Blowing my own horn…

…And a reviewer who gets Bloodlust and Pearls Before Swine!!!… in the same damn review. Time it appears is on my side.

Check out Digital Retribution’s erudite reviews here, of my first two features. Its nice to have someone take your work seriously in the underground critical community and for them to find some value in it. Jolly good show.

Here’s a fun picture of Boyd Rice.

Avid fan

Got a letter from a fan. Thought I’d repost it here. I get these every now and then. I’ll answer some of his questions in the comments column soon.

Dear Richard,

I’m emailing you completely out of the blue because I’ve just spent an afternoon away from uni reliving one of your films that I really loved as a young, snotty 90’s teenager – Bloodlust.

As I started to become more interested in film, one of the things that I began to notice as I became more seriously interested in the medium was the lack of anything familiar to me. My Australia wasn’t the one that the mainstream Australian film industry seemed particularly interested in depicting.

On the commentary track, you describe your intended audience as being ‘15 year old boys eating pizza’ – that was absolutely who I was at the time, and as a young, horror-obsessed nascent pervert, Bloodlust was something I simply had to see. As I’m sure you remember, there was something intimidating about video shops at the time – they didn’t just stock whatever pablum Hollywood was shovelling at us, there were all kinds of weird little underground films that found their ways to the shelves. Out of this environment, I found David Lynch, Cronenberg, Troma, John Carpenter, Kenneth Anger, and a universe of films that defied description. Bloodlust’s cover was intimidating, and held the air of something naughty – something that I really shouldn’t be watching.

The thing that I got out of it, though, was that it was the first film I can remember watching that caused me to really identify with the surroundings. The film wasn’t simply shot in Melbourne – it WAS Melbourne, in some weird kind of way. It felt familiar, and had a truth to it regarding the environment that I grew up in. I’m 30 now, and I still can’t remember too many films that give me that feeling of regional identification.

It certainly sparked off my interest in underground cinema and deepened my obsession with horror cinema – for those reasons, you and Jon created something that was very important to me, so for that, I thank the pair of you.

Waxing nostalgia aside, I was curious to know if Bloodlust is ever going to receive a local DVD release. I’d love to get a proper, non-bootleg print of the film – are there any plans to reissue it?

Also, out of curiosity, whatever happened to Robert James O’Neill, Kelly Chapman, and Jane Stuart Wallace? I think I saw Robert O’Neill as an extra in ‘Proof’ – but I’ve never seen the other two in anything.

Anyway, this is just a gushy fan letter because I was having a bit of a moment. Best of luck with all your success with MUFF.

David Elliott
(A Fan)

And then there was Uganda

Sorry if Idea Fix has been a little spare in recent weeks. Been busy as a lizard drinking putting togerher MUFF 10’s Poster and catalogue and prepping a two week trip early July to Uganda.

Yes, Richard Wolstencroft is going into Africa. And I’m told I will have net access, so stand by for a travel diary here at Idea Fix.

I am shooting a documentary, more on this later, and this will be a unique experience for me. I have had my vac shots, I have got my anti malarials and I’m ready to journey into the heart of the mysterious and at times dangerous continent of Africa. Uganda has always fascinated me since I idealized Idi Amin as a child. Here was a strong black leader standing up to the West. There was something wonderful about that. I found Amin a charismatic and fascinating media presence. I knew nothing of the atrocities until I grew older, but Uganda’s past will hopefully find its way into this new project.

More details on all this later…

Until then a map of Uganda to look at. Former homeland of aforementioned Idi Amin and location for conflict in the past 20 years between the democratic current government of Museveni and The Lords Resistance Army in the North lead by Joseph Kony. We land at Entebbe airport in under two weeks.

I will put MUFF in place before I go… and then away we go! Oh, I will write my directors statement for MUFF X from Uganda, so that’s bound to be a treat…

I welcome any thoughts and advice on travel to Uganda and Africa. Cheers RW

Samson Delilahed

Saw Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah recently, 30 people in cinema as opposed to 1 (me) the week before for the shithouse My Year Without Sex (see note below).

Samson and Delilah is about as good a film as one can make about Aboriginal petrol sniffing, and the hopeless situation of many rural original Australians …it is uncompromising and brutal at times, to its credit. The direction is slow, ontological and assured. This close to the truth account of rural Indigenous Australia is long overdue and for that reason alone is an important film, as Jim Schembri noted on his blog here.

I couldn’t help thinking this is the real Australia…not Baz Luhrmnan’s glitzy camp fantasia.

The subjects it deals with are real and the film has a nice existential style in presenting them. There are even more serious issues like indigenous child sex abuse and white rape squads that drive up North, that are not really dealt with here. Though, a rape does happen off camera, and is very powerfully done (same the car accident – brilliant). There is also teen abuse with sticks in the Aboriginal ghetto. So, all in all it covers many issues…It’s brave and daring for all this…
But neither is it the whole picture, but I guess it need not be, of course.

But, I do think most Euro Aussies are aware of the raping and pillaging our ancestors have done to obtain this land, sorry or no, and that we have a duty of care to its original inhabitants. I think the Australian Aboriginals are connected to the land here by a strong and mystical bond of ‘blood and soil’. I’m interested, as a radical political trouble maker, in the notion of returning part of Australia to Aboriginal self-rule…say part of Northern Territory, WA or Qld? But until that happens White Australia is aware of many problems shown here and in the cities at least we have addressed some problems and at times provide ample social security to try and remedy them. But the rural problem is a harder nut to crack. I’d say working with community elders and a more aggressive program of action and cross community based initiatives could supply further hope…

This film raises these issues and portrays white Australia as being totally oblivious to Aborigines, which to some extent it is, but not entirely. This later accusation is a bit one sided,  and dare I say it unfair…

Overall Samson and Delilah is an important film, though, a rather depressing one for most of its length… and it may only preach only to the converted too, i.e., those who care about Aboriginal issues. The film ends well, I thought, which was needed. Overall I can’t help but feel it’s is a little overrated due to its Cannes win, but its a very strong Oz film about an important subject well worth your attention…

NOTE on My Year Without Sex (Not worth a review). …As I mentioned I saw Sarah Watt’s My Year Without Sex…this film is a microcosm of everything I hate about the Australian Film Industry…ugly people, mundane lives, Kitchen Sink dull story lines. Its like the film is made by various government departments like Department of Health, Taxation, Gambling, Communications, etc. It’s sickeningly PC at times and filled with every film school type cliché added to condescending and shallow lectures on religion, rich vs poor, sexism in billboards, et al., that are so passé it’s beyond a joke. And aneurysm is hardly a hot and exciting topic to centre a film around. Saturday night lets see a film on aneurysm! Yeah!!! For 15 bucks a head… and lets take our friends… NOT! It’s a pretty bad effort all round from (so called) Oz film industry darling Sarah Watt… and the results speak for themselves at the box office. Will probably win all the AFI’s though, of course, given all this…

District 9’s alien xenophobia

New film from Peter Jackson (Producing) and some South African guy called Neil Blomkamp. Looks to be a rather tasty motion picture parable about xenophobia, only the immigrants are aliens. Cool. Very Cool.

MUFF X – Lords it to the Flies…

A new MUFF X teaser ad.

IKEA fascism

…I’m was a bit of a handy man today…I assembled a new book shelf from IKEA to hold some more books that are piling up…and I remembered the IKEA founder was a fascist, so I looked it all up on the net…

Interesting tidbit: Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA founder, was a former Swedish fascist sympathizer, party member of the pro-Nazi New Swedish Movement (Nysvenska Rörelsen) and corresponded with its leader Per Engdahl enthusiastically. He writes about his political committment in the 40’s in his autobiography “Leading By Design: The IKEA Story”. Naughty Ol’ Ingvar’s fascist leanings show in the ordered structure of an IKEA store, and its futurist/modernist ‘designer furniture for all’ weltanschauung, they have also cornered the market in a blitzkrieg of Swedish ingenuity. Ingvar is a transcendental fascist too, as he has stores in Israel and the Middle East raking in the $ for his special cause. Here’s a fun article on IKEA and fascism here and a wiki on Ingvar here. He is one of the world’s richest men, in fact, maybe the richest…. The totalitarian aspects and nature of IKEA was noticed and commented on in Fight Club, both the book and the film. I like IKEA, all things considered. Though you need to only use its furniture only for your basics at home and use Indy designers for the rest of the house, to give it a more personal flavour. Oh and I dig the Swedish names of IKEA products, too…’flark’ you all!

Here’s a pic of Ingy baby!

Fred West Side story

Pretty funny…

Bill Killed…by jerking off in a closet.

David Carradine hung himself jerking off via auto asphyxiation in a Thai hotel. Who knew all Uma Thurman had to do was give Bill a length of rope and closet and she’d have no need to Kill Bill.

In all honesty though, he will be missed! He was great in Kill Bill 1 when you hardly saw him and just heard that voice. But the family bull at the end of KIll Bill 2 was a bit of a let down compared with the rest of the film. I’d like to see both films cut together though as QT has long promised…

DC was a great actor, love that Kung-Fu show, and its good he enjoyed his comeback before going out doing what he loved…acting, and wanking that is.

Michael Moynihan’s I Love a Parade T Shirt

I got a T Shirt in LA off Brian M Clark with the following design on it (see below) and wore it around the US, and at The Opening Night of the St Kilda Film Festival, 2009. I think its very funny…

If you’d like your own, you can order it here.

It was designed by Mr. Michael Moynihan Esq, former Boyd Rice collaborator, the force behind band Blood Axis, international man of mystery and all round interesting cultural figure. I have been reading his superb European Culture journal TYR, so more on him here later….

Order a T Shirt and remember I Love a Parade.