Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
The Sweet Hereafter
"It turns to streaming piss."
(Dir. Atom Egoyan) (1997) The school bus has gone badly off piste in a town that looks (and acts) like South Park. Whilst a close-knit (at times, a little too close-knit – adultery and, disturbingly, incest seems de rigueur) community mourns the lost children, a troubled ambulance-chaser (Ian Holm) moves in. This intense and rich movie features superb performances and has a great weird atmosphere. [Trivia note: Director Egoyan is a big fan of The Homecoming, that AFI rendering of hijinks within a bogan family. Apart from Ian Holm, who is sensational in Atom’s film, TVC does not agree. Respectfully, filmmakers…
Continue Reading →The Evil Plan
(image by W. Endicott & Co.)
“You befriend a number of unfortunates, indigent, alone, abandoned and unhappy. The sheep of this misbegotten flock need be old enough to have forever lost their zest but too young to carry with them an official record of mental illness, drug dependence, tendency towards violence, or history of self-harm. “You take life insurance upon each of them. You foster in them a feeling of self-worth and joy. This achieved by the simple expedients of spending time, listening, taking seriously, showing some respect. The purchase of small presents, mere tokens, may be involved. “You have them execute their last wills and…
Continue Reading →Damned Whores and God’s Police
Black-eyed Sue and Sweet Poll say goodbye (by Robert Sayers)
(by Anne Summers) (1975) (updated 1994, to 2000s and beyond) The title is a bit of a howler, for it derives from a statement attributed to someone in partial error. But it is still a great title, and it synthesizes the point of the book, which is to reveal and detail how the bifurcation, by colonial authority, of early Australian females into saints and tramps, has formed the nation’s bedrock and permeated the social fabric ever since. This is a difficult case to make. For instance, such ‘types’ are considered somewhat one-dimensionally cartoonish now. And wouldn’t the outlook change with the development of a free…
Continue Reading →Hannah Gadsby
Hannah in 'The NGV Story' (ABC) considers the work of Mueck
(Adelaide Fringe Festival, Garden of Unearthly delights, 28 February 2016) It’s the Fringe and you gotta go to something, unless you’re saving those pennies for the stock car race Adelaide puts on to insinuate that it hosts great races and makes great cars (implications no longer true, if they ever were). The Varnished Culture naturally plumped for Hannah, art historian and well known actress and comic. She tends to steer clear of gynie jokes and deploy real wit, a rather radical departure. She is also excellent in a sweet ABC show, Please Like Me. We lined up (with our pre-paid tickets)…
Continue Reading →Nyugalom
"The Chasseur in the Forest", Caspar David Friedrich, 1814 (detail)
[A lunatic from the past, Bela Kiss, living in conditions of relative tranquility (in Hungarian, “Nyugalom“), made recordings of his ravings in the first-person mode obtaining from time immemorial. These have been transcribed and lovingly italicized by a team of scholars with rather too much affection for the source. The editor has taken the liberty of suggesting that the ensuing statements in the manuscript smack of self-serving apologia, akin to the homilies obtaining in the forwards of most modern three-volume biographies, to the effect that guessing, decontextualizing, moralizing and or fiction are necessary in order to render an antique subject…
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