POST
Page 60 – POST, July 3, 2010
TIMEOUT
movietime
Arriaga is mightier with the pen The Burning Plain (M)
REVIEW: PIER LEACH
Fractured narrative is a signature of Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote the superb Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu trilogy – Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel – and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. In The Burning Plain, Arriaga applies a similar structure to familiar themes of linked fates, love and suffering. He also takes the reins as director for the first time – but the result is significantly less arresting than those efforts in which he was solely the writer. It’s an interesting threestranded narrative, featuring a strong, bigname cast led by Charlize
Kim Basinger plays an unhappy New Mexico housewife in The Burning Plain.
Theron and Kim Basinger. But it is strangely inert, despite some stunning visual imagery and the spliced structure Arriaga has previously used so successfully to keep
audiences on their toes. The opening image is literally a burning plain. Well, a trailer burning in the middle of some remote, arid scrub. It’s an image that eventually links all the
stories, which seem unrelated for a good chunk of the film, as it shifts between New Mexico and Oregon, the present and, as it turns out, more than a decade earlier.
What happens when a world-renowned scientist, crushed by the loss of his eldest daughter, conceives a book disproving the Christian concept of creation? Such is the story of Charles Darwin and his master-work On the Origin of Species.
2 1 June - 17 July 2010
Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL
Creation tells of a global revolution of ideas played out within the confines of a small English village. A passionate marriage is torn apart by a dangerous idea and a theory is saved from extinction by the logic of a child. Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code) stars as Charles Darwin.
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TWELFTH NIGHT
directors, writers & actors to eliminate your blocks and rediscover your creative passion. Sept 25-27. W: www.screenworkshop.com.au T: 9384 4604 SINGING FOR NON SINGERS - Thu 22nd July to 26th August at 10.30am-11.30am. Cost $295. Choir (as yet unnamed) commences 29th July 7.00pm-9.00pm. Please make enquiries and join as soon as possible. Ring Ron on 0402 347 350 or Wendy on 0416 337 743. New singers and/ or musicians are welcome. (Cost $190 per 10 weeks) Min 20 people to start, so ring us now! Warehouse Café, Shenton Park Tutor/MD: Ronald Macqueen Book and enquire: 0402 347 350 www.macqueenmusic.co.au
THEATRE WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE - Sparkling new Australian comedy written & directed by Edgar Metcalfe, Dolphin Theatre UWA, 7.30pm June 25, 26, 30 July 1-3 and 7-10. Tkts $25 f. $20 c. Book at BOCS 9484 1133 - door sales.
WORKSHOP
“As unrepentantly grandiose and ludicrous as its title, Luca Guadagnino’s visually ravishing third feature suggests an epic that Visconti and Sirk might have made after they finished watching Vertigo and reading Madame Bovary while gorging themselves on aphrodisiacs,” says The Village Voice. Slate magazine reckons Tilda Swinton is “the Maria Callas of international cinema” and the film “an eye-boggling two hours at the movies and a must for Swinton completists”.
Grown Ups (M)
NY Post cuts to the chase: “When Grown Ups star and co-writer Adam Sandler repeatedly slapped Rob Schneider in the face with a dehydrated banana, I was jealous of Schneider, who suffered less than I did getting slapped upside the head by this rotting fruit of a comedy.” Variety agrees: “Grown Ups delivers precious few laughs for the sheer volume of comedy talent on offer.”
Average star ratings
★★★★★ “THE MOST ELEGANT PIECE OF CINEMA YOU’LL SEE THIS YEAR” THE TIMES
STARRING OSCAR-WINNER
TILDA SWINTON NOW SHOWING
Check The West or online (www.lunapalace.com.au) for sessions and other films screening at CINEMA PARADISO
LEARN TO READ MUSIC & PLAY THE PIANO IN ONE WEEKEND - Saturday and Sunday July 10 & 11. You will be amazed at what
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W I N E PA R T N E R
I Am Love (M)
start 26th July Mon 12-3, Tues 9.30-12.30 cost $245. 1 day colour workshop Sept 5th cost $95. 1 day mixed media workshop Sept 12th cost $95. Ph: 9388 0266 or visit www.janemckay.com.au
The New York Times
24 JULY - 8 AUGUST
Pixar’s latest has been a smash with both the box office and the critics. “In providing sheer moviegoing satisfaction – plot, characters, verbal wit and visual delight, cheap laughs and honest sentiment – Toy Story 3 is wondrously generous and inventive,” sums up The NY Times. Time magazine calls it simply “an instant classic”.
ABSTRACT PAINTING - JANE MCKAY - Term 3 courses 8 weeks
“A perennial favorite… as surefire as Shakespeare plays get.”
DIRECTOR
REWIND
POST TimeOut has five copies of the book The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle and five in-season passes to give away to the film Creation, opening at Windsor Cinema and Cinema Paradiso on July 15. To be in the running to win a book and a ART double pass, BURTstreetGALLERY - Open Saturdays 10am - 4pm. Ceramics, send in an Paintings, Textiles, Jewellery. 1 Burt Street, Cottesloe. Plus Adults and Children’s envelope with Pottery Classes. Ph: 9383 2668 your name, address and CLASSES phone number PAC WEEKLY CLASSES - At Subiaco Arts Centre: PAC Acting; PAC on the back to Voice/Voice Over and PAC Screen Workshops in their 18th year plus PAC Creation competition, POST Creative Intensive. Now is the time to claim your creativity! New course starts TimeOut, 276 soon. T: 9384 4604 W: screenworkshop.com.au Onslow Road, COURSES Shenton Park 6008. PAC CREATIVE INTENSIVE 14 - Weekend residential course for
postdates
1 Short St Fremantle
www.sppt.asn.au or 9335 5044
cinema
win
Creation of Charles Darwin
To divulge too much and it ends up a case of too much sizzle, not quite about the plot would be to enough sausage. undermine the structure There’s no doubt he has Arriaga has so carefully a strong visual sense, constructed. So briefly, there’s a deeply contrasting the languid unhappy, promiscuous warmth of the New restaurant hostess in Mexico landscape with a wintry, moody, coastal Oregon (Theron), an Oregon – though the unhappy New Mexico housewife (Basinger) whose striking cinematography daughter (Jennifer (by the brilliant Robert Lawrence) cottons on to the Elswit and John Toll) was compromised at the fact she’s having an affair, and a young girl (Tessa Ia) screening I went to by an who watches her father’s irritating, shuddery digital projection. crop dusting plane crash in There’s a lot to enjoy in Mexico. Individually, they’re all The Burning Plain – but it is not the best work of its compelling tales. What’s usually fascinating writer. slightly disappointing is the way in which they come together. Arriaga overplays the mystery in What the critics are saying… keeping the stories separate – Toy Story 3 (G)
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P R I N C I PA L PA R T N E R
NOW SHOWING
Check The West or online (www.lunapalace.com.au) for sessions and other films screening at WINDSOR CINEMA