“I ask you, have you ever had a New Year’s Eve you enjoyed? Of course not! Why? Because you’ve persisted in this insane delusion that somehow things are supposed to keep getting better, or that the cyclical nature of the ying-yang means that the earth is supposed to replenish itself or some such horseshit! Horseshit doesn’t even replenish itself…”

Lester Bangs, ‘New Year’s Eve’, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 286

 

Writing in the face of the oncoming 1980s, Bangs’ glib words always come to mind whenever New Year’s Eve rolls around: “New Year’s Eve is the biggest bummer yet, because we all go out with these expectations and get totally soused just so we can stand to be around each other.”  While I don’t agree completely since I’ve had several decent New Year’s Eves (usually a house party + music + alcohol + friends = good times), even the best New Year’s Eves are tainted by disappointment. More than usually, a disappointment felt within a maudlin hour or two of reflection where the mistakes of the past year are revisited and the misguided hopes of the next year are entertained. So anytime something occurs that excessively promotes New Year’s Eve as the greatest night on Earth such as Garry Marshall’s latest film New Year’s Eve, I react in a manner befitting Bangs at his most cynical. Another version of Valentine’s Day where half-baked stories are overwhelmed by too many stars centred on a popular holiday, the trailer to New Year’s Eve annoyed me greatly, even with its use of a Pink song extolling us to “raise our glasses”. Gah, it’s all so forced!

Naturally with any Hollywood romantic-comedy that looks completely dire, Heavy Movie Parking Lot is on the scene, party hats on our heads and sparklers in our hands, completely ready to give ourselves over to the lessons that might be learnt before the clock ticks over to 2012. Unfortunately, much like any successful New Year’s Eve, you had to be really hammered to enjoy New Year’s Eve! The endless parade of “Oh, they’re in this?” cast appearances and “Yeah, I can see where this is going!” storylines prolonged the inevitable countdown to midnight within a two hour time-span that felt like a week. In comparison, the trailer seemed quite harmless as I’d completely forgotten that ‘Auld Lang Syne’ was a thing and that the dimple-faced girl with the McDonalds-commercial-child-actor eyes from Glee would be caterwhauling it! HMPL were no dummies and knew what we were getting into, partying on across audio recording devices to deliver a podcast that always twists the bad things into good: namely Leonie talking a lot about how good Ludacris was (possibly campaigning for him to guest rap on one of her songs no doubt!)

PART ONE: HERE

PART TWO: RIGHT HERE

From a brief, unplanned hiatus, Heavy Movie Parking Lot returns to bring you more cutting social and cultural commentary! From out lofty highbrow tastes we stoop to experience the cinema of the hoi polloi! Who says peeps can’t change, huh?

OH WAIT, my bad, that’s simply the (gender-neutralised) tagline from the terrible movie we saw! My double bad, we see terrible movies all the time! And we talk about them ALL THE TIME. So to rephrase my rhetorical question above: Who says, “let’s go see the The Change-Up and then talk about it in the car park for thirty minutes and learn about ourselves and life in general?” Heavy Movie Parking Lot, that is who.

From the director The Wedding Crashers (2005) and the writers of The Hangover (2009), The Change-Up (2011) was predictably effing terrible. But if we Heavy Movie goers have to (or feel perversely compelled to) sit through 112 mintues of racist, sexist, homophobic garabge, you can count on us (or, me, rather) to find some nugget of retarded truth under a banana peel or turd somewhere in that disgusting pile.

The nugget of redemptive truth that one might get out of this utterly terrible film is by virtue of its being a body-swap comedy. The body-swap comedy speaks to, at once, both the absurdity and contingency of emodiment: those moments when we look in the mirror at our bodies and think, “I don’t feel like I look like this. How is this me? Is this me? What is me?” And we all know that schtick is both hilarious and terrifying. The Change-Up is mostly terrifying. But the fact that we have bodies is often hilarious. Fart joke? I am really grabbing at straws here.

This edition of HMPL is in its own way something of a change-up, though. For instance I am much louder than Tristan due to his having a cold at the time of recording and my having eaten two ice-creams earlier that day and probably being a little “hyper” as a result.

For all the platitudinous wisdom you could hope for, check out the full length downloadable version HERE. DO ENJOY.

Why DO remakes get made? Is it just another capitalist scam? Is it to show how times change but ultimately people are the same? It is like covering a song? Like the new director can hit some high notes that the other director couldn’t, or is like what it is to turn a fast and flashy dance track into a folkish alt country croon to highlight the raw emotion of the original? (I’m thinking about the Fast and the Furious right now, and even though I have never seen the Fast and the Furious I would probably see a folkish alt country version of the Fast and the Furious, knowing me) But anyway, that’s a terrible and useless example/ analogy, because movies don’t get made like that. The remake will almost always or just plain always cost way more to make than the original. No one ever does a lo-fi version of anything in the movies. Only in Be Kind, Rewind, but that wasn’t real life that was a movie.

So, in cheap real life, Heavy Movie Parking Lot went to see a 2011 remake of a 1981 film, Arthur, a film about a heavy-drinking, high-fun-having heir to a considerable fortune that only comes at the cost of love.
It was OK. Not great, not terrible either. Let’s look at the costs:

2x tickets @ $18 each = $36
1x ipod for recording podcast = $79
Give or take a few bucks for candy bar treats (I’m not going to make a joke about how expensive candy bar food is, just in case you were expecting that, we’re just going to skip it), all in all this podcast cost about $120. Which, to me, seems like a high budget for a lo-fi podcast. Is it? Either way, there’s a lot to enjoy in this edition, like when I lay into Tristan for always describing lady actors as “the lovely/ fetching/ gorgeous ______” even though I actually refer to Greta Gerwig as a “babe” way before Tristan says anything. Hypocrisy! Like this podcast, it’s free.

SO. Remakes. Probably just another capitalist scam. But maybe try to find some enjoyment in them anyway?

Like by downloading the podcast? Everyone wins!

So, Leonie moves to Melbourne and Heavy Movie Parking Lot continues…

MONDAY 28TH FEB 2011 - TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:

LB: ”Oscars!”

TF: ”Ah, I’m not watching them. Watching Hall Pass for free instead!” 

LB: ”Duuuuuuuuuude! I am so jealous!”

TF: ”I so wish I was talking to you right now about Hall Pass! Q is nicely analytical about comedies but you would have deeper thoughts, Mrs Brialey!”

LB: ”We should try skying a hmpl sometime. Drawing for catfish is close to being sent to you.”

TF: ”Yeah, skype! Good thinking! I’ll get on that Catfish write-up by Wednesday!” 

THURS 10TH MARCH 2011 - TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED: 

LB: ”Dear tristan, hall pass was the worst movie I have ever seen. It took every fiber of my being not to walk out. I look forward to discussing this with you. Regards, leonie.” 

Quick! To the skypemobile! Hit the record button and let’s roll!

“This is a film for people who have given up!” was the pull-quote for the video cover that Leonie came up, but this is the movie reviewing podcast for people who never give up! Heavy Movie Parking Lot ditches the physical parking lot for the parking lot of the mind, Heavy Movie Skyping Lot even, trying to wrestle with a sad state of affairs - no parking lots, no laughs, no good roles for Owen Wilson, etc - but carrying on with plenty of bad jokes, annoying bits and awkward laughter! Yes, once again, we’re the type of professionals who can spend near-50 minutes on a film not worth two hours of your time! Hall Pass? More like hALL pASS!

Full forty plus minutes of fumbled fury towards the Farrelly Bros and weathered woe for Wilson, Owen, is right here: UNCUT PODCAST! 

There are a few things that Heavy Movie Parking Lot stands passionately behind: a philosophy of amateurism; no editing; maybe doing a little research, but mostly shooting from the hip and from the heart. The thing we are most passionate about however, the thing that brought us together in a car park with an mp3 player to record our half baked musings with the intention of putting them on the internet, was the shared joy of going to the movies, and then talking about the movie with a friend. It’s a simple, often underrated pleasure in life, and one that I have missed greatly since stretching our Heavy Movie Parking Lot to 2720 km by moving from Perth to Melbourne.

Undeterred by this, we have continued to get heavy about the movies via the Heavy Movie Skype Lot and the people at Revelation even asked us to talk about their film festival under the misguided notion that more than 3 of our friends might actually listen to the podcast. In the email exchange regarding this request the Revelation representative wrote to me: “I think the last time I saw you we were standing outside a warehouse somewhere deep in the depths of Bayswater - I hope Melbourne is treating you well.” Well, let me tell you: first of all, I don’t remember this meeting very well; chances are I was very drunk, also it was really dark in that Bayswater carpark, so I apologise for forgetting this meeting. Second, Melbourne is treating me very well; my only complaint being that I just don’t go to the movies as often as I did in Perth. Why? I dunno why. There are $6 movies on Monday playing at a theatre down the road from me, but I guess I am too busy drinking coffee and reading the internet. Also, I don’t have anyone nagging me to go see any of them.

So! Thank goodness for people like Tristan Fidler and thank goodness for film festivals like Revelation. Left to my own devices I would probably only ever watch Singing in the Rain over and over and over again and never see any other movies, ever, in my life, but, thanks to friends who love watching movies, love making movies, or love talking about movies, potential dumb-bum philistines like myself get dragged along if they’re lucky to see a plethora of films they would otherwise not think to or get the chance to see. Because while I am lazy and have some philistine tendencies, I do sincerely love movies. In general, I love watching things, learning things, feeling things like feelings about things I am watching and learning, and then talking about these things with my friends. I’d say most people feel similarly.

So, this amateurish and slap-dash podcast is a general toast to going to the movies as often as you can, seeing as much as you can, as diverse things as you can, and then talking about these things with your friends.

Revelation, I wish I was there.

~~~

Full Length and Uncut HMPL Special Edition Revelation Past and Present Podcast you must download HERE. Excerpt up top provides HMPL’s picks for Revelation 2011. Happy Film Festivus, Perth!

“Podcasts are the best. People talking. No editing. Long length. They go deep. Like Stanley Siegel or Donohue” - Judd Apatow.

Well, Heavy Movie Parking Lot is two people talking and there is no editing and for special editions podcasts like this one, which is devoted entirely to the work ofJudd Apatow, it’s at a long length (cue a dick joke). So we hope maybe one day Apatow listens to us talk about him and his work (though I’m sure it’d be a reaction along the lines of when Jonah Hill gives a CD of his band to Russell Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and he says, ” I was gonna listen to that, but then, um, I just carried on living my life. “). Though this podcast doesn’t necessarily go “deep” as one of its own members pointed out (I’ve spoiled the surprise twist ending already: “We didn’t go deep enough!”). Basically when Leonie and Tristan sat down to critically discuss Apatow’s corpus of work as writer-director-and-more-specifically-auteur-producer-of-our-times, rather than probing the critical material over his deification of “bromancing”, or looking at the gender politics across the films he’s produced, or examining how saturated his humour is in dick jokes and gay jokes, or exploring how Freaks and Geeks is one of the best things Television ever did… Wait, a minute! This podcast does touch on all of this topics! We did go DEEP… well, deepish. Because the majority of this podcast is actually devoted to us “riffing” by which I mean quoting lines ad nausem from all these TV episodes and comedy movies we like to love so much. So if you like impressions of Seth Rogen or Mooj from The 40 Year Old Virgin, then this is is the best podcast (under the framing provision that all “podcasts are the best”). Oh, and we also crack a lot of lame dick jokes and to make up for that, here are some good ones:

My first introduction to the work of Judd Apatow was setting the VCR timer to record episodes of Freaks and Geeks that screened at 3-4pm on Channel Nine. I think I saw Joe Flaherty plug it on that dire midday Martin Short talk show - that and a few write-ups I’d noticed praising it as this generation’s version of The Wonder Years. Actually it was more catching one episode late at night where the geeks buy non-alcoholic beer for the party Lindsay is throwing and Nick makes a pass at her and blames it on the beer - no, I think it was the freaks laughing at the high school play about the dangers of drinking and Harris playing the victim (holy shit - did we hold a discussion on Freaks and Geeks and NOT mention Harris? WHAT THE FUCK! Stephen Lea Shepard, hear our praise! You are the best guy!). More to the point, Apatow’s name was always at the end of each show as it was his production company that produced it though I feel that the way we talk about this show we both love so much is that Apatow created Freaks and Geeks, which is WRONG as Paul Feig was the creator (we love you, Paul Feig, even when you starred in Sabrina The Teenage Witch!!!). I think that’s an important note to make as Judd Apatow’s name has been taken as an umbrella term for a lot of different shows, different films, different actors and different directors. Going all the way back to an association with Ben Stiller on his sketch show (check Apatow doing Jay Leno here), writing forThe Larry Sanders Show (the second greatest thing television ever gave us), and writing/producing The Cable Guy (where he met his talented wife, Leslie Mann), Apatow’s rise to power has been quite a thing to observe the producer as auteur-brand, a sum larger than his parts (cue another dick joke) or a name bigger than the man himself, which has come to define the style and tone of American comedies over the last ten years. 

From the break-out success of The 40 Year Old Virgin with the man who defines likability, Steve Carrell, to his follow-ups, Knocked Up about the joys of parenting (or at least the idea of Seth Rogen being a dad), and Funny People about the business of being in comedy (oh, and having cancer and trying to reconnect with your ex - seriously, it’s like two movies in one!). Then we have all the movies that Apatow produced even giving his Freaks and Geeks alumni the chance to prove themselves as major stars - Seth Rogen in Pineapple Express and Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall - and to reintroduce indie directors into the mainstream - Greg Mottola for Superbad and David Gordon Green for Pineapple Express. Even though Apatow is readdressing the “bros before hos” criticisms he’s long had to answer by giving Kirsten Whig a shot at writing and starring in Bridesmaids, the very funny comedy that focuses on a lot of funny women (wait, let’s call these ladies funny people and they are funny so fuck you,Christopher Hitchens!). Still, we’re hoping he also gives a shot to Carla Gallo, Lizzy Caplan and Aubrey Plaza by giving them comedy vehicles to head-line (see also: my idea for a buddy comedy with Mindy Kaling and Greta Gerwig, but like a Lethal Weapon cop movie please). 

To quote the man himself from another great podcast based on him from The Sound of Young America: 

“I learned a lot from Gary [Shandling] and a lot from Paul [Feig] and most of it was about being personal and that your stories are what connect with people. I remember reading, I can’t remember who said it, but the best gift you can give to people is to share your story… that had a big effect on me because I thought my story was boring… my parents were divorced,  I got depressed, I had trouble getting a girlfriend, I got into comedy… but the tiniest details of it are what is interesting and what people connect to…”

So sit back and listen to the tiny details of what we connected it across the body of work that Apatow’s name represents or is associated with, and even how the podcast itself represents a tiny detail for HMPL that it was the last one recorded before Leonie left Perth (she hopped a van with some hippies to go follow The Grateful Dead; that album, American Beauty really spoke to her). Speaking of which, let’s conclude with the best TV credit sequence ever:

So listen to the preview edit or stick the full-length in your ear (cue dick joke) HERE. Also: e-mail us about which Apatow character you most identify with, please - we’d love to hear from you! heavymovieparkinglot@gmail.com

You could describe Heavy Movie Parking Lot’s relationship with podcasting and the internet as something of a casual one. We go see a movie, hook up with the podcasting in the car afterwards, wait about 3 months and then, a la Tom Haverford, text back with, “what’s crackin?”

So, Internet, what’s crackin’?

Here at Heavy Movie Parking Lot we are a bit behind and maybe a bit bored. Fact is, we’ve seen too many romantic comedies lately (I blame myself - me, Leonie) and things have gotten a bit stale. There are only so many times you can hear us extol the virtues of When Harry Met Sally and Some Like it Hot. There are, however, not enough times you can hear Tristan Fidler’s Christopher Walken, or Leonie make inappropriate sexual innuendo. So you get that here. And, as always, we offer ideas for movies that would have been better than this one. Example:

So here’s the whole podcast for download: yo. And STAY TUNED for NO ROMANTIC COMEDIES for a little while (although we still have a whole podcast on Judd Apatow bromantic comedies to upload and also our first skype podcast on Hall Pass for your listening pleasure. Hold onto your hats, the edge of the seat, your private parts, etc).

Movies equal escapism, right? The anxieties and worries of everyday life are alleviated momentarily by sitting in the dark and absorbing a cheap thrill or a dumb laugh. Then you have movies which are about life at its most anxious and most worrying, for instance horror movie hijinks like climbing into a dark cave to be preyed upon by nasty subterranean creatures like in The Descent, or then you have movies that induce further anxiety and worry by the knowledge that they are based on a real life story of survival that did indeed happened to someone out there in the world. The type of experience you can see clearly on a person interviewed on numerous news reports and television interviews, because they’re forever transformed by the event, psychologically and physically. 

Stepping back for a moment to the morning of the 127 Hours screening Heavy Movie Parking Lot attended, my biggest concern was waiting in an empty lobby for Leonie to arrive while everyone else was inside with the movie already starting. This to me was anxiety and worry at its most EXTREME! “I might miss the opening credits! SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT! HOW CAN I LIIIIIVE?” Finally Leonie arrived after having circled the cinema twice to find a parking spot, somewhat breathless but with enough breathe to state, “I saw a guy riding a bike with a basket at the front. Inside it was a Jack Russell. I nearly died.” See, a microcosm of anxiety (waiting on a friend) and relief (the friend arrives). Oh, and how about “dying” as an expression of elation? Slightly ironic when HMPL heads off to see a movie where an actual dude named Aron Ralston in a freak climbing accident had his arm stuck underneath a rock for five days, which ended with him sawing it off to survive. “I nearly died…” no shit. However, such a tale would make you appreciate the small things that make life worth appreciating much like sighting a Jack Russell in a bicycle basket, the type of image that might have kept Aron Ralston going (That and the thought of not being trapped underneath a rock). Witnessing his story, any minor anxieties or worries I might have felt at the screening (“Boy, this seat at the back of the cinema is really uncomfortable!”) were quickly overruled because this was a dude who went through some serious shit. 

Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Ralston’s autobiographical book (originally titled Between A Rock and A Hard Place) places you in a state of anxiety for the majority of its running time. Relief is promised in the end as we know Ralston survived, but much like Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, having the ending spoiled by historical fact doesn’t absolve you of the suspense in the situation. Particularly when Ralston’s ordeal is a bracing, uncomfortable, and even stomach-churning state of psychical endurance for the space of 90 minutes. As an audience member, you become a collective participant in a cinema’s very vocal reaction to the grisly consequences of Ralston’s experience, particularly the extreme of hacking off your own extremities in order to survive. Such trauma becomes carthatic in reminding us of how to appreciate the everyday (the rays of the sun, the refreshing taste of water, the ability to have a beer at a party) and to realise that we need people particularly the ones - family and friends - who’d miss if we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thus the movie worked as my own personal Jack Russell in a bicycle basket only inscribed in the handsome mug of that other shaggy dog presence, the thespian James Franco.

Thus Heavy Movie Parking Lot swung its movie reviewing arms wide all to answer the question, “How do you make a story about about a guy stuck under a rock watchable “entertainment”?” Well, our critical discussion reached to include how great James Franco aka Daniel Desario is as a screen presence acting dude, how true-life-disaster stories take us to extremes of human behaviour, how sexy thoughts are underrepresented in such ‘I Can’t Believe I Survived!’ accounts, and how many troubling puns we could lob into our patter - seriously, to make light of such a traumatic thing would be quite disarming! 

Stretch your limbs long and hard then let our heavy words drop right onto them. Take heart in that the duration of your ordeal is a little less than 127 hours… 

Downloadable HMPL 127 Hours podcast HERE.

I think Tristan is expecting this write-up to be my gender politics rant to end all gender politics rants, where I pull out the big guns, put my ovaries on the table, I dunno what. But… I just can’t do it. Being so constantly outraged is so exhausting! Plus, there are better articles about why this movie is so bad written by more qualified, more intelligent women here, here, and here. I may not be completely qualified (and by ‘qualified’ I mean ‘of a sound mind not flustered with rage and despair’) to list all the things that are wrong with the way women and men and heterosexual relationships are written about in movies, but I am more than qualified to list all the things that are wrong with me, personally, such that I have seen this movie not once, not twice, but maybe four or five times now.

#1

I am a hopeless, pathetic romantic. Thus, when a romantic comedy comes out, like a moth to the flame, I can’t help but go to it. No matter how bad it looks (actually the last one looks good amiright? I am beyond hope). But as I write this and list all these bad movies I have seen or plan on seeing (yep Just Go With It, I’m there) I realise there is nothing actually remotely romantic about any of these movies. There is a lot that is titillating (is there? I dunno even know anymore?), so maybe I am just a pathetic perve/ masochist?

#2

I enjoy being outraged and entertained at the same time. The later is a real stretch lately. But let me just walk you through my rollercoaster of highs and lows while watching such deplorable movies as recent romantic comedies:

“Are people actually like this? People are awful/ sexist/ shallow/ superficial/ immature/ unrealistic/ wear too much make-up/ are crass/ ew.” DESPAIR

“At least I am not like this! At least I can see what is wrong with this! I am excellent/ aware of my own sexism/ sometimes able to think deeply about things/ enjoy mundane reality/ am crass but in a charming way.” ELATION

“But wait, people made this movie; people wrote this and rich, influential people funded it. The teenage boys sitting behind me are laughing. They are going to grow up confused about what it means to be a man/ woman, they are going to treat their girlfriends badly and have unrealistcally high/ low expectations of what relationships are actually like.” DESPAIR

“One day I will write a movie that is way better/ less sexist/ more realistic/ more thoughtful/ more funny/ more touching than this.” ELATION

“That would be a lot of hard work; I am never going to get around to actually doing that.” DESPAIR

“Fart joke/ pun.” ELATION

“Sexist/ homophobic/ racist joke.” DESPAIR.

So, basically, what I’m saying is, I dunno how much more of this I can take. Hall Pass might have been the straw that broke the camel’s hump. I mean back. (Ya geddit? I could totally write a hilarious romantic comedy!) But we get to the third (certainly not the last) thing wrong with me:

#3

I am stubborn/ I never learn. So I will probably go see Just Go With It and be equally as upset about how it treats women/ men as how it makes me feel about a man once loved/ still love, Adam Sandler (similar thing happened with Owen Wilson in Hall Pass).

And maybe Tristan will listen to me complain and draw a comic making me look tougher/ funnier than I am? Thanks, TF. And maybe you will listen to the podcast? (probably only worth listening to the last 15/ 20 minutes. For such a terrible movie, we certainly had a lot to say about it.)

Somewhere is the title of Sofia Coppola’s fourth film, which is possibly a reference to ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ or to the notional sense of locating yourself at a point but without any bearings (you’re somewhere as opposed to nowhere… nowhere is still somewhere, right?). Some would argue that for a title change from Somewhere to Something as in “Waiting for Something to Happen!” Yes, amidst the critical fanfare for Venice Film Festival prize-winning Coppola film, several friends fired off scathing critical take-downs of the film’s emptiness, which rather than portraying ennui was criticised as the shallowness at its very core.,..

Suggested tagline:“If You Went To University, Pretend To Enjoy This” - Jessica

“Fuck you Sofia Coppola” - Soda

When I finally saw it, I was caught between diverse reactions from intelligent siblings - from the brother reiterating “I really felt empathy for the main character” to the sister calmly noting “That director has no heart” - but what were my feelings about this film?

There were out there… Somewhere… in a Heavy Movie Parking Lot! 

Well, actually Heavy Movie Moving Parking Lot as Leonie stuck the keys into the ignition and piloted our mobile film review from a quaint Mount Hawthorn park all the way to a picturesque Scarborough beach-front for our Socratic roundelay with this art-film about a bored movie star and his crying daughter. In essence, HMPL reenacted our own laboured metaphor of driving around in circles like Johnny did at the start of Somewhere, physically and verbally encircling the subject matter, touching on the use of boredom in film narratives, the existential crisis of not being interested in anything (even a pear?!) and the impact of obvious cinematic metaphors (and look at me name-drop Michaelango Antonnoni once again, ah ha ha, what a wanker).

We Dorff it up big-time on the road  … instead we knew where we were heading - film review podcast excellence!

Downloadable mp3 version for your own driving-around-nowhere-times is right somewhere here. And just to get you in the right mood of fragile ennui, listen to The Strokes please: