Top Ten Movies 2005

I've always wanted to do one of these, but every year when it got to the end I had forgotten most of the movies I saw, even the good ones. But this year I wrote about every movie I saw, so it was easy.
These are not in order of greatness, but the order in which I saw them. Click on the titles if you want to read my original reviews.

1. Sideways - This movie, along with American Splendor, made me jump up and down shouting to the four walls what a GREAT actor is Paul Giamatti. Don't forget to watch Duets, he's in that one too! He also has a small part in Saving Private Ryan, which I only discovered when I watched it again the other day.
2. The Aviator - Martin Scorsese's movie about Howard Hughes. I liked how he locked himself in the room with his piss bottles. I can see myself doing that somewhere in the future, for sure.
3. Ong-Bak - Tony Jaa is insane, man. I was reading some blog recently where somebody was complaining that there has been no martial arts hero since Bruce Lee. Well, please step forward Mr Jaa! Your eyes will pop right out of your head watching this guy and his AWESOME action scenes. A movie like this makes a laughing stock of movies by such *action stars* as Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal (not that I've ever managed to watch an entire movie with either of those guys, they are so awful).
4. The Machinist - Christian Bale lost about every last atom of fat for this one. He looks like he just stumbled out of Dachau. The guy is hardcore. This movie was a very grim and grotesque thriller, and so great.
5. Crash - I think I only started blubbing once at the movies this year and it was when Matt Dillon pulled the girl out of the car in this one. But the whole movie was excellent. There is hope for humanity yet!
6. Batman Begins - Christian Bale again, this time playing Batman, and doing an excellent job. The best Batman movie since that first one with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson.
7. Grizzly Man - OK, this is not a movie at all, it's a documentary, but I saw it at the cinema, and it's one of the most amazing cinema experiences I've had in my whole life. I couldn't stop thinking about this guy and his beloved bears for weeks afterwards. And I'm still waiting for the DVD to be released!.It's taking a long time!
8. Howl's Moving Castle - Another wonderful animated fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. This, and his Spirited Away, will delight you, guaranteed.
9. The Magician - Just about every other Australian movie in 2005 had much higher production values, but this was the one that grabbed my attention the most. A *documentary* following a Melbourne hitman and his regular day-to-day life. If your jaw doesn't develop an intimate relationship with the floor throughout this one, I'd be surprised.
10. The 40-Year Old Virgin - Before I saw this one, and if I saw the previews, and if I was Spiderman, I might have said, 'My Spider-sense is tingling! It's telling me that this will be another dumb-as-fuck gross-out movie!' But my Spider-sense would have been wrong because this was really good, and impossible not to like. How could you not like this movie, and these characters? Impossible!

It's Not The Heat...

Why is it still so hot at this late hour (9:20pm)? That's what I'd like to know. Actually, it is not hot, but humid. You know, it's not the heat that gets you so much as the humidity. Have you heard that one before? I'll bet you have. If you live in a place that has high humidity in summer, you will have heard that line, or a subtle variation of it. Well, I've heard it enough times, man. I know very well it's the goddam humidity and not the heat! Everybody friggin' knows that already! I'll tell you what, man, the next time somebody says that to me, about it not being the heat but the goddam humidity that gets you, I will ask them if that's the best they can come up with.
'Is that the best you got?' I will say. Then I'll start windmilling my arms and shout:
'Everybody knows that already and you're only saying it because you can't think of anything else to say, you goddam robot! Get some new material!'

Of course, I would never really say that. What I would say would be something like this:
'You know what? You're quite right! It IS the humidity and not the heat! Because, if you just have the heat, you can sit in the shade and cool down, but with the humidity, you can't even sit in the shade! It won't work! You will still be sweating like a maniac! It's that humidity, is what it is! You're quite right, I say!'
And I'll have twisted my face up into a grotesque expression of intense admiration.
Then that person will give me a funny look, and walk away.

Codeine Problem

When you buy Nurofen Plus/Panafen Plus (12.8Mg Codeine Phosphate) and you read the back of the packet where it says not to take these things for more than three days in a row, you should pay attention to that. Yet maybe you forget about that and take them for eight weeks straight, every night. Some nights you might go a little cRaZy and take eight, or ten, or twelve even. But that was only once; the next night you're back to eight, or ten. But when you start snapping at everybody, and having anxiety attacks all over the place, and an overwhelming sense of impending doom overtakes you, and you begin to despise yourself, and your writing seems to suck all of a sudden, you decide to quit (the stuff doesn't seem to work like it did at the beginning, anyway), but two days later you feel like your damn joints have frozen up and you have suddenly aged fifty years.
It is at that point you realise you should have paid attention to the back of that packet.

Merry Christmas!

Well, Brother will be here any minute in his automobile and we are zooming off up to Woy Woy to spend Christmas with Ma and Grandma and the Cousins. Merry Christmas to you all!

Morning Fantasy

This morning I woke up before the alarm went off. Half-asleep I wondered, not very optimistically, if it was Saturday. No, it didn't have that Saturday morning feeling, and it didn't feel as though I had served my full weekly term, so I knew it must be Friday. 'Oh well', I thought, 'if it has to be a weekday, Friday is the best one!' I sprang out of bed, lost my balance, and went straight into the wall. With an egg rising fast on my head, I bounced like a pinball into the bathroom.
I showered without incident and made sure the skin was dry before I stepped into my uniform: black shoes, guacamole pants, black t-shirt. Then, standing in the middle of my room looking at the green clock numbers and listening to the man talking about a Muslim Barbie doll, I understood it was time to get going. I pushed my bike out the door, making another big black smear on it with the rear tyre. Sometimes I wonder what people think when they walk past my door. It looks like stormtroopers with sticky rubber boots tried to kick it in. I like it, maybe because it makes me feel like I'm in 1984. Why do I have this obsession with living in a robot world where there is a TV or radio that is constantly on, and there is only one channel or frequency, and you are not allowed to ever turn off, can only turn it down a little? In my fantasy I yank it off the wall and smash it into pieces, but then the robots come after me in force, armoured, with their high-powered weapons and electric stun sticks and they jab them into my ribs and armpits when I say: 'FUCK YOU, I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME.'
Then I am taken away to an ugly bare room and subjected to torture - psychological and physical.
I don't last long.

Stratu Comic by David Puckeridge

Here's another Stratu comic. Another one? Yes, however this one was not drawn by Simon James, but by my old comics pal David Puckeridge! I got this in the mail today and it really made my week. It's really great.

Domino

I left work early this afternoon and went speedily to the movie house in order to catch the 3:45 session of King Kong, but as I was waiting in line to buy a ticket I looked up at the board and it said that session was FULL. Ah! Foiled was I! A decision had to be made: go home or see a different movie? I decided to see a different movie, and that movie was called Domino.
What a stinker! This movie was awful! Boo! Oh wait, I had better write something about what actually happened in the movie...
Domino is apparently BASED on a true story of a woman (Domino) who became a bounty hunter. Domino is played by Keira Knightley. It begins with a big shootout in a little cabin out in the desert then cuts to a scene of Lucy Lui (who plays a detective) interrogating Domino. Domino declares she will spill the beans and tell Lucy all about it. Yay! No need for torture! [There's enough of that just watching the movie.] Now we go back to the TRUE beginning, in England, when Domino was a little girl and her goldfish died. At that very moment she decides never again to invest her love in anything; from now on she will be a real BADASS! Then her mother falls in love with Beverly Hills 90210 and drags Domino to live there. Where? Beverly Hills, of course! But then she goes to college, ends up in a fraternity with a bunch of bimbos and when they start hazing her by calling her boobs "mosquito bites" and asking her how she feels "having the body of a ten-year-old boy" she asks that girl, "Have you had a nosejob?" and when the girl says "Duh! No!" Domino winds up and punches her real hard in the schnozz, busting it up real good. Hurrah!
[Hey, wait a minute! This movie sounds pretty good! What's going on here!]
Anyway, she gets expelled from college and becomes a model. We see her on a catwalk and some other model bumps into her so Domino gets mad and turns around and yanks that girl's hair so she falls down. Woah! She is badass, alright!
Then! Somehow she learns about a seminar on how to become a bounty hunter. She rolls up, pays her $99.00 and listens to a bit of the pitch but then the guy says 'OK break for lunch and see you after.' But it's a scam! The three guys wanna take the money and run but Domino sees one of them going out the bathroom window and gives chase. She confronts them and throws her knife through the windshield of their car and with her badass attitude convinces them to give her a go.
I won't go on with the story because it's too ridiculous and convoluted. Also, soon after that I gave up caring what the hell was going on because it was too stupid. The movie is cut so fast it looks like a really long music video, and every scene is filmed using a heavy yellow or green filter.
The music is awful, I didn't like any of it. One track they have the nerve to play TWICE is some loud obnoxious rap song with a chorus of "MOTHERFUCKER!" The soundtrack seems to be aimed at people who start giggling when they hear a cuss word in a song. Or maybe they use those tracks to reinforce the point that Domino is very ANGRY and BADASS. It could be one, or the other, or both.
Mickey Rourke is in the movie and he plays the main bounty hunter and Domino's mentor. It's a shame to see him in this after his recent AWESOME appearance in Sin City. Oh well, I hope he gets something good next time. Christopher Walken is also in it for a little while but hasn't got much to use. Oh well, he probably got paid a lot of money.
The dialogue is awful too, like in one scene near the end where Domino has just about finished her story, she notices that Lucy Lui has been staring at her goldfish tattoo and tells her so. Lucy Lui knows a lot about goldfish and tells her some facts about them. Then Domino says:
"I'll bet you are in a very unsatisfying marriage and you hate your job."
"Actually, I am not married, and I LOVE my job."
"Well, tonight I'll bet you will go home and fantasise about my pussy."
There's also many, many scenes where Domino is screaming at people, but she only sounds like a teenage girl jumping up and down on her bed throwing a fit at her mother for telling her to turn her Spice Girls record down a little.
People who hated (or even loved) Beverly Hills 90210 might want to see the movie because Ian Zeiring and Brian Austin Green are here playing themselves as washed-up actors, and Domino even punches Green in the face (breaking his nose) for suggesting that she's pretending to be badass when she's really only an angry daddy's girl.
Jerry Springer fans may also want to check it out because there's a big Jerry Springer Show scene where a black woman comes on ("America's Youngest Grandmother!") and shows a chart naming new racial varieties, like 'blacktino', and this of course starts an audience riot.
You know what? It suddenly occurs to me that this movie may actually end up with a cult following. Good grief, yes, it could happen! It certainly has many of those 'hey-what-about-the-scene-where...!' moments.
Yikes! Could I be wrong and this awful movie is, in fact, an accidental work of genius?! Please God don't let it be so! Or forgive me and only give me one more chance to watch it again and realise its great worth!
*falls to the floor, groaning in the Spirit*
[Dear readers, you are invited to comment on the movie if you have seen it. I'll welcome your opinion!]