Avan Yu Frank Woodley
YU BEAUTY
After wowing judges of the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia over the weekend, 25 year old Canadian Avan Yu walked away with the competition’s most illustrious award, pocketing $25,000 for his efforts. Next Monday Yu will take to the stage of the Perth Concert Hall to give Perth audiences a taste of his talent at the Judge’s Winner’s Recital. Tickets for his recital on Monday, July 30, at 7.30pm are on sale now via BOCS.
LET’S BE FRANK
After a three year absence, the lovable and lanky Frank Woodley is set to return to Perth this October with a brand new show entitled Bemusement Park. Combining physical comedy with witty and wacky observations, Woodley’s new show promises to enchant and bewilder audiences; and is a must see for any Lano And Woodley devotees. Catch Woodley being bemused at the Astor Theatre from October 1113. Bookings through BOCS.
A PLETHORA OF POETRY
Paella by La Latina at the Winter Supper Club
WHAT’S SUP?
The Perth Town Hall will come alive with delicious scents and serene sounds this Friday, July 27, when the City of Perth’s Winter Supper Club returns to tantalise our tastebuds and satisfy our appetites. Head down to the Town Hall this Friday to see the historic building’s undercroft transformed into a European style food market, serving up every meal imaginable, from paella to bratwurst, crepes, churros, soups, pies and traditional German chocolate bread. The fun takes place from 5-8pm this Friday; and the Winter Supper Club returns again next month on Friday, August 31.
Wordsmiths and lovers of prose will come together this August for the eighth annual WA Poetry Festival, a celebration of language which will feature workshops, poetry readings, talks, slams and contests, all designed to showcase different poetic expressions and traditions. Running from August 17-20, the Festival will showcase work by national poet Steve Smart and international poet Andy White, alongside local poets Tineke Van Der Eecken, Kevin Gillam, Jake Dennis and Kate Wilson. The full program of events and ticketing information can be found at wapoets.net.au.
MADE IT
A marketplace which serves up the best independent art, fashion, food and home wares, the Made On The Left Winter Market will take over the State Theatre Centre this Sunday, July 29, and best of all, entry is free! Over 65 small businesses will have stalls at the market, and everything on sale is handmade or fully produced right here in WA. The market runs from 10am-4pm, to find out more hit up madeontheleft.org.au.
The Dark Knight Rises
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Bat’s All, Folks
Directed by Christopher Nolan Starring Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt It could have gone wrong. Threequels tend to suck (Spider-Man 3, X-Men: The Last Stand) and Christopher Nolan, having not made a bad film yet, is kind of due for a fall. Add to that the fact that The Dark Knight was one of those rare sequels that was better than its progenitor, eclipsing Batman Begins in almost every way, and a betting man might start to worry: could Nolan’s third and final jaunt into the world of Batman not be up to scratch? Happily for all concerned, such worries are groundless. While it doesn’t quite capture TDK’s heady mix of comic book iconography, thematic depth, and psychological pathos, it’s a fine film, and a worthy endpoint to what has been a consistently excellent series. The film opens some eight years after the events of TDK, with Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) policing a quiet, almost crime-free city. The Batman has not been seen since the death of Harvey Dent, and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is now a tortured recluse. It isn’t long, though, before his old instincts are reignited by a burglary committed by master thief Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway - and the name Catwoman is never uttered), which may be linked to the
shadowy plans of the masked mercenary, Bane (Tom Hardy). It isn’t long before all of Gotham is in peril, and Bruce has to strap on the black again to save the day, but at what cost? It’s a hugely ambitious film, epic in scale and length (it clocks in at almost three hours), and if it doesn’t always hit the high notes it’s reaching for, it’s not for want of trying. What impresses the most is how organic the whole thing feels. This isn’t a tacked-on cash-grab, but the final part of a long and wholly engaging narrative; a final chapter that ties up most, if not all, of the threads from the first two films and making them part of a seamless whole. And yet the film still has its own identity. For one thing, it’s the one out of the three that feels the most like a comic book, embracing the fun and occasionally silly thrills of the medium. Which isn’t to say it’s a laugh a minute, but it allows itself room to breathe and smile, which is something of a relief after the incredibly dour prior instalment. That it does so while still delivering an emotionally satisfying coda to the trilogy is truly impressive indeed, it feels like Nolan is finally relaxing into the film’s genre, rather than fighting against it. The problems of the series have not been remedied - Nolan’s intricate plotting still doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, and that voice is still an issue - but the film gets so much right that it’s trifling to complain about such things. It’s not as much fun as The Avengers, but it was never trying to be; The Dark Knight Rises is Nolan’s superhero curtain call, and anyone who loved the earlier films will be well pleased by this one. _TRAVIS JOHNSON
CHRISTIAN BALE
The Dark Knight Retires You’d think Val Kilmer would have the bigger head, but nope, Christian Bale is happy for it to be on the record: he has the bigger noggin. We’re talking cowls, by the way, not egos. The two Batmen had to share the same cowl - if only provisionally, in Bale’s case. When initially cast in Batman Begins, Bale was rushed in for a costume test. Unfortunately, all the producers of Batman Begins had lying around was Val Kilmer’s Bat cowl and uniform from 1995’s Batman Forever. “I t didn’t quite fit,” laughs Bale, remembering trying to compress his head into a slightly-smaller cowl. “A l l I r e m e m b e r w a s t h a t t h e claustrophobia was just unbelievable in that thing. I just stood there and I thought, ‘I can’t breathe… I can’t think… This is too tight! This is squeezing my head! I’m going to panic… I’m about to have a nervous breakdown! I’m going to have a panic attack right this second!’.” Bale felt so embarrassed that he wasn’t a fit for the cowl, and even thought the film’s director Christopher Nolan might go so far as to drop him from the film. “I thought Chris Nolan would have to recast. I just stood there and I thought, ‘I would really like to make this movie and be able to get through this’. So I asked for 20 minutes to myself and I just stood there. Then I called everyone back in and said, ‘OK, just talk very calmly please and maybe I can get through this!’. Everyone was sitting around asking ‘so, how’s that? how’s it feel mate?’ while I was suffocating in there. They gave me my 20. I came back. And I made it work.” When Batman Begins rolled around, the costume designers had come up with a Baleready cowl and uniform. By the time this Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, came about Bale was as comfortable as he’d ever been in that mask and costume. “In the same way Bruce Wayne improves the suit, we improved the suit for comfort. And I could rip the cowl off myself if I did in fact see stars”. From the moment Warner announced they’d be rebooting the Batman series, Bale bugged his agents incessantly to get him an audition. When Nolan was hired to direct Batman Begins (and was consequently rehired to direct the two sequels) in 2005, Bale’s interest peaked. 18
In Darkness
IN DARKNESS Tunnel Vision Christian Bale “ C o r r e c t m e i f I ’m w r o n g , m y understanding is that Bob Kane created this character in 1939, which being from England, right, that was beginning of WWII. And it was an answer to the uselessness that individuals felt against this humongous tragedy, and what could you do? So it was topical in its inception, that’s how Batman began...it began as a very topical character, and I think Chris returned it to that.” Bale, who shares the screen in The Dark Knight Rises with series virgins Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway, was a little sad to rip the cowl off when shooting on the blockbuster wrapped. The character changed his career and Bale remembers his last moment on set fondly. “I t was with Anne Hathaway as Catwoman,” he recalls. “Yeah, we were on a roof in New York. I was wrapped but they still had a few days on the movie. I just went down, sat in a room, and realised, ‘this is it’. So again, I asked if they could please leave me alone for 20 minutes. I felt real proud that we achieved what we had set out too. [This character] changed my life and changed my career and I just wanted to appreciate that.” _OLIVIA MARNE
Directed by Agnieszka Holland Starring Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Furmann, Krzysztof Skonieczny, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup After several years working in American cable television - she directed, amongst other things, episodes of The Wire - acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland (best known for Europa, Europa) returns to both fiction feature filmmaking and her native country to bring us this harrowing, but ultimately uplifting, World War II Holocaust drama. Based on a true stor y, In Darkness charts the wartime exploits of an unlikely hero, Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a lowly sewer inspector in the Polish city of Lvov. When the city is occupied by the Germans, Socha initially seizes the opportunity to make a profit through a little light looting and black market manoeuvring, but his life begins to change when he finds a group of Jews hiding from the Nazis in the ancient sewers he knows so well. At first, Socha only helps the refugees in exchange for money and valuables, but gradually he comes to realise that his own inherent humanity will not allow him to give up his charges. We’ve seen the Holocaust portrayed on the big screen so many times that you could be forgiven for wondering if there’s anything new to be said about the subject, but what sets Holland’s film apart is its odd and engrossing mix
of the humane and the starkly unsentimental. In Darkness portrays the atrocities of the Nazi regime - the camps, the torture, the exterminations - with an unblinking eye, but it also takes the time to demonstrate that, even in the midst of death and horror, humanity keeps on keeping on. Children still play, people still laugh, argue, fight, and have sex, and the foibles that make us so fallible and real are, if anything, even more foregrounded. Wieckiewicz, an actor largely unknown outside of Europe, is excellent as the complex, clay-footed Socha, a man who finds himself trying to do the right thing in spite of himself, but he is not alone in that regard, being supported by an impressive ensemble who almost all manage to imbue their characters with a sense of individuality and completeness. The Jews of In Darkness are not saintly ciphers, but real, complex human beings, with their own concerns, ideals, and deeply held grudges and rivalries. Benno Furmann stands out as the mistrustful Mundek, who is sure that Socha will betray his people, and plans to pay him back with a cut throat; and so too is Michal Zurawski as Bortnik, Socha’s Ukrainian friend who has found a niche for himself enforcing the Nazis’ harsh rule. Feeling like a reaction to Steven Spielberg’s heartfelt but histrionic Schindler’s List, In Darkness manages to rise above the overly familiar conventions of the Holocaust movie subgenre by focusing on character instead of carnage, and in doing so manages to reinforce the horrors of the period without descending into gratuitousness. While by no means for the faint of heart, still it remains a rewarding experience. _TRAVIS JOHNSON X-Press – First on the street, Wednesdays