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 […]
Author Archives: lisathatcher
February
04
Dallas Buyers Club – Jean-Marc Vallée asks how should crises affect a system? (Film review)
posted by lisathatcher
February
04
Chair – Simon James Phillips sits in a room. (Music Review)
posted by lisathatcher
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)
posted by lisathatcher
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)
posted by lisathatcher
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.
posted by lisathatcher
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)
posted by lisathatcher
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)
posted by lisathatcher
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)
posted by lisathatcher
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 […]
January
30
Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom – Justin Chadwick’s comfortable confinement. (Film Review)
posted by lisathatcher
Having never made a bio-pic about a saint, I can only guess at the moral complexities waging war within the soul as pen is put to paper and story put to board. As far as I can tell, in post-modernity we’ve only really had three people who’ve reached the pop zenith of universally being claimed […]
January
27
30 Years ago today – Broadway Danny Rose (film review)
posted by lisathatcher
Slap bang in the middle of the Woody Wow Days, Broadway Danny Rose made in 1984 is couched between 1983’s Zelig and 1985’s The Purple Rose of Cairo. In ’86 he will make the brilliant Hannah and her Sisters, in ’89 he will make Crimes and Misdemeanours, in ’92 he’ll make my favourite Allen film Husbands […]
Lisa Thatcher 