Rampage at Port Arthur
28 April 1996 TVC has friends who were honeymooning in Tasmania on the above date. That morning, they had a lovers’ tiff: she wanted to go to Port Arthur, the pretty but desolate and spine-tingling remnants of early convict settlement, vividly recounted in Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (although that is set elsewhere in Tasmania). Her beau, however, thought they should take advantage of the mild weather to climb picturesque Cradle Mountain, and his argument prevailed. It’s the kind of argument where you can never say ‘I told you so.’ For that day, a young (28 year old), well-to-do,…
Continue Reading →Sunday Too Far Away
(Dir. Ken Hannam) (1975) The life of the shearer is brilliantly romanticised here (like Shane romanticised the lone gunslinger) but such a life is a freaking hard one, nevertheless. This film celebrates, starkly and poetically, an almost lost aspect of Australia. Shearing was largely non-unionised, or rather, disorganised, more a matter of individual contract, where sheer (pardon the pun) talent got you the dough. Shearers were romantic as cowboys, individual as anchorites and hard as contract killers. The most number of sheep shorn (with standard shears) made you the Ringer. The Ringer was the King of the Sheds. Trying too hard hurt the sheep, by cutting them up. Cutting corners meant (in an early nod to animal rights) that…
Continue Reading →Killer Quentin Quotes
Maybe he’s a better writer than director? We have reviewed Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs and seen more than a handful of others, but the Man does have a certain je ne sais quoi with a movie line.Here’s what we mean: “Hamburgers! The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.” [Pulp Fiction] “Check out the big brain on Brad!” [Pulp Fiction] Bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) has no illusions: “I’m 56 years old. I can’t blame anybody for anything I do.” [Jackie Brown] Gangster Jules pays a call and delivers a message from God: “Ezekiel 25:17 – The path of the righteous man is beset on…
Continue Reading →The Lyin’, the Pitch, and the Allodoxaphobe
Tim Robbins listens to an uncomfortably realistic pitch in Robert Altman's "The Player"
I watched the 2016 Academy Award ceremony recently, that horde of virtue signallers, with their silly names, silly hair, silly clothes and sanctimony, barely able to read the teleprompters, and it occurred to me that here I am, beavering away in obscurity, when I could be writing award-winning scripts. I mean, I’ve not seen enough films to know what the people want, but I have sat through enough to know what they deserve. Since they’ve done Batman vs Superman, what about James Bond vs Obi-Wan Kenobi? So I’m sitting in one of those Potemkin cabins on the lot (of my mind), facing three illiterate…
Continue Reading →The Homecoming
"Who's on First?"
(Dir. Peter Hall) (1973) There’s nothing profound going on here but an overheated, nasty, portentous, claustrophobic, woman-hating, slashing saga of domestic squalor. Repulsive Dad (Paul Rogers, poster-boy for the “Big Book of Bad British Smiles”) and his ignoble brother Uncle Sam (Cyril Cusack) share their parent’s house (the type of upstairs-downstairs horror seen in Coronation Street – you can’t tell where the gutter stops) with Dad’s two younger sons, morally crippled Ian Holm and borderline retard Terence Rigby. Home comes accomplished son Teddy (Michael Jayston) with his glamourous bride, Ruth (Vivien Merchant). ‘Home’ here is Pinter’s version of post-boom England, and everyone from outside enters at their peril. Filmed in brown,…
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