A U.S. head start even on Australian films

On Friday night I saw the giant spider movie Sting, which hasn't yet played Australian cinemas but is already available for the lower rental price -- lower as in not the premium $19.99 gouging -- of $5.99 on U.S. iTunes.

The thing is, this is an Australian movie through and through.

It's written and directed by consummately Australian director Kiah Roache-Turner, who helmed Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead -- a very Australian film which I really liked -- and its sequel. 

It stars Australian actors -- Ryan Corr and Robyn Nevin being the ones I recognized beforehand, but also Alyla Browne, who has just been impressing audiences as the younger version of the title character in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. (In fact, just about the only imported actor is American Jermaine Fowler, who plays the unfortunately retrograde "cowardly Black man" in the film.)

It was most certainly shot in Australia, on a Sydney sound stage in fact, but this location is doubling for the U.S. (I thought they mentioned New York, but I don't that referenced in the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.)

And yet, it's still forced to go to the back of the line and end up as one of the standard Australian releases whose release date is time-shifted from the U.S. release. The movie came out in the U.S. on April 12th, which is why I'm already seeing it available for $5.99 -- which, I should say, is a convenient way for me to get ahead of reviewing it in time for its July 11th Australian release.

Now of course, it's very unlikely we would see this if the movie were set in Australia and the Australians were using their natural accents. I can't think of an example where Australia had to wait for an actual Australian movie, not a movie made by Australians but set in the U.S.

Still, I do find it sort of funny that the distributors had no interest in leveraging the Australian cast and crew for a world premiere of the movie in Australia, rather than a world premiere in Los Angeles. If it doesn't mean anything that a movie is made by almost exclusively Australians, why even do it, other than I suppose the tax breaks.

Sting weekend

You know how I like reporting movie-related coincidences I experience. Well, here's another.

I hadn't been thinking much about Sting recently. In fact, I can't remember the last time I devoted some portion of my brain to him, but it could have been more than a year ago. That's how long it's been since I had a Sting-related incident of any kind.

This past weekend, I had three.

The first was when the former Police lead singer did a handful of songs before the AFL (Australian Football League) grand final. I didn't know what Sting's connection to Australia was, but then again, Bryan Adams had no connection to Australia when he fulfilled a similar role last year. It's a big enough event to woo A-list talent, albeit A-list talent past their prime.

But is Sting really past his prime?

I marveled not only at how fit he looked, but how good his voice sounded. The high notes are not a problem for him or anything, and he's still trim with impressive muscles. Looks more like a 45-year-old than a 65-year-old (his milestone birthday was also this past weekend). I'll hope to look that good when I turn 45 in two years, and will surely fail.

The second Sting event was not really an event at all, but pondered me to first consider the coincidence. It was seeing his name among my trending topics on Facebook. The reason he was trending had to do with some viral video on Jimmy Fallon. I didn't watch the video, but I did wonder how he managed to get to Jimmy Fallon so soon after being in Melbourne on Saturday. (He must have been in New York first and come to Melbourne after that, unless maybe he did it remotely.)

It was by Sunday night that I started to wonder if someone was punking me.

Sting has something a bit larger than a cameo in Zoolander 2, which I watched Sunday night. It's important to emphasize this because there are about 173 others who have what would more legitimately be described as a cameo. Sting appears in the movie twice, in a consequential role, so he almost reaches the level of, like, a co-star. It was nice to see him on screen again. He was funny.

And you know what? Zoolander 2 was funny. I may have just lost all credibility with you, but the movie was so much funnier than I had any reason to believe it would be. The word of mouth about this movie has been awful, and even as a fan of most Ben Stiller movies, I figured I'd be in synch with those opinions.

But after 15 amusing minutes in which I didn't laugh much but appreciated what they were going for, I started bursting out laughing periodically, maybe once per five minutes. That's not bad at all in a 100-minute movie. It all started with the hilariously unexpected appearance of Benedict Cumberbatch as the androgynous transgender supermodel called "All" and it just went from there. (The only person I didn't really like, in fact, was a usual favorite, Kristen Wiig.)

Where will I see Sting next?

Wherever it is, it will be welcome.