Gig Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (5.0/5.0)

The Lowdown: The Boss and his E Street Band have still got it delivering a mammoth, rousing performance that’s worth every dollar. And then some. 5.0/5.0

“Are you tired yet?” bellowed The Boss to his enraptured audience close to the end of a three hour plus performance that positively pulsated with energy. They weren’t and it seems, neither was he save for a well earned drenching and some intermittent staggering. But then that may have been his signature tight jeans.

At 63, Bruce Springsteen has lost none of his vigour for performing in this Wrecking Ball Tour (his first tour of Australia in a decade) - a man half his age would struggle to keep up. By the end of the night he’d crowd surfed (singing all the while), mounted a piano and wrapped his legs around his microphone stand in what looked like a cross between a yoga position and some kind of pole dancing stance. It’s clear age has not wearied The Boss.

"The atmosphere was like one massive block party where all ages were invited. Springsteen and his E Street Band were clearly having a ball and the audience loved them for it."

Gyrating and fist pumping as he belted out over 25 songs new and old, Springsteen’s smoky voice and socially conscious lyrics were as powerful as ever. He barely had a chance to catch his breath over the three hours – no costume changes here and no fancy pyrotechnics or bells and whistles - just pure, joyous, unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll.

The passion and enthusiasm of Springsteen and his E Street band was infectious. Even if you weren’t a fan, you couldn’t help but get swept up in this consummate showmanship. Of the 18 strong band - most of which danced in unison alongside Springsteen at one stage - special mention goes to the spectacular performances of saxophonist Jake Clemens who fills the legendary shoes of his late uncle Clarence (“Nobody blows like Jake” said one cheeky sign in the audience), vocalist Cindy Mizelle and guest band member Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello whose cracking guitar solo on The Ghost of Tom Joad almost set the stage alight.

The Boss with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello

Springsteen proved a more than generous performer with a playful affection for his audience and his enduring everyman touch (jutting his guitar out for eager fans to strum, taking audience requests and pressing the flesh with the floor crowd a number of times).

The atmosphere was like one massive block party where all ages were invited. Springsteen and his E Street Band were clearly having a ball and the audience loved them for it.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Allphones Arena, Sydney - March 22; Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne - March 24, 26, 27; Hanging Rock, Woodend - March 30, 31. For more info click here. 



Courtesy of Setlist.fm

Celeb Flashback: Susie Porter

There’s a certain guarantee that comes with almost every character on the resume of earthy actrine Susie Porter – strength by the bucket load and a vulnerability to match.

Whether portraying the sexually liberated, (Better Than Sex, Feeling Sexy), the manicured ball breaker (Two Hands, Little Fish), the resolute but flawed (Mullet, Remote Area Nurse) or the downright dowdy (Teesh and Trude), thirty-something Porter has garnered a reputation for delivering gutsy performances with a large helping of sass.

It’s not that she ravenously pursues these strong female roles says Porter but more that her own inner strength resonates with those that cast her.

“I always seem to be cast as strong women. I don’t know whether that’s because of typecasting or what,” says Porter.

“I suppose within that strength, the vulnerability is the important thing to focus on. I’m also quite grounded as a person so people get that there’s this strength in me rather than someone whose energy is very flighty. It’s Susie Porter’s energy, I suppose that’s what I’m known for. There are a lot of other sides to me as well. I can be flighty and neurotic at the best of times.”

In The Caterpillar Wish, a story of secrets and second chances, Porter adds another sinewy, vulnerable woman to her oeuvre.

As Susan, she’s a pig-headed single mum who has long given up on true love, keeping men at arms length through casual affairs much to the quiet chagrin of teenage daughter Emily (Victoria Thaine) who pines to know the identity of her father (a ‘tourist’ who breezed into their seaside town years earlier) and dwarfs her mother in maturity.

“I loved the relationship between the mother and daughter,” says Porter who occasionally punctuates her responses with a maternal ‘sweetie’ or ‘darl’.

“It was kind of reversed, so instead of the matriarch and the kid it almost seemed like the kid was the matriarch. I liked the idea of a relationship where the mother seemed more immature than the child.”

“I can never really understand why people say ‘You’re not the normal leading lady’. What is that? A back handed compliment? My ego can interpret those questions as ‘Ok, so I’m ugly…’.”

 

Porter’s reputation for bravery in her role choices has come not only from her gritty performances but from what she’s been prepared to do for her roles; whether it’s frank nudity and simulated sex in Better Than Sex, a lesbian tryst in The Monkey’s Mask, or appearing topless as a barmaid in The Caterpillar Wish (not to mention uttering the sexual advance “Part me beef curtains” in the spectacular misfire Welcome To Woop Woop).

Despite perceptions of gung ho bravery, Porter says these kinds of scenes affect her as much as the next person.

“They do bother me if I’m totally frank,” she hesitates.

“I’ll try and worm out of them at the 11^th hour to be honest with you. It’s not that I regret doing any of these scenes….. I’m not really strong enough to deal with it. People have this view of this strong Newcastle girl but nothing in life is what it seems - ever.

"I mean most people can’t even bare hearing their own voice on a tape recorder, let alone seeing themselves naked, simulating sex on [a screen] 40 foot high. It’s very confronting. It would have to be a pretty bloody good project for me to do that again.”

I love the smell of milkshakes in the morning.....

With a distinctly Australian charm, freckled complexion and a figure once compared to that of a Rembrandt, the actress is hardly your conventional leading lady. It’s an observation Porter seems perplexed and gently rankled by.

“I can never really understand why people say ‘You’re not the normal leading lady’,” she ponders.

“What is that? A back handed compliment? My ego can interpret those questions as ‘Ok, so I’m ugly…’.”

In truth, Porter is far too pragmatic to spend too long worrying about such matters.

“Maybe people do want to watch beautiful people all the time as a way of escapism, I really don’t know. The main thing I can do as an actor is to be as truthful and as honest [as I can] and have people respond to it.”

Acting says Porter, “ain't that hard. It ain’t that hard really to morph into another character and be completely different.”

Since childhood growing up in the coastal steel town of Newcastle, north of Sydney, the actress always knew her vocation.

“I was always a bit of a performer,” she laughs. “I was pretty gregarious. I was a confident kid but I was never precocious. I hope I wasn’t, I don’t think I was!”

As she reflects on her career so far and on the eve of an “adventure” to scope work opportunities in L.A, FILMINK asks this talented actress what her next desired role will be.

“I’d like to do projects that are really focused on story more than anything else and have the opportunity to play characters that I never play,” says Porter.

“ ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ Put me in a habit. Will someone do that one day? I would like to play a nun. I’d like to play an obsessive, religious freak.”

First published in Filmink Magazine, June 2006.

DVD Review: Arbitrage (4.0/5.0)

The Lowdown: A handsome, largely gripping thriller.

Richard Gere in his 60’s? Yea Gads!

In Arbitrage, he’s still handsome as all get out but age – baggy eyes, reading glasses – is catching up with him as Wall Street fat cat Robert Miller.

Still, that’s the least of the silver fox’s worries; he’s committed fraud on a massive scale, his company’s merger is looking shaky and he’s the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

As the tentacles of Miller’s deceit impact the lives of his loyal wife, (Susan Sarandon), daughter (Brit Marling) and lackey (Nate Parker), the walls begin to close in with a wily detective (Tim Roth) doing the pushing. Miller is a slippery snake too but blood sticks. Can money and power scrub it away?

Debut feature director Nicholas Jarecki, who penned the screenplay, handles it all deftly and Gere, Sarandon and Roth are at the top of their game. It’s a handsome, largely gripping thriller though a major deficit is an abrupt, ambiguous ending that’s less than satisfying.

Extras: Featurettes, interviews, trailer. (Unpreviewed)

Film: 4.0/5.0

Out: Now

This review was first published in Empire Magazine, March 2013.

Film Feature: Fast Rock

Dwayne Johnson may still be known throughout the world as ‘The Rock’ but he’s now better known as a serious action star in the likes of films like the high-octane Faster.

In the adrenaline-fueled action film Faster behemoth Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has a role he was born to play. As Driver, he’s a man on a mission hell bent on heading straight from a ten year jail stint to avenge his brother’s murder.

At his disposal, a charging muscle car, a whopping gun and sheer fearlessness. He’ll need all that – and lots more - if he’s going to outwit a hot-in-pursuit eccentric assassin and the cops.

Johnson, keen to revisit his action roots, immediately connected to his character.

“I would go to the ends of the earth to protect my family. I think we all would,” he says. “That was something that resonated with me.”

Though an extensive back story and Clint Eastwood movies helped Johnson prepare for the role, nothing could replace hearing a range of inmate experiences first hand.


Pout and Point

“We had the great fortune of sitting down with a couple of individuals who had served a lot of time in maximum security prisons for a variety of crimes, including murder,” he says.

This allowed him to “get into their psyche, their thought process and their perspective on what it’s like to take another man’s life.”

Believe it or not, Johnson needed to then beef up his build to play imposing criminal Driver and learn to fight like a hard-bitten inmate.

But it’s clear the charismatic star had the most fun tinkering with guns and cars, enthusing “It’s a ‘big boys with toys’ dream.”

KNOW THE ROCK

Winning millions of fans as wrestling superstar ‘The Rock’, Dwayne Johnson pulverised his way further into popular culture twelve years ago to become a bona fide box office draw.

His movies, including The Scorpion King, Welcome to the Jungle, Be Cool, The Tooth Fairy and Fast Five have amassed over $US1.5 billion.

VITAL STATS

Name: Dwayne Johnson.

Nicknames: The Rock, The People's Champion, The Brahma Bull, The Great One.

Age: 40

Height: 1.93 m

Weight: 116kg.

MORE ROCK

Originally entered the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as ‘Rocky Maivia’ in 1996 as a ‘face’ or hero character.

From March 1997, was known as ‘The Rock’ and swapped sides to become a ‘heel’ or villain.



In case he forgot it, he had his name
stamped on his jocks

The  Rock’s signature wrestling moves included The Samoan Drop, The People’s Elbow and Rock Bottom.

The Rock’s $US5.5 million salary for 2002’s The Scorpion King scored him a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest paid actor to receive top billing for the first time.

The Rock is a bestselling author with best selling autobiography The Rock Says and is a platinum recording artist via an original song of his that was included in the compilation album WWF The Music. Vol. 5

Faster airs tonight at 9.30pm on GO.

This is an edited version of a story first published in Blockbuster Interaction Magazine, July 2011.

TV Review: Easy A

The Lowdown: With some of Easy A’s comedy falling flat it’s no The Breakfast Club but it does have moments that sparkle with edginess in an enjoyable teen comedy with a brain.

It’s funny how a good movie trailer can reel you in, in this case a snappy package that promises snappy dialogue and performances in a teen comedy with a brain. Easy A doesn’t quite deliver but it has fun trying.

In the sunny, buttoned up community of Ojai, California, Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone, The Help) is by no means an ‘IT Girl’ at school but when she tells a saucy white lie, rumour spreads like wildfire through the social networking superhighway that she’s lost her “V card” (that’s virginity to you and I) and more. In short, the lady’s a tramp and Olive isn’t about to spurn her new found popularity, instead embracing the lie complete with “whore couture” emblazoned with the letter of shame, just like the condemned Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter which she happens to be studying in class.

The ruse has side benefits. In exchange for gift cards to her favourite stores, Olive allows the school’s nerds to spread the word that she’s “fake rocked” their world. Things quickly get out of control as the lie starts to have adverse effects with a backlash of lynch mob proportions. Fanning the moral outrage is the patronising god-botherer Marianne (Amanda Bynes, Hairspray) who spread the rumour in the first place -“Jesus tells us to love everyone,” she preaches. “Even the whores and homosexuals.”

You lookin' at me?

You have to wonder why a gal, one that hardly looks like she’d be an outcast, should have to resort to being a faux hoe to gain popularity. Even so it’s entertaining to watch her try. A scene where Olive and tortured, gay Brandon (Cougar Town’s terrifically sardonic Dan Byrd) fake a romp of ecstasy is Easy A’s funniest and most beautifully played. It’s a shame that that’s the er….climax of what this comedy could have been.

It seems that writer Bert V. Royal and director Will Gluck (Friends With Benefits) are aiming for a sophisticated John Hughesian teen comedy like The Breakfast Club for the naughties and they have mixed success. Some of the comedy falls flat while other times it sparkles with edginess. There’s a fair whiff of Dawson’s Creek Syndrome too – that is, teens sprouting eloquence and witticisms way beyond theirs or anyone’s years and it can be a little too smug, smart and self aware. Literary references from Hawthorne to Silvia Plath and Mark Twain are poured on thick. While this reviewer welcomes some raunch and profanity, here the mix doesn’t quite gel with the result a little too much resembling a female American Pie. That’s saying something given no one really gets laid.



Who you calling Easy?

Easy A earns good grades for some impressive performances (bar Lisa Kudrow who pretty much phones it in, regurgitating her kooky Phoebe Friends shtick as a Counsellor). Stone proves a caustic and fearless talent while Cairo Time’s Patricia Clarkson (making a rare foray into the mainstream) and The Devil Wears Prada’s Stanley Tucci as Olive’s off-kilter non-judgmental parents are charming and have a lot of fun with their roles.

The filmmakers have made nice work of highlighting the fight between a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach with all the puritanical outrage and infamy that follows, versus that of standing up and being yourself. No prizes for guessing which approach wins - it’s hammered home and resolved in much too neat a bow - but then this is Hollywood. It’s a film not quite worthy of an easy A but we’ll give it an E for Effort.

Easy A airs tonight on Go! at 9pm.

This review first appeared online on Trespass Magazine, September 2010.

TV Review: The Adjustment Bureau

The Lowdown: A major mainstream Hollywood film that succeeds in being both entertaining and thought provoking.

We’ve all watched as taxi after taxi pass us by or (more commonly) fumed as reception suddenly drops out on our mobile phones. What if these experiences weren’t just simply part of the humdrum of everyday life? What if they happened for a reason, orchestrated by something or someone pulling at the strings of destiny?

Meeting - seemingly by chance -  beautiful dancer Elise (The Devil Wears Prada’s Emily Blunt), up-and-coming New York Senate candidate David Norris (Matt Damon) is instantly smitten, certain she’s the woman for him. But then strange occurrences begin to collude against his desired fate, thanks to the mysterious workings of The Adjustment Bureau. This covert operation of sharply tailored men in hats (including Mad Men’s John Slattery and Priscilla Queen of the Desert’s Terrence Stamp) makes sure that every moment of a person’s life happens to the plan the Bureau has set out for them, right down to when and how you spill your takeaway coffee.

For reasons not immediately apparent, the Bureau will stop at nothing to keep David and Elise apart. David soon realises he’ll have to outsmart them if Elise is to remain in his life and so begins a thrilling, almost fantastical chase through New York City in a race against time.


You can leave your hat on.....

The concept may sound obscure – it’s based on a short story by much adapted sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick – and with its peculiar mix of thriller, sci-fi and romance genres, it is. That’s the film’s biggest challenge – it requires the audience to suspend disbelief and join the ride. But in the capable hands of debut feature director George Nolfi (screenwriter of The Bourne Ultimatum) who directs with panache, two compelling leads and a strong supporting cast (including The Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie who impresses as a sympathetic Bureau agent) it largely works.

Damon is dependably good and Blunt, such a natural performer, positively oozes magnetic charisma and charm. The chemistry between the pair is right off the Richter scale and believable to boot.


Come to the Gents often?

The production design is also effective with the ‘men in hats’ looking as if they’ve just stepped out of Mad Men’s ad agency and their powers and methodologies – futuristic, telepathic and old fashioned – a quaint mix.

The Adjustment Bureau poses existential questions of destiny, chance and the consequences of free will. It’s a major mainstream Hollywood film that succeeds in being both entertaining and thought provoking, complex yet deceivingly simple in its creative concepts.

Some viewers may find the film’s denouement less than satisfying. But taken as a whole, if you allow yourself to take a leap of faith The Adjustment Bureau is an intriguing, engrossing experience. At the very least, it just might be the perfect date movie.

Originally published online at Trespass Magazine, March 2011.

Film Review: Broken City (4.0/5.0)

The lowdown: Broken City is a taut, intriguing and hard-boiled thriller that has much to say about big city corruption. 4.0/5.0 stars.

Given the talent attached it’s surprising that this thriller comes to our screens with so little fanfare almost slipping under the radar in the afterglow of the Oscars (even star Russell Crowe has expressed his disappointment on Twitter at the apparent limited publicity). It’s a shame because Broken City is well worthy of attention.

The ‘Broken City’ of the title refers to the Big Apple and it’s a fruit rotten to the core if snaky Mayor Nicholas Hostetler (Crowe) is anything to go by. But with an election looming, his immediate concerns turn closer to home; he suspects his wife Kathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is having an affair and he hires hard-bitten disgraced former cop cum detective Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) to investigate.

What seems like an open shut case of infidelity in New York’s upper echelons unravels into something much more scandalous as Billy digs deeper into what will prove a far reaching conspiracy. To say much more would be giving too much away but it’s safe to say that money, power and vengeance are constant bookends.

Co-producer Wahlberg said recently in an allegedly drunken interview (watch an excerpt here) that he wanted Broken City to recall some seminal American character driven films of the 70 ‘s – films like Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. While that’s setting a lofty goal, Broken City does invoke the genre nicely with its own gritty panache while bringing currency by mining current political events as its backdrop. It’s a film wryly in touch with its NYC setting (an irony given that some of the film was shot in New Orleans) with a hard boiled honesty, jarringly salty and un-PC dialogue, raw violence and a plot seething with underhanded political manoeuvrings and turning tables of power.



Rusty takes his pulse taking VERY seriously

Crowe is formidable, positively lapping up his role as the cocky, intimidating (and strangely orange-hued) Mayor prepared to do whatever it takes to stay in the hot seat. Wahlberg proves a worthy macho match as his sparring opponent in this cat and mouse game and Zeta-Jones is suitably sultry, almost purring as a possible femme fatale. There’s top notch support from character actors Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale), Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) and Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights ) too.

What’s more, the sharp screenplay with its serpentine twists aided and abetted by polished direction by Allen Hughes ( The Book of Eli ) keeps the intrigue bubbling away in what amounts to a taut, hard-boiled thriller that has much to say about big city corruption.

Film: 4.0/5.0 stars

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Barry Pepper, and Kyle Chandler.

Director: Allen Hughes.

Written By: Brian Tucker.

Rated: MA 15+

Genre: Drama

Year: 2013

Run Time: 109 minutes.

Out: March 7, 2013.