Change Your Image
chrismccloughen
Reviews
Street Food: USA (2022)
Amazingl food and wonderful people
Such a great series that I binged it all in one evening which is easy as each episode is only 30 minutes long. Street Food: USA, contains people who love food and who love selling and sharing their food with their communities. The food they make is like sermons of love that you eat to get the spiritual message of family, service, passion and identity. These are the culturally diverse people that make up the melting pot that is the USA. These are people who have become icons in their community because of their excellence and ability to hustle. Each episode focuses on a different US city, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, New Orleans, Oahu, and Miami. And this is food that I could almost smell and taste. And though I would try it all, and these are all great cities, Portland appeared to be the place of true invention and experimentation in presenting everything from Vegan dishes (like Vegan Pork Belly) to pork and beef BBQ. And while the food is all great, it is the stories of the different people involved in the food that makes this series magical.
Viewed on Netflix. Reviewed July 2022.
She Shears (2018)
Woman Sheep Shearers
She Shears, 2018, Documentary, 79 mins *****
Great New Zealand documentary on four women sharers who will compete in the 2018 Golden Shears competition in Masterton, New Zealand, alongside male competitors (there is no separate female competition). While more women are shearing, they are still a small minority, and it is a real privilege to hear these women's stories and to view their passion for shearing and wool handling.
Girl in a Mirror (2005)
Carol Jerrems - the complex artist.
Warning: Contains some spoilers.
This short documentary relates something of the life of Australian photographer, Carol Jerrems, who died aged 30 in 1980 from Budd-Chiari syndrome. Carol had obvious talent and photographed compelling black and white images of people in a style in tune with the period of the sexual revolution and women's liberation in the 1970's. She was a complex person who despite having a number of sexual relationships with men she knew and despite having photographed herself nude and semi-nude many times (including during her terminal illness), is described as somewhat closed off and distant from those who knew her.
Typically, of many artistically inclined people, she also struggled with depression but appears to have come to a state of acceptance about her life over her last months with her terminal illness. Carol also directed a short movie, Hanging About (1978), about rape and had herself been raped earlier in her life. The movie is directed with competence by Kathy Drayton who also wrote the script. Watching, Girl in the Mirror, reminded me of New Zealand photographer, Rebecca Swan who photographed herself while having cancer and treatment over 1991/92 and published a book entitled, The Big C. Swan survived her experience with cancer.
Gardening with Soul (2013)
A practical and spiritual life.
Filmed over four seasons at the Home of Compassion in Wellington, New Zealand, Gardening with Compassion, focuses on the life of ninety year old Sister Loyola Galvin, a nun in Mother Suzanne Aubert's Sister's of Compassion Roman Catholic religious order. Although having to get around on crutches or with cane at times, Sister Galvin enthusiastically tends to her gardening duties while extolling the importance of good compost and companion planting as she disperses pearls of wisdom and insights from her life. This is a simple but moving story of dedication and love from a woman who is both spiritual and practical, much as the founder of her order was. Technically, this is not the greatest cinematography that you will see, and I would have loved to have discovered more of Sister Loyola's interior spiritual life, but I respect her comment that such things can be difficult to put into words.
Pacific Rim (2013)
A Disappointment
Yes, Pacific Rim has great CGI and some of the fight scenes are good and then some are just plain stupid. A sword that finally appears towards the end of a battle? Why wasn't it used earlier? Some of the acting was poor, the script needed a lot more spit and polish, and mainly, it just needed more plausibility. Why would jet aircraft with stand off missiles that could be used miles away, or at least with cannons that could be used far enough away as too not be swatted by the monsters, have the need to fly so close to shoot bullets? Ludicrous, or had I fallen asleep by that time and missed any explanation offered to this!? A little more awful and Pacific Rim might have edged itself towards the, "its so bad its almost good sort of science fiction that becomes a cult hit". But no, it's firmly rooted in mediocrity and deserves to live out its rental days in the "Blah" section of the video store. I am a lover of science fiction, but not of this type of big budget nonsense. Rent if you must but please remove your faculty for reasoning first. You have been warned.