Monthly Archives: February 2014

February 05

About Schmidt – Alexander Payne and the Odyessy of the anti hero. (Film Review)

There are many images in Alexander Payne’s films that stick with his audiences, but it has to be admitted that Kathy Bates’ outrageously sexy BBW nudity is one of the most thrilling, being one of the most audacious and confronting acts of unashamed sexual drive in the history of American cinema, and earning that actress […]

February 04

Dallas Buyers Club – Jean-Marc Vallée asks how should crises affect a system? (Film review)

There are no spoilers in this review. If Dallas Buyers Club succeeds at anything (besides Matthew McConaughey teriff performance) it reveals the devastating impact, not necessarily of prejudice, but the first worlds astounding inability to act when a true crises hits. The FDA (in this country it is the TGA – Therapeutic Goods Administration), whether […]

February 04

Chair – Simon James Phillips sits in a room. (Music Review)

Chair by Simon James Phillips is available through Room 40 When Simon James Phillips fills the cathedral ceilings with his sonorous repetitions, the act of creation forces the sound to live, as a changing formulating thing, obeying certain laws of mathematics and phenomenology, and at the same time building on itself, a musical repetition being […]

February 04

Election – Alexander Payne finds his stride. (Film Review)

Riding on the success of Citizen Ruth, the writing team of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, and the film making success of director Alexander Payne, editor Kevin Trent and cinematographer James Glennon continues three years later with the arrival of the great film, Election, arguably both teams best work, most certainly one of Alexander Payne’s […]

February 03

Compás – Jules Faife creates out of what he left behind. (Music Review)

When an artist, fresh and new to humanity, is learning a craft, they make their way in the world on a kind of Odyssey to self, the search directed outward is in order to find a path inside, to spiral down to that place uniquely theirs, not reactionary, not admonishing, but fully expressed, the word, […]

February 03

R.I.P Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It seems inappropriate to watch, think about, or speak of films and film making on the day Philip Seymour Hoffman dies of a drug overdose. Grief can appear at it’s cheapest when wrapped in the tinny platitudes of an irrational outpouring for a person never known, never met and no more special than the hundreds of […]

February 03

Citizen Ruth – Alexander Payne and the trouble with women. (Film Review)

As a stand alone, Citizen Ruth has some interesting things to say about the abortion debate and, as Payne himself repeatedly assures, the problems of zealotry and extremism, in its depiction of the ways that ideology can cloud judgement and strangely end up committing the moral crimes it is trying to ensure against, but overall […]

February 01

Inside Llewyn Davis – A Coen story perfectly told. (Film Review)

When one is determined to say nothing about the Academy Awards, until subsequent years of course, it is a promise of a sacred type born of a determination in this particularl film commentator/reviewer, to not further saturate an already bloated marketplace with my completely useless predictions or opinions about what the primary awards  white Anglo […]

February 01

Legend! Slips Cordon: A Safe Pair of Hands – history re-written by the cheeful rabble. (Theatre review)

Legend! ‘Slips’ Cordon – A safe pair of hands The Old Fitzroy Theatre Decorum in association with The Sydney Independent Theatre Company Season from 28 Jan – 15 Feb “(Australian) Citizens know that some among them will have more power and money than others… But according to the unspoken national ethos, no Australian is permitted […]