Becoming Led Zeppelin: the first ever authorised documentary

Showing all posts tagged: film

Becoming Led Zeppelin: the first ever authorised documentary

17 February 2025

Becoming Led Zeppelin, trailer, a documentary made by Irish-British filmmaker Bernard MacMahon, is screening in Australian cinemas at present, and tells the story of the English band’s first two years, from 1968 to 1970.

I listened to their 1971 rock classic Stairway to Heaven — one of their many compositions — and I have to say, they don’t make them like they used to. I doubt anyone could make them like they used to now, even if they wanted to.

Oh to be a rock and not to roll…

Were David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin right about Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

12 February 2025

American actor Jesse Eisenberg played Meta/Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, David Fincher’s 2010 dramatisation about the founding of Facebook. The screenplay, written by Aaron Sorkin, was based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires.

Despite being part fiction, Zuckerberg was not impressed with his portrayal, saying Fincher and Sorkin were only accurate with his wardrobe. Think the hoodie, and those fuck you flip-flops.

For those who have not seen The Social Network, the now Meta CEO comes across as a brash, arrogant individual, who has virtually no regard for authority, and little respect for anyone other than himself. Particularly women, and the people he called friends. But Zuckerberg’s upset was understandable; few people would relish being presented in such a light.

Perhaps Fincher and Sorkin recognised that by way of one of the final lines in the film, delivered by Marylin Delpy (Rashida Jones), a lawyer acting for Zuckerberg, who said: “You’re not an asshole Mark, but you’re trying so hard to be one.” In other words, Fincher and Sorkin were trying to give a young Zuckerberg — as someone who’d become a little too obsessed with his ambitions for the the fledgling social network — the benefit of the doubt.

Some of Zuckerberg’s recent actions however may have removed any doubts. Revising Meta’s fact checking and content moderation policies, and scaling back the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruiting programs, among them. Some people may be thinking Fincher and Sorkin had nailed Zuckerberg’s character from the get go.

Even Eisenberg, whose portrayal of Zuckerberg was, I thought, pure class, seems to be of the same opinion. Speaking recently, while promoting his new film, A Real Pain, Eisenberg said he didn’t want to be thought of as being associated with the Meta CEO:

These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it? Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hate. That’s what I think… not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.

Chestnut, a film by Jac Cron with Natalia Dyer and Rachel Keller

11 February 2025

Recent twenty-something finance graduate Annie (Natalia Dyer), who’s about to leave Philadelphia and move to Los Angeles for work, meets Tyler (Rachel Keller), and Danny (Danny Ramirez), who seem to be a couple, at a bar one evening.

But neither Tyler nor Danny seem sure they’re a thing, and their ambivalent feelings for Annie only muddy the waters further. Do they have designs on Annie. Or do they not?

No one seems to know. The only certainty being Annie, Tyler, and Danny enjoy slinking endlessly in and out of one bar after another, in the middle of the night.

Chestnut, trailer, the 2023 debut feature of Los Angeles based American filmmaker Jac Cron, struggles to figure out where it is going or what it’s trying to say. But maybe that’s the point, for is that not the plight of many a twenty-something?

The Teachers Lounge, a film by Ilker Catak, with Leonie Benesch

3 February 2025

The Teachers Lounge (AKA Das Lehrerzimmer), trailer, made in 2023, and directed by Ilker Çatak, is a cross between a (kind of) psychological thriller, and a (kind of) whodunit, set in a German elementary/primary school. I kid you not; the tension is palpable.

A person unknown has been stealing small quantities of money from bags and wallets left in the school’s staff room, and idealistic young teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), controversially attempts to uncover the identity of the thief.

Carla’s efforts to solve the mystery may be well intentioned, the presence of a would-be burglar in their midst both irritates and unsettles her colleagues, but you know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That’s not a knife: iconic Australian film Crocodile Dundee gets recut

3 February 2025

The knife, the editing room knife, has recently been taken to ocker Australian film Crocodile Dundee.

Producers deemed the slapstick comedy — that swept the once Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger, and television personalty Paul Hogan, to big screen fame in 1986 — to be out of touch with the expectations of contemporary movie audiences. This necessitated a number of “considered edits”, says Garry Maddox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:

Updating classic films can sometimes upset fans — there was a ruckus when George Lucas had Han Solo defending himself from bounty hunter Greedo rather than firing the first shot in a 1997 special edition of Star Wars — but the long tradition of creating new versions includes Francis Ford Coppola with both Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part III and Ridley Scott with Blade Runner.

Scenes from the film — set between the Australian outback and New York City — where Mick Dundee, AKA Crocodile Dundee, gropes a cross-dresser in a bar, and later a woman at a party, have been removed, while others have been extended. The re-edited version of the film is to be called Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut, and will henceforth become the standard edition of the story.

The chances of aliens coming to Earth are a trillion to one, but still they come

30 January 2025

Has Earth, and the solar system, been the subject of visits from extraterrestrials from elsewhere in the cosmos? How else to account for the numerous flying saucer, AKA unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) sightings, of, in particular, the past eighty years? I guess it’s possible visitors from deep space have been our way, at least once in the last several thousand years, drawn here in the knowledge that Earth is capable of hosting intelligent life.

But, any long distance travellers would have to be “very, very lucky”, says Anders Sandberg, of the Future of Humanity Institute, at the University of Oxford, speaking to Peter Brannen, a writer for The Atlantic, in 2018. Very, very lucky to have survived as a species, in an unsafe universe, rather than having somehow circumvented the laws of physics to reach us, that is:

“Maybe the universe is super dangerous and Earth-like planets are destroyed at a very high rate,” Sandberg says. “But if the universe is big enough, then when observers do show up on some very, very rare planets, they’ll look at the record of meteor impacts and disasters and say, ‘The universe looks pretty safe!’ But the problem is, of course, that their existence depends on them being very, very lucky. They’re actually living in an unsafe universe and next Tuesday they might get a very nasty surprise.” If this is true, it might explain why our radio telescopes have reported only a stark silence from our cosmic neighborhood.

The Age of Disclosure, a documentary made by Dan Farah, posits however that extraterrestrials have indeed visited. At least one person whom Farah interviewed claimed to have seen alien beings. There’s the suggestion of a massive cover up. I won’t dwell on that point, but will say this story sounds like the scoop of the century, maybe the whole of recorded history.

Why then not take it the media? Why make us pay to see a film to learn the truth? Can’t someone who’s in the know just call a news conference and spill the beans instead?

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documentary, film

Megalopolis, Reagan, among Nominations for 2024 Razzie Awards

29 January 2025

Borderlands, Joker: Folie a Deux, Madame Web, Megalopolis, and Reagan, a biopic about the late United States President Ronald Reagan, are vying for the coveted $4.97 gold spray-painted statuette, in the worst picture category of this year’s Golden Raspberry, AKA, Razzie awards.

Recipients in all Razzie’s categories, including worst picture, will be announced on Saturday 1 March 2025, the day before the Oscars, on what is surely the film industry’s night of slights.

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awards, film, humour

Vale American filmmaker, storyteller, David Lynch

18 January 2025

The director of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and the surely surreal Mulholland Drive, died on Thursday 16 January 2025. We shall watch Mulholland Drive, which is in the home movie library, this weekend in his memory.

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David Lynch, film

Y2K, a film by Kyle Mooney, the Y2K bug seriously strikes back

12 December 2024

I’m not sure if this horror re-imagining, trailer, of the Y2K “bug” will have a cinematic run in Australia, or is going straight to streaming.

Two high school nobodies make the decision to crash the last major celebration before the new millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.

With dire fears of road traffic signals failing, ATMs crashing (causing some people to keep cash on hand), and aeroplanes falling out of the sky at midnight, on the first of January 2000, what more would you want in a horror story?

Those who came in post 1999, can read more about the Y2K bug here, but here’s a quick summary of the problem:

Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Computer systems’ inability to distinguish dates correctly had the potential to bring down worldwide infrastructures for computer reliant industries.

Apparently some organisations spent up big trying to fend off the bug, although some IT experts felt the money could’ve been put to better use. In late 1999, I was having some weird computer (think clunky desktop with bloated monitor with an actually pretty small screen) problem (of a Windows nature, not Y2K), and had a computer fix-it guy come around and look at it. The issue was resolved, but I ended up being auto-subscribed to the fix-it people’s monthly newsletter.

Out of politeness, I read the first few newsletters they sent, before unsubscribing. In the February, or maybe March 2000 edition, they did a “recap” of their clients’ Y2K bug experiences. The fix-it people claimed many, many, organisations had averted catastrophe, thanks to their efforts. Unfortunately, or conveniently, as the case may be, not one of these organisations wished to talk publicly about how the fix-it people had saved them from certain doom. Of course.

In late 1999, I launched a Y2K bug inspired Neocities-like version of disassociated, here’s a screen grab. See them bugs in the lower right hand corner, hey? I picked up on the idea of traffic signals failing, and roads choked full of cars, trapped amid the chaos. Notice also the news box. They were ubiquitous on personal websites of the day; a design trend. Today the whole site is a news box.

Mooney’s movie might make for a great glimpse of the world, and the internet, in late 1999 though.

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design, film, history, Kyle Mooney

Leonardo da Vinci: a four hour documentary directed by Ken Burns

6 December 2024

This I wouldn’t mind seeing… a four hour documentary about Renaissance age artist and polymath Leonardo da Vinci, by American filmmaker Ken Burns.

A 15th century polymath of soaring imagination and profound intellect, Leonardo da Vinci created some of the most revered works of art of all time, but his artistic endeavors often seemed peripheral to his pursuits in science and engineering. Through his paintings and thousands of pages of drawings and writings, Leonardo da Vinci explores one of humankind’s most curious and innovative minds.

I’m hoping this will be available, eventually, to stream in this part of the world, at the moment though even access to the trailer and preview clips seem to be blocked in Australia.

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