The screening of 'Nosferatu' at the Opera House was a huge disappointment for me. First of all, the preamble - a tardily compiled collection of clips from other vampire flicks - took the edge off my anticipation. And really, an audience comprised of cinephiles does not need to have the bleedin' obvious lectured to it. But what really bugged me was the band. It's timing was spot-on and it was beautifully rehearsed, but the music I thought was too loud, and worse, inappropriate. If Nosferatu is, as most people gathered would argue, a classic of the vampire/horror genre, surely it warranted a 'score' that reflected its intended mood. Instead we got snippets from Bonanza, Benny Hill, The Pink Panther and a hokey take on We'll Meet Again. Humour was most certainly not the filmmaker's intention, but the smart arsed, undergraduate musical 'wit' was encouraging us to laugh at his work. Mockery is indeed the curse of contemporary culture and its nabobs of hipness.
Have you ever seen the Italian film Love and Anarchy? It's very good, about this rural Anarchist who comes to Rome to shoot Mussolini and finds love, then gets clubbed to death by fascists.
Incidentally, you will all be pleased to hear I didn't get evicted today, the Residential Tenancy Tribunal threw out the landlord's complaint.