![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thanksgiving plans
Nov. 26th, 2008 08:04 amLater today I'll be flying down to Central Oregon for Thanksgiving weekend. Aside from the Thanksgiving pig-out itself, plans include seeing Baz Luhrmann's Australia with the women in the family (I'm also bringing the DVD of Strictly Ballroom, because my sister hasn't seen it), and watching the UO-OSU Civil War game. We are a divided family on the UO-OSU front, and my nephew has already sent a "joke" calling UO fans idiots and morons. If OSU wins, they go to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 43 years; if they lose, I'll be a happy man.
I'll be returning to Seattle Sunday evening.
Update: Here's Manohla Dargis in the NYTimes on Australia: "A pastiche of genres and references wrapped up — though, more often than not, whipped up — into one demented and generally diverting horse-galloping, cattle-stampeding, camera-swooping, music-swelling, mood-altering widescreen package, this creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion."
Sounds like a blast!
Update 2: Regarding my comparison of Strictly Ballroom to Warner Bros cartoons in the comments, here's Moira MacDonald on Australia in the Seattle Times: 'The film is an old-school epic, starring a pair of insanely beautiful movie stars and drawing on our memories of the likes of "The Wizard of Oz" ("Over the Rainbow" permeates this film), "Gone with the Wind" and "Out of Africa." And while "Australia" isn't remotely as good as any of those — there's an odd cartooniness to it that keeps getting in the way — it nonetheless satisfies, in a lean-back, munch -popcorn- and-watch- Hugh-Jackman-emerge-from-the-mist sort of way.'
The cartooninness is part of what I love about Luhrmann's films. He has called it "intensified artificiality."
I'll be returning to Seattle Sunday evening.
Update: Here's Manohla Dargis in the NYTimes on Australia: "A pastiche of genres and references wrapped up — though, more often than not, whipped up — into one demented and generally diverting horse-galloping, cattle-stampeding, camera-swooping, music-swelling, mood-altering widescreen package, this creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion."
Sounds like a blast!
Update 2: Regarding my comparison of Strictly Ballroom to Warner Bros cartoons in the comments, here's Moira MacDonald on Australia in the Seattle Times: 'The film is an old-school epic, starring a pair of insanely beautiful movie stars and drawing on our memories of the likes of "The Wizard of Oz" ("Over the Rainbow" permeates this film), "Gone with the Wind" and "Out of Africa." And while "Australia" isn't remotely as good as any of those — there's an odd cartooniness to it that keeps getting in the way — it nonetheless satisfies, in a lean-back, munch -popcorn- and-watch- Hugh-Jackman-emerge-from-the-mist sort of way.'
The cartooninness is part of what I love about Luhrmann's films. He has called it "intensified artificiality."
