While Sydney braced itself for the heatwave of a century, Lora-Dana DiRuffio (still hungover from the season’s revelries) and Mavis Daze (also hungover… scrap that, still drunk) were trying to procure the last known, legal cheese-on-a-stick in the Eastern Suburbs.

“How could this essential food stuff be outlawed? Do these people have no hearts?” cried Lora-Dana as she furiously typed search terms such as ‘Cheese-on-stick Bondi’ ‘specialty deep-fried foods’ into her iPad.

“Probably not,” Mav replied, “Those lobbyists who pushed the ban through are probably all sitting on waiting lists for transplants. It’s always those who have indulged the most who deny rest of us” she opined through a fug of cigarette smoke.

“But I’m dying, Mav, ddddyyyyyyyyiiiiinnnnngg.” Lora-Dana threw down the handful of Panadeine Osteo capsules passed to her. “You know that nothing soothes my New Year’s hangover but cheese-on-a-stick. Hey, you don’t suppose you could call that Easter Show carnie you once had that little encounter behind the Gravitron with?”

“Don’t even think of it, LD.”

“Goddammit.” She slumped into her antelope kid lounge and squinted from behind her over-sized Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses at the sparkling panorama of sea before them. “Life is putrid,” she sobbed.

Mavis took pity on her fragile friend and proposed an activity that she promised would be such a lark that the mother of all headaches would be forgotten. She suggested they begin 2013 wisely, by listing the most important lessons they had learnt over the silly season.

With some coaxing, Lora-Dana produced the list, thus,

USEFUL THINGS THE HOLIDAY SEASON HAS TAUGHT US

1. In which, party shots are not for you. ‘Tis not the season to become the only idiot you know who actually tried a vodka eyeball but missed your eye, only to end up with an unsavoury ear infection.
2. Whereby, you are not a bad person if you hate the Moonlight Cinema. You might be, though, if you attend Moonlight Cinema sessions a little on the sloshy side and locate the projector so that you can contribute to the onscreen action with your shadow puppetry.
3. In which drunk dialling should be avoided at all costs when you are too blind to correctly distinguish between ‘Sexy Jake’, ‘Study Jake’ and ‘Cousin Jake’
4.  Beware the rum pig. Dark spirits will bring out the dark spirit.
5. Whereby, inebriated eBay shopping will yield surprise packages over the Christmas season. Being your own eSanta can be cause for confusion in the bright day of sobriety. 42 cases of Mylanta could be seen as excessive, along with the numerous vintage wedding dresses, however acquiring enough abmachines to fill a gym might come in handy for next year’s corporate (re)gifting. As for acquiring someone’s virginity, only to discover that it was your own, posted the night before after the work Christmas party failed to yield any successful sexual conquests …victimless crime.

 

To Rome With Love – Film Review

REVIEWED BY CRITIC, FILM BUFF & BEER CONNOISSEUR F.P. BLUCK

Saturday evening at Dendy Cinema 5 for To Rome with Love . Lots of people, a date-related crowd rather than film buffs.

The usual aspirational Dendy ads: expensive menswear, coffee, restaurants, jewellery, designer homewares and salsa lessons.  Previews for The Sessions (a couple of repetitions of this one, especially William H Macy and I’m moving to a probable).  Less likely for The Hobbit (aka NZ’s desperate grab for tourism relevance, Mark IV* ).  CGI and Martin Freeman, which is much the same thing.

Having watched Margaret and David do the soft-shoe-shuffle-with-Blunnies on it, I held out great hopes of being able to heap scorn on To Rome with Love .  And it deserves some chastisement for lack of imagination and for dispersing what imagination and energy there was over a couple too many story themes.  From the third row**, it looked an awful lot like tourism-by-the-numbers with Rome’s friendly citizens and well-managed traffic suggesting something less than complete objectivity.  A roundup of the usual ancient ruin suspects, plus Woody Allen. But there was a bit more wit and maybe even some love in the nods to Cinecitta, the 50’s and 60’s, the bookending with Volare, the opinions of knowing local narrators and the collection of short stories exploring some common theme.

The core plots of each explored the possibility of transformation over a brief time through experience in a place of ferment.  The ageing American opera director*** who cannot let go, and his spiky wife; their daughter and her fiancé; the fiancé’s parents, especially his talented but content father.  The older architect**** and the student, his girlfriend and the girlfriend’s best friend; the anonymous clerk who briefly becomes someone; the young honeymooning couple with a Penelope Cruz-shaped explosion in the midst of the straight-laced relatives. 

Some of this stuff could have been lost without any effect on the major narrative and maybe that would have allowed a little more depth.  On the other hand, that might have created a little less room to move the action and distract the viewer from seeing where the fabric was frayed or badly joined.  There are apparently poor people and ugly buildings in Rome but not in this version of it.

But the film’s Rome is beautiful and the movie will do no harm to any but the most sensitive of souls.  Yes, it’s safe for my mother or yours.

On to the Tongue and Groove for a Grolsch.  Then home before the young people started to take over Civic.

FPB

 

* – after the Lord of the Rings exercises in grandiosity.  No-one ever goes to the places where they filmed Once Were Warriors .  I wonder why.

** – I said there were lots of people.  Most of them seemed to be enjoying it immensely and at a considerable volume.

*** – Woody Allen, showing his remarkable dramatic range by playing an opinionated neurotic, a character he has tried only about a hundred times.  If he’s going to act, he should resume the style of his old, funny movies.

**** – Alec Baldwin, doing a fair job as a sort of Greek chorus though his support team just seems to disappear, raising a question of why they were there in the first place.

 

Lawless – Film Review

  REVIEWED BY CRITIC, FILM BUFF & BEER CONNOISSEUR F.P. BLUCK

I’m one of a handful in the 10am audience at Hoyts. No previews screened that I had not previously seen – Dredd:3D , End of Watch, Seven Psychopaths ,the third of which might be worth a look.  Ads for multi-coloured housewares, discount curtains and for flavoured milk.  I have no idea what this means, assuming it is meant to be a code for the people they think might be watching*.  Maybe Canberra is full of healthy cheapskates who redecorate.  Whatever.

And the Iron Chef ingredient this morning was bootleg whisky made of pretty well anything that may once have fallen within the vegetable class**.    Franklin County, Virginia, appears as beautiful as Virginia can be.  The Depression is not having so large an effect on people who have pretty well nothing anyway.  Prohibition is failing utterly to do anything useful except redistribute money and get people killed***. 

Three Bondurant brothers, the eldest reputedly immortal, engaged in the production of the local distilled product.  A tough girl on the run and a highly protected daughter of the local minister provide the love interests for two of the brothers, Forrest and Jack****.  They manage a stable, respectful, cooperative and corrupt relationship with the local law.

Cut to scenes of the carnage in Chicago.  Then the apple cart***** is overturned by changes in the larger world, wanting the rivers of corruption to flow a different way.  As a consequence another, human-sourced, fluid provides a comprehensive red spattering.  A new State Attorney with a Special Deputy who has more charm than scruples or mercy, has.  The feeling is apparent pretty quickly that no-one is playing for a win/win outcome.  The music is exceptional, varied within the types found in the region, and suggests that the soundtrack would be a smart choice for those who don’t fancy the violence.

Oz watchers note.  Guy Pearce as the Bad Cop******.  Mia Wasikowska as the virgin-with-religious-father.  Noah Taylor in a small role.  Nick Cave did the screenplay and gets a music credit.

* You know, the way some of the more bogan end of television is increasingly populated with ads for insurance products (specifically funeral insurance) and few questions asked personal finance.

**Pauses to bite yellow capsicum. Adopt supercilious smile.

***Speaking of which, the SBS series – currently placed just before Boardwalk Empire – is a beauty.

****The other brother, Howard, is a couple of steps above Mongo from Blazing Saddles .  (I saw that Alex Karras, the footballer/actor who played Mongo, died recently without having emulated OJ SImpson’s career).

***** Which would be empty, all the apples having been converted to something resembling calvados or palinka, except that it’s sold in jars like all the bars do now in Melbourne.

****** An inch, or an ounce, more and he’d be channelling every elegant but sadistic Nazi ever seen on screen.  “Acch! Herr Bigglesworth.  We have your friend Algy and plan to have our vicked vay vit him”  etc.  Nothing at all like Jack Irish.

 

Jep and Dep are the delightful folk duet, Jessica Cassar and Darren Cross. Their melodious sound is inspired by the folksy, country music of the 1960’s. They say they are just a boy, a girl and a guitar but the commercial potential of this group who have only been performing together for 8 months, suggests that they are so much more than that.

Recently returned from a 6-week tour of Berlin, they played last Thursday night to a heaving Union Hotel in Newtown for ‘Proper Music Social, A night of Folk and Country at The Union’. So far, they have been happy to tour the local music haunts and drinkers dives that are the standard stomping grounds for anyone seeking out live music in their hometown, Sydney.  Listening to their  sweet harmonies  and mournful heartbreakers as they sing pretty ditties about ‘love gone right and love gone wrong’ you might be tempted to think of Regina Spektor and Jack Dishel.

While I was lining up at the canteen for chocolate milk and paddlepops with Cassar, Cross was fronting 90’s alternative group – Gerling – and selling out the Metro. But he seems to have journeyed, musically, far away from those heady days where he was playing Big Day Out with Ben Lee standing in as the guitarist. Gerling is currently on an indefinite hiatus and if that means that Cross has more energy to throw at Jep and Dep, it’s not such a bad thing.

The potential is obvious and free for you to behold tonight at  where they will be playing along with new talent, the Battleships  from 8pm.

 

You can check out more of their music here > http://jepanddep.blogspot.com.au/  and https://soundcloud.com/#jep-4  or stalk them on Facebook to find out how to be a groupie.

The Smith Family is a national, independent children’s charity helping disadvantaged Australians to get the most out of their education, so they can create better futures for themselves.

www.thesmithfamily.com.au/littleheroes

The Words – Film Review

REVIEWED BY RESIDENT CRITIC, FILM BUFF & BEER CONNOISSEUR

F.P. BLUCK

This is one I really wanted to see, and that I really wanted to be crunchingly good to the last mouthful. The usual weekday morning scatter of older folk, better dressed because this was, after all, Manuka. There were no choc tops.

The previews were about as much help as usual i.e. quite a lot. The Intouchables – rich but paralysed French bloke has his life turned around by a tough black carer and some of what one could call “the action” in The Words did, in fact, occur in France. Safety Not Guaranteed, an amusing-looking thing which seems to combine time travel and learning to be a writer. The Words had a bit of a time-ago thing and a disturbingly large amount of stuff about the Craft of Writing*.

Bradley Cooper plays Rory Jansen, a struggling young writer who is still parasiting off his old man for the rent while he tries manfully to produce the Great American Novel or somesuch in between hanging around New York like a ‘writer’. He describes himself at one inconsequential point as an angry young man which is sort of funny because anger would require a bit more acting. For heaven’s sake, his unbelievably tolerant girlfriend loves him because he is so serious all the time which probably says a fair bit about her and even more about Mr Cooper’s** dramatic stretch. He does, however, have intense eyes.

Without giving away more of the plot than the preview did, young Rory finds a beautifully crafted manuscript (so much better than his Great Work) in an old satchel and undertakes the heartbreaking task of putting it through the keyboard onto a screen. He becomes a literary superstar and is accosted by an angry*** old Jeremy Irons who claims to have written the thing. Uh-oh, Rory! Dennis Quaid ties it together nicely as a literary lion who has written about the thing****.

This could have had some cute tricks in it – but it didn’t. And that made it a little better than it was. Or it could have used its space and the minds of its audience to ask some really gristly questions about artistic ownership/borrowing/reflection/parody/tribute and maybe the possibility that we all steal from others every time we use a cliche or, indeed, use a word or a gesture we have learnt from another.

If it had jumped into the deeper water, it might have been a better movie.

*-the capitalisation is deliberate, sort of like the pace of the movie.
** – Breadley Cooper… Gary Cooper (famous for saying things like “yup, ma’am” with all the expression of something from Bunnings). Coincidence?
***– yes, he can do “angry”, and resignation and pathos and, pretty well, whatever is needed.
****– OMG! Quade/Quaid and Cooper. Cue the X-Files music and the weird green lights.

Our wonderful, talented and irritatingly hipster friends over at Design Federation nabbed themselves an exclusive interview with The Dandy Warhols at Harvest Music & Arts Festival in Melbourne last week.

Just too cool for school. Congrats to them and yay for us!  They have let us share and share alike. Enjoy

Interview by Paris Thompson.

 

It’s road-trip season, kids! So back the cut lunch and beach-towels and squash in the back because Crowne Plaza thinks you’ve earned a good old-fashioned summer holiday. Their ‘Recharge’ promotion is on now and is giving you  up to 20% off the best available rate*.

Available for stays of two nights or more, the package includes complimentary full buffet breakfast for two, with stays starting from AU$132 per night.

A family wedding (of the traditional, wild descendants of Irish convicts kind) required a recent stay in Terrigal and thank heavens for the Crowne’s soft pillows to nurse our throbbing heads. Seaside views of the quaint and lovely kind… and you just need to see this breakfast to believe it.

Everything from traditional continental breakfasts to the (rarely available at other hotels) delicious healthy options, the spread had my companions’ eyes bulging out of their heads and required a number of returns to the buffet. There’s even a little coffee stand with a snaking line for your barista brewed fix, in case you’re missing your morning commute rituals. But don’t worry, you won’t feel like you’re still in town because as you wait, you will be gazing out the arched windows and through the pines to the sea, to the sea.

If you have overindulged at breakfast slim down in the sauna or sweat it off at the gym facilities which we took advantage of, hoping to purge the evils of a night of slurred speeches and far too many toasts to the happy couple.

Terrigal Crowne Plaza isn’t the only destination included in this deal.

 

Participating Crowne Plazas include:

New South Wales & ACT

• Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach from AU$200
• Crowne Plaza Hunter Valley from AU$190
• Crowne Plaza Newcastle from AU$190
• Crowne Plaza Norwest from AU$132
• Crowne Plaza Terrigal from AU$180

Queensland

• Crowne Plaza Surfers Paradise from AU$159

South Australia

• Crowne Plaza Adelaide from AU$160

Victoria

• Crowne Plaza Melbourne from AU$190

West Australia

• Crowne Plaza Perth from AU$179

Packages are bookable from 19 November, 2012 through to 27 February, 2013 for stays between 1 December, 2012 and 28 February, 2013. For more information on Crowne Plaza’s Recharge packages, or to make a booking visit –  www.crowneplaza.com/recharge .

* Packages are subject to availability. Terms and conditions and blackout dates apply. Minimum two-night stay.

Arrested Development: Possible Prequel  –   Arbitrage review

REVIEWED BY CRITIC, FILM BUFF & BEER CONNOISSEUR F.P. BLUCK

 

And so to the 10 am session of Arbitrage .  Sparse attendance, despite this being public sector superannuation payday.  Lamented, with the ticket person the disappearance of Last Will before I was able to see it.  Not a young crowd, and definitely about half would have been there to check out the current state of Richard Gere.  I can safely report that he does a suit almost as well as Clooney but when looking harried and drawn, takes on an unnerving resemblance to Bryan Cranston*.

The previews – as ever – tell us much about what the chain (in this case Event) thinks about the movie and its audience.  The Words with Jeremy Irons needing rehydration where Bradley Cooper playing an expressionless guy**;  Skyfall , a James Bond starring Daniel Craig as a man with few signs of personality; a film with a very high shooting quotient; Argo which might be ok but for the sneaking feeling all the good lines have been used in the preview***;  The Intouchables is an endearing-looking French confection about a wealthy paralysed bloke and his way-tough carer. In other words, the previews suggested that (a) Arbitrage was unlikely to require a wide repertoire of expressions from Mr Gere and (b) the plot and script might be a bit intelligent.  We also had two ads for Foxtel.

The Gere meister plays Robert Miller, a lion of Wall Street, a sleek but ageing king of a jungle. He has survived for years and is a purveyor of confidence mostly in himself.  Susan Sarandon is his wife, limited to doing charitable things.  There is a possibly thick-headed son and a disconcertingly clever daughter.  He’s in well-dressed flunkie heaven with many young retainers and some old hanging on his oracular status.  The … ahem …. girlfriend with a cute French accent and an art gallery propped up by his “investment”.  All the signs of success are there but the throne is on hollow legs and the whole palace may be on quicksand.

The film deals with the period when additional excrement is added to the quicksand and the whole is transported by an air-conditioning medium into Gere’s immediate vicinity so that, for the first time, he may have to face the consequences of his actions****.

Solid performances from Gere, Sarandon, Britt Marling, Tim Roth (as a dogged NY cop this time) and Nate Parker.  A script that shows rather than tells and a plotline that recognises that what is screened has a before and an after.  Some recognisable traces – a bit of Bonfire of the Vanities here, a little Margin Call there, some Woody Allen-lite NY affection – but it’s a world most of us don’t know.

This is well worth time and effort.  It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good.

 

* – don’t pretend you don’t know.  Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad , plus a couple of strange roles in movies including the unlamented Total Recoil .

** – something he seems to do quite well.

*** – oh, and it’s got Bryan Cranston.

***** – yes, he can act.  Although his character operated as a projection of the information he was processing much of the time, rather than as a whole person.

****** – I’m not giving away more of the plot.

 

Christopher Dair and Zae Greenwood launched the very unique   More the Merrier website last year which allows users to plan an entire social event online.  Without having the hassle of juggling venues, the site gives you access to information on the best restaurants and activities which best suit groups of six or more people.

With suggestions that stretch from divorce parties to buck’s nights, dinner and ghost tours, botox brunches and beer masterclasses; More the Merrier is making expert socialites out of us all and Two Flat Whites chats to the innovators behind the site to find out what these merry events planners have in-store for a Sydney summer.

Q1:  How did you come up with the idea of MTM? 

It can be very stressful finding reliable group-friendly venues and experiences. Our aim was to create a platform that made organising great group occasions easy. With backgrounds in Events and the Entertainment industry, we were very familiar with the need to find unique group get-together options and the necessary information required when planning large get-togethers. We want MTM to be Sydney’s go to for group occasions.

Q2: What do you think about the Sydney scene for social dining compared to the rest of the world?

Sydney has plenty of wonderful social dining option. While it may not have the history or variety that some other super cities like London or New York have, Sydney has the climate and views for exceptional al fresco dining experiences.

Q3: What would be your ultimate, dream group occasion?

The most important component of any group occasion is friends, and then it’s a venue or experience that is group-friendly to create memories that last forever.

We recently talked about a ‘Hook, Line and Sinker’ experience that would have you enjoy a day out on a private fishing charter, then to finish you would pull into a harbour side restaurant where your catch of the day would be prepared by the chef for a seafood dinner like no other.

MTMs Hot Tips for Group Gatherings this Summer in Sydney

• Shed the winter layers and get out into Sydney’s great outdoors –  pop up picnic anyone ?
• Don’t let your group get stuck in the dreaded social rut of only attending parties and activities that are on your doorstep. You don’t become worldly by hanging around the same-old postcode.
• Look for dining options that have the share factor; it’s a more social, relaxed approach to group dining
• Get active and think of unique ways to get together with friends. It doesn’t need to be someone’s 30th to jump out of a plane or attend a dance class