....has violence looked so good on screen.
Justice make a departure from the pop world. There's something about French film making and raw, brutal and urgent images that somehow possess a kind of harrowing beauty.
By Director Romain Gavras
High Quality Quicktime here
Friday, August 1, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Homecoming Prince (of Darkness)
So it's official, after almost seven years existing in foreign climbs on the other end of the world, I have decided to head back to that Great Southern Land I call home (well...for twelve months at least anyway). I was going to celebrate with Banjo Paterson's Man From Snowy River, but that's pushing the cheese barrier (even for me) - so instead I decided to go with another Aussie with a thinning crop who has also been away from home for too long.
Nick Cave is one of those rare musicians whose talent and credibility somehow gathers more momentum as he gets older. He is constantly experimenting and his narrative style of embedding terrible tales within his music snares me in every time. He has a new album out - Dig, Lazarus, Dig - and if this title track and video is anything to go by, the man and his writing are still holding form.
Nick Cave is one of those rare musicians whose talent and credibility somehow gathers more momentum as he gets older. He is constantly experimenting and his narrative style of embedding terrible tales within his music snares me in every time. He has a new album out - Dig, Lazarus, Dig - and if this title track and video is anything to go by, the man and his writing are still holding form.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Jaisalmer breakfast
We're in the far west corner of Rajasthan not far from the Pakistani border in a fort town called Jaisalmer. The 12th century fort rises out of the desert plains like a massive Bondi Beach sand castle, replete with 99 crumbling sand bucket bastions. A quarter of the towns people live within the fort walls and the ten year old in me wanted to stay within them as well, so we paid through the teeth to stay in a 500 year old haveli with a room that was more a film set from Arabian Nights. It looked over the ancient Jain temple next door and out on to where desert plains meet the sky.
We thought we'd be sweltering, but it's winter here and outside high noon it gets cold. Real cold. We've invested in blankets, thermal underwear, gloves and cultivated a rum and hot chocolate addiction just to keep warm. From 11am to 3pm Cheryl and I can be found on the rooftop of our haveli reading books and soaking up rays for the cold night ahead as if we're solar cells.
Yesterday we decided we'd brave the elements and book in to a camel safari through the desert just south of here in Khuri for a few days. We met our guide out the front of the fort. Dressed shoulder to toe in white with a multicoloured turban and turned up shoes, he would have looked like a postcard Rajput if it wasn't for the bad brown leather jacket he'd donned to keep the morning chill at bay that matched the colour of his betel stained teeth. We discussed our trip over a cup of chai, where he also told us his life story. Chatting with Indian alpha males is like chatting with coke heads. Some are interesting, some are boring and (apart from some cursory questions about yourself to not come across as rude) they will largely talk about themselves and any contributions by yourself will be ignored unless they add colour to the wonderful picture they are painting. Baba Singh, was a character though, "not rich and not poor" by his own definition, he'd led a good life and had the hearty laugh to prove it. He said he'd pick us up in his jeep after he'd been to the doctor. He's been coming to the doctor here in Jaisalmer every day for a week after bull rammed him in the desert and gave him a nasty puncture wound to the stomach. We shook hands and agreed to meet in the morning - after three months here we've become complacent with the ridiculous.
We then headed back up in to the fort to track down the Vyas Meal Service - a ma and pa operation that apparently do great breakfasts of Paratha (a roti like flat bread) with apple curd and honey. After eventually stumbling across it in the maze of narrow alleys, we walked up stairs to find a bent over old woman and her daughter sweeping up what can only be described as a living room. It was as dark as night and contained a small gas stove, a Pepsi fridge and a table with four chairs. After some enquiries in basic English, we confirmed that we had actually come to the right place. She bade us to sit down and hobbled over with a menu and a pad and pen and asked us to write our order down. We gave her the pad with our written down order and with a beaming toothless smile asked if we could read it to her as she didn't read English (after three months here we've become complacent with things not making sense). Cheryl patiently read the order to her and we sat back in the candle lit darkness to await our meal. We felt guilty having this poor old woman wait on us so we insisted we'd carry everything over to the table, leaving her on the floor with the gas stove making chai and curd.
When she finally called to us in Hindi that it was ready, we sat down to our most basic yet best breakfast yet. In the cold of the desert morning in an ancient fort, we warmed ourselves up with her spicy chai and piping hot paratha with which we scooped up the rich goodness of apple curd with honey - eating every morsel. We thanked her profusely and left her a massive tip that she would not have known about as we had to add up our own bill (another example of the incredible trust and hospitality we've encountered across India). Warmed to the bone, we flung our rugs back on and headed out to the wine shop to stock up on rum for tomorrow's camel safari. Maybe its the Australian in me, but even after six years in Europe I'm still a big girl's blouse when it comes to the cold.
We thought we'd be sweltering, but it's winter here and outside high noon it gets cold. Real cold. We've invested in blankets, thermal underwear, gloves and cultivated a rum and hot chocolate addiction just to keep warm. From 11am to 3pm Cheryl and I can be found on the rooftop of our haveli reading books and soaking up rays for the cold night ahead as if we're solar cells.
Yesterday we decided we'd brave the elements and book in to a camel safari through the desert just south of here in Khuri for a few days. We met our guide out the front of the fort. Dressed shoulder to toe in white with a multicoloured turban and turned up shoes, he would have looked like a postcard Rajput if it wasn't for the bad brown leather jacket he'd donned to keep the morning chill at bay that matched the colour of his betel stained teeth. We discussed our trip over a cup of chai, where he also told us his life story. Chatting with Indian alpha males is like chatting with coke heads. Some are interesting, some are boring and (apart from some cursory questions about yourself to not come across as rude) they will largely talk about themselves and any contributions by yourself will be ignored unless they add colour to the wonderful picture they are painting. Baba Singh, was a character though, "not rich and not poor" by his own definition, he'd led a good life and had the hearty laugh to prove it. He said he'd pick us up in his jeep after he'd been to the doctor. He's been coming to the doctor here in Jaisalmer every day for a week after bull rammed him in the desert and gave him a nasty puncture wound to the stomach. We shook hands and agreed to meet in the morning - after three months here we've become complacent with the ridiculous.
We then headed back up in to the fort to track down the Vyas Meal Service - a ma and pa operation that apparently do great breakfasts of Paratha (a roti like flat bread) with apple curd and honey. After eventually stumbling across it in the maze of narrow alleys, we walked up stairs to find a bent over old woman and her daughter sweeping up what can only be described as a living room. It was as dark as night and contained a small gas stove, a Pepsi fridge and a table with four chairs. After some enquiries in basic English, we confirmed that we had actually come to the right place. She bade us to sit down and hobbled over with a menu and a pad and pen and asked us to write our order down. We gave her the pad with our written down order and with a beaming toothless smile asked if we could read it to her as she didn't read English (after three months here we've become complacent with things not making sense). Cheryl patiently read the order to her and we sat back in the candle lit darkness to await our meal. We felt guilty having this poor old woman wait on us so we insisted we'd carry everything over to the table, leaving her on the floor with the gas stove making chai and curd.
When she finally called to us in Hindi that it was ready, we sat down to our most basic yet best breakfast yet. In the cold of the desert morning in an ancient fort, we warmed ourselves up with her spicy chai and piping hot paratha with which we scooped up the rich goodness of apple curd with honey - eating every morsel. We thanked her profusely and left her a massive tip that she would not have known about as we had to add up our own bill (another example of the incredible trust and hospitality we've encountered across India). Warmed to the bone, we flung our rugs back on and headed out to the wine shop to stock up on rum for tomorrow's camel safari. Maybe its the Australian in me, but even after six years in Europe I'm still a big girl's blouse when it comes to the cold.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Varanasi
Was it standing on the banks of Marnikarnika Ghat, where the worker explained that it took three hours and 120kg of wood for a human body to burn completely? Or him mentioning that the three apartment blocks behind us were full of people waiting to die and be burnt right there, the smoke and stench of the funeral pyres filling their nostrils just as it did ours? One of the Doms (outcasts that handle the bodies) stoked the fire just metres in front of us and a head and torso jumped out of the flames, its skull staring at us through eye sockets, hollow and bubbling and black. Just behind, another Dom bends two legs back until they break and fall in to the fire, a fire that was lit by Shiva two and a half thousand years ago and has been burning ever since.
Maybe it was seeing the faithful bathe, brush their teeth and do their washing in water that is septic. No oxygen exists, just 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water (anything over 500 is considered unsafe for bathing). Dead bodies, excrement, anything of the physical realm cannot possibly harm them when they believe the water is so pure, so holy.
It could also have been the morning chai with the sadhus, street kids and the homeless out the front of our hotel. All of us feeding twelve puppies - smiling and laughing at the simple joy these little furry creatures brought to all of us.
Then there is the light and the way it plays upon the river, the mist, the buildings and your retinas so you're certain that if everything in the place was obliterated tomorrow, it would somehow still be holy.
It could also be the constant array of prayer, puja and ritual that surrounds you, so that in any given place at any given time you are sure to be faced with something bizarre and baffling happening before you.
I think seeing a family stand in solemn silence over their just departed Grandmother (whom they had taken down to the auspicious river for her last moments), draping her Sari over her face had a lot to do with it.
Along with winding our way up the old town, sharing the Galis (narrow walkways framed by decaying buildings and hole-in-the-wall shops) with a constant stream of pressing bodies, motorbikes, hobbled donkeys, road-blocking buffaloes, mad charging cows (that send people flailing out of the way) and a bull that rammed me from behind as I chatted with a local. The actual streets provide little respite, sharing these with striking boatmen shouting slogans with rifles casually slung over their shoulders, haggling touts and rickshaw drivers and a travelling procession of wound up Muslim boys brandishing swords and mock fighting with bamboo poles.
Framing all of this chaos is the tranquil flow of the Great Mother Ganges. Rendered even more serene by the boatmen's strike, it takes on the persona of a wise and graceful old matriarch lovingly tolerating the antics of her beloved children.
It could have been any one of these that left me reeling in bed with a pounding heart, a racing mind and restless sleep - but it was most likely the sum of the whole. Varanasi, Benares, is India distilled into 2km of river bank. It is where life and death co-exist brazenly along side one another and out in the open for all comers to see. It is also where you'll be enthralled, captivated and confounded by a culture you'll never really come to understand.
Maybe it was seeing the faithful bathe, brush their teeth and do their washing in water that is septic. No oxygen exists, just 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water (anything over 500 is considered unsafe for bathing). Dead bodies, excrement, anything of the physical realm cannot possibly harm them when they believe the water is so pure, so holy.
It could also have been the morning chai with the sadhus, street kids and the homeless out the front of our hotel. All of us feeding twelve puppies - smiling and laughing at the simple joy these little furry creatures brought to all of us.
Then there is the light and the way it plays upon the river, the mist, the buildings and your retinas so you're certain that if everything in the place was obliterated tomorrow, it would somehow still be holy.
It could also be the constant array of prayer, puja and ritual that surrounds you, so that in any given place at any given time you are sure to be faced with something bizarre and baffling happening before you.
I think seeing a family stand in solemn silence over their just departed Grandmother (whom they had taken down to the auspicious river for her last moments), draping her Sari over her face had a lot to do with it.
Along with winding our way up the old town, sharing the Galis (narrow walkways framed by decaying buildings and hole-in-the-wall shops) with a constant stream of pressing bodies, motorbikes, hobbled donkeys, road-blocking buffaloes, mad charging cows (that send people flailing out of the way) and a bull that rammed me from behind as I chatted with a local. The actual streets provide little respite, sharing these with striking boatmen shouting slogans with rifles casually slung over their shoulders, haggling touts and rickshaw drivers and a travelling procession of wound up Muslim boys brandishing swords and mock fighting with bamboo poles.
Framing all of this chaos is the tranquil flow of the Great Mother Ganges. Rendered even more serene by the boatmen's strike, it takes on the persona of a wise and graceful old matriarch lovingly tolerating the antics of her beloved children.
It could have been any one of these that left me reeling in bed with a pounding heart, a racing mind and restless sleep - but it was most likely the sum of the whole. Varanasi, Benares, is India distilled into 2km of river bank. It is where life and death co-exist brazenly along side one another and out in the open for all comers to see. It is also where you'll be enthralled, captivated and confounded by a culture you'll never really come to understand.
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