Rumour Has It

I’m struggling to write at the moment more like the last year I’ve struggled. I spent some time recently looking through old blog posts and gosh I used to write. Now I struggle to craft a few sentences into something resembling a story.

I’ve just spent the last ten  minutes trying to write an opening sentence about Saturday night. Instead I’ve written the above.

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Saturday night, I went to the Judy. ahh, the Judy for a show called Rumour Has It: Sixty Minutes Inside Adele. Sam was in town so she came along, as did one of the nursies from my old work and her daughter. It wass a fantastic show. I would go as far to say that Naomi Price live was better than the Adele studio recordings. I like Adele, she write a good song and has an amazing voice but I often feel listening to the studio work that it’s just a little too equalised. I love music with good dynamics. Music where you know the singer is feeling those words from their toes to the every strand of hair on their head.

Naomi Price brought that oomph into the songs of Adele on Saturday night along with some cabaret comedy, some sass and some all round good times.

If you are in Noosa for the Long Weekend Festival or Melbourne for the Cabaret Festival, I strongly suggest getting tickets and going along to see an ah-mazing show.

BIFF Round up

I was flicking through some of my old drafts and came across this one for some reason I never posted rounding up the last of the movies I saw at BIFF in 2007. So here it is, only a few years later. There were some good ones and not weird ones but all good movies. Head over here to check out the other BIFF posts from 2007.

Well after movie 4 I sort of got side tracked by life. So here are movies 5 to 13. One of the bummers is that I have been slightly running round like a chook with its head cut off this week is that I have managed to doze off in 5 of 9 I saw in the past week. Hasn’t really mattered in most as I was able to find my self pretty quickly but there was one or two when I went hang on a second what I have just missed?

Parents
We were undoubtedly the largest group in the cinema with there been 8 of us and 2 girls that Thor ran into that she also knew
Watching parents made me realise that I quite possibly know a bit more Icelandic than I think I do as I was able to pick out quite a few words that I knew as well as following the conversation loosely when my eyes were resting. I was unsure about it been shot in black and white but it worked in keeping the film quite gritty. Just as I like seeing movies filmed in Brisbane especially to pick out familiar sights it was also cool to play pick out the Reykjavik sights in Parents, I think they drove past the apartment block where my sister used to live (Herdis, have you seen Parents?) and there was obliviously a few cafes that they used which were familiar to Pabbi. It was gritty, dark, slightly depressing but also sort of uplifting in showing what parents go through and the decisions they make for their children.

Quinceañera with short film out of milk
Was the movie that made me say I have to go to BIFF this year. I first heard about it last year some time when it was doing the festival circuit in the northern hemisphere and I remember watching the short and knowing that I had to see this movie. I really, really enjoyed it. It was the perfect blend of angst and comedy set against a community which is grappling with gentrification.
The short film was a laugh but also a good look at how a child sees her mothers affair as it happens right before her eyes.

The Future is Unwritten: Joe Strummer
I missed a bit of this film due to going to sleep but from say the 80% that I did see, I really enjoyed it. They drew heavily on the large wealth of archived material and in particular the use of the audio from his BBC World Service radio show London Calling. It was remarkable. One of fun things about the film was that it kept on coming back to people sitting round a fire, singing and chatting in various locations around the world. The film was knitted together quite well in how they used

Eagle vs Shark
This was everything I thought Napoleon Dynamite was going to be and more. A film from New Zealand which was really, really, really fantastic. The right amount of laughs, the right amount of darkness and the right amount of everyday blandness and of course good old New Zealanders and the word awesome. This was in my top handful of movies for the festival. It was just a crackpot.

Barakat
I had high hopes for this one but I missed the middle of it since I dozed off and I never quite caught it again. It tells the tale of two Alegiran women during the recent civil war

Donkey in Lahore
This was the first of two Brisbane produce docos that were screened together at GOMA, both of which were delightful. I was on my seat for most of Donkey in Lahore as I crossed my fingers and hoped that it was going to work out for Amber and Amir. A fantastic movie.

Unlikely Travellers
Unlikely Travellers was the subject of a fair bit of controversy over the subject matter of this documentary and it was a very, very thought provoking film.

An Old Mistress
This was a last minute addition to my viewing schedule and it really surprised me.

Once
Based on the paragraph description in the BIIF booklet, it sounded like a pretty nice movie about a busker who through chance manages to make a break. Little did I know that two leads are both accomplished musicians before they are actors. The busker is played by Glen Han of The Frames and the female lead is Mar Irglova. Even more surprising was that The Frames were in town to support Bob Dylan and popped into to the theatre to play a few songs acoustically for us.

The sweet smell of November rain

The house is filled with the sweet smell of November rain mingled with the perfume of the Mock Orange.

The street is filled with the soft patter of rain drops, the Four Tops from next door and the sound of whistles and yelling carrying up the hill from the netball.

The makings of Christmas presents cover the living room floor and the kitchen table.

There is  big container of dried fruit soaking in rum and spices in the pantry.

There is only a few days left till the calendar reads December.

 

happythankyoumoreplease

watched Happythankyoumoreplease the other week whilst on sick leave and whilst parts were weird, parts were sad and parts were darn funny. There was this one scene that just about summed up a part of me oh so very well. More so than I think I’ve ever summed it up myself.

Annie: So, what got you into photography?

Sam #2: Oh, I wouldn’t call it photography.

Annie: What would you call it?

Sam #2: I love taking pictures, I guess.

Annie: Okay. Well, why do you take pictures?

Sam #2: Umm.. I don’t know. When I see something I like looking at, I get to keeping looking at it.

That last line, right there. Yep. “When I see something I like looking at, I get to keep looking at it”. That’s why I take pictures. I like how something looks, or the way the light falls on an item. I take a picture and then I get to keep looking at it.

These are three such pictures.

Daffodils, driedBreadcrumbsWattle

H.

Plans tomorrow night?

Not sure what you are doing tomorrow night? Want to catch some live tunes?

There is only one option. That is The Mountain Goats at The Zoo. Buy your tickets now!

It can be safe to say that there have been many times in the past seven years I’ve waxed on about The Mountain Goats. They probably are quite easily the band I’ve spoken about the most and my last.FM account tells me they are the band I’ve listened to the most in the last seven years that I’ve been keeping a log of my music habits.

They were last here in 2010 and this was the pretty darn fantastic show they played at The Zoo. I’m still some 754 days later pretty chuffed that out of the sold out crowd it was me! that had my request played 😀

I’ll be rocking my Babylon Springs tour shirt from 2006 in all my Mountain Goats fangirl glory.

My two wishes for tomorrow night are that they play Brisbane Hotel Sutra and that they have great tour shirts this time (bonus we are the second show of the tour so there should be plenty of sizes to pick from :))

That is tomorrow.