Kristen Condon gets spanked on Safran’s Race Relations

My ex and the star of The Beautiful and Damned Kristen Condon was a guest on John Safran’s Race Relations getting spanked as part of a Christian Discipline Group. You can watch the show here. Enjoy.

John couldn’t seem to make it hurt. Kristen said she only said it hurt to me later so John wouldn’t be embarrassed. She did go out with me for 7 years, so what do you want! He just needed to come see little old me, and I’d have given him a few helpful hints and tips on how to spank a woman properly. Anyway, funny episode. The show is good. The episode on his Mother who passed away was moving and one of the best things he’s done. Next week he gets crucified… and its long overdue.

RIP- Paul Naschy

Great Spanish Horror actor Paul Naschy died last night. Just as the West was finally getting a decent body of his work released on DVD and he was enjoying a cult renaissance. I’m sure Lugosi, Cushing and Karloff are welcoming him with open arms in ‘the other world’…

Naschy on the cover of the cool Video Watchdog.

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.