Images of USA

I’ve been travelling again. That’s why not many posts. Having too much fun… as usual.

Here is a visual diary of some things I’ve been doing. I’m back in AU next week, so posts, and thoughts, to resume here soon.

Meantime, enjoy these…

The MUFF awards on vimeo

The MUFF awards shot live by Mike Smith from Indie Film Nation! Thanks Mike!

Enjoy! See here.

For some reason I can’t embed Vimeo, when I cut and paste the code?

Recent MUFF Press Release

MUFF X – MUFF ATTACKS – is HERE!

The Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) is back to celebrate MUFF X – the festival’s prestigious tenth year of championing alternative cinema in Melbourne. MUFF is thrilled to announce its highly anticipated 2009 lineup and full schedule of events.

MUFF X will run from Saturday August 22nd until Sunday August 30th. This year’s venues will be Noise, Loop, Glitch, and the Embassy (the old QBH).

Opening night at the newly converted Embassy will deliver Into the Shadows – a fascinating and important documentary about the state of this country’s film industry and the challenges faced by Australian independent cinema throughout the past century. It features interviews by Rolf De Heer (The Tracker), George Miller (Mad Max), Andrew Denton, and many more film
practitioners and representatives.

The 2009 festival programmers are proud to present a selection of exciting and provocative pictures from interstate, overseas, and many from the festival’s home town of Melbourne. MUFF may be the only chance Melbourne audiences will have to see many of these films.

Local highlights include Sleeper – a thriller starring wrestler Scott ‘Raven’ Levy as a mute serial killer with an aversion to daylight, Eraser Children, an ambitious and absorbing sci-fi flick set in a futuristic dystopia, and Carmilla Hyde, a darkly seductive twist on the traditional Jekyll & Hyde story. International highlights include Impolex, the bizarre story of a WWII soldier in search of undetonated German missiles, and Modern Love is Automatic, a comedy about an apathetic nurse who moonlights as a dominatrix.

MUFF X will also feature a variety of special events including a focus on legendary 1950s and 60s horror director William Castle, a world-first retrospective on 1980s cult hero/demon Wings Hauser, and special screenings of the early films of Leni Riefenstahl, German leading lady of the 1920s who went on to direct the infamous propaganda piece Triumph of the Will for Adolf Hitler.

Added to this lineup is the return of Mini Muff, one of MUFF’s most popular yearly events, wherein the festival showcases the best short films from Australia and from overseas. Over 50 short films have been selected for the 2009 lineup, including local thriller Out,
starring Rob Rabiah (Chopper, Underbelly), and The Marina Experiment – a confronting autobiographical film from New York featuring original music by Mick Harvey of the Bad Seeds.

These are but a few of the treats MUFF X has in store for Melbourne audiences this August. The complete program is now available in venues and stores across the city.

Peter Serafinowicz is fucking funny

If you don’t know this comedian you should. He did that wacky show, Look Around You and the more recent Peter Serafinowicz Show.

Check out episode six of his new show (in three parts) for a taste.

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)

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.

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!

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.

A prayer for Dave Gahan

Dave Gahan has been sick with bladder cancer, and has had a tumor removed. Mode have canceled shows for a month, and in my opinion should cancel more, so Gahan can rest up.

To me, my favourite band was never The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin or Dylan. To me they were naive sixties idealists and hippies espousing an absurd and lazy philosophy, their music good… but so 20th century. My favourite band growing as a teenage, and in many respects to this days was/is Depeche Mode. They were something else, something alien. They were the Future, baby. They were my Beatles. And I dare say it, a more profound outfit, and of a longer lasting significance, than those baby boomer 60’s assholes…

Why? Nihilism, proto fascist imagery, dark moody lyrics, sadomasochism, tortured love, technology, perversion, dance music and clubs, leather and sex. This was the world of Depeche Mode. This was my world as a teenager, and later… Gore’s amazing songs, the electronic sound scapes of the band and Gahan’s amazing voice made for a brilliant and long lasting combination. And still Mode are releasing classic albums 29 years into their career. They have been a consistently strong and amazing band, that define the 80’s generation.

So Idea Fix sends out our heart felt best wishes to Dave G. Mode has been the sound track to my life… and if I feel a little Nostalgia… …well, lets allow Dave Gahan himself to say it best…on this brilliant side project track from Mirror… Get well Dave and keep bringing us the ’sounds of the universe’…

Susan being boiled

I am so over this Susan Boyle bullshit. First of all she was a completely manufactured and calculated set up of that woeful UK variety show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. The show’s producers knew she could sing, and so did the judges. And they deliberately made her look like a total tosser before she sung, so as to surprise and shock a nation…then OK, she could sing. But, big deal, a fat ugly lady who could sing? Has the audience of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ not heard of Opera? Actually I’d say not. Anyway, every gormless and witless lemming out there in internet and TV land took Boyle to his or her heart, as the fat ugly loser who could!

…and doesn’t her face simply annoy you, as it does me? It looks to be face of pure stupidity…

Anyway, all was going well for an empty societal signifier of success ‘from out of nowhere’ to give the wretched and hopeless a reason to exist. Later day Capitalism throws up these tidbits often, for our supposed delectation. But it turned out Boyle was a bit mental…actually mildly retarded, due a problem in birth. The Britain’s Got Talent cunts, best exemplified by that scumbag weasel Simon Cowell, then got scared of her being able to do all the media rounds and public relations, etc., so they awarded the number one prize to a shit house bunch of dancing prats called, of all things, “Diversity”. Boyle then, of course, has a mental breakdown… and now Gordon Brown is calling to make sure she is OK, and to help his woeful poll figures.

Its all like a skit from Little Britain really, isnt it? Which in some senses it is…

Ahh, Britannia how far you have fallen? You once ruled the world, her seas and an Empire the envy of the world. Now you have your former Colony treating you like a bitch, a capital known more and more as Londonistan, societal and cultural failure like no other European nation… and now Susan Boyle. As Morrissey once said, “Viva Hate”…