How to be a clever film critic

 

d'Arenberg Toilet Wine

Recently I read that Australian wine consumption has dropped around 25% in the last couple of decades

I mention this because it is unusual that I bought half a dozen bottles recently.

For me it's also unusual as I last bought wine for drinking, rather than cooking, about a decade ago.

Sometimes I'm drinking wine that I bought decades earlier, since I have been enjoying the benefits of cellaring bottles in cardboard boxes.

So, what prompted me to buy wine in 2026?

This also seems unusual because I was prompted by a Youtuber.

Bobby Fingers is a wry Irish artist who makes entertaining videos about building dioramas.

His interests extend to dabbling in a variety of media, such as the music that's often included in his videos, as well as a recent excursion into writing romantic fiction.

The most recent video shows the process of constructing a small scene discussed in the defamation proceedings between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which prompted Fingers to try making his own wine as part of research into Depp's fondness for fermented grape juice.

 

Since I've already shown the result of that digression from the detailed diorama, it's no spoiler to share that Bobby Fingers ended up in South Australia at one of the most highly-rated wineries.

One of my top five wine experiences was a 1998 d'Arenberg Footbolt shiraz and I still remember a eureka moment when it hit my tongue.

That taste was when I understood some of the wine terminology about vertical stacking of tannins, as the flavour was bold and seemed as though the taste continued to explode in my mouth after the wine had gone down my throat.

While the Bobby Fingers branded Toilet Wine is a decent drop, although a bit more expensive than what I normally drink because Australian wine is generally very good value for money and I'm cheap, I think d'Arenberg have done something that will be emulated for years to come.

The wine itself shows the same clever blending that I associated with the 1998 Footbolt in having a long-lasting taste, although it is surprising to me the flavour does not seem to be as decidedly fruit-focused as Australian wine is generally.

It might be that I'm so far out of the habit of drinking wine that I haven't noticed it before, or maybe d'Arenberg are making a conscious decision to aim for a more European sensibility since Mr Fingers is based in that part of world.

A clever aspect of this marketing-based product is the obvious affinity that Chester Osborn has with Bobby Fingers' art-making and I thought the suggestion that the Toilet Wine might actually contain fermented toilet was hilarious.

While I couldn't taste toilet in my glass, it's not something that I have much experience in discerning.

However, while Australian wines don't usually note the blends in detail on the labels unless it is more than a certain threshold, I thought it was also clever of Chester to link the role of malbec in the blend in the video.

 

It was memorable to compare the meaty taste of that grape to seared kangaroo. 

This is the kind of small, yet amusing consideration that could cultivate a broader audience for tasting the product and developing an interest that goes further.

At risk of being sentimental, it was sweet to have my appreciation for wine given another lesson from d'Arenberg.

 

They have produced a wine with Bobby that could have been ordinary, but instead they appear to have seized on an opportunity to reach an new audience and educate them a little in doing so -- which might be what this Australian industry needs in the longer term.

Passing time

Everyone seems to aspire to live in the moment and it's fascinating to consider how those moments relate to each other

I've been curious about understanding our relationships with time since writing a poem that pondered our places within history. 

A friend recently shared this idea that our sense of continuity is what undermines argument that time passes. 

To be fair to Heraclitus, his idea was that new water flows past every second but the person stepping into it has changed. 

Knowing the previous note is that change. 

Yes, I think one of the failings of modern thought is that notion of discrete sections. 

There's so much more to be gained from presenting a subjective view of time as an experience, rather than pretending one can be wholly objective. 

One of the bigger possibilities is then shifting to a view that places one's self within a broader context, and I wonder if the quantum view will prompt that but it could also be through something older like the Dreamtime. 

(Although, I'm not suggesting these are interchangeable, just that they offer prompts beyond the individual.) 

In some ways I can see this is probably more in line with the Romantics and their rejection of science at the expense of wonder, which also offers a cultural tradition closer to my own heritage.

It leads me to appreciate how Jorge Luis Borges inverts how to think the subject in this quote:

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."

Seasons changing

Steam rising as the sunlight arrived at the fence this morning

Portrait of the blogger by AI

This is what Youtube thinks I look like based on a video from 21 years ago 

There are a number of AI features appearing on that site and I was curious what it would recommend for a thumbnail image. 

The video is a song about listening and mentions bare branches, so it drew those themes from my Autotuned attempts at singing. 

I'd put the music to footage that was the first thing I uploaded on Youtube about 20 years ago, showing a clip of mountain biking outside Wagga where you briefly see my face at the end after I stacked. 

So their AI has taken details like my spectacles and beard, as well as the lyrics to produce this image. 

At this rate I expect it will be able to generate a video for my music within a couple of years, or maybe create the music too?

Here is my video.

 

Famous Catholic paining and other art

Michael Agzarian is one of my favourite Riverina-based artists

He uses his Advision shopfront in Wagga to make a number of provocative statements and one of the most recent prompted an article on the Region website this weekend.

I am particularly amused by their typo "famous catholic paining" as it seems like an apt slip. 

 

Responsible service of alcohol

One of the outcomes from training for an RSA certification this week was craving alcohol

I haven't felt the need to drink for ages, so my mind turned to the collection of bottles in my dwindling cellar.

This Morris Durif was a gift from my father-out-law and, when I saw the year, I knew it needed to be drunk.

While durif usually benefits from cellaring, the year 1998 was sweet and fruity and that meant many of the wines didn't have the same tannin structure you want for keeping them longer term. 

The wine reminded me of a wonderful jam that I bought at a church sale, which was cherry with vanilla.

This durif had some oak flavour prompting the latter, while the softness of the body was like juice.

There's a lot I could write about the RSA course, which was a full day and weirdly structured with important details like defining intoxication left until the fifth module. 

It also neglected giving detailed consideration to the antisocial impacts of this legal drug, such as the disproportionate number of men who suffer violence from strangers.

However, it was eye-opening for me to learn about the strategies for minimising drink-spiking that impact on women.  

Photography didn't kill painting

It's that "medium is the message" thing again, where different tools become an aesthetic

Just like audio tape was rediscovered by a generation of sound engineers, or the 1994 vampire film Nadja used a Fisher-Price PXL-2000 Pixelvision toy camera.

The constraints offered by a process will appeal to specific projects, which is why I reckon we'll see a longer version of Nolan's The Odyssey after it's had a run in Imax -- where the size of their reels limited the film to under three hours. 

Coming to my Census

The Australian Census is being collected this week and it prompts me to share something my mother told me earlier this year

We had been remembering an old family friend named Hector Kinloch, who had a role in the 1967 Referendum through his work at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

There is a widespread idea in the contemporary Australian population that notable referendum was historic for addressing racism toward the First Nations populations, and it's idea I heard more than once during the recent referendum for the Voice in 2023.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies website notes that "many people think that the [1967] Referendum gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the right to vote, this wasn’t the case."

On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them. A resounding 90.77 per cent said ‘Yes’ and every single state had a majority result for the ‘Yes’ vote.  It was one of the most successful national campaigns in Australia’s history.

The Wikipedia entry gives a little more detail in identifying that "Voters were asked whether to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians, and whether Indigenous Australians should be included in official population counts for constitutional purposes."

 

My mother told me how she heard directly from Hector how he'd asked at an ABS meeting whether the next Census would count Aboriginals and it was this decision that had prompted a referendum to include them in the Australian Constitution. 

 

This seems like one of those moments where a small decision takes on a much bigger result.

 

However, I can see that it isn't how the event is generally known. 

 

Look how a significant institution like the National Museum of Australia frames the 1967 Referendum as an outcome responding to pressure from protests:

In May 1967, after 10 years of campaigning, a referendum on the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution was held. The vote focused public attention on the fact that First Nations people were treated as second-class citizens. Nearly 91 per cent of Australians voted to amend the Constitution. This change meant that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be counted as part of the population and acknowledged as equal citizens, and that the Commonwealth would be able to make laws on their behalf. 

Seeing the way facts are shaped into a narrative is one of the interesting aspects of history, but I expect there's probably a number of factors and even more characters claiming an influence. 

 

It'd be interesting to compare the questions in a Census, because I remember that in previous years there was data collected about how people use their free time. 

 

The Australia Council, I think, used that information to show more people were involved in cultural activities (as simple as reading a book) than in sporting ones (presumably going to watch a match). 

 

Something else to ponder is how the referendum of 2023 for a First Nations "voice" in Federal Parliament and the same-sex marriage plebiscite were both a result of decisions made by Prime Minister John Howard.

Under his government the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was dissolved, which had occupied a role like that of the "voice," and the Marriage Act was amended to explicitly define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. 

 

As for Hector, I often remember him at the Friends Meeting House in Canberra as well as being elected in the first ACT Assembly elections. 

 

He was:

...a founding member (and briefly deputy leader) of the Residents Rally for Canberra, a coalition contesting the first election to the Australian Capital Territory’s Legislative Assembly in May 1989. Gaining a seat, he served in the Liberal Party-led coalition government as executive deputy to the minister for education and the arts. Budget-driven school closures prompted his resignation from this position in 1990; the government’s decision in April 1991 to proceed with a casino led to his withdrawal from the coalition.

While I can't find anything online to support Kinloch's role in the 1967 Referendum, I have no reason to doubt my mother's recollection of how he explained events and find myself more interested in learning about Hector's life.

Nothing to whine about

It's been ages between bottles

I opened a bottle of wine the other day that was older than my kids and it reminded me of a lifetime ago when things were less complex. 

That $12 bottle tasted priceless.