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.

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”…