Welcome to No Bull Film Reviews

G’Day Possums,

I am officially going to pull my finger out and start sharing some no bull film reviews with you, especially as I’ve seen some great films lately, take generally inconsequential interest in film reviews, and do not profess to that which you already know – these NBFRs are just one more opinion in a universe of opinions and impressions.

This will include films I truly like, and others I want to pick a bone with.  If they help you decide whether or not you would like to watch the films at the pictures, or on DVD, just remember that I will probably not be as rude online about the ones I’m annoyed with as I would be if we were chatting face to face, and utterly effusive about the ones I really like:  either of which may be of generally inconsequential interest to you as a film audience member.

But deep down, I have always enjoyed going to the pictures, and hope that you do too.

x

Femme/Feminine Essentials – An Abbreviated Lissssssst

Femme/Feminine Essentials:  what exactly are they?  And why do they matter?

I first heard of  ”feminine essentials” from a work colleague some years ago.  This terminology was a world away from ”women’s things,” the shy termininology I muttered at the blushing age of fifteen on a rural towns high school orchestra tour, to the elderly male bus driver who demanded to know my reason for wanting to get back onto the locked bus when everyone else was inside the hall tuning up.  Despite having a friend with me, I couldn’t bear to state the bleedin’ obvious.

Now I see that the term ‘feminine essentials’ has a broader application. 

As a member of the Femerati, with a doubtless biased opine-yon, I have decided to set sail (without help from real sailors) upon a M.O.G.I. (no, not a cat, rather a Mission of Great Importance) which explores the feminine-gendered kind.  Obviously it’s of some small concern that the ‘femme’ reference may go down a G.G.R. (Grossly Girly Route), so I’ve boiled it down:

To Discover: What Are the Top 100 Feminine Essentials?  And why.

Rules, Disclaimers, and Other Procrastivatory[sic] Bollux: the following is not an experiment in E.S. (Exact Science).  Probably because I don’t possess a white coat.  True, it has an objective (reverting to high school biology here, rather than the more dramatic GOAL which has been seconded by motivational types), and something of Methodology,  and it is possible that a conclusion or set of conclusions may be drawn from Evemadence[sic]… ooh, just notice a girly inscrimination[sic] there.

I invite you to think outside social stereotypes.  So please avoid the following, unless you can offer a particularly feminist reading upon your selection:

1. Shopping
2. Cosmetic surgery (for purely vain concerns of perfectly fine-looking persons)
3. Other socio-gendered crap

This experiment is not for the fainthearted, the lazy, or the J.I.I.T.R.T.R.G.B. (Just in It To Read The Good Bits).  Au contraire, I offer you, the reader, the marvellous opportunity to contribute your own wild and fabulous examples of evidence which I will publish after a very long time into the future. 

And when the list of Feminine Essentials Reaches 100.

Thus, to begin with, a suggestion of my own, which one hopes you shall find charming and entrancing.

FEMMESENTIALS  – An Abbreviated Lisssssst

1. Firm Foundation Garments: what a Berlei-ooody load of gender-political bollocks.  Did Boadicea wear a brassiere?  Whilst cooking upon a brazier?  In brazen times of old…

The greatest women in history were very often triumphant with the firm foundations of strength of character, bbbbraaaaains, and spunk.  That’s Australian for good looking, and for guts.  Boadicea had better things to do than hitch her herself into an iron cage before hoisting herself upon her trusty steed.  Did Boadicea’s horse wear a bra?  No. And I’m sure that Napoleon’s didn’t bother either.

What say you are feminine essentials?  And why?

She moves in mysterious ways…

She moves in mysterious ways.

Best Blogs in Goddess Worship

Thank you.

Kanye Bugger off West and Never Come Back?

To be honest, despite being a feminist, I don’t tend to read many feminist blogs, and I think that Naomi Wolf needs to take a ride in the real world.

But this post by Melinda Tankard Reist in The Punch got my goat this morning.  And it’s not hard to see what got hers.    Kanye West presenting sexually objectifying, degrading and torturous depictions of women in his latest video clip, Monster: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/counterpunch-women-arent-playthings-slaves-and-bitches/.

If she hasn’t already, I think Naomi Wolf will shit herself with feminist delight when she sees West’s clip: something to really get her critical teeth into.  And why not?

Frankly, I am so repulsed by the image, first, of a woman hanging dead in front of Kanye West seated on a throne, that I don’t want to watch the video clip.   I can’t stand graphic horror.  Maybe I should**, if I am to comment with the ‘authority’ of anything beyond secondhand information and the ensuing Reist blog post debate amongst her readers, some of whom mention the satirical perspective which West takes in his narrative.  Maybe I should, to discern for myself whether the video clip and lyrics really are a satirical commentary upon shallow women who use their wiles to garner the attention of rich men, such as West, and prostitute themselves for the connections with benefits.

However, if I wish to read about shallow women, I can stick my nose inside WHO Magazine any day of the week, or watch Keeping Up With the Kakas.

There is nothing wrong with West using satire to critique and challenge women who sell out such traditional values as not giving head jobs to music industry power knobs, and spilling their milkshake around the yard on missions of self-aggrandisement. If that was his intention.  But when he catches up with the women in his family, and they ask,  ‘What have you been working on lately?’ what is he going to say?  What is he going to say to every woman and girl whom he loves and respects, about a video clip which muddies a purportedly satirical message about women and self-respect, against visual footage of not only overt female sexual objectification, but women being tortured and decapitated?

Some might say that the joke is on the viewer.  Here is West using the merest smearing of ironic critique to get away with sexually and brutally objectifying women for his pleasure in a video clip.  One which could be seen by every woman and girl whom he loves and respects… as well as all of those whom he doesn’t.

Satis, I say.  Enough satire from you, West.   Perhaps in your next video clip, you  could even up the score by filming yourself  wearing lots of gold chains with money symbols, and having a wank in front of a mirror.  Or consider the recent rape  and beating of 60 Minutes journalist Lara Logan in Egypt’s Tahir Square, the online report of which brought tears to my eyes this morning, right before I read about a very muddy message about women, men, and self-respect.

**17/02/2011   Edited to Say:  Today I bit the bullet and watched the Monster. It did indeed ”cross tha line” (West). 

Sunshine and All that Stuff

Sunshine and all that stuff.

You know, I think I am going to make this a category all of its special own.

Currently I am sitting in my cold bedroom, instead of the warm, sun-filled lounge room.  And eating cold rolled oats and linseeds.

Argh, it’s been a little chilly in Sydney of late.  Of late what?  Library books.  Oh don’t get me started, I’ll go nuts-a-loo writing all sorts of stream-of-consciousness and metaphor-raising floosziebiloolio stuff.  And making up words.

This is the sunshine blog.

This morning I stood in front of my kitchen window, like Rapunzel at her garret – er, tower bedroom, waiting for that slack-arsed prince to stop fucking his horse and rescue her.  What is it with princes on horseback?  Can’t they walk?  Geez.  Poor bloody horses.  A lardy-arsed prince AND a suit of armour, not to mention saddle and a belly full of primeval mediaeval oats.

Back to sunshine.  So, standing in front of my window, thinking about a telephone call I had to make about an opportunity that I believe is there, and slightly psyching myself up, and embracing the sun, curiously enough, at the base of my belly.  Exactly where a girl needs it when she wants to achieve something professionally.

A good blast of sun right in the base chakra, but around the front, because who the hell would turn their back on all that beautiful sunshine?

I’m going to deliberately finish – in the middle – by saying that the only reason Rapunzel knew her prince was coming is because she was facing OUT the window, sunshine of my miiiiind (some sixties pop song in my head I think, and if not, must be the seventies, must look up all sunshine songs).

Tricked you.  I didn’t finish in the middle.  See what happens when one edits oneself before the outpouring of minor creativity has concluded its merry swish through ones mind, behind the beads, the eyes, the Rapunzellian eyes of the soul?

So I was grateful for that sunshine.  And thanked the Sun.  And my ancestors.  And I felt good, and mission simplified, the right message coming through to me, as to WHY I should share in that opportunity.  Then I thought about lots of other stuff which was highly distracting, irrelevant, and slightly negative but constructively negative.  Then I got back into the sunshine state of mind.  No, not Queensland.  It’s not always about Queensland you know.

But you know, I already knew last night – or the wee whoooours of this morning – what my method for tackling the opportunity mission would be, et-sunny=-cetera.

I love the sun.  And right now, I am going to finish my rolled oats, and get ready for work.  Between the train and I is about three quarters of a kilometre of sunshine.  I shall embrace it through my sleeves, my stockings, my sunshiny spirit.

Love and Blessings (Sunny Blessings) to you, Sunshine, dear Sunshine.xxx

swayed…..suede

Back in first year uni, I thought suede was what Desert Boot uppers were made of.  I didn’t know it was a band too.

What was this ‘alternative’ music?  Alternative to what?  All I knew was the Top Forty, and listening to Friday Night Request Line.  I wasn’t that many years removed from a spiral perm and Roxette.   ‘She’s Got the Look’ wasn’t, I suppose now, that much different from Suede’s ‘She’s in Fashion.

It’s just that I was never in fashion.

I used to go blank on my city friends sometimes.  They never knew how desperately uncool I was.  Or perhaps they did and were too nice to tell me.

After all, one day when I wasn’t wearing a flanno (which I took to wearing out of homesickness, and ironically, never wore them so much as in the Big Smoke), I put on my best jumper and ribbon to ask out this nice older boy in my history tute, just before we went into a lecture.

He was so desperate to get out of going with me to a party that he actually went out and busted his leg playing soccer.  The full plaster cast and amnesia-about-being-asked-out combo.  Total blank on Monday after the game.  I was too shy to ask if he was still interested.  Not that I was selfish, but you know, it took a lot of being psyched up by the family I boarded with, and picking the right jumper and ribbon…

I stood there down the hill a bit from the history lecture hall, while one of my friends went on about some English band, Ride.  I should have known what that was about.  I mean, I couldn’t even sit on a horse long enough after it oninto a canter without trying to remember the stunt roll Mum told me about when I was a kid.  I knew enough about horses to know about a band called Ride.  Surely.  Yeah but nooooo, to paraphrase e of the great thinkers ofthe twenty-first century, Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard.

My friend enthused, her beautiful long dark hair and long skirt standing across from me, as she and our other friend gabbed on.  I stood there and realised that I had been left out of the cultural loop.

Where did you find this music?  Why had I never heard of it before?  What universe had I existed in?  I would never catch up.  I didn’t even especially like the Chili Peppers.

Sure I went to the Bar on the Hill on the occasional Thursday nights, and saw these great new Aussie bands play, but I didn’t collect music, and Triple J was new.  To me.  Not to the rest of the planet.  On the East coast, near the sea, where dreams are made in blue and green waves, not red ant hills.

Although I had not been in a dream world, not lived in one for nineteen years, that moment, standing on the hill at uni, felt as if I were coming out of one.  Not a sleep dream.  And I don’t even mean it wholly metaphorically.  I didn’t say anything.

Anyway, my friends knew that I was a country bumpkin from Broken Hill, but they never knew that it was a one FM radio station town, a station that I listened to sometimes on the wireless .   You know, back when a wireless was a wireless radio, and not something sticking out of the crack of a pair of skinny jeans worn by an arseless twat who has marginally more hair on his legs than I currently sport beneath my arms.  Well, up at the top of my arms and under a bit in a lovely warm hollow, and, if you wanted me to wave to you across the street, would stop traffic.  That’s how much I need to shave my underarms.  Who the hell invented that stuff?  Men.  So they could sell razors.  Bastards.

What is it with the pits?  They just grow so damned fast.  A girl doesn’t have time to daydream, procrastinate, create, and shave all in the one day.  No, she just gets a surprise in the shower when she washes her hair.  This is so taking me back to that dose of chicken pox I had when I was nineteen.  Man (pun intended), I could not shave under there for three months in case I knocked a pox off.

But you don’t want to know about my teen pox episode.  Well, you do, but I’ll save that for another post.

Anyway, so, I have been listening to Suede lately, on Youtoot, um, YouTubaclosis, no, YouTube.  It’s so… poppy, that may be it was never alternative.  Just wanted to see what all the fuss was about, even though, by now, I’ve heard them often enough.

Anyway, the beautiful thing is that my gang of uni friends and I may be grown up now, but I have a feeling that we all still love music.

And I suppose I know what the alternative is.

When European Cinema Doesn’t Shine

I love going to the pictures. 

The only time I haven’t enjoyed the cinematic experience is the time a few years ago I convinced a couple of friends to see this Italian family draaaaaama where the characters did nothing but bitch, and fuck, and argue for the film’s duration. 

It was exhausting to listen to, exhausting to watch, and no amount of cute Italian hand gestures could make up for the fact that this film was exhausting to listen to and exhausting to watch.

For the first time in my personal cinema-going history, there was no choc top from heaven that could have stopped me from walking out.  And I never walk out of a film.  So I sat there, and hoped my friends wouldn’t say anything awful to me afterward.  Of course, when we walked out into the sunshine of Oxford St, I apologised for inviting them to see it.  This is something which I would never dream of doing.  Other people whinge and whine about films, but I love going to the pictures.

As for building the drama, the story up on screen couldn’t flatline any further in terms of dramatic dynamics.  In fact, if it had flatlined, I would not have noticed it.  It was a constant parade of four seasons in one emotional day.  And so much anger (the characters’, not mine).

One of the things screenwriter Billy Marshall Stoneking has to say about drama (and he has plenty to say) is that drama has to build and go somewhere.  It has to do something. I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting his writing on Dramatic Grammar:

A story’s power is proportional to its effectiveness in building and releasing energy in ways that are fresh, unexpected and thoroughly credible. 

When a story stops building energy, or is unable to effectively release it, the energy dissipates, which is another way of saying the story becomes undramatic.

You can join Billy on his hunt for truly dramatic storytelling at http://www.wheresthedrama.com.

Highly recommended if I do speak from experience.

Should I tell you the name of this film that altered my perception of cinema-going for all eternity?  No.  I have forgotten the name, and to be honest, I feel a bit mean slagging off the work of other artists.

But it was a growing experience.  I did learn something of storytelling value that afternoon.  It was naive of me to expect that a European film might, by sheer virtue of its being a European film, automatically provide a glowing cinematic experience.   It doesn’t mean diddly squat.

That’s the same as assuming that Australian films are broadly quirky, undramatic, or filled with horror.

Anyway, enjoy your choc tops, possums.

Ina room of heroine ona broomofheroin. Censorship.

Ina room of heroine ona broomofheroin.

Just jokes.

Fingers got away with me. I meant to write ….a broomof heroine.

See how we censor ourselves?  Edit.   I could also have written ….abroomofheron.  I see herons above a damn.  I mean, a dam.  Truly, I did.  And they were beautiful.  As was the heat of the day.

Freedom of expression is sometimes the first step toward censorship.

Without freedom of expression, censorship would have no legs,no feet, no fools to parlay.

In parlour games?

Parle vous sincere?

Even in this post, this small piece of writing,  I find that with every fling of the fingers (or fling of fingers)on the keyboard, I delete some letter, some word, exchange it for another.  I burst,upon occasion, with inspiration.  No, not burst.  But burgeon (please excuse my breaking my rule of despising nouns abused as verbs) with thoughts, slings and frings of words, ideas, pictures, visions, and they SHOULD come out on paper, but I don’t always put them to account on paper.

Sometimes, it is the vision of the words, not only (initial idea: ‘nor only’) the meaning coming after, the object of the vision, the impression, the fancy, that …. see, I’ve just ditched a few words in a few seconds – compel me to put them down.

Let’s not get started (first idea: ‘me started’  oh no so egotistical exclamation mark had I a key that was not broken)  – now that I have censored those fleeting words, I have forgotten what the original idea of this sentence was.

Conclusion:

Censorship: is often the destructive twin of expression.  Censorship is like an octopus that wraps itself around the utterance, an utterance, and swallows it and shits it out in some makeshift parody of creativity, of free-flowing ideas.

Censorship is: vision stuffed in a box and booted into a black abyss toward a billabong across a paddock which I remember and you do not, but if I were not inclined to go and put the kettle on, I might take the time to tell you about.

Censorship: wastes time.

Censorship:  You decide.

I am inspired.

And question where to begin.

Putting it on paper.

You decide what I mean by the iteration of those last two sentences.