Popsickle

Cosmopolitan Culture Redux

Roddy-pedia

Apr 6

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture | No Comments

 

I’ve just edited my first piece of content on Wikipedia. Depending on your viewpoint, its amazing that it’s taken this long to make this passage to inner geekness. Even more so once you find out what I’ve edited.

To see my entry, go to the episode review for American Dad, then the season 1 cultural references for Roger Codger (who wants to be bothered contributing to boring plot summaries).

Mine is the last entry about Larry David – which for some strange reason, I can’t believe wasn’t shown here originally. Oh well!

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Raiders of the Lost Indy Transcript

Mar 11

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture, Flicks | No Comments

For those of you like me, who possess an unending curiosity for movies and importantly, HOW they are actually made, this is practically El Dorado. The blog Mystery Man on Film has uncovered a transcript from a 5 day series of brainstorming sessions between George Lucas, Stephen Spielburg and young writer gun for hire at the time, Lawrence Kasdan.

The result is sheer delight for anyone who wants to understand the screenwriting process, and how plot, character, pacing, exposition, structure and story all intersect on that cosmic plane we call movie magic. It doesnt happen often, but when it does, it’s an amazing joy to behold. The site has a further link to either PDFs, or a HTML version.

Check out the link to Mystery Man’s blog here, also spend some time around his site – he has some fantastic film and movie screenwriting resource links here, not to mention writing blogs to a stack of his mates and acquintances. Thanks also to AICN where I first spotted this gem.

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Kathy Day Knight’s Grandmother?

Mar 6

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture | No Comments

We had some after work drinks last week – trying to establish a work GLBTI initative. We had quite a respectable tunout at the inaugural “Southern Cross Stars” networking event at Hotel Chambers.

I can’t precisely recall (actually I can but I’m not in a position to repeat it) but we got on to the subject of Australia’s most notorious soap of the 1970s, Number 96. Not many people at the table remember the show – however, I remember it being only a young whippersnapper myself. It was lewd, crude and one of those utterly adorable shows that you had to ’sneak’ a viewing of – especially if you were a young person. “Officially” it was banned in our house – so my sister used to pretend to go to bed then try to view if over our parents lounge chairs.

One of the things I DO recall quite fondly was local gossip Dorrie Evans, shamelessly and totally played OTT by veteran Aussie actress Pat McDonald. She really was the grandmother of Kath Day Knight – her most common phrase being;

“Why wasnt I told”

This expression since became the lightning rod for every local gossip on the planet. She also had a variety of malopropisms, the most famous of which were;

“It’s enough to drive a body beresk.”

“I am quite ardamant about that.”

“Speaking for myself, personally, alone…”

“I prefer to remain ambiguous.”

“It is a well-known fact.”

“That is all my eye and Mary Martin.”

“Life is not always a bowl of cherubs.”

“That is a horse of an entirely different colour.”

“Pardon me for protruding…”

“We’ve passed a lot of water under that bridge”

Thanks to Ian McLean for Dorrie’s sayings and photos.

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If life does go on, it won’t go on for all of us!

Mar 5

Posted by Maestro in Happening Now!, Scientifica | No Comments

Chilling words. Hard to think they could have been applied to US this week when news crept out that a rogue asteroid (or other such heavenly body) came to within a 60,000 km strike of Earth.

Think about it people – 60,000 km. To provide some perspective, the Moon is approx 380,000 kms away. To parphrase on the “toasters” (love that term) from Battlestar Galactica;

“It has happened before – and it will happen again”

Although the stellar object in question was only small by cosmic standards (some 100 or so metres across), scientists theorised the damage caused should an impact have occured would have been similar to the devestation caused in Siberia in 1908 – the famous “Tunguska” event (see above). At most, approximate evac time would have been 24 hours.

Which may or may not have been a strike with a black hole, depending on which loony tunes astronomy school of thought you belong to (I mean the Siberia thing).

Peak hour on Sydney’s M5 motorway.

Seriously – I think my all time favourite image from Mimi Leder’s thought provoking “Deep Impact“. I can hear the sound of the ‘roid crackling as it disappears over the horizon – a truly great image from quite a thought provoking film.

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Atop the famous Woolworth Tower

Mar 3

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture, History Channel | No Comments

I love this – Gawker’s pic of the day is a shot of a darkened Manhattan, circa 1943, due to power shortages to conserve energy.  A kind of Earth Hour in reverse – as there was really no choice. Cast your mind back to what a power outage of this size would have done to Gotham’s inhabitants in an age before TV, Internet, and all the other mindless and sometime useless palava we take for granted these days.

Comden and Green’s lyrics (about New York) never seemed more prescient;

A town’s a lonely town
When you pass through
And there is no one waiting there for you
Then it’s a lonely town

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We are bound by the POP secrets we share…

Mar 1

Posted by Maestro in Flicks | No Comments

Not that I would even consider my humble little journal in the same company, but I gotta tell ya, I really do like discovering blogs and sites along the way that are attuned to my way of thinking and that also cover the same material.

PopMatters is one such site. Covering media across the world of film, TV, books, comics, music and the internet, like most sites of this kind, its best features is often found, well in its features – ie reviews and columns etc.

Take the following as an example. I absolutely adored Notes on a Scandal when it first came out. A tour de force by two actors at the absolute peak of their powers, Dench I think even more so, partly as she had the meatier role. This is the very nifty little capsule review for Notes on a Scandal they presented as part of their “Dark Side” of 100 Essential Female Film Performances.

Sheer delight – although what’s wrong with calling it “camp trash”? You gotta love a subgenre with a name like that.

At age 72, Dench reinvented herself as obsessive lesbian stalker Barbara Covett in this gripping study of two very desperate women (the other is Cate Blanchett’s Sheba Hart) who have nowhere to turn except to one another. Barbara is an institution at her school, students fear her, and the other teachers hate her. She is a mouthy loner that is just unpleasant in general to everyone. She finds everyone dull or stupid except Sheba, who (unfortunately for her), brushes the cobwebs from Barbara’s eyes and virtually illuminates her face and thoughts with her presence alone. Once Barbara sets her sites on a special friendship with a certain young (targeted) lady, things can get a tad nasty, a tad tawdry, even. Couple this obsessive love with the fact that Barbara has, coincidentally, stumbled by accident onto some choice evidence to use in bribing Sheba to be her companion. Filled with one-liners you will use for the rest of your life (“you’re not young, sneers Barbara in one scene), Eyre’s depiction of sexually threatening, corpulent evil lurking in the most unseemly of places, like in the person of sweet little Dame Judi Dench, is a nail-biter. The veteran actress goes for broke in a way that hasn’t been seen since Beryl Reid chortled and smoked her way through The Killing of Sister George 40 years ago. Only here Dench brings an unquestionable theatrical pedigree along with her to quiet any detractors that dismiss this as camp trash.

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Miss Brahms – are you free?

Feb 26

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture, Happening Now! | No Comments

Well she is now. Whoever would have thought that Miss Brahms would have gone before Mrs Slocombe?

Sad news today that Grace Bros favourite “cockney knockers” tart Wendy Richards has gone to the great department store in the sky. Bone cancer apparently. She amassed a second generation of fans from her time on Eastenders.

But to me, she will always be the object of the resident Lothario Mr Lucas and his lustful longings across the perfume counter.

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iRecall?

Feb 26

Posted by Maestro in Happening Now!, Musicology | No Comments

Do you think that the song playing on your iPod of a morning stays with you for the rest of the day, or even the week?

I can’t get Peter Allen’s “Not the Boy Next Door” nor Midnight Oil’s “Best of Both Worlds” out of my head – yet there were the two tracks playing on my iPod this morning on the train!

Very strange. Two very different songs and performers.

 

“The one it could have been”*

*Line often repeated in the “Best of Both Worlds”

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Queen X Queen

Feb 25

Posted by Maestro in Happening Now! | No Comments

The Queen Mary 2 (QM2) pulled into Sydney Heads this morning and is currently docked at Garden Island.

Hard to think that after having dinner with them last night at the tackily furnished Neptune Palace (savouring the wonderful salt and pepper squid/prawns, amongst others), that Lucy and her mother Patricia (aka Madge) will board this oceanic leviathon afternoon for a cruise to Singapore via Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

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Hugh-ray for HeathLedgerwood!

Feb 23

Posted by Maestro in Culture Vulture, Flicks | No Comments

Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy, bally hooey Hollywood.
Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic with just a good looking pan.

Fortunately for us, Hugh Jackman and Heath Ledger who in their own ways owned last night’s 81st Oscar show, had both good looking pans (ie faces) as well as talent talent talent to boot.

Heath – long expected to have the Best Supporting gong in his back pocket after his maniacially diabolical turn as the Joker in Chris Nolan’s smash, the Dark Knight – was emphatically endorsed by the New York Times as a no brainer contest for picking up the prize. His family’s simple eloquence on accpeting the award will go down as one of the quintessential Oscar moments that you will see again and again on future repeats.

Now to Mr Jackman – who I thought did an outstanding job. The job of the host is to ENTERTAIN – and Hugh ( by virtue of being the best actor- singer-dancer combination in Hollywood today – come on – who else do you think could have pulled off what he did) rose to the occasion magnificently. Forget the whole cheesy cruise ship references some of the more acerbic US critics have savaged him with today – he was brilliant!

Line of the night – Natalie Portman – to a bearded Ben Stiller made to look like the current ravaged rap artist Joaquin Phoenix seems to have morphed into:

“You look like you’ve come from a Hasidic meth lab”

Hilarious!

If you didnt happen to catch the telecast (or even if you did) check out Ken Levine’s hysterical review of the night here on Huff Post. Believe me you WON’T be disappointed – a brief  sample being:

Benjamin Button did win “Best Make-Up.” They made Brad Pitt look younger. The real trick is to do that with Goldie Hawn.

Congratulations to Penelope Cruz. Even with subtitles she won. Expect to see Will Smith in the next seven Woody Allen movies until he gets his.

I will have to get along to see Slumdog Millionaire very soon. Hard to think it was slated to head straight to DVD in the US – although given most Americans  display a cultural ignorance of anything more sophisticated than grits and Southern Fried Chicken – not that surprising.

I’ve also included a link to the colour co-ordinated slideshow from the NY Times so you can compare all the hags and their frocks!

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