Documentaries: 5
Features: 4
Shorts: 2
Weirdest Cinema Snack: A capsicum being eaten like an apple. Not by me.
Hey! Moment: Meeting up with James of hooverdust, along with his friend Nick, after Bright Leaves. We had a most satisfying beer-fuelled powwow at the Lounge.

Now, the lack of reviews. Over the last few days, I have seen: a fantastic Australian movie from 1974 set in Footscray, an utterly charming documentary about tobacco plantations, and a depressing story of abandoned Japanese children. There have been old men on St Kilda pier, fishbone necklaces, Columbian activists and severed hands using mobile phones.

I think I'm overstimulated. Once again, it's after midnight. This festival lifestyle is slowly killing me. I am not hardcore. Apologies for the sudden cessation of indepth critical analysis.

It’s 12.31am, and I’ve just got home from seeing The Corporation. This documentary will receive a commercial release in September, and everyone should see it. More to the point: in the current, Michael-Moore-softened climate of receptivity towards lefty documentaries, everyone probably will see it. The session tonight was sold out days ago.

The documentary offers a multifaceted view of the corporation as social creation and legal person. Undoubtedly, parts of it have an amazing impact. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface carpets, tells the story of his environmental epiphany; asked to address an environmental taskforce on his ecological vision, he drew a blank, did some reading, and became a powerful advocate for corporate sustainability. Totally inspiring stuff.

In another segment, two whistleblowers from Fox News tell the story of the pressure placed upon them by Monsanto and Fox to distort an investigation they had prepared on the use of hormone treatments in the dairy industry. Their wicked sense of humour and integrity are compelling.

Vandana Shiva, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and a host of other interesting thinkers raise plenty of ideas, and the footage of old advertisements, Bolivian water protests and Nicaraguan oil pumps are confronting. That said – and what follows by no means takes away from these powerful moments – I left the theatre disgruntled. My overwhelming feeling was that I had just witnessed the audiovisual equivalent of a high school textbook.

The filmmakers faced a number of challenges with this documentary. How do you present pure ideas in a visual form? And how do you coherently present such a variety of information? Their solution to the visualization dilemma was to style the film as voice-overs and monologues, accompanied by old footage or photos, animations, and visual gimmicks like jigsaw puzzles. The effect for me was like that of a doublespread of a textbook: sidebars, boxed facts, a cartoon and some pull quotes.

The material was largely left unstructured. Orange screens with chapter headings appeared now and then, but bore little resemblance to the subsequent content. A vague idea of diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of the corporation as a psychopath was followed, but inconsistently.

But Beth! You love sprawl! I hear everyone cry. Well, yes. But not when someone is trying to construct a case and argue a point (in this case, corporations are having harmful effects and we need to take action). Besides, this film lasted for 145 minutes and at a conservative estimate presented 50 or 60 ideas. Audiences can latch onto the one or two they remember most, and the film may be considered successful. But a better organizing principle – some kind of narrative or focal story, numbered points, whatever – would help us remember more. The textbook grab-bag approach also, I think, unnecessarily patronises/alienates an intelligent audience.

The Corporation is fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining. But from a stylistic, structural point of view, I think it could learn a lot from big brother Michael Moore.

Lyn arrived in Melbourne yesterday. And did we chat, gossip, wine or dine? We did not. We walked straight into back-to-back films at the Forum.

The tally now stands at:
Documentaries: 3
Features: 3
Shorts: 0

Somersault
This moody Australian piece, written and driected by Cate Shortland and starring Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, has garnered significant critical acclaim. I had two strong gut responses: (1) Abbie's hair looked great and (2)...well. (2). The opening shot of the film establishes Abbie as a member of Canberra's bogan trash community. And how do they do this? With a long, screen-filling shot of the KAMBAH TAVERN. This was the watering-hole at my local shops for twenty years. It was discombobulating to see it used like that in a cinema full of festival snobs.

Anyway, the film was beautiful (if a little absorbed by its own good looks), and the lead performances were impressive and charismatic. Abbie plays a young girl who runs away from home in Canberra and ends up in Jindabyne, romancing an older guy who lives on a nearby property. What the film did perfectly was capture the naive, arrogant, confused sexuality of adolescence. Sure, I was a little surprised to discover that Jindabyne was ruled by landed gentry who were engaged in class warfare with the likes of the "chick from the servo", but the icy, atmospheric beauty and the heartache carried the day.

One Missed Call
I was expecting to be a little more scared and a little less amused by this Japanese horror flick. Premise: one by one, co-ed students are receiving voicemail messages on their cell phones from themselves in the future, screaming and dying. Then they die. That's scary. There was a brilliant section of the film where one of the students is pressured into appearing on a reality TV special at the time of her death. And there's some way chilling action in a deserted hospital. But the heavy handed horror touches (a white bony arm! and so on) made the audience laugh out loud, and the ending was frankly bizarro. Still, all good fun.

The Story of Marie and Julien
This film moved so slowly, and took so long, that one of the guys behind us started snoring loudly. But I didn't mind slow. This French film was a delicately sketched ghost love story, rich in ideas and soulful looks.

MIFF Viewing Tally
Features: 1
Documentaries: 3
Shorts: 0

Favourite Audience Member: The 15 year old Metallica fan in his concert T-shirt who was in front of me while we queued to get into the Metallica flick. And his Dad, who was obviously bemused by the crowd but happy to support his son.  I asked the young fella a few questions about Metallica, and he answered in earnest, rambling echos of the official fan website. Adorable! Sadly, I couldn't keep him.

Not yet reviewed: Somersault and The Kidnapping of Ingrid Bevancourt. Both very good.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
The highlight of the festival so far. Imagine a sellout crowd of mostly Metallica fans, with long hair dying for a Queer Eye touch, faded black T-shirts and attitude. The director introduces the movie, and notes that the sound has been turned up "real loud". Devil horn fingers wave madly in the air as the first grinding guitar riff blasts through the speakers...

Already, it was a perfect experience. And then to top it all off, the documentary was quite amazing. It focused on the therapy the band underwent for 2 years with their very own Dr Phil - from what I saw, a weasel in bad knitted jumpers who mouthed platitudes, charged US$10,000 a week and was determined to suck that cash cow as long as possible. The band members struggled like true Americans to talk the therapy talk - "I'm hearing that you, um, feel uncomfortable, um when I play like this" - but soon degenerated into "Fuck you! Your music is stock and this whole thing is shit!" The lead singer, James Hetfield, walks out and checks himself into rehab. Peacemaking lead guitarist Kirk Hammet sighs and puts his head in his hands. And Lars Ulrich rages.

My favourite character was Lars' dad - a small, wizened Danish man who carried a knobbly walking stick and repeatedly stroked his long, white beard. So far, so fairytale.  Then it emerges that he's an expert on heavy metal music, sees his son as a pioneer, and is the band's most revered critic. In one scene, the band brings him into the studio and plays a track. He sits, stroking his beard. At the end, in slow, measured tones, he says: "If someone (stroke) were to ask (stroke) for my advice (long pause), I would say (stroke) - delete it." Classic.

Not only was the film achingly funny - particularly for a non-Metallica fan who considers even their music hilarious (if catchy) - it also managed to change the way I saw the band. I've long considered Lars the epitome of baby-faced evil for his actions against Napster. I still hold that view. Now, though, I can see how Lars might have unwittingly worked himself into that position - he has a very simplistic (almost immature) idea of what's fair, he is greedy, he is unwilling to back down, he was in the middle of a creative and relational meltdown at the time, and he probably received bad advice.

One last scene: Lars is being interviewed on the couch, and he's talking tough about metal. Gradually, you become aware of a voice in the background "Daaaaadddy." Lars continues. Ten seconds later. "Daaaaddddy!!" And again; "DADDY!". Finally, Lars breaks off his speech and turns to the door. "Yes, sweetie?" End scene.

If you get the chance to see this documentary, seize it eagerly. It doesn't matter whether you like Metallica or not - the power struggles of a massively successful band, and the very human faultlines they expose, make compelling viewing.

Melbourne International Film Festival Viewing Tally
Features: 0
Documentaries: 1
Shorts: 0
Number of audience members upon whom I have inflicted violence: 1. The woman next to me, aka Ms Self-Righteous Huff'n'Puff. She tut tutted, snorted, and sighed loudly all through the film. It got to the point where I had a millisecond-long window for my own reaction to events on screen. I half-deliberately kicked her ankle as we were leaving. Or - I accidentally kicked her ankle and then decided I wasn't sorry.

Control Room
This documentary, which told the story of Arab news network al-Jazeera during the Iraqi conflict, was Lyn's top pick of the Sydney Film Festival's documentaries. The screening in Melbourne was a sell out, and the queue for seats extended from the RMIT Capitol Theatre, down Swanston St, around the corner into Collins St and right up to Dymocks. The audience was noisily sympathetic to the anti-American tendency of the film (see above).

What I liked most about the doco was the shift in perspective. I'm used to bagging the media and journalists. Yet this film showed the subjectivity of the community of journalists in Iraq - their analyses, emotional reactions and struggles. Many of them had really interesting things insights that were new to me. One of the main journalists depicted, Hassan Ibrahim, pointed out that for Arab viewers the issues of American troops killing Iraqi civilians and American-funded Israeli troops killing Palestinian civilians were like two hands with their fingers intertwined. As the American press officer commented, people back home (like me) wouldn't even think to connect the two conflicts.  Other Arabic journalists talked about pride, about set-ups, and about the grief of losing a reporter when the al-Jazeera office was bombed by the Americans.

The sardonic humour of the journalists was appealing. Hassan Ibrahim, again:

(watches footage of a young boy who has been killed). "That child. Another weapon of mass destruction."
(watches footage of the bombing of Baghdad) "Ah, democracy."
(watches footage of angry Iraqis demonstrating against the US) "The Shi'a people who welcomed Americans with flowers."

The documentary focused on al-Jazeera, but allowed other characters to be human and rounded. Lt Rushing, the main source of information for the press, initially seemed like a pro-America robot but soon showed internal conflict over his own varying reactions to Iraqi and American deaths and greater willingness to learn about the Arabic cultures. Tom Mintier from CNN had some excellent, cutting comments to make.

Control Room was extremely pro-journalism, but in choosing this alignment it united journalists from opposite sides of the political and cultural fence. Interesting, and valuable. 

Like most other Aussies, I learnt a bit about bushrangers in primary school and high school, I sang the song "Blame it on the Kellys" and I've seen a few iconic Sidney Nolan paintings. But it wasn't until last night, when I finished Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang, that I actually felt like I knew the story. It took a book length treatment, the situation of incident within characters and relationships, and an intimate connection of legend and landscape for history to feel like part of my story. My ancestors were Irish. I've driven through Beveridge and Benalla. Now it all means a bit more.
 
So, two thumbs up to Carey. But I'll tell you something else interesting. After I'd put the book down and cogitated for a while over a cup of tea and an episode of The O.C., I felt an irresistible urge to pick up William Faulkner. I read his tale of a poor white trash boy, Barn Burning, and could see why I had to juxtapose the two writers (indeed, Carey's epigarph is a Faulkner quote). In TTHOTKG, Carey is a bit like an Australian Faulkner. He captures the vernacular of the voiceless underclass, he tells stories that evoke sympathy for the poor and dispossessed. Yet Carey's work is just slightly undermined by his cleverness - he can't resist putting in a literary flourish (someone's voice is like a kookaburra on a grey box fence in the early morning sun), or a deep thought about Truth and Australians. Faulkner stays true to his narrator/focal character. Any deep thoughts are presented in a realistic swirl of impressions and confusions. Carey's book is a gift for Australians, but Faulkner is a genius. 

It's sad when a newspaper becomes nothing more than pages of advertisements interspersed with utterly predictable articles. To alleviate the stress, I now play a little game of newspaper bingo. It started with a simple count of the number of articles/editorials/reviews/letters that dealt with the issue of career women leaving babies too late. I'm averaging at least three a day. Now, I also give a silent tick when I come across

• boys doing badly at school
• custody arrangements and the family court
• the new feminism

And you can come up with your own! I tried doing up a little bingo sheet for everyone but it didn't exactly drop out of my non-html-skilled hand the way I had dreamed.

By the way, looking at that list, no-one could accuse Howard era Australia of showing no interest in social issues. Just, perhaps, a scary kind of backward-looking interest.

All year, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Joe Cinque's Consolation, Helen Garner's first full-length non-fiction work since The First Stone. Garner has, I think, a unique ability to examine social events and trends through eyes that are at once journalistic and personal. I love the honesty of her writing style. Plus, this new book is about events that, as an ANU law student in 1999, I was fairly close to.
 
On Saturday The Age had Garner on the cover of  the Good Weekend liftout, and devoted a fair few pages to her book (sorry, can't find the link). I started reading in that greedy, excited way. Before long, I was starting to shift in my seat, bite my lip and feel a little uncomfortable.
 
It is understandable that the machinery of literature looks for an angle when promoting a new book. J.K. "The idea just came to me on a train" Rowling. That boy who was only 18 and wrote about drugs in New York. Nikki Gemmell, of course, and that whole irritating anonymous author crap in The Bride Stripped Bare. To compete against movies, TV and the bevy of  cross-marketing material books requires a bit of spin - a hook for the public.
 
And what hook have they chosen for Joe Cinque's Consolation? Helen Garner was painted as an ageing hysterical woman, who wrote the book rather than have an emotional breakdown, who understands women at the end of their tether, who is acquainted with desperation and drugs, who was battered and bruised by the public. This picture emerged both from the commentary of the journalist and the quotes of Garner herself.
 
I don't like it. Garner is a writer I hold in great respect, and I don't plan to view her work as the effluent of a disturbed harpie. It's like "they" (her, her publishers, the media, whoever) have taken the personal nature of her writing style, and somehow allowed it to mutate and grow into a monster that overwhelms her book. Either that, or perhaps the book isn't very good. It's a worry.
 

They seek her here, they seek her there, they seek that Drisky everywhere.

Dear Drisky,
I'm glad I finally tracked you down. Can you tell me if there's anything good on TV at the moment? Thanks, Bored-After-Dinnertime

BAD. Dude. You have hit straight upon its head the number one philosophical problem troubling all of society's great minds. Terrorism? Yesterday's news. Stem cell research? Whatever. Yet another home renovation show? WHY GOD WHY!?!

It's an issue that has evolved considerably since 2001, when a slurry of reality TV hit the small screen and illuminati everywhere deigned to briefly consider the state of pop culture. Then it was interesting. Five minutes later, it became boring. And now it's interesting again by dint of the fact that it is SO damn boring and the boredom is relentless. Will we die? Has the word entertainment lost all meaning as applied to domestic broadcasts? Where have all the good shows gone?

The answer, as always, is Monday night. There were three and only three shows worth seeing last week: Denton interviewing Rachel Griffiths and Jeff Kennett at 9.30, The Sopranos at 10.30 and Wildside at 11.00. To watch all three required some finesse with the VCR and a determination that early nights are for the weak.

And what can we say of these shows? Denton, at first so charming and incisive, has shown a worrying inclination towards the uncritically smug. Germaine Greer pointed this out to me, and I saw it for myself when he interviewed John Travolta. "You have a plane! Omigod LOL that is so cool! And I'm talking to you on my turf!" The RG/JK special was unusually good for Denton. And that's because RG rocks the free world.

The Sopranos - also going through a brilliant patch, a respite from the sameyness that has started to afflict the show in season five.

Wildside - the best show ever produced in Australia and it's 7 years old and being repeated for at least the third time. It's great, but it is not enough.

BAD, I feel for you. Even if you tape all three shows they're not going to eke you out over the course of a week. You might get trapped watching some nightmarish documentary on Korean chemical warfare (how are we supposed to sleep?) or bland, faux-hyped AusIdol/Big Brother shite. Good luck out there. Drisky.

The Melbourne International Film Festival is about to hit town. And while I have finally come to the realisation that I am not a hip, countercultural film-maker who lives only for the darkness of the flickering screen, I think I might try and take in a few flicks. Let's face it, Lyn has inspired me. I don't think I can come close to her breathtaking tally of 14 features, 8 shorts and 8 documentaries. I do, however, hope to see these:

1. Bright Leaves
Tobacco plantations, family legend, ruminations and wandering.

2. Fahrenheit 9/11
I can probably already write the review. "Although Moore makes some excellent points, he goes to needless and alienating extremes. But then again, he doesn't need to convince me. I hope the film makes people vote against Bush." By the way, where are our anti-Howard movies? Where's the slick of cinematic glamour, the controversial frisson of a loopy celebrity, the contagious passion of public figures?

3. Somersault
A hyped Aussie feature that appeared at Cannes. It has Simone from Wildside in it, and loneliness.

Probably, I'll also try and see some random things. Woohoo.

News today that Amanda Vanstone has introduced changes to the government's policy concerning Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). TPVs are the only visa option available to refugees who arrive by boat, and they are very nasty - no English lessons, no health benefits, and until just now, no ability to apply for a non-humanitarian visa without leaving the country first.

With the changes, holders of TPVs are now able to apply for skilled, business or student visas without leaving Australia. I think this is fantastic - I physically relaxed reading the article. It's time's like this I know I'm incurably optimistic/naive, because everyone else's reaction has been far more cynical - will this softening be reversed after the election, there are still outrageous aspects of the TPV system etc etc.

I agree with those criticisms, and I am fully aware that the softening is a populist ploy designed to make life easier for rural Lib and National MPs with large TPV populations in their electorates. But what excites me is the blurring of the line between TPV/humanitarian refugees and the skilled migration program. Before, these streams were kept rigorously separate. It was part of the "culture of control" infecting Australia's migration system - a way of demonising boat people while actually raising the number of economically valuable migrants. And now comes the tacit recognition that boat people can be economically valuable to Australia, too. It's a very important symbolic step.

God bless the half-price ticket outlet. Thanks to a fortuitous alignment of that outlet, myself, a hot date and a free evening I was able to watch the preview performance of Minefields and Miniskirts.

Minefields and Miniskirts is, as the Age rightly observed, more of a documentary-show than a play. This took me a little while to realise...I was a bit like "where's the deeper meditation on the meaning of life and the human condition? Where are the depressed everymen sitting under trees?" Instead, Minefields and Miniskirts is a social history - a distillation of the stories of over 50 women who went to Vietnam. There are five main characters: the nurse, the nun, the journo, the showgirl and the vietnam vet's wife. They take it in turns to perform monologues, punctuated by songs.

I really enjoyed the songs! They were by Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and other cool cats, and the women's voices worked very nicely together. Who can truly hate five part harmony?

The actors were well knowns, and very good. I recognised Wendy Stapleton from her role as Trixie on Neighbours. Tracy Bartram was a powerful presence. And then there was Debra Byrne. I was totally unprepared for my reaction to her - you see, she was Fantine in the Les Mis production I saw when I was 8. And everytime I heard her sing, I had this little catch in my throat. Because the tigers come at night with their voices soft as thunder, and they tear your hopes apart, and they turn your dreams to shame. It's just so sad.

After the show, the actors came out and mingled with the audience in the lobby of the Malthouse. I saw Tracey Bartram meet two young women, and listen to them very intently. Good on her, eh. Libby Kennedy from Neighbours was there. And Debra Byrne came out, but I decided that perhaps it was inappropriate to go over to her and gush over a role she performed 18 years ago.

It seems like a great idea to me - a Sydney company will work with Detroit band MC5 to have "bootlegged" CDs of a live performance available for sale within 5 minutes of the show finishing. The idea has previously been used by The Pixies.

I like this concept because it generates money for the band (between $10 and $15 per CD, far more than royalties from studio albums). I like it because it takes the morality out of "piracy", simply using technology to provide a better service. It recognises the legitimate and frankly flattering desire of fans to have live recordings. It also provides another incentive for people to get out and see live music. Top work.

In an extraordinary press conference yesterday, Mark Latham fought back tears as he asked the media to lay off his family.

I find so many aspects of this news-byte interesting. For a start, most of these allegations - a wild buck's night, a sexual harassment case, a broken collarbone and more - had not been published. They were press rumours. Latham himself called the press conference to confront the journalists and deal with the gossip head on. Was this a canny move? I think so, yes. Hearing the rumours all at once does make it seem that there is a smear campaign going on. What's more, including mild misdemeanours (the buck's night) makes people think more tolerantly of the whole package of allegations. Seeing Latham passionately defend his family and his honour doesn't, I think, do his image any harm. He looks proactive. Tick.

Latham also accused the coalition of having a dirt unit. I don't think anyone could doubt that such a unit, whether formal or informal, exists. That's just the grubby game of politics. But Howard said that he believes private life should be private (fancy a Lib saying that!) and he knows of no dirt unit. What I want to know is - can Howard possibly have any credibility when he denies something? Do we all interpret that as meaning "I am 99% positive, through my careful strategy of don't ask, don't tell, that such a unit exists, but I don't know for sure." Or is that just me?

I got up early on Sunday to watch Video Hits (it keeps me hip). There was even a clip that I found interesting. Scratch interesting. Fascinating.

Jin is a Chinese-American rapper. His technique is hot - he's got that low, menacing rhythmic chant that has worked so well for Chuck D and 50 Cent. The content of the rap matches the style. The clip starts with Jin delivering Chinese food, then going to Chinatown. But his words are addressed to white America, with the emphasis on one repeated line: "Y'all gunna learn Chinese."

The line is delivered as a threat, and it's a post-colonialist cultural critic's dream. Language as dominance, reverse colonialism, reverse cultural imperialism - name a buzzphrase, and Jin slots right in. It's also a beautiful illustration of the way rappers substitute verbal violence for physical (raps began as street battles). This is meta - Jin uses language to threaten people with language.

If rappers weren't so disappointing live, I'd be tempted to see Jin when he tours Australia.

English philosopher Alain de Botton seems to have succeeded in taking something highbrow (philosophy) and transforming it into a popular success. His television series, The Consolations of Philosophy and more recently Status Anxiety, are screened to large audiences (4 million) on commercial networks.

I haven't seen the shows, although I plan to one day. For now, I'm just interested in the moves he's making and the responses he's getting. Some critics have derided de Botton's work as dumbed-down and self-aggrandising. But I don't know. Perhaps any attempt to reach a mass audience will need to be simple on at least one level, and will need to tap into personal celebrity - a main point of entry for our culture. I wouldn't mind doing something similar for literature. In fact, that could well be part of my mooted PhD.

What do other people think of Alain de Botton?