Going viral, now and then.

As I'm sure many other YouTube-hounding Millennials do, I remember in 2007 when everybody's favourite theatrical Britney Spears fanboy Chris Crocker exploded online with his videa demanding we “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” That was the first viral video I saw (although I've since seen several earlier one like Star Wars Kid) and admittedly I found it hilarious like virtually everybody else. Since then there's been Psy's Gangnam Style clip, that shirtless Romeo with “My video for Briona” (which to me was so creepy it felt like him screen-testing for a role as a slasher movie villain), and Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent audition clip among others (that one even made the 6pm news here. No joke).

But now, in 2017, it seems the term “viral video” is thrown around like rice at a wedding. Virtually every week now a new one apparently comes along, but now almost none are as high-profile (if that word can be used to describe fifteen-minute fame) as those earlier ones, with far less parodies et cetera. Why? It's like going viral has become devalued now.

Plus, considering what DOES go viral online now reminds me of just how much we misprioritise now. Over two billion people, at least, are beset with poverty, inequality or war and yet, you look at the 'Trending' bar currently on any social media website and odds are it will be clogged with superficial, materialistic horseshit. What fucking goes?

I don't know, though I stand by all of that. But I still wish something of mine would go viral. Something I'm proud of, that is.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #33: Beautiful (2009).

The fictional Melbourne suburb of Sunshine Hills is in the grip of fear after the rumoured abductions of three teenage girls. Living there is Daniel (Sebastian Gregory), a shy 14-year-old introvert obsessed with photography and his 17-year-old neighbour Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), a would-be Lolita. After they meet, Suzy capitalises on his crush on her to promise him her friendship if he will bring her secrets and photos of the neighbours and their activities. When Daniel meets one, a very withdrawn woman named Jennifer (Asher Keddie) with a violent boyfriend (Socratis Otto), their snooping lands them in some very hot water. This extends to their separate home lives: Daniel with his cold, secretive cop father Alan (Aaron Jeffery) and his conflicted live-in girlfriend Sheree (Peta Wilson) and Suzy with her iron-fisted mother (Deborra-Lee Furness aka Mrs. Hugh Jackman).

Debut writer-director Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful (2009) is just that. An American Beauty/Neighbours hybrid may seem weird and incongruous initially (in terms of tone), but through emphasizing the similarities of those two while invoking his own perspective of suburbia and with a very intuitive visual language he holds it together the whole way. Credit here also goes to production designer Robert Webb and cinematographer Kent Smith.

O'Flaherty also gets dynamite performances from his whole cast, particularly Peta Wilson as Daniel's browbeaten but courageous surrogate mother, and while I usually hate EDM, Paul Mac's score enhances every scene. Beautiful is a haunting portrait of modern Australian suburbia, and of what happens when the child and adult worlds collide.

Rosemary and Poppies, Rubber and Sand.

In 1915, to Gallipoli they came,
Young Aussies and Kiwis, all with no shame.
They lost their lives gallantly, on a beach or in a trench,
On battlefields there, or later some Belgian or French.

Then when Hitler and Japan hit the scene,
They did just as much to help lessen the screams.

Next when war broke out in Korea,
They showed the very best of what we have here.
Then in Vietnam, because of the brutal Vietcong,
They were sent to help right a great wrong.
Upon returning home after going with no choice,
For far too long they were all denied a voice.

Next in the Gulf of the strong Middle East,
They helped rid the locals of their leader, a beast.

And now we have seen, since the planes hit the Towers,
Bringing about one of humanity's darkest hours,
That beautiful Anzac spirit, of mateship and aid,
Here and abroad clearly never will fade.







Lest we forget.

Hating on disability hate!

I know it's a cliché, but what if you were told you resembled a freak? How would you react? Do you think somebody should react to that? Would the consequences be worth it? Last night, ABC2 aired a decent documentary called The Ugly Face of Disability Hate Crime, hosted by Adam Pearson, an English actor and comedian with neurofibromatosis. Focusing on people with facial disfigurements, it emphasised how disability hate crimes are disproportionately prosecuted in the UK compared to those towards other minorities (but without trivialising those ones, pleasantly). Why is this so? A lack of time and resources? A lack of regard for or trust in the disabled? Or do the disabled largely distrust them from personal experience?

(Adam Pearson.)

I don't know the figures for here in Australia, and despite being autistic I've mainly been harassed over my life for my build (and rarely physically). But wherever and whoever it is between, fear of the unknown or unusual only excuses so much, if anything, and anybody like Pearson who never surrenders to oppression (as I try not to) is an inspiration to us all. Let us all take a permanent, public stand against ableism. Especially you, ablebodied, neurotypical people!

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #32: Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015).

He was the reluctant spokesperson the MTV Generation, and now his life and work have touched Millennials no less. But who was the real Kurt Cobain? What fuelled those anthems of anguish and rage? How did they, and fame, affect him? In Cobain: Montage of Heck, documentarian Brett Morgen sets out to answer those questions about this revered but deeply troubled icon.

Now, as Courtney Love and daughter Frances were involved (Frances as an executive producer, no less) in this documentary, you might understandably expect a biased or sycophantic portrait, but thankfully it shows Kurt warts-and-all. It follows his life and career chronologically, with revealing interviews with his parents Wendy and Don, sister Kim, ex-girlfriend Tracy Marander and Courtney and Krist Novoselic (but no Dave Grohl, likely due to Love's involvement), and while Morgen clearly admires and sympathises with his subject, he also doesn't ignore or defend any of the more reckless things Kurt did. Particularly he focuses prominently on how Kurt and Courtney kept taking heroin while knowing she was pregnant, but he avoids nosiness or judgment here by emphasising how the media's treatment of them helped nothing whatsoever.

Morgen also includes several cleverly placed and realised animated sequences, and numerous Cobain family home movies (one of which, using the song All Apologies, is particularly moving), and mentions Cobain's death simply as a coda.

Disgracefully, Cobain: Montage of Heck wasn't even nominated for the 2015 Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and that may be because several of Kurt's inner circle have publicly denounced it as inaccurate. But frankly I don't care about that in this case because ultimately it was simply meant to be Morgen's version of events, and I suspect the memories of many who were involved with Nirvana would be quite hazy now anyway. I hired this with some misgivings because while I love Nirvana, I've always felt Kurt would've objected to his story being filmed, but I am so glad I did. As a coverage of his life and music it's solid, but as a condemnation of the destructiveness of our fame-obsessed culture, it's simply heartbreaking. A knockout masterpiece.

Something Cult. Foreign-Language or Indie #31: The Kings of Summer (2013).

Joe Toy (Nick Robinson), on the cusp of adulthood, finds his frustration with his single father Frank's (Nick Offerman) efforts to organise his life boiling over. After a family game night that culminates in Joe prank-calling the cops about Frank, he runs away to a secluded area in the local woods which he found earlier with his best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and an eccentric tagalong named Biaggio (Moises Arias). With them back in tow, Joe declares they will build a house there and live off the land, devoid of parents and responsibility. Upon completing their makeshift lodgings, the three boys find themselves living as masters of their own destinies without interruption. But they soon discover you can run but you can't hide from civilization and (genuine or created) family, or the conflicts of either.

Leave it to indie filmmakers to produce a legitimately refreshing and oddball coming-of-age dramedy like The Kings of Summer. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who's since made the decent Kong: Skull Island, working from Chris Galletta's methodical screenplay (which thankfully has teenage-sounding dialogue), infuses this one with thorough understanding and affection for every character and the message, while invoking a visual language that fleshes the many moods of the wilderness out so authentically. Praise also here goes naturally (pun intended) to cinematographer Ross Riege, and Ryan Miller offers a score that matches this convincingly through a teenage male mindset.

But especially as they are teenagers, most of us probably wouldn't care quite as much for such characters were they not relatable (warts and all), and Robinson, Basso and comic relief Arias all bring them to life with nicely layered performances, and evident chemistry and comic timing.

The Kings of Summer is a brilliantly entertaining, wise and resonant bildungsroman.

The troubled cogs in the Easter commercial machine.

I love chocolate, though I do eat it in consistent moderation. And while I'm an atheist, I can still enjoy religious holidays like Easter for the harmony and connection they bring. But whether Easter for you means your Messiah's Crucifixion or confectionery, or both, as you tuck with relish into your chocolate eggs and rabbits this year, spare a long thought for those whose intense labour brought them to you.

By that I obviously don't mean a huge rabbit living on the moon. I mean the millions of impoverished adults and mainly children forced to work in cocoa production in Africa's slave trade. I realise what a delicate issue, and I don't know any exact issues anyway, so I'll try not to be manipulative here (hence the lack of photos). The epicentre of African slave cocoa production is the Ivory Coast, which borders the North Atlantic. This productivity method is Africa's equivalent of sweatshops in Asia. Very low pay, in very harsh conditions, doing physically draining work for often abusive employers. Need I say more?

Western chocolatiers like Cadbury, to their credit, have made efforts in recent years to counter these origins of their products (or so they say). But they should all pull their socks up higher, especially as employers in their own ways themselves.

Nelson Mandela once said, "Any nation that does not care for and protect all of its children does not deserve to be called a nation." He was too right there - and let's not forget, he was an African himself.

But as I said, I love my chocolate (in moderation), and so can you. Just always remember how it likely came your way. Happy Easter!

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #30: DOUBLE FEATURE! HIMIZU (2011) / TOKYO TRIBE (2014).

My foreign-language movie collection is overwhelmingly Japanese, and one Japanese director whose work particularly it particularly represents is Sion Sono. I'm not too familiar with his whole filmography, but two of his movies have really bowled me over in recent years. They have as many differences as similarities, but they are equally awesome.

Firstly, Himizu (2011) follows two troubled adolescents enduring the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Yuichi (Shota Sometani) is a misanthropic boy sick of living with his lazy mother and violent, irresponsible father, who at school meets Keiko (Fumi Nikaido), an optimistic rich girl who instantly sees a smidge of good in Yuichi. Despite his initial apathy and repulsion (in one scene he even demands she stop praising him in class), they gradually become kindred spirits. But when Yuichi's patience finally runs out, he violently lashes out at society's bad seeds and now Keiko must set him back on the right path.

Based on Minoru Furoya's manga, Himizu has many layers and Sono nails them all: a revenge flick, a portrayal of squalor and social malaise, an exploration of modern urban and rural Japan, and most significantly a very sincere and resonant tale of teenage angst and romance. Sono handles it all with delicate authority, very smartly using Samuel Barber's breathtaking Adagio for Strings (best known as the theme from Platoon) and eliciting strong performances from Nikaido and Sometani (who won Marcello Mastroianni Awards for Best Young Actor and Actress from the Venice Film Festival), amidst nicely controlled cinematography.

Then we have 2014's Tokyo Tribe, which is a prime slice of unashamed, intentional ridiculousness as only Japan can produce. Another manga adaptation (this time of one by Santa Inoue), the setting is a near-future Tokyo split into 23 rival tribes at war for control against a melting pot of corruption, violence and depravity. When the Bukuro Wu-Ronz tribe leader Mera (Ryuhei Sanada) murders enemy Tera from the Musashino Saru tribe and then hunts Mera's successor down to settle a personal score, the already bubbling pot boils over. And then as the High Priest's daughter disappears, vicious Yakuza boss Buppa (Rik Takeuchi) hits the scene, sparking an intertribal turf war across the city, with our guide being street hood MC (Shota Sometani again). All of it over one night, and in the tone of a hip hop musical.

This must be one of the coolest movies I've ever seen. Some may say it tries too hard there, or the music is too repetitive, or the cast can't rap, but I think such criticisms all miss the point. Sono's intention here, besides trying primarily to make a deliberately ridiculous and far-fetched experience (also crammed with gratuitousness), is really to deliver a stinging satire of Japanese organised crime in all its immorality and hypocrisy. Which, of course, given their power even with the police, is seriously fucking audacious. Plus, while doing all of this, Sono also offers snappy dialogue, nuanced characters and thoroughly rhythmic and energetic direction.

Himizu and Tokyo Tribe both aren't for everybody, and obviously neither are appropriate for kids. But love or hate them, watch either and I'm sure you'll acknowledge Sono's filmmaking talent and nerve.


P.S. As this is my 100th post, I would like to sincerely thank you all for taking this ride with me. I hope it's been fun, and there's heaps more on the way.

The V-word. (No, not "Vagina.")

Tragedy and hardship are inseparable from life. I don't know how else to put that, though you all know it anyway. Some have it harder than others, and most of us just have our ups and downs. But contemporary culture and society still stigmatizes personal troubles like they should be taboo. This in and of itself invokes that term, "victim."




Recently, I've been stewing a little bit over why we apply this term, and why so often. Does help more than hinder, or vice versa? If the latter, is there an alternative word? Taking a literal view of the word "victim," it sounds slightly degrading to me, however it's applied. I have no doubt it's usually used well-meaningly, and anyone who tries not to let tragedy or pain keep them down has my great respect. But I'm just one man. I can change my own life, but in most cases, real change happens through us all.




Obviously I resent having to re-use this word, but our tendency for victim-shaming must end, especially among minorities and even self-inflicted forms like addiction. And with cyberbullying and social media it's now easier than ever to victim-shame. In recent times that has even happened in law enforcement and legal circles. A good (albeit fictional) example of this is in the 1988 film The Accused, in which Jodie Foster plays a hard-living young woman who is gang-raped in a bar. She takes her attackers to court, but throughout the trial she is constantly mocked and distrusted due to her appearance and lifestyle. Come to think of it, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain had to endure similar treatment during their real-life trial.




How can we curb victim-shaming (whether the subject is famous or not)? Is it a lost cause? I can't confidently answer either of those questions, and even if I could I'd still want to feed you food for thought anyway. But I aim mainly to help people and myself, so if you fall into personal hardship, speak up and don't throw the towel in. One of my heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said: "We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees." After all, in the face of paralytic illness he became the longest-serving president in American history.

Go Blue for Autism!

As you can see, today is World Autism Awareness Day. So let's all go blue for autism! Let's do it! There's nothing I'd rather be on than the spectrum. Just NEVER go blue for New South Wales! (Aussies will get that.)