Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace voice review.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5m7gJVMGAToRVFBcTNkQ0xKa2pYN1A4cDU0Qzh4emhnOXcw

Post what you like, but will they like what you post?

Social media has now become a global, instant grapevine. One that can also trace somebody's personal and professional trajectory. What we publicise on it is, thankfully, our call, though how it's received never is. And I think it's understandable if someone posts about a memorable or emotional experience they've just had, only for that post to be ignored, and they subsequently feel frustrated.


But isn't it remarkably intriguing how you never quite know how your online activity will be received: what will get a fuckload of likes and/or comments and what'll get lost in the depths of the Net? Of course, if you're a celebrity you post a photo of your breakfast and it'd spread like wildfire, but for us commoners, at least those like me who crave attention most of the time, that's very unlikely. But more to the point, I for one struggle to anticipate who'll enjoy each thing I post on Facebook (the only social media website I use, as I'm a Net junkie already), or even on here, quite honestly. But come to think of it, maybe that's part of the appeal. Or just a very cunning IT business touch.


In fact, as I sit here racking my brain over this entry, it's just dawned on me how that unpredictability online can mirror the sort we encounter with real-life interactions, even with people we've known for fucking years. For example, if you felt compelled to ask them a personal question or give brutal honesty. Depending on the severity and location they could react very surprisingly. I have a friend with very strong views whose expression of them on Facebook has made some of his own friends, whom he'd known for over 30 years, delete him on there. It can be a very capricious environment.


But again, it has its pleasures and uses. Just don't predict what posts of yours will or won't take off, for disappointment's sake. Leave that to me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #36: Pulp Fiction (1994).

Two bumbling restaurant burglars, madly in love. An interracial hitman duo sauntering around LA doing their boss' dirty work. One then landing in a compromising position with his boss' free-spirited wife. And an underdog boxer who kills his opponent and subsequently acquires others outside the ring. As the tagline says: "Four stories... about one story."

Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic filmmaker, certainly from America, to have emerged since the New Hollywood movement of the '60s and '70s. He hit the scene in 1992 with the superb Reservoir Dogs, but if that fired the starter gun for an indie filmmaking revolution, 1994's Pulp Fiction was surely the movie that blasted a huge hole in the mainstream-indie divide and changed the face of indie cinema forever. It grossed over $200 million, won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, won Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary the Best Original Screenplay Oscar (alongside five other nominations including for Best Picture and Director), secured the careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, and returned John Travolta to superstardom.

Travolta and Jackson respectively play Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, foot soldiers for LA mob kingpin Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). They're an effective team despite being a study in contrasts: Vincent is white and Jules black; Vincent enjoys his job and Jules hates his; Jules is very religious, frequently citing Ezekiel 25:17, and Vincent is agnostic; and they also frequently have differences of opinion. They also get stuck as couriers of a suitcase which may or may not contain their boss' soul. When his wife Mia (Thurman) enters the fray, it becomes a night both she and Vincent hope Marsellus never learns about. Boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) lives with his fragile French girlfriend Fabienne and has to fight with more than his fists before he can get the fuck outta Dodge, and Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) are the would-be restaurant Bonnie and Clyde who could use a few tips from that duo.

When you unravel it all, Pulp Fiction means fuck all, but that is the precise point. It was the first Tarantino film I ever saw and while I love his whole filmography, he has and will never again scale the heights he achieved here. He directs scene after scene with ferocious panache and draws career-best performances from his whole cast, the standout unquestionably being Samuel L. Jackson. But QT's greatest talent for me has always been his writing, and I'm prepared to call this the greatest screenplay ever written. Check the 'Memorable Quotes' page on its IMDb entry; I swear it's like the whole fucking script is there! My favourite line in film history: "I'm prepared to scour the Earth for that motherfucker. If Butch goes to Indochina I want a n----- hidin' in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass." And amidst all the clever running jokes (namely how every time Vincent uses the bathroom something bad happens) and obvious but fitting intertextual references, it's bursting at the seams with characters and situations that feel authentic and thoroughly understood.

Throw in some sharp editing (RIP Sally Menke) and a very refreshing and eclectic retro soundtrack, and Pulp Fiction is quite simply beyond praise. Certainly one of the best films ever, and THE best of all indies for me. Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.



Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #35: Rushmore (1998).

15-year-old Max Fischer is simultaneously somehow every teacher's wet dream and worst nightmare. He is a scarily smart but recalcitrant pupil at the elite Rushmore Academy, where he edits the school newspaper and heads extracurricular clubs and societies devoted to basically anything legal. But due to this ubiquity on campus, Max's grades are going downhill like an avalanche and he is on the verge of expulsion.

During his latest campus activity, a big-scale play he's written to be performed in the school's auditorium, Max is shocked when he meets and then falls for widowed elementary teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), so much so that he elects to install an aquarium on campus in her honour. Yet another spanner lands in the works, however, when Max becomes entangled in a love triangle with Miss Cross and his wealthy but deeply depressed friend, steel tycoon and father of two of Max's classmates Herman Blume (Bill Murray). Now Max must navigate this, his first romantic minefield, get back on top of his schoolwork, and start to secure his future.

Rushmore (1998) really is a bildungsroman like no other. Wes Anderson is certainly one of those filmmakers you either love or hate (although I actually find his work quite hit-and-miss), but with this he and co-writer Owen Wilson have hit on a beautifully funny, celebratory oddball tale and revel in spinning it for everybody. Their screenplay channels the academic environment and Max's teenage prodigy mentality to a convincing fever pitch, and Anderson's visualisation of it matches that throughout. Olivia Williams, perhaps obviously as a teacher, has the film's moral voice and she makes Miss Cross a realistically layered woman, and Bill Murray is equally memorable in a breakthrough dramatic role. But naturally, this is Schwartzman's show the whole way. Francis Ford Coppola's nephew (his mother is Francis' sister Talia Shire), his gawky but driven manner here helps us care for Max even though he is often consciously an obnoxious little shit. And, most important, his comic timing is superb in every scene.

Kids, don't be quite like Max Fischer. But, to all of you: do, well, rush out to see Rushmore.

Australia... in EUROvision?

Australia has become a global music hub, with a very long and justified honour roll of international stars. Dame Nellie Melba, Percy Grainger and Dame Joan Sutherland, through to the Bee Gees, Kylie Minogue and of course AC/DC. What started with the Aborigines playing the didgeridoo and hitting their sticks together has become a thriving national music industry with a global reach, and I hope it stays like that.

But while I do support Aussie musicians gaining exposure through charts and radio et cetera (whatever I think of their music), I do not understand for a second why Australia has, for three years now, been participated in the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, I can assure you that's not due to anything related to Europe ethnically or culturally (although I do hate being part of the British Commonwealth), and nor am I suggesting Australia is superior to any European country. But the plain fact is, we are not a European country; hell, we're not even in the same fucking hemisphere. We are Australia, and despite being apparently that far "Down Under," (and no, that's not a Men at Work pun) we have still become a G20 country, largely on our own steam.

Our Eurovision representative this year is Isaiah Firebrace, who, in fairness (despite his having come from a "reality" TV show like his two predecessors, Guy Sebastian and Dami Im), really can sing. And I suppose, especially as he's just 17, it will be a nice experience for him. A young rising star performing for the whole world while experiencing a new country (Ukraine) and culture. Good luck to him. But still, in his position I would've declined the offer with "Well, thanks, but Australia's not a European country." Plus, Eurovision's best-known winners, after 43 years, no less, are ABBA (I'm sorry but for me their music can stay in the '70s), and even Britain's long-serving telecast commentator Terry Wogan quit in 2008, claiming it had become "predictable" and was "no longer a music contest.* God forbid If Firebrace wins my misery will be complete: Australia hosting the fucking thing.

Finally, I again wish to stress none of this should suggest a feeling of hatred or superiority towards Europe or Europeans. All foreigners should be welcome wherever they go anyway. And I know how all of this may have sounded nationalistic. But maybe that's just sometimes unavoidable if you want to be patriotic.

Who hypes more: Hollywood or the media?

They're synonymous now: mass media and sensationalism. It doesn't matter if the medium is newspapers, television, radio or the Net. If it's newsworthy, especially in a topical or trendy context, they will build it up like a construction company does skyscrapers. And very often for no point whatsoever.


Yesterday delivered a case in point here if ever I've seen one. All major news outlets got wind of a royal emergency at Buckingham Palace, around 2pm Australian time, and immediately they wouldn't let it go. You could be forgiven for thinking the Queen or Philip had had a stroke or something, but ultimately what was the "emergency"? Phil had elected to withdraw from public engagements, and in August, no less. How does that warrant so much fucking coverage? I doubt even monarchists (and I have never been one) would think it does. It was like being on a rollercoaster, slowly approaching the big fall and then *buckling sound*: it gets jammed right at the top. I also doubt the royals would've wanted to indirectly get their subjects into such a frenzy anyway.


Some news events do deserve ongoing coverage, but I'll close with this to any media personnel reading: you lot often wonder why so many of us have lost faith in journalism. Well, maybe it's time you reconsidered how you practice it.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #34: Garage Days (2002).

Meet Freddy (Kick Gurry), a twenty-something record store employee and aspiring rocker. He's been going through the motions, hopping back and forth between girls and pubs until he one day realises it's now or never, so he starts an indie rock group. Playing rhythm guitar he recruits three like-minded friends: his abrasive student girlfriend Tania (Pia Miranda) on bass guitar, hopeless romantic Joe (Brett Stiller) as the lead axeman and pill-popping Luce (Chris Sadrinna) on drums. For guidance they have bumbling roadie Brunpo (Russell Dykstra) and Joe's old rocker dad Kevin (Andy Anderson, basically just playing himself).

They all want the band to succeed, but conflict brews when Freddy develops a crush on Joe's imperious girlfriend Kate (Maya Stange), who's now having Joe's baby after they fucked in a cemetery. Now Freddy and his crew must resolve all their differences (musical and personal) if they want to get a deal with lecherous label executive Shad Kern (Marton Csokas) and play at the Homebake Festival.

Garage Days (2002) is visionary Aussie director Alex Proyas' paean to rock music and youth, and what a wildly funny, energetic ride it is. The four leads have convincing chemistry and they all make their characters feel sincere and relatable, like types you'd find jamming in any Australian pub band aiming for something more. The screenplay may seem stuffed with rock clichés but I don't care about

that because it gives the whole movie a real honesty; let's face it, those clichés are unquestionably true. Proyas infuses it throughout with vibrancy and psychedelic visuals more electric than the band's guitars, especially in an hilarious dinner scene with Tania's parents and one where Freddy's disgust for poker machines culminates in an act that would make Tim Freedman proud, and naturally there's an awesome hard rock soundtrack.

But above everything it's a coming-of-age tale, and that's actually its greatest strength. As it shows, even if you reach the pinnacle of your industry, you'll never forget your Garage Days.