An in-depth review:

• All the characters are sweaty, all the time
• Valjean (Hugh Jackman) looks more and more like a hobbit as the film progresses
• Sacha Baron Cohen as Thénardier? Please. It should’ve been Jonny Depp
• The scenes (mainly the architecture) get monotonous after a while
• How good at everything is Helena Bonham Carter?!
• The film part failed to back up the musical part is a few places. It left me with no empathy for the characters. I didn’t feel Valjean’s internal contradictions, or his attachment to Cosette. I didn’t feel Javert’s moral duty struggle against his civil duty. Éponine’s pain on the other hand, drew me in.

It’s worth seeing, but as usual, the book’s better.

Summer is coming.

In summer you can even get away with white men rapping.

The women and the weather both are hotter than Hades.

Thou shalt not steal if there is direct victim
Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lostprophets
Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barret in vain
Thou shalt not think any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile, some people are just nice
Thou shalt not read NME
Thou shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular
Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry
Thou shalt not judge a book by it’s cover
Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover
Thou shalt not buy Coca-Cola products, thou shalt not buy Nestlé products
Thou shalt not go into the woods with your boyfriend’s best friend, take drugs and cheat on him
Thou shalt not fall in love so easily
Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants, use it to get into their heads
Thou shalt not watch Hollyoakes
Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave as soon as you’ve done your shitty little poem or song you self-righteous prick
Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in, week out, just ’cause you once saw a girl there that you fancied but you’re never gonna fucking talk to
Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are, or were
The Beatles were just a band
Led Zepplin? Just a band
The Beach Boys? Just a band
The Sex Pistols? Just a band
The Clash? Just a band
Crass? Just a band
Minor Threat? Just a band
The Cure were Just a band
The Smiths? Just a band
Nirvana? Just a band
The Pixies? Just a band
Oasis? Just a band
Radiohead were Just a band
Bloc Party? Just a band
The Arctic Monkeys? Just a band
The next big thing? Just a band
Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-English speaking countries as to those that occur in english speaking countries
Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be
Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music, thou shalt not make repetitive generic music, thou shalt not make repetitive generic music, thou shalt not make repetitive generic music
Thou shalt not Pimp My Ride
Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster
Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness
Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit
When I say “Hey” thou shalt not say “Ho”
When I say “Hip” thou shalt not say “Hop”
When I say, “he say, she say, we say, make some noise”… kill me
Thou shalt not quote me happy
Thou shalt not shake it like a polaroid picture
Thou shalt not wish you girlfriend was a freak like me
Thou shalt spell the word ‘Pheonix’ P-H-E-O-N-I-X not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you
Thou shalt not express your shock at the fact that Sharon got off with Brad at the club last night by saying “Is it”
Thou shalt think for yourselves
And thou shalt always kill.

Moneyball is a rare film these days, one that does not require you to leave your credulity nor your imagination at the door. The story centres on Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team, who starts a baseball revolution by using metrics to recruit his team, enabling him to assemble a winning team despite having the smallest budget in the league. It is very much a typical sport film, but it sticks pretty close to historical fact, and doesn’t get carried away with the ‘misfits beating the rich mean team’ thing. Brad Pitt plays Beane, and does a great job, but that’s expected, so the real brilliance of the film is in the other characters, all of whom share the load evenly. Jonah Hill is great as Peter Brand, and Chris Pratt likewise as Scott Hatteberg. It’s a no-gimmicks film, completely free of slapstick, lowest common denominator jokes, and inconsequential eye candy. Honestly I can’t fault it. Go see it, especially if you have even a passing interest in baseball.

Oh baby I want you
Yeah I want you to be my girlfriend
Now will you send those kids to play down the street
And shouldn’t you, shouldn’t you put shoes on their feet?

The natural posture for a politician has always been ‘chief among equals’. But modern media does not allow this. Now it is at best ‘equal among equals’ and commonly last or least among them. Listen to talkback, watch Q&A, tune into the internet and ask where the power and respect lies. Who lays strongest claim to the record, the knowledge and the authority, charismatic or otherwise? Not the leaders. Most of what used to be theirs is shared between the host and the audience, for whom pretty well any opinion is as good as another. The politicians scramble for the residue.

Every day they do what they used only to do in election campaigns. There is Tony Abbott, aspiring prime minister, in a hard hat or gauze one, staring down a mine, fiddling with a tractor, filleting a fish. The people are sovereign, he says. To hell with the sovereignty of scientific facts: popular opinion will determine if the Earth is warming and what to do about it – just as it determined the answer to polio and the movement of the planets. There was Prime Minister Rudd, tin-eared and ineffably graceless but a mind to be reckoned with – where else should we see him every day but surrounded by babies or hospital patients? And there is Julia Gillard, prime minister of the Commonwealth, daily risking her dignity in the nation’s malls and school grounds, confessing her insecurities at the National Press Club, bringing herself close to tears as she asks to be understood, surrendering to the maw of magazine culture and afternoon television, and taking the office with her. The Oprahisation of Australian politics is now pretty well complete.

- Don Watson.

We are the problem, not our leaders.

As hipsterism gains momentum, practitioners find safety in numbers. They come to believe that their world view has substance, that it is worth something in the public arena. All people ought to have a valid voice, and so they have done themselves a great disservice, as espousing such a faux-aesthetic cannot amount to any depth of social or political insight. They are the new yuppies. Therein lay the dangers, when they begin to be accepted – not by their peers, but by their leaders and entertainers – and accommodated, our collective imaginations shall disintegrate with a sigh.

As I started this short discourse with Kierkegaard, let me end by paraphrasing him. The act of choosing is essentially an expression of the ethical. The hipster’s choice is an aesthetic choice, but an aesthetic choice is no choice at all. Transfiguration is never attained by the one who chooses merely aesthetically. The rhythm in that person’s soul, in spite of all its passion, is a spiritus levis, they have chosen emptiness.

- Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Charging around with a juggernaut brow
Overdraft speeches and deadlines to make
Cramming commitments like cats in a sack
Telephone burn and a purposeful gait
When out of a doorway the tentacles st r  e   t    c     h
Of a song that I know and the  world   moves    in     slow-mo
Straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day

- Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey, The Bones of You