At a February 2013 concert at the Sydney Opera House, I saw Nick Cave come out of his shell a little. As the applause died down after ‘Mermaids’, Cave hesitatingly addressed his audience. ‘See, it’s not really about mermaids. It’s about longing for women, about desiring them from a distance. It’s a metaphor …’ Then […]
Archive | Film & Television
St Kilda Film festival, Opening night, 22 May 2014
Opening night at the Palais theatre served up a tasting platter showcasing the house specialities of a short film festival. There was the fast-paced-short-with-a-punchline, shots cascading into each other like a row of falling dominoes (Chopper). The gleefully offensive animation with the redeeming ‘awwww’ ending (The video dating tape of Desmondo Ray, aged 33 & […]
What price history? Abraham Zapruder’s home movie
Sometimes an article comes together quickly as ideas from unrelated reading connect. A news story on the sale of the Zapruder film to the US government reminded me of something J G Ballard had said earlier that year and the piece was done in a couple of hours. A morbid parlor game of the late-twentieth […]