still love this site

while trawling through folders of sites i've collected, i came across xkcd. i've been an occasional stalker for years now. always makes me laugh. and think.

a friend's short doco

it's been interesting to watch the state of my country recently - how many industries are being affected by job loss, companies closing, community services cutting back. one such story was brought to my attention through a friend who lives in the area, she's a film-maker so along with another friend put a short documentary together. save the hope street bus is a fabulous doco that tells the story of a community looking out for it's own. take a look at SAVE THE HOPE ST BUS

one man's reminisces

(image sourced from malthouse theatre)
paul capsis' autobiographical piece of theatre, angela's kitchen played at the malthouse. i love this theatre for all it's surprises and oddities and i have seen some truly moving and awe-inspiring productions since moving to melbourne. angela's kitchen was funny, thoughtful, sad and made me long for the days when i was little and surrounded by my own eccentric family, around my nan's kitchen table talking and eating for days on end. this story travelled between malta and sydney and his grandmother's stories, to where his over-lapped. it was a real treat to be invited into capsis' memories of his family.

friday at the astor

i remember watching this film with my family when it first came out. it was the weekend family experience for the five of us. my early teen years were filled with weekend family dates. i kid you not, there were even occasions when we would all go roller-skating at the local rink, those were normally sunday afternoons for a couple of hours. how strange that may seem, it was pretty awesome seeing my dad and brother on skates. ha! my mum and little sister, who would've been about 4-5, also took classes to learn to skate at the same time.

anyway, back to raiders of the lost ark. love it, own it. and have seen it so many times i've lost count. but to see it on big screen at an art deco theatre was a treat i could not pass up. and yes, it was still awesome. and i can still hear my family (yes, in my memories) laugh out loud when indiana, after fighting so many men hand to hand, denies the large man brandishing a sword, takes out his pistol and shoots him dead. what an adventure.

funnily enough i still couldn't watch the ark scene where the "rays of god" struck down all the nazis - well, not the melty blowy up face bit at least. it's still gross. yep, still love this film.

another chat-fest

two days of sitting in the semi-dark of cinema nova, listening and talking with a variety of writers, producers, broadcasters, directors and even an actor. both interesting and frustrating but it's given me the impetus to get off my butt again and back to the page.

who needs a reason?

to take a day off to wander through a beautiful city and then sit and listen to a writer? not me. though i did indeed have one. my beloved niece has never mentioned an author to me before about a month ago. this got me excited. doesn't take much i know, only speaking books with my 14 year old niece. but not only an author but an australian author. wow! now i haven't read any of morris gleitzman's books yet, but hearing this i had to search him out and it just so happened that he would be one of the speakers at the melbourne writers festival. timing, never one of my strong points, seemed to be right on target.

so off i went to the bmw edge, along with a zillion school kids, to listen to gleitzman's tales of felix and zelda and why he wrote his trilogy of four. and as the good auntie that i am, lined up with said zillion school kids to get the fourth book signed for the niece.

by dickens

thursday evening at the melbourne town hall with simon callow.  he was the 2012 melbourne writers festival key note speaker and as timing would have it just happened to have a new book to sell.

never a fan of charles dickens, callow spoke so eloquently and passionately about his writings that i may just have to pick up a book or two, one of which needs to be callow's.