One year later. Now back for good (NOT mediocre!!) Au revoir, Canadia.
First few days
Now the World Cup is on
and am watching Damages, which will get its own post.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Back in Oz
One year later. Now back for good (NOT mediocre!!) Au revoir, Canadia.
First few days
Now the World Cup is on
and am watching Damages, which will get its own post.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Australia: First Two Weeks
DAY ONE
Met some ladies on the flight from Canada and America. Slept. Made the mistake of watching He's Just Not That Into You, which spends 80 minutes telling us something and then 5 telling us the opposite. Arrived at Dave and Michelle's apartment in Ashfield - 'Monterey' is its name. Michelle had made muffins and we had tea. Felt spacey. Paul and Mum left to move house. The three of us went into Surry Hills to window shop while Michelle went to a dance class. Found six dollar greeting cards - does the originality of the design warrant this? Remember how expensive Sydney is. See hipsters everywhere, and some models. Boys in skinny jeans and thongs. Markets and we eat some gozleme. Then to a couple of pubs for some beer. We go home and I sleep for over 13 hours.
DAY TWO
Michelle is dancing in a Middle Eastern festival, so her mum comes over and we drive into Marrickville. Dave leaves to go to work and I enjoy meeting Michelle's Mum. We have a break after two of Michelle's dances and go to a cafe to have tea and cake. After her final dance we go to a Turkish restaurant and I have a delicious pide. The dancing is beautiful and makes me wish I could do it. I consider doing this instead of Indian dancing.
DAY THREE
Monday - I get keys cut. I go over to Roseville and meet Mum and accompany her to the grocery store. We then go to the amazing Jim Murphy cellars where I gaze at the splendid rows of Australian wine at reasonable prices. I buy Mum some chamgpagne for Mother's Day the following week. Am reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, a copy that I think might be mine that my brother now has. I also seem to have hay fever again and feel quite sick and sneezy. We have a lovely dinner of pumpkin and pesto pasta and wine, and listen to Gershwin, which makes me want to own Rhapsody in Blue. Mum and Paul are very sweet together and I'm really happy that she has found him.
DAY FOUR
TBC
Met some ladies on the flight from Canada and America. Slept. Made the mistake of watching He's Just Not That Into You, which spends 80 minutes telling us something and then 5 telling us the opposite. Arrived at Dave and Michelle's apartment in Ashfield - 'Monterey' is its name. Michelle had made muffins and we had tea. Felt spacey. Paul and Mum left to move house. The three of us went into Surry Hills to window shop while Michelle went to a dance class. Found six dollar greeting cards - does the originality of the design warrant this? Remember how expensive Sydney is. See hipsters everywhere, and some models. Boys in skinny jeans and thongs. Markets and we eat some gozleme. Then to a couple of pubs for some beer. We go home and I sleep for over 13 hours.
DAY TWO
Michelle is dancing in a Middle Eastern festival, so her mum comes over and we drive into Marrickville. Dave leaves to go to work and I enjoy meeting Michelle's Mum. We have a break after two of Michelle's dances and go to a cafe to have tea and cake. After her final dance we go to a Turkish restaurant and I have a delicious pide. The dancing is beautiful and makes me wish I could do it. I consider doing this instead of Indian dancing.
DAY THREE
Monday - I get keys cut. I go over to Roseville and meet Mum and accompany her to the grocery store. We then go to the amazing Jim Murphy cellars where I gaze at the splendid rows of Australian wine at reasonable prices. I buy Mum some chamgpagne for Mother's Day the following week. Am reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, a copy that I think might be mine that my brother now has. I also seem to have hay fever again and feel quite sick and sneezy. We have a lovely dinner of pumpkin and pesto pasta and wine, and listen to Gershwin, which makes me want to own Rhapsody in Blue. Mum and Paul are very sweet together and I'm really happy that she has found him.
DAY FOUR
TBC
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Big movie post
No poems today, but three movies to comment on. Have been depressed lately and rather than keeping up with my impressive gym schedule, have been bingeing, purging, and watching movies. It's healthy.
Rachel Getting Married
After watching this I found The Silence of the Lambs on YouTube and watched the first half. Think I'll finish it tonight after reading the Bernie Madoff story in Vanity Fair. Finished my classes for this week. Well, I found Silence of the Lambs because it, like Rachel, is directed by Jonathan Demme.
Synecdoche, NY
The DVD had a critics' round table with various bloggers: now two of them are on my Favourites: Filmfreak, with Walter Chaw, and Some Came Running, by ex-Premiere Glen Kenny. It was naff but also worth it for those two.
Rachel Getting Married
After watching this I found The Silence of the Lambs on YouTube and watched the first half. Think I'll finish it tonight after reading the Bernie Madoff story in Vanity Fair. Finished my classes for this week. Well, I found Silence of the Lambs because it, like Rachel, is directed by Jonathan Demme.
- Rosemarie DeWitt is gorgeous and note to self, FIND AND LOOK UPON that purple dress she's wearing when she tells them she's pregnant. She looks like a combination of Mary-Louise Parker and Elisabeth Shue (hey! both mentioned on this tiny blog already!)
- Anne's rehab shag was hot. Wait, the man, not her hair, which some might call a shag.
- Anne, who lost to Kate Winslet for Best Actress for this role, is a bratty self-obsessed rehabbed hellion who gets out of a clinic to come to her sister's wedding. The wedding is all kinds of gorgeous, but will hipsters start imitating it? Have they already? We learn that while 16 and stoned, she drove her baby brother into a lake and couldn't stop him from drowning. She can't forgive herself, so can't do anything else but get fucked up and make the family hate her more.
- Bill Irwin, as the dad, was gorgeous. So heartbreaking.
- Their mum was played by Debra Winger (terrifying! she and Anne have a bitchfight with real punches - it's horrible) and their stepmum by Nancy McNally from The West Wing - awesome!
- It's shot in hand-held but not vertiginous, nauseating Robby Mueller hand-held, and scenes are 'captured' rather than set up for the shot.
- warmth, family, love, pain, family, noise, love
- The wedding cake! A masterpiece.
Synecdoche, NY
The DVD had a critics' round table with various bloggers: now two of them are on my Favourites: Filmfreak, with Walter Chaw, and Some Came Running, by ex-Premiere Glen Kenny. It was naff but also worth it for those two.
- Did not know there was a place in New York state called Schenecdaty, but now I do.
- Agreed with external reviewers that first half great, second half dr-a-a-a-ag-g-g-g-ed a bit.
- Caden Cotard, Adele Lack. As she has for a while now, Catherine Keener scared the shit out of me. God, she's a bitch.
- Basically, life's what happens when you're making other plans. Or something. Spend too much time trying to make authentic art and your life is over.
- Why do we have to find men who don't know how to live romantic and charming and tragic? Aren't they just losers?
Slumdog Millionaire
Tired now so will return to this later.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Short Story
Here's the idea for a short story that I woke up with this morning:
A man (i think he will be known as 'the man' throughout the story) has a dog. Its breed, appearance, temperament, personality and other attirbutes will be described in great detail. The man sees another dog in a park one day, a dog of a different breed, appearance, temperament etc. He goes home and starts thinking about and wondering about the other dog. His dog responds to its owner's change by alternately moping, begging and acting out for attention. The man starts to wonder what having this other dog would be like. He watches his own dog become sick from the lack of love and attention, and wonders how much suffering it can take. He has bad dreams about being a bad dog owner and feels guilty, but he wakes up and keeps on neglecting his dog and thinking about the other dog. Eventually he breaks the dog's paw to see what it will do, then goes out and acquires the other dog somehow. (That dog? A dog of its type?) I'm not sure what will happen to the original dog or the man in the end.
The level of detail about the dog comes from DFW; the tone will come from Herman Hesse and James Joyce, and the structure will come from how much I want to play about with the short story form. Not sure yet.
A man (i think he will be known as 'the man' throughout the story) has a dog. Its breed, appearance, temperament, personality and other attirbutes will be described in great detail. The man sees another dog in a park one day, a dog of a different breed, appearance, temperament etc. He goes home and starts thinking about and wondering about the other dog. His dog responds to its owner's change by alternately moping, begging and acting out for attention. The man starts to wonder what having this other dog would be like. He watches his own dog become sick from the lack of love and attention, and wonders how much suffering it can take. He has bad dreams about being a bad dog owner and feels guilty, but he wakes up and keeps on neglecting his dog and thinking about the other dog. Eventually he breaks the dog's paw to see what it will do, then goes out and acquires the other dog somehow. (That dog? A dog of its type?) I'm not sure what will happen to the original dog or the man in the end.
The level of detail about the dog comes from DFW; the tone will come from Herman Hesse and James Joyce, and the structure will come from how much I want to play about with the short story form. Not sure yet.
Monday, December 29, 2008
movie
http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/sarris_0.jpg
Moody malaise means movie madness.
1. Hamlet 2
Wanted to be lifted up by Steve Coogan. (Would also like to be laid down by Steve Coogan, if anyone knows him). Steve didn't disappoint himself, but the movie was embarrassingly awful, on the whole. Catherine Keener can shrink balls with the lines she has. I wonder what drama teachers think of this?
2. The Strangers
I had to watch most of it on fast forward, because I am a total wimp. The Exorcist is the only horror film I can watch, and then it's only because I've seen it so many times. On FF, it was okay. Except that I agree with...AO Scott? Andrew Sarris? Whoever it was who said that the director, Bryan Bertino, is all kinds of skilled, but has used his powers for evil instead of good. It's such a nasty film. Who gets 'inspired' by the Tate/LaBianca murders and actually follows through? I mean, it's not really a cultural touchpoint for us anymore. Not that it should be forgotten, because as seemingly random post-hippie acid-induced cult slayings go, it is the benchmark, but we've had Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Columbine, bodies in vats, feet in harbours, and Paul Bernardo since then. I know we're supposed to fear the idea that people can kill not because they're sick or disturbed, but because they can, or they're bored, because that's not something we can contain or treat. But has that been borne out yet? Do rapists and murderers really go that far out of ennui and apathy and a kind of vulgar curiosity? Is this a post-Prozac movie? People need to stalk and stab total strangers in order to feel a spark of life? Seeing the masked killers push and twist the butcher's knife into the couple's bodies was really disgusting, gross, and hideous. It did suggest a clinical interest in the proceedings that perhaps the characters were supposed to have, but the audience isn't. Apparently there's a sequel already in the works.
3. The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger's Brando-sounding Joker is another soulless killer, although he has a touch more thought going on in the form of a love of anarchy and chaos. Did Bale's Batman always talk like that? Thank God for Maggie Gyllenhaal and the absence of Katie Holmes. Gary Oldman looks like an...oldman. Didn't realise Anthony Michael Hall was in it until the credits. Oldman has a terrible, rambling, melodramatic speech at the end. Ill-advised use of a small child.
I'm going to have mashed potato for dinner tonight and watch Lars and the Real Girl. I am this close to getting a mannequin myself.
Moody malaise means movie madness.
1. Hamlet 2
Wanted to be lifted up by Steve Coogan. (Would also like to be laid down by Steve Coogan, if anyone knows him). Steve didn't disappoint himself, but the movie was embarrassingly awful, on the whole. Catherine Keener can shrink balls with the lines she has. I wonder what drama teachers think of this?
2. The Strangers
I had to watch most of it on fast forward, because I am a total wimp. The Exorcist is the only horror film I can watch, and then it's only because I've seen it so many times. On FF, it was okay. Except that I agree with...AO Scott? Andrew Sarris? Whoever it was who said that the director, Bryan Bertino, is all kinds of skilled, but has used his powers for evil instead of good. It's such a nasty film. Who gets 'inspired' by the Tate/LaBianca murders and actually follows through? I mean, it's not really a cultural touchpoint for us anymore. Not that it should be forgotten, because as seemingly random post-hippie acid-induced cult slayings go, it is the benchmark, but we've had Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Columbine, bodies in vats, feet in harbours, and Paul Bernardo since then. I know we're supposed to fear the idea that people can kill not because they're sick or disturbed, but because they can, or they're bored, because that's not something we can contain or treat. But has that been borne out yet? Do rapists and murderers really go that far out of ennui and apathy and a kind of vulgar curiosity? Is this a post-Prozac movie? People need to stalk and stab total strangers in order to feel a spark of life? Seeing the masked killers push and twist the butcher's knife into the couple's bodies was really disgusting, gross, and hideous. It did suggest a clinical interest in the proceedings that perhaps the characters were supposed to have, but the audience isn't. Apparently there's a sequel already in the works.
3. The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger's Brando-sounding Joker is another soulless killer, although he has a touch more thought going on in the form of a love of anarchy and chaos. Did Bale's Batman always talk like that? Thank God for Maggie Gyllenhaal and the absence of Katie Holmes. Gary Oldman looks like an...oldman. Didn't realise Anthony Michael Hall was in it until the credits. Oldman has a terrible, rambling, melodramatic speech at the end. Ill-advised use of a small child.
I'm going to have mashed potato for dinner tonight and watch Lars and the Real Girl. I am this close to getting a mannequin myself.
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