Kimba the White Lion - influencial vegetarian

I bought a dvd of the old Kimba The White Lion cartoon a while ago, and watched the first episode last weekend. I was a little surprised at just how much I still enjoyed it. The animation was always quite inventive (especially compared to the cheap children's cartoons that came out in the 80's like He-Man). And Kimba was one of THE cutest characters ever.

And I also remembered loving the idea of all the animals living peacefully together and Kimba being brave and protective even though he was so small (of course it's wasn't particularly realistic - in real life a small white lion wouldn't have much chance of convincing the other jungle carnivores to give up meat). But in fact, I actually think Kimba was one of the influences behind my becoming vegetarian when I was a kid. I'd never considered it before, but I'm certain now that Kimba was a definite influence.

So three cheers for Kimba - turning small children into vegetarians!

The kids of 1971

On good old Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) you can search for the year you were born, then choose 'Births', and it will show you all those people (though mainly american ones) who have become famous inthe same number of years it's taken you to get where you are now.
I like my slacker crowd (of 1971).
*** There's the SexySuper '71 Boys: Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G/Borat), Ewan McGregor, Mark Wahlberg, David Tennant (the current Dr Who), Sean Astin, Johnny Knoxville, Luke Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Ricky Martin (maybe I'll have to sneer alittle less at him now I know he's a '71 boy), Jared Leto, Richard Ashcroft (The Verve), Matt Stone (South Park)
*** And the SuperSexy '71 Gals: Winona Ryder, Erykah Badu, Sofia Coppolla, Dido, Christina Applegate, Dolores O'Riordan (The Cranberries)
And assorted other '71ers - Mary J Blige, Denise Richards, Shannen Doherty, Tupac Shakur, MissyElliott, Stella McCartney, Dannii Minogue, and Tiffany.

Live Earth - music, mixed messages, and whingeing critics

A number of Foxtel channels showed almost 24 hours of the Live Earth concerts on the weekend. It was highly watchable if you did as I did - digitally recording it and then fast forwarding through the constant ads for various Foxtel programs, and zipping past a couple of dud artists.
Biggest and brightest show was in London, while Beijing's was rather awful - icky music and with a tiny audience. A fairly token effort.
Crowded House, Foo Fighters and Madonna all seemed to go off (apart from Madonna's dreary charity single). And one artist who surprised me was Alicia Keyes, who came out with some solid soul covers. Much better than the mush that made her famous.
With simultaneous concerts, there were a couple of interesting doubling ups. James Blunt sang a Cat Stevens song in London (did an okay job of it I thought), and a little while later Yusuf (the ex Cat himself) turned up in Hamburg to sing some more of his own stuff. While Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) was covered by Corrinne Bailey Rae and John Legend in London, then again a while later by Alicia Keyes in New York. I read somewhere that What A Wonderful World and Gimme Shelter also turned up twice.
Liked lots of other artists, and wished I'd been there to see them live - Keane, Snow Patrol, Macy Gray, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Baaba Maal, Joss Stone, Jack Johnson...
There have been plenty of critics pointing out the obvious irony of listening to enviro-messages coming out of the mouths of far from carbon-neutral cashed-up pop stars. But the world's media has spent years demonising greenies and turning collective deaf ears to environmental scientists (their warnings are ignored or at best put off as something for us all to face some day down the track, but not right now while doing something about it might cost us a buck or two). Big media rarely listens to anyone who's not rich and/or powerful anyway. If you're a hippie with a message about living sustainably in a beach shack with a veggie patch, nobody's going to give you air time. So getting big names to go even partially green and giving the message a new platform, how can that hurt? And, well, mega-concerts can be a lot of fun.
Pop stars aren't likely to change the world a whole lot, but a concert for a good cause is usually preferable to one that's solely for their bank balances.
Of course what would be really nice would be if people were willing to vote for politicians who didn't always put short-term $ before the future of our planet. End of transmission!

2007 Sydney Film Festival

This is a grumble post.
This was probably the most disappointing Sydney Film Festival I've known. There's a new woman in charge of picking films, and she didn't do a terrible job - the films weren't awful - it's just that none of them were great. Especially the films shown at the delicious State Theatre. Film after film of art-house-lite. Decent enough for passing the time of retired public servant types, looking for a way to pass some hours with something neither too dumb or too challenging. Unexceptional low-key dramas, and unambitious docos. 2 weeks of them.
Got me wondering whether the woman in charge can truly be a lover of films? Maybe she just 'likes' them. Would partly explain her taste for worthy brown-bread PC-fare, with little emphasis on anything truly outstanding.
For the first time I've known, there was NO silent film. So sad.
There seemed to be almost nothing american on the menu. I wonder if this was intentional? (last year the US gave us some of the best festival films - like United 93, An Inconvenient Truth, and Little Miss Sunshine).
And the couple of more 'colourful' films I could see on the program were in the smaller theatres on George St, where they quickly sold out (too quickly for me to see them).
Also, the new 'ideas' seemed to have ideological rather than artistic purpose - lame kids films, a group of films specifically dealing with people with disabilities, and supposedly feel-good music docos (such as a reportedly unimpressive hula film being followed by hula dancing lessons).
So that's my whinge.
I'd like her to go.
But as far as I could tell people still turned up, so if their box-office takings were okay she'll probably return next year.
The only positive things I could say are that I'm pleased they showed some old John Huston films (saw The Dead, The Misfits, and The Man Who Would Be King on the big screen), and that maybe some of the films I missed might have changed my opinion. But what I saw was nothing to blog about.

Packer Wedding - Close the borders!

James Packer and Erica Baxter are married.
Now is surely the time to close the Australian borders and cancel the passports of the entire wedding party, before any of them return. We'd be rid of the Packers, Alan Jones, Eddie Maguire, The Warnes, and most of the Murdochs. What an awful pack of people. They even invited the Cruises, just to make things extra creepy. Ick.

MTV Music Awards 2007

We were out at the MTV music awards yesterday, wearing t-shirts with CREW written on the back of them (well Cade went without as they didn't have exactly enough to go around, which left him a bit miffed), assisting with siphoning disorderly teenagers into the mosh pit, where we got to join them once the show started.
This was the second time we'd been to these awards. They're a bit odd, as the presenters do their presenting to the cameras, not the audience, and everything goes dead when it's ad-break time. Definitely best to be in the mosh pit where you can get up close to the performers, but it does mean standing back a bit from the screaming teens at the front.
The bands were all decent, including Eskimo Joe, as well as some of the others that I'm not personally keen on (like Good Charlotte, and Damien Leith). The 'flossy flossy' Fergie was the host, though the song she sang was just okay.
* The HIGHS - Pink is truly cute, even though she wants to be 'tough', but that just makes her cuter. As well as singing she twirled a couple of metres above the stage and audience from drapes hanging from the ceiling. Nifty. Sneaky Sound System rocked, just like they did when I saw them as the opening band for Scissor Sisters a few months ago. It's unusual to see dance musos who sound so good live. Would be good to see them get some exposure internationally. And I got to see silverchair for the first time ever. This really got the mosh pit kids off, and water bottles were sent flying. They were so satisfying that we decided to leave for home even though there was about 20 minutes of show to go. No point sticking around for 30 Seconds To Mars (Jared Leto) who would only have been an anti-climax (and the word from backstage was that Jared Leto and his boys weren't the nicest of people).
* The LOWS - Like the Logies, there's obviously plenty of dodgy voting, because there's no other believable explanation for Guy Sebastian winning for best pop clip or Evanescence winning best album. Few people got a less excited response from the crowd than Guy, but at least he didn't sing. I've never been a fan of ex-soapie stars like Stephanie Macintosh trying to become pop stars, but it was a bit hard watching (and hearing) her flail all over the place, especially when the music stopped for a few seconds so we could hear the full awfullness of her singing. I can't decide if her performance was as bad as Russell Crowe's at last year's show, or whether Russell wins that one. There seemed no point to Nicole Ritchie being there, until she announced a winner as shah-Non Noll, and gave us all a laugh.
*** UPDATE - The awards were shown live on MTV. As we were at the awards we couldn't watch them on tv until they were repeated - by which time Stephanie Macintosh's performance had been cut! Was this MTV trimming the dud bits to make a more entertaining show? Or was it done to protect a singer who can't sing while the record company is still trying to flog her music to the pop-star loving kids of the world???