Scriffles: The Asia Pacific Triennial's tactile installation is great fun. At Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art until April.

<p>Scriffles: Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery is heaps of fun for kids & grown-ups to share. from Lisa Yallamas on Vimeo.</p>

Who knew that string hung from the ceiling could be so fascinating?
For me, it's the best piece at the Queensland Art Gallery's Asia Pacific Triennial which continues until April and is only in Brisbane: http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/apt

Scriffles: Law Abiding Citizen. *****

Basically, it's a time bomb from the opening home invasion scene. Law Abiding Citizen will have you on edge the whole time. 
The movie starts with a father and a daughter and ends with a father and a daughter - it's a tough lesson for a lawyer who's preoccupied with his courtroom win rate.

The whole audience jumped at the midway point - it's an outta your skin experience just like the Alien jumping out of the chest scene in Alien. 
I didn't expect anything so abrasive since I really can't take Gerard Butler seriously - but he's seriously good. 
Together with a great script, his performance makes this a gem of a thriller - if you can stand the heat.

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He's so believable he's scary - no sign of the smug romantic comedy leading man from (The Ugly Truth) though he does show his pecks and his gluts off in one scene - which until now seemed to be his greatest assets. He plays the innocent father-husband plunged into Hell by the murder of his family. 

He's waging war against the hypocricy of the "good guys" who are too busy upholding the law rather than seeking justice - they're all in it for themselves and people like him just fall between the cracks.
Maybe that's why this is seriously intense because it has two protagonists and neither of them fit the archetypal villain.
The helpless authorities - like the warden - come the closest to villains. 

It is a well-told and extremely well executed story that would have been a Marvel cartoon if not for a masterful script and great performances - you're on a journey with a mysterious destination.
Nothing is clear cut. The red herrings work. 

Director F. Gary Gray has Black Film Awards for The Negotiator and Set It Off - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0336620/awards

Brian Helgeland (who wrote Philip Noyce's next flick Salt starring Angelina Jolie, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and the award-winning Mystic River) co-wrote this with Kurt Wimmer whose credits include The Recruit (Al Pacino and Colin Farrell) and Ultraviolet.

Only one criticism: why spoil Jamie Foxx's best line at the end by using it as a throwaway joke for a minor character in a previous scene? We get it.
This is not a movie that panders to audience expectations with macho lines - like Avatar does.
I  went because I thought it was a thriller but this crosses over into horror.
Rarely do I cover my eyes. I covered my eyes. Most of the violence is implied but that makes it even worse - if you're a person with an imagination. 
People who like stuff like Saw will probably think it's tame.

Scriffles: Harmony Red. Dreams Purple. Cough comedy!

I didn't make any New Year resolutions. I chose themes and colours. I chose Red for Harmony and Purple for Dreams. I've been sick ever since. Excuse me while I cough my lungs up ... it only happens at night. 

January: coughing keeps me up nights and not just any coughing.
It's wake up with blocked windpipe, gagging, choking, I can't even breathe kind of coughing.

February: still coughing.
Been to the doctors twice and she says it's sinus and indigestion.
Can't think why it'd be indigestion. Never had problems with either.

Today someone (who's not a doctor) tells me sinus and nasal passages is where you get anaerobic bacteria - no oxygen required.
Great they don't need oxygen but I do so they kill the host and die??

Just looked it up on Wikipedia: Some produce toxins highly noxious to HUMANS:
Eg: tetanus and botulinum.
Certainly feels like I'm being poisoned! I have suspects! º¡º

That would be my luck!
Half the known world is injecting itself with Botox with no side effects.
I, on the other hand, think it's lunacy injecting Botulism into my face for vanity's sake!
What do I do? I find another way of catching it - IN AUSTRALIA !!! ?????
This internet self-diagnosis really puts your mind at rest - doesn't it?

I'm in harmony with a bug.
And a one, and a two and a... cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, GAG, GAG; Gag, Gag!

Perforation of the bowel?
Even better!

Wait till I see that doctor again!
I wonder if it's PURPLE? Cause I certainly ain't dreaming at night.

Scriffles: Branded entertainment.

Been wondering whether branded entertainment is a good thing for ethical projects.

McDonalds is worried about the methane cows fart into the atmosphere ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/corporatesocialresponsibility

Now Pepsi want to fund worthy projects:

Is it the wolf in sheep's clothing?

Is it possible to use "evil" power for good?

I sat in a food hall at a huge shopping mall today and looked at the people swallowing it down without question.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

It may be the only way to reach these people.

Scriffles: Life's a nursery rhyme for an urban lizard. Ol' King Cole's Melon.

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Old King Cole lives at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
From the borderlands (ankle-high scrubby garden), an urban reptile scopes the cement plains inhabited by giants. Splat.
"Watermelon!" He whips under the coffee table to suck the juicy morsel. But he blows his cover.
He snatches up his prize and scampers away - gotta be easier than catching flies.
Life's a nursery rhyme for the urban reptile.

Scriffles: Almost through my schoolbook poetry out.

In a war against dust and clutter I've chucked stuff out - including books.
Who needs books! Who reads books! Who reads poetry?
But that stupid high school poetry book - I stuck back on the shelf.
Not just one copy, no, I have TWO!
Must've rescued a copy that someone else in the family was going to chuck.

I am the family repository of photographs, memorabilia etc
They tell me to throw it out - I keep it.
Why must I be so sentimental and emotional?
I have no choice in this matter but my clean-up was partly a rebellion against myself.

Your point of view changes as you move through life.
At 17, or 24, or 30, lots of things are just things.
And they ARE just things.
Words are just things.

Something turned up on Twitter made me think of a poem I adored in high school.
It spoke of a beauty free of space and time.
This quote inspired a decade of my working life - I inscribed it on diaries, address books, and a painting.
"Beauty free of space and time" - this was my life's goal when I started out.
Funny that!

I called a painting I did once Beauty free of Space and Time.
I don't think anyone else saw in it what I saw.
I kept it.
Once I could gaze endless at it.
I saw this company of dazzling Russian dancers.
Painting a small photograph out of the programme let me hang onto that moment of joy.
But today it's just a ghostly thing.
I'd forgotten what I once passionately believed in.
What is beauty free of space and time?

Perceptions ... sights, sounds, touch, smell ...
lead to
Reactions, expressions, words, silences ...
....
...
.
English poet Clive Sansom talks about a grand design in this poem, The Spirit of the Cathedral.
Now, I've never believed that our lives are laid out by a grand design.
Perhaps I've even tried to prove this poem wrong.
By steadfastly pursuing something that truly is beyond me I've proved him right.
There is a grand design, an immaculate pattern, the repository of perfection.
Everything in its perfect place.

"The artist gropes to find. But being
Artist he must grope, must mould
Within his mouldering hands a symbol
Of that perfection - loveliness dissolving
Even as it leaves his touch, but telling
For a space of time, of beauty free
Of space and time. And beholders know
The shadow's substance, the divine matrix
From which this image came."

Even though I eventually forgot these words, the idea had taken root in my very being.
Maybe it was always there.
If you want to read the whole poem, here it is:

The Spirit of the Cathedral
by Clive Sansom b 1912 England.

Whatever is beautiful, whatever rouses
The heart from its complacent sleep, says
"Man, you are more than man, more
Than a repository of birth and death" - such beauty,
Before the creative chisel of the mind
Shaped it in stone or word, music
Or colour, lay in the Imagination's eye,
The retina of God.

They know, who see it, that a world exists
Behind the world, where the thought, the Idea
Of beauty, independent of its earthly form,
Lives in perfection - an eternal realm
Which holds the immaculate pattern fast
The artist gropes to find. But being
Artist he must grope, must mould
Within his mouldering hands a symbol
Of that perfection - loveliness dissolving
Even as it leaves his touch, but telling
For a space of time, of beauty free
Of space and time. And beholders know
The shadow's substance, the divine matrix
From which this image came.

So with the Cathedral. Before it laid
Its pressure on the clay, enclosed the moving
Air with arches, or threw its spire
Upon the mercy of the wind - already in that other
Kingdom stood the great archetype,
Supreme and perfect, waiting only
The man to see, the will to fashion
Its mortal replica.

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Now what amazes me most about this is that it informs all the work I've done for the past five years writing a children's book.
Almost 10,000 words about a grand design.
Never would even have found this connection unless Gary Tan hadn't blogged about building a cathedral.
And certainly wouldn't have connected the dots if I'd thrown this book out because I can't find it on the internet.

*** *** ***