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At the Sydney Film Festival: Surviving Life

Surviving_life_posterSurviving Life
Director: Jan Švankmajer
★★★

Czech director Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life is a whole movie in the style of Terry Gilliam’s animations. Or, more accurately, Gilliam’s animations are in the style of Švankmajer, who was a major influence on the Monty Python member. In an amusing introduction Švankmajer explains the film is a ‘psychoanalytic comedy’. He continues to say that the stop-motion style has been used in place of live-action because that was too expensive. The story has its origin, he says, in one dream he had, which he then wrote the rest of the scenes around. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant; Surviving Life is a surrealist film where the only reality is dreams. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 23-06-2011, No comments

At the Sydney Film Festival: Armadillo and The Tree of Life

ArmadilloArmadillo
Director: Janus Metz
★★★★

Janus Metz’s Armadillo takes its name from a forward operating base in Helmand province. The documentary focuses on a platoon of Danish soldiers and their deployment from February to August 2009. The impression given of the Afghanistan War during their tour is a war by inches. The Taliban are less than a kilometre from the base and throughout the film the troops fight over and win and lose a few tiny villages and farmland. In this stalemate the Taliban seem to have the upper hand: the stalemate being a goal in itself. ... read more

Written by Peter Francis on 20-06-2011, 1 user comment

Waltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer

'Waltzing with Jack Dancer' coverWaltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer
Poems by Geoff Goodfellow
Story by Grace Goodfellow
Wakefield Press

This review is dedicated to Guido Schivella, who lost to cancer in 2008, and to Charisse Mitchell, who will beat cancer in 2011.


Cancer is indiscriminate, picking its battles with seeming randomness. There are hypothesised causes: smoking, drinking, sun etc, but they are not definitive. Cancer picked the wrong fight when it tried to take on Geoff Goodfellow, the man HG Nelson describes as ‘tough nut’. Geoff’s boxing training, working-class background and teenage daughter were three things that cancer didn’t count on. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 11-05-2011, 15 user comments

You can only get so close on Google Earth

Cover of Ann Shenfield's bookYou Can Get Only So Close On Google Earth
Ann Shenfield
Arcadia

Ann Shenfield is recognised as an animation filmmaker and author-illustrator. You Can Get Only So Close on Google Earth is her debut poetry collection.
Poems within the collection have been recognised, winning such prizes as the Rosemary Dobson and Max Harris Poetry Awards in 2007 as well as publication in journals such as Visible Ink and Glass (2003).

A recurring theme is death; the death of a father when the poet was 5 years old, and the relatively recent death of a sister. Indeed, both traumatic experiences. I did, however, find the imagery used in the particular poems to be a bit flowery and assume the poet has reconciled the trauma of these events. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 6-05-2011, 14 user comments

Punch and Judy and the theatre of politics

Punch & Judy

Punch & Judy: the double disillusion election of 2010
Mungo MacCallum
Black Inc.

Mungo must have been punching out Punch and Judy during the election – trawling the mediascape for fodder and spitting it back out between midnight and 4am, when only he and Tony Abbott were awake. Like all of us, he was surprised at the result but like most of us, upon reflection, wasn’t that surprised and Punch and Judy reflects this. In his analysis of the election, the result seems almost inevitable by the book’s end. Both candidates were useless and more alike than different policy wise, so there hardly seemed any point in voting unless you voted Greens or Independent as they were the only ones saying anything contrary to the unified voices of the Coalition and Labor. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 5-05-2011, 6 user comments

Justin Clemens on two Dorothies, two Porters

Overland 202 contains Justin Clemens’ sparkling essay on Dorothy Porter, Peter Porter and Dorothy Hewett. It’s now online for your reading pleasure.

... read more

Written by Editorial team on 2-05-2011, No comments

Non-fiction review: From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story

1194_mary_gaudronFrom Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story
Pamela Burton
UWAP

From Moree to Mabo is the compelling and readable biography of a remarkable lawyer. Although some of the detailed analysis of the key cases and political turmoils of Mary Gaudron’s time as Solicitor General of NSW can be overwhelming, it is hard to put this book down. If you don’t know who Mary Gaudron is or if you cannot explain what is meant by equal opportunity or if you have never heard of section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution, then this is a good book for you. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 29-03-2011, 4 user comments

All Along the Watchtower

watchtowercoverAll Along the Watchtower
Michael Hyde
Vulgar Press

Michael Hyde’s All Along the Watchtower is a recent Australian example of the trend of memoirs by 60s activists, which has also seen the publication of Tariq Ali’s Street-fighting Years (1987, 2005), Luisa Passerini’s Autobiography of a Generation (translation published 2004) and Tom Hayden’s Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960s (2003). (See Radical Middle for 50 accounts written by US citizens alone.) ... read more

Written by Sophia Always on 22-03-2011, 3 user comments

Review: Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets

2010-OUT-OF-THE-BOX-coverOut of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets
Michael Farrell and Jill Jones (eds)
Puncher & Wattman Poetry

I’ve put off reviewing this book. During the whole of 2010 I must have reviewed one too many collection of academic lyricism which clashed violently with my academic burnout. The result was that every contemporary poem I read – I’m sorry to say – sounded like it was written by one of the same two imaginary people: ‘Jane Masters’, the female lyric poet doing some kind of postgrad creative writing course and preoccupied with how to overwrite everything, and ‘Joe D’oh’, the punctuationally challenged experimentalist who can’t (or can’t be bothered) editing his stream of consciousness for the reader’s sake. ... read more

Written by Tara Mokhtari on 17-03-2011, 6 user comments

Politics and Religion in the New Century

Politics and religionPolitics and Religion in the New Century
Philip Quadrio and Carrol Besseling (eds)
Sydney University Press

Any critical engagement with the politics of religious discourse that begins by acknowledging Al Swearangen and Joe Strummer has to be worth more than a second look. At least I’ve made the assumption that is the Joe Strummer and the Al Swearangen. It’s possible I’m reading too much into it and they are referring to Professors Strummer and Swearangen who are comfortably ensconced in chairs at Sydney Uni. I’ll go with my first assumption as it gives me a better springboard into Politics and Religion in the New Century, edited by Philip Quadrio and Carrol Besseling. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 9-03-2011, 4 user comments

Fiction review: This Too Shall Pass

Finn-smallIn exciting news, last night, Melbourne writer SJ Finn and Sleepers Publishing launched Finn’s second novel, This Too Shall Pass.

A writer with a diverse oeuvre, Finn is a well-known poet and her first novel, Fine Salt, was published in 2002. Finn’s short stories have been produced for radio and published in such notables as Going Down Swinging and Sleepers Almanac and in 2010 her short story ‘Angus’s Playground’ was a runner-up in the Australian Book Review short story competition. Last, but certainly not least, Finn writes commentary and review here at Overland. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 4-03-2011, 3 user comments

Poetry review: Memory: video poetry

SynGraWall5Memory: video poetry (DVD)
Synaptic Graffiti Collective

A light bulb smashes in slow motion. More recently, and more regrettably, furry animal suits prance to emo.

Wider possibilities for music videos remain. Daft Punk’s ‘Around the World’ combines dance with camera angles to take on the shallow representation of globalisation. Cold Chisel and even Eskimo Joe had to reshoot clips on the grounds the originals were too confronting. Here we find the limitations of the genre as advertisement.

Memory by Synaptic Graffiti Collective is a DVD collection of poetry as music videos. It remains a series of advertisements for writers (Chris Mansell’s contribution to Memory, ‘Gerald and Gulio’, trades cleverly on this). Poetry also tinkers with expressive structure. So as a collection Memory manages to challenge the limits of music video. ... read more

Written by Gerald Keaney on 3-03-2011, No comments

Did you read … Meanjin?

The latest Meanjin, Volume 70, the first edition for 2011, is also the Meanjin-swansong of its editor Sophie Cunningham who took the helm in 2008 and resigned unexpectedly in 2010. Sophie’s editorial wraps-up her time with the journal and welcomes the newly appointed Sally Heath.

This edition of Meanjin begins with the rather droll ‘Mulgrave, je t’aime’ by Oslo Davis, a cartoon that should bring a smile to the lips of many Melbournites and friends-of-Melbournites. Goodness only knows what would happen to the ‘faux hipsters’ if they made it out as far as Warburton … ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 28-02-2011, 5 user comments

Decision Points: a review

bushmemoirjpg-George W Bush comes, he says, from ‘a family of bestselling authors’. His mother and father wrote books, as did his sister, his wife and his daughter. Even his parents’ dogs, C. Fred and Millie, ‘authored their own works’.

Well, if Millie can do it, W can, too – and, one presumes, using much the same technique.

The real author of Decision Points seems to be speechwriter Christopher Michel, a twenty something wunderkind, who has tweaked Bush’s notes into the bland but serviceable prose of a corporate press release. As the title suggests, the book’s neither a memoir nor a biography but an account of those moments when the man who called himself the Decider did his best deciding. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 21-02-2011, 4 user comments

In defence of the rock critic

Lester Bangs‘Your mileage may vary’, Georgia Claire’s recent piece on the worthlessness of rock criticism, gave the impression of an archaeologist stumbling across a snippet of text from some curious – if clearly uncivilised – tribe. (Which, in fairness, isn’t an inaccurate description of most rock critics.) How funny these people are, with their made-up words and grammar-bending syntax!

Her point, of course, was that a description of Sydney band The Laurels, and rock criticism at large, make no sense. On at least one level, she’s absolutely right. As an example of the English language, it’s simply not much cop. What exactly is a psychedelic juggernaut, if not a garishly painted road train? ... read more

Written by Myke Bartlett on 21-02-2011, 4 user comments