ENTERTAINMENT
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CULTIVATING MURDER Cultivating Murder Byron premiere screening is about the disastrous effects of broad-scale land clearing in Australia, and will be launched by Greens MLC Dr Mehreen Faruqi, who will also conduct the Q&A following the screening with the filmmaker Greg Miller of Film Projects. Cultivating Murder is screening at Mullum Civic Hall. Tuesday at 7pm, by Film Projects. This local screening is in association with iQ Inc. Tix online at https://www.stickytickets.com.au/52553 or at Mullum Book Shop or at the door!
COMEDY FOR KEV If we were asked to nominate one individual to best define Australian humour, for most of us the name Kevin Bloody Wilson immediately springs to mind. His recently released biography DILLIGAF, The Life and Rhymes of Kevin Bloody Wilson, is a raucous, earthy, in-depth look at perhaps one of the only Australian comedians who has not bowed to the pressures of political correctness.Kevin Bloody Wilson is also the only international artist who can shift seamlessly between an outback pub to the hallowed halls of the London Palladium. Don’t miss the legend at Ballina RSL! Friday 23 June at 8pm. Tix $55.
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES
WATERMELON WONDERLAND
VERITY NUNAN’S EXHIBITION
WATERMELON WONDERLAND
IS A PLAYFUL EXPLORATION OF THE FEMALE FORM EXPRESSED IN IRREPRESSIBLE COLOUR WITH LIBERATED LINES EVOKING THE PRIMITIVE AND JOYOUS NATURE OF THE FEMALE FORM. What’s your process for working up a piece from concept to finished? Is it hard to walk away and go that’s it, you’re done? My concepts change a lot. A lot of my work involves real women exposed in an abstract multicoloured universe. Sometimes they are me, sometimes they are not. Recently I have been using the events in my life as subject matter to paint these vivid figures. I like recreating these scenes and stripping them back to the core moment. I like trying to capture the feeling in a few lines. Less is best, keep it fresh and don’t think too much. I feel my way through my paintings. Everything is based on emotion and instinct. I try to depart from what is visually true but keep elements that make you feel. What inspires you to create?
For time out of mind, the climax of any story would be withheld until all avenues of character development and plot turnings were explored. Not any more. The diminished attention span of today’s audience and its craving for instant gratification mean that in adventure flicks such as this, the fifth of the Pirates franchise (a sixth is already in the pipeline), events are going at full throttle from the opening scene – and usually with an accompanying 500-piece orchestra hammering your eardrums. If your sensitivities are more oldschool, by the halfway point you are likely to be pleading for the mercy rule to be invoked – but in vain, for there is not a moment’s peace and quiet. And I cannot recall ever hearing an actor yell ‘aaagghh!’ at the top of his lungs as often as Johnny Depp is called upon to do as his braided Jack Sparrow jumps from the frying pan into the fire at five-minute intervals. That a state of near hysteria reigns for most of the two hours (it seems longer) is an understatement, but there are plenty of jaw-dropping visuals to keep you interested (although in my case my jaw was almost dislocated through yawning). Jack sails off in search of Poseidon’s trident, which has
the power to break every old mariner’s curse. The beautiful girl (Kaya Scodelario) has a map that only she can read, the handsome young man (Brenton Thwaites – another product of the Australian TV soapie industry) becomes Jack’s accidental sidekick, and the villain is Salazar (Javier Bardem), the dead captain of a ghost ship – his face is a miraculously grotesque work of art. When the frenetic action slows briefly for inserts of dialogue, so that you might understand the point of it all, there are enough decent one-liners to maintain the levity – although for mine, Depp’s face pulling has always been overdone – and some of the set pieces, notably Sparrow’s brush with the guillotine, are quite ingenious. Fans will love it, others might find it overblown and repetitive.
THE SHACK
If you think that some actions are simply unforgivable, you would be infuriated by a movie that is little more than an insipid exercise in marketing for Christianity. The timing of its release, just days after the slaughter of the innocents in Manchester, is particularly galling, for in it we are asked to ‘understand’ the murderer of a little girl. The child in question is the 8-year-old daughter of Mack (Sam Worthington), a good-guy dad in a gormless family of Bible-belt churchgoers. She is abducted and killed
while they are on a camping trip at Lake Woodchuck. Mack, consumed by hatred for the man responsible, is astounded to receive an anonymous invitation to spend a weekend at the shack where the kid’s body was found. Waiting for him in the shack is God, in the form a fat Afro-American pastryrolling mumma (Octavia Spencer). A very groovy looking Jesus is also there (Avraham Aviv Alush – the bloke was Jewish after all) and to complete the father/son/holy spirit trinity, there is Sarayu (Sumire Matsubara who, as holy spirits go, is pleasingly on the hornbag side). Together, they will teach Mack a thing or two about life while assuring him that his child is as happy as Larry to be where she is (in heaven, of course) and that the omnipotent God takes no responsibility for what happened to her. Mack finds it hard to swallow that his child’s horrible death was all for the best, but he thinks it’s pretty cool to walk on the water with Jesus and he can’t get enough of God’s cooking. Non-believers will scoff at this film for the tripe that it is, but the child’s gruesome death is a curiously compelling through-line that might have made for a decent crime drama. Sadly, it’s treated as nothing more than the incident that brings Mack to the glory of God. At some point we all have to cope with loss and grief, but only a simpleton would be comforted by the platitudes spouted in this. I wanted to puke.
Girls Night Out Preview Screening Wednesday 14th June 6.30pm arrival for a 7pm screening. All Tickets $25. Pre-Show snacks and Complementary Glass of Champagne on arrival served by Wicked Waiters.
At the moment I like to re-create emotionally charged moments in my life that I have witnessed or been apart of. I did a painting called Gin not long ago. It’s a figure reaching for a bottle of empty gin. I love how dark the subject matter is but how the bright friendly colours take all the offence out of it. Who are the artists or musicians who influence you most? Ron Curran. He and Liz run a dynamic drawing class in Byron. He really opened my mind and showed me the absolute freedom art can offer. All the talented artists in my family, specifically Brian Nunan my grandpa, Australian landscape painter. His connection to country is incredibly deep and so admirable. Verity’s work opens on Saturday at a pop-up art gallery across the road from Surfection on the industrial estate. Gallery opens from 4pm on Saturday with all-girl Byron rock band Galaxy Girls playing from 7pm. The gallery will be open again on Sunday 10am–4pm. There will be some drinks and nibbles flying around on the night; and don’t forget your dancing shoes – this is no ordinary art exhibition!
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo May 31, 2017 35