First Tuesday of November: Below Average Day
It's the 2nd November, Melbourne Cup Day, well into Spring at it's frickin freezing. 17 degrees. wtf? So instead of those warm, sunny feelings you associate with the coming Summer, I started the day feeling like I'd backtracked several months to mid-Winter and all the shitty inklings that come with the cold weather. It also didn't help that last night I watched the Banksy doco Exit Through the Gift Shop and had crazy, in-depth art related dreams all night. Fuck it was a good movie though. Totally diverting, defying all expectations. Though it does has some amazing footage of street artists and their craft (it was pretty special to see Banksy at work), it actually turns the tables on the film-maker, a nut job French guy and ends up being about his obsession with filming and his attempt at putting on his own street art exhibition. I'm tempted to call bullshit on the whole thing, it just seemed too eccentric, too amazing to be a true story. My feeling is that it's a hoax, a 'prankumentary' so they say, illustrating the ridiculous and fickle nature of the art world and the money that drives it. Seems a very Bansky thing to do, to just fuck with everyone's head and use his star power to highlight the absurdity of selling street art in auction houses for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Good on him. 5 stars fo sure.
Had a lovely movie date with my gal Nish to see Easy A which, not knowing anything about it, was surprisingly good. It's the 'Mean Girls' of 2010; Emma Stone is what Lindsay Lohan would be if she wasn't so coked up. Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind on the other hand was surprisingly disappointing, probably because I rate Charlie Kaufman so highly. Oh well. Drew Barrymore was excellent in it as the effervescent, irrepressible Penny but apart from her performance not much to write home about. I think George Clooney directing may have sullied the script a little.
So the Melbourne Cup is kind of shitting me, or rather the whole horse racing/gambling industry. "The race that stops a nation" so its citizens can drink, throw away money and frock up. There is no other purpose behind this day other than alcohol, gambling and fashion, all of which I see as fatuous and self-indulgent pastimes. /rant.
Had a lovely movie date with my gal Nish to see Easy A which, not knowing anything about it, was surprisingly good. It's the 'Mean Girls' of 2010; Emma Stone is what Lindsay Lohan would be if she wasn't so coked up. Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind on the other hand was surprisingly disappointing, probably because I rate Charlie Kaufman so highly. Oh well. Drew Barrymore was excellent in it as the effervescent, irrepressible Penny but apart from her performance not much to write home about. I think George Clooney directing may have sullied the script a little.
So the Melbourne Cup is kind of shitting me, or rather the whole horse racing/gambling industry. "The race that stops a nation" so its citizens can drink, throw away money and frock up. There is no other purpose behind this day other than alcohol, gambling and fashion, all of which I see as fatuous and self-indulgent pastimes. /rant.