Paint It Black

I first discovered the intricate performance art that is black light theatre at the annual Morris Hall school eisteddfod. I'd call it a talent display but I don't want to mislead you. For those of you not as culturally advanced as I, black light theatre is where you turn on a UV light and a series of phosphorous objects glide magically across the stage held in place by a series of performers dressed in their best drama blacks. It's basically like using Twilight Zone stickers as a form of theatre.

Now all you cynics might think that isn't enough to sustain one's interest and justify a night at the theatre but we thought the same thing about model trains once and all it took was the great mind of one Andrew Lloyd-Webber to prove us wrong there with the seminal Starlight Express (it hears your distress!).

So as an 8 year old having to sit through all number of tiresome calisthenic (more commonly known as calispastics) routines including endless rod displays to the theme from Gremlins and odd homages to the Seekers, there were only 3 things that got me through these evenings.

1. The hope that they might throw confectionary at the audience. This occurred more often you'd think in the less health conscious 1980's.

2. The promise of catching a glimpse of the grade 4 teacher who looked a lot like Angelica Huston in The Witches. A striking lady, I'll leave it to your fertile imaginations as to whether she resembled her with or without the latex mask and wig.

3. But most of all it was looking forward to the grade 3 teacher's consistently dazzling use of the much maligned art of black light theatre. After sitting through hours of barely co-ordinated girls in unbecoming outfits, I could always rely on the vision of a woman who had clearly found her creativity repressed by Australia's private school system but allowed it to explode across the stage annually. Her breathtaking creations reached a dizzying peak in 1988 as she celebrated our bicentenary (celebration of a nation, give us a hand, celebration of a nation, let's make it grand!) with an assault on the senses that covered everything from the Great Barrier Reef to Lindy Chamberlin. If you didn't think such differing subjects could be covered all at once by a series of pre-pubescent girls with thongs on their hands (and this time I do mean flip flops) then you're sorely underestimating the magic of black light theatre and it's ability to comment on our times.

So that brings us to the present day. The 90's seemed to bury black light theatre or at least relegate it to late night performances at Teriyaki Anarki Saki or window displays at Ministry Of Style. But wandering the streets of Prague, I discovered that it's still very much alive and embraced by the Czech Republic. I guess the communists didn't let them explore it in the 80's. And we all know how anticipation can make things twice as sweet.

So I decided to "treat" myself to a night of black light theatre. The options are plentiful in Prague, almost one on every street corner, and I considered a black light production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Cats (nothing like making a good thing better, right?) but then I realised I didn't hate myself nor did I want to put myself through great mental agony so I opted for the more conservative Cabinet. Cabinet is a new work about a professor exploring great inventions of the modern era, fittingly told using the greatest invention of them all - black light theatre.

Alarm bells started ringing the minute I stepped into the theatre. A sign at the entrance read "NO MEALS SERVED DURING THE PERFORMANCE". The fact that they felt the need to warn me of this filled with the kind of dread I feel when I'm watching a movie and realise Renee Zellweger is the lead character. I don't go to the theatre expecting my stomach to be fed. Not anymore anyway. Only perhaps for them to throw my soul a morsel it can gnaw upon. So the fact that the show had this sort of warning made me think they were expecting the sort of audience one might see at Witches In Britches or The Swagman and thus would be pitching their content at that level.

The programme promised/warned me that I would be "helpless in the power of music that will touch your soul". If the great synthesiser scores of 80's fantasy films such as Ladyhawke had the ability to touch my soul, then by all means surely this music touched mine. I've always thought that all one needs to create great music is one man and his drum machine (In The Air Tonight proves this point) and the dastardly team behind Cabinet clearly agreed.



Cabinet seemed to have a plot about a mad scientist type and his beautiful-beneath-the-glasses assistant who work on all number of wacky inventions and seem to have a magic wardrobe that sends its unwitting participants into a sort of neon Narnia where black light shapes dazzle and spin around them. After having seen black light used to reveal how Australia's judicial system let down Lindy Chamberlin, I couldn't help but feel Cabinet was a little light on for plot. And my blood ran cold when I discovered that their main way of advancing the plot was to draw upon the handicapped little sister of narrative - audience participation. As they drew one hapless soul after another up on stage to be the butt of their vaudeville jokes, I died a little in side. You'd think by now I'd learn my lesson not to seek out ironic forms of entertainment particularly after seeing that production of Chess starring Daryl Braithwaite where they decided to eliminate all references to the Cold War reducing it to a musical about... chess. But I can be a slow learner.

As I stumbled out of the theatre after a thoroughly bewildering hour and an elongated curtain call, I realised that black light is to theatre what Renee Zellweger is to acting. Or Andre Rieu to classical music. Or John Wayne Gacy Jnr to childcare. It takes something beautiful and destroys it forever.

I Feel The Earth Move

I'm back on the interwebs and ready to rock this blog.

I've left Amsterdam, moved through Poland and have now reached the Czech Republic. I've decided to go all non-linear on this blog or just show things in the order I find them most interesting or pertinent (I take the same approach when showing Showgirls to the uninitiated) so I won't cover Poland just yet and how my calf muscles will never be the same. It'll come - don't worry.

Instead today the most important thing on my mind is youth hostels or how I have grown to hate them.

Maybe it's the time, maybe it's my age as I hurtle toward my fourth decade (wow - that makes me sound a hell of a lot older than I really am) or maybe I'm just a plain old crank but after one night in a hostel in Prague, I'm ready to torch the place.

I didn't always feel this way. In 2000 and 2001 when I travelled, I had nought but good experiences in youth hostels. But things were different then. The World Trade Centre towers loomed proudly over the New York skyline. New Orleans thought they were invincible and Ann Rice would always watch over them. You could travel on planes with a bottle of water and get through security wearing your belt and shoes. And most importantly, mobile phones hadn't quite infiltrated our lives.

Sure we all had them (heavens - it's not like I'm talking about the 90's!) but global roaming was still a confusing issue, people hadn't quite twigged to the fact that they could swap SIM cards from country to country and battery lives were unreliable and stunted. Hell we were still getting our head around that new concept of being able to send these things called text messages to somebody who wasn't even on the same phone network as us. What a strange futuristic time we seemed to be living in. If you'd added some jet flames and a moving Asian billboard we would have all thought we were living in Blade Runner.

So back in the halcyon days of travelling, pre September 2001, it was possible to go to sleep in a hostel dorm without expecting numerous SMS messages and wacky ring tones to ensure you never reached deep REM sleep. Maybe I'm looking at things through rose-coloured glasses but I couldn't help but long for this not too distant past last night as one of my roommates, I forget his name so we'll just call him Mr Cocksnaggle, took not 1 but 3 phone calls between the hours of 2 and 5am. Don't you mind the rest of us, Mr Cocksnaggle! We're just lying here because our blood sugar levels are low and we can't quite work out how to stand up. It's not like we want to use these beds for sleep or anything.

I have a little less contempt for people who put their phones on silent during the night but there's an important distinction between "silent" in 2001 and in 2009. In 2001, it meant exactly that. Your phone didn't make a sound. In 2009, "silent" actually means "vibrate". And these fuckers have got some buzz in them. So if you're sharing a bunk bed with somebody and their phone vibrates, there's every possibility the whole room will shake and it will sound as if a plague of locusts are descending upon you in the night. Unless, of course, you're staying in Cambodia where both of those things will really be happening.

But I also discovered that mobile phones aren't the only things that will make your bunk vibrate as I awoke at 4am to a couple going at it hammer and tongs as they say in the top bunk. Now I'm all for sexual experimentation and livening up your sex life by trying it in unexpected places, but really? The top of a bunk bed with 5 other people in the room trying to sleep? At 4am? Is that really the best time to try the reverse cowgirl position? You sure now? You don't want to rethink that? As I listened to them testing Ikea's fine workmanship, I hoped neither of them got vertigo. But then I realised I actually very much wanted both of them to get vertigo. And when our young Valentino's phone rang and he reached to grab it, knocking his lady love off the top bunk where she plummeted naked to the floor landing face down next to my bed, a nasty voice in my head that I'm not at all proud of hissed "who's eating carpet now, sweetie?".

And I must admit my own hypocrisy here as I caused the bunk bed I was in to vibrate too. Vibrating as I lay there shaking with silent laughter.

The whole incident became even more dignified when Valentino's friend knocked on the door to let him know they had to leave so he did the considerate thing and turned on the bright fluorescent lights so that he could find his pants, slowly dressed while talking loudly to his friend and left leaving Lady Godiva to fossick around for something to wear as we all pretended not to be watching her. It was the most undignified exit from a hostel room I've seen since Reyjkavik 2001 when a drunk British backpacker didn't realise she had walked into the male dormitory by mistake at 3am until she had stripped down to only her thong - and I'm not talking about flip flops, It seems you can feel 7 pairs of eyes staring at you particularly when it's 3am in an Icelandic summer as there's still daylight filling the room.

But Lady Godiva didn't seem too fussed by her soulmate's less-than-honourable treatment of her as I found her the next morning in the hostel common room with her head in another guy's lap. I guess she thought - Valentino's been gone for a whole 4 hours now. Why wait?

I've often wondered at what moment should you no longer stay at youth hostels. My answer just became clear. When the idea of spending a night with Mr Cocksnaggle, Lady Godiva and Valentino doesn't fill you with joy. In other words - last night.

Teenagers

And we're back. I certainly gave the writers of Lost a run for their money with that cliffhanger, didn't I?

So for those of you too lazy to read the last entry, I'm in Cannes and about to see the latest Paul Verhoeven film, Teenagers (and couldn't be happier). Until the film started.

I remember thinking to myself "gosh this opening logo looks a lot like it's been created on iDVD". 10 seconds later the real truth dawned on me - there's more than one Paul Verhoeven. This didn't come from the mind that gave us such dialogue as "I've got my period. See?" and "People got AIDS and shit." It seems the entire audience reached that conclusion at the same point because the crowd stood up en masse and evacuated the cinema with such haste, you'd think Carrie had just stood up drenched in blood and started looking at us through bulging eyes of hatred.

The 10 of us remaining just sat there dumbly in a state of confusion as two teenagers appeared floating in space. It was kind of like the opening of Dune except the stars looked like they'd been borrowed from the opening credits of Young Talent Time. The boy and girl (the last time we'll be seeing one of those pesky females for a while!) spoke about the themes of the film in French. I can't say I remember what they were saying because my heart was still breaking a bit that I wasn't watching a film from the mind that gave us Starship Troopers. Plus I have the sneaking feeling that the credits were translated using Babelfish because they didn't really make one word of sense.

Luckily we'd been handed a manifesto for the film as we walked in which the remaining 10 of us in the audience quickly reached for to try to work out what the hell was going on. We soon learned that the film we were watching was told in 3 chapters and I soon realised that each of these chapters would be introduced by the outer space narrators. So far so good. Then I read the paragraph about all the scenes of "naturism" being absolutely legal and young people having no problem with it as they are accustomed to it in their sport activities. Hmmm.. I can't say I did a lot of sport as a child so maybe I just missed Nude Little Aths day.

Chapter #1 starts in 1983. It involves a 15 year old boy called Erwan who has been abandoned by his parents and now doesn't like folks. He takes it out on young Lucas who has been unceremoniously dumped with Erwan for the week by his parents. Lucas isaA 12 year old boy who is strangely non-resistant to Erwan's demands that he take off all his clothes (yep! briefs too!) and act like a dog for the duration of his stay, albeit a dog who can also make breakfast and serve it to Erwan in bed. One day Erwan accidentally whips Lucas 50 times with a stick and Lucas almost dies. Erwan realises he and Lucas are in love. They have sundaes. With me so far? They make out. And no, seeing a 12 year old naked boy make out with a 15 year old who treats him like a dog isn't creepy at all, you conservative prudes! They eventually go their separate ways because Erwan realises that Lucas is angelic and he doesn't want to corrupt him. As if you could, Erwan! You've got a heart of gold too underneath all those brambles you keep whipping naked boys with! So that's chapter #1. I'll skim through the next chapters because they're too damn confusing, I fell asleep and then left the cinema midway through in a state of utter bewilderment. I will tell you though that I did see a 27 year old Lucas start a relationship with a 14 year old called Said in 1998 that involved sundaes, making out and a homosexual suicide pact. Luckily the purity of their love turned them into angels so they could return to earth in the directionless present day and inspire a street gang to stop mugging young boys and start hugging them instead. I don't know why I walked out either. I'm just nuts like that. If anyone wants my T shirt, go to Ebay pronto!

I wandered the Palais in a fragile state after evacuating the cinema until I met up with the gang to see Nymph, a splendid new Thai addition to the eco-porn genre. I don't know about you but I can't wait for VideoBusters on Smith Street to finally start up their eco-porn section. They say they don't have enough room but I'm sure if they moved the 10 packs of water to the left and the Buddhist heads to the right, they could slide it in there next to their internet kiosk. Once again, we upped the ante for sleeping in a cinema when all 5 of us passed out within minutes of the film beginning. Later we were able to piece together the plot as it seemed that we all slept through different parts. I slept through the part where a man fell in love with a tree while somebody else slept through the part where his jealous wife chopped it down. Together we made a story! A beautiful beautiful story.

So by this point, I really needed some sleep but I had one more film in me - Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void!

By this point I'd dealt with incest, paedophilia, underage S&M, preachy kids in outer space, eco porn, gypsy curses, eye gouging and detailed descriptions of what Charlotte did to herself in Antichrist so why not see a film from the director of Irreversible? And Gaspar certainly still had some tricks up his sleeve for us! Ever wondered what sex looked like from the cervix's point of view? Well kids, you're about to find out.

It's hard to comment on Enter The Void as what we saw was a work in progress but I was blown away. And not in the way that I was when I saw Teenagers. With the exception of Drag Me To Hell, Enter The Void was the only film in Cannes I didn't fall asleep in. High praise indeed! It's hard to talk at all about what the film is about without giving the whole shebang away but it was a bold, ambitious, challenging film that like Inland Empire was simultaneously breathtaking, frustrating, confusing, pretentious, overwhelming but ultimately inspiring as it came from such a strong artistic voice. I'll be interested to see what he does with the film. Apparently there's still a lot of effect work to be done but the effects that were in the film were pretty stunning and transcendent. I think the film would be stronger if it had 20 minutes trimmed out of it - at close to 3 hours, it became a little repetitive and monotonous but one could argue that was also half the point as repetition and aimlessness were major themes of the film. While I kinda knew that Haneke would take the Palme D'Or, I really hoped that this film would win it. But considering this is so early in his career, I look forward to seeing what he does with this film and what he does beyond it. It took some pretty big risks, one that resulted in a good third of the audience walking out and missing the final scene that brought the whole film together, but it's one I'd definitely watch again. Cinematic mescaline.

And that's "SCENE" from me in Cannes. I'm back in Amsterdam now and set for a choc-a-block month of workshops and shooting which will see me wrap up at Binger Lab before heading to Poland where I may be beaten with sticks in the name of art. Joy.

A&E - Cannes You Feel It?

So I'll never be Carrie Bradshaw. I'm an irregular blogger at best. But I assure you it's not just because I'm sitting at home watching Rob & Big take Mini Horse on lots of adventures across America, despite how that may appear. I'm really actually quite busy.

And I got a case of the old tonsillitis and nothing sucks the humour out of me like a case of the old tonsillitis. I was grumpy, moody and petulant. Luckily I found some left over "codeine" from my trip to Cambodia. Lord knows what it really is. When you buy pharmaceuticals in Cambodia, you don't bother to read the fine print. They just took me off to a lovely land of fluffy bunnies and candy mountains that resembled something out of a Pioneer commercial (you know.. Pioneer. What jelly dreams are made of. I think they went the same way as Gumbuyah Park and Wobbies World and everything else that gave me happiness as a child - condemned as being health hazards.)

How did I get this tonsillitis? Knowing the followers of this blog your minds have gone straight to the gutter but it is with great pride that I can correct you and say nay, I caught it whilst visiting the family in Germany for Easter. My attempts to speak German weren't great I must admit. Hadn't spoken it in a few years - there are few opportunities around downtown Collingwood. But I did try. Unfortunately my "near enough is good enough" approach to the language just caused confusion. Especially when I kept wishing people a Frohe Osterreich which doesn't mean Happy Easter at all but actually means Happy Austria. You'd think Austria would be happy to be mentioned at all but apparently they don't like being confused with Easter. Talk about being precious.

I visited with my cousins but all roads in Germany lead to the family matriarch - die Tante Herta. My first attempt at film writing was at the age of 18 when I started writing a script called Die Tante Herta about an elderly German relative who comes to town one wacky festive season and manages to tear her family apart with a few well chosen words. The script was no Casablanca but I couldn't help but think fondly of it as I sat at the dinner table with Tante Herta.

Tante Herta doesn't care for me as I have long hair and wear nail polish. Devoting my life to burlesque routines based on Equus would probably have more dignity in her eyes. As our meals were delivered, Herta inspected each plate carefully before lowering her voice, adopting a tone that insinuated an incorrect answer would have dire consequences for everyone in the near vicinity as she coolly asked "where are the potatoes?" They were quickly delivered.

But you didn't come here to read about German senior citizens. Oh no. You're here for the real party - Cannes! And yes what a party it was.

It got off to a shaky start as all my flights seem to be doing lately when the check-in lady at Amsterdam Schipol reprimanded me for my heavy suitcase. I'm pretty sure it's the suitcase that's heavy as I was packing next to nothing but this was met on deaf ears of course. Nor did I get a response to my question, "you don't happen to have a cousin back at Tullamarine called Fuck Face, do you?"

Things soon righted themselves and I was off to Cannes via London. The equivalent of driving from Melbourne to Adelaide via Sydney. The joys of European flying. Turns out that 9 times out of 10 it's cheaper to fly via England and when I heard Juliette Lewis would be rocking Koko for one night only... well, I'm not made of stone, am I? Jules showed she still had a set of pipes on her and her singing wasn't bad either. Oh sound that Benny Hill horn! The night ended rather dramatically with a friend being carted off to A&E after some overzealous dance floor action but luckily the outcome wasn't as bad as we all feared. Once again though, it turns out we've all been lied to through song as Allison Goldfrapp's rapturous musings about the British A&E wards aren't in any way accurate.

Well this IS turning out to be a long blog isn't it? Anybody would think I was overcompensating for weeks of not writing. I may have to pull a 2 parter on you. Let's see if I can find a suitable cliffhanger.

So I arrived in Cannes and checked into my apartment with my Binger droogs, who for the sake of allowing me to re-use the acronym (and because I'm not sure whether they want their names plastered all over the interwebs) I'll just call A&E. Look at me! Streamlining my blogs!

Anyways, we were on the fair shores of Cannes but 2 hours when invitations were thrust into our hands and off to the India party we went. The party started with a kind of Wicker Man meets Eyes Wide Shut touch of us being ferried far from the mainland onto an island where we were shepherded into SUV's that drove down dark paths until they arrived at a stony fortress lit by flaming torches. Luckily once we got inside, there were no masks, sodomy or repetitive pianos. Instead there was a buffet worth throwing elbows for, mood lighting that made us all look like Bollywood stars and a whole bunch of dancing ladies getting all Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny) on our arses. It wasn't a bad way to start the week.

It seems everything is beautiful at the buffet for as I was slyly manoevering my way around some people to reach the desserts, I was mistaken for a British pop star. Not sure which one. Though with my glass ashtray throwing abilities, it could have been one of the Sugababes. At the end of the party we were all given goody bags and we all did pretty much the same thing - dump the contents in the harbour save the lovely red pashmina. Day #1 down!

From then on, I established a rhythm that I saw no real reason to deviate from for the remainder of the festival - get up early, have some meetings, go to the Binger apartment for workshops, squeeze in a film, happy hour drinks wherever was happy, bedazzle my way into a beach party and then crawl home for some night cheese. Night cheese became a bit of a Cannes tradition and soon morphed into dawn cheese and morning strawberries. Good nutrition is vital to any film festival.

There's no real need to go into the meetings because if I tell you about them they won't come true. There was only one moment when I pondered my level of class and dignity when I rocked up to a meeting, introduced myself to the person in charge only to be told "I know who you are after last night's party." Part of me will always wonder what he meant by that. I do remember collaring somebody with a camera in order to give an "hilarious" interview as the sun was rising and then leaving the party with an armload of croissants around 6am (to have with my dawn cheese) after ensuring that everyone knew all the moves to Get Ur Freak On but nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't like I pulled a Pat Benatar and started a revolution of whores taking it to the streets at sunrise. I will say this though - the meeting was brief.

While Cannes was deathly quiet this year with everybody scared to have too much fun in case it made them seem insensitive about that whole economic crisis, the parties still managed to deliver the goods. Kudos in particular going to the Norwegians, the French and the Mexicans.

And as for films, this year was the year of the "masters" so there wasn't really much for fans of the Wayans Brothers. I arrived on Saturday so I missed Bright Star, Fish Tank and A Prophet (the 3 early contenders for the Palme D'or) and also missed out on Taking Woodstock though considering the reviews for Ang Lee's latest, it would seem that maybe "missed" is the wrong word.

On Sunday night I foolishly turned down a ticket to see Agora, the latest from Alejandro Amenabar (the one who DIDN'T direct Harry Potter or Babel). I assumed with it's $70 million budget and Rachel Weisz as a studious astronomer trying to pacify the Christians and the Pagans with her theories on constellations in the 4th century AD that the film was a natural contender for the multiplexes. After all, don't those elements spell out box office gold to you? But sadly, no distributors were forthcoming and no sales were made on the film, described by my colleague E as a "big budget adaptation of Google Maps", so I may never get to see it. You'd think after The Fountain, Rachel's agent might have said "hey Rach, how about you give films that rely on its audience having an intimate knowledge of esoteric spiritual faiths a wide berth?" Maybe it's time they had that conversation.

I did end up seeing the lovely Monica Belluci and Sophie Marceau in their new film, Don't Look Back. Now I should point out that I, and all 3 people I went to see the film with, fell asleep at some point but in Cannes, that's not exactly a criticism. Night cheese doesn't have caffeine in it, aight? The film dealt with Sophie Marceau's fear that she was Monica Belluci and Monica Belluci's fear that she might be developing super-cellulite and might therefore be human after all. It was one of many films in the festival that waved the flag loud and proud for incest. Incest, it appears, is the new black.

Monday I was all set to see Antichrist, the latest from Lars Von Trier, but an unfortunate shoe malfunction on the red carpet, prevented me from seeing Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg going at it hammer and tongs (and rusty scissors). It was interesting to hear detractors of Charlotte (of which I'm not one) lamenting her starring role in the film but once reviews got out and everyone heard how the film, umm.. climaxes, they supported Lars' decision to cast her much more furtively.

Wednesday saw the premiere of Inglourious Basterds - the hottest ticket in town. And I didn't have one. I did try to charm my way into a market screening only to be elbowed out of the way by Pedro Almodovar who did get in. What does he have that I don't? I just hope he didn't hear me yell out "choke on it, Pedro" because I really didn't mean it and it was said in the heat of the moment and I was secretly gunning for him to take out the main prize after years of being overlooked. Despite its mixed reviews and the general complaint that it meandered and needed a good hard edit, there were whispers that it could take out the top gong but considering Isabelle Huppert had been fired from the film a few days into shooting and was the president of this year's Jury, I didn't see that happening somehow.

Instead I had the pleasure of allowing Sam Raimi to Drag Me To Hell. His much anticipated return to horror was an absolute hoot and the enthusiastic crowd response ensured it was one of the most animated cinematic outings I've ever been to (except for that time I saw Lost Things at Greater Union and the bored audience turned rabid and started throwing their seats at the screen). The film was not only entertaining but remarkably pertinent - the general comment being, who wouldn't want to see a bank loan officer getting dragged to hell for 2 hours? The thing I really enjoyed though was that it was an old fashioned genre film that fully embraced its roots and was also embraced by a Cannes audience. I don't want to pay out on all the jump cutting, incest supporting, Google Map adaptations out there but sometimes an audience just want to be entertained and see a good story. And Raimi ensured every minute of that film was firing on all cylinders.

Thursday's when things started getting a little messy. I, along with my cohorts A&E, did the honourable thing and got up at 8am to attend a screening of Inglourious Basterds. The only problem was, we only got to bed a little after 5am a few hours earlier so we were in no fit state to see a film. We totally missed the screening but some kindly soul took pity on us and gave us 3 tickets to see the Michael Haneke film, The White Ribbon. What I saw of the film was well crafted and stark but considering I'd had less than 3 hours sleep, I was in the mood for some Nazi hunting set to ironically chosen music, not a weighty parable on how Nazis came to be. And it was around the time I started hallucinating that there were creatures crawling up the walls of the Grand Theatre Lumiere that I thought "screw this, I'm getting some REM sleep" and curled up in a ball and completely missed the remainder of the film. I will see it again naturally to give it a more respectable chance but right now, there's not a great deal I can say.

After my Haneke nap, I woke refreshed and rejuvenated. I raced to see the new Paul Verhoeven film. My love affair with Paul Verhoeven goes back to the underrated Showgirls and it's deep, intricate exploration of what it takes to be a Vegas lap dancer in the hard and fast 1990's. I'm sure many readers of this blog would have heard me wax lyrical about it many many times and if you're lucky, you may even have caught one of my stirring reenactments of one of its key scenes particularly the gazelle-being-eaten-by-a-crocodile swimming pool scene. So when I heard he'd made a 2 and a half hour documentary about teenagers, well I wasn't about to miss that. I arrived at the screening and received the last ticket! Imagine that! Just call me Serendipity. We were handed tie-in T-shrits and ballpoint pens as well as we walked in. It was a true cinematic event! I settled into my seat about as excited as a 12 year old Christian at a screening of Hannah Montana. But then the movie started...

And there's my cliffhanger!! Stay tuned folks!

Wombling Free

So it's been a little while since I posted but much has happened.

I've started my work at the Binger FilmLab workshopping The 24 Hour Window. We're an eclectic group representing most of the continents (imagine my chagrin that Antarctica have once again failed to make their presence felt) each with our own feature script we'll be workshopping until July. The schedule that has been arranged for us is challenging and inspiring. Already we've bonded and learned a lot about ourselves even though it's barely begun. We're not quite sure what will happen next but we've been assured our lives will never be the same.

And when I'm not Bingering my way through the days, I'm off exploring the city. I've decided it's crucial that I DJ while I'm here so with the aid of my new DJing software (that I purchased the day before I left and was quite thankful when I finally tested it last week that it did indeed work) I have set out to find the best little out of the way club that I can set on fire with electro hits.

I've also tried to pose as a local the best way I can - by singing while riding my bike. I discovered though that they do have a preference for middle of the road, adult contemporary classic rather than, say, Ca Plane Pour Moi and that one should only sing whilst in motion. Not at traffic lights or in traffic jams. I'm a quick learner!

This weekend I had the pleasure of housesitting for one of my fellow participants, mainly to look after the infamous Rebbe Naches - her aging Dachshund. He's 12 years old, with a brain tumour and a headful of grey dreadlocks making him look like a wonderful cross between a Womble (from Wimbledon), a Mystic (from the Dark Crystal) and Fiona Horne (from Def FX).



For the first couple of days he just kind of stared at me but once I upped his medication he became a ball of laughs and I've woken up on more than one occasion to find him spooning me. He has the unfortunate tendency to wake up barking so I can only assume there's some sort of Julia Roberts in Sleeping With The Enemy past going on there. I wanted to take him for a canal boat ride but like Madonna he's old. Old as time. And considering his age plus long body plus said brain tumour make it impossible for him to go down stairs, I thought traipsing across half the city might be rubbing it in his face a bit. Like asking Margot Kidder to model for a shampoo commercial after she hacked off all her hair with a razor blade.

Those of you who know me won't be surprised to learn my love of housesitting. You don't make any new discoveries by going through your own drawers now, do you? And while I love the place I normally stay at, I do occasionally open my curtains to discover strange men standing on my balcony. It's at those moments I thank my lucky stars I'm not Miranda Otto or they might have caught me dancing around in my underwear to Dragon's April Sun In Cuba with a half-consumed bottle of tequila in my hand.

So it's nice to have a change of pace and this canal-side apartment with its chaise lounge, roof terrace, chandelier (just the one - no need to coarsely splash your wealth around) and wall-sized artworks suits me well. It also has the delicious perk of belonging to the director of Drop Dead Fred. He was bemused at my excitement on learning that he had directed that film but once he realised I was Australian it all made sense to him. Apparently we Australians took Drop Dead Fred into our hearts like nobody's business. I wonder what that says about us.

And to anyone who thought I phoned this blog entry in a bit and didn't give you enough to think about, here's another photo of the Wombles.

Daniel

Well, 3 weeks in Amsterdam and I've fallen in love.

He takes me on long journeys down by the canals.

His slender frame is a thing of beauty.

Sure he's been around the block a few times but I don't mind.

And he does make a lot of noise but at least that lets people know when he's coming.

His name is Daniel - my new bike.

The getting of a bike in Amsterdam really provokes quite the moral dilemma.

Second hand bikes are readily for sale in markets to the tune of 100 - 150 Euro and similar prices can be found on Craigslist.

But the real cost saver seems to be just to buy a second hand bike off a junkie. You can easily nab a bike this way for 10 - 30 Euro. One girl I know paid 40 Euro for her bike which she admitted was expensive but she said that junkie offers a great service. You text him if you don't have a bike and he calls you back when he's found/stolen a bike and brings it to you. I asked if you could get him to pick up a pizza and a DVD on his way but apparently that costs extra. Just because he's a down and out smackwhore doesn't mean you can treat him like a slave I guess. Kudos smackwhore! You stick to those guns come the winter months.

So for the traveller on a budget, it seems buying a bike off a junkie is the way to go.

Naturally it's illegal but the Dutch police are hardly known for their stringent enforcement of laws that provoke moral debates.

I was considering getting a junkie bike for the main reason that I don't have a great deal of cash plus bike theft in Amsterdam is rampant and I figured I'd be a whole lot less upset if I discovered my 10 Euro bike was stolen at 3am on a Sunday than if it were a 100 Euro bike.

It's also one of the few times that I think the whole socialist approach to possessions can really work a treat. If everyone did it, nobody would get ripped off. Everyone could just buy a 10 Euro bike and if it gets stolen, buy another. And junkies could fill themselves up to the brim with junk knowing there will always be demand for their services. What a wonderful world it could be! It's kind of like Ellen DeGeneres' belief that there are only 100 umbrellas in the world and they belong to us as a community. If we see one we take it and eventually we put it down and somebody else takes it. And nobody wants to be stuck with the red one.

But then of course some locals did point out the sad reality that not everyone has bought into this system yet so for the time being there would be some real losers in this situation - those who had saved up to buy reliable bikes that don't screech like a gathering of banshees when you apply the brakes as well as the junkies forced to live a life of crime. So, until everyone agrees to the socialist biking system, you're really giving your karma a Hot Richard.

So I tracked down a reliable second hand bike dealer and forked out 80 Euro for a bike which included all the bells and whistles. Well no whistles but a bell, a light and a lock. Plus he'll buy it back off me when I leave. "If you still have it then," a cynical local commented. "Your mother sucks c**** in Hell," I replied.

I gave my bike the name Daniel (after the Bat For Lashes song I'm listening to constantly) and I ride it every opportunity I get. I'm glad I went the honest approach for my bike, though a part of me is sad that some junkie out of there went without his fix because I insisted upon not compromising my Christianity. But rest assured, if somebody steals Daniel off me, I'll be texting that junkie within seconds asking for a 4 speeder with a basket, the latest season of Dexter and hold the anchovies.

It's amazing how quickly you can become one of those self righteous Dutch cyclist who tuts at the tourists for daring to step onto the bike path without checking both directions first. And cyclists here certainly have adopted that Cambodian approach to driving - believe in yourself and you can achieve anything. I asked somebody if there were actually any road rules for bikers and he assured me there were but over time cyclist have had to evolve to take drunk Italian tourists into consideration so things are pretty much in a state of perfectly organised chaos.

I haven't quite adopted the whole "you can do anything on a bike" philosophy that it so prevalent here. The most common things you'll see on a bike are:

1. Riding while holding up an umbrella
2. Riding while talking on your mobile
3. Riding while humming Des'ree's Greatest Hits
4. Dinks
5. Riding while having a coffee

I'm pretty sure I saw somebody applying mascara as well while she pedaled her way down Kerkstraat the other day.

I hope as the weather clears up, people get a bit more bold and try a few more ambitious things on their bikes. How about a nice game of Connect 4? Eating a bowl of spaghetti? A re-enactment of the climax of E.T? Come on Amsterdam - don't let me down!

And when I get back to Melbourne, I'm heading straight to VideoBusters Smith St and suggesting they add the bike racket to their wonderfully morally ambiguous approach to retail.

Hold Tight

Well I've settled safely into Amsterdam now.

I've got a quiet little apartment halfway between the harbour and the zoo. The only sound I get is Miss Lonelyheart, the woman who lives across the courtyard (it's a Rear Window type of affair which satisfies the Jimmy Stewart in me) who recently got dumped by her boyfriend and has been pumping out Blondie's Greatest Hits ever since. I'd been lying if I said I didn't love it a bit.

I've been pretty much housebound this week due to a cold so I just duck out to the local shop for supplies. It's a little more expensive than the "supermarket" down the street but it's worth it due to the teenage checkout chap. He'd be about 14 and his main drawcard is he looks like the supporting guy from an 80's teen movie. Not any of the Coreys or even an Anthony Michael Hall for that matter. He looks like the featured extra who you always see in the background of crowd scenes and ends up getting a snappy one liner at the climax after the lead character's done something cool to stick it to the man. You know the kind. They tend to wear unique sunglasses, smoke in the parking lot and often have a crucifix earring or headband. So while it means I have to pay an extra 3 cents per item, he gets to enjoy practising his English on me and I enjoy pretending he's saying something cool after I've led a BMX race through the school corridors to create a diversion so that the lead character can get to the roof to escape the evil headmaster and counsellors. Everyone wins. I've attached a photo of how I see him below.



But onto the real post.

Well kids, I've held off on delivering this entry for long enough. But it's now time to give you a certain book review.

I should preface this with a few facts.

I have read the complete Dollanganger Series. That's the wonderful Flowers In The Attic series for those of you who don't speak VC Andrews.

I continued to read the works of Anne Rice long after it was fashionable or even, for that matter, coherent in the case of books such as Violin and Merrick.

I've read novels by Jackie Collins, John Grisham and the autobiography of Roseanne Arnold nee Barr (My Lives).

I even read the much-anticipated sequel to Gone With The Wind, Scarlett. Every last word of it.

Yet none of these come close to the rampant mediocrity of Harlan Coben's Hold Tight.

My attention was drawn to this book as it was one of the Reader's Feast recommendations and it's plot bore a passing resemblance to a script I was working on. And alright, I thought it might be making a reference to the rocking tune by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch. I'll swallow my disappointment by simply saying I won't be shopping at Reader's Feast anymore. I'm also thanking my lucky stars that I'm not writing the worst film of all time.

For Hold Tight is bad. The Village-bad.

And I'm going to pop in that whole SPOILER ALERT thing right now because I urge you not to rush out after reading this review in the hope that "it can't be that bad" because you'll just be consumed by the biggest case of scheißebedauern since Halle Berry strapped on her stilettos for Catwoman.

"Every family has its secrets" - the cover cries out in warning. As it turns out, the deep secret the Baye Family are hiding is that they're all a pack of douche bags.

The plotline of Hold Tight is relatively simple. Tia and Mike are concerned that their son Adam has been unusually distant after the suicide of his classmate. Rather than, oh I don't know, parenting him, they decide to install some spy software on his computer to monitor his goings-on. Soon their worst fears are realised. Not only is he an emo, but he's swept up in all number of underworld goings-on that threaten to bring their house of cards crashing down around them.

It's testimony to the evil genius of Harlan Coben that he could take such a simple premise and turn it into the most convoluted car crash of contrivances ever to hit the page or as the Canberra Times put it "an astounding number of unexpected twists and turns that keep delivering surprises all the way to the last page". That there are, Canberra Times. That there are.

One such "twist" involves the character of Marianne Gillespie. We first meet Ms Gillespie when she's being bashed in the back of a van and the pain is taking her to another dimension. Yes. That is how her pain is described. For much of the novel, we don't know why Marianne has befallen such cruel circumstances, nor do we really care (because as you'll notice, she wasn't mentioned at all in the synopsis involving Tia, Mike and the apple of their eye, Adam) but we soon discover she has a daughter called Yasmin. Now Yasmin was once a bright happy child but is tumbling towards the way of emo after her school teacher, Joe Lewiston, points out she's a little on the hairy side and might want to do something about that. Poor Yasmin becomes the butt of many cruel primary school jokes - a plotline better explored in Judy Blume's Blubber. Luckily Mama Gillespie does what any responsible mother in her right mind would do - she porks Mr Lewiston, films it and threatens to show the video to his wife unless he quits teaching. So Mr Lewiston calls his mates, one of which has some severe anger management problems after a run in with some Serbian soldiers, who promptly bash Marianne to death, dress up her corpse like a cheap hooker and chuck the body in a dumpster. See? That IS an unexpected twist that certainly delivered a surprise for me. What does it have to do with the main plot of the book? Absolutely nothing! I guess Coben thought the main story needed a bit of padding. Or maybe that we needed a distraction from the fact that our central character, Mike Baye, is a total c***. And nothing distracts an audience from the fact that the lead character is a c*** by surrounding him with rapists, whores and murderers now, does it? I noticed with wry amusement that Coben acknowledges that this story came to him after having dinner with his friends Beth and Dennis McConnell. Don't you wish you were a fly on the wall for that dinner party?

So back to our central "story". Once Mike becomes convinced his son is up to no good (and I almost expected Mrs Walsh from 90210 to storm on screen and disappointedly ask "Not alcohol, Brandon?") he decides why stop at a little spy software on his computer and bugs his mobile phone too. Coben also notes at the start of this novel that "The technology used in this book is all real. Not only that, but all the software and equipment described are readily available to the general public for purchase." These are strange, heady times we live in.

Mike discovers his son has gone off to the Bronx (I assumed in search of Jenny From The Block) and with the gung-ho attitude of a man half his age, Mike decides to stalk his son. He discovers his son is frequenting a club for underage youth. It's kind of like the club in The Henderson Kids 2 except without the bird smuggling. It's there that Mike meets the dastardly Rosemary McDevitt who walks away with hands-down the worst description in the book when she's described as being "young, petite and had that sort of raw sensuality that made you think of a puma." Can't you just picture her? Rosemary is also flanked by her evil henchmen. Not Parsley, Sage and Thyme like I was hoping but Carson and his group of goths. Now I don't know about you, but I find goths to be possibly the least threatening subculture on earth, falling in behind hippies playing djembes at Queen Vic market and candy ravers with angel wings and Chupa Chups. In fact, the only time I've ever seen a goth engaged in violence was outside Maccas on Swanston St late one evening when a young lass from Broadmeadows tried to take down an androgynous young Trent Reznor wannabe for looking covetously at her McFlurry. But I digress, a trick I learned from Coben.

So Mike discovers his son is embroiled in shenanigans with a sexy puma-like lady and her murder of goths and has to save his son from a gritty life of Bronx crime. I longed for the days when teenagers in books could solve their own problems. Like The Gathering, Judy Blume's Blubber or indeed, even the great V.C. Andrews' epic Flowers In The Attic. But Mike's clearly one of those happy-go-lucky baby boomers who's shocked and appalled at the failing morality of todays kids and isn't afraid to judge them harshly based on their appearances and interfere mercilessly with their lives. As he observes of Gen Y, "They wore chains and had strange facial (and probably corporeal) piercings and, of course, the requisite tattoo, the best way to show that you're independent and shocking by fitting in and doing what all your friends do. Nobody is comfortable in his own skin. The poor kids want to look rich, what with the expensive sneakers and the bling and what have you. The rich want to look poor, gangsta tough, apologizing for their softness and what they see as their parents' excess, which, without doubt, they will emulate someday soon." Now I'd forgive that for being one of the worst passages I've read since having to read the Stan Rice poetry that would start each chapter of an Anne Rice book if it wasn't so clear that the views don't really belong to Mike so much as they belong to Coben himself. And he's clearly not afraid to paint the younger generation in a black hue.

Not that the other characters come off much better. They all compete with each other for the worst name - Darryl LeCrue (a hard nosed FBI agent out to solve the case his way), Guy Novak (the poor ex-husband of Marianne Gillespie), Reba Cordova (a happy homemaker who goes the way of Marianne Gillespie), Dolly Lewiston (the less said about her the better), DJ Huff (son of Captain Huff - oh that I were joking), Ilene Goldfarb (a surgeon who stumbles upon another wacky rape case - wait for it, it's coming!) and then just to keep it real, Betsy Hill (the mother of the boy who killed himself. She wanders through the book wishing she'd installed sophisticated spy software on her son's computer. Maybe then little Spencer might still be shooting hoops in the front drive way).

All the women are either ball-busting, dried up career women or end up Marianne style. All the men just want to shoot hoops with their sons in the front driveway but can't because their sons have turned emo. It's a cruel world they live in. And if you feel women weren't treated badly enough for, you know, not being men, there's a real peach of a subplot involving a woman who is impregnated by a rapist, stabs him to death but then finds herself in a right pickle 15 years later when her son has a life-threatening illness that can only be cured by getting a kidney transplant from his father. You know. The dead rapist. Well, we've all been there.

But the worst part - the worst part of the whole novel isn't it's convoluted plotline. It isn't that it condemns teenagers as immoral, drug-pushing drones with no fashion sense. Not is it that curious Paul Verhoeven tendency to model its female characters either on whores or Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. The worst, most toxic part of this novel strikes on page 307 when Loren Muse (the latter type of female) and Paul Copeland (yet another irrelevant character) have a good old fashioned D&M about music.

Paul: I had this song from Missy Higgins. Do you know her?
Loren: No.
Paul: She's great. Her music is a total killer.

That's when I threw this book clear across the room and decided to stick to books with integrity, dignity and subtlety. Like If There Be Thorns.