Year: 2013
White Rabbit: 'Serve the People' & Li Jin
Saturday, October 19th, 2013 Art Column,Serve the People was the theme of a speech given by Mao Zedong in September 1944, while the Red Army was still engaged in combat with the Japanese. One year later the invader was defeated and the Communist forces would be renamed “the People’s Liberation Army”. In the years that followed, the PLA would battle […]
Mystery Road & Exposed
Saturday, October 19th, 2013 Film Reviews,Before Mel Gibson got a real American accent, the film Mad Max (1979) was dubbed to make it acceptable to a United States audience. Is that Australian twang still a barrier to international success? Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road should answer this question. The accents could hardly be more Australian but the film is pitched firmly […]
Italian Film Festival 2013 & Thanks for Sharing
Saturday, October 12th, 2013 Film Reviews,Anybody who remembers the thrill of seeing Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) for the first time should swiftly book a seat for the major drawcard in this year’s Lavazza Italian Film Festival: The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza). The film critics are strangely sniffy about director, Paolo Sorrentino, but I can’t understand their reticence. He […]
Georges Braque
Saturday, October 12th, 2013 Art Column, International Art,“Painting is not an art where anything goes.” Georges Braque. In 1977 the Fraser government struck a lethal blow to Australia’s reputation as an art-collecting nation when it torpedoed the purchase of Georges Braque’s painting, Nu debout (1908) (AKA. Grand Nu). The National Gallery of Australia had a price – $1.5 million – and an […]
The Act of Killing & Rush
Saturday, October 5th, 2013 Film Reviews,There are limits to a social conscience. When a film has attracted every possible superlative it takes on the status of a must-see event, but after about ten minutes you know The Act of Killing will be both sickening and unforgettable. As one deadpan horror follows another in an interminable procession, many viewers will decide […]
Moscow Biennale 2013
Saturday, October 5th, 2013 Art Column,Moscow will never be a contender for the title of ‘World’s Most Liveable City’. It is a place where puny human beings are overshadowed by the architectural juggernauts of Church and State. Even the famous Metro – each station an aesthetic marvel – is so deeply embedded in the earth that every train trip feels […]
Tim Winton's The Turning & Lovelace
Saturday, September 28th, 2013 Film Reviews,Tim Winton may be the most overhyped writer in Australian history. This is not to deny his talent, merely to question the kind of reverence in which he is held by so many intelligent people. Personally, I’ve never found his books to be particularly interesting. There’s something irritating about his characters. They are not simply […]
Australia at the Royal Academy
Saturday, September 28th, 2013 Art Column, Australian Art,Australia at the Royal Academy of Arts in London has echoes of Baz Luhrmann’s blockbuster movie of 2010. Like that overblown, incoherent concoction, the one-word title of the RA show suggests this is all you will ever need to know about Australian art. It presents itself as a definitive statement. Kathleen Soriano, Director of Exhibitions […]
Party time in London
Saturday, September 21st, 2013 Blog,For the long-anticipated show of Australian art at the Royal Academy the opening night was always going to be a joyous affair. The problem is that nobody looks at the art at an opening. Having already spent hours inspecting this exhibition I felt like a party pooper when people gushed: “Isn’t it wonderful!?” No, it’s […]
I'm So Excited & Salinger
Saturday, September 21st, 2013 Film Reviews,It’s slightly disturbing to be sitting on a airplane writing about I’m So Excited, set almost entirely on an airplane. It could’ve been worse. There are real life docu-dramas such as United 93, where one spends the whole movie waiting for the plane to thump into a field in Pennsylvania. I’m So Excited is a […]