Note: If you’re here, you were connected with Perth’s Film and Television Institute at some point. The FTI in the form that we know it, is being wound up and some of its functions are being taken over by ScreenWest. This is my idiosyncratic tribute to the FTI as it was formerly. I’m not someone who plans things. Depending on how well you know me, you might be saying “Amen to that” right about now. There was no plan to have anything to do with filmmaking when my friends and I entered our first efforts in the WA Film and Video Festival almost 35 years ago (forerunner of the WASAs). We made experimental films on Super 8 movie film; in-camera editing, falling down sand dunes, raw meat and tomato sauce representing the terrible effects of our filmic violence.   Super-8 was the cheapest type of movie film. 8 millimetres in width. You could shoot two-and a-half to three-and-a-half minutes depending on your frames-per-second. We had no money, so shot “longer” at 18 fps. Our ti...

Esteban von Disco saw his first moonbow (a nighttime rainbow) whilst dog-sledding with his family across Alaska at age 1. “It transformed me from a baby, wasting time and precious resources, into a being of sheer wondrous potential. I saw the infinite and was unafraid.” Three decades later, in March 2017, he deploys GENERIC | LOGO on all platforms, in all markets, simultaneously, osmotically and with maximum humility. As he explains, “You’re in the middle of a forest fire and the sun goes nova. And you’re like – “I get it”. Von Disco conlangs at genius level. “Sun Tzu and the Buddha, they grok me, bruh.”  Indeed, they are very much the spiritual underwriters of the GENERIC | LOGO exemplar and IPO.  Think back to the normcore era when life was basic and artisanal insecticide was not yet a thing. “I had the year from Hell,” he says” My haircut guy dies. He’s crossing the street with my lunch time ramen, his Zimmer frame gets caught in a car bumper and BOOM!” GENER...

I visit my local cafe regularly. For the purposes of this post I shall call it Cafe Proximity . This place is ridiculously near by. How close is it? I occasionally think of walking to the slightly more distant cafe to give my pedometer something to do. But I don't. The nearer java-slinger plays a steady stream of Generation X hits like Spandau Ballet's "True" and (perhaps as a result) it is less busy and more in need of my custom.  The farther joint, which I will now dub Espresso Hipster , is going gangbusters. It is populated by young mums who have just fast-walked the entire suburb and parked their strollers three deep on the footpath outside. I can't be dealing with their kind of vigorous energy on a Sunday morning, nor do I wish to be the only person on the premises not wearing yoga pants. So I slump in a Cafe Proximity plastic chair and listen to the likes of Cold Chisel and Carly Simon whilst waiting for a small latte that will be delivered with a comp...

Today I learnt that Chronos is the ancient Greek god of Time. Not to be confused with Cronus the titan who fathered Zeus greatest of all the Greek gods. Neither are to be confused with Cronut the tasty but over-rated combination of a croissant and a donut invented in 2012. Chronos the god is sometimes represented as a three headed serpent. Cronus the titan used a sickle to castrate Uranus, god of the sky (I know!) And Cronut the baked confectionary just sits there looking enticing. The original Cronut is approximately 230g and 1330 calories. Sadly there is no record of either Cronos or Cronus ever enjoying a Cronut.

Not to be a downer or nothin', but between the overuse of anti-bacterial hand-santiser and the overuse of antibiotics making them less efficacious against bacteria, we're pretty much one-sneezing-guy-on-a-plane-ride-who-turns-out-to-be-patient-zero away from a Steven-Soderburgh's-CONTAGION-what-happened-to-the-top-of-Gwyneth's-skull? scenario. If I go first, you can have my 1977 Star Wars bubble gum cards.

If you're a Generation X-er like myself, you may remember the above headline as a parody of the slogan of a shampoo called Silkience.  The Science of Silkening Your Hair  was the promise with every bottle. I guess the name itself was a portmanteau word that shoved  silk  together with  science  in an unholy humentipeding of the two commonly used dictionary terms. The sharp-eyed amongst you will recognise humentipede  as a portmanteau neologism recently invented by me in the previous sentence. And yes, I have sewn together the word  human  and  centipede  and thus blatantly ripped off the rather repellent concept invented by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six for his series of  Human Centipede  movies. I come neither to praise Tom Six nor mention his work any further, I am here to discuss words and the writing of same.  The science of silkening one's hair sounds good. It is supposed to bring on though...

Reading Variety.com, I discovered that there is to be an Angry Birds movie , to be made by Sony and based on Rovio's popular game Angry Birds because that's what you wanted. Apparently the cast includes Jason Sudeikis he is playing as “Red,” head of the Flock . Also Josh Gad as speedy Chuck, Danny McBride as the volatile Bomb, Bill Hader as a pig, Maya Rudolph as Matilda, and Peter Dinklage as the Mighty Eagle. Other voice cast members include other comic actors including Kate McKinnon, Keegan-Michael Key, Tony Hale and Ike Barinholtz. Also them YouTube guys Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla). Why are we even talking about this? Because Sony first announced the cast to users of the Angry Birds app. Whoa! Yes, I know. The momentosity of this very special announcement was certainly not lost on Sony itself:  “With two and a half billion gamers around the world, Angry Birds is one of those brands that can drive massive fan engagement,” said Dwight Caines, p...

  I was tuned into INSIDE WEST COAST CUSTOMS last week because I have lost my remote control and therefore can only receive 7MATE on the Panasonic Viera.   For those not acquainted with Australian television, 7Mate is one of the free-to-air channels aimed specifically at men. I watch it quite a bit, especially those History channel shows like AMERICAN RESTORATION, PAWN STARS and AMERICAN PICKERS, but I tend to stay away from shows involving toothless swamp dwellers or excessive modding of internal combustion engines. My previous knowledge of West Coast Customs was based on their participation in MTV’s PIMP MY RIDE. Over four glorious seasons (2005-2008) West Coast Customs was the Californian car remodelling business vouchsafed with the task of ride pimping. In practice this meant some young student or minimum wage worker offered up their decrepit vehicle for a makeover. Some poor shmo whose Ford Focus was held together with epoxy and duct tape would be selected t...

Today I was at the Post Office at Dianella Plaza, which some of you know, incorrectly, as Dianella Centro when I espied SWAN DIAL 71! This mighty municipal sculpture is the work of Elwyn Hawthorn and Dr Guy Hamilton. Sadly, it sits unnoticed on what is more or less a traffic island, but according to the plaque it used to be the world's biggest sundial. In Dianella. In Perth's Northern Corridor. The heyday of SWAN DIAL 71 was, unsurprisingly in 1971 and we even have the pics to prove it. The State Library of WA has some great photographs of the opening of Dianella Plaza back in August 1971. Here is SWAN DIAL in its former glory.  When you're on the SLWA site hit the back button at the top left of the pic and suss out some of the other photographs. Among the delights you'll discover–a happenin' place for men's fashion called Shirt Inn International and roasting pork at a mere 55c per pound. Mr Trivia

No, Virginia, The He Man and She-Ra  Christmas Special (1985) is not on this year Hail Zeitgeisters, Obviously today is a day for family etc. what would you be doing watching the telly, eh?  However if you do wish to cast your eye over what’s on the free-to-air digital, you’ll find slim pickings. We’ve had a quick look and chosen some highlights also some “highlights” This selection is based on the Perth guide which will be similar to the guide in many capital cities, but there may be some regional differences. NATIVITY (2010) 9.16 AM-11.00 AM (ABC 1) Mr Maddens, a primary school teacher, is charged with producing the school's nativity play and competing against the posh rival school for the honour of 'best show in town'. Martin Freeman from THE OFFICE (UK) is the lead in what is a well-regarded family movie according to many on-line, although I thought this was awful when I saw it on Christmas Eve. Suss it out yourselves though when it is repeated today....

The Iced Vovo brand was registered in 1906. According to the Wikipedia stub, it’s “a wheat flour biscuit topped with a strip of pink fondant either side of a strip of raspberry jam and sprinkled with coconut. It is a product of the American-owned Australian-based biscuit company Arnott's. When I was a kid, before your fancy Melting Moments and Triple Choc Chip cookies became de rigeur ; before we developed the American habit of buying cookie dough; before you could purchase a dozen huge, soft cookies for a couple of bucks at Coles, we had a thing called the biscuit. Fancy biscuits were in short supply. You could always find a Nice or a Granita or a Milk Arrowroot. These were okay. They were the solid mainstay of the bikkie tin; the Chips Rafferty, the EH Holden, the rotary Hills Hoist of Australian biscuitry. Their ready availability was the result of your canny mother's foresight. She would supply the average ones and only bring out the good ones when absolutely necessa...

Apparently Pope Benedict XVI has just got himself a Twitter account and he will begin tweeting on December 12th. Lapsed Twitterers are almost as numerous as lapsed Catholics, so the Pontiff will be on familiar ground. I've done the Twitter thing and I worry that within a week Pope Benedict will be reduced to commenting on the "awesome latte" he just had. His Holiness will be known as @pontifex. If you're really interested in getting in on the social media wisdom of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, then his people have thoughtfully arranged a hashtag #askpontifex for your convenience.  If you do a Twitter search to see how this is working out (and I recommend you do) you'll see the types of questions are either from those angry at the Church and who see Twitter as a forum for confrontation or from ironists like @Judes_Dickey who asked: "Is Theology the study of Malcolm-Jamal Warner's work on The Cosby Show? # askpontifex."  Why not ask Benedict XVI ...

I was cruising the Internets this morning looking for a pair of portable headphones. And I discovered a couple of things. Apparently a common Google question is, "Can I use my headphones for a microphone?" Apparently you can. You can also use pliers for a hammer and you can employ Microsoft Surface as a cutting board if you wish, but would you?  I then looked for "May I use my headpho nes for a microphon e?" a nd found nothing . The discourtesy of this younger generation continues to disturb . The second thing I discovered was even more ephemeral, but you're reading Mr Trivia's Tract, not Mr Crucial's Manifesto and this kind of nonsense is why we are here. I saw a pair of clip-on 'over-ear' headphones and wondered if they were any better than the last time I tried them about ten years ago. There followed the fairly nonsensical 3 am thought - I wonder if I can find a picture of someone using a pair of clip on headphones and looking as thoug...

  --> In the Man Booker prize winning LIFE OF PI (now made into a major motion picture by Ang Lee) there is a tiger in a lifeboat. The tiger is called Richard Parker. According to the Internets, in his book THE LIFE OF PI, author Yann Martel has the tiger misnamed Richard Parker as the result of a mix up. The hunter responsible for capturing the tiger is called Richard Parker. Sure, that may sound like sitcom nonsense to you and me, the sort of thing that might have happened on Gilligan’s Island, but it’s actually part of a Man Booker award-winning novel, dude, so it must be hell plausible and well written. Anyway, I find the name of the tiger instantaneously annoying, Neither Richard nor Parker is a good tiger name and when said jointly, the irritation factor is extremely high. If the tiger is referred to as Richard Parker every time, then this conceit has the quality of a small child saying a phrase over and over, just for the sound of it, all meaning having been...