Ben Gook
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
As a writer for the Village Voice once maintained, Slavoj ‚âàŒ©i‚âàÔøΩek is a modern day philosophy rock star. In The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, the bearish Slovak theorist runs riot in 150-minutes of archival cinema footage. He slams Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky, Chaplin and the Marx Brothers all against each other in quick-fire succession. Instead of telling us why particular films’Blue Velvet, Solaris, The Birds’are great cinematic works, ‚âàŒ©i‚âàÔøΩek’s aim is to tell us why cinema matters.
As a philosopher in the psychoanalytic tradition, ‚âàŒ©i‚âàÔøΩek understands the cinema as a place where …
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
Invisible Waves tells the story of soporific gangster and chef, Kyoji (Tadanobu Asano). After Kyoji unintentionally kills his lover, who also happens to be sleeping with his boss, he moves to Phuket. He is trailed there by Lizard (Ken Mitsuishi), a Hawaiian-shirted caricature of a 1940s Hollywood clich””’?, who menacingly disrupts Kyoji’s daily movements. Kyoji is never allowed to settle into his new life, and soon realises that his boss is responsible for orchestrating a sinister scheme. Kyoji therefore plots his revenge.
An oblique and absurd gangster film, the violence of …
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
Stanley Kwan’s Everlasting Regret traces the story of two female friends, Qiyao (Sammi Cheng) and Lili (Yan Su), as their lives entwine and fall apart in Shanghai. Set against the backdrop of the turbulent arrival and implementation of Mao’s Communism, the private lives of these two young girls are continually unsettled.
Qiyao begins as a retiring but playful girl who is groomed to become Miss Shanghai. When her corrupt husband’s activities find him out of favour with the burgeoning Communist party, he disappears and Qiyao is left to fend for herself. …
The Pundit 2006 Reviews »
Anyone familiar with the supersized DVD stores that dot our cities will also be familiar with their dedicated ‘music’ sections. Row upon row of discs stuffed with ‘exclusive interviews!’ and ‘bonus extra special live footage!’. Each music documentary title promises fans a chance to hear and see their beloved band, potentially showing another side to that heard on audio recordings. The titles run the gamut from straight concert footage (a documentary of a sort, albeit dull) to critical and thorough engagements with an artist’s history, context and philosophies.
The Backbeat section …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
Matt Elsbury doesn’t like advertising. Neither do I. Neither do you, probably. This gives the Melbourne comic a ready audience for his multimedia attack on the words and imagery which intrude on us each day.
Playing in the cinema room at Glitch, Elsbury utilises the technology at his disposal and peppers his show with video excerpts and skits. The best and most creative of these videos introduces the show. In it, we see an animated Elsbury battling against one of the advertising world’s most recognisable icons: a great visual way to …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
The premise of Justin Hamilton’s show lingers behind each sentence he utters. The world is in a bad way, he reckons, and this can be seen in any number of places – tedious jobs, horrible relationships and terrible politicians. Why his show is called Smash!, though, is never quite made clear – does he want to smash the state, smash the world or smash his boss? Whatever: the nebulous title is a foil for Hamilton to talk about the ills he sees around him. As a comic, Hamilton sees humour …
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