A New Year's Self-portrait.

It’s hot, hot, hot! Clothes are worn only when absolutely necessary, but since we have excellent privacy, the only people we are likely to shock are each other.I took this self-portrait on New Year’s morning. Last night we went to dinner with friends after wisely avoiding the New Year’s Eve drunks the night before. The meal featured a pork-loin, marinated and roasted in wine, porcellum oenococtum, an ancient Roman recipe by Apicius, b. 25 bc. It was to die for! I wish all our dear lj friends the happiest of happy New Years.

Ho-ho-hum!

This picture sums-up for me that strange, timeless, kind of run down, zoned-out space between Christmas and New Year’s Day. We spotted him while we were on our search for the entrance to the water-lily ponds at Eastlakes. We still haven’t located it.I saw a documentary about the Mexican freetailed bats of Austin Texas and their migratory flights.honoriartist and our other Austin friends, why haven’t you told us about this amazing natural phenomenon? Are you so used to this spectacle that you take it for granted? I guess we get fairly blasé about our giant fruit bats. There were some good shots of Austin as well, so now I have an idea of what your city looks like.I’ve been feeling a bit tired and irritable. I don’t feel like cooking, which is unusual and reading, which I love, is making me doze off after about ten minutes. I suppose it’s a small dose of post-Christmas ennui. Roll on 2004! Surely the world will have a better year than it did in 2003?

I went to see...

I went to see The Lord of the Rings - the Return of the King today. It didn’t start until we had had at least a half an hour of ear-splitting commercials, which added extra strain to an already bladder-bursting experience. People could be seen in silhouette climbing over crowds and partitions throughout the last third of the film in a desperate struggle, as intense as any on the screen, to have a piss.And so to the movie itself. First the bad news: the Elfy bits with Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen are as boring as ever. Every time someone other than Sam or Gollum makes a speech longer than ”Let’s go kill the bastards”, there is much knitting of eyebrows and lowering of vocal registers and it’s all terribly sententious just like the book. A black vs white theme could be drawn from the movie but I suspect that Jackson just had hundreds of Maoris available whose exotic looks when compared to the white main cast allowed him to differentiate their looks from the men and hobbits when the orc make-up went on. This is possibly the most disturbing aspect of the three films, its potential for racist exploitation by idiots.Now the good news: the big battle is as exciting as anything ever put on screen. The acting of Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkin is excellent. The fantasy architecture, especially of Minas Tireth is everything for which a fan of fantasy architecture could wish. Shelob the spider is truly frightening and the climactic scenes on Mount Doom are an appropriate and thrilling climax to the story. The scenes with the oliphaunts are eye-popping.Do, however, have a whizz just before the movie starts and I would recommend that you don’t buy a soft-drink from the candy counter,The verdict on the trilogy as a whole: though it deletes a few fairly tedious bits, (Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the shire, which, while touching, is anti-climactic), the public got what it paid for, an as faithful as possible film adaptation of an epic cultural phenomenon.Like any epic, (The Bible, The Lion King) it is possible to extract dodgy supremacist messages from the story. Some people would lumber poor old Tolkein with the false philosophic burden of “Defender of European Values against the Encroaching Tainters of the Race”. Actually , with his son fighting in France, it was the encroachment of German facists and their Italian and Spanish allies that he was thinking of.A re-emerging bunch of Euro-neo facists have the usual wooly, absurd philosophic baggage which seems to be a nauseous blend of Opus Dei (renowned for its facist sympathies) and what they term archeo-futurism and plain old-fashioned racism, (we’re being infested with Chinese!). The words, as always, are slightly different but the stench remains the same. And, as ever, people of conscience are not fooled.Fans of the movies will be blissed-out.

Christmas Jingle.

Merry berry, holly jolly, jolly berry, merry holly, jolly jelly, jelly belly, holy holly, jingle jolly, holy merry, beery belly, merry jelly, holy horror, jingle jerry, merry merry. berry merry Christmas to you all. God bless us every one! With love to all our lj mates from Bill and Ian.

Pizza and the Alexandria Summer Movie Festival

When Ian says “Let’s have Pizza!”, he doesn’t mean call Pizza Hut or Dominoes. He doesn’t mean take out a frozen base and cover it, either. He means he’d like one of my specials from scratch, you know, with yeast, flour, gluten and the full performance. So, since it is my sole duty in life to spoil him rotten, that is what he gets, with buffalo mozarella, two other cheeses, artichoke, mushroom, pepperoni, sun-dried tomato, anchovy and olives. He even left some for me!It’s been so stinking hot this week, with 150 percent humidity, that it hasn’t really been outdoor weather. So it’s been summer movies at home festival time. I’ve seen two superb films and one sort of good film this week. The first was “Amacord” which I’ve already talked about and which went straight into my all-time favourites treasure-chest along with several other Fellini favoutites. It joins ” 8 1/2”, “Juliet of the Spirits”, “la Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria” in my never to be forgotten basket. Then came another film which I’d heard of, but never made much effort to see. More fool me! It was the astonishing Yugoslav film, “Underground”. What a funny, horrifying, moving extravaganza. It, like Julie Taymor’s “Titus”, owes a lot to Fellini but in a different way. “Titus” takes a lot from Fellini’s extravagant visual style but is cool and ironical. “Underground” also references Fellini, but it is hot and humane. It’s an attempt to explain and celebrate the passionate, loyal and frequently murderous soul of the Balkans. It also barged straight into my list of all-time favourite films.“The Hours” was a less satisfying experience for me. Nicole was fine but role of Virginia Woolf was underwritten. Virginia Woolf was a lot more than a mental-illness. Julianne Moore was better, (I’ve admired her ever since seeing her perform on TV the Beckett piece in which all you see is her mouth). Her scene with the always excellent Meryl Streep was very good. I’ve loved la Streep ever since “Evil Angels” (US title “A Cry in the Night). Meryl was criticised here for having a lousy Australian accent. What these morons failed to realise was that Lindy Chamberlain was originally from New Zealand and that Meryl impersonated her with a FLAWLESS Kiwi accent.However my favourite moment in “The Hours” was the small, heartrending cameo by Toni Collette, my favourite Australian actress. Nicole can be good, Rachel Griffiths always impresses, Judy Davis is a very distinguished actress, but for me Toni Collette is always perfection.At least this movie has encouraged me to embark on a detailed biography of Virginia Woolf, and to promise myself to re-read some of her novels. I suspect I was too young the first time round.One good effect of the lousy weather is that the birds have been very active. I saw nine magpies in a tiny park yesterday and the koels have been in a noisy delerium for days. The insects have been amazing too, as androkles’ post will affirm

Cross-genres and other ramblings.

Yesterday, while Ian was otherwise engaged, I decided to indulge in the guilty pleasure of a schlock-horror movie. This one was a retro-70’s style number called ”Wrong Turn”. It was, as expected, quite woeful but what intrigued me was the sub-genre cross-references. It was sort of “Deliverance meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets the Blair Witch Project meets Halloween”. I think it’s time for some bolder cross-referencing. How about Mozart meets Tobe Hooper in “The Magic Austrian Chainflute Massacre”? Any other suggestions? I watched “Duck Soup” as a second feature as an antidote.Yesterday we had a broad daylight shotgun holdup at a local mall. What’s going on here? Do we want to end up in Detroit? Not so many years ago, the only people in Sydney who had handguns were the police and half a dozen career criminals. Now they are everywhere, and the courts are handing out sentences for gun-dealing such as $3000 fines or three months imprisonment. I’d give them 20 years.I don’t know what induced me to choose it, as I have almost zero interest in Sadism, but this week I read Neil Schaeffer’s biography of the Marquis de Sade. It was fascinating. He was a childish, infuriating but terribly interesting man who lived through experiences that would have killed anyone else but this uniquely egocentric personality. Not for the squeamish however.I hear that there has been a PBS broadcast in the U.S. of “Angels in America”. Was it a good production? I missed the reputedly excellent Sydney production and would appreciate any feedback on the broadcast.The vile, snide yuppie-queens next door are having their roof replaced so its time to head off before I come down with a hammering-induced migraine.

A BIG SURPRISE IN MY SHORTS

We had set ourselves up under a shady ledge on the sand near the deserted, beautiful rockpools and inlets of Boat Harbour. I had got out a book and was beginning to to happily doze off, lying on my all-too-well padded tummy. Suddenly Ian came up and cried, “Oh Bill, LOOK!” Instantly I was aware that I had been joined by something that was on the back of my thigh and was intruding itself into my bright red shorts. My legs flailed wildly, (giving my foot a minor injury against a sandstone outcrop) and I swatted at my legs and buttocks like a man possessed. The friendly, fearless personage you see pictured life-sized above, scurried away, wondering what all the fuss was about. Ian had taken his picture previously, about a hundred metres down the track.I’m glad to be back on lj. Ian had been quite ill for a few weeks and then had a computer crisis, so I’d had a period of limited access and I’d been a bit down myself. I sometimes have doubts about how well I’m doing as a carer and supporter of this wonderful man. I should have greater reserves of calm and stamina, but I’m afraid that sometimes I let things get to me. A couple of night ago, Sydney’s wonderful and unique SBS channel showed Fellini’s “Amacord”. It is the only major Fellini film I had never managed to see and, Oh how worth the wait it was. I adored it! I know recent revelations about him paint a not-very-flattering portrait of the old maestro, but whatever his collaborators went through, it was worth it. What unalloyed joy his films have afforded me through the years. Once again a magical ship loomed out of the darkness as it does in so many of his films, once again he thrilled me like no other has ever managed to do. (Certainly not James Cameron, Kate, Leonardo and a squillion bucks in “Titanically Fatuous”).Hope to be talking to y’all a bit more regularly for a while.