oh I wish I had a suntan

Spent the weekend down the coast and oh, be careful what you wish for! The suntan is more of an embarrassing sunburn and I'm feeling far more Jane than Joan in the office at the moment. (so where's my silver fox in this scenario?)

Still I guess I don't regret it too much since there's not much more I'd rather do in the summertime than swim and lie on the beach reading classic California noir from Raymond Chandler. Sandy feet and daydreams of Elliott Gould as Marlowe, yeah, things could be worse. 

I forgot my mantra

Speaking of mantras, the Chauvel Cinema (which I love, loave, luff, two F's) has been doing a Woody Allen festival, with double features every Friday night into early January. I got ill-advisedly drunk post work and missed Annie Hall - heavy tragedy! - but was reminded today of one of my favourite bits of the whole thing, which for a film comprised almost entirely of favourite bits is no small feat. Namely, Jeff Goldblum in a little L.A. cameo.

and you thought it couldn't get any better than Diane Keaton in a linen suit.

getting seriously involved with someone just means ruining your nightlife

Have I mentioned how much I love Chris Eigeman? Specifically, Chris Eigeman as he appears as variations on the same guy in the films of Whit Stillman and Noah Baumbach's post-college masterpiece Kicking & Screaming. Because at the risk of turning this blog into nothing but a giant 90s nostalgia fest, I really really do.

He functions as something of the archetypal antihero of these pieces: over-privileged and manipulative and cynical and arrogant and self absorbed but also endlessly quotable, and a master of the hangdog expression which means he somehow succeeds in making his characters charming and redeemable. He gets all the best lines. ("I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now" is basically my mantra) He wears dishevelled suits and always seems to have his hands in his pockets, and has theories on everything and probably too much money and somewhat suspect morals. He talks and talks and talks and doesn't seem to ever actually do anything, and, well, he's perfect at it.

So yeah, I miss those overly talkie nineties movies. And I'm incredibly happy to see that not only is Stillman coming out of hiding with a new movie (Last Days Of Disco was released in 1998!) but he might be taking Eigeman with him.

never been too good with names but I remember faces

Tonight I found myself unexpectedly at the Metro, reliving teen yearnings courtesy of the seemingly indestructible Evan Dando and The Lemonheads. In the 90s they were pretty much everything you want from your favourite highschool band: 3 minute pop songs, seriously cute slacker-type lead singer, swirling rumours of rock & roll debauchery. And their show was pretty much everything you want from a reformation of your fave highschool band: the record that got me into them 'It's A Shame About Ray' played in its entirety plus all the other hits and finishing with an encore of Outdoor Type with Tom Morgan & Alison Galloway of Smudge (who was the #1 indie pin up girl of choice amongst my male friends as teenagers and still looks enviably beautiful while playing drums).

And ya, he wore stripes.

daydream believer

Forget your favourite Beatle, who's your favourite Monkee?

Oh wait, was that even a question?

Bernice bobs her hair

A trio of fabulous femmes to give you an idea of what my summer hair looks like. Tragically, a Myrna Loy 'do doesn't automatically come accessorised with a William Powell-type partner in crime to be the Nick To my Nora.

leader of the pack

Monday night Kenneth Anger trilogy at the Chauvel; Scorpio Rising, Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome and Lucifer Rising - quite an auspicious way to start the week. Visually entrancing and impeccably soundtracked, I've wanted to see these films ever since references to Anger started turning up all over in my trawlings through pop culture's seedy past.

He's a constant through many threads of rock & roll and Hollywood history, sharing a fascination with Aleister Crowley with Jimmy Page and the Rolling Stones, befriending Manson Family acolytes (former flame of my favourite groupie Miss Pamela - and sometime member of Love - Bobby Beausoleil), authoring the infamous expose of the heart of darkness in America's screen industry, 'Hollywood Babylon'. And now he's doing video campaigns for fashion labels! It's a wonder he's found time to create the films that he has, beautiful pre-cursors to music videos full of occult dreamscapes and tripped-out explorations of classical myth, all decked out in a good dose of homoeroticism and some of the best costumes I've ever seen.

baby, this one's for you

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains."

I enjoy being a girl

This brilliantly named shade of nail polish has been produced by Revlon ever since the early 1950s, and is currently adorning my fingers. Perfect for channeling past starlets and secretaries alike.

yeah, and hell yeah too

Justin Townes Earle, who has really waltzed into my heart these last few months is out of rehab and back on tour. Which includes Australia! I'll die if I don't see him, no kidding.

I'm everything you ever wanted to be!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains!

Corinne "Third Degree" Burns is kind of my new hero. She's tough as fuck and epically disdainful. And she doesn't get her comeuppance for being a rebel girl, which happens in so many other movies. Sure, her erstwhile love interest (who knew Ray Winstone made such a babin' rockabilly-punk?) destroys her audience by telling them they're adverts, but at least he doesn't slut-shame her or tell them that maybe she does put out - when she wants to.

"I'm perfect. But nobody in this shithole gets me because I don't put out!"

baby just one kiss will get these things for you

The stars are aligning for Sydney lovers of the holy alliance of musicians and film (um, everyone? Surely) - there's a Rolling Stones doco screening this week, Serge biopic starting the next and maybe most excitingly, The Promise: the making of Darkness On The Edge Of Town. My fave Springsteen record, plus the idea of a couple of hours in a darkened cinema in the company of The Boss is just too good to pass up.

and life is like a song

Sometimes all a girl wants to do is lie in bed and watch technicolour musicals. I would pretty much wear everything in this film, no kidding. And the picnic scene is hard to beat - all I want for summer is a boy who rolls his cuffs up.  

I'll be seeing you

Melbourne lost weekend! 

It's not Vegas - there will be stories.

Real Wild Child

Drew Barrymore is my spirit animal

Initials S.G.

New documentary Gainsbourg & His Girls, plus finally an Australian release for the biopic! It's all about cigarette smoke, seduction and being tres, tres jolie-laide. It's the summer of Serge.

what a lovely way to burn

new mixtape!

perfectly lethal

This guy comes on like a cross between tattooed rockabilly bad boy and Gram Parsons-style country crooner, a near perfect combination.

Sure he's currently in rehab but then country music, not to mention rock & roll in general has always been a haven for the beautifully fucked-up. If you can turn a good  story out of your heartbreak and hard living you're welcome. 

It's a hell of a name to live up to - Justin Townes Earle. And the thing is, he does.

(did I mention he does a great Replacements cover?)

best pull up my skirt

the song is problematic in all kinds of ways (why don't you love me? really B?) and I know the Betty Page homage has been done to death but goddamn, Beyonce looks incredible in this video.

none of that, sugar

Oh Tony Curtis, you cross-dressing heartbreaker. 

One of the best cinema love scenes ever - it's basically perfect, and romantic as hell.

really fucking cute

I'm in love with the modern world

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

                                                          I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't oick the rider as carefully

as the horse

                 it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm telling you about it

    

      Frank O'Hara

There are an awful lot of Marini's Riders out there, but this one's at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and this poem comes into my head every time I see him. You don't get so many echoes of Frank in Sydney.

like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing

No-one knows how to put people in a landscape like Antonioni. 

ought to make a few reputations in the cult of number one

So I was watching Mystery Train, admiring the way Joe Strummer expertly slouches over jukeboxes and Steve Buscemi and I got to thinking about other musical hearthrobs and their forays into film. It happens more often than you'd think, so this list is highly selective, arbitrary, and largely just counts cameos dear to my fickle heart.Perennial fave Richard Hell turns up a lot, a fact we all ought to be grateful for. Some kind of punk answer to the nouvelle vague, not so much acting as being. That's okay with me.
Chris Isaak arrives with Keifer Sutherland in tow to Twin Peaks in Fire Walk With Me (as does Bowie, but then he's in everything), and gets the John Waters treatment in A Dirty Shame. This guy is a lot cooler than he's been given credit for.
Mos Def knows where his towel is.
Cherie Currie with fellow Foxes (which I'm dying to see) Scott Baio and Jodie Foster

Marianne Faithfull in Made in U.S.A. giving Anna K a run for her money. 

You could probably have an entirely separate list comprised exclusively of Rolling Stones' exes.

and oh, Jarvis! Animated but unmistakable in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.

Honorable mentions go to Richard Hawley lurking as a rockabilly DJ avoiding zombie teddy boys in Flick, M. Ward being um a musician alongside the luminous Lou Taylor Pucci in The Go-Getter, Tom Waits in everything from big budget horrors (Bram Stoker's Dracula) to small criminal masterpieces in black & white (Down By Law).

As for actual bands in movies, that's a whole other story. Because really, what self-respecting teen movie was without a live band for the big prom scene?