MAN ABOUT TOWN

I started watching the DVD of Alan Parker's 1984 film Birdy tonight. As the opening credits rolled I remembered - or perhaps had a false memory of - the last time I watched this film. I think it was with my dad, a couple of months before he died. It makes the process of watching this film, which is already laden with memory and nostalgia, an even more poignant experience. In 1984 I became friends with Mark Morrison, who a year or two later introduced me to this film, which stars Matthew Modine and Nicholas Cage (before he became just Nic), and which features an evocative and stirring soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. Sitting down to watch Birdy tonight is such a strange experience, with so many layers and moments of memory attached to it... Watching it with my dad, in our old home in Trafalgar, in country Victoria in 1985 or '86; realising then and remembering now how laden this film is with homoeroticism, and how awkward that made me feel at the time and realising now how naive I...

Woman King – Iron and Wine [Sub Pop] This six-track EP from Iron and Wine (a.k.a. Sam Beam , one of the masters of modern blues-folk) sees the singer-songwriter taking cautious steps away from his earlier lo-fi approach to composition and production. Its six warmly and cleanly recorded tracks display a rich texture not previously audible in Iron and Wine albums, a beautiful setting in which to display Beam’s narrative lyrics and his simultaneously plaintive yet robust tunes. Evoking misty mornings that turn into brilliant days, these rhythmic, emotive, coolly passionate songs take the heartfelt passion of folk and filter it though tastes more akin to contemporary urban sensibilities. If the taste of Iron and Wine on the Garden State soundtrack wasn’t enough to whet your appetite, thus EP certainly should be. I Am A Bird Now – Antony and the Johnsons [Spunk] The second album from this exquisite New York artist is a heart-breaking collection of songs that captivate, move and engage...

GERRY (Madman Entertainment) Director Gus Van Sant clearly experienced an epiphany after making the turgid coming-of-age melodrama Finding Forrester (2000). After - presumably - contemplating his recent oeuvre in comparison to such uncompromising works as Mala Noche (1985) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Van Sant wrote and directed, in quick succession, two of the most hauntingly beautiful and non-commercial films to have originated from the USA in recent years: the Palme d’Or-winning Elephant , released in 2003, and its immediate precursor, 2002’s Gerry . Make no mistake: this is a movie that many people will deride as pretentious and unbearably stilted. Even hardened cinephiles may find it witless, trite and painfully slow. Personally I believe it to be one of the masterpieces of contemporary film-making. Bear with me while I explain why. Cinema is a visual language. All too often, dialogue is used for exposition, with clumsy film-makers telling us what is happening instead of showin...

So work has been utterly insane and I've been stressed to the gills and not particularly productive of late, which means I haven't updated my blog for ages. I'll try and rectify that this weekend with a couple of quick posts to bring it up to speed. Speaking of which, I've been doing far to much speed lately. Speed, and strawberry ice-cream. Not simultaneously I hasten to add. Eww, imagine trying to snort strawberry ice-cream. Its bad enough that speed makes your nose burn - imagine having it freeze as well! Last night I went to the opening night of the German film festival, which like far too many film festivals was marred by having a bland, cheesy crowd-pleaser as the opening night film. Depressing, really, when there are so many potentially stronger films in the program - but I guess they wouldn't want to show a film about Nazi Germany at the opening night when your main sponsor is Volkswagen and their local CEO is in the audience... After that it was off to see ...

Ok, so Danny Bhoy from Scotland - Glasgow, to be precise - may have stood me up on my arts program on 3RRR but he was very funny. Occasionally dragged a joke out too long (eg 'muuuuuuuUUUUmmmm!') and his defensiveness re his heterosexuality was sometimes a touch tedious, but otherwise he was the funiest person I have seen in the festival to date. I also saw The Bedroom Philospher aka Justin Heazlewood, a Melbourne boy who combines self-depreciating awkwardness with genuine wit and whimsical wordplay. His show needed a director to help tighten it, but it was still good fun. Lawrence Leung and Andrew McClelland's Somewhat Secret Secret Society Show was sadly nowhere near as strong as McClelland's last show (a hit of both 2003 Fringe and the 2004 Comedy Festival ), A Somewhat Accurate History of Pirates . Emma Westwood gave them a glowing review in The Age but perhaps she saw them on a night when they were tighter and funnier. Perhaps. Or maybe she's just more gen...

Maybe I'm just going in with my expectations set to high, or perhaps its because I'm a cynical fucker, but I've been underwhelmed by the shows I've seen so far at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year. Charlie Pickering's 'Betterman' is a one-man show from this up and coming young Australian comedian which outlines his quest to improve his body, mind and soul. While occasionally provoking guffaws, Pickering was let down by his reliance on a power-point presentation of images, quotes and visual gags; his constant fiddling with the remote drained the show of any momentum every time he tried to cue up a new image. Ironically the funniest moment in the show came about when Pickering accidentally set the computer into fast-forward, resulting in a rapid succession of images being thrown up on screen out of sequence, and causing a flustered Pickering to almost panic. Wil Anderson came on stage sweating so profusely he had to towel himself down eve...