A brutiful film & two absolutely major talents

I've slipped up in my role. Here is the segment on the film Last Ride from the ABC's At The Movies. David gives it 4.5 stars (out of 5), and Margaret 4 stars. This YouTube includes interviews with Hugo Weaving and my friend Glendyn Ivin (and there are some extra web grabs at the At The Movies site too). Here's a few words from David:

And there are two absolutely major talents here. Well, actually more than that but Glendyn Ivin, whose first feature this is, proves to be a really fine director ... And Greig Fraser, who photographed it — it is one of the most stunningly photographed films I've ever seen.
...
So this guy is an amazing talent, and these two talents together have turned this book, with a script by Mac Gudgeon, into a really powerful film, I think, with a very, very strong sense of place.

Those scenes on the lake, the shallow water there, I've never seen anything like that, I don't think, in a film before. Just amazing stuff. It is, in some ways, a grim story, but I was completely captivated by these characters. I think Hugo Weaving, probably the best performance he's ever done on film.
...
You really must go and see this film. It's a really good film.

Poetry Friday - Re-adjustment

Last week I posted a portion of Tennyson's poem Idylls of the King, and so this week I thought I would post C.S. Lewis's Re-adjustment, the reason soon being obvious. It would seem to be commonly held that here Lewis is writing about old age and the comfort he hoped it would bring, as well as a concern that future generations are losing the ability to connect words with meaning, but what do you think?


Re-adjustment

I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning.
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won't be.

Between the new Hominidae and us who are dying, already
There rises a barrier across which no voice can ever carry,
For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever.
Uproot your loves, one by one, with care, from the future,
And trusting to no future, receive the massive thrust
And surge of the many-dimensional timeless rays converging
On this small, significant dew drop, the present that mirrors all.

C.S. Lewis

A pink umbrella

and two people I love to pieces:

Something I'd like to say

Let me just tell the world something: coffee cups that are skinnier at the bottom than they are at the top are a very stupid invention. They might look all very stylish, but they are completely dysfunctional. They are unstable disasters waiting to happen.

My Saturday night boogie

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I went out dancing to Michael Jackson last night!

I can’t remember the last time I went out dancing on a Saturday night. It’s not something I did very often (maybe once or twice? – and maybe even then under duress) even when I was 18, so let me explain.

Earlier in the year my flatmate decided she was going to take singing lessons, so off she went to a singing teacher who’d been recommended to her from someone somewhere. Said singing teacher was involving all her students in a “concert” of sorts and asked my flatmate if she wanted to be in it. She decided to give it a go. So, each student had to pick a song from a set list, because the teacher decided that rather than using backing tracks they’d get a real live band to back them up this time, and the students could have a go at live stage singing. So, way back then my flatmate chose 'Don’t blame it on the Sunshine' by Michael Jackson.

As Providence would have it he died two days before the concert.

What this meant is that when my flatmate came out to sing, on the stage of the Petersham RSL auditorium, she filled the dance floor as just about everyone present got up to pay their tribute to the King of Pop. And a superb performance it was.

I am not the world’s greatest public dancer. Maybe it’s partly phobia because I grew about a foot in one year when I was around 15. Maybe it's something about the atmosphere of dancing joints – the darkened room lit-up in flashes by the pulsating disco balls, the relentless thumping noise of dance music – that comes over me like a big wet blanket and I’d rather be someplace else (say someplace where there is an unplugged guitar strumming softly in the background, the moon is rising over the ocean and I can hold a conversation with one of the people around me). But hey, I let my hair down, danced liked no one was watching and got into those moves for “sunshine”, “moonlight” and “boogie” (I like set moves – it means a few moments respite from having to make up my own funky "freestyle", a few seconds assurance that I might be close to doing what everybody else is doing).

Added to that, the band playing the music, “the frocks”, is a band of women who, err, punt from the Cambridge the end, to steal a line from Lost in Austen, when Amanda tells Bingley she “prefers women” (which originates in the fact that you can tell the difference (or used to be able to) between students from Cambridge and students from Oxford by which end of a punt they, um, punt from, with the Oxford end considered more “orthodox”). So, there were quite a lot of Cambridge punters amongst the audience, and there was a lot of, um, slightly unusual dancing going on.

And that, folks, is the story of how I came to be dancing to Michael Jackson in the Petersham RSL with half a room full of lesbians.

News flash!

I interrupt this blog for a news flash of an event of epidemic proportions:

My brother-in-law has swine flu!

At least we think so. He went to Melbourne for a few days with a group of guys from the Army, one of whom is now quite sick with confirmed swine flu, several others are moderately sick and awaiting test results, and my brother-in-law is not yet being tested because his (milder) symptoms don’t require treatment - but has been told that is most likely what he has. You could pray that he doesn’t give it to his two-year-old daughter or seven-month-old son, who might suffer the worse from it (he is currently in the dog-house - or maybe it's the pig-house - because he’s been told (by the doctor) to stay away from them).

For the good news, he is now a qualified flying instructor (helicopters) with the Army, which is no small feat, so congratulations to him!

For other news, my niece, who up until this point has stayed out of stuff she wasn't to have, found the blue food-colouring in the cupboard and ran off with it.

Poetry Friday - The passing of Arthur

Poetry Friday has made a comeback, and so for today I thought I would post a segment of Tennyson's narrative poem Idylls of the King, based on the legend of King Arthur. There is something I find incredibly stirring about this closing section called The Passing of Authur (the middle portion of the second stanza spurs me to prayer like few things do).


Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
'Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.'

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groaned, 'The King is gone.'
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
'From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

...

Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Picture from: kingarthurbooks.com