(Madman)

Ultra-violent new-age adventures of a furry dude with a snake for an arm – hey, it’s Adult Swim!

Xavier: Renegade Angel takes Carlos Castaneda-esque shaman mysticism and places these magical powers in the hands of the self-obsessed title character, who often finds himself at the receiving end of redneck beatings and whose help you would run a mile to avoid. Partly created by John Lee and Vernon Chatman (the team behind Wonder Showzen), the show follows the adventures of a furry character with a blonde mullet, a snake for an arm and a third eye where his penis should be (modestly covered up by a loincloth). His tales are told in an abstract, feverishly violent manner, blending psychedelic visuals, plentiful blood and a crude computer game animation style that resembles a nightmarish, alternate universe Sims. Supposedly an ongoing journey where Xavier’s muddled philosophy asks pressing questions such as “what doth life?”, it’s really an excuse for comedic taboos to be thrown out the window, as frequently disjointed stoner narratives lead characters to horrific fates. Bonus “fanmentaries” have devotees of the show quoting Ancient Greek philosophy and Hal Ashby’s Being There in their thoughtful search for meaning, but like all Adult Swim, it’s just as easily enjoyed as tasteless freak-out humour to accompany your next dalliance with the bong.

***½  

MATT THROWER

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(Bruised/Hopscotch)

Seen through the eyes of a tortured tiger 

By the time I learnt of the name Mike Tyson, he was already the focus of late-night talk show parody and satire. I was more familiar with his monumental Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! video game on the Nintendo Entertainment System than I was with the monumental young boxer who wowed audiences with his ferocious attacks and lightning speed. It was similar to hearing about The Clash when I had not yet developed the cognitive powers to appreciate them: I knew why he was supposedly important, I just couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Watching this unabashedly one-sided documentary from James Toback (in a rare departure from fiction) goes some way to explaining the fuss, while also putting a spotlight on the heavyweight’s spectacular fall(s) from grace. Drawing heavily from one-on-one interviews with the champ, the documentary travels from the mean streets of Brooklyn to training at the hands of visionary trainer Cus D’Amato and the many battles (both within the ring and his mind) that Tyson fought in the decades following. The angry young man suffering from self-confidence issues angle has been done to death in most sports documentaries of redemption and woe, but the willingness of Tyson to bare all doesn’t fail to move you. It’s unlikely to sway your opinion of the fallen warrior, but in a paparazzi culture where it’s all too easy to consider celebrities as objects rather than people, Tyson is a humanising look at the invisible factors that can topple the seemingly undefeatable.  

***½

MITCH ALEXANDER

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(Vendetta Films)

Where’s John Constantine when you need him?

Spanish horror flick [REC] seemed like a breath of fresh air when it came out in 2007. Like Cloverfield, the gimmick of having characters running around recording the action worked well in terms of framing the events (and at that point seemed not quite so overused). While [REC] was ostensibly a zombie film (albeit with the new 28 Days Later/Dead Set-style of sprinting ‘infected’), [REC]²  ups The Exorcist quotient, as we learn the ‘zombies’ are in fact the puppets of a malicious demon.

Starting in effect a few minutes before the end of its predecessor, [REC]²  introduces a SWAT team headed towards the quarantined apartment building. Assigned to protect a representative from the Ministry Of Health (who is a bit more than he seems), the team enters the building and all the living hell it contains. At the same time a group of teens with a camera sneak into the block via the sewers, not realising that it contains a little more adventure than they can handle. This allows for two sets of cameras to capture the action, but also doesn’t allow much room (if any) for character development. Which, aside from the tendency to fall into moments of video game first-person-shooter territory (seriously – I thought I was watching a game demo at more than one point), is the film’s biggest flaw. It has tension, it has inventive camera-work and effects, a ridiculously over-the-top premise (in a good way), but not a single character to genuinely fear for. If there’s a [REC]³ and we finally get out of the building, hopefully we’ll have reasons to give a damn if Barcelona gets overrun by the possessed.

***

TOPHER HEALY

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(Madman)

Cannibals, but no musical

If you’ve read The Fatal Shore you know that the history of convict Australia contains a notable surplus of floggings, scurvy and cannibalism. The cannibalism comes most prominently in the story of eight convicts who escaped from the Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in 1822 and made their way across one of the most inhospitable parts of Tasmania, turning on each other one by one as they did. Van Diemen’s Land tells that story. Though it’s a brutal tale filled with horror and revolt, Van Diemen’s Land is actually a beautiful-looking movie. Partly that’s because of the stark, rain-swept glory of the Tasmanian forests (and some Victorian ones that stand in for them), where the vegetation is so thick it’s like walls and animals simply aren’t seen. Largely though, it’s because of the cinematography, with every shot – whether it’s a group of haggard men gathered around a campfire or an axe descending on its victim – composed as meticulously as a Renaissance masterpiece. The same attention to detail is not paid to the characters unfortunately, and it’s very hard to get inside their heads enough to sympathise with their situation beyond a superficial level of unpleasantness. The backgrounds of the characters are left blank and they blur together in the story’s first half, meaning that when they start dropping like flies it’s more difficult to care about them beyond a general squeamishness at the fact of what’s happening. It’s a story more could have been done with, that shows a part of our horrible history but does so in such disconnected isolation that its impact is diminished.

**½    

JODY MACGREGOR

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(Roc-A-Fella/MTV)

Kanye Sinatra entertains in his own way

Other musicians have come through the VH1 Storytellers format humanised by opening up in front of an audience, chattily explaining their inspirations between songs – Bruce Springsteen even joked about overusing a rhyming dictionary in his early days. We couldn’t expect the same of someone as egomaniacal as Kanye West, but even so, it’s surprising when he says things like, “My greatest pain in life is I will never be able to see me perform.” There aren’t many people as conscious of how special they are as West. That’s far from the weirdest of his banter, which also includes a break in the middle of Amazing to list amazing people like, no joke, O. J. Simpson. Wearing a pink shirt and black bow-tie, he stands in a neon tanning bed surrounded by an orchestra in black helmets who look like a bob-sled team from the nation of Daft Punk. The orchestral live versions sometimes work – Flashing Lights is unharmed – and sometimes don’t, as with a disappointing rendition of Touch The Sky. A lot of the tracks here are cuts from 808s And Heartbreaks, but it’s a sparse selection all-round. A three-hour concert has been trimmed down to an hour-long DVD/CD, excising a lot of songs and some of his insane blather. Even shortened, it’s not easy to watch. There’s a kind of fascination to it, like watching an autopsy video, but I wouldn’t call it pleasant. There’s a guy in the front row while West does his “You could be anywhere in the world tonight, but you wouldn’t be as happy as you are right now” spiel who looks dubious about that. He looks like he can think of a lot of places he would be happier right now.

**       

JODY MACGREGOR

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(Madman)

Cinéma vérité portrait of chilly Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour

Ice queen of American Vogue Anna Wintour is the subject of this documentary, chronicling the creative development of the September 2007 issue (ultimately weighing in at just under five pounds and with a record-breaking 840 pages). Wintour, who was fictitiously portrayed in Lauren Weisberger’s roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada, is the person on whom the entire direction of the magazine hangs. A great deal of controversy has surrounded Wintour – her promotion of fur has attracted the wrath of PETA and her aloof, demanding manner has turned her into a creature of mythical proportions, a gorgon with a page-boy bob. The film is a more personal portrait than these images would suggest. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler (who produced D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ great Clinton campaign pic The War Room) paints a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of Wintour, a woman on the verge of tears as she describes how her brothers and sisters find her career choice a joke. Don’t get me wrong, Wintour would be a frightfully intimidating person to work for, but Cutler uncovers vulnerability in her bashful smile and her small, birdlike appearance – she’s a million miles removed from Meryl Streep’s haughty monster. That said, she puts a great deal of people through the emotional wringer, not least the magazine’s creative director Grace Coddington. Dismissing beautiful $50,000 photo shoots with a withering glance, Wintour breaks the red-headed stalwart’s heart on more than one occasion in the film – that said, Coddington appears to be the person she most relates with on the Vogue staff and their tense relationship is ultimately quite touching. The DVD is loaded with extras, including a bunch of deleted scenes. It’s going to resonate particularly well with fashionistas, but anyone who enjoys glimpsing behind the mask of one of media’s most influential figures will get a kick out of The September Issue.

****

MATT THROWER

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