Stars: 4 out of 5.
Wanky applause at end of film: 4 out of 5.

Now that I am the Sydney GrodsCorp correspondent, I feel it my duty to do a few reviews of the films I am seeing in the Sydney Film Festival.

I just saw “After the Wedding,” the latest offering by Danish director Susanne Bier (who made Brothers a few years ago, a very taut and compelling film). “After the Wedding” was about the difficulties of balancing personal and global responsibilities and the power dynamics between two men from very different backgrounds but with a lot of character traits in common despite that. Jorgen, a rich Danish businessman, offers Jacob, an aid worker in India, a huge donation which will guarantee the future of his orphanage, on the condition that Jacob give up India and remain in Denmark. The reasons for this perverse demand become clear as the drama of the film unfolds, with some great plot twists drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into the family lives of the two men and unravelling the viewer’s first impressions of both the main characters, obscuring the black and white notions of which one is “good” and which one is in the “right.”

I enjoyed the film, which generally strike a balance between melodrama and humour, and delivered a very interesting ethical dilemma which still has me ruminating. I personally didn’t agree with the film’s resolution, and sometimes the melodrama irritated me (my tolerance levels are not very high for that sort of thing) but it’s still a very good film. I think “Brothers” was a better film, but “After the Wedding” is also very good and worth catching if/when it comes to SBS.

As a larger aside, I am enjoying the various foreign films delivering up ethical questions this year, and wonder if it is more than coincidence but perhaps a trend reflecting the times that such films are coming up on the global stage - The Lives of Others (which won best foreign film at the Oscars), Pan’s Labyrinth and now After the Wedding (which was also nominated for Best Foreign Film).

OK, don’t fall off your seat Ed, but I am actually going to write my first post in about 300 blog years.

The Federal Treasury’s second Intergenerational Report (which we groovers like to call “IGR2″) was released this week and social policy nerds like me were, I’ll say it, excited. The IGR2 is a 40 year projection of Australia’s future economic and demographic position based on current economic growth, government spending and population trends. It’s also something which all portfolios of government rely on for what I believe are socially narrow policies and public spending cutting and is therefore well worth reading so you know where the other side is coming from. It makes a couple more pointed policy references than the IGR1 (eg it refers to the future need for market-based mechanisms, indicating a government position rather than a statistically demonstrated necessity), making me a little more wary of the IGR2 as an ideological weapon rather than a policy-making tool.

Go here IGR2 to have a read.

KEY POINTS of the IGR2:

1. CLIMATE CHANGE:

It’s important to note that the IGR2 does not statistically incorporate the possible effects of climate change on the economy but notes that a policy of government paying for carbon abatement (as opposed to private industry) would cost in the range of at least an additional 1.25 percentage points of GDP which would mean more pressure on public spending.

2. AGEING AND THE PUBLIC PURSE:

- Over the next 40 years, the ageing of the population is projected to slow economic growth with real GDP per person rising more slowly than in the past 40 years.

- Spending pressures in areas such as health, age pensions and aged care are projected to rise. Real Australian Government spending per person will increase by around 4.75 percentage points of GDP by 2046-47.

- Net debt will therefore re-emerge around mid-2030s and increase rapidly, rising to c.30% of GDP by 2046-47.

3. AGEING AUSTRALIANS (THAT INCLUDES YOU):

- The fastest rates of growth will be in the number of people aged 65 and over. About 25% of the population is projected to be 65 and over by 2047. The rate of ageing will quicken after 2010. Fertility rates are still significantly lower than the replacement rate.

- The proportion of the population of traditional working age (15-64 years) will decline by around 8% to 60% (This should mean that there will be low unemployment ie high participation rates).

- The fastest growing group of traditional working age is the group aged 55-64, rising by nearly 50% over the next 40 years.

4. GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

- Government will focus on the “potential role of market-based mechanisms in managing spending pressures.” I take this to mean focus on competition policies including in areas traditionally excluded from competitive approaches due to “public good” exemptions (such as some areas of health spending). The social policy maker inside me is scared by this kind of rhetoric, and gets the feeling that the IGR2 is nothing more than a fancy piece of statistical propaganda which will be used to thump chests about public funding cuts for the public good over the next 200 terms of the Howard government.

- The number one spending pressure will be in health, followed by aged pensions and aged care. The Government congratulates itself in IGR2 on the reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme which will help reduce this as a spending pressure point. My cynical mind says that reforms have amounted essentially to less government money despite rising costs of new drugs.

5. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

It means that we are still getting older as a population and there are going to be fewer people to drive the economy and pay taxes in the future, up against a need for more public money to spend on health and aged pensions.

The IGR2 is designed as a report which a government should respond to so we don’t end up in a right mess in the year 2046-47. What this Government will probably do is the usual: limit eligibility for pensions, cut spending on other areas like education, harp on about superannuation and so on. What it would be nicer to see is: investment in high yield industries and employment training, support for family-friendly work practices so more people can afford to have kids, corporate responsibility for environmental damage (eg government-private sector shared carbon abatement policies), and basically a less narrow view of the drivers of productivity.

OK my fellow ageing Australians: any thoughts? What are your views of the IGR2 and its findings? How do you think the Government should respond?

Peter Garrett is the ALP’s new shadow spokesperson for environment and climate change. I have to say, I didn’t see it coming. I thought they might give him arts, or maybe indigenous affairs, but would shy away from giving the formerly outspoken president of the Australian Conservation Foundation the actual environment portfolio. I guess he might win back some of the people who vote for the other tall man of politics, Bob Brown, and all that he stands for. He might also attract a crowd to the Rudd and Gilliard “listening tour” of Australia (On a side note, this was my favourite quote from K Rudd broadcast from Bundaberg today: Interviewer: “Why are you doing this tour, Mr Rudd?” Mr Rudd: “One word: to listen.” Do you think he said it like that in order to sound less intelligent? I reckon he might have.)

I have to say I am a tiny, grain of sand amount excited at the prospect of the new ALP team. I mean, they are mainstreaming green issues and playing on people’s fears for their children and Rudd doesn’t gross me out if I avoid tv and photo images of him, and today I just listened to the radio so I am feeling more positive. Mr Climate Change only made a few inarticulate responses on air and Rudd is cleverly taking him under his wing on his first big tour of the People whilst cashing in on his rockstar appeal to attract the People in the first place. Could this be the beginning of something worth voting for?

Here’s the thing. I will probably vote for the ALP my whole life. So anyone out there who is volunteering in a local ALP member’s office and is responsible for keeping a finger on the pulse of the blogging community, you don’t have to read past here. Your vote is safe with me.

Or I should say - your preference vote. I have taken to giving my primary vote for the Greens or Democrats in the last few elections and preferencing ALP as my version of a protest within the ranks.

Here are some of the things that piss me right off about the Federal ALP and which I do not expect to change:
1. The factions.
It is unbelievable but appears true that the ALP factions would rather lose election after election than sort their shit out.

2. The dominance of beery and outspoken older blokes.
Where are your bright and feisty women in party leadership positions? Hurray for Julia Gillard but surely there are others? If New Zealand has had a female PM for almost ten years than we must be about another ten years off, I guess.

3. The snail pace of realising that climate change might be used as a real vote winner
You could really hit those middle Australians for all their worth - get them in the fear joint, hit them with the risk to their future livelihood, the jobs of their children - whatever it takes, but use it.

4. Kevin Rudd.
He just makes my skin crawl. I can’t explain it, but I know I am not alone.

The absence of actual policy
Whilst my skin was crawling, I heard Rudd say something about providing ‘a real alternative government,’ not just shadowing Howard. I hope he does what he says. I have to say though, the moment he was quoted as being in the business of ‘nation-building’ my automatic nervous system switched off my attention gland.

It’s for the reasons above that I am not a member of the ALP and never will be. I have card carrying members for friends who I wish would run for seats but I know they value their quality of life too much for that (damn you for your lack of total self-sacrifice - and you know who you are).

The take home message from this is not new - these same things piss off thousands of my dissatisfied, left-leaning compatriots. I am not going to suggest anything for the ALP to change because the ALP refuses to change any of these things in any active way. Instead I will enjoy observing the ALP as it is inexorably forced to change, as the Greens grow into a real left wing threat and my and others’ currently empty primary vote starts to mean something more than protest.

The High Court decision yesterday was a 5:2 majority call that the Federal government was well within its Constitutional corporations head of power in instituting its sweeping workplace relations laws.

The States have lost the battle and in doing so, they have lost the war, too. This court decision means that the Commonwealth ministers will be lining up for advice from the Australian Attorney General’s Department and the Australian Government Solicitor as to how far they can push their own portfolios via the corporations power.

When it happened in the Tasmanian Dams case under the Hawke government, I didn’t care - I was on their side. Damn straight the Tasmanian government should not be permitted to dam the Franklin, was my view. But now the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, and I am all for federalism. What else have we got to protect us from the kind of sabotage of workplace relations and now potentially also of the health and education portfolios that this Howard government commits with such gleeful, smug abandon?

Read more about views of the High Court’s conservative ascendancy leading to the judgment here

Read about the case and find links to the judgment here

For anyone looking for a light blog-read, this is not the post for you.

I just had my first experience of sexual harassment. There. I said it. “Sexual harassment.” It makes me feel dirty and ashamed to just write it like that, even though I am not the one who should feel dirty and ashamed.

And therein is the heart of the matter. I have left my job so as not to work with my boss after his offensive and inappropriate behaviour towards myself, because in an office of 3 there is nowhere to hide and when you have been working somewhere for almost a year but still on a temp contract there are very few protections for you but the one you provide yourself - the ability to leave at a day’s notice. I have been in touch with the HR area of the larger body which my workplace was an offshoot of, and I have been in touch with the temp agency I was hired through, and I have been in touch with the Equal Opportunity Commission. The bottom line is - how much pain and sorrow do you want to put up with in order to feel like you have received some validation of your experience? Because the ultimate result might be an apology, or maybe some compensation, or a promise to implement sexual harassment training. None of these equals a feeling of safety in my workplace. None of these was going to help me to stay in my job.

My boss has already apologised to me, but that doesn’t mean I can ever trust him again enough to work with him. It doesn’t mean I am not jumpy when I see men of a certain age and stature. It doesn’t stop me, a fairly strong and independent woman, crying uncontrollably all day and feeling utterly disempowered and worse, to blame.

I don’t know what the answer is. I think it is positive that there are sexual harassment policies and I am assuming that the worst of the above reactions will pass with time. But the repercussions for me and my boss are so horribly unequal in the current situation - me jobless and income-less in order to remove myself from a situation that was giving me livid red hives all weekend, whilst my boss has only his conscience to answer to - that the bare fact of it is injustice, straight up, no ice.

To do something, anything, about it, I decided to at least contact his boss (my boss is a contractor to someone else, which just complicates things a little more and waters down the available protections) and tell him what had happened. I’ll let you know if I get any kind of response which makes me feel any better. That’s the focus right now - fighting the good fight, and making myself feel a little better.

I have been having the computer-camera payback karma month from hell. All those times I swore at my computer or used bootleg software - I take it back! I take it all back!!

I bought a beautiful new Sony HVR Z1P high definition camera about a month ago, and have trying EVER SINCE to get it to communicate in DV-PAL to my computer. I have googled, forum-ed, spent countless time on the phone to Apple, and made two outrageously unhelpful phone calls to the Sony support centre (their advice: call Apple), and happen to be right where I began - blaming the camera but with little or no support from Sony to help me through this difficult time.

Trying to get a camera and computer to work together when they both come from two different proprietary systems is like trying to broker peace in the Balkans. Each side blames the other despite having little or no knowledge about each other. It’s depressing. I could get no sense out of either side. My only hope was to gradually isolate the element that was clearly at fault.

First stop: call Sony support centre. Don’t ever do this. It is utterly pointless and just gets you mad. I did it twice and all I ended up getting for my trouble was their mailing address so I could send them a letter of complaint about how useless their support line is. The call suport people had never even heard of the freakin’ camera I had just bought from them.

Second stop: Test the software. I took the camera to the Apple store and tested it with their versions of Final Cut Pro, to see if it was just my software at fault. No cigar. This pointed to the hardware.

Third stop: Test the firewire cable. At this point I also get to blame Dick Smith for something - my faulty brand new firewire cable. I bought a second brand new firewire cable from Mr Smith’s store, made my way back to the Apple store and it worked! So I raced home and plugged the camera in, only to find that it worked for HDV only. So I raced back to the Apple store and tested it with their software (revisiting First stop: test the software). It worked with one program but not the other.

Fourth stop: Re-boot Final Cut Studio at home. So I decided I needed to re-boot my software with a new version of the program, and bought and installed the full Final Cut Studio 5.1 suite. It did not work at all. i coudln’t even get the program to load after three hours of installation.

Fifth stop: rant and rave.

Sixth stop: Call Apple Support line. The Apple support people were very helpful and after twenty minutes, we had managed to get the software to work. So I hung up, all happy and brimming over with possibility. I connected my camera. It crashed the software as soon as I breathed the words “log and capture DV-PAL” in its general vicinity.

Seventh stop: See :”Fifth stop: rant and rave.”

Eighth stop: Call Apple Support line again. After another 20 minutes of trying everything, we isolated the camera as the problem - something to do with the firewire port or the DV signal. Which is what I thought all along - I was right back where I started out. I hate that kind of vindication.

Ninth stop: Call Ed, whinge my heart out, swear vociferously at the computer, the camera and every element of the useless, >$10,000 system on my desk, take a hot bath, eat some chocolate cookies, and watch 5 episodes of Buffy.

Tenth stop: Call Sony service centre. There is absolutely no point in calling Sony product support (see First stop above). They are the reason I am still in this situation, four weeks on. There are only three authorised repairers in Melbourne for the HVRZ1P. I called the one nearest where I live. The man there I spoke to, whilst quite friendly and helpful, had never even read the Sony manual before. They have no loan camera arrangements so the urgent digitising I needed to do last weekend already will have to keep waiting. He doesn’t know if he can figure it out. If he can’t, he will call Sony in Sydney - I quote, “I don’t know how much help I will get from them. There is someone’s 60th birthday on up there today and they are all going out to celebrate.”

Eleventh stop: Write a Grods post and hope that this wee vent will serve as a warning to you all. The moral of the story: Buy Panasonic.

Film rating: 4/5
Walkouts: 0/5
Pretentious clapping at credits: 3/5 (and I joined in, in a golf clap kind of way)
BPM sighting: No (although this may have been because it was a sell out)

Quite apart from how magnificent the title of this documentary is, The Great Happiness Space was easily one of the best things I have seen in this year’s festival. The documentary was a truly intimate insight into the lives and motivations of male hosts in clubs in Osaka and their female clients. The issues of trust, “love,” and guilt for misleading the women who pay thousands of dollars to spend time with the male hosts at their clubs in order to take their money are beguiling and complex. As the film progresses, you learn that many of the female clients are themselves in the hostess or prostitution business, driven to male hosts in an attempt to buy happiness and love or driven to prostitution in order to support the habit. The film is full of candid interviews - the characters reveal things to the camera that you would not expect them to reveal to anyone, given how little trust they have for almost everyone they come into contact with and how hardened they have become to human relationships. I feel for the male hosts and the female clients in the film the way you might feel for a war veteran who has been forced to kill, and kill again. No human should have to repeatedly encounter the murderous, hate-filled part of human nature, just as no human should have to deal in the cynical game of buying happiness and the illusion of love that these lost souls engage in, year after year, for a “living.” It’s incredible, how many ways we find to live a life.

As a documentary maker, I was envious and impressed at the honesty of the interviews, the consistently good observational camera work and the diligence and perserverance of the film-makers to be present in all sorts of situations which must have been emotionally taxing. As a documentary watcher, I was educated, perplexed and fascinated by the true life characters on screen and was carried along by very good editing from one theme and point of the story to another. I thoroughly recommend this film, congratulate its makers, and send hopeful prayers to its characters.

Film rating: 2.5/5
Walkouts: 2/5
Pretentious clapping at credits: 4/5
BPM sighting: No

Did I say that Takeshis’ was weird? That was before I had Funky Forest: The First Contact as a reference point for Japanese cinematic oddity. This film was about what it would be like to channel surf as an alien. It contained innumerable skits, some narratively related in a party-drug dream-like way. I enjoyed it because it was funny and outrageous but at times the sexualised alient bits were somewhat on the gross, discomfiting end of the spectrum and made me wonder about the kinds of minds that came up with it…
The humour was a mixture of the bizarre, slapstick, sexually inappropriate and senselessly violent and the laughter in the audience was more often the “I can’t believe someone pitched this idea and got funded to film it” kind.

There were a few poignant moments of contact with our inner child, our inner loser, our inner wannabe-Japanese-DJ; but it was contact with our inner alien that this film was all about.

Film rating: 3.5/5 (J, The); 3.5/5 (The Editor)
Walkouts: 1/5 (J, The); 1/5 (The Editor)
Pretentious clapping at credits: 2/5 (J, The); 0/5 (The Editor)
BPM sighting: See Takeshis’ (J, The); No (The Editor)

J, The says: This is an excellent film.

About halfway through it, I had serious misgivings. I went to see this film without really reading the blurb in the guide, because my cinematographic idol Christopher Doyle shot it. He also shot all of Wong Kar Wai’s really good films, and as far as I am concerned, he is an absolute genius with a lens. I know I am gushing. I just think this review needs context.

So I was prepared to love this film regardless of storyline, but about an hour into it and I was bored. Everything was moving sloooooowly. I was sick of the time we were spending with the main character and his guilt, with very little intrigue to punctuate it. I was getting close to even being disappointed with Mr Doyle’s colour grade, which was depressingly washed out, greyish green to match the ocean I guess.

All was forgiven, however, in the last 30 minutes of the film. I am sure you have had the same experience before - you are watching and waiting, watching and waiting, you don’t want to walk out and leave with a disappointed feeling but are praying that something is going to happen soon - and it does.It’s not that something extra suddenly happens on the screen or the style of film changes to one you are more accustomed to enjoying. It’s simply that you hit the zone. You and the film are keeping the same rhythm. You get it. You like it.

I am not going to give away the story in this review. But I am going to say that the last few dialogues and the interactions between the hitmen in the film are what made it for me. I left all full; a slightly stunned feeling in my gut, as if those hours and hours (probably one, all told) of boring time in the dingy hull of a ship with the lead character had carved out a space there unbeknownst to me and the final half hour filled it up. Thank goodness I didn’t walk out. I get to continue my adoration of Mr Doyle and I get to add another director (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang) to my must-see lists. Go and see it and if you do - stay until the end.

The Editor says: J, The is essentially spot on. This film would’ve got a 4/5 instead of 3.5 if only they remembered to employ an editor. A unique and impressive cinema experience provided you’re in the mood for a quiet and contemplative style of film.

Film rating: 2.5/5 (J, The); 2/5 (The Editor)
Walkouts: 2/5 (J, The); 2/5 (The Editor)
Pretentious clapping at credits: 1/5 (J, The); 3/5 (The Editor)
BPM sighting: I saw a man who met the description provided by Ed but without the critical pump (J, The); No (The Editor)

J, The says: This film was weird. I honest to god wish that I got Japanese cinema, art, books - culture. The fact is, I really like it. I read every Murakami novel I can find; Yayoi Kusama is one of my favourite artists; and I risked hail damage to my beloved new bicycle to go and see Takeshi Kitano’s latest offering to yakuza films today at the Festival. I came out of the Forum bemused and amused in fairly equal measure. Takeshi took a step inside his own mind and gosh, look at all the things he found there: layered and blurred lines of dream and reality; fears of failure and self-confidence defeaters in the shape of a scary skinny Japanese woman who kept wanting change for 10,000 yen notes and an array of other annoying characters; and downright kookiness personified as a boy who dances as a geisha and two big, fat comedians dressed in tutus who just keep popping up wherever Beat Takeshi goes. There are lots of the shoot ‘em up scenes we have come to know and love from Takeshi’s films, except the difference is that he keeps shooting the same people in this film, over and over and over again, and they just keep on coming back. And did I mention the cross-dressing singer and the giant caterpillar?

I didn’t get this film, but when I stopped thinking about it and sort of looked at it out of the corner of my eye, I kind of did. If I read Jung’s dream books and read up on Japanese psychology I might get there yet. If you are going to see it, my advice is not to think too much - the narrative structure is not what you are used to.

The Editor says: J, The is basically spot on. This was one freaky film that didn’t at all follow traditional narrative structures, but was instead like a bunch of seemingly unrelated scenes with tenuous links criss-crossing all over the place. It was funny in parts and boring in others. 90% of the walkouts occured during that bloody tapdance scene. I’d be keen to see this dude’s other films if only to help explain this one.

Film rating: 3/5
Walkouts: 0.001/5
Pretentious clapping at credits: 3/5
BPM sighting: No

Jafar Panahi introduced his film last night, dedicating it to his daughter who, at the age of 11, snuck into a soccer game to watch it with her pa. The girls in the movie were not so lucky. The film’s action takes place largely as dialogue amongst the girls, mad soccer fans, and the soldiers who have to stand guard over them and take them to be arrested for dressing as men to try and get into the stadium to see the Iran-Bahrain qualifier for the World Cup. I have to admit, I got a little bit bored with the limited number of sets and locations and the limited amount of action outside of these conversations. But I was the one who picked this Iranian film from the MIFF Iranian focus program, wussing out of more serious and depressing fare, instead asking for my lessons about the plight of Iranian women to be served up with comedy. So perhaps I can’t blame the film for its light-on plot, and the director may well have been limited in his locations for the film’s action by the subject matter he was shooting - women disobeying the law by trying to watch the soccer. Overall one to catch on the box when it comes to SBS, but no need to do the whole MIFF queue for it except as a show of solidarity with Iranian women and soccer fans both.

Mr Warren Buffett just donated 85 % of his $60 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation - read about it if you don’t believe me. That is a LOT of money, well in excess of what many countries give in their total foreign aid budgets (Australia gave approx. $3 billion in 2005-06, which is about what the Gates Foundation already gives, before taking into account this new ginormous donation to the pot).

This kind of thing always raises the question, in my mind anyway, of foreign aid going from private sources. I think it is incredibly laudable, giving that kind of money to people in grave need. But it always makes me a little uneasy, thinking about private companies with potentially private interests deciding the terms of welfare of millions of people. I mean, what if they were all pro-lifers, or pro-Western institutional democracy, or pro-US-style free trade, or (hang on a sec…)? I wonder about how this kind of giving should be best, well, given - via governments or aid programs who have just as many vested interests as a private foundation, if not more? Views, amigos?

It is a cold and wet night in Melbourne, so earlier this evening I joined my entire neighbourhood at the local DVD store. I overcame my usual compulsions about a film being too “disturbing” or complex for Saturday night, tracky dack viewing, and borrowed out “Rize.” I am very glad I did.

“Rize” is a superb documentary, filmed over more than two years in the African American ghettos of LA by David Lachapelle, who is better known for his schmick music videos (Moby and Elton John are on his CV). David and his crew of one other, Morgan Susser, had excellent access to cover this emerging dance style which is having major social and artistic impact on the communities of LA south central. Lachapelle focuses on about 6 main characters, going into their lives and homes and providing important emotional and real-people context.

These kids have really freaking hard lives. Dragon’s mother was on drugs, making him the head of the family for most of his childhood until she found God; Little Tight Eyez relies on non-family members for his support; Tight Eyez was shot by his grandfather, who had been aiming for his toddler brother in the arms of his mother. There is a golden moment in the film when Dragon is looking off to camera right, saying “People think we are just some rowdy, heathen kids…” His head snaps back to the camera, his eyes on it. “Well we’re not. What we are is oppressed.” Snippets of interviews and loads of variety in observational footage are intercut with long, montages of the dancing known as “clowning” or “krumping.” The dancing itself is disturbing and vivid and is clearly changing the dancers’ lives - from the way they talk, they had two choices - it clowning/krumping or joining a gang. When they say it, you know they are not over-dramatising. These are kids who really are overcoming hopelessness and an unfairly shortened life and really are using art to do it. It’s better to see it like this, in a documentary, because you can see how truly hard that would be, which makes it all the more remarkable.

The kids put trademark make-up on their faces, and several interviews used in the film have been taken while they boys have been painting their faces, which was a top idea by Lachapelle, adding movement and a separate focus so they are even more natural and honest. One of my favourite lines is where Tommy the clown, who started clowning in a more organised way by setting up “Tommy the Clown’s Hip Hop Academy,” discussed the “battlezone’ competitions between clowning and krumping dancers. He says, “There used to be battles in hip hop dancing and y’know, i just brought it back.” He pauses, dabs more white powder on to his face. “With make-up.”

The documentary gives you enough character insight to feel the complexity of the lives that the dancing is a part of, via really short, sweet grabs. The focus is the dancing, and the footage here is superb. There are some brilliant night street “battle” shots and some brilliant, film-clip like stuff which looks like it might have been shot in a studio. The big competition between the clowners and the krumpers is a great inclusion, and the last third of the film shows you just how much access Lachapelle had secured by that stage of the film (I won’t tell you about it, cos I want you to go and get it out and WATCH it).

All in all an excellent documentary. Do I feel overawed to the point of chucking in my own documentary-making towel? Nah. I just feel like going out and krumping some. If only I knew how.

John Howard is getting a little too repetitive for my liking. Children Overboard, Siev X and throwing Australian citizens into detention facilities were pretty bad, and the PM’s claims that he didn’t know a thing about any of it were cheeky to say the least. But his recent decision to place all the blame on the AWB for the oil-for-food scandal really does take the cake. In an act of pure Machiavelli-101 politics, Howard has taken the only option remaining - cut his losses, farewell his AWB cronies and keep himself and his best and second-best friends Downer and Vaile clear of the sinking AWB ship. I can only hope that the AWB executives taking the fall for the whole schmozzle come out embittered and ready to rat on John, Alexander and Mark. It’s straight-up schoolyard politics at play here. I never liked boys like Howard at my school - chums with the teachers (in this case the defence counsel for AWB and MR Cole himself), keeping his hands clean and ratting on his friends the moment it suited him. It sickens me more than the weekend’s bout of Easter egg eating that a man as small-minded, mean and unforgivably ignoble as he is my PM. I only wish the voters cared.