The Jamjar

Marios, Brunswick Street, Melbourne

Eating out on a Monday isn't as easy as it looks. It's the night a lot of cafes and restaurants decide to flag after a busy weekend working. Those establishments that are open, are often quite full and don't always easily have room for two hungry girls looking for a cosy meal.

We have had a number of asian-style meals lately (Thai, Japanese, Curry) and were looking for something more comforting and warm with good vegetarian options. This lead us to window shop all along Brunswick Street, and then across and down the other side until we arrived at Marios.

It was pretty busy and looked quite full, but the nice man behind the counter waved us down to a table for two near the back. The cafe was bustling with chatter, but not in an overwhelming way and it was easy to talk. The place was cosy with white linen tablecloths and a peppergrinder on each table. The menu sounded so good it was hard to decide what to eat. I really ought to have paid more attention to what I ordered so I could relate it accurately here because apart from the garlic bread, I can't remember the names nor the descriptions of our food. Mine was a lovely round white plate with little discs of pasta, pea mash, almonds, cheese and green herbs that made both my mouth and my soul very happy. Fox enjoyed her spaghetti very much too (I paid even less attention to her meal, so intent on consuming mine). The garlic bread was so buttery and garlic'y, and everything went wonderfully with the sparkling white wine we ordered. See? I don't even recall the name of the wine, but the meal was just what we were looking for and the portions were exactly right - I dislike places that serve portions that are too large and wasteful. I finished off with a wonderful berry bread and butter pudding I did not need, and an espresso.

The service at Marios was absolutely spot-on. Our waiter (I didn't even ask his name *hopeless*) gave us the exact right amount of time to make our decisions, the food was prompt and correct, and he interacted with us in a charming and happy way - he seemed to enjoy his job and we enjoyed him. He looked after us with correctly-measured attentiveness from when we sat down, until we paid our bill and wished us a nice evening.

Fox had asked me on Sunday, after I had a coffee I said I didn't like, where I thought the best coffee in Melbourne was. I had this pool of places that fell into the area of coffee I liked, with Cafe Five probably floating to the top on the grounds (haha, grounds) that I did not need to add sugar to their coffee. Pellegrino's is probably the "best" coffee, but it's too strong for my delicate constitution (I'm like a little bird). I can now answer her question question easily: Marios on Brunswick Street served me the best espresso I have had in Melbourne - hands down.

Mario and the Marios - Miettas.com

No advertising material, please.

I know I don't spend a heck of a lot of time on Facebook these days, but when did advertising/sponsered content start being posted to the News Feed?

First Food/Last Food

Thursday Things

I had an interesting day. Had a meeting and was on my best behaviour, had lunch with Fox, witnessed two confrontational incidents (one on the tram, one domestic outside the supermachet: even the druggie beggar girl outside Safeway has a boyfriend: I am truly alone forev0r), bought some makeup, purchased a new cardigan, bought baked beans and danish butter - but the real high-points are below:

• buying two new books from Hill of Content
• drinking coffee at Pellegrini's
• listening to the barista at Pellegrini's say "What do you two loosers want?" when taking an order from a customer (I love grumpy people)
• telling the guy at Paperback Books that I had finally made a decision about which book to buy and he saying he knew something must've happened cos there was a change in the wind (I'd been in his store quite a long time)
• reading one of my three new books at Cafe Five while drinking hot chocolate
• drinking fruit/vegetable juice with a celery kicker at DeGraves with Eroica
• surprised to be offered a seat by a young man on the crowded tram (I said "why?" when he offered me his seat, he said "Because I'm nice" and I said "oh, what I meant to say was 'thank you'" does this mean I'm officially elderly? Fox reckons it's cos I'm a bewildered kiwi)
• going to Peko Peko for dinner
• drinking plum wine and scoffing edamame while waiting for Fox
• ordering two more plum wines (more for me, one for the Fox when she arrived) and a bottle of sake (mostly for me but for Fox too)
• drinking plum wine with a squeeze of lemon vowing never to drink it any other way
• giving Fox the name of the sake which I had gleaned from the waitress (the job Fox had tasked me with a few days earlier)
• ordering salmon sashimi, sweet potato gyoza and eggplant ohmygodio (that's not actually Japanese)
• looking up to find Willo staring in at us from outside
• welcoming Willo to dinner, and encouraging him to order beer, share the sake, try the lemony plum wine and eat the eggplant ohmygodio
• ordering one last plum wine and making Fox and Willo hang about while I finished it
• knocking over and smashing an empty beer bottle from another table while putting my coat on (won't technically make you happy but thought I'd mention it cos it made a great noise it makes as it smashes to smitherines)
• mushy DVD hunting
• showered, pyjama'd and softly sozzled in bed with my new books, ibook, and bulleted lists

Happy Thursday. Goodnight Melbourne.

Furry Espionage

David: so, listen.. in Iran or Iraq they arrested a bunch of spies and it turns out they're squirrels
Michelle: what, wait, what did you say? Squirrels?
David: Yeh, Squirrels.
Michelle: The furry animal: squirrels?
David: yeh! and, but wait, they were British squirrels which are the most cunning of all squirrels.
Michelle: I don't think there are any squirrels native to Iran or Iraq anyway, so those spy squirrels'd be pretty conspicuous. Maybe they should have used snakes, they might've blended in more.
David: Hehe, yeh.
Michelle: You know, I don't believe that story about spy squirrels.
David: Geeze Mum, they were just squirrels.

Not convinced about spy squirrels? How about Acoustic Kitties?

Gnocchi Tuesday

Watch this handy-dandy video follow his recipe and you'll be eating delicious gnocchi for dinner too! It was easy, and even though we halved the recipe, there was enough left over to freeze for another meal.

That's alottagnocchi.

Kyle and Rocket: Observers

Banff, St Kilda

Link.. Doh!

Whoo hoo!! (Homer looks like he wants to play quoits)

Live Blogging from the Gibsonia Kitchen

Fox is making dinner.. she's been up to the supermarket and now she's back home cutting asparagus into 4 cm long bits. She's cooking risotto for dinner and I'm watching - that, my friends, is what we call in the trade "team work".

The blinds are closed, the lights are on and there is music playing - it's the evening after a long day where Fox worked really hard and I did hardly anything - it's just the way things are, nature's way, the way of the wild, the stuff of the universe etc.

I went for a walk earlier. It's a grey, cold, wet day in Melbourne and it's wonderful. You know, if you dress right you can be happy doing most things (words to live by) rug up properly and go out into Winter and it's just glorious. Dress in a bikini and go to paint-balling and it's gonna be a nightmare. See? the correct outfit is 80% of the battle.

It was a great walk in the rain and wind, powering up Melbourne's only hill and being passed by cyclists in mining helmets (that's what the lights on their heads remind me of). By the time I got home I was all wet on the outside and dry on the inside - perfect.

So now Fox is undressing an onion. It's one of those nice brown onions. She's really bad at onions and says she will probably be inconsolable shortly. I am consulting Fox as to how many layers to peel from the onion before she begins dissecting it. Before I became completely zen with onion dicing, I used to wear a my father's old diver's mask to avoid the copious tears that would stream down my face so instead of having swollen red eyes at dinner, I would have the large oval suction crease from the mask - swings and round-abouts.

****News Flash: we have marshmallow biscuits for dessert!!*****

Okay, Fox is sniffling, and tearing up, the onion is being diced finely - this is gonna be a goooood risotto!

She's now putting the asparagus aside because, she says, "it needs to think about what it's done. " The onion has turned her into some kind of emo cook and she's considering taking her MySpace photo as she's misty as all get out.

So she's frying stuff - she told me but I was "live blogging" (that's a SXSW thing, apparently) and missed a few steps. There's magic in our kitchen as Fox makes the onion turn transparent.

Sizzle, sizzle, the smells of dinner are filling the room. [scratch/sniff here to experience]

It's time to strain the asparagus - she really is quite the housewife - if she poured me a wine about now I'd totally tell her she was as close to The Perfect Roommate™ as any one's ever been but.. nope.. Jedi Mind tricks aren't working, she's not weak minded.

Now she has to add a cup of aborio rice to the buttery, transparent onion and garlic. She's stirring the mixture thoroughly for about a minute. Oh my goodness, the garlic's getting warm and wafting this way. Now she has to make everything drunk - she's slopping white wine and vegetable stock into the pan and the softly sizzling rice is getting really happy.

And now is the time that Fox wins The Perfect Roommate™ award 2007 because she's pouring me wine!

I am quietly blogging and not interacting with Fox and her important work - that's not because I'm sensitive or aware of the concentration needed, but because she told me not to distract her from her important tasks.

Fox: do you know why arborio rice gets sticky and ordinary rice doesn't?
Michelle: no, I don't know why arborio rice gets sticky and ordinary rice doesn't.
Fox: *stir* *stir*
Michelle: do you?
Fox: no, no I don't.
Michelle: *wikipedias* "Arborio rice is an Italian medium-grain rice. It is named after the town of Arborio, Italy (in the Po Valley) where it is grown. Cooked, the rounded grains are firm and creamy due to the high starch content of this rice variety. They are often used in the dish Risotto."

The risotto is starting to get creamy like rice pudding with onion in it. It's only been introduced to about a cup of the liquid but things are going swimmingly. It's the mushrooms turn to get it's groove on as they're sauteed in a dab of butter in preparation of being introduced to the risotto.

We're using Danish butter which, despite it's horrific food miles, is simply the most delicious butter on the Planet. We don't have a Hummer to drive to Passionfoods to buy our Danish butter so we minimise our* carbon footprint when purchasing it by walking to Safeways.

Fox loves when she cuts open a packet only to discover the other end has an "easy open" flap - cheddar, extra tasty cheese has now been slit open with an Ikea knife instead of being gently eased into the world via "easy open" flap - ah well, the end justifies the means sometimes.

Note: would get up and help by setting the table but she's standing right in front of the cutlery drawer and i don't want to break her cooking feng shui by making her move.

Now she's turning the heat down on the rice, adding the asparagus and mushrooms, and gently folding it all together.

ALERT: rice is still hard.

SOLUTION: more stock, cook a bit longer.

We're** all about solutions, people!

Quiet cooking sounds - soft sizzles, stirrings and the romantic hum of the extractor fan over the stove makes for a cosy flat. Fox is setting the table - cutlery and napkins - so I don't even have to do that anymore. This is the life!

Dinner smells amazingly good. She's putting a small loaf of garlic bread into the oven - this is gonna be really good comforting hearty food for such a lovely winter's day.

* my footprint - Fox'd never be so selfish and fussy as to not buy locally grown produce.
** Fox, cos Lord knows I'm not helping by asking so many questions.

(I think this is so much better than blogging about the Melbourne Animation Festival, although I will blog about that, in all my typical overwordage)

[UPDATE] That was one damn fine risotto! I ate about four times as much as I needed but it was so tasty I couldn't stop! What a very nice evening. Thanks Fox!

Red Violin, Bourke Street, Melbourne.

Melbourne Animation Festival 07

Right, so - I had great plans, for a nicely formatted blurb about each of the movies I saw at the animation festival here in Melbourne. It was amazing, by the way, and I highly recommend finding the time to go see any/some/all of the movies on offer in 2008.

But as all great plans of mish and men, mine got whittled down to this - to me writing this goofy non-intro then hiding the bulk of my unformatted brain-dump (unsent emails) by publishing this in August and dating it July but if I don't post this now it will be time for the next animation festival and I will truly suck.

Day One:

Once Upon a Time (France) - it mixed an old black and white Henry Fonda western with digital characters with cut-out flat real life film and even water - it had the black and white movie woman falling for the digitised hero who zoomed around the movie in cars and trains and submarines - it was just fabulous. ***Fox's Pick***

The Foxhole Manifesto (USA) - seemed to be based on a stand-up comic's monologue on God and how he saw God as he grewup from a child. It was okay but didn't really grab me though it got a few laughs from the audience.

Blindman's Bluff - So after that black and white film came a black film with colours that were drawn aroundthe outside of each character, so the landscape in Blindman's Bluff was defined by the negative space that the characters created - the black also gave the impression of night - the film was about a blind man and showed me how he saw the world. I thought that was really beautifully drawn too.

Dreams and Desires: Family Ties had the most amazing drawings - done in what seemed like pastels on paper - and the amazing "camera" work - really good stuff - fun and funny and very British - about a woman videoing or rather, the video from the wedding.

The Man Who Waited (Canada) - I didn't understand it - it was done in a woodblook style which was interesting but the story lost me or, and I lost interest in knowing what it was all about anyway.

Jeu (Switzerland) - an incredibly paced painted animation that, while not pen and ink, reminded me very much of Escher in the way the images folded in on each other and created optical illusions.

Day Two of the MIAF - digital animation (not including Motion Capture)

Tonight it was all about boys, and textures a marked constrast from the concentration on line and story from the night before. Not that the digital efforts tonight lacked plot, but it seemed secondary in many of the works. As with the night before, the first film was a show stopper. 458nm, from Germany was stunning. Macro shots of mechanical snails was amazing. Their fleshy bodies translucent to the mechanics of their insides working - the antennae absolute jewels of delicacy with wonderful subtle robotic sounds - simply stunning and Fox's favourite for the evening. Cellusions, from France, followed. Complicated cubed flora and fauna in a deep 3D space all moving, flowing and a stark contrast to the complicated, textured, moist world of 458nm. Another French entry followed: Faces had more than a hint of The Matrix and a dash of Sith about it. A vertical lift takes us up a shaft of capsules containing a head progressively damaged and infected - it was pretty gruesome as the film progressed and I found it funny though less desensitised people than I had trouble with the gore at times. The next film saw a murder victim's chalk outline animate and walk in the world. This film from Holland had beautiful late night street sceens, but it was just too long and not terribly interesting. Moloch from Poland followed and crystalised a thought that had been forming since the evening began: these digital entries were very male. All so far concentrating on the technical aspects that digital rendering does so well: textures and camera angles. This film had textures so detailed, the oxidation of metal and paint looked almost fleshlike at one stage. The moisture of the air that rusted the metal hanging like mist and dripping from pipes, it really did show those texture maps to perfection. After what seemed like an entire short film of panning rusting metal in a disused factory - the soldiers with guns arrived and I nodded to myself and said "Boys." In an lineup that was set and determined to contrast one film with the next, we traded the peeling paint for pristine computer generated plastic clay. Monster Samurai from the USA is set in old Japan with a cursed samurai swordsman as an ogre who can't kill any one anymore, battling against a demon army using the "dull edge wallop" instead of the blade. Typical japanese storyline, humour and animation - which is not to say it's quality isn't extremely high, just that it's nothing new. NannyBot from Slovenia is another digital film set against the whiteness of it's environment. How anyone can manage to portrait compassion on a tin robot's features is beyond me, but this robot was so human, if flawed in it's solution processes. I was so happy to see a New Zealand entry in the program tonight. It's a shame, though, that Ray Ray didn't bother including any credits. It's also a shame that this appeared to be a showreel demonstrating all the technical appitude of it's creator. It seemed to be either a portfolio piece (which might explain why there were no credits) or a video to accompany Fat Freddys Drop. [ http://www.perceptual-engineering.com/ ]Sigg Jones, another French entry, with a very Japanese feel. I heard one audience member comment on this being a Nike advertisement. It is an amazing, and beautifully choreographed fight scene, with splashes of humour, and great camera-work. Bulgaria's The Crown was absolutely perfect, though. A short, simple, digital-claymationlike piece with a simple story simply told and easy understood. clean, clear, funny, to the point: just fabulous and judging by the laughter and robust round of applause, I wasn't the only person who was delighted by this snippet. My favourite of the evening though, was from Japan. Tough Guy! is a film in three acts, following the adventures of a martial arts praying mantis. What I loved about this movie was the grainy film quality of the digital production. After all the perfect, pristine, texture enriched surfaces, the texture of this piece was all on the film and lens, with the later moving in and out of focus to the point I forgot it was even a digital animation. The story was solid too - three vignettes with a beginning, middle and end - I really do think that often the story in digital animation gets dropped down the priority list in favour of technical gymnastics, but not in this case, although I imagine the technicalities of this piece were emence. Une Charongne is an achingly beautiful piece from France. It has foregone the obvious texture mapping and manages to feel like traditional paperbased animation with it's transluscent trees and felt-tipped pen hair flowing around our main character. But again, with the silk fabric clinging to breasts and buttocks of our heroine, I felt this film had a very male quality about it even though it was so romantic, soft with a feminine character. The only film that I felt left that masculine tone behind was the final film of the evening - Doll Face from the States. A simple 3D space - a room with a trunk and an old television. Inside the trunk a series of robotic gears and insectlike protrusions emerge with the face of a flesh female. She watches the television and mimics it, striving more and more to be what she sees on the screen, to ultimately fail. This seemed to be the only film that dealt with it's character dealing with an emotional concept, rather than acting out a scene or interacting with other objects, which is why I believe it felt feminine to me. Beautifully done, no matter what the gender of the animator/animating team.

The third evening at Melbournes International Animation Festival was a challenging one for me. Overall, I found the works presented to beextrordinarily creative in both content and form - to the point I was challenged and uncomfortable at times. The fact of the matter is: I'm a square, and so some of these movies made me sit defensively with my arms and legs crossed because they weren't typical (if you can say any animated short film is typical) of the work I'd seen to this point. I have a feeling these films were about endings..

The first film was a beautiful and original look at a bus ride from an empty drink bottle's perspective as it rolled back and forth on the floor ofthe bus. the bottle's liquid had been used, and the bottle was at it's end of usefulness. I particularly liked the linework, and the way the scenes "slid" open and closed as the plastic bottle rolled. A really beautiful and simple film. It was followed by one of the first movies of this session to challenge my conception of a "typical" animation. El Paguey, from Spain, had a man being swept down a swollen river, while another man attempted a rescue. I don't know how the first man got into the river, I don't know why the second man was sitting beside the river at the time, and I don't know if the rescue attempt was successful. It was a sliver of time out of context. It was strange - and it looked odd. And I crossed my arms as I looked at it, concentrating really hard in case I'd missed something but the only thing I missed was the thing that wasn't there: an ending. The next film was a comptuer generated piece with a couple who had a passion for the tango but after the male dancer suffered an accident, their dancing career ended. Unfortunately, the sound was out of synch and the magic was a bit mislaid because of that. Jar was my second problem film of the evening. I notice on our shared program's "tasting notes" that Fox has written 'mon favorit' - I can't agree, and I think that's mostly because it reminded me a little of Monty Python's animation in the way surreal shapes grew out of and into each other - there seemed no beginning and no ending, these images morphing and growing one into the other that would continue as long as the animator managed it. It seemed to be black fiber-tipped pen on paper and felt very much like it was made as a student's answer to a animation-school brief. Three australian animators brought us Fraught - a series of interviews with people describing embarrassing instances in their lives with each of the animators own style. The stories were gently funny and intensely ordinary, we all have stories like those told. The artwork was colourful and simple, and the film worked really well. It was a really nice collaboration that hung together well considering the different artists. When we sat down in the theatre before the screenings began, a rather attractive (apart from the dreadlock tail that hung from the back of his skull, but we'll ignore that for the time being) man in a dapper suit fidgeted in and around the 5th seat from the aisle of our row. He seemed to have friends in the two rows behind and the two rows in front of his and it was a rather large group. It became evident when Little Dog Turpie screened, that this gentleman was the animator, Ben Mars. His animation was black and white with the surface qualities of a woodcut, with the animated qualities of an indonesian shadow puppet theatre.
The story seemed to be fable-like, humourous, and really well done with a cute and just happy ending. I really enjoyed his movie, and his "posse" help bolster the ample applause for the film. It was followed by a cute little piece called Come Rain or Shine. Again using interviews as the basis (a la Creature Comforts) the accented interviews backed the animation concerning the British weather. I can't remember any positive comments about

the weather in this movie, and most of the voices wanted the changable/cold/bad weather in the UK to end. Sand seemed to be the media of choice for Do You Mind? shapes moved and morfed into each other as the story unfolded. I like the play of positive and negative spaces, especially when they interchange and blend to create new images. There was a feeling of loss in this film, of something that had ended or had been lost. Not the End was another of this evening's films that I found strange. It examined all the aspects of a couple's relationship, including their plants on the balcony. while each of the scenarios within the film came to an end, it wasn't the end as further investigation into the details carried the film on and on.

Lost in the Snow from Latvia was beautiful and strange. Ice-hole fisherman oblivious to the breaking pack ice could easily have been a metaphor for our attitude to resources and the consequences of our blatent arogance towards our planet. But I might be reading too much into it and it may have simply been the ending of Winter, and the Spring thaw. Crossing the Stream from the USA was beautiful and unusual. Traditionally rendered on paper mixing media to achieve a flickering of jewel colours and stuttering lines, a man leads his horses across a stream, breaking the surface of thewater and moving slowly under the stobing media of line and colour the animator's artwork created. This movie is so simple and passive in it's story, and so complex and creative in it's execution. Recto Verso gave me a brief respite and showed a more typical animation. Black and white, good versus evil, cause and effect - I loved the way the animators used the space the frame of the film occupied. It was cute, and funny, and sharp in its look of the eternal battle and the blurry lines between good and evil even giving the film was black or white. The last movie of the evening was just.plain.weird. Taste of Life from Estonia was strange looking and I couldn't figure it out. It seemed to be about a masseuse who ate his clients, and a shoe salesman who bewitched a pair of shoes, and a fickle girl who didn't like the smell of food or wearing shoes. I don't know what was going on here but it went on and on and on and I thought it would never end.

Day four had two international sessions and a lesson to be learned: being tired and trying to appreciate international animated submissions at a festival is impossible. I was less tolerant and found myself being harsher and using that dreaded word "boring" - it was a bit of a marathon and while I didn't actually fall asleep, I came mighty close more than a few times.

Program #3 started with a digital chase movid from France called Wanted. It was beautiful and well paced, funny and slapstick. A fabulous little short. Both Fox and I tagged the next movie as our favourite for the session. T.O.M. from the Uk was an offkilter story told by a young boy that captured our attention, and surprised us with it's ending. Very short, but extremely good. Origin from Taiwan was another sandanimation which I have decided I don't like by the choice of medium - I really don't enjoy sand animation - it unerves me even though I can appreciate it is as complex and as hard to do as it gets. I was pleased for some good old fashioned British clay mation with The Adventures of John and John - quirky and full of personality, with the best production name of the show "Will Bishop Threenames". Another French film, Rhapsody for Two was another film that my lack of sleep dominated my opinion of - it didn't interest me and I didn't like it much. The next film, another from Taiwan called Snail Supply I deemed boring - see? a person needs some powers of concentration and alertness when viewing these sessions. I perked awake to see the Australian submission, Fluid. I loved it - the mixture of colour and stencil-like art, it was very Macromedia Flash and I have a real soft spot for the warm clean vector lines this movie utilised. I suppose Dinner in Lisbon was good, but again my state meant I only tolerated this short. Another sand animation called No Days from Iran didn't rate with me for reasons of medium mentioned previously. Belgium woke me up with Administrators and it's scratch splattered primary coloured story of beaurocracy and made me laugh which I was most grateful for and needed for the next boring installment.While Caracus had the most beautiful artwork - reminiscent of illustrations for a childrens book - the story was boooorrring.. too long, without point, and another movie I felt my eyelids losing their battle to stay open. Mr Schwartz, Mr Hazen and Mr Horlocker finished the session strongly with a funny and lively short about noise control and finished the first half of our moviewatching night with a laugh. Great artwork too : very painterly.

Session 4/Program#4 followed then minutes later. It started with a Japanese film that, at first, I thought was a brilliant idea - animation on cards held in front of scenes but rapidly became mesmerising and boring and could have been fabulous if the animations were less abstract and doodly - I had an idea that if the backround of the scene (real life) was drawn on the cards that sould have been supurb but that's not what they did and so I didn't like it. Grumpy much, Michelle? and on we go to France again, and a claymation/model short about a man in a subway breaking up with his girl. The modeling was nice but the trend of having credits last almost as long as the movie itself started with this film. I didn't like The Hole in my Bank from France! Topless and Bottomess , another entry from France was cute and funny. Where's the Gag from Taiwan was one of a few movies in the festival making comment on how frustrating it is to be an animator. While it had some funny comments, and the sentiments obviously resounded with some members of the audience, I really don't want to see how annoying it is to be an animatore - look dude, every job is annoying so get over it and put some more effort into the creative process and stop whinging. The very beautiful and magical The Eye of the Cyclone from France (does *everyone* in France animate?) washed the screen with gorgeous colours, wonderful linework, an intriguing yet simple storyline and perspective. Simply beautiful. And I needed that to have to sit through Purple Grey from the UK - surly the most blatent argument for the animator utilising a creative PROCESS when determining a direction for a film - this animator decided to make a boring movie about being bored and then did it badly. I hated this movied. HATED it. A young man from the UK saved us all from the torment of Purple Grey with his beautifully drawn Puppet. I loved seeing the pencil marks from the original drawings underpinning the inkwork. An excellent animation. Another good idea but made boring in Penelope's Day from Hungary. My favourite for this session came from Italy in the wonderful woodblock/crosshatched style I love so much, The Memories of Dogs. The images seem to be carved from the sceen's surface, the lines are almost alive wanting to tell their story - it's a bleak look too, and suits the tone of this sad tale. I also love the way the story unfolds and the first frames link the last in a circle after I have pieced the story together. Wonderful work. Portugal pays homage to a celebrated graphic designer - while this black and white piece seemed well drawn with a tone from a bygone era, it was lost on me having never seen the graphic designer's work. Cry from the Past from Australia looked so familiar to me until I wondered if the animator, Susan Stamp, had provided the artwork for one of my favourite movies "Look Both Ways" - I can't find (I hate searching) confirmation of this and maybe it's a wrong memory. The evening finished up with a refreshing, bright, and wonderful Canadian autobiography called Here and There. This was Fox's pick for the session and very nearly was mine too.

The last night of the International Program, they brought out the big guns.A very strong selection and a good night's sleep meant I was prepared to finish this wonderful week on a high note. French film Story Ville was styled on the first days of animation. The tribute to Mickey Mouse with the gloved hands of our hero, and the scratchy vinyl soundtrack of New Orleans jazz. Gorgeous artwork, beautiful modeling, confusing ending but short enough that it didn't really matter. Moments of I don't Know had a slight Tom Yorkness bout it. The UK film's penciled lines and simple conversation narrartion illustrated perfectly the of the end of this particular relationship. While I didn't like Songs from the Haven of Despair, I had to appreciate the artwork and linework - there were some really nice animated dance sequences although I kind of feel that drawing over filmed work is almost cheating, I will leave that idea alone. I didn't like Soldier from Croatia much but it was rich in claymation work. Sarah's Tale from Russia was exquisite. Smudey charcoal on a stark white snowy landscape, with a beautiful narration and wonderful animation - so detailed for such smudgey representation. Perfectly lovely and Fox's pick for this, our final session. New Zealand's second entry to the International sessions, I can barely remember the details of Rip, and I'm not sure what that's all about except I must've been thinking about something else and not concentrating. I didn't enjoy Without An Of though I appreciated the artwork and techniques. Same goes for Bows and Arrows from the UK - this session had such high quality animation though I didn't always "like" what I was seeing. Carnivore Reflux made me laugh though - animated jointed characters accompanied a rhymed story about gluttony with huge amounts of vomiting - what's not to like! Postman from Holland was a great blend of drawn and digital lines - short and very good, clean, and interesting. Endangered Species was the final (thank goodness) of the "what it's like to be an animator" bunch of movies that were sprinkled about the festival. Made in the form of a documentary about the evoloution of animation, it was nicely drawn, and cute - but not so much in a good way. It almost seemed obligitory and I put up with it. X.Pression from France was just plain creepy - people being fed into a machine to feed the offspring of some dinosaur-like offsprint, it was very soylent green. I found Yarn...Good Light is Essential from the UK really annoying. The lines were all the same and tangled, like yarn, but not in a good way. My favourite of the session: http://www.theblackheartgang.com/

Sleeping Beauty - Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne

"Michael Kantor’s Sleeping Beauty is a blood-pulsing, dream-scouring take on one of the great stories of our collective consciousness where fear and desire are as interchangeable as twin blades."

Yeh, nah.

Three points of note during the play:

1. near the end of Act One, our heroine has glitter rain down upon her - fine, gold glitter, that sticks to her hair and her legs and sprinkles in soft showers as she hurtles from one side of the stage to the other showing us her portfolio of acting faces she learned at Drama School (she stopped doing so much of that in Act Two: bless) and I remembered just how much I like glitter (bored already, Michelle?)
2. as Act Two starts, I start to worry I've become one of those middle-aged women who buy tickets and go to plays in town after reading about them in The Age to then discover she's $47 out of pocket and a bit lost - maybe I'm just past it and can't understand what's going on because I'm just not smart enough, not cultured enough, not read the right books, got the right in-jokes, found the right groove. Then I remembered that I'm me, and I am excellent LOLz, and the truth is: this play just isn't very good.
3. plugging our way through Act Two, our heroine has confetti rain down upon her - I wish her character would do the decent thing and kill herself so the play can end.

Michelle: So, this is what I think.. I think that the play was about growing up. The family unit, right? mum, dad, daughter and son and they adored the daughter and they have plans for her life and that's when the box came down on her bed while she was in it, they pigeon-holed her into her future and she fought against the box, well.. not very hard but she had just pricked herself on the spinning wheel - was that a drug metaphor or a sexual reference? the "prick" was red, maybe she got her period - so, anyway, she gets out of the box and that's like she's rebelling against their ideas, their plans, their idea of how her life should be. She goes out in the world and it's scary and she doesn't cope so well at first but then she kinda gets the hang of it, but falls into and out of love and is hurt and mucks up and finds drugs and alcohol and music and parties and all that stuff and when she gets a bit older she wants more from her relationships and her life and she longs for her childhood again, for the safety of home, and so she goes home, she takes off her shoes and her pink chicken coat and .. well, okay.. this is where it got a bit weird because I couldn't work out why she was kissing her brother (the guy in the white chicken coat) so maybe he was never a brother but a next-door-neighbour who used to sit on their couch and watch their tv, and was now out (Out?) in the world too but strangling chickens or whatever it was he was doing with all that blood on his hands and I'm not even gonna go anywhere near why he was tied up and blindfolded for a while there - did you notice that his hips moved independently to the rest of his body? he was a weird moving dude - so she falls in love with him and the Mum and Dad are really happy to have their girl home and she and the next-door-neighbour-boy are really happy and they snuggle and canoodle and the Mum and Dad party like it's 1999 but then another box comes down and covers them both and maybe this box represents all the expectations their parents and society bestow upon them now they're a couple and have a set path to follow and then suddenly everything falls apart and life sucks and he's gone and she's alone and is just gonna end up old and pointless like her parents but more alone because the boy-next-door has mysteriously disappeared (probably turned out he was gay or too deep into the BDSM scene), but then she finds God with a bunch of Christians including the boy-next-door-exhusband (the Christians must have cured him of his wayward ways) who convince her that suicide is not the way even though they sing her there's life after death, which is a good enough reason to let her go see, I reckon. She decides to love life, honour her parents and praise the Lord and the whole world (cue: mirror ball) is in her hands and BONUS, there's life after death. The End. That's my best stab at what I think that play was about.

Fox: Well if that was your best stab at the play, I wish you'd stabbed it a lot harder.

Life on Mars

Lemonade Scones

1 cup lemonade
1 cup whole cream
3 cups self-raising flour

Preheat your oven to 220ºC. Mix the lemonade and cream into the sifted self-raising flour. Mix gently until combined. Turn out onto a floured surface, knead and press with lightly floured fingers to 2 or 3 cm thick. Cut into squares and put onto a lined baking tray. Brush tops lightly with milk. Bake for approximately 12-15 minutes or until slightly golden.

General Rules of Scone (regardless of recipe):

• scones like cold ingredients - use ingredients straight from fridge (no, you don't keep your flour in the fridge, you know what I mean! though, keep your descicated coconut in the freezer - keeps it from going rancid but that is by the by)
• scones don't like being over-mixed
• scones don't like being touched with your warm hands so keep handling to a minimum
• sconicules aren't like breadicules - keep kneading to a minimum and only do enough to make the dough hold together - unlike bread, scones do not become more airy the longer you knead the dough, in fact, they're the exact opposite
• scones made with cream do not last as long as traditionally made scones, so make/bake/eat - they're fragile too so handle with care
• scones can be more savoury by adding a hand full of grated cheese and a pinch of curry powder to the dough - savoury scones are great with hot vegetable soup for a wintery Sunday lunch
• scones taste best plain when buttery warm, with good berry jam and a dollop of freshly whipped cold cream