1 year ago
‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)
Renny Harlin’s turn-of-the-century thriller is one of Kate’s favourite films. Clem has only ever seen the GIF of Samuel L. Jackson’s demise, and the last three minutes on Channel Ten one time over the summer holidays. Whose feelings will be triumphant?
* * *
Kate: 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of this beautiful film being in my life.
Clem: Sharks can smell Trojans. And they love cabernet shiraz.
Kate: I love shark cam. It’s my favourite cam.
Kate: YES!!! That shark just torpedoed through a boat!!
Clem: Is that Aaron Eckhart or Thomas Jane?
Kate: That would be Thomas Jane.
Clem: He wears those running shoes with individual toes, in real life.
Kate: Saffron Burrows. You know she’s a bitch because she’s English.
Kate: The facility is now on screen. The facility called Aquatica…
Clem: Who knew marine biologists were so interested in paying tribute to the architecture of Alcatraz?
Kate: Oh Jacqueline McKenzie, you’re too nice for this world. You’re going to get eaten.
Clem: McKenzie!! Do you think they have any curried-egg sandwiches and/or P.K.?
Kate: I… I just love this film.
Clem: Let’s start a band called ‘The Normals’.
Kate: God we’ll be important to the ska scene during the Thatcher era in the UK.
Clem: I keep expecting the Ocean Girl theme to play down here.
Kate: I wonder who thought of the name ‘Aquatica’. Probably Renny Harlin’s miniature pinscher. He’s a really special dog.
Clem: Saffron Burrows hates birthday parties. Cake gives you Alzheimer’s.
Kate & Clem: LL COOL J!!!
Kate: Oh. An uncharacteristic cyclone. I’m sure it will pass without incident and this film will continue on as a quiet Noah Baumbach-style character piece.
Clem: Those sharks are so organised! Take that, Russian synchronised swimming team!
Kate: It’s good when he has a breathing apparatus in his mouth because then he can’t deliver lines like “On the open sea, that doesn’t float.”
Clem: Watch out, Carter! Saffron Burrows is frowning and that annoying nerdy dude has stopped being irritating! Something bad’s going to happen!
Kate: Saffron Burrows has done a lot in her eight years.
Clem: It would be hard to concentrate in a laboratory where the muzak is so ominous and foreboding.
Kate: Yeah, at the first hint of the muzak, you think you’d go, “Nah, I might just hop on the helicopter back to the city.
Clem: Did Stellan pass that vial of shark brain ooze to Saffron because he thinks her skin needs some more Omega 3?
Kate: Every time I see an animatronic shark on-screen I gain another year of life. This film is better than therapy for me.
Clem: That shark was obviously an undercover operative for QUIT. No smoking!!
Kate: I just got so excited by that dude’s arm getting taken off that I forgot to say anything.
Clem: Stellan was so depressed at being taken out of the action so early in this film that by the time he starred in Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 they didn’t have to put any SFX makeup on him. He actually just grew barnacles of sadness.
Kate: Don’t worry Stellan Skarsgard! You just lost an arm and fell into the shark water in the midst of a cyclone! I’m sure you’ll still be hanging onto a barrel at the end of the film, weary but laughing at all you’ve seen.
Clem: Now THAT’S what I call a fucking explosion!!!!
Kate: It was like “We’re done with character development. BOOM MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!”
Clem: HAHAHA VENDETTA SHARK
Kate: You better send ‘em a card at Christmas. They never forget that shit and then BAM! You get slammed into a glass wall.
Clem: I hope LL entertains them with an acoustic sing-along of Mama Said Knock You Out while they wait for rescue.
Kate: That would certainly keep their spirits up as a genetically engineered mako gnaws on their foot.
Clem: This movie combines so many of my worst fears: drowning, open ocean, shark attack, falling down concrete or metal stairs, Saffron Burrows…
Kate: That was my joke
Clem: It’s mine now. Like a mako, I eat your gags. You can be the foulmouthed parrot.
Kate: That seems fair.
Clem: “As a side effect, the sharks got smarter… and I used their brain cells as dermal filler for my lips.”
Kate: Saffron Burrows is doing a very convincing job of being an actor playing a part suited to someone at least 300 years older than her human age.
Kate: LL better hope that shark doesn’t know how to work a convection oven.
Clem: Makos are only familiar with microwaves.
Kate: Ok!! FIRST SHARK-BASED EXPLOSION!!!
Clem: FLAKE & MINIMUM CHIPS FOR EVERYONE!!
Kate: Yeah, Samuel L. Bring it home.
Clem: Don’t talk about Ice-T like that, Jackson!
Kate: Samuel L. we hardly knew ye.
Clem: NOM NOM MUTHAFUCKIN NOM
Kate: Oh Jacqueline. You’re so normal looking. Why are you still alive.
Clem: Did one of the sharks just fart?
Kate: Yes. They didn’t have the budget to reshoot. They spent it on training the other shark to break through steel doors.
Kate: Jacqueline. Your hair’s weird. You make lame asides. You were married to a comfortably attractive middle-aged Swede. Your number’s up, friend.
Clem: Damn, LL, that’s deep.
Clem: WHY HAVEN’T THEY EATEN SAFFRON BURROWS YET
Kate: They haven’t thought of a really poetic way of doing it just yet. But they’re sharks with brains the size of wall units, they’ll think of something.
Clem: The sharks are busy playing PS2 in the rec room.
Kate: They’re just finishing off an awesome WoW session.
Kate: One of them’s a Minotaur.
Kate: The other one is a sexy elf bat.
Kate: I’ve never played WoW.
Clem: LL is just going to make his video submission for DancingAloneToPony.com while he’s waiting.
Kate: Who just died?
Clem: Nerd guy. The sharks wanted to make a statement about alternative energy sources so they shoved him into the fusebox underwater.
Kate: Oh, the redhead dude. I’ll tip some juice on the ground and think about all the times I failed to care about him as a person and a wetsuit with some hair sticking out of it.
Clem: Is Saffron going to make out with her creation like Ripley in the fourth Alien?
Kate: I hope so. Twenty minutes of her just really licking a mako’s snout, the mako trying to get away…
Clem: “Saffron, please, don’t”
Kate: “I have a girlfriend. She’s interstate but we’re pretty much monogamous.”
Clem: “We can just watch a DVD if you want?”
Kate: Saffron knows the only way to kill a shark is matching cotton underwear.
Clem: This looks like a still from a rejected ‘summer only’ cK One campaign.
Kate: That very unsuccessful campaign that engaged with dreamy imagery of our fragile mortality and massive fish electrocution.
Clem: Quick, LL! Take this opportunity to baptise them!
Kate: That shark that’s attacking him. Clearly an atheist.
Clem: These sharks are totally from North Fitzroy.
Kate: I bet they have opinions on the Dirty Projectors
Clem: They really like eating at i Carusi.
Kate: It would be better if Thomas and LL just really went for it here.
Clem: To the tune of Deep Blue Something’s ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’.
Kate: And LL was like “Careful of my shark wound.”
Kate: And Thomas was like “I’ll give you a shark wou—”
Clem: MY HEAD IS LIKE A SHARK’S FIN
Kate: EIGHTY BILLION DIAMOND DUSTED STARS
Clem: This is the best official rap song since the wiggidy wiggidy Wild Wild West.
Kate: The one for The Machinist was pretty good, too.
Clem: Right then, want some fish and chips?
Kate: Only if they’re EXPLODED.
1 year ago
‘Willow’ (1988)
Kate has never seen Willow. Clem saw it 1000 times (rough estimate) when she was ten but hasn’t watched it since. So how will our heroines tackle Ron Howard and George Lucas’ fantasy-adventure flop of 1988?
* * *
Clem: LUCASFILM. Does that excite you?
Kate: Not as much as THX!
Clem: “Tuurn it uuuup!”
Kate: That’s it, I missed the intro type, I’m fucked.
Clem: Seize all pregnant women! A baby will be born, etc. It’s all just King Herod but with girls ‘n’ shit.
Kate: This is just going to be 90 minutes of colour and light and beards now.
Clem: SILENCE, WENCH
Kate: Peasants are always so dumpy. Ooh, good baby acting.
Clem: This baby will blow your mind. I think it grew up to be Meryl Streep.
Kate: That baby actor actually rode that reed bed down the river. Method baby. Ooh, a bird.
Clem: You don’t have a problem with dwarfs, do you? Because, er, just checking.
Kate: I have a problem with their acting here. And their choice of headwear.
Clem: Yeah! Warwick Davis! He was the original ewok.
Kate: I like it when peasants forget to put on their English accent properly.
Clem: Who says they’re in England, McCartney?!
Kate: Just off-screen I think there’s a whole orchestra that just won’t let this poor peasant family be.
Kate: Sorry, they’re in that very Saxon borough of The Bronx. My mistake.
Clem: I used to LOL my head off at “Let’s get him!” when I was eight.
Kate: Thank fuck I don’t live in feudal times. I hate jigging.
Clem: For years I’ve wanted the jig music as my ringtone.
Kate: Plus if I wanted to celebrate fresh produce that much I’d just go down to the local farmer’s market and high five an architect.
Clem: Piglet!!
Kate: I feel like you might be dangerously connected to this film, Bastow.
Clem: Have you noticed the insect sound-FX have gone for THE WHOLE FILM so far? Either that or there’s a cricket in my cupboard.
Kate: What are they attacking? It looks like a wet poodle.
Clem: Wargs, der.
Kate: I think the sound designer was really pleased for the gig. It’s unrelenting. It’s like five soundtracks played at once. They probably used it on Noriega.
Kate: Old men with plaits always seem super interested in babies.
Clem: There should be more plaits in beards in general.
Clem: I’m going to start saying “The bones have spoken!” in the supermarket.
Kate: Yes! When deciding between toilet cleaners.
Kate: This magical plait dude is creepy as fuck. He just rocked up and started watching those two making out.
Clem: He never got over starring in The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington.
Kate: Oh holy fuck a diagonal screen wipe! A real life diagonal screen wipe!
Clem: Hey, it was produced by George Lucas.
Kate: She’s using the lady villain voice so she must be evil. Or have a very severe head cold.
Clem: DOOROOTHYYY GAAAALE. Whoops, wrong Jean Marsh movie.
Kate: Peter Jackson just ripped a DVD of this and used most of it in LOTR, just with a greenscreened Ian McKellan in the foreground, didn’t he?
Clem: Pretty much.
Kate: Jean Marsh would have been the most severe, haughty baby in the newborn ward.
Clem: Yeah, take that, Burglekutt!
Kate: Her parents were probably deferring to her by the time she was three months old. They probably had to sleep in the cot and ask to use the fridge.
Kate: What the fuck is that thing on screen? It’s like a lioness that’s had too much sun.
Kate: Oh it’s just Val Kilmer
Clem: Migosh is hot.
Kate: Is that the horse?
Clem: Man I wish I was a medieval reenactment person.
Kate: Man I wish you hadn’t said that.
Clem: I don’t really, honest.
Kate: Val Kilmer is a beautiful Miss Venezuela and can also break a springbok’s neck in a single bite.
Clem: Do you think Val cries out in psychic agony in the shower when he remembers how beautiful he used to be?
Kate: I think he has a bedspread of his face and rolls about on it every morning, weeping.
Clem: Ooh, fairies!!
Clem: Chill out, panel van art lady, you’re in the whole sky.
Kate: Okay my brain has reached character capacity. Are you saying there are feudal dwarves, Val Kilmers, rat poodles, Lilliputians AND Cher fairies? Dude seriously. They just need to add in a wizard and a Transformer and they would have covered everything.
Clem: Just wait five minutes.
Kate: If that baby papoose transforms into a breakdancing car I’m turning off the TV.
Clem: I feel like this movie is killing your soul. Are you crying, Kate?
Kate: Honestly dude I did my Masters in alternative narrative structure in Eastern Bloc animation, which means that for six months I mainly watched circles and squares jump around screen set to the sound of an industrial fan. And even that was easier to understand than this fucking film.
Clem: It’s awesome when you’re eight.
Kate: Rubbing your eyelids til you see sparkles is awesome when you’re eight.
Clem: We can probably skip a chapter or three. But then you’ll miss the talking possum.
Kate: You had me at “talking”. And then again at “possum”.
Clem: Take more clothes off, Val!
Kate: Oh my god Val’s so beautiful. I just want him to rock me to sleep, listing the products he likes to use on his skin.
Clem: I want Warwick to wave his arms in the air more.
Kate: Dude it’s a brushtail!!!!
Clem: The king of all possums.
Clem: You love this movie now, don’t you?
Kate: I want this film playing on a loop at my wedding.
Clem: That skull-face-helmet would come in handy at the Boxing Day sales.
Kate: Brushtails are angry motherfuckers. David Mamet should write them a vehicle.
Clem: Or Neil Labute.
Clem: This dialogue makes me anxious about the fantasy/adventure film I’m writing.
Kate: It should. I think my cat could shut better dialogue into his litterbox.
Kate: Shit, could shit better dialogue.
Clem: He could shut it in there, too, so no one ever repeats it.
Kate: In fact he is. He just wrote The Apartment. Obviously it’s a bit derivative but he’s only 10-weeks-old.
Kate: I have to wee. Let me know if there’s another crude tent.
Clem: Mostly just peasants. I’m drinking milk with a straw.
Kate: I was drinking orange juice but around the 40 minute mark I started adding vodka. A loooooot of vodka.
Clem: I think I’m regressing to try and recapture my youth i.e. like this film.
Kate: In potentially related news this film is GREAT!!!
Clem: I still listen to the score most days :(
Kate: Don’t emoticon your way out of that statement Bastow
Clem: I STILL LISTEN TO THE SCORE MOST DAYS!! :D
Clem: Wish u were still a possum, gurl
Kate: Still waiting on a deciduous tree with a heart of gold to be introduced… Very late in the game to be introducing the titular character, Lucas…
Clem: You know he doesn’t go in for that Syd Field shit. He’s gangsta.
Kate: Why fucking TROLLS as well?!!!
Clem: Trolololol
Kate: Seriously what possible issue could any of these people have with a baby that couldn’t be resolved with a green tea and government subsidised childcare?
Clem: Or a copy of Doctor Spock.
Kate: A troll just turned into a wet bleeding brain. That’s it. I’m out. I give up.
Clem: This dragon gave me nightmares, btw.
Clem: Oh, spoiler alert.
Kate: I’m drinking straight vodka.
Clem: I’m tipping milk on my head.
Kate: I’m dunking my head in a potplant.
Clem: I’m Spartacus! Oh, wait.
Clem: In happy news for you there are only two chapters left in this YouTube playlist.
Kate: TWO CHAPTERS?!! This should have ended on the brushtail!!
Clem: In D&D we would say Willow is “bloodied” right now.
Kate: In B&B we would turn this off the in-house movies and steal some showercaps.
Clem: Hotel shampoo is basically always Morning Fresh.
Kate: I don’t know. That lady villain has a lot of square feet of real estate at her disposal and she’s only using it for an echoey skinny walkway and some things that are on fire. She should subdivide the block and make some real coin rather than investing all this fucking rage and horses in a baby actor.
Kate: Seriously dude I’m genuinely just drinking vodka.
Clem: Wait til Fin Raziel morphs into Tyra Banks!
Kate: That baby is crying because it got a callback for Look Who’s Talking but its agent “had a good feeling” about this film.
Kate: HOW IS THIS FILM STILL GOING
Clem: EVEN MOAR
Clem: BTW Val and Joanne totally bonked
Kate: Did they?! For reals?
Clem: They bonked all the way to the chuuuuch!
Kate: Why are you only telling me this now?!! Was it in that text that I missed at the beginning?
Clem: Yep: “The seers also foretold that Joanne Whalley-Kilmer would eventually divorce her husband and, lo, he would get fat and a bit scary”.
Kate: The 20th Anniversary audio commentary between them for this would be so good. They’d have lawyers present.
Clem: YouTube just suggested I watch “Val Kilmer as iceman” instead of the final chapter.
Kate: Go on, we’ll compare and contrast.
Clem: It’s like the bitch-fight version of Gandalf and Saruman! Nanananana!!!
Kate: I sort of feel like more films should end in a physical fight between old women. How To Make An American Quilt would have been much improved by one of those old ladies talking about losing her virginity in a cornfield then king hitting the woman next to her.
Clem: Willow! Willow Ufgood!! Willow!!!
Kate: Who’s Willow?
Kate: If someone made this film now they would fail Year 12 Media Studies.
Clem: Aaaaand we’re done! Thank you ballboys
Kate: I’m not!
Clem: Oh, shit.
Kate: Oh thank crap. A slow pull out. It’s over.
Kate: You’re dumped, Bastow
Clem: reblog agen if you creyed :(
Kate: FIVE STARS!!
1 year ago
Rendition (2007)
- Kate: Is this the film during which Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyggglleeenggall fell in love?
- Clem: I think it might be! Which means we should get to see him with his top off.
- Kate: He doesn't seem that interested in Reese right now. He seems pretty into that very damp woman.
- Clem: Can you blame him?
- Kate: Ooh. Jake's removed his neck for this role. That's more commitment than using nose putty. I can't believe he didn't get nominated for an Oscar for this.
- Clem: Apparently they can do that using a special sort of sticky tape. Kevin Branagh uses it to remove his lips.
- Kate: Yeah! Gwyneth Paltrow uses it to remove her likability.
- Kate: Shhh shut up fucken Meryl Streep in da muthafuckin house
- Kate: I can see why Jake n Reese got it on during the filming of this. It's a super sexy subject matter.
- Clem: Yeah, I like to have a hot bath and think about CIA documentation processes.
- Kate: In North Africa no one uses cool colours in their interior design.
- Clem: I love it when films are set in places like "North Africa". How's life at 123 Example Avenue, Africatown, North Africa?
- Kate: It's mainly ochre hues, that's what it is.
- Clem: Well that's because they use mud. I learned that from the inspirational sports buddy flick 'The Air Up There'.
- Kate: I hope this film ends in one final game of basketball, too.
- Clem: Basketball, or Kevin Bacon having to eat camel shit.
- Kate: That'd be great, if for no reason at the end of the film, Kevin Bacon just rocked up, took a deep sigh and started shovelling camel shit into his mouth.
- Kate: Honest to goodness, I think the colour grader for this film was high on nailpolish remover. Some of this seems to be shot by the Mars Rover.
- Clem: Lucky everyone's complexions suit an autumnal palette, though.
- Kate: I reckon Meryl Streep is about to rain down natural tones on this film. Actually, where did she go? Was that it for her?
- Clem: I hope not. Come back, Silkwood!
- Kate: Maybe she's playing every part in the film. She's a very good actor.
- Clem: Her best work was as Dustin Hoffman.
- Clem: In 'Hook'.
- Kate: She played such a good metal hook.
- Kate: I liked her as the credits in 'Smilla's Sense Of Snow'.
- Clem: So Reese's husband's a pretty hot bro. Surely that must have given the CIA some second thoughts.
- Kate: I know, you'd think they'd look at how nice his teeth are and go "Oh no, wait, he's an actor. False alarm, guys!"
- Kate: Shit, in a different context, the sparsity of the dialogue, the blindfolding, the bare chests, the two broody, sweaty men...
- Clem: Just imagine it with house music playing.
- Kate: Unfortunately I had "I've got the KE-EY! I've got the SEC-RE-ET" in my head, which is a song that should under no circumstances, no matter how quickly you need things done, be used in the context of sex.
- Clem: Unless you're an actual key.
- Kate: Don't be so braggy Key. It's not going to be a turn on for that door.
- Clem: Oh Peter Sarsgaard, why you gotta be Maggie Gyllenhaal's husben?
- Kate: I know! That child of theirs is going to have the most destitute, flea-bitten existence.
- Kate: Oh look! Torture! :D
- Clem: Yeah!! Feelgood hit of the whenever-it-was-originally-released!
- Kate: All that blood trickling down his toned chest... And he screams like a girl so the ladies know he's sensitive!
- Clem: This film is actually pretty naff, isn't it?
- Kate: I was just thinking that. It could have been done better with just Meryl Streep and a few decent wigs.
- Clem: And 'The Key'.
- Kate: That sexy metallic bitch.
- Clem: Look at Jake's rugged laptop! I think Julianne Moore used that in 'The Lost World'.
- Kate: And John Travolta used it in 'Battlefield Earth'!
- Clem: LOL "Secure Fax"
- Kate: Super secure. Just don't leave it by the phone to doodle on when you're on hold with CitiPower.
- Clem: Shakespeare quote! Slam dunk!
- Kate: What the fuck was that? Did they find that online?
- Clem: I bet he Googled that, too.
- Clem: Hey, is Reese going to lose the baby in front of the Capitol Building? Mad symbolism!
- Kate: I bet the search was "quote" +"serviceable" +"I checked out of this project when I found out it wasn't part of the 'Muppets Take' franchise"
- Kate: It's becoming clear to me why this film is lit like an alien abduction; the people working on it were trying not to fall into a boredom coma.
- Clem: "PUT ON THE CLOTHES"
- Kate: The best thing about this film is the half an almond Magnum I just found in my freezer.
- Clem: I've been thinking about the shower I'm going to have.
- Kate: I've been staring at my foot.
- Clem: Should we fast-forward it?
- Kate: It has a band-aid on it.
- Kate: Ok! Now we're getting somewhere! Like, to the end!
- Clem: Ooh, a donkey.
- Kate: I'm a tad ahead of you. You're going to see some sheep in silhouette in a sec, which will add another half star to the review.
- Clem: Awesome. I don't think Khalid is long for this world :(
- Kate: It just... It just fucking finished. What? It was halfway through a scene and it was like someone just turned the camera off.
- Kate: Ahh, the credits. Meryl's finest work.
- Clem: Haha look at Reese's baby. "Here's one I prepared earlier."
- Kate: She fades in and out really convincingly.
- Clem: Well, that was that movie.
- Kate: Do you want to watch it again?
- Clem: Yes, right away!!
- Kate: YES!!
Flipper (1996)
- Kate: Flipper's on right now but given that I am singing to my cat's stuffed bee & it looks like a postcard outside, I'm going to the pub to be with people. I do enjoy how chance the films on free to air tv are though.
- Clem: WE STARTED OUT LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET BUT IT ENDED UP IN TRAGEDY!!!!
- Kate: It really is a shame because things are heating up for this dolphin so much that Elijah wood has changed into jean shorts.
- Clem: Has Jessica Alba turned up yet? I seem to remember she had a flat-top blonde hairdo like Roxette in that film.
1 year ago
27 Dresses (2008)
- Kate: Look I don't want to jinx it and maybe I'm completely off base here, but I think Heigl might FALL IN LOVE during this film
- Clem: Shit, really?? Wow. That's really brave screenwriting.
- Kate: Oh no wait - my mistake. She just realised she's been dead all this time
- Clem: Bruce Willis was the alien all along!
- Kate: Oh god! Bruce! I was wondering who was poking their head into the background of every shot! I thought a stray dog had just wandered onto the shoot.
- Clem: Has Heigl been revealed as the REAL devil in the elevator yet?
- Kate: She's some sort of key!
- Kate: Now there's a giant battle with CGI orcs n shit! THIS FILM IS FUCKING AMAZING!!!!
- Clem: Yeaaahh!! I love that Peter Cetera theme song, too. Mad inspiraysh
- Kate: Yes! He collaborated with Vangelis! I'm so inspired I'm doing weights right now!
- Clem: I just ate a whole carton of eggs!!
