I’m Your Man, the Leonard Coen movie I saw at the Chauvel on Friday, simply blew me away. What a talented man, and what an incredible bunch of people they assembled in one room to pay tribute to him – all my faves, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Antony, Jarvis, etc etc. I wanted to lay down in a darkened room and hear nothing for hours afterwards. Wow.
On Saturday Christina took me to Erkinsville (West again, damn that heat!) to a furniture auction house. This place was incredible – full of the most beautiful things for your home. I had to forcibly restrain myself from buying things, constantly reminding myself that I’ve decided not to ‘homebuild’ as I’m enjoying my new-found minimalism since ditching loads of stuff in the UK. I was totally ruthless in the week or so I had before moving out here, and got rid of things I’d had for years, so I don’t want to simply start all over again, and acquire loads of ‘stuff’. Even with books (which was the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to be ruthless with, and shamelessly boxed them all up for storage) I am going to make sure I pass them on once I’m done. (btw, I just finished ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind, and am really looking forward to seeing how the hell they’ve managed to make it into a film! But I hear the lead in it is a young actor called Ben Whishaw, whom I saw as Hamlet at the Old Vic in 2004, and in Chekhov’s The Seagull at the National Theatre last year, and from his stage performances I think he’s perfect for the role of Grenouille.) Anyway, I didn’t make any bids on the furniture, but here’s a picture of some of the wonderful stuff they had – I’m sure I’ll be back!
These summer months make me miss my annual tennis feast, but I’ve been combatting Wimbledon withdrawal symptoms by watching the Australian Open – seeing Federer kick everyone’s ass in Melbourne. What fun. It’ll be weird watching Wimbledon in the middle of the winter (well, Aussie winter is probably on a par with a London summer, so no change there!)
It’s unbearably hot here. Soooo muggy. There’s no point in opening the window because in will come warm, still air. I just got back from the cinema – saw a 30 minute film funded by the AFC which was beautiful – it was the cast and crew screening, my colleague Andrew knows the producer, and they got $200,000 to make this 30-minute film (about £80,000) – can you believe it?! Set in one small town in the Blue Mountains with a cast of about 6! But conditions of AFC funding mean you have to pay market rates for everything, including wages, so they still had to shoot on HD! But it did look beautiful – and I was impressed with the evident talent that had gone into making it. Am slowly trying to work my way into this crowd... Give me time.
The cinemas here are air conditioned, so they are freezing, which in my current overheated state makes me think cinemagoing might become a bit of an obsession over the next few weeks. Escapism in multiple senses.
cx
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