i want to hold your hand

this broke my heart.
you will see the film
and understand
but put this way
cheerleaders
flying football players
say no more.

all this...
AND i hate the beatles!

across the universe

and to top off my film lust for the weekend



this. don't miss it.
i can't get enough of it

give it time to digest

since the war in iraq began on march 19, 2003 there have been far too many didactic, well-meaning and earnest attempts to tackle the subject. everyone has thrown in their 10 cents. by and large i've dodged the bullet. why is everyone some keen to jump the gun on something that requires hindsight to do it any kind of justice at all.

still, in spite of what i just said, i will be seeing this.

laugh if you will

the original video of a 19 year old kate bush
yes, we have all read the novel
yes, we have all heard the song
and we all know
it rocks through the ages.

heathcliff
it's me
cathy
coooooooming home

who isn't cathy
who isn't heathchiff

to go through the highlights of lett's notes

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am

and
My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being

gia

just because.....

muriel's

well if it looks like i've spent all weekend watching films
in my jim jams..
it's because i have and it has been glorious

watching muriel's takes me back many years.
i recognize a bevvy of soap actors from home & away
(more flashbacks to dreary existence in the fenlands)
it's also odd to see household names
toni collette and rachel griffiths
in the film that put them that launched them over a decade ago.

if the late 1970s put australia on the map as a film-making nation
to be reckoned with arty fare such as picnic at hanging rock
(among my top ten greatest films of all time)
the 1990s represented a particular time for oz
films like muriel, while marketed as "comedies"
were everything but. sure, you can get a bitter laugh in
but what you were watching was pretty flipping depressing
uber-social realism presented in over-the-top kitsch
and yet,
as i come to the denouement of muriel's. i am uplifted.

i like my westerns like my men

big and bad
jest aside...i really like me a good western
and this remake, is a real keeper.

the genre is going through something of a revival of late
(though this has been said before and usually they are one offs)

i guess the key thing about a good western is that there is no
place for trite revisionism or glib political correctness.
you have to stick to the basics. and the archetypes
which doesn't mean it has to be a saddle 'em up, shoot 'em down
there is room for complexity (a good western can say it all about
the human condition) but the golden rule is: don't take too many
liberties. this one doesn't and it is all the better for it.