I wrapped up my last few days on Bali and came on down under. I am under funded for this trip. I essentially came because the AirAsia flight Denpasar-Darwin was stupid cheap at $70. So I booked that back in the Fall and decided to fly back to the States from Sydney, giving me three weks down here. With only $1500AU after converting my Rupiah, I don’t really have enough to do it in style. But I’m gonna try and just roll on this sum and only get into more funds if I have to. I knew AU was expensive, but to see it first hand is shocking. These are essentailly the best economic times here ever, as they weren’t hit by the world recession and are mining up all China will buy. Some examples:

bed in a hostel, dorm room, four beds $26-29
kebab and drink $10 lunch special
average entrees around, not esp. fancy $20-30
3 minute phone call to a local number $2
box of “goon” low ened blended wine 2L $11

My train plan has been scrapped. It was expensive and might have been do-able, but only runs once a week, and is full until the 15th anyway. And there is no reason at all to hang around tiny ass Darwin until then. So I got a cheap $191 flight down to Melbourne where I want to be anyway and leave tomorrow night. Then I’ll slowly make my way to Sydney from there, maybe seeing the Blue Mountains en route. I was drinking in the park with some German’s and Estonias when this one guy, Fritz, convinced me to rent a cart with him and see the Kakadu National Park area and I agreed. So Frtiz, who has been hitching, not eating much, and out of practice drinking proceeded to get completely blotto. So the next morning, the kid was a mess, and I did the leg work on the rental car prices. We finally found the deal we wanted, went to get it, and it turned out Fritz didn’t have a credit card, just debit, which wouldn’t cut it. So much for Fritz and his plan. But no harm done, I just won’t see any nature up here. I’m content to swap road tales with other backpackers. there are like 10 hostels in this tiny city, which supposedly has 100k poeple, but feels much smaller to me after crowded-ass Indonesia. but it’s comfy enough. And the Sydney traveling film fest is in town, so I might go check out a flick tonight…for $15.

I also met up with Pavel Friday night, who I reached out to via couchsurfing.com. His new wife is not down with a houseguest, which is fine, but we went to dinner at the Yahct Club, which we snuck into and swapped road stories. He is a Czech Muslim, works in IT, and has traveled all around Iran and the ‘Stans, so has diffent tales than your average. All always dig Czech’s, even non drinking ones. Plus it helps build my cred on couchsurfing and I might have some more luck in that area down the road.

So I am technicAlly “down and out down under” but so far so good. this country is completely zawash in European backpackers who have come down here on work permits, to make cash then set off around the continent and up into Asia. So the hostels will always be full of talkative strangers, and mobile Aussies working around and crashing cheap.

*spoilers herein*

So let me begin my admiting my bias and sharing a story that has amused parts of my family for decades. I am solidly Gen X, and in 1982, when I as 11 years old, with my Dad and little sister, then 6, on one of the weekends he had custody by the divorce decree, killing time as we often did in a movie cineplex, we slipped into a screening of the original Conan. It had already started, the scene where Conan’s mom is decapitated. And we only made it as far as when, as a grown barbarian he meets the woman who is to turn into a lycanthrope during their intercourse, when my sister piped up, audible throughout the mostly empty theater, “Dad, we aren’t allowed to see full frontal nudity!”. Classic hilarity. Soon after of course I saw the entire thing, and would say over the years I have done so at least a dozen times. Friends and I at various times have described it as pehaps the the ultimate fantasy film. For those too young to remember, let me point out there were many in that era, some, like Beast Master, blantantly trying to cash in on Conan’s success, others from Krull, Dragonslayer, Excalibur, and LadyHawke taking things in other directions. So one must ask why one would want to fuck with a classic… But alas, we live
in an era of remakes. And after James Bond, Batman, Star Trek etc. I guess Conan the Barabrian was about due. And it doesn’t completely fail, but there are a few points I must harp on.

Schwarzenegger vs Jason Mamoa

At first look at least, the new guy measures up. I’m no huge Arnold fan, despite seeing him time and again in classic roles of my adolescence. But I would argue he was BORN to play Conan. His Austrian accent adds to the plausibility of his barbarism, as does the stoicism that might be the reult of inferior acting ability. It’s not completely Mamoa’s fault: the writers gyped him trying to add romantic dimensions to the character. After some inital cliche chauvanism, he has a tender “make love” scene with the heroine. Barbarians don’t make love: they fuck. True, old Conan had real emotion going for his thief woman, but only because she was so outlaw, 3/4 masculine and still hot. A barbarian knows when he wants something, and will definitly open case after case of vengence when it is taken from him. But he lacks a certain emotional vocabulary. If he is tender it is almost accidental because has has unintentionally crushed fragile things in his past. Hell, Momoa is a better barbarian in Game of Thrones, where all he does is glower, kill, eat and butt fuck! (Ok so it was most likely only “doggie style”, but I’m taking license for the sake of a comedic line.)

The soundtrack is complete shit, I assume Tyler Bates is a hack, though he did do Matt Dillion’s City of Ghosts which I think is underrated. One cliche “action movie” melody and musical attack after another. You can hear a sample from Basil Poledouris’ superior soundtrack here.

Stephen Lang is completey played out as a villian. The scenes of his scrawny frame fighting Conan without the use of magic or minons are absurd. That having been said – the mask of evil power as a device was superior to the James Earl Jones in a Betty Page mullet snake cult motif. And I liked the idea of the wanna be incestuous witch daughter character, and Rose McGowan seemed to be having fun, though by the end she came up short. The Freddy Cruger nails were just stupid.

What’s with Papa Smurf on the hookah lording over the Tai Chi madiens? He added nothing. Nor did Conan’s black pirate buddy. The character comes off as token pandering. And while I’m on that – there is nothing essentially wrong with Conan doing time on a pirate ship, but the way they did it just seemed like the writers going “Ok, we need a little Pirates of the Carribean vibe here”. As did the fight in the court yard feel “we need a little Prince of Persia/Scorpion King vibe here.”
Also, the only time magic is used. The theif buddy is also a throw away. A quasi-middle eastern guy with a ring of skeleton keys, nothing plausible about him as a theif.

AND WHERE IS CROM? You cannot have Elric without Arioch, and you cannot have Conan without his “God by default” Crom. Conan’s tribe is described as specifically atheistic. Perhaps he mutters “Crom” a few times in moments of surprise, but there is nothing of his shaky faith in the war god who mostly delivers for him.

The sets started out Ok, but eventually had to do the LOLR CG fest, the most absurd being the skull mountain, or I should say the crumbling of the skull mountain as they ride away, straight out of King Kong. Have some rocks fall maybe, not the entire thing crumble.

I don’t want to hate on Ron Pearlman, who does as best he can as Conan’s father, but since when does Conan have a father? I see him as the child of rape, or maybe an absent father off fighting with the horde and ghost writing half-assed lyrics for Robert Plant. Conan’s mother dying here, right at the beginning, and his ersatz cesarian birth are laughable. I’m not sure how Robert E. Howard laid out Conan’s father originally, but see now from IMDB, ’82 Conan did have a dad – but I didn’t find him memorable.

Evil Henchmen

And there are many here. “No nose” is fairly original, as is his demise. But none of the henchmen carry the heft of “Molly Hatchet” and the other dude from the original. The one guy, far too orchish for my tastes, with the face tattoos being sent back as a message on a giant boulder which lands perfectly in the middle of giant ship which is inexplicably being hauled everywhere is cartoonish. Thank Crom they didn’t get too “Burning Man” with the costuming which I could have seen happening. I didn’t appreciate the snarling snow Mohicans in the beginning either, though the concept of the race around the mountain with the eggs was a nice touch. I thought it would have been more bad ass if Conan had showed up with the three heads but had acted penitant because his egg had broken, truely feeling his father might think he didn’t measure up.

What else did this version get right? There was a respectible amount of breast footage (lots of eastern europeans if you look it up…), essential I feel for the genre, though somehow it could have been sexier. And despite my earlier complaints about the scene, I did appreciate seeing Rachel Nichols’, or her body double’s. It’s not that the film is a complete failure. They have to make everything so over the top for modern autistic audiences. But you should understand downtime when you’re trying to make something epic. The plot continues to move forward, but write in scenes where the characters have a chance to grow, or reveal themselves in subtle ways. Scenes for example of characters wandering around a foreign city unsure of the next step, until eventually a camel is punched in the mouth for comic relief. Or a crucifixion. In the new version, Conan rushes from “Slave Island” to “Theif City” to “Skull Mountain” and none of it is really cool, none of it has true ambience.

And more magic. When she started to turn into the dead wife they were trying to summmon, I thought “OK maybe now we’ll see something worth those absurd acrobatics on the wedged wheel we just had to endure”. But no, he falls into the lava and she’s back to normal with no ill effect. The word necromancy was absurdly overused here, with no serious extraction of essenses, animation or the canal violation of corpses I equate with a heavy term like necromany. Either only say it once, or go ahead and show, or at least infer, corpse fucking and fight it out with the censors.

There were no classic lines here. “Conan! What is best in life?” Followed by his O SO METAL answer. Here we actually have the head villian saying, “Conan, I don’t think I like you any more.”

And sadly, not knowing what the box office has taken in so far or ultimately will, I sense this film might go on record as solid for this generation. They will mock the bad Snake metamorphasis of the original and consider the battle won. But just maybe, some teenager will read these words, watch both versions again in his mature years and think “gee, that crotchity old glory days fucker was right.” Maybe not…

My parting complaint: whomever came up with that “omnipus” monster of whatever the fuck that tentecled mess was supposed to be should never be allowed to work in film again.

So I have a ticket to Darwin from Denpasar on Feb. 3, and despite some of the impressions afforded by the Bingtang sleeveless clad Aussie masses swarming around Kuta, I’m going. My general plan is to possibly take The Ghan down the middle of the country to Adelaide, then with gumtree.com/au rideshare make my way east, hitting Melbourne, and most likely fly back to the US from Sydney later that month.

Sometimes, with this blog, I don’t know… I’m proud I keep it up, and it’s rewarding in it’s own right, but I wish I got more meaningful response. From strangers I mean, the kind of strangers I’d like to meet. Of course I appreciate the old friends who follow along. That having been said, I have had two pleasant comment encounters in the last few months. Once from an old friend of Patrik Keim who found me via his small image archive here; and another, a reader who put me back in touch with an amazing woman I met in southern China in 2010. He claimed instantly to know who I was talking about and had no doubt from my description. Now, much of that is a testimony to the power of her personality, but it was also “good to blog” validation for me.

So as I try and build my itinerary for AU, I’ll go ahead and put this out there: where do you think I should go? Unfortunately the West is out on this trip. I will have a finite amount of time, and some financial resource, but as I’ve been earning RI Rupiah for the last year…not THAT much. And their economy is doing well compared to the rest of the world, in part because they seem intent on mining up all that China will buy. Beers are $10 each at the moment, ouch!

All I know are Grinderman dates don’t currently extend past Dec.; I’d like to have some bizarre, quasi-Star Wars via Tatooine experience in Cooper Pedy; I must go to Melbourne; and might try and swing Tasmania. So give me all other recommendations for the Central and SE areas, oh Darwin too, though I don’t plan to linger. Band dates, film festivals etc that might overlap the time I’m there – essentially February 2012.

I summon thee, o dark and mystical forces of the Interweb! Speak! Er, I mean… Comment!

After his Pusher trilogy (…well at least the first one), Vallhala Rising, Bronson and now Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn is becoming one of my favorite directors. Gosling does the tough guy well. Only Albret Brooks bugged me here and it wasn’t so bad. Definitely more psycho than cutsie-poo. Bryan Cranston and Ron Pearlman fill out the cast. Some seasons with Pearlman in a tux might take you back to on of his earlier roles in Chronos. The female lead is rather understated. At first I thought it was again Gosling’s co-star from Blue Valentine, but was in fact Brit Carey Muligan, of the recent Never Let Me Go. It isn’t entirely plausible why he would fall for her, but it’s a bit like a western: he’s the protagonist, and she’s the girl -so he falls for her, without their being much carnality between them.

Excellent use of Eno’s Apollo soundtrack (ed 12-14: I see now from Wikipedia it isn’t credited! Well it is under Apollo soundtrack, but not the Drive entry. It’s also unclear exactly what Angelo Badalamenti did on the film. His name is clearly seen in the opening film credits, and A.B. wikipedia has Drive listed with his name, but he’s not mentioned in Drive wikipedia.) Other music is techno and seems an odd choice, but it works. It’s an early 80′s techno sound.
It isn’t huge “blow you away” sort of film. More of a subtle classic.

I haven’t done one of these pervy posts for a while, but as this starlet was born in Indonesia, it’s fitting. I’ve been eyeing Cannibal Compilation #28 for a while now in a pile of films in the night market. The three of the seven that I hoped to see were Lugosi in ‘Bride of the Monster’, Fulci’s ‘Zombie’, and ‘Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals’. Unfortunately, the DVD had only the last, and only about three quarters of the film. But I still find it comment worthy, from the late 70′s when an Italian schlock-master might combine the themes of soft-core porn with extreme violence.

The film, or what I got of it, is thoroughly watchable, with great scenes of 70′s NYC, the absurd dialogue one hopes for in these sort of films and lots of T+A. Apparently there are many different versions of the film, some with hardcore moments of other actors spliced in to the footage, and varying degrees of gore, but this semi-copy I got (and for only $1.25 I can’t quite claim total disappointment…) doesn’t have anything too gory. Looking around online, there is plenty of choice footage I’m missing. At one point, Emanuelle and the Anthropologist watch a black and white film in his apartment of tribesmen decapitating and castrating an adulterous couple. The effects are absurd at best. But then there’s all of the footage of lovely Laura Gemser, still alive and living in retirement in Rome. And that’s definitely worth watching…

I suppose 8 o’clock on a Wed and Thurs is a reasonable time to hold a festival of short films, but it insures I won’t be able to attend. I work 1:30-9 PM. And it would take me at least .5 hour to get to the venue. And as they are short films, and the event isn’t cheap – I’m out. What’s wrong with the weekend fuckers? Oh right you’ll have some numbnuts DJ spinning poolside… But it’s a serious tease, because how many times a year do things like this happen here?

A friend, a working dancer, who has not seen this film yet, commented recently that his dance friends tend to rant about the realism of the film while the non-dance people are a little less excited. In the non dance camp, I must admit I have more respect for the discipline of ballet than I did before. Of course, you know it’s demanding, but to see rehersals in effect, witness the ego’s involved, at least fictionally represented, is another level.

I really enjoyed the transformation, when the Nina character “nails” the Black Swan half of the dance, which the entire film her ability to do has been in question. But rather than a “dance film”, I would describe this as a very repressed and infantilized woman dealing poorly with personal and professional pressure.

Even though the film works and is very good, if I seem a little less than blown away, I must admit I wouldn’t have minded a little more “Aronofsky style”. It’s what I loved about the first three films: the zip edit montages and time lapse, the emphasis on color, and whatever other ephemeral but distinct elements where at work. Yes, even The Fountain, which I didn’t think was as bad as some others seemed to. Then with The Wrestler, he shed most of that, replacing with strip downed realism, not “Hollywood magic” at all. And it worked. But I’d like to see the former style come back! To be fair, there are hints of it, as the film progresses and Nina is getting lost in her psyche. But the only scenes that struck me as distinctively Aronofsky where when the camera followed, about two feet behind her, showing us the mundane city commute as she was seeing it. He did the same with Rourke walking behind the scenes in the grocery store and at various matches. In Requiem, he did it with the camera in front of the characters, we seeing their expressions and behind them, often in a fix cam that shook about all the background only keeping their heads in focus.
I miss all of the other highly stylized trickery Mr. A! Don’t be afraid to follow it into realms they might call pretentious crap…

Twitch had me anxiously awaiting this film. So much so that while in China, I went to my Beijing source TWICE in hopes of a black market DVD. I wasn’t disappointed; it’s still a film I must own some day. And yet…

One thing reviews I’ve seen so far haven’t mentioned is how psychedelisugarpop the opening credits are. Here is everyone involved, essentially unreadable, at least to the conscious mind…and into the film.

*rather spot on depiction of a DMT experience, not exactly like my own in the early 90′s, which strangely also involved a painter, but it definitely worked.

*combined factors make Tokyo seem like the most tripped out city on earth: the neon and futuristic vibe, tiny alley like streets, ex-pat vibe created therein, well done, but definitely not a place to front on the cops

*the first portion of the film completely works, and but I now feel a compulsion to go off about Paz De La Huerta for a bit…

An actress who clearly loves to get naked and carnal in front of the camera, I first saw her in Season 1 of Boardwalk Empire where her Apple accent works perfectly. But after this I have to question her acting ability overall. And it might not be entirely her fault. Noe’s script has her bogged down in quasi-incestuous inappropriate lounging with her brother and only companion in a cruel world. But I am still tempted to blame her acting, especially in her big “break down” scene, which rings hollow. I’m really conflicted about this actress, she is sexy without being exotic somehow. Something about her feels “Chloë Sevigny” if that makes any sense, and indeed, it would be interesting to see her work with Larry Clarke esp. before she gets too old for his tableaux. She has all of this sexuality frontally presented, as if there were little inside, and yet a hint of another deeper level where much is hidden. I’ll be curious to see more of her work (haven’t seen the Jarmusch thing yet)- my verdict is still out. But since I’ve gone this kooky obsessive about it, I’ll further mention my sister and I have a running bet if her breasts are real or not. I say real.

What else to say about this film? It’s as abstracted as you’ve heard, yet in ways that make sense. There is nothing David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ about it (in other words: “what the fuck am I watching here?”). There is something about spirits interacting with electric energy. There is something about the nature of expressed love. Mommy issues and sister issues and the search for love.

But one quote I must include, from a wasted girl who burst into the men’s room afterward looking for a friend and delighted me with a quote as they followed me into the frozen night from the theater. Apparently she had no idea what to expect from Gaspar Noe (who I still credit, along with Ms. Monica Bellucci, as capturing the most hardcore depiction of rape ever filmed), nor what she was getting into.

She said, “I mean what the fuck was that? That was a porno, Joey. A reincarnation porno.”

It wasn’t, but the quote was appropriate and hilarious. I would have liked to see more about some of the minor Japanese characters in the story: the painters roommate who build the amazing model of Tokyo; the girl with the glasses, who got with the main guy, but apparently had a thing for Mario. I guess I would have liked more of a film, shot in the same style, about naughty gaijin in Tokyo, than a film about this guy’s death.
I guess you’ve done it again Mr. Noe. Got me thinking about and liking a film I can’t entirely get on board with. Contrasting the brutality and the bliss. I still give you points for grit and balls, even with all the experimentalism.
And I don’t agree with those who say it was too long. The subject matter, style, presented in this way…just right.