Category: Culture

Land of Mine – review #sydfilmfest

Land of Mine is a very grim and sobering film. Set in 1945, it tells us a little known story of the de-mining of the coast of Denmark immediately after the Second World War. After Germany’s surrender we follow a group of teenage German boys, obviously conscripted late in the war, who were sent to Denmark to remove mines from its coastline. Apparently some 2,000 German ex-soldiers were forced to de-mine these beaches and over 1,000 of them died or suffered debilitating injuries as a result.

From the very beginning this film is brutally realistic in its approach. Perhaps it is necessary if the anti-war message is ever to be widely understood. So we are introduced to the consequences of war with an abundance of violence, destruction, revenge, loss of life, waste, blame, guilt and victimisation. Very little is held back and there are many graphically realistic scenes of sheer horror.

One of the keys to the power of this film is that the cast look and act so authentically, making in even more shocking. The Danish sergeant in charge of the group of the boys, played by Roland Møller, has obviously either seen the results of German excesses during the war itself, but we are not given any details. All of the young German boys look so innocent and somewhat ashamed of their country’s role in the war. It is so effective and powerful because I think they actually are teenagers, not 24 year olds playing teenagers as is so often the case.

As the film develops, it slowly introduces and explores other emotions and the consequences of war: loss, grief, empathy, friendship, love, sympathy and perhaps forgiveness.

The film is beautifully shot, from the scenery of the Danish coastline to the close-up shots of the boys nervous hands removing detonators from the mines.

It is such a powerful film that I wonder whether it should be compulsory viewing for any politician wanting to send young people off to war or willing to spend more money on the awful industries that manufacture these horribly destructive weapons.

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 4/5 (Most people would think this to be special.)

War on Everyone – review #sydfilmfest

I feel somewhat conflicted writing this review less than 24 hours after the Orlando massacre. The film is very violent, but not in the same way as Orlando and although it is lame to make comparisons to other film-makers, it is not quite in Quentin Tarantino’s territory, let alone Sam Peckinpah’s in terms of gun violence. I may have reacted somewhat differently if I’d heard of the Orlando tragedy before seeing the film, but to be perfectly honest about my reaction, I found War on Everyone hilarious.

John Michael McDonagh is a brilliant film-maker and he really understands how to entertain an audience. It isn’t going to be a film for everyone, but I think a lot of lesser directors could really learn from his method. His story telling in Calvary was so much more effective than a much darker heavy-handed approach that may have been taken by many others. This is no Calvary, but it is just as wonderful an experience as a film. Although it obviously deals with real issues like gun violence, corruption, greed, child abuse and the vast multi-cultural nature of many modern societies, there seems to be no attempt to impart a strong overall moral message: it is simply a lot of fun. It certainly doesn’t make me want to head out and shoot or beat up some bad guys.

Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña are great as Terry and Bob, two bored cops who enjoy the excitement of breaking rules and amusing themselves at the expense of others in Albuquerque. Their dialogue, written by John Michael McDonagh again demonstrates his great facility with the English language, even in an American setting. Some of the lines might be politically incorrect cliches in the hands of others, but in this film they very elegantly sewn together throughout the film and I just laughed and laughed the whole way through it.

Bob has most of the wise-cracks but every now and then Terry throws a very funny or a very stupid line in that broke me up.  Alexander Skarsgård is very easy on the eye as Terry and his physical presence and character have me wondering whether he has become a contemporary John Wayne type of film hero. In this film he moves with the grace of a cat and even dances in one of the funnier sequences, but he also displays genuine physical vulnerability and empathy for a young boy who has been abused. His physicality is also on display during a fairly long on-foot chase sequence. It is perfectly framed and I’d say it is mostly Alexander doing his own running.

I know that comparisons are lame, but I felt this film was more like a Coen Brothers feature than a Tarantino shoot-em-up. The ludicrous lack of reality and its great use of the ridiculous make this film a stand-out for me. There are several very memorable sequences in the film that whilst completely absurd and unexpected, illustrate John Michael McDonagh’s brilliance with visual humour. These include Terry’s dance sequence, a brief sojourn to Iceland (go figure), the opening shot when they run down a mime artist getting away from a robbery, the cocaine sniffing shown in the clip above and Terry and Bob practicing their gun handling on an indoor shooting range. It doesn’t stop there. Through almost the entire film we are treated to Terry’s obsession with the music and lyrics of Glen Campbell’s greatest hits.

So, if you don’t mind this kind of thing, see it if you get the chance! You won’t regret it.

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 4/5 (Most people would think this to be special.)

It’s Only the End of the World – review #sydfilmfest

Xavier Dolan wrote, edited and directed this film and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year. Both Xavier and the film come to the Sydney Film Festival with a big reputation to live up to.

It’s Only the End of the World is based on Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play Juste la fin du monde. Gaspard Ulliel stars as Louis, a successful gay writer returning home after 12 years away, to inform his family of his impending death. We are given no further information on this. Gaspard’s performance is consistently strong throughout and he is well supported by Nathalie Baye, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel.

Despite its success at Cannes, I don’t think this play has been translated well enough for the big screen. The cast do a great job with the roles and material they’ve been given, but it simply isn’t a convincing portrayal of a family who are all extremely intolerant of each other, all the time. It may have worked well enough on stage, but I think I’d have been similarly frustrated and unconvinced.

Xavier Dolan does a good job of building the tension and works in time spent exploring Louis’ individual relationships with his siblings, his mother and his sister-in-law, but whenever they are all together the mood quickly disintegrates. They almost never stop talking at each other and poor Louis is never given much air time. We do really feel very sorry for him and he never quite gets around to passing on his tragic news. The film built to what I felt was an extremely emotional climax right at the end, but I left wondering whether this was actually cathartic for all (or any) in his family, or not. I think this was because some of the dialogue was either awkward or incongruous.

It is mostly shot indoors in quite dark light, with some very tight framing and music is well used for dramatic effect. Gaspard doesn’t say much, but he has a very expressive face and gives good tragic. There are some artistically lit interior scenes and a really beautiful lingering image of Louis when hugging his mother that is breathtaking on a big screen (you can see it from about 0:43 in the trailer above).

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 3/5 (Not especially special.)

High-Rise – review #sydfilmfest


High-Rise is a surrealistic film based on J.G. Ballard’s novel of the same name. It is about the descent into savagery and mayhem of the inhabitants trapped inside a brutalist high-rise block of apartments somewhere on the outskirts of London in the 1970s.

The film is much hyped, possibly because of the stellar cast including Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Elizabeth Moss, Keeley Hawes and James Purefoy and possibly because of Tom’s amazing nude scene. As they say in the movie, he is an excellent specimen! Overall though, that wasn’t enough to carry the film or make the story interesting or that meaningful. The road to their dystopia is rapid and told with a heavy-handed and repetitive method. It isn’t enjoyable for the most part, although there are a few mildly amusing observations of the excesses of modern society along the way.

For me, by far the best part of the film, which underlines the block’s feral nadir, was a long sequence scored by Portishead’s brilliant cover version of ABBA’s S.O.S. I think they played the entire song and I reckon it is better than the original.

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 2/5 (Pretty ordinary really.)

Goldstone – review #sydfilmfest


I saw this at the wonderful State Theatre where the sound system, screen and setting highlighted the brilliance of the multi-talented Director Ivan Sen’s cinematography and music. This mystery and thriller follows on from his previous feature Mystery Road, also staring Aaron Pedersen as the hero, Indigenous detective Jay Swan.

The film starts brilliantly just with some of Ivan’s music and some well selected glass plate negative images from various state libraries and archives. They looked brilliant on the big screen and I was reminded of the same technique being used in Ken Burns’ Civil War series.

The two leads and twin heroes of the film are Aaron as Jay and Alex Russell as Josh the local policeman. Alex takes us on a personal discovery of his true character and Aaron learns more of his past. Almost stealing the first part of the film with a very dignified and mystic screen presence is David Gulpilil as Jimmy, a local elder. One of the film’s highlights for me was the bark canoe journey that Jimmy takes Jay on through what looks to be a sacred local gorge. He seemed to me to be singing the local history to Jay through their journey in that gorge. Gorges like this always look like natural cathedrals to me.

Apart from that gorge, the rest of the scenery is almost all desolate – barren, rocky and dusty, but Ivan arranges some beautiful overhead shots that are perfectly framed to highlight the natural colours. These are almost like one of Fred Williams’ later paintings from a similar perspective.

The film reminds us of the choices we make in life and the costs and consequences they have on others and our environment.

The two key creepy baddies in the film are played by Jacki Weaver and David Wenham. Both seem to almost be reprising corrupt creepy bad character roles from previous films. Jacki is a convincingly strong-willed greedy evil manipulator, but I think it is too close to her matriarch role from Animal Kingdom. And David needs to develop a new creepy look that doesn’t involve an awful hair style, some 1980s glasses and clothes from the era of the safari suit. My only other small gripe is that I think we could have seen and heard more of Aaron’s Jay. Jay seemed to have a much stronger presence in Mystery Road.

Both Aaron and Ivan made brief appearances on stage before the film started and answered a couple of questions. The SFF do this kind of thing very well.

My Bruce McAvaney Specialness Rating*: 4/5 (Most people would think this to be special.)

Great Videos from the Aspen Leadership Roundtable on Library Innovation (Pt. 2 of 2)

In this second part, I feature the talk by Michelle Ha Tucker, from IDEO. She deals with Library Innovation By Design.

Michelle’s talk is very easy to understand and quite inspiring for those thinking of taking this path. It is the path we’ve been on for some five or six years in developing a design mind-set with the aid of several design mentors and guides from UTS and elsewhere around Sydney. I’d agree with her observations and recommendations.

She described user centred design or design thinking as more of an approach than a process and then runs through a few different ways to describe the various stages that you tend to work through such as Inspiration > Ideation > Iteration > Scale, or Explore & Understand > Synthesize > Prototype > Refine & Scale, or simply moving from Research through a Concept Prototyping phase into Design. What I liked most is that she also said the best way to learn about it is to actually start doing it. There are a number of guides and toolkits around that can help. For example Design Thinking for Libraries, the Design With Intent Toolkit, and the (Social) Innovator’s Toolkit.

Michelle sees three reasons libraries should try design thinking:

  1. Libraries are the last great living lab (for designers?): we have dedicated spaces, a steady stream of users who can be observed and questioned on a day-to-day basis. And you can prototype, experiment and co-create with a diverse range of people.
  2. Librarians are great service designers. They really know their users best and the challenge is empowering front-line staff to create better solutions.
  3. Libraries are networked community infrastructure. We are at the centre of the communities strength and resilience connecting education and learning systems, public safety, economic development and civic engagement. MIchelle believes  the best solutions are systemic, complex and cross institutional, so with libraries at the centre of all of this, we’re well positioned to connect and make those partnerships deliver. The partnerships must be activated.

Michelle also recognised some tensions or barriers such as moving from:

  • just reflecting on data (historical benchmarking) to imagining a future or possibilities;
  • research answers questions to (design) research opens up new questions (be comfortable with ambiguity);
  • organisation structured around operational teams to an organisation driven by strategic teams; and
  • failure is avoided (at all costs!) to failure is invited.

Some resolutions or thought starters: hiring T-shaped people with one depth but a broad affinity with others and also X-shaped people who have developed expertise in two different areas (like art and science). Those people will lead changes in libraries.

On Innovation, Michelle said it was a verb (not a noun), both process and outcome, something that can be taught and about thinking big and starting small. It is not always new and she encourages taking something you see and contextualising it for your needs.

Finally she said that change happens at a large scale not top-down, but by empowering people on your front-line to act.

30 Day Song Challenge (in one day)

I was late to this. Today I saw Chris Caines tweeting about his songs (he was catching up too) and decided to find the list and join in. So here they all are. I found it on Doctor J’s blog. So here we go, mind the step …

30 Day Song Challenge (2015)
DAY 01:  your favorite song   A Forest (Tree mix), The Cure (from Mixed Up. I’ve seen two of their “last concerts ever”.)
DAY 02:  your least favorite song  Who Are You, The Who (mainly now because of CSI, but I hated it well before they started using it & I refuse to provide a link to it)
DAY 03:  a song that makes you happy  Mack the Knife (live version, Ella Fitzgerald (she forgets some words and improvises)
DAY 04:  a song that makes you sad  re: Stacks, Bon Iver (because I associate it with Dad’s death last year)
DAY 05:  a song that reminds you of someone  And It’s Alright, Peter Broderick (because I had this played at my brother’s funeral. It was very sad.)
DAY 06:  a song that reminds you of home Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes (I don’t know why, but I love the change of time signature that they pull off at about 2:45)
DAY 07:  a song you never tire of hearing  True Faith, New Order (and the iconic music video I linked to broke new ground in 1987 – it is worth a whole blog post I think; or She’s Gone, The Brian Jonestown Massacre – for me this song is almost like tripping, it is all-encompassing and I just dive into it, all 7+ minutes of it)
DAY 08:  a song you know all the words to  Take a Picture, Filter (or Ripe & Ruin, Alt-J)
DAY 09:  a song that makes you want to dance Peter Pan, Jinja Safari (because ugly dancing)
DAY 10:  a song that helps you fall asleep Harry Patch (In Memory Of), Radiohead (it doesn’t send me to sleep, but it is soft and a melancholy)
DAY 11:  a song from your favorite band/artist In Between Days (Shiver Mix), The Cure (from Mixed Up)
DAY 12:  a song from a band/artist you hate  Anything by Justin Bieber (once again, no link)
DAY 13:  a song that is a guilty pleasure  Kids, MGMT (and I really don’t feel that guilty, but it was this or something from Coldplay)
DAY 14:  a song no one would expect you to love Unite Us, Pnau
DAY 15:  a song that could be the theme song to your life Ordinary, Red Riders (I wish they’d not split up, but I was fortunate enough to see their last Sydney show; or You Are A Tourist, Death Cab for Cutie – watch the video, I think it is brilliant!)
DAY 16:  a song you used to love but now hate Jelly Legs, Children Collide (I guess I don’t really hate it, but I do skip if it comes up on the Nano)
DAY 17:  a song you hear often on the radio Time to Wander, Gypsy & The Cat (well, I used to hear it when I was listening to the radio some years ago)
DAY 18:  a song that every bar band should know Closer to Fine, Indigo Girls
DAY 19:  a song that bar bands should stop playing Anything from Hot August Night, Neil Diamond (it could be banned or made illegal, so no link.)
DAY 20:  a song to listen to when you’re angry Johnny Appleseed, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros (calms me down; makes me smile again)
DAY 21:  a song that is best heard live  Go Or Go Ahead, Rufus Wainwright (but I’ve also heard a fab version by Matthew Mitcham in his cabaret show)
DAY 22:  a song you wish you had written A Stillness, The Naked and Famous (I LOVE this song)
DAY 23:  a song you want played at your wedding Intro, M83 Feat. Zola Jesus (from Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Disc1)
DAY 24:  your favorite song this time last year We Are Fine, Sharon Van Etten (& I still love it because it is truly beautiful. I first heard it on the US TV series Rectify.)
DAY 25:  a song with utterly mysterious lyrics Moth’s Wings, Passion Pit (I’ve never really tried to understand the lyrics)
DAY 26:  a song that is an “earworm”  Symphonies, Dan Black (in a good way mostly)
DAY 27:  a song you wish you could play/sing  The Shining, Badly Drawn Boy (another very beautiful song first heard on the US series Queer As Folk. They always selected outstanding music to close each episode.)
DAY 28:  a song from your childhood  The Boy With a Moon and Star on his Head, Cat Stevens (I was a big fan)
DAY 29:  a song you want played at your funeral Read My Mind, The Killers (The lyrics are wonderful, especially “The stars are blazin’ like rebel diamonds, cut out of the sun…”)
DAY 30:  a song you discovered this month (during the Challenge)  Love Will Tear Us Apart, Joy Division (well, more rediscovered actually, but I love that someone had it down as a song to be played at a wedding)

99 Homes – review #sydfilmfest

Wow. Billed as an intelligent thriller, 99 Homes is more of a true-to-life horror story. It focuses on the home property foreclosures by banks in the US in 2008 during the GFC. It is powerfully disturbing for its duration. I think I just sat there with my mouth open in disbelief, whilst knowing that all this actually happened. As far as I’m concerned director Ramin Bahrani deserves all the plaudits being showered upon him. The writing is just so brilliant and Ramin worked with Amir Naderi and Bahareh Azimi on this as well.

The film’s hero Dennis Nash is very well played by Andrew Garfield (who I noticed is also an executive producer for the film) and he is left with the dilemma of either looking after his family or doing what might be morally more correct. We learn, however, that this may not simply be a clear decision between the good side and the dark side. The dark side is represented by Michael Shannon’s brilliant portrayal of real estate agent Rick Nash. We are set up from the start to hate him, but this situation is soon complicated because he seems to be doing the right thing by Nash. And he delivers a couple of brilliant monologues that convincingly explain his motivation and his actions.

Ramin was present at this screening and mentioned the score that was composed by Antony Partos and Matteo Zingales. That too is great and helps set up some chilling moments of the film.

Go and see it! 4/5

Vincent – review #sydfilmfest

This film from France moves along at a gentle pace and effectively holds a fair bit back. There is very little dialogue, and the director, screen writer and lead actor Thomas Salvador pulls this off really well. Set in the French country side, some of the visuals are stunning. Our hero Vincent is blessed with super powers when he is wet, so there are several scenes of him doing amazing things in lakes. I have no idea how they pulled off the special effects. Maybe Thomas Salvador actually has super powers?

Vincent meets and falls in love with a local girl Lucie who has a big personality, and she played very well by Vimala Pons. Vincent and Lucie share some really beautiful scenes. The film also has an excellent and very imaginative chase scene, but I cannot give it away by saying more. If there is a fault, I think the ending is a little weak but perhaps the director is leaving something to our imagination. I enjoyed it. 3.5/5

Mr. Holmes – review #sydfilmfest

Mr. Holmes doesn’t disappoint. The pace isn’t fast, but the story telling is both elegant and interesting. An ancient Sherlock is well played by Ian McKellen, but I think the limelight is stolen by the child actor Milo Parker, who plays Sherlock’s house-keeper’s son. He is fantastic well beyond his years. Laura Linney plays the house keeper.

This is an entertaining film and it shows many others just what is possible with cinema and a team of film makers who are obviously good at all of it. This film transports you to its time, shortly after the Second World War and it is beautifully shot, mostly I think on the South East cost of England.

Really enjoyable. 4/5