Elijah Cavanagh and Mikayla Graham, Hillbillies Cafe, Mount Tamborine
Like Justin Timberlake taking a turn to make movies and invest in MySpace, singer/songwriter Elijah Cavanagh, 19, has seen his creative interests progress from poetry into music video production.
"I started writing poetry, writing down what I felt at the time, when I was 12 or 13, and my step-brother Sam had a guitar and he showed me how to strum it, and I started singing what I'd written to that," says Elijah. "I was terrible. The guitar was terrible, my voice was terrible."
"The stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of color and women," said Viola Davis in her Screen Actors Guild Awards acceptance speech this week. "It's all of our burden, all of us."
Davis won the Best Actress award for playing Aibileen Clark in The Help, with fellow cast-member Octavia Spencer (Minny Jackson) winning Best Supporting Actress. The film, based on the book by Kathryn Stockett, is set in the 1960s and gives us the story of three women – two maids and young journalist Skeeter (Emma Stone) – on the domestic front of the Civil Rights movement.
The film also won the Best Cast Ensemble award and is expected to be a serious contender at the Academy Awards. Get a rundown on how the The Help was made via this report on The Hollywood Reporter or read our review of the film and book. Disconcertingly, the book's author, Kathryn Stockett, was sued by her brother's nanny on the grounds that her story bared too much likeness to her own character and caused her embarrassment. The lawsuit has caused division between Stockett and her brother.
Australia played host to the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards (AACTAs, formerly the Australian Film Institute Awards/AFIs) at the Sydney Opera House this week with Red Dog winning the Best Film award. While Red Dog was the highest grossing film in Australia last year, taking in $21.3 million at the box office, it was the sinister murder movie Snowtown, which made $1 million locally, that got the most accolades in the peer-voted awards. The Awards, which cover TV, too, have moved from December to coincide with the global awards season, making Australia "part of the global screen awards conversation".
Also at SMH, pieces on actors Vera Farmiga ("As I age, I want to see stories about women my own age; inspirational, illuminating stories. I'll develop them, I'll produce them, I'll direct them, I'll finance them, I'll distribute them if I have to") and Rachael Taylor("'Sometimes I think we just fill our lives with stuff so we don't really make any choice at all, which is certainly incredibly luxurious. This idea of how to choose the path that's right for you as a person is a very moving and complicated subject matter for a movie.'')
Frankie/Smith Journal creative director Lara Burke has compiled a cute list of Valentine's Day treats for the Etsy blog – a great way of extending the magazine's already impressive online community.
The second trailer for The Hunger Games is out. Based on the Suzanne Collins dystopian novel of the same name, the movie follows Katniss Everdeen as she enters the fight-to-the-death games.
Each Friday, Inside Out magazine will be posting a staff profile on its blog. First up is editorial coordinator and "problem solving queen" Rebecca Carlsen who says, "I truly believe that no one person is too busy or important to at least say “please”, “thank you” and “I’m sorry”." The March/April issue, which takes you inside the home of designer Marnie Skillings and introduces you to I Like Birds store opener Tamara Turnbull, is out now.
Some great articles care of The New Yorker include, 'What Facebook can sell' ("Facebook knows who’s getting engaged, and also who’s listening to pop music right now, and who read the Washington Post this morning. Your friends, and your advertisers, now know thousands and thousands of things about you that would have been private a few years ago"); 'J.D. Salinger's Spirit' ("All of the reckless clichés that are tossed around about him (“recluse,” “crank,” etc.) seem to be voiced by people who are bitter or enraged about their own frustrations"); and 'The Harder They Fall' ("For the audience [of ballet], shamefully, an onstage injury is not just a misfortune. It’s also an adventure, like something in a movie").
Still with ballet, The Australian Ballet company's 2012 repertoire includes Romeo and Juliet, which starts in Brisbane on March 23 and finishes in Perth October. "Love is a many-splendid thing – and in a corrupt world it blooms fast, burns bright and dies young."
Gold = John Clark and Brian Dawe's satirical take on "Warm and Fuzzy" media news. "Instead of analysing the news, Brian, and encouraging people to think very deeply about what's going on in their world, we're going to try to put people more in touch with how people feel... We're going to put people in touch with their feelings in a way that helps create a community." Also, back on the ABC next week: Q&A and Landline (2012 is the "Year of the Farmer").
Also the the ABC, episode nine of Nigella Kitchen is worth catching up on iView if you missed it. It takes in her favourite go-to flavours and contains such gems as, "Life without garlic would be unimaginable", and, "When I want almost instant choco-gratification, I turn to my everyday brownies." Love it. The lady certainly has a way with words.
Sydney journalist Sarah Ayoub has composed a beautiful reflection on her fledgling cross-cultural marriage, which was published in Sunday magazine this past weekend. Worth a read at her blog, The Aphrodite Chase.
"Literally" is the "much misused" word of the moment, reports author Ben Masters in a rollicking piece for The Guardian. "I'm no socio-linguist or cognitive-scientist, but I do like to float some hypotheses: maybe we're a generation that is scared of commitment, linguistically deferring reality with our false literallys and our compulsive "likes" and "sort ofs" and "kind of things" that make everything seem only tentative and approximate... Of course, we might just be lazy and imprecise users of language."
And, lastly, a mesmerising film by Sean Ohlenkamp of Type bookstore in Toronto, Canada care of Maggie Alderson, who is putting the finishing touches on her new book...
On Sunday, the women of our church hosted a meeting to decide what we might do in the community this year. A supper club was proposed. It will take place on the first Monday evening of each month, with each month taking a different theme – books, food, travel – with the view to swapping stories, recipes, reads, ideas.
The dynamic that existed in the room was interesting. We are all fond of each other, but we are very different in age, in life stage, in taste, in disposition, in experience and in opinions on matters political, domestic, career and relationship. Some of us are very close, others not so much. What links us together is a common cause: to share in the love we have for the Lord and the hope we have in Christ.
The feminist movement has had a similar purpose; a shared goal. Simply, equality for women.
Not long ago, Angela Schiffke, 31, and her husband, an English teacher, had itchy feet and thought of going overseas. Instead they thought an interstate move would do.
"We decided that going to Melbourne would be like being overseas," she says. "I'd been there once and loved it and had some friends down there, so we moved there for a year."
With Angela working in administration, the couple rented a tiny flat and Angela spent her spare time walking around the surrounding suburbs of Richmond, Fitzroy, Collingwood, North Melbourne and Brunswick.
"I loved Fraus Creperie in North Melbourne, Rose Street Artist Markets in Fitzroy, and shopping in Brunswick and on Smith Street and Flinders Lane in the city," she says.
Shuffling through a cupboard of stuff amidst a de-cluttering rampage these past holidays, I came across a box of wedding trinkets I had forgotten about, which rekindled many fond memories of sitting, office-bound, working out which stationery and music and sweets we would offer to our guests (at lunch time, of course!).
It is easy to lose sight of the purpose of marriage amidst the finalising of the minutest of details, much more how you might negotiate life together as a couple once you've wed, which doesn't always swing to the sound of a Van Morrison song.
Mezzanine Media's WHITE magazine is refreshingly helpful, and optimistic, as far as this matter is concerned, with the potential to reignite the spark in the most stagnant of partnerships as well as guiding engaged couples along the right path.
"We started the magazine after a few couples we know broke up within 12 months of marriage," says publisher Luke Burrell from his Newcastle base. "We used what we had in our hands to do something that would bring some positive and meaningful editorial into the wedding industry."
The opening lines of one my favourite books, Paper Towns by John Green, read, “The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us.”
I have lived my life in the belief that my so-called miracle will be more along the lines of terminal ear cancer than Nobel Prize winning. I have always had a fear that something terrible was going to happen to me. The first time (okay, and the second) that I visited the Eiffel Tower, I had a panic attack on the stairs because I believed they were going to collapse.
A year ago, Hannah Truscott was studying marketing at business college when she started researching current and past magazines. She was miffed by what she found.
"I was so upset at all the articles and pictures that it really made me think how it all impacts our youth and young people," she says. "I felt really encouraged to do something about it, so I met with some friends and we brainstormed some ideas, and it kept coming back to charity work and people making an impact using their gifts."
You are contemplating the black Nina Ricci top and skirt confection featured in the new Harper's BAZAAR and can barely contain your lust. You MUST have this outfit... you deserve it! It would complete you! But a pang of guilt rises up and threatens to steal this moment of material delight. Drats!
The last time you spent a fist full of cash on a designer ensemble such as that, you wound up selling it for $50 at the markets (or was that $30? You may have lied to yourself). Those dividends are no girl's friend. What to do to curb this cumbersome dilemma? And why the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that cannot be appeased with a cup of tea and a biccie?
By golly, it's your conscience. Old Jiminy Cricket is up to his old tricks, pulling you back towards the safety of sensible economic habits, which are all-too easily overcome by the persuasions of glossy magazines and a glimpse at what that girl over there (on a blog, out in town) is wearing.
Receiving an "ang pow" from my lovely aunt Dorothy.
By Julia Low
Just as the Christmas decorations around the houses and malls in Malaysia went down, up came a different kind of red, this time in celebration of Chinese New Year according to the Lunar calendar.
Also known as the Spring Festival, Chinese New Year means spring cleaning, heaps of yummy food, and more importantly, lots of family time.
The current torrent of rain drenching south-east Queensland will be particularly confronting for those members of the community for whom the January 2011 floods were more than a trivial inconvenience.
We were reminded of this with Frances Whiting's latest stunning piece of journalism, the sensitive and beautifully crafted 'Children of the Flood' for Qweekend. A senior journalist, much-loved columnist, former school teacher and new-ish Twitterer, Whiting took time out of her frenzied schedule on Friday (a day on which she takes part in 'The Verdict' first thing) to talk to GWAS about how her story evolved and her career in journalism...
GWAS: For starters, what is 'The Verdict'? Frances: It's a thing I do weekly for the Saturday Courier-Mail. There are three of us – Denis Atkins, Robert "Crash" Craddock and me, and they ask us about the main issues of the day and we have to give very short answers about what we think. It's quite tricky because it's often something I have no idea about, like cricket. It's a wide range of issues, some serious and some light-hearted.
How does your work week pan out, with your column for U on Sunday and features on Qweekend? I work three days a week at Qweekend – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – and that's devoted to feature writing and researching those features. Both the column and The Verdict I do from home. The Verdict is half an hour every Friday, but so I know what I'm talking about, I have to keep abreast of all the issues going on.
An assortment of goodies that found their way into the Girl With a Satchel postbox last week. Isn't it wonderful to receive personal notes and postcards (from Paris, no less) in the mailbox? I'm endeavouring to send more snail mail in 2012.
Readers, meet Betty, our new puppy. She's a little bit cute.
Djokovic won the tennis and promptly tore open his shirt, while a 31-year-old homeless man was murdered in St Kilda this morning; a sobering juxtaposition of current events that remind us it's a topsy-turvy world of victory and violence as we enter a new week.
Let's catch up: With the media focusing on the highs and the lows, we are quick to forget that for most of us there is a lot of mundane, challenging, humdrum in-between that goes on; the training, the studying, the research, the grocery buying... But it's those in-between days that count the most, because they add up to a totality of a life and strengthen us for the inevitable highs and lows. This week's agenda: Behind the scenes, there is a fair bit of thought that goes into correspondence (with God, contributors and readers), while pressing life matters (like a gaping hole in one's tooth) are also being attended to (as you do and I do, too). If GWAS is not up-to-date, then this is generally why, but we are slowly getting into the flow of things. The Word for the Week: "Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD." Psalm 27:13 Quote of the Week: "I worked hard and every time I stepped on the court ... it was like: 'Vika you know what, you have whatever, 40 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, to make a difference, to become somebody who you've never been before'. It was just self-belief." - Victoria Azarenka, winner of the Australian Open women's final. Dictionary.com word for the week: conciliate \kuhn-SIL-ee-eyt\, verb: 1. To overcome the distrust or hostility of; placate; win over; 2. To win or gain (goodwill, regard, or favor); 3. To make compatible; reconcile; 4. To become agreeable or reconciled.
"After an agreeable goal was settled upon, a sometimes laborious process of conciliation with God, she felt all was good and right in her soul. And could finally move on." Reading: 'Nigerian Christians on violence alert' @ The Australian.
Girl With a Satchel unpacks culture, faith, feminism and media in an effort to elucidate all that's good and right and true while dipping our toes into what's lovely, inspiring and praiseworthy, too. We don't always get it right but we have a duty to try. And we are always pleased to meet you.
