Two-track mind

"Look, should Branko have been sacked without a full season? No, that's crazy talk. Is this a farce? I, and many working families right across this country think so. Will I be putting forward my name as a replacement? Look, we will release all Sydney City-related policies in due season, but more what's more important is that Mr Howard answer this question..."

Zwartboek [no spoilers*]

'Black Book' in Engels.

Everyone knows and loves Paul Verhoeven for his cheezy, sleazy, ultra-violent masterpieces; Robocop, Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Showgirls and Starship Troopers. Such is his reputation that the mere mention of the word 'Verhoeven' on any film forum will summon a flamewar of Biblical proportions**. Now, back in his native Holland he's put out a high-exposive, altitude-fused blockbuster of a film, based around a de-familied Dutch Jewish cabaret singer entangled in the savage, treacherous twilight struggle of the Dutch Resistance in WW2.

If you've read anything on the resistance struggles in Occupied Europe, you pretty much know the score here; suffice to say, nobody comes out of this smelling like roses, a theme the movie does well to highlight, with strongly-drawn characters on both sides -- to the point where viewers may be surprised at their sympathies. Critics will say Verhoven strays too close in humanising SS and Gestapo officers, but one is never allowed to forget, for a moment the full import of their jobs and their choices. The sad thing is that they were human, not that we are reminded of their humanity.

The film isn't all torture and slaughter; a grim, but often warm humour suffuses much of the characters doings and dealings -- including those of a raunchy nature (of which there are plenty). The random, chaotic nature of war is shown in it's full flight*** and through the windows of black sedans we see a little (though not enough for this nerd) of the horrors afflicting wartime Holland. At 145 minutes it is a little drawn out, and it becomes harder to tease out exactly who triple-crossed whom, but none of these detract from the vitality and power of the film.

Oh and: Steun jezelf voor de emmer met shit scane!




*OK, one, kinda
**unless it's prefaced with 'Henk', naturally
*** there are a lot of improbable and crazy co-incidences, but if anything they pale to some of the stuff in the history books. I really couldn't say what, if anything, was obviously fictitious.

Daniel Davies is the most dangerous man on the Internet

Someone stop him before he defends something worse...

The warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow....

Went to this on Australia night.

We got to our seats just as the players were walking onto the pitch. For a brief moment I was hit by an amazing sensation, awe and anticipation mixed in equal parts as I watched 21,000-odd (that's the official figure, it seemed like at least 27k+) people roar, flags and banners whipping and flapping in gusty wind. Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd brought a camera along, but I doubt the photo would tell the same story as my eyes did.

The game itself was a pretty standard Sydney FC performance: run rings around opponent in first half, lose crucial player to injury/suspension (this time it was McFlynn with a groin injury), attempt to replace player from paltry bench stocks, then try to hang on grimly against resurgent opponent. We got to see both sides of the story close up, being side-on to Newcastle's goal as Brosque and Milligan scored rampant headers and Milton Rodriguez's comprehensive schooling of Topor-Stanley and Iain Fyfe in the second half.

It'll be a tense match up at EAS this sunday - despite Newy's away goal, this team as shown it has form against them and they have yet to beat us this season. It'll be interesting as well to see who we end up facing should we go through. At the moment it looks like a plummeting Melbourne victory - wiping them out of the finals would be fitting revenge for Round Two and Round Seventeen, even if they are on the downward slope of an impressive season.

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie

... more like Puddlesnot and Cruddlepie am I right folks? *tish, etc*

Nah. It wasn't that bad - set and costumes were great, singers good. The story itself was as bloated as , with multiple redundant scenes and songs viz. way too much dancing around in circles and pointless captures and easy, tensionless escapes from the seriously un-menacing Banksia Men and Mrs. Snake. I know this is partially for kiddies, but they deserve a good pants-wetting fright - it's what good childrens stories are about. There were some laughs along the way but they were outnumbered by the shocking puns, by about, fivefold. And that Herald guy was right, songs = not memorable.

All in all an average adaptation that fails to reflect the strong atmosphere of dystopian despair and social decay that characterised May Gibbs original vision.

10.7/17

Teufelhund auf meinem Endstück

Apropos of nothing: One of the funniest little bits of this magnificent DVD series is the old interview footage they roll out of European journalists interviewing the likes of Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim and such. One interview in particular has always stuck in my mind:John Lee Hooker explaining how he learnt to play slide by running bottlenecks along old steel cables in his thick, slurring Delta patois (strong enough to give me trouble), with subtitles in German. I don't know how well the subtitler did, but he must've had a headache by the time he was finished.

Guest Post: Christopher Hitchens on the Australian Wheat Board scandal

Cross-posted at LP

Vale, the pro-democracy Left - this pallid specimen that blotches the screen before me is but a whited sepulchre, devoid, in it’s egregious simpletonism of even the slightest understanding of basic tactics

[”How many syllables was that? 47? You’re sure I used ‘egregious’ at least once? Excellent…”]

Hello, I’m Christopher Hitchens. Once again, I must be called upon to be of service in this grave crusade of which I am proud to say I am a mere footsoldier, by acting in defense of that much maligned benefactor of Iraq, the Australian Wheat Board. The case is simple. By bribing the country we were about to invade, the incredibly farsighted and steadfast AWB played a critical role in the preparations for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

At this very moment, I can see humourless lefties are giving that narrow grimace they call a ’smile’ and gritting their teeth with ‘laughter’, “oh ho, hah-hah, Christopher, as if. He must be joking!”, you writhe in you feeble approximations of mirth - entirely, parsimoniously, pericardially, proto-plasmatically predictable. Orwell is spinning in his grave, and yet you natter away, in this, our most dire hour.

Where am- where was I? [ Have I namedropped yet? I haven’t? Good lord!] Ah, yes, Salman Rushdie once told me that, "In order to do good, the evil must protect the strong from the good, lest in weakness, Tyranny should fall". What the AWB did, wasn’t that. It was different. In fact, the unfairly-demonised Paul Wolfowitz himself assured me of the momentous importance of the AWB’s task.

To wit, it was their self-sacrificing bribery that made a greater contribution to the overthrow of the bloated bellicose Butcher of Bahgdad than my own, putting the feeble efforts of the vultures of the Left to shame. By bribing Saddam Hussain, they confused him, so splendidly as to where he stood! Why should he take these ultimata, these countless, numberless, no - infinite, UN resolutions seriously, when there were still Western Governments making multi-million dollar deals with him? Why believe the US was serious this time, when contractors were still funneling money under the auspices of the UN? The poor crazed fool was hoplessly entagled in this web of grubby realpolitik that he could scarcely have noticed the bold, shining, sword of Democracy raining it’s merciless judgement on his sordid regime. So there. Aren’t you all ashamed? You’ve strove to ruin the careers of heroes all for your petting point-scoring politics. Wake up kids, the 60s are over, lets have a real debate!

Thank you and goodnight.