothing else, at least knew how wrong his actions were.

But damn, that final act of his was the sickest and saddest thing in the whole episode. There’s really no sympathy for someone who kills their whole family like that, no matter the situation. Shane was gutless, but he knew he was guilty.

And damn, didn’t they all work to give Vic a taste of guilt. Ronny got it in the end, taken down because of his own blind loyalty. That’s what he got for trusting Vic for all those years. For a while it looked as if Ronny might be the one to get away, but he went in even further with Vic at the end, and paid for it.

As for the rest of the characters, life goes on for them, for the most part. Claudette is sick and getting sicker, but she’s always been tthe moral centre of the show, and she showed that. When she couldn’t get Vic in any other way, she at least made sure the scorn of the rest of the Barn, and the shock of Ronnie’s arrest was rubbed in. Dutch was briefly troubled, but even he got his guy — the teen serial killer — with some satisfaction. Dutch is a little awkward, but he was always the good cop, like Claudette.

As a finale, it matches up pretty well. It ended things  where it needed to, and kept things broad and open in some places. Vic had the talent to survive, and the luck, so it made sense the way it went down. But he’d burned too many bridges to make it all go his way. It’s deliberately Shakespearean in the way it went, and the horrors of Shane’s end are offset by Vic’s coldness. Shawn Ryan, as writer for this last episode handled it pretty well, with some deliberate fireworks but also some quiet reflection. Clark Johnson directed with the style he established in the pilot, and also contributed a cameo that had me recalling his time on Homicide in the 90s, as the cop that takes Corinne and the family to their new lives.

I’ve been reading a lot this week how The Shield has been criminally underrated and ignored for years now, and if that’s true, it’s a real shame. The Shield has been consistently one of the best dramas, and certainly the best crime drama, on TV for years. Easily the best cop show this decade (matching with Homicide:LOTS in the ’90s) and one of the best dramas fullstop.

A worthy ending to the series, and one to savour.

Gone Baby Gone

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Finally got to check this out on DVD tonight… really solid stuff. I read the novel it was based on earlier this year, so I actually knew all the story already, but it was interesting to see how first time director Ben Affleck handled the story.

Pac ing and style wise it was stark and minimalist, but it’s such a dark and depressing story I think that was a good call. It’s a perfectly awful conundrum that Casey Affleck’s Patrick Kenzie is put in, and he thinks he’s made the right decision, and technically he has to have, but really, you can’t help but realise that he’s wrong as well. BUt they do well to establish Kenzie as a guy of strict morals, and you can see how he ended up doing what he did.

A good allround cast, with veterans like Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman opposite Affleck jr. and Michelle Monaghan, who’s a gorgeous and talented actress, but here kept her look as plain as possible. Again, made sense here. And Amy Ryan was Oscar worthy as the missing girl’s mother — she was an awful mother, yet you could see how she did want to try. She wasn’t deliberately awful, it’s simply how she behaved. Much of the minor cast were Boston locals — this movie oozes that authentic city feel, I think far more so than something like The Departed.

Truly, it wasn’t the most cheerful movie in the world, and there wasn’t much of a happy ending for an yone (except Ben Affleck I think, who has a positive notch in his resume for the first time in a few years), but definitely worth watching.