| Comedy Festival 2012 Wrap Up |
[Apr. 23rd, 2012|07:26 am] |
The Comedy Festival is over for another year. I'll be honest: I wasn't really in the mood for it this year.
Before the festival, I was dreading it. It felt more like a burden to be suffered through than a pleasure to be enjoyed. Once it started, I had to force myself out to see shows. And of the shows I did see, many were good, some were great, but there was nothing that felt truly extraordinary.
I just wasn't in the right mood.
So I was surprised this morning to learn, after I tallied them all up, that I went to 20 different shows this year. That's 7 more than last year.
( Here's the list of what I saw... )
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
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| Comedy Festival |
[Mar. 30th, 2012|04:17 pm] |
Sure sign the Comedy Festival has begun: Jel and I only ever talk via Twitter and text messages. I work days, she works nights, we never see each other in real life. It's like Ladyhawke, only without Matthew Broderick.
Every year I tell myself I'm only going to see twoor three shows, and every year I see over a dozen. I've seen two already, and I have tickets to two more shows tonight.
The shows I saw on Wednesday:
The Peer Revue
Four different comedians doing vaguely-science related routines. Ben McKenzie summarised Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time in tem minutes, Simon Pampena yelled about maths, Trent McCarthy talked about octopuses, and Nicholas J Johnson discuss oxycontin while demonstrating some con routines. It was opening night, and there were subsequently a few hiccups - lines fluffed, jokes that didn't really work. But overall it was a fun show.
Daniel Kitson – Where Once Was Wonder
Sporting a radical new look, and building his show around the theme of change, Kitson ironically delivered a classic set of his standup. He's a master at this craft, weaving together whimsy, self-deprecation, intricate structure and emotional heft with lots of dick jokes. Kitson has mellowed considerably since I first saw him, but he's still hilarious. The only criticism I had was the abrupt ending when he realised he was over time.
Tonight's shows: Your Days are Numbered: The Maths of Death and Sarah Kendal -- Persona.
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
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| MONA FOMA - Part 1 |
[Jan. 24th, 2012|10:38 pm] |
A Buddhist chant for AC/DC? A string quartet played by seismic data? Three separate Dresden Dolls shows in as many days?
Yeah, A. and I have just been to MONA FOMA.
Or to give it's full title: the Museum of Old and New Art's Festival Of Music and Art. Like that full title, this write-up is going to get long. I might split it into three parts.
BACKGROUND
Regular readers may remember me raving about MONA after we visited it in April last year. MONA FOMA is a music festival run by the same people. It's funded by MONA, and curated by Brian Ritchie, who used to be the bass player for the Violent Femmes.
Remember that. It becomes important later.
The festival has a reputation for being eclectic to the point of eccentric, and for having big name acts performing very cheaply. Two of the headliners for this year where the Dresden Dolls and PJ Harvey.
I booked tickets as soon as they went on sale.
Then one of the other headliners (Death Grips) had to cancel. The festival organizers asked the Dresden Dolls if they would play a second set.
Amanda Palmer thought that would be boring. So she came up with another plan, and persuaded Brian Ritchie, Mick Harvey and John Parish to form a supergroup with the Dolls and play the entire first Violent Femmes album live.
WEDNESDAY 18 JAN
A. and I flew down to Hobart. Apart from PJ, the Dolls and this supergroup, I had no idea who or what else would be playing at the festival.
We landed in the afternoon, caught up with some friends, and had a nice dinner in a fancy Indian restaurant. The headliners for that night were Girl Talk, but they were sold out and we weren't that interested, so we basically had an early night.
THURSDAY 19 JAN
Thursday morning we caught the ferry to MONA to check out the new Wim Delvoye exhibition. (Delvoye created Cloaca, the machine that digests food and produces shit.)
Back on the early afternoon ferry. A bit of rest. Then down to Princes Wharf 1, the giant shed on the harbour where most of the MONA FOMA acts were playing.
Thursday night was the Dresden Dolls headlining. While we waited for them, we saw...
SENYAWA - an Indonesia two piece. Vocals and a self-made bamboo sitar/guitar/percussion instrument. They played sort of grindy metal mixed with folk dancing.
TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Japanese artist who plugs the output of a mixing desk back into itself, and mixes the resulting feedback into noise music. Brutal and transcendant, but I could only last half an hour before my ears hurt and we bailed.
PRINCE RAMA - shiny sparkly psychedelic Hare Krishna electro pop from a Brooklyn duo.
KELLY O'DEMPSEY painted on a giant paper scroll while the Tasmanian Improvised Orchestra played. We left half way through to try and get a good spot for the Dresden Dolls, and ended up about one row back from the barrier.
THE DRESDEN DOLLS were great. We were directly in front of the left-hand speaker stack, so it was *loud*. The show didn't quite have the manic energy of the recent gig at the Forum in Melbourne - the Dolls we giving it their all, but they seemed a little tired or the audience was a bit more subdued. But this is only a relative comparison: they were ripping it up and audience loved it.
There was an official after-party at the festival club FauxMo, but we chose to go home and get some rest instead.
(To be continued...)
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
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| Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows |
[Jan. 7th, 2012|02:37 pm] |
We saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows last night.
Look, it's a big, dumb action film that is only tenuously connected to the Arthur Conan-Doyle stories. It probably should have been subtitled "A Game of Explosions". It's another excuse for Robert Downey Jr. to swan around being Robert Downey Jr.
But for all that, it's actually a lot of fun. And unexpectedly intelligent.
Okay, it's not exactly profound. But all the fist-fights and gun-fights and blowing-things-up-in-slow-motion are linked together with good acting, a coherent plot, and none of the skeevy chauvinism that has marred the Steven Moffat Sherlock.
Irene Adler's still not having a good year, though.
(Steven Moffat apparently was none too happy about that Guardian article. Which is not the same thing as it being wrong.)
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
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| Inernet explodes |
[Oct. 24th, 2011|02:38 pm] |
Joss Whedon announces secret Shakespeare movie. Internet explodes.
http://muchadothemovie.com/
Details are sparse - Nathan Fillion linked to that site about an hour ago, and Whedonesque commenters confirm that it is in fact real. But no info about when, or what format, or anything really. Except apparently Whedon made it on his two week vacation from The Avengers.
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
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