Pollies getting back to their roots (no, not in the bedroom)...

Never mind corruption or social media misuse or financial irresponsibility. Currently Australian politics seems to be in the grip of an entirely new trend: dual citizenship! Under Australian Constitutional law, you cannot serve in Federal Parliament if you hold citizenship of a foreign country, which I can understand for loyalty reasons. Yet, in fast succession, three currently serving figures have been revealed to be holding such citizenship. First, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam (New Zealand), then Liberal MP Larissa Waters (Canada) and now National Party Senator (and I'm ashamed to say fellow Central Queenslander) Matthew Canavan (Italy), whom I have an unpostable nickname for.

The real sting in the tale for Canavan is that he unwittingly acquired Italian citizenship as a result of none other than his mother registering for it herself in 2006. (“Grazie, Mama!”) He was 25 in 2006, so obviously when she did that he was a legal adult already, but now he's subsequently lost his Cabinet position thanks to her. Won't she be getting a lovely Mother's Day present next year...

Now, admittedly I definitely have a few more politicians who I'd love to see this fate befall, but in all seriousness, this whole revolving door (like that of the prime ministerial merry-go-round) is dangerous for Australia's image overseas in an organisational and diplomatic sense. I hope it becomes a wake-up call for all current and future federal MPs, to check up on their citizenship and allegiances before taking office. It would also save them and their families much personal scrutiny.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #46: The Lost Boys (1987).

 

Brothers Sam (Corey Haim) and Michael (Jason Patric) have just moved to Santa Carla, California with their newly-divorced mum Lucy (Dianne Wiest), to live with her friendly wackjob father (Barnard Hughes). They're classic, corn-fed, all-American boys who live for comics and nights out at the funfair. But beneath the wholesome veneer of their new home stirs an underbelly of shady activity. It's also home to a band of vampires, led by David (Kiefer Sutherland), who live in every way like rock stars: they ride motorcycles, drink like fish and even have a mural of Jim Morrison as their cave's centrepiece. When Michael inadvertently falls in with them after falling madly in love with the gang's human sweetheart Star (Jami Gertz), their wicked spell slowly falls over him, there and at home. Mum understandably will not approve, especially when it interferes with her burgeoning relationship with rental store proprietor Max (Edward Herrmann). Now Sam must figure out what's come over his big brother and how to stop it, with the help of militaristic brothers Edgar and Allan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander).

Director Joel Schumacher may be infamous now as the guy who put nipples on Batman and Robin's outfits in 1997 (and I'll pretend that whole movie never happened, for that matter), but this 1987 cult horror comedy delight proves he's really not at all that bad. The Lost Boys is infused throughout with sincere charm, knowing genre humour, suitably Gothic visuals and soundtrack choices, confidently staged and paced action scenes and most importantly for a horror flick, loads of blood and gore. Schumacher uses the hip screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, Janice Fischer and James Jeremias to offer a vampire flick that somehow achieves the balancing act of being a loving homage to classic vampire films and stories while inverting their themes and tropes into a more postmodern variation. And despite some obvious (but unavoidable) signs of its era (e.g. vinyl records and rotary phones), its setting still feels surprisingly contemporary.

The cast all have terrific fun in their roles also, particularly Feldman and Newlander who even make these very gung-ho teenage occult hunters feel trustworthy and sympathetic (I know I'd be sceptical about enlisting help from such young “experts”), and Michael Chapman's cinematography enhances the whole movie's succulent glam-rock feel. The Lost Boys is one supernatural flick very much worth sinking your teeth into.

Big Game Hunting: Brutal, Gut-Wrenching Horror.

Remember in 2015, all the global outrage when American dentist Walter Palmer fatally shot Cecil the Lion? Well, now Cecil's son Xanda has become himself a tragic statistic in Zimbabwe. Now, I acknowledge the high risk of manipulation here, but I'm pathologically outspoken and no issue enrages me more than animal cruelty.


The worst part is, in too many non-Western countries, hunting is literally a commercial industry. One claiming to be fun for the whole family, based on murder, and against species who I'm sure as just as fucking scared as vice versa. In those terms, "commercial" means nothing but blood money. It is fucking emotional and ethical bankruptcy.

I understand one of the countries it's most common in is South Africa, where ending it isn't considered a priority due to ongoing economic problems from apartheid. I understand that to a point - a slight point - but besides that, there is no excuse for continuing or participating in it. Had I been there, I would've seriously told the hunter to shoot me instead. RIP and Cecil and Xanda. I hope the where you both are now is more humane than Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRQxN6afNoA

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #45: Akira (1988).

Neo-Tokyo rises from the ashes of a nuclear explosion on 16 July 1988. Swarming with malaise and corruption, by 2019 it has become a sordid, hazardous maze. The Japanese government has now enacted the Akira Project to discipline out-of-control delinquent youths, namely those in motorcycle gangs. One such gang includes childhood friends Shotaro Kaneda and Tetsuo Shima, who encounter a military operation to recover a fugitive experimentation subject. Tetsuo, already more sullen than Kaneda, is captured and now becomes their guinea pig. Their mental experiments awaken his dormant psychic powers but when these get out of hand, he rampages against the world that has tormented him, and now only Kaneda can stop him - and save us.

Nothing can prepare you for the awesome action, visuals and (most significantly) thematic resonance of Akira. Adapting his own seminal manga, Katsuhiro Otomo here helped to define anime and 29 years later it hasn't aged a day. The level of detail and futuristic insight in the animation shows painstaking dedication, the action sequences are very fluidly framed and edited, Otomo's direction also studies each character very observantly, and Shoji Yamashiro's score is pulsating.

But where Akira most of all stands out, even breaking new ground, is in its indictment of dominance and mind control. These boys are no angels, they are still children nonetheless, and in adolescence any emotion can be hazardous. Their treatment at the hands of the authorities, much like real-life "discipline" for teenagers, is misguided and hypocritical abuse, potentially leaving them institutionalised at best.

Obviously, Akira is not an animated film for the whole family. And anime, as I've said here before, is an acquired taste. But if you can handle strong violence, and want plenty of food for thought, Akira should be right up your alley. And if I can close on a personal note, I'm proud to say it was released on my date of birth (16/07/1988)!

Donny and Vlad: the Bromance!

Love or hate him, Donald Trump is America's President now. We can't go back and stop that. The orange New York boy born with the silver spoon in his mouth and now the ugliest toupée in history has now been trusted with the nuclear codes, despite having had no previous governmental or even military experience. He's been in office for six months now, and yet the debate over how he won rages on. Coincidence? I doubt it.

All signs (apparently) point to Russia and their president, Vladimir Putin. A gung-ho alpha male who smiles less than any other leader since fucking Hitler. His administration's glowing track record includes militant LGBT rights opposition, randomly shooting an enemy's commercial plane down, and even doping their athletes into human tree trunks. Where is Bram Stoker when we need him to write about this Vlad the Impaler?

Ah, but did Putin and his government hack the 2016 US election? If Trump tried to he surely didn't act alone; I doubt he could hack his way through a padlock let alone an election. In any case, in Australia neither of them would be trusted with a fucking game console joystick. That's all I can say there.

Obviously, I wanted Clinton to win. But if an election is ever hacked, and whoever the culprit(s), that's surely a violation of democracy and liberty. And hypothetically assuming either Trump or Putin hacked the election, both the US and Russia will have to sleep in the bed they made for themselves. Donny and Vlad are like lifelong drinking pals: they're thick as fucking thieves. And, of course, just 50 years ago, their nations were headlocked in the Cold War. Now, thanks to both, we all could be facing a conflict even worse.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #44: Boys Don't Cry (1999).

In 1993, a young man named Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) arrived in Falls City, Nebraska. He was an instant hit there with his small-town innocence. But when he started dating Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny) her unstable ex-boyfriend John (Peter Sarsgaard) uncovered the truth: Brandon Teena was really Teena Brandon, a girl enduring a gender identity crisis, who wanted to undergo reassignment but couldn't afford the surgery and was equally uncomfortable living as a lesbian. So, she chose to live as a male, with sadly tragic results.

Despite (or maybe because of) the importance of its content, Boys Don't Cry must be one of the most disturbing movies ever made. Co-writer and director Kimberley Pierce recreates this harrowing true story with a rather journalistic approach, assertive and desolate but methodical and never dishonest. She obviously knew sanitising or ignoring Brandon's struggles would've been disrespectful to his memory, most of all with the truly gut-wrenching rape scene.

But Boys Don't Cry just would never have been the same without the gifted Hilary Swank. Coming out of nowhere to win the 1999 Best Actress Oscar over heavy favourite Annette Bening (American Beauty), roles don't come any harder or braver than this, and Swank delivers a miracle. It's effectively a triple performance - as the confident and worldly Brandon, the anguished Teena Brandon and finally the exposed Brandon who must keep the peace and defend himself in terror against pure hatred - and overall it really is some of the greatest acting I have ever seen. She will simply leave you speechless, and not to be outdone Sevigny (who was Oscar-nominated) and Sarsgaard also leave strong impressions.

Boys Don't Cry may be a very confronting and draining experience, but its sincerity, compassion and suspense makes it absolutely commendable. RIP Brandon Teena. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #43: Cosi (1996).

Lewis (Ben Mendelsohn) is a young uni graduate living with his girlfriend Lucy (Rachel Griffiths) and pretentious playwright roommate Nick (Aden Young), who takes a desperate job in a mental institution working with patients interested in drama. Lewis thinks the job will just mean helping them stage a small variety show, until stalwart patient Roy (a show-stealing Barry Otto) insists the production be no less than an epic performance of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. This is stacking the deck on them at best, as none of the patients can speak Italian much less sing opera and they consist of nymphomaniacs, pyromaniacs and obsessives who clearly have other preoccupations.

Obviously, this isn't a "respectable drama," but it's still a comedy that explores mental illness accurately and sensitively, and indeed there are some deeply touching moments here also. Working from Louis Nowra's adaptation of his own celebrated play (based on his own experiences working in an institution), Mark Joffe handles the rehearsal and performance scenes very vibrantly and the more tender moments with discreet restraint. And the whole cast are a hoot: this is ultimately Otto's show as I said, but Jacki Weaver unleashes her inner schizophrenic to great comic effect, David Wenham (in his breakthrough role, which he originated on-stage) is a riot as pyromaniac Doug, and there's even Men at Work frontman Colin Hay as Wagner-obsessed Zac. And as bulimic Julie, Toni Collette performs a stunning a cappella rendition of Ben E. King's Stand By Me.

And on that note (no pun intended), Cosi ultimatelty emphasizes how the arts can give us all, particularly the marginalised or misunderstood, an unmistakable voice, even if it needs some encouragement or guidance. Cosi is compassionate, realistic, deftly handled and most of all, very, very funny. A (literally) madcap Australian treat. 

Diagnosing in retrospect.

Autism belongs to the ages. I'm sure even some of the ancients had it. But the widespread awareness and understanding of it, that's very much a recent phenomenon. I consider it comparable to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s in that while not life-threatening or contagious, beforehand it was barely known and then BAM! Suddenly it was on everybody's lips and minds.

Since that explosion of public and psychiatric awareness in the last 20 years or so, retrospective diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders have been made of literally countless historical figures. Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson, Glenn Gould, Marie Curie, Stanley Kubrick, Alan Turing, Thomas Jefferson, Adolf Hitler, Jane Austen, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and even Hans Asperger himself (above) are now among those speculated to have been autistic. Obviously we'll never really know if any were (although I'm myself convinced  Gould, Kubrick and Turing were) and while we should be careful not to give such speculation too much authority for that reason, I think it can help to inspire children and adults now on the spectrum (like me) and to trace the history and unlock the secrets of creativity, philosophy and maybe even identity. Even if many in those fields are not at all autistic.

And it can also help to answer the question of whether ASDs are hereditary. One example who has found genealogical links is psychotherapist Rachael Lee Harris, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 37. She subsequently found signs in the behaviours of her father and paternal grandfather, and she now has a young son with Asperger's. (She covers all this in her splendid book My Autistic Awakening: Unlocking the Potential for a Life Well Lived.) And for privacy reasons I won't say who, but I now have evidence to believe one of my recent ancestors was autistic. However, the search for a conclusive answer continues.

Overall, retrospective diagnoses of autism shouldn't be taken as concrete. If their subjects really were autistic they shouldn't be remembered just for that anyway. But they are nonetheless a great source of positive inspiration (excluding Hitler) for everybody, whatever their brain's wiring.