Idea Fix - The Blog

Here’s a sneak peek at the New Barbet Schroeder Documentary “Terror’s Advocate” - looks fascinating.

As apologies are in vogue this week, why don’t we get one from the Japanese for their treatment of Australian POW in WW2?

Like any self respecting pervert I love Japan. I have been there four times and dig, dig, dig its post war culture, cinema, night life and literature, especially Yukio Mishima, who I love - Banzai! I also dig its pre war Emperor worship, Samuari spirit, Zen Buddhism, architecture, theatre and many other traditional elements of Japan.

But I will say this - the Japanese treatment of Australian POW is a disgrace. Kokoda, The Burmese Railway over the River Kwai (which I visited in early 2007), The Banka Island nurses…it’s a long list. And if Sorry is all in vogue at present. I think Her Majesty’s Government of Australia is owed one here.

I was spurred onto this opinion today by watching a documentary on SBS about the nurses who were taken POW during WW2 in Indonesia and the Banka Island Massacre. Vivian Bullwinkle, who survived a mass shooting in the sea of 22 nurses, lived to tell the tale of woe and as she said in the doco, ” If anyone thinks the Japansese weren’t barbarians, I’m here to tell them the truth”.

While her opinions are shaped by deeply unpleasant experiences in extreme circumstances, one can’t help notice the lack of respect, outright torture and abuse shown to Aussies and other Allies in the Pacific Theatre of War by Imperial Japan.

I know we want the Japanese tourists, investments, imports/exports, etc… but perhaps a little Sumimasen or Moushiwake arimasen, might not be bad for the events that disgraced the Emperor’s name, origato.

For the story of Vivian Bullwinkle and the Banka Island Massacre:

Article 1

Article 2

Diggers who wanted any apology last year- Diggers Article

Anyone know what happened here? Did the Japanese PM say anything?

See also the Bruce Beresford’s film Paradise Road, which tells about how the Australian nurses were treated like shit.

Kevin Rudd apologised today to the Aborigines of Australia, I thought he didn’t go far enough. He should have apologised on behalf of the British Crown for invading this country in the first place and taking it from the Aborigines by force and guile. He should have apologised for one of the world’s only completely successful genocide’s of Tasmanian aborigines.

He could have then apologised for building cities and penal colonies and establishing western culture here in the South perhaps. Why not apologise also for the poetry of Henry Lawson or Banjo Paterson that came from this? Or Waltzing Matilda, the Eureka Stockade or Ned Kelly? He could have probably apologised for the British Empire itself. He could have also by default apologised for the middle ages and the Roman Empire for founding Britain and instilling it with its character, virtues, vices and culture. Hell, why not apologise for the entire course of Western History? Or the invention of Science and its theories of Evolution and Progress or for Western Culture itself?

Why not? For it will mean as much as his apology today. Nothing. Tokenistic bullshit to make idiots grin.

As a Transcendental Fascist, I would act more decisively and actually give the Aborigines back part of their land. Say the Northern Territory? To be ruled as a Sovereign Aboriginal State. Until the Aboriginals have at least part of their own country returned to them as a Sovereign entity under their own rule, this is just window dressing. The maintenance of an originary population’s relationship with its land is an important facet of Transcendental Fascism. While Australia, America and other colonial countries can’t turn back the pages of History and should not, they can in the present restore at least partly some of the original Volk’s relationship with its Soil. The same can be said in many other similar colonial situations that cause discord around the globe.

But I’m afraid these few words are all our Aboriginal comrades are going to get. A Flowery speech of less than two minutes in Parliament and then back to business as usual.

Sorry for fucking up your entire world. Here’s some words, a little cash for some who deserve it and some more for people who pay lip service to our bullshit, forget about what you had. Forget about your primary relationship with the Being of this land. We are the good Cop, to Howard’s bad cop. We are Sorry. Western History has run over you, we are so deeply Sorry about it, but lets face facts, it has. It has consumed you, as it has so many cultures, hey, as it is consuming them now! Really… we truly are very, very sorry about it all. Now go away,we have a mining deal to organise…

You never know do you? While I still feel Hillary has some new (and some Diebold illegal perhaps?) tricks up her sleeve it seems that actual good old fashioned democracy might actually be working in the US election this year. Obama is Idea Fix’s prefererred winner of the US election in 2008. Obama seems actually committed to change and revitalizing America. His voice, style and policies are refreshing. He’s also African American so we can finally have a cool moral Black President… like in those good first three seasons of Keither Sutherland’s terror opus “24″.

I still think something will derail Obama, as the last eight years has made me a slight pessimist in US politics, but I damn sure hope I’m wrong. Obama might have the Republicans on his side at present, strangely enough. Because if he defeats Hillary, the Republican’s can then play the race, the experience, the war, the drugs and morality cards on Senor Obama. They will do all this to get old Warhorse John McCain into the ‘White’ House for ‘four more years of war’. The later phrase could be a Republican slogan?

I’m no big fan of capitalist democracy but my basic Romanticism can’t help but be moved by Obama’s victories, so I too will try and believe his victory is possible. My main problem with Democracy in Capitalist countries is that the outcome is so easily influenced by the media, corporate interests and secret agencies. But at the moment things seem to be running in a way a real democracy might work. So go Obama, maybe there’s some old real life in the US Republic yet. Idea Fix certainly hopes so.

Obama news here.

Two classics from Miss Kitten and The Hacker. From the early 00’s but sound just like the 80’s (deliberately I’d say). MK&tH, FisherSpooner, The Knife and handful of other cool early 00 bands are responsible for the whole eighties revival manifest locally here with The Presets, Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernaughts, etc. I love it all. One can never have enough good electronic music. Caroline Herve aka Miss Kitten has a new album out too, “Batbox”, following on from her “I-com” first solo outing. “First Album” by her and the Hacker is still one of the best and purest albums though of the electro revival.

Revolution no.9: The MUFF 9 call for Entries info on Idea Fix!

The 9th Melbourne Underground Film Festival is now calling for entries. Get your entry form here:

Download Entry Form here

We call all able-bodied filmmakers of any taste, sexual persuasion, style, budget or political bent to help us man and woman the ramparts in the urgent culture wars of the Australian Film Industry. The mission? To save the Australian film industry from itself. After a poor year of Oz cinema (yet again! Happy Feet aside) in the mainstream (Romulus, Noise, Clubland, Home Song Stories … snore, snore, snore) the MUFF mandate to find, identify, promote and lauder new voices in Australian cinema is more relevant than ever.

We now have our own distribution label set up in conjunction with Accent Film Entertainment called Accent Underground … so maybe getting your films into MUFF might also lead to it coming out on DVD in the near future.

See here for more details: www.accentfilm.com/press.cfm

We are also adding a vast array of new shorts awards to MUFF 9. There will be two closing nights in 2008. The first will be a “Best of MUFF 9” shorts and awards ceremony for the short filmmakers …then the features closing night with the awards for the features. We will have ten or twelve short film categories (including four awards for International shorts!) and also be organizing prize packs including Free Equipment hire, Accent Underground DVD’s, book voucher’s, posters, CD’s and other prizes all to be announced before MUFF 9 this year.

We are also looking to present a BEST of MUFF shorts through Accent Underground in the future post MUFF 9 … so get those shorts in to be considered!

ATTENTION: All Filmmakers: Even if your film played at MIFF or SIFF or elsewhere in Oz… we still want it at MUFF. Our criterion for selection is based on one issue only: Cinematic Passion. So if your films have it, send it in to MUFF and play the underground as well as the mainstream scene. MUFF has the credibility other film festivals in this country lack, so be part of the cinematic rebellion with us in 2008.

The international awards for features will continue of course … next to our famed barometer for new Oz cinema and talent in the MUFF feature awards. Past winners in this category include: James Wan, Scott Ryan, Mark Savage, Jon Hewitt, Shannon Young, Jason Turley, Bill Mousoulis, Zak Hilditch, Stuart Simpson, Greg Pakis, Frank Howson, Stefan Popescu and Anna Brownfield …aka, some of the most interesting new voices in Oz cinema.

Entries Close: Monday August 11, 2008. Get them in early if you can … as they are considered more thoroughly if you do.

The festival will ‘happen’ early October (after footy finals but before The Melbourne Arts Festival).

We have many other grand plans and improvements for MUFF 9 … so stand by for details and remember MUFF accepts and plays the most exciting and daring cinema Australia and the world has to offer… all packaged up in our usual risqué culture bomb of mischief and mayhem.

See: www.muff.com.au

Just saw There Will Be Blood. Well, it blew me away. PT Anderson’s new film “There Will be Blood” is a cold, hard, black masterpiece. Clearly the only film in the running for an Oscar that fully deserves it. Anderson has taken Upton Sinclair’s novel on the early Oil fields and turned it into a misanthropic theological cinematic triumph that could be the best film of the past 12 months. Or at least top three or four.

Better I thought, than my other two recent raves “No country…” and “…Jesse James..” the film plays around a deep basic theological discussion between the two main characters. The first is Daniel Plainview (name as destiny) played to perfection by Daniel Day Lewis. Plainview is an outright misanthrope who hates all people except family and is mighty distrustful of them. He is only interested in one thing. Oil. This he ruthlessly searches for and attains at the hands of his many devious deeds. He blatantly rips off the land owners and fowls friend and foe alike in his search. To Anderson’s credit the left wing nonsense of the Upton novel is toned down or gone and replaced with a theological/ metaphysical voice. This dialogue exists with the other main character, Eli Sunday. Sunday is a determined idealist son of one of the men ripped off by Plainview and through a heightened sense of his own value in the world, takes the religious humanist perspective in the film.

Spoilers ahead. Don’t look for any Scorsese or Ferrara mystical religious musing here, the film takes a cold look at theology much to Anderson’s daring and credit. Plainview is clearly a nihilistic existentialist out to exploit and dominate for its own sake. He is challenged in his world view (apart from family diversions with his son and fake half brother) by Eli Sunday, who due to his pious beliefs makes Plainview perhaps question his own perspective. For example over his displicable treatment of his own adopted son, who he sends away like a freak when he becomes deaf. To Plainview, life is nasty, cruel, brutish and short. He takes solace in liquor, oil and domination. Eli builds a church from Plainview’s funds and a congregation to pursue the idealist path of the sharing of Christian humanism and good will. Plainview takes Eli’s positions personally after he breaks down at a service he is forced into… to get a final property that will give him a pipeline. Plainview is a gangster archetype par excellence who doesn’t like to be crossed and he feels betrayed and mortally insulted by Eli.

Plainview’s son is the only moral character of sorts who grows up to resent and leave his adoptive father over his evil ways. But he is loved by Plainview, who spurns him with bastard taunts as he leaves, and this love is Plainview Snr’s only redeeming feature. For all his achievement, wells and wealth, Plainview is empty, drinking himself into the grave. A monstrous shell. But still he holds true to his world view, as a badge of gangster honor.

In the excellent climatic scene Eli, now a confessed sinner (and probably embezzler) comes to Plainview to seek money for the last sale of the last plot of land in the area. Plainview asks Eli to admit he is a fraud and says he will give him something. Eli, in a fatal mistake, does so and admits he is a religious charlatan and that God is a superstition. Happy in the confirmation of his own beliefs that everyone is corrupt, Plainview characteristically takes immediate action. He gets a bowling pin from his personal bowling alley and bashes Eli’s head in with it. When the servant comes down to pick up a plate of food Plainview was eating and sees the brutal ‘There will be blood’. Plainview answers eerily “I’m Finished”.

Yes, a masterpiece basically. On the money, cold, daring, to the point, brutal. Like a falling mining pipe to the head There Will be Blood offers us the perverse anti epic. A sort of Non Citizen Kane. Nothing redeems Plainview. There is no Rosebud. He may have believed redemption possible, hence his interest and antagonism with Eli Sunday. Indeed, Plainview may be the main religious character in the film as his black heart, may acknowledge the possibility of its opposite. But at the end, it is not. We are left with the cold hard nihilistic brute reality of reality itself.

Day Lewis tones down his Gangs of New York character and adds a John Huston accent to give probably his finest performance yet. Paul Dano is well cast, if a little young as Eli Sunday, dressing like he is in a band like Interpol or Arcade Fire. It provides a needed ‘in’ to the film for the under 30’s though and his performance is good. Ciaran Hinds and Kevin J O’Connor are excellent, too, in support, as is Dillon Freasier who plays Plainview’s son H.W. The score is compelling and haunting by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood and helps build on its anti epic mood, by the odd synth drones and building Phillip Glass like strings. Robert Elswit’s cinematography also is beautiful but unsetteling in its portrayal of desert landscapes contrasted with the oil and dirt drenched humanity.

Politically the film is innovative. The parallell’s to Bush are obvious down to the double lane bowling lane that exists at the Whitehouse. The endless nihilistic search for Oil and domination for its sake is laid bare. But the film says if you are to defeat the Plainview’s of this world it will not be via metaphysics, religion or their off shoots in Socialism and Communism. You will defeat them only by playing them at their own brutal nihilistic game or perhaps at something new, something that eludes even Plainview’s nihilism. This something is hinted at by the films lyrical beauty and something that the movie longs for. It is also something that we hope is coming…

Well, I spent Saturday night at the Sandown Park Tet Festival (held around the same time as Chinese New Year) and it was a lot of damn fun. Celebrating Tet, the most important Vietnamese holiday, it is a three day festival held out at Sandown that must have had close to 15,000 Vietnamese Australian’s in attendance with a smattering of interested on lookers like myself. I was there shooting a Malaysian friend’s concert on the main stage and as you might guess, it wasn’t my first choice for a choice Saturday night out. I remembered also the excellent Tet offensive scene in Full Metal Jacket that had me grinning all evening.

On arrival, I told the ticket box manager that I was here to shoot the concert. The manager inside the box was as belligerent as one of the referees in that Russian Roulette match in The Deer Hunter… not believing my story, then refusing to even speak on the phone to an official from the concert area. I hunted down a non Vietnamese security person, who spoke to the official and got me inside the venue… alpha bravo charlie.

The place was packed. It was like a mini Melbourne show. Rides, show bags, markets, clowns. I tried my luck at the food stands and had delicious Bang Chung and a meat on a stick deal that was tasty. I then made my way to the stage and worked out the shooting details with the two cameramen. Then I moseyed through the mini Saigon market and bought some pirate DVD’s, mostly crazy Asian action stuff at 5 bucks a pop but with Lust Caution there too for five smackers. I couldn’t help noticing a lot of Madman Eastern Eye titles being happily pirated by the less than copyright abiding stall owners.

I hung out with some Aussie security dudes killing time and heard this come over their intercom speaker system, no shit - “All we need now is some Napalm”. The security guards laughed and looked at me, in suspicion, as if I would report them and I just laughed at their sick humor. It further confirmed my own observations of the racist nature of most Anglo Australian’s. We shouldn’t forget (..and I don’t) that Australia was at war with Nth Vietnam when I was born and I guess some Australian’s remember little things like that and might hold a grudge. I don’t though, of course.

The Vietnam war was a interesting move in the grand chess game between Russia and the US and not entirely in vain. Ho Chi Minh too is cool. I find him interesting and the war in general was fascinating, from French Colony to American pawn in the Cold War to finally Communist State and victory against the US… then detente post cold war.

Anyway, the concert went well and I had fun shooting the antics of performers and crowd. Two Us Vietnamese singers had the crowd eating out of their pocket. I then looked around some more at the festival until the second performance of my friend closed out the night. The Tet festival is on again tonight at Sandown. Good food, crazy atmosphere, check it out.

More intellectuals, celebrities and artists need to speak out like this!