Stephen Rowley

377 posts

Mid-Apocalyptic

Film Film Reviews

Mad Max (George Miller, 1979)

Mad Max stands alone, the first and only film of a genre that surely could be explored and exploited, with interesting results, by action-oriented filmmakers. It is extremely probable, I believe, that if Australian filmmakers began churning out similar violent, futuristic car-motorcycle films full of spectacular chases and crashes – films in which the stuntmen are the stars – it could be the start of an international craze equal to that caused by Italian westerns and Chinese kung fu movies a few years back.

Danny Peary, Cult Movies, 1981

Looking back, the surprise is how much the Australian film industry didn’t follow the example of Mad Max. George Miller’s cult classic is often cited as one of the most profitable films ever made (in terms of proportionate return on investment), yet the flood of road-based action movies Peary half-expected never arrived, and Mad Max and its sequels remain aberrations in the history of the Australian cinema. For whatever reason – I suspect the influence of government funding bodies – the imitators never followed, and Miller was left to forge his own little mini-genre. It is probably just as well: for all the spaghetti westerns that were made, there was only one Sergio Leone, and I doubt an industry of Mad Max clones would have thrown up anybody nearly as talented as Miller.

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Life Reproduced in Drawings: Realism in Animation

Film

This essay was originally published in a somewhat different form in Animation Journal,Volume 13, 2005.

The relative scarcity of serious theoretical writing on animation in the early years of establishing film studies as a discipline has fundamentally influenced the nature of animation theory. In this essay I wish to highlight one such oversight: the dearth of writing on realism in animation.1 By this, I mean theory that looks at the way in which the animated depiction of reality resembles the actual physical world, and the implications that the similarities and differences between the representation of the cartoon and the actual experience of life in the real world have for the way in which cartoons are understood. This is an extremely wide area of study, and I cannot attempt to outline a realist theory of animation here. Rather, I want to briefly outline some contrasts between classical notions of film realism (developed with reference to live-action cinema), and the ways in which writers on animation have discussed the subject. Much writing on animation is structured around certain assumptions and arguments about animation’s relation to the real. With a few exceptions, however, these arguments tend to be made implicitly. I wish to make explicit some of the approaches to realism that occur in writing on animation, and to extend the existing work that has explicitly acknowledged the realism question. A single unifying theory of animated realism is, I believe, no more achievable or helpful than attempts to outline a realist theory of live-action cinema. However, the study of live-action cinema was given a robustness by the variety of early theorists who posed alternative competing theories about cinema’s relation to the real. I want to outline a vocabulary, and make some preliminary comments, to allow similar approaches to animation.

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Why the Louvre was Wasted on Me

Film Miscellany

(An excerpt from my 2006 travel blog).

What I discovered at the Louvre is that basically I’m a philistine. You may have already worked this out, but exposing myself to the world’s finest art collection really rammed it home. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it: it’s all good stuff. But I just can’t get as excited about great art and sculpture as I know I should.

I mean, with the Mona Lisa, I agree that Leonardo managed a great enigmatic smile on that thing. An exceptionally good enigmatic smile even. But given the Mona Lisa is apparently valued for insurance purposes in the order of $650 million dollars – well, it’s not that good a smile.

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The Endearing Charms of Friz Freleng

Film

My contribution to the Friz Freleng blog-a-thon organised by Brian of Hell on Frisco Bay.

Let’s deal with the hard part up front and get it of the way. Friz Freleng will always suffer by comparison with his more prodigiously gifted colleagues: Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones. I’m not going to shy away from the fact that he wasn’t as good as those three illustrious directors. But that’s okay. Avery, Clampett and Jones are pretty far clear of the pack when it comes to the great Hollywood cartoon directors. Noting that Freleng wasn’t their equal doesn’t get you anywhere: it’s just what happens when you make comparisons to the incomparable. Freleng deserves to be acknowledged for what he did, not downplayed because of the exceptional company he kept.


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MIFF Week Two

Film

My second week at the Melbourne International Film Festival saw far fewer films. I was never planning too see as many in the second week, but a couple I had planned to see fell by the wayside. Haivng not been that impressed by The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, I couldn’t get that interested in Zizek, a film about Lacanian theorist Slavoj Zizek (and besides, that was the night Essendon beat the Lions). However, I did regret that circumstances meant I missed The Host, a Korean creature feature that I had been looking forward to greatly. So in the end, week two amounted to a measly two films.

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MIFF Week One

Film

We’re about halfway through the Melbourne International Film Festival now, and my own experience has been only average. This isn’t a reflection on the festival: it’s just the way the cards have fallen in the vast lucky dip that happens when you have to choose from a range of movies before the usual pre-release buzz. (It’s a little frightening to realise how much you rely on distributors and the media to direct your viewing).

My experience so far has been of several middling films, one good one, and one really wretched one. Which is probably a strike-rate reflecting the overall quality of any given sample of movies. But I do hope the second week throws me up something really excellent. But here’s what I’ve seen so far.

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Star Trek: Rebooted

Film

Ain’t It Cool brought my attention to this post by writer Bryce Zabel about the treatment he wrote with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to “re-boot” Star Trek. You should read the treatment yourself, if you’re interested, but basically it involved starting from scratch, and doing a new television series about the original characters (Kirk, Spock, et al) on their five year voyage. Effectively, it’s giving Star Trek the Batman Begins treatment, which seems all the rage these days (what with Superman Returns and Casino Royale both on the way).

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Now for Apocalypse Now Redux, Redux

Film

Ain’t It Cool have a very cool video showing the process used to create a three-dimensional Marlon Brando for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, using the old footage from Richard Donner’s 1978 movie. While you have to suspect there would have been simpler ways to achieve much the same effect, it’s still pretty nifty.

Brando was used in the original Superman as a sort-of ready made icon of gravitas and respectability (in a film that was, frankly, not that good, and therefore needed help in that regard). Singer obviously wants to harness that same aura.

Less than Excellent

Film Film Reviews

Cars (John Lasseter, 2006)

The latest Pixar film, Cars, is an enjoyable animated film that should leave audiences pretty happy. I want to say this up front, because this is going to sound like a negative review. For while Cars is a good film, it is also the first Pixar film that falls short of excellence. It is therefore much more interesting to talk about what doesn’t work in Cars: by now, we all know what’s good about Pixar’s films, but this is our first look at a less-than-excellent one.

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