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Bon Anniversaire Monsieur Rohmer

Today the French film director Eric Rohmer is 88. He is still making films, though I have trouble seeing his latest ones here in Australia. In fact, I don’t believe that any are even available here on dvd. Occasionally they turn up on SBS (I recall being happy to find L’Anglaise et le duc on SBS one Christmas night), and at the cinema (the Mercury showed a number of his films as part of their cinematheque program a couple of years ago).

For those in Adelaide you can go to Kino on Goodwood Rd where you can hire just about all of his feature films up to the mid 90’s (as long as you still have a video). Last time I went past it looked like they weren’t there anymore, I no longer live in the area so I’m not sure what’s going on there.
My recommendations:

though I must say that I have enjoyed all of his films that I’ve seen. I think only Ingmar Bergman could possibly compete with him as my favourite director. They are quite different from each other so I can’t compare directly, but it’s fair to say that the right mood is required for a Bergman film, but I’m always in the mood for a Rohmer one.

Sydney Festival

The music lineup for the 2008 Sydney festival is amazing. Already Bjork and Battles are scheduled to come to Adelaide with the BDO, and Andrew Weatherall has a show at Rocket, but will anyone else be playing here? I would be very happy to see any of Sufjan Stevens, Low, Brian Wilson, Tunng, Mice Parade or Kimmo Pohjonen, but most of all I really want to see Joanna Newsom.

More Recommended Reading

Just catching up on reading through my links on my day off, there’s a few things I’d like to recommend:

  • Phil at Spinopsys has posted an interesting video about the high cost of free parking.
  • Tim Lambert has been exposing the lies about DDT for ages, but his recent posts on the matter have been particularly good as he follows the money to find out where the “Rachel Carson is responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans” claim so beloved of anti-environmentalists came from.
  • John Quiggin has written an excellent review of Clive Hamilton’s new book. The review serves as a concise history of the Howard government’s approach to climate change. Via Blogocracy.
  • Nexus 6 finds that the Oz are very carefully targeting their advertising.
  • Mark Diesendorf will be in Adelaide speaking about “Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy” this Thursday.
  • Greens MLC Mark Parnell wants the SA Government to stop BHP’s free ride.
  • The Denialism bloggers have a couple of great posts about cranks, first there is the how to guide , and then a case study – someone who will be familiar to readers of this blog, Alexander Cockburn. Also, you may have missed this link in an update to an old post, so here it is again: the Cockburn vs Monbiot debate.

That’s it for now, but I’ll get around to writing something myself some time soon.

My Name Is Albert Ayler in Melbourne

I’ve been waiting for ages for a chance to see the documentary My Name Is Albert Ayler (reviews here), but so far it hasn’t even made it to Australia at all. I had hopes when I saw that the Adelaide Film Festival had a section on music documentaries but it wasn’t to be. Now, according to the film’s official website it is to screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I thought I’d really had a stroke of luck since I was thinking of going to Melbourne in July anyway … but unfortunately the festival starts on July 25 by which time I’ll be back in Adelaide for work. I suppose I can still hold out hope for an Adelaide screening.