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This is what you get when a 6 year old judges a classic book by its cover. The results are clearly hilarious, but also sometimes surprisingly appropriate. For instance, even though Slaughterhouse 5 is not at all about a slot machine lost in a mysterious desert, it totally sounds like the kind of story Kurt Vonnegut would have written.
I got hooked watching Thomas Balmes’ 2010 doco Babies last night. I just couldn’t take my eyes off these adorable, disgusting, hilarious babies! The film tracks 4 infants (from Mongolia, Namibia, Tokyo and San Francisco), documenting their first year of life. There is no narration and no subtitles so it is very non-narrative and intimate, like an extended, beautifully shot home movie.
While sounds like it has the potential to be boring it is entirely fascinating viewing. It helps that babies are cute, but they are also hugely entertaining. Let’s face it; babies are little aliens. They don’t know the rules of our planet. And they don’t care. Like some eating, sleeping, crying, pooping ‘id’ monster, the baby goes after what it wants with no regard for the consequences.
This can result in hilarious moments like babies reaching for the same toy and having fights and tanties, playing roughly with animals, and tipping over prams. OK so maybe finding it funny to see a baby risk hurting itself is in bad taste. But it is refreshing to see infants getting up to the kind of trouble you imagine would be natural to a thing that wants to touch and eat everything with no awareness of its own fragility and helplessness. It is a rare glimpse into the similarities and differences of how children are raised (as well as the contrasting ways of life and standards of living) in four distinctive parts of the globe. And it is an important reminder of how weird and raw we all are at the start of our lives.
- Claire
Love Story was a super fun way to start my 2012 MIFF schedule! In this clip the film’s director, Florian Habicht, talks about the inspiration for his very playful, and often hilarious film and his experiences with MIFF. Florian is a guest of the festival and delivered a very entertaining intro and Q&A at today’s sold out session. Love Story will be screening again this Thursday so head along if you want to see a man (Florian, playing himself) pursuing a beautiful Russian woman holding a piece of cake, and getting love advice from strangers on the streets of New York!
- Claire
MIFF 2012 has well and truly begun. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, here is the brilliant festival trailer. The crisp German accents, the pre-requisite cinema nerd glasses, the self-deprecating jabs at hardcore film snobs and the city of Melbourne. “Where is Melbourne anyway?” OMG I love it so much.
- Claire
Lectures and Forums at Melbourne Art Fair
If you are interested in art anywhere on the scale from sci-fi to the deepest thinking of the angsty painter contemplating the medium of paint then check out some of the great lectures and forums being held at Melbourne Art Fair!
9 months ago - 
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2 THEESatisfaction will be playing with Big Freedia for the Melbourne Festival in October. I love it that all the ladies in this amazing clip are such effortlessly pro dancers that they manage to get loose without ever banging into each other. I can only assume things will get messier in Melbourne. OMG I can’t waaaait!!
- Claire
