Brag#738

THE

HAS EVELYN IDA MORRIS MADE THE AUSTRALIAN RECORD OF THE YEAR?

T A H W Y DO

T N A W Y E TH

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL IS BACK AND BIGGER THAN EVER

ALSO INSIDE:

ICEAGE, JULIAN DENNISON, BITCH DIESEL, ALISON WONDERLAND, GABRIELLA COHEN, CHVRCHES, TWO SHORT STORIES, AND MUCH MORE

Evolving with you.

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FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!

PERFORMED IN ITS ENTIRETY

& MORE

VERY SPECIAL GUESTS

SAT 10 NOV I SYDNEY ICC THEATRE ON SALE 1PM FRI 4 MAY Ticket info at livenation.com.au

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SPECIAL GUESTS ROLAND TINGS & KULT KYSS

SATURDAY JUNE 23 • ENMORE THEATRE ON SALE NOW . THE PRESETS.COM . LIVENATION.COM.AU NEW ALBUM HI VIZ OUT NOW

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this month what you’ll find inside…

ISSUE 738: Wednesday June 6, 2018 EDITOR: Joseph Earp joseph.earp@seventhstreet.media NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Tyler Jenke, Bianca Davino, Lars Brandle ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant PHOTOGRAPHER: Ashley Mar COVER PHOTO: Ben Sullivan

“I try to buy only witch pedals.”

ADVERTISING: Josh Burrows - 0411 025 674 josh.burrows@seventhstreet.media PUBLISHER: Seventh Street Media CEO, SEVENTH STREET MEDIA: Luke Girgis - luke.girgis@ seventhstreet.media MANAGING EDITOR: Poppy Reid poppy.reid@seventhstreet.media THE GODFATHER: BnJ GIG GUIDE COORDINATOR: Belinda Quinn - gigguide@seventhstreet. media REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Arca Bayburt, Lars Brandle, Tanja Brinks Toubro, Alex Chetverikov, Max Jacobson, Emily Gibb, Emily Meller, Adam Norris, Holly Pereira, Daniel Prior, Natalie Rogers, Erin Rooney, Anna Rose, Spencer Scott, Natalie Salvo, Aaron Streatfeild, Augustus Welby, Zanda Wilson, David James Young Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address Level 2, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046 ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Carrie Huang accountsseventhstreet.vc (02) 9713 92692, 9-13 Bibby St, Chiswick NSW 2046 DEADLINES: Editorial: Thursday 5pm (no extensions) Ad bookings: Last Wednesday of the month 12pm (no extensions) Finished art: Last Thursday of the month 5pm (no extensions) Ad cancellations: Last Wednesday of the month 12pm Deadlines are strictly adhered to.

Published by Seventh Street Media Pty Ltd All content copyrighted to Seventh Street Media 2017 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get the BRAG? Email jessica.milinovic@seventhstreet.media PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204

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regulars 10 59 60 63 61 68-69 69 70-71 72-74 73 74

The Frontline The Watcher Parent Talk The Bookshelf Game On Sounds Like The Defender Snaps Gig picks Drawn Out Giveaway

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Evelyn Ida Morris

20-22

Split Singles Club

24-25

Eves Karydas

26-27

Gabriella Cohen

28-29

Alison Wonderland

30-31

Iceage

32-33

Snail Mail

34-35

Bitch Diesel

36-37

Chvrches

39

Sydney Film Festival Special

40

Our SFF Highlights

41

Freak Me Out

42

Terror Nullius, What Keeps You Alive

43

Ghost Stories

44

Holiday, Good Manners

45

Filmworker, The Ranger

46

SFF Winners, Reviewed

47

Foxtrot

48-50

The Cinema Of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

51

The Field Guide To Evil

52-53

Julian Dennison

54-55

Tully, Upgrade

56-57

Avengers: Infinity War

58

Under The Silver Lake

62-63

Visiting Him

64-67

Most Of This Story Isn’t About Us

“We’re the Statler and Waldorf of the Australian dance community.”

The Prests photo by Ben Sullivan, Bitch Diesel photo by Jamie Wdziekonski

follow us:

The Presets

16-18

“I’ve made some really good friends as part of Freak Me Out.”

EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of the BRAG.

@TheBrag

12-14

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the frontline

With Bianca Davino, Nathan Jolly, and Tyler Jenke

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

COMP THIS

EXCELLENT!

Prepare thyselves: everyone’s favourite slackers Bill and Ted are set to make their grand return to the big screen. As announced at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are going to reprise their roles in a new adventure, titled Bill & Ted Face The Music.

According to Deadline, the film will depict the buddies as “middle-aged men and underachievers” who, despite having written thousands of songs, find they have ultimately failed in their desperate quest to save the world. This time around, the dudes will be taking their daughters along with them – one can only imagine that’ll lead to a hilarious pratfall or two. Oh, and excitingly, the film’s script will be written by the franchise’s original creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, with the film directed by Dean Parisot. “We couldn’t be more excited to get the whole band back together again. Chris and Ed wrote an amazing script, and with Dean at the helm, we’ve got a dream team” said the actors on the new film.

A 16-year-old kid from Concord, California has been arrested and charged with a whopping 14 felony counts for hacking into his school’s intranet system and changing a bunch of grades. Needless to say, this is some wholesome ’90s TV show shit – a high school student outsmarting the technologically-challenged teaching staff and bumping his and his friends’ grades up. A+ for effort. This is how he did it: he sent a bunch of emails to all his teachers with a link. The link, should the teachers click it, sent them to a website he built, which mirrored the design of the school’s portal, and prompted them to enter their username and password.

Brilliant so far, except a lot of teachers smelled a hack, and forwarded these emails to local cops. One trusting teacher did not smell a hack, and instead did enter their details; the kid had access to the hallowed Mount Diablo Unified School District IT network and bam!

He went on a grade-changing spree, which included adjusting “ten to 15” students’ grades. Cowabunga, right? Needless to say, this basically happened in an early ’90s episode of Beverly Hills 90210 when Steve Sanders used his “freshman buddy” – who was a geek and therefore understood the intricacies of computer hacking – to change his grades in the school’s computer system.

DO YOU REALIZE???

Although they seem more likely to release their own strain of weed or tabs of acid, The Flaming Lips have teamed with a U.S. brewery to create a brand new beer. Not surprisingly, the beer is wrapped in a suitablypsychedelic label, and will be named Dragons and YumYums, because why not? Coyne admits he isn’t a beer drinker – “It just fills me up too much” – but he enjoys this one: “Sometimes I’ll taste a beer and I’ll think that someone has poured, like, a ginger ale into in, and I’m like, ‘That’s not right! I kind of like beer to just taste like beer, you know? But I think the beer they’ve made for us is a really great-tasting beer, and I was actually surprised at how much I liked it. I think it’s great – and I think a lot of beer people would agree with me.”

The Simpsons

GETTING A LITTLE HAIRY

Baldness is a curse that besets millions of people around the globe; it’s a troubling, anxiety-inducing ailment that even young ‘uns live in constant dread of. But, excitingly, there is new fresh hope for bald people, with English researchers stumbling across what could very well be a potential cure.

As SBS reports, researchers from The University of Manchester have discovered that a drug used to treat osteoporosis may hold the key to hair regrowth. While Cyclosporine A (CsA) is usually used to treat autoimmune diseases and suppress transplant rejection, the research team discovered that CsA inhibits a protein which usually restricts the growth of hair follicles.

However, as CNBC notes, hair growth was one of the few positive side effects of the drug, causing project leader Dr. Nathan Hawkshaw to keep on looking for more options. Now, after plenty more research, Hawkshaw has happened upon another compound which achieves the same results without the unwanted side effects. Named ‘WAY-316606’, the scientists hope this could be the answer many have searched for.

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Rick And Morty

HE’S PICKLE RICK One of pop culture’s most acclaimed and intelligent cornerstone shows, Rick And Morty, has been picked up by its network Adult Swim for another 70 episodes. The news came in the form of a video from show creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, depicting the pair in the shower and promising rabid fans that they’d get back to work soon. This comes after the show earned the highest ratings of any comedy in 2017, making it the best rated series in Adult Swim history.

Harmon tweeted back in March that the show hadn’t been renewed, saying, “On one hand, it can be challenging, especially with crippling lazy alcoholism, to write a show that hasn’t been ordered by a network.” Fans took to the platform to urge Adult Swim and Netflix to get their acts together in renewing the hit show. While no expect release dates have been revealed so far, one nifty Redditor has pointed out that we could potentially see new episodes as early as Christmas.

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LIVE NATION & UNIFY PRESENT

A U S T R A L I A N

T O U R

2 0 1 8

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

15 JUNE METRO THEATRE (LIC AA) W W W. P V R I S . C O M / S H O W S W W W. L I V E A N T I O N . C O M . A U thebrag.com

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“We’re the Statler and Waldorf of the Australian dance community.”

COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

“We survived.

We survived electroclash.

We survived indie dance nu rave.

We survived dubstep.

We survived EDM.”

Phoebe Ph b Loomes L chats h t with ith Ki Kim M Moyes and dJ Julian li H Hamilton ilt about b t politics, liti th the state t t off electro, and what it’s like to be outsiders in an industry that craves homogeny

T

here’s an air of the outsider that surrounds The Presets, presumably because they’re often labelled in simple terms – makers of dance music, or multiple ARIA Award winners, or Australian music veterans. But none of these labels quite aptly describe who they really are.

When I sit down with the duo, Kim Moyes and Julian Hamilton, Hamilton eschews compliments before I have the chance to offer any. “We’re the Statler and Waldorf of the Australian dance community.”

I counter that The Presets are outsiders, and veterans at it. Arguably their most seminal hit is ‘My People’ which was an aggressive ode to the plight of refugees. As the interview comes to an end, and the three of us are joking around, Hamilton brings up the aged muppets Statler and Waldorf one more time.

There is an idea in the spiritual practice that you begin something the same way you started it. It’s an energetic seal. I am a superstitious person. I like how Hamilton tops and tails the conversation like that.

“I like the term veteran,” Moyes concedes.

“I’m okay with it now,” Hamilton sighs, “It makes me feel like we’ve fought in a war. We survived!” he laughs. “We survived electroclash. We survived indie dance nu rave.

We survived dubstep. We survived EDM.”

The Presets photo by Ben Sullivan

Australian dance music is awash with more than the aforementioned genres. The Presets have been frontrunners of the scene since the early 2000s. They released their debut album Beams in 2005 and have seen the scene populate and follow them, then explode and genre-bend. Some sounds were Australian, some were fast follows from overseas.

“EDM sort of came out of the blue to us and we’re

completely unrelated to it,” Moyes says. “Musically, we always tried to forge our own lane, and it’s not like we’re jumping onto trends. We’re pushing our own thing. We’ve never felt aligned with any of the genres we’ve been pigeonholed into.”

Talking to The Presets, I notice an ease that fl ows between them. They are a yin and yang pair: Hamilton is leant back in his chair, deflecting implications of greatness that are probably coming from me. Moyes is eager and energetic; his spirit is youthful. There is no question that Moyes doesn’t spring to action towards, especially when it comes to talk about music making, artist collaboration or production.

They are, however different, in sync. They don’t interrupt each other; they don’t disagree. They tell me about the album, taking turns. I start to get an idea from both their words, which build and intersect, like a venn diagram.

Outsiders, together.

“We’re musicians and we’re comfortable with that. With being artists,” Hamtilton says. “The music business is another beast. It’s always weird when we have to interact with it.”

“I

don’t think we ever felt comfortable. I think we always felt like outsiders,” says Moyes, refl ecting on their earlier years. “Even when we signed to Modular [in 2003] that was a label that was entirely made up of outsiders.

I feel like it’s a badge of honour to say that I don’t feel comfortable.”

This connectivity is something I have not oft encountered in duos, where ego battles are often present. That has come from, well, I don’t know what. I would hazard a guess that the feeling that fl ows between them is one of

“I don’t think we ever felt comfortable.” thebrag.com

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COVER STORY

“We definitely wanted to try and tap into an energy and an excitement that we had when we first started.”

synchronicity borne of years of experience.

They make vague references to hazardous touring; pain and suffering behind microphones and mixing desks; time together at strange rockstar parties; ‘it girls’ and famous video clip directors. All of this they refer to as noise, uninteresting, distracting. Something they withstood and survived.

HI VIZ is the 2018 release from The Presets, and it is not the album fans might be expecting. It is wild, contemporary, cathartic and fearless. Hamilton tells me it is very much like their first EP Blow Up – that they tried to hark back to that.

“We definitely wanted to try and tap into an energy and an excitement that we had when we first started. If anything, we tried to make a record that sounded like our very first EP.” I have been told by countless people that The Presets are really nice guys, but I honestly paid very little attention to this. ‘Nice guys’ is a meaningless phrase.

But Hamilton and Moyes are strange, kind, intelligent, enthusiastic, weird, and very warm. And, I would assume, very good friends.

The songs on HI VIZ are, as Hamilton describes them, “like a mixtape; like you’re at a friend’s house and you’re spinning tracks.” ‘Beethoven’ is a heart thumping dark house track, packed with sultry lyrics, and a nasty beat, where you’re dancing in the dark with beads of sweat on every part of your body. ‘Tools Down’ is deep techno, another moment, fearless confetti spluttering gay anthems. On ‘Out Of Your Mind’ Alison Wonderland screams like a punk about cassette tapes – it’s aggressive, nasal, and devoid of aspiration. There’s smooth and uplifting modes. ‘Feel Alone’ is longing, loving, and millennial – it makes me sentimentally think of Avicii.

There are love songs, and dark songs. ‘Martini’ lands in the former category: Hamilton says it’s about being enthralled by a trans woman called Martini. “It’s a love song, It’s our run at a cyber croon.”

This is the kind of album that comes from the absence of fear; of fucks given. It’s a youthful and energetic release.

Sometimes these things come as debuts, from desperate youngsters who have no stake in society and endless hunger. Sometimes it comes from years of experience and experiences.

“A

s a band we think about those first shows, that rocking energy, crowds partying,” says Hamilton when I talk to him later, after spending a few days listening to the eclectic album. “I have an energy in my head of what that sounded like, and we wanted to make a record in my head of what that sounded like.”

A house party it is. HI VIZ features a reel of guesting musicians, including Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters, Shane Parsons from DZ Deathrays, Alison Wonderland, Touch Sensitive, Kirin J. Callinan and The St Paul’s Lutheran Church Choir. On the face of it there seems no real rhyme or reason to this set of collaborators, but I suggest to Hamilton and Moyes that all these individual music makers fit the mould of also being outsiders.

“Totally,” says Moyes, excited to be talking about other musicians. “They’re uncompromising and doing their own thing just like us. I admire any artists doing their thing in this industry. It’s hard work, you know? Whether it’s a straight up and down pop artist, or guys like DZ [Deathrays]. I feel like we’re kindred spirits, you know? A big part of the HI VIZ thing was trying to harness this inclusiveness, this sense of party.

This sense of you know, togetherness.”

Hamilton and Moyes are humble about their veteran status, their careers, their leadership in a community that has not always been welcoming of their political engagement. “We’ve had times in our career where we’re made a post about Australia Day, The Bali Nine, people getting executed,” says Hamilton, when I ask him if it’s okay for a band to be apolitical in the current climate. “I don’t know what the right answer is for that.”

“I guess you’ve just got to roll with your own conscience,” says Moyes. “On marriage equality, it’s a no brainer, you know?

And I guess that’s where we see we have a responsibility to make that idea have a bit more resonance for everybody.”

Hamilton continues. “When something does come along that we feel strongly about, like Australia Day, we want to be on the right side of history and on the right team.”

And just as it gets deep, Hamilton circles back again. “We’re the Statler and Waldorf of the Australian Music Community.”

“Laughing at everybody’s outfits,” Moyes adds.

Where: Enmore Theatre When: Saturday June 23 And: HI VIZ is out now through Universal Australia

“Musically, we always tried to forge our own lane, and it’s not like we’re jumping onto trends.”

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FEATURE 16 :: BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18

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FEATURE

EVELYN IDA

MORRIS

On Bodies

By Joseph Earp

I

t’s hard to write about Evelyn Ida Morris’ new self-titled record, their first under their own name. Sometimes it can be hard to even talk about it. That’s partially because it is a mostly instrumental record – a collection of piano tracks that resist both easy categorisation and the straining of rock critics forever tempted to say music is “about” something – and that’s partially because it is carried by such a sheer force of feeling that it can leave one genuinely unable to find the words necessarily to describe it. It is this primal, essential, extraordinary thing – a love letter Morris has dedicated to other non-binary people in the hopes that it will help them “discover something.”

It is also quite clearly one of the standout records of the year so far; a glorious, sun-dappled work of art that has solidified Morris’ place as one of the most important musicians in the country.

“I LIKE JUST PLAYING AROUND

UNTIL SOMETHING BUBBLES UP AND I CAN GRASP IT AND MAKE IT EXPAND UNTIL IT IS A ‘SONG’.”

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FEATURE

“I HOPE THIS ALBUM DOES WELL THOUGH:

IT IS A MOMENT IN TIME THAT HAS BEEN CAPTURED WELL,

SO IN THAT WAY I FEEL IT IS A SUCCESS.

The BRAG: On days when you’re not writing, you’re not touring… What does your life look like?

Evelyn Ida Morris: I’m working on all kinds of projects for other people, usually. As a producer, engineer, mixing engineer, [and] a composer for film soundtracks, I am kept pretty busy. If there are ever times when I’ve not got much work, I also teach drums, and in times when I’m not doing music stuff I either do some painting or hang out with my partner and my friends.

I love having time with the piano as well, just to keep connected and to practice. I am always looking for new collaborations with people across different modalities, such as dancers and poets.

Do you try and write every day, or are you more casual about it?

EIM: I am really casual about writing. It is literally something I fit in whenever I can. If I don’t have much work, then I usually spend days at a time exploring things – but it isn’t something that I schedule time for, because the mood kinda needs to strike me.

Otherwise it feels a little painful and forced. I like just playing around until something bubbles up and I can grasp it and make it expand until it is a ‘song’.

Do you approach your making music differently to how you approach your painting?

EIM: No, not really. It’s very much the same impulse/response practice. I enjoy using painting and songmaking as a process of developing my relationship to my impulses, more so than even looking for particular results. It is a method that grew out of my long relationship with improvising.

When did you begin work on Evelyn Ida Morris?

Did you always envisage it being a full-length album?

EIM: I didn’t really imagine this ever being out in the world, so I didn’t imagine it being an album. I was really in dire need of some emotional expression at that time. I was unemployed and hadn’t yet found my career as a producer/composer; I hadn’t yet found LISTEN or other activist practices; and hadn’t yet really figured out my identity in lots of ways. So the writing of this album was purely about indulging in my emotional landscape, and trying to find my way more than a goal-orientated process.

‘Freckles’ is such a brilliant song. When you’re working on a track like that, do you know exactly what the song will sound like, or does it come born out of experimentation?

EIM: They are always born out of improvisation and experimentation. ‘Freckles’ was just a little repeated phrase on the piano that I liked, and it came along at a time when I felt like all my other pieces were too busy and too explosive with details, so I was looking for something to be more repetitive and calming. I wrote the words in one sitting as well – just abstracted thoughts about myself, women in general, a friend of mine who was having a particularly bad time, and a feeling of loss I was unable to identify at all at that time. It has since come to mean a lot more as well, about the sense of having external forces change you. In the song it is the sun creating freckles in your skin, but in life I was experiencing a thing I didn’t understand at that time, which turned out to be the enforced gender binary.

How did you know when the record was finished?

Did you have to fight the temptation to keep working on it?

EIM: Not at all. These songs just sat around, and I kept tinkering for a few years. I put it away when a friend gave me advice that he didn’t think it ‘sounded

right’ or as right as my gigs or whatever, so that kinda extinguished the last shred of confidence I had in the recordings and I just decided not to think about it for a while. Then LISTEN started and I completely lost track of it until my current partner took a particular shining to it.

How do you judge the success of an album?

EIM: That is a tough question! I don’t know really. I think with this one, I am choosing to have it be that it reaches other non-binary people and helps them identify something. In that way I would like it to go as far as it can, but other kinds of success are hard for me to interact with because I don’t want the idea of success to influence my writing. I hope this album does well though: it is a moment in time that has been captured well, so in that way I feel it is a success.

Was it harder to write ‘The Body Appears’ given it has lyrics, than the instrumental tracks of the record?

EIM: It was just an experiment, very last minute, that I was adding to another more poppy album that I was going to release as Pikelet. It seemed to sum up my feelings about my gender and my grief related to it so well though, I chose to group it with these older piano pieces. That was the final straw in realising it was worthy of release.

Tell me something you’ve never told an interviewer before.

EIM: Umm… I have ulcerative colitis and arthritis and probably will forever.

What: Evelyn Ida Morris is out now through Remote Control / Milk

“I ENJOY USING PAINTING AND SONGMAKING AS A PROCESS OF

DEVELOPING MY RELATIONSHIP TO MY IMPULSES, MORE SO THAN EVEN LOOKING FOR PARTICULAR RESULTS.”

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FEATURE

Split Singles Club Is Changing The Australian Indie Rock Narrative

By Allison Gallagher

L

ast year, Melbourne labels Milk! and Bedroom Suck Records came together to launch the inaugural edition of the Split Singles Club. The concept was fairly simple – each label picked six artists from their roster and beyond, pairing two acts per 7” split single. The project was initially conceived by Bedroom Suck’s Joe Alexander as something of a solution to music industry competitiveness.

“I feel like so often in the music industry, particularly in a smaller community like Australia, there is a hyper-jealousy going on,” explains Alexander. “There is a bit of a misguided idea of what success is, and that someone else’s success means your failure. We wanted to start a project that was about working together, celebrating the incredible music and community we have here.”

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Alexander approached Milk! Records, a label started by Courtney Barnett in 2012, now run by Barnett and partner Jen Cloher. “Courtney and I had been talking about the idea of a series of split 7” with different artists, so it immediately appealed to us,” Cloher explans.

“I also liked the idea that the artists weren’t necessarily on either label. Just bands we loved, and perhaps didn’t have the time or money to release.”

This initial series featured a number of artists across the Milk! and Bedroom Suck rosters, such as Barnett herself, Jade Imagine, Blank Realm, Treehouse and Dag. It also included several artists not on either labels’ rosters – including Cable Ties, Primo!, and Lehmann Smith.

“Each label had a long list of artist we love and wanted to work with,” says Alexander. “One of the great things about this project was we finally got to call them up and ask if they wanted to work together.”

Now, the baton has been passed on to two other labels, Melbourne punk institution Poison City Records as well as the newer Our Golden Friend, helmed

by Lorrae McKenna and Skube Burnell.

This time around, artists featured include RVG, Harmony, Mere Women, Mon Con, Stella Donnelly and more – again, a selection of Poison City and Our Golden Friend artists along with newer acts not signed to either.

For Cloher and Alexander, approaching Poison City about carrying on the series was a natural fit. “I love Andy and Thommo at Poison City and I think they’re releasing some of the best rock albums in Australia,” says Cloher. “Their whole approach and ethic is very similar to Milk.”

“Poison City are another super inspired, friendly and hard-working label,” agrees Alexander. “They’re committed to building their local music community and creating a safe, fun space for people to make music. They seemed the perfect choice.”

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P

oison City Records was started by Andy Hayden back in 2003, originally run out of a small house in the Melbourne suburb of Preston. “We did a little bit of mail order, and imported stuff from the States so we did some distribution as well,” says Hayden. “The label initially started to release friends’ bands and a couple bands I was playing in at the time. Things just grew and evolved from there, and here we are still chipping away,” he laughs.

“I spoke to Steve [Cross] and Harvey [Saward] from Remote Control and asked if I could start up a label and they were like, sure, go for it.”

McKenna would go on to quit Remote Control a year later to focus on Our Golden Friend. “I’d been there about four and a half years and decided I wanted to go back into artist management, and that Our Golden Friend would be a catalyst for that. It turned into a label as well as a management company, so it’s grown bigger than I thought it was going to when we started it.”

Our Golden Friend’s artist roster

currently boasts the likes of RVG, FERLA and 808s and Greatest Hits, while also managing the likes of Totally Mild, Jade Imagine, and Jess Ribeiro.

Even before being approached about curating the next Split Singles series, Hayden was familiar with the folks behind its first volume. “The Milk Records and Bedroom Suck people are good friends of ours, and we’ve worked together on projects. We have bands of ours that play with their bands,” he says.

He was also already familiar with the Split Singles series, having signed up during its first run. “The Split Singles volume one really impressed me. I remember telling Jen and Joe what a great idea it was. It reminded me of the old Sub Pop 7” club they used to do in the late ’80s and early ’90s. I liked that it brings together a few of the bands you’re working with but also exposes newer bands who aren’t on the label but we

like.”

Cloher and Alexander didn’t have another curator in mind yet when broaching the idea with Hayden and Poison City, letting the label choose a counterpart instead. Eventually, Hayden and co. approached McKenna and Our Golden Friend.

“The good thing about the two-label way of doing Split Singles is that introducing another label means you get a whole other taste and dynamic,” says Hayden. “We wanted to work with a newer label rather than one we’d worked with a lot over the years, we thought it was a cool pairing.”

“I think Andy and I kind of come from different backgrounds musically. The labels are quite different,” McKenna says. “It’s kind of a meeting of two minds and I’m really happy with the selection of artists that all ended up on the series together, it’s really cool.” ▲

In 2007, Poison City opened a brickand-mortar record store in Fitzroy, which continues to trade six days a week. The label has released a plethora of beloved Australian indie and punk records, from Camp Cope to Infinite Void, and it also runs an annual festival in Melbourne, Poison City Weekender, a highlight on the calendar of this country’s underground music community.

Conversely, McKenna and her partner Burnell began Our Golden Friend relatively recently, back in December 2015. McKenna was working at Remote Control at the time, envisioning Our Golden Friend as a way of putting out 7” releases by bands the pair loved that weren’t quite right for Remote Control.

“I FEEL LIKE SO OFTEN IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, PARTICULARLY IN A SMALLER COMMUNITY LIKE AUSTRALIA,

THERE IS A HYPER-JEALOUSY GOING ON.”

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FEATURE

“WE WANTED TO START A PROJECT

THAT WAS ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER,

CELEBRATING THE INCREDIBLE MUSIC AND COMMUNITY WE HAVE HERE.”

T

he logistics of putting together the Split Singles is where Hayden says things got a little tricky. “It sounded like an easy thing to get together six bands per label,” he says. “But a lot of the bands we worked with in this series are very active; they’re touring and releasing albums. We had to work around quite a few logistics to make sure everyone has happy with a trick being released at a certain time and whatnot.”

Deciding which artists to pair together per split 7” was another considerable task.

“With volume one, the way Joe and Jen approached bands they wanted to work with, the bands didn’t necessarily get a say in who they would be paired up with. It was kind of a blind dating scenario. We’ve released other split 7” singles, we did a recent one with Mod Con and Fair Maiden. Those bands have a bit of history and have played shows together, and often that’s how a split comes about.

“With our series, we did a little bit of both. Some of the pairings were suggested; Michael Beach and Bitch Diesel we suggested to both bands and they were happy with that. The RVG and Mod Con pairing, I know Romy and Erica had already talked about doing a split together so that was a natural pairing. A few of them happened organically, and when suggesting other pair-ups, we just tried to make it an interesting match up and hope everyone was happy.

When we spoke to all the bands about it, there seemed to be some common thread through most of the bands; they’d had some interactions with each other.”

One of the artists featured in the series is Melbourne post-punk act RVG, who are currently signed to Our Golden Friend. Centered around the songwriting of frontperson Romy Vager, the four-piece has had a huge year since they self-released their debut album A Quality of Mercy in 2017. “RVG I’ve been a huge fan of for a long time,” says McKenna. “They’re one of the best live bands I’ve seen in a really long time. When I first saw them play at the Tote I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is really good’ and it’s been a year since I started working with them.

They’ve had a huge year in that time.”

Elsewhere on the split you can find the likes of idiosyncratic Poison City artists like Mere Women and Harmony.

According to Hayden, bands that are unique are what draw his attention.

go see them live, they all have a very distinct sound to them.”

T

he labels behind both Split Singles series, along with a significant portion of the artists featured, are Melbournebased. Naturally, one wonders what the series says about the city’s sense of collaboration and shared community.

“Melbourne has an incredible sense of connection and support,” comments Cloher. “It takes some time to establish yourself but once you’ve found your comrades it’s one of the best places to be making music.

There is always something on the local scene that will inspire you.”

“I GUESS SOMETIMES PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION OF AN INDEPENDENT LABEL IS THAT

IT HAS A COMMON SOUND. I’VE REALLY TRIED HARD OVER THE YEARS TO NOT HAVE THAT.” “I guess sometimes people’s perception of an independent label is that it has a common sound. I’ve really tried hard over the years to not have that. I like lots of different music and the bands that stick out for me are the ones that are doing their own thing.

They stand alone as that particular sound. Mere Women, Harmony, Mod Con… if you post those records on, or

However, those involved with this year’s iteration are quick to note that there’s no reason further editions should be as Melbourne-centric.

“I actually tried really hard to get bands who weren’t from Melbourne in my selection,” says McKenna. “I asked other bands but they had other things going on or didn’t have a song

ready. We have such a plethora of amazing bands here at the moment, so I think we’re a bit spoiled for choice. And we’re always just drawn back to what we know, because Andy and I are both from here we see everything all the time.”

Hayden agrees. “Maybe next time around it becomes a Sydney label and a Brisbane label. I don’t think there’s any reason that it has to be a Melbourne thing or even an Australian thing. Music’s such a global thing these days, if there were bands that made sense to fit in from the other side of the world, then why not?”

Ultimately, the motivations behind the Split Singles series are fairly straightforward – Hayden and McKenna want people to discover new music.

“There’s obviously some higherprofile artists in there,” points out McKenna. “They’re kind of what we hope will draw people in, and then they’ll listen to the whole collection.

There’s some really beautiful musicians on there who are quite unknown. Way Dynamic is an artist from Melbourne who’ll have an album out later this year, but it’s a nice introduction to him musically.

“It’s quite a good way of profiling bands who are doing quite well, but also introducing an audience to bands they might not have heard of before.”

Hayden echoes McKenna’s sentiments; “We just want people to find out about good new music.”

What: Split Singles Club Volume Two is available now. For more info, head to splitsingles.club/

“IT’S QUITE A GOOD WAY OF PROFILING BANDS WHO ARE DOING QUITE WELL, BUT ALSO

INTRODUCING AN AUDIENCE TO BANDS THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE HEARD OF BEFORE.”

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FEATURE

Eves Karydas:

The Purity of Pop Belinda Quinn talks to Hannah Karydas about the feminist prose that changed her life and the power of pop’s no-fucks-given attitude

O

ver two years ago Hannah Evyenia Karydas – the woman formerly known to Australian audiences as Eves The Behaviour – decided to drop everything to move to London on her lonesome. While most artists might rather ride out a wave of consistent triple j play and continue to support crowd-drawing names, Karydas wanted change. “It wasn’t really a career decision. It was a dream I had to fulfil,” she explains.

When she’s not in the studio with collaborators Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), Sam Dixon (Adele, Kylie Minogue) and Chris Zane (Passion Pit), Karydas can often be found in her London apartment with her head in a book or cooking Greek dishes from her Yaya’s secret recipes.

“The sweets are really tricky to make. I mean when you think of baklava, it’s very intricate,” she explains.

Growing up in a big Greek family in Cairns meant being surrounded by seemingly endless cousins, going to church, and having their house blessed.

“I think we’re not really a normal family,” she says; she claims the sheer degree of support her parents showered her in was somewhat irregular. “I guess also growing up in a Greek family, it’s not particularly like middle of the road white Australia either. Yeah. We’ve always just been our own little crew,” she says, her quiet admiration clear.

Excitement grows in Karydas’s voice when her love of reading is brought to the table: “I could talk about this all day.” From Joan Didion’s eloquent and cutting personal essays to Gloria Steinem’s restlessness in My Life On The Road, it seems endless texts have left a mark on the now 23-year-old.

A particular favourite of Karydas’s is Didion’s essay on self-respect. Originally published in Vogue in 1961, the piece was considered unusual for the magazine’s voice at the time, tucked in between hair, beauty and fashion styling tips.

In it, Didion quips, “The dismal fact is that selfrespect has nothing to do with the approval of others … [This approval] is something that people with courage can do without.”

“It just blew my mind. I mean I really needed to read that at that time I think,” Karydas explains.

“I read it when I was 18 or something. I swear, once a year I go back and read that and I learn something new from it.” It’s fitting, really. From what I’ve heard so far of Karydas’s Hush, the work thematically circles self-respect, independence and her growing understanding of what it means to be a sexually empowered woman.

Her new track ‘Couch’ stands out as a nod to Karydas’s growing confidence and ambition. “It’s just about embracing feeling good about yourself and knowing that you’re going in for the kill,” she breaks to laugh, “and that you can do and you can own it. And that’s kind of a feeling that I’m trying to explore more and more with this record.”

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When Karydas claims Pride And Prejudice as her favourite book of all time, I let out a giggle, and she gives an – admittedly welcomed – reprimand. “People always laugh at that. I think there’s a big misconception about that book because they think it’s just a love story. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about independence; it’s about being a woman and not being intimidated. I read that once a year as well.” The pages of her own copy are carefully folded down; whenever she’s feeling blue, she returns to the moments that remind her of her strength.

Hush is a significant move away from the darker, Chvrches-like electro-pop of 2014 single ‘Electrical’ to a lighter sound that manages to maintain its moodiness. There’s a delicacy of tone and minimalism in ‘Wildest Ones’, something you might hear in a Hans Zimmer composition; a complex, reversed melody that stemmed from a writing experiment in ‘Further Than The Planes Fly’ and a swelling desire in ‘There For You’. The songs reflect Karydas’ transition to a more positive, authentic version of herself, which grew out of her time away from home.

Karydas describes her favoured ‘miss-ur-crush’ artists: these include everyone from Lana Del Rey to Joni Mitchell to the biggest pop artists of the minute. “It’s kind of like genre doesn’t matter anymore; it’s more about a feeling, and they all signify and stand for the same things, like a thread that runs through them. A lot of it is music made by women … When something has come from a real experience, it’s hard not to be moved by that.”

‘Miss-ur-crush’ music has grown to sustain Karydas. “It kind of gets me through everything. I mean, that’s such a basic thing to say, but it’s my life,” she says half jokingly, half not, “as it is for pretty much every other person as well.”

When it comes to her love of pop – she often returns to artists like Cardi B and Selena Gomez – she says, “it’s the ‘no fucks given’ attitude surrounding it” that appeals to her most. “It’s just like, ‘This is how I feel. I’m putting it all out on the table’. [There’s] no aura of trying to be too cool.

It just is what it is and I love that. It’s unabashed and pure. I don’t like when people act like they don’t care and hide behind those masks.”

After suggesting that there’s a certain meanness behind ‘too cool for you’ vibes, which perhaps stems from insecurities, she says, “Yeah, I definitely think that … It’s just like, let those people do what they want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do.”

What: Splendour In The Grass 2018 When: Friday July 20 – Sunday July 22 Where: North Byron Parklands With: Angie McMahon, Chvrches, Henry Rollins, Middle Kids, Superorganism, and many more

“POP HAS NO AURA OF

IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS AND I LOVE THAT. I thebrag.com

FEATURE

“WHEN SOMETHING HAS COME FROM A REAL EXPERIENCE,

IT’S HARD NOT TO BE MOVED BY THAT.”

“PEOPLE THINK PRIDE AND PREJUDICE IS JUST A LOVE STORY. BUT IT’S SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT.

IT’S ABOUT INDEPENDENCE;

IT’S ABOUT BEING A WOMAN AND NOT BEING INTIMIDATED.”

F TRYING TO BE TOO COOL, T’S UNABASHED AND PURE.” thebrag.com

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FEATURE

“HARMONIES ARE THE BEST. THEY’RE THE SUGAR YOU NEED.”

“THERE DEFINITELY WERE DEADLINES THAT I DIDN’T MEET.

YOU JUST CAN’T RUSH IT. EVERYONE CUT ME SOME SLACK, BUT IT’S JUST A NATURALLY LATE PROCESS.”

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FEATURE

Gabriella Cohen:

In Harmony Doug Wallen learns that Melbourne singer-songwriter Gabriella Cohen has finally learned how to live her best life

T

wo years on from her head-turning debut LP, Full Closure And No Details, Gabriella Cohen has resurfaced with a follow-up that doubles as a wry, sly travelogue. Initially recorded on a cattle farm in Seymour, Victoria, before being finished on far-flung stops in England, Portugal, Italy, Mexico and Venice Beach, Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love mentions several of those places by name – in between some remarkably candid expressions of melancholy and longing.

“I feel so lonely all the time,” goes the surprisingly upbeat chorus of ‘I Feel So Lonely’, which also includes the quiet admission “I push people away.” And on the closing ‘Sky Rico’, she sings, “Cooking alone is depressing as hell.” Such moments make for an ideal fit with Cohen’s weepy, twangy indie pop, which relishes oldies-style reverb and vocal harmonies – but is it hard to share stuff that’s so close to home?

“Definitely not,” answers Cohen without hesitation, by phone from a beach on the Sunshine Coast. “That’s the only comfortable bit I have in songwriting, that I can share all of that. It doesn’t feel nerveracking at all. It’s therapeutic. It all starts with a problem, and it’s solved by the time I finish writing.”

Cohen originally hails from a permaculture village in southeast Queensland called Crystal Waters. “It’s a proper village. No one really knows about it, which is great,” she quips. After some time spent playing and singing in Brisbane bands, she took off for Melbourne and quickly established herself with that low-slung, wisecracking first album, which saw release in the U.S. via revered indie label Captured Tracks – home to Mac DeMarco, DIIV and Widowspeak. From there, her breakout single ‘Beaches’ only boosted her international presence.

Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love builds on Cohen’s chilled-out delivery and throwback arrangements, chasing down a woozy psychedelic detour on ‘Hi Fidelity’ and dropping some witty commentary on the music industry on opener ‘Music Machine’. Lead single ‘Baby’ is the sharpest example yet of her quirky bubblegum stylings, while the track ‘Neil Young Goes Crazy’ makes no secret of its inspiration – specifically, the last few tracks from 1974’s On The Beach. “I love Neil Young,” she confirms, “and it just sounded so much like him. I hope he hears it one day.”

Working closely with bandmate Kate Dillon, who engineered both albums, Cohen again self-produced the new record. “I wanted to be more expansive and colourful,” she says, “and work with more instrumentation. Just bigger as a whole.” At the same time, tracks like ‘Recognise My Fate’ have a cosy, pleading intimacy that most bands would kill for.

Besides Dillon, whom Cohen also accompanies in Dillon’s Full Flower Moon Band, Cohen’s backing ensemble includes bassist

Arun Roberts, who got scouted by Gucci when they played together in Hollywood. “So I’m lucky if he still wants to play with me,” she laughs.

In fact, all of their time in the States has been fortuitous, from doing South by Southwest to supporting Foxygen on their full North American tour last year. “It’s been incredible,” beams Cohen.

“America really, really loved us, and we loved them back. No one was really prepared for how overwhelming the response was, at concerts and after concerts. America was just going crazy.”

Part of Cohen’s overseas appeal could be her old-school airs of doo wop and bossa nova, right down to the spoken-word recitation on ‘Miserable Baby’ and the gospel-style exhalation at the start of ‘Morning Light’. “I discovered [oldies] in the past six years or so,” she says, singling out The Supremes and The Ronettes. “I’m just really into that. It makes people feel happy and nostalgic.”

She’s similarly effusive when it comes to harmonies, which she imagines as “a choir of angelic dolls that are very deadpan and sweet” when writing back-up vocal parts for herself. “Harmonies are the best. They’re the sugar you need.”

After recording the first album in Gympie and the second in Seymour, Cohen feels ready to graduate to a proper city studio for her next LP. While she’s previously found studios to be “cold and steely,” she admits that recording in the country has its own pitfalls: “You have to stop because there are cows mooing and cockatoos screeching.”

And in the case of her second album, it wasn’t finished by the time Cohen and her band jetted off for that Foxygen tour.

“There definitely were deadlines that I didn’t meet,” she says.

“You just can’t rush it. Everyone cut me some slack, but it’s just a naturally late process.” Yet, in a rewarding outcome for the album’s unabashedly personal lyrics, Cohen found herself finishing the record partly in an apartment in Portugal – a destination she had inserted into multiple songs while writing away in Melbourne.

“I was desperately in love – I still am – and trying to get to Portugal to meet the person,” she explains. “So that’s all I could really write about.

I kind of manifested it through song, because I ended up getting there after tour, thank god!” For an uncommonly relatable songwriter who makes inner doubts seem so accessible – and even necessary – it’s a lovely bonus to see her wish and will herself all the way across the world. Even if she does go the more traditional studio route next time, you can bet that her songs will take us far beyond those four walls.

Where: Waywards When: Friday June 29 And: Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love is out now through Dot Dash / Remote Control

“I WAS DESPERATELY IN LOVE – I STILL AM –

AND TRYING TO GET TO PORTUGAL TO MEET THE PERSON. SO THAT’S ALL I COULD WRITE ABOUT.” thebrag.com

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FEATURE

“YOU’RE ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT THE SOPHOMORE,

THE SPOOKY FOLLOW-UP

– YOU’RE WORRIED IF YOU’RE MAKING THE RIGHT SOUNDS AND STYLES.”

Alison Wonderland:

Spiritually Fucked Up Via the world’s crackliest phone line, Alex Chetverikov interrogates Alison Wonderland – AKA Alexandra Sholler – about life at the top

A

lison Wonderland is on the other side of the world, quietly and assuredly living her best life. The Aussie EDM performer – real name Alexandra Sholler – has just released an extraordinarily diverse and colourful second album, Awake; melted minds at Coachella; and is generally doing the kind of things most other musicians would only dream of. “I’m driving in South America right now, and it’s been so surreal already,” Sholler says. “Everyone knew the words to my songs. It is insane. It’s so weird: you’re in one country for most of your life. You travel here for the first time after living somewhere for so long and bam – people are singing your words right back to you. How did I get here?”

“I’M JUST GOING TO STOP GIVING A SHIT AND WRITE HOW I WANT TO.”

That same sense of the surreal can be seen in Sholler’s rise to commercial stardom. Here’s a quick look at her musical background: playing bass in a punk band – check! Spending time as a classicallytrained cellist in the Sydney Youth Orchestra – check! Paying her dues as a high-energy EDM producer and DJ – check! From club residencies in Kings Cross, the Sydney native’s relentless work ethic has culminated in a range of incredible achievements and platitudes, including Awake hitting number one on the US Billboard Dance Chart.

It’s a journey that, for its peaks, has had its low points, as she unashamedly explores on Awake. This is her catharsis, and reflects more than merely a coming to terms with the personal effects of success. In an industry that can just as quickly swallow one up in its sheer excess, it’s her testimony to the power of realisation and awakening.

“Second album, what am I going to do? I’m just going to stop giving a shit and write how I want to. It became such an incredibly open experience. You’re always worried about the sophomore, the spooky follow-up – you’re worried if you’re making the right sounds and

styles. I eventually got to a point where I just stopped caring and rode my natural high. A big example of that is ‘Church’, which almost didn’t make the album. As the masters were getting sent in, I went on Instagram live and my fans were watching. It felt like I was onstage and there was no second-guessing.

They guided me and helped me to realise how powerful that song was for them.”

Indeed, ‘Church’ is the rawest example of Sholler’s new, unfettered writing style.

Joined by a youth choir, she takes us to her spiritual place (or, as she puts it, “fuck me up on a spiritual level”). There’s a different theme at work here; the inherent strength afforded by acknowledging negative energy and embracing vulnerability. Whereas first album Run fizzed with youthful energy and trap-heavy pop anthems, Awake seems more mature and measured – though not without Sholler’s characteristic knack of laying down a big, bass-heavy beat.

Sholler’s not without a sense of humour, either. On a barely-audible phone line dodgier than the NBN roll-out, our call dropped out no less than four times before Sholler decided to finish the interview off, David Byrne-style... interviewing herself.

“Tell me more about the album and how it came together”, she asks, before responding in kind. “I’m just gonna give you some answers to random questions. I wrote the album with Joel Little, who’s worked with [Lorde] and won a Grammy. Usually I’m pretty much solo, and I was so tentative meeting Joel. I had my songs and ideas he gave me little tweaks and tips What: Curve Ball At Vivid Live 2018 to improve my music.

Where: Carriageworks I worked with Wayne When: Saturday June 16 Coyne from Flaming With: Vera Blue, Crooked Colours, Haiku Lips, too…” She Hands and more laughs. “Oh god, I can’t And: Awake is out now through Universal believe I’m doing this.”

“I WROTE THE ALBUM WITH JOEL LITTLE, WHO’S WORKED WITH LANA DEL REY AND WON A GRAMMY.

USUALLY I’M PRETTY MUCH SOLO.” thebrag.com

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FEATURE

Iceage

Augustus Welby and Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt talk humour, change, and horror

For The Future

I

ceage emerged in the final years of the ’00s, a bunch of noisy teenage punks intent on leaving their mark on contemporary rock music. After two albums of dark, break-neck post-punk – which Iggy Pop memorably praised as sounding truly “dangerous” – 2014’s Plowing Into The Field Of Love nullified any questions about whether the Danish band was all style and no substance.

The album was hailed as a major step forward for Iceage thanks to its more accessible sound and the inclusion of increased melodicism, acoustic guitars, horn flourishes – and even the odd country twang.

Now, three and a half years later, Iceage returns with Beyondless. The band’s four members are still in their mid-to-late 20s: these are significant years for the expansion of one’s worldview, and a time to navigating some rather unfamiliar personal challenges. But frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is ambivalent about whether Beyondless represents a more evolved perspective.

“I usually hate the way that people talk about music as maturing or growing up. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that,” he says. “It’s more just that you go through life and different sorts of expressions go with different periods.

Of course you build on what you made before and you develop. But I don’t know about growing up.”

Beyondless continues the stylistic exploration initiated on Plowing, showcasing an enriched sense of songcraft and a band emboldened by the success of that previous release.

Along with nods to glam rock and ’60s avantgarde, not to mention Rønnenfelt’s typically erudite lyricism, there a couple of songs that recall the austere ferocity of the band’s earliest work.

“The core of it is the same need that has fuelled us always,” Rønnenfelt says. “But we always try and push

our output into some sort of new ground and we’re not that interested in relentlessly repeating ourselves. The sort of need for creation is the same, but we can’t do it the same way twice.”

A particular contrast to the swirling chaos of 2011’s New Brigade and 2013’s You’re Nothing is the rigorous attention given to the constituent parts of each track on Beyondless – from the instrumentation and lyrics to the structure, performance and production quality.

“Sometimes you do, depending on the song you’re writing, have to face an uncomfortable part of yourself, or dwell in an emotion that is not necessarily easy to confront,” Rønnenfelt says. “There’s an element of that, but if there’s pain to confront it’s usually a gratifying thing to face.”

Indeed, while there’s an emotional intensity to the creative process, writing isn’t always such a hifalutin exercise.

“It’s always been a quite nuanced emotional palette we have presented,” Rønnenfelt says. “So some of it has been painful to write through; some of it I’ve written with a dumb smirk on my face. It’s a process that can hold a lot of different things – and more than anything it’s a process that I enjoy.”

Since the beginning, Rønnenfelt has sought to give his lyrics a literary edge, which is again the case on Beyondless.

In past interviews the band members have name-checked a range of literary favourites including American authors Carson McCullers, James Agee and Henry Miller, French writers Georges Bataille and Jean Genet, and Japanese writer and militant nationalist Yukio Mishima.

Accordingly, Rønnenfelt takes a disciplined approach to his lyric writing, reflected in lines such as these from album-opener ‘Hurrah’: “An abstract notion / That I’m fl agless at last / I’m not fi ghting for a country / I’m fi ghting to outlast”.

“I USUALLY HATE THE WAY THAT PEOPLE TALK ABOUT MUSIC AS

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FEATURE

“WE ALWAYS TRY AND PUSH OUR OUTPUT INTO SOME SORT OF NEW GROUND AND WE’RE NOT THAT INTERESTED IN

RELENTLESSLY REPEATING OURSELVES.” “There are certain people who open up your idea of what language can be and what language can do,” he says. “I have a hard time picking up my influences or determining who’s influenced me and who hasn’t. But there’s people, both lyricists and writers, that have expanded my view of language and what it does.”

Some of his favourite rock lyricists include Leonard Cohen and Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker. Both writers are notable for their ability to find romance in banality and for being at once humorous and melancholic.

This latter characteristic is of great interest to Rønnenfelt. “Not a lot of people pick up on the humour in my writing, I think, because it’s subtle.

But it’s there.”

In tune with the tonal breadth of the album, the Beyondless cover features a highly evocative artwork.

Dominated by a mixture of nebulous, cellular shapes that are suggestive of existential fluidity, and presented in vivid reds and pinks signifying rage, anger and lust, it’s a wonderfully compelling but somewhat disquieting image. “[Choosing the artwork] was a pretty painful process. I think we’ve never had a bigger argument in this band than picking the artwork for this record. In hindsight all the other suggestions for album covers were pretty shit, so thank God this one showed up.

“It was Dan [Kjær Nielsen, drums]: he found this girl in Copenhagen whose grandad who’s now dead used to do modelling for books. He went to her house and got to look through the grandfather’s collection. He then found that one and we all saw that and it was pretty evident that was what the record looked like.”

THE HUMOUR IN MY WRITING,

I THINK, BECAUSE IT’S SUBTLE. BUT IT’S THERE.”

thebrag.com

What: Beyondless is out now through Matador / Remote Control

Iceage photo by Steve Gullick

“NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE PICK UP ON

It’s not only a captivating image but it also acts as a sensory primer for the ten songs on Beyondless. “A good album cover burns itself into the inside of your brain and then you can’t really disassociate the music from the cover.

A lot of records, the album cover is so not-detachable from the music.”

There’s a pause. “I’m trying to think of really great albums with really shit covers, but nothing really comes to my mind.”

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FEATURE

Snail Mail:

The Post-Relationship Slog Belinda Quinn chats to Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan about Baltimore’s indie-rock scene and the cyclic lifespan of first loves

L

indsey Jordan of Snail Mail grew up among the groundswell of independent artists emerging in Baltimore, most of which seem to have the same ethos: make music for the sake of making a good thing. She lists her local inspirations: Celebration, Future Islands, Romantic States, Beach House, and Big Mouth, just to name a few.

“It’s such close proximity to New York and Philly where it’s sort of like people move out of their hometown to make it big, but it’s also not really a destination spot,” explains Jordan. “So we have really amazing like, creepy weirdo bands, which I’ve always really looked up to and thought were really cool. Snail Mail is like, the least freaky band, but it’s inspired by freaky music.”

“SOME OF THESE RELATIONSHIPS DON’T REALLY MEAN THAT MUCH TO ME ANYMORE AND REPRESENT

A BLIP IN TIME.”

Lush was recorded in Upstate New York at the seemingly haunted – according to Jordan – Outlier Inn. Her unrelenting need to perfect the tone of each instrument and melodic phrasing within Lush shows a keen eye for detail and emotive precision. At 18 years old, Jordan wields an intricate and controlled sense of direction in Snail Mail’s lo-fi sound, which really, isn’t lo-fi at all.

Lush’s earlier tracks were written while she was head-deep in the work of poet Eileen Myles, including the works Inferno and the classic Chelsea Girls. “[They] were both kind of personal accounts of being an openly gay woman. Her writing has a really unique personality to it that’s just really bold and succinct,” explains Jordan. “I think she just epitomises like, cool,” she says, geeking out a little over the phone.

“There is a lot of variation on [Lush],” she says. “It’s mostly like a clean record and then when you hear something crazy happens, you’ve got to like make a really big deal out of it with like, some weird noise.” Jordan sat by producer Jake Aron’s side throughout the entire mastering process, soaking in as much as possible.

With mentions of luring in an ex with a bourgeois $25 pie and hoping to gain said ex’s sympathetic attention after she breaks an ankle, Myles both delicately and wittily captures the desperation of missing an exlover in her essay on The Excruciating Pain Of Waiting for Love. When it comes to the themes here, Jordan says, “That’s where I draw a lot of parallels.” In its beginnings, Lush captures young romance, and her reaction to the heartbreak of rejection at its highest point of intensity.

“SNAIL MAIL IS LIKE, THE LEAST FREAKY BAND,

BUT IT’S INSPIRED BY FREAKY MUSIC.” Together, they took inspiration from Solange – Aron engineered her phenomenal third record A Seat At The Table – and Big Thief’s Capacity. “The manner in which [Big Thief] make and put out music is unchangingly honest,” explains Jordan. “It’s really hi-fi production and clean and very straightforward but also like, huge. And I love that almost like, arena rock bulk setting that they have going on.”

From Hop Along to Paramore’s After Laughter to Big Thief, there’s a wide sense of musical community living and breathing within Lush’s DNA, but at the same time, it is undeniably its own organism.

There were moments touring prior to Lush where Jordan was feeling stifled. “I sort of wasn’t so psyched on what I was doing and I wanted to kind of get away from doing music stuff, which is hard for me to say,” she says. It wasn’t until she began reading novels “obsessively” that she began being pulled back into her own words. Annie Dillard’s account of living in rural Virginia, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, particularly rekindled her passion.

“She’s just writing about isolation and she writes about all of these plants and bugs that she finds; she gets really philosophical about how her life mirrors the ecosystems. And that’s just a really nice distraction for me,” explains Jordan.

“It sort of feels like, the end of the world, like everything is shit, [a] melodrama album,” she says. “I wanted to capture the intensity of those feelings and having those earlier relationships in your life that you feel makes a really big impact on you but, you know, when you’re moving past it and you can just look past and laugh at yourself because you realise you’re bathing in your own melodrama.”

Lush begins with a trickling guitar melody that runs off of Jordan’s voice like water in ‘Intro’, which ends with a warm, full drone before moving into the fuller strumming of ‘Pristine’. She croons, “don’t you like me for me / is there any better feeling than coming clean,” before demanding, “I will never love anyone else.”

“I like to immerse myself in it and just feel everything fully and be non-judgemental of myself, coz you know, all that stuff’s real,” she explains. “And at some point I was writing and I was looking back at the earlier songs on the record while I was finishing the record, and I was like, some of these relationships don’t really mean that much to me anymore and represent a blip in time.

“But I mean the only reason I don’t regret any writing I’ve ever done or just erase anything is because at some point it was significant for me and I like the idea of capturing that.”

The last two songs on Lush are soft, weighty and full of reflection; the lovely indie-rock slow dance ‘Deep Sea’ creeps under your skin, combining imagery of a lonely dive into the blue with long, breathy notes on the French horn. ‘Anytime’ repeats similar lyrics from ‘Intro’ with the distortion lifted from her voice, perhaps indicating the clarity of hindsight that comes after an intense wave of emotion.

These relationships are over, and for now, she’s doing fine.

What: Lush is out through Matador/Remote Control on Monday June 18

YOU’RE GETTING CAPITALISED ON JUST BECAUSE OF WHO YOU ARE.”

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Snail Mail photo by Michael Lavine

“IT FEELS LIKE SOMETIMES

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“YOU CAN JUST LOOK PAST AND LAUGH AT YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU REALISE

YOU’RE BATHING IN YOUR OWN MELODRAMA.” thebrag.com

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Belinda Quinn talks to Melbourne’s rock and rollers Bitch Diesel about witch pedals, slut struts and patriarchal

Bitch Diesel:

Love Drunk Gems

“I TRY TO

BUY ONLY WITCH PEDALS.” 34 :: BRAG :: 736 :: 04:04:18

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elbourne three-piece Bitch Diesel play music that’s glamrock meets Bratmobile meets Kath And Kim. They’re the wholesome babes you drunkenly befriend in a grubby nightclub bathroom when you’ve gone a bit too turbo on the piss. And they’re the kindling behind an incoming love rock revolution.

“The Charger tried to Pash Rat me at a Steve Miller Band gig back in the day,” – I think Pash Rat means snog – “and The Stang gave me her flower crown to wear at the pub footy ball (an honour I had only dreamed would one day become a reality) and professed her love for me in the dunnies,” says bassist Silver Skidmark of the moments she realised she wanted to make music with her Bitch Diesel bandmates. (The three have taken on their own personas in order to cope with the ol’ performance anxiety.)

They’ve known each other around the traps of Melbourne’s music scenes for years, but it was at the fi lming of their mates Mod Con’s music video that they really hit it off. It was a shared period of strife within their lives that led to a special bond forming between them; a bond only strengthened by Bitch Diesel, a term that describes cheap plonk for the girls.

“We were all in red, drinking tins, and we got thrown in a car boot together,” says their drummer, The Charger.

“I was going through a rough break-up and had to leave a band with my ex when these spunks fi nd me with wine and whisky and offer me a spot in the band. It was the greatest day of my life,” explains guitarist The Stang.

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FEATURE

bullshit

“I’D BEEN MADE TO FEEL

VERY ASHAMED ABOUT MY SEXUALITY

THROUGH AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WHEN I WAS YOUNGER.”

“The feelings were all round mutual, so we formed a fullyfledged marriage in the form of this ridiculous rock and roll outfit,” adds Skidmark. And ever since tying the knot, Bitch Diesel have produced some of the biggest sounding rock and roll Australia has to offer right now.

All three grew up regional: Silver Skidmark claims to be from Lake Ballsack in Victoria; The Charger is from a banana farm in Doon Doon; and The Stang is from her family’s flower farm in “the Dandenongs.”

Their latest track ‘Power’ tells a tale of Joan of Arc’s spirit guiding the oppressed in a time where witches were still being burned at the stake – the song begins with a static buzz that flickers like a sonic flame, and was engineered by their frequent collaborator Gareth Liddiard of Tropical Fuck Storm and The Drones.

Together they’ve recorded everything from thunderstorms, to The Charger smashing wine bottles and a “South American Marimba-type object”, which was plucked by the Silver Skidmark to create a spaceship-like whirl in ‘The Skull’. “The Stang was certain her people had returned from Uranus,” says Skidmark.

The band are outspoken on the issue of patriarchal bullshit, and continue to call out the big egoes lurking within Melbourne’s endless scenes. “We are all victims of a system that still has massive flaws in it. Even in Melbourne, one of the world’s most progressive and liveable cities, women and many other minority groups are still victims of patriarchal bullshit,” explains The Stang. “It’s the egotistical system that needs to be taken down that is fuelled from ignorance, greed, bigotry, jealousy and hatred. The only way that can happen is through education.”

The album art from their previous release ‘Red Love Witch’ is strikingly similar to the lush, DIY Victorian wiccan aesthetic of 2016 film The Love Witch – maybe that’s unsurprising, given The Stang and The Charger work together in film costume and garment design at Vovo The Label. But where the film mocks unrealistic expectations and fantasies surrounding sex and relationships, ‘Red Love Witch’ simply sees The Stang on the hunt for a good old-fashioned root.

“Being back on the dating scene was the inspiration for the song. I started writing it when I decided I was going to go on a slut strut after a break up and I was going to reclaim the word for myself,” says The Stang. “I’d been made to feel very ashamed about my sexuality through an abusive relationship when I was younger. The witches were a great help writing the lyrics – it was very fun.”

“In my opinion it’s the irony of the song that brings me such joy,” says Skidmark. “The Stang, who is 100 per cent responsible for this masterpiece, is a giant prude. #fakeittillyoumakeit is one of our mottos. We live and will die by it.”

“EVEN IN MELBOURNE, ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST PROGRESSIVE AND LIVEABLE CITIES, WOMEN AND MANY OTHER MINORITY GROUPS

ARE STILL VICTIMS OF PATRIARCHAL BULLSHIT.”

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Indeed, the song contains cracker lines like “Don’t shave your bush, it’s extra cush ... I’ll give you a tug coz you’ve got a real nice mug / Waiting for a mate to take me on a date / Don’t wanna wait just need to get laid,” and the lyrics are tucked in-between witchy guitar swirls and heavy distortion.

“We are always doing witchcraft and voodoo at home and onstage. Thanks for noticing our witchy swirls. I try to buy only witch pedals,” says The Stang.

Importantly, each member of the band brings something unique to the Bitch Diesel table, and there’s no one person who dominates the pack. “There is no diva” The Stang says.

“It’s a socialist collective, DIY and going forward I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

What: ‘Power’ is out now through Poison City Records/Our Golden Friend

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Chvrches:

In Love and Death Iain Cook of Chvrches tells David James Young how the Eurythmics, The National and loftier ambitions shaped the third studio album from the Glasweigan synth-pop trio

“THERE’S A

Chvrches photo by Danny Clinch

REAL SENSE OF EXPLORATION TO THESE SONGS.”

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or about a year there, Chvrches were everywhere you looked. On the back of their second studio album, 2015’s Every Open Eye, the Scottish trio played shows well into the triple figures, dropped a half-dozen singles, and made it out to nearly every continent. Then, for about a year, Chvrches were nowhere to be seen. Sure, they’d earned a break – but this felt like a hibernation. All the while, however, the band were plotting their next move – on their own terms, of course.

“For me, writing has always existed on this binary of sorts,” says Iain Cook, who provides synths, keyboards, bass, and occasionally guitar in the band. “I can’t be doing other things like playing shows if I want to be in a position of writing new material. I’ve always had a lot of difficulty in marrying the two. It’s actually kind of funny – Martin [Doherty, keyboards/vocals] can pull out his laptop and his

headphones and start working away at a song in any dressing room across the world. I haven’t ever been able to shift myself into that kind of gear.”

Hence the reason Chvrches were out for basically all of 2017: they were piecing together what would become their third studio album, Love Is Dead. As law dictates, the album is an equal and opposite reaction to its predecessor – while album number two was born out of a rush of creativity, Love Is Dead was slow-cooked to perfection.

“Every Open Eye was out the door pretty quickly – it was all done within about five months,” says Cook.

“With this album, we really wanted to have a bit of breathing space. I actually think that’s reflected in the music itself – there’s a real sense of exploration to these songs, I think. There’s a really interesting

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FEATURE

“I CAN’T BE DOING OTHER THINGS LIKE PLAYING SHOWS IF I WANT TO BE IN A POSITION OF WRITING NEW MATERIAL.”

journey on this record... and, normally, I hate the word ‘journey’ being used when describing music. I think we all really opened up as musicians and as songwriters in making this record together.”

One key aspect that differentiates Love Is Dead from the previous two records is the fact Chvrches had other people involved in the songwriting and creation of the record. This was a considerable step forward for the Glasgow-based band, as Cook testifies: “In the past, we’d been pretty aggressively opposed to it,” he says.

“The way we saw things, we had carved out a real niche for ourselves without any kind of external input. It was a big deal to us to reach a point where we could open ourselves to the idea – just to see what would happen. It really left a mark on us.”

Greg Kurstin is a key co-writer on much of Love Is Dead, additionally co-producing the album. The single ‘Miracle’ also features contributions from Steve “Mac” McCutcheon, who is behind hits for Ed Sheeran, Charli XCX, and Pink. An early session for the album also saw the band working with Eurythmics’ multi-instrumentalist half, Dave Stewart. Although no songs from their session made it to the record, Cook sees their encounter as wholly influential on Love Is Dead’s overall sound.

“I would have to say that it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had as a musician,” says Cook. “The guy is like no-one I’ve ever met before. He doesn’t think the same way as anyone else. He has all these brilliant, highly conceptual ideas. He’s really inspiring – I don’t think the record would have gone in the direction it did if it wasn’t for his early input. It was a really big deal for me, because Revenge was actually the first record I ever bought. They say to never meet your heroes, but sometimes they turn out to be great blokes.”

If that wasn’t enough, Love Is Dead boasts the first ever feature vocalist to make it onto a Chvrches record, and only the second in their career behind Hayley Williams’ assist on a re-recorded ‘Bury It’ in 2016. ‘My Enemy’, the album’s second single, features vocals from none other than Matt Berninger, best known as the frontman of The National. “We’d run into those guys a few times at festivals around the place,” says Cook. “Lauren got to sing with them a few times, which was a huge honour – we’re all such big fans of that band.”

“I THINK WE ALL REALLY

OPENED UP AS MUSICIANS AND AS SONGWRITERS IN MAKING THIS RECORD TOGETHER.”

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“Later on, when we were tracking ‘My Enemy’, we had the demo as a co-lead between Martin and Lauren. I loved it, but Martin was very critical of his vocal. The idea of asking Matt came up – his voice is in a similar range to that of Martin’s, so it made sense. Lauren emailed him, and he got back to us on the same day asking to hear the song. The very next day, we had his vocals in her inbox. We were really lucky – it’s not every day that you’re getting Matt from The National singing your song.”

On the subject of other people singing Chvrches songs, one can’t help but wonder what the band made of Australia’s own Grinspoon giving ‘Get Out’ the Like a Version treatment on triple j just recently. “That was insane!” says Cook with a laugh. “I guess it lends itself well to a downtuned guitar – especially transposing the opening synth part. It’s a real honour to have our songs re-interpreted like that.”

Where: Hordern Pavilion When: Sunday July 22 And: Love Is Dead is out now through Glassnote / Mushroom

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arts in focus

INTERVIEWED: JULIAN DENNISON FILM / REVIEWS: UNDER THE SILVER LAKE / TULLY UPGRADE / AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

THE BRAG’S AG S G GUIDE U TO:

Holiday starring Victoria Carmen Sonne

FEATURING:

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SFF 2018 HIGHLIGHTS / THE CINEMA OF RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL / THE RANGER / TERROR NULLIUS / HOLIDAY / WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE / FREAK ME OUT / AND MORE

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6–17 JUNE 2018

FULL PROGRAM AVAILABLE AT SFF.ORG.AU ▼

Here’s Our Highlights Of The 2018 Sydney Film Festival Program

1.

By Joseph Earp Listen, we get you: Sydney Film Festival might be one of the most exciting cultural events of the year, but choosing which films to see out of the jam-packed program is about as fun as having teeth pulled. Each year, the organisers of the fest spoil us more and more, and each year it becomes increasingly difficult to know which buzzed-up flicks to see.

“Filmed with the neorealist sparsity that has won him acclaim throughout his still nascent career as a director, Andrew Haigh’s Lean On Pete is a quiet, devastating watch.”

That’s why we’re here to help you out.

Here, for our money, are the “don’t-you-daremiss-’em” picks of the fest; the soon-to-be contemporary classics that you’ll kick yourself if you don’t catch.

You Were Never Really Here

2.

Lynne Ramsay doesn’t make films very often – over her 18-year career, she’s directed only four full-length features – so when she drops a new project, one would do well to sit up and take notice. Best known for her dark, Robert Bressoninflected, kitchen sink dramas (2002’s masterful Morvern Callar is a particularly grimy, particularly sparse watch), her new film You Were Never Really Here is rather a departure in style for the auteur. Led by a bearded, haggard Joaquin Phoenix, it’s ostensibly a revenge story, a tale of a PTSD-riddled former FBI agent who finds himself embroiled in a child kidnapping ring.

Lean On Pete Filmed with the neorealist sparsity that has won him acclaim throughout his still nascent career as a director, Andrew Haigh’s Lean On Pete is a quiet, devastating watch. A new addition to the burgeoning “confused and heartbroken young person connects with a troubled yet ultimately accepting animal” genre, the film focuses on the friendship between a teenager and his horse, the titular Pete. It’s been picked up for U.S. distribution by A24, one of the most exciting and important entertainment companies in operation, so consider that a mark of its considerable quality. Oh, also, by all accounts it’s absolutely heartbreaking, so those who got a kick out of last year’s equally devastating The Levelling should hunt this one down.

3.

But this is no Death Wish style caper; rather, it’s an overloaded, brutal sensory experience, as affecting and effective as anything Ramsay has ever made.

The Seen And Unseen This one’s a must for all you cinephiles with youngish kids. Family friendly fare of the most intelligent and acutely realised order, The Seen And Unseen is a dreamlike Balinese fable that’s light on plot and heavy on visuals and tone, making it a kind of hallucinogenic Brothers Grimm story for the new age. Not, mind you, that the film is not without considerable weight: it explores, in sometimes agonised detail, the loss of a family member, as a young twin must come to terms with the sudden death of their sibling. But despite its occasional heaviness, it bursts with unrivalled imagination; with colour, and with light, and with life.

Rush to it.

“You Were Never Really Here is no Death Wish style caper; rather, it’s an overloaded, brutal sensory experience, as affecting and effective as anything Ramsay has ever made.”

BlacKkKlansman Speaking of auteurs, who can argue with the cinematic back catalogue of one Mr. Spike Lee? The Godard-inspired, fourth wall busting, politically charged postmodernist is perhaps American cinema’s most inspiring cultural voice, and the man responsible for Do The Right Thing, one of the very greatest films ever shot, chopped, and spread over cinema screens.

“Who can argue with the cinematic back catalogue of one Mr. Spike Lee?”

5.

His newest joint, BlackKkKlansman, sounds like Lee at his purest – based on an unbelievable true story, it follows an African-American police officer who manages to infiltrate the KKK. Early word is that it’s a “buddy comedy” (no, seriously), albeit one that pushes all the buttons you’d expect the director who once made a film about blackface to push. Oh, and did we mention it was produced by Get Out director Jordan Peele? This one’s a must see.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot Looking to get even more Joaquin Phoenix in your life? Then make sure to head along to Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, a new biopic from lauded American filmmaker Gus Van Sant.

Sure, Van Sant has had some misfires recently, but Don’t Worry sees him back on familiar ground, telling the story of cartoonist John Callahan and the brutal accident that paralysed him at the tender age of 21.

It’s also a story about alcoholism – it was a drink driving incident that led to Callahan being confined to a wheelchair – and is, by all accounts, a tender, warm-hearted look at recovery. Plus, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, and Jack Black fill out the supporting cast.

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“Think something like The Taking Of Pelham 123 stripped down to its most basic parts and you’ll get close to The Guilty’s sheer adrenaline rush – close, but not quite there.”

4.

6.

The Guilty There aren’t enough real-time thrillers out there. High Noon perfected the form some 50 years ago, but since then, only a few filmmakers have accepted the challenge and committed to the real-time format – which only makes something like The Guilty, a nerveshredding Danish thriller, all the more tantalising.

Moreover, the film, directed by award-winning filmmaker Gustav Möller, isn’t just set in real time; it’s also restricted to a single location. Kicked off by a phone call from a kidnapped woman, the film sees a beleaguered emergency services operator try to guide the victim to safety – connected to each other only by voice, the pair must try their hardest to outwit the woman’s captor. Think something like The Taking Of Pelham 123 stripped down to its most basic parts and you’ll get close to The Guilty’s sheer adrenaline rush – close, but not quite there, given that this taut little crowdpleaser has an energy all of its own. When it premiered at the Sundance film festival early this year, it scooped up major awards, and a lot of buzz – you best believe this one will be big.

WH AT: SYD N EY FILM FESTIVA L 2 018 WH EN : WED N ESDAY J U N E 6 – SU N DAY J U N E 17 thebrag.com

arts in focus

“I’ve made some really good friends as part of Freak Me Out.” FREAK ME OUT: One Big Happy Family Joseph Earp learns that Richard Kuipers, the man behind Sydney Film Festival’s Freak Me Out program, is as dedicated as he is wellversed in horror cinema lore

E

very year, a horde of genre film lovers descend upon cinemas in George Street and in Newtown for Sydney Film Festival’s ‘Freak Me Out’ program. It’s a ritual of sorts. Go enough times, and you start to see the same faces, year in, year out; leather jacket-clad, patch and button-sporting, dyed hair horror cinema lovers, as passionate about the art form as some people out there presumably are about their jobs, and y’know, their families. And yeah, maybe it’s a cliché to suggest these lovers of extremity form a kind of family, but how else are you meant to describe the feeling of warmth that emanates from a crowd of horror nerds, all packed in together in a darkened room, ready to watch something new?

“That Freak Me Out family … that’s what I love,” explains Richard Kuipers, the programmer responsible for Freak Me Out. “It really feels like a community.

And having built it up – this is the eighth year I’ve been doing it – it

just feels great. I’ve made some really good friends as part of Freak Me Out. It’s really, really nice.”

Kuipers’ vision for Freak Me Out is that it should always be surprising.

He’s not just looking just for fullyblooded horror films – although it’s true this year’s Freak Me Out program features its fair share of those, most notably Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade. Kuipers is just as drawn to slower, quieter films; chillers like this year’s Freak Me Out stand-out Good Manners.

“I just love the diversity of [Freak Me Out],” he says.

“I always wanted to get people who were more into traditional slasher horror and fun horror along to the more arty films – and vice versa.

And that seems to have happened over the years. You have people with green hair and a death metal t-shirt coming to see an arty horror flick … People can come and see that kind of stuff if they trust Freak Me Out enough. That’s great. They can come and see the kind of stuff they wouldn’t usually. I’d never

“Piercing is a weird sexual psychodrama interior – it’s basically a two-hander. But it really puts you on edge.”

“I always wanted to get people who were more into traditional slasher horror and fun horror along to the more arty films – and vice versa.” want to pick seven straight-out horror slasher type films, or seven extreme arthouse films. It’s always about finding that balance.”

Freak Me Out devotees will know exactly the kind of surprises Kuipers is talking about – after all, it’s only been a few short years since Goodnight Mommy played the festival. That horrifying and wholly surprising new genre classic delighted and disturbed viewers in equal measure, and even those traumatised by the unsettling work would have a hard time arguing that it didn’t leave an impression on them. “[Goodnight Mommy] was a bit out of the box,” Kuipers agrees. “But that’s what I love doing. It’s very slow-burn; it’s a mood piece. Something like Goodnight Mommy or The Eyes Of My Mother; these are moody art films that have a genre element to them. And I love that sense of discovery and surprise; when people go, ‘Oh wow, that’s really something else.’”

Excitingly, this year’s Freak Me Out program shall see the return of some of the festival’s favourite filmmakers – including

Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, the pair responsible for Goodnight Mommy. “They have made one of the shorts [in anthology-horror film A Field Guide To Evil],” Kuipers says. “So have about three or four other directors whose films have played in Freak Me Out in previous years. It’s great to get some of our favourites back.”

It’s an exacting task, programming Freak Me Out – as Kuipers tells it, he often finds he has to sift through 60 to 80 films, searching for the perfect mix of commercial, gore-stained horror, and subtler, stranger arthouse fare. “I always want … a couple of films that are instantly appealing to a broader audience, and then a couple of films that really hit the mark but will never get a commercial release in this country. No matter how good they are, they’ll never get a commercial release. This is the only chance to see them on the big screen.”

Hence the inclusion of films like Piercing. Despite starring our country’s own Mia Wasikowska, it’s hard to imagine that the grim and unrelenting sadomasochistic

fantasy will get a widespread release in this country – there’s simply no room for a mid-budget horror film in Australia’s rushed and haphazard cinematic release schedule. “Piercing is a weird sexual psychodrama interior – it’s basically a two-hander,” Kuipers explains. “But it really puts you on edge. It’s that extreme arthouse film – it’s something I really like.

And I know from previous years that if you can find a good extreme arthouse film, you’re doing well.”

Maybe all this makes it sound like organising Freak Me Out is a punishing job for Kuipers – an exercise in plate-spinning that requires hours and hours of energy and effort. Which, sure, maybe sometimes it is. But it is also the best kind of job in the world; something that Kuipers is genuinely great at, and something that he loves, unconditionally.

Freak Me Out might be work, but it is work Kuipers has been leading up to his whole life. “I’m a horror nerd as well, and have been all my life,” he says. “That’s how I program the films. I’m always going to be that horror nerd. And I reckon that’s the best way to program.”

W H AT: T H E F R E A K M E O U T P RO G RA M RU N S AS PA RT O F SY D N E Y F I L M F E ST I VA L 2 018 thebrag.com

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“What we wanted was to have some very frank and open conversations with ourselves.”

GHOST STORIES: The Horror, The Horror Belinda Quinn chews the fat with Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, the co-writers and co-directors of Ghost Stories, one of the most horrifying films of the year

“W

e have to be so careful with what we believe in,” says the paranormal sceptic Professor Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman) at the beginning of Ghost Stories. Adapted from Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s internationally successful play of the same name, the anthology tinkers with three classic horror tropes in order to instil a sense of doubt within its viewers.

in lots of thinking and talking and discussing and debating and we both enjoy that,” says co-writer and director Dyson.

Hooved pagan demons taunt the deranged teen Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther), an alcoholic Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse) reluctantly recounts horrors found in a haunted asylum, while the wealthy Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman) navigates the modern terrors of a traditional poltergeist.

While Dyson is reflective and a bit softer spoken, Nyman is energetic and dynamic, their temperaments balancing the other out. “We are two halves of the same human being,” says Nyman, lovingly.

“It was exciting to look at these different sub-genres within the overriding genre [of horror],” explains co-director, writer, and actor Nyman. “And explore those things that all had facets that we were fascinated by, which is the very notion of ‘what’s real and what isn’t real?’ and how we base what we believe the world to be through our very limited experience.”

The two have been best friends since they were 15, having met when they bunked together at a Jewish summer camp. “We are fascinated by our heritage.

You know, Judaism is quite an intellectual religion. It’s founded

“We’re not religious but we’re quite spiritual,” explains Nyman. “We talk a huge amount about spirituality, the responsibility and the function of what religion serves, why religion might dying as an idea but spirituality is growing.”

At the camp they instantly bonded over their shared obsession with horror and began pouring over the classics: An American Werewolf In London, Halloween, Evil Dead, and Friday The 13th. But it was the Britishness of films from studios Amicus and Hammer – in particular the three-for-one story structure of portmanteau films – that really struck a chord with them.

part of its DNA wasn’t thrown away,” says Nyman of their decision to turn down two Hollywood offers.

“I think we’re always asking ourselves in our conversations when we’re working together: what matters, what’s most important?” explains Dyson of their writing process.

“What we wanted was to have some very frank and open conversations with ourselves,” says Nyman. “And talk about things we’d done that we were ashamed of or embarrassed by, or moments that really struck a chord with us, digging into those things that maybe we’ve never spoken about to anyone else.

“Within the themes of Ghost Stories are absolutely some of those moments from our own lives. Things that happen and you think, ‘I wish I could have those five minutes again to go back on that’. And how different one’s life could have been if one had acted differently,” he says.

As well as the rainy, grey melancholy of their home’s landscapes, there’s a very British, very inappropriately timed humour within Ghost Stories: moments you most expect to be startled can quickly fill you up with laughter.

Nyman’s Phillip Goodman is a seeker of the truth, outing the phony clairvoyants and mediums that manipulate those vulnerable people suffering from existential terror – the fear of what happens after your life ceases to be.

“It was really important that the Britishness that was so much a

Although each of Ghost Stories’ three tales – as well as the one we

don’t realise we’re really viewing – feels like an exploration of more rational fears: the fear of being a parent; the fear of letting a loved one down, and the fear of the unknown and the unknowable.

Though the play was written some ten years ago, many cultural critics have linked Ghost Stories to the creeping doubt within the state of current politics when it comes to fake news and “the light racism that you realise underpins so much,” says Nyman. “It’s amazing when we read the reviews how much those things have been picked up on because the world has shifted.”

The priest within the film’s first story quips, “How unfashionable it has become to believe in anything other than our own personal gain,” and there seem to be anti-capitalist sentiments sprinkled throughout.

“We’re very big on being very suspicious about materialism,” says Dyson. “And we both know how easy it is to be swayed by materialism on every front in your life. And absolutely that’s in the film – I mean the whole Mike Priddle character in his story is a critique of that.

“The flip side of it is Andy and I are quite entrepreneurial people.

You have to be if you’re going to earn a living through your creative activity; there’s no way around it,”

“Judaism is quite an intellectual religion. It’s founded in lots of thinking and talking and discussing and debating.”

Dyson says of surviving while making the best art you can. “And I think we would argue it’s a good thing, because it kind of enforces a disciplinary vigour. That’s why I couldn’t stand up and be a Marxist.”

Dyson laughs.

Ghost Stories’ directors are dubious about chasing fool’s gold, and their independent devotion to this story could well have brought us one of the best horror films of the year.

The film questions the way we so easily set our beliefs in stone: how we might perceive ourselves to be morally superior than those around us, when really we might have just buried our worst mistakes. It revives the memories have been pushed into the deepest, darkest, dustgathering corners of our minds. And what could be more horrific than that?

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TERROR NULLIUS: Girt By Fear Joseph Earp chats with artist collective Soda_Jerk about Aussie cinema, working for the BRAG, and being “un-Australian”

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arlier this year, TERROR NULLIUS, a sample-based feature from artist collective Soda_Jerk, was deemed fundamentally “un-Australian” by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, the very body that had funded the sunblasted epic in the first place. It was a foolish move on the part of the Trust for a number of reasons, not least of all thanks to the sudden burst of publicity it guaranteed TERROR NULLIUS (someone should fill those philistines over at the Trust in on the Streisand effect.)

But it wasn’t just a fundamental misreading of the film, a searing satire cobbled together out of Australian cinematic classics. It was a fundamental misreading of Australia itself. TERROR NULLIUS isn’t “un-Australian” – it is Australian in the purest meaning of the word, which is to say it’s coarse-mouthed, populated by murderers and rapists, and stitched together out of antiquated myths white Australians can’t seem to leave behind.

“We were initially stunned that [the trust] could reach [their] decision five days out from the premiere, and after more than a year of intimate knowledge and abounding enthusiasm for the project,” Soda_Jerk explain over email, firing

off their correspondence from a Brooklyn basement. “But when the shock wore off we realised that the most worrying thing was that on some level it wasn’t really all that surprising at all. In this polarised political moment, many institutions are becoming increasingly riskadverse, and that’s our real concern.”

Billed as a revenge story in three acts, TERROR NULLIUS uses the language of Australian cinema against itself. Opening with a deliciously juvenile rendition of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ blared out by air horns, it’s by turns amusing and horrifying, a deconstruction of an entire way of life.

Soda_Jerk were well-versed in Australian cinema before they began work on TERROR NULLIUS – after all, they have a history working in the field via the pages of this very magazine. “Back in the day we … we wrote reviews and interviews for the arts section of the BRAG,” they explain.

But despite being self-professed “deep nerds of Australian cinema”, they still had to mine the cinematic vaults, and got to work studying as much as they possibly could. “Our approach is always to try and see absolutely everything, so there is an unending process of watching involved.”

“In this polarised political moment, many institutions are becoming increasingly risk-adverse, and that’s our real concern.”

Rather than start out by scripting the film, the pair worked on “maps” that would help guide them. “We used them as touchstones for shaping the narrative. [We included] things like Gough Whitlam’s 1975 dismissal, the Tampa Crisis, the so-called Bicentennial Celebrations of ’88, the rise of Pauline Hanson, the marriage equality plebiscite and the MABO decision. This eventually evolved into scripts and storyboards, but because we work entirely with samples you can never

definitively plot the film in advance.”

Actually putting TERROR NULLIUS together was a nightmare, particularly when it came to creating a consistent visual tone – “Sample-based continuity is a world of hurt,” is how Soda_Jerk put it.

But the result is something extraordinary: a brooding, bloodthirsty, brilliant thing, as accurate a national self-portrait as our culture has been able to forge in literal decades.

“TERROR NULLIUS has haunted our studio practice for more than a decade, ever since we made a short work called Picnic At Wolf Creek in 2006,” Soda_Jerk explain.

“That early work went some way to speculating on what might have happened to the vanished white school girls, and ends with a bus load of queers making roadkill of Mel Gibson. But we always knew there was much graver political revenge fable that we wanted to make out of Australian cinema, and have been growing that idea ever since.”

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WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE: If You Go Into The Woods Today… take after take, I would feel very empowered and like I’d done something I didn’t think my body could do before.

Joseph Earp learns making dark thriller What Keeps You Alive energised writer-director Colin Minihan and star Brittany Allen

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ou don’t necessarily need to have a good time on set to make a good movie.

Some of the greatest achievements in cinematic history have been wrangled out of uniquely traumatising experiences; think Werner Herzog threatening his star Klaus Kinski with an honest-to-god pistol on the set of Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, or The Exorcist director William Friedkin permanently injuring Ellen Burstyn’s tailbone during a stunt gone wrong.

You’d be forgiven for assuming What Keeps You Alive, a new survival horror flick from Grave Encounters co-creator Colin Minihan, was born of similarly fraught circumstance. The story of a young couple, Jackie and Jules, who decamp for a holiday that quickly takes a turn for the sinister, What Keeps You Alive was shot deep in the woods of Muskoka, Ontario, and features long sequences of nerve-wracking tension. Victims run through dense forest, row across lakes, and

“The scenes where Jules and Jackie were at their happiest were the most ‘fun’ to shoot. But so’s shooting a rowboat scene in the freezing cold, as the sun is coming up at 6AM and the sky is purple and everyone is exhausted, and you’re racing to beat the clock, and Hannah [Anderson, who plays Jackie] and I are cursing the cold, but then jumping into character as the drone races past us, and then driving to get McDonalds’ breakfast as everyone else is just waking up. Every scene and moment on this shoot was pretty special.” generally get pushed as close to exhaustion as it is possible to get. So how fun could it really have been for cast and crew to live off grid in the woods for some 20-solid days?

The answer, surprisingly, is a lot. “Some of the most physically demanding scenes were my favourite, looking back,” explains lead Brittany Allen, who plays Jules in the film. “In the moment, I was pushed to my limits and exhausted beyond belief, but once I’d rowed back and forth across the lake for an entire afternoon, or sprinted through the woods

Indeed, for Minihan, most of the struggle making the film happened before cameras even rolled. “It took me months to develop the idea and then weeks to write the script,” he explains. “There were

“Some of the most physically demanding scenes were my favourite, looking back.”

heavy re-writes leading up to the shoot as characters changed a lot due to casting, so this made for a very frantic race to re-write it before going to camera.

“However I went with the flow and really trusted my instincts [during] this time crunch, and some of my strongest ideas came out of it. The whole process probably started about a year before we went to camera. It wasn’t some script I had locked away ... I basically wrote it knowing I could pull it together as a producer and shot it soon after.”

At its heart, What Keeps You Alive is a film obsessed with the mystery of the other – it is no spoiler to reveal that rather than being haunted by ghouls, goblins, or serial killers, Jules and Jackie are haunted by people they once thought they knew. “I do think that people for the most part are incapable of truly knowing themselves,” Minihan says.

“When we do something that our projected self doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree with, that’s when we have identity crises and go see therapists or something. If we don’t even really know who we are, then we mustn’t know who our loved ones are either. That theme excited me: not knowing your loved one at all, even though you think you do.”

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HOLIDAY: Blood On The Water Joseph Earp chats with Isabella Eklöf, the mastermind behind one of the year’s most shocking cinematic experiences, Holiday

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ou’d be forgiven thinking that Holiday, Isabella Eklöf’s extraordinary debut, is nothing more than ten miles of bad road; a brutal slog of a film, full of rape, turmoil, and horror. After all, that’s how the critics coming out of Sundance described it – Eric Kohn of IndieWire memorably claimed the film contained “a brutal, graphic rape scene more alarming than anything comparable in world cinema since Irreversible.”

It’s certainly true that Holiday is occasionally a tough, tough watch – but that has less to do with its shocking, brief moments of violence and much more to do with the moral puzzle it offers up to viewers. The film’s heroine, a gangster’s girlfriend named Sacha (expertly played by Victoria Carmen Sonne), never plays the victim, and her behaviour runs entirely contrary to what we might expect from a woman who, from the film’s very opening act, is alternately beaten and spoiled by the men around her.

In that way, the film shares less with Irreversible, Gaspar Noe’s deliberately sordid rape revenge flick, and much more with Catherine Breillat’s À Ma Sœur!, a film that

Eklöf describes as being “canonical” in her development as a filmmaker.

“I absolutely hate it when directors try to explain the characters to me,” Eklöf says. “Either you feel mirrored in what the character does, or you don’t.”

As with A Ma Soeur!, the first two acts of Holiday are, on the whole, disarmingly gentle, punctuated by brief moments of violence that even the victims quickly come to ignore.

The Turkish landscape is sun-kissed and beautiful, and there are longing shots of sunbathing partygoers, beaches at night, and carefully arranged cakes. “I have always felt that it’s cliché to set dark subject matter in dark locations, and this film needed to feel like the seductive lifestyle that Sascha is offered,” Eklöf explains. “I think films should be about all aspects of life, and luckily beauty is a part of it. Especially if you’re a materialistic girl like Sascha – she’s constantly chasing beauty and pleasure.”

Even the “antagonist” of Holiday, Sacha’s gangster boyfriend Michael, has an eerie kind of charm to him.

He’s played with equally distinct lashings of easy-going chirpiness and malevolence by Lai Yde – for

“Sascha is simply a mix of me, my co-writer and Victoria. She’s extremely close to home.

Her choices are our choices.” most of the film’s running time, he comes across more like a tipsy businessman at an office Christmas party than a mafia don, and the bulk of his criminal wheelings and dealings are kept off-screen. “It’s very simple. We experience everything that Sascha experiences,” says Eklöf. “That’s why there aren’t any scenes of drug deals, for example. The women aren’t involved – other than carrying money, like in the beginning.”

And yet although she might only be tangentially connected to the film’s seamy criminal underbelly,

Sacha is the heart and soul of Holiday – she’s an entirely unique, fully-rounded character played with aplomb by Sonne. “The caster, Gro Therp, basically forced me to cast her,” Eklöf says of Sonne. “I was annoyed with Gro, because I thought Victoria was way too young. But as soon as she started acting it was obvious that she was more intelligent, talented and had a better understanding of the character than any other actress I knew.”

At first, Eklöf struggled to nail the opening act of Holiday – she found

herself distracted by peripheral characters and storylines. But before long, she realised she needed to keep her main character in focus; that Sascha was her film’s true moral compass. “Staying intensely in the moment and with the main character’s emotional arc is the key.”

When that clicked, writing Sascha herself was easy. “[Sascha] is simply a mix of me, my co-writer and Victoria,” Eklöf says. “She’s extremely close to home. Her choices are our choices.”

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GOOD MANNERS: For The Brood

Fernando Zuccolotto and cinematographer Rui Poças.

Joseph Earp and the co-writers and co-directors of horror film Good Manners talk lycanthropes

Creating the music with composers Guilherme and Gustavo Garbato was another exciting challenge. Of course, all of these formal elements that bring visual and musical beauty into the film come from its themes and its content: it is, in the end, a story about love and about the formation of a strange family.

“We saw the film as a modern fairy tale, so all the formal elements were very important.”

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aybe, given it’s the year of our lord 2018, you’re a little bit over werewolf films.

That’s understandable.

But that doesn’t mean you’re over a film like Good Manners, which, despite featuring a small ensemble of blood-thirsty lycanthropes, does for the furry beasties what Let The Right One In did for bloodsuckers.

A bold exploration of class,

sexuality, and motherhood, Good Manners is a horror film with more wit and intelligence than casual viewers might walk in expecting.

We spoke to the film’s co-writers and co-directors, Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas.

The BRAG: The film has a real beauty and tenderness to it. Was that the goal from the outset?

Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas: We saw the film as a modern fairy tale, so all the formal elements were very important. We wanted the story to take place in a slightly surreal and imagined version of São Paulo. We [used] early Disney films as visual references, and it really helped to deeply discuss the tone with production designer

“All the children were amazing and really understood the magical tone of the film, but we had limited hours to shoot with them.”

How did you go about casting Isabél Zuaa, who plays the lead, Clara? Was she hard to find?

MD + JR: Our assistant director, Daniel Chaia, met Isabél during the shooting of Joaquim, directed

by Marcelo Gomes. He thought we should meet her, so Isabél came to São Paulo for an audition (she is Portuguese, but was living in Rio de Janeiro at the time). We were immediately captivated and overwhelmed by her strength. She suddenly revealed something about Clara that we didn’t even know was there. We couldn’t stop thinking about her.

How long did the shoot take?

Was it a tricky film to shoot?

MD + JR: It took around eight weeks to shoot. It was a complicated set, especially in the scenes with visual effects and in the scenes with the children. All the children were amazing and really understood the magical tone of the film, but we had limited hours to shoot with them. With the

special effects coming into the mix, shooting became even slower.

But it was a learning process for everybody involved, and in the end quite unforgettable.

The effects work in the film is incredible. Was it daunting to plan and conceptualise?

MD + JR: We worked with three different special effects companies.

Mikros Image, from France, did the CGI work, mainly on the sevenyear-old Joel. The CGI animation, however, was inspired by the acting of Miguel Lobo, who played all his wolf scenes with a green suit.

Atelier 69, also from France, did the animatronics and part of the make-up effects. Baby Joel and the birth scene were shot for real, and it was a pleasure to witness Isabél’s tender interaction with the animatronic baby.

The matte paintings were designed by artist Eduardo Schaal and composed at Quanta Post, in Brazil. The combination of all these techniques, some of them traditional and classic, some of them modern and digital, was responsible for the final visual result we got on the screen. All of it began early in the process through the concept design. It had to be a very specific concept because we saw Joel as a baby and as a 7-year-old, therefore not yet fully developed; not yet complete and grown. Joel is a werewolf “inprogress”.

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6 –17 JUNE 2018

FILMWORKER: In Service Of The Master Joseph Earp talks Kubrick with Tony Zierra, whose new documentary, Filmworker, details the life of one of the auteur’s closest confidants

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here’s something about the work of Stanley Kubrick that encourages obsession.

Cinephiles young and old pore over the man, searching for secret clues hidden both in his dense, knotty films and outside of them. They treat every shred of information offered up by those who knew the mercurial titan as a kind of sacred scripture, picking apart even the arrangement of canned soups and meats scattered throughout The Shining.

For those who love him, it’s as though everything Kubrick did is part of a complicated and secret string of code composed for the benefit of his faithful; a kind of secret message only visible to those who sacrifice huge hours of their life to his work – and, perhaps, their sanity.

Documentarian Tony Zierra understands that kind of obsession. He is as committed to Kubrick as the next film lover; not only has he made two full length documentaries about the auteur, SK13 and Filmworker, he’s spent years haunted by Eyes Wide Shut, unable to shake the film. “I worship Kubrick’s creativity,” Zierra explains. “I learned filmmaking from watching his films and

dissecting them. But things took a different turn when I watched Eyes Wide Shut.

“I saw it in Los Angeles on opening day. Since then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The press were harsh, and people were saying that Kubrick had lost it. SK13, which explores Kubrick’s body of work and his obsession with Traumnovelle – the source material for Eyes Wide Shut – became my next project. I spent at least 10 years researching, shooting and thinking about it. I really wanted to know if that genius was too old and lost control of his film as some people who were close to him claimed. I think I found the answer.”

It was during the process of making SK13 that Zierra met Leon Vitali, a kindred spirit and one of Kubrick’s closest confidants. A committed and versatile actor, Vitali’s film career kicked off when he was cast as the prissy Lord Bullingdon in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. But rather than keep at acting, Vitali decided instead to leave life in front of the camera behind, and became Kubrick’s longsuffering personal assistant. The pair worked together for decades – it was Vitali who found and cast the eerie, blood-soaked twins of

The Shining – and the demanding, reclusive Kubrick allowed Vitali glimpses of his creative process none had ever seen before.

It’s this at turns terrifying and inspiring relationship between Vitali and Kubrick that inspired FIlmworker, Zierra’s latest tribute to Kubrick, and, just as importantly, the unsung heroes of the film industry; artistic powerhouses like Vitali. Not, mind you, that Vitali was initially excited by the prospect of having his song sung – when Zierra first suggested making a film about his life, the 69-year-old turned him down. “He didn’t think

he was interesting enough for a documentary and feared that I would be disappointed later on,” Zierra explains. “I kept pressing him to do it and finally he reluctantly agreed.”

Note the emphasis on reluctantly – at the beginning of the three-year long filming process, Vitali resisted Zierra’s questions. “He was closed off and very uncomfortable about being in front of the camera and talking about himself. I quickly learned that Leon is more at ease talking about Stanley Kubrick, and not about himself. I had to be patient and tried everything to engage him.”

“You can’t tell Leon’s story without Kubrick, and vice versa.”

All of Zierra’s hardwork paid off.

Filmworker is a painstakingly drawn portrait of two obsessives, one of whom is rightly regarded as a true master, and the other of whom has for far too long been condemned to the shadows. “You can’t tell Leon’s story without Kubrick, and vice versa,” Zierra says, simply.

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THE RANGER: Fuck The Man Joseph Earp talks anti-authoritarianism, horror, and the spirit of punk with director of The Ranger, Jenn Wexler

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f you cut The Ranger, the demented directorial debut from genre cinema mainstay Jenn Wexler, the thing would bleed neon. A slasher picture that takes equal inspiration from the likes of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and the slightly higher brow, mohawked punk cinema of Derek Jarman, it’s not so much a movie as it is a sustained and ragged howl of outrage. Pivoting as it does on a viscera-soaked clash between a pack of leather-clad brats, led by the resourceful Chelsea (Chloe Levine), and the titular psychotic park ranger (Jeremy Holm), Wexler always envisaged it as a fi lm of conflicting extremes.

“I loved the idea of the world of the punks and the world of the Ranger colliding, both visually and musically, so I kept that in mind through every stage of the process,” Wexler explains. “I knew we needed to start the film in the world of the punk club, with all these insane colors, and then bring those colors into the woods along with the punks. You can see the conflict right there just in the colors: the punks’ neons and leather clashing with Ranger’s rustic, Smokey the Bear parkland vibes.”

Indeed, though Levine is stellar as the iron-willed Chelsea, it’s Jeremy Holm’s Ranger that really

“We wanted to make a film about a figure of authority who is trying to stomp out individuality; lifestyles that don’t conform to what he deems worthy.” steals the picture. An inversion of the very picture of American manliness, he’s absolutely terrifying, the natural extension of conservative thought poured into a suit and topped off with a broadrimmed hat. “Jeremy was a friend of [co-writer Giaco Furino] and we had him in mind as we were writing the project,” Wexler says.

“I was just a fan, having watched him in Mr. Robot and House Of Cards. When the script was done we showed it to him and we were very excited to find out that he loved it. We had a meeting and we all clicked immediately. He was the first person we cast.”

Given how perfectly realised The Ranger is as a horror antagonist,

it’s rather unsurprising to learn he was developed directly out of Wexler’s own fears and nightmares. “We wanted to make a film about a figure of authority who is trying to stomp out individuality; lifestyles that don’t conform to what he deems worthy. Personality types that say you have to fit into some cookie-cutter mold or else you’re living your life wrong have always been terrifying to me, so that definitely informed a lot of the character.”

Not, mind you, that The Ranger is some T-1000 type; an unfeeling, unthinking machine. Wexler goes out of her way to delineate his motivations, however shaky and irrational they might be, and he has an arc all of his own. “We wanted him to have relatable characteristics, too. Deep down he craves a human connection. It was really fascinating to explore his layers in the writing process with Giaco and in shooting with Jeremy.”

That’s not to ignore the film’s other star, a grotty and banged-up van owned by the film’s central band of punks that Wexler has had her own notable offscreen relationship with. “When principal photography was over, I wanted to hold onto [it],” Wexler says. “I live in New York City where parking is absolutely impossible and renting a spot is very expensive, but my aunt who lives over the river in New Jersey, in a nice little suburban community where there’s plenty of parking, said that I could keep the van in front of her house.

“Although we were totally in the right to park there, within a week the state of New Jersey impounded it because of neighbor complaints of it being unsightly.

The van’s in my mom’s name, so we took a mother-daughter trip to court to get it back. Now it is hidden in the back of a parking lot; I’m not ready to give it up yet!”

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Here’s Our Four Favourite Sydney Film Festival Winners

2012

Alps directed by Yorgos Lanthimos Greek surrealist Yorgos Lanthimos is beating a strange path to something approaching mainstream success – his film The Lobster, a romantic comedy as written by Kafka, was bursting with Hollywood darlings, and his next cinematic antic is set to be led by Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman.

By Joseph Earp

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hose folks over at the Sydney Film Festival sure do have great taste. Since the competition launched in 2008, they’ve honoured nothing but the best, awarding their top plaudit – the Sydney Film Prize – to some of the true masterpieces of the last decade.

But those needing to be reminded of Lanthimos’ strange, lopsided roots would do well to return to one of his first features, the bonkers Alps. Unfairly overlooked by those who get swept up with his admittedly excellent third film, Dogtooth, Alps is a cock-eyed look at loss and bereavement.

But, you may ask, of the nine films to ever scoop up the gong, which are the finest – the cream, so to speak, of an already creamy crop? Good question. And here, in response, are our four favourite flicks that have picked up the coveted prize.

“Alps is a cockeyed look at loss and bereavement.”

“Bronson is a perfect mix of high and lowbrow culture – a crimesploitation film shot as though it were an opera.”

Two Days, One Night directed by the Dardenne brothers The Dardenne brothers are masters of mundanity, deeply humanist filmmakers who specialise in gently devastating mood pieces about the most vulnerable members of society – young mothers; illegal immigrants; alcoholics. They are also well-known for making films with nonactors, so their decision to cast French star Marion Cotillard as the lead of Two Days, One Night, was at first greeted with some surprise.

Those shocked should have had more faith. Cotillard is perfect as the gentle-hearted, devastated Sandra Bya, a factory-worker forced to make the case for her continued employment to her colleagues when they are given the power to fire her. The moral epicentre of a troubling, beautiful film, Cotillard has never been better, and the whole of Two Days trembles with the great warmth and feeling her performance exudes.

2014

2009

Bronson directed by Nicolas Winding Refn Some have already grown tired of Nicolas Winding Refn, dropping the Danish auteur into the pen occupied by his similarly rabble-rousing cinematic counterpart, Lars von Trier. But Refn doesn’t deserve to be written off yet. Sure, he loves his showboating, and his film bro antics do sometimes feel a little tiresome, but a director who has made such a consistently impressive string of masterpieces doesn’t deserve to be dumped quite yet.

Case in point: Bronson, Refn’s Kenneth Anger-indebted magnum opus.

Ostensibly a film about Britain’s most dangerous prisoner, Michael Peterson (AKA Charles Bronson), the flimsy, fist-fight filled plot is really an excuse for Refn to go through his considerable bag of tricks. Bronson (an electric Tom Hardy) tells the story of the film directly to the audience, dressed as a clown; long fight sequences are stretched to the point of becoming almost balletic; and Ophuls-inspired tracking shots pan over layers of literal human shit. It’s a perfect mix of high and lowbrow culture – a crimesploitation film shot as though it were an opera.

2013

Only God Forgives directed by Nicolas Winding Refn Seems like SFF can’t get enough of Refn. Just four short years after they honoured Bronson with the top gong, they gave the same stamp of approval to Only God Forgives, the director’s dreamlike homage to Thai cinema and culture.

Even more oblique and unusual than Bronson, if such a thing is able to be imagined, Only God Forgives takes the myth of the lone ranger and pushes it to its natural endpoint. Julian (Ryan Gosling, his eyes fire and his body taught as a wire) is ostensibly avenging his murdered brother Billy, but he doesn’t seem to give a shit about morality or penance either way.

He is a stoic, silent marauder, berated by his mother (a vicious Kristin Scott Thomas), and about as emotive as a stone pillar, making him the perfect Refn hero – a cipher for the audience to messily project upon.

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“Julian is the perfect Refn hero – a cipher for the audience to messily project upon.”

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6–17 JUNE 2018

FOXTROT: Cycles Of Violence Belinda Quinn talks to the director of Foxtrot, Samuel Maoz, about the pervasive weight of trauma

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arely do we see behind the closed doors of other people’s grief. In Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, we witness the impact on the parents of young soldiers who receive that fatal knock on their doors. And we feel the invasiveness of the Israeli Defence Forces’ presence as they make funeral arrangements just hours after the protagonist Michael Feldmann learns of his son’s death.

It’s these fleeting moments in Foxtrot that leave a dull ache in your chest. The way mother Dafna Feldmann sullenly reasons with throwing away her son’s things, saying: “I couldn’t stand how things lose my child’s scent,” as if his possessions were cruelly rejecting his memory. The way Michael holds his hand under boiling water for far too long. The way the silence in the initial scenes feels deafening.

When asked what research Maoz had to do to capture these scenes with honesty, there’s a pause on the line. “Nothing!” Nothing?

“Nothing, no. I just talked from my experience. From the things that I know that everybody knows here in Israel,” he explains.

Foxtrot is not simply an examination of grief. Maoz presents an unapologetic critique of the Israeli Defence Forces, a point that

mustn’t have been easy to make to a country with compulsorily conscription. “This is not an army of mercenaries, this is the people’s army – our army reflects us,” he says.

“I wanted to tell a personal story that reflects the collective. From a wider perspective I can say that Foxtrot is dealing with the open wound or bleeding soul of the Israeli society with the traumatic circle we are trapped in,” explains Maoz. “I mean, we dance the foxtrot – every generation tries to dance it differently, but like the foxtrot, we always end up at the same point.”

Some years ago Maoz’s daughter made a point of sleeping in and missing her bus to school in Tel Aviv. Cab fees started to pile up.

He told her to catch the bus like everyone else. And that day her usual bus exploded, killing dozens.

It took him an hour to learn that she had missed it by seconds. “It was the worst hour of my life … I asked myself what I learned from this experience and I realised that I can’t learn much.”

Maoz’s passion for film grew from a young age. His father daydreamed of being an actor and drove a special bus to a cinema outside of Tel Aviv. He’d bring his Maoz to see the films. A particular favourite

“Foxtrot is dealing with the open wound or bleeding soul of the Israeli society with the traumatic circle we are trapped in.”

of his was an old western, The Journey To The West. “Each time where the train goes over the camera, I felt an uplift.”

On his bar mitzvah his father gave him a gift: an eight-millimetre camera. “The next day I was already on the railroad tracks. I put my new camera between the tracks and waited for the train,” he says, before watching it being smashed into pieces. “This was my first experience,” he laughs. Maoz made dozens of short films before it was his time to serve in the IDF. His father often played the “bad guy.”

Maoz’s first feature film Lebanon explored his firsthand experiences as a tank gunner in the Lebanon war. “As a 20-year-old child who’d never been involved in any act of violence, one morning I found myself in hell – in bloody battles killing people,” he says. “I had feelings of guilt and I can say that I suffered from… how shall I put it? From some small silent posttrauma.”

Foxtrot looks beyond the commonly known effects that PTSD has on veterans. “I’m not the picture of the post-traumatic man,” says Maoz.

“I function and work and I’m close

“This is not an army of mercenaries, this is the people’s army – our army reflects us.” with my family … I don’t have nightmares. But this quiet trauma knocked me out of my life for many years.”

Protagonist Michael Feldmann (Lior Ashkenazi) represents this generation of seemingly high functioning Israeli soldiers who were forced to internalise their trauma after witnessing the effects of the holocaust firsthand. They hold their head up, and work hard for their families. “But deep inside, there’s a word for it in Hebrew – it’s srita: They have a scratch in their soul,” explained Ashkenazi to NPR of Israelis like Feldmann.

“When [Lebanon] came out I realised that I’m not alone as I felt,” says Maoz. “And that our society produces many versions like me – too many. And suddenly I understood why we as a society why we behave as we do. Our emotional memory of our past traumas, the holocaust followed by surviving wars – this memory is still stronger than any kind of clarity and logic.

“Trauma, you know, passes from generation to generation and is based on the determination that we are in constant existential danger and as a result we are in an everlasting war – now our existential danger has long since past. Our traditional enemies are no longer relevant.”

There is a scene in Foxtrot where an Israeli soldier murders Palestinian teenagers in a snap judgement, mistaking a beer can for a grenade – the military then buries the bodies in an unmarked grave.

“As far as I’m concerned the roadblock is a little cosmos of society,” he says of the middle section of the film. “It’s about a reality that is getting more and more crooked.”

When it comes to breaking the devastating effects of being trapped in the endless dance of a pro-war mentality, Maoz says, “We need a leader with a vision who can understand that from time to time the majority can be wrong.”

“One morning I found myself in hell – in bloody battles killing people.”

WH E RE: STATE THEATRE / HAYDEN O RPHEUM C R E M O R N E / R I T Z C I N E M A RA N DWI C K WH E N : S U N DAY J U N E 10 , TH U R SDAY J U N E 14 , SATU R DAY J U N E 16 thebrag.com

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6–17 JUNE 2018

FULL PROGRAM AVAILABLE AT SFF.ORG.AU ▼

Love Is A Kind Of Death: The Films Of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

By Joseph Earp

“Relationships in Fassbinder’s films often fall apart due to the absence of cruelty, not the introduction of it.”

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COVER FEATURE

arts in focus

R

ainer Werner Fassbinder’s dream was to win the Oscar for best director, and be ugly on the front cover of Time magazine. He achieved neither.

Instead, from 1969 to his death from a cocaine and barbiturate overdose in 1985, he made some 40 ground-breaking films, acid-laced melodramas that were about love, and trauma, and politics, and cruelty. With his films, he once explained, he was trying to build a house. Some films were walls. Others made up the floor. Others still were the windows, big and clean enough to let the light in.

What all his films share is the same complex, cock-eyed view of love. Growing up around parents who could barely tolerate one another in a Germany ravaged by the Second World War, Fassbinder spent his adulthood telling interviewers that marriage should be abolished and feverishly writing and directing films about lovers who inflict great pains upon each other. “I was lucky, growing up in a family where close relationships didn’t exist,” he once told the New York Times.

“Today I’m kind of happy about it. It makes me freer than people in general.”

Certainly it’s true that relationships in Fassbinder’s films often fall apart due to the absence of cruelty, not the introduction of it. In Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, a 60-year-old window cleaner named Emmi falls for the titular Ali, a young Moroccan man, and is forced to overcome the discrimination and racism of her close-minded neighbours. She does, rather nimbly. It’s only when the world around her accepts the relationship that things sour. When her neighbours move on from their prejudices, Emmi takes on the mantle of tormentor herself, bullying and needling her young lover. She parades him about like a show pony, inviting her friends to feel his muscles; to stroke his skin.

When he shirks away, she dismisses him. “He has his moods,” she sighs. “It’s his foreign mentality.” “[Fassbinder] felt that relationships unavoidably have a power struggle at the core of them as two people establish their dynamic; and that the fear of losing love once you have it is tied to the fear of life’s other inevitable conclusion, death,” explains Eric Allen Hatch, a film critic, one-time director of programming for Maryland Film Festival, and the brains behind Baltimore’s soon to be launched non-profit video store, Beyond Video. “In that sense, coming to terms with mortality would make someone more capable of real love, because they wouldn’t then damage and pervert love in their fearing the loss of it.”

That melancholia was not artifice, either: Fassbinder lived his life with the same bleary-eyed intensity and destructiveness with which he made his fi lms. “We could almost reconstruct him from the DNA embedded in his

World On A Wire

The Marriage Of Maria Braun fi lms,” Hatch says. “He lived his life hellbent on converting his every thought and feeling into vital cinema.”

The budget for Fassbinder’s post-war melodrama The Marriage Of Maria Braun was blown out by the cash he demanded from his longsuffering producer, Michael Fengler, so as to support his taxing cocaine habit. He drank and smoked to excess; years later his muse, Hanna Schygulla, told The Guardian he smelled and looked like “a rebel filled with angst”.

He’d often start his day on set asking for ten Cuba Libres, nine of which he’d slurp down, and one he’d save for throwing at his crew. And his lovers, both men and women, were often as passionate and prone to occasional bouts of violence as he was.

“Whenever two people meet and form a relationship, it’s a question of who dominates whom,” Fassbinder once told Cineaste magazine. One of his lovers, El Hedi ben Salem, attacked three people with a knife, ended up in police custody in France, and committed suicide in his prison cell. Another, Armin Meier, took his life a little under a month after he and Fassbinder broke up.

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COVER FEATURE

6–17 JUNE 2018

FULL PROGRAM AVAILABLE AT SFF.ORG.AU ▼

“In Fox And His Friends, the deeply naïve titular hero, played by Fassbinder himself, isn’t safe from disrespect even in death.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder “You get the sense from his work that this is a person that’s both experienced and (especially, it seems) caused great pain in relationships,” Hatch says. “There’s something cathartic about seeing extreme feelings expressed and explored honestly, knowing someone else has been to these very dark places.

But he doesn’t just show them to us… Behind our tears or dropped jaws or dark laughter, we might learn something about ourselves and how to treat other people better.”

“Fassbinder would often start his day on set asking for ten Cuba Libres, nine of which he’d slurp down, and one he’d save for throwing at his crew.”

Fox And His Friends

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The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant

any have called Fassbinder cruel. The critic Kent Jones described his films as “blunt instruments”, and it’s true they often have a kind of elegant sadism to them. The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, which Andrew Sarris somewhat reductively described as being about the “problems of lesbians”, is a tangle of unpleasantries; in a baroque, decadent bedroom, the young Karin spurns fashion designer Petra von Kant, who in turn spurns her put-upon assistant Marlene, a white-faced punching bag who has been so bullied and belittled as to be rendered mute.

And in Fox And His Friends, the deeply naïve titular hero, played by Fassbinder himself, isn’t safe from disrespect even in death. “One gets the sense that [Fassbinder] wanted a revolution to bring about a better world,” Hatch says. “But sadly, he simultaneously seemed to believe people are too deeply flawed to build that better society.”

Fassbinder’s endings are often abrupt. Characters explode; sometimes literally. They pivot on their heels and act in new, surprising ways: Petra promises Marlene she will change – that she will be kinder, better – only for Marlene to pack a suitcase and leave. His lovers hurt each other in ways so new and unusual as to resemble genuine breakthroughs.

His endings are rarely happy. But despite their morbidity, and despite the claims of cruelty that have dogged his legacy ever since his death, underneath it all, Fassbinder always leaves room for some lopsided, emaciated form of hope. He was an optimist, albeit of the most bitter, resentful sort. Love, for Fassbinder, is cruelty. Love is a kind of death. Love is violence, and trauma, and pain. But sometimes, love is a reprieve.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder W HAT: THE M ARRI AGE O F M A R I A B RAU N I S PLAYI NG AS PART O F SYDNE Y F I L M F E ST I VA L 2 018 W HERE: DENDY O PERA QUAYS WH E N : SAT U R DAY JUNE 16 AND: ALI : FEAR E AT S T H E S O U L , WO R L D O N A W I RE, AND BEWARE OF A H O LY WH O R E A R E ALL AVAI LABLE TO ST R E A M O N STA N 50 :: BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul ends with Ali in hospital, suffering from a burst ulcer. The doctor, his face blank, speaking in the clipped, affected tone common to so many of Fassbinder’s characters, warns Emmi that even if Ali fully heals, he’ll be back in hospital again soon.

Ulcers are common to foreign workers, he says. He’s probably right. But Emmi doesn’t listen. She goes over. Holds Ali’s hand. And she stays there, looking down at him, ’til the screen fades to black. thebrag.com

arts in focus

“I kept [the folktale] short with only the brothers and added the shoe and sex elements, which were not in the rather chaste original.”

THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL: Ancient Threats Joseph Earp and The Field Guide To Evil contributor Peter Strickland mull over the problems – and the great pleasures – associated with anthology horror

A

nthology horror films are risky endeavours. Sure, on paper they always sound great – what’s not to love about getting a host of genre titans together and letting them do whatever the fuck they want? – but in execution, they almost always turn out to be mixed bags. Some sections work, some don’t, and the wraparound theme for the shorts has a tendency to feel tired and ham-fisted.

Consider The Field Guide To Evil a genuine accomplishment then. Made up of eight alternately chilling, bizarre, and bloody shorts each inspired by a folktale, the film is an unusually cohesive piece of work. Each director involved has their own distinct visual style, of course – some shorts, like Calvin Reeder’s ‘The Melon Heads’ are amusingly absurd, while Can Evrenol’s entry ‘Al Karisi’ is genuinely rather terrifying – but all those disparate pieces come together to form one helluva whole.

Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke Of Burgundy, Strickland has proved himself one of the most exciting directors working; an endlessly inventive auteur whose work combines the feverish with the tactile. ‘The Cobbler’s Lot’, Strickland’s short in A Field Guide To Evil, is a distillation of the themes he’s been obsessed with his entire career: shot in the style of a silent movie, it’s a transcendent, frequently grotesque, look at obsession and fashion.

“The Hungarian producer [of The Field Guide To Evil], Dora Nedeczky introduced me to a folktake expert called Csenge Zalka,” Strickland explains. “She had a whole collection of tales that she sourced, but I had to forego some of the more flamboyant ones if we were going to make anything on budget. One of the remits was to work with existing folklore connected to the country we made the film in, but there was some freedom to change things.

“The original story that Csenge sourced for us centres on rival brothers vying for the attention of a princess resulting in their death at

her hands, but it’s a much longer tale, what with the introduction of another suitor who can bring the princess’s vengeful corpse back to life and happiness. I kept it short with only the brothers and added the shoe and sex elements, which were not in the rather chaste original.”

Filled with hallucinogenic imagery, striking lighting cues and what Strickland calls “one or two visual nods to [Kenneth] Anger”, ‘The Cobbler’s Lot’ was influenced by a range of the director’s favourite fi lmmakers.

“The biggest influences were [Sergei] Paradjanov, Powell and

Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales Of Hoffmann along with ‘O Is For Orgasm’

by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, which was also for a related series of short fi lms [ABCs Of Death]. They’re my favourite contemporary fi lmmakers along with Lucile Hadzihalilovic.”

Ultimately, it’s not hard to see why Strickland’s short was chosen to finish off the anthology. It is a perfect distillation of what makes The Field Guide To Evil special; a searing oddity, as strange and as sensual as a velvet glove cast in iron.

“One of the remits was to work with existing folklore connected to the country we made the film in, but there was some freedom to change things.”

Some of the praise for the project’s success surely deserves to be sent Ant Timpson’s way. After all, he’s the producer and all-round mastermind behind The Field Guide To Evil, and an old hand when it comes to anthology flicks (his ABCs Of Death series is an all-time high point in the subgenre.) And though each of the directors involved does excellent work, it’s Peter Strickland, whose short rounds out the film, that comes out as another of The Field Guide To Evil’s true MVPs. That’s probably unsurprising.

Over some 14 years and two astounding feature films, W H E R E : T H E R I T Z C I N E M A RA N DW I C K / D E N DY N E W TOW N W H E N : F R I DAY J U N E 15 , SAT U R DAY J U N E 16 thebrag.com

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arts in focus

N O S I N N E D JU L I A N E H T N O G N I K IS TA G N I K C U F R MOTHE D L R W O

F

By Olivia Costa

INTERVIEW

ans of the Deadpool series, rest assured; the fi lm’s expletive-riddled sequel doesn’t let its R-rating go to waste. As obscene and over the top as the original might have been, Deadpool 2 only ups the stakes: it’s jam-packed with more violence, action, and sass than ever before.

But that’s not all: Deadpool 2 so happens to offer 100 per cent more New Zealand accent thanks to the very welcome addition of Julian Dennison as Russell, AKA Firefist, a disillusioned and difficult young boy who can shoot fi re from his hands. Dennison, a short, smiley dark haired 15-year-old, says he enjoyed being able to bring a twist to Russell, who in the Marvel comics is a “blonde kind of jock”. In Dennison’s knotted, burning hands, the character becomes something new entirely – a kind of anarchic punk, not too far from his portrayal of Ricky Baker in the Taika Waititihelmed cult classic, Hunt For The Wilderpeople.

Dennison brings his wicked sense of humour and unexpected Kiwi accent, which he explains was much less of a creative decision than it was a decision born out of his inability to do a consistent and believable American accent. “It was a real quick conversation [with Ryan Reynolds],” Dennison explains with a grin. “I remember going like, ‘Will I keep my accent, or will I have to learn American?’ Because I’m terrible at American.”

Now, sitting in a hotel room in Sydney, Dennison is asked to recreate his aborted U.S. twang. But, grinning and crossing his arms, he shoots back a reply quickly. “Nope,” he says. “I’m not even going to try.”

That said, despite the perceived quality (or not) of his American accent, Dennison is an incredibly

skilled actor. His still nascent career began with New Zealand feature Shopping in 2013, which saw him win Best Supporting Actor at the New Zealand Film Awards. From there, he was then cast in the hit fl ick Hunt For the Wilderpeople, a fi lm that saw him teamup with now good mate Sam Neill, and that premiered at Sundance to great reception.

Reynolds, Deadpool himself, has said that they didn’t even consider other actors for the role – Dennison was in mind for the character as soon as Reynolds saw Hunt For The Wilderpeople. Later, on a trip to L.A., Dennison met with Reynolds to chat about Deadpool 2, a conversation that turned into a screen-test: a cold read with a camera in the corner.

After returning to New Zealand a few weeks later, Dennison got a call from Fox saying they’d like him for the part of Russell. Dennison clarifies. “They called my agent, not me – I’d be like,” he mimes being confused and overwhelmed, and laughs.

Describing director David Leitch as a “physical director” citing his background as a stuntman (for Brad Pitt, no less), Dennison says the action scenes were his favourite to shoot. “I don’t want to be cocky, but I think I’m pretty good at the emotional scenes. They’re draining more, they take a lot more out of you … But man, it was so fun doing all the stunts.”

Dennison’s casual attitude towards his success and friendliness makes it easy to forget he is just 15, until he mentions that while he’s seen snippets of it, he still hasn’t been allowed to watch the original Deadpool.

He says he’ll watch it in when he’s home in October and turns 16 (Deadpool has an R-16 rating in NZ).

Nonetheless, he feels like he understands why the

“DEADPOOL 2 IS JUST SO OU T THERE. YOU’D NEVER SEE THIS STUFF IN A NORMAL MOVIE, OR AN AVENGERS MOVIE… IT’S OU T BY ITSELF AND IT’S ITS OWN THING.”

Julian Dennison in Deadpool 2 [above left and opposite] and Hunt For The Wilderpeople [above right].

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arts in focus

L SCENES.” A N O TI O EM E TH AT D O O INK I’M PRET TY G TH I T U B Y, K C O C E B TO “I DON’T WANT

“I REMEMBER GOING LIKE, ‘WILL I KEEP MY ACCENT, OR WILL I HAVE TO LEARN AMERICAN?’ BECAUSE I’M TERR IBLE AT AMER IC AN. fi rst was so successful. “It’s just so out there. You’d never see this stuff it in a normal movie, or an Avengers movie… It’s out by itself and it’s its own thing.”

Shot in Vancouver over five months (Dennison comments that he got a good tan), Deadpool 2 boasts an all star cast with Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Zazie Beetz.

Bill Skarsgård and Terry Crews rounding out the bill.

Being on set with heavyweights like Reynolds and Brolin, Dennison said he was initially intimidated, but that being able to work with influential, seasoned actors was a great way to learn about the industry.

Nodding vigorously, he says he wants to remain in the fi lm industry, and spurns the idea that he might one day get an office job. Aside from developing himself as an actor, he ‘s interested in getting behind the camera, potentially to produce or direct. He’s already joking that Deadpool 2 might be his peak, and that it could all be downhill from here. But with Dennison’s immense talent and quick climb from local fi lms to blockbusters in one of the biggest franchises of recent times, it’s hard to believe his career will be ending anytime soon.

Dennison says he’d love his superpower to be teleportation, like Nightcrawler from the Marvel Universe, although he doesn’t want to be blue or have a tail. And when probed about a Deadpool 3, Dennison says he’d be keen, and hopes they don’t kill off his character.

“I would love to act more. I don’t know how to say it, but I want to be Russell more, because it was a really cool character and I reckon there’s so much more that people could learn from him.” With the internet already in deep, mad, obsessive love with the fi lm itself, it’s easy to predict huge success for Dennison – and hopefully a comeback from Russell in Deadpool 3.

What: Deadpool 2 is in cinemas now

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arts in focus

REVIEW

■ FILM

Tully is a shattering and beautiful everyday fantasy

By Ella Donald

T

ully is one of the more memorable films I’ve seen in a while, and for a number of reasons. Firstly, there’s the Carly Rae Jepsen sing-along, a feature that is long overdue to become as common in movies as the makeover montage. Then, there’s the unassuming approach to Marlo (Charlize Theron)’s bisexuality, revealed with pleasingly little fanfare. Then, there’s the third

act emotional wringer that, while messy, is nonetheless more touching and surprising than any other I’ve seen in recent memory.

But mostly, Tully is an arrival of something long-awaited, a gift unto us that you may not even know you needed, and a film that will (hopefully) finally make a star of Mackenzie Davis. So, for those who haven’t fallen in love with

the Black Mirror episode ‘San Junipero’, or aren’t one of the few that watched Halt And Catch Fire, who is Mackenzie Davis? (And no, she’s not the teen vlogger that a YouTube search first yields.)

In Tully, Davis plays the titular mysterious night nanny, who appears once the rest of the house has gone to sleep to care for Marlo’s newborn while she gets

‘Marlo, for one, can’t shake the feeling that she’ll wake to a kidnapping or something else – particularly as Tully attentively waits while she breastfeeds in the early hours.”

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“Tully does listen, of course, just not how we anticipate: Marlo is drowning, and does what she needs to hold on.” some much-needed rest. Tully first appears at the door, peeking around with an introduction that assumes familiarity, already three steps into her role, and an “I’m here to take care of you” vibe that feels all too bright.

Marlo, for one, can’t shake the feeling that she’ll wake to a kidnapping or something else – particularly as Tully attentively waits while she breastfeeds in the early hours. But there is something disarming about her immediate ease in her presence, and she reluctantly lets her in because…

Well, who else will listen? Marlo’s son Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica) is having problems at school, her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) retreats into online worlds instead of noticing her, and her daughter Sarah (Lia Frankland) is moving further and further away from her.

When baby number three arrives in the second act after a refreshingly imperfect and trying birth scene, the name is revealed as an offhand afterthought. Marlo’s brother Craig (Mark Duplass) is correct in guessing that Marlo is heading for another breakdown. Tully does listen, of course, just not how we anticipate: Marlo is drowning, and does what she needs to hold on.

But back to Davis. I put the focus on her because she is the film,

both in title and spirit. It is by her the conceit – a substantial leap of faith, not of whimsy but heartbreak – lives or dies. It’s no mistake that her and Theron (also wonderfully earnest and open), and in turn Tully and Marlo, feel like two sides of the same coin.

It’s a killer role for Davis, one that’s able to utilise her alien-like quality that appears in one form or another in most of her roles – whether in Blade Runner 2049 (you could pick her role on the casting announcement alone) or as outsiders of different types in Black Mirror and Halt And Catch Fire – unlike ever before.

Her towering, gangly frame is always disarming, never imposing, punctuated with shrugs and her trademarked look of bug-eyed optimism that could sell anything – and here, it thankfully does. But even that doesn’t quite pinpoint why she is so magnetic, possessing as she does an unnameable charisma unlike anyone else in Hollywood today. Perhaps what’s so thrilling about Davis is her innate ability to turn one’s head without drawing comparisons to anyone else.

I dance around the twist in Tully, because it definitely makes the film more spoiler-filled than the average drama, despite the fact thebrag.com

arts in focus ■ FILM

Upgrade is Robocop for the Google Home generation

By Joseph Earp

“We tell the stories we need to in order to survive, but eventually we need to let someone else in.” many will be able to pick it from early on. Tully is the idealised former version of Marlo, spending days in bed with no other commitments and for whom messy relationships are seen as freedom, making her unrecognisable and so out of touch to Marlo, the new mother.

No wonder it took Marlo time to once again be comfortable.

At the risk of becoming an overwrought metaphor, it’s a fine balance for director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody to strike between extreme darkness and comedy, and once again collaborating they do some of their best and most daring work. It’s also a refreshing return to form for Reitman, markedly more youthful and less worryingly paranoid than 2014’s miserable tech drama Men, Women, And Children or saccharine than 2013’s Labour Day (it’s telling that both have been promptly forgotten).

But Reitman is working in a different zone to previous high points like Up In The Air – and even his previous collaborations with Cody. At times, Tully is nearly impossible to watch, so immersive and harrowing is its empathy for parents both old and new, as well as those suffering from anxiety.

There won’t be a dry eye in the cinema.

A breakdown early in the film, punctuated by a child kicking the back of a car seat and screams rising and the air being sucked out of the surroundings, is a particularly accurate depiction of a panic attack. When Tully and Marlo’s relationship turns around in the third act, it’s at once surprising, manipulative, and darker than the preceding softly-lit fairytale of their evenings together would suggest, but also an appropriate continuation of what we’ve seen preceding. In less skilled hands, it would be absurd. Here, it cuts to a rattling truth about daily life rarely rendered so carefully.

We tell the stories we need to in order to survive, but eventually we need to let someone else in.

G

rey (Logan MarshallGreen) is old beyond his years. The kind of man whose eyes seem to be constantly searching for some remaining shred of the “good old days”, he is a relic of another era – namely ours. After all, in the near distant future of Upgrade, everything from driving to cooking has become automated, making Grey – a grizzled mechanic and homebody who spends his days tinkering with vintage cars – an outsider.

So when Grey is rendered paraplegic some 20 or so minutes into Upgrade, shot during an attack that also takes the life of his young wife, you immediately get the sense of what he has lost. His cruel fate befits a film written and directed by one of the masterminds behind the Saw franchise, Leigh Whannell, but it also creates an immediate sense of emotional stakes, grounding the strange twists and turns of a script that incorporates splashes of horror, sci-fi, and black-as-tar comedy.

Confined to a wheelchair, Grey hasn’t just lost his means of making money. He’s lost his very place in the world.

“This is one of the most thrilling, fucked-up films of the year, a cult masterpiece constructed out of scrap metal and human viscera.”

At this stage, the genre allusions that litter Upgrade might be making themselves clear – this is Robocop for the Google Home generation, an extraordinarily tight and entertaining new genre classic that has all the searing social satire of Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece. As Upgrade goes on, it becomes increasingly unclear who is really in charge – the emotional, bitter Grey, or the calmly voiced STEM (Simon Maiden), and the lines between man and machine become increasingly blurred.

Not, mind you, that this is some kind of heady exercise in academia: on the contrary, in fact.

This is one of the most thrilling, fucked-up films of the year, a cult masterpiece constructed out of scrap metal and human viscera.

Like Verhoeven, Whannell knows to keep the plot as tight as a drum, and it’s only after Upgrade’s lean 95 minutes are up that the broader social criticism really begins to sink in.

For the length of its running time, Upgrade is as immediate and uncomplicated as a switchblade pressed against the throat.

Whannell’s debut as a director, Insidious: Chapter 3, while very solid, was clearly just a warm-up: it’s with this film that he shows off the full breadth of his talents, pulling off a hire-wire act that sees

“As Upgrade goes on, it becomes increasingly unclear who is really in charge – the emotional, bitter Grey, or the calmly voiced STEM.” him navigate comic interludes about ninjas, Shaw Brothersesque fight scenes, and an inspired, devastating twist ending.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Marshall-Green takes the sad-eyed devastation of Charles Bronson and ramps it up to 11, remaining painfully human even as his body becomes increasingly mechanised, while Benedict Hardie brings an odd, clipped malice to his role as cyborg gangster Fisk. Indeed, Hardie is emblematic of the antiauthoritarian, tech bro-suspicious bent of Upgrade: the film’s villains aren’t thick-necked brutes, they’re Bill Gates types retro-fitted with gun arms and micro-robots they can sneeze out at their enemies.

That said, it’s Maiden who really steals the film. An unholy cross between Siri and Patrick Bateman, STEM is an all-knowing,

unstoppable force, ruthless in ways that Grey finds that he simply cannot be. And it is Maiden’s eerily calm, hypnotic voice that lingers after the devastation, comedy and horror of Upgrade is done – his voice that lodges in the brain.

After all, there’s a lot that our world of devices and apps lets us do, and Whannell knows that. But it’s not hard to imagine Fisk and his Elon Musk-esque buddies are waiting for us somewhere down the line – the retro-fitted monsters creeping about in the long shadow of Silicone Valley.

What: Upgrade is playing as part of Sydney Film Festival 2018 Where: Event Cinemas George Street, Ritz Cinema When: Thursday June 7, Friday June 8 And: Upgrade is in Australian cinemas from Thursday June 14

It also means you don’t bat an eye when Grey makes a decision that others might find unthinkable, offering himself up as a guinea pig for a device, STEM, that will give him the power to walk again. And it accounts for Grey’s almost immediate pivot from quiet, subdued luddite to STEM-assisted serial killer, an automated murdering machine desperate to take out those who have robbed him of his entire way of life.

“Whannell’s debut as a director, Insidious: Chapter 3, while very solid, was clearly just a warm-up: it’s with this film that he shows off the full breadth of his talents.”

What: Tully is in Australian cinemas now thebrag.com

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arts in focus

REVIEW

■ FILM

Avengers: Infinity War is a baffling display of monotony, capped by one hell of a finale

Mild spoiler warning for Avengers: Infinity War

By Cameron Williams

“T

here will be no resurrections,” says the villainous Thanos (Josh Brolin) in the opening skirmish of Avengers: Infi nity War. History contradicts him. After all, there’s a saying in comics books and soap operas: no one ever stays dead.

Unless you’re Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben (RIP forever), you’ve got the same number of lives as a cat. If only we could believe Thanos when he makes his threats in Infi nity War.

Thanos shows up casually late to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to achieve in one film what couldn’t be done in the 18 films prior to Infi nity War: a self-edit. Thanos is every writer’ greatest fear; I wondered how ruthless he would be using track changes in a word document. Marvel Studios have

“Infinity War is like completing an IKEA bookshelf with 60 per cent of the pieces left over.”

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taken the longest route to arrive at the battle royale that is Infi nity War. The McGuffins of a few previous Marvel films, the powerful infinity stones, are now part of Thanos’ genocidal do-it-yourself project to control the universe and purge half the population for the sake of balance.

The MCU has done a superb job of establishing an identity for each of their characters with solo adventures, team-ups and play fights (hello, Captain America: Civil War). Marvel have changed the nature of modern blockbusters with interconnecting films that set the stage for event films like Infi nity War, but in the process they’ve established a monotonous aesthetic that rarely pushes their films beyond a passing grade.

Simply put, they’ve mastered the art of making 3-star films. There have been outliers along the way – we’re still in a honeymoon period with Black Panther – but there are strict limitations on the aspirations of these films, despite how invested we’ve become with these characters. Everything the MCU has done to date has set the stage for Infi nity War, but it’s a film that’s haphazard with the emotional stakes they’ve worked to establish across multiple films.

Infi nity War is a sustained gut punch

“When we meet Thor in Infinity War he has nothing left to lose – but still he chooses to fight.” that’s admirable in commitment but an empty promise because of the franchise’s loose approach to mortality. The MCU’s rigid mentality gets cubed in Infi nity War; everything is bigger but never better. It’s more of the same; a spectacular display of monotony.

The thrill of Infi nity War isn’t in any of the gigantic action sequences leaden with stodgy digital carnage,

but instead, it’s the meet and greets that shine. Establishing each character over 10 years has allowed Marvel to let them interact without lengthy introductions.

Each character can breeze into scenes because we know who they are, and it’s fun to see Thor (Chris Hemsworth) interact with the intensely loveable Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautisa, and Zoe

Saldana) or Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) work on his father-figure role with Peter Parker/ Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Not every character gets breathing space, which may be a syndrome of Marvel failing to kill any of their darlings prior to Infi nity War. Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) feel thebrag.com

arts reviews

disconnected from their previous narrative arcs.

“Even the spectacle of the bombastic action sequences can’t sustain the unfinished nature of the film.”

The absolute standout in the gigantic roster is Thor. Infi nity War picks up right after the events of Thor Ragnarok and moves toward setting up the stakes for Thor within Infi nity War, which is tied personally to his arc that was established in Thor. Thor’s personal grievances with Thanos matter, and his motivations extend beyond the blanket need to save the universe. There’s a monologue Thor gives mid-film where he talks about everything he has lost over the course of the MCU, and it allows Hemsworth a moment to give a heartfelt performance away from the muscles and the cape.

Thor began life in the MCU as a god stripped of his power learning about self-sacrifice on Earth in order to be worthy of his hammer.

When we meet Thor in Infi nity War he has nothing left to lose – but still he chooses to fight. Of all the superheros swirling around in Infi nity War, Thor is the one with a clear purpose, and he still manages to retain the weight of all his previous appearances.

Co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely split the

party into distinct groups and send them on side quests under the banner of “all hope is lost”, which is fine, but in the process they stretch what was once the grand finale of a standard blockbuster across 2 hours and 40 minutes. Infi nity War exemplifies the serialised style of the MCU: it’s a stepping-stone film, akin to The Matrix Reloaded, or Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The tricky part is viewing the film as a self-contained whole, mostly because it’s outright detrimental to whatever follows. The MCU has always been a moving target when it comes to Avengers-themed films – we’ve been told everything has been leading up to Infi nity War, but the film itself is like completing an IKEA bookshelf with 60 per cent of the pieces left over.

Even the spectacle of the bombastic action sequences can’t sustain the unfinished nature of the film. Co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo pit the Avengers against pixelated foes with no sense of clarity when it comes to action; a lot of the battle set in Wakanda is reminiscent of a similar showdown in the disastrous Justice League with alien lemmings still the go-to army, once again.

“After a decade of revelling in the success The Avengers and their solo adventures, it becomes obvious that Infinity War, like most events in 2018, came to crush us.”

Often it’s hard to tell if Infi nity War has a human touch. None of Iron Man’s suit feels practical, mechanical or real anymore; it looks like the most expensive tracksuit ever made. There’s no sense of authorship from the Russos at all, which we know is possible within the Marvel machine thanks to the marks left by filmmakers like Shane Black (Iron Man 3), Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok).

Even the set-up of each scene cycles between wide, mid and close-up shots of each character like clockwork, and the action sequences have no sense of place or collaboration. The Russos try to evoke the feeling of the team working together as effectively as Joss Whedon once did when the camera circled around a team united in The Avengers – Alan Silvestri’s score from Whedon’s film works overtime in Infi nity War to conjure the same reaction – but the film never reaches the same triumphant heights.

But as Infi nity War nudges toward its cliffhanger it becomes clear that it’s a film with a false sense of pride. After a decade of revelling in the success The Avengers and their solo adventures, it becomes obvious that Infi nity War, like most events in 2018, came to crush us. I won’t get into specifics, but the final moments of this film reminded me most of the television series The Leftovers, and Marvel deserves credit to its commitment to kicking our butts.

Despite years of dodging mortality, the MCU takes a

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moment to acknowledge that we’re all just dust in the wind. I heard Bill and Ted’s voice in my head explaining life to Socrates in Excellent Adventure: “Dust. Wind.

Dude.” Infi nity War could have the greatest fake-out ending since Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, which feels a tad manipulative if Marvel decide to hit ‘ctrl+Z’ when the Avengers return, but if you live in the moment of the ending – disregard whatever 20-film plan Disney has for this franchise – it’s a feeling of profound loss that has been rare in these films to-date.

If you want to daydream about the most apt song to play over the credits, it would definitely be Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’.

But like James Bond, The Avengers will return, and there’s an overwhelming feeling of monotony when it comes to the never-ending churn of these Marvel movies at the conclusion of Infi nity War. Marvel Studios are yet to make a film that’s a complete dud, but they’ve made a lot of same-same films and it’s starting to become apparent that as a body of work the MCU may be just a bad. Even at the height of their powers in Infi nity War, it feels claustrophobic within the walls of a Marvel movie. In one of Thanos many speeches he says: “In time, you will know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right. Yet to fail all the same. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.” Like destiny, more Marvel movies are coming.

What: Avengers: Infi nity War is in Australian cinemas now BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18 :: 57

arts in focus ■ FILM

Under The Silver Lake is a grim endorsement of male fantasies

By Manuela Lazic

“As Sam, Andrew Garfield is lanky, constantly stoned, but still cute enough to get around town fairly easily.”

T

he post-mainstream success film tends to be a challenge for directors, especially in Hollywood. Riding on the wave of public and/ or critical recognition from a previous movie, filmmakers often get more funding and freedom to realise their vision fully for their follow-up project.

But the constraints of a limited budget and the ambition to make oneself noticed are powerful driving forces that can make a first film more interesting and effective than its anticipated and emancipated follow-up. David Robert Mitchell’s Under The Silver Lake is exactly one such blank check, but it also reveals in sharper contrast the key motifs that the director hinted at in his widely acclaimed sophomore flick It Follows.

Those idiosyncrasies, it turns out, are dispiriting: what follows goes nowhere, as Mitchell exhibits his disdain for meaning, knowledge and human beings (especially women) over more than two hours of faux postmodern intellectualism.

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regularly with his actor friend The Actress (she doesn’t have a name), but becomes worried when Sarah suddenly vanishes.

Perhaps he has finally found something beyond basic sexual instincts to motivate him through life? Or maybe that’s all it is again. Nevertheless, Sam embarks on an adventure to try and find this girl he almost got to sleep with. Luckily for him – and depressingly for us – he also gets to sleep with a few other women in the process.

“Mitchell exhibits his disdain for meaning, knowledge and human beings (especially women) over more than two hours of faux postmodern intellectualism.”

What better location than Los Angeles to explore the pointlessness of existence, and what better suited protagonist than a 30-something white man to add on top of it a selfrighteous digging into other people’s lives, barely disguised as a deep-dive into modern life and its discontents? As Sam (whose looked-for job remains undetermined), Andrew Garfield

is lanky, constantly stoned, but still cute enough to get around town fairly easily.

He’s also slightly creepy, and becomes quietly obsessed with his new neighbour, the mysterious Sarah, played with charm but excessive manicpixiness by Riley Keough – although the script is definitely to blame here. Sam sleeps

Mitchell’s script is dense with events and characters more or less or not at all related to Sarah. Far from creating a sense of a lived-in environment, however, this multitude of narrative arcs, twists and turns and deadends makes for a tiresome amalgamation of stuff. Modern life is rubbish, and there’s a lot of it: conspiracy theories, rich people controlling everything, pop culture full of secret meanings, or technological advancements deadening our souls... Sam drifts through it all with bewilderment but purpose, the one person who cares in the multitude of blasé soldiers of modernity.

Despite the mess, Sam’s efforts are rewarded and he

does get to the truth, which might be Mitchell’s most disingenuous touch. Whereas Paul Thomas Anderson found a kind of wisdom and humility in the random and meaningless connections of his narrative in Inherent Vice, Mitchell only validates all his fears.

Mitchell turns Saminto a hero who finds meaning in accidents, like a prophet whose despicable behaviour is in fact suited to his environment. Sam was right to investigate into the life of this woman he barely knew; he was right to connect these disparate dots; he was the one person who understood it all.

The whole world was made for his particular taste, and his favourite things: sexy women, comic books, old video games, and Kurt Cobain. The universe is Sam’s very own Ready Player One, and he wins at the end.

Even if it’s too late for Sarah to change her mind and finally sleep with him, Sam does get the girl at the end – in the sense that he proves her wrong.

What: Under The Silver Lake was reviewed as part of Cannes 2018

“Far from creating a sense of a lived-in environment, the film’s multitude of narrative arcs, twists and turns and dead-ends makes for a tiresome amalgamation of stuff.”

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What’s new to streaming?

ew to stre n am s at’

ing

W h

arts in focus

“Chubbuck’s life story is defined by tragedy – those unaware of her shocking end would do best to avoid reading up on it before diving into Christine.”

Christine

WITH JOSEPH EARP

The sheer surplus of shit to stream has no clearer casualty in Australia than Inside No. 9. In the U.K., the show is a cult hit, picking up well-deserved writing awards left and right, and even in the States it has a loyal, committed following. But over here, the program is largely unknown, thanks in no small part to Netflix’s decision to treat the best content they have like a dirty secret, pushing it deep within the folds of their site.

Another unsung masterpiece lurking away from Netflix’s frontpage is Christine, the latest feature from Antonio Campos. Campos is probably best known to viewers as the filmmaker responsible for the first three episodes of the Jessica Biel-led mystery The Sinner – all those who choked on their tea when Biel’s Cora Tannetti stabbed a perfect stranger to death have him to thank (or, perhaps, to blame). But away from television, he is a brutally efficient director of tension, and Christine, based on the true story of doomed reporter Christine Chubbuck, is probably his masterpiece.

Chubbuck’s life story is defined by tragedy – those unaware of her shocking end would do best to avoid reading up on it before diving into Christine – but Campos’ film never feels exploitative, or tabloid-esque. Held together by a stunning performance by Rebecca Hall, who captures Chubbuck’s frazzled, anxious energy with real skill, the film has a deep sensitivity to it. Real, unaffected loss permeates through every scene, and by the time tragedy strikes, the viewer is so caught up in Chubbuck’s story that the loss of this 29-year-old woman feels as fresh as though it had happened only yesterday.

Inside No. 9

To which I say: fuck that. Inside No. 9 is, for my money, the best written television show of the last ten years, a stunning achievement that only gets stronger as the years pass.

Created by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton – best known for their work as part of The League of Gentlemen, and the excellent dark comedy series Psychoville – Inside No. 9 is a horror-thriller-comedy anthology, with the episodes united only by a shared sense of vicious intelligence.

Shearsmith and Pemberton are true horror aficionados – after all, The League Of Gentlemen, filled as it was with stranger-suspicious villagers, owed a clear debt to Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man – and that love of genre shines throughout Inside. Season Two’s ‘The Trial Of Elizabeth Gadge’ is Witchfinder General shoved through a blender; ‘Seance Time’ is a deliciously creaky haunted house homage; while ‘The Devil Of Christmas’ stitches together touches from Struwwelpeter, the films of Dario Argento, and a heady dose of early Hammer Horror schlock.

But even those who consider themselves horror adverse will find they get a great deal from Inside. As dark as episodes can get, the sheer innovation of Shearsmith and Pemberton’s writing keeps proceedings entertaining – albeit in a distinctly grisly way. Episodes like ‘The Twelve Days Of Christine’, ‘Cold Comfort’, and ‘Sardines’ are stunningly compact, mini mysteries capped off by some of the most satisfying pay-offs in modern television history. While critics fawn over the lengthy, often tortured plots offered by more mainstream fare like The Leftovers and Westworld, Shearsmith and Pemberton are spinning 30 minute tales with more wit, intelligence, and life than those shows have in entire seasons.

“Inside No. 9 is largely unknown, thanks in no small part to Netflix’s decision to treat the best content they have like a dirty secret, pushing it deep within the folds of their site.” thebrag.com

“Tangerine showcases Sean Baker’s skills as the poet of the underdog; shot entire on iPhones, the film has a gorgeous, tactile humanity to it.”

Over on Stan, fans of Sean Baker’s extraordinary The Florida Project would do well to check out Tangerine, his first feature. As with Florida, Tangerine showcases Baker’s skills as the poet of the underdog; shot entire on iPhones, the film has a gorgeous, tactile humanity to it. People have in the past compared Baker to Truffaut, but it’s an unfair comparison: Baker is as warm and unvarnished as Truffaut is composed and collected.

For my money, Baker is the closest we have to a new Raymond Carver – an artist whose skill lies in translating tiny moments of regret, shame, pain, and beauty into shimmering moments of pure cinema.

also playing…

For something completely different, I’d also strongly recommend, a trilogy of excellent world horror titles: High Tension, Raw, and Baskin, all playing on Stan. Those who decry the state of modern horror – sour-hearted old codgers who believe the genre has become nothing but a glut of overcranked snuff films – should shove these three masterpieces right in their goddamn maw and choke. The first, High Tension, the debut film from Alexandre Aja, is a deliciously slick nightmare, as unsettling and as cruel as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Sure, it falls apart when it comes time for the famously ludicrous ending, but every other minute of this nasty little film thrills.

High Tension

Raw, by contrast, wears its beating, bloodied heart on its sleeve. A coming-of-age story that also contains elements of cannibal drama, dark comedy, and woozy social satire, it is the most impressive horror debut since Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. Time will almost certainly reveal it to be one of the most effective and important films of the decade – who could say no to that finale, told with all the barely-suppressed glee of a dirty joke?

Raw

Then, finally, we have Can Evrenol’s Baskin, a lit candle placed in front of the shrine of Lucio Fulci. Beginning as a nightmarish cop procedural, the film takes a sudden and shocking tonal right turn about halfway through, transforming into something altogether meaner, weirder, and wetter. If there is any justice in the world, this debut future alone will guarantee Evrenol has the support and funding to make as many horror films as he bloody well wants.

Baskin

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arts in focus

parent talk

Powered by

with Nick Hollins

CHASE ME Turns out the much-loved playground game of tag has been taken to ridiculous levels by the new professional sport of Chase Tag. Yes, you read that right – it’s called Chase Tag. In its essential form, the nascent sport is a heroic combination of obstacles, parkour and general fitness and health. It’s also sure to provide an ample dose of inappropriate inspiration for your kids – they’ll be attempting outlandish things at school in no time. Who knows,

they might use the sport to get their very first broken arm!

Competitors must simply evade their pursuit for a set number of seconds (I’m still figuring out the rules). There’s some seriously impressive moves on display and high levels of courtesy between participants; they shake hands and high five after each round. What more could ya want out of a sport?

QUIT THAT

READ UP

First off, it’s worth nothing that you are a sovereign human being with the right to make decisions about your own life and health. You are free to do whatever you like. But, put simply, don’t smoke around your kids because they’re not being given a choice.

Now, with that frame in place, I’m going to share research published in the BMJ that suggests smokers who scale back to one cigarette per day still retain half the risk of heart disease and stroke faced by people who smoke 20 or more cigarettes per day. “No safe level of smoking exists for cardiovascular disease,” goes the report. “Smokers should quit instead of cutting down, using appropriate cessation aids if needed, to significantly reduce their risk of these two common major disorders.”

If you’re interested in living a longer life, simply cutting back isn’t the best solution. You’re still keeping almost 50% of the risk! Screw that noise.

Speaking from experience, I was a fully paid up and addicted member of the smokers guild. I’d been in the game for about a decade. Tried to quit and cut down a few times and it hadn’t quite worked out. Guess what did work in the end?

Making a grown ass decision with a disciplined choice to go hardcore cold turkey. Kill that nicotine addiction for good. Choose to be mindful and simply observe the effect of that addiction on your mind and body as you starve it of oxygen (get it?). We’re seriously talking about three to four days, possibly up to a week of real struggle to escape the clutches of physical, gripping nicotine addiction. There will be some sweaty, gross and restless nights as you escape the physical hooks. But this is about making a choice and making a break for it.

Think of it like a prison break. The alarms are going off, search lights flashing around as you make a break for the fences and into the getaway car.

What if I told you that when dads read bedtime stories they benefit children’s cognitive development more than when it’s mum doing the reading? It seems crazy, right? But it’s true. Elisabeth Duursma is a senior lecturer in Early Childhood Literacy at the University of Wollongong. In research published at Harvard University in 2014, she explored the impact of dads reading to their kids.

“We found that fathers used more abstract and complex language. When sharing a book with their child, they would often link events in the book to a child’s own experience,” Duursma explains. “For example, when a ladder was discussed in the book, many fathers mentioned the last time they had used a ladder to climb up on the roof or use it for their work.

Mothers focused more on the details in the book and often asked children to label or count objects or identify colours.”

When I was young, my dad was a primary school teacher who specialised in early reading. He read books to us all the time and would also make up serialised stories on the spot. The one I remember most was about a magic mouse that would take us on adventures.

Roald Dahl was my favourite author and so when my son was only one, we bought a brilliant box set of all his books for $60. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is by far our son’s favourite. We’ve read it about four times. All while I’m reading he’ll be asking questions or positing his own ideas, creatively building on the story.

RAISING THE SKATE Just because skate ramps resemble slides doesn’t mean you should let a five-year-old run wild amongst stoned teenagers during a weekend session. Oh, and when that kid is cleaned up by a grown man coming through after a backslide flip, don’t get mad about it. This is on you. I’m not going to direct you to specific videos because they’re painful to watch, but YouTube is full of clips like Kid Gets Knocked Out At Skatepark and Skateboarder Crashes Into Kid.

While we’re at it, don’t buy your kids scooters. It’s skateboards or nothing. Make sure they learn a thing that’s worth learning.

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Skate Park photo by Cristian Flickr

That was my teenage years – I spent all my time dodging tiny kids on the park while their parents laughed and thought it was cute. I’d be using maximum effort to not injure innocent children, and parents would look at me like I was a party entertainer; like a clown. Added to this, kids just sit down in random places across the park.

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game on Gaming news and reviews with Adam Guetti

REVIEW

JUN

New Releases

THE C64 MINI

you’re not well-versed on each individual title, you’re in for a lot of fatal trial and error as you mash buttons to determine a solution.

Similarly, the system’s controller is bound to frustrate due to its clunky nature. It’s not a total dealbreaker, but considering how brutal older games can be with their emphasis on pure precision, an unreliable controller certainly doesn’t help.

you’ve been pinching your pennies, because June is 2018 Hopefully filled with quality games you’ll want to splurge on. First up on Tuesday June 5 is Vampyr (PS4, XBO, PC). In it, you’ll control a doctor-turned-bloodsucker, and it’s up to you to make crucial decisions about his future.

For something a little more subdued, check out The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset. The latest expansion for the online behemoth will allow entry into the ancestral home of the high elves. You can find it on PS4, XBO and PC from Wednesday June 6.

Racing fans, meanwhile, will have their opportunity to put pedal to metal on a whopping 19 tracks when MotoGP 18 speeds onto PS4, XBO and PC on Thursday June 7.

Jumping ahead, the little ones will also have something to sink their teeth into on Friday June 15 courtesy of Lego The Incredibles (PS4, XBO, Switch). Expect similar gameplay to the other Lego titles, while retelling the plot of both films.

Switch owners will score their piece of action on Friday June 22 with the release of Mario Tennis Aces, which will include the series’ first story mode in quite some time.

Closing out the month is Far Cry 3: Classic Edition (PS4, XBO) on Tuesday June 26 and The Crew 2 (PS4, XBO, PC) on Friday June 29. The former is a prettier update of the 2012 shooter while the latter builds upon its racing foundations with new air, ground and sea options.

reviewroundup

If Nintendo proved anything with its NES and SNES Classic systems, it’s that gamers love taking a trip down memory lane. As a result, the C64 Mini wants to send you back to 1982, a time where microcomputers and floppy discs were all the rage. Thankfully, it’s a trip well worth taking.

The actual recreation of the original Commodore 64 is understandably compact

yet absolutely adorable, and one that elicited nostalgic grins when we first unboxed it. Once you’ve hooked everything up, navigating your way through the carousel of 64 games on offer is easy, thanks to a simple and clean interface.

Actually jumping into them, on the other hand, presents a few more difficulties.

Instruction manuals aren’t part of the deal, meaning if

Should your favourites be missing from the list (including guilty pleasures like Zorro) the C64 Mini allows you to load homebrewed ROM files from a USB drive, although be warned – it’s a tougher process than it sounds.

Still, that’s where the C64 Mini succeeds. It offers a wealth of flexibility not found in its competitors, allowing you to keep the memories flowing for as long as you please.

By Adam Guetti

Review: State of Decay 2 (XBO)

Review: Little Nightmares: Complete Edition (Switch)

tate of Decay was a surprise success story that took the zombie survival hook in an interesting direction. Its sequel, despite dealing with its fair share of bugs, is equally enjoyable. Where the game really shines, however, is the new four-player co-op. Once you bash your way past the opening tutorial, the whole experience can be played as a group, and it goes without saying it’s the ideal way to play. State of Decay 3 2 could still use a few tweaks to its core formula, but that doesn’t prevent it from being (un)dead-set fun.

S

ittle Nightmares might seem like a clone of classic games like Limbo and Inside, but it has an atmosphere all of its own. You control Six, a nine-yearold girl desperately trying to escape The Maw – a vast, mysterious vessel inhabited by corrupted souls looking for their next meal. What follows is an incredibly creepy and tense stealth platformer. Some of the game’s original issues, like long gaps between restarts, unfortunately haven’t 3.5 changed, but Switch owners are definitely scoring a superior version with extra DLC and handy portability.

Review: Nintendo Labo (Switch)

Review: Destiny 2: Warmind (PS4, XBO, PC)

N

T

intendo Labo is a product unlike any other. Part cardboard cut-out, part child fantasy, its potential is limitless and its debut an absolute delight.

Construction of Labo’s Toycons is a breeze thanks to smart instruction and, for many adults, may actually be the most enjoyable element. The piano in particular is unexpectedly deep once paired with the versatile Toycon Garage. The Variety Kit is certainly the best starter compared to the more limited Robot Kit, but not matter which one you choose, Labo 4.5 will create smiles all around.

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L

hose keeping an eye on Destiny 2 since its release last year can tell you that the MMO/shooter hybrid has persevered through a pretty rough trot. Its latest expansion, Warmind, is the latest attempt to simultaneously retain the game’s existing player base while re-enticing older players. But much like the core game, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. With only a handful of missions that will take around an hour and a half to complete, expect a whole lot of grinding and a much 2.5 slower pace. There’s some cool boss fights and interesting backdrops to explore, but there’s just a lack of some much-needed creativity.

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SHORT STORY

Poppy Reid is a New Zealand-born journalist and author of short fiction.

V i sit ing Him

BY P O P P Y R E I D

stand silent at the apartment building door before buzzing, staring through my reflection and letting my eyes glaze over. I had heard he was regressing more every day and was becoming more difficult to communicate with.

I

“The apartment is exactly as I’d remembered it, before he changed.”

He’s in a wheelchair, sat in the corner of the room at a small table, just staring out the window. His gaze is locked across the motorway at a yacht in the harbour.

He hasn’t noticed me yet. Perhaps he is daydreaming. Perhaps he’s afraid to open to his mouth.

I stall; fi xing my fringe, running surface-level conversation starters in my head – anything to keep the weight of what is ahead of me from crushing my frontal lobe.

“How has he been?” I ask, not wanting to know the answer but wanting to show her I think of him often, even if I suppress most thoughts before the little baths fi ll up behind my eyes.

My grandmother’s sing-song voice tells me to “push the door” and “come up to level three”, as if I hadn’t been here many times before.

The thing about Alzheimer’s is that it progresses slowly, then it arrives all at once. One moment you’re finding it hard to recall the right word or the place you left your keys, the next you’ve lost your ability to walk, to talk, to even eat without assistance. It’s a right cunt of a disease; it slowly removes you from the picture, inch by inch, at such a cumbersome rate that when it’s reached its most severe, the suffering is almost unbearable for everyone in its path.

Th is time is different though. I walk up the carpeted steps, the soft brown shag cupping my boots like bread dough, and I try to remember the last time I was here; what he was like and how he made me feel.

Before I can recall my trigger questions for shower-shallow conversations, my grandmother is way ahead of me, detailing what she’s making for lunch, and when and where she’d bought the ingredients.

“I’ve got fish for the vegan.” She never did quite fully understand the vegan diet. She pronounces the word ‘vaygan’, as if the word is so foreign to her she’d never even heard it being spoken.

The apartment is exactly as I’d remembered it, before he changed. The walls are lined with shiny porcelain trinkets from their travels together: bowls with nothing in them, glasses not meant for drinking from, and delicate, utterly breakable garnishments that would have made me nervous if I was 10 years younger.

The table is set for three. Knowing my grandmother it’s probably looked like this since yesterday.

She’s been known to wake up at 3AM Christmas morning, dressed and waiting in the dark. On one occasion, while overseas for a wedding, she left seven hours before her fl ight without saying goodbye to any of the eight family members staying at the same hotel. We received a group text: “Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye family. I didn’t want to miss my fl ight. X.”

I sit in front of him at the table. “Hey,” I manage.

He turns to face me.

“You really are beautiful,” his eyes are grey now, even when they smile.

My grandmother’s birthday is next week so I place a card and a pen in front of him and tell him what it’s for. He fumbles with the pen and adjusts the card a few times, biding his time to latch on to thoughts, the slipping balloon strings just out of reach.

When he finally puts pen to paper it’s illegible, like a toddler’s hallway wall etching, not reminiscent of anything but a decaying mind. He looks at me sadly from under his silver tangle of eyebrows; he’s embarrassed. Sitting before me is a man who used his hands to work almost every day of his adult life; a man whose childhood home had a dirt floor.

He forwent higher education for long days of hard labour to support his family – and still built an empire from it.

“I had no idea it would be this hard; that it would be this far along; that he himself could see he was slipping out of view.”

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I swiftly write in the card for him, making sure it’s loving but not too personal, and excuse myself.

In the bathroom I slump to the floor and stifle my cries with the back of my hand.

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arts in focus The BOOKSHELF: Each month, we talk to one of our favourite Aussies about their personal libraries – the books they own, the books they love, the books they hate. This time around we spoke to 21-year-old Jamie Marina Lau, whose debut novel Pink Mountain On Locust Island is a new hard-boiled classic, available from Lifted Brow Books.

“Every time I’ve read Less Than Zero it’s played out like a long movie or a hallucinatory state.”

I reach for the toilet paper as dollops of salty liquid slice through my makeup, leaving my cheeks streaked with differing degrees of beige. I had no idea it would be this hard; that it would be this far along; that he himself could see he was slipping out of view.

What is the most prized book that you own?

I don’t actually own a lot of the books I love yet: friends are always lending me their copies and I’m always reading at the library, but I’m in love with my copy of The White Book by Han Kang.

‘Th is isn’t about you’, I tell my reflection in the mirror and dab away the wayward spots of mascara.

What was the first book that you bought?

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I remember just needing to own it because I thought of it as a sort of gallery or archive to investigate over time.

“That smells amazing.” I sail back into the living room with my chin held high. My grandparents can see I’m trying and seem grateful that I’ve come to play a minor part in the chin-up charade they’ve been forced to live in.

What’s the last book that made you cry?

So much of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge really moved me.

It unveils and exposes the process of smothering a history of really horrible racial brutalities. And how this ‘lack of historical knowledge’ is built into and continues to inform a racist system.

After lunch I give my grandmother a pedicure. Her bunions jut out at right angles and her nails have yellowed,

“He chuckles in the way someone does when they don’t quite hear what you’ve said, praying it wasn’t a question.” but her feet are surprisingly silken, as if the years of wearing medical grade footwear has paid off. I look over at my grandfather’s toenails and ask if I can do his next.

He chuckles in the way someone does when they don’t quite hear what you’ve said, praying it wasn’t a question.

I choose a thermal colour-changing polish, one that’s clear in the cold and purple when heated. He looks on amusedly as I slowly trace the edges of the nail, the air conditioning making it paint on clear; the act seems like a mime. It’s something I would have done when I was younger, when I forced him to play with my dolls or wear my hair clips. He always obliged. No request was ever denied, no want was ever too much.

It was my grandmother’s idea to take him outside for a wheel around the marina. We are perhaps ten steps out of the building when the polish catches our eye. Gone was the clear camouflaging sheen and in its place is the brightest most conspicuous purple I’ve ever seen; ten stumpy used paintbrushes jutting out from his sandals. He looks up at me and lets his head fall backwards as he breaks into a wide corrugated smile. His laughter is a waterfall, flowing merrily and full. ◆

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What’s the book you fell in love with when you were a teenager?

This giant edition of Dorothy Parker’s collection of fiction, criticism and plays all mixed up, which my drama teacher lent to me in high school often.

What books do you have on your bedside table?

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, Beloved by Toni Morrison, China In Ten Words by Yu Hua, The White Album by Joan Didion, and Airships by Barry Hannah.

If you were trapped on a desert island, what’s the one book that you would want to have with you?

Less Than Zero. Every time I’ve read it it’s played out like a long movie or a hallucinatory state, so it would be a suitable distraction.

What’s the last book that you hated?

I’m really bad at hating books because I’m a slow reader and often don’t read on if I feel I’ll get bored.

But I feel like the books I’ve read and should ‘hate’, I hate because of their dated ways of perceiving and representing. I don’t think its productive to hate a book for these reasons though – I think it’s an interesting way to inform my own work.

For example, The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac is filled with misogynistic, racist and exoticizing perspectives, and I was irritated when I read it. As a writer, reading these perspectives only extends my own, providing evidence that these perspectives were normalized and do exist.

“I’m really bad at hating books because I’m a slow reader and often don’t read on if I feel I’ll get bored.”

What’s a book people might be surprised to learn that you love?

I love Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk but I’ve never watched the movie. People would be surprised because I can’t really stomach violence on film but I love it in books.

Who’s the writer that changed your life?

Toni Morrison with Jazz.

“I can’t really stomach violence on film but I love it in books.”

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SHORT STORY

Most of thi s Stor y Isn’t About Us

BY E L L I O T T S O B E R

ost of this story isn’t about us, although some parts are. Most of this story is about the man in the bar I’ve walked past twice now, and how much time he spends wondering whether he knows me or not. Other parts are about Vivien Leigh, who spent a lot of her life confused as to whether she was an actress playing Blanche DuBois, or whether she and Blanche were one and the same. There are short passages about the girl who copied fire; there are others about Sylvia Plath, and some of this story is about James Dean.

M

No part of this story is about me wondering whether or not it is sensible to love you.

“No part of this story is about me wondering whether or not it is sensible to love you.” screen makes him feel worse. Lonelier. No one has sent him a message in some time now. So he likes to imagine questions that the woman who he is waiting for has sent him. He answers, typing messages into his phone, and then sending them back to himself, typing his own number into the address box. He sends answers that look like this: HURRY UP.

The part about the man in the bar goes like this:

NO. I DON’T MEAN IT.

The man in the bar does not know me. The man in the bar is sitting by himself, and this is because he has nobody to wait for. He likes to pretend that he does. He has thrown his jacket onto the seat next to him, as though reserving it for someone.

Whenever another patron approaches him and asks to take the chair, the man apologises; tells them that his friend will be here shortly. The man sits by the window, facing the street, but does not enjoy looking out at the people passing by. He only sits there because that way his back is to everyone else inside the bar: the kind of people who might want to catch his eye and smile or invite him over. The man spends a lot of time telling himself that he is not lonely.

YOU TOO.

I am walking past the bar because I like to walk, and stay quiet, and spend hours not talking to anyone but myself. Most of the time, I am not lonely. I have very little in common with the man.

The man in the bar catches my face as I walk past. He smiles, despite himself. I smile back, but only briefly, because I can walk quite fast when I want to. I am writing a story in my head about a girl who copied fi re, and burnt.

The man in the bar watches my back as I continue down the street. He follows me for as long as he can, craning his neck until I pass into a group of people that have spilt into the street, and am gone.

The man in the bar likes to think about the woman who he is waiting for, although she does not exist. Every few moments he checks his phone, because he believes if he does this, other patrons will leave him alone. But looking down at his blank

Elliott Sober is a musician and artist based out of Victoria.

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IT’S COLD, AND I’M WAITING. YES. OF COURSE I DO. I LOVE YOU. He sends these messages off, and a few moments they come back to him, his phone buzzing. He reads over them again, and then puts the phone back into his pocket.

He is not unattractive. His hair is long and dark. He has often wondered whether or not he might be gay. He has no one to wait for because he does not like people. He knows that this is real loneliness.

I am still walking, writing the story in my head about the girl who copied fi re. The story is half fi nished. The girl has just invited me into her house, and is watching me smoke a cigarette.

“Why?” the girl who copied fi re is asking.

“Why what?”

“Why do you smoke?” She doesn’t understand. She is sitting across from me, staring intently at the ashtray and the tip of my cigarette, her eyes fl icking in between the two. She is young. Ten or 12. I cannot tell because she does not stay still. Because she moves like fi re, even now, with her fi ngers and her hair separating and coming together in thin waves.

The girl who copied fi re is in this story because she is a lot like how I imagine you were when you were young. You have not told me much, and I have seen no pictures. But you and this girl share something.

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SHORT STORY

“I smoke because I like it,” I tell the girl. “It makes me feel relaxed.”

The girl who copied fi re asks a lot of questions. Some are easier to answer than others. She wants to know whether women move faster than men, and I tell her I don’t understand the question.

“Women can move as fast as men,” I say, blowing smoke through my nose.

“Everyone walks at the same speed?”

“No. Some move faster than others.”

“So. Who is faster? Men or women?”

“Neither,” I say. “Some women are faster than most men, and some men are faster than most women.” The girl who copied fi re sighs, and watches me stub out a cigarette into the ashtray.

But then she has nothing more to say. The story is only half fi nished. By now, I have circled back, and I am walking the way I came, about to pass the man in the bar once again.

The next part of this story is about James Dean.

James Dean was bisexual. He smoked too. Sometimes he got his lovers to butt out their cigarettes on him during sex, their pink hands working their way into his skin, the burning ends leaving perfectly circular holes in his chest. Later, he died in a car accident, because the woman he loved had gone back to marry another man.

His car crashed during a snowstorm, the windowshield fi lled with white. He had turned off the wipers. He watched everything change, and everything stay the same. The road, the tires, the streetlamps. Snow worked its way into his hair. Into his mouth.

It melted on his lips and ran down his face. His eyes turned

“After they had sex, the woman would read him her poems from memory. Sometimes she would recite them as if they meant nothing, talking in a low voice. Other times they were performances.” thebrag.com

“He felt like talking to people today. He walked up to the woman behind the counter and started talking, fast, like he hadn’t done it for a thousand years.” white. He watched, while he could, as everything became the same colour, till sound turned white, turned to snow, fell around his ears, covering the parts of his body that had been burnt by cigarettes, covering all of him, till he was white, till he was nothing, till he was snow, till he was sound, and then the car ran into a tree and he died.

I get sad whenever I watch a fi lm with James Dean in it, because I cannot help but think about his body, eyelashes still wet with snow, slumped over a car wheel. After I have known you for some time, you tell me you get sad when you watch Marilyn Monroe, because you cannot help but think about her body slumped out across a hardwood floor, her blonde hair trailing across her open eyes.

I am not thinking about James Dean when I walk past the man in the bar for a second time. He, catches my eyes. He looks confused, but I just smile, and shrug my shoulders. He smiles back, and moves his glass of beer a few inches to the left.

The man in the bar is trying to remember a Sylvia Plath poem. It is a poem a woman read to him, years ago, although at the time, she told him she had written it. He was in love with the woman, and together they lay on her bedroom floor, and she spoke gently into his ear. He did not read poetry, as a general rule. He had met her at the party of a mutual friend, and she had laughed at his jokes in the right way, and instantly made him feel more relaxed.

He had even followed her home that night, pressed his sleeping face into her naked back, and had dreamt of things he would later forget.

The woman told him she was a poet. There were no books in her house. Hardly anything to write on. She had one bare desk that she kept in the kitchen, next to the oven. It was strange little things like this that convinced him that he loved her.

After they had sex, the woman would read him her poems from memory. Sometimes she would recite them as if they meant nothing, talking in a low voice. Other times they were performances. She would move her hands in front of her face, tightening them. He worshipped anything that came from her.

BRAG :: 737 738 :: 02:05:18 06:06:18 :: 65

Most of thi s Stor y I sn’t About Us CONTINUED…

She looked a little like you. Her hair was shorter. Her eyes were a different colour. But you both had the same way of walking, as though your body only hung loosely off you. And when we touched, we could all imagine that we were part of something beautiful. Something that fell like snow.

The man in the bar had known his woman for six months before her birthday came around. He wanted to get her something special. He was not particularly rich, but he worked hard, and the apartment he rented was small enough for him to buy her something nice.

Something expensive. There was never any part of him that doubted what it should be: a book. Poetry. Something she loved.

He shuffled into a bookstore on the day before her birthday. It was warm. The woman behind the counter smiled at him, and he smiled back. He felt like talking to people today. He walked up to the woman behind the counter and started talking, fast, like he hadn’t done it for a thousand years.

“I’m looking for poetry,” he said, and the woman behind the counter smiled.

“Anything in particular?”

“Sylvia Plath,” he said, quickly, and blushed. The woman behind the counter smiled, raised a hand to her lips.

“You’re a Plath fan?” she asked.

“It’s for my girlfriend.”

“Cheery stuff,” the woman behind the counter said, and laughed.

But the man did not care. He felt as though he would never care about something as small as laughter again.

The woman behind the counter led him over to the poetry section.

Her fi ngers brushed over the titles, until she found what she was looking for.

“Ariel,” the woman said. “It’s a good place to start.”

But the man was looking at a thick book; the Collected Works.

He pulled it out, fl ipped it over. It was ninety dollars. He grinned.

“Th is one,” he said. The woman smiled.

“Would you like me to wrap it up?” she said. The man shook his head. He wanted to read a few of the poems before he gave it

“He threw the book into the trash can. He never saw the woman again.”

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“Most of this story isn’t about us, you and me. But we are here, both of us, sitting side by side.” to his girlfriend. Wanted to surprise her. Maybe he could quote one of the poems in the birthday card he would buy for her. He wanted to feel impressive; as clever as she was.

He started reading as soon as he walked into the street. But he was surprised. He knew the fi rst poem he fl ipped to. He had heard it before, although he had never read Plath in his life. He read over the fi rst few lines again; What a thrill – my thumb instead of an onion.

The top quite gone Except for a sort of hinge.

He knew this poem. She had spoken it into his hair, whispering, her voice catching around his skin, sticking where the words hit.

She had told him it was hers.

She was a liar. He fl ipped through the book. Lines jumped out at him. He knew most of them. She wasn’t a poet at all. She probably hadn’t written a word of poetry in her life. But if she had lied about that, how much of what she had said had been true?

Any of it? It was all a lie. There was no way she loved him.

The man had not seen a fi lm with James Dean in it. If you had asked him, he would have recognised the name. That’s all. He knew nothing about Dean’s car crash. But as he walked down the street and away from the bookshop, everything began to turn white. Clouds had appeared without him noticing. Snow collected in front of him. He had turned off the windscreen wipers. He was covered in white. It fell on his body, landing on the places where the woman had lied to him, whispered to him, kissed him. He could hardly see. Everything was snow. Now, he was just waiting for the crash.

He threw the book into the trash can. He never saw the woman again. He simply did not call her. Avoided the restaurants they had visited together. She did not even try to contact him. He forgot her slowly, and then, years later, he found himself in a bar, watching the shape of my back as I passed him for the second time.

He had been drinking for a good few hours. People had come and gone. He had watched them out of the corner of his eye, but he would not remember their faces. Their conversations. He would sit at the bar till closing time, and then walk home as slowly as he could, wondering how much longer life would go on like this.

If he had walked the right way, he could have wandered right past me. I was sitting on a bench, smoking slowly. The story about the

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SHORT STORY

girl who copied fi re was fi nished. I had nothing to write it down with, so I was running it over in my head again and again, trying not to forget.

The story about the girl who copied fi re did not have a happy ending. In the story, the girl and I went to the movies. The girl who copied fi re did not understand what we were doing. She did not like sitting in the dark, staying quiet. She kept asking questions.

“Who’s that woman?”

“That’s Blanche.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s crying.”

“Why?” “Well, she’s not really crying. She’s acting.”

leaving me because I could not answer her questions. One day I came home and there was nothing left but a shape made of smoke sliding out of the window. The girl who copied fi re had burnt.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, and lit a cigarette, and the smoke from the tip floated out of the window and joined up with the shape of the girl, mixing together until both got hurried out into the street by the wind, and disappeared.

I have fi nished thinking about the story. I start to walk home, slowly, although it is not my home. It is yours. I have the keys for the front door in my pocket. I flew in this morning. I want to fi nish my story about the girl who copied fi re in time for you to read it when you come home from work.

There are not many things that I’m sure of. The man in the bar, for example. I still don’t know what the inside of his house looks like. Maybe if we were different people he might have invited me to his place. We might have talked. I could have told him the story about James Dean and he could have jumped up, out of his seat, and said, “Yes. Snow, falling on the windshields. And everything’s so fucking white. I know that part of the story. I know what that’s like”

“Who’s acting?”

“Vivien Leigh.”

“What?”

“That woman up there. Her name’s Vivien Leigh in real life, but in the movie her name is Blanche.”

“Why?” “Because she’s not the same person in the movie as she is in real life.”

The girl who copied fi re tutted, turned away. She was sick of answers like this.

If I had known how to answer her properly, I would have explained that it was interesting, actually, about Vivien Leigh.

Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder, long before anyone really understood the condition. Spent her life in and out of institutions, and somehow managed to balance an acting career as well. But her mania reached its peak when she played Blanche. She came to believe that she and Blanche were one and the same. When the takes were done, the shooting was over, she would look up at the cameras, confused. She did not understand why she was being fi lmed. She was just living her life. And there were all these people around her, holding her, touching her. And Stanley was not the same man anymore. His face moved, relaxed, and he was a stranger. He touched her on the shoulder and called her a name she did not recognise.

We could have talked about the thought of James Dean lying dead against the steering wheel, but only briefly, because we would have had other questions. We would have wanted to know whether he saw the tree before he hit it. Whether he saw a shape.

Something whiter than the other white, or deeper, or softer. If he knew.

Most of this story isn’t about us, you and me. But we are here, both of us, sitting side by side. Your hand is on mine, and together we are switching off the wipers. The car is turning white.

Snow falls into your mouth. You kiss my lips and the snow moves across my tongue like that time we drank gin from each other, feeling for it beneath our teeth. Your hands are running down my body, but there is no difference between us anymore. Everything is going white, and the car and the snow and our bodies and the crash are all the same. And we know we’ll be able to see the tree coming. And we know exactly what it means. ◆

My story about the girl who copied fi re ended with the girl

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BRAG :: 737 738 :: 02:05:18 06:06:18 :: 67

Sounds Like…

NEW ALBUM AND SINGLE RELE A SES WITH JOSEPH E ARP

Scepticism has received a worrying uptick in popularity recently. I’m under no allusions as to why: the world we live in is distinctly shit, getting shitter every single day, and so there’s a kind of comfort that comes from taking a shitty attitude towards it all. It’s like deciding to only ever expect the worst of your very worst friend – optimism is disappointing, cynicism is freeing. You know they’ll be two hours late to your coffee date, and that they’ll suspiciously have lost their credit card when it comes time to pay for their overpriced latte and snack, so why set yourself up for heartache by expecting anything different?

But here’s the thing: just because something is easy, doesn’t make it right. Profound and unceasing scepticism isn’t just boring – it’s actively unhelpful. I often find myself thinking about the story of Pyrrho, an Ancient Greek sceptic who took every single thought, opinion, and experience presented to him with a fistful of salt. He was sceptical when it came to causation; sceptical when it came to knowledge; sceptical when it came even to the existence of himself.

One day, while Pyrrho was sceptically walking to market, he heard a low groan emerging from the ditch by the side of the road. He peered over to see his master, the

Lithics

arch sceptic Anaxarchus, lying in the muck, the victim of a flipped carriage. “Help!”

Anaxarchus cried. “Help me out!”

day.” And with that, Pyrrho went on his way to the market, leaving Anaxarchus rolling about in the muck.

Pyrrho thought about it for a long time.

Eventually, after much deliberation, he spoke. “Anaxarchus, you are my master. I would like to help you. But I have no way of knowing whether the world would be a better or worse place if I helped you out of the ditch. So I have decided not to help. Good

So here’s the thing: scepticism, in its purest form, is a kind of stasis. Spend your whole life shitting on everything around you, and soon you’ll be drowning in the stuff.

Case in point: Father John Misty’s new record, God’s Favourite Customer, out now. One long series of oh-so-clever puns, arch digressions, and Phil Spector-esque choruses, it’s one more nail in the coffin of the once promising career FJM (real name Josh Tillman) flirted with on glossy but oddly sincere records like I Love You, Honeybear and Fear Fun.

“One long series of oh-so-clever puns, arch digressions, and Phil Spector-esque choruses, God’s Favourite Customer is one more nail in the coffin of Father John Misty’s once promising career.”

Sure, Tillman was never exactly original – his shtick was always looted heavily from

“Lithics are as fed-up with the world as the rest of us – there is a gloriously bored rasp hiding in the folds of lead singer Aubrey Hornor’s vocals.” the records of significantly more talented ’60s songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson – but at least he used to know how to have a good time. Now his songs are first year moral psychology lectures set to languid, Xanax-addled instrumentation: songs like ‘Mr. Tillman’ and ‘Date Night’ are so languid one has to fight the temptation to

Lithics photo by Christie Maclean

68 :: BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18

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albums

The Defender

Oliver Mestitz

BY LISA DIB Each month, a BRAG writer makes the case for a piece of pop culture they feel has been given the short shrift. This time around, Lisa Dib argues that king of contemporary wellness, Alain De Botton, deserves much more respect than he’s ever recieved.

I

n a myriad of ways, we live and breathe philosophy every day.

Philosophy isn’t like arithmetic wherein one plus one definitely equals two: the study of existence, morality and knowledge cannot be, by its very nature, “correct” or “incorrect”. Philosophical thought is written by humans, and will no doubt change as we do.

“Oliver Mestitz, the principal songwriter of The Finks, is a poet, and Rolly Nice is his newest volume of verse.”

assembled. Tracks blend into each other; the doo-wops and ooh-ahs rack up without ever smothering songs; and Cohen knows just when to peel everything back and let her songwriting shine through. With Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love, Cohen has become one of the most impressive and accomplished songwriters in the country.

To The Finks. Oliver Mestitz, the principal songwriter of the band, is a poet, and Rolly Nice is his newest volume of verse. Like William Carlos Williams, perhaps, or Frank O’Hara, he has an eye for picking out moments of gentle, quiet beauty; his songs pivot not on tension, or on drama, but on the stuff we’re really talking about when we talk about “real life”. “I don’t believe something is better than nothing,” goes a line ‘Charlie’s Manifesto’. “I believe in salt water.”

These are the things he takes inspiration from: fruit bowls, Vegemite, tomato sachets.

And these are the ways that he moves you: quietly, with grace.

check their pulse. If you wanna write a book, write a book Josh. Don’t keep pretending that flipping off low hanging fruit makes you some guru; you’re a dilettante knee-jerk reacting to the world in the most tiresome way possible.

Contrast that to the new record from wormy punks Lithics, Mating Surfaces. Lithics are as fed-up with the world as the rest of us – there is a gloriously bored rasp hiding in the folds of lead singer Aubrey Hornor’s vocals, and songs like the excellent ‘When Will I Die’ have a resigned kind of fatalism to them. But not content with just tearing shit down, Lithics spend 12 tracks building something out of the rubble. This is punk rock that has all the energy and life of ’70s disco. ‘Glass Of Water’ in particular is a minute and a half-long masterpiece, all spiky solos and melody lines as blotched and unfocused as a Rorshach test.

Of equal magnitude are two new Australian records: Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love by Gabriella Cohen and Rolly Nice by The Finks. The first is a sun-dappled, sensory overload; a Matisse brought to musical life, full of choruses as tactile as thick daubs of oil paint. Cohen doubles down on the things that made her debut, Full Closure And No Details so impressive, but she’s not merely going over past victories.

This time, she has the sonic control of a veteran – ‘Music Machine’ and ‘Neil Young Goes Crazy’ might be highlights, but this is a record that has been carefully

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“Gabriella Cohen doubles down on the things that made her debut, Full Closure And No Details so impressive, but she’s not merely going over past victories.”

Highlight Of The Month: Mating Surfaces Dud Of The Month: God’s Favourite Customer

“Modern philosophy” is an entire category of its own, beginning around the seventeenth century. This separation puts philosophy into a more relative context. Rene Descartes (“I think therefore I am”), a leading figure in modern philosophy, wanted to move away from the dense, inaccessible philosophy of the time, and the focus on thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. He made a concerted effort to distance himself from those before him. It is only with the benefit of hindsight do we acknowledge “I DON’T MEAN that he was right TO ANGER THE to do this: were PHILOSOPHY NERDS his contemporaries as supportive of his IN THE AUDIENCE BY measures? Was he COMPARING SWISSheralded then the same way he is now?

BRITISH WRITER

ALAIN DE BOTTON

Place (a show which I am sure philosophy nerds blame for also attempting to make philosophy ‘accessible’), it can be useful to utilise metaphor, simile or a simple drilling-downto-basics in order to communite the key message to the student.

I don’t mean to TO DESCARTES.” anger the philosophy nerds in the audience It’s not a crime against the by comparing Swiss-British foundations of philosophy to make writer Alain De Botton to Descartes. things easier to understand for people Although he had several books before that didn’t study it for four years. What it, De Botton’s ‘name-maker’ was 2000’s it does sound like, though, is snobbish The Consolations Of Philosophy. The gatekeeping by dusty academics or book divided people: while some, condescending intelligentsia; people that like me, found it interesting and don’t want the lofty art of philosophy to absorbing, his critics accused him of be accessible to common folk. It’s not trying to “popularize philosophy” and of unlike the painters that decry Bob Ross, “dumbing” it down. or – worst of all – alternative musicians that spit on pop music makers and fans.

The Consolations Of Philosophy drills People have their islands and don’t want down to the core message in many any outside intruders. philosophical ideas, simplifying them.

It does not, as some would have you De Botton’s work exists for particular believe, shit directly into Bertrand types of people; one of them being, Russell’s mouth. The elitism surrounding like me, people that attempted to battle academia means that people will thumb through Schopenhauer’s The World their nose at anything deemed too As Will And Representation and got accessible, ‘mainstream’ or simple. De frustrated with his dusty ass pretty quick.

Botton’s work is not pop-up picture books I like the idea of applying philosophical of philosophy made with cut-out pictures teachings to modern life because that’s from storybooks; it is thought-provoking, where I live. In interviews, De Botton stimulating work that, as with anything has discussed the realistic role of else, has its fans and detractors. philosophers in the modern day: Those who haven’t studied philosophy “In Greek, philo means love – or at university may not realise this, but devotion – and sophia means wisdom. that stuff can be hard to read: dense, Philosophers are people devoted to dry and often inaccessible. I’m a smart wisdom….Being wise means attempting person, and it’s a tough slog. My interest to live and die well, leading as good in philosophy has often stimulated a a life as possible within the troubled desire to soak up the knowledge of conditions of existence. The goal of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Plato, wisdom is fulfilment. You could perhaps but I find myself confused and ashamed say ‘happiness’ but ‘happiness’ is 20 pages in. I don’t think I am the only misleading, for it suggests continuous human alive who struggles with tomes chirpiness and joy, whereas ‘fulfilment’ like those, though they might have the seems compatible with a lot of pain and genuine desire to be educated on the suffering, which every decent life must by subject. necessity have.”

Not unlike Chidi imparting philosophical What’s your beef with that? teachings on Eleanor in The Good

“I LIKE THE IDEA OF APPLYING PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHINGS TO MODERN LIFE BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE I LIVE.” BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18 :: 69

s n a p s

ice cube

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29:05:18 :: Sydney Opera House :: Benelong Point

dreams

What we’ve been out to see this month. See full galleries at thebrag.com/snaps

25:05:18 :: Sydney Opera House :: Benelong Point

jet 31:05:18 :: Enmore Theatre :: 118-132 Enmore Rd, Newtown thebrag.com

thebrag.com

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12:05:18 :: Hordern Pavilion.:: 1 driver Ave, Moore Park

Angus & Julia Stone

12:05:18

:: Hordern Pavilion.:: 1 driver Ave, Moore Park

Angus & Julia Stone

g g guide gig g Submit your gig and club listings, head to: thebrag.com/gig-guide.

PICK OF THE THE MONTH Cat Power

WEDNESDAY JUNE 6

City Recital Hall, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $40.

Daniel Champagne University Of Wollongong, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

Sons Of The East Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $28.99.

Reijie Snow Oxford Art Factory, Sydney.

9pm. $39.90 Ruth Carp And The Fish Heads Rad Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

THURSDAY JUNE 7 I, Valiance Valve Bar, Sydney CBD. 8pm. Free.

Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point.

MONDAY JUNE 11

Mazzy Star 9pm. $72.90.

High Tension

Tired Lion Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale.

8pm. Free.

West Thebarton Rad Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

Young Hearts Run Free – feat: Ella Hooper, Jonathan Boulet, Hayley Mary and more Enmore Theatre, Enmore. 8pm. $59.90.

FRIDAY JUNE 8 Baker Boy The Uni Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

Mood Eyes Leadbelly, Newtown. 6pm. $12.75.

Waax Rad Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

West Thebarton Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 5pm. $18.25.

Yemen Blues Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $42.

SATURDAY JUNE 9 I, Valiance The Small Ballroom, Islington. 8pm.

Free.

High Tension

Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale. Friday June 29. 8pm. $23.50.

One of the most punishing, unforgiving and altogether original metal acts currently operating in Australia, High Tension are sure to blow your earbuds into a fine pulp when they play the Lansdowne.

Jack Grace 107 Projects, Redfern. 8pm.

Free.

Lea DeLaria

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Waax The Lair, Sydney CBD. 4:45pm. $20.

SUNDAY JUNE 10 Dead Letter Circus The Bald Faced Stag, Parramatta.

8pm. $39.80.

DMA’s + Hatchie Enmore Theatre, Enmore. 8pm. $54.90.

MONDAY JUNE 11 Day Street Band Leichhardt Bowling And Recreation Club, Lilyfield.

8pm. Free.

Mazzy Star Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point. 9pm. $72.90.

TUESDAY JUNE 12 Diana Radar Rad Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

Mazzy Star Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point. 9pm. $72.90.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 Haiku Hands Art Gallery Of NSW, Bennelong Point. 6:30pm.

Free.

Madeleine Peyroux City Recital Hall, Angel Place. 8pm. $73.

Mazzy Star Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point. 9pm. $72.90.

THURSDAY JUNE 14 Daniel Champagne Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 8pm.

Free.

You Am I Narrabeen RSL, North Narrabeen.

8pm. $44.90.

thebrag.com

g g guide gig g

WITH DONNY LOVE

Submit your gig and club listings, head to: thebrag.com/gig-guide.

St. Vincent

1. Draw your band:

This is a cynical exaggeration of the various Dons most ‘redeeming’ features.

2. Draw the cover of your new album, Sensation:

A sketch of a sketch of a sketch.

Also Donby Love was our name for several months due to a typo.

Unique is an overused predicate these days – seriously, how many bands that trot out the same indie rock cliches get treated like the second coming of Christ? – but it’s hard to imagine how else one might describe Donny Love, and the band’s new record Sensation. A frenetic mix of jazz licks, soul stylings, and their distinct brand of rock and roll, it’s an album like few others. To celebrate the release of the album, we asked the band some questions, and they drew us some (very Bruce Willis-centric) answers.

3. Draw your ideal rider:

Self explanatory, three wishes is all we ask for.

St. Vincent

Carriageworks, Eveleigh. Sunday June 17. 8pm. $100.

St. Vincent is one of the most important artists currently working, a musical polymath whose skill relies in making the alien relatable, and vice versa. But you already knew that, cause she’s, ya know, St. Vincent, so chances are you already have your tickets to her Carriagework show booked, hey?

SATURDAY JUNE 16

WEDNESDAY JUNE 20

SATURDAY JUNE 23

Raave Tapes Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm.

Free.

Autechre Max Watt’s, Moore Park. 8pm. $49.90.

Dan Sultan Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $44.90.

SUNDAY JUNE 17 Ok Hotel Rad Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

St. Vincent Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $100.

MONDAY JUNE 18 Jo Koy Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 9:30pm. $70.60.

TUESDAY JUNE 19 Alice Glass + Zola Jesus Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $49.90.

thebrag.com

Rittz Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $54.29.

TUESDAY JUNE 26

Bad Pony The Bank Hotel, Newtown. 8pm.

Free.

Streetlight Manifesto Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm.

Free.

Bugs + Scabz The Uni Bar, Wollongong. 8pm.

Free.

Vancouver Sleep Clinic Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $37.90.

City Calm Down Metro Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $43.15.

Michael Bolton State Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $161.17.

Bruce Willis singing ‘Under the Boardwalk’ from his 1987 masterpiece The Return Of Bruno.

The Presets Enmore Theatre, Enmore. 8pm. $71.30.

THURSDAY JUNE 21

FRIDAY JUNE 22

5. Draw your favourite musician of all time:

WEDNESDAY JUNE 27 Lloyd Spiegel Church Street, Bellingen. 8pm. Free.

Michael Bolton State Theatre, Sydney.

8pm. $161.70.

5. Draw your ideal audience:

A crowd full of B-grade Tina Turner and Bruce Willis impersonators. We’re currently going through a momentary Bruce Willis phase, within a much longer Tina Turner phase.

BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18 :: 73

g g guide gig g Submit your gig and club listings, head to: thebrag.com/gig-guide.

Have a gig or club listing to get in The BRAG? You can now submit your gig and club listings, head to thebrag.com/gig-guide.

THURSDAY JUNE 28

FRIDAY JUNE 29

Radio Moscow State Theatre, Sydney CBD. 8pm. $61.90.

Gabriella Cohen The Bank Hotel, Newtown. 8pm. $23.50.

The Preatures Hotel Gearin, Katoomba. 8pm. $44.70.

High Tension Lansdowne Hotel, Chippendale. 8pm. $23.50.

Scabz

The Marlin Hotel, Ulladulla.

Friday June 29. 8pm. Free.

The self-proclaimed “shittest band in Newtown”, Scabz are a punk rock act like few others. Last time I caught them, they spent their set throwing plastic 3D glasses into the audience.

Who could say no to that?

Gabriella Cohen

Gabriella Cohen

The Bank Hotel, Newtown. Friday June 29. 8pm. $23.50.

Pink is the colour of unconditional love, and ‘extraordinary’ is the word that best describes the songs of Gabriella Cohen. Don’t miss the Melbourne-based singer-songwriter live, otherwise, you’ll be kicking yourself next time someone tells you how her gig changed their life.

Scabz The Marlin Hotel, Ulladulla. 8pm. Free.

Scabz

SATURDAY JUNE 30 Barry Leaf Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 8pm. Free.

Daniel Champagne The Pelican Playhouse, South Grafton. 8pm. Free.

Habits Freda’s, Chippendale. 8pm.

Free.

Hollie Col The Basement, Sydney. 8pm.

Free.

SUNDAY JULY 1 The Bennies Uni Bar, Wollongong. 8pm. $29.65.

TUESDAY JULY 3 Pendulum Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $70.96.

For our full gig and club listings, head to thebrag. com/gig-guide.

free stuff head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

HEREDITARY

UPGRADE

The time is finally upon us: Hereditary, the debut picture from rising star Ari Aster, and the year’s most highly anticipated film for horror lovers (not to mention us over here at the BRAG), is hitting Australian cinemas on Thursday June 7.

Upgrade is “Robocop for the Google Home generation” A according to, uh, well, us. But you shouldn’t just take DOUBLE our word for it – the film, Leigh Whannell’s second as a PASS director, has been lauded by genre lovers around the world as a new classic, a blood-drenched revenge fable slathered with neon and full of the twists you’d probably expect from a film helmed by one of the cocreators of the Saw franchise.

Described as “the chilling story of one family’s terrifying ancestry and the sinister fate they seem to have inherited” the film has been compared to horror masterpiece The Exorcist, and is already being described as a new genre classic, guaranteed to terrify even the most iron-skinned of horror geeks. Want in?

Luckily for you, we have ten double passes to give away; to get involved, head over to thebrag.com/freeshit.

74 :: BRAG :: 738 :: 06:06:18

WIN

A DOUBLE PASS

WIN

To celebrate the release of the extraordinary film, which hits cinemas on Thursday June 14, we’re giving away 10 double passes. To enter, head along to thebrag.com/freeshit, won’t you? thebrag.com

FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!

PERFORMED IN ITS ENTIRETY

& MORE

V E R Y SPE CIAL GUE STS

SAT 10 NOV I SYDNEY ICC THEATRE ON SALE 1PM FRI 4 MAY Ticket info at livenation.com.au