ENTERTAINMENT
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
SPACE COWBOY AT THE BRUNSWICK PICTURE HOUSE FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
HOLD THAT SPACE The holder of 43 Guinness World Records, The Space Cowboy leads the frontier of extreme performance. His bizarre demonstration highlights the incredible power of the human mind and the physical body. Making international headlines and performing to sellout crowds, The Space Cowboy returns to Brunswick Picture House with an updated show and a few new surprises and twists. Friday and Saturday at 7pm with a matinee on Saturday at 2pm.TICKETS: Adult $25 | Concession $20 | Child (3–15) $15 | Family of 4 $60. Tickets go to brunswickpicturehouse.com.
IT’S A DISNEY LIFE Life, Animated is the inspirational story of Owen Suskind, a young man who was unable to speak as a child until he and his family discovered a unique way to communicate by immersing themselves in the world of classic Disney animated films. This emotional comingof-age story follows Owen as he graduates to adulthood and takes his first steps toward independence. Owen was a thriving three-year-old who suddenly and inexplicably went silent — and for years after remained unable to connect with other people or to convey his thoughts, feelings or desires. Evocatively interweaving classic Disney sequences with vérité scenes from Owen’s life, beautiful, original animations offer rich insights into Owen’s fruitful dialogue with the Disney oeuvre as he imagines himself heroically facing adversity as a member in a tribe of sidekicks. Owen’s story is a moving testament to the many ways in which stories can serve as a means of persevering through the dark times, leading us all toward the light. At the Brunswick Picture House on Wednesday at 7pm.
SPICE OF LIFE
SNATCHED
ALIEN: COVENANT The lasting impression made by Prometheus (2012) was that director Ridley Scott is more comfortable in ancient Rome than outer space. Confused and confusing, it was ordinary at best. He has gone some way towards redeeming himself with its sequel, even allowing for the fact that the last forty minutes are taken up with the Big Fight – for it to be repeated ad nauseam in films such as this suggests that there must be a hell of a lot of punters out there who find it exciting; I don’t. (Or maybe it’s just a case of the CGI guys being like kids with their toys.) The story is set in the year 2114, with the spaceship The Covenant carrying 3,000 sleeping colonists from Earth to a planet in another galaxy. A malfunction leads to the captain’s death, whereupon the less-loved Oram (Billy Crudup) takes control of the mission. Among the crew is Walter (Michael Fassbender), the latest model android – his doppelgänger, David, from the previous generation, has evolved into an omnipotent megalomaniac ruling his own world. Tempted by the siren song transmitted from an unknown source (John Denver’s Country Road, The Covenant changes course to investigate. Big mistake. When a party from The Covenant finds where the tune is coming from, all hell breaks loose. For sci-fi fans, this is probably the most riveting segment of the movie and,
even if the genre is not your cup of tea, the appearance of the first alien, bursting from within the body of its human host, is pretty impressive. Without doubt, it’s the most grotesque creature ever imagined by any art department – naked, with a satanic tail and a bulbous head with hideous teeth (but no genitals), its numbers multiply fast to attack the trapped crew. The narrative is easier to follow than it was in Prometheus and Scott does not get bogged down again in questions about God and creation, but there’s only so much a non-tragic can take and, in the end, I was worn down by it.
writer’s nom de plume. After the laborious set-up and abduction, the pair find themselves in the badlands of Colombia (how did they It’s not every day that this get there?), fleeing from a reviewer agrees with a movie’s stereotypical Latino hood rating out of 10 on IMDb, whose nephew Emily has but the 2.2 for this vile little killed with a shovel. concoction is hard to argue At one point they are running with. The title’s nasty double through the jungle with a entendre probably says it mysterious bloke who helps all – girls can be as crude as them out for a while before boys. Isn’t that impressive? being killed off, and then they In what is a voguish but are taken in by an indigenous stone-cold unfunny comedy, tribe at an outpost where we have Amy Schumer doing the mission doctor pulls a her gross-is-chic shtick and tapeworm from Emily’s throat. a vaguely human Goldie Implausible is one thing, but Hawn as her mom being downright ridiculous is hard kidnapped while holidaying at to cope with in a plot that is a Caribbean resort. no more than a vehicle for Schumer’s Emily has just been Schumer to deliver routines. dumped by her boyfriend and Among all the squealy sacked from her job, while slapstick and blunt visual her mother is a paranoid gags – Schumer bares her agoraphobic divorcee. The nipple and hoiks her leg less said about Jeffrey (Ike onto the sink in a toilet to Barinholtz), the idiot brother clean her vagina when on a who is hysterically dependent date (yawn) – the guy who on his mumma, the better gets the most laughs is the – he really is a poorly drawn harried State Department character and Barinholtz’s official in Washington performance is appropriately (Bashir Salahuddin). The dreadful. best bit is at the end when The script overall is a crock and one can only hope that Katie Dippold is the
Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself gets cranked up as accompaniment to the credits.
Tracey Spicer was always the good girl. Inspired by Jana Wendt, this bogan from the Brisbane backwaters waded through the ‘cruel and shallow money trench’ of television to land a dream role: national news anchor for a major network. But the journalist found that, for women, TV was less about news and more about helmet hair, masses of makeup and fatuous fashion, in an era when bosses told you to ‘stick your tits out’, ‘lose two inches off your arse’, and ‘quit before you’re too long in the tooth’. Still, Tracey plastered on a smile and did what she was told. But when she was sacked by email after having a baby, this good girl turned ‘bad’, taking legal action against the network for pregnancy discrimination. Tracey will be in conversation with co-founder of the Feminist Writers Festival, Dr Cristy Clark. This is Tracey Spicer full frontal: expect an entertaining, warm, witty and possibly shocking afternoon! Sunday 4 June for the Big Think at Lismore City Hall.
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo May 17, 2017 35