arts & entertainment
New Canberra website to seek a job in the arts HERE’S something new. Arts job seekers and employers are invited to join the Canberra arts freelancers’ website. Canberra artists can create an account and upload CVs in PDF format. Notifications can be set up to receive an email when jobs become listed in chosen categories. Visit canberraartsfreelancers.com “WEEREEWA – a Festival of Lake George” won’t surface again until 2014, but its busy committee has a visual history project. With support from the Royal Australian Historical Society, they’ve launched a project that aims to present a visual community history of the lake. It’s being managed by Bungendore resident and committee member, Sharon Rasker, who says members of the public
Helen Musa arts in the city
are invited to submit photographs from their family collections depicting the way people have interacted with Lake George. Submission forms must accompany the photos, to be sent as electronic files via email or in person until February 1, 2013. BELCONNEN Community Centre’s gallery@bcs in Swanson Court, Belconnen, is hosting “Plucked”, a group exhibition by Gavin Jackson, Hardy Lohse, Thea Van Veen, and Charlie White, 2012 graduates of the ANU
School of Art’s Photography & Media Arts department, as part of its “Springboard” series – 9am-4.30pm, MondayFriday, until February 8.
work by artist Kirstie Rea, running until March 21. Rea is, of course, one of our local glass artists who has a huge international reputation. She got her start in 1962 at the Old Bus Depot Market site and is now respected across M16 Artspace, in 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith, has two many continents as an artist, teacher and innovator. shows providing perspectives on our “sense of place”, both This exhibition will express her interest and ideas on the running until February 10. Angharad Dean’s paintings are generation of creative energy. inspired by the Australian light, colour and landscape and the words of Dorothea Mackellar’s poem “My Country”, THE unsinkable Carl Rafferty has built a large, loyal and Eva Stimson Clark has drawings and paintings of the audience for his “Opera by Candlelight” productions. vessels that hold our memories of a place. In keeping with the motif of the year, he’s calling his ensemble “Centenary Opera”, and will stage “Carmen” THERE’S a lot of excitement at Canberra Glassworks at at Albert Hall, February 8-10. Bookings to carlrafferty@ the prospect of “Under My Skin”, a solo exhibition of new bigpond.com
Where good comedy intentions drown “This is 40” (M) JUDD Apatow’s sequel to “Knocked Up” may well have the 2013 Razzies’ “Worst Movie” done and dusted before any other contenders get released! That’s kinda regrettable because while watching it is distinctly uncomfortable, a mind prepared to dissect it might conclude that its scarification of middle-class US family life deserves commendation. Pete (Paul Mann) is about to turn 40. So is Debbie (Apatow’s off-camera wife Leslie Mann) but she’s in denial about the numbers. Their daughters (played by the Apatow children) reflect what’s wrong with how contemporary American (Australian as well) society is raising its next generation. His music-publishing business is floundering. Her casual-wear shop has sticky-fingered employees. Their parents’ lives are disconnected from spouses and grandchildren alike. Imagine a housewife preparing dinner. But in the savoury dishes she uses sugar and in the dessert she uses salt. The result closely matches how Apatow’s film is delivering ideas that cry out for recognition. The screenplay is not dopey and the acting is not bad. Its behaviours can make a reasonable mind cringe simultaneously with that same mind thinking: “Well done. That needed saying.” The problem is not the “well done”, but Apatow’s delivery of it. Early laughter generated by vocabulary gives way to audience silence. Good intentions drown beneath the film’s unremitting insistence on Apatow’s core theme – that materialism and lack of intellectual rigour in the home are pushing America toward a societal abyss. That’s not funny. At all cinemas
“You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger” (M) EARLY into this film, a whisper got put in my ear – “Am I past Woody Allen or is this just not very good?” “This” was the tart little observation of relationships and ideas that Allen made in Britain in 2010. And it does get better, with a sparkling cast and a screenplay redolent with Allen’s acerbic talent for sampling humanity’s infinite variety. Divorced Helena (Gemma Jones) has unquestioning confidence in fortune-teller Cristal (Pauline Collins). Helena’s daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her aspiring novelist husband Roy (Josh Brolin) stifle their indignation at how Cristal is sucking up Helena’s money. Finding solitude untenable, Sally’s father Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) falls for Charmaine (Lucy Punch) who enjoys spending the funds sustaining Alfie and his financial obligation to Helena and isn’t beyond giving away what she used to charge big money for. Roy’s publisher tells him to keep trying. In the flat
Dougal Macdonald cinema
“This is 40”... early laughter gives way to silence. across the lane, he sees dishy guitar-playing Dia (Frieda Pinto). Sally gets work in the gallery owned by Greg (Antonio Banderas). Helena strikes up a friendship with portly bookseller Jonathan (Roger Ashton-Griffiths). Films populated by unlikeable characters offer their own kind of satisfactions, as this one confirms. Its characters and opportunities for hanky-panky reek of vintage Woody Allen, developing an agreeable abrasiveness that rather reverses the implications of both the options in that whisper in my ear. At Greater Union
“Monsters University” (PG) PARENTS should not fear that the scary values in this Pixar animation might emotionally disturb their children, at whom it is most directed. Compared with classic children’s fiction rich in monsters, ghosts and other scary stuff, “Monsters University” is sweetly benign. Sulley (voiced by John Goodman) and his former adversary Mike (Billy Crystal) join forces to ensure that Sulley stays at the top of the sales honour board at Monsters Incorporated ahead of Randall (Steve Buscemi). The global business of Monsters Inc, converting screams of frightened children into marketable energy, is doing well. Management’s greatest fear is monsters making physical contact with children. If kids realise that scary is all in the imagination, the firm is in trouble. Sulley, a large pink and blue buffoon, unintentionally touches Boo. Inevitably, they form a friendship. Sulley and Mike battle with corporate hierarchy and Randall. It’s sweet, charming and non-addictive, an ideal escape for kids from the ravages of summer heat. At Hoyts and Limelight CityNews January 24-30 17