2025 - EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT, see the title.

Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann got his hands on a bunch of films of Elvis performing in concert.  Most of the footage seems to have been shot during one of his last efforts, his appearances in Las Vegas.  It's always impressive when they find this old color footage and digitally restore the picture and sound.  The footage of Elvis performing from this period is quite remarkable. 

In this film Elvis is about 8 years from the beginning of the end when his health issues and his drug intake catches up with him.  The footage in this film shows that Elvis was still an engaging performer.  He interacts with his band during rehearsals and the fans in the audience still respond to his stage presence.  All well and good.

However I have to say he does not look to be in all that great of shape.  Elvis is starting to be a bloated mess.  He seems to favor wearing gaudy form fitting jump suits and it doesn't make him look exactly like  a "Skinny Minny."  He's constantly wearing sun glasses and his haircut and sideburns gave him a weird pageboy look.  Some critics at the time called Elvis's appearances in Vegas as "the ultimate lounge act."  This was not a compliment.

If you want to see Elvis Presley in his sort of performing prime during the twilight of his career you can give this film a look.  This footage is almost his last hurrah before he goes over the precipice and comes crashing down.

The running time is 96 minutes. 

2008 - AUSTRALIA - is a long movie it has a lot of cows

 Thank God for the 2nd run theaters especially if they are near a bar. If I had to pay full price for this dog I would have had to give up eating Shrimp on the Barbie, or something like that. 

 The director is Baz Luhrmann, who has been making overblown films for what seems like a long time. He was out of control in Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet.  His style seemed to work better in Strictly Ballroom but that movie was short. This is his shot at making a large David Lean type epic love story.  Luhrmann and his 3 screenwriters should have read Kevin Brownlow's biography on David Lean. They would have understood that Lean would work for years on his screenplays prior to making his films. This seems to be one of the reasons that Lean's output was so small in the 1960's and 1970's. He was looking for the right material and then he wanted to get it right.

 In Australia no one worried much about getting it right. This is a mishmash of movie stuff. The major influence seems to be the Wizard of Oz, of which the song "Over The Rainbow" is used throughout the film, but I would almost guess that the actual influence is from Red River with Nicole Kidman in the role of John Wayne. I know every idea in the world has been made into a movie, but couldn't they have found a new way to spin it?  Kidman has to move those cattle out to feed a hungry nation. She and her hired hands must drive them to the coast of Australia during World War II or she will lose the ranch of course.  In this movie she gets to leave her clothes on this time. She talks Hugh Jackman into going along with her, so we can have lots of shots of the two actors striking various carefully composed poses throughout the landscape of Australia. These shots remind me of those Kodak picture taking spots at Disney world. 

 

 Kidman and Jackman also pick up a cute little half caste kid along the way so the audience can have an "awww" factor as in "awww that kid is so cute and sweet". He talks in that weird movie talk, saying things like "Boss Lady" and "Mr Drover". The kid gives a nice performance and looks good but he's a heavy handed symbol of what the white people did to the native people of Australia .  The little kid thinks that "Over the Rainbow" is a magic song and it must be real magical because they play it a lot. They get the cattle to the stockyards, and save the ranch, but miles of plot later we have to sit through a Japanese aerial attack blowing up stuff , saving some kids off of an island and a dance where Hugh Jackman gets himself cleaned up so all the women can go "awww." 

The original ending had Hugh Jackman's character killed off, but the studio demanded a happier ending. I think this was probably a mistake. The movie could have used a little spine in it, instead it comes off like a big bunch of nothing. I would recommend Red River if you want to see how to make a cattle drive movie. At least the gay subtext in that movie is a lot more interesting than the romance of Australia.

Written by 4 count em 4 writers, Baz Luhrmann, Ronald Harwood, Stuart Beattie and Richard Flanagan.  The running time is 165 minutes.