19-25June2011 :: This (Canberra) Week

26Jun2011 [weekly]

• imdb:tt1820400
• imdb:tt1156398

This week was Black & White & Sex, and Zombieland, book-ending a trip to the nation's capital.

• Watched Black & White & Sex (imdb); fascinating Australian film with a deceptively simple premise; it's a one-room thing that could probably be theatre, but it plays nicely with the language and possibility of film; it features a director interviewing a sex worker, her on film, he off-screen, and it becomes a detailed and (eventually) nuanced conversation about sex, its meaning and expression; she is played by eight different women, each giving us slightly different takes on the material, serving to extend the conversation in new directions, and as is noted in the script, prevent us from ever really getting a grip on her identity; it's really well made, written, shot, cut, and while the male lead and a couple of the women are rather flat, most of the women really shine.
• Took a road-trip to Canberra for a couple of nights, the volcanic ash cloud meaning my flight down was cancelled, so I hired a car and drove instead; a car meant I had to fall back onto CDs, so I ended up quickly grabbing three from the collection, and they didn't disappoint: La Roux, Nas and Damian Marley's Distant Relatives, and Florence + The Machine's Lungs; the selection probably speaks to their standing across the genres within my collection, though I was limited to albums from before September last year, simply because of their physicality.
• Canberra is a curious little city, the government context completely inescapable, even in snippets of overheard conversations in cafes and bars, but it does try to offer a fairly cosmopolitan experience, with good coffee available and a wide range of options when eating out — the cafe culture seems like a big thing, which I love.
• Took the opportunity to give Foursquare's 'Explore' feature a whirl, using it to find a whole restaurant and shopping precinct with a great cafe, and a great pub with microbrew cider, all within walking distance of the hotel; that's a winning use case right there.
• Was the first trip I've taken since getting the iPad, and I very nearly could have left the laptop at home entirely, only pulling it out twice — once to run through a document I hadn't transferred to the iPad, and once to move some files around via USB; as my work was largely meetings I did everything I could on the iPad instead, which is so much less intrusive in a meeting or over coffee!
• Watched Zombieland (imdb); kinda dumb, and either Jesse Eisenberg or his character (or both) is very annoying, but Woody Harrelson plays a great character and the whole thing is very well written, with enough pace to get through without getting bogged down and a heavy dose of dark wit that makes the whole absurd situation really entertaining.