Fridae wishes all its readers a very merry X’mas!

Whether you’re gay, bi, straight, transsexual, single, attached, chaste, monogamous, polygamous or just “it’s complicated, okay?”, we hope you all have a very warm and joyous festive season.

Now on to the movies. The must-watch of the week is definitely Australia, a grand and spectacular epic with two of Down Under’s biggest and most beautiful stars – Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Directed by the bold, brilliant and very mad Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), it tells an epic tale of an aristocratic woman (Nicole) who falls for a gruff drover (Hugh) when they have to drive 2,000 head of cattle across the vast continent of Australia.

With romance, adventure, war, racial tension, class difference, parenthood and almost everything else thrown into this ambitious spectacle, this is the event movie of the holiday season. Ho, ho, ho!

Less spectacular is The Spirit, a disappointing comic book adaptation by Frank Miller which will be remembered for its flawed experiment in transferring comic book aesthetics onto the big screen.

Equally disappointing is Bedtime Stories, Adam Sandler’s unfunny comedy about a man who discovers his niece and nephew have the uncanny power to turn their bedtime stories into reality.

Well, don’t let us keep you from your Yuletide celebrations. Once again, merry Christmas, everyone!

Date:7th Jan 2009

Venue :Lido Hall 1

Time:8.45pm

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Australian director Baz Luhrmann may be married with two kids, but everything he touches turn into Bright Dazzling Campy Melodramatic Fabulousness. For a married bloke with kids, then he must be the gayest straight man we know.

His wildly hyperactive Romeo + Juliet (1996) dragged the Shakespearean romance kicking and screaming into the MTV era. His pop musical Moulin Rouge (2001) was another dizzying assault on the senses.

And in his latest film Australia, he may have finally found a story to match his massive talents and ambitions. Costing a sensational US$130million, Australia is to Baz’s country Down Under what Gone With The Wind must be to America. It is a big, spectacular, old-fashioned epic that mixes romance, war and adventure.

By the end of it all, you feel like you’ve just watched three movies for the price of one. Seriously.

Written by Baz with a team of three scribes, Australia tells the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman, looking as impossibly elegant as ever) who travels from her home in England to Australia to visit her husband, who she suspects of having an affair. Instead, she finds her husband dead – killed allegedly by an aboriginal man.

She makes plans to sell his land and cattle, and promptly return to England. But when she discovers that a rival cattle company may be stealing her husband’s herd and may even be behind his death, she decides to stay and get even. She hires a drover (Hugh Jackman in stunning shape) to drive her cattle through miles of arid land to get them to market…

The film’s running time is 165minutes, so it’s hard not to feel a little exhausted after such a long epic. But the actors are commendable, taking us through the elaborate plot even when it defies credibility.

Nicole Kidman – the muse of so many gay men and the object of lust of so many gay women – is ravishing as Lady Sarah Ashley. Her clothes are cunningly cut so as to accentuate every curve and crevice of her body. (If you observe closely, you can make out her G-strings.) Her acting is stronger than usual, and she displays a fine comic sensibility rarely seen in her recent works.

Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman is impeccable as always. Not only is he in fabulous shape, he’ll show you why he was voted the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. Also worth mentioning is 11-year-old actor Brandon Walters, who plays a half-aboriginal child through whose eyes we witness the story.

Big, boisterous, ambitious and just spectacular to look at, Australia is the must-see epic for the Christmas season.

The Spirit stars the Gabriel Macht as a murdered policeman who has mysteriously returned to the city as a masked crime-fighter known as the Spirit. He must now battle the maniacal Octopus (Samuel L Jackson) and his sidekick Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson) who plan to wipe out the entire city.

Along the way, the Spirit crosses paths with many beautiful women (Eva Mendes, Jaime King, Paz Vega) who want to love or kill him…

Now comic-book film adaptations are usually directed by well-known action/horror directors like Sam Raimi and Robert Rodriguez. So it’s interesting to note that The Spirit is the first of its kind to be directed by an actual comic artist – namely, Frank Miller.

Well known for his dark noir-inspired comic titles like The Dark Knight and SinCity, Frank Miller has obviously tried to infuse his debut film with his comic book aesthetics. But the results are mixed and very worrying.

His attempt to transfer the dialogue and picture panels of comic books to the big screen doesn’t work. Telling the story in moving picture panels creates a very static and inorganic feel to the action – as if the characters are trying to break out of the panels but can’t.

Characters say things like “Somebody find me a tie – I don’t care what kind, but by God, it had better be red”. This may be fine for comic books where the dialogue must be brief and overripe, but it sounds tremendously silly on film.

The Spirit is an interesting failure, a lesson on what should never be done for a comic film adaptation. Remember Speed Racer? Exactly.

There are few actors we dislike more than Adam Sandler. Once again, the infinitely annoying Adam unleashes his un-funniness on the world with Bedtime Stories, a film supposedly tailored for parents looking for family fare this holiday season.

Adam plays a hotel handyman who has to babysit his niece and nephew (Laura Ann Kesling and Jonathan Morgan Heit) for a week. He soon discovers that the bedtime stories he tells the young ones have an uncanny way of coming true – especially when the kids add their own twists to the tales.

Soon, gumballs fall from the sky, and monsters and midgets are traipsing about in broad daylight, giving Adam wonderful design ideas for the new hotel that his boss is launching. Naturally, it all ends happily ever after.

Cheap, unfunny and lazy in so many ways, Bedtime Stories is the worst release of the week. And despite this being Adam’s first G-rated film (which mean anyone of any age can watch it), the fella still can’t resist putting in some toilet jokes. Annoying, annoying, annoying…

In Mandarin with subtitles

Ip Man opened last week along with many other titles, so we thought it best to save the review for this week’s edition. We are not surprised to learn, though, that it is No. 1 at the Singapore box-office, making an impressive S$700,000 up to the weekend. Yes, it’s that good.

Donnie Yen delivers a career-best performance as Ip Man, a martial arts legend who popularized the Wing Chun style of fighting in East Asia. He was the sifu (teacher) to actor Bruce Lee, who would later bring kung fu to the world.

The story begins in the mid-1930s in Foshan, Guangdong, where Ip is already recognized as the finest kung fu master in the city despite not having a single student. When a gang of bullies goes around threatening and defeating the other kung fu masters, Ip steps up and beats them down effortlessly.

When war breaks out a few years later, Ip keeps a low profile, taking on menial work just to survive. But when his friends start to get killed by Japanese karate fighters in fights organized by the Japanese army, Ip decides to take part in a fight in order to salvage the pride of his Chinese compatriots…

Directed by Wilson Yip (Dragon Tiger Gate) and featuring fight choreography by Sammo Hung, Ip Man is rousingly good entertainment. The film is surprisingly well-crafted, as it mixes solid action sequences with often heartfelt drama. As Ip Man, Donnie Yen supplies an unexpected dignity and depth to what could have potentially been a caricature role. We recommend this film highly to fans of actioners.

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Stars Joo Jin-Mo and Jo In-Sung

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Stars: Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor

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Queer China

Kansai Queer Film Festival 2009

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A multi disciplinary performance that examines "Who am I" through the maternal figure as a point of identification or seperation. Stars Singapore's very own Melissa Quek.

Date: 16-17 Jan 2009
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M1 Singapore Fringe Fest

The Asian premiere of this threatre performance explores what are the difference between national and private shame to a German and an Israeli? Is a relationship possible with such today's political reality?

Date: 11-12 Jan 2009
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