Quentin Tarantino at the Hateful Eight NZ Premiere

Quentin Tarantino at the Hateful Eight NZ Premiere

Here are some shots of Quentin Tarantino at the Hateful Eight NZ Premiere last night in Auckland.

Zoe Bell at The Hateful Eight: NZ Premiere

Zoe Bell at The Hateful Eight: NZ Premiere

Here are some shots from The Hateful Eight: NZ Premiere with Zoe Bell meeting and greeting fans and talking to the press

The Hateful Eight: NZ Premiere

The Hateful Eight: NZ Premiere

Here are some shots from The Hateful Eight NZ Premiere attended by Quentin Tarantino and Zoe Bell.

Doctor Who Series 9 Part 2: Blu Ray Review

Doctor Who Series 9 Part 2: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by BBC and Roadshow Home Ent

The second part of Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman's tour de force Doctor Who year is one of highs and lows.

Among the lows are Sleep No More, which despite the inclusion of Reece Shearsmith never quite pulls together its found footage promise and essentially ends with the Doctor and Clara running off; and the slightly muddled extended finale, which totally ruins the ending of two episodes prior.

But the highs are brilliant - The Zygon two parter shows both Coleman and Capaldi at the peak of their powers and Clara's exit in Face The Raven is nothing short of a dramatic high for the show (which is then promptly derailed in the last episode).

And equally, while the stories are a good strong solid bunch, there's nothing stronger than Capaldi and Coleman who gel perfectly here, give every moment a palpable sense of expectation and deliver a series that needed some chutzpah after the last few years. With Doctor Who, change is the only constant and if this year proves to be the middle year for Peter Capaldi with rumours he is leaving the 12th Doctor next year, then he can be comfortable in the knowledge that this was one of the show's more creatively strong years and one which presented surprises as a regular MO.

Anomalisa: Film Review

Anomalisa: Film Review

Cast: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan
Director: Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson

Both a eureka moment for stop motion animation and a musing and discourse on life, Anomalisa is a disturbing piece of cinema, that's now been recognised by the Academy and the awards season in general.

David Thewlis voices Michael Stone, a customer service whiz whose motivational speeches have seen him check into a hotel prior to giving a keynote speech in Cincinnati the next day.

With only the night to keep him company, Stone meets a couple of women who've travelled to attend his seminar and strikes up a friendship with Lisa (Jason Leigh) who suffers from low self-esteem.

Anomalisa is an exercise in bleakness, an allegory of loneliness and a tragedy of a film.

Kaufman's casual mixing of a Barton Fink atmos with a sprinkling of Lost In Translation, along with a miserabilist look at a life on the edge of a mental precipice, gives Anomalisa something of a slightly depressing vibe, all wrapped up in a swathe of melancholia.

But as in any business trip, Kaufman's managed to capture an atmosphere of crippling loneliness and apply it to a man whose outlook is directly contrasted to his perception within the world. Granted, it's not a new idea or story, but it is heartbreakingly transposed to the screen with a stop-motion look that's both a mesh of crash test dummies and Tintin-esque rendering.

Guaranteed to provoke debate and stir divisiveness, Anomalisa strengths lie in its execution.

Haunting and rhapsodic, its perverseness and its starters for conversations over its symbolism will be its appeal to some - and there won't be many who won't fail to be moved in some way by the events within. Or at the very least, recognise something in its melancholy tale. Its progression from a one time only theatre piece to the small screen is a debt owed to its Kickstarter nature and its head-scratching-once-you-dig-below-the-surface premise.

Thewlis uses his voice brilliantly to convey the frailty within this long dark night of the soul but his ultimate unravelling is psychologically distressing. There's an innate sadness and a frustration to Stone, a man whose introspection is a fertile and frequently familiar ground given the way the modern world is going. Wrapping alienation with loneliness is not a unique proposition, and both Kaufman and Johnson know the right tics to expand and expound their viewpoints. And Jennifer Jason Leigh brings an arc to Lisa, the woman with whom Stone connects (or grooms, depending on your take on it all) but whose ultimate destination gives the film the emotional edge it needs.

There's so much to discuss in Anomalisa (is the hotel Fregoli a major clue?) and to do so is to enter spoiler territory, but by throwing in moments of deeply wry humour among an examination and discourse of the human condition, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind scribe Charlie Kaufman has brought to life a reflection and a gradually disquieting essay that's both bizarrely distressing and weirdly enlightening.

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