Baz Luhrmann’s hugely anticipated Australia has all the elements of a classic epic movie but mixed reviews have cooled ambitions for success on the international stage. It is that country’s most expensive film to date with a budget of US$130m, an A-list cast including Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman and fellow AussieHugh Jackman. So much hype has surrounded Luhrmann’s new movie that the tourist industry is counting on the film’s success to uplift the industry’s decline. Talk about pressure. Kidman plays an English aristocrat who inherits a cattle ranch in Australia at the start of WWII. She teams up with cattle drover Jackman after rival owners plot to take her land. The pair drove thousands of animals across the country, fall in love, dodge Japanese bombs, and take in the panoramic vistas.
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Milk is the much anticipated new movie from auteur Gus Van Sant and chronicles the assasination of charismatic Harvey Milk in 1978. Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. His legacy is still apparent in San Francisco today where Milk is still a hero of the Bay Area.
On November 27 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed by another city supervisor, Dan White. White had recently resigned from his position and wanted his job back and blamed his former colleagues for denying his attempt to rescind his resignation from the board. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after using the infamous “Twinkie Defense,” sighting his addiction to sugary foods as a factor of his depression and subsequently a cause of his diminished responsibility in the deaths of these two men. White served just five years in jail and was released in January 1984. He committed suicide the following October 1985.
Checking off the essential ingredients that make a James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace didn’t disappoint in the hard, fast action department. From the moment the cinema lights go down, the audience is thrust in to an exciting car chase in Siena, Italy, with our hero destroying yet another gorgeous automobile. This time round it’s the stunning, and expensive, Aston Martin DBS.
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At the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show this week, the famous Bond car was in full view and commanding a $273,000 price tag. But one secret Bond fan paid a whopping $352,000 for the Aston Martin that was totaled at the bottom of Lake Garda, Italy, for the sensational first movie scene.
Ginger Liu
Checking off the essential ingredients that make a James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace didn’t disappoint in the hard, fast action department. From the moment the cinema lights go down, the audience is thrust in to an exciting car chase in Siena, Italy, with our hero destroying yet another gorgeous automobile. This time round it’s the stunning, and expensive, Aston Martin DBS. Check one, our hero is in a bit of bother; check two, he’s driving a fancy sports car; and check three, he is not in Kansas. Number four on my list is Bond’s sense of humor, which is sadly lacking in Daniel Craig’s follow up to the superior Casino Royal. Fifth and sixth on my list are two of the most essential Bond movie elements of its 23rd outing: the Bond girl and the villain. I realize that this contemporary Bond movie is trying its best to be a real life story of a spy and Quantum of Solace certainly had me holding my armrests throughout the stunning violence that Bond inflicts and endures. But Bond’s villain, Dominic Greene (Matthew Amalric), the chairman of an ecological organization called Greene Planet, is about as sinister a foe as green salad. We know he’s no match for Daniel Craig’s Bond, who is an impressive killing machine. Disappointing still, is the lead lady and lover of Greene, Camille (Olga Kurylenko). She’s a delicate, skinny victim of a Bond girl who doesn’t even land on her back for the good of Her Majesty’s secret service. Where Vespa Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale was tough, sexy, and intelligent, Camille fails to deliver much of any emotion.
But beside the nit picking, Daniel Craig is the most exciting Bond ever and demands our constant attention. The violence is obvious and has consequences; people are in pain, people scream, and people die. And more importantly, the effects, in most part, are real and more awe inspiring than much of the computer generated garbage we see today. I just wanted more: more humor, more evil bad guys, and an incredible knock-out of a female lead. Imagine Angelina Jolie as a Bond girl and then you know where I’m coming from.
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Ginger Liu
