Oprah @ Kath and Kim

Part 3
FADE IN:

1 INT. KATH AND KIM LOUNGE ROOM – NIGHT
OPRAH steps into the lounge room from the studio. She is wearing a glamorous red dress and holding an Australian flag-imprinted coffee mug.
She is followed into the lounge room by Kim, Kath, Sharon and Brett.
Oprah sits down on the couch, with Kim and Sharon on either side of her. Kath goes into the kitchen and lights a cigarette. Brett switches on the TV, and begins watching the news.
KIM
Change the channel, Brett. I have to see Desperate Housewives.
OPRAH
Do you get it here?
SHARON
Yes Oprah, we get a lot of American stuff.
It’s good to be aware of what’s happening in the world.
BRETT
We also have our own version of Desperate Housewives.
KIM
And that is?
BRETT
Kath and Kim.
KIM
Oh, I’ve never heard of that.
Kim goes to the kitchen, empties a pack of chicken nuggets into a bowl and puts it into the microwave.
KIM
I am just happy watching the American one, you know.
I can actually identify with all those attractive women.
KATH
Kimmy, attractive women don’t eat deep-fried chicken nuggets.
KIM
So Oprah, what do you think my chances in Hollywood are?
KATH
Fat people have no chances in Hollywood.
What do you think my chances are, Oprah?
KIM
(to Kath)
Do you realise that Kate Winslet was 80 kilos when she was pregnant?
OPRAH
So does that mean you are pregnant, Kim?
KIM
Oh no! I’m just preparing in advance for it.
SHARON
Oprah, you must tell me and Kim how you lost so much weight.
OPRAH
Two simple things – be active and eat healthy.
KATH
Are you listening, Kimmy?
KIM
I have to watch TV and be on TV. Isn’t that enough activity?
OPRAH
I thought Aussies were good at sport.
KIM
If I had Tom Cruise coming to my show,
I would quit eating for one whole hour.
KATH
Oh no, Kimmy! Don’t invite Tom Cruise, he left our poor Nicole.

FADE OUT

Denton @ Kath and Kim

Part 2

FADE IN:

1 INT. KIMMY LIVE STUDIO – DAY
KIM, wearing an ‘Enough Rope’ white polo-shirt, low-strung denim pants and trendy glasses catwalks onto the stage, and sits down on the bright-pink couch in the centre, facing the audience.
She is followed by Kath in a straight skirt and a puff-sleeved blouse, Sharon in a yellow and green Australian cricket team track suit, and Brett in poorly-ironed corporate attire. They sit on a black couch on the right side of the stage, facing Kim.
Kim clips her microphone onto the lowest button of her polo-shirt.
KIM
Women and gentlemen, welcome Mr Andrew Denton.
DENTON enters, holding a ‘Cheap as Chips’-imprinted glass of white wine.
Kim motions him to sit on the blue couch next to her. She waits for the applause to die down before speaking.
KIM
Of course, Andy needs no intro.
KATH
(frowning at Kim)
Now you haven’t done your google, Kim.
KIM
(in a hushed voice)
Andy, just ignore her, okay.
SHARON
Kim, at least ask him whether he prefers being called Andy or Drew.
DENTON
(smiling apologetically)
Andrew will be fine.
KIM
Sharon, do you realise you are talking to ANDRU DENTO double NE
on the ABC double E? Now do you have any serious questions?
BRETT
Kim, do you realise even we are on the ABC double E?
KIM
Brett, please don’t compare yourself with Andrew.
You can’t speak a word in American. Now go and get me a Mars bar.
SHARON
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
KIM
Was that a question, Sharon?
DENTON
(to Sharon)
Have you read that book?
SHARON
No, Mr Denton. I thought it was an American saying. But talking of books,
I’m reading Shane Warne’s bibliography right now. Have you read it?
KIM
Of course he hasn’t, Sharon. He reads more serious stuff.
KATH
Kimmy, let Andrew answer.
DENTON
No, I haven’t read it yet. But I wouldn’t mind;
Shane Warne is an interesting Aussie character.
KATH
(indulgently)
How’s your Cardonnay, Andrew?
DENTON
Oh my Cha…! It’s great, thanks Mrs Day.
KATH
I wanted to actually serve you some chilled beer,
but Kim insisted that Cardonnay looks better on TV.
KIM
And besides that, Cardonnay is more Australian that Victoria Bitter.
DENTON
(perplexed)
Is it?
SHARON
Yes, Mr Denton, it’s grown in our own wine-yards.

FADE OUT

Sanjeev @ Kath and Kim

Part 1
FADE IN:

1 EXT. KATH AND KIM HOUSE – DAY
SANJEEV, the British-Indian host of The Kumars at No.42 and the first of Kim’s three guests for today’s show, adjusts his ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’-imprinted tie and smoothes his bright orange coat before pressing the doorbell.
His indulgent self-appraisal is interrupted by a swivelling newspaper delivered by a speeding van hitting his backside.

SANJEEV
(to himself)
Don’t the kangaroos have arses or what?
He bends, picks the paper up, and presses the doorbell. While waiting for the door to be opened, he admires the newspaper’s front page picture of semi-clad, sun-baking men and women at St. Kilda beach.
SANJEEV
(running his fingers through his hair)
May be it was a she-kangaroo!

2 INT. KATH AND KIM LOUNGE ROOM – DAY
KATH, dressed in a knee-length lacy white dress and a big hat is lighting a cigarette and pacing the lounge room.
KATH
(facing the stairs)
Kim, Kim, Kimmy! Will you hurry up please?
These British people are very punctuational.
KIM, wearing a short printed Indian skirt, a midriff-baring singlet, and a dot on her forehead is catwalking down the stairs.
Her husband, BRETT, is holding the ends of the long Indian scarf draped around her neck, and following her.
KIM
(with her head held high)
How do I look?
KATH
(pointing to Kim’s skirt)
Oh Kimmy! What in Fountain Lakes are you wearing?
BRETT
(letting go of the scarf and despondently sitting on the stairs)
All I know is it cost me a fortune.
KIM
(moving to the kitchen and opening a pack of tandoori-flavoured chips)
Oh shup up Brett! I am becoming a talk show host from a talk show wife.
You should be thankful.
SHARON, Kim’s ‘second best friend’ enters the scene.
SHARON
Stop eating those chips, they are for the guest.
Do you have a fancy dress theme for your show, Kim?
KIM
(giving up the chips and reaching for a pack of tim-tams)
It’s not a fancy dress, it’s the in-thing.
Oh Sharon! You don’t know anything about fashion.
Even Liz Hurley was wearing an Indian skirt at the Oscars.
KATH
But wasn’t hers longer?
KIM
Oh yeah! I cut it in half, so all those fat women can see my beautiful legs on TV.
KATH
I think they’ve seen enough, Kimmy. But wait, I don’t get it.
Why an Indian skirt?
KIM
Mum, you don’t do your google, do you? Sanjeev is half-Indian.
KATH
(adjusting her hat)
I thought he was from the Queen’s country.
SHARON
Kim, Mrs Day, he’s not half-Indian or half-British.
He’s an Indian brought up in Britain.
KATH
Oh I see! Just like we are Australians brought up in Fountain Lakes.
Sharon, you’re a genius.
SHARON
(blushing)
Thanks Mrs Day.

FADE OUT

Fictocritically speaking I

Read it and learn. Because learning is reading. And reading is also writing. Both are activities I have been procrastinating of late. And immersing myself in the world of film. Where there is also reading and writing, and some degree of learning, but of a different kind. It is learning with light. May be even shadow. The shadow-play that is film viewing (and film reading) leads to the practice of film-writing. And from this film-writing emerges a discourse that entangles the visual and the verbal, the academic and the mainstream, the aesthetic and the political. Does the enmeshment of these elements liberate us from the confines of rhetoric? Can rhetoric be creative? Is creativity itself rhetorical? Perhaps I/we am/are striving for a harmony that seeks to define even as it dismantles the notion of a single definition. This is not mere deconstruction; this is the realm of ideas.

The Apu Trilogy (Dir. Satyajit Ray)

Pather Panchali
The first film of the trilogy, and the foremost chapter in the life of Apu, this is a fascinating chronicle of life and death, the pleasure and pain of childhood, as well as the mundaneness and unpredictability of domesticity. Several international film critics have appreciated the "humanitarianism" of Ray's cinema, commenting that such scenes of rural bliss can be witnessed in a wide range of contexts. At the same time, the Academy Award-winning director was often criticised by the mainstream Indian film industry for highlighting the poorer aspects of the country. Is this similar to the dilemma confronting Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy? Would be accurate to propose that all the "serious" Mehta films received better reviews and reception from overseas viewers? Mehta has acknowledged Ray's influence on her own work in a number of interviews, but the question remains whether she is a mere follower. One of my favourite images from "Pather Panchali" is the reflection of the sweet-seller and the brother-sister duo in the water as they walk along the river bank. Mehta seems to have appropriated this imagery, especially in "Water" which, not unlike "Pather Panchali" tries to balance aesthetic/stylised cinematography with the sheer austerity of the widows' lives.

Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
The adolescent phase of Apu's life is also likely to resonate with film viewers the world over. His migration from the Bengali countryside to the buzzing city of Calcutta for higher studies and a wider horizon does not initially sit well with his widowed mother, but is a social-intellectual turning-point of sorts. One could argue that this is the archetypal "coming of age" film tale, and is mirrored in the self-discovery undergone by the characters of Radha in "Fire", Baby in "Earth" and Shakuntala in "Water". Also, the battle between the forces of home/tradition/stability and those of homelessness/modernity/instability is being inwardly and outwardly staged in both Ray's "Aparajito" and in all of Mehta's elemental films (notwithstanding the particluarities of their historical and geographical circumstances). One of the scenes in the film, however, that directly evoked the memory of "Water" in my mind was the image of the dying father who asks for water that Apu just about manages to get from the banks of the Ganga in Benares (Varanasi). In "Water" (also set in Benares), Chuyia does the same for the ailing Patiraji, but the elderly woman expires before the water arrives.

The World of Apu
Does this title imply that Apu, now an adult, has finally become "worldly"? The idealist that is university-educated Apu, is rather like the Gandhian Narayan of "Water" in that both young men are driven to the women they come to love by their unconventional (and somewhat naive) nobility and are in turn shattered by the untimely loss of this love. Another noteworthy parallel is that just as Apu and his son Kajal are "rescued" by each other towards the culmination of the trilogy, Narayan and Chuyia are arguably saved by each other at the end of "Water". Again, it would be tempting to typecast the Apu-Aparna and Narayan-Kalyani love sagas into a universal (read Eurocentric) typecast of tradition-defying romantic passion that climaxes tragically. While this may aid "identification" with the male and female protagonists, their specificties of time, place and cinematic treatment must be kept in mind. Whether by virtue of their own artistic limitations or due to flaws in the script, John Abraham and Lisa Ray as Narayan and Kalyani fail to achieve the emotional finesse of Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore as Apu and Aparna. At the same time, the attachment of the latter couple is moving precisely because of its middle-class everydayness, and is thereby different from the "grand" love of Romeo and Juliet.

Senses versus Intellect

Can I have both?
The intelligence of my emotions and
the sensuality of my intellect.
The word in the image as well as
the visual in the written.
Love film as much as I have been
passionate about literature.
Live in the ephemeral moment even as I look forward to
the retrospection of tomorrow.
Draw my lines of flight while giving them
the colours of light and shade.
Drive the wheels of cyclical pleasure
that pain must grease.

Refracting Adelaide

When this film, my debut cinematic project in more ways than one, won the inaugural 2007 Adelaide Festival of Short Film, my grandmother quizzed me over the sudden change in my career direction. She said she always though I'd be a journalist or a writer, and when I began my doctorate, she reconciled herself to the fact that she would have to be content to see her beloved grandaughter as an academic. When did filmmaking enter the picture? I would like to think of it as a culmination of my writerly, scholarly, creative, audio-visual and scientific interests. And therefore, I would be happy to receive any feedback on whether this rather unusual doco 'works' for you. Here's the link:

Refracting Adelaide_AdelaideNow

The Year of Living Dangerously (Dir. Peter Weir)

I watched this film because Mehta lists Weir as another one of her contemporary filmmaking influences. Made in 1982, before his more famous Hollywood productions of Dead Poet's Society, The Truman Show and Master and Commander, this film is alive with the rigours of overseas political journalism and the reprieve of unexpected relationships that I can see on the ABC's Foreign Correspondent even today. It was also comforting to see Mel Gibson in his pre-What Women Want and The Passion of the Christ days. As Guy Hamilton, a novice Australian journalist operating during the Sukarno era in Indonesian history, his character combines an idealism and opportunism that not many 'heroes' can pull off. His love interest, Sigourney Weaver, a British Embassy official, is also impressive in her amalgamation of feminine charm and astute emotional intelligence. But it is no surprise that Billy Kwan, a Chinese-Australian dwarf played by Linda Hunter won an Academy Award for her role. My post-colonial brain couldn't help but appreciate the effortless hybridity (and mariginalisation) of this quirky wo/man.