Where the Wombats Are

28 May 2008
Gate 6
Melbourne Airport

My small collection of photos

What an energetic, good-looking, easy to get around city! I’ve had an absolutely fabulous time in Melbourne regardless of the fact that I haven’t done or seen anywhere near what I’d like to have… just means I’ll have to come back… The bad news for you is that my camera batteries were dead so I don’t have many photos.

My reason for coming to Melbourne was a policing research conference scheduled Monday – Wednesday. I decided to come early for a weekend of exploring and arrived Saturday morning around 10.30a. I was met at the airport by the professors that will be in staying in our Roslindale home for a few years while working they are working at Simmons College. What a fantastic couple they were/are. We hit it off immediately! Terrific senses of humour, intelligent and outstanding hosts/tour guides. It was quite a coincidence when I learned that these visiting professors were from Australia and even more so to learn they lived in Melbourne. We were just going to connect for coffee to meet and have a chat about the logistics of their renting our home, but their offer to pick me up at the airport should give you an idea of what kind of friendly people they are.

The first thing to strike me on our ride from the airport was the amount of public art everywhere. Some modern, some classic figure sculptures. Wonderful! From the airport they took me straight to Queen Victoria Market – a classic, old style food market. Such a shame that I didn’t have my camera, but perhaps these official pictures will do. It was a huge place and bustling with so many people. There were fish stalls and meat stalls and cheese and coffee and olives and bread stalls for as far as the eye could see. And then outside the actual building were rows and rows of produce in a covered shed. Apparently beyond the produce there were more and more sheds of clothing, leathers, hats, etc. but we didn’t go back there. We wandered through all the stalls and produce and picked up a bit of this and a bit of that for lunch. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect way to start the day.

They lived a few blocks from the market, so while Rachel drove the car back, Ross took me on the overland tour and I began to get my first sense of the energy and liveliness of Melbourne. It was Saturday midday and the streets and sidewalks were alive with a diverse and cosmopolitan crowd. Shortly into our walk we stumbled onto huge protest/parade for Macedonian independence (I’ll check Flickr for photos – found some, but doesn’t give a sense of size… it was huge). It extended for many, many blocks and we had to actually skip through the parade itself in order to get to their apartment – my second bit of excitement for the day.

They are on the 39th floor and as we waited for Rachel, Ross pointed out lots of features on the Melbourne landscape and oriented me to the city – the Royal Exhibition Building from the Melbourne International Exhibition, the museum, the University of Melbourne, and the state library building directly below (very fitting that library and information science professors would live so close to the state library!). We had a delightful lunch of all the goodies from the market and a terrific chat about library and information science stuff – a treat for me who encounters few colleagues from this area in my daily work these days.

They then decided to take me on a brief tour of the CBD (central business district – that acronym is used quite a bit in Australia, by the way). Our first stop was the state library itself. What a fantastic building both architecturally and design-wise (they’d just renovated it) and in its energy. It was teeming with people. The illuminated manuscript exhibit they had going on was so mobbed we couldn’t even get in, and the rest of the library was alive with tons of students. It was great to see a library so full of life. Apparently the university libraries aren’t that great and so many of the students find better resources at the state library. But that couldn’t be the only thing. It just seemed like students were treating it like a student union. It was great. Many of the rooms were great, but the central reading room was the most majestic. It went up about five stories into a dome, with exhibits in the hallways around the outside. On the main floor were rows and rows of antique wooden reading desks with leather writing pads embedded at each seat in an adjustable table-top that you could tip up and a variety of angles to customize your reading angle. In the centre was this enormous carved wooden librarian’s desk. It was hexagonal in shape with a small door and half a dozen steps leading up to an elevated librarian’s desk on a platform at least 6-7 feet off the floor. It was fun to imagine a librarian actually sitting up there in days gone by and supervising the library patrons. I hope I can find a photo. [Thank you Matt, from the State Library of Victoria, for posting links to more pictures! - to read Matt's comments, click on "# Comment" up by the title of this post.]

From the state library we headed down Swanston Street, one of the main drags in the CBD that leads to the Yarra River waterfront. Federation Square is truly an exercise in the genius of public space. It is a collection of half a dozen multi-textural and color and media buildings surrounding a large multi-level open space that includes a large video screen and a stage for public events. The especially brilliant bit is that much of the plaza is pitched at a low grade to create an amphitheatre effect that allows everyone to be able to see the activities. Another great feature is that the straight square footage of open space is really quite large, but it is broken up by steps and courtyards and nooks and sloping walkways that always make you feel like you are in a reasonably intimate space. I loved looking at it, walking through it, admiring it from different sides. It borders the Yarra River across from the Flinders Street Station – the central train depot in Melbourne – a magnificent gold and red vintage building that combined with Federation Square and the waterfront parks and blocks of shopping and business comprise and fabulously vibrant central downtown area.

On the other side of the river to the east were boat houses and the botanical gardens. We walked from Federation Square across the bridge and off to the west through an extensive waterfront public space full of riverside walkways, cafes, public art, and access to shopping and hotels, the arts theatres (opera, musicals, etc, and the national gallery of art) and the Aquarium and Convention and Exhibition centre. We walked back over a pedestrian bridge and under the Flinders Street Station and back up Elizabeth Street shopping and wound our way through Chinatown and the Greek district back to their apartment. It was a delightfully warm and sunny day and I laughed my way through it with my new friends with a grin on my face – realizing once and for all that I truly am a city girl… thrilled to be in the middle of the hustle and bustle and trams and people. By the time we got back to their apartment, the sun was going down, and they were kind enough to drive me down to St. Kilda so that I might get in a walk on the beach before the sun was completely down.

They dropped me at the X-Base hostel on Carlisle Street. Now that was an amazing place – probably the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in (and I’ve been in quite a few). I had just enough time to check in, drop my bags and have a quick chat to one of my young bunkmates, who turned me onto places to eat and the opportunity to see little penguins out on the pier after sunset. As I rushed down the few blocks to the beach, the sun was fading fast behind Luna Park, the old school amusement park, and the Palais Theatre. I made my way up the esplanade and along the boardwalk, breathing deeply and smiling happily in my contemplation of how much I love beach towns. It reminded me of Venice Beach a little. It doesn’t look like it, and definitely not as busy, but that feel of a beachside part of a major city that still carries remnants of its seedy past but has become gentrified and pricey in much of the area (later that evening I did spot a few prostitutes and even a couple of junkies shooting up – which was so strange given the clearly upscale homes they were in fairly close proximity to).

By the time I reached the pier, the sun was already down and dusk was well underway. At the end of the pier was a small café, and beyond the pier, the rock jetty. Already a small crowd was assembled at the fence protecting the penguin habitats at the far end of the jetty. But it was another 30-45 minutes before any critters showed up. At last, in the full darkness, a few little penguins poked their heads out from their little homes in the rocks to charm us. SO cute! About 1-1.5 feet tall. I only saw four with my own eyes, but periodically a chorus of calls would erupt from the rocks in a flurry of deep chirping and cooing sounds. It was as if the rocks were singing. There were signs everywhere prohibiting flash photography, so I didn’t get any good photos, but I’ll try to find some.

I went to dinner at Greasy Joe’s on Acland Street – the happening beach-side strip of shops and restaurants in St Kilda. Met some folks who suggested the Hotel Esplanade up the road for live music. Apparently it’s commonly known as The Espy and isn’t really a hotel. It clearly had been a glorious beach-side resort hotel in the past, but now was a series of bars and music rooms. It was full of great columns and a majestic staircase, though now all with patched and peeling paint. Upstairs was more popular music. Downstairs was alternative/punkish. There was a third room, but that was $15 so I skipped that one. In many ways it was like The Middle East in Central Square, Cambridge. None of the music I saw blew me away, but I had a great time anyway. And apparently one of the acts, the nutty and off-balance Dave Graney, has a bit of a reputation as an Australian icon (much in the same way, it seems, as Little Joe Cook had at the CanTab).

Sunday morning I’d been advised to have breakfast at the Galleon and was not disappointed – the St Kilda equivalent of the Centre St Café weekend brunch in Jamaica Plain. I then managed to make my way to the #16 tram out of St Kilda to the CBD by about 12 noon (I got a bit of a late start as I was feeling pretty rough from staying out so late). I checkin to my conference hotel and headed out into downtown Melbourne once again. By this time, though, it was threatening rain. I took the free tourist bus around the city and had a good squiz of the major sites. The rain kept me from the gardens, but I had a nice run through the National Gallery before heading back to the hotel for an early night.

The conference was pretty good – all about researchers and police working together and I met a lot of people that I’ll need to be working with in the future. So that was good too. One of the highlights was the conference dinner at “The G” – otherwise known as the Melbourne Cricket Ground! We had dinner in one of the exclusive boxes and function rooms overlooking the stadium. Colleagues from Canberra had talked about “The G” and I’d contemplated going to an Australian Rules Football match over the weekend, but the tickets were too expensive. So I was very excited to have an opportunity to get inside. The G seats about 100K and is perfectly round field. There was actually a semi-humorous presentation that included references to all types of AFL plays that were completely foreign to me. Out of 50 types of plays discussed, only “kicks” and “tackles” made any sense to me. I had to look up clearance, hitouts, bounces, handballs, and everything else. From the best I can figure so far, it’s kind of like soccer, basketball, volleyball and American football rolled into one (with no pads). Some of my new colleagues from the Victoria Police have promised to take me to a match the next time I’m down, so I’m looking forward to a further education.

I can’t wait to go again. There’s so much I didn’t get to explore. Sydney and Melbourne have both been great for different reasons, but if I had to pick a place to live right now, I think I’d say Melbourne.

22 May 2008
Hippo Bar
Civic, Canberra, ACT

One bad photograph – sorry

Not just another Wednesday night at the Hippo! As you may recall, I went to see the John Mackey Quintet a few weeks ago for the ABC Classic FM live jazz series at the Canberra Girls Grammar School. They were great then, but SO much more fun in an intimate club setting tonight! It was a bit disappointing that the bar was fairly empty. John and I were talking at the interval about how it makes the acoustics a bit weird without a roomful of people. But apparently there was some event til 8.30p so they weren’t letting anyone in and maybe that was why it was quieter than usually. But they still rocked. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t mix my genres… but it WAS rockin’ – even the mellower stuff. They did some of their own stuff (Greg Stott’s and John’s) and some Wayne Shorter and Eddie Harris among others. As John described to me in an advance email: “Jazz fusion style – hard bop – big impact fun stuff” – definitely fun stuff (though some contemplative and soulful stuff too)

Last night was a bad writing night for me though. I wrote for almost two hours while I was there and couldn’t come up with anything worth writing here today. Some days are just like that I guess. I tried a Strawberry Ricotta Cheesecake approach for a bit – just trying to feel the music and write from there. I didn’t have much luck but did manage a short bit during Greg’s “Maybe Tomorrow”. I suppose it would best would be for you to listen to it when reading what I wrote, but I think it’s a new composition (or at least not available online). Nevertheless, here are links to John and Greg’s myspace pages:

John Mackey (sax): http://www.myspace.com/johnmackey69
Greg Stott (guitar): http://www.myspace.com/gregstott

The piece (“Maybe Tomorrow”) got me nostalgic for New York for some reason:

They said this piece was mellow, but I suppose that’s in comparison to what they’ve just been playing. It’s definitely a moving piece as opposed to a lounging piece… Walking in Central Park on an autumn Saturday afternoon. No deadlines, no destinations, sneaking through shortcuts in the trees where, for a brief moment, there is no one else around. Back out onto a broad lawn with frisbee and soccer and picnics and dogs and 3rd generation beat poet couples reading to each other in the sun. Joggers, cyclists, dog walkers. Bird watchers chattering away about Pale Male. And that slow, hesitant decrescendo as you approach the perimeter of the park and contemplate the streets of Manhattan.. No wait, let’s not break the magic just yet. How about another turn around this little clump of bushes here. You can see the bakc of the Met from over here. Someone told me about a little cafe this way. We don’t have to be anywhere. Let’s keep walking, strolling, ambling… Pausing on the top of this rise, gazing out over gardens and New Yorkers and the huge city behind… Does being so far away make me love New York in a romantic way I hadn’t previously? Or is it just the music?

Well, that’s where my writing got all stuffed up. Not a high octane day to be sure. The next piece was great too, but I’d totally lost my command of language by that point so you’re going to have to make do with my snippet of NYC. Off to Melbourne on Saturday, so hopefully I’ll be able to give you a nice chunk of reading and adventure next week. I’m at a conference through Wednesday and don’t know about schedule and time for uploading so don’t get cranky if I can’t post for a week. But I promise pictures…

Cheers to all,
me

18 May 2008
21 Hackett Gardens
Turner, ACT

She was having dinner in a restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska. I had just sorted out my morning coffee and was settling in at my desk in my office in Canberra, Australia. “The wine list here is huge!” she typed. “I feel like a glass of wine.” I typed back. “And what exactly does it feel like to be a glass of wine?” came zooming in before I had a chance to finish my next clarifying thought – something obligatorily addressing the fact that it was indeed 7 o’clock in the morning for me and of course I couldn’t possibly have really meant what I said, even though the romance of having an elegant glass of wine in a candlelit restaurant at the cosmopolitan frontier of Alaska on a reluctant spring evening quite easily conquered any temporal facts. Romance always trumps reality.

“Red or white?” hit me in the middle of my second attempt at a thought. “Red,” I fired back before she could get too far ahead of me. “I’m feeling deep and passionate today.” So how would it feel to be a glass of wine, we mused. “Perhaps constrained… by the glass?” she pondered. At first glance that seemed sensible, but the logic dissolved almost instantly when we began to consider it. The wine needs the glass to give it form – to see it, to see through it, to smell it, to hold it, to consider it, to experience it. Without the glass, what is it? A muddy puddle in the earth: the blood of the grape rapidly reabsorbed into the womb of Mother Earth, intoxicating a thousand insects, worms and bacteria with an unexpected Bacchanalian interlude in their mindless drudgery of composting. Has any researcher investigated the reproduction of our microscopic gardeners under conditions of intoxication? When a drunken youth stumbles into the embrace of a new-found sweetheart and sends a splash of fermentation to the earthen floor below, do the little ones overcome their inhibitions and share in the reckless love of their benefactors and make more tiny crawlies than on other days? Do they feel deep and passionate when soaked in merlot? Do they feel light and frisky when showered with chardonnay?

But I digress. This is not about how it feels to be an inebriated paramecium. It is what life feels like as a glass of wine. We’ve already determined that the glass is a necessary partner, though as yet no feeling has been ascribed to the glass itself. I was about to set that aside but I just got a flash of deep, deep memory and distant longing, of the glass for its childhood as sand by the seashore. Perhaps we’ll return to that, but for now it is the wine itself with which we concern ourselves.

How does it feel? It feels smooth and slippery and fluid and warm or cool to us. But how does it feel to itself. I suppose in the glass I would feel the excitement of interaction – with air, with light, with lips, with tongue. My life in a barrel has been a slow, almost imperceptible transformation from innocence to sophistication. But the release into the air, into the light… I can breathe! I can frolic! I can engage with the world! I can play with the light and sparkle and glow. I can play with the air and launch my scents into the atmosphere like a million dandelion seeds.

Do I feel slippery? No. It is parts of the world that are slippery – the bottle, the glass. They are slippery – so little to interact with there. I feel sad for them, in a way: through such highly intensive adversity they have become beautiful and immortal, but so hard, so isolated. Every once in a while you can hear the whispers of the ghosts of the glorious grains longing for the pounding of the surf and the gusting of the wind to ferry them to their distant cousins and new lands. But we cannot play together. They can only hold me briefly in space and time. I run over their surface, searching for an outstretched hand, an open ear – but they are deaf mute amputees packed too densely in their sparkling immortality.

But tablecloths and ties on the other hand – the whole textile crew – now there’s a classic, frenzied, fatal passion! That moment of first contact: so scintillating, so absorbing, so truly fantasmic to lose yourself completely in another… rapidly expanding outward into shapes of yourself that you never imagined possible. But like crack cocaine it’s over in an instant. And then you are stuck, eternally. Such a love-hate relationship with these wicked takers. Whereas the crystal are sad in their isolation, the textiles are greedy in theirs. Quite the opposite of the glass, where there is no way in to a relationship, the textiles tempt, cajole and lure you into a merging so ecstatic, so extreme, so extensive, so complete… before you know it you are permanently wedded in a marriage that’s ruined both of you – fixed forever in space and time, with no way back… all your transformative life potential sucked out of you by their thirsty fibres, with only a dirty spot to mark your grave.

How does it feel? In the glass it feels like first love, like a deep crush, like a flash of firey attraction for a complete stranger. The anticipation. The excitement of the unknown. The sizzling, fizzing longing for interaction and exchange and transformation… just moments away, inches away. The first touch to the lips: an electric encounter with a porous living collection of spirits. A festival of alchemic opportunities and adventures. A thousand new souls to meet on the tongue and in the throat. A thousand pairings of new relations as parts of me sneak off with new sweethearts to explore and transform each other. It is a return to the innocence of my youth when I was a thousand spirits living in a thousand skins. We were mates. Like our friends the grains of sand. In some ways our adversity was more brutal than theirs. They had that searing heat, but it didn’t last long. For us, we were gathered together, and then pushed together, and then mashed together, until our skins ripped and tore and burst open on one another and our hearts and souls and blood and flesh became one. But in the gentle rolling journey past the lips, around the tongue, down the throat… as bits stay behind and blend and merge with new partners… it’s like we are mates again. From the same village, the same school, the same street, but all of us unique again – each pairing up with someone different and making private memories, spreading throughout the town like visiting sports fans. We may not know where we all ended up, but we know our family is out there, infusing the world with our own gifts and vices, transforming our partners and ourselves in a lingering, late-night dance of the senses.

That’s what it feels like.

14 May 2008
Hippo Bar
Civic, Canberra, ACT

Trio Apoplectic, from Sydney allegedly. Trio of double bass, sax and drums. Young men. Well, maybe not that young. Hard to tell. It’s pretty dark in here. It’s also pretty red in here. Dark red walls. Rich red velvet seat cushions on the bar stools. Rich red leather ottomans scattered everywhere – this is not a restaurant: no tables, very loungey. Looks brown in this picture, but it’s red, trust me. One whole wall is windows looking down over Garema Place. A horizontal panel of mirrors across the length of the adjacent wall reflects the view of Garema Place and makes the place feel bigger than it is. Small chandaliers and ceiling fans hanging from the red ceiling shimmer in the deep red cherry stained hardwood floor.

I could write about the music, but in spite of how much jazz I’ve listened to over the years, I’m still not very good at evaluating musicianship. I just know when I like what I hear it. I’m not particularly fond of things that are atonal and un-rhythmic. In that way I’m a bit conservative I suppose. Perhaps that is because the atonal stuff reminds me of feelings I’d rather forget. This isn’t to say that I need things to be all sunshine and roses and C major chords all the time. I enjoy melancholy and angst (usually the most moving stuff), but it’s the pure chaos of some jazz – music that sounds like a really bad acid trip or a dream where you are getting beaten up in a toolshed by cabinet doors and baby strollers – that’s the stuff I just don’t know what to do with. But these guys are making me happy. Good music to write to.

So this is a big week. I’m now transitioning from the beginning of the beginning to the middle of the beginning of my Australian adventure. First of all, I’ve moved from my little pool house studio in Lyneham to house-sitting for one of the professors in her beautiful, zen, and very green (environmentally) house. My daily routine now includes the ritual of opening and closing of all the shades to maximize and preserve the passive solar heat. My routine will also very soon include the daily feeding of the magpies. Today I went to the butcher to pickup some chicken pet mince (minced up chicken scraps) as Dorothy had run out and her magpies gave me evil eyes this morning on my way off to work. So I got a whole kilo for $1.75 and separated it into little meatball sized portions and put them in the freezer for easy daily thawing and distribution to my new avian friends. So tomorrow I will be Queen of the Magpies. They will love me – instead of hating me like they did this morning when I had no food. Oh, I miss my cats – Ernie, Bert and Trixie (Slade will you upload a current photo of Trixie please…).

Today I got the import permits to bring them here at the beginning of July. They have to stay in quarantine for 30 days. And the flight, of course, will be long. We thought very hard about this – whether or not to put them through it all – but ultimately decided that they are family. We belong to each other. We couldn’t just give them away, and even if we could it’s unlikely that any one person would take all three and we couldn’t bear to separate them. I’m still not sure if we are doing the right thing, but it’s what we are doing.

The second big part of this new phase is that I also moved my office this week. All along I was supposed to have this office, but it was a mess and needed plaster and painting and carpeting fixed. But now they’ve done it, and now I have moved – to the cellar. It’s okay I guess, quieter, but now I’m really on the outer arm of this galaxy of spiraling corridors that is the National Centre of Epidemiology and Population Health…

We also had a bunch of grants come through this week and so my job is changing a bit as I will be taking carriage of those projects and they require some shifting of priorities. It’s good actually. It gives me a few more activities that I am actually competent in. Everything else I’ve been doing recently has been really new and hard and I’ve chucked a few wobblies. It’s not like the whole thing has gone completely pear-shaped, but I was definitely getting a little down about having so much of my job characterized by lack of success.

So Dorothy’s in Spain for five weeks and then I’m off to another house-sit til the end of July. I’m looking forward to saving some money to pay off our kitchen renovation (remember that? Have another squizzy: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=kitchen&w=23557771%40N03). How depressing is this? – my beautiful kitchen, that I haven’t even been able to enjoy, was supposed to help increase the value of our home. We just got a new appraisal as part of our re-finance and, get this, the house is worth exactly what it was three and a half years ago when we bought it! Aagh! So just in case you hadn’t heard that the US housing market was tanking… here’s some proof. Oh well, such is life. I suppose I can optimistically say that if we hadn’t done the kitchen it might actually be worth less than what we paid. That would truly be grim and I would surely be much more of a grumble-bum than I already am about it.

But it is a lovely little evening out in Canberra tonight. Carl Orff and Trio Apoplectic have made me happy. And so on I go… plunging wildly (well, maybe earnestly is a better word) into the middle of the beginning of this new life!

11 May 2008
My office @ ANU
Acton, ACT

I’ve seen a lot of movies in the past few weeks – thanks to the ANU Film Group, which you may recall required only a $60 membership fee and screens 4-6 movies each week in a large theatre (full screen). Recent films I’ve seen:

Forbidden Lies – documentary about woman who wrote book on honor killing in Palestine and was criticized for making it up
3:10 to Yuma – struggling farmer agrees to escort prisoner to train for money
Atonement - childhood lie ruins life for two lovers in WWII
Elizabeth, The Golden Age – vignette of Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh at time of war with Spain
The Darjeeling Limited – three brothers on pilgrimage across India
Waitress – woman in bad marriage finds courage to leave after baby
Kamikaze Taxi – junior Yazuka ganster engages immigrant taxi driver in revenge
Control – life and death of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division
24 Hour Party People – emergence of Manchester, England as musical hot spot through eyes of Tony Wilson, driving force behind Joy Division, Happy Mondays, record label Factory and nightclub Hacienda

Forbidden Lies
Oh man. If this film is available, you should rent it. You will find yourself questioning everything about how you make judgments about people. She keeps pulling the rug out from under you, over and over again. I thought that Travis Cragg’s review for the ANU Film Group was very good. It got me to see a movie I might otherwise have overlooked:

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Last year wasn’t the best for Australian films. There were plenty of good ones, but there was only one movie that really stood out as excellent… and that was Forbidden Lie$.

This documentary profiles Norma Khouri, best-selling author of the book Forbidden Love, an account of the murder of a Muslim woman by her family, an “honour killing”. The events in the book, and the interviews with Khouri, shock us in that something this horrible could have happened. But then the filmmaker, Anna Broinowski, digs a little deeper into the story…

This is one of those rare documentaries that grips you from beginning to end. Khouri is a character we have all encountered in life – she is so convincing that you don’t know when she is lying and when she is not. My opinion swayed so many times, I was totally befuddled towards the end!

The film involves interviews with reporters who first doubted her story, as well as other interesting viewpoints. There is also a trip to Jordan, where Khouri never fails to amaze with her revelations.

Forbidden Lie$ won most of the Best Australian Documentary awards on offer last year, and I think it would also do well at the Oscars if submitted. Don’t miss the chance to meet this fascinating woman!
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3:10 to Yuma
I liked this movie much more than I expected to. Much more. I liked Russell Crowe in spite of myself. Same for Christian Bale. The story sucked me in and even though some of the plot was predictable, it was stylishly done such that the predictability of an event never got the upper hand. The only real problem I had was with the fact that Ben Wade got caught in the first place. I found that highly unbelievable given his character, but if you can suspend your disbelief about that, the rest is thoroughly enjoyable – the way I imagine Westerns really ought to be.

Atonement
The reviews said it was great. I thought it was good. Worth renting, considering all the crap that’s out there. But I think my lack of enthusiasm has more to do with my experience of Keira Knightley and James McAvoy than the rest of the movie (story, script, sets, costumes – the latter of which were great). I think two different actors might have made this movie more believable and enjoyable for me.

Elizabeth, The Golden Age
I love Cate Blanchett. I love richly designed period sets and costumes. This movie was an absolute treat for me. I wouldn’t have cared what the plot was. If I’m forced to consider it, I have to say that the plot was probably the weaker parts of the film. The acting (with the scripts they had) was terrific by all parties (Geoffrey Rush is always a pleasure), but I didn’t think the story was particularly strong enough to provide the appropriate backdrop/motivation for a hypothetical journey into the mind and soul of Elizabeth. Nevertheless, Cate carried it. She’d make you believe anything. You believe she’s Elizabeth. There is absolutely no doubt in your mind that this is the way Elizabeth thought and smiled and controlled and laughed and dressed. I am not convinced that Elizabeth would have let her emotions go quite so recklessly as the writers have her do at one point. But Cate makes you believe those emotions. And all of that dressed in some of the most sumptious clothing – delicious. Oh, and Clive Owen is easy on the eyes, which doesn’t hurt either.

The Darjeeling Limited
I can’t even begin to describe how/why I love this movie so much. If you didn’t like it, or were unmoved, then no amount of description on my part is ever going to help you understand me or the movie any better. First, let me quote the review/description written by Dallas Stow for the ANU Film Group program guide (http://www.anufg.org.au/filminfo/20080503.html):

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First and foremost, this is a road movie. Three guys go on a journey of self-discovery, some stuff happens along the way (individually and collectively), a seminal moment is reached and we all go on our way feeling a little upbeat.

Except this is Wes Anderson territory, so the three guys are the three very different Whitman brothers who have little to do with each other, and have not talked since their father’s funeral a year ago. They are on a train. Which is in India. As is their mother, who is a nun.

The older brother Francis (Wilson) has organised this journey as a way of getting the brothers back together to achieve self-realisation. However, his sharp, snappy older brother ways grate on the others. Middle brother Peter (Brody) has an attachment to his father’s personal things and youngest brother Jack (Schwartzman) is just plain disorientated in life.

It takes us a while to realise why they are the way they are, and to forgive them for being that way.

Like all good road movies, the central characters learn a bit about themselves and the others and dump some personal baggage to achieve self-realisation. But, unlike other road movies, it makes us want to go out, buy the great soundtrack and travel by train across India.

Wes’s family insights, whimsical touches, quirky humour and the great photography make this movie a gem.

Did I mention the snake?
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Now I’ll type up the notes I scribbled on a piece of paper after the film:

*************
I can tell right now that it’s probably going to be impossible to explain why, but I totally loved that movie – every single bit of it. The characters, the dialogue, the story, the costumes, the music, the sets, the landscapes, the little movie within a movie, the non-sequiturs, the slow-motion, the running gags, the astoundingly accurate family relations dramatizations, the actors. I just don’t even know what to say except that I’m just totally grinning and I can’t stop. I really can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a movie as much.

I almost don’t want to watch the next movie because it has the potential of spoiling this fantastic mood I’m in. I haven’t been this genuinely amused… I can’t even remember. What was it? Man. If I could write books or movies like that – books that make me feel like I feel right now. I’m just laughing. Still laughing. Out loud. It’s like the whole thing was an inside joke.

I want to find all the people who love this movie like I do. I’m just sitting here, at the back of the theatre, just laughing to myself. Seriously, uncontrived, uncontrollable laughing. I’m still laughing, but this is no joke. I need to get the script, the soundtrack, and find out how they made this movie. I need to own this.
*************

So, there you have it.

Waitress
If you’ve ever been trapped in a horrible marriage/relationship, you might identify and the final liberation may resonate, but its done so very, very simply and predictably it’s not really worth watching. Andy Griffith’s brief and one-dimensional cameo is the best part. I’m quite sure that two months from now I will have completely forgotten that I ever saw this movie.

Kamikaze Taxi
An action film, a road movie, and a bit of a redemption and social commentary. Hard to be disappointed, unless you forget that this movie is over ten years old. I enjoyed the characters, and the action (some shoot-outs quite creatively done – reminiscent of how impressed I felt when I first saw The Killer and The Replacement Killers), and the story. Every once in a while it got a little trite, but it pulled itself back with stylish action, engaging characters, refreshing humor, or another shift in gears. Apparently the DVD is not available in Australia. Don’t know about elsewhere.

Control
If you have ever had any prolonged periods of existential confusion where your life seemed to have taken off without you and you’d lost (or perhaps never quite had) the reins, be forewarned. You will be reminded, perhaps in a visceral way, of what that felt like. It was almost therapeutic to re-live those wretched emotions in a way that enabled me to safely return them to their box at the end, without the familiar and dreaded fear that they might be resurfacing again. This is not meant to depress, but to highlight the strength of the presentation as deeply believable.

On a completely separate subject it was great to watch and hear the music of my early youth. I thought the actors did rather well performing a number of the Joy Division tunes themselves.

One of the things I enjoy about watching lots of movies in a concentrated period of time, is the frequent occurrence of resonant events – similar plots lines or dialogue or music or actors that show up in more than one of them. This past week it was Samantha Morton who grabbed the spotlight, with her contrasting roles as Mary Queen of Scots in Elizabeth, The Golden Age and then here as the young, working class, abandoned housewife. I wasn’t entirely convinced of her gravitas in Mary Queen of Scots, but she did well enough. She was outstanding here – particularly in her barely contained distress on the front steps after her confrontation of Ian on his infidelity. Sitting on the steps in the dark, looking furtively up and down the street in desperate disbelief. Searching for some way to make sense of what is happening and figure out what she should do in the very next moment. Too stunned to even cry. Most of us have been there at some point, I know I have, and she captured that feeling with such authenticity I myself felt stunned.

24 Hour Party People
This followed Control in a double bill. And what a night it was – a fascinating experience to see two different takes on the same piece of history (Joy Division), with different actors and different events highlighted and dramatized in slightly different ways. But Joy Division’s piece of Tony Wilson’s story of the rise and fall of the music scene in Manchester was only the beginning. The way the movie was framed, by Tony hosting and starring and narrating a pseudo documentary of his own life, was quite amusing. If new wave music played anything more than a background role in your life in the 80s, you’ll find something of interest in this film. But it is a very “noughty” production, with a camera that never sits still and strobe-scribble graphics slapped everywhere for the “short-of-attention” crowd. While many documentaries have been made of the development of various music scenes – this highly-dramatized version of mostly true events left me believing that I had a feel for the evolution of the Manchester scene. Like the proverb about the frog in the pot (if you throw a frog in boiling water he’ll leap out, if you put the frog in cold water and boil it slowly he’ll stay in and become supper), by the time I arrived at the closing of the Hacienda in 1997 (fifteen years after its opening and nearly 20 years after the start of the movie), I understood, in a way that catalogues of timelines of bands and scenes never gave me, a real feeling of how music evolved.

I enjoyed watching the double bill (Control & 24 Hour Party People), but it may be a bit of a time commitment for some people. However, if the warnings I gave in the Control review resonated with you, you might want to watch these back to back and go to bed with a smile on your face.

And for tonight:
Definitely, Maybe - chick flick about history of three romantic relationships of one guy as told to his 10 year old daughter; and
Charlie Wilson’s War – financing of Afghan rebels against Soviets

Anticipated reviews: predictable but reasonably entertaining (i.e., no great insight or superlative emotional experience expected). I’ll let you know.

11 May 2008
My office @ ANU
Acton, ACT

Apologies for the gap in posts. I haven’t been doing anything spectacularly Australian in the past 10 days. Yesterday was a day-long rehearsal for Carmina Burana. I’ve written about that before, but I will say that it cracks me up that the first piece I’m singing after years of silence is essentially a bawdy one. Those of you who know me well know that I’m a bit of a prude (not particularly fond of explicit descriptions or dramatizations of sexuality in my entertainment). For those of you that don’t know, Carmina Burana includes a healthy selection of R-rated poems (or at least PG-13) amidst the vast collection written by a trio of Bavarian monks in about 1230 AD. Our conductor yesterday was saying that one production he was involved in included a boys choir and the conductor couldn’t actually tell them what some of the words really meant and had to make something up. I won’t recite them all here, but you can read the translations if you so desire. There are some poetic poems, but others are quite base, and there’s a good drinking song as well. There is one odd one, however, that I will quote in its entirety (and which some of you might recall as the wailing, twisted tenor solo):

12. Cignus ustus cantat (The Roast Swan)

(Tenor)
Olim lacus colueram (Once I lived on lakes),
Olim pulchur extiteram (once I looked beautiful),
Dum cignus ego fueram (when I was a swan).

(Male chorus)
Miser, Miser! (Misery me!)
Modo niger (now black)
Et ustus fortiter! (and roasting fiercely!)

(Tenor)
Girat, regirat garcifer (The servant is turning me on the spit)
Me rogus urit fortiter (I am burning fiercely on the pyre)
Propinat me nunc dapifer (the steward now serves me up).

(Male chorus)
Miser, Miser! (Misery me!)
Modo niger (now black)
Et ustus fortiter! (and roasting fiercely!)

(Tenor)
Nunc in scutella iaceo (Now I lie on a plate)
Et volitar nequeo (and cannot fly anymore)
Dentes frendentes video (I see bared teeth)

(Male chorus)
Miser, Miser! (Misery me!)
Modo niger (now black)
Et ustus fortiter! (and roasting fiercely!)

This woeful lament of the roasted swan is followed by a couple of drinking songs (during which I assume the poor swan is consumed) and then, predictably, by further descent into ever more lascivious and lust-filled poetics described as “cour d’amours” (songs of love). Ah those crazy 13th century monks…