australian rozie

Went to work… attempted to go home. Got stuck waiting for a Metro 20 bus for about 20 minutes at Central. One went past that was full grr. Dave called me to ask where I was as he was walking home; I was grumpy on Elizabeth Street. I made him buy me dinner. We first tried to go to Wafu, but they now have their special sustainable, environmental rules and a set menu with no meat (not even fish) tonight, so we gave it a miss. I just didn’t feel like being told what to eat and although I believe in their philosophy of not wanting food to be wasted, I just wasn’t in the mood. From their website:

# Please be mindful of the amount of food you order – consider ordering just the right amount, in harmony with your appetite!
# To find pleasure in our dishes is to finish the meal. Please don’t leave anything on your plate.
# Please consider sharing meals as you would at home, by eating together you will be reducing the amount of wasted food.

So we headed over to good old Komachi, where I ended up having a vegetarian ramen and agadeshi tofu (but it was my choice ok) and yes, I ate it all up and didn’t leave any leftovers.

Sex and the City 2 was good, but I can understand why it has got some bad reviews. As a big fan of SATC, it was enjoyable but probably not as good as the first movie which I just watched a week ago. I would like to give an honourable mention to Dave who tagged along with me to watch SATC2 at the Entertainment Quarter – he was the only straight guy in the cinema! I’ve also inflicted SATC seasons 4, 5 and 6 on him over the last couple of months as well. Note to self: get back into fashion!!! Now that I’ve got that over with, I can catch up on all those Quickflix DVDs on my list.

Is that a more interesting title? It’s from a song you know.
Here a few things we did today:
Checked out Redwater Markets. They are new “environmental” markets in Redfern Park. We got there about 10:30am and it was pretty small. Mostly second hand clothes, books, homewares. There was a nutty guy who asked us to buy his home-made recycled furniture. He told us how he had made a plant stand from floorboards and named one his chairs “Mr Wonderful” chair! There were only about 10 stalls, but it is new and early days. I hope it picks up because I really like the idea and an alternative to the hipster-fest that is Surry Hills Markets.
Checked out the Rittenhouse sale in Surry Hills, Dave bought me one cotton top ($50), he held back.
Bought some yellow beads from Empire Beads, and bumped into a woman who used to be my art supplies sales rep from when I worked at Billy Blue. Small World.
Bought some groceries from Thomas Dux – it’s so neat, gourmet and orderly in there! I miss being able to do my groceries there. Thomas Dux was literally up the road from where I worked in Surry Hills last year. Don’t miss that job though – teaching those questionable overseas students.
Had a snack at Mad Mex
Checked out Via Alley and Flight 001 (new travel items shop – for those who like to travel in an a-nal-ly organised way)
Back at home, Dave made a yummy roast lamb dinner and then we watched two episodes of Breaking Bad. We are almost finished Season 3!
Stayed up to watch the Australia vs Ghana match while Dave dozed off.

As you can see, I’m running out of interesting topics, so the title of this blog entry is just the date. Still, it was a busy day, at work we farewelled Nat who is moving to Darwin and will be sorely missed. We did manage a farewell lunch, farewell dinner and afternoon tea for her! Dave gave me a pedometer to wear and I amassed 13,222 steps in one day! I’ve been told you need to do at least 10,000 steps a day, so that’s not bad for a first attempt. Dave is participating in the Global Corporate Challenge and of course wants to be a high achiever in this pursuit. After work, I went home, grabbed a snack and got changed to go to Piper’s farewell for now going to Japan for six months drinks at the Lord Roberts Hotel. It was good to have a catch up with lots of the former Da Ladies of da League skipping crew and associates while enjoying the fancy canapes, East Sydney stylez.

I don’t mean standing up as in defending a woman’s honour, I mean standing up and giving them a seat on the bus. Sometimes I think it would be nice if someone (not just a man) would give up a seat on the bus. Is it sexist or old fashioned to think that a guy would give his seat to a woman? Why don’t young people respect their elders any more? Every morning and evening my bus is packed and I keep thinking, why don’t people give that older person a seat, or that person in the “less mobile passenger” area doesn’t look less mobile. Basically in Sydney it’s free for all. First in, best dressed, except that you don’t stand in a queue to get in first.

I forgot to review the drama, “I am love” which we saw in the opulent State Theatre with Dave’s cuz and his gf. Before the film we had a tasty Uighur dinner on Dixon St.
I quite enjoyed I am love. It was introduced by the Italian director Luca Guadagnino. I especially liked the music, art direction, the beautiful food shots, architecture and fashion. There’s also a fair bit of shagging in the countryside! Tilda Swinton is an awesome actress who plays a Russian who marries into a wealthy Milanese family, I’ve always like her work (except The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).

Director Luca Guadagnino and actress Tilda Swinton rush headlong into the crumbling empire that is classical melodrama, flaunt their shared awareness of Luchino Visconti’s visual splendour and Douglas Sirk’s bristling plotlines and create this magnificent contemporary ode to impossible love.

The Recchis are Milanese royalty. Wealthy and cultivated, their successful furniture business supports a luxurious lifestyle that is both rarified and uncontested. However cracks begin to appear in the walls of the magnificent family edifice at the birthday party of the grand-patriarch, a catalyst event for an unfolding series of startling transgressions.

Swinton is magnificent in the central role as the wife, mother and outsider (in this cloistered world her Russian heritage prevents her from truly belonging) whose carefully maintained order is undone by the unexpected wakening of desire.

The Sydney Film Festival is over for another year. Now I can finally go and see my long awaited Sex and the City 2. Yes, yes the reviews say it’s shit, but as a huge SATC fan I’m sure I’ll like it anyways.

Even when I sit in the guard’s carriage, there are stinky, foul-mouthed crackheads.

Teenage Paparazzo was my final Sydney Film Festival pick for 2010.
I chose this one because I like celebrities and photography, so thought it might be interesting. It was really well done, the precocious teenager Austin and Adrian Grenier become accomplices and antagonists in the hunt for celebrity. I didn’t get into Entourage (even though lots of people say it’s awesome), so I didn’t know much about Adrian other than he was Anne Hathaway’s boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada (another great fashion/celebrity film). I enjoyed seeing a celebrity turn paprazzo and Austin’s “grown up” redemption a the end.
Here’s the blurb:

Director Adrian Grenier is best known as Vincent Chase from the TV series Entourage. In this fascinating documentary he describes what it’s like to be the focus of the paparazzo’s lens and then turns the camera on the photographers themselves – in particular thirteen-year-old snapper Austin. The teenager spends his nights chasing photo-ops and getting tips from his paparazzo mates on who’s hot and who’s where. Austin’s colleagues are at first suspicious, but his palpable interest in their work and precocious talent serve to ultimately win them over.

Grenier sets up his own paparazzo moment with Paris Hilton as well as interviews with colleagues Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin and Eva Longoria Parker. Grenier’s second feature as director is a well-crafted, entertaining production that investigates the phenomenon of celebrity obsession with considerable intelligence and humour.

Australian Premiere

The next film I saw was a doco on Canadian born pianist Glenn Gould called Genius Within: the inner life of Glenn Gould.
This was part of the sounds on screen stream and all the other music docos weren’t really grabbing me. I wasn’t familiar with him or his work but it turned out to be a fascinating and detailed doco. The archival footage of Glenn Gould starting from the 1950s was impressive. Obviously he was celebrated and accomplished enough to have so many recordings and film foootage of him. I quite liked the old footage of Toronto because it’s somewhere I’ve been 3 times.

In the end he becomes more nutty and a recluse but when he was in his twenties, he was quite hot! There are photos of him looking like a cross between Jeff Buckley and Heath Ledger (with a touch of Sean Penn). I’ll have a hunt around and see if I can Here is a link of some pics of him when he was young.
Unfortunately, I had to do a runner to get to the Dendy Opera Quays in time for the next movie, so missed about 5-10 minutes of the end.

3 movie marathon:
First up was the documentary, The Most Dangerous man in America. I finally got the “proper” festival experience at the State Theate. I took a seat next to an “older” gentleman and we struck up a conversation while waiting for the film to start. Turns out he used to be a university psychology lecturer, now retired. He made a quip about most people in the audience being old. I didn’t see any Coogi jumpers this year, just one colourful ensemble on an older dude.
Back to the film, it was pretty interesting even though it was about war and politics (not some of my favourite things). I also worked out that Richard Nixon was a bit of a jerk!

Nominated for an Academy Award© this riveting documentary tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg’s transformation from US Marine and trusted Pentagon bureaucrat under Robert McNamara to anti-war campaigner. Ellsberg was instrumental in compiling reports to justify the 1964 US bombing of North Vietnam but a visit to the front lines changed his opinion.

This seismic shift led him to leak the 7000-page secret history of the war to The New York Times; the infamous dossier demonstrated that a succession of US presidents had deceived the US public about the conflict. This rousing documentary leaves you to draw your own 21st century parallels.

‘Pulses with the suspense and momentum of a sleek thriller’ – Washington Post.

Director Judith Ehrlich will introduce her film and take questions afterwards.