Monday, July 11, 2005
2005 Sydney Film Festival - The Films
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005
2005 Archibald Prize
I think the Archibald prize exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery has closed by now.
I spent an hour there one recent afternoon.
Saw the winner, which nobody was paying any attention to. The two-headed Janus idea was a good one, but the execution was garbage. Firewood.
My personal favourite picture was Adam and Harvie (Krumpet) by David Ralph. I liked it's squareness for some reason, and the cheerful animated look Adam had. And the relationship between Harvie and his creator kept me wondering. Was Harvie creeping up on Adam to surprise him? Was he riding on Adam's back? Was Adam looking more startled or wary?
One picture that I didn't exactly like, but found interesting was of Gretel Killeen. I wasn't sure the picture was so good, and at first I didn't even think it looked too much like Gretel. It looked to harsh. But after looking at it some more it struck me that Gretel sometimes does actually have that harsh look to her.
* I really enjoyed many of the entries in the Australian Photographic Portrait Prize that hung in some nearby rooms. Some good ones of Libby Gore, Duncan Armstrong under water, a guy sitting below the mural of Martin Luther King in Newtown, and Bob Hawke (with skin tone darkened as if to exaggerate his exposure to harsh Australian sunlight).
The most gorgeous shot was of a young woman standing in a suburban backyard. I don't remember the name of her or the photographer, but it was impressively good. It was all fairly simple and straightforward, with just a few odd touches including mesh material wrapped around the woman's face. But she had a presence, and the strong colouring of the photo made the ordinary backyard (little more than some grass and a fence) look like something extraordinary. The blurb beside it mentioned that the photographer took a long time to set it all up (I believe it was over a number of weeks) and it showed. Top marks!
I spent an hour there one recent afternoon.
Saw the winner, which nobody was paying any attention to. The two-headed Janus idea was a good one, but the execution was garbage. Firewood.
My personal favourite picture was Adam and Harvie (Krumpet) by David Ralph. I liked it's squareness for some reason, and the cheerful animated look Adam had. And the relationship between Harvie and his creator kept me wondering. Was Harvie creeping up on Adam to surprise him? Was he riding on Adam's back? Was Adam looking more startled or wary?
One picture that I didn't exactly like, but found interesting was of Gretel Killeen. I wasn't sure the picture was so good, and at first I didn't even think it looked too much like Gretel. It looked to harsh. But after looking at it some more it struck me that Gretel sometimes does actually have that harsh look to her.
* I really enjoyed many of the entries in the Australian Photographic Portrait Prize that hung in some nearby rooms. Some good ones of Libby Gore, Duncan Armstrong under water, a guy sitting below the mural of Martin Luther King in Newtown, and Bob Hawke (with skin tone darkened as if to exaggerate his exposure to harsh Australian sunlight).
The most gorgeous shot was of a young woman standing in a suburban backyard. I don't remember the name of her or the photographer, but it was impressively good. It was all fairly simple and straightforward, with just a few odd touches including mesh material wrapped around the woman's face. But she had a presence, and the strong colouring of the photo made the ordinary backyard (little more than some grass and a fence) look like something extraordinary. The blurb beside it mentioned that the photographer took a long time to set it all up (I believe it was over a number of weeks) and it showed. Top marks!
Monday, July 04, 2005
Live 8 Concerts
I have a bit of a problem with the 2 hours of footage that Channel 9 gave us from this weekend's Live 8 concerts.
Obviously the main problem with this kind of concert is that only some performers could get shown while many others were cut completely. Couldn't we have had at least 3 hours of it? Channel 9 would only have had to cut 1 extra hour out of it's schedule of garbage to do it. Should have been piss-easy.
Channel 9's disappointing choice was to go almost solely with the big-ticket golden oldies:- Elton, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, U2, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Sting... I could count the number of songs that were less than 10 years old on 1 hand. One of the few recent songs was from Coldplay, but I suspect that was only so they could show shots of family members Gwyneth Paltrow and baby Apple bouncing along in the crowd.
The annoying thing is that there were plenty of younger acts performing at the actual concerts, but Channel 9 didn't care to let us see them. I would have loved to see some Travis, Joss Stone, The Killers, Dido, or Scissor Sisters. I presume Channel 9 was more interested in an older demographic, so younger music fans weren't considered worth catering to. Thanks heaps!
This also made the older performers seem older again. Rather than mature active musicians sharing a stage with newer artists, they tended to look like a nice bunch of semi-retirees having a comfortable reunion gig. And we could have done with more from the performers outside the main London gig - a bit of Shakira, Bjork, Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran wouldn't have hurt.
But I am complaining too much now. The glass being more than half full - it still was very enjoyable viewing overall. The standard of music only fell a couple of times. The bland country song by Keith Urban, and the uncomfortable duet between Tina Arena and Craig David were obviously only included in the broadcast as the singers were originally from Australia. It's a little sad to think what other great performances we missed out on just to hear them. (I have since found out that Tina & Craig's duet was a last minute effort after another singer dropped out. So it was good to see Tina giving it a go, but it still didn't sound that hot).
So to wrap up, there were plenty of nice things to say about the concerts. But as for Channel 9, a rather ordinary effort indeed.
Obviously the main problem with this kind of concert is that only some performers could get shown while many others were cut completely. Couldn't we have had at least 3 hours of it? Channel 9 would only have had to cut 1 extra hour out of it's schedule of garbage to do it. Should have been piss-easy.
Channel 9's disappointing choice was to go almost solely with the big-ticket golden oldies:- Elton, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, U2, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Sting... I could count the number of songs that were less than 10 years old on 1 hand. One of the few recent songs was from Coldplay, but I suspect that was only so they could show shots of family members Gwyneth Paltrow and baby Apple bouncing along in the crowd.
The annoying thing is that there were plenty of younger acts performing at the actual concerts, but Channel 9 didn't care to let us see them. I would have loved to see some Travis, Joss Stone, The Killers, Dido, or Scissor Sisters. I presume Channel 9 was more interested in an older demographic, so younger music fans weren't considered worth catering to. Thanks heaps!
This also made the older performers seem older again. Rather than mature active musicians sharing a stage with newer artists, they tended to look like a nice bunch of semi-retirees having a comfortable reunion gig. And we could have done with more from the performers outside the main London gig - a bit of Shakira, Bjork, Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran wouldn't have hurt.
But I am complaining too much now. The glass being more than half full - it still was very enjoyable viewing overall. The standard of music only fell a couple of times. The bland country song by Keith Urban, and the uncomfortable duet between Tina Arena and Craig David were obviously only included in the broadcast as the singers were originally from Australia. It's a little sad to think what other great performances we missed out on just to hear them. (I have since found out that Tina & Craig's duet was a last minute effort after another singer dropped out. So it was good to see Tina giving it a go, but it still didn't sound that hot).
So to wrap up, there were plenty of nice things to say about the concerts. But as for Channel 9, a rather ordinary effort indeed.
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