MAN ABOUT TOWN

I caught a media preview of the new Australian film Animal Kingdom last Friday, and am delighted to report that it lives up to all the praise that's been heaped on it since screening at Sundance (where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema - Dramatic). My full review of the film is up at Arts Hub , but here's the gist of the piece: 'At the centre of the film is the softly spoken teenage protagonist Joshua ‘J’ Cody (newcomer James Frecheville), thrust into a world of crime following his mother’s sudden death. “Mum kept me away from her family, because she was scared,” the teenager comments in voice-over, and we soon learn why. Joshua’s uncles – brooding armed robber Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody (a cold-eyed Ben Mendelsohn), speed-freak drug dealer Craig Cody (Sullivan Stapleton) and the youngest of the three brothers, Darren Cody (Luke Ford) – are career criminals whose lives revolve around their ferociously loving, totally uncompromising mother, Janine ‘Smurf’ Cody (...

I'm trying to give up drinking at the moment, and to be honest, I'm finding it pretty hard going. After the abject failure which was my attempt at FebFast , I realised I actually had a fairly significant problem with alcohol, so consequently three weeks ago I enlisted professional help by consulting the Turning Point Drug & Alcohol Centre in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. After my first meeting with a GP there, and regular home visits from a nurse, things started well: my first week of trying not to drink I had four days off the grog - at least a 10 year record - and the following week I was alcohol-free for six days: a personal best, given that I started drinking at about 13, when my parents introduced the idea of half a glass of wine at dinner in an attempt to convey the concept of sensible drinking (I think the plan backfired - it probably hard-wired a liking for booze into my adolescent brain, and as a concept would certainly be frowned upon today). I also managed not to dr...

I saw the new iteration of Robin Hood at the on Monday night. I was less than impressed. Here's an extract of the review I wrote for Arts Hub : 'Unfortunately for audiences, there is little to recommend in this latest version of Robin Hood . As with the trend in comic books to render once glittering, larger-than-life icons like Batman and Superman into gritty and angst-ridden contemporary characters, in making this account of the outlaw’s life ‘realistic’, the filmmakers have lost the original sparkle and romance of the legend. The story sags under a barrage of unnecessary details, such as Robin’s discovery that his late father was responsible for drafting the Magna Carta (anyone with an eye for historical accuracy will be grinding their teeth in frustration by the final moments of the film’s 140-minute running time) and the hodge-potch of politics, revisionism and family angst considerably impacts on the pacing, with the film really only finding its feet in the fi...