Anyone can make a zine, right? Just cut some things and glue some stuff. How hard can it be? Well the answer is: really super very hard. Have you actually tried to cut something out and stick it onto a page? Have you? Cutting out is hard. And then pasting it down in a visually pleasing way is also really hard. And on top of that you have to choose things to cut out that are sufficiently whimsical or thought provoking or left field but trendy like beards or obscure '80s TV shows. It’s a hard task. Imagine how gluey your fingers would get. And the paper cuts? Forget about it. And then there’s the task of photocopying the lopsided mess, which opens a whole new can of Pandora’s worms. Where do I put my money again? Where do the pages come out? How do I do a double-sided copy? My advice is: leave the zines to the pros. Luckily, they’ve all agreed to assemble for your picking and/or choosing pleasure at the MCA for the third annual MCA Zine Fair. There’ll be other creative bits there too, so if zines aren’t your thing why not buy a badge or twelve? Swapping zines is also welcome! And you can catch Sydney Writers' Festival panels on Graphic Novels vs Illustrated Texts and FBi's Out of the Box with guest Tom Cho.
It's hard to fathom Laura Marling as a mere 20-year-old. Before lending her your ears, you could be forgiven for presuming this unassuming, pretty, brunette girl to be more like Lisa Mitchell than Joni Mitchell. But when she performs, it's as if she has summoned the sorrow, regrets and desires of a woman living more towards the end of her time than so close to the beginning. While her first album Alas I Cannot Swim established this young folk songstress as a musician far beyond her years, her recent second album I Speak Because I Can is darker and more sophisticated, filled with poetic nostalgia such as 'Goodbye Old England (Covered in Snow)', 'Hope in the Air' and 'I Speak Because I Can'. Marling weaves lyrical narratives, expressing herself through fictional characters including Odysseus's Penelope and scribes of wartime love letters. Several tracks contain Mumford and Sons-style twangs and banjo riffs, which is not surprising considering she is signed to the same label as the band and girlfriend to lead-vocalist Marcus Mumford. But this is not an indie gossip column (Wait. It's not? -ed). If you managed to catch her at the Sydney Festival earlier this year, you will agree Marling's performance was rousing. Her husky voice never falters; she speaks directly to her audience through song, slicing the intensity every now and then with a dose of witty banter. Marling plays her Splendour sideshow at the Metro Theatre on August 2, joined by Melbourne quartet Boy and Bear, who joined Laura onstage during her last Aussie tour. A second show, with the Maple Trail as supports, has been added on Sunday, August 1, at the Factory Theatre. https://youtube.com/watch?v=lUi9teTRCgk
For 35 years, acclaimed Australian director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, Charlotte Gray) has been following the lives of three Adelaide women. What started as a one-off short film documenting what it is to be a 14-year-old in 1975 has become a five-part series, with Armstrong checking in with the girls again at 18, 26, 33 and 47. For those unfamiliar with the project, the opening 25 minutes of the latest installment, Love, Lust & Lies, is devoted to bringing the audience up to date with the lives of best friends Kerry, Diana and Josie. Time brings marriages, children, financial woes and hopeful dreams for the trio in what is a captivating portrait of family, motherhood and aspiration. All three dropped out of school as soon as possible, and the inter-generational consequences resonate profoundly with the women's common wish for a better life for their children. Armstrong captures all with a compassionate and reflexive eye, as she unobtrusively includes herself in the film as a testament to what has become a life-long friendship. Indeed, rather than relegate these women to the proverbial quiet lives of desperation, Armstrong has created a compelling social document. And though there are obviously similarities to Michael Apted's famous Seven-Up series, Armstrong's achievement is unique to Australian cinema, providing both a fascinating social history and a deeply personal account of these three remarkable, ordinary women. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zg4LG5rZMZI
Like the evil twin of the Biennale, Momentum:Sydney will be lurking around your neighbourhood this week. You'll find him in all your favourite warehouses, galleries and bars, trying to start trouble. This guy's not into gold, ornate frames — we're talking contemporary video, new media, performance and sound art here. With tons of international art stars and key gems of the local scene hanging around, you'll want to be where he is. One event to take note of is a performance by .Tatumi Orimoto, aka the Breadman. In Oil Can, Orimoto will enlist fifteen innocent bystanders to stand in said oil drums in an art event typical of his signature style. Meanwhile, Sumugan Sivanesan's ruminates on cannibalism and otherness in his lecture, What's Eating Gilberto Gil?, on Friday, May 14 — to be followed by a cake-based performance. Taking another angle on the 'other' is Afghani artist Lida Abdul, whose video works will be exhibited at Anna Schwartz Gallery. It all ends with one last hurrah at Melt Bar on Saturday eve, with DJ Mieko Suzuki from Tokyo/Berlin alongside infamous VJ Tim Gruchy. Take the plunge and choose your own adventure. Details are scarce, so track down a program and don't let go until it's over. Image by Tatsumi Orimoto.
The discontent of Robert Winter, a semi-successful actor, occurs in the twilight of his career. While preparing backstage for a show, a momentous recent event forces him to examine the choices and sacrifices he has made for his craft. William Zappa, an actor who has himself experienced many of the trials and tribulations retold in Winter's story, is both the performer and writer of this piece. This is a dissection of the cult of acting, and for this purpose all an actor's tools are employed: familiar stretches, motivational speeches, warm ups in gibberish and the famous lines of dead white males. Zappa clearly enjoys revealing these absurdities to an audience who may or may not be already familiar with them. Zappa's approach to his character begins with great subtlety — so much so that we are initially tempted to admit that Winter has perhaps made some wrong choices. However, as the plot thickens, Zappa reveals the extraordinary depth of his skill (as well as Winter's), and we long for nothing more than the benefit of watching his performance. Winter's Discontent is an incredibly honest piece which gives rise to some unpredictable and transcendent moments. Zappa's skill is irrefutable, and you should snap up the chance to see him perform this work at the intimate Darlinghurst Theatre.
When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, peace will guide the planets and Australia can finally have their Juggernauts back. Fresh from a European tour with French dynamo Justice, Melbourne trio Midnight Juggernauts are back with a shiny new record, Australian dates and the meaning of life (though perhaps a little scant on the latter). With their debut LP Dystopia sending 2007 into a robotic warzone of dance, these electro guns are bringing their wondrous zest back with The Crystal Axis and more punch than an intergalactic Beastie Boys SLAM. With founding members Vincent Vendetta and Andy Szekeres nabbing Lost Valentinos drummer Daniel Stricker, the trio has certainly upped their Euro-feel since dwelling in the Parisian quarter of Le Marais for a large part of 2008. Ah, l'electro c'est super! Heralding an infectiously synth-based kind of kaleidoscopic electro-rock, this triangular ensemble has successfully overcome the cluster of Aussie dance punk circa 2006, leaving contemporaries Cut Copy, Van She and Grafton Primary to find their own feet. The 50-minute sophomore album of the threesome brings a more immediate sound to their generally sequenced electronic recording — moving past surface-value cosmic tomfoolery to bring a more vivid exploration of deep space. With new singles The New Technology and Vital Signs transporting the listener to some kind of musico-galactic tipi, the threesome have a revamped set, a revamped style (beards crucial), and a revamped DIY ethos that has garnered international acclaim. As these celestial musketeers look into one pastel wash of an interstellar sunset, Sydney can sleep sound in the knowledge their Juggernaut has returned. https://youtube.com/watch?v=dc8Osb5zYm4
There's something a wee bit schadenfreude about the image of a bunch of little kids running around banging into each other. I don't know if that's actually what the kids from Children Collide intended with the name of their band, but that's what immediately comes to my mind. But seriously folks, the real issue here is that Children Collide are awesome. The Melbourne based lads have put together their sophomore album with the combined inspiration of the science of the universe and the mystical powers behind tarot cards, and now wish to share it with you. Come September 17, head to the Metro Theatre to catch the boys in a rocking show. With spectacular guitar solos and banging beats, Children Collide will send you singing along into the stratosphere — a place where you're likely to find this Aussie band floating about, hands behind heads with a piece of straw in their mouths, tapping their toes and looking down on the earth with wisdom.
The first thing that strikes you about South Solitary is its visual splendor. Gorgeous cinematography and unshowy period production and costume design effortlessly draw the audience into Meredith's (Miranda Otto) rather extraordinary predicament. It's 1927 and she's a woman of a certain age, romantically marooned by the impact of the Great War and now literally cast aside onto a craggy rock in the middle of the ocean. With only her cantankerous lighthouse keeper uncle (Barry Otto) and a cuddly lamb for company, the pair receives a frosty welcome from both the weather and the lighthouse's overlooked caretakers, including shell-shocked veteran Flint (Marton Csokas). South Solitary marks ten years between films for the Camera d'Or winning writer-director Shirley Barrett (Love Serenade). One has to wonder how much a decade of solitude played upon the mind of a filmmaker once lauded at Cannes, however, much like her plucky protagonist, Barrett's writing betrays no bitterness; instead reveling in a knowing humour that is beautifully embodied by Otto. Also, for a film steeped in metaphor and symbolism (lighthouses, beacons, ships passing in the night, to name a few), Barrett's light touch is to her credit, if only she had also thought to trim the film from its lengthy 120mins. Audiences expecting a sweeping romantic drama between Meredith's bubbly spinster and Flint's tortured soul will be disappointed by Barrett's restraint. And yet what lurks behind the whirling winds and the stoic characters is a warm-hearted film that also happens to be as pretty as a picture. Visit the Official Site to view the film's trailer.
If we've learnt anything from theatre, it's that the corporate world and spirituality don't mix. Like A Fishbone proves once and for all that architecture and religion are like oil and water. An unexpected and unknown woman shelters from the rain inside an inner city office. She is strange, unsophisticated and seems completely out of place. As the office's permanent occupant — an architect — begins to question her, it is gradually revealed that this woman knows exactly why she's there. She has questions to ask about the design of a memorial for her community, and things to tell about the tragedy that prompted its design. In the attempted mix between elements, this play digs deep into a contradiction inherent in ideas about diversity. A person's most deeply held beliefs, their most fundamental reasoning and their purest emotions, are more than just abstract thought. These beliefs direct their lives and their being, and cannot be separated from the way in which they view the world. Tolerance then, is just thinly disguised rejection and the path to harmony — earthly or otherwise — is more convoluted than we once thought. While this play doesn't attempt to reinvent the wheel, its understated execution leads to more insights on its subject than you may initially expect. Prepare to be surprised.
In a sea of three-piece bands taking dingy stages right now, I'm glad that Fabulous Diamonds remain a suitably polished duo. Sure, their songs are a trial to back-announce on radio (they’re all untitled), but what's a small moment of on-air discomfort when the song is so sublime? Alongside building a following from live shows that swung between buzzing to bickering and back to mellow, Nisa Venerosa and Jarrod Zlatic have just released their second album together, Fabulous Diamonds II. In their hynoptic little world, they keep fine company. The new record is out in Australia through Chapter Music and available on vinyl through the likewise iconic American label Siltbreeze. They've toured the States with kindred upstarts, Times New Viking and Pyschedelic Horseshit and dragged their heavy keys and kit all across Europe and the UK to the delight of broody-mooders coast to coast. On record, they're spacey and sensuous with a slight air of upset. Live, it all makes a kind of intense sense; Venerosa and Zlatic playing off each other's vibes in a troubled, telepathic way. Can't recommend more highly.
If you missed out on nabbing tickets for the Blondie and Pretenders tour (the first two Sydney shows sold out in a matter of days) we’ve got good news: an extra Sydney show has been added to the bill. I’m sure there’s no need to delve into how epic this collaboration is: this is the greatest BOGOF of all time. For the price of one, you get two of the coolest bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, two style icons and double the dose of new wave classics. Decades might have passed since Blondie and Pretenders topped the charts, but both bands’ timeless appeal resonates with younger fans generation after generation. Meanwhile, Debbie Harry's ever-faithful to the peroxide bottle, while Chrissie Hynde continues to rock out in her signature boy’s tshirts and skinny jeans. As for the music – I can only vouch for Blondie who played a festival in the northern part of the world a couple of years back and the (younger) crowd was blown away. This is one legend that will never be 'past it'. Touring together for the first time ever, both bands will team up to play across Australia before heading to New Zealand. They play the Enmore Theatre for their third and final show on December 9.
Although she was rather fond of the visually stimulating and sensuously heightening colours of a dance floor, Eloise knew that a library — not a discotheque — was where she felt most at home on a Friday night. Tonight however she found herself distracted by that buffoon who was making a ruckus of the usually still and quite library. He'd approached her earlier in the evening to joke about some mechanic's exam he was preparing to flunk but she wasn’t impressed and the sparks of electricity that shot through her body when he touched her shoulder were still rippling through her, adding to her annoyance. There was something about his big, strong ... Wait, wait, wait — I'm no Romance writer! But Mills and Boon author Annie West, romance scholar Sandra Barletta and book blogger, Kat Mayo know a thing or two about the genre. They're discussing Sex, Passion and Love and just why it has inspired authors from Shakespeare to Austin to Roberts in the 21st century. They’ll even hand you evidence in the form of a free romance novel at the end of the night. *Free event but bookings essential
Film-makers are still struggling to make a really good version of Romeo and Juliet. In the meantime, people like the Sydney Shakespeare Festival keep putting it on in real life. Lots of Shakespeare's plays were originally performed under an open sky — as many people already know if they study his work, or watch Doctor Who. It's a great way to get to know the plays. The comedy and drama thrive on the extra informality. And while indoor shows are more common these days, outdoor performances remain pretty popular both here and overseas. The Sydney Shakespeare Festival is a more recent arrival than its sage contemporary Shakespeare by the Sea, staging its plays on the foreshore at Glebe's Bicentennial Park. The 2011 Festival alternates between A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, mixing both cast and genders between the plays as much as Romeo and Juliet mixes comedy with its tragedy, or A Midsummer Night's Dream takes in fairies with its classical myth. So if you're searching for a most rare vision, get over to Glebe and report how their Dream was. Performances run Thursday to Sunday.
Greek. Gypsy. Spanish. Portuguese. Senegalese. Afro-Peruvian. Mexican. Bulgarian. Balkan. Cafe Carnivale has a pretty full program this year. As a taster of globe-spanning goodness to come, it's brought together a collection of musicians to launch the 2011 Carnivale program with Fiesta! at Eastside Arts. The Cafe has been running ten years now, having grown out of the music program of the now-departed Carnivale festival. Sometime Mariachi Victor Valdez — recently seen supporting chicano músicos Los Lobos at the Sydney Festival — will play his surprisingly strong solo Mexican music on the harp. Mandie Vieira promises Fado — soulful Portuguese sound not unlike Flamenco singing — while Mousa Diakite will show off his hard-earned styles steeped in music from Mali and the Ivory Coast. Also present will be the Gypsy bass of John Maddock, Monsieur Camembert regular Eddie Bronson, and Uruguayan performer Jose Barroso. Cafe Carnivale musical director Justo Diaz completes the lineup, a talented musician himself, he has a staggering knowledge and collection of international instruments, many of which will join him on stage. So if you crave duende or other musical passions, get along to Eastside and join the party.
Lots of bands get accused of having an eclectic range of influences. The Unthanks, instead, get accused of being the eclectic influence. Their reach covers not only musos like Elvis Costello and Radiohead, but has also helped inspire a revival of lo-fi clog dancing. Part of a musical current unwraping live music from the electric, this Northern English band's current lineup is a ten-piece big band — five of whom are touring here to Sydney to perform at the Festival's Spiegeltent. Formerly Rachael Unthank and the Wintersets, a complicated set of line-up changes over the years brought the band to settle on its shorter name. Sisters Becky and Rachel Unthank (their real surname, it means 'squatter') grew up around folk songs and folk festivals, drawing their musical influences together into a modern act. Their rich geordie voices intertwine tightly on stage, at times the amplification dropped so completely that you can hear a seat creak or the pages turn in a reporter's notebook. While their songs are often grim or heartbreaking, it's some work to be sad when the voices are so sweet.
As the Laneway Festival approaches, it scatters in its wake a host of gorgeous sideshows. Some are well-known favourites while others are, if not completely unknown, a shade towards the obscure. Blonde Redhead is an example of the latter, a band most recently heard in Australia in the form of its epic pop romance 23, which hides an impressive discography stemming back sixteen years. Spawned from New York-based noise rock, Blonde Redhead are singer/guitarist Kazu Makino and twin brothers Amedeo (singer/guitarist) and Simone Pace (drummer/programmer). Their sound is delayed champagne, full of reverbs and romantic synth, but with just the right stir of post-grunge bitters to stop the taste from cloying. Coupled with this is an aesthetic that wears nostalgia so casually that they may as well be fairy travelers from a yesteryear time. Joining the trio for their only Sydney sideshow are New Zealand band, The Verlaines. Dropping away from the sweeping magic of Blonde Redhead, Graeme Downes and company create an earthier soundscape of witty melancholy marked with playful interludes of brass.
Closing night at the Beck's Festival Bar is going to be mad. The phenomenal Burden brothers are bringing their techno genius Octave One to Australia for the very first time. Hailing from Detroit, Octave One are techno innovators. Having toured the globe for over 20 years with DJ set and live shows and through their own 430 West label, the Burden brothers know their stuff — they've collaborated with Underground Resistance, remixed the likes of Massive Attack and had their most popular release Blackwater included on over 30 compilation albums. Octave One's 'deep vocal house and slammin' techno grooves' will have the Beck's Bar kicking on 'till the very last beat.
Venues present and past have been hidden around the city. Shops a-plenty dominate its broader boulevards and narrow lanes. But what Sydney-siders really want is to get our hands on the roads themselves. Openings for bridges and tunnels, runs — fun or marathon — even picnics have been eagerly snapped up as excuses to get our rubber on their asphalt. But until recently we didn't get much of a chance to stick around. Who would have thought that we'd get the chance for, not just one but two city street parties in the same month? On Australia day, the Rocks will host a whole day of free music down the sharp hills and smart alleyways of one of Sydney's oldest disreputable neighbourhoods. A long list of artists includes the Hungry Kids of Hungary, the funereal Christa Hughes and the Honky TonkShonks and any amount of choral singing. At five there's a flashmob singing Bury Me Deep in Love by the Triffids, with which you can join in. So while some may go for other festivals, ferry races or more somber bites of history, why not spend your shoe leather tapping along to the action on the Rocks' sweetly cobbled streets? Original image by Kat Clay.
Darren Aronofsky may have been lauded for his portrait of The Wrestler, but he certainly doesn't pull his punches in the ballet world. Turning the dial up to 11, Aronofsky brings glorious new meaning to the term 'melodrama' as he refashions the tragic tale of the Swan princess into a sexy, haunting and sublimely over the top cinematic romp. Taking more than a few cues from Dostoyevsky's The Double, Roman Polanski's Repulsion and of course Powell and Pressburger's seminal The Red Shoes, Aronofsky and his screenwriters serve up Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a timidly ambitious ballerina desperate for perfection. When ballet company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) ousts his prima ballerina (Winona Ryder) and instead selects Nina to play the lead in his revamped production of Swan Lake, the pressure immediately begins to take its toll on his new princess. Thomas knows Nina is perfect for the virginal White Swan, but he forces her to confront her lack of sensuality and wild abandon required for the sultry Black Swan. This role is better suited to the free-spirited new recruit Lily (Mila Kunis), and this perceived treat to her new reign fractures Nina's fragile psyche. Add to the mix a terrifyingly infantilising mother (a scene-stealing Barbara Hershey) and a history of stress-induced scratching, and Aronofsky has a veritable crucible of psychological factors to toy with on screen. And toy he most definitely does, leading his audience into the depths of Nina's psychosis via Portman's utterly spellbinding performance. She is simply exquisite, literally and figuratively flapping about on stage, rail thin and wild-eyed. It is a testament to her committed preparation that Portman looks at home in the ballet company, and similarly she seamlessly slips into Nina's protracted childhood amongst her wall-to-wall pink, plush toy filled bedroom. There's even a music box, complete with a twirling ballerina. Yes, everything is that black and white in Black Swan, and that's exactly how Aronofsky wants it. If you're searching for any hint of nuance or subtlety, you're in the wrong place. Aronofsky is more like a bull in a china shop, but therein lies all the fun. See Black Swan for Portman, for the production design and for the sheer, ballsy, maddening brilliance of it all. https://youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs
The Spanish word duende is hard to translate. The director of Live: An Intimate Video Study of the Art of Performing — Jasmin Tarasin — feels that modern venues lack it, as concerts and arenas leave you pushed too far away from the breathing, perspiring pure voice and understated rhythms of one-on-one, casual performance. Too much gets lost in the translation from solo artist to stage or screen. Duende roughly means 'possessed inspiration' — this, she says, is what she was looking to bring to audiences in her installation at the Festival this year. Live is made of two long rooms bunted in black curtains and white neon light. Four big screens sit down one wall of the first room. The second has four black booths — each with a vertical screen shining black and white videos of singers from hips to head, slightly larger than life. The same videos run in the first room. Four sing at any one time, and you choose channels on your wireless headphones to decide who to listen to from screen to screen. They belt out songs like little gods, looking down at you from a taller place. Though there's an obvious progression from the big screen to small, the little black booths are so good that the first room seems almost superfluous. Martha Wainwright explodes on guitar, Julian Hamilton sings acapella, Juliette Lewis does some surprisingly ballsy blues and Warren Ellis is ragged and well tuned. The black and white photography works well, bringing each performer to occupy the same abstract white space. But they perform to camera. Looking into the middle distance, spit and sibilants get lost to electric backing and headphone glitches, pushing you further away from the moment. But although it doesn't quite hand you duende on a plate Live makes for good music, and good art. Live will be closed January 18.
Eddie Perfect's sense of humour is disturbingly funny. Like a car crash you know you shouldn't look at but can't help yourself looking anyway, Perfect's jokes are ones you know you shouldn't laugh at because if your mum was sitting next to you she'd box your ears for it. Perfect shot to notoriety in 2009 with the spoof Shane Warne: The Musical, and after playing former Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, in Keating! The Musical, is heralded to look fabulous in fishnet stockings and heels. With a three-piece band in tow, Misanthropology asks, 'What makes us human?' and 'Does a shopping trolley full of 'eco' and 'organic' make you a better person than one full of 'No Frills' and 'Made in China'?' Commissioned specifically for the Sydney Festival, Misanthropology sees Perfect teamed with director Craig Ilott, whose work on the SF2010 world premiere of Smoke and Mirrors (starring iOTA) resulted in an international tour and a slew of Helpmann Awards for the cast and creators. Perfect is so tastefully irreverent in Misanthropology that it is only performed at midnight to a legally aged crowd, but I still wonder if you'd be game enough to take your mum? https://youtube.com/watch?v=rM7Q6NiFRIU
Anthony Lister's figures are amalgamations of superheroes, shimmering colours and body parts. Lister describes the appeal of four-colour comic characters as almost godlike — heroes in a kind of mythology. And if mythology is really about family at heart, then Lister's family is odd, powerful and roughly formed. His figures put on a spare head or a fresh pair of arms as casually as a new coat. They stand powerful and heavy; comfortably composed with a revelatory style not too far from comic legend Bill Sienkiewicz. Lister has been collected by Taschen and curated by the National Gallery, and now he comes to the Chalk Horse Gallery in the form of solo show Memories Not Included. His hero figures will be on display along with darker, less defined pieces flush with shadowy palettes and neon stains. There'll also be some in situ work unique to the gallery space. Lister's figures demand attention, but they're not interested in yours. They look ready to walk off the walls to go out in search of whatever takes their mood. Don't let them get away before you've had the chance to get a look.
Misc. Magazine is a new free magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of up and coming and amateur artists, writers, designers, photographers and other creative types, giving Sydney's young creative community a chance to have their work published in a tangible format for distribution amongst the public. Want to get on board? The first issue of Misc. will be launched at this week's Purple Sneakers, with copies of the magazine available on the night. If you like what you see, why not get creative and join in for issue #2? RSVP to mag@misc-magazine.net to check it out.
You do not want Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) or Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) knocking on your door. The two are arguably entrusted with one of the US Army's toughest assignments: casualty notification. It's a job that's driving teetotalling Stone to an alcoholic abyss, and one that promises to scratch at the viscerally raw nerves of recently returned Staff Sergeant Montgomery. Together the pair set out on their thankless task in screenwriter Oren Moverman's (Jesus' Son, I'm Not There) strikingly simple yet devastatingly powerful directorial debut. Co-written with producer Alessandro Camon (American Psycho, The Cooler), Moverman's film shows remarkable restraint for a first time director, particularly one saddling himself with the often unwelcome subtitle of 'an Iraq War film'. Visually and thematically, The Messenger sticks fearlessly close to its titular character; as the film traverses six notifications, Moverman's camera predominantly stays on Will as the news horrifically hits home off camera. Forbidden to reach out and comfort the N.O.K (next of kin), the audience experiences Will's fearful, then seething seclusion, and can thus almost empathise as he entangles himself with a widow (Samantha Morton). Mercifully, similar restraint is shown in this storyline, with an utterly electric, single-shot scene of Morton and Foster emotionally opening up to each other. Such punch in the gut performances are present across the board, with Steve Buscemi making a remarkable cameo and Harrelson even garnering an Oscar nomination. With such impressive acting and understated, poignant direction, Moverman can be forgiven for stretching a couple of the film's metaphors a tad too far. The Messenger is nevertheless a beautifully rendered and necessarily painful window onto an overlooked reality. But you can take cold comfort from the fact that you really needn't worry about shooting the messenger — he's already at the raggedy edge. https://youtube.com/watch?v=8MEApxjYncI
With the Newtown Festival, the question isn't where to start but where to stop. Divided into stages, stalls, lawns and avenues, events in the festival trip over each other to entertain, edify or feed you. Three live music stages will feature local Newtown acts, groups from Sydney, and further afield — including the serially strange Richard in Your Mind, duet Stiff Ginns and some local beat poetry. Dog lovers can parade their pets in one of eight categories at the morning Dog Show, while at midday the Planet Ark Clothes Swap will offer an hour of unrestrained cashless fashioning-up. The Watershed bike library will be there to intrigue cyclists and non-cyclists alike, and younger cyclists can compete to win the Bling Your Bike competitive parade. Poets, crime writers, travel writers and social researchers will populate the Writers Tent, culminating in a political debate between Gillard biographer Jacqueline Kent and ABC political chronicler Annabel Crabb. And at the Local Village, Roomie Artspace and the Wrap With Love Knitting Group can give you some idea where festival proceeds go. Or you can just sit comfortably on the grass, watch the passing show and suck up the essence of Newtown, concentrated.
Have you ever found yourself sitting over a bowl of something delicious thinking, "I'm totally loving this now, but what will I be totally loving in The Future? Will it be tiny fish that clean between my teeth? Or maybe potato chips flavoured with dolphin tears. Do dolphins even have tears? Oh how I wish I knew what will be Big In The Future!" Fret no more, compadre! Read on and be enlightened. Woosh! Zoom! We all know that before The Future happens and becomes the past it is actually living in Tokyo. Tokyo is in Japan, so if it's Big In Japan it must be big in The Future. Success! And here's more good news — you don't even have to go to Japan, just scoot on over to the Royal Hall of Industries where the folks from Ksubi will be curating the Big In Japan *exhibition. The performance-focused show will be running over the course of a day showcasing the best of Japanese avant-garde. So here's a glimpse of what's in store in your near future and beyond: krautrock girl groups, floating human sculptures and colourful chaos. You need to be here. *Strictly invite only
Sounds like a bit of a contradiction doesn't it — Affordable Art? Well imagine walking through a bazaar of art — there's some you like, some you don't want to look twice at but there's also the freedom to openly discuss these things without feeling the pressure of a 'formal gallery' purchase. Like any good bazaar, the masters of knowledge man the stalls, i.e. gallery owners who are on location to discuss the art work and considering the varying sizes and prices, there's no doubt you're going to find something you like. Looking at all that art can get dizzyingly confusing though so there's the opportunity to take part in the 'art walk and talks' where you can learn about the do's and don'ts of art collecting and check out the print-making process — then walk away with your very own copy. The Affordable Art Fair is so popular that it's held in Amsterdam, London, Milan, Singapore and New York. Although travelling to one of those cities for the event may change its description of 'affordable', it's an excellent opportunity for you to start your collection (or expand it) while supporting the artists that contribute to the culture of this fine city. For your chance to win a double pass to the opening night (valued at $100) including live entertainment and complimentary booze, email hello@concreteplayground.com.au
In a superlative example of art-imitating-life, there was definite alchemy at work on the set of The Social Network. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg may be none too pleased with his fictional portrayal, but perhaps even he can appreciate the sublime pairing of director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Charlie Wilson's War) with their leading man Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Zombieland). This truly thrilling triumvirate have created nothing short of a masterpiece and one that, appropriately, plays out through a triple-threat Rashomon-esque storyline. From the unconventional, but utterly Sorkin opening scene, the film is itself a sprawling network of plotlines, arguments and, most assuredly, egos. In 2003 a ferociously ambitious, but socially stunted Harvard undergrad Zuckerberg bumbles his way into a break-up with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), only to then drunkenly blog and code his way into Internet and now film history. This stuff of legend is elucidated and bickered over though two separate legal proceedings, wherein Zuckerberg is sued by his erstwhile bestfriend and Facebook co-founder/CFO Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), as well as an imposing twin-set of professional rowers, the Winklevoss' (Armie Hammer) along with their business partner (Max Minghella). Rather than seeming weighed down by Sorkin's dialogue heavy screenplay, Fincher is in his element. This calculating, convoluted, male-centric environment is perfect fodder for Fincher's oeuvre. His unshowy, but perfectly polished camera develops an impressive amount of suspense and seething emotion; though with Justin Timberlake's scene-stealing turn as Napster founder Sean Parker, Fincher allows himself more than a little devilish glee. The third act's slight lag in pace, as well as Rashida Jones' unnecessary but understandable role as one of Zuckerberg's lawyers — essentially a Greek chorus — are mere quibbles in a film entirely deserving of all the hyperbole being thrust upon it. It's almost as if Sorkin, Fincher and Eisenberg have rewritten Jean Luc Godard's filmmaking dictum for the Internet Age: all you need to make a movie now is a girl and a grudge. https://youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4
Since I started visiting The Abercrombie Hotel post refurb, the first thing I hear when I confess my love for it — even before unanimous approval of scotch egg sliders and deep fried mac ‘n’ cheese balls — is that it used to be the home of Purple Sneakers. I didn’t move to Sydney until Purple Sneakers and The Abercrombie had already parted ways so I don’t really know how good those nights were, where good tunes and sneaky goon sacks made sweet love in a dark and dusty pub, but they sound like they were pretty damn good. Something that also sounds pretty good, however, is Now or Never. The Abercrombie’s brand new music event takes place every Saturday night, kicking off with $6 vodka Red Bulls from 9pm – 1am and charging on until 5am. The previous two Now or Nevers have delved into the vast sonic underworlds of Anne Deep, Morgan Hyslop and Charlie Chux, and equally diverse DJ sets are expected to follow. What’s more, entry is free — so chug some goon, throw on any colour sneakers you like and spend that $10 you’ve saved on one of those killer Berocca Coladas they do on Sundays.
Sure, you can zag with style and some tremored precision when you're out and about, but what you really want is to dance scruffy, like you do among the lingering curls of steam by the bathroom mirror. There's an evening of dance that gets your problem. A homegrown night out that's spawned a worldwide movement which many know, but few have seen. Hosted at Curiousworks, Sydney's inner-city hive of pan-urban storytelling, No Lights No Lycra invites you to dance away the evening with your groove on and the lights off. One year on, the evening has pulled its weekly socials into a monthly omnibus, guaranteeing you a consolidated wave of soothing vibes from the speakers and a bigger vibe from a bigger crowd. Proceeds from the night itself go to support Curiousworks' good work helping Sydneysiders to tell their own tales themselves. So if you want to dance your secret mirror-dance with all of the passion and none of the shame, No Lights No Lycra waits for you the first Thursday of every month with all embracing arms, and some judiciously closed eyes. Image by masochismtango.
Tokujin Yoshioka is a designer who puts striking curves into the fabric of everyday furniture, boxes or even shop displays. His vision of design rests on making a strong emotional connection, and a lot of industrial-size glass. He also does art, having made temples of glass or shimmering ice-like slabs which seem to ripple even as they are, in reality, completely still. An upcoming exhibition at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is bringing his work to Sydney, collecting his work here for the first time, under the title Waterfall. As well as the eponymous, rippling Waterfall the show promises to introduce Sydney to the variety of Yoshioka's career. Thousands upon thousands of drinking straws are already in Paddington, the hallmark of room-filling sculpture Tornado, a life-size confection which wraps the viewer in a rickety cloud of stalky plastic. Geometry, smooth forms and a lightness all combine in his work, whether making a life-size, functional paper chair which molds to your shape (but only the once), or papering a wall with suede flowers for a Campers shop in London. This is Yoshioka's first foray to Australian shores, but odds-on you'll soon be hankering after a return engagement.
By turns brassy and classy, exotic and demotic, exquisite and coarse, malevolent and melancholy, the extraordinary phenomenon that is Smoke & Mirrors will return to the Seymour Centre for one final season. Presented by Lunar Hare Productions, described as "rock 'n' roll cabaret with a scorching live band," Smoke & Mirrors sold out at Sydney Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It's a breathtaking vaudeville fantasy; a glorious melange of physical spectacle, pantomime characters and strobe lights. Supported by a four-piece band, the curious cast of characters includes a red-ruffed ringmaster, a twisted chanteuse, a sublime aerialist, a mesmerising magician and some giant, gambolling bunnies. It's a sexy jounce through Edwardian music halls; a theatrical knees-up to centuries past. It teases out the myriad yearnings and dangers of modern sexual relations through saucy songs and balancing acts, transforming them into an artful cabaret turn. Smoke & Mirrors is a lushly disturbing piece of theatre that was one of The Famous Spiegel Garden’s headline shows. Go see it at the Seymour Centre before it disappears in an exquisite puff of smoke.
You've put in the hard yards: gone home early Friday night, or spent a night in, and now you wake bright and early on a Saturday morning. You're fresh and ready to make the most of your city. You're ready to do good. So, what next? Well, my suggestion would be that you head along to CarriageWorks. There'll be loads of people doing the same, attending workshops on things like gardening, bike safety tips and public art. This Saturday, you have three to choose from. 'Earthly Delights', which promises to help you train tricky soil, 'Getting Weedy', pointing out common weeds that can be used as food or medicine, and 'Reverse Robots', partnering with Reverse Garbage to enable you to create the ultimate robot mask. And if you do happen to weaken on your plan thanks to the temptations of Friday night, the good news is that this is a monthly do. Which means there's only so many excuses you can make before going along and digging in.
You’d have to be some kind of cold-hearted, imagination-starved automaton not to want to step onto the silver screen like Gumby walked into any wall, Bill and Ted telephone-boxed into the pages of history (and an A+!), and Marty McFly into the future (and almost incest). I would bet my entire DVD collection (mostly stolen) that every child has had at least one such fantasy. Vintage pop-up shop bams & ted know it, and in their new home in the Gaffa Gallery’s Arcade Project they have curated three collections rotating around a different movie each time. Currently in show is A Picnic at Hanging Rock — specifically, Miranda, the Botticelli-esque beauty. Girl-crush alert! Picture yourself draped on rocks, decked in wispy dresses the colour of marshmallows, your hair a Pantene dream, tiny daydreams forming in crystal-blue eyes. Your trinkets back at the boarding house include a lucky horseshoe, darling animal plates, a flowery cushion or two. And then, of course, you die — or, rather more poetically, disappear — and are memorialised forever, always young, always pretty. Luckily, the upside of fantasies are they are not real, so you don’t really die, but you do get to buy a few nice things and feel like a schoolgirl for a day. Next on the bill is the dashing femme fatale of Hitchcock’s 1955 To Catch a Thief — think French Riviera resort-wear, ginormous jewels, slinky black cat burglar suits and, if we’re lucky, a handsome man called Cary Grant who is available for rental by the hour. After March, bams & ted turn down the heat for a little Murder She Wrote, Angela Lansbury style. Aww man, who didn’t imagine themselves as this super-sleuth at one point? She can solve crimes and bake scones! We are told to prepare for typewriters, crisp sweaters perfect for the New England autumn, and presumably a whole lot of 80s bad taste. I don’t need to be a detective to know I won’t be bidding adieu to my DVD shelf anytime soon. The To Catch A Thief 'Francie' launch will be held on Thursday 11 March, 6-8pm. The Murder She Wrote 'Jessica' launch will be held on Thursday 8 April, 6-8pm. Additional late nights (in conjunction with the Gaffa openings) will be held on Thurs March 25 for Francie and Thurs April 22 for Jessica.
There are several wonderful things about this festival. The first is that it's entirely for charity. All proceeds go to the Sarah Hilt Foundation, which funds victims of meningococcal disease. The second is that you pay a flat rate of $105 and you get unlimited alcohol for the entire 24 hours. And we're not talking house wine and VB; the event is catered by Apple Tree Flat and Vodka O, so there will be enough sugar in your booze to keep you dancing all day and night. The third is always a winner: fancy dress. If you were at Playground Weekender you'll understand how much fun can be had boogying with an aubergine or having your photo taken with a tribe of sexy aliens from the planet Pandora. This quaint little festival boasts a delectable local lineup including Deep Sea Arcade, the Thundamentals, Matt Corby, and Fun Machine and 104 Collective ft. Seekae, with DJs DCup, Elane, Much Love, Bondi House DJs, Bad Wives and SMS. You can also post a postcard to your mum, drink tea with a 1950s tea lady and join a Japanese sing-along. So c'mon, this is your last chance to run barefoot through a field, release your inner hippy and set up a tent that you probably won't use before the summer fizzles out. Secret Garden's location will be revealed shortly before the event — but word on the street is it's just one hour south of Sydney. Image (Deep Sea Arcade) by Kylie Coutts. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4XrG20hALoQ
As kimono clad onlookers a few floors above traipse around the Hymn to Beauty: The Art of Utamaro exhibition ogling delicate ukiyo-e woodblock prints, rest your weary geta clogs in the downstairs theatrette. Hymn to Beauty focuses on the "floating world" captured in Utamaro's work, glimpsing into the luxurious new pleasure culture of early seventeenth–century Japan. All films are free(!), and screen on Wednesday afternoons, nights and Sunday afternoons. Tickets are released outside the theatrette an hour before each session starts. Sharaku Dir. Masahiro Shinoda (1995) Wednesday 3rd March 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 7th March 2pm Fictional biography of famous Japanese woodblock artist and Kabuki performer Shakaru. Zatôichi Dir. Takeshi Kitano (2003) Wednesday 10th March 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 14th March 2pm Meet a Japanese Edo-period superhero: blind gambler/masseuse (seventeenth century 'slashie'?) by day, master swordsman at night. The Life of Oharu Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi (1952) Wednesday 17th March 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 21st March 2pm The tragic tale of a lady-in-waiting forced by society into a life of concubinage. Empire of Passion Dir. Nagisa Oshima (1978) Wednesday 24th March 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 28th March 2pm Revenge, eroticism and supernatural visions in feudal Japan. Winner of Best Director at Cannes. Utamaro and His Five Women Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi (1946) Wednesday 31st March 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 4th April 2pm A study of printmaker Utamaro and his five muses; as much their story as his. Kwaidan Dir. Masaki Kobayashi (1964) Wednesday 7th April 2pm & 6pm, Sunday 11th April 2pm The Edo period Candyman, of sorts. Four stories based on a samurai class parlour game designed to summon spirits. Twilight Samurai Dir. Yôji Yamada (2002) Wednesday 14th April 2pm & 7:15pm, Sunday 18th April 2pm The first in Yamada's trilogy, this is about samurais and not vampires. A tale of wealth, honour and courage. I repeat, not vampires. https://youtube.com/watch?v=7sEdxb3I3dk
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting, Ecstasy, Reheated Cabbage) is coming to everyone's favourite den of despair, Oxford Art Factory. If you've found yourself thinking that maybe there's something more to life than getting drunk all the time and that you should read more, you should come to this. There you'll realise that there is more to life: namely reading a few books about getting drunk all the time, doing drugs and beating people up. This event is a bit unusual so we're all still a bit unclear on what exactly Mr. Welsh will be doing. Hopefully he'll yell obscenities at Jack Ladder and the Disbelievers who are "supporting" and throw a bottle at also-an-author Dominic Knight who is "presenting". We do know that he will be signing books and I will give 20 bucks to anyone who turns up with a Trainspotting DVD. As for me I'll be asking Irvo whether he's worried that maybe his audience might be a wee bit bored of reading about pretty much the same characters doing pretty much the same things they were doing in 1993. "And another thing," I'll say taking a long swig of beer, "that last collection . . . 'Reheated Cabbage' is a pretty good title, eh Irvo? HA HA HA. What's that? Glasgow kiss? That sounds nice . . . yes, please!" https://youtube.com/watch?v=koP4O6QAzx4
Tim Burton's obsessively anticipated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland finally hits cinemas in all its three-dimensional glory. Burton has transformed Lewis Carroll's Alice Kingsley into a 19-year-old dreamer (played by Australian Mia Wasikowska), who flees a claustrophobically staged engagement to follow one of her flights of fancy and ends up falling down the proverbial rabbit hole. This is not to say that Alice is a stranger to Wonderland; indeed, she dreams of it constantly, though remains unaware of her childhood adventure to 'Underland'. And so Alice and the audience are reintroduced to all the old favourites: the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Rabbit (Michael Sheen), Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) and the trippy Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman). While Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast) do a laudable job reinventing the literary heroine, they don't quite manage to breathe new life into her. In fact, apart from a spirited scene or two, Alice is a rather flat, meek character who literally sits on the sidelines of scenes to allow Depp and Bonham Carter to dish up their quirk. That his muse and his wife would run away with the production was always going to be the risk of Burton's Alice; if they do just manage to restrain themselves, Burton isn't able to convert this into a winning emotional journey for his heroine. Despite these distracting characterisation flaws, Alice in Wonderland is a well-paced, beautifully crafted visual spectacle that makes good use of 3D for a cracking cinematic experience. Alice's costumes are particularly delectable, and, as ever, Burton's signature gothic stamp is a resplendent, atmospheric addition to this latest world he's set his sights on. https://youtube.com/watch?v=9POCgSRVvf0
Living room slide shows have become an endangered species since the advent of social photo dumps like Facebook. For me, the act of sitting in a small room, eating some snacks and watching a friend fiddle with their post-travel carousel of anecdotes is so far removed from my current reality that I am almost certain I've never even seen a slide projector in the proverbial flesh. Thankfully there are folks like photographer William Yang out there, bringing a taste of nostalgia back into a jpeg-saturated reality. Impeccably suited and concisely spoken, Yang gives his audience a warm, humourous and very honest tour through his rich portfolio of social photography. There is something so wholesome about having a real human describe the story behind each image, rather than a couple of tags to anchor identities, and unlike the often rambling, soporific punishments of stereotypical amateur slide nights, Yang has curated his presentation so as to provide a fascinating, naturally-evolving piece of storytelling. Characters, from Brett Whitely through to Robin Nevin, drift in and out of Yang's narrative like lanterns on midnight waters, breathing life into this collection of stills from the artistic, literary, theatrical and queer circles of Sydney in the 80s and early 90s. Daniel Holdsworth of the Maple Trail punctuates Yang's tales with occasional bursts of music — including tunes from Bob Dylan, Tiny Tim, and the Village People. These moments are used sparingly and to great effect, especially at key points of the story where it would be better to let the images speak for themselves (or sing karaoke for themselves, given the presence of the music). As a historical document, My Generation is a wonderful, moving work and a must for anyone who dared to assume that our generation invented the notions of debauchery, love and angst. Image by William Yang.
Since calling a hiatus from the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer has been touring the world off the back of her solo debut Who Killed Amanda Palmer (a sister to Laura, perhaps?) and flabbergasting people with her avant-cabaret tunes. She has recently bowled over crowds at the Edinburgh Festival and Coachella and will soon be touring kooky and controversy-courting new act Evelyn Evelyn, but is first stopping back into the Opera House to treat us once again. Piano-heavy and dramatic, her music takes bits of Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush and Tori Amos and adds in a hefty dose of Liza Minnelli and Frank-N-Furter. Her playful, low voice is put in the service of artful lyrics that oscillate between tongue-in-cheek, lewd rants and heartfelt tales of love and death. The show is always theatrical and highly visual, existing somewhere on the cusp of fringe and pop. She makes great film clips and her performances often make it to DVD, but even those are unlikely to match the thrill of her live show. See it all the more stately in Opera House surrounds. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3sex26GeZ6c
Fans of Sydney street press will no doubt recognise the photography of Cybele Malinowski and Daniel Boud. For five years the couple have been shooting musical greats including INXS, Ben Lee, Ladyhawke, The Precepts, Philadelphia Grand Jury and The Vines, and now their magazine covers (in their original forms) will go on display and for sale at the Mart Gallery. Something of an online icon with his award-winning site Boudist, Boud broke into the photographic world shooting live music. “With a live band everything is presented for you,” he says, “The artist is performing already, they’re lit by a lighting designer, they’re on a stage that’s already been dressed, so as a photographer you’re more of a documentarian. Whereas a cover shoot, it’s a blank canvas. It’s completely up to you in terms of how you present the person, what you get them to do, what they’re wearing, what backdrop you’re using, how you light them. There’s a lot more of your photographer’s work in a cover shoot than it is shooting a live band.” Covers is the their first joint exhibition, and they will be donating proceeds to the youth support network Oasis.
Little Red have changed my life. No longer can I enjoy a Coca-Cola like I used to now that I have Little Red's infectious ditty on how to do it right. Little Red remind us of a sweeter era — girls in poodle skirts bopping to doo-wop, and taking your gal to the milk bar, filling your cola with ice and kissing like it's 1965. Their pop, like the soda, is sparkling, sweet and utterly addictive — just try to stop yourself smiling. The little band from Melbourne are: Adrian Beltrame (guitar/vocals), Dominic Byrne (vocals/guitar), Quang Dinh (bass/vocals), Taka Honda (drums) and Tom Hartney (vocals, percussion). Together, the all singing troup will have you all dancing the night away at the Oxford Arts Factory with their catchy hooks and old-fashioned rock 'n' roll. Having teamed up with producer Scott Horscroft (The Temper Trap, The Presets, Silverchair) for the release of their upcoming album, Little Red are touring their way through a string of single launches before taking their pop tunes to foreign shores. So make sure you make the most of the local lads while they are still here and travel back to a sweeter time.
What are ideas anyway? They're those big, abstract tangles floating above our heads that we pull down and argue about now and then, right? Most of the time we're too busy grappling with them to remember that someone had to put them up there in the first place. Enter Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany), seen here as a brilliant but private middle-aged man, leading a seemingly charmed life surrounded by family and friends. It doesn't take long for us to see the reasons for his reticence. Darwin is plagued by illness and troubled by his suspicions regarding the nature of the universe. We see Darwin's philosophy as it emerged: a knot of scientific study, family relations and devastating tragedy. There's plenty here for those who favour art over science: a strong dramatic plot, complex characters and conveniently visual scenes featuring hydrotherapy treatments. That Darwin's wife, Emma, is played by Paul Bettany's real-life partner Jennifer Connelly adds tangible depth to the problematic marriage. Some moments do creep close to melodrama, but even this operates well within the context to draw otherwise abstract considerations back into the complexity of their human origins. CREATION official movie trailer
In almost any American movie worth its weight, there's a great scene set at a drive-in. Think Grease, Twister, Accidents Happen and many more. The lesson to be learnt is that drive-in cinemas are awesome and cool things happen there. This is why you should go along and visit the Racecourse Drive-in cinema. Hopefully a twister won't come through the screen while you're watching The Shining, but instead you'll have a fantastic winter's night snug in your car watching a collection of some of the most exciting films to have come out in recent months. Blockbusters Sex and the City 2, Iron Man 2, Robin Hood and Avatar are just a few of the titles. But of course a drive in wouldn't be a drive-in without some classic cinema, so also check out Breakfast at Tiffany's, Top Gun and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Pack a few sandwiches, a thermos of hot choccie and your favourite car-sized friends and head off to Randwick for an authentic American drive-in experience.
He ain’t heavy, he's Neil Diamond. People like his songs, his shirts and his album covers. Chris McAuliffe, director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at Melbourne University, liked the cover of Shilo enough to curate an entire exhibition devoted to it. One hundred artists were sent copies of the record sleeve, which has a connect-the-dots of Diamond's face against a white background. The results are as varied as you would expect. Some have connected the dots with string, paper or paint, others have obscured them entirely or collaged around them. There is a lot of crosshatching, a lot of colour and a lot of string. The exhibition is light and fun, and the artists have obviously enjoyed creating their contributions, but the works would benefit from a bit of backstory. Perhaps it's against the artistic spirit, but I wanted to know why Adam Cullen sees Neil Diamond as the devil or why Mitch Cairns used brown paper words. Some of the artists are interviewed in videos, but these are too reminiscent of Behind the News to be informative. Some of the greatest works in the show are original covers, found in op-shops, which the previous owners have taken to with pencil or blue biro. Anonymous #8 shows Diamond with fangs, a nose ring and a goatee and features the words "Greg 'O' co-starring Real Rage Material", while Anonymous #4 leaves him with a feather earring and a love bite helpfully labelled "love bite" — artistic interpretation at its homemade best. Catch the curator's talk with Dr Chris McAuliffe, Director, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, on Sunday, July 11, at 3pm.
First up, let me start by saying that this film is not The Karate Kid. Yes, it's a remake of the beloved 1984 original complete with updated versions of Pat Morita's classic Mr. Miyagi and charismatic poster-boy Ralph Macchio's Danny Le Russo. Yes, it follows the same familiar Star Wars-like formula of helpless-lost-boy-meets-wise-mentor-who-him-to-greatness. But rather than combating bullies on the gritty urban streets of LA, our waif-like African-American hero is transported to the teeming streets of Beijing, China, where he's winded by culture shock and schooled in the art of kung fu not karate. So for the sake of preserving everyone's favourite childhood classic, I'll be referring to this remake as 'The Kung Fu Kid' henceforth. In 'The Kung Fu Kid', 12-year-old Dre (Jaden Smith, son of Will and Jada) has a hard time adjusting when he moves with his mother (Taraji P. Henson) to Beijing. Not only is the language and landscape completely foreign, he has to contend with a group of schoolyard bullies who terrorise him via some pretty brutal fight scenes (kiddies, avert your eyes). Enter Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the solemn, reclusive maintenance man who lives in solitude next door and happens to be a clandestine kung fu master. He takes the young hopeful under his wing and trains him in the ancient Chinese art, enabling him to beat the bullies, win the girl and prove himself as a 'man'. As far as cinematography goes, this film hits it out of the park. It may be a kid’s movie, but the sweeping vistas of mountainous Chinese countryside and bustling streets of Beijing redeem it from the predictable storyline and make for compelling adult viewing. The other surprisingly notable features of this film are its leads, Smith and Chan. Smith, who's clearly right at home in front of the camera, is entirely his dad's son in terms of charisma and screen presence. At only 11 years of age at the time of filming, he manages to carry the weight of a hefty 140 minutes of cinema (a little too long? I thought so) with relative charm and ease, while Chan portrays the world-weary, multidimensional Mr. Han with honesty and heart.
So I have a yearly routine with World Press Photo: See the show. Gape in wonder. Feel suddenly nauseous two hours later. If you've seen this annual collection of the preceding year's best global photojournalism before, you'll know what I'm getting at. The images featured are always stunning, and it's no different this year. There's an amazing stillness and beauty to every shot, often — almost always — of scenes that should surrender neither: the aftermath of the Iranian elections, Israel's bombing of Palestine, the workings of an abattoir. But as those examples suggest, it's also wrenching viewing. News, arts, landscape and sports categories are all featured. But year-in, year-out there’s a predictable, and perhaps inevitable, skew towards impeccably shot horrors. Hence the nausea. It’s hard not to argue that anger or disgust are simplistic reactions. If you buy that the world-class photography should be celebrated, and that there’s no arbitrary point at which news photos should be disallowed, then World Press has to exist. But at the same time, they're reactions that are hard to shake when looking at a blown-up photo of the chair that a man (the President of Guinea-Bissau, as it happens) was shot then dismembered on and knowing that alongside everyone else in the room, you're there to be entertained. So perhaps the real masterstroke here is the inclusion of the Sydney Morning Herald's Photos 1440 exhibit alongside World Press. The newspaper's shots run a gentler gamut — through beaches, festivals, the Sydney dust storm and Australian politics. Many are beautiful, too. But while they're not at the same level as World Press, it's not so much a virtuosity gap that separates the two shows; it's the difficulty of remembering any one of Photos 1440's individual images. The horrors in World Press are so exquisitely presented and immediate as to force the formation of memories. And while it'd be nice to say that this ensures that the minority of simple, beautiful photos that don’t foreground death or cruelty — an autistic child under running water, their hand clutching a prized found object — also find lodging, that's bullshit. It just means there's something in the world's most beautiful atrocity exhibition that you won't be guaranteed anywhere else: your brain excited and alive.
The reclusive E is sneaking back to our shores, bringing with him a new album and a new style. Since first appearing in the mid-'90s, his band, Eels, have swung from grunge to hip hop, folk to electronic under the more constant guise of low-fi indie. It feels somehow dirty just to label them, even with such a long list of genres, as no style can do justice to their eclectic sound. One can never be sure of what to expect at an Eels gig; in fact, I can't even be sure E will be there after recently being questioned by police under suspicion of terrorism. However, this is more a testament to E's unruly facial hair than anything else, and I hear he's been released on good behaviour. The new album, End Times, is a bit more autobiographical, perhaps as a result of E's recent introspective journey into the realm of novel-writing, and fans shouldn't miss the chance to get a bit closer to the elusive music man getting back to basics with an album that returns to old-fashioned rock 'n' roll. https://youtube.com/watch?v=YHd9-ymWvxU
Glitchy abstractions, ambiguous beats and Nintendo bleeps. Sounds like you? Sounds like Xiu Xiu. Where some people paint still-life, watercolour canvases to express a part of their identity, lead singer Jamie Stewart uses dark words and a stormy demeanour (mashed in with experimental rock) to express his. Stewart may be a little bit angry, but it’s not personal — instability seems to be his driving force (the band has had four lineup changes in eight years), and it's clearly reflected in the spontaneity of sounds on Xiu Xiu’s seven-spinner discography. Stewart is now joined by Angela Seo for Xiu Xiu’s latest release, Dear God, I Hate Myself (2010), which has been described by their label, Popfrenzy, as "more overtly poppy and electronic". The making of the album included Nintendo sounds, a vibraphone, tenor recorder, optigan, desk bells, a Game Boy, harmonium, chamberlain — even a celeste. Joining them on the September tour, also from NYC, are electronic fringe-dwellers High Places and Sydney's experimental-pop darlings, Kyu. All three groups will be playing new material. These will certainly be high-calibre performances, but what I want to know is (1) will Jamie Stewart be as angry as I'm afraid he is in concert; and (2) how will they play all those instruments? There’s only one way to find out. Image by Huy Ngo.
A film for those who love Arnold Schwarzenegger but not so much his take on politics, Farewell (or more precisely, L'Affaire Farewell) is a far shot from your typical American blockbuster, delivering both beauty and the brains to go with it. The matter takes place during the Cold War: a true story of an espionage operation that altered the course of history. Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica), a disillusioned KGB colonel, decides to sell his soul to the French in an effort to bring change to his beloved Russia. For this ominous task, he chooses not an experienced spy but the humble Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet), a French engineer living in Moscow with his family. This film combines thrills and tension with well-informed political and subtle emotional dimensions. There's a multitude of takes on the democracy-versus-communism debate, and not always sober ones. Canet is a far cry from Arnold, but it is precisely this quality that makes us fans. Sweet, confused, bespectacled Pierre is the perfect 'everyman', and he pulls us all the way into the action. Amateur historians will bask in the rich world that director Christian Carion (Joyeux Noel) has laboriously created. The only fault in this film's intellect is the cheap shots at American politicians, but this alternative to the usual portraits is a guilty pleasure that feels right. https://youtube.com/watch?v=fW_smC73R6w
