Thursday, August 29, 2002
One of the benefits of living in this big little town is that occasionally you get to do something a little bit special. Last night I got to pull the leather jacket out of the wardrobe, mess up my hair all arty-like and attend a special preview screening of a new Australian film, Garage Days, at Parliament House.
Following a bit of confusion over the multitude of entrances (Kelly went to sign me in at the House of Reps entrance, I was at the Ministry entrance) I finally made it into the building (being 8pm I couldn't just waltz through the public entrance) and we made our way through the maze & up to the Parliamentary Theatre just in time to grab a glass of wine each and find some seats. After some nice words directed at the Australian Film Finance Corporation, the Minister for the Arts and Sports, the Hon. Rod Kemp, waffled on for a bit about supporting Australian films, mispronounced a few names & stumbled over a few details before getting out of the way so that the film could be played.
Garage Days is an incredibly funny and entertaining comedy that follows a Sydney band trying to get its big break. There's sex, drugs, rock & roll and lots of all of them. It looks at the issues & motives of and relationships between each of the band members, the manager and #1 fan, and through some terrific writing manages to crack a bunch of laugh-out-loud jokes and still comments on the plague of 'pokies', the business side of the music industry as well as drug use and mental health. Sydney is well-treated and the Homebake festival is also well used.
The filmmakers have successfully combined a normal narrative-style 'quirky Aussie' film with some cool stills-montage segueways, some very cool mutant-bullet-time / slow-motion character introductions and a killer soundtrack featuring some contemporary Aussie rock, Rick James' Superfreak and even a Burt Bacharach track.
The film runs for 100 minutes & may be scheduled for national release in late September or early October (I've read conflicting reports), with overseas release scheduled for January 2003.
Go see it when it comes out.
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