The Jamjar

One New Zealand Cinema: Two Australian Movies

Somersault and Look Both Ways are debut feature films for their directors - Cate Shortland (short film maker) and Sara Watt (animator) respectively. Both set in extreme weather conditions - Somersault in the bleak cold change of season near a ski resort; No Way Out set over a scorching hot weekend in Adelaide. Two Australian movies that are similar in many ways but each leaving me feeling completely different afterwards.

Somersault follows 16 year old Heidi as she makes that subtle shift between child and adult. Her life lacks the intimacy she craves as she confuses sex with love with the exquisite bad judgement of youth. She leaves her home after one such incident, and takes the bus to a ski resort arriving at the wrong end of the ski season believing a past encounters promise of contact if she's ever in the area. Of course, he doesn't remember her let alone want to hear from her, so she looks for a place to sleep by letting a tourist take her back to his accommodation. This is her method of operation - sexual encounters for warmth and attention and shelter. She is intensely alone. It's all she seems to know, and we know how self destructive that road will be if she continues down it.

Then she meets Joe, the son of a local farmer. He seems to be as closed off and confused as Heidi appears naive and fragile. She is childlike, and he is confused. She finds a job, makes friends, meets people - tentative, fragile, but a semblance of a "normal" life seems to fill the space she occupies, though her transluscent innocence never leaves her.

"I'm fucking the girl from the servo."

"she's not like a close friend or anything, we're sleeping together."

"you know when you were a kid, did your mum ever used to spray perfume in the air then sort of walk through it? ... yeh, well she's like that. you see, when you leave, you can still feel her on your skin."

Things catch up with Heidi though, her self destructive tendencies resurface when she realises Joe is uncomfortable with her meeting his friends and begins to pull away from her again. This is the catalyst for her to make that subtle move to stop playing at grownups. She reaches out, finally, and finds a little help goes a long way. She left me feeling like it's not going to be easy but I could see the woman in the girl and am slightly hopeful.

Slightly.

I spent the whole movie worried about Heidi. She was bloody lucky not to fall into any real danger, or have any of those situations turn really bad. In fact, a lot of women could probably say that about the same time in our lives. There's a very fine line between being safe and not safe in sexually charged situations. The woman next to me in the theatre expected more trouble for Heidi in her situations, if the frights and gasps she annoyed me with were anything to go by.

Somersault left me feeling low. Although it had a dreamlike quality, like old photographs or memories - it's reality hit home. Sadness and worry are the feelings I've been left with.

Look Both Ways is one of the best films I've ever seen. It is familiar, and beautiful - I loved it right from the beginning with the flashes of illustrative imaginings and I want to go see it again right now. Time spent in this movie is joyful. Insanely ordinary and familiar. We meet, and spend a weekend with Nick, and those whose lives intersect his. Lives change this hot weekend.

"What are you talking about death for? it's not like the good old days when you just ignored the whole concept of it."

The characters were all so familiar. Slivers of people I recognised and situations I felt familiarity with. I noticed the way Nick was uncomfortable and didn't know where to place himself that whole weekend after being told he had cancer on Friday, when his work previous to his diagnosis showed him to be a self-assured and confident photo journalist. The way Nick's news changes his Editors outlook on life and we see that shift of priority in the love on his face as he watches his wife and daughter blow out birthday candles. Just a couple of the many fantastic performances from the cast in this movie.

The word "familiar" echoes again and again. Even in the furnishings - stains on the wall paper, black and white photos from the 50s on the walls, oak dressing tables, low quality 40s style sofas worn on the arm rests, old crownlynn teacups - just like every home somewhere. It doesn't feel staged or prepared - Meryl's room, for instance, looked like she'd lived in it for years - layers of images pinned to the walls, traces of her everywhere she even had colour on the telephone from picking it up with wet paint on her hands from a hundred previous phone calls.

The soft, casual - not hilarious, this is no Murial's Wedding or The Castle - funny parts of ordinary people living ordinary lives and having extraordinary everyday things happen to them. Meryl's friend, upon seeing Nick's photo of the train victim's wife on the front page of the paper noting first, how sad that was then "She's got really nice hair." so typical of friend conversations.

"How was home? Did you meet any nice men?"
"It was my dad's funeral."

It's a movie about beginnings. endings. meetings, finishings, picking ups, dumpings, losings, gainings - all the things that happen to us all the time. Everything never changes. This is life.

"You're giving me the flick, aren't you?... I met you on friday, we slept together on Saturday, you took me to meet your mother on Sunday and then you can't start anything. That's the tightest little relationship I've ever had."

I wanted to scoop the movie up carefully in my own two hands and keep it for myself.

There're things that could be written about the slice of generations in Look Both Ways and the train metaphor and the convergence of people and the continuence of spirit and of life and of community and of connectivity but the movie did it all so brilliantly that I say, go see for yourself.

I came away from this movie full of joy, and hope, and glee and warmth.

Phet Sky

Lessons in Mish 101.01.2 - The trouble with numbers

It's seems such a simple thing - read the time a movie starts on a website, take note of that time, get to the cinema before that time, see a movie. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? and yet, in the World of Michelle, it's something that gets cocked up as many times as it doesn't.

When I first noticed it happening, I used to blame the website I'd taken the information from. Several times I'd had stand-up fights with the ticketing staff at Village (mostly) telling them their website is [obviously] crap and needed a redesign, with real developers and information designers because it couldn't possibly be *me* every time.

Could it?

Age is a wonderful thing when it lets you chill the hell out and realise: everything is, actually, your fault.

Simple plan for Sunday - wake up, get up, go see Look Both Ways at the Rialto at 12:30pm. Easy and accomplished all but for the fact the movie started at 12:10pm and by the time I arrived, it was 18 minutes underway. Upon checking the listings, the next available move was First Descent - a documentary style movie about snowboarding. I'd seen the trailer and it looked pretty spectacular so I bought a coffee and a ticket and settled in to another serendipitous movie afternoon.

First of all, if you haven't been to the Rialto Newmarket in a while, get your skinny white butt along to those comfortable generous seats. I still fidget a bit but at least now there is room to do so.

First Descent follows a group of snowboarders to Valdez, Alaska to snowboard the backcountry where so few mountains have ever been riden before. The team is made up of four generations of snowboarders. Three snowboarding pioneers: Shawn Farmer, Terje Haarkonson and Nick Parata take two 18 year old world class freestyle snowboarding superstars: Shaun White and Hanna Teter, out to some of the biggest snowboarding challenges in Alaska. It also traces the rise and development of snowboarding from a strange culture that saw them banned from ski fields, to a legitimate Olympic event and a lucrative career for those at the top of their game. The movie splices historic footage with profiles of the team and their training then boarding of those amazing mountains in Valdez.

The film footage is incredible. Apart from the breathtaking Alaskan mountainscapes, the filmmakers are obviously extremely experienced in capturing this sport on tape. In some of the historic footage of Shaun White's Winter X Games runs for example, you can see the cameraman captured Shaun's run while snowboarding behind him and I can only imagine these skilled cameramen were employed to do the same and more on the back mountain runs we see in this movie.

The real shining star of First Descent thouh, is the soundtrack. Not just the choice of music, but the use of sound. The sounds of Terje's descent when he gets stuck having taken a bad line down the mountain is amazing. The sound of his breath being forced from his lungs as he lands hard to get himself out of the sticky situation tells so much about the concentration and nerve needed for this sport.

There's another really cool sound part too. In Norway, with the quarter pipe, the music stops as the boarder leaves the lip at the top of the pipe where everything goes silent - the crowd, the music, the sound of board on snow - and you hear one, quiet, classic SLR shutter sound - then the sound crashes back as the snowboarder lands the jump.

Damn good sound.

So now I've enjoyed my serendipitous movie-going afternoon, I'm going to go see a movie now from the Latin American Film Festival before I go home.

[my apologies for the quality of this post.. not that quality has ever been a criteria here at thejamjar.com - but i'm sitting in an internet cafe typing this and my head is everywhere and nowhere these days and I didn't really figure out what i was going to say before I started typing and i'm quite hungry having not eaten yet today so yes, apologies and i will probably edit this later on but i'm gonna post now cos well you know - i can't stand anything as a draft and my next movie starts in 3 minutes so thankyou for your patience]

Thursday Burnday

I've somehow managed to accumulate more burns in one morning than I've had in 10 years. Let me recount the ways...

1. Packing leftovers for lunch this morning, I decided to flavour up a somewhat bland pasta dish with sweet chilli sauce. Mmmmm....delicious....oh wait, what's THAT sensation? That would be my epithilial cells falling prey to the scorched earth policy of my lunch! Aiiieeeee....damn you delicious but evil sweet chilli sauce.
2. Said lunch required reheating in yonder microwave. Apparently microwave energy converts water to steam....go figure. Fingers are over rated anyway I suppose. Lesson to be learned here - stop, drop and roll is useless for steam burns to metacarpel phalanges. Useless but amusing to bystanders.
3. Friction burn: do I need to go further? OK. As I heroically dismounted from my scooter my pants had a difference of opinion with my thigh. Skin was singed and hair lost. My only saving grace was that Hereford St carpark is deserted at 0658.

I'm being punished for something. I'm not sure what yet but I'm pretty sure it was worth it if the punishment is anything to go by!

Sleep is the new Black

Maybe I have insomnia:

It's been a while since I had nights where I couldn't sleep, but now after a week of seeing the wrong side of 3:40am, I think I can self diagnose and say i'm going through one of those sleep phases lumped under the heading of "insomnia".

The last few days haven't been much of a probem because I've been able to sleep late due to the extra Easter days off work, but now i'm staring down the barrel of a new albeit shortened work week and my insides groan at the prospect of dealing with it without enough shuteye. Why can't I sleep? It better not be caffeine, cos I'm not giving that up!

Maybe it's because I'm homeless:

I moved out of my flat and into temporary digs a (few weeks/six weeks/eight weeks/February) while ago and so far have done next to nothing to change my temporary status. It's not that I'm uncomfortable where I am staying, and there's no doubt I'm imposing, but it's not my home. I am homeless. I have no home. I have no place for my stuff and my things and my heart and my mind. I have no where to look forward to at the end of my day although I do look forward to seeing David everyday which might have something to do with the whole inertia with the process of sourcing a new abode.

Now, I could easily remedy that situation - but I am not. And there are obvious reasons for that, and some not-so-obvious reasons. They chug their way through my thoughts as I punch my pillow into the perfect rest for my unsleeping head.

Maybe it's because I'm restless:

It seems like six months since I went to Melbourne, but it was only the other week. I flew home with candied ideas of moving there and starting fresh, with lots of work and a new coat. While family events are conspiring against that idea, it is still very much on the cards when considering my options for both working and living. At the very least my options - as far as work is concerned - have branched out to include the idea of moving outside of Auckland. This gives me more opportunities, and more scope, and more things to think about as I turn from my right side to my left and slide from the overly warm sheets to the cooler side of the bed.

Maybe it's because I'm afraid of everything:

Ever since Christmas, I've been this indecisive scardicat - even more so than usual. I am sure that Michael did something to my "I kinda know what i'm doing" chakra that night in the cafe. I went through two weeks where I didn't sleep after that - yes, let's blame him, shall we? I remember him fiddling with my invisible wings doing god-knows-what back there as I lie on my stomach and will sleep to claim me as I force myself to not look at the clock one last time.

Maybe it's because I'm lonely:

That's a weird thing to consider seeing as how many people are in my life at any given moment, but you know what I mean. I am longing for someone I love, to have time to love me back. I know he's out there somewhere cos I've seen the tracks. I have his scent. I know who I'm looking for. I get annoyed with myself for dabbling round with those poor sods I dabble around with who have no idea that they're not who I'm looking for. I argue with myself, debating whether I'm a bitch or have intimacy issues and wonder if I'm too fussy or not fussy enough or just plain out of luck and sigh and curl up and hug my pillow and open my eyes to blink at the clock that tells me I'm still not alseep.

Maybe it's because I'm old:

Insomnia's supposed to be a symptom of menopause. What a horrifying thought - it's bad enough being in my forties but early menopause would be just cruel. God, I'm going to die alone with Anna Pray's words "if [after menopause] you don't use it, you'll lose it" ringing in my ears. To have to go through a lifetime of surpressed shit until I'm 50 and then lose what little pretty I have left to dry skin, wrinkles, insufficient lubrication and the ever-present threat of breaking a hip even if given half a chance of sexual intercourse'd be typical round about now, wouldn't it. I throw all but one pillow from my bed and kick off the duvet. Please God, if you can't grant me sleep at least let me die now because I can't face another day if that's all my future holds for me.

Maybe it's because some things happen for no damn reason:

I don't believe in fate. And I don't believe it when people say "all things for a reason" - If you think about the words in that saying they are utterly pointless. And the meaning behind the words isn't far behind. You know what? sometimes, shit just happens. It may have nothing to do with you, but it can land right on you just the same. You can spend many hours searching for a silver lining in any given rain cloud but sometimes, it's just murky crap in there and life is pain, Princess. You are just a talentless hack afterall and by Any-Minute-Now, everyone's gonna know that too. You're always going to be a fat lump as well - don't forget that. And no one is ever going to find time to love you because you're just fucking unloveable. No wonder parts of your family are a mess, you're just a lazy parent and it's a wonder things aren't worse. God knows you've been crap in any relationship you've ever been part of. You really hate saying "you" in sentences too because it distances yourself from your pathetic nature and somehow makes it almost seem not your fault you're a fucked-up, stupid, pointless, worthless woman.

I must've dozed off because I've woken up cold. I pull at the duvet and it comes up crooked and I snuggle down under it and look at the clock. An hour til my alarm goes off to tell me it's time to get up. I could get up now, I'm perfectly awake and there is that terrible habit I have of shutting the alarm off in my sleep. I could get up and go for a walk. Get back, even have time to eat breakfast for a change. Catch the early bus and actually get to work at a civilised hour. But instead I curl up and words and ideas tumble across the backs of my eyes like a relentless tide until I do fall asleep for one last nap before startling awake and realising I'm late for work again, and I've slept through my alarm again, and my jaw is sore from clenching it as usual and I hope this phase doesn't last too long.

Podlike Communications

Stacey: I don't understand the appeal of Sponge Bob
Jo: It's his square pants.

Melbourne Grand Prix Watchers

Parlez-vaus francias?

Snug, I see that you have a stack of lever-arch files under you desk.
          Yes, yes I do.
You'll have to move those into a cupboard.
          Why? I use those folders like, once a month. I like them there.
Well you'll have to move them. They're an OSH hazard.
          An OSH hazard you say?
Yes, you could trip over them if there was a fire.
          I'd trip over the folders that are UNDER my desk?
Yes.
          No.
No what?
          No I would not trip over the folders that are so far under my desk I can just touch them if I stretch out.
Well they're also a health hazard 'cos you can't move your legs freely under your desk.
          ......?
Don't look at me like that!
          I like my folders there. I'm not going to walk half way around the office just to get my stuff.
The health nurse will insist.
          I like it when they do that.
Do what?
          Insist. I always say no. Then they say I've been a naughty boy. And then....well, you get the idea.
What? Just move them.
          I'll move them to the eastern battlement....will that make you happy?
Sure. Ummm....you'll move them where?
          To the eastern battlement. You see, at the moment, the offending folders make up the southern wall of my castle. They're not structural or anything but they do a great job at slowing the French down whilst I slaughter them like dogs with my archers.
What?
          I know! They keep trying to storm the keep from the south. If they only glanced at the heavily wooded area off to the east they'd realise it would supply a measure of cover from my archers as they approach the walls. It's actually quite a blind spot for me...that's why I'd like to reinforce it with those folders.
Are we still talking about those folders?
          Hello? Eastern battlement....Frenchmen getting slaughtered like dogs....we were JUST talking about them.
So....you're going to move them then?
          Yes, yes I will.
OK.
          *smiles*
Soooo....do you mean you have a fort under your desk?
          I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of said fort. Parlez-vaus francias?
You're a bit wierd aren't you?
          You look a bit French......who do you work for!?
*backs away slowly*

Not the Herald (this time)

From the article Pervert snapper caught on film

The conviction follows another involving covert photography using a cellphone last year.

Christopher Douglas Kurth was convicted for offensive behaviour after he was found taking pictures with his cellphone through a hole in a wall of a woman in a Hamilton toilet.

*reads last sentence again* .... he was found taking pictures with his cellphone through a hole in a wall of a woman

what?

*sprinkles with commas or something*