Rad - Watch - DVDs, Movies, TV Shows
WATCH is ThreeThousand's guide to movies in Melbourne. While we focus on art-house and independent releases, we never shun our secret pop-culture pleasures. WATCH also has its fingers on the pulse of film-festivals and specially programmed events and we give tickets away every week. We have also been known to organise special preview screenings, which we always chicken out of introducing on the microphone before the previews start playing.
The Men Who Stare At Goats
This shaggy comedy is very loosely based on an incredible true story: the US Army's secret elite squad of Jedi-like psychic warriors. It's pretty much an excuse for Oscar-nominated actors to clown about like doofuses. Actually, I've always preferred George Clooney's wild-eyed slapstick (Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou?) to his suave or serious roles.
Herb and Dorothy
Aged 88 and 75 respectively, Herb and Dorothy Vogel may look like New York hobbits who dote on their cat Archie, but Megumi Sasaki's intimate, funny documentary reveals the all-consuming passion that's made the Vogels among America's most important minimal and conceptual art collectors.
Hearteningly, adorably, the Vogels aren't snobs.
Fantastic Mr Fox
I was dubious about Wes Anderson's take on Roald Dahl's darkly gleeful caper about a cheeky fox who steals from three awful farmers. But Anderson's mannered directorial trademarks work well with the stop-motion animation. There are funny sight gags and quotable lines aplenty, including perhaps the best thing anyone's ever said to Jarvis Cocker in years: "That was a bad song.
The French Kissers
France's answer to American Pie - Tarte Française, perhaps? - is adorable, excruciating fun, with a much more edgy indie feel than its trans-Atlantic counterpart. Director Riad Sattouf is a comic-book illustrator whose best-known work is The Secret Life of Youth, and his debut film's original French title was Beautiful Kids.
Valentino: The Last Emperor
I always thought Valentino was his surname, so clearly I had much to learn about Signor Garavani. Luckily, Matt Tyrnauer's very funny documentary paints an intimate portrait of this wizened Oompa-Loompa as he prepares to celebrate 45 years in haute couture. Valentino's lavish 2007 knees-up turns out to have been his swansong - he retired in 2008, leaving his eponymous label in corporate hands.
Marc Jacobs on Film
Marc Jacobs, I love you, let me countdown the ways!
I loved you first back in the Parsons days when you had long hair and wore it in pink furry pom-pom elastics - in fact this is when I loved you best! Your infamous '93 Perry Ellis 'grunge' collection comes a close second though - take notes people, that's how you turn a failure into a success.
The September Issue
RJ Cutler's behind-the-scenes documentary about the September 2007 issue of American Vogue promises an insider's view of legendarily hard-nosed editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and it delivers as much as Wintour is willing to give away. She clearly got more than career advice from her newspaperman dad, "Chilly Charlie" Wintour, but she betrays a touching anxiety to impress her accomplished siblings and to have daughter Bee follow her into fashion.
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