Getting on the soap box

I hadn’t bought soap for decades. It’s not as if I don’t use it, rather I am privileged. Ms L. cares more about soap and can’t resist a new one any more than she can a bargain, and should the two combine, it’s game on, which is how I ended up with coffee-favoured soap recently. Okay, perhaps coffee- scented soap?

Who wants to go around the offce (or the streets) smelling of coffee, notwithstanding that most places generally reek of the stuff until noon anyway, so why would you want to gild the lily by bathing in caffeine? Fair enough if someone wanted to ft in at work and smell like the coffee lathering up with coffee is weird and was the straw that broke this camel’s back, which was interesting because the coffee soap packet bore a picture of a camel, I think, although maybe that was the Camel Milk Soap by the Camel Skin Care Co, so it’s good for camels too evidently, but also pretty weird outside Egypt and Saudi

So, for the frst time since 1984, I went shopping for normal soap, remembering there was one with oatmeal and another one with leather, equally acceptable in most social

But the world of soap has blossomed, more accurately ballooned, exploded even and there is an entire aisle devoted to it now.

Kitchen soaps, laundry soaps, hand soaps (didn’t see any foot soaps), bath soaps, sugar soap, although may have been in Bunnings. There’s light soaps, fragrant soaps, heavy soaps, professional soaps, hospitalgrade soaps (be careful when using them), there’s even soaps made from stainless steel!

There’s new improved formulas, trusted old granny formulas, hyper allergenic formulas, or is that hypo? Naturally, there’s natural soaps and clearly some very unnatural ones too, much more fun.

Todd Field’s Tar breaks all the rules of conventional screenwriting. It begins with a long take dominated by dialogue in the service of one image – that of a supremely confdent Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) painting a verbal self-portrait by describing her life as a celebrated conductor. She’s being interviewed on stage by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik and is giving him an unashamedly intellectual rundown on the mechanics of music-making and the philosophy behind it. The tone is so elevated and, at the same time, so elliptical that you start to feel as if you’re watching a biographical documentary. Or maybe a flmed play. It certainly doesn’t look or sound like the kind of American movie that gets a cinema release these days. There’s a distinctly European feel to the way Field asks his audience to search out any clues that elaborate on his theme. On the other hand, the flm does come from Focus Features, the company behind some of the most intelligent American pictures of the past 20 years, including

Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain. The suggestion that Field make a flm about a conductor originally came from Focus, but Field did not expect them to accept the script he produced. It was to be his frst flm in 15 years and from interviews he’s given, it sounds as if he were a little afraid of it. But the green light went on and Blanchett’s performance has set it to blaze. She has immersed herself in every aspect of Tar’s character: her armouring of arrogance, her joy in the music, her damaging need to exert power and her vertiginous fall from grace. Blanchett, who has already won a Golden Globe for the role, deserves the awards.Tar’s personality can be read in her every move: the athleticism of her style on the concert platform, the impatience with which she charges through life off the podium and the desperation in her eyes as her carefully constructed existence begins to fray and fall apart. It happens as her career hits its peak. She is launching a memoir – modestly entitled

Tar on Tar – and she’s rehearsing Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in Berlin where she lives with her partner Sharon (Nina Hoss), the orchestra’s concertmaster and frst violinist, and their adopted Syrian daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic). But we soon become acquainted with the quickness of her temper. It’s an early scene, a long unedited sequence in which Tar comes up against an equally confdent young student who makes the mistake of telling her that he disdains Bach’s music because of the composer’s

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ballinafaircinemas.com.au

Thursday March 23 - Wed March 29

• Scream VI (MA 15+)

• John Wick: Chapter 4 (MA15+)

COMING SOON...

• Dungeons & Dragons (CTC)

• Air (CTC)

• Super Mario Bro (PG)

• Argonauts (PG)

• Andre Rieu in Dublin

• Disney 100yrs “Sing A Long”Frozen (PG)

• The Forest Song (PG)

• Mafia Mama (CTC)

• Polite Society (CTC)

• 80 for Brady (M)

We have an amazing line up of shows coming to the Saraton.

STEVE O: THE BUCKET LIST TOUR DOWN UNDER PT 2

Thursday April 20, 2023@ 7.00pm.

CELTICA: A NEW ERA OF IRISH HERITAGE

Wednesday May 3, 2023 @ 7:30pm.

LUKE KIDGELL HAPPY HOUR

Sunday June 11, 2023 @ 6.30pm

QUEEN BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Friday 16 June 2023 @ 8pm

THE ROBERTSON BROTHERS 60’S VARIETY SHOW

Sunday June 18, 2023 2:00pm

LIAM COOPER’S KINGS OF KEYS

Saturday August 5, 2023 @ 7:30pm

MUSIC OF THE NIGHT TRIBUTE TO ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER

Sunday August 27, 2023 @ 2pm faults as a human being. There is little doubt as to who’s going to win that argument.

At this point, her ego looks to be in such rude health that no one could put a dent in it. It also needs regular exercise, hence her habit of playing favourites with the young female musicians she encounters. There’s a pattern to these relationships. They go through three stages –seduction, subjection and rejection – and her assistant Francesca (Noemie Merlant), an aspiring conductor, has reached stage two, while a former assistant is mired in stage three. We don’t meet her, but her agonised emails about an inability to fnd work are proof of Tar’s ruthless efforts to stymie her career. It’s a flm that already has a life beyond the screen. Tar’s fully furnished backstory and the brilliance of Blanchett’s

Conductor Could Actually

Thanks to the nightmarish these sequences are the fruit of her own febrile imagination, springing from her worst fears. Field doesn’t mind. He has benignly declared that no interpretation of the flm is wrong, so the game will probably go on for some time.

One thing, however, is indisputable. The flm is a genuine tragedy – a black comic tragedy, but a tragedy nonetheless. When great artists betray their talent by treating it carelessly and abusing the power that comes with it, it’s always a tragedy.

That “diffcult second album”? Almost four years have passed since Brisbane’s Blues Arcadia released its breakout debut LP, Carnival of Fools, to instant and universal acclaim. Under normal circumstances, following up a record that opened at No 1 on the Australian Blues & Roots Airplay chart and attracted 4.5 and 5-star reviews might have been fraught with a degree of overthinking and selfdoubt.

But the past four years have proved to be anything but “normal circumstances”. During an extended break enforced by a worldwide plague that brought the entire music and arts industries to a standstill, along with lives and careers in general, the population at large also took pause to consider its future. Most of us at one time or another wondered if there was a future.

Blues Arcadia took the time to write and record its second album Now Or Never, the title suggesting a mission statement of sorts. Sexual politics, digital disruption, gun violence, religion, selfidentity and of course the shared experience of social and artistic lockdown during the recent past are all themes.

But for the most part Now Or Never is about what’s made the band an irresistible attraction both live and on record. Blues Arcadia have augmented their signature “dirty soul” sound with fresh forays into funk and jazz, while never straying too far from their grounding in the blues. Keys player Paula Girvan brings the jazz, while the longstanding rhythm section of bassist Jeremy Klysz and drummer Casper Hall brings the funk. Guitarist Chris Harvey fuses the fuency of Stevie Ray Vaughan with the more traditional blues stylings of the

“Three Kings” (Albert, Freddie and B.B.), yet his playing sounds thrillingly contemporary. Frontman Alan Boyle sings it like he lives it, wrenching every last drop of sweat, passion and emotion from lyrics that speak to direct experience. “There’s a defnite sense after the last few years that life can change dramatically at any time,” says Boyle. “After the ‘Great Pause’ we’ve had to work harder than ever to get back into people’s lives, back on festival line-ups, to get airplay… so if we’re going to put out a new album, watch out!

Mark’s current band STONELOVE put on a killer live show, recently supporting Daryl Braithwaite. Their riff driven Rock n Roll can be streamed everywhere.

An accomplished musician and singer, Mark performed with New Zealand band Shotgun Alley, recording three albums. They shared the stage with Rock n Roll heavyweights ZZ Top, Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Heart. In 2020 Mark made it through to the semifnals on The Voice, on Kelly Rowland’s team. He is well renowned for his role in Australia’s iconic TV drama Home and Away as bad boy ‘Ric Dalby’. He received two TV Week Logie Award Nominations for Most Popular Actor for two consecutive years.

Mark’s other TV credits include appearing in Screentime’s crime drama Underbelly: The Golden Mile, as well as police series Water Rats, Balmain Boys, the Peter Andrikides directed drama Jessica and the mystery and adventure series Outriders. He will soon be seen in the third series of Harrow.

His frst feature flm was the Gale Edwards directed A Heartbeat Away. Mark subsequently appeared in several US features, including I Can Only Imagine with Dennis Quaid, Breaking In featuring Gabrielle Union, Tell Me How I Die and Bornless Ones.

In 2021 Mark played the role of Freddy in Chess The Musical, touring Australia alongside Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Rob Mills.