Local comedian Ellen Briggs got her break when she won the QLD final and made it to the national finals. For anyone who wants to fast-track their journey to becoming a comedian, then winning RAW is the way to do it. Mandy Nolan’s former comedy student Hannah Gadsby is a testament to this as her win has seen her go on to become one of the most sought-after comics in the country. Hannah can now be seen fronting documentaries on the ABC with appearances on Good News Week and Spics and Specks, and numerous headlines at international festivals. Heats take place nationwide, with one scorching Byron Bay Heat at the Pandanus Lounge at the Byron Ex-Services Club on Monday 14 March at 8pm. Shows are all $10 with tickets at the door.
POETRY IN MOTION
Writers at the Rails’ first show for 2016 on Sunday arvo features
two award-winning poets: popular Irish storyteller and poet Maleny’s Joe Lynch and winner of the 2015 Nimbin Poetry World Cup poet/ muso Josh Holms. The show will include invited readings and the ever-popular Poetry Slam. Visiting writers always welcome. Starts at 2pm, free entry.
RAISING MONEY FOR CANCER ON BROADWAY! Join Lismore Amateur Musical Society for an evening of standup, singing, dancing and entertainment celebrating some of Broadway’s best. With soloists, choirs and duets performing routines from some of Broadway’s best-loved productions, this night promises something for everyone with music that has inspired generations of musical theatre lovers. Star Court Theatre in Lismore on Friday and Saturday. For all ticket enquiries, please contact the Star Court Theatre directly on 6622 5005.
Brunswick Valley Historical Society Inc. presents
ON A SHAR K A SHOST FILM
45 YEARS
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
We all live in our own heads, do we not? Years of co-habitation, of deep and enduring love and friendship can still never fully erode the wall surrounding a secret enclave of indelible memory that is the author of our true, intensely personal story. Pop psychology insists that it all be let out, that everything be revealed, but maybe it goes against the grain to not keep a little something just to ourselves. As close now as they have always been, Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay) are preparing for a party at which they will mark forty-five years of marriage. Kate is fully aware of the ill-fated relationship her husband had with a German girl, Katya, before she met him, and to Kate
it is water under the bridge… until Geoff receives news in the mail that will send a tremor through the emotional bedrock of their life together. Katya had been killed when she and Geoff were hiking through the Swiss Alps and her body, after all this time, has been discovered frozen in a glacier. The result is to launch the elderly, childless couple on different trajectories of introspection and self-discovery. Set in the wintry Downs of Kent, details unravel bit by bit in the leadup to the weekend’s celebration. Geoff seems rejuvenated by the memory of Katya – he and Kate dance in their living room, they make love, and walk together with their German shepherd, Max. But Kate, increasingly uncertain of her own standing in the hitherto rock-solid marriage, chips away at finding a truth that Geoff has concealed from her. Every good story has a twist and the one in this arrives when Kate climbs into the loft to dig out Geoff’s slides from the hiking trip with Katya. I didn’t see it coming and it changed my take on the movie as much as it did Kate’s understanding of her husband. Two of the finest actors of their generation deliver vintage performances in a poignant film of startling honesty.
HAIL CAESAR!
Venturing into comedy, at which they have always understood narkiness better than subtlety, their latest outing is a mixed bag, but overall a ripping good yarn. It’s set sometime in the McCarthy ’fifties (without his purgings being specifically referred to). The famous actor Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), starring as a Roman centurion in a Jesus epic, has been kidnapped by a coterie of miffed screenwriters calling themselves Communists and demanding a larger slice of the box-office pie.
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The Legacy of the Hippies BY POPULAR DEMAND Showing at the Ex Services Club Mullumbimby March 5th 2016 Cost $10 Tickets available at the door. Doors open 6.30 Screening 7.30 Live music by Broadfoot
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
Had we not already been aware of it, Joel and Ethan Coen’s magnificent re-make of True Grit (2010) made abundantly clear how much the brothers were beholden to and smitten by Hollywood’s lasting legacy – and its impenetrable ego. Their staunchest fans would be reluctant to concede it, but at heart the boys are traditionalists (notwithstanding their aberrant pretensions, ie, No Country For Old Men) – and more power to them for it. However, when it comes to satirising the industry that butters their bread, as they’ve done here, the guise of self-deprecation and mockery is, like Maxwell Smart’s ‘reverse psychology trick’, never strong enough to conceal a genuine belief in the status of cinema as a godsend to humanity. (And, again, good on them. All artists should be driven by this conviction. Otherwise what’s the point?)
The loosely structured, slightly loopy plot is built around a series of reverential and irresistible set pieces; Scarlett Johansson features as the mermaid in a classic, all-too-short aquatic ballet, Channing Tatum tap-dances, shimmies and humps his way through a high-camp Gene Kelly sailor routine, Ralph Fiennes suffers as the artiste directing a schmuck actor and Alden Ehrenreich, a cowboy who’s made it big, does a remarkable turn with a lasso while waiting on the sidewalk for his date. The attention to detail is to be savoured, and holding it all together is the stressed producer, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). I found it impossible not to love this movie for the weird reason that, ultimately, escapist entertainment is lauded for being cheap and superficial, but justifiably cherished.
The Byron Shire Echo March 2, 2016 35