The Bourne Identity (2002)

by

0

A man is found floating in the Mediterranean sea by a fishing trawler, he is unconscious and shot. Taken care of by the crew of the fishing trawler, he awakens and he has no idea who he is, or where he is from apart from a miniscule clue of a Swiss safety deposit box on his person.

The audience knows of course, that he is Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), a CIA operative who appears to be pursued for reasons that are not revealed to us. Bourne makes his way to Switzerland and investigates the contents of the safety deposit box filled with multiple passports with various names, multiple currencies and a gun. Faced with more questions, than answers, Bourne makes his way to the only place he thinks he can get some help, the American consulate.

Its up until this point that the film runs your standard and enjoyable spy fare with a great setup. All of this preamble though, is merely a means to an end to setup an impressive but endless amount of action scenes featuring the main protagonist and his numerous foes who are out to assassinate him.

Finding himself cornered in the U.S. embassy, Bourne summons his previously unknown fighting skills in the first of many fight scenes that takes place in which Bourne must elude his pursuers. He teams up with Marie (Franka Potenta) a young woman he saw earlier in the Embassy and offers her twenty thousand dollars to drive him to Paris where his next potential clue to his identity could be.

We learn in between the impressively scripted fight scenes that Bourne was a member of a classified CIA program called treadstone which is headed up by a shady character called Conklin (Chris Cooper). Treadstone now want Bourne dead for reasons that aren’t explained that wonderfully as the story takes a back seat to the action as is common in films today.

It’s been ten years since I’ve seen The Bourne Identity and those ten years really haven’t changed my feelings about it. While the film is technically proficient and the action scenes are well put together, the storyline itself seems a bit “thin” compared to other films of this genre. All in all though, this is a spy movie for the iPod generation that does entertain and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, this first film sits well amongst the two subsequent films to create a satisfying trilogy.

What’s The Attraction Of The Hunger Games?

by

0

Maybe it’s just another sign that I’m getting older at the age of 35, but it appears that many films that get released in this day and age appear to be based on really average properties. In this case I refer to the new film “The Hunger Games” that has been released over the last couple of days. Now I know that I’m not in the target audience for the film and I’ll admit that I didn’t know a thing about the books that the film is based on, but I was invited along with friends to see the film, so I thought I’d give it a go.

To me, “The Hunger Games” is effectively a very unoriginal film that uses the personally boring, reality TV format as a basis of it’s  storyline. I’m not going to go into the plot so as not to spoil it for people who haven’t seen it, but It’s nothing we really haven’t seen before on a film, after all 1987′s “The Running Man” used the reality TV format as a story backdrop long before reality TV became the banal TV format that heavily fills a lot of television timeslots around the world today.

After all, even “The Running Man” was what you would call an average film in it’s day, but back then, the balance between good films and average films was heavily in favour of the good films column.

Today though, it’s a much different story. That balance of a good film vs. average film from a big Hollywood studio now leans towards the average column sadly and an original, big budget studio film is the exception rather than the norm. Now it’s really only the independent film genre that appears to have really creative story lines in this day and age.

Personally, I believe that the main culprit for this is reality TV, and that’s the big difference between 1987 and 2012. Today’s younger generation of  is very accepting of mediocrity thanks to reality TV because many young people idolise manufactured singers from average talent shows and vaccuous reality TV stars as well. After all how do you explain the success of really average films like the Twilight series and now “The Hunger Games”? They don’t know any better!

Australian F1 Grand Prix

by

0

The new Formula 1 season is finally underway, which means I made my (usually) annual sojourn to Albert Park here in Melbourne but have not been able to go these last few years for personal reasons out of my control. This year however I made a fun return to my favorite spectator sport and it didn’t disappoint in the slightest.

The race was a tightly run thing with even pace amongst the main teams which hopefully means we will have a tighter season this year than last. Hopefully though Mclaren have finally found the pace they’ve been looking for over the last few years. I got myself a few pictures amongst the fun of the race which you can view here.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Vale Ralph McQuarrie

by

0

During my usual thrice daily twitter checkup yesterday, I was sad to read that conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie had died aged 82. While McQuarrie certainly wasn’t a household name to your average person, his work would have certainly made an impact without them really knowing it.

To film lovers, geeks and general science-fiction fans around the world McQuarrie would certainly be familiar as the genius visionary behind such films as Star Wars and it’s sequels, E.T, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Jurassic Park.

If it wasn’t for his vision, many beloved films that we know and love today, could be completely different, or forgotten completely. He’s a man whose work has inspired many directors over the years and I’m sure his influence will be sorely missed.

Australian Government Is A Soap Opera

by

0

The last several days have been like a soap opera when it comes to our own government. For the second time in 18 months our useless Labor government are again going through the process of ripping itself apart with in-fighting between Gillard & Rudd as they try to find a new leader because their polls are so low instead of trying to work on effective government and sort out the issues that affect us all.

The labor government here in Australia have stuffed up the budget by blowing it into a massive deficit, introduced dud policies and scared the shit out the general population by pandering to the insane green party with a moronic carbon tax which, in turn, has practically brought a large chunk of this economy to a stand still because of all the uncertainty going around with regards to it.

I’m sorry, but whoever wins this nonsense, we all lose, because it’s not the leader of the party that’s the issue, it’s the awful policy that labor have introduced over it’s one and a half terms so far. The sooner we have an election and get rid of this government, the better this country will be, until then we will have a dysfunctional government run by either a compulsive liar or someone with a power trip complex.

In a related note to all this nonsense, someone out in cyberspace obviously has a sense of humor by posting a funny job listing for Prime Minister on nowhiring.com, of course there are a few prerequisites for the job;

“The applicant would be expected to report to “faceless men”, “Alan Jones” and a large team of experienced senior executives with proven track records.”

“Wayne Swan will also be there”

“Applicants should … be an earnest and empathetic individual of outstanding moral character. However, we will settle for applicants who have a pulse.”

If you could meet the quite amusing job requirements listed, you should give the job a go. After all you can’t do any worse than the two clowns fighting AGAIN!

2012 Formula 1 Season Draws Near

by

0

After what seems like an eternity to a Formula 1 fanatic, the Formula 1 circus is rolling into action again. With just over a month until the first race of the season here in Melbourne, the teams have hit the track at Jerez for pre-season testing which gives us our first real chance to see the 2012 cars in action. This year the cars look a slight bit different to previous years, the most notable difference is the use of the “platypus” noses due to new chassis regulations. All the teams with the notable exception of the new Mclaren MP4-27 sport this new look while Mclaren are using a more traditional nose and in my opinion is the best looking car in the field.

Will it be the quickest though??

Personally I don’t mind the look of the new “platypus” noses, after all Formula 1 has always been at the cutting edge of technology and it’s interesting to see how each team has adapted to these new rules. Red Bull of course have gone their own way with regards to the new noses compared to the other teams and added an intake above the lower nose, how this will help them performance wise is unknown until we get to the season as testing never really gives too much away as the teams don’t want to show their hand too early. If one was speculating, you would have to give the advantage to Red Bull at this point because the title is theirs to lose, but hopefully some of the other teams step up to the challenge this year like in the 2010 season, the last thing Formula 1 fans want is another season without a cliffhanger ending. Time will tell.

Sherlock Is Amazing Television

by

0

A few weeks ago I watched what I believe is the best episode of television in over ten years. I refer to the final episode in this current series of the BBC’s Sherlock. As usual with most of the BBC’s programs, the short length of each series is proof positive that doing shows the American network way, ie: too many episodes per year, just leads to mediocrity in the long run (although there are of course some exceptions.)

While each series of Sherlock is short (only three movie length episodes) this was 90 minutes of brilliant storytelling topped off with a cliffhanger that makes you wish that the wait between series wasn’t so unbearable. Here’s hoping that the wait till series three isn’t as long as the wait for series two.