Aussie Madness

I think it must have been Peter Weir night on TCM yesterday. They were playing a couple of the Australian director's films like Gallipoli and The Last Wave. The former is a really good movie with a lot of symbolism about Australian youth going off to get killed in Turkey. (A good scene was the one where the 18 year old protagonist is trying to describe to a backwoodsman why he's going to war against Germany by going to Turkey)

The Last Wave is a surreal creepy movie about an Australian lawyer who is enlisted to defend some aboriginees who are accused of murdering a man. As this goes on, he begins to discover a connection he has with the aboriginees, or more accurately his connection with the spirit world. Amid worsening weather in Sydney, he has visions of a tsunami catastrophe. I thought the movie was pretty good; but its also pretty simple, and a lot of the film is the protagonist talking to one guy who neither acts nor says much. The synth music is really atmospheric, but until the movie starts coming towards its conclusion there's not much going on. I could it see it being boring if I were paying more attention. One thing that's obvious is that Weir is a really good director when it comes to atmosphere and symbolism.

The third movie of Weir's they showed was Picnic at Hanging Rock, a movie based on a book that a lot of people came to believe was about a real event, but wasn't. A scenic trip by Australian girls in a private school in 1900 becomes a tragic mystery when four disappear for unknown reasons. This movie was really good and would have made it onto my scariest movie list if I'd seen it last month.

I was able to get a ticket to the MLS cup final on Sunday between Dallas and Colorado. A lot of the ticket were going for prices of like 60+ dollars, and even the resale ones seemed to be for face value only. Fortunately, I got a very cheap ticket at ticket hub. Some there were even going for 25 dollars after fees. I got one at a good section of the stadium for 30 dollars... which seemed actually a better deal than I could get for tickets at previous games. It was weird that there was such a disparity between the prices I could find the same tickets at for this event. There's also a free concert by Matthew Good before the game, though I may not come when it starts as there;s both rough weather expected, and a CFL playoff game on.