Film Review - Black Swan

Black Swan is the difference between a movie and a film.

A movie will entertain you, keep you interested and give you some great discussion points. A film however, will draw you in, entice you, impress you, take you on a journey…

Black Swan will be remembered in the upper echelon of great films. Not just because of Natalie Portman’s engaging and enthralling performance but also for Darren Aronofsky’s direction and his ability to take you on to the stage and make you fall in love with Ballet. As in The Wrestler, Aronofsky manages to squeeze every ounce of substance of his lead actor - Natalie Portman shines.

Portman plays the talented but troubled Nina who wins the lead as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. The already fragile Nina slowly looses her mind as paranoia, a possessive mother, and the mounting pressure leading to opening night take their toll. Add to this the beautiful Mila Kunis (Lilly) as the threat to her role and Black Swan takes you on a scintillating, mysterious and often terrifying journey and look into the world of professional ballet.

Portman rightly deserves her Golden Globe. Not just for her acting ability but her dancing scenes are incredible. Hollywood is riddled with stories of actors going through painstaking training to learn skills for a certain role, and there is none more impressive than Portman. Actors that immerse themselves in their role – Anthony Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs”, De Niro in “Raging Bull” and Natalie Portman in “Black Swan.” She is incredibly convincing as a world-class ballet dancer, with seemingly minimal body doubles and direction that contains extended wide angled frames showing the full extend of her dancing ability for this role.

There are a few surprises such as the great performance by Barbara Hershey as the domineering, possessive mother, a brief appearance from Wynona Ryder as the ballet star nearing the end of her career. The uncredited star of this film is Ballet itself as it seamlessly joins with the wonderful direction to make you feel like you on the stage itself.

This film is like watching live Opera but without the Italian singing and with a lot less vibrato - dramatic, ethereal and beautiful.

This is more than a movie – it’s a classic film.

Enjoy…

A.

Hitting the dance floor - tips for young players...

Let’s Dance.

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Just get up and dance.”
~Dave Barry

Whatever the reason is you’re there. You’ve paid your money, told a few friends and maybe - depending on your initial level of enthusiasm – you’ve watched a few videos online. You have a story, you’re at a particular stage of life, and you’re on the dance floor staring at a room filled with other dubious faces ready to start your first Salsa class. You’re in a room filled with people who have all arrived at the same destination but have come from vastly different origins. Maybe you saw Salsa on TV and thought it was something you had to try; or you stumbled across an online video; you’ve come out of a terrible life experience or relationship and are looking for some confidence; you could be looking for that special someone you feel you’ve never found or simply looking to increase your networks. Or maybe none of this applies to you, you just like dancing.

Whatever the reason you find yourself holding hands with a complete stranger as you both count one, two, three – five, six, seven under your breath in an attempt to get your feet and hands to do what your brain is demanding. Believe me I can relate, learning to dance can be no easy feat. Those of you reading this article that are obsessed with dancing and are out most nights doing your thang may have forgotten how intimidating it can be. My story on how I stumbled across Salsa is really no different to most people. One night a good friend invited me to some Salsa party where I was assured there would be “a lot of honeys and some great music.” Well both were in attendance. As I stood on the side of the dance floor looking at smiling hands and feet flying all over the place I suddenly felt as though I was missing out on some genuine fun. Not to mention the impressive live band that were simply hypnotising. A few months later I was watching YouTube videos and signing up to my first beginner’s class. When I first started taking lessons the thought of trying to take what I was learning in class to the social dance floor was accompanied by my own self confidence pointing its finger and laughing at me as though it was an insurmountable task. It wasn’t just the dance that was intimidating. My headspace was not well, I was not well, my confidence was at an all time low and I was reeling from a significant negative life experience. I was looking for a life raft and I found it in quick, quick slow. Fast forward 18 months, countless classes, the occasional workshop, new friends, various pairs of dance shoes and there is rarely an event I don’t try and get to filled with people I know and ladies who I love to dance with. Not to mention some genuinely good people.

Now let me be clear right from the beginning; I am no expert when it comes to the dance floor - far from it. But in the time that I’ve been learning to shake my thang, I have learned some rather invaluable lessons – all of them the hard way – and being a narcissistic, out of work freelance writer who often feels the need to sit for hours at a keyboard to keep my brain from exploding, I felt the need to share with those of you who are mustering the courage to hit the social floor. So in this brief collection of words take heed that what you are reading is a collection of hints and tips taken directly from a dance nerd who learned the hard way. Oh and all the lads out there, some of the things you will read are taken directly from some of the many conversations I have had with some of Adelaide’s most beautiful dancers (looks to the sky and day dreams a little). Oh and ladies anything directed to you will be an attempt to introduce you to the male psyche when it comes to dancing – hard I know but it does exist. Ok lads lets go, (ladies still read):

When grammar comes between love...

A friend sent me this article this week, and I am still giggling like a school girl. I'm sure this was a Seinfield spisode.

For all intensive purposes

To what extent does our grasp of grammar affect our chance of romance?
Comedian Mark Butler investigates.

I recently broke up with a girlfriend because she misused an apostrophe. Yes, I know it’s not a capital offence to write “two bottle’s of wine” in an email, but this minor grammatical blunder irked me just enough to pull out of that night’s barbecue. Some relationships break down because one partner is too possessive; ours ended because the two bottles were not.

Obviously this was not the only slip-up this girl (let’s call her Je’s’sica) made during our brief relationship, but the “bottles incident”, as I now call it, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was a your/you’re episode in a love letter that left me loveless, there were double negatives crammed into conversations that turned me right off, and there were countless text messages strewn with errors which, in hindsight, were probably written deliberately to wind me up. Basically, the relationship was destined to fail because I care about grammar and she, apparently, CUDNT CARELESS.

I didn’t care so much when I was a teenager. Growing up in a coal-mining community in the north of England, it was difficult enough to find a girl who could speak in full sentences, let alone in grammatically correct ones. I took what I could get, and this often meant me putting up with clauses enclosed by “like” and “intit” in the hope of copping a feel behind the bus shelter. In those days, the most desirable quality in a girl was not her grasp of grammar; it was her willingness to go behind bus shelters.

But then came university in the south of England where I was surrounded by young women who could construct sentences without fillers. They all spoke properly, like BBC newsreaders, and they all mocked my Northern knack of truncating the “to” and omitting the definite article in sentences about me “going t’ pub”. Suddenly it was my grammar that was under the spotlight, and I knew I would have to pick up my game if I hoped to attract such sophisticates.

So I went t’ library and buried myself in a big book of grammar with a penguin on it, studying all the things that my middle school English teacher would probably have taught me had she not always been popping out for fags during lessons. I learnt about subjunctives, superlatives, conditionals and participles. I studied predicates, prepositions, pronouns and proper nouns. I learnt so much about language that I was able to crawl confidently from my study cocoon and proudly unfold my grammatical wings. I even learnt how to create butterfly-related metaphors, albeit clichéd ones.

But this newfound knowledge didn’t get me laid. In fact, it probably had the opposite effect. I became convinced everyone could benefit from my wisdom and I thought nothing of pointing out where pretty girls had wrongly used adjectives instead of adverbs. I honestly thought I was helping; they genuinely thought I was a dickhead. We were both right. But my chance of romance was slipping faster than Australian school standards, and I had to learn to keep my mouth more shut, more often. My crusade had come to an end.

It seems it is not possible to point out grammatical gaffes and still expect to sleep with the person who made them. Having good grammar is sexy, but the highlighting of others’ mistakes is a passion-killer, a cold shower on any conversation. People like to be told how smart they are, not that “for all intensive purposes” is a malapropism. No one likes to be told that “fastly” is not a word; if they really cared, they would have figured it out by now.

So what do language pedants like you and me do if we want to be loved? (I am assuming that you are a pedant since you have read this far into the article; everyone else stopped reading after missing the clever word play at the end of the first paragraph.) Do we just let our partners get away with syntactical murder? No, we do not. We explain to them that our grammatical nitpicking is a symptom of an obscure mental illness. We tell them that grammatical mistakes bring on anxiety attacks in us. We tell them that if they truly loved us, they would stop using “could of” in third conditional sentences. We do not drop our standards; we help them to raise theirs.

Je’s’sica, however, had more problems raising her standards than she did the hem of her skirt, and it was with great regret that I had to end it. Yes, she had great legs, an angelic face, and at least two bottles of wine, but these things were only going to take her so far; a grammar geek like me needs all the boxes ticked. She sent me a text message after we broke up, after I told her that it was me and not her, after I lied about me not being ready for another serious relationship. ITS SHAME COZ WE CUD OF BIN GUD 2GTHR. X. We all know that I did the right thing.

Mark Butler will be performing his new comedy show, Grammar Don’t Matter on a First Date, at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

So good, I might have to check it out.

Enjoy...

A.

Ain't love grand...

This was emailed to me by a good mate. Funny and ironical...

Enjoy...

A.

Beauty queens, world peace, rising flood waters and the prevailing Aussie spirit...

Watch any beauty queen pageant contest and not only will you see a bevy of beauties with fake tans, and manicured eye brows, but you will hear that every contestant seems to want the same thing.

"World peace."

The vain persuit of victory whilst tacking on somekind of conscientiousness. I find it quite hilarious. I'm sure they all really want to see world peace, but do we even know what world peace looks like? If it sprung up one day would we see it?

Just like all of us I have been incredibly moved by the images and footage coming out of Qld surrounding the floods. It's quite difficult to know how to respond when you see such devestation and there is no-one to blame or no finger to point.

It is refreshing to see however, the post disaster news stories come out as people band together to help each other out. After watching an ACA report on the volunteers (I NEVER watch ACA as it barely passes as journalism) I couldn't help but feel that little bit more Australian seeing thousands of people coming together to clean-up and repair Brisbane.

What also impresses me is how we approach such things with humor as is the larrikin Aussie spirit. I saw this image below and felt that little bit more Australian.

Wally Lewis statue outside the flooded Suncorp stadium.

I also saw this facebook status in the last few weeks as well:

"Come on Australia grab your shamwows...we've got a city to clean."

I don't know if we will ever see peace in the middle east. I don't know if we will ever eradicate racism from our communties. I don't know if the poor in Africa will ever see respite from famine and Aids. I don't know if children will ever be safe from slave labor or sexual exploitation. I don't know if we will ever see the end to human trafficing or the injustice of poverty around the world, and I certainly don't know if we will ever be safe from religious extremsim - but i keep hoping.

But one thing I do know, is that in Brisbane right now we are getting a glimpse of what world peace could be; a community of people coming together, helping each other out with good humor and hard work.

Check it out - there's world peace in Brisbane right now.

A.

Exit Through The Gift Shop - Hybrid Street Art that is amazing...

Wow this is where it's at. This guy manages to fuse political message, art, graffiti, love, romance, humor and everything in between. Check out some of his artwork below and enjoy the 5 minute video that I promise will be the best part of your day.

Check out Banksy HERE.

Trust me and enjoy...


A.

Meet Crash - Why I love graffiti art...

Meet Crash (aka John Matos) HERE. Also meet him below.

Enjoy...

A.