Angry. Season 4 of delicious True Blood is being written up in guides. Should be a moment to enjoy pictures of the gorgeous cast and squeal with delight at a witty pithy write up that gets you all excited about tuning in and returning to Bon Temps. No. Instead, Angry. TV Week (page 10 August 8-20 issue) says: "After spending most of the past few seasons in relationships with unsuitable men, Tara (Rutina Wesley) finds herself mixed up in a witches coven, ..." and SMH The Guide (August 14 -2) says: "Tara (Rutina Wesley) has run away to become a cage fighter ..." Neither publication thought it necessary to mention TARA HAS A GIRLFRIEND, and though (i'm only up to ep 4) she hasn't given herself a label IS PROBABLY A LESBIAN or BISEXUAL or QUEER or something. No, it's only a really queer show all about out-ness and examining prejudice... it would make far too much fucking sense to mention the developments in Tara's sexuality, wouldn't it? Fuck Australia. Fuck making lesbians invisible. Fuckety fuck fuck. Angry.
Love,
Ridiculous.
P.S. Lots more to say about True Blood. Interesting. Another day...
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
July 2011 rant:
Our daughter’s daughters wont adore this piece of shitty theatre rant, AKA the ways in which the current (fucky) Cameron Mackintosh infected version of Mary Poppins mangled my childhood and broke my heart rant:
(Warning spoiler alert for the crap-ness of the Mary Poppins stage show)
Where do I begin? Theatre means a lot to me. My childhood means a lot to me. My mother and my brother mean a lot to me. And Mary Poppins means a lot to me. So you can imagine the sort of nostalgic, bubbling, excited, mess I was as I stood in the foyer with my mother and my brother (my brother dressed as Bert in a beige striped suit, combed hair and red bow tie) waiting to see the much raved about production of Mary Poppins (which, god knows why, swept the Helpmann Awards on Tuesday night.) I was giddy. I was also a little bit theatre foyer tipsy. I paid for an overpriced alcoholic slurpee just because they’d named it Rum Punch, cos that’s the kind of nostalgic sucker I am. And can I point out, that the exact kind of nostalgic sucker I am is the exact kind of bums on seats that are shelling out 90+ bucks to have their dreams mangled and shoved back in their face. These fuckers are counting on people like me and our hearts full of memories, we’re the ones desperate to find something, re-live something… so I find it offensive and absurd that we get fucked with, that we get the short end of the stick. I need to start with the most offensive of the litany of changes that Mackintosh took it upon himself to make to perfectly wonderful, and loved, text. Consider this number for a moment:
We're clearly soldiers in petticoats
And dauntless crusaders for woman's votes
Though we adore men individually
We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!
Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"
From Kensington to Billingsgate
One hears the restless cries!
From ev'ry corner of the land:
"Womankind, arise!"
Political equality and equal rights with men!
Take heart! For Missus Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!
No more the meek and mild subservients we!
We're fighting for our rights, militantly!
Never you fear!
So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done! Well done!
Well done Sister Suffragette!"
Who, in their right mind, thought it was a good idea to cut this song and re-write Mrs Banks as a subservient little wife-ey character? (and write her an atrocious, subservient little wife-ey character song?) On what planet is this an okay thing to do? The song is empowering. Important. Euphoric. It situates the story historically and centres the story. The story is about a strong woman. A strong woman who inspires and excites and reinvigorates a household. Mrs Banks, not as outwardly strong as our hero, was closeted-ly fighting for womens right to vote and hiding her sashes when her husband got home. Her subservience to Mr Banks was ironic and comical and heartbreaking all at once. It was a really important dimension to the film. And at the very end of the film, you might remember, she does come out, she attaches her political sash to the end of Michael's kite “A proper kite needs a proper tail,” and they all go fly the kite, with ‘womens right to vote’ proudly flapping in the wind below the kite, with the family proudly flying it together. I can’t stomach the idea that this isn’t a relevant detail to leave in the story, seeing as it is a period piece… but even if you were to argue something ludicrous like, that considering women’s (debateable) relative equal-ness to male-folk nowadays, the song doesn’t fit, then there is no fucking excuse for turning Mrs Bank’s character into a subservient wifey character, who, when at the end of the show is offered the opportunity to chase her dreams (which are acting, not politics) she replies that she never really was a good actress and there is a role she’s much more interested in. BARF BARF BARF VOMIT VOMIT!!!! Fucked eh? How fucking dare they. So Ridiculous was a pretty cranky punter and that, sadly, wasn’t the only balls up. They screw around with all the songs. None of them really remain the way you remember them, which is okay, but kind of tiresome. We went there wanting something and weren’t given it and kind of made to feel rude for wanting it cos there’s this wank floating around that we shouldn’t expect it to be like the film… it’s something new… more based on the books… wank wank wank… Which is just rubbish. Like I said earlier, their banking on us with our film imbued childhoods wanting to come see it and give them all our cash. They’ve used the iconography from the film, they’ve got fucking 100 dollar umbrellas for sale in the foyer with a fucking parrot head handle exactly modeled on the one you see in the film. Don’t give me any rot about it being a separate piece of art from the film. (And don’t give me any shit about it being based on the books, if it’s based on the books, where the fuck are John and Barbara, the other two children? Huh?) It’s not. It’s based on the film all right, just that some megalomaniac got his hands on it and decided to fuck around and fix what’s not broken. Fucking fuck wit. (sorry I’m so mad I can’t stop swearing.) It’s kind of like when you go see an old band you used to love and they refuse to play all the songs you love and instead play you their new album, that no-ones heard, cover to cover, and it’s a gross noise experiment. It’s wanky and pretentious and you look ungrateful and not a true fan if you don’t take what you’ve been offered with a smile and shut up. It’s irritating, for no reason I can decipher, the readings on the measuring tape aren’t the ones we remember, the tunes are similar but they sing different words. There is a ghost in our hearts as we’re watching an instead of our little ghost being able to whisper the words, it gets trodden on. They don’t jump through chalk drawings, they don’t laugh and take tea on the ceiling… They do sing Let’s go Fly a Kite, thank heavens, but they sing it in the middle of the second act. You cry/bawl anyway. The song does all the things it always did to you. And if you’re sitting there with your brother-dressed-as-Bert and holding your weeping mother’s hand, and sipping another Rum Punch, it’s pretty damn emotional… but you assure and comfort yourself that they’ll sing it again, they’ll bring it back for the closing number, surely. It is the closing number. No such luck. Apparently, a new song needed to be written for the close, and apparently we don’t need to see the kids fly their kite with their daddy, cos that isn’t the whole damn point of the story or anything… don’t fucking worry about it… Ugh! And apparently dad buying Michael a new kite, not fixing it for him was the solution all along… fucking ugh! And apparently it is more interesting if Banks gets offered his job back cos he made a great investment and earned the bank heaps of money instead of cos he shedded his conservatism, found his sense of humour and joy in life and cracked a great joke that made the senior partner die of laughter… no that ending would be too damn well lovely wouldn’t it? We have to have a more plausible, greed-filled ending don’t we? Have I mentioned how fucking shit the show was? Despite everything though, the cast do do a great job and the sets are incredible. It really is a shame bout the writing. It really could have been quite a magical show, with a little bit of backbone, homage and imagination. I also, despite everything, had a theatre moment full of magic and electricity. Mary Poppins flies out over the audience and disappears. Seeing her, inches from my face, flying, the actress, in character, staring into my tear soaked eyes, seeing my dreams streaked across my face and knowing that her performance was moving people, moving me, was one of those delicious edge-of-artifice moments that I spend my life hunting for and I have to begrudgingly admit that I found it amidst a truly disgusting rendition of my favourite childhood musical. There you go.
Other bits of theatre rant:
I think the only other show I saw in July was Emily Eyefinger, the latest offering from gorgeous children’s theatre makers; Monkey Baa. Super cute. It’s fast and funny and bright and colourful and silly. Everything you’d want out of children’s theatre. Dannielle Jackson is a superb Emily, full of bravery, wit, charm, and generosity. Sandra Eldridge and Tim McGarry are also really great. Funny and pun-ny. If you have little ones and the tour is near you go see it. Get your kids hooked on theatre!
Art Rant:
So, my friends Kelly Elkin and Betony Dircks, (who just launched their PJ Label: www.alasthelabel.com ) had a show at Gaffa for the Sydney design whatchacallit. I know so very little about fashion but I liked it. They upcycled (a verb I only just learned existed) a bunch of outfits and made a huge pyramid of clothes to highlight their distress about the amount of clothes that end up in landfill. Their designs were super trendy and rad, and if I bought clothes I’d definitely be up for shirts made out of pants and what not. I was impressed. Kelly has also been blogging about ethical fashion designers for a while now. Check out her blog if that sort of thing interests you. http://www.transparentseams.blogspot.com/ My friend Rob Yee also had a show in July. I didn’t make it to opening night cos I got hit down by a crazy flu that was going round but I did pop by and check it out. His work was good, as always, but I was largely unimpressed and frustrated. This man is super talented and has one of the most amazing imaginations of anyone I know but when he comes to pick works for his solo shows he always seems to pick the most bland examples of his work. I was disappointed. I can’t wait till he’s too famous to be curating his own shows and someone objective does it for him. He also has a blog. See what you think: http://theavocadomoshpit.blogspot.com/ I checked out the latest offering from White Rabbit Gallery, Year of the Rabbit I think it was called (they’ve just taken it down and are installing a new show. As always it was fucking amazing. Such a stupidly wonderful asset to the community that damn place is! So much exciting and sensational art. Well hung, well organised. For free. In a wonderful space. If you’ve not yet visited you must must must. I swung by and had a look at The Real Story of Superheroes at ACP, which was an exhibition of Photographs by Dulce Pinzon exploring the lives of hardworking Mexican immigrants in the US. Pinzon, wishing to pay homage to these everyday heroes who work incredible hours and send their savings home to their families, dressed his subjects in superhero costumes and filmed them in their workplace. I found the premise gorgeous but the actual photos a little repetitive. Interesting though. Lastly for my arting-outings was the Pre Raphaelite exhibition at AGNSW. Yum. If you like the PRB, or if you like drawing, or if you like art really it’s a must see. Really interesting collection of drawings I’d never seen before. Such a gorgeous exhibition. It’s still up for a bit, so go, now.
Ok, that’ll do for my July round up. Mary Poppins made me vomit and I inhaled a bit of art.
Love,
Ridiculous.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
June Rant:
I thought, this month, I might give up with the rant categories and run all my thoughts together. Eeeeeeeeeeeep! So, June welcomed the magnificent Sydney Film Festival, and the lights-on-the-Opera-House, Vivid Festival. I never really do anything with Vivid but it does kind of buzz in the background and make buildings look pretty and make me go ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to The Cure’… I caught a glimpse at the pretty post theatre one evening, but it was raining and soggy and I didn’t stop to marvel, I jumped on a train and trudged home. But. Yes. Pretty. Funnily enough, considering I consider myself a film geek, I seldom celebrate SFF either… In fact, the only times I’ve ever gone to see something is when I’ve been taken/dragged. This year was no different. A lovely friend of mine had tickets to The Trip (Dir: Michael Winterbottom) and asked me to accompany her. Otherwise I would have just walked around all month going ‘dang, I wish I had tickets to Norwegian Wood’ (cos I’m super wetting my pants about seeing the first film rendering of Murakami, cos I’m a BIG Murakami junkie… Oh well… theatrical release is supposed to be in August, so I’ll just have to settle for soggy knickers till then) … Anyway, there was an odd short called Bunce (Dir: Peter Cattaneo) that screened before The Trip, written by Stephen Fry, who I’m super cranky at cos of when he said that women don’t enjoy sex and that sex is for men (read this and grumble: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/2010/11/01/stephen_fry) and I tend to not be in the mood to like him/find him funny anymore. Meanwhile, Bunce was really weird. It was all about Fry’s obsession with lollies in boarding school, and included scenes of actual Fry (playing the role of principal) beating himself as a kid (played by Daniel Roche, that cute kid from Outnumbered, how funny is Outnumbered btw?) for sneaking to the store and buying lollies. It was odd. On the other hand, The Trip was heaps of fun. Food, friendship, English countryside, impersonations, actors being actor-ish dicks. I was having a most enjoyable giggle. Sadly though, as things tend to happen in Sydney… Everything happened on the one night. I suddenly found myself with tickets to the opening of The White Guard, (Dir: Andrew Upton) and it was going up at 8 at Sydney Theatre and The Trip started at 6.30 on George Street. I checked the running time, there was no way we’d be able to see the whole of The Trip and make it in time for The White Guard. So we did a runner in the middle of the 4th Michael Caine impersonation and caught the bus down to Walsh Bay… So, I can only really say I’d begun to enjoy The Trip and was sad to leave and I fully intend to watch the rest at some point. Now, before I ramble about what I thought of The White Guard I want to rant about how much I love the Aussie flick, Dating The Enemy (Dir: Megan Simpson Huberman.) Odd segue I know, how the fuck is a 90’s rom-com related to a June-2011 rant? So, the thing is, I don’t usually get star-struck. Sydney is full of famous people. They’re annoying. Actually fame really gives me the shits. It’s a really freaky commodity/state. It artificalises places/experiences. It isn’t real. We don’t actually know these people… yet we’re filled with feelings for and about these people. They’ve captured our imaginations in some way. We have ideas and opinions about them. They are the characters they’ve portrayed or something (in the case of famous actors.) Or, there must be some bits of the characters we’ve invested in inside them cos they were them for a time. (I remember once, as a youngster, having to catch myself and swallow the urge to yell at Rachael Griffiths about what Brenda did on Six Feet Under that week when I was selling her movie tickets cos I knew it was absurd to conflate actress with her role, and you know, it was rude and embarrassing and I don’t know her…) I don’t know, but for whatever reason, when a famous person enters a room the feeling changes and I really, really hate that. It really struck me when I was about 16 having coffee with my mother and a friend and a famous person walked into the coffee shop. All of a sudden, we couldn’t just drink and talk as we had been. Everything now revolved around what the famous person was fucking doing… “ooh she’s ordering this, ooh she’s wearing that” Ugh. They suck. They turn settings banal and stupid. So I make a point of not finding them exciting or interesting. It mostly works too. Cept, at The White Guard opening no amount of don’t-let-fame-change-the-feeling-of-the-evening reasoning was going to stop my heart fluttering over Claudia Karvan being in the mix of famous-people-in-foyer-fodder and that’s because, Dating The Enemy is the Australian film that has meant the most to me in my life. I was there with my friend (who’d taken me to the beginning of The Trip) and she happened to also be a Karvan/Dating The Enemy nut, so the evening exploded in fan-girl giggling and perving and joking and general hysteria. There was no way to stop us. We were ridiculous. And I have to say it was pretty fun. And I think a coin or two dropped about what fandom is, how euphoric it can be. I’m still unsettled by the whole dynamic though. I think fame and fandom are fraught states and we need to be really careful… but a night of giggles at the theatre never really hurt anyone did it? Dating the Enemy was the film, throughout my teenage-hood, that I’d watch and re-wind and watch again. It was my Friday-night-learn-all-the-words-and-jokes-and-say-the-film-to-yourself-before-the-film-does film. I never really stopped to think about why I loved the film so much. I just loved it. Now I’m all nerdy and looking at the place films sit in peoples lives, specifically in lesbian spectators eyes, I realise that I was, without knowing it, watching the film queerly. I couldn’t get enough of Karvan acting like a man. The pretence, the masquerade, the woman acting butch, the edge of artifice and reality where I knew that Brett wasn’t really in Tash’s body, that it was actually a woman, Karvan, acting like a man, was so fucking exciting for little-kid-repressed-lesbian-me. I still watch the film really regularly. It’s silly and fun and dorky and 90s and I love all the shots of Sydney and I still find Karvan incredibly hot. I want to nerd it up properly and write a proper queer response to the film but I prolly wont do that here (in blog land) and I definitely wont do it now. I just thought I’d tell you the way in which my night devouring bits of Sydney culture felt, cos the experience of a theatre foyer is just as important as the actual theatre. Well, maybe not just, but it really is a big part of the evening. The red wine, and gossip over a bag of over-priced potato chips before the show goes up, the theatre skull, (cos there’s never enough time for a full glass of wine) and the slightly giddy feeling said theatre skull gives you as you stumble into the theatre and take your place, the pitch of the foyer chatter, the fashion, the type of crowd, all the little bits add to the feeling of the show, how the space feels, is it sterile? Is it a grimy underground venue? Is it pretentious? It all informs how we feel and theatre is all about how we feel. Anyway. What I thought of The White Guard… pretty dull. It runs till July 10 if you want to dash and see it but it’s not much to write home about. I really loved Dale March’s work. He’s charming and funny and keeps you giggling. He’s a really skilled and humble clown. A real joy to watch. One of the most interesting Sydney actors around at the moment. He’s the true comic genius of the show. Big wigs of the comic-actor scene such as same-every-time-Darren-Gilshenen are acted (and funnied) right off the stage by March. It might even be worth it just to see his work but, all in all, the production doesn’t really work. It’s supposed to be farcical, (I think) but it sits somewhere (uneasily) between farce and tragedy and doesn’t hit the right notes of either. Upton’s adaptation is as mediocre as his directing. Neither are inspired and some bits just didn’t work at all. Meanwhile, over at Wharf 1, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, (Dir: Sarah Goodes) is amazing and well worth a look. It runs till July 23rd, if you want a good night at the theatre GO AND SEE IT! We all know I’m a big Lindsay Farris fan and he doesn’t disappoint here. Gorgeous, charming, hilarious, generous, magical, intelligent, performance. Paul Bishop, Bryan Probets and Emily Tomlins are great too. It’s a tight ensemble. The play, by Anthony Neilson, is wonderful, full of wit and charm and magic and imagination. I should quit with the listing of adjectives shouldn’t I? It’s about theatre and love and storytelling and the wonder of storytelling and it’s silly and absurd and loopy and gross and breathtaking. Whoops. Can’t seem to stop with the gushy listing. Sorry. It took me right in. It’s theatre that is theatre and is about theatre. It is imbued with all that is wonderful and exciting about performance and stories and storytelling. It’s circus-like and vaudeville and yum. My only complaint is I didn’t really feel like it suited STC. It felt too, well STC at STC… I wanted to see it in a tent or in a grimy warehouse in Marrickville, or even just Darlo (Speaking of Darlo it kept reminding me of a show I once saw there: The Illusion, (Dir. Damien Miller, 2006) one of my all time favourite theatre experiences ever!) would have done the trick. Seeing it in the charming but still very bloody proper and upper-middle-class-feeling Wharf 1 made me feel distanced form the piece a bit. I felt like I was at a zoo, or a museum, seeing what this rare specimen of “exciting theatre” was all about. The show transcends the space though. It’s completely rad. I should prolly mention Romance was Born did the costumes and they’re pretty good. The idea of them doing it made me a little uneasy. So fucking hipster, and, can’t we just have them be designers and give costume jobs to costume artists? (like say Gemma Lark… I’d have loved to have seen what her gorgeous imagination could have cooked up for this one.) But then, what can you expect when you’ve got and actor and an adaptor running a theatre company eh? What I mean is, I have to begrudgingly admit the costumes were really great. Full of, you know the drill… magic and wit and charm… I’d also like to mention that the sound design, by Steve Toulmin was really awesome. Super yum. Toulmin, as it turns out, is one incredibly talented individual. I also happened to be blown away by his acting chops this month round the corner (or right underneath) at the Studio 1 ATYP theatre, (seems I lurked at Walsh Bay for my theatre this month) in the Arts Radar/Under The Wharf production of Tooth of Crime, (Dir: David Harmon.) Toulmin, who plays Crow, was stunning, and sexy, and Bowie, and electrifying, and everything. He well and truly blew Hoss (Akos Armont) off the stage. I thought Armont was a tad weak, I’d have liked if I gave more of a shit about his demise but it was a solid (and sexy) performance too, I’m not going to complain too much. I also want to mention how much I dig Paige Gardiner. She was a little rusty at the start of the show I saw but she really warmed into her role and had heaps of really compelling vulnerable moments. Watch her. My bet is she goes places. I saw her in her final year of NIDA in a mish-mash-of-Moliére production and she really knocked my socks off. She really knew how to engage an audience and think on her feet and improvise and be funny and charming. I’m a fan. I also thought Dan O’Leary was great and had one of the most moving numbers in the show. I got all hairs-on-my-neck-standing-on-end (in a good way) about him. Anyway, they play was pretty good. It’s a Sam Shepard play and it’s dirty and Rock and Roll and exciting. It almost feels more like a gig than theatre. In a good way. Not much of a story and it kind of drones on a bit but it’s punctuated by fucking cool numbers. Fun. Enjoyed it much. That will do for this month. June equals: I’m a failed film geek who saw a bit of theatre. End rant.
Love,
Thursday, June 2, 2011
May Rant!
I didn’t get out much in May. I stayed home lots and watched Buffy instead of seeing and doing things. (Which is a totally great way to spend the beginning of winter.) I blogged my flicks rant out of the month thing… I saw Snowtown… it reeked. So I’ve only got a one show and one gig to rant about.
Gig Rant: I geared up for a night out with the rents and saw Mic Conway & The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band at the Cell Block theatre (in the NAS campus.) They’re great. They’re a time capsule and a time machine. The crowd was full to the brim with people who were clearly groupies of the band 20, 30 years ago, and who clearly had been time travelling, with the music, (to an absurd version of) the 20s and 30s for 20 or 30 years. They’re funny, witty, silly, sincere, stand-up, cartoon, cabaret, circus, vaudeville, theatre, absurd, magic, magical, fun, fun, fun, fucking wonderful. It is a complete, generous, awesome performance, full of jokes and tricks and costumes and madness. The show is kind of a museum piece but I mean that in the best, best possible way… there really is nothing out there doing quite what Matchbox do. And Cell Block Theatre is really dramatic and spooky and sandstone-y yum gorgeous. The spooky-ness of the venue amplified the time-machine/capsule effect of the band and the whole gig felt a bit haunted… It also possessed my rents and turned them into teenagers… and so, I might have forgone my Saturday night ‘stay home and watch Dr Who’ tradition but I was treated to wads of real life spook and time travel! Eeeep!
Theatre Rant: The only theatre I got to in May was a production of I Only Came to Use the Phone at Darlinghurst Theatre.
As you know, I love Darlo. I think it might even be my favourite Sydney theatre. The staff are always super lovely. The vibe is lovely. It’s not super pretentious. It’s a nice intimate venue… and, often, the shows are great. I didn’t really enjoy this one though.
I found it really, really, uncomfortable, and I haven’t quite worked out if it was good-healthy-confronting-learning-from-the-discomfort discomfort. It was just so fucking depressing. And I’m not sure I learnt anything or gained anything from my heart being dragged through the gutter and kicked around. Do we have to gain something from depressing works? Am I being fuck-wit audience? Am I demanding theatre be disingenuous? Am I asking for ‘depressing’ with a take-home message and do I want to be let off the hook? I can’t tell whether I’m being unfair on this work but I really disliked the experience of it. And theatre is about experience right? I don’t know. On some levels I want to like it. The production based on a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (from Strange Pilgrims.) It explores the hideous experience of a woman in Franco-era Spain… which resonates with hideous experiences of women everywhere… in lots of different stories and landscapes, right? I wanted to feel the pain as a feminist and leave the theatre empowered and defiant, but instead I just felt kicked around. I just felt like shit.
Maybe if it were directed a bit differently, and, if Netta Yashchin, the director, didn’t keep getting up out of her seat in the audience and joining the ensemble. I’m not anti directors giving themselves a role, it happens. I am, however, against fucking with fourth walls for no good reason. Sometimes, (very rarely) fourth walls can be breached to great effect, otherwise, I LOVE FOURTH WALLS SO FUCKING MUCH IT HURTS. I want to suspend disbelief. I want to get lost in art. I don’t want to be constantly reminded it is art. Can directors please appreciate the magic of theatre, please? It was kind of a sloppy production. I didn’t care enough about the protagonist. I cared enough to be fucking depressed at watching her get kicked around but not in that complete, gut-wrenching way you’re supposed to follow a protagonist. The performers were all good, working really fucking hard, but nothing blew me away. It kind of felt like watching talented actors do drama exercises. Jullia Billington, in particular, got a real work out inhabiting tons of different characters with great skill and physicality.
There was also a really nasty lesbian predator rapist character (that the fourth-wall-breaking director played) and you can just imagine how excited I was to watch women raped by women on stage. I’m not disputing the fact it happens, (nor am I disputing the fact shitty things like abuse should be talked about/explored and assessed through art) I just couldn’t cope with that as an issue on top of all the other blows this play delivers. I never see lesbians on stage, and the first time I do it’s really fucked up. Grump.
I realise this rant has been a bit shit. I found it really hard to collect my thoughts on this one. Basically, I like fourth walls, and found this show uninterestingly depressing.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Snowtown rant
Snowtown is a really hard film to watch, and I don’t mean ‘hard to watch’ in a so-deeply-disturbing-and-harrowing-and-confronting-and-interesting way, (which it should be) I mean ‘hard to watch’ in a stupidly-pretentious-and-up-it’s-own-arse way, which is just so fucking disappointing isn’t it? Yet another missed opportunity to resurrect audience’s faith in Australian filmmaking. Sigh. True-crime-film is a delicate genre, and, unfortunately, Snowtown hasn’t pulled it off.
Let’s get one thing straight before I begin, Lucas Pittaway (who plays the lead Jamie Vlassakis) is nothing, whatsoever, like Heath Ledger. Sorry to start with such a snarky and seemingly inane point, but all the lead up hype to this film has been banging on about Pittaway being Heath Ledger and it’s been really irritating, it’s just such absurd, PR, rot. Ignoring the fact he’s not got even half the looks Ledger had, HEATH LEDGER WAS A FUCKING ACTOR. Pittaway, like most of Snowtown’s cast, is not, and it damn well shows in his far, far, less than mediocre performance. Justin Kurzel has attempted to tell a ‘humanised’ version of the story by centring the film around Pittaway’s character, Jamie, and show the seduced-and-corrupted-by-the-desperately-craved-father-figure angle on the tragedy. However, sadly, what with not actually being an actor, Pittaway doesn’t have the range required to pull off the angle…(Let’s not even get into whether this a tad sensationalised and irresponsible, insensitive, way to tell the story… Surely the kid had agency in the horror that shouldn’t be filmically excused with a but-he-was-corrupted-and-coerced telling of the story?) Snowtown is littered with stupid shots of Pittaway not doing much. Pittaway ‘acts’ by looking blanky at the camera in the hope the audiences will do the work and insert complicated emotions. It makes sense, he’s a non-actor so he’s been directed by Kurzel not to do much, because the camera is a sensitive eye and picks up everything, so the best thing to do with non-actors is to get them to stay still and then they won’t over act. In this way, Pittaway delivers an adequate(ish) performance, punctuated with moments when he gasps a bit and dribbles tears in a mildly moving manner. It is certainly not an embarrassing performance but it isn’t enough to make the boy the lynch-pin of the story. We’re supposed to see the story through his eyes and understand him to an extent, but as nothing much goes on in his eyes (apart from when he cries) we just don’t and the whole story merely lingers around him, weakly.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
April Rant
April rant disclaimer: this is going to be an odd round up, I didn’t get out and about too much and some of the things I did I’m refusing to talk about!
Flicks Rant:
Let’s start with the not-talking. I saw a film this month and it was so offensively bad I don’t want to talk, or write about it. I wouldn’t discuss it with my mum and dad when I left the cinema, I wont tell my friends about it, and I won’t fucking blog about it, cos, I feel like, even tearing it apart is giving it publicity/word-of-mouth/intrigue it doesn’t fucking deserve. I’ve never had a film make me so fucking angry. It entirely spoiled my mood too. I was a total bitch for about 24 hours because I was just a ball of hurt, frustrated, cinematically assaulted, fury. So. I saw a really terrible film. That wasn’t even interestingly terrible. And I’m not going to tell you what it was, I am just going to hope and prey that no-one goes to see it. The end.
Strings Attached Rant:
My friend, who I’ve blogged about before, Gemma Lark, had her first solo show in April (and it runs till the 9th of May so shake a leg and go see it @ Oh Really Gallery – 55 Enmore Rd, Newtown) and it was pretty fucking wonderful. She’s a theatre-ey trained artist (NIDA design) who’s a bit of a puppeteer/performer/everything too. Her works were very puppeteer inflected, including a live/performance sculpture of a marionette/woman/zombie tied to a wall with ropes and scissors hanging from the ceiling just above her crotch. Ropes also hung in the middle of the exhibition space, attached to the girl’s wrists, that you could yank and the performer would move accordingly. I found the work so powerful I could barely look at it. I felt like a sleazy, fucked-up, voyeur, complicit-in-rendering-women-as-dolls, puppeteer for even glancing at her and when the performer met my gaze I wanted to vomit and bawl. The rest of the works are gorgeous. A few yummy painted-on-bits-of-old-wood offerings with curling, curving, characters and moments with big eyes and something dark about them and lots of puppety sculptures. My favourite work was a teapot with a face, crying long drapey tears made of teabags. Yum. Anyway, at the opening I had a really random/weird/loveliness. I met this guy called Hugo and he epitomised everything I used to believe in: freedom, generosity and spontaneity… everything that seems to have turned to hipster in my life was still real and alive and generous and spontaneous in his. He handed me the short story collection he hadn’t even finished reading and asked me to read it, just cos he thought I’d like it and to pass it along when I was done. Sadly, I had nothing I could swap him but he was unfazed, I implored him to swap numbers with me so I could at the very least return the book, he wasn’t interested though, he just wanted to give it to me. He gave me hope, he also filled me with sorrow cos I worry his heart will get kicked around like mine and he’ll one day give up on the swings-and-round-abouts take on art - that everything should be shared and all knowledge should be free… not that I’ve given up, just that I’m very very disheartened and every time I think I’ve found a salon-like, earnest, generous, lets-just-share-ideas, type place of magic it tends to turn out its actually about wank and hipster and fame and isn’t really very magic at all… He was like time traveling to me in first year, and now I’m caught in a whirl of nostalgia, hope, bitterness, betrayal, gratitude, sorrow… and, I really hope that hope wins the war in my heart and soul, because humans should connect and give each other novels and share stories and art and love, and it shouldn’t be about return… oh dear… Anyway he convinced another fella we were chatting with to give me a copy of his EP It’s called Losing Business and the act is called Ex-Trendy… which is oddly fitting considering the universe lecturing me on growing old and jaded and trendy… It’s very cute and earnest and has a fun quality to it with Bowie-esque sounds in the singing style. I found the lyrics a little hard to take seriously at times ( foe example, they sing about standing in line at the text-book store) but at other times quite endearing. I think my favourite track was No Connection, which oddly enough is about losing all your (I’d say hipster) adornments and losing connection and contact. They definitely have heaps of promise. I reckon keep an eye on them. This EP isn’t amazing but it’s very impressive and shows heart and humour and love. And it’s beautifully presented with a gorgeous photographs of a man draped across an old TV-set taken by Greer Rochford. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to meet and connect with people on such a real, generous, level, at what is customarily the breeding-ground for disingenuous-ness and wank – the art-show opening night drinks… but I did, and I was also very, very proud of my friend Gemma Lark who, has made some very, very, nice, and fucking powerful, art.
Gig rant:
This month I saw Shiver Like Timber play at World Bar, She (Betony Dircks) was great, as always. She triumphed despite some serious gig-adversity… crazy noisy amps and strange beer-throwing brawls in the crowd. I’m not so sold on World Bar, I found it a bit wanky and super cold. Betony was definitely worth my battle to be there, and I had to battle, apparently thongs are a liability or some such nonsense, I’ve not worn anything but thongs since I was 18 and have never had trouble getting in anywhere else. So my tear-filled wait in the gutter for a dear friend to rescue me and bring borrowed purple boots was all worth it and Bet’s gorgeous imaginary landscapes, nostalgia, story-telling and upside-down imagery delivered and looped in her unique (and extremely beautiful) take on the child-woman-with-her-mouth-full like singing voice dressed and danced away all the woes of the evening, well almost, to be entirely honest the weirdness of the evening did catch up to me and I did scurry home a bit of a mess... but Bet very nearly soothed all the worries and the wank... I also stumbled down the road (in thongs) this month and saw another friend, Dave Fong, play music at the Glengarry. He played a mixture of his own songs and covers and he was pretty damn awesome. I’d never seen him play before and was blown away by his honey-like dreamy vocals and dream-scape take to his own song writing, and others. It was a very enjoyable way to spend an evening. I also really like the Glenngary, it’s a neat pub, very local and real and not wanky and Sydney-tries-to-be-Melbourne… It also pretty much consists of one room, and one long table, which pretty much insists on connected-ness which is nice, you sit with strangers and talk to them, or, at the very least, acknowledge them! Not stomp around like we’ve all sucked lemons and pretend other humans who aren’t in our click don’t exist… There you go, April, in short, was about connectedness… (Perhaps)…
Love,
Ridiculous.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
not really a rant at all, (sorry) - Ridiculous plugs! :
My friends just launched their PJ label, that they've been busting their guts over all summer, and it's really awesome and organic and yummy and dreamy and fun! Yay! check it out: www.alasthelabel.com
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