Digital Diatribe

Len Wiseman, the same guy who crashed a car into a helicopter in Die Hard 4, and who gave me a new found a appreciation for Timothy Olyphant and “go codes”, is currently remaking Total Recall.
After looking through the cast list on IMDB, I can’t help but think they should have renamed it Total Awesome.

With Colin Farrel playing Quaid / Hauser and Bryan Cranston playing every Michael Ironside character ever Cohagen, this movie could not possibly be terrible in any way.
It’s even got Kate Beckinsale AND Jessica Biel. And they have a fight. A girl fight. With pillows. In bras and panties.
Ok, I may have made that last bit up.

Bill Nighy (not the science guy) is playing the guy with the flesh puppet in his chest. Hearing the words “Quaid, start the reactor” in an english accent is going to be epic.
Ethan Hawke and John (captian Sulu) Cho are also there too!

It’s written by Kurt Wimmer, the same guy who wrote the screenplay for the Gun-Kata cult classic Equilibrium.
If this movie fails to be amazing then this is not a world I wish to inhabit.

Recent interviews with Len Wiseman reveal he is a fan of the original movie, which he first saw at age 15, so hopefully his teenage innocence distilled the awesomeness from Paul Verhoeven’s (not this one) masterpiece.

From the limited pictures that have been leaked, it looks to be more sci-fi than the orgiginal, with police type dudes walking around is cool white generic armour suits, and hover cars that look like they came out of the other Philip K Dick inspired classic, Blade Runner.

My only reluctance to endorse it fully is that it is no longer set on mars. Therefore I am probably unlikely to hear Colin Farrel tell himself to get his ass to mars.
But with confirmation of the return of the triple breated whore, this can probably be forgiven.

I give this a pre emptive four out five flashbacks.

If there is anything I’ve learned from watching other people do podcasts on the interwebs it’s that you either need to swear a lot and drink beer while someone films you talking to your rich friends, or you need to swear a lot and have an english accent and a team of good animators.

I have neither, and I’m also sick as a dog, so although I promised Emily I’d have a podcast ready by the end of the day, I was in fact full of shit.

The Future.
To sum it up, this is a film so bad that nobody can even be bothered to pirate it. I think the male lead sums up the film perfectly about halfway through the trailer when he simply says “no one cares”.
It doesn’t exist on Usenet, and any of the limited number of torrents that are available have no seeders.
As such I now have 88.6% of this film, with no one playable section even as long as the trailer (1).
So that’s pretty much what I’ll base my review on.

Without reading the synopsis of this film you could be forgiven for thinking it was about two poorly dressed 35 year old hipsters with funny voices who upon deciding to adopt a talking cat that also has a funny voice, (this being because it is in fact voiced by the poorly dressed and highly irritating Miranda July who happens to be the lead actress and director), realise that their lives are fairly meaningless.

The trailer starts with a shot of what I can only assume is the same puppet they use for the lucky lotteries commercials (2).
I’m not sure at this point which annoying cat I’d rather listen to.

They are told upon inquiring about the cat that it’ll be dead within 6 months or 5 years depending on how awesome they are and that they won’t be able to take it home for 30 days. As it seemed like they were pretty vague about the whole thing to start with, you might have thought their internal dialogue would have gone a bit more like “oh in that case we’ll take any of the other cats that have a higher chance of survival and that we can also take home with us right now”.
Rather than do this they decide that in the next 30 days they had better find some meaning in their lives. Probably because the cat was supposed to do that for them, and now they need to wait a month for it.
My suggestion would be to start by buying a better TV, but that’s probably because I’m an aspiring film critic and it’s one of the tools of the trade.

Back to the trailer…

For some reason Sophie (the main female lead) decides to turn off the internet in their apartment but at the same time film a new dance every day for 30 days and somehow email it to her friends. She also decides to have an affair with an old man, crawl inside a yellow spandex star type of thing, scream out an open window, and describe herself as wild.
Jason (the male lead) talks to an old man who I guess is supposed to be wise because he’s gone through all this shit before and possibly lived through at least one world war (although he doesn’t really look that old and I’m just guessing now as to where this wisdom comes from. Another review (3) said that it might come from the fact he has the same couch as Jason. This couch might also possibly be magic. Having not seen the film I really can’t comment further).
The film also stars a talking moon, although one not nearly as entertaining as the one from The Mighty Boosh.

According the trailer it’s Coming Soon, which I guess is supposed to be clever because the film is called The Future, but really much like the rest of the trailer it’s just irritating and far too easy to read in to.

Based on the trailer, other reviews, and the fact that nobody can be bothered to torrent this semi baked mess of a cheesecake that should either have been left in the oven or made with different ingredients so that it didn’t require baking at all, I give this film 2 out of 10. One point for the magic couch, and the other for the talking moon.
If I ever get around to watching more than two and a half minutes of it I’m sure this score will decrease appropriately.

1. The Trailer
2. That other annoying cat
3. The other review

Those of you who live away from the Parramatta Road end of Glebe Point Road might not be too bothered to travel down past the library, but take a wonder down past the children’s court and you’ll run into a little pocket of shops that time seems to have forgotten.

Until recently.

The store next to Glebe Liquor has been vacant for years, used as storage for the Lucky 7 supermarket while the landlord waited in vain for the managing agent  to find some poor soul willing to part with $700 a week for it.

Having no such luck he’s now decided to redevelop it himself. But what has he put in there?

Of all the things Glebe Point Road needs more of, I’d argue that Tobacconists sit at about the same level with Thai Restaurants.

With all the hoops the Department of Health are making shopkeepers jump through these days just to sell tobacco products, who in their right mind would open a store where you can’t have any of your products on display?

Someone who has no intention of sticking to the rules, that’s who.

The owners of the Lucky 7 have already been in trouble with the Department of Health for selling under the counter cigarettes, imported without the mandatory health warnings on them and sold at a cheaper price. But due to some loophole whereby they weren’t the people behind the counter when the sale took place, they managed to get off and one of their staff members took the fall and ended up with a fine and a criminal record.

Combined with all the flagrant violations of council regulations for storage of food and keeping animals in their shop, are these really the kind of people we want opening yet another store?

What’s more, they have no regard for anyone else on Glebe Point Rd. Examples of this behaviour include constantly doing works during times where they clearly aren’t allowed to and getting massive deliveries left on the side of the road blocking up the footpath. The dog they keep out the back has bitten 3 people now and been reported to council and is still allowed to roam free. What does it say about the effectiveness of Sydney City Council that all this happening on their watch? Would it have happened if Glebe was still part of Liedchardt Council?

Cignall-377 Glebe Pt Rd

Council say they can’t make moral judgements on the type of store that is opened, and because a tobacconist falls under retail use and the space is zoned appropriately there isn’t a lot they can do on that front.

At least council isn’t entirely ineffectual. Due to the fact that the work they have done never got council approval, they have been ordered not to do anything until it gets resolved. So we’ve gone from an empty juice bar to an empty tobacconist.

If the Lucky 7 is anything to go by it’ll be full of crack pipes and bongs and lighters in the shape of boobs. I can’t wait.

Is this the type of revitalisation this end of Glebe Point Road needs? What do you think?

Let us know in the comments below. All comments are moderated.