A vicious bout of influenza mowed the Voxfrock team down this week, decimating social plans and at first, triggering some glum reflections on Life, The Universe and Everything in General. We missed at least one A-list party, two launches and a disparate scatter of arty knees-ups across Sydney and Melbourne but, on the plus side, we did manage to slink into the comforting dark of three film screenings and emerge ab-so-bloody-lute-ly JUBILANT at what we had seen. Who needs parties?
FAST AND FURIOUS 6
Who indeed, when there is FAST AND FURIOUS 6, a testosteronic hoot (brrrmmm! BRRRMMMM!) of a movie, a joyful, outrageous, thrill-to-the-gills frenzy of million-miles-an-hour stunts for boys who like their heroes ripped, their crashes fiery and their womenfolk tough as bricks, built like models and as fond of tight tops and short shorts as they are of God and noble gestures.
Voxfrock’s preview screening was packed to the back stalls with popcorn-shovelling, Big Gulp-guzzling boys and girlfriends who, fascinatingly, trooped ceaselessly in and out of the cinema for – wee breaks? More candy? Stress relief? who knows? – and erupted, roaring as One through every chase and crash.
When the credits rolled and the customary “Don’t try these stunts at home…” disclaimer appeared, they stumbled out, still hoovering popcorn and laughing like drains. Voxfrock couldn’t figure, however, if they were amused the producers would even suggest they might try the stunts for real, or that they wouldn’t….VOXVERDICT: FAST AND FURIOUS 6: FIVE (FIERY) STARS
DESPICABLE ME 2
Voxfrock admits a certain reluctance to associate with large numbers of contemporary children. Even small numbers. Revolting table manners, a tendency to arrogant intrusion, and the invariable absence of responsible parents, have taken their inevitable toll. However. Resistance was not an option when a second installment of the Despicable Me animated film series was recently announced. We are suckers to the genre.
Voxfrock’s preview screening of Despicable Me 2 was, like Fast and Furious 6, chock full of its target demographic who coo-ed and giggled and screeched almost – but not quite – as often and passionately as Voxfrock. It is relentlessly funny and terribly, terribly clever, a genuine treat for both kidlets and lighthearted adults. The writers exploit the limitless possibilities of animation and its third remarkable cinematic dimension, imagining impossible but knowable fantastic characters, locations, buildings, machines and scenarios.
It’s the stuff of dreams but, also anchored in the eternal human struggles of good versus evil, love versus…you get the drift. Despicable Me 2 does not, however, melt into mawkish or saccharin resolutions of those issues at any time, a fact for which Voxfrock, who gags easily, is also eternally grateful.
Finally, Voxfrock recommends film-goers sit still for the closing credits, hosted by three dopey, chattering minions who challenge, with various stunts, the visual limits of 3D including “bubbles” that drift out of the screen, up the cinema aisle and so close to your nose you could pop them. VOXVERDICT: DESPICABLE ME 2: FIVE (CUTE-AS-A-BUTTON) STARS
THE GREAT GATSBY
Are they mad? Voxfrock is puzzled Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby was harshly judged by some critics before its Australian release. Flakier writers than us, might wonder if the negativity weren’t karmic fallout for the film’s world premiere NOT being held here, despite Mr. Luhrmann accepting $50 million of Australian tax payer’s money to help fund it. But, we won’t bang on about that.
The Great Gatsby is shockingly good, marvelously entertaining. (We hope this won’t set your critical bar so high, Dear Reader, that you have nowhere but to plunge when you see it.) Mr. Luhrmann and production designer, Catherine Martin, imagined Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s wild world of vacuous and greedy social climbers as a garish, cartoonishly glamourous and heartless place.
It is a mesmerising spectacle, with echos of the paintbox colours, night gardens and exotic mansions of epic 1950s and 60s Disney films about it, pumped up with glitter explosions, contemporary music and some particularly memorable pelvic thrusting. At the epicentre of this lavish world, Leonardo Di Caprio’s Jay Gatsby is, covertly, the greediest, most relentless social climber of them all but, there’s a catch to his cool. His motive is love, which, in his own, and narrator, Nick Carraway‘s (played by Toby Macguire) eyes, renders him pure on one arguable level.
As Mr. Luhrmann’s and Mr. Fitzgerald’s figurative captives, we are also forced to examine our motives: what do you do, Dear Reader, and why, to belong to The A-list, The Privileged, The Blessed or The Rich?
Carey Mulligan’s Daisy is sweet but a silken whisper short of the perfect, perfectly fragile Daisy played by Mia Farrow opposite Robert Redford in the 1974 film. More memorable is Muiccia Prada’s extraordinarily lovely wardrobe of crystal-crusted frocks, soft-dyed stoles and graphic and glimmering jeweled headbands and scarves for Miss Mulligan. The planks who rated The Great Gatsby any fewer than five stars must at least concede, the frocks were a triumph. VOXVERDICT: THE GREAT GATSBY: FIVE (SPARKLING) STARS
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Clarice Burke, Michaela Summers and Morgan Devitt, intern@voxfrock.com.au
