Tagged: Wish I Was Here

Tattersall’s Club, Sydney: Olympians

As I’ve mentioned before I’ve been digitising the magazines and newsletters of Tattersall’s Club, Sydney where I’ve been a member for several years now. The collection that I have access to goes back only to 1929 (when the magazines started) and is not 100% completed or comprehensive, but I’m pretty close to finishing.

Tattersall’s is a sports club and beside the swimming pool in the club’s Athletic Department there is an honour board that recognises members who have represented Australia in the Olympic sports of swimming, diving and water polo. Unfortunately there are quite a lot of names missing and currently, Olympic representatives from other sports are not recognised elsewhere in the club. I have been proposing the addition of the missing names to that honour board and some form of central recognition for all Tattersall’s Olympians.

My research to date is represented in the attached image where I have listed 24 names, when they represented and what medals they won. I think I’m pretty close to correct, but I’d love further information if anyone has any. The source for the information in the table below is https://www.olympics.com.auList of Tattersall's Olympians

Wish I Was Here – Review

And so we come to a film that I was not expecting to like, but I did. This is Zach Braff’s second film as director, as well as being this film’s screen writer and producer, and it was largely crowd funded via Kickstarter. It is really a very gentle comedy and a feel-good movie that deals with family relationships, the reality of life as an actor for most actors, love and the coming loss of a father and grandfather. After so much violence, grief and depression in most of the films I’ve seen this festival, Wish I Was Here came as a very welcome break.

I thought all the lead characters were great, including Mandy Patinkin, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad and of course Zach himself as the father of the two kids played by Joey King and Pierce Gagnon. Nobody is annoying or takes themselves too seriously.

The dialogue is cleverly humorous without trying to be too clever and there is also some very funny visual humour. The film is shot beautifully too. And about 10 years after Garden State, Zach Braff again uses some great music in the soundtrack including Bon Iver and Badly Drawn Boy. Zach and Kate even do a (thankfully short) version of James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James in their garage.

Enjoyed. 4/5