Meat Brûlée

Wait for me bandwagon!

2011-10-10T19:02:00.001+11:00

When my dear departed Nokia XPressMusic died on me I wasn't sad, as it was terrible at managing music and only pretended to be able to surf the web. It was in fact the world's least smart smartphone. So now I have an iPhone. Version 4, one month before the 4S comes out. Jumping on bandwagons late is becoming a speciality.

So here is my first mobile blog post. Might be my last. Need to decide whether to leave it dormant.

Here's a photo of an amusing shop sign just to test the photo functionality.

FILM: The Apartment (1960)

2011-04-24T17:08:00.002+10:00

After careful consideration (10 minutes on a tram), I proclaim this film to be the best romantic comedy ever made. Written and directed by Billy Wilder, it stars Jack Lemmon as sickly C. C. Baxter, a nobody at work whose ambition for promotion leads him to lend out his city apartment to his managers. They use it to 'entertain' their mistresses. When one of these girls - Fran (Shirley Maclaine) - attempts suicide in the apartment, he is left to care for the girl, and romance blossoms. Their world is a cold, cruel place, a long way from from the world of those Doris Day comedies of the same era. The coldness gives an edge to some of the snappiest dialogue you'll ever hear. But essentially this is a film where you feel the warm glow of affection like an open fireplace in a very cold world. [10/10]

FILM: Cold Souls (2009)

2011-03-07T21:26:00.002+11:00

Paul Giamatti (of Sideways and American Splendour) plays Paul Giamatti having so much emotional difficulty getting into character for a production of Uncle Vanya that he decides to put his soul into storage. Literally. This is a world where a business (run by the brilliantly straight-faced David Strathairn) exists that extracts the human soul, puts it in cold storage and loans out other people's souls. Giamatti is disappointed to see that his own soul looks exactly like a chick pea. That exasperated hang-dog face of his gets a work out as he flies to Russia when his soul falls into the hands of black marketeers in the soul trade - Paul being the only actor on the books when a mobster's wife asks for the soul of Al Pacino to improve her soap opera acting. Cold Souls, directed by Sophie Barthes, has a Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman feel, but its less flashy, more subdued and deadpan, more philosophical. Though I prefer to think of it as an arthouse Total Recall. [7/10]

FILM: Chinatown (1974)

2011-03-06T14:09:00.002+11:00

Lets start at the end and work back. Chinatown has the unhappiest ending of any film I've ever seen. Film Noir is not a genre renowned for happily-ever-after, but the extent and manner in which evil triumphs over good is unexpected, devastating, and creepy, in a... well, in a Roman Polanski kind of way. Polanski directs Jack Nicholson in one his best performances, as private eye Jake Gittes in 1920s Los Angeles investigating a murder that reveals corruption around the growing city's water supply, and a terrible human tragedy underneath. Its slow-paced and beautiful. Faye Dunaway is perfect as a vulnerable, mature femme fatale and film director John Huston makes a very dominant, powerful villain. Te intelligent plot demands some attention and it all leads towards that incredible ending. [9/10]

FILM: Genova (2010)

2011-02-05T20:31:00.002+11:00

Colin Firth completes his Englishman in mourning double after A Single Man. This time he is father to two daughters who takes them to Italy after their mother dies. A sort of reverse Don't Look Now. The laneways of old Genova look menacing, and you always feel something truly awful is going to happen. The emotions are raw, and I wept as the youngest daughter woke screaming for her mum and Firth's face is wracked with pain as he holds her in the night. Director Michael Winterbottom steers it towards a dramatic but frighteningly plausible ending, and the film stays with you. [8/10]

Evil Angels / A Cry In The Dark (1988)

2011-02-04T20:37:00.005+11:00

This is the infamous true story of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, devout Christians whose baby daughter Azaria goes missing on a camping trip to Uluru, with Lindy insisting "the dingo took my baby" in what I now feel experienced enough to judge a very good Australian accent. The film does is make you think "if this is how it happened, how could Lindy possibly have been convicted of murder?" No body, other people around, no motive and a totally implausible accusation off decapitation with embroidery scissors. Yet convicted she was, largely on the back of a rabid press and gossip hungry public who loved the outlandish dingo story. The little scenes of random people spreading rumours and sharing their sudden dingo expertise is what makes this film feel so real. Chamberlain was released on appeal, but the sense of injustice remains.

Finally, I love films that change title in different countries for no good reason. The Australian (and New Zealand) release kept the title of the original book, Evil Angels, for reasons I can't fathom - who does it refer to? The dingo? The baby? The parents? The public? Everywhere else in the world went for A Cry In The Dark, which makes sense and has a poetic feel to it, but it could be about anything. [8/10]

FILM: Swingers (1996)

2011-02-03T20:31:00.002+11:00

Doug Liman's classic LA hipster film is still funny. The oh-so-skinny Vince Vaughan takes love-lorn John Favreau to bars and parties and Vegas baby! Both are perfect in this - one hyperactive, one glum puppy dog - both with great snappy dialogue. Plus it makes the tribes, rituals and trails of cars that make up LA nightlife look very cool. [10/10]

FILM: Bran Nue Dae (2009)

2011-02-01T20:50:00.002+11:00

An awful mess of a film. A musical with only one catchy song, and a comedy that looks relies on mugging to camera for its laughs instead of witty dialogue. There is plenty of energy in the production, but its all misdirected. The acting is ridiculously hammy (including Geoffrey Rush), the editing is all over the place, the characters are terrible stereotypes and the ending is jaw-droppingly implausible (though this at least is common to most musicals). Most disappointing is that this was directed by Rachael Perkins, who produced First Australians, one of the greatest television documentaries I've ever seen. [2/10]

FILM: Death at a Funeral (2007)

2011-01-30T12:51:00.000+11:00

A British farce that delivered a lot more laughs than I was expecting. A family funeral, bickering brothers, accidental hallucinogenic drug-taking, the secret gay midget lover of the deceased, an accidental murder, fun with hiding corpses, all very silly. But its all very funny due to subtle performances and one of the guest characters being written like a Larry David/Ricky Gervais character, which automatically raises the cringe level. [7/10]

FILM: The Social Network

2011-01-26T12:16:00.000+11:00

In 2003 Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook as a second year student at Harvard. This is a year when I was the entire social networking phenomenon saying "why should I start a MySpace page when no-one ever contacts me on Friendster?" In a few years Facebook had half a billion users and made Zuckerberg the world's youngest billionaire. But even with those facts you still wouldn't imagine that the story of a website would make great cinema. That it does is due mainly to a zingy script from Aaron Sorkin (West Wing); tight, exciting direction from David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac); and some wonderful performances. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as a fast-talking, socially-inept, self-centred, but insecure nerd. When the hilarious Harvard elite Winklevoss twins take him to court you're entirely on his side. But in the case brought by Eduardo, his former best friend and partner, you feel for the bond that was doomed the moment Napster founder Shaun Parker joined the party (Justin Timberlake in role that justifies his acting career). Its funny, touching and fascinating - adjectives I haven't used for anything I've seen on Facebook for at least three years. Now where's that Friendster password...? [9/10]

FILM: Good Hair (2010)

2011-01-25T20:30:00.001+11:00

Chris Rock's documentary is one of the funniest and most fascinating films I've seen in a long time. Alarmed by his young daughter's view that she didn't have "good hair", he explores the history, culture and economics of african-american hair. We see what 'relaxant' really is and how dangerous straightening hair is, how weaves went from secret to badge of honour, where the hair comes from (mainly India), and why a man must never, ever touch his woman's hair - or as Ice-T puts it: "keep your hands on the titties". An afro hair stylist competition provides the film with some structure and tension, but its the little anecdotes and the differing views of men and women that provide most of the laughs. I was boring people for weeks telling them about this film. [10/10]

FILM: Citizen Dog (2004)

2011-01-11T20:48:00.001+11:00

This Thai film is one of strangest and sweetest romantic comedies I've seen in a long time. The plot starts as boy meets girl after boy loses finger in sardine factory, finds it again in a tin of sardines and just pops it back on. Then the hyper-colour dreamlike style continues through smoking teddy bears, ghost taxi bikes, humans with tails, and a mountain of plastic bottles collected for love that reaches as high as the moon. [6/10]

FILM: A Single Man (2010)

2011-01-08T11:31:00.002+11:00

Tom Ford's directorial debut looks as stylish as you might expect. I haven't seen a film where every shot is as carefully composed as a photograph since Anton Corbjin's Control. But the fact that everything has that 'start of the 60s-Mad Men' chic is just the icing on the cake. The script and the acting are incredibly moving. Colin Firth's George is a warm, funny, intelligent and caring towards friends and strangers, but grieving and giving up on life following the death of his partner of 16 years. Its a pleasure to spend time with him, and a perfect performance. [9/10]

FILM: Quadrophenia (1979)

2011-01-07T21:30:00.001+11:00

Television on New Year's Eve offers very slim pickings in Australia. You've got the Sydney fireworks, as not even people who live in Melbourne watch the Melbourne ones on TV. Apart from that, the only good viewing was Quadrophenia. So I watched that for the fourth time.

Its one of the greatest films about youth culture ever made. Set in the mid-60s, it explores the world of mods - the clothes, the scooters, the drugs, the teenage rebellion, the boredom of day jobs, and their vicious gang warfare with the greasy rockers down at Brighton on bank holiday weekends. Phil Daniels plays Jimmy, who loves his mod tribe, and mod girl Leslie Ash. Daniels is perfect as the wide-eyed, insecure, aggressive boy, suddenly becoming disillusioned with everything he believes in. The rest of the cast is a parade of faces that would be become fixtures of British film and television in the 80s. All of them are good. Even Sting is good. The only negative is the songs by The Who on the soundtrack over the last two scenes which have lyrics unnecessarily explaining exactly what you're already watching. But it is still one of cinema's greatest endings. [10/10]

FILM: Spider-Man (2002)

2010-12-20T21:09:00.002+11:00

The best film adaptation of a Marvel comic. None before or since have so successfully put my childhood dreams on the screen. The rigid goblin mask is the only thing wrong here, everything else is perfect. The origin, from setting up Peter Parker's nerdiness and his relationships with family and friends, through to the comedy wrestling bout in terrible costume and the tragic death that leads to Spider-Man's philosophy of 'with great power comes great responsibility' are translated perfectly in spirit from page to screen. The story of the Green Goblin is woven nicely into Peter's personal life, leading to the Brooklyn Bridge battle that despite changing a key character recreates the feel of one the most famous scenes in comic history.

The casting of Tobey Maguire, along with Kristen Dunst, James Franco, and Willem Dafoe was spot-on, though JK Simmons steals the few scenes he appears in as newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson. Sam Raimi was an inspired choice of director, bringing just enough of that visceral comedy-horror-action style he used in the Evil Dead films, making the action scenes amazing, but with enough pain to make them feel real. The final sequence of Spider-Man swinging through New York is a beautiful realisation of classic Spidey poses by a string of four decades worth of great artists, from Ditko to Romita (Snr and Jr) to MacFarlane. For grown-up fans it produced that perfect blend of nostalgia and childlike wonder. [10/10]

FILM: Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

2010-12-18T21:03:00.002+11:00

A really interesting adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book. Spike Jonze took the beautiful illustrations and turned the monsters into giant muppet monsters that look fantastic. He also took the less than 100 words of text and expanded them into a fantasy about the dark emotions that all children experience - the rage, the jealousy, the fear of abandonment - and made the wild things their physical representations, along with those same emotions in the fairly unsympathetic main character in Max (Max Records). Its a great arthouse film, but its not for young children. But more because of the lack of fun than the darker elements. [7/10]

FILM: The Invention of Lying (2009)

2010-12-14T21:28:00.002+11:00

The smartest Hollywood comedy I've seen in a long time, from writer and actor Ricky Gervais. He stars as Mark Bellison, a loser in world where everyone tells the truth and shares whatever is on their mind. This is the perfect backdrop for Gervais to be mocked for his lack of looks and success by his date - Jennifer Garner, and his colleagues - including Tina Fey and Rob Lowe. It also allows satire of industries like advertising, entertainment and even aged care - Gervais' mum is in a place called "A Sad Place For Old People". When Mark hits rock bottom he tells the world's first lie and realises he can do anything - banks and casinos give him money, women will sleep with him if he tells them the world will end if they don't. Then in the film's most touching moment he lies to give comfort to his dying mum and invents the lie that is heaven, rumours spread and he has to make up a 'great man in the sky who controls everything'. While all this is going on he can't bring himself to lie to win the heart of Jennifer Garner and overcome his inner loser. It perfectly balances traditional rom-com sentimentality with a subversive attack on the comforting fiction that is religion. Its not The Office, but I enjoyed it as much as Extras. [8/10]

FILM: X-Men (2000)

2010-12-08T21:19:00.002+11:00

The first film of the current boom of comic adaptations was never likely to meet my high standards. X-Men is my favourite comic series ever, with Chris Claremont's epic run on Uncanny X-Men through the 1980s giving me a second family of colourful mutants I have a strong emotional attachment to. My childhood dreams were never going to make it to the big screen intact. Director Brian Singer went for cold realism, and those changes were fairly successful - though in hindsight I think I would have preferred the silly costumes - I think looking back from 2010 we have learned to take such characters seriously.

The film opens brilliantly, with the young boy who would become the villain Magneto seeing his parents taken to their death in a Nazi concentration camp, his emerging magnetic powers tearing at the camp gates. I also recall the excitement of first seeing High Jackman's Wolverine popping those claws on screen, and Anna Paquin's Rogue's life-draining kiss. But beyond the powers and special effects the film suffers a severe lack of character development. How can they fully explore Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm in a two hour film, when comic readers have seen them grow across 30 years worth of monthly comic soap opera? On top of which they crammed in a wholly unnecessary plot about turning humans into mutants. Not a bad film, but not the great one I always dreamed of. [7/10]

FILM: Speed Racer (2008)

2010-12-07T21:16:00.002+11:00

The only film the Wachowski brothers have written and directed since The Matrix trilogy is too long, has clunky dialogue, and very little humour above the 'funny chimp' level. But it looks amazing. My video game references are dated now, but if anyone remembers the final round of MarioKart 64 where you race on a luminous rainbow track in outer space, watching this film is like that. And it's not just the race sequences - the montage-narrative sequences with characters' heads rotating across the foreground are equally trippy. The fight sequences have similarities to Scott Pilgrim, Christina Ricci looks her most weirdly like a Blythe doll, and the costumes and backgrounds are hyper-coloured and flashing. Watch it on TV late at night. [6/10]

FILM: Batman Forever (1995), Batman and Robin (1997)

2010-11-27T21:10:00.003+11:00

Tim Burton leaves, Joel Schumacher enters, everything turns to shit. This is the received wisdom. It is 100% true. Schumacher and any Warner Bros execs involved in this change of directors ran the Batman franchise into the ground into the 90s.

Batman Forever marked an attempt to build a bridge between Burton's supposedly dark knight and the caped crusader of the much-loved camp 1960s Batman TV show. It fails in every regard, and it still amazes me that this film is not as derided as one that followed it. Chris O'Donnel does decent job as Robin, but that character should never have been introduced into a modern superhero franchise. Val Kilmer has no screen presence as Batman. Jim Carrey plays The Riddler like Nicholson's Joker, and Tommy Lee Jones plays Two-Face like... Um... Nicholson's Joker. A complete waste of interesting characters, and a complete waste of time. [2/10]

Batman and Robin at least has a charismatic Batman - I'll stick up for George Clooney and say he is the best thing in this. Everyone else is either terrible like Arnie and Uma as Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy, or utterly pointless like Alicia Silverstone's career-ending turn as Batgirl. The true villain is Schumacher and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. Its nice that they listed Batman creator Bob Kane as one of the writers as a tribute, but if he wasn't dead he would have asked for his name to be removed from the credits.. Lets just be grateful this didn't make any money, or we would've had Bat-Dog versus King Tut in the next one.[2/10]

FILM: Samson and Delilah (2009)

2010-11-26T21:08:00.000+11:00

Grim grim grim. The story of a mute petrol-sniffing teenage boy who runs away with the girl who shows him some affection from the depressing remote aboriginal community they grew up in. They run away to homelessness, begging, more petrol-sniffing and abuse. A touch of lightness is added by the homeless man they sleep near under a motorway who gives voice what the audience is thinking - "bloody well speak why don't ya?" The cinematography is great, the desolate beauty of the Australian bush around the squalid living conditions of indigenous communities is all too real. Its a film that will stay with me, but I was very glad when it was over. [5/10]

FILM: Antichrist (2008)

2010-11-25T21:04:00.001+11:00

Another deeply unpleasant film from Lars Von Trier, but without the inventive gimmickry of some of his earlier work. Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a psychiatrist and his wife, whose son falls to his death from an open window while they are busy having sex in the opening scene. To treat her depression the psychiatrist takes his wife to a cabin in the woods for intensive therapy. She starts channeling weird she-gods or Earth spirits or becomes the personification of female vengeance or something or other, and it all goes a bit Misery. But with more nudity, more pretension, and way too much genital mutilation. [5/10]

FILM: Balibo (2009)

2010-11-23T21:33:00.002+11:00

In 1975 Indonesian forces invaded East Timor. The international community did nothing. Five Australian journalists were murdered covering the event in a tiny village called Balibo. The case of the 'Balibo Five' was at best ignored, at worst covered up with the help of the Australian Government. Months later another journalist, Roger East, retraced their steps as the Indonesians advanced on Dili. This is that story. The acting, led by Anthony La Paglia as East, is good, but getting that story out there is the central aim of this film. So the script and direction are lean, and the journalists are certainly not presented as heroes, so when their death arrives the realism is terrifying, and the story is out there. [8/10]

FILM: Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (2010)

2010-11-21T13:14:00.000+11:00

Three great films in a row now for director Edgar Wright, after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Michael Cera plays Scott, a guy in a band in his early 20s. He's embarrassed by his current schoolgirl girlfriend, and falls in love with the cool new girl in town. The dialogue is funny in that cute indie way. To win her heart he must defeat her six evil ex-boyfriends (and one girlfriend) in combat. From here it turns into a film like no other. Though based on a graphic novel, it is like a video game adaptation that no real video game adaptation ever dared to be. The characters fight like they have superpowers and the losers explode into gold coins while the points scored float up into the air. Scott Pilgrim's comic book roots come through, mixing hyperreal manga style with an indie slacker mentality. With so many highlights its hard to pick out a favourite, but the evil ex-boyfriend with vegan superpowers being defeated by tricking him into ingesting animal products was incredible. This is probably my favourite film of the year. [10/10]

FILM: Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992)

2010-11-17T20:52:00.001+11:00

Tim Burton remains my favourite director of Batman films, and Michael Keaton is my Bruce Wayne of choice.

Batman was Hollywood's first comic book adaptation since the Superman franchise died out in the mid-80s. It set the template for the comic book movie wave of the 2000s, and it rocked like its Prince soundtrack (hey, it's an underrated album!). It has the now trademark Tim Burton mix of dark gothic design and bright fairy tale fun. Jack Nicholson hams it up spectacularly as the Joker, Keaton is stern in the mask, and charming and exciting as billionaire Wayne. Kim Basinger does the job as reporter Vicki Vale caught between the two. Neither protagonist is given much background - just the most cursory origin story - they just get on with the stylish action and well-delivered banter, with a plot simple enough to hold it all together. [10/10]

Batman Returns is Burton's sequel, and again set a superhero film template - cram extra villains into sequels at the expense of the lead character. Michael Keaton has a lot less to do here, but is still great in every scene with Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Her costume design, the character designs for Danny Devito's Penguin, and even Christopher Walken's hair as Max Shrek, are all Burton in full creative flight. Throw in the snow-covered Gotham and the fairytale opening scene of The Penguin's abandonment as a child and you have Burton re-shaping the Batman universe his way. With that comes Tim Burton's weakness - narrative. There is no central plot, but lots of them in quick succession. Penguin tries to become Mayor, Penguin tries to discredit Batman, Penguin kidnaps the firstborn of every family, Penguin tries to destroy Gotham with exploding penguins. But its a minor failing. With Batman Returns Tim Burton remains the director who has most imprinted his personal style on a comic adaptation. [9/10]

FILM: Four Lions (2010)

2010-11-16T21:39:00.002+11:00

As a huge fan of Chris Morris's amazing TV and radio work - The Day Today, Brass Eye, and Jam - I was really looking forward to his first outing as feature film writer-director. I loved it. This is the comedy story of a Jihadist terrorist cell in the UK midlands. Moving away from the mean satire of his earlier work, Morris has gone for a gentler style of comedy - the 70s and 80s British sitcom style. The homegrown terrorists are mainly idiots, with the humour coming from the uncomfortable meeting of their ridiculous dialogue and the deadly seriousness of their essentially wanting to murder innocent people for misguided reasons. Only the leader of the group is played straight, by the brilliant Riz Ahmed. His touching family scenes are undercut by the chilling acceptance of his wife and son that he wants to martyr himself. The finale in which they try to blow up runners in the London Marathon in costumes leads to my favourite scene of police snipers arguing over whether they should shoot the wookie or the honey monster, and if either of them are bears. Then the very end hits you like a slap in the face. [9/10]

Tim Burton: The Exhibition

2010-11-14T21:42:00.004+11:00

This retrospective exhibition on the career of Tim Burton was a great reminder of how good he used to be. Props, scripts, character designs, storyboards, videos, and costumes were all present. His early student work was showing, as were his 80s designs and drawings that were 'too dark' for Disney. My highlight was the Batman section, including Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costume, some lovely Penguin drawings and of course, the batmobile.

The item I found most fascinating was the test reel he made for Mars Attacks using stop motion animation for the martians. It looked great, but it was way too expensive and time-consuming to make a feature that way. Seeing the few items from Big Fish and Planet of the Apes reminded me me that he'd been making bad films long before Alice in Wonderland. But his great currently outweighs the bad - apart from the Batman films and Mars Attacks, the exhibition had the fluffy jumper from Ed Wood, storyboards from Sleepy Hollow, the scissors from Edward Scissorhands, and even the 'Afterlife' newspaper from the waiting room in Beetlejuice. Now that is a good run of films.

The 39 Steps

2010-11-11T20:49:00.001+11:00

John Buchan's adventure novel is the originator of every page-turning airport thriller. The story of an innocent man framed for murder, on the run from London to the Scottish highlands, escaping police and enemy spies to undercover a plot that threatens Britain itself! It has a cracking pace and though incredibly silly, it can now be read in a tongue-in-cheek jolly hockey sticks way that means you don't have to take all those implausible escapes and coincidences too seriously.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1939 adaptation made one excellent addition - making the music hall mind reader central to the plot. Otherwise the studio-bound production never really flies along. It has a touch of those old Clark Gable rom-com murder mysteries, but Hitchcock's best was yet to come. [4/10]

FILM: Looking for Eric (2009)

2010-11-10T19:53:00.002+11:00

A Ken Loach comedy is no ordinary comedy. Not when the main character is an unhappy middle-aged Manchester postman (beautifully played by Steve Evets), barely talking to his children, one of which is getting mixed up with drug gangs, and regretting walking out on his one true love. But when he starts asking advice from his imaginary friend and idol - Man Utd footballing legend of the 90s, Eric Cantona - and Cantona appears in the flesh to give him guidance on love and life, its warm and funny. The concept is genius. Cantona always believed himself a philosopher and poet, and his comic delivery with that French accent is as perfect as any cross he ever made. Throw in a great supporting cast and you have a beautiful, funny, heart-warming film. [9/10]

FILM: Public Enemies (2009)

2010-11-09T22:10:00.000+11:00

This story of 1930's gangster John Dillinger should really be a lot better than it is. Johnny Depp is beautifully styled as the outlaw, but not given any depth of character to work with. Michael Mann gives us what we expected - a gangster-era version of Heat, following the gang and the police team hunting them (led by Christian Bale). But as nice as it looks, the whole thing feels flat and unengaging. The liveliest thing here is Stephen Graham (of This Is England and Jimmy McGovern's The Street) as the psychotic Baby Face Nelson. [5/10]

FILM: Coraline (2009)

2010-11-07T09:03:00.001+11:00

Henry Sellick, who directed Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, has given us another animation classic. Coraline is a girl moving into a new house with parents she feels don't give her enough time, or indulge her. She meets some kooky neighbours, then finds a doorway into a parallel world, with new version of her house and parents. Her 'other mother' seems perfect in every way, apart from having buttons for eyes. She wants Coraline to sew buttons into her own eyes so she can stay forever. Yes, this might give children who understand it nightmares. The character design is beautiful, but when you're starting from characters and concepts from a novel by legendary comic writer Neil Gaiman, you've got a head start. The script is witty, and the voice cast - with Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher leading, and French and Saunders and Ian MacShane in support - deliver those lines expertly. [9/10]

FILM: The Hangover (2009)

2010-11-02T20:10:00.003+11:00

Once a year, one of those crude, stupid Hollywood comedies proves to be far better written, acted and directed than all the others in the pack. This was that film in 2009. The tale of a stag night gone wrong is not new, but the noir-style premise of an adventure to discover what happened on the drunken night they just woke up from and find the groom before the wedding is handled so well and the dialogue is laugh out loud. Especially the bit about the medal. The ridiculousness of waking up hungover to find a tiger in your bathroom still makes me smile. Todd Philips and and his cast of relative unknowns (Cooper, Galifianakis, etc) are exactly where Judd Apatow and his cast (Carrell, Rogen, Rudd) were after 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. So they'll be churning out poor-to-moderate comedies with big budgets for the next five years. [8/10]

FILM: The Reader (2008)

2010-11-01T20:30:00.003+11:00

Kate Winslet won the holocaust film Oscar she was after in Ricky Gervais's Extras. Her performance as Hanna, a detached, illiterate concentration camp guard in post-war Germany, is good, though she was a lot better in Little Children. The fascinating part of this film is its look at how a whole country dealt with its guilt in the 50s and 60s over the holocaust conducted or passively accepted by the previous generation. When Michael, the central character - who had an affair with Hanna as a teenage boy - starts recording himself on cassette reading books and sending them to Hanna in prison it is quite touching. But when Hanna manages to teach herself to read with them the whole thing becomes ludicrous. [6/10]

FILM: Ponyo (2009)

2010-09-26T20:29:00.001+10:00

After a run of ambitious fantasy adventures, anime legend Hayao Miyazaki returned to the 'magical encounters in a small town' style of his early work, such as Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. Ponyo is a twist on the Little Mermaid story. But a Miziyaki twist means sea goddesses, living water, cute character design, and a colourful collection of small town characters. Its low key, sweet and strange. [8/10]

FILM: Inception / Shutter Island (2010)

2010-09-09T21:00:00.004+10:00

If there's one role Leonardo di Caprio loves to play, its the man with the little goatee beard haunted by his wife, whose guilt about her death interferes with his case/mission and leads him, and the audience, to question whether anything that is happening around him is actually real or all in his head.

In Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island, di Caprio and fellow detective Mark Ruffalo, arrive to investigate the disappearance of a mental patient on an isolated island asylum for the criminally insane. The film is a homage to 1950s B-movies, which goes some way to excusing hammy performances and hackneyed old plot devices, like the classic "that person's name is an anagram of that other person's name, so they must be the same person" routine. If you go with the flow you'll get some enjoyment out of it, but you have to be in a generous mood. [5/10]

Christopher Nolan's Inception is a more sophisticated film. Though it is nowhere near as intelligent as many reviewers have described it. The film is based on a cool gimmick - that thieves and con artists can infiltrate your dreams to steal or plant ideas, they can manipulate the dreamworld around them, and they can enter dreams within dreams. But rather than explore any metaphysical themes or challenge the audience by blurring the lines between the levels of dreams, it goes the traditional route of heist caper meets spectacular Hollywood action movie. The viewers always knows where they are, and are not asked to think until the very last, excellent, scene. Despite its low aspirations, Inception is a well-made, well-acted, highly-entertaining blockbuster, that is more intelligent that most other blockbusters.

The geek in me can't let this review pass without dissecting the film's logic. Our heroes are told not to manipulate the dreamworld as it will draw attention. In one scene, after cover is blown, one of the gang 'dreams' a really big powerful gun to win a fight. So once the team were being attacked by an army on a snowy mountain, why didn't they just dream some warplanes, dinosaurs, aliens, zombie armies, or perhaps a classic line-up of X-Men to smash the opposition? I would have. [7/10]

Art in London

2010-08-30T17:10:00.006+10:00

One of the things I never truly appreciated about London when I lived there was the large number of major gallery spaces it has and all the great art. There's so much of it that if you hate one exhibition, don't worry, you'll probably like a brand new one next week. Here are reviews of my two favourites from our three weeks in July.

Various Artists - The Surreal House - Barbican Gallery. 

You've got to love an exhibition with a trailer.

A huge, and hugely-entertaining, collection of 20th Century sculpture, painting, illustration, and film loosely-based around the theme of 'surrealism and the home'. You can see Freud's chair, which looks sinister and sexy in its moody lighting. Dali and Bourgeois get a good showing, but the highlight is the film selection - I've never been to an exhibition where I want to watch all the film clips from beginning to end, but when its work by Jan Svankmajer, Buster Keaton, Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky that fits the theme, its absolutely captivating. The Surreal House is on for another couple of weeks. Its not cheap, but its worth it.

Sally Mann - 'The Family and the Land' - Photographers' Gallery. 

I love the new space this gallery has moved into in our absence. Mann's large black and white prints, taken using a 150 year old exposure technique, deserved the wider, darker space. Split into three sections - blurred close-ups of her children's faces, innocent nymph-like nude children playing in nature, and actual corpses decomposing in outdoor setting. This one is also still on. Its also free.

Of course not all art in London is good. On the same trip we also saw the current Wolfgang Tillmans, Serpentine Gallery. It was the same price as the Sally Mann exhibition - free - but not worth the price. A motley collection of squiggles, some competently shot photos of not much at all and some assembled junk and newspaper clipping. None of which seemed related. 

Also of dubious quality was the exhibition of painting and... er... poetry... by Noel Fielding, half of the Mighty Boosh, upstairs at Maison Berteaux in Soho. I suppose when you're foolish enough to go to an exhibition at a cake shop you get your just desserts. Apologies for that one. At least Fielding's Bryan Ferry shrine made me smile, which was more than Tillmans managed.

This has all made me want to go to every major exhibition in Melbourne. There aren't many, so we really should make an effort.

FILM: Kick-Ass (2010)

2010-06-02T21:25:00.004+10:00

A couple of years ago I picked up the first issue of a comic called Kick-Ass, mainly because of some great John Romita Jr art (see below, and the sketches in the film). The story didn't grab me, and there was little humour evident in the tale of a deluded youth becoming a superhero in 'real life'.

The Kick-Ass film is the first comic book adaptation good enough to make me go back to the comic for a second chance. Fresh from playing the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy, Aaron Johnson plays ordinary comic nerd Dave, who buys a garish wetsuit, starts up a MySpace account as superhero Kick-Ass, and gets his ass kicked first time out. When he returns after some nerve damage gives him a higher pain threshold he is filmed defending a stranger from a beating and becomes a YouTube sensation. Things get violent and hilarious when his path crosses two real vigilante 'heroes' - Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moritz) who are waging a war against a crime boss. Moritz is amazing as the vicious 11 year old child. Her action scenes are some the best I've ever seen - tense and thrilling, but still funny. Cage is really disturbing as the loving but psychotic father who brainwashed her into a life of crime-fighting.

Kick-Ass has its cake and eats it with a major shift in tone. The social media elements are highly-plausible, and the realism of the dressing up to fight crime is what makes the first half of the film so funny. But then that realism is ejected when Hit Girl goes all Matrix and you get one the best comic book fantasy action movies in the genre. [10/10]

FILM: My Year Without Sex

2010-05-17T10:40:00.002+10:00

Sarah Watt's debut film Look Both Ways justly won awards and a decent box office in Australia. Her next film, My Year Without Sex, had little fanfare, which is a shame because its almost as good. Sacha Horler plays a suburban working mother and wife, whose life is thrown into turmoil when she has brain aneurysm. The doctor advises her to avoid sneezing, straining on the toilet and orgasms (hence the title). The film follows the next year of her life, as she and her husband (Matt Day) carry on with lives, raising their children, and finding money for their Christmas presents. The drama is low key and the comedy is from the heart. You feel like you know this family. You feel like you are this family. Its warm and its funny - go boost it's DVD rental figures. [8/10]

FILM: 27 Dresses

2010-05-06T17:12:00.003+10:00

Sometimes there just isn't anything on TV after that Masterchef/So You Think You Can Dance reality TV marathon, and you want something that requires no brain cells. So you flip around and you come across a crap film already half an hour in, and somehow just keep watching. This is important. If you watch it from the opening credits, you feel dirty, as if you planned to watch it. You must happen across them. 

This is how I came to see 27 Dresses. Its a typical romantic comedy, with all the cliches rolled out, including the acerbic best friend, the boring nice guy that the heroine thinks she loves but doesn't, the drunken singing scene, and everybody's favourite: the musical dressing up montage. But the script isn't terrible, and performers do have some charm - Katherine Heigl as the eternal bridesmaid, and Cyclops without ruby quartz visor as 'cynical journalist with passion within' that she obviously falls for. I watched it to the end, so it can't be all bad. [3/10]

FILM: Vicky Cristina Barcelona [2009]

2010-04-27T21:03:00.002+10:00

This the first decent Woody Allen film since Bullets Over Broadway. This is largely because it avoids his usual pitfalls - he didn't cast himself and he didn't write a character that forces an actor to do a Woody Allen impression. All of the cast are good: Scarlett Johanssen, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz. The plot of two American tourists falling for the same Spanish artist is cliched but entertaining. However it is partially ruined by one of the most intrusive voice-overs I have ever heard - persistent, pointless and not remotely funny, it explains things that the screenplay and acting should be able to convey easily. [6/10]

FILM: I've Loved You So Long (2009)

2010-04-24T21:52:00.000+10:00

Kristen Scott-Thomas gives a wonderful performance as a woman released from prison after serving 12 years for murdering her six year old son. She moves in with a sister she barely knows and slowly adjusts to freedom while around everyone is still wondering why she did it. I don't think the film needed the big emotional reveal of what actually happened at the end, as it was a fairly predictable scenario. But the build up was lovely and subtle, and it gave the actors a chance to show off their talent. [7/10]

FILM: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004)

2010-04-23T16:49:00.002+10:00

Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise was the romance it was OK for young arthouse fans to love in the 90s. Though it completely passed me by. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy play American and French students who meet on a train and spent a night walking around Vienna, talking the kind of rubbish that pseudo-intellectual students do when they flirt. Hawke is very irritating indeed, Delphy less so. But the avoidance of cliche set it above most romances, and the film ends not on the couple being together, but on the promise to meet again at the same place a year later. [5/10]

Unexpectedly, director and cast reunited for a sequel no-one was demanding a decade later for Before Sunset. The formula was the same - two beautiful people walk around a beautiful European city talking and flirting. This time its Paris in the daytime. This time the characters have matured, the romantic idealism has given way to the cynical realism of adults who look back at lost love and missed opportunities. The script is funnier, the acting charming. I saw this one first and now realise you don't actually need to see the first film at all. [8/10]

FILM: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

2010-04-17T19:23:00.003+10:00

Tim Burton's Alice is more a sequel to the Lewis Carroll books, with an almost adult Alice returning to the magical world of her childhood. Perhaps it would have been better as a straight adaptation of the source material. At least it would have had a plot, instead of the meandering mess followed by sub-standard fantasy battle scene we get here. There are only two things to recommend this film - the visual design, and the performances of Helena Bonham-Carter and Anne Hathaway as the Red and White Queens. The worst thing about it is the dance that Johnny Depp (as the Mad Hatter) does at the end - a kind of hip hop crossed with Irish jig enhanced by computer effects. It is the most embarrassing cinema moment of the year. And then Alice repeats it. Ugh. And the 3-D effects add nothing. [3/10]

FILM: Moon (2009)

2010-04-17T19:20:00.002+10:00

Clever low budget sci-fi from director Duncan Jones. It's the story of a solitary man on a mining station on the moon who finds himself sharing the base with a clone of himself. The mood of the film reminded me of Soderbergh's Solaris, but where that film took the philosophical direction, Moon goes for the simple and effective conspiracy plot. The clone thing has no special effects - its all cinematography and acting - Sam Rockwell gives two perfect performances as two versions of the same man, with only three years experience making their personalities slightly different. [9/10]

FILM: Up

2010-03-29T19:56:00.003+11:00

Another Pixar classic, that gives family friendly laughs while delivering very adult themes. This is the story of Carl Fredrickson, a grumpy old man who flies off in his own house carried by helium balloons, to a lost land in South America. Up pushes boundaries - the film starts like many others - the young Carl meets Ellie, a girl who shares his interest in adventure. But then it launches into a long montage of their happy marriage, the sadness of a miscarriage, forgotten dreams, loving old age, and finally Ellie's death. I cried. At the beginning of a cartoon. It sets up Carl's character perfectly for his relationship with the boy scout who gets taken along for the ride, and makes the laughs all the more joyous. The talking dogs they encounter provide the most laughs, and they are very good ones. You also have to admire a Disney studio that goes for a major animated feature with no cross-promotional opportunities -no chld wants an old man action figure with their happy meal. Squirrel! [9/10]

Toddling

2010-03-15T21:51:00.001+11:00

Look at her go! Amelie took her first unaided steps less than a month ago, and now she's zooming around the park.

FILM: Up In The Air

2010-03-15T21:43:00.002+11:00

From the opening sequence of fascinating aerial footage, expertly cut with cool music you know that Up In The Air is at least going to be stylish. But it is also warm, clever and funny. George Clooney (who I rarely dislike on screen) is excellent as Ryan Bingham, a highly paid consultant who spends his life flying around the country firing people for employers too gutless to do the job themselves. This is an great premise, and gives the film its most moving scenes - actors with short single scenes showing the full range of emotion and reaction to finding out they've lost their job from a stranger. No-one who's ever lost a job could fail to identify with these moments. 

But the main focus of the film is Clooney's gradual softening of his isolated lifestyle through the presence of two women entering his life - a casual fling that becomes something more (Vera Farmiga), and a new young colleague who irritates him but brings out his paternal side (Anna Kendrick). This is great sophisticated comedy for adults, and great improvement on director Jason Reitman's overrated previous effort - Juno and Thank You For Smoking. [9/10]

FILM: Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)

2010-03-10T20:08:00.004+11:00

Another film I didn't see the end of, but this time not out of choice. The lemon-sized hailstones of the storm this week caused a power cut 20 minutes from the end of the film on TV. I was expecting this to be a heavy-handed examination of 1960s racial intolerance, not the beautifully light-hearted comedy drama it is. Perky Katharine Houghton surprises her parents when she introduces them to the man she's just met and intends to marry - Sidney Poitier, perfect as the perfect man. The real joy of the film is watching Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as the shocked and concerned liberal-minded parents - a real life ageing couple still in love, playing an ageing couple still in love. Now I'll have to rent the DVD to see if it all works out and love wins the day. I think it might. [8/10]

FILM: Hunger (2008)

2010-03-10T20:02:00.003+11:00

We disliked this award-winning debut from video artist Steve McQueen so much that we turned off the DVD after 50 long minutes. Perhaps that invalidates my criticism, especially as I never made it to that one long scene of powerful dialogue I'd heard so much about. But after 50 minutes of poo-smearing and making moats out of chewed food to channel the piss out of prison cells, I'd had enough. The story of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands remains to be told as history, rather than as artistic experiment. As art it has a couple of admirable moments - you'll spot these, as they are repeated over and over or linger longer than necessary - 'man washes blood from knuckles' for instance. But when the only vocal sounds are the screams during the beatings from the guards, and you're already over the theme of humanity debasing itself, it time to switch off. [2/10]

Stuffed coat of arms

2010-03-07T10:41:00.003+11:00

Australia has a weird fascination with stuffing animals. The Melbourne Museum in particular has long tradition of taxidermy. Its natural history section is a menagerie of native and international animals, all expertly stuffed. The poignancy of a stuffed Tasmanian Tiger is strong, but I can't help wondering if a few less of them were stuffed they might not be extinct.
Champion racehorse Pharlap has been here since he was poisoned in the 1930s. Just last year they stuffed Sam the Koala - the koala famously fed by a fireman during the 2009 bush fires - and put his little trademark bandage back on. But for truly disturbing kitsch value you cannot pass the Australian coat of arms composed with a real stuffed kangaroo and stuffed emu. I stared at this for some time with my jaw dropped. You wouldn't get that in the UK. Then again, its quite tricky to find a unicorn to stuff.

FILM: Gran Torino (2009)

2010-03-07T10:16:00.003+11:00

Clint Eastwood directs himself in this tale of Walt, an old man, who's wife has just died, is still carrying the guilt of killing in the Korean War, and has no connection with his adult children or grandchildren. An Asian family moves in next door and we see Walt's grumpy, straight-talking turn into racist slurs and nicknames. When Walt save Thao, the teenage boy next door, from a local gang (before finding out that Thao tried to steal his car) the new neighbours embrace the crotchety old bigot, who starts to mellow. I prefer the films Eastwood directs that he actually stars in - they always explore the same fascinating theme - stoic action men grown old, looking for purpose or emotional connection in a world they no longer understand or feel part of. This time its done with a great deal of humour, a lot of heart, and a dramatic conclusion as Walt steps in to save the family permanently. [9/10]

FILM: District 9 (2009)

2010-03-03T21:11:00.004+11:00

A hugely-entertaining sci-fi adventure, very funny and packed with cool special effects. A huge spaceship arrives over Johannesburg full of alien refugees who are placed in a camp - District 9 - on the outskirts of town. Years later the aliens - nicknamed 'prawns' - are suffering from the discrimination all refugees suffer from, and a corporate security agency is hired to force them out of their camp. The allegories are obvious, but that's just another emotional hook to get you on-side with the aliens. Sharlto Copley plays the clueless, cowardly, unpleasant company man Wikus Van De Merwe leading the mission in a manner similar to Steve Carrell in the US version of The Office. But with a South African accent. He is such an unlikely hero that his infection and slow body-horror transformation into an alien-hybrid is comedic. As is the alien's taste for cat food. When Wikus teams with one of the beautifully-designed and animated 'prawns' the action ramps, as robot exo-skeletons and lighting guns that make people explode are used to fight off corporate soldiers and Nigerian gangsters. Its damn cool. [10/10]

Amelie - first steps!

2010-02-28T21:15:00.003+11:00

On Friday morning Amelie took her first unaided steps. She was standing in her room next to Claire, looked over at me, decided where she wanted to go and took five confident steps across the room into my arms. I'm very proud. Claire and I applauded. In the two days since she has walked even more. Sometimes with our hands hovering under her arms in case she falls, sometimes just going it alone. She'll be unstoppable soon.

FILM: In The Loop (2010)

2010-02-28T21:02:00.002+11:00

The movie spin-off of The Thick Of It - one of the greatest comedies the BBC ever produced - is not as funny on the big screen, but it comes close. Peter Capaldi is back as Malcolm Tucker, Media Chief to the British Prime Minister. Tucker is inventively foul-mouthed, scaring the shite out of bumbling cabinet ministers, civil servants, and diplomats alike. This is a fictionalised version of the 'fictional' allegation that Tony Blair's Press Secretary Alistair Campbell 'sexed-up' the intelligence document that got Britain into the Iraq war, and how the US hawks outmaneuvered the doves to get it past the UN. Tom Hollander - as the principled, but weak, cowardly, and bumbling minister - probably gets the best lines, like "war is neither inevitable, nor... evitable' (very Yes Minister) and 'No hookers! I hate prostitutes. But not in violent way' (very Alan Partridge). Most of the cast of The Thick Of It are here, oddly as different, but similar characters. The Americans are written more subtly, perhaps acknowledging cultural differences but it means their scenes drag slightly, as do the dramatic confrontation scenes, but its nice to writer Armando Ianucci trying to stretch the TV formula. [9/10]

Nearly over!

2010-02-22T08:06:00.002+11:00

At work at 6.30 am. Darkness and silence on the journey in. Today we launch the website I've been working on redeveloping for over a year. Two missed launched dates last year. Now just ticking down the minutes. I will be so glad to lose the stress, the long hours, and the inability to slack off during the working day.

FILM: Drag Me To Hell (2009)

2010-02-10T21:37:00.002+11:00

After the disappointing Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi has returned to his Evil Dead horror-comedy roots. Alison Lohman stars as Christine, a bank worker who refuses a loan request from Mrs Ganush, an old gypsy woman, wonderfully over-played by Lorna Raver. The old woman attacks Christine in a car park in the film's funniest and most viscerally violent scene. A curse is enacted and the fun starts - things crawling into mouths, disgusting things only the hero can see at awkward social moments, animal sacrifices, and digging up corpses. The glossy production values might stop this reaching either the scares or the laughs of his early work, but it's a fun ride. [7/10]

FILM: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

2010-02-09T21:04:00.003+11:00

I've never wanted to know Wolverine's origin before he had his bones and claws laced with unbreakable adamantium, and I've avoided the recent comics that claim to tell that story. I wished I'd avoided this film too, for that and other reasons. The plot is ridiculous - the military collecting mutant powers to give to the ultimate mutant-killing warrior - which turns out to be Deadpool with his mouth sewn shut and two hilariously impractical swords popping out of his arms. Wolverine's supporting cast of characters was always pretty lame, and when you compound this with bad dialogue the actors are all fighting a losing battle. Shame, because the performances - Hugh Jackman as Wolvie, Liev Shrieber as Sabretooth, and Danny Huston as Stryker - are all decent. The most terrifying thing in Wolverine is the cameo at the end from Patrick Stewart - what happened to his face? For a moment I thought he refused the gig and they did a bad CGI job to put him in. Its really creepy. [3/10]

A girl who likes comics

2010-02-07T21:52:00.003+11:00

Child-proofing continues. Amelie has developed an interest in comics. Which of course, is a good thing. She likes flicking through pages, looking at pictures, tossing them across the room. She has excellent taste -chucking JLA to the side and concentrating on Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr-era X-Men.

Hang on, is that Uncanny X-Men #138, the funeral issue after the death of Dark Phoenix, slightly bent in the background? Right, that' s it, fun time's over, we're off to IKEA for some drawers for this shelf unit.

FILM: Children of the Revolution (1996)

2010-02-07T21:45:00.002+11:00

A great Australian comedy from the mid-90s, with Judy Davis as Joan, an Australian communist in the 1950s who goes to Moscow, sleeps with Stalin (played by F Murray Abraham) the night he dies, returns to Melbourne and raises his son. She clings to her adoration of the dead dictator, her son (Joe) rebels against the indoctrination, but as an adult in the 80s, played by Richard Roxbrough, starts displaying alarmingly Stalinist traits. Then he grows that moustache... with a great supporting cast - Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, and Rachael Griffiths - this is ridiculous and funny, and a film I'm happy to have just discovered. [8/10]

FILM: Synecdoche, New York (2009)

2010-02-01T21:28:00.003+11:00

This is Charlie Kaufman's first outing as director, taking his usual tricks and themes to the extreme - using stories within stories to explore the nature of creativity, the workings of the mind and the miserable state of humanity (or at least men). Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden, a theatre director whose wife leaves him, taking his daughter to Berlin, who then falls for Hazel (Samantha Morton) but can't quite get together with her. Caden is given a 'genius grant' and decides to mount the most ambitious play even created. Its a search for 'truth', all the actors bare their souls. He hires an actor to follow him around, becoming him, exploring his ugliest feelings. Everyone ages, people die, the play is never shown to an audience.

All this barely hints at the weirdness of this film. It is deliberately 'Kafkaesque' (referencing The Trial early on) with nightmarish overlapping realities getting sadder and sadder, replacing the early silly surrealism (like Hazel living in a house that is permanently on fire). Caden eventually swaps places with Ellen, a cleaning lady who is a very minor character, and takes refuge in a closet with his forever-lost grown-up daughter's childhood clothing. It lost me a bit towards the end and I can see how many will view this film as pretentious, but I found it both clever and moving. [8/10]

FILM: Let The Right One In (2009)

2010-02-01T21:10:00.003+11:00

A beautifully creepy Swedish vampire film, that avoids the usual overblown romance and sexual tension of the genre by having its protagonists 12 years old - on the cusp of all that messy teenage nonsense. Admittedly, one has been 12 years old for a hundred years, but when Eli the vampire moves into a grim apartment block and meets her neighbour - shy, bullied Oskar - they both act like 12 year olds who are outsiders to mainstream society. It begins as a friendship, and as Oskar learns more about Eli, so do we. When elderly 'helper' dies you start to wonder if he too was a 12 year old boy when he first met Eli, and the whole thing gets a lot creepier. The limited hours of daylight in Swedish winter and the snow covering everything make the town and nearby woods a novel setting for murders and body disposal, and add to the creepy mood. [9/10]

Amelie's book review

2010-01-24T11:48:00.003+11:00

This week Amelie is reading Banana Yoshimoto's NP.

She prefers it Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. But she would not rank it above Philip K Dick's Ubik, Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You.

FILM: JCVD (2009)

2010-01-22T17:11:00.003+11:00

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as Jean-Claude Van Damme: washed-up action star, caught in the middle of a 'real life' robbery/hostage situation. Van Damme ruled the early 90's straight-to-video action genre (take that, Seagal!), before fading to... uh... less popular straight-to-video releases. Van Damme gives the best performance of his career, displaying the sadness and bitterness that comes with his fallen status, and the boredom and irritation of being back in his native Belgium.

Van Damme turns out to be a master of the world weary, especially when he rises up out of the action into the attic and delivers a soliloquy to camera. Its the film's best moment, along with the bitching about John Woo and Steven Seagal, and the homage to Dog Day Afternoon. This might all sound like high farce, but it is a very downbeat film, due to writer-director Mabrouk El Mechri's choices in dialogue, plot (including an ending that surprised me), and the washed out colours of the cinematography. He probably went a little too far - JCVD could do with the odd karate kick to the face to liven things up. [6/10]

Amelie is one year old!

2010-01-18T21:03:00.002+11:00

I can't quite believe Amelie is a whole year old. I look back at the confusion and sleep deprivation of that first month and I'm frankly amazed, relieved and very proud of our beautiful little daughter.

We took her to the zoo as a birthday treat. This is how much she loved it.

Here's a nice cuddly bear we saw.

And here is Amelie surveying all of the presents she received on the morning of her birthday, not knowing which one to play with first.

They've all had a thorough going over in the last four days.

Bring on the second year!

FILM: Rachael Getting Married (2009)

2010-01-16T12:47:00.004+11:00

The set-up is a familiar one: wedding provides catalyst for family troubles to get a dramatic or comedic airing. Anne Hathaway is the drug addict Kym, out of rehab to return to the family home, years after being responsible for the death of her little brother, to attend the wedding of her sister Rachael. Hathaway is very good as the attention-seeking Kym, and her scenes with Debra Winger as her mother are wrenching. But the real star here is Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachael. As a bride she wants to be the centre of attention, and the annoyance at her sister trying to upstage her is written as clearly across her face, and this fights with her sisterly love and concern for her mental wellbeing. The balance of these feelings shifts realistically as the film progresses.

Director Jonathan Demme delves into his back catalogue and throws everything at this one. The family angst is as tense as anything in Silence of the Lambs, the guests assembled for the wedding are as kooky as Melanie Griffith in Something Wild, and his shooting of the musicians at the wedding is as reverent as his Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. Its these last two areas that undermines the first. The drama is filmed with almost Dogma-style realism, but we cannot help chuckling at the ridiculousness of the wedding itself. All races and cultures are represented. All have a talent for philosophical musings, spiritual insights, and beat poetry. The rehearsal dinner and reception has authentic Brazilian samba, African drumming, classical string quartet, acid rock, jazz funk, gospel ballad, indie troubadour, and the ceremony itself mixes Hindu prayer (but no Hindus present) with the lyrics of Neil Young. Its what a wedding someone who has spent too much time with David Byrne would imagine a wedding should look like. This would be fine in another film, but when we're so fully engaged with the realism of the drama, the wedding just distracts and undermines it. [8/10]

FILM: Avatar (2009)

2010-01-08T12:59:00.003+11:00

The pleasant surprise of the year. I thought this film looked like a boring, terrible cliche in its trailer, and every review confirmed that opinion. Yet word of mouth convinced me to give it a whirl. Everything that you've heard is wrong with Avatar is absolutely true. The plot is mish-mash of 30 other films. But some of those films are great, like A Man Called Horse, Return of the Jedi, and Princess Mononoke (to which the resemblance is startling). The dialogue is poor, ranging from plot exposition to action movie stereotype - "just another grunt looking for a war" style narration. The actors don't impress due to a combination of dialogue and spending half the time in un-emotive CGI versions of themselves. Some moments were down-right laughable.

Yet the 3D effects occupy you for the first hour of set up, used smoothly to add perspective, not for throwing things at the audience. They are almost too good, too subtle. Then the Sam Worthington's hero soldier defects to the giant blue hippies, the action kicks in, and we get what paid for: one of the most thrilling battle scenes I've ever seen. A hour's worth of giant blue elves with bows and arrows fighting human soldiers wearing robot suits toting over-sized machine guns! Dragons fighting futuristic space helicopters! On the forest moon of Endor, but if it was designed by Miyazaki and Giger in the style of an 80's fantasy art poster! And in 3D!

On small screen DVD this would be pretty poor. But as a big screen cinematic experience it has to be recommended. [8/10]

FILM: Little Children (2006)

2010-01-07T13:17:00.003+11:00

A beautifully written, perfectly acted adult drama. The longing for excitement and passion felt in suburban married life, and the power of temptation balanced against the need to protect your children - both from the pain of divorce and the clutches of a creepy sex offender, who has his own temptations to resist. Kate Winslet gives her career best performance as a mother embarking on an affair. Interestingly, the other key roles are Nite Owl and Rorschach from Watchmen, proving they can really act if you give them the right material. It has humour, tension and pathos in perfect balance. How this failed to win the awards and acclaim it deserved when it was released I don't know. [10/10]

Like mother like daughter

2010-01-05T21:33:00.003+11:00

A predisposition to develop frizzy hair in a humid climate is apparently hereditary. Hear is the back of Amelie's head on the Gold Coast. That hair is straight in Melbourne.

Looking cute in spots or stripes is also hereditary.

Best albums of the 2000's

2010-01-02T20:52:00.005+11:00

I love a good end of the decade list. These are my 20 favourite albums of the last 10 years (at least they are today).

1. Nick Cave - Lyre of Orpheus/Abattoir Blues
2. Kings of Convenience - Quiet is the New Loud
3. MIA - Kala
4. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
5. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
6. Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis
7. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
8. Antony & the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
9. The Panics - Sleeps Like a Curse
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
11. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am…
12. The Strokes - Is This It
13. Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
14. TV On The Radio - Dear Science
15. Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around
16. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
17. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
18. Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain
19. Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
20. Lambchop - Nixon

A lot of great music had to be squeezed out to form this list. Though I'm inclined to think the 90's were a better decade for music. If I put together a similar list for the 90's, I'd be a lot more emotionally engaged with the choices. That said, the 20 records above are all killer, no filler. Well, apart from Danny Boy by Johnny Cash, but he was dying, so let's give him a break. And the obvious filler on the Magnetic Fields album, but that was kind of the point - if you don't like one song there are 68 more to please you. Interesting that no artist appears more than once. No-one pulled off the job of wowing me twice.

Amelie likes birds, not beaches

2010-01-02T10:03:00.003+11:00

We spent Amelie's first Christmas up on the Gold Coast with Claire's parents. This is Burleigh Heads, viewed from our 6th floor apartment.

That silhouette above is a kookaburra that came to visit. Amelie liked it. Here's a close-up.

What she didn't like was the beach. Or more precisely, sand. I think she she disliked the feel of it on her feet, the fact you can't brush it off, and the difficulty of standing up on it where you've just learned to stand.

She enjoyed the holiday once we decided to stick to Victoria time, instead of adjusting to Queensland. Amelie made this decision for us by waking up at 5.00am every day. But that is a beautiful time to walk down to the the sea.

FILM: Weekend (1967)

2010-01-02T09:44:00.003+11:00

Jean-Luc Godard made some wonderful films in the 60's, and I'm sure Weekend had quite an impact at the time with its sexually-explicit dialogue, graphic violence, and stream-of-political-consciousness narrative. We follow a nasty middle-class, money-driven couple on a drive to the country, who encounter revolutionaries, philosophers, farmers and cannibals. It has a very nice tracking shot through an angry traffic jam. It was probably so influential that it became the template for every cliched film student project ever made - it makes no sense, it lacks humour, character, emotion, plot, or anything to hold attention. It was probably never designed to be a piece of entertainment, but even as an exercise in chin-stroking, watching Weekend is a hard slog. [3/10]

Licenced to Drive

2009-12-22T21:28:00.003+11:00

I passed my driving test! At the third attempt. I knew could pass, as I only failed the last one on a stupid error - I sped up to 60 kph when I saw the '60' sign instead of waiting until I passed the sign. Technically speeding. Deserved to fail. But I didn't bother with any more lessons between that test and the 3rd one.

The first half went really well and my reverse park was flawless. The tester was about 15 years younger than me, which made me think "who are you to judge my driving?" Then I forgot to indicate when he told me to pull over to add the scores in the first half, and I realised there was plenty to judge in my driving.

But I passed. The chief criticism was driving too slowly. Something I need to work on, but when you fail one test for speeding you tend to overcompensate. Only driven once since getting my licence, bu I know I'll get better through the next year with practice. Claire did remarkably well in her go at being a passenger inher own car. We've both got some learning to do - fun times!

FILM: The Wrestler (2009)

2009-12-22T21:15:00.002+11:00

Darren Aronofsky's beautiful film about an over-the-hill wrestler is painful, emotionally and physically as you watch Mickey Rourke pull staples out of his skin, lamenting his fall from greatness. Rourke is amazing as Randy 'The Ram' Robinson, living in a trailer park, estranged from his daughter, and working by day at a supermarket deli counter. The only lights in his life are the friendship he has with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) and reliving his glory days at night, on the local wrestling circuit. These are men who do it for the love of it - it being put on a leotard, sharing steroids, and choreographing some severe punishment for each other. When a heart attack prevents him from doing the one thing he loves the film becomes truly tragic, as he fumbles his attempts to reconnect with daughter and is drawn back to the ring. [10/10]

Amelie - these are a few of her favourite things

2009-12-22T05:37:00.004+11:00

Thought I'd catch up on some things that Amelie enjoys doing. Here she is...
...reading...

...hula-hooping...

...playing tambourine...

...gardening...

...and her favourite, riding her bike!

FILM: 500 Days of Summer (2009)

2009-12-22T05:16:00.003+11:00

A romantic comedy that aims straight for the heart of indie kids who are too cool for Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl. The Garden State market, basically. But this is not in the same league as that funny, touching, Shins-career-launching film. Zooey Deschanel is neither interesting or likable as flighty Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is more interesting but still unsympathetic as Tom, whose relationship with Summer is counted in days, and shown to the audience in non-chronological order. The supporting characters are all cliched, the 'offbeat' script is not off enough to be be funny or engaging, and referencing Belle & Sebastian and The Smiths in the script does not make it more entertaining. [3/10]

FILM: Milk (2009)

2009-12-16T21:11:00.002+11:00

Society, and Hollywood, have caught up with the themes of sexual freedom from Gus Van Sant's early arthouse films, allowing him to give the full mainstream feel good drama treatment to the biography of Harvey Milk. Sean Penn is excellent as the warm, vulnerable and driven gay rights activist, playing his love affair with Scott (James Franco) with real humour and tenderness. Milk becomes a San Francisco councillor in the late 70s, protests against the right-wing Christian lobby, and is murdered by disturbed colleague, Dan White (Josh Brolin from No Country For Old Men, great again). Some of the recreated events seem a little cliched, and if you've seen the Oscar-winnng documentary from the 80s - The Life and Times of Harvey Milk - it lacks depth, but overall it is moving, uplifting, and beautifully acted by all. [8/10]

FILM: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

2009-12-07T21:07:00.004+11:00

Quentin Tarantino's World War II adventure is suspenseful, funny, brutally-violent. The opening scene with Christopher Waltz as Col Hans Landa, the 'Jew Hunter' interrogating a farmer hiding Jews, is unbearably tense, reminiscent of Lee Van Cleef's entrance in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but with Tarantino's trademark length dialogue in French. Suddenly we are jolted into humour - very dark, very funny scenes of Brad Pitt's 'Basterds' troop of American Jewish soldiers striking fear into the Germans as they scalp their way through the Nazis in occupied France.

What makes this different from other wartime adventures is the way it casts the Jewish characters as the heroes - not victims or noble survivors, but violent kick-ass warriors like 'The Bear Jew', or in the case of the Melanie Laurent as Cinema manager and Jew-in-hiding Shosanna, transforming (with a little help from David Bowie on the soundtrack) into the terrible, beautiful spirit of Jewish vengeance in an amazing scene that changes the end of the war in a way that will leave you wishing that was exactly how the Nazis did get their comeuppance. [9/10]

24 Hour Party People (2002)

2009-11-30T21:36:00.004+11:00

Alan Partridge meets Shaun Ryder. That's your pitch right there. That alone would make this a contender for best film ever, and after several viewings it rest safely among my favourites. The diverse director Michael Winterbottom uses Steve Coogan's arrogant yet hapless Tony Wilson (in a very Partridge-like performance) as our guide through the history of Manchester's Factory Records from Joy Divison through the Happy Mondays to the closure of the Hacienda. It has amazing music in exciting gig scenes, it is surprisingly light and touching in its handling of the doomed Ian Curtis, and with its juxtaposing Wilson's local TV reporting with his rock and roll lifestyle, it is very, very funny. [10/10]

FILM: Star Trek (2009)

2009-11-29T22:14:00.003+11:00

The reboot of the Star Trek franchise is a very clever film pretending to be a dumb action film. It is of course a very good dumb action film too - the banter, the explosions, crowd-pleasing nods to the nerds. But it is cleverness lies in having its cake and eating it - it re-writes Star Trek continuity - allowing the producers to "re-imagine" the early year of Kirk, Spock, and the 60s Trek gang - but does it within old Star Trek continuity so the fans can't complain about it - through Leonard Nimoy as Spock coming back in time and accidentally causing a shift in the space-time continuum thingy with Eric Bana, the angry Romulan (this is as close to a plot as we get). Not that I care, I was never a big fan of the original Star Trek. I'm more a Next Generation man. But I enjoyed all the nerdy touches - especially the old 'gay in red goes down to the planet, you know he's going to die first' routine. Simon Pegg isn't nearly as annoying as Scotty as I thought he would be. Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) is great as the young Spock. And seeing Winona Ryder as Spock's mum was just weird. Good fun. [7/10]

FILM: Diary of the Dead (2008)

2009-11-28T10:12:00.002+11:00

George A Romero's fifth installment of the classic 'Dead' series of zombie films (a genre he invented and ruled for 30 years), is neither fun nor frightening. Romero's zombie films are never about the zombies. They are always more about what happens to aspects of humanity when society collapses. This one looks at the YouTube/blogging generation. The main character is a film student, rarely seen, as he is usually behind the camera coldly documenting his friends struggle to survive and occasionally being eaten, without ever stepping in to help. This makes him more than unlikeable, it makes him, and the entire premise, unbelievable. The first-person shaky-cam gets boring very quickly, the dialogue is uninteresting, and the only character that could have proved fun to watch - the mute Amish farmer with dynamite and a zombie-splitting scythe - is zombie food way too early. [3/10]

FILM: La Dolce Vita (1960)

2009-11-24T21:01:00.002+11:00

One of those classics I'd somehow missed, Fellini's long, long film is one I found enjoyable, if not gripping. Marcello Mastroianni plays a jaded society columnist in Rome, going to parties, chasing women, living 'the sweet life' of the title but becoming increasingly disaffected and disturbed by it all, and by all his close relationships - girlfriend, mistress, father, seemingly happy friend.

The film is episodic - the famous sequence with Marcello pursuing Anita Ekberg as an international film star ends so abruptly and so early in the film you wonder if she is going to come back, or have any relevance to the rest of the film. She doesn't.

But I was interested throughout with some beautiful pieces of cinematography and some fascinating sequences. Including the statue of Jesus being carried over slums by helicopter, the dance scenes, and, best of all, the two small children who claim to have miraculously seen the Virgin Mary and cause a stampede of media and fanatics. [8/10]

Back in the Habit

2009-11-24T20:56:00.002+11:00

Until last week it had been 3 months since my last blog post, and twice as long since my last film review. This is partly because I haven't had time to write and partly because I rarely go to the cinema anymore. However, we have joined a DVD online rental list. So I will be reviewing new a nd classic DVDs to get back in the habit. Don't worry, Sister Act 2 is not on the list.

My home is girt by sea

2009-11-16T20:53:00.004+11:00

This weekend I became an Australian citizen. A process that was perhaps inevitable from the day I fell in love with an Australian girl 12 years ago.

The ceremony took place at Preston Town Hall. It started with a multicultural volunteer choir. They were every bit as good as you might expect a volunteer choir to be. Amelie didn't seem to mind, alternating happily between waving the Australian flag and eating the Australian flag.

We had speeches from the acting Mayor of Darebin (not sure what the real one was doing); a representative of the traditional owners of the land who was a descendant of someone who once met a famous indigenous leader; the mumbling local MP; and a song from 'The Connies' - singing tram conductors and community entertainers. Then 150 new Australians took the Pledge of Allegiance, and were called up to the stage one at a time to collect our certificate. It was a bit like University Graduation Day - the ones with the most family and friends got the biggest cheer. Claire held Amelie up in the air and cheered for me.

Rumours that I'd get a small tree proved unfounded. I did get a 'Stork's Bill' - a native flower. (Its a 'creeper' - not sure what that symbolises will it do for my garden what Australian culture will eventually do for me - slowly creep into every fibre of my being if it survives a hot summer?)

Then the multicultural volunteer choir came back we all sang the National Anthem with them. But only the first verse. Its a running national joke that nobody knows the second verse, and they certainly kept it going by not bothering to sing it even at an official Australian citizenship ceremony. If they don't sing it there, where do they sing it?!?

Finally it was off to Andrew and Ange's who threw us an Aussie barbecue. I put an un-Australian cider in my stubby cooler and ate the pavlova Claire brought. Poor girl - she never wanted to marry an Australian, but ended up with one anyway.

The crawl

2009-08-18T16:45:00.002+10:00

Amelie knows how to roll. She just chooses not to. Crwaling however is something she's not at all fussed with. I even dressed as a commando to inspire Amelie to do the commando crawl, but she wasn't having any of it.

Solid as a Rock

2009-08-08T12:35:00.002+10:00

Amelie's adventures in eating solid food are progressing nicely. We've tried her on a wide range of food now, and hasn't been made ill by any of them. She hasn't even disliked any of them. So she's eating mixtures of three foods now. This morning she had pumpkin, chick peas, and avocado puree.I can't explain the pride of watching a baby keep a tiny spoonful of mush in her mouth without her dribbling it down her front, but it is a beautiful moment for me.

Amelie at six months

2009-08-01T12:50:00.002+10:00

The Possibility of an Island

2009-08-01T12:22:00.004+10:00

Just finished reading this book, and it lingers in my mind. I wouldn't say I actively recommend the book, partly because the main character is so unpleasant, sexist, and details his sexual exploits in very graphic style. A friend once told me he never looks at people the same again if they lend him a book with a sex scene in it. In addition, there was an awful lot I disliked about this deeply pretentious book. And yet, it lingers...

Written by French author Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island is the story of Daniel, a successful, but not remotely funny, comedian. Daniel is a vile character, who dresses up his views on women in pretension, satire and philosophy. His story records his bleak outlook on life, love, and humanity, and charts his personal decline through his sexual relationships, and his involvement in a religious cult. But through the bleakness you see that he refuses to give up on the possibility of love.

What makes the book interesting is its structure. Between every 'Daniel 1' chapter is a commentary by 'Daniel 24' or 'Daniel 25' - his clones living 2000 years later in a post-apocalyptic future and trying to understand the remote concepts of love, sex, and humanity through reading Daniel 1's story. But it is the development of the cult, with its promise of eternal youth through imprinting its members brain patterns in a clone in the future, and the way this taps into the decline of civilisation, which I found most fascinating, being a sci-fi nerd. The two parts of the story are linked in theme as well as in narrative, and Daniel's bleak outlook has stayed with me.

Chewbacca much taller than Darth Vader, but both scrub up nicely

2009-07-24T11:09:00.004+10:00

Star Wars cast ready for a fun night out. No-one invited poor C3P0. They secretly hated him. Alec Guinness was meeting them at the bar though.

Amelie in Queensland

2009-07-23T10:12:00.003+10:00

We took Amelie to the motherland this month - Queensland. The state her mum grew up in. Here she is, happy to be by the sea on the Gold Coast.
Her Nana and Grandad were delighted to see her again, and give her a cuddle - they hadn't seen her since she was a week old. Amelie also met her Uncle Drue for the first time. We were a little worried she might be scared of his beard (Lord knows, I am sometimes), but she warmed to him immediately.

Masterchef Australia - the final wasn't fixed, but the last eliminations probably were

2009-07-21T09:21:00.007+10:00

Australian TV's zeitgeist series of the year finished last night - Masterchef Australia. The final was the most watched show, excluding sporting events, in Australian television history.

The show is based on the UK version, but expanded with elements of other shows. It has the Pop Idol audition process (complete with amusing bad food) that boils down to a Top 20 who are evicted one by one. It has The Apprentice's team-based tasks. And for Iron Chef fans it has both the high-tension grandiose treatment of the in-studio cook-offs and the most flamboyantly dressed judge/host since Chairman Kaga - Matt Preston. Much of its success is put down to the heartwarming 'return of niceness' in these kinds of reality shows. But going too far to achieve this may have been its undoing, in terms of credibility.

The final four contestants were probably the best four in the competition. Then it all went wrong. Justine - the second most consistently-good chef in the competition - went out (finishing 4th) on a terrible decision. The best chef in the competition was Chris - unfortunately he knew it. Through his own arrogance and some selective editing, he became the only villain on the show. So he had to go. In a task where the cooks had to plate-up food that would look great in a cook book. Bizarrely he lost to Julie, who didn't even finish her dishes. I suspect the judges were influenced by the Channel Ten producers who wanted the fan favourites to get to the end, and the final winner to be the one they thought would sell the most cookbooks.

So we had Poh, the artist who decided she would ignore a chunk of Matt Moran's recipe to recreate his dish, beaten by Julie, the 'simple home cooking' specialist, who didn't know the difference between onions and shallots. Everybody's families came on at the end, the judges were all in tears, Channel Ten is counting the money, and I loved it right up to the second from last episode. Especially the Croquembouche episode - now the whole country knows what that mountain of profiteroles is called.

Winter wardrobe

2009-07-20T09:28:00.002+10:00

Amelie is now 6 months old. She weighs 7kg (about 15lb) and is 64 cm long. The Melbourne winter is dragging on (though not like a London winter) and Amelie has her little seasonal uniform - top, tights, pinafore dress, cardigan and this hat (which Claire added the flower to).

Radio defection

2009-07-14T16:36:00.002+10:00

There comes a time in life when you change radio station allegiance. Its when you become an old man. We recently abandoned Triple J - the ABC's 'youth' station in favour of Triple R - one of Melbourne's community stations. This was a similar defection to one we had in the UK from the commercial indie station X-fm to BBC 6 Music. In both cases it was a combination of being irritated by grating, trying to be funny DJs and becoming bored with the playlist. In JJJ's case, the 'talking over the top of each over' style of the breakfast show made it unlistenable, the Australian hip hop has always been unlistenable (sorry, I've tried), the repetition of Kings of Leon made it boring, and the elevation of Foo Fighters to kind of god-like position only The Smiths should occupy was just strange.

So over to RRR. It gives you a warm fuzzy feeling hearing a mix like Jarvis Cocker, Leonard Cohen, the Pixies, Jeremy Jay, Dolly Parton and TV on the Radio. The nerdiest show even played the theme from the 90's X-Men cartoon as a musical track. This week's 'album of the week' - the new one from Dinosaur Jr - who else would do that? The worshipping of Bob Dylan and Neil Young isn't quite my tastes - my musical traditions go back via the Pulp> Smiths> Punk> Bowie > Beatles route - but at least they acknowledge songs recorded before Nirvana broke up. The chat is very local, and entertainingly amateur. Not too fussed on the speciality music shows, but the talk shows about film, food and medicine are strangely compelling. We like it so much, and felt guilty enough listening, that we paid the subscription. Now all we need is a competition win and our commitment is sealed. God, I'm old.

First tooth!

2009-06-05T19:48:00.002+10:00

Amelie has her first tooth coming through! Just a sharp edge of white at the moment. She doesn't seem to be in much distress about it. Just loving shoving things in her mouth. ...and she's still sleeping beautifully...

Grandma and Grandad

2009-04-14T09:04:00.004+10:00

Amelie is lucky enough to have two sets of loving grandparents. Sadly, neither lives in Melbourne. My parents flew over from London 6 weeks ago to meet her for the first time. So they have now been here for half of Amelie's life. They have seen her change so much in those weeks - the shape of her face, her physical development, the cute communicative noises she makes. Its been wonderful having them here to share those moments and I know its been an amazing holiday for them.

Its also been nice having babysitters in our city. Claire has been able to go to the gym every couple of days. And the two of us have got out to do some shopping, have a couple of meals, go to the cinema, and even see Steve Coogan at the Comedy Festival.

Saying goodbye to them at the airport tonight is going to be tough. They'll know they won't see their granddaughter in person for another year. But at least they are on Skype - so they will be able to see, hear and talk our little one. Amelie will learn to recognise her Grandma and Grandad on the screen. God bless the internet.

So, Mum and Dad, when you get back and read this... we all love you and miss you.

Happy Easter

2009-04-14T08:58:00.002+10:00

Happy Easter from the Easter Bilby... eating the Easter Frog...

...and the Easter Bear...

FILM: Watchmen

2009-04-10T14:05:00.007+10:00

I liked the film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen about as much as I expected. It was as faithful to the classic comic as it could be while lacking the depth of the original. The themes are all there, just diluted - the twisted psyches of anyone who wants to dress up and fight crime, the threat of nuclear armageddon, the nature of humanity itself - but I felt they were all glossed over. As a result I never cared about any of the characters (though to be fair, Alan Moore hasn't written a genuinely sympathetic character since Swamp Thing).

There is lots to praise Watchmen for, with Moore's story of outlawed, flawed, or retired superheroes returning to investigate a 'mask-killer' that leads a threat to the whole world is still powerful. The characters still intrigue. The effects are excellent and the action is well-handled, if a little over the top. The casting is great and the acting is all spot on. The visual design was OK, with only one nerdy thing bothering me - Rorshach's mask is meant to be clearly black and white, never mixing - this is more about his extreme personality than a costume - but here its a blurry mass of beige and grey.

The real problem lies in the lack of explanation. I sympathise with the writers who had to cut out a hell of a lot. To give the characters - minor and major - the depth they had in the comic, would have required a 6 part mini-series. But if I hadn't read the comic I would have been confused by the montage sequence that glossed over the history of the 1940s superhero team. As I would have been by Ozymandias suddenly having a big purple cat with antlers. Claire (not a nerd) asked on the way home where the heroes apart from Dr Manhattan got their powers. They don't have any, one of the things the book explores is why they just decide to become heroes. But the film shows them punching through walls, slo-mo hovering in the air doing karate kicks, climbing up walls. This might look cool, but it gives the impression they are superhuman, and not the deeply flawed humans they are. [8/10]

I accidentally took my parents to a gay festival...

2009-03-22T09:43:00.005+11:00

Claire and I decided to take my mum and dad, who are over from London, out for a drive into Victoria's countryside for a day trip. Our choice of pretty little country towns has been reduced quite a lot by the bush fires, but we happily headed out north-west from Melbourne to 'Australia's spa capital' - Daylesford, and its little sister town Hepburn Springs.
Based around natural springs, Dayleford is a busy, pretty, country town. It also seems to have a disproportionate number of gay men and lesbians in its community. Though a few of my gay friends have expressed an interest in both saunas and watersports I wasn't aware of spas being a particularly gay activity. Its a really nice place. And probably Australia's gayest town.

The number of rainbow flags out this particular weekend gave me the first hint that something else was going on. Then I found a brochure for Chillout Festival Daylesford - this is a 'thousands of topless men in a field, drink, drugs, dance music' kind of festival. This seemed more a 'stay at a hotel, mooch around town, eat, shop at ye olde collectables store, and sit back with a little bit of live entertainment in the evenings if you can be bothered' kind of festival. It blended in to the point that I don't think my mum and dad noticed or cared.

We all had a lovely day out, eating, wandering around the Hepburn Springs reserve (photos above), and Amelie was certainly chilled out.

Peek-a-boo!

2009-03-07T18:40:00.000+11:00

Amelie - cuter than a squirrel

2009-02-22T17:49:00.003+11:00

Amelie is getting bigger, stronger and more happy and settled by the day.
She has moved out of the moses basket in our room, and is quite happy in the cot in her own room, decorated with cute woodland animal wall stickers. Gotta love squirrels.

Watchmen - the comic

2009-02-21T19:00:00.007+11:00

In preparation for the forthcoming film version, I re-read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's classic comic book, to see if it's as good as I remembered. Watchmen has been described as the 'Citizen Kane of comics'. This is a fair comparison. Both Kane and Watchmen broke new ground in what you could do in their respective medium - the narrative is multi-layered with different viewpoints, the characters are complex, flawed and psychologically-damaged, and the themes and tone are very serious. But also like Orson Welles' film, Watchmen has dated a little (feeling very 80s), and has a few parts you'd just like to skim over to get to the next great bit.
Watchmen is set in the 1980s. But an 80s where Richard Nixon is still US President and costumed vigilantes have been around since the 1940s, but were outlawed in the 70s. Where all but one of these 'heroes' were without super-powers - just a bunch of people with differing motivations for wanting to dress funny and punch criminals - from civic duty, to sexual impotence and repression, to parental pressure, to fascist or nihilistic political views. A world where the one person with super-powers, Dr Manhattan, has God-like power and is used to shift the political balance of the world.

When one former hero - the vile, rapist-murderer government agent known The Comedian - is murdered, the outlaw hero Rorschach begins his investigation. Rorschach is one of the finest fictional characters ever created. A twisted Batman - a detective as demented as he is driven, right-wing enough to make the reader uncomfortable rooting for him, frightening yet pathetic. Dave Gibbons' character design is stunning - a film-noir hat and trenchcoat, with a fluid black and white ink blot test instead of a face.
Gibbons' rigid 9 panel grid layout creates the perfect atmosphere of tension and claustrophobia - you wait for the artwork to explode along with the plot. The plot may be one of the few things that doesn't quite work anymore. The idea of doing something terrible to unite the world as it moves to the brink of nuclear Armageddon seems very much tied to its era. The nuclear fear just isn't as all-pervasive as it was when I was growing up in the 80s with talk of 4 minute warnings and fallout shelters. The threat is still here, but its one of many now, along with environmental, biological, terrorist, or financial disaster.

But Alan Moore knows how to write comics. You gloss over any minor faults, and a couple of those text only pages in between chapters, because you know you are in the hands of a master. You may not warm to any of his characters but you enjoy the way he writes them, and you are dying to know what happens to them. Watchmen is the first and only comic that many people have read as adults, due to its stature as a classic of literature, not just the comic book genre. Its not my absolute favourite, but its absolutely one of my favourites, and has most of the qualities that make me love comics so much.