the Pen

Looking for new/old dvds I should rent. Here’s a sample of movies from bigpond waiting for me, any one have any suggestions as to what I should add to the list?

New Wave goodness: The Promise, by When In Rome. As heard in Napoleon Dynamite (The bit at the end of the movie).

From the Letters pages of the Sydney Morning Herald…

In the spirit of White Whine and Stuff White People Like, Bruce Hulbert of Lilyfield writes into the Sydney Morning Herald with some gold!

It is disappointing to hear that the Sydney Film Festival is being truncated to 12 days from last year’s 19 (“Splice of life - film festival drops a week”, March 30).

I can understand there may be sponsorship problems but for the chief executive, Mark Sarfaty, to cite the other major reason as reports of viewer fatigue last year seems to miss the point.

Talk about wimps.

This is a film festival. The opportunity to watch too many films is why many people go. And as for the idea that the festival needs “to benefit from the extra focus on the arts in the city” generated by the new concurrent Vivid Sydney festival, reducing your offering from 175 to 120 films probably isn’t your greatest strategy.

If Phoenix’s Lisztomania had a music video, it would look like this.

I can’t wait to see Black Dynamite (whenever it’s released).

There’s also a NSFW version of the trailer.

Thanks, Attack Of The Show!

A Breakfast at Tiffany’s revival?

Sadly, Rooster and I had been thwarted in our pursuit to see some films at the St. George Open Air Cinema. Luckily, however, we were able to score tickets for a showing of one of my favourite (but not my actual favourite) Audrey Hepburn movies, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, at the Moonlight Cinema.

Interestingly, I’ve noted the recent phenomenon of a revival of the movie, with younger girls also citing it as a ‘favourite’. However, I do wonder if the many “fans” have actually seen the movie and don’t just refer from the photos they’ve seen. For starters, do they actually know that Holly is high class call girl? Or know that it was based on a Truman Capote novella (which features a rather sombre ending), and that he wanted Marilyn Monroe to play his titular character?

Cynically, I’ve put it down to the “Gossip Girl” phenomena*, but am open minded enough to hear other explanations.

____

*In itself, it is not necessarily a bad thing - more people are being expose to Hepburn’s work. But I would recommend that people check out her other movies, particularly some of her more obscure works like “The Children’s Hour”, before pronouncing “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” as their “favourite” Hepburn film.

Damn it. The Leibovitz doco that I was going to watch at the Rooftop Cinema has been cancelled.

The Combination, set in Western Sydney, depicts the lives of young Lebanese-Australians getting caught up in gang violence and struggling to fit in.

In cinemas February 2009 - I look forward to watching it.