Monday, May 21, 2012

Next to Normal

Not a review per se; rather, a quick report. I saw the SA premiere of Next to Normal last night; it's being staged as a co-production by Adelaide companies Factory and Six Foot Something. I'd heard of the show before, but know practically nothing about the specifics – and a whole bunch of recommendations from people who'd seen it that it was excellent.

And they were right; it's an absolutely brilliant show. It has an unusually strong narrative for a musical, so much so that, combined with the way they segued into each other, it was several songs in before anyone remembered it was a musical and applauded.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

The Avengers

A couple of Mondays ago I saw The Avengers; then, a few days later, I saw it again. So, it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I've written about it – though it's taken me a bit longer to finish than I anticipated; such is my life at the moment.

Oh, and medium-level spoilers ahoy. I don't like doing that, but I really can't talk about the bits that I liked without giving too much away. If you want a very brief review it's as follows: it's a stunningly well-written and well-made action blockbuster film with great characters and some of the cleverest and funniest dialogue I've heard – albeit with a couple of fairly minor flaws.

Thorough review below the fold.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Jay and Silent Bob Get Old

In an echo of sentiments that I've made in the past about people like Ian McKellen, John Cleese and Olivia Newton John, I had never at any point expected that I would one day have the chance to see writer/director Kevin Smith live on stage – in fact, in a way, it was even less likely than those other people, since they all have a history of live performance and Smith (until fairly recently) was purely a filmmaker. But in the last few years he's taken to doing public 'performances' - including sellout shows at the Sydney Opera House and a seven-hour long Q&A session in New Jersey in 2005 – and selling tickets to those; thus began what appears to be a successful sideline career.

This has evolved into doing regular series of podcasts with assorted different people including his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach; producer and View Askewniverse performer Scott Mosier (the official name for what is now a network of recordings is SModcast - S for Smith and M for Mosier, since the first of them featured those two); and Jason Mewes, who portrayed Jay in all the View Askewniverse films alongside Smith as Silent Bob – and the name for the Smith/Mewes show is Jay and Silent Bob Get Old.

And at some point they decided to bring that show to Australia.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Henry Rollins

When I heard that Henry Rollins – easily my favourite combination punk/hard rock band frontman, writer, publisher, activist, actor, radio show host, spoken word artist and documentary film maker1 – was coming back to town for a spoken word gig, I made sure I got a ticket straight away.

Now, if you're not familiar with Henry Rollins, here's this thing: he's a scary looking guy – he's spent a lot of time in the gym, has a bunch of tattoos, and is one of the most intense people around. Here's a picture from his website: