Category: Asides

And so off I went today to see Australia Baz Luhrmann’s epic, epic movie about … OK, no spoilers here, but can I just say spearing, crocodiles, the bombing of Darwin, cattle stampedes, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, romance … the attraction of opposites, dyed-in-the-wool villains, redemption, the stolen generations, a wonderful young actor Brandon Walters, all your old favourite Aussie actors, and a landscape to die for. Well a lot do in this movie. But it’s much, much, much more …

I knew some of what to expect from the video podcast series Set to Screen that’s been released gradually on the iTunes Store this year. The last episode on ‘Editing’ was released only last week. In these really excellent and free 10 minute or so videos, the business of making movies was introduced supposedly for Higher Ed students by Luhrmann himself. If you are at all interested in what goes on before, during, and after a shoot, download the series. Nice bit of product placement for Apple of course.

But back to the experience of the movie. It’s an old-fashioned, gutsy, romantic movie and it wears its big heart on its sleeve. It’s derivative and excessive in parts, but it is also sweetly comic, tender, and reveals a landscape that is astonishingly beautiful. The soundtrack and especially the music is as lush as is the production design, and that’s just fabulous … as you would expect from Catherine Martin. The integration of live-action on location, studio shots and CGI is well-nigh seamless, though a couple of the Darwin panoramic shots looked a bit artificial … I’m carping. The performances are all terrific, and the casting of Jackman and Kidman as a screen couple is quite simply, perfect. Nicole Kidman in a recent interview on how she found working so closely with Jackman said it was ‘nice’ to go to work each day … I bet.

The story is highly charged, energetic, and as packed as it can possibly be without exploding out of its tight riding britches … it runs already at a whopping 165 minutes. It’s a Baz Luhrmann movie that’s for sure, and his hand is very firmly on the tiller. He’s said he has deliberately made a movie for everyone, and that he will probably be ‘killed for it.’  I doubt it, but this ambitious aim also creates the movie’s most significant weak spot, in that it does try to be all things for all audiences.

The light-hearted and broadly comic opening sequences do jar a little, but maybe that was me. I was reminded here of Strictly Ballroom (1992) and some of the comic nonsense in Moulin Rouge (2001). Australia then steadily generates momentum and gear shifts into darker, more violent and guilt-laden territory. Some of the background on the stolen generation and indigenous Australia is of course necessary, but it’s perhaps a tad obviously expositional when it comes.

I loved the Darwin outdoor pictures sequence as the boy Nulla watches Judy Garland, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz. His referencing of this classic 1939 movie throughout Australia shows Luhrmann the movie-maker at his most poignant, clever, and imaginative.

And I was moved deeply and unexpectedly by the slide at movie’s end which declared that in 2008 the Prime Minister of Australia apologised to indigenous Australians for the treatment of the stolen generation. That was a good thing I reckon … that I was so moved. I hope it has the same effect on others.

Stay for the credits by the way. You will get to hear Elton John and Rolf Harris and a whole lot more.

It’s been a busy busy week for this groundling. And it’s mostly been spent travelling to and from Brisbane for performances, showcases, launches, and other industry-related matters. It’s typical of the frantic pace that accompanies the last couple of months of each year, as we gather to mull over what’s been, plan what’s to come, and draw breath before it starts all over again. It’s also time to watch the intake of canapés; there are only so many a groundling can take.

What’s either front and centre or in the back of everyone’s minds right now is the parlous state of the world’s economy … dangerous times as PM Kevin Rudd would have it.  What does this mean for local business and to the personal budget … to job security even? On the business side, there are anxieties in the wider arts industry about the discretionary dollar in an audience member’s pocket. Where will that be spent? It begs the question, “What kind of works do we turn to in dark times?”

We’re all familiar with the all-singing, all-dancing glad-times Hollywood movies during the depression of the 1930s. Audiences flocked to Busby Berkley‘s broadway movies about being ‘in the money’ with understudies making it to stardom, or straight dramas about the ‘little guy’ winning out over the most severe adversity … think Grapes of Wrath … and we get some notion of the stories that appeal. They don’t have to be thigh-slappers or facile puffery, but a good laugh does help.

On Wednesday night this week, there were palpable waves of audience delight in the Playhouse on Brisbane’s South Bank. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is being directed by Michael Gow for Queensland Theatre Company. He gives this production a fresh look without ever compromising its particular 19th century Wildean playfulness or the character’s eccentricities.  Of course, Earnest is one of the best-loved plays in the English language; it’s a known commodity, but it’s also a life-affimer. I reckon it will be the scripts, the plays, the movies that can affirm community and solidarity that will win out in what our PM calls the ‘dangerous times’ ahead.

It’s good to come together to think out loud in front of ourselves … as Martin Esslin famously wrote about the purpose of theatre.

I trawled back through the posts to one I wrote at this time last year. This is what I said then:

… Another class of actors enters the industry at their showcase performance and end of three years of intensive training. Their lovely talent shone through despite the grunginess of the venue. As always, I felt as though a bunch of fledglings was leaving the nest, and needed protection. No, let them go and hopefully fly. Along with many other actor-trainers, I hate showcases. They are artificial exercises designed to market a human product; they always make me feel incredibly sad and proud in equal measure.

I wanted it to go so well for them all, dressed up, hopefully clutching their business cards, learning how to pick their way through the minefield of industry schmoozing that’s required to get agents, casting calls, auditions, jobs. It’s a tough business. Many will walk away finding it too hard, too compromising, too … .

Break a leg and never give up!

Last night’s venue, the fabulous Brisbane Powerhouse on the river was far from grungy, and the reception (hosted by the Vice-Chancellor Prof Bill Lovegrove) and given to guests, alumni, staff and graduating students of University of Southern Queensland‘s School of Creative Arts was worthy of most opening night bashes in town. In a step up from former Theatre showcases, the newly-styled ‘Trade Show’ was launched bringing together a new kind of showcase, one to introduce the work of the School, located in the Faculty of Arts on the Toowoomba and Springfield campuses. And so for the first time at a showcase, music, art, media and theatre were all on display. Good luck to them.

Get along if you can tonight and see for yourself, the final day. That beautiful talent is now about to enter the next phase of its development, outside the protected walls of the training institution. Now they simply need to ‘just do it.’

PS. Why do howler-monkey members of the audience insist on drawing attention to themselves during a show. Tsk, tsk chaps. Theatre Etiquette 101.