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MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 8:

The Magic Faraway Tree (Ben Gregor, 2026)

The first chapter book I ever read was The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton, the second of her four books in the series. This was forty-seven years ago, when I was seven. I remember staying up long after my bed time, determined to finish the last two chapters. I was getting tired and my eyes were blinking, but I felt thrilled to read a book on my own, thrilled to finish a book with chapters!

Each chapter was such an adventure, as Jo, Bessie and Fanny encounter their friends in the Enchanted Wood and the Faraway Tree, and find a different land on top of the tree each time they visit. Blyton's idea is ingenious. Instead of the friends having to explore the universe, the universe comes to them – in the form of The Land of Take-What-You-Want, The Land of Dame Slap, The Land of Birthdays, and an infinity of other lands, each with its own quirks, characters and perils.

First edition dust jacket. Illustrations by Dorothy M. Wheeler.

The act of reading is an act of visualisation, and my immersion into these adventures involved mental images of the characters depicted in the vivid and beautiful illustrations by Dorothy M. Wheeler, in the first editions. These were the books I was lucky enough to experience; they were owned by my grandmother, and she had read them to her many primary school students before her retirement. In my little head, as I was reading, I pictured the three children as Wheeler had drawn them: Jo in his tie and shorts, Bessie in red, Fanny in blue. Moon-Face was a little Churchillian man with a round face, Silky a fairy with flowing golden hair, and Saucepan Man had a long nose and a shy grin.

Indeed, my inner experience of the Faraway Tree and its folk was so strong that I regarded the illustrations in future editions with suspicion and disdain. Like Cousin Connie in the third book, my nose was snobbishly turned up at the appearance of these strangers who dared to inhabit my Tree. Moon-Face, in particular, was never done right; he was often drawn with a Moon, an actual Moon, for a head and face, unlike real Moon-Face who was merely described as a little man with a very round face.

Later editions, too, were infamously corrupted over time, with the endorsement of the Estate of Enid Blyton, to supposedly better suit more modern times. Jo became Joe; Bessie became Beth; and Fanny, dear Fanny, became Frannie or Fran. Dame Slap gave up corporal punishment and became Dame Snap; characters became more conciliatory and less violent; and of course, the Golliwogs vanished altogether. The self-censorship of the Blyton industrial complex within the context of changing social expectations is worth its own examination. For me, The Faraway Tree adventures, as formed in my seven year old mind, stayed immutable and ever-delightful. I am now fifty-four, and the thrill of the Tree has never soured for me. I have read the books again and again as I have grown older, reading them to our children and my students, sharing the joy – and hoping that the thrill I felt would also be felt by others.

Such is the power and the pull of books and stories.

So: am I going to start talking about the new movie, The Magic Faraway Tree? That's why we're here, after all.

The first book, The Enchanted Wood, was published in 1939, almost ninety years ago. Apart from a few cartoon versions, this movie marks the first screen adaptation of the stories. The producers have set the movie in modern times, in the year 2026. A talking fridge and smart phones make their appearances briefly, but the point is that the three children and their parents (Tim and Polly) are making a deliberate escape from the city and personal technologies, in a sense going back in time to the kind of rural world that Blyton imagined. The Wood and the Tree are realms of community, choices and consequences, more 'real' than the technology that the kids are addicted to. The oldest and most jaded child is now Beth, and she in particular goes on a personal journey towards re-building connection and engagement. This is a post-COVID movie, and the folk of the Faraway Tree are perfectly placed to help the kids out of their post-COVID funk. Little Fran (Billie Gadsdon) is a delight, gradually coming out of her shell as she encounters the magic.

We are already a long way from little Damian's internal reading of the stories, but older Damian is not scoffing, not even at Moon-Face (played by Nonso Anozie), who is well over six feet tall and has a crescent Moon hairdo. But: this Moon-Face has a round face, and he behaves just like the Moon-Face I first encountered. Silky (Nicola Coughlan) is truly the Silky of the books. Dame Snap (Rebecca Ferguson) gives a nod to the original texts by lamenting how she is no longer allowed to slap naughty children. There are enough Lands on top of the Tree to visit and enough adventures to be had to mirror the episodic structure of the books, but the producers wisely provide a story arc that wraps everything up, as Polly and Tim (Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield) embark on a struggle to succeed in the tree-change they have imposed on themselves and their children.

The Magic Faraway Tree is delightful, and is a true adaptation of a book into a film, and of a 1930s story into a 2020s one. Like Tim, the thrilling fantasy world of the Faraway Tree is deep within me, and it was lovely indeed to see on the screen a reflection of the lifelong pull and influence of wonderful storytelling, as Tim becomes re-acquainted with his childhood experiences. My connection to these stories brings me no shame and no embarrassment. I feel sorry for adults who either had no exposure to stories in their childhood, or who decided in later life to dismiss them as silly and irrelevant. The Faraway Tree stories marked my first steps as an independent reader, and this movie closes a circle, as my now-longer stride joins up with my initial wanderings. I slow my pace; little Damian quickens his. We meet up, and our strides are as one.

Previously in this series:

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Nosferatu (2024)

1917 (2019)

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974)

Little Women (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#movies #books #children's fiction #enid blyton #the magic faraway tree

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 7:

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2026)

This is a science-fiction movie that uses entertainment as the delivery system for science. And if you come for the science, stay for the human warmth and entertainment.

The success of Project Hail Mary lies in the way it gives everyone something, and some people everything. It is gorgeous to see and hear, and it has everything that makes people want to go to the movies: drama, action, tension, humour, laughs, tears, spaceships — with the end of the world at stake.

I try not to give plot spoilers in these tiny essays, because really, it’s you who should see this movie if you haven’t already. Without giving too many details, the MacGuffin in this plot is an ingenious and efficient one, because it gives propulsion to the plot itself, while also giving propulsion to the interstellar spacecraft.

It’s clever and fantastical, and so is the alien creature found by Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a creature who has also been forced to travel far away to save its world. I’m not one to be ever satisfied with alien creatures as depicted in books or movies, because the astronomy hobbyist in me is more fascinated by the physicality and the immense mind-fracturing size of the universe, rather than speculations on extraterrestrials who will never meet us nor we them. But one of the charms of this movie is the alien encounter, which made me think about the love and companionship of my dogs more than anything else. Space is cold and utterly inhospitable. In the absence of companions we need aliens, just as Tom Hanks needed his Wilson.

For fans of hard science-fiction (and I am one of those) there is much to enjoy with the depiction of space and space travel. The planets look beautiful, as does the ship, and the up-and-down-defying sense of centrifugal space-gravity and weightlessness is great. But all of this is only part of the appeal. The thing that makes this movie so entertaining and successful is Ryan Gosling, whose charisma and messy humanity is central. Ryland Grace is in a perpetual crisis of confidence, and that's what makes him real. Don't we all aspire to something, anything, which might make us feel like our lives have importance and meaning in a vast, bewildering universe?

Top: 40 Eridani. Bottom: Tau Ceti. Astrophotos by me. See, they are real stars, real destinations.

Previously in this series:

Nosferatu (2024)

1917 (2019)

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974)

Little Women (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#project hail mary #movies #science-fiction #ryan gosling #tau ceti #40 eridani

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 6:

Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024)

This is my favourite vampire movie, and I think it’s the best adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, even though this is more correctly described as a remake of a remake of an illegal adaptation of a novel.

It’s worth it for the cinematography and the sound design alone — but why not stay for the very disturbing interpretation of the Count, as played by Bill Skarsgård, and Lily-Rose Depp’s performance as Ellen, the haunted victim of Orlok’s unholy appetite?

I found more recent vampire movies to be quite off-putting due to the attempt to make these demons somehow sympathetic and hopeless romantics (Twilight, Interview with the Vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula). This Nosferatu rightly jettisons that idea and returns the Count to his original modus operandi as an irredeemable ungodly monster and predator.

As a horror movie, it’s crook, violent, bloody and highly disturbing. No-one leaves the movie theatre feeling any better about life. Ick. Eeeewww. Go see it at once.

Previously in this series:

1917 (2019)

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974)

Little Women (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#Nosferatu #movies #vampires #horror #gothic

I can now reflect upon the Voice to parliament proposition, and the failure of the Yes campaign.

I was and still am an advocate for the Voice, and have been ever since engaging with the Uluṟu Statement of the Heart and the invitation it gave for further reconciliation, and the prospect of helping close the gap between the life outcomes of indigenous Australians and the wider population.

Early on I sought to do my little bit in the promotion of ideas by sharing content for the Yes case on my social media, because I saw this referendum as a challenge for Australia. I felt that the default electoral position was No, and that work needed to be done to move it to Yes.

Work, effort and engagement is what many people needed to do. With most people suffering under cost of living pressures and the other concerns of life, it was always going to be a huge challenge for the importance of this proposition to be apprehended and understood.

Everyone has their own levels of capacity, and my own activism was limited. I admire and thank everyone on the Yes side who got out there during the campaign; it was a grassroots phenomenon. Even if I had the time, I couldn’t have done so myself as I would have become too exhausted. I decided to withdraw into neutrality, through my work with the AEC on election night. Hence my silence on this issue in the period between the writs and the cessation of my AEC employment.

I am deeply disappointed by the referendum result, but as a fan of democracy I accept it. On referendum night I saw the results with my own eyes, comparing the size of the piles of Yes and No votes. It was pleasing to see very few informal votes; most people decided to cast their vote without wasting this precious opportunity.

It is my perception that:

• The Yes campaign was largely positive, leading the idea of challenge and change.

• The No campaign was in the business of casting doubt and muddying waters, in the absence of strong argument.

• It was right for the referendum to be called. The work had been done for many years, and it had to now go to the people. Some are saying that the PM should resign for its failure, which is the same as saying Menzies should have resigned for the failure of his 1951 anti-Communist referendum.

• Key arguments of the No campaign (not enough detail, it’s divisive, if you don’t know vote no) were untrue. As a teacher, I find the “if you don’t know, vote No” argument appalling, because it’s a call for wilful ignorance, and for not facing challenge.

• Disinformation and misinformation campaigns are growing, and they appear to be Trumpy imports from overseas. Claims that the Voice was a land grab, a UN/WEF conspiracy, and that the AEC is corrupt are wrong and ridiculous. Dis/misinformation worries me and I think we need to fight it.

It is not for me to draw conclusions as to what was in the hearts and minds of Australians when they voted.

But I believe the long walk towards reconciliation and closing the gap is not over.

I’m not ok with the vastly different life outcomes between first Australians and the rest of us. I’m not ok with the concept that colonisation had nil affect on indigenous Australians. I am certainly not ok with racism, which does exist, and which claims that people behave in certain ways due to some innate supremacy or deficiency.

Research always shows that when you empower people, when you give them a say, a voice, it improves things.

It was a modest proposal, but it failed.

What’s next?

I hope that the pro-Voice elders, people, academics, Australian students who did the work, who walked the walk, can recover and revitalise and continue, with hope, and that the younger generations can keep holding the flame.

I wait to see what the politicians, from both sides, offer next. Whatever happens, the referendum outcome will be something for everyone to refer back to.

If you’re still here, thanks for reading. And make sure you read Thomas Mayo’s article here:

Although the Voice referendum was lost, and despite the racist vitriol it unleashed, the movement for Indigenous rights and recognition has

🇦🇺 🖤❤️💛

#voice to parliament #yes #yes23au #auspol #first nations #indigenous

577. Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 in C minor. Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by André Previn. This is the most terrifying music I have ever heard. The first time I listened to it, it made my skin crawl, and it still does. This is testament to how powerful it is. The symphony was written in 1936, but then withdrawn and never performed until 1961, because the Soviet authorities had just threatened Shostakovich after Stalin was so appalled by the opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’. This new symphony was too dark, too dangerous, and for those with the ears to hear it was all about the terror which was engulfing the Soviet Union during Stalin’s purges. You can hear it! The first movement runs for almost 30 minutes, and it’s a relentless series of themes and cacophony. Just when you think you’ve been scared enough, something else jumps up. Some of the written score is marked ffff! You can’t get louder than that.

The second movement is a creepy dance of death. That’s what I think it is, anyway. It ends with a percussion pattern playing over hushed strings. It’s as if the skeletons are scrambling back to their graves.

Is this fun? Is this what music is supposed to do? Yes, sometimes.

The final movement starts with a slow march which builds to a devastating crescendo, sounding as if evil has won and is cackling at us. Then Shostakovich moves into a dreamy ballet of sorts, in the realm of unreality. Then a loud, driving finale before everything crashes down and fades into the darkest parts of the universe.

Throughout is a two-note motif, which sometimes sounds like a bird, sometimes a knock on the door, sometimes a boot stomping.

No wonder 25 years passed before this was premiered. It contains nothing about the promised paradise of the Soviet state. Which is precisely the point.

Compelling, terrifying and thrilling. #TLDR #CDsAtoZ 💿

#shostakovich #cdsatoz

#IMPORTANT instructional video about Chiko Rolls.

#chiko roll #australia

The Asteroid Project turned 10 today!

#tumblr birthday #tumblr milestone

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 5: 1917 (Sam Mendes, 2019)

Now listen children: there was once a time when people could go out to theatres and watch movies as a shared experience with lots of other people. I watched 1917 in this way, before the age of the pandemic. How different things were back then.

There has been a lot said about 1917 being a ‘one-shot movie’, using the same conceit as famously used in Hitchcock’s Rope with clever edits. The technical aspect should only be there to serve the over-arching truth of the cinematic universe depicted, and as to how an artist can succeed in the ineffable endeavour of finding this truth is perhaps a mystery. I do find that an over-reliance on flashy technique can easily date movies. Is there anyone out there who can re-watch a Baz Lurhmann movie?

1917 is what I can an experiential movie, one that aims to place the audience in a particular space and time. There are many examples in cinematic history, some recent ones being Steven Soderbegh’s Che, Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant, every movie by Jane Campion and even certain key non-love story scenes in James Cameron’s Titanic (all the stuff about the ship). Experiential movies get their power from obsessive levels of research and preparation, the end result being that you feel like you are there. The illusion of real time in 1917 is not the only thing that gives this sense, but it is certainly the main conceptual driver. Experiential movies are uncommon, and many non-experiential movies are also made with obsessive attention to detail, such as the films of Stanley Kubrick. The difference is the extent to which we are made to feel like participants, and not merely observers. Filmmakers are master manipulators.

1917 is also a classic quest narrative, and in this I was reminded of Frodo and Sam’s journey in The Lord of the Rings, in both book and film, which also gives an authentic impression of the pain, difficulty, vast physical space and drudgery of adventure. Tolkien’s book, of course, is in part based on his experience of the Great War, and 1917 shares with it the shifts in tone, the ups and downs and the bursts of action that accompany momentous struggle.

This may be the year of the plague and it feels like the earth has shifted from beneath our feet, but a lot of us are in a position to look back from our 21st century privilege and examine the First World War and the Spanish Flu that followed it and ponder what it might have felt like to experience such extreme and prolonged misery and trauma. Unlike real life, the narrative of 1917 resolves itself, its end in a sense being its beginning. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s as close to a happy ending as we could expect, and this is one of the things that keeps us going to the movies.

Previously in this series:

The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974)

Little Women (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#movies #1917 #Sam Mendes #First World War #The Great War

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 4: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974).

Before we even consider things like story, plot and character, the look of this movie is sumptuously gritty. Walter Matthau is wearing a multi-coloured chequered shirt and a yellow tie, for crissakes (and I drop that curse because everyone in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three talks like that, except for the English villain played by Robert Shaw). Most of this movie is filmed on location and set in the New York subway. The flickering fluorescent lighting illuminates a mise-en-scene of 1970s brown and blue. The hairdos are magnificent. This is truly a slice-of-life experience; this is how stuff used to look, because it’s the real thing and not a set. It looks like Alien, set in the early seventies. All the technology looks already aged. It’s fascinating just to sit and look at everything on the screen.

The soundtrack is remarkable, too, from the brass-heavy swagger of the opening theme, and the harsh, grinding clash of subway sounds and extraordinarily cranky New York dialogue. This is the real thing. Everyone in this movie is shitty with everyone else, and none more so than Caz Dolowicz, the station master superbly played by Tom Pedi, who shouts and grumbles his way down the railway tracks before meeting his destiny. This movie gives us the working world of people who have run out of kindness and patience. Even Lieutenant Garber (Walter Matthau) loses his cool after spending much of the movie rolling his eyes at the crankiness of everyone else.

What of the story? A train is hijacked. The bad guys are bad, but some of much badder than others, and the hostages waste no time in directing their pent-up crankiness at their captors. This is a thriller, but it’s the characterisations that make this movie timeless.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of my favourite movies, ever, and I watch it at least three times a year. It’s the most cantakerous movie on Earth.

Previously in this series:

Little Women (2019)

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#movies #The Taking of Pelham One Two Three #Walter Matthau #Robert Shaw #New York City #subway

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 3: Little Women (Greta Gerwig, 2019).

The best stories need to be revisited, revitalised and retold often, hence the umpteen versions of Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, A Star Is Born, Spider-Man, Little Women. This latest plays with time, showing us where these women ended up and what it was that brought them there. It also takes advantage of the audience’s prior knowledge of the story and love for the characters.

Plot to me is always a secondary consideration. Primarily, I’m sitting in the theatre wanting to enter another world. In Little Women, the lighting, photography, sets and costumes brought me in and kept me there. It makes me want to choose this kind of movie over the next action one. Who isn’t a little bit sick of darkness, villainy, explosions and super cuts? Today I visited a beach, an autumn field, a frozen lake, a writer’s attic.

The characters make choices and face consequences in this story, but it’s not a morality play. Eventually, the sisters find out who they are. They are not defined by the men they choose to love, but their choices inform us of what they have discovered about themselves as women. Beth (Eliza Scanlen) seems to be the sister who finds self-knowledge well before the others. Mr Lawrence, played by Chris Cooper, senses Beth’s purity of self and self-expression and presents her with a gift. The music played by Beth and finally Friedrich resonates, and binds the family together.

I find it a delight in our current times to once again see a story on the big screen that features characters who influence rather than undermine each other.

The movie is literally book-ended, beginning to end. After all, most of us came to this story via the book. The story is told, then lovingly bound, and it ends with such hope that I gasped when the screen cut to black.

Previously in this series:

The Irishman (2019)

Notorious (1946)

#Little Women #movies #Louisa May Alcott #books

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 2: The Irishman, Martin Scorsese, 2019.

As a film director who is deeply immersed in cinema and the history of cinema, it is only fitting that Martin Scorsese is involved in the early days of movie streaming, with this one only available on Netflix. It changes the way we watch movies. My preference is always to try and see an important movie in the theatre, and it’s a new experience for me to watch something on my iPad, in bed, with headphones. At least the image is close and I can make it as big as I want it to be, provided I don’t further destroy my eyesight.

Scorsese has spoken at some length about his decision to go with Netflix, and I can’t blame him given the difficulty he has had in getting some of his movies funded. The wonderful Silence is a case in point: very hard to finance and in the end, sadly, not many people saw it. Luckily for us, The Irishman is long and slow and seemingly untarnished by studio and producer demands. It runs for three hours and forty minutes – which would be impossible for a theatrical run. It’s a treat for filmgoers who love Scorsese’s work, because it luxuriates in what we love about his movies, and in particular his crime/gangster genre. For everyone else, it’s remarkable and new and different. It’s the Barry Lyndon of gangster movies: beautiful, deliberately paced and understated. And it’s even longer than Barry Lyndon.

I found myself coming out of the movie every once in a while to ponder the work of the second unit. Scorsese’s movies are so thickly layered with so much cutting and so much visual, I kept wondering which shots were directed by Scorsese himself and and which were second unit. I kept wondering about the script (this one by Steven Zaillian) and how thick it must be. I marvel (geddit?) at stories like this, spanning decades and moving back and forward through space and time.

There is so much to enjoy of the acting and the cast, the first thrill being that of seeing Harvey Keitel, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci all in the same movie. They give the expected bravura performances and there is so much of the shouty, sweary acting from Pacino that I adore so much. But equally exciting is the understated performances from De Niro, and especially Pesci, who for me steals the show.

Much has been discussed about the astonishing “de-aging” technique to make the actors look younger, and once again, Scorsese, the champion of old movies is embracing the newest in film technology, just as he did in his love letter to cinema, Hugo.

Because I am prone to falling asleep in bed, I watched this movie over four sessions, giving up only when the iPad started dropping out of my hands. It’s a weird way to see a new movie, but I think I loved it as much as I would have if I saw it on the big screen.

If studios won’t let us see movies like The Irishman in theatres, Netflix can at least give us an opportunity to keep seeing brave and unusual storytelling. And hopefully things will swing back again and the success of streaming will bring the weird and the wonderful back to the big screen.

#movies #Martin Scorsese #The Irishman #Netflix #streaming #Robert De Niro #Al Pacino #Joe Pesci #Harvey Keitel

Usually I write about the year that was. But this year I have decided to honour 2019 (if that’s what it deserved) with a sequence of 133 photographs of our beautiful tree.

This has been a very challenging year but Becksy and and our little family have come out the other end strong and solid like this big beautiful tree, and while fog and cloud and rainbows and celestial objects pass behind it with the seasons, the tree stands tall and brave.

#tree #2019

MOVIES YOU SHOULD WATCH BECAUSE I SAID SO Number 1: ‘Notorious’, Alfred Hitchcock, 1946.

As with the best of Hitchcock’s movies, you could watch this with the sound turned down, particularly in its third act, just so you can follow the objects, the points of view, move with the camera from high and far as it descends low and close, and revel in the editing. It is beautiful to watch. Subjectivity is the key.

Prior to his appearance in the famous grey suit in ‘North by Northwest’ (1959), Cary Grant probably never looked finer, his tuxedo making him one with the spy-noir black and white. Ingrid Bergman is magnificent in her light-and-shade performance, drinks and drinking being an objective correlative to the pain she is forced to endure, which is further reflected in the botted 1934 vintage MacGuffin. Claude Rains is a charming villain, and by the end he makes us feel for him.

First viewing: 1987 in Year 10 Media.

How can I find it? Not easily; this is a well-regarded Hitchcock movie but it’s hard to find. I certainly couldn’t find it on BluRay or DVD in Australia and only managed to luck out by getting a second hand DVD when I was in the UK.

#movies #alfred hitchcock #ingrid bergman #cary grant #claude rains

Kookaburra saying g’day.

#australia

I’ve been waiting a long time for this release - ‘Orchestral Favorites’ 40th anniversary, with two discs of live material from Frank’s 37-strong orchestra, recorded in 1975 at Royce Hall, UCLA.

Joyful!

#Frank Zappa #music music

Bourke Street

#melbourne #public art

Flinders Street Station

#Melbourne #australia

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