[blindwoodworker] Re: 54Eucalyptus?
- From: "JDM" <sunnyday001@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blindwoodworker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:46:46 +1100
G'day Larry,
I've not seen, nor listened to, the movie "Australia." But, I did hear that it
got a very cool disinterested response at the box office here in Australia.
Most folk regarded it as a very corny set of out of date cliche's, that have no
relevance to modern day Australia. After all, more than90% of Australia's 22
million people live in a major, highly urbanised city, with little contact to
rural farm life. Most Australians recognised the movie for what it was, which
is basically a Tourism advertisement, which hoped to attract international
visitors. The basic story line was also heavily criticised here as a shallow
cliche.
But, as i've not seen the movie, i'm not really in a position to make any
comment. So, below, i've copied and pasted 2 reviews of the movie, reviews
which were made shortly after the movie's release here. The first review is
from "The Age" a very conservative newspaper here, while the second review is
from a radio station JJJ, marketed to the under 25's audience.
OK, hope you enjoy the following 2 reviews.
John
Melbourne Australia.
Review#1:
"The Age" Newspaper: Jim Schembri, reviewer
December 2, 2008
"Australia" the Movie.
stars-2half
There are moments while watching Baz Luhrmann's over-sized, over-long Outback
weepie Australia when one wonders if there are any tablecloth cliches about
Australia that have been missed.
No, it all seems to be there. The horses. The cattle. The dust. The rugged
Aussie loner. The Aborigine standing on one leg in a loincloth. The beer. The
Kangaroos. About the only thing missing is a bloke named Bruce.
It may not be the stuff from which classic films are typically born but such
cliches provide a great featherbed of easy-to-digest references for the type of
sweeping melodramatic saga designed to appeal to the lucrative "chick flick"
market and to foreign audiences eager for an attractive holiday destination.
By these measures Australia cannot be seriously faulted. With its open links to
the Australian tourism industry, the film is a great advertisement.
As entertainment, the saga, cringe-inducing as it often is, eventually delivers
the type of big, crowd-pleasing, teary emotional pay-off that makes its many
long hours and overcooked characters worth enduring, even if the film is 30
minutes too long.
Set in the Northern Territory in 1939 on a remote cattle station with the
fairytale name of Faraway Downs, Australia tells of the forging of a family.
Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) is the prissy English aristocrat who arrives
to make a go of the station after the murder of her husband, allegedly by a
blackfella called King George (David Gulpilil).
Helping her take her cattle to Darwin is the enigmatic Drover (Hugh Jackman), a
no-nonsense piece of calender-worthy, girl-baiting Aussie beefcake.
Glueing the story together is Nullah (Brandon Walters), a sweet-faced little
boy of mixed blood whose stateless status and dubious parentage serves as the
lightning rod for the film's over-arching themes of racism, responsibility,
love and reconciliation."
Review#2:
"Australia" the Movie.
review by Radio JJJ's, marc fennell 28 November 2008
It's here! The movie that’s supposed
to save the Australian film
industry, rescue Nicole Kidman's career, justify Baz
Luhrmans monolithic ego, heal the Stolen Generation,
cure cancer, slice bread, place man on the moon and
improve upon the basic orgasm.
it is....
AUSTRALIA…
Gurd thy loins - The story of a british aristocrat
(Kidman), her drover man (Jackman), her indigenous
adopted child (Walters) and a shitload of cows
traveling
across the country has landed, and I believe if you
read
the fine print on your birth Certificate or passport
you'll find that we're
all legally required to go see it.
But is Australia all its cracked up to be…
Well….. kinda.
If you’ve ever seen So You Think You Can Dance you
might’ve heard the term "Hot Mess" well Australia is a
hot mess. The whole thing smacks of a movie that was
half written, shot, reshot, rewritten, then reshot
again
then rewritten, reshot, re-edited, rewritten and then
reshot and re-edited a final time.. then they watched
it
once more and decided to spend $20 million on blowing
up
Darwin and hearding some CGI cows off a cliff. That
said, there are some truly stunning cinematic moments
in
Australia - the aforemention stampede, the bombing of
darwin, the heartbreaking scenes of Aboriginal Children
being ripped from their homes (well, Kidman's home) And
David Gulilpill standing on some rocks peering into
your
soul is eery to say the least.
But almost none of it flows and fits together. Some
parts are large and majestic, then it'll become
a cartoon. A bit of high-camp I can enjoy but, almost
every 30 minutes on the dot the movie will stop to show
us a bunch of Tourism Australia landscape shots. I kept
expecting Jackman to turn to camera and say "You'll
Never Never Know, If You Never Never Go".
The plot's key turning points have either too much or
not enough emphasis and are often in the wrong spot.
The
whole last half of the movie (The Bombing of Darwin and
so on) could easily have been shifted earlier for a
punchier, more wrenching ending. Like I said, this
movie
wasnt written it was re-written. And nowhere is that
more obvious than in the amount of CGI used. The movie
is filled with scenes that were half filmed on
location,
half on green-screen as reshoots. It's not that Baz
Loman has
bitten off more than he can chew, it's that he's bitten
off more than he SHOULD'VE chewed and then pigheadedly
insisted on munching through it all, even if it does
take 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Yes, Australia is beautiful, Yes I cried a bit in
parts.
But lets face it, the outback is awesome and I'm a
pansy. Tell ya what the biggest surprise of this movie
was though… Nicole Kidman. I had all of my botox jokes
ready to go, but y'know what? That damn woman won me
over. Not for her dramatic performance but for her
comic
timing. She played the stuck-up English bitch
hillariously. She nails it. And also young Brandon
Walters, found via a nationwide callout, is stunning.
Except for his voice-over narration. Another tell-tale
sign of an under-written flick.
Finally though, if you want a new drinking game.. then
try taking a
shot everytime someone says "Crikey." I guarantee
you'll
be too hammered to notice the movie's glaring flaws,
and
instead soak up the sheer glory of watching the
Director, Baz Loman, snort
his own ego through a wide-angle lens."
----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Martin
To: blindwoodworker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2009 4:46 PM
Subject: [blindwoodworker] Re: 54Eucalyptus?
My wife and I just enjoyed watching the DVD Australia. What was the local
reaction to the movie?
On Nov 22, 2009, at 9:57 PM, JDM wrote:
G'day again John,
OK, I now understand, that 54 really puzzled me. But, as for Eucalyptus
being easy to work, there is no single answer. I know of more than 300
varieties of the Eucalyptus genus, and each and every one has a different
hardness, density, colour and grain patterning and so on.
Here, in the State of Victoria the most commonly used Eucalyptus timber is
Victorian Mountain Ash, though if the very same timber happens to come from the
State of Tasmania, then it is called Tasmanian Oak. The different climatic
conditions of the 2 States has a major effect on the hardness, density,
workability and colour. Though Tasmanian Oak is truly a variety of the
Eucalyptus genus, and completely unrelated to English, European or American
Oak, it was called Oak by the early English settler pioneers because of its
very similar appearance and working characteristics.
Unlike the USA, where much of your timber seems to be flat sawn, all timber
that is grown and milled in Australia is quarter sawn, or occasionally rift
sawn. A consequence of this is that here we do not see any lumber which has
the cathedral patterns of the growth rings on the board faces. In quarter sawn
timber the growth ring cathedrals would appear on the edges of the boards. But
of course, the thinness of the edges precludes the cathedrals from ever being
seen.
North American furniture makers seem to utilise these cathedral patterns as
an integral part of their overall design to give their pieces a very
characteristic American or Canadian look. Australian furniture lumber is all
very straight grained, and character can only be imparted by the incorporation
of knot marks, gum veins and shakes into the design.
Below, after my signature, is a list of 284 varieties of Australian
Eucalyptus.
Hope this has been of interest,
John Milburn
Melbourne Australia.
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