Doctor Who returns to Australia: 6pm Monday–Thursday, from 15 September on ABC TV. Note to self: buy fuckload of VHS tapes.
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Dropped in briefly to the Balloon Factory* Shop squatted social centre on the weekend, and props to those in the thick of it all. It's a struggle to create and defend spaces of radicality and fun, especially in a part of the world that just doesn't have the convenient critical mass (in terms of both sheer numbers and weight of various radical traditions) that Andrew's been blowing my mind with of late. So the fact that this shit happens in Sydney is worth celebrating even more!
* Okay Shane, but all the world's a social factory -- it's so sexy! :)
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After my brief "sectarian" (anti-Labor) contribution to the Tampa Day event, I nicked off to the movies and saw Morvern Callar on Flux's recommendation. Fuck! The endless line of compounded, inappropriate choices made by the main character in the wake of her boyfriend's suicide left me dazed. Her behaviour wasn't "immoral" or inconsistent; rather, it just really strayed from the kinds of moral gestures one expects from "well formed individuals". Which is interesting. And which fits in with the way the audience's sonic space could move from Morvern's walkman, out into the world, and back again, almost randomly. Leaky headphones, a subject in flight. Contrast this with the continual emphasis on her name, and the spaces that occupies. Interesting. Samantha Morton's performance was great, but I was more taken with the excellent non-actor Kathleen McDermott (who's actually an apprentice hairdresser) as Morvern's best friend Lanna. I don't think I've seen a performance so keenly, uh, mammalian. She rocks!
