Film Guide

Goodie Bag has created a fantastic video called “Hollywood vs. New York”, featuring four decades of celluloid New York annihilation distilled into one musical montage.

The tag line for Beautiful Losers is “Make Something From Nothing…” but I’m not comfortable with that assessment of the brilliant documentary it’s trying to make you want to watch. Sure it’s catchy, and in some way honest. I prefer to think a better tag line would have been something along the lines of; “Everyone one is an artist, most of us are just too scare to let him out”.

Following a loose group of anti-establishment artists and creators in America in the 90’s Beautiful Losers looks at how emerging street art became mainstream. Not overnight, and never chased, but still success seems to follow these uninhibited innovators, albeit at some distance.

The documentary is as rough and ready as the people it’s covering, but it also contains the tangible passion and creative spirit that the same people refused to allow to lie dormant inside them. Read the rest of this entry »

I had heard about this film for quite a while before I managed to get my hands on a copy of it. Working within the coffee industry I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.

Its a Documentary of the way one of many coffee producing regions are treated by multinationals and the New York markets and often how they get dictated to.

I myself am an advocate of ensuring coffee farmers get a fair deal – they produce the quality coffee that I build my business around. However this film rips back the layers, and exposes how much work goes into getting your coffee into the cup you buy at your local espresso bar or cafe.

While the quality of the filming may not be big budget doco, thats not the point with this film, as it follows Tadesse Meskela (General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union) as he is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. It follows his battle as he tries to get a fairer deal for his local coffee farmers, whom struggle to provide good schooling for their children – something us westerners tend to take for granted. Yet we without thinking buy our morning Latte, with little thought about where the coffee comes from.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to have to be honest here and say that Sanctuary is not the easiest TV show to get into – but then I’m guessing it’s not that easy to create a whole new concept in Sci-Fi and have it hit the ground running. But as with any new born baby, they soon find their feet and it doesn’t take them long to start exploring, and getting into trouble.

Sanctuary follows the super secret goings on of Dr. Helen Magnus, her daughter Ashley, quirky tech-whiz Henry and the newest member of their team, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Will Zimmerman. Together they know a secret that we think only live in our dreams – that the monsters that go bump in the night, are actually real, and live amongst us. Some are perfectly normal, but for a few special talents, others are bugs that seem to only want to devour us. All however are of interest to Helen’s team whose purpose in life seems to be helping those abnormals who need help, and disposing of those who pose a threat.  Read the rest of this entry »

Promoted as a kind of grindhouse style Shaun of the Dead meets Lesbian Vampires, Lesbian Vampire Killers is a totally over the top, over clichéd, movie length Tui advert style film that wants to be mocked and laughed at.

The main characters in this British comedy/horror are two predictable slackers, the fat guy who can’t get a girl, and the slightly dumb guy who keeps getting dumped by his leeching girlfriend. In a desperate attempt to break free of their hopeless lives, they decide to go on a tramp, and end up at a fabled Inn, where locals give them free beer and a place to stay – in a cottage down the road. Unbeknown to them however, the same locals have just sent a van of hot ‘Tui girls’ there as well, all for the purpose of ritual sacrifice by the local coven of, you guessed it, Lesbian Vampires.

Slow motion Tui-ness ensues with some brief nudity and plenty of splatter as well as a few frights, mixed up with increasingly funny laugh out loud moments. Throw in the local priest who thinks he’s the only person in the world who knows how to slay vampires and a love interest and the formula is complete. Read the rest of this entry »

Evolution sucks! Secular wisdom sucks! Dressing up monkeys and saying awaah look how cutely human he looks-Sucks!… And this movie ssuuuaaAArrrhh I can’t do it! … I enjoyed it damn it…. I must admit part of me wished it did-sure a parts of it were set up to support one side of the argument, but the acting, production values, the 1850’s historical setting and his…. Life story, just won me over.

It didn’t win me over from the start to be sure. Using classic old tricks of making fun of the Church and faith. Early in the movie Darwin tells the story to his children of how it made no difference to the lives of children from an island tribe. Highlighting its “complete failure”, which made his children and the audience giggle. He had a good friend who was the local Reverend and teacher of their village. He miss named an insect and used harsh discipline on his daughter cut to church singing “all things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small”. It then shows the preacher telling the congregation a classic non biblical sermon that death and misery exist as Gods loving tools of discipline.  Read the rest of this entry »