Ulalume
Fly-blown to Emerald City
March 2015 The New South Welshmen-and-women complained about the autumnal ‘cold snap’ (the softies). Anyway, Sydney is exactly the reverse of Adelaide in being a sensational place in which to visit but challenging to live. The Mardi Gras and election nonsense sums it up: ultra conservative. They’re still doing the first (!) and in the (mandated) second, they are debating the privatisation of poles and wires (how September 10th). We arrive on a Friday and search for food on Circular Quay (for our U.S. friends, that’s pronounced ‘KWAY’, very loudly) – we meet Opera buddy Lindsay, for Faust. We see Germaine Greer at…
Continue Reading →Perish Vandals
Lazlo Toth (He's not Jesus)
Art vandals can expect no clemency TVC charges the following with crimes against art, and adopting the jurisprudence of Ignatius J Reilly (aka Zorro) from A Confederacy of Dunces, sentences them to be hanged by their undeveloped testicles till dead (or if dead, to plough their graves and build thereon a new Bedlam). In no particular order: 1. Lazlo Toth (who in 1972, aged 33, took a geological hammer to Michelangelo‘s Pietá, shouting “I am Jesus Christ – risen from the dead.”) Lou Reed sang in his song I Believe – “being sick is no excuse…”. 2. Islamic State (for the wilful…
Continue Reading →Hi Ho (Leaving Carthage)
Destruction of Gomorrah in deep waters (Pieter Schoubroeck, c. 16C)
TVC is off to Gomorrah (well, Sydney) tomorrer to apply some cultural varnish to its faded monolithic charms. So we are doing a random stock-take. 1. MoMa is having a retrospective of the films of Wim Wenders – the time is apparently ripe. Wim deserves a walk in Paradise’s verdant lane at least once for Wings of Desire (1987). 2. Guy Maron’s AAA Building in Canberra and the Bicentennial Conservatory in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens have both been heritage listed. The Conservatory is an exciting modern work, which has been described as looking like a flying saucer that has landed…
Continue Reading →Half Glass Beats Full
The full glass (The Ritz Bros. photographed by William P. Gottlieb)
In the wake of the banal, humour-free and self-aggrandizing gang-bang that is the Academy Awards, we are reminded of a scene from Tropic Thunder in which Ben Stiller, conversing with Robert Downey Jnr., regrets the failure of his dramatic film, Simple Jack. Stiller complained that “I did the work.” Downey points out the tactical error of going Full Glass instead of Half Glass, adding “Ask Sean Penn, 2001, I Am Sam. Remember? … Went home empty-handed.” Downey cited Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Peter Sellers in Being There as examples of acclaimed or Oscar-winning half…
Continue Reading →Oscars – the people aren’t right
Kevin Marc is as shocked as us at some of the Academy's choices...
It is timely, in this awards season, to recall that Aristotle suggested the three bad forms of governance were tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. With these matters in mind, let us roam at random over some of the choices (for best picture) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. To judge film awards, you presumably have to have clear criteria and then see everything. This is not feasible or even sensible. To make an appraisal, you have to be a ‘stakeholder’ in the proper sense of the word – in other words, be completely disinterested. This is not feasible or…
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