Bogong guitar

Started another guitar

My partner says I should paint a ciggie hanging from its mouth and call it a bogan bogong!

Ode to Troy

Thinking of Nolan's Odyssey, I thought this meme was funny

Crow guitar

Started painting a new guitar

There's a young crow that visits my yard, who likes to talk with their reflection.

So of course it gave me an idea for a new design.

An Odyssey

I'd like to see this version of The Odyssey 

I mean, sure, Christopher Nolan's film looks fun; but how cool would it be to follow the Seven Sisters across this ancient sea? 

Finding faith

Couple of people recently introduced me to Rene Girard, called both the Einstein and Darwin of the human sciences  

He described the role of imitation in human life in a book called The Scapegoat (1982), about how it leads to status rivalry. 

This argues that conflict is avoided or stopped by creating these circuit-breaking roles that unite the crowd. 

Girard came to believe in God through his study of this imitative rivalry and scapegoating mechanism. 

He thought Christ was divine intervention, becoming the ultimate scapegoat, to make the mechanism visible to humans.  

That led to centuries of social progress, led by Christian institutions. 

Girard's ideas gave me an understanding of why C.S. Lewis moved from being an atheist to adopting faith through his conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien, and came to call Christianity the myth that became fact. 

Religion is a good mechanism for managing anxiety, but the scapegoat is only part of the process as those ancient institutions play a broader social role.

Actually, maybe I need a caveat to recognise that churches have shown they have a way to go in recognising individual rights -- particularly for women and children. 

His Girl Friday

One of those films that I've been meaning to watch for years since it interested me as both a film student and wannabe journalist

I first attempted to watch it decades ago on DVD, but found the audio was too quiet.

When I saw that it was now streaming, I decided that I could use the subtitles to keep up. However, it's surprising how many errors and gaps appear in the text on Prime.

That this romantic comedy is set in a newspaper is so clearly out of date, but so too are the references to American socialism and also a joke about Hitler that are interesting in how they give a glimpse of attitudes that quickly shifted within a few years as the US joined WWII and moved into McCarthyism.

For a film student there is a strange sensation while watching it of how the performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell make sense of those seen in other movies.

Tony Curtis famously modelled his character of Junior in Some Like It Hot (1959) on Grant and it's difficult to see the original without thinking of the imitation.

Similarly, Russell's performance is mentioned on Wikipedia as inspiring the character of Lois Lane in Superman, although she appeared in 1938 and the film was released in 1940, but for me it kept bringing to mind Jennifer Jason Leigh's role in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) -- which is one of my favourite films.

The script is remarkable for showing how a good story will travel through swapping the gender of a character and into various remakes over the years, including Switching Channels (1988).

 

A lot of the humour is still funny and there's so much of it that, if you get your ear in, the jokes flow in a way that moves easily from smirking to producing a laugh. 

Perfect Days

Perfect Days is a remarkable film for many reasons

The story follows a guy cleaning toilets in Tokyo and it reveals a city that appears so much more livable than I would've expected.

While it isn't acknowledged in the script, I expect the role of a nature-worshipping religion like Shinto is significant for the pockets of greenery and abundance of potted plants.

There's also a healthy dose of wabi-sabi in the narrative arc, which reflects the role of Japan's other religion of Zen Buddhism.

One of my habits after watching a film is to look on Wikipedia for background information and it was surprising to learn Perfect Days developed from a program to promote public restrooms:

Wenders was invited to Tokyo by Koji Yanai to observe The Tokyo Toilet, a project in which Japanese public toilets were redesigned in 17 locations throughout Shibuya... At first, the producers envisioned Wenders would make a short film or series of short films on the facilities, but he opted for a feature film

I think it shows how much an artist can elevate a project, but it also helps that you have someone of the calibre of Wim Wenders with a celebrated catalogue of stories which are hinted at in small details like the character reading Patricia Highsmith or the evocative dream sequences that might've been taken from Until the End of the World (1991).

Another surprise for me from the film was the Japanese version of 'The House of the Rising Sun,' which led me to get a new perspective on its themes and learn how a song might be related to a 17th-century folk melody inspired Bob Dylan to go electric.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

One of my interests in time travel

While the means to travel back in time have evaded me so far, there's a good technique for travelling forward in time through watching movies.

So time-travel as a genre has been a fascination and I've got ideas about how it functions as a narrative device.

In fact, if there was a subject that I would consider writing a thesis about, I feel I could develop an essay and fiction combination that would explore this potential.

Since I have time now to indulge in sitting on the couch in front of the TV after abandoning my teacher training, I caught up with this film that had interested me last year.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a surprising story with developments that lead into dark satire and, no spoiler, an ambiguous ending that still manages to resolve character arcs.

Actually, slight spoiler, I think the ending shows it is similar to that famous time-travel franchise Back To The Future and made me wonder if there was an aspiration for a sequel.

However, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die will likely become one of those cult movies that finds an audience outside of the cinemas since it didn't achieve much success in those venues and lost money.

I don't want to spoil anything, so let's just say this film is worth watching if you like comedy horror and fluffy sci-fi with a biting commentary on contemporary life.

It shows how science fiction can be used as a device to reflect the present day, while leaving open the possibilities of how things could be different.