Little Running Bear

There were these action figures when I was in grade 6. Called GI Joe, these were essentially military dolls with a hint of invented story behind them: nationally non-aligned villains; an endless supply of imagined weapons and vehicles.

Now they’ve made a film based on those action figures. The plot follows what you’d expect but just to spice it up a little, I’m going to program it in basic:
10 print 'exposition'
20 print 'explosions'
30 goto 10
Hit Break after about 110 minutes.

The thing is, though, with all those explosions and all that exposition there isn’t any time left for character development. Actually one character does have some kind of emotional journey but he’s a villain so it lasts about 5 minutes before he’s stripped of anything resembling humanity including clothes.

The title of the film is ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’. Step one wouldn’t necessarily be ‘make a bad film’ but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt.

This film reminded me so much of Ben Elton’s dreadful ‘Maybe Baby’ in its poor direction and terrible story development that to think about it much more would only serve to make me angrier.

I haven’t read the book and now I never will. The characters had little to no development and there were so many travelogue type establishment shots of New York that there was a moment I thought the director must have gone to the Ed Wood school of using found footage but he had obviously never graduated.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Avoid this film.

Ah, what a fine weekend of arts I’ve had. Well, I say arts but really it was just art. One art. Photography.
Peter Milne’s brief Shining Moment is a stunning display of his recent political work and exposes him for the absolute genius he is. Of course we all thought he was good when he was shooting Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds across Europe or documenting the comedians and punters during Comedy Festival but Brief Shining Moment really slaps us in the face and makes us realise just how far he has come and how far he’s willing to push us.
The show was a collection of his thesis works, taking a starting point of Australian politics in the 70s and following it through to how it has shaped us today. He doesn’t just capture moments but tells entire stories of power, corruption and downfall. Get yourself to 69 Smith Street in Collingwood before its gone.

I also got myself to the opening of the Frédéric Brenner exhibit at the Jewish Museum. Brenner’s subject matter is interesting — an almost 30 year exploration of Jews in the Diaspora. His photography, on the other hand is more medium than art and more expository than journalistic. Still, it exists primarily as exploration of a subject and in that it is fascinating. Of particular fascination to me were the photos of Morano Jews in Portugal performing their still secret rituals all these centuries after the inquisition has ended.

It’s wednesday night at 7.00 and people are lining up to get into Billboard. What the hell could they be waiting for?
Fashions vary from goth to prep to suburban shopping centre. I can see no pattern but I can’t be bothered crossing the road to ask.