Stop selling us crap!
Is it just me or does it seem ridiculous that Big W is bragging about donating $1 to the RSPCA drought relief appeal for every 36-pack of Pepsi sold? I mean, who the hell buys a 36-pack of Pepsi?! How many of these packs would get sold in a day? It’s almost like me saying that I’d donate $1 for every supermodel that walks up to me on the street and offers to sleep with me. OK. So maybe I do exaggerate a little, but if they donated $1 for every 36 cans of Pepsi sold, that’d be great. Or even every 100 cans sold. But as it stands, it all seems just a little ‘all talk and no action’ for me. Or maybe I just really underestimate Australia’s love of Pepsi. But I doubt it.
Speaking of Pepsi, with Coke doing alright with their Vanilla Coke thing (I actually quite like it), Pepsi have come up with Pepsi Blue! What is it (I hear you ask!)?! Well it tastes pretty much like Pepsi except it’s… um… blue. This is almost like me saying… um… actually, I don’t have a supermodel analogy for this one.
Now, speaking of special promotions and such, I bought the Spiderman DVD for $29. Then I see next to it a super-duper special boxed set for $59 or $69 or something. Now my DVD already has a second disc with interviews, behind the scenes, outtakes and such. What more could possibly be in this $69 shiny box that I would pay an extra $40 for?! What more could the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Special Edition possibly have besides an extra long title? Extra footage? Do we really need extra footage?! Well do we at least get an extra hobbit?! My pirated copy from Thailand includes an additional hobbit… or wait… maybe it’s just some guy in the cinema getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the movie.
Recent CD purchases:
Machine Gun Fellatio (***), Ben Lee (***1/2), Wallflowers (***1/2). The Ben Lee CD also comes with a free T-shirt. It’s red, and pretty much looks like the kind of t-shirt that you get free with a CD.
Monday, November 25, 2002
Monday, November 18, 2002
Not knowing which way the wind blows
It feels OK but something just isn’t right.
There’s nothing uglier than the displeasure you get at the sight of your own reflection.
And perhaps by tomorrow it will all be fine. Perhaps by tomorrow, I’ll stop babbling like a moron over… what exactly? I don’t know.
‘Well at least you can see yourself in the mirror’, says Sleepwalker. ‘At least you’re not a vampire.’
I need to be pitied for pitying myself. Not for that which I pity myself about.
But at least I’m not a vampire.
It feels OK but something just isn’t right.
There’s nothing uglier than the displeasure you get at the sight of your own reflection.
And perhaps by tomorrow it will all be fine. Perhaps by tomorrow, I’ll stop babbling like a moron over… what exactly? I don’t know.
‘Well at least you can see yourself in the mirror’, says Sleepwalker. ‘At least you’re not a vampire.’
I need to be pitied for pitying myself. Not for that which I pity myself about.
But at least I’m not a vampire.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Greater Expectations
The flames have been rekindled and my love for theatre burns brightly once more (did I just write that?!). It was originally money (or lack thereof) that pulled me away. Tickets just got too expensive and STC subscriptions weren’t worth it because STC just isn’t consistent enough with their quality. A lot of their productions are rather dry and uninspired affairs written by over-the-hill writers (e.g. David Williamson) who’ve lost their edge. There are a lot of smaller theatres now that are winning people over with smaller but more original efforts, but when STC does something properly, they’re still damn hard to beat.
And there’s something about drama theatre that you just can’t get on TV or the big screen or even big Broadway-style musicals. It could be the rawness of it. Or the melodrama. Or simply the fact that real people are standing in front of you and you are so damn close to them. It’s voyeurism on multiple levels. Whatever.
Lately, I’ve seen a couple of pretty good ones. Thanks to Lil who’s suddenly gotten into it all (it used to be me dragging her along!) and organised the last two. Here are my thoughts on both.
The Glass Menagerie — This is the second Tennessee Williams play I’ve seen and I’ve become a fan. The guy’s a genius. He reminds me why I liked theatre in the first place: great writing, great dialogue. And although not quite as polished as the West End production of Cat on a hot tin roof I saw last year (Marcus Graham just can’t compare to Brendan Fraser), this was still pretty damn good. The acting was solid and any bad points (some scenes just seemed awkward) didn’t detract enough from the fact that it’s a bloody well-written play. Although Aussies doing Southern American accents just doesn’t do it for me. Marcus Graham sounded Irish when he got angry!
Great Expectations — Last night. Four hours long! But I stayed through it. And relished it, faults and all. It’s brave of them to try to put Dickens on the stage and they succeeded to some degree. They were certainly creative in their interpretation (using wheeled chairs to simulate a boat worked better than you’d think) but as anyone else who have tried to re-interpret this story must know, there’s just too much there. Even four hours wasn’t enough to tell the whole story. They shouldn’t have tried to cram so much into it. Three things for me came out of watching this play last night: (1) Great Expectations is one of the greatest stories ever written, (2) They made a good attempt at putting it on stage, but (3) the story just isn’t meant for the stage. For one thing, the city of London is a character all it’s own in the story. But it’s very hard to simulate a city on stage (lots of people walking up and down the stage just isn’t good enough) and the filth of poverty and the eerie Satis House are also very hard to reproduce on stage. And these are all very important images in the novel. Finally, Estella just wasn’t alluring enough. She was just plain unlikeable. She’s literature’s ultimate femme fatale! You’re supposed to love her and hate her at the same time.
These aren’t the two greatest productions I’ve seen. But they're even further from being the worst that I've seen. And it’s brought back a little… or a lot… of the passion that I once had for watching a bunch of men and women shouting to each other on an unnatural stage.
The flames have been rekindled and my love for theatre burns brightly once more (did I just write that?!). It was originally money (or lack thereof) that pulled me away. Tickets just got too expensive and STC subscriptions weren’t worth it because STC just isn’t consistent enough with their quality. A lot of their productions are rather dry and uninspired affairs written by over-the-hill writers (e.g. David Williamson) who’ve lost their edge. There are a lot of smaller theatres now that are winning people over with smaller but more original efforts, but when STC does something properly, they’re still damn hard to beat.
And there’s something about drama theatre that you just can’t get on TV or the big screen or even big Broadway-style musicals. It could be the rawness of it. Or the melodrama. Or simply the fact that real people are standing in front of you and you are so damn close to them. It’s voyeurism on multiple levels. Whatever.
Lately, I’ve seen a couple of pretty good ones. Thanks to Lil who’s suddenly gotten into it all (it used to be me dragging her along!) and organised the last two. Here are my thoughts on both.
The Glass Menagerie — This is the second Tennessee Williams play I’ve seen and I’ve become a fan. The guy’s a genius. He reminds me why I liked theatre in the first place: great writing, great dialogue. And although not quite as polished as the West End production of Cat on a hot tin roof I saw last year (Marcus Graham just can’t compare to Brendan Fraser), this was still pretty damn good. The acting was solid and any bad points (some scenes just seemed awkward) didn’t detract enough from the fact that it’s a bloody well-written play. Although Aussies doing Southern American accents just doesn’t do it for me. Marcus Graham sounded Irish when he got angry!
Great Expectations — Last night. Four hours long! But I stayed through it. And relished it, faults and all. It’s brave of them to try to put Dickens on the stage and they succeeded to some degree. They were certainly creative in their interpretation (using wheeled chairs to simulate a boat worked better than you’d think) but as anyone else who have tried to re-interpret this story must know, there’s just too much there. Even four hours wasn’t enough to tell the whole story. They shouldn’t have tried to cram so much into it. Three things for me came out of watching this play last night: (1) Great Expectations is one of the greatest stories ever written, (2) They made a good attempt at putting it on stage, but (3) the story just isn’t meant for the stage. For one thing, the city of London is a character all it’s own in the story. But it’s very hard to simulate a city on stage (lots of people walking up and down the stage just isn’t good enough) and the filth of poverty and the eerie Satis House are also very hard to reproduce on stage. And these are all very important images in the novel. Finally, Estella just wasn’t alluring enough. She was just plain unlikeable. She’s literature’s ultimate femme fatale! You’re supposed to love her and hate her at the same time.
These aren’t the two greatest productions I’ve seen. But they're even further from being the worst that I've seen. And it’s brought back a little… or a lot… of the passion that I once had for watching a bunch of men and women shouting to each other on an unnatural stage.
Thursday, November 07, 2002
Your ideas are not your own
Is it just me or does Dylan Lewis look more like Monkey Magic than is normally possible for a man without make-up?
What?
Ugliness is a very ugly thing.
Is that meant to be wise?
Whatever.
__________
Question: Are we sick of nubile Britney-pop starlets yet?
Well I’m not! So here’s yet another cute little 18-year-old to marvel in all her splendour! My prediction (with a 68.7% level of accuracy) is that Alizee here will be the next big import to these shores. She’s already huge in her homeland (France), the rest of Europe and recently the UK. Her stuff should make it here and to the US as soon as she… um… learns English.
OK so there’s probably something not quite right about a teenage girl singing ‘Moi… Lolita’ but hey, it’s catchy so just soak up the goodness!
__________
I saw this Honkie movie over the weekend called Fall for you, with one of my favourite Honkie stars in it, Francis Ng. Anyway, it was another shallow romantic comedy in typical Honkie fashion where love can develop within a single meeting and life-altering decisions are made are based on a smiling glance from a beautiful stranger. But this particular film didn’t end the way I expected it to. Not the way these films usually end — which is either a happy ending or somebody dies. And I was really disturbed by it. I don’t know whether it was the actual story end that bothered me or just the fact that it didn’t fit the usual template. But I can’t believe I was emotionally moved and disturbed by a B-grade romantic comedy!
__________
My friend turned 24 last Sunday and my day is coming up real soon. I’m feeling old again. I haven’t done enough. I felt so down about it on Tuesday that I had to buy myself an Oreo Bash just to calm me down (or maybe I just wanted one and needed an excuse).
Oh and I also bought myself the Spider-man DVD (for some reason, the Oreo Bash seems more important). It’s still a fantastic movie the second time around. Wilhem Dafoe and Toby Maguire’s is-he-really-such-a-little-boy-or-is-he-on-drugs flat, wide-eyed acting really pushes the film beyond just a special effects spectacular. But is it just me or is Kirsten Dunst completely unspectacular?
Maybe it’s just me.
Is it just me or does Dylan Lewis look more like Monkey Magic than is normally possible for a man without make-up?
What?
Ugliness is a very ugly thing.
Is that meant to be wise?
Whatever.
__________
Question: Are we sick of nubile Britney-pop starlets yet?
Well I’m not! So here’s yet another cute little 18-year-old to marvel in all her splendour! My prediction (with a 68.7% level of accuracy) is that Alizee here will be the next big import to these shores. She’s already huge in her homeland (France), the rest of Europe and recently the UK. Her stuff should make it here and to the US as soon as she… um… learns English.
OK so there’s probably something not quite right about a teenage girl singing ‘Moi… Lolita’ but hey, it’s catchy so just soak up the goodness!
__________
I saw this Honkie movie over the weekend called Fall for you, with one of my favourite Honkie stars in it, Francis Ng. Anyway, it was another shallow romantic comedy in typical Honkie fashion where love can develop within a single meeting and life-altering decisions are made are based on a smiling glance from a beautiful stranger. But this particular film didn’t end the way I expected it to. Not the way these films usually end — which is either a happy ending or somebody dies. And I was really disturbed by it. I don’t know whether it was the actual story end that bothered me or just the fact that it didn’t fit the usual template. But I can’t believe I was emotionally moved and disturbed by a B-grade romantic comedy!
__________
My friend turned 24 last Sunday and my day is coming up real soon. I’m feeling old again. I haven’t done enough. I felt so down about it on Tuesday that I had to buy myself an Oreo Bash just to calm me down (or maybe I just wanted one and needed an excuse).
Oh and I also bought myself the Spider-man DVD (for some reason, the Oreo Bash seems more important). It’s still a fantastic movie the second time around. Wilhem Dafoe and Toby Maguire’s is-he-really-such-a-little-boy-or-is-he-on-drugs flat, wide-eyed acting really pushes the film beyond just a special effects spectacular. But is it just me or is Kirsten Dunst completely unspectacular?
Maybe it’s just me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)