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…

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.

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”…

Vale JG Ballard…long live the Metro Centre!

JG Ballard passed away on the weekend. An amazing literary talent has left us, one whose later works were, in my humble opinion, sheer genius.

Best source for stories about his death is ballardian.com here. Its a great site run by Simon Sellers. Its a little bit of a pomo wankfest, but informative, detailed and sincere.

I wrote this post below Sellers obit, comments and tributes are welcome there:

“A genius, who saw the future. He didn’t write science fiction in his later years he wrote science fact. His prescience about a new form of fascism being the only legitimate form of resistance to later day Capitalism, in his last novels, could not be closer to the truth. Viva The Metro Centre, James! Something is coming, you won’t live to see it, JG…but many will…”

I think it says all I need to say…

Here is a visual tribute to one of Ballard’s last books, the masterful career ending Kingdom Come, with its Metro Centre, a mall that acts as a site of a people’s uprising. The mock Metro Centre website is here. I love these photos, a guy looking in a rubbish bin with a light emanating from it, a guy depressed in a shipping department with headline “Sale Now On”, other ads promoting losing it and going completely crazy, and the last chestnut, “The Wait is almost over”. This is an advertising campaign supposedly designed by and featuring character David Cruise from “Kingdom Come”, that was created to publicise said novel. Its intentions are to unsettle and unhinge people with the utter and complete emptiness of capitalism, thereby fostering some form of new fascist revolution. Indeed, that is the purpose of the book, also. Don’t believe me? Read the book… tell me if I wrong…

Doll fucker

Check out this weird shit.

Its from a doco called Love Me Love My Doll from the BBC US, sort of like a real life Lars and the Real Girl. Except instead of the handsome Ryan Gosling, you have some weirdo who looks the black member of Culture Club.

The source for this odd tidbit? Mr Mark Savage (of course), turned me onto it, at his site Phantom of Pulp, see link below. He is master of this kind of weird shit. He also recommends a doco called My car is My love, that sounds equally bizarre about people who are sexually attracted to their cars. Very Ballardian.

Enjoy this freak, freaksters…

Obama as Anti Christ

Here is an interesting video from Alex Jones about the fraud that is Obama, called The Obama Deception, while its slightly hysterical, it makes some salient points about an unaccountable, irresponsible and out of control elite behind world politics. Whether you buy some of the conspiracy stuff is up to you, but the point that Obama is a stooge for big finance, and all the old values of the Bush era, and beyond, seems to be held up by the facts since he took office. You won’t believe some of the info about him in this doco!

I’m going to write a post about Conspiracy theories as phenomenon this weekend to further develop some ideas raised here.

Here is part one and two of a 110 minute movie click to go to You Tube to watch the rest. Just watch these two ten minute clips… and you’ll want to watch the rest…

Phil Spector Guilty… of hair offence

In an American crime first a celebrity has been found guilty of a serious crime, 2nd Degree murder. Phil Specter, the 60’s ‘wall o’ sound’ guru has been found guilty of popping some bitch. Giddle Partridge online at Facebook has been singing his praises and innocence, and I’m down for supporting any guy who produced ‘Let it Be’ and ‘Imagine’. I mean OJ, Jackson and Blake all got a free pass…why not Mr.Spector arguably the most avant garde and creative of the lot?!

What really stands out though, and is beyond the pale, is Phil Spector’s hair. Surely a crime against hair dressers and dressing everywhere.

What will become of Phil? Perhaps on appeal he will be acquitted. But, no matter what, he should really hunt down a new barber or wig maker…

The Comedian was a fascist

I liked Zach Snyder’s film version of Watchmen. I mean its such strong material, its hard to go wrong? You had to truncate it for a feature. I enjoyed it a lot, and don’t get the disappointment some have expressed about it…

Jon Hewitt gave the comic to me back in 1990 during the making of Bloodlust and said, “You must read this”. I always hated comics but trusted his immaculate taste. Suffice to say I loved it then, and thought, “Wow this really turns super hero’s on their head…”. Its taken 18 years since then until someone made it for the big screen. Its mood is right, its tone correct. Its similar to the mood and feel of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman film. We are seeing scarier and more realistic super heros, which is good, as its a boring genre if the envelope is not pushed…

Of course I liked the tragic Comedian best, who dies at the start of Watchmen, the tough fascist who discovers his conscience when he gets wind of Ozymandias radical ’scorched earth’ plan to destroy part of humanity, in order to save it. The Comedian’s character is complex, he is a rapist, and murders someone he describes as a ‘chink’ in Vietnam, who he got pregnant. But, The Comedian has another, softer side, that of a tortured soul burdened by his realism, nihilism and cynicism. This Yin and Yang makes for a great character. The mixture of humour as a fascist trait, is a very clever addition from Alan Moore. It recalls a dark Nietzschean laughter. Many fascists are of course the worlds greatest pranksters, trouble makers and jokers… and faced with the universe as it is, and the human predicament as it stands, can you blame them?  What else can one do, eventually, but laugh?

A great performance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the smiley face badge carrying fascist super hero/psycho, lit up his scenes. Rorschach is no slouch of a character either, his intense 1950’s style driven revenge machine is dynamic in the film. So, too the hot latex outfit of the Silk Spectre for other reasons. In fact they’re all pretty cool characters, in their way.

Anyway, Watchmen is out on the big screen infecting the young and impressionable minds of the new generations with its dystopian message of purge, and renewal…Hahhahahahhaha

Welcome to Cipherspace

Angelina Jolie as the new Madonna presiding over a sea of consumer shit. Got some new books today from Amazon that I have long been after. Should provide fuel for further reflections here at Idea Fix.

For the moment a quick message from later day Capitalism’s sponsor… Moronic celebrity.

‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ memo from The Ministry of Truth

Newspeak announcement: From Now on the Global War on Terror will be known as “Overseas Contingency Operation”. This will apply retroactively when talking about past Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO’s). Peace is War, War is Peace.

The Financial Crisis will no longer be called a recession or a Depression but a Financial Readjustment Paradigm. Poor people will now be called the Fiscally Contingent Alliance. The Unemployed will now be called the Labour Reserve.

That is all.

Funnily enough the first part is true…See here.