Author: Michael W Jackson

Another poor little rich boy.

Blue Desert (2013) Deserto Azul 

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 34m, rated 7.4 (!) by 52 cinematizens.  

DNA: Brazil.

Genre: Boring.

Verdict: Nothing comes from nothing.  

Tagline: Is this all there is?

A movie about the purpose of life and the meaning of human existence, modestly declaimed the writer and the director.  

With that pretension stated, what follows is an indulgent account of the angst of an adolescent posturing this way and that. In case it was all too deep for the viewer some scenes are repeated two or three times, and there is a narrative to guide the dull wits like me.  

He is a poor little rich boy who seems to have no responsibilities or ambitions.  He meets or perhaps dreams of a man even more useless than he is, painting the Atacama Desert blue.

It takes place in the Jetsons’ Brasilia, and is gorgeously photographed, preferable to turn the sound down and the subtitles off and watch the moving pictures.  

Go girl! Go!

Malice in Wonderland (2009)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 27m, rated 5.8 by 3,400 cinematizens.

Genre: Fantasy; Species: Alice.

DNA: Geordie.

Verdict: It’s all about time.  

Tagline:  Go girl! 

Late at night the amnesiac Alice hitches a ride in Whitey’s (who is late, late) black London cab and nothing is quite the same again.  In a series of skits she and he meet contemporary updates of the Mad Hatter, Tweedlee and (very) -dum(b), Caterpillarman, Dormouse, The Cheshire Cat, The Walrus, and, of course, the Red Queen.  A few genders are bent along the way.

Alice moves things along by ingesting every illegal substance these creatures purvey in the struggle to regain her memory. She is the missing daughter of zillionaire Lewis Dodgson who offers a colossal reward for her return, and that lucre sets off even more scoundrels in pursuit to relieve Whitey of this fare.  

Fun follows. Lots of it. 

***

It makes no sense but it is a mile-a-minute with some engaging players like the Gardening Girl in the looking glass. Alice ends where she began and there is a charming resolution.

It seems there is species of Alice films.  All manner of them from Disney to anti-Disney from the silent era to today in many languages.  One review lists 33 without any claim to being comprehensive.  By the way, this title has also had many iterations.

Star Wreck!

Star Wreck in the Pirkinning (2005) 

IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 43m, rated 6.5 by 6,000 cinemtizens.  

DNA: Finland.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: A parody with laughs.

Tagline: ‘Deploy Windows 95!’  

Travelling by accident from the far future back to the 21st Century Earth, no one believes Captain when says he is from the distant future.  He’ll show them!  He sets about conquering Earth so he can save it from destruction.  Yes, he is a megalomaniac.  

When the going gets tough, the tough use the ultimate weapon: Windows 95!  It will destroy anything! 

***

This is a fan mash up of Star Trek, and it worked well enough to keep me watching.  There are others segments of different lengths. Click on.

No questions.

Any Questions for Ben (2012)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1hr and 54m, rated 5.6 by 1,800 cinematizens.  

DNA: Strine.

Genre: Neither Rom nor Com.

Verdict: Oh hum. 

Tagline: Is that all there was?

The tale of a poor little rich boy who has everything (money, cars, women, booze – who could ask for more?) and, yet, wants more.  

The best scene comes with the end-credits when our now reformed hero is leaving the country.  If you can endure the preceding drivel, stay tuned long enough to the see that.  

***

Overall it views like a Melbourne Tourist Board production of bright and beautiful young people basking in the hedonistic sun and fun (alcohol and sex) day in and night out in bleak city.  

It is accompanied by a deafening soundtrack that combines demolition work with peak hour traffic. 

In all it was about 1h and 54m too long.  

He’s back!

The Return of Moriarty (1974) by John Gardner 

Good Reads meta-data is 304 pages, rated 3.86 by 982 litizens.

Genre: Sherlock.

DNA: Victorian Britain.

Verdict: Tony needs counselling.  

Tagline: Period detail galore.

Tony Moriarty has come back from the dead, making a pact with Sherlock who looms on the horizon but never appears in these pages. Reclaiming the reins of his criminal organisation he dispenses justice, grants favours, invests in heists, and plans his own master stroke.  He is one hard working Don.  No wonder he needs counselling.   

John Gardner

***

The telling is replete with the slang of London lowlife of the time and place.  The text is accompanied by footnotes that relate incidents to the Holmes canon, which sometimes offer supplementary fictional text to enrich the soup. One in series starring the professor. 

Grrr!

The Way of the Bear (2023) by Anne Hillerman 

Good Reads meta-data is 281 pages rated 4.17 by 634 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Navajo 

Verdict: Overcooked.

Tagline: The evil Barbies did it.

Mostly Bernie and her bottomless portfolio of worries – career, sister, mother, neighbours, weather, parking, etc. If it’s there she will worry about it.  

Over-plotted, too much exposition, too much ‘How I am feeling.’ 

The snow and quick changing weather certainly dominate as are the distances with attendant loss of cell phone coverage but all rather mechanically.

Leaphorn’s name is on the cover but has but a few lines on the telephone at the end of the book.  

The two villains were obvious from the get-go. Both quickly crossed the border of my suspension of disbelief.  Each seemed too incompetent to pull off anything.  

Bot, Bot, who is the Bot?

Annie Bot (2024) by Sierra Greer.

Good Reads meta-data is 231 pages rated 3.83 by 26,921 litizens.  

Genre: Chick Lit; Species: Sy Fy.

DNA: USA.

Verdict: Atta Bot!

Tagline: Be careful what you wish for. 

The android Annie Bot is the perfect prostitute for the busy man.  Made to order with libido settings, and more.  Her owner Doug is very pleased, though she is not so good at housework.  (No woman is perfect, it seems.)  

He is a very good owner (he thinks) and encourages Annie to develop, which she does….  

As this sex slave grows more conscious she plots to escape to freedom, and does so.  The more so when she observes how casually Doug buys, uses, and sells another bot.  

That simple summary makes it seem thin but it is not. The evolution of her consciousness is slow and unsure, and punctuated with regressions.  Still it is an affirmation that consciousness strives for freedom of choice to realize itself in the world.  See Georg Hegel Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) for details. That is a free consciousness strives to imprint itself into the world by words and deeds, and seeing these objectifications of self the consciousness is affirmed. Get it?

P.S. See ‘Beta’ from Logic Films, a 20m short on a similar theme.

***

Doug is  a cipher who only exists in these pages in relation to Annie.  He has no other purpose or identity but to relate to her.  I am sure there is irony there, but where?  

We came across this title in a Cronulla bookstore in April and we both read it. We were amused by the dog walking bot, and went on line to order one for us.  

Cult or gang?

Chris McGillion, The Coffin Maker’s Apprentice (2024)

Good Reads meta-data is 288 pages, rated 4.0 by 2 litizens.   

DNA: Timor L’este.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Assured. 

Tagline: Is a cult a gang?

Chis McGillion

There is trouble right there in Dili city and Vincintino Cordero sorts it out.  East Timor has one of the youngest populations of the world and youth gangs are one by-product of that lopsided demographic profile and skewed economy.  Some of these gangsters import and export drugs for fun and profit and when it seems a rival gang is cutting into the action, dead bodies proliferate.  

The drug connection is right up Cordero’s alley and so up and down alley’s he goes.Then the innocent apprentice gets caught up in things and it is a full court press.  

***

There is much high energy to-ing and fro-ing in Dili, and much cultural background that embeds the story in the time and place. 

It rattles along drawing in the usual crew to good effect.  

The author is a friend of mine.

Hit those keys!

The Angel’s Game (2008) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Genre: Magic Realism.

DNA: Spain, Catalan, Barcelona.

Verdict: Immersive.

Tagline: All trip.

The obsessed writer seems to be writing his own life, and rewriting it.  He is on a quest and the man he seeks is himself.  

From humble beginnings his prose takes him into journalism, and then penny dreadfuls, and then THE BOOK. His prose is courted by a mysterious French publisher who does not seem to exist and yet the money he pays is real enough.  

***

This is the second instalment in Ruiz’s slow-motion sequence The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The prose is so thick and luscious it has to be read with a knife and fork. I loved the description of the writer pounding out his prose on an old Underwood typewriter.  But no, I don’t get the title either.

It could happen there.

Witch Hunt (1994)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m (it felt longer), rated at 5.5 by 1,800 (drug-addled) cinematizens. 

Genre: Noir fantasy.  

DNA: Hollywood. 

Verdict: Skip it.

Tagline:  The tortoise outpaced it.

Intended as a sequel to Cast a Deadly Spell it suffices to demonstrate the superiority of that film to this one. Yikes.

This was watching cement dry, and wishing a dog would run through it to break up the monotony.  

The original pitch idea would have been interesting but the execution was execrable.  What idea?  Set in early 1950s Hollywood the unscrupulous Senator Joseph McCarthy campaigns against, not communism in La La Land, but magic. (See Cast a Deadly Spell.) He is so unscrupulous that he plans to burn witches alive at his campaign rallies.  (That might have seemed far fetched in 1994, but it is now all too easy to imagine this will appeal to the planners of the next Republican convention.)

I won’t labour the threadbare production values.  The non-sequiturs. The dead ends.  I will mention that a dead bored Dennis Hopper mouths his lines in a monotone, with frequent glances at his watch.  

There were some good moments, but too few for redemption.  The late Julian Sand as the Irish villain was a delight, perfectly polite and never threatening, yet menacing all the same.  Hypolyta Kropokin was a dignified witch who seemed to forget her hexography at the crucial moment.  And the female lead had a poignant backstory that emerged at the end, without any fit to the plot, such as it was, in which she got to act.  There was also a corker of a special effect at the Drive-In Theatre. In short, it has moments, but these dots did not connect up into a whole.