Men on Film was a reoccurring skit on the best sketch comedy show ever, In Living Color (sorry, SNL). When I was ten I wanted to be a fly girl (where J.Lo got her start, FYI) and it was the closest I had been to a black person up to that point in my life. I loved it, and I'd like to thank my parents for allowing me to watch such wildly age inappropriate programming. A+ parenting that I intend to emulate if I ever have kids.
But this post is not about the glories of early 90's urban TV or the genius of the Wayans brothers. It is about movies. Australian movies, on which I have a lot of catching up to do.
A Cry in the Dark
Not ringing any bells?
"The dingo ate my baby!"
How about now? Yes, that's the one!
I caught this on TV, but the listing said it was called "Evil Angels". That's the name it had in Australia and New Zealand, and that title makes no. freaking. sense. There's nobody (or nothing) evil in this movie, nor are there any angels. A Cry in the Dark makes much more sense because the whole movie is based around.....a cry in the dark.
The movie is true life case of the Chamberlain family who were camping in the Outback in 1980. Their 9-week old baby Azaria disappeared from their tent, presumably taken by a dingo, but the family was immediately presumed guilty of wrongdoing in the court of public opinion.
They found most (but not all) of the clothes the baby was wearing in the Outback, soaked in blood, but never found the body. So, naturally, ritualistic religious sacrifice was the easiest assumption to make.
The mother, played by Meryl Streep, was locked up for a lot of the 80's for the "murder of her child". Only when they found a jacket the baby was wearing inside a dingo den did anybody consider that maybe the dingo did take the baby, and human sacrifice didn't really happen.
It was a surprisingly good movie, and a historical view in to the hugest course case/murder mystery of Australian history. Meryl pulled off a decent Australian accent if I do say so myself, but didn't actually ever say the words "the dingo ate my baby". She said, "The dingo's got my baby", which begs the question: Who in their right goddamn mind would take a 9-week-old child camping? In a tent? Where there are wild animals?
Hmm....on a scale of letting your kid watch bad TV to turning them in to dingo feed, I say my parents erred on the side of caution.
The rest of these movies are ones I want to see, but have not yet. It'll be quick, as I don't know too awful much about them, and I'm using this post as a list I can reference in the future.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
If you hadn't noticed already by my prepubescent love of Men on Film, I love me some gays. And nobody's gayer than a drag queen.
Which is what Priscilla is all about.
One of my favorite movies of all time is To Wong Foo, an American drag queen roadtrip movie. I expect this movie to be almost exactly the same as that. However nobody could ever be as fabulous as these queens:
Muriel's Wedding
I only know 2 things about his movie: It's a chick flick haters chick flick (a la Love Actually) and it has ABBA music.
Epic win! Must see.
It stars Toni Collette, who I legit did not know was Australian until embarrassingly recently. She's what I like to call a "clandestine foreigner". An actor or actress who is so good at their American accent, and acts in so many American shows, you don't even know they're not American. See also: Anthony LaPaglia, Hugh Laurie and Damian Lewis. The foreigners are invading our shores! And we don't even know it.
Mad Max
All I know about this movie is it is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, and I looooove post-apocalyptic movies. It stars Mel Gibson before he was famous and before he was an anti-Semitic asshole, so it will be fun to see him so young, nubile and not-yet-Jew hating.
Crocodile Dundee
This can hardly be classified as an "Australian movie" but it's a shame I've never seen it.
So on the To See list it goes!
No comments:
Post a Comment