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Reviews: Film – The Hangover Part III

by Suzan Ryan on May.21, 2013, under Reviews

Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zack Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, John Goodman
ROADSHOW ENTERTAINMENT

IN the original Hangover film, Todd Phillips and his merry band of comedians somehow stumbled on crowd-pleasing, comedic gold, converting a relatively modest film budget into a global hit. A sequel was inevitable, and it came in the form of the instantly forgettable The Hangover Part II: a bigger-budget repetition of the same formula that made even more money.

For the third instalment, writer/director Todd Phillips has acknowledged the obvious shortcomings of repeating the same formula and hoping for different outcome by taking the series back to the drawing board with what appears to be an even bigger budget. This time around, there are no bachelor parties, no hangovers, and the series takes on a decidedly darker tone.

Mr Chow’s (Jeong) smallish show-stealing role in the first two films has been greatly expanded alongside the other big-laugh generator: the idiotic Alan (Galifianakis). In theory this makes a lot of sense, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired as their respective brands of farfetched comedy only seem to work in small doses that garnered more chuckles than big laughs.

To go too far into the plot would, strangely, give things away, as many of the beats of Part III register as drama or, at times, thriller; and there are even some twists and turns that you may not see coming. There’s nothing wrong with taking a drastic departure from the formula—in fact, Phillips deserves kudos for doing just that—it’s just that almost everything tends to feel flat, and the individual and combined proven talent of the Wolfpack trio don’t seem to have a whole lot to work with on the comedy front.

In fact, Phillips seems to have tried to balance out the wacky antics of Chow and Alan by manoeuvring Phil (Cooper) and Stu (Helms) into dual straight-man roles: a move that makes Part III feel a tad light on more grounded comedy. There are a handful of big laughs, but some of those are ruined if you’re familiar with the film’s trailer.

It appears that in his attempts to right the ship that was set adrift in Part II, Phillips has oversteered and pushed it in directions that feel inorganic to the series, and disappoint on the all-important laughs front. The Hangover Part III certainly isn’t the worst comedy ever made, but it doesn’t hold a flame to the laugh-inducing effectiveness of the original film.

THE HANGOVER PART III is in cinemas on the 23^rd of May.

Review: Nathan Lawrence

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WIN! A Jack Reacher DVD prize pack

by Suzan Ryan on May.10, 2013, under Competitions

Thanks to Paramount Pictures, Australian Penthouse is offering 5 readers the chance to win a DVD prize pack featuring kick-arse action movie JACK REACHER plus a Jack Reacher USB light and Jack Reacher dashboard mat (valued at $69.99).

THE MOVIE

FORMER US Army Military Police Corps officer and current drifter Jack Reacher (Cruise) takes it upon himself to travel to Pennsylvania after ex-US Army sniper James Barr (Sikora) is arrested for the apparent random murder of five people.

Reacher’s mission is simple: he wants to see Barr executed, as this isn’t the first time the sniper has gone violently rogue. In order to appease his own pedantic nature, though, and at the behest of District Attorney Helen Rodin (Pike), Reacher can’t help but conduct his own investigation into a case where not everything adds up.

Cruise puts in a believable performance as the no-bullshit drifter who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. There are plenty of incredibly well-shot action sequences, buttressed with intriguing characters and engaging dialogue, as the mystery unfolds throughout the course of the film.

The film also boasts an all-star cast including Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now), Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day), Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn), David Oyelowo (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Richard Jenkins (The Cabin in the Woods) and Jai Courtney (A Good Day to Die Hard).

DVD special features include a ‘Combat & Weapons’ documentary, whereas Blu-ray boasts two separate film commentaries and two documentaries: ‘When The Man Comes Around’ and ‘The Reacher Phenomenon’.

Based on best-selling author Lee Child’s popular series of novels, Jack Reacher was adapted for the screen and directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher McQuarrie (Best Original Screenplay, The Usual Suspects, 1995).

Check out the trailer:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-oxhxD32MM

THE COMPETITION

To be in the running to win one of five Jack Reacher DVD prize packs, answer the following question in 25 words or less: “If Jack Reacher was to roll into your town to solve one problem, what would that problem be, and how would he solve it?”

THE PRIZE

JACK REACHER is available on DVD and Blu-ray May 22, 2013.

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

Game of Skill

Competition commences on 10/05/13 and concludes on 30/05/13 at 12:00pm. Entry is open to all residents of Australia, but excludes all employees of Australian Penthouse. Entrants must provide their contact details and an answer to the question, “If Jack Reacher was to roll into your town to solve one problem, what would that problem be, and how would he solve it?” in 25 words or less. This is a Game of Skill which contains no element of chance, and which will be judged by members of the Australian Penthouse staff on 3/06/13. Five winners will receive 1 x DVD copy of Jack Reacher, 1 x Jack Reacher USB light and 1 x Jack Reacher dashboard mat (valued at $69.99), as detailed above. Prizes will be mailed to winners at the address nominated in their entries. The promoters take no responsibility for lost or misdirected entries, and no correspondence will be entered into.

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Review: Gear – Noise-Cancelling Headphones

by Suzan Ryan on May.06, 2013, under Reviews, The Magazine

THE practicality of in-ear headphones is that they isolate more ambient noise than over-ear or bud-type headphones; however, the Sennheiser CXC 700 quietens the outside world even more with noise-cancelling technology. Better yet, there are three noise-cancelling presets that are optimised for different soundscapes: daily commuting on public transport or in cars, long-haul flights and crowded environments. The clever ‘TalkThrough’ feature allows users to mute audio input to communicate with others without having to remove the headphones. A single AAA battery boasts up to 16 hours of noise cancellation.
The CXC 700s ship with an inflight adaptor and its three sizes of ear adapters plus a cleaning tool round out the solid package.

NOISE-cancelling headphones certainly aren’t cheap and really need to be experienced for users to understand their usefulness (particularly for frequent travellers). But cheaper-model headphones don’t necessarily equate with shoddy, as Sony’s MDR-NC40 on-ear (supra-aural) noise-cancelling headphones prove. This model is lightweight, durable and collapsible, which makes it perfect for plane trips. With up to 90 percent ambient noise cancellation, the MDR-NC40s keep the outside world at bay while providing the kind of impressive sound quality, such as balanced treble and solid bass, that Sony is famous for.
The urethane-cushioned earpieces ensure a comfortable fit and simultaneously relieve pressure on the ears.

COMPATIBLE with all current-model smartphones and tablets, the Parrot Zik uses Bluetooth 2.1 technology for wireless connectivity. The intuitive over-ear (circumaural) headset boasts up to 98 percent ambient noise elimination. An internal head-detection sensor pauses playback when the headphones are removed, while simplistic earpiece controls let you tap or swipe to pause, play, skip tracks or answer calls. A double-microphone system cleverly separates user conversation from background noise, ignoring the former during calls while removing the latter. Most impressive, though, is Parrot’s decision to challenge sound-output norms, as the headphones can be configured for audio playback to come from the front—in true concert fashion—instead of the usual horizontal stereo plane.

THE high ticket price ensures that audiophiles only need apply for Denon’s on-ear noise-cancelling headphones, which are targeted at the frequent flyer, with good reason. The attractive, foldable design is just the beginning, with a choice of wired 40mm audio cable connection or high-quality wireless Bluetooth 3.0. Unlike some other brands, the Globe Cruiser boasts an internal rechargeable battery that holds 10 hours’ worth of charge. The real shining star, however, is the playback controls on the outside of each earpiece. The right-earpiece controls take care of volume, play, pause and track skipping, while the left-earpiece controls allow you to answer and end calls via a microphone integrated at the bottom of the headset.

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Reviews: Film – Snitch

by Suzan Ryan on May.03, 2013, under Reviews

Snitch
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Jon Bernthal, Barry Pepper, Michael K. Williams, Benjamin Bratt, Susan Sarandon
STUDIOCANAL

WHEN his son makes a momentary error in judgment and finds himself looking at ten years behind bars John Matthews (Johnson) takes desperate measures to ensure his son’s safety and early release. He strikes a deal with a U.S. Attorney and agrees to go undercover to infiltrate a drug smuggling ring. Enlisting unlikely ally Daniel James (Bernthal), an ex-con trying to go straight, he convinces Daniel to make the introduction on his behalf to his former partners in crime and starts running drugs across the US/Mexico border.

When an exchange goes bad Matthews’ cool head prevails and puts him on the radar of Juan Carlos ‘El Topo’ Pintera (Bratt), a criminal far higher up the Cartel’s ranks than he or the DEA expected. Chasing the collar of a lifetime, the kind that political careers are made of, U.S. Attorney Keegan (Sarandon) alters the deal offering Matthews his son’s freedom in exchange for El Topo. As events start to spiral out of control both Matthews and James show the extreme risks each man is willing to take to protect his family.

Director Ric Roman Waugh’s steady pacing and slow tension building work to great effect in Snitch. By taking the time to establish the main characters, their motivations and the nature of their family relationships it gives the audience time to connect with each father, identify with their situation and feel great empathy to their plight.

The action sequences are used sparingly and feel completely within the realms of possibility. This isn’t Dwayne Johnston playing the ultimate bad-arse or super-soldier. This is a regular guy, a loving father taking desperate measures to protect his son. There’s a sense of frailty to Johnson’s portrayal of John Matthews, so much so that you forget about his towering size and impressive physique.

Jon Bernthal brings an equally layered performance as the ex-con trying to do right Daniel James. Struggling to support his family, avoiding lapsing back into a life of crime and desperate to keep his son from heading down the same path, Bernthal’s conflict is apparent. His previous violent tendencies are bubbling just beneath the surface, but he holds them in check to make a better life for his family. The difficulty he has wrestling with what his conscience tells him is the right thing to do and genuine fear for his family’s safety comes across brilliantly and he provides a rock solid counterpart to Dwayne Johnson.

The supporting cast ably backs up the leads with another short but sweet turn by Barry Pepper as a veteran DEA agent Billy Cooper, the typecast but who cares Michael K. Williams as ruthless drug dealer Malik and the power hungry ‘soon to be running for office’ U.S. Attorney Keegan played by Susan Sarandon. Even Benjamin Bratt’s brutal and uncompromising Cartel kingpin Juan Carlos ‘El Topo’ Pintera isn’t a mere caricature reinforcing the realistic characterisation and grounding both the plot and tone.

Far more of a thriller than a balls-to-the-wall action extravaganza, Snitch offers significantly more depth than you’d expect with Dwayne Johnson proving there’s a lot more to him than just muscle. The measured pacing and character development is a welcome change from the more explosions, less exposition formulaic Michael Bay styled fare all too familiar these days.

Snitch is in cinemas May 16.

Review: Dave Kozicki

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Gallery: Isobel, Jayme & Taylor

by Suzan Ryan on May.02, 2013, under Girl Galleries

THREE GIRLS, ONE CAR

Isobel, Jayme and Taylor will drive you crazy with lust…

Photography: JOSH RYAN
Continue reading “Gallery: Isobel, Jayme & Taylor” »

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Interview: Bare Essentials

by Suzan Ryan on May.01, 2013, under Interviews, The Magazine

Who or what inspired you to write this rather candid book?
There’s a 1965 novel called In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey, about a man reminiscing about some of the women he’d slept with many years before. It was a book, ultimately, about love, and love was a subject I was deeply interested in.

Is that what Laid Bare is about?
That’s essentially what Laid Bare is about. It’s not about sex; it’s a book about trying to figure out what love is and where to find it, and how to make it last. It started out as an article I wrote for marie claire magazine about how it feels when your wife leaves. I got a lot of letters from women around Australia thanking me for writing a candid story from the male perspective on how difficult divorce is.

How tough was it for you to actually write the book?
I took the approach that if you’re going to write a memoir, you have to write it as authentically as possible. My dark personal moments were very much a part of that story. It’s important that people understand that men—though outwardly we may appear to have no emotions at all—are actually deeply emotional, as much as any woman. We just very rarely show it.

How common is your experience among other men?
I found that my situation wasn’t that uncommon and there were a lot of guys suffering in silence and not really having anyone to talk to about what they were going through internally. I felt that it was important for me to show that it’s okay to be vulnerable and to break down and have emotions. I think it’s really important that men also be more open about the times when they are struggling, particularly with mental illness.

Mental illness?
A lot of guys I know are going through similar sorts of things to what I went through, particularly with anxiety and depression and even OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder].

You mention OCD in Laid Bare. What was your particular subset?
My subset of OCD is called ‘Pure-O’, which is short for ‘Pure Obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’. Essentially, what was happening is I would be getting intrusive and disturbing thoughts at the most inappropriate times. It’s not something you can really understand. It’s brought about by anxiety. I think OCD is an incredibly misunderstood disorder.

How so?
In the media, the impression we get of it is crazy people washing their hands 50 times a day, but it’s much more than that. The thing that most don’t understand is that people are driven to these sorts of compulsive behaviours because they’re trying to shut out thoughts and images coming into their head that they don’t want. People are killing themselves because of OCD because they don’t know who to talk to about it.

How did you deal with it?
I didn’t understand why these things were happening to me. I was just trying to get on with my life, but I was being assailed 24/7 with obsessions. A lot of the sex that I was involved with was a way of trying to escape what was happening to me.

On the topic of sex, what kind of dating websites were you signed up to?
I never went on an adult personals site that was strictly geared for sex. I put a profile on one of the adult sites here in Australia, just to see what the deal was, but it didn’t strike me as something that was for me. I met most of the women I dated through more traditional online dating sites, such as RSVP.com.au.

In your experience, was RSVP more geared towards relationships or sex?
People are saying they want relationships, but it’s a meat market. If you’re in good shape, have decent looks and a bit of money, it’s very easy to fall into the player lifestyle by putting yourself online. And it’s not just men, it’s women as well. I found myself getting hundreds of emails from very desirable women. All of a sudden, it’s like being in an American supermarket where you’re overburdened with choice.

So these women were chasing you?
Oh, much more so than I was approaching them. I was frankly surprised because the woman I was deeply in love with—my ex-wife—didn’t want a bar of me. But I put myself online and hundreds of women were sending me emails and they all looked bloody fantastic. It’s great for your ego, but it’s not necessarily good for settling on one person because I think men go on there and become rock stars. We get a bit carried away with the attention. That’s certainly what happened to me.

What is the perfect middle ground for online dating?
To be honest, I have met a lot of women through online dating who have become very good friends of mine. I think online dating is fantastic for making friends, for networking, for building your social circle; I just don’t necessarily think it’s fantastic for relationships.

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Gallery: Penny, March 2003

by Suzan Ryan on Apr.30, 2013, under Girl Galleries

See a Penny pick her up, and all day you’ll have good luck.

Poets we may not be here at Australian Penthouse, but we sure know a good sort when we see one. What is more, here is a gal who just loves to tease.

“I’d really love to know what’s in the minds of your readers,” she coos, provocatively, as she flashes yet another come hither look into our camera lens.

“What are you thinking as you look at my photo spread? What are you doing right now?”

Some thoughts, even for a penny, are better left unsaid.
Photography: Nicolas Sage Continue reading “Gallery: Penny, March 2003” »

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Interview: The Winner Effect, by Professor Ian Robertson

by Suzan Ryan on Apr.24, 2013, under Interviews

What was the original appeal of studying the effects of power on the brain?
Over the past 10 years, partly through amazing research that’s come out and partly because of my own clinical experience, I’ve realised the biggest shaper of who we are and the structures of our brains is our relationships with other people.

How does power come into it?
One critical aspect of our relationships with other people is dominance. That’s where power comes into play—the power we have over other people or that other people have over us, whether that be political, economic, workplace, or down to the relationships we have within our families where there are incredible power plays.

Which is more impactful: societal or interpersonal relationships?
Well, they’re both pretty important. Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher, said, “Power is the fundamental substance of human relationships, just as energy is the fundamental substance of physics.” Basically, human beings are a group species; we evolved to live and hunt and survive in groups and therefore most species that have groups have dominant hierarchies within them.

How exactly does power affect people’s interpersonal relationships?
On the small scale, most husband/wife or partner relationships involve a certain degree of power. The definition of power is having control over resources that the other person or other people fear or want. If one person is more in love with the other person, there’s an imbalance. The fact that one person is more emotionally needy will give the other person more power. There are a number of psychological mechanisms that can lead to distortion and a negative cycle of behaviour of the powerful person, so the powerful person starts to see the less-powerful person in progressively more negative terms because of the power imbalance.

How does power affect those with a lot of influence, such as politicians?
When you come to things like dictatorships, where you have a dictator like Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Gaddafi in Libya, there you see the ultimate effects of power on the human brain. There can be no such thing as a benevolent dictator because the effects of unfettered power, unconstrained by other checks and balances, so change the chemistry and physical structure of the brain that it literally drives people mad. It’s like getting megadoses of crack cocaine; it acts through the brain’s reward system so powerfully that it knocks off the whole balance of the brain and makes people behave in the extraordinary way we see dictators behave.

How is that counteracted?
That’s what democracy was invented for, largely. The democratic instruments that we have, including elections, a free press and an independent judiciary, these are necessary to counter the fact that giving someone power alters their brain and makes them behave in certain patterns which, if unconstrained, will lead to terrible effects, not only on them, but on all the people they have power over.

How does power actually affect the brain?
Power makes people feel good because it increases testosterone, in both men and women. And that testosterone, in turn, increases the level of dopamine activity in the middle of the brain in an area called the ‘reward network’. That’s the area of the brain that activities like sex and taking drugs act on: it’s the feel-good centre. When that up-regulates, it gives us that ‘glow’ we get when we have sex or when we achieve or when we get that promotion. That glow is the up-regulation of dopamine in the reward network. And being given power operates through the same system.

What are the mental benefits of power?
Being given tiny amounts of power temporarily makes you smarter, it makes you more focused on goals and makes you more confident that you can achieve them, it makes you more action-oriented, it makes you less depressed, and it makes you less anxious. It makes you think more abstractly and strategically.

What are the effects of an absence of power?
A powerless position down-regulates dopamine and increases the activity of noradrenaline, which is a kind of threat transmitter, and that activates more of the right-front part of the brain, which is the cautious ‘accountant’ part of the brain.

How does the brain maintain balance?
In a way, the human brain is two people, metaphorically speaking. One is the kind of gung-ho, confident chief executive and the other is the cautious chief financial officer, always worrying about the downsides and the plausible threats. They make a good team, but the problem with unfettered power is that it basically bullies and inhibits the cautious accountant side of the brain and you get the kind of recklessness and bizarre distorted judgement that led to the Global Financial Crisis.