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For a Sydneysider The Golden Mile was always going to be the most appealing series of Underbelly. It covers 1988 through 1999, which, for a thirty year old, roughly corresponds to the time he might start paying attention to the news. The shooting of Lakemba Police Station or that year of kneecappings and other associated violence lingered the same way a hot summer does, leaving one reeling and with a template imprinted onto their brain against which all future summers are compared.
Entirety of Underbelly - The Golden Mile
Flying a Bombardier crunches in the sight of a small jet plane with quaint propellers on each wing necessary to lift a hulk of metal into the clouds. Not always the same sight as sound and that's the type of article found in the magazine sitting in back of the seat pockets along with the CRJ200 planes.
Entirety of SkyWest magazine from Go!
If you’ve read anything about The White Ribbon, perhaps in anticipation of the film, you would have come across the Q&A with director, Michael Haneke. In it, Haneke explains why he chose as a setting a village in Northern Germany prior to World War I. I will reprint it, because it is instructive in understanding this film.
Entirety of The White Ribbon
Living around people drip-feeding on welfare, you notice quick how much they waste away not just the money they inebriate themselves on, but the very fabric of the neighbourhood. Depression is a state of mind and they own premium bonds. Leaving is the only way to find a light, and you know they're not going to do it any time soon.
Entirety of Fish Tank
Brittle stuff the plastic, the wrapping that keeps a copy of Human Rights Defender through the post. Breaks apart at the mere touch, yanking it from the ranks to read through and through. It is, alack, from the era of 2007 and back, so time eats away enough to render the plastic a broken dream of dreams. And gloss breaks into the light.
Entirety of Human Rights Defender magazine
Now an old bickering couple squabbling over copyright and legacy, now the strength of connective tissue that is love between a man and a woman living out one's final days in a station master's home. Of course, that titular location (Astapovo station - Аста́пово) casts the last breath of Leo Tolstoy and this, an end stem biographic of the slice.
Entirety of The Last Station
In the early hours of the 30th June 1860 a small child was taken out of his cot unnoticed by his little sister and the household nursemaid that shared the room. He was found the next morning in an outside privy where he had been stabbed and where his throat had been slit so severely that his head was almost detached from his body. The doors and windows of the house had been locked from the inside suggesting that the killer was either one of the help or a family member.
On the 15th July 1860 Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher made his way to Road Hill House, directed there by Scotland Yard to solve this heinous crime.
Entirety of Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House
Breadcrumbs, dust and hair. Skin flakes too. Maybe even a dead roach or two. Hygiene is only as good as the blindness that envelops the dermis. Flood the keyboard with globs of honey (didn't anybody tell you to eat away from your computer?) and you're stuck with some StudlyCaps. And today's reading material, a literary magazine, looks to employ that titular backwardness.
Entirety of FreeXpresSion literary magazine
As with a lot of people, reading a book sogged in wet takes a toll on the whole. Way too friendly with each other, the fibres of the pages cling strong. Drip, let it dry and all is good again. And that's the feeling of reading Our Movie Year.
Entirety of American Splendor: Our Movie Year by Harvey Pekar
Spluttering up a mean dose of determination, the lungs give out as the back of the throat cakes over with a dusty and dry void. And the asthma strikes again. And there, in the wilds of Bolivia, Ernesto "Che" Guevara hacks up the resolve, fortitude and the sheer essence of convictions to lead himself down the path of a sequel that proves that there are few exceptions to the rule. The Bolivian uprising, not so wheezy hot.
Entirety of Che: Part Two: Guerrilla
Che: Part One is sandwiched between Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s first meeting with Fidel Castro in Mexico, in which Guevara joins the 26th of July Movement that eventually overthrows Batista’s government, and Guevara extracting a promise that he would be allowed to export the revolution to the rest of Latin America. This not only sets up the second part of this four-hour tour-de-force, it also gives an insight into the sort of person that Guevara was. After all, the notion of exporting a revolution to an entire continent, before having actually successfully achieved one of any kind is audacious to say the least.
Entirety of Che, Part One: The Argentine
When M. Gira toured through Australia earlier this year on the All Tomorrow’s Parties bill he played a few sideshows, including one at The Basement that I was fortunate enough to catch. At that show, Gira played some songs from We are Him. What was notable about the performance – aside from Gira’s booming vocals – was the simplicity of the arrangements. “Promise of Water,” for example, on the night, consisted solely of a shuffling guitar part and judiciously stamped feet.
Entirety of Angels of Light - We are Him
With the authorities steady ready with their glocks, out drops a magazine bearing two people shooting multi-coloured guns off into the left distance. PISTOL blares large and loud for the eyeballs to line a sight in quick fashion. "Do you like guns?" they ask. "No. It's found reading material. Nothing more."
Entirety of Australian Pistol Shooters' Bulletin
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