Words, Words, Words: The World Of Blurbs

It’s festival time in Melbourne. Actually, it’s always festival time in Melbourne. Arts, Film, Comedy, Fashion, Writers, Design, Stencil, Cycling, Jazz, Brass, Animation, Fringe, Moomba, Tap, Travel Writing, Italian, Scarf, Funk… and that’s just the first five pages of Google results. Melbourne has a festival for everything. But how do you decide which film to see? Which comedy show? Which travel writer? Which scarf?

In most cases your guide will be the festival program, and the description of each event. 150 words need to convince you to commit your time and money, to get off the couch and turn off those old tapes of Chances – “The best kabuki puppet western you’ll see all year!” “I laughed so hard I mislaid my socks!” “Gong Li is the most beautiful woman on Earth!”

Anne-Marie Peard wrote about the launch of the Melbourne Fringe Festival program a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about blurbs during the Melbourne International Film Festival. But what makes a good blurb? What needs to be in that magic paragraph to pull in the punters and let the sun shine in?

The Outland Institute assembled a panel of experts to address this deeply important issue…

Anne-Marie Shows Us Her Fringe

Another day in Melbourne, another major arts festival. The 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival was launched last Wednesday – Anne-Marie Peard attended, so you don’t have to. 

The memories of MIFF and the Yalumba Man are fading.  We’ve had a couple of weeks to sit back on the couch in our Wong Kar-Wai slippers, snack on our Dalek bread and catch up with Australian Idol and that thing where fit people ran around a lot and tried not to think about other events that happened in Tiananmen Square.

Some of us prodded out brains into action with a visit to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, but the thought of another arty-type marathon was too much for me right now. Until - under the festival tree - the Melbourne Fringe program appeared…

John’s MIFF blog: No Place (part 2)

Yesterday I presented my Melbourne International Film Festival wrap-up, and also gave room for some our regular Institutees to speak. Last up is the glorious Syms Covington (who normally lives here). He rants exclusively for The Outland Institute.

This year’s MIFF was an interesting one for me. It was the first time I had attended the fest in three years, having been stuck in Sydney town for that period, and also because I could directly contrast it with my experiences at SIFF about a month earlier. The two festivals are vastly different, and I have Richard Moore to thank for that. The Sydney Film Fest is strutting off in its own direction with its big blue prize, eyes firmly on everything but Australian film, while MIFF had the tenacity to not only program some of the best Aussie arthouse films around (as well as new genre surprises like The Horseman and Acolytes) but to devote a whole strand to the ‘drunken uncles’ of the Australian film industry – the ones the more ‘respectable’ contingent of the industry has been actively ignoring at the parties for years – the filmmakers who made what is currently being referred to by the trendy Tarantino-coined moniker of “Ozploitation”.

Indeed the Ozploitation bent of this year’s MIFF was the thing that pushed me over the edge to travel south. I’d had the opportunity to see Not Quite Hollywood previously at a closed screening, and fallen in lust with it. I was terribly excited by the possibility of attending opening night just to experience the film again in a room filled with not only the genre benders profiled in the film, but the very film industry snobs that had blacklisted many of these films originally. For me, the film and opening night shenanigans were well worth the trip down. The only thing that would have made it better was if there had been screens either side of the stage filming “reaction shots” – like at the Oscars – of the old snobs shuddering in their hush puppies and sensibly ironed fawn slacks. I am seeing it again with a crowd of industry folk at the AFI Awards Screenings night in Sydney, so hopefully someone will have acted on this idea by then.

John’s MIFF blog: There’s No Place Like Home

And so another year’s Melbourne International Film Festival draws to a close. The rubbish is strewn across the turf, the drunken young women have collapsed on the trams, and the vomit is being hosed down from the VIP tent – no, wait. That’s the Melbourne Cup. Let’s start again.

Ah, MIFF. You come, toy with our affections, then leave in the night. Yet every year we come back. You mock us, yet we want you so. You temptress. You seductress. Both dominatrix and mother to us all.

Like all art, film is subjective. Our response to film is not only based our our preferences and tastes but can be altered by our surroundings – would I have enjoyed Let The Right One In more if the gentleman next to me hadn’t spent the whole film munching through a box of popcorn larger than his head? Probably. Would I have enjoyed My Winnipeg less if I hadn’t been so exhausted from chasing horses all day that I was more than willing to fall under it’s hypnotic spell, like the sleep-walking residents Guy Madden describes? Maybe. Am I now aware that even the most deserved criticism of the festival is likely to bring on the fury of The League Of Festival Directors, like a Marketing Team descending in the night? Oh yeah.

So here is my completely subjective take on the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival (after all, if you didn’t want my opinion you wouldn’t be here, would you?)

The Victorian Transport Minister and the Goblet Of Fire

It was just another day.

The neighbourhood had gathered to burn an effigy of Lynne Kosky, the transport minister. There’s nothing like Lynne to bring out an angry mob round our way. We find our seething hatred of her incompetence has somehow brought us closer together.

It had been a very successful burning, one of our most popular yet. It was almost as packed as an 86 tram! we joked amongst ourselves (although obviously it wasn’t as uncomfortable as that). As the smaller children ran giggling from the embers, Edith brought out a flask and some paper cups. We sipped our tea, feeling the heat warm our bones, while Abdikaram flipped through the program for the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

“Strike me pink”, he said. “Did you know that Lynne Kosky is also the Victorian Arts Minister?”

Well, it was news to us. Could this perhaps explain everything? Was her lacklustre performance as Transport Minister caused by the distraction of her other portfolio – after all, it would be hard to get any work done with Phillip Glass and Patti Smith banging on about Ginsberg all day long.

John’s MIFF blog: “je regrette, je ne parle pas Francais”

My intention with this MIFF blog was not to review individual films, but to give you a taste of the festival as a whole – to explore what makes it this festival and not – say – that one. I find, however, that with a week to go I don’t have much more to say. This year’s Melbourne International Film Festival has been just fine, there are popular and unpopular films as you’d expect, and only the occasional drama (off-screen, that is).

On the other hand, there also hasn’t been that excitement you would expect by now, the rush of good (or bad) word-of-mouth that often propels a festival such as this (“You’ve got to see the Etruscan leper musical, it will change your life!” or “Last night I saw Book Of Revelation“). I also don’t have any celebrity stories to pass on – did Morgan Spurlock sacrifice a goat in his hotel room? Did George A Romero set fire to Eureka Tower? No, sadly. Remember when Larry Clark attacked his film’s distributor during the 2002 London Film Festival? Ah, those were the days.

So let’s talk about subtitles.

John’s MIFF bloggette – Glitches in the Matrix

A frustrating evening at the Melbourne International Film Festival on Monday as a strange confluence of wrongness occurs.

After all the delays, trailers, introductions, and big-ups to my homies, Dead On: The Life And Cinema Of George A. Romero hit what must be a new MIFF record, starting a full 45 minutes after the advertised time. Festival-goers planning to attend a nine o’clock screening had to choose whether to leave halfway through this film or arrive halfway through the next. It might have helped if they hadn’t decided to include an unlisted short film by Romero’s daughter, Tina. Her short was hardly the worst thing ever, but it looked like the second-year film it is, and the audience response could best be described as “polite”. Surely if the film is both a) running late and b) longer than you have programmed for, adding short films is not the answer. (The film itself I would describe as “Brighton Grammar girls do Battleship Potemkin as a rock eisteddfod.” Do Americans have rock eisteddfods?). The documentary itself looked good, and I hope one day to see the end of it.

John’s MIFF blog – George A. Romero LIVE! (of the dead)

If you’re me – and I am – one of the most exciting things in this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival is the mini-retrospective of horror legend George A Romero. The icing on the cake? Last night’s live interview with Romero himself, which took place at the MIFF Festival Club.

For those who haven’t been to The Forum, it’s like the last-days-of-the-Roman-Empire meets Studio 54 in a crazed fever dream of Zazoom, the donkey from Hanna Barbera’s Arabian Knights series. “Size of a late-1920s picture palace!”. It was too weird even for the Christian Revivalists, who owned it for a decade until 1995. It’s been part of the Marriner Theatre group for the last few years, as well as the central base of the film festival.

The Forum was long ago subdivided from it’s original three thousand seat configuration – the old dress circle is now a cosy 500 seat cinema, and the remodelled stalls section is mostly used for concerts. During MIFF this section becomes the Festival Club.

I had expected more of a beardy horror audience, so was both surprised and pleased to see such a mixed crowd. You could have been expecting an appearance from Krzysztof Kieslowski, rather than a man who has made four films with “of the dead” in the title (and one “of the living dead”).

When Romero discretely appeared at the side of the auditorium, awaiting his cue, the audience started applauding, loudly and warmly. By the time he actually reached the stage, it was clear that introductions were completely superfluous.

John’s MIFF blog – the introduction

This was the very first article for The Outland Institute. Recently it’s been attracting a large number of hits due to it’s high Jason Statham content, but I can’t help thinking the writing’s perhaps not as strong as some of the later pieces. Mind you, you’re probably not here for the words, are you? However, since you ARE here, why not leave a comment at the end of the piece? It’s only polite to say hello… And you can buy The Bank Job on PAL/Region 2 here – The Bank Job [DVD] [2008] or NTSC/Region 1 here – The Bank Job (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy).

Another year, another Melbourne International Film Festival. I’m going to run a blog here about the event as a whole, not necessarily as a review of individual films. Because I believe you have a right to my opinion. No, don’t thank me.

This is the third time I’ve worked in the box office for MIFF, and the customers are the nicest of any of Melbourne’s arts events. They have a genuine excitement for both the festival and film as an artform, with none of that “the world owes me everything” attitude you get from – say – the MTCaudience (a lot fewer red blazers, too. What is it with the MTC and red blazers?). It’s the most egalitarian of the festivals, which may well be a matter of ticket price – film is an art everyone can afford. Also good value for money – after all, some-one may have spent fifty million dollars for something I can see for fifteen. Could you make The Bank Job at home for fifteen dollars? No, you couldn’t. You probably couldn’t even get Saffron Burrows to pop around for a cup of tea for fifteen dollars. She’d cost more than that. And that’s even with you providing the tea. And biscuits.

Speaking of The Bank Job, the evil Dr Chris and I attended a MIFF pre-screening because we’re both huge fans of Jason Statham. He’s a fine, fine actor. Just look:

A FINE, FINE actor. Especially when he’s topless. And wet. Which happens fairly regularly in his films, in all honesty, so everyone wins. As the Onion AV Club’s Nathan Rabin once said about Matthew McConaughey, Statham is fighting a “one-man war on the tyranny of shirts”. The reason for attending this screening was because Mr Statham was there in person to introduce it. And he is, after all, a fine fine actor.

Oh yes.