Is it devaluing this movie to call it a dark-hued off-beat rom-com, I asked myself as I sat down and prepared to bang out this quick review. I decided I didn’t care enough to ponder the question at any length. And I mean any length. So let’s start again…
Ahem…
Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a 40ish misfit who has a few balloons floating loose in the cranial sky. At least he did have – he’s recovering from a nervous breakdown, which necessitated his institutionalization. Rog has left his home and carpenting job in New York to look after his older and more successful bro’s home in L.A. while he and his family are away on holidays in Vietnam. The house-sitting opportunity has come at a good time. Greenberg is at a crossroads in his life, and is taking time out to ‘do nothing’ and hopefully find some direction. (Sound familiar?) Read the rest…
You know how Margaret Pomerantz gets when she’s moved by a film – all gushy and tremulous, brimmy about the eyes, and instantly defensive if poor old Stratton dares to offer up any critical observations that might suggest she’s going a bit over the top? Well, I was in danger of doing a Pomeranz with this review. Then I attended last Sunday’s Q and A screening at the Luna. Second viewings tend to amp up one’s critical faculties. You know what’s coming, so you’re more aware of structural elements, less inclined to be swept up in emotional response. But second viewing or not, this movie is potent – irresistibly so. Read the rest…
This is a movie shot from two perspectives. First, there is Paloma (beguilingly played by Garance Le Guillermic), an eccentric and precociously intelligent 11-year-old girl born into wealth and privilege she wants no part of. She spends her time in the apartment in which she lives with her parents and older sister, filming them through an old movie camera, gathering evidence of her perception of their lives as soulless and superficial.
This harsh assessment is a projection of her own sense that life is banal and meaningless – common enough in emerging adolescents straining against parental authority and hormonal onslaught, but Paloma isn’t sentiment-driven. Not for her the angst of the common herd! She’s in dispassionately intellectual existential crisis (how French!). And she has decided, calmly and rationally (she thinks), that life is so dull and pointless she will end hers on her 12th birthday, thus avoiding the tiresome path that birth and circumstance have mapped out for her! Read the rest…
We arrived at 11.15 on Friday morning, and I have to admit I was expecting my interest to flag within a couple of hours at most. Outside a generous sample of rum by 11.20am, I started to feel optimistic about the day ahead. As things transpired, we were still there at 4pm when the day session finished, and could have put in another few hours quite cheerfully – without sampling all the Show had to offer! Read the rest…
The sellout is me, not the Good Food and Wine Show. See, I’ve accepted an offer of free tickets to the show in exchange for doing a promo post.
Never accepted payola before…then again, I haven’t been tempted with an offer until now. They say everyone’s got a price, and I guess I’ve just demonstrated that mine’s not very high. Think of it this way, teeming and now disenchanted hordes of Boomtown Rap devotees: life’s full of disillusionment – I’m just doin’ my bit in the service of checkin’ your collective realities. Read the rest…
As readers of this blog will know, I have been a home-baked pizza fanatic for a while now. I’ve done lots of experimenting, tried lots of tweaks. Masochists can trace the evolution of my pizza sojourn from its beginnings via the links at the bottom of this post.
While I’m no fan of Masterchef (rave building…but that’s another post), Gary Mehigan and Georgieboy Calombaris are undoubtedly excellent chefs and I do make sure I catch the Friday night ‘Masterclass’ episodes (he lied, trying to suggest he exercised some degree of discrimination, when in fact he hasn’t missed an episode: blame a long-standing trash TV addiction). Last Friday’s class was particularly interesting for me because it featured Gaz and Georgieboy demonstrating home-baked pizza.
Earlier in the week, there had been an ‘Invention Test’ in which the contestants were given one hour to turn out “the best woodfired pizzas in the known universe” – or some such silly hyperbolic Georgism (can someone pleeease dunk his fucking scriptwriter in the deep fryer?).
That’s one hour including making the dough! Errr, pizza dough has yeast in it – and yeasted dough needs a lot longer proofing time than 1 hour! So WTF? Read the rest…
At its best, collaboration compounds collective strengths to produce wondrous results. More often – certainly in the case of an intrinsically collaborative art form like cinema – mediocrity is the outcome. In my experience, the great majority of movies, ‘mainstream’ or ‘arthouse’, are middling to crap, notwithstanding the mega bucks and effort invested in them.
Indeed, the movie-making process is so complex, with so many hands meddling in the mix, it’s a minor miracle when it all comes together – which it does, most assuredly, in the new Australian movie Animal Kingdom. Read the rest…
For the past year, I’ve been on a sourdough tour of discovery. It’s been a fascinating ride, taking in many different dough formulae and techiques. Some I’ve sourced from bread gurus – Hamelman, Reinhart, Lepard, Glezer – but most have come courtesy of amateur home bakers generously sharing their recipes and expertise on artisan bread sites like Sourdough Companion, The Fresh Loaf and Wild Yeast.
My sourdough adventures have not been confined to bread…
Try sourdough pizza and there’s no going back.
Ditto pancakes.
Panettone.
Fougasse.
Bagels.
Bananabread.
Even hot cross buns!
The sourdough breads I’ve baked have included pain de campagnes, San Joaquin sourdoughs, Norwich sourdough, walnut breads, barm breads, Italian batards, semolina sourdoughs, country boules, ciabattas, simple milk loaves, San Francisco style sourdoughs, and various adaptations of classics by acclaimed bakers such as Lionel Poilâne and Gérard Rubaud. If you’re not a breadhead these names won’t mean much to you. Don’t speaka this language? Doan worry! For here we come to the core of this post, which is a return to basics: a no-fuss, everyday sourdough bread that tastes great and is simple to make. Read the rest…
Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is an elderly ex-Marine making the best of his miserable lot. He lives in a low-rent housing estate terrorised by marauding gangs of youths and drug dealers. He ventures out only to visit his terminally ill wife, who lies in her hospital bed unable to recognise him, and to have an ale and a game of chess with his pensioner mate Len (David Bradley) at the local pub. His wife dies, then his grief is compounded when police come knocking on his door to inform him that they are investigating Len’s murder. And at this point, the movie goes off the tracks, ultimately descending into farce. Read the rest…
Mindful of the acclaim that was heaped on the first Iron Man movie, I went along to Iron Man 2 with an optimistic attitude. I liked the idea of a ‘Marvel superhero movie for adults’ with more developed, complex characterisation etc etc. I’d read that Iron Man, alias Tony Stark, is endearing for his all-too-human flaws, particularly so to female audience members, who are supposedly drawn to his ‘vulnerability’. Well, I dunno about the first movie, but in this one ol’ Tony Stark came across to me as an attention-seeking spotlight-basking wannabe rock star partyboy with not much going for him. In fact, I’d sum him up as an out and out dickhead when he’s not kicking bad-guy arse in his metal suit. Always did wonder about women’s taste in blokes…
Look, perhaps the debut Iron Man movie was the goods. As you’ll have noted, I didn’t see it. But Iron Man 2? I have to suspect that the few critics who are persisting in chirping on about this being a standout of its genre are drawing on credit points accrued by the first movie. I’m with the rest – part of the majority, for a change! – who are underwhelmed by this follow-up. Read the rest…
