Posted by KB on March 2, 2011
Since the release of his 2007 film, Hammer Bay, Ben Briand has been impressing audiences and critics alike with his creativity and style. Taking on short films, video clips, commercials and photography, Ben has instilled in his work a unique visual approach that’s seen him dubbed “one of Australia’s most promising film makers”. We caught up with him in the wake of the release of his latest short film, Some Static Started.
Covered: dying men, square pegs, scripts and shorts.
KB: You’ve just released Some Static Started, can you tell us a bit about it?
Ben Briand: It’s a short film I made in association with the guys at China Heights. I describe it as a strange nightmare in a hot motel by the side of a highway. In his final moments a bleeding man recalls a reoccurring dream he has had featuring a beautiful girl in trouble. It’s a short film
KB: It finishes the trilogy that includes Apricot and Castor & Pollux – were these films devised as a set from the start?
BB: Not consciously. But there are certainly threads that are consistent through all the works. I like to think of them as different perspectives on the same idea. More...
ben briand, some static started, china heights, film
Posted by KB on February 2, 2011
China’s Shaolin Monastery: if you know anything about martial arts then you’ll realise this is a pretty important place. Which is why when it was confirmed that Benny Chan’s new epic, Shaolin, was to be filmed at the monastery itself, ears of martial arts fans all over the world pricked up.
Fans of the 1982 film Shaolin Temple (starring Jet Li) needn't fear the desecration of a classic; this isn't really a remake. The focus has been shifted a little from just martial arts (though the temple itself remains an integral part) and the story moved to the 1920s.
It’s a time of change for China; the early years of the republic and the era of vicious civil wars headed by feuding and equally vicious warlords. Enter Hou Jie (played by Andy Lau) and his sworn brother Cao Man (the emotastic Nicholas Tse) who take great gusto in their part in the war, generally terrorising the population. But as all good fables tell us, it’s important how you treat people on the way up, as you tend to run into them in some rather awkward situation on the way down.More...
shaolin, andy lau, jackie chan, movies, martial arts, benny chan
Posted by KB on February 2, 2011
Those fancy little French macarons have been getting far too much attention of late. Sure, they're crisp and light and come in more inventive flavours than we've ever dreamed of, but where's that sticky coconutty satisfaction, or the confidence that comes with saying “macarooooon” and knowing you've pronounced it correctly.
We say put the kettle on and help yourself to a couple of these classic coconut biscuits, and remind yourself that good things come in sweet packages, even if they're not that fancy.
Coconut and cherry macaroons
3 eggs whites
1 1/2 cups desiccated coconut
3/4 cup sugar
glace cherries (optional but delicious)
Preheat your oven to 170C and cover a tray with baking paper.
Whip your egg whites until soft peaks form (an electric beater is awesome for this, but using a whisk will give you bigger muscles). Add the sugar a bit at a time and continue beating until glossy.
Change to a spatula and gradually fold in the coconut, making sure you don’t overwork the mixture.
If you are using cherries, place them on the baking tray, leaving plenty of room around them. Then using a spoon - or a piping bag if you want to be fancy - cover the cherries in a mound of mixture.
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly browned. As the macaroons cool, any brown bits will be crispy and the white bits will stay nice and chewy.
recipes, biscuits
Posted by Danni Le Toullec on February 1, 2011
While most artists are looking for ways to make their music more futuristic, Deep Sea Arcade's sound is rooted in the beats of a past time. Often compared to the likes of The Beatles and The Smiths, their sound is soaked in a delicious pop reverb that transports us to a sandy beachside boulevard and props a surfboard under our arms. Friends since primary school, the two founding members Nic McKenzie (vocals) and Nick Weaver (bass) have spent years perfecting their art. I caught Nic McKenzie after a dinner of dumplings and wine in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
Covered: sixties chord progression, cinematic journeys, Nancy Sinatra and heartache-inspired music
Danielle Le Toullec: The name Deep Sea Arcade (DSA) evokes a kind of aquatic fantasy world, what’s the story behind it?
Nic McKenzie: It’s a lyric from a song we don’t play anymore; it’s actually in reference to an album called The White Arcades by Brian Eno and Harold Budd.
DL: You are often put into the genre of 1960s Brit/surf rock music culture; was that a conscious decision when you were developing your sound or did you just fall into it?
NM: I think we’ve just fallen into it; it's also just the music that has been chosen by radio stations to play. We have a lot of different songs, that all come from the same place, some do use a more sixties sounding chord progression and sound production.More...
deep sea arcade, nic mckenzie, nick weaver, surf city
Posted by kluster on December 21, 2010
It seems that no sooner were we bemoaning the lack of a decent beer garden in Sydney than our prayers were answered in the form of The Norfolk, which has (re)opened just in time to be the Christmas present we were hoping for. Taking over what was well and truly a pub past its prime, team James (Wirth and Miller) has revamped and reinvigorated this Cleveland Street venue, revealing what will be the place to be this summer. We caught up with one half of the team in the wake of the launch.
Covered: sleepless nights, untapped potential, beer gardens and queer Mexican dance parties.
Kat Hartmann: The Norfolk opened to the public with a bang last week. I hear it was a bit of a process getting the bar from old-man dive to the retro European-inspired, rancho relaxo you unveiled. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Jaime Wirth: We basically had eight weeks to get the place from derro pokie pub to where it is now. We had really great builders and tradesmen but it was a pretty mad scramble at the end to get it open. There was 20 years worth of crap to get out the place, walls to paint, roofs to build, floors to replace, seats to install and trees to plant. Sleepless nights, very early starts and some tense moments but we managed to stick to our opening date. Phew.More...
the norfolk, bars, jaime wirth, james miller, surry hills
Posted by KB on December 21, 2010
It’s Sunday night. Not a night for drinking per se, but a night for enjoying a drink. Really taking the time to savour the flavour. And where better to indulge in a school-night tipple than a bar that puts its all into crafting the perfect cocktail.
So we duck into the Kirketon Hotel on Darlinghurst Road, skipping the bustling Art Bar at the front and instead heading down a dark corridor past the bathrooms. Our efforts are rewarded with the kind of cocktail bar you’d only expect to find in films. It’s dim without being dingy, all dark wood and decadent decor, with leather banquettes for pulling smooth moves or stools at the bar for pouring your heart out to the bartender when it all goes pear-shaped.
Seeking something strong, we opt for the Smoky Rob Roy (listed as owner Sven’s signature drink), a mix of Talisker single malt and Lagavulin whisky, given depth with cigar-infused rum, Vermouth and orange bitters. The Scacco Matto (Don Julio Reposado, Kahlua, Frangelico and chocolate bitters) is like honey in a glass, perfect for this cold and rainy night.More...
eau de vie, kirketon hotel, art bar, darlinghurst, bars, cocktails
Posted by Andy Ryan on December 21, 2010
The Inner West copped a dose of Tennessee trouble as Those Darlins and Jeff the Brotherhood stopped in at the Annandale for a Meredith sideshow.
A sparsely populated Annandale Hotel didn’t diminish the raucous noise emanating from the drums and guitar duo of Jeff the Brotherhood. While the minimal set up lends itself to more unsophisticated music, when done well and intently, like here, it really lets you tap into the raw essence of rhythms and noise. Volume becomes an instrument in itself and with just you and your mate up there, fine things happen when attuned musical intuition takes hold.
The guitarist would wander through the crowd and atop the bar and rip all manner of noise out of his peals then, while the drums clanged like a runaway shopping trolley, he’d lock in. They did their best to inspire some spirit and spirits into the crowd, threatening to play a ‘cerebral’ song if we didn’t move closer and urging us to just get wasted and party.More...
those darlins, jeff the brotherhood, annandale hotel, sydney, gigs, reviews
Posted by KB on December 1, 2010
From the street, Monkey Magic doesn’t exactly jump out at you. Given the name we were expecting something a little more playful perhaps, but that’s probably a good thing; we’ve not yet been to a themed restaurant that serves decent food.
The street-level area is just a small collection of couches, but an enormous tree trunk reaching floor to ceiling gives it a bit of wow. Upstairs, long wooden tables and a great stretch of bar fill the surprisingly large dining area.
Though there are some tempting looking mains on the menu (like the slow-cooked pork belly), there's a couple of pages worthof smaller dishes, so we can't pass up the opportunity to pull together a meal with anything and everything we like the look of.
Edamame and renkon chips are the obvious choice from the appetisers. The lotus roots slices with their snowflake pattern have always seemed a bit special, and now deep fried and covered in pink salt, they’re even more so. Already we’ve planned a return visit just to sit in the streetside bar section with the chips and a couple of beers.More...
money magic, surry hills, japanese
Posted by Audrey Lee on November 29, 2010
It’s hard to sum up Hellen Rose in one paragraph. Sieving through the highlights from her raft of accomplishments alone would fill pages. Not one to conform, Hellen has achieved admirable success and commanded high levels of respect from those in the know for more than 20 years now. While she’s not busy pushing musical boundaries, her preceding reputation has also led her to tap into other creative pursuits, including acting and opening her eponymous performing space, the Hellen Rose-Schauersberger LabOratorium. And the list goes on. For a woman who has proven her worth many times over, we’ll keep the superlatives to a minimum and have Hellen shed some light on her past, present and future.
Covered: Back in the '80s…, constant adjustments, The Hellen Rose-Schauersberger LabOratorium, Moonlight film and a one-woman show.
Audrey Lee: You've been making music for more than 20 years now and have sung alongside bands including X and Dangerous Curves back in the 80s. Care to give our readers an insight of how your career in music first began? How have you and your sound progressed since then?
Hellen Rose: I started singing when I was very young. I come from a family where one side is music and the other is… all the other stuff that I’ve never been into. I snuck into a pub at around 14 and pushed my way onto the stage and just got up and belted out a blues number I was making up on the spot! My first live show with a band called Great Dane who were totally cool about it and the crowd loved it!More...
hellen rose schauersberger, X, ian rilen, george gittoes, dangerous curves
Posted by Hazel J Taylor on November 28, 2010
Photo by Jeff Busby
Edge of Night, the Australian Ballet’s most recent Sydney Opera House triple bill, shows off the divinely gorgeous choreography of Stephen Barnes and Tim Harbour through the bodies and souls of some of the world’s hottest dancers.
Choreographed in 2003, Stephen Barnes’ At the Edge of Night (first on the bill) is a delicate, intriguing and sultry piece set to a selection of seven of Rachmaninov’s Op.23 and 32 preludes. Barnes began with the preludes as the foundation from which he built the ballet. Sitting with his set and costume designer Michael Pearce, the decision was collectively made that the ballet should take an ephemeral quality, with broad themes which inspired more questions than answers.
As a result, the ballet does not commit itself to a definite time or place in history, although the dramatic deep maroon coloured dresses made of thick Chinese dressing-gown fabric, and professional business attire of the ballet gents emanates a post war vibe, particularly when coupled with the nationalistic Rachmaninov score. Barnes and Pearce note that the fragments of the story emerged from their analysis of the score. Evoking themes of the past, of memories and of dreams, the dancers appear throughout the piece as if floating through an old house like ghosts in the night, calling on memories and conjuring images of forgotten times.More...
edge of night, australian ballet, sydney opera house, stephen barnes, tim harbour
Posted by KB on November 28, 2010
Natalia Ladyko is our kind of girl. Not content with being great at just one thing, she’s turned her attention to a whole raft of rather impressive skills, adding things like “stilt-walker” and “aerial artist” to her resume. Now she’s teamed up with some other talented folk to create Umbrella Theatre, which will reveal itself to the masses as part of Peats Ridge 2010. We caught up with Natalia as she prepares for her first big festival performance.
Covered: Theatre magic, The Dark Crystal, video games and world domination.
KB: The name Umbrella Theatre conjures up quite a few images, but what’s it really all about?
Natalia Ladyko: Umbrella Theatre is an intimate travelling venue where you’ll never know what performance you’re going to get. We have a growing number of shows we perform in Umbrella Theatre, with duration never exceeding 10 minutes. As you queue outside the red curtains, you’ll hear laughter, screaming and God knows what else. But you can never assume you’re going to have the same experience as the people before you, or the people after you! We rotate between performances and most of our pieces have alternate endings. Or do they? To be more precise, it is a three-metre tall, custom-made umbrella where magic happens.More...
umbrella theatre, natalia ladyko, peats ridge, underbelly arts
Posted by kluster on November 2, 2010
According to Border Thieves...
The dominant paradigm that popular music operates under is an unyielding beast, begrudgingly approaching antiquity. Equal parts useful and redundant, the schema places musicians at a crossroads; those who adhere are can be rewarded with success but will all too often self-destruct (Metallica) and those who subvert will work day jobs until their brilliance is discovered in the pages of some retrospective book by someone who had the patience to wade into their murky depths (Mission of Burma).
But as is the case with most system dichotomies, choice is not a black/white divide. Here at Border Thieves, we choose to adhere to the dominant paradigm. Here at Border Thieves, we also get bored sometimes and indulge in some subversion.
Because… how can you smell the roses with a nose cut for spite?
So Kluster, with this in mind we have answered your questions. One answer will adhere to the rules of the interview and hopefully provide your readers with a snippet of information on which we hope an interest may spark and compel them to click a link and go listen to our songs. The other will subvert and we will read them back to ourselves in 10 years' time and say "No wonder nobody understood us".
We hope you get it.More...
border thieves, melt bar, kluster presents, state of the art, adhere, subvert