Heritage listing for Valley historic building

PROPERTY News

One of Queensland's first child health clinics, located in the Fortitude Valley, has become the first building of its type to be entered in the Queensland Heritage Register.

Queensland Heritage Council (QHC) Deputy Chair Chris Buckley said the Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was constructed on Alfred Street in 1923 as a baby clinic and maternity and infant nurse training centre. “In the early 20th century there was a high infant mortality rate due to disease and mismanagement and women's organisations were lobbying for the establishment of baby clinics," Mr Buckley said.
“The Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was purpose-built following the introduction of the Maternity Act 1922, which was part of a national and international movement to improve the health of mothers and babies.
“Public health and social reform was implicit in the growth of the town planning movement,” he said.
“The Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre was the first training centre for maternal and child welfare nurses in the state.
“The centre was also the headquarters and administration centre for all other Queensland baby clinics, operated as one of the first baby clinics, and provided accommodation for mothers.” Mr Buckley said in 1925-26, the Fortitude Valley Child Health Centre had the highest number of attendances and visits to newborns compared with other clinics in operation throughout Brisbane.
“By July 1927, the number of patients attending the clinic for treatment had increased and accommodation was insufficient.
“The centre was expanded in 1929 to include ante-natal care and during the 1930s the accommodation at the clinic was regularly overtaxed.
“A large clinic was planned for South Brisbane at the time but was never built. “In 1938, a 4.5m wide two-storey extension with a basement was added to the Alfred Street building, adding many new rooms and additional space.”
Mr Buckley said the centre was a good example of an interwar Queensland Department of Public Works institutional building characterised by good quality design and materials.
“The centre remains as one of the two operational child health clinics from a group of 13 built across Queensland between 1923 and 1930.
“It is significant for being highly intact and, as of 2011, having been in continuous use as a child health centre,” he said.
The building was identified as part of the statewide heritage survey, being carried out by the Department of Environment and Resource Management's Heritage Branch. The Queensland Heritage Council is the state’s independent advisor on heritage matters and determines what places are entered in the Queensland Heritage Register.

Places that are entered in the Heritage Register are considered of importance to Queensland's history and are protected under heritage legislation.

Views sought on backflow devices

NEWS

City council will hold a series of public meetings to discuss whether backflow devices are needed to help prevent a repeat of January’s damaging floods.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the sessions were being run as part of an investigation into the feasibility of backflow devices in flood-affected areas of Brisbane being undertaken for council by engineering firm Max Winders & Associates. Cr Quirk said the main aim of the sessions was to give residents the opportunity to provide their views on whether backflow devices were needed in certain areas of Brisbane.
He said as that while the sessions were being held in specific flood-affected suburbs, any resident from any suburb in Brisbane could attend to provide their views.
“Backflow devices are a tricky subject because in certain circumstances they can actually make flooding worse, particularly if they are not maintained religiously," Cr Quirk said.
“That said, this administration is committed to mitigating the impacts of flooding on this city as best we can, which is why we're out there doing this study and asking residents where and how they think backflow devices might work in Brisbane.” Cr Quirk said the sessions were scheduled to be “drop in” sessions, meaning residents could turn up at any time within the three hour window to discuss their ideas.

The meetings are at: • Riverside Receptions 50 Oxlade Dr New Farm Saturday 3 September 1pm to 4pm Thursday 15 September 6pm to 9pm
• Mercure Hotel 85-87 North Quay Brisbane CBD Wednesday 7 September 4:30pm to 7:30pm Tuesday 13 September 4:30pm to 7:30pm
• Milton State School Bayswater Rd Milton Saturday 10 September 1pm to 4:pm Wednesday 14 September 6pm - 9pm

Give our Valley a break!

OUR SAY

Fortitude Valley is home of a number of organisations that help the homeless, the needy and indeed the afflicted, and there’s nothing wrong in that at all. They are services the precinct should be proud of.

But it’s also a vital part of town trying its hardest to develop a strong day-time retail economy to go with its image as a fun destination for music lovers at nights and weekends. So unless City News can point to a real problem that needs to be addressed, its report last week – especially given its prominence and total lack of balance – besmirches the Valley’s image at a time when local traders to trying their best to make a bob in hard times.
We can all be compassionate – but should the interests of these traders going about their lawful business and trying to make a living take second place to people who are risking their own lives doing something illegal? 
An article that gives potential customers the impression that the Valley is a place to be avoided is simply bad news for those businesses. The City News article quotes a Sydney-based injecting room supporter and director of the alcohol and drug service at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital Dr Alex Wodak as saying the Valley has two to three drug overdoes a week that require ambulance callouts and “a lot of these people will die”.
Averaging that out at 2.5 a week means 125 a year, and he’s saying “a lot” of these will die! We respect his expertise but it’s a big call from a long way away. The Indie will seek police statistics on the issue and report back next edition.
Our local pollies think the scenario painted in the story – that street injecting is now at a level where safe injecting rooms are needed – is simply wrong. And in the absence of any real evidence to the contrary, we agree with them. And we believe that the unanimous attitude of the limited number of traders we spoke to would be endorsed by many; many more. Injecting rooms? No!
Sadly, City News has form in tarnishing the Valley’s image. In years past they’ve collaborated with The Courier Mail’s Punch Drunk campaign to portray the Valley as a dangerous place to visit – a place where you’re likely to be king hit at best; glassed at worse.
We thought some of the stories were beatups then, and The Indie at the time ran a story from a top Valley cop worried that such articles highlighting glassings and other violence did more harm than good.
With this latest assault by Quest Newspapers on the Valley’s image, spare a thought for Winnings Appliances, the company that has invested well over $4 million on its recently opened outlet in the Valley heart. Or the developers behind the Melba residential project in nearby Wickham Street, where work on 112 boutique apartments has begun. Our bet is that neither of those company’s research before opting for the Valley heart for their projects suggested an area plagued with a level of street drug injecting that called for safe injecting rooms?
And our guess is that they would be pretty upset over an article that suggests that anyone making a trip to the Valley stands a very real risk of seeing that illegal street drug injecting first hand, or even standing on one of their used syringes, for that matter.

Not the messiah; she’s just a naughty girl

FEDERAL POLITICS ... with Mungo MacCallum

Two weeks of parliamentary recess, and the general view is that the government must be pitifully grateful for the relief. But this is not necessarily the case.

Despite Tony Abbott’s assurance that the row over Craig Thomson (for which the Opposition is almost entirely responsible) has paralysed the government, in fact the legislation has been getting through; 22 bills in the last fortnight, bringing the total to an impressive 185 for the year.
Julia Gillard needs the parliament; in the current poisonous atmosphere, delivering the goods is her only hope of appearing positive. It is also the only place she can show what the electorate increasingly sees as her best features, her courage and persistence. Without it, there will be something of a vacuum; backbenchers will return to their electorates to be assailed with questions and complaints about Thomson and the media will become a breeding ground for yet more leadership speculation.
At the weekend the independent Andrew Wilkie gave it a kick start by opining that we might see new leaders as soon as May next year; this should not be a real news story, he added hastily, and it isn't; but nor will the speculation go unnoticed. While the Labor Party has not yet succumbed to the despair which the Murdoch press regards as its due, a faint murmuring can be heard among the understandably nervous nellies on the backbench that it might just be time to be starting to consider a plan B.
It has become something of a chicken and egg question: with the party vote and the leader's standing equally on the nose, are they both irretrievable or is one dragging the other down? And if so which? And in the circumstances would a change of leadership make any difference? On the face of it, the move would be suicidal. There is still a substantial Rudd rump festering in the party room; to add a Gillard rump would risk open and bitter divisiveness.
Moreover, it would confirm the already substantial impression of a party desperate for survival and without any sense of purpose and direction. And most importantly, it could undo Gillard's pact with the independents, who have pointed out that their deal was to support a Gillard government, not just any old Labor government.
Better to hang on and hope for a miracle - after all, if there are no serious accidents (which in the wake of the Thomson affair may be an overly-optimistic assumption) there is still two years to go. But, say the doubters, that is precisely the point.
Two years is a bloody long time - more than long enough for the voters to forget all the current kerfuffle and embrace yet another new Messiah. Gillard is doomed; the people have stopped listening to her and if they do hear anything she says, they don't believe it.
The unrelenting hostility from the miners, the clubs and pubs, small business, the farmers and of course the shock jocks and Murdoch press is aimed directly at her: Juliar, Brown's bitch. A new leader would not be greeted by these groups with joy and delight, but at least he - it would inevitably be a he - would not be carrying quite as much baggage.
But even if this line of argument were to be accepted by the caucus - and there is no sign of that happening at present - the problem remains: finding the new Messiah. Kevin Rudd is the voters' choice, but absolutely unacceptable to the powerbrokers who killed him off once and would blow up the party rather than have him back.
The deputy, Wayne Swan, is totally identified with the Gillard government and in any case is too boring. Defence Minister Stephen Smith has been mentioned as a relatively unknown cleanskin, but is hardly the man to excite the imagination of millions.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet is competent and convincing but tied to the unpopular carbon tax. Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten is a down to earth figure who has had a moment in the sun with the disability proposals but is still remembered as one of the faceless men from 2010.
And this is the catch 22: all of the above were apparatchiks - party officials or union bosses, precisely the people most to blame for the Labor Party's decline as an inclusive, open political movement.
This may be an unfair assessment of the individuals involved but nonetheless it is the public perception; they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. And, given that the same stricture applies to more than half the caucus, it would seem that any real improvement in Labor's fortunes will have to involve change starting from the bottom, not the top.
Let's face it, there is no plan B. For better or worse, Labor is stuck with Gillard, so the nervous Nellies had better just stick up for her. But Wilkie was talking about leaders, plural; is there any real threat to the smashing, bashing, crashing Tony Abbott? Well, obviously not immediately; with the polls the way they are he will cruise into government without having to consider what Tony Windsor claimed he threatened as the ultimate sacrifice: selling his arse.
But the same polls indicate that the voters will elect him with considerable reluctance: a clear majority neither like nor trust him. And it should not be forgotten that he gained the leadership by just one vote, and a lot of those who didn't want him back then have not changed their minds.
If he can get them back on the Treasury benches, that's terrific, but it doesn't end there; having done the job he was selected to do, he might find his use-by date approaching more quickly than he thought.
And the irony of all this, of course, is that if there were to be a popular vote for Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull would be a shoo in. Abbott will always have lurking behind him the real Messiah, slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born.

On yer bike for a Bali good time

TRAVEL ... with David Bray

Downhill all the way. It’s the way to go when you’re part of a genuinely good day tour in Bali. Now travel writers for the glossy mags and the metropolitan dailies tend not to do tours. Don’t have to, because their hosts whiz them around in time-efficient luxury. Your reporter had some years of such junketing and saw quite a lot.

Once the freebie phase was over, it was back to Gray Line and suchlike, and it must be said they almost always proved to be enjoyable, informative and fair value for money. One such expedition not so long ago provided all of the above and a bit more. A bicycle tour without the need to ride a bike.
We see an advertisement in a tour shop as we pick our way with considerable care along the atrocious footpaths of Ubud. The brochure offered an eco/cycling day tour, down hill, suitable all ages. Just the thing, at a mere 350,000 rupiah each. Say $4.
Around 7.30 next morning Wayan picks us up at our accommodation in an air-conditioned van and we drive around town picking up others until there are seven of us, including a couple of fit-looking young men.
An hour’s drive takes us up into the cool, green hills for a nice enough breakfast at Kintamani overlooking Lake Batur and lava leavings from historic volcanic eruptions. It’s a pleasant place, good view, nice people. Next to a farm to learn what grows well here in the tropics. We are familiar with many plants. Guide Wayan (aren’t they all so named?) is a first rate teacher, well informed and with good English.
We know now that the Balinese can’t do without BBC _ bananas, bamboo, coconut. We get to sample some of the drinks. Wayan must have been looking us over, because he asks, politely: “”Mr and Mrs Bray, how long since you rode a bicycle?’’ Many years, mate. Let’s see how we find things. So soon we pick up the bikes, and helmets. They’re excellent machines, but after some surprisingly strenuous cycling around the flat ground, Mr and Mrs B accept the offer to ride the course in the comfort of the van. The five fit ones roll off and it must be said all of them make it to the finish, back in Ubud, 25 kilometres on, almost all of it downhill and on quite roads.
They, and we, visit a Balinese family who make their living from a bamboo plantation. Almost every member of the family has something to do, even granny who is weaving a mat. We learn a little about the family/social system, and later at a temple stop, discover some of the basics of the Hindu belief system.
At one stage we pull off the road to enjoy a passing colourful procession of villagers on their way to prepare for their new year celebrations. Lunch is well into the afternoon, a brilliant meal set out in a pleasant pagoda-style building surrounded by lush green rice fields.
We feel very relaxed and pleased with the whole expedition and are interested to hear the women who made the ride say they had been so busy avoiding dogs and traffic that they had not really been able to take much notice of what was around them. The blokes, more experienced cyclists, had no such complaints. For some reason none of us could be bothered doing the last bit of the tour, Monkey Forest. Nasty, greedy, thieving little wretches.
As for us, we couldn’t be more content with the day.

GETTING THERE

There are plenty of direct flights between Brisbane and Bali. Bus services and taxis run Denpasar to Ubud. Resorts and hotels arrange transfers and tour bookings. Since our effort there has been a remarkable rise in the number of cycle tours on offer in the area. Expect to pay $35 to $45. Plenty of choice on the internet.

Do as we say ... not as we do

FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick

Three years ago a colleague registered a business name with the state government's Office of Fair Trading for a hobby-based enterprise he wanted to develop. The registration period of three years expired in mid-June, so in May he sent off a cheque to keep the name for a further three years.

But months later, no receipt or acknowledgement of having received the payment had been sent to him by the OFT people. So, he checked his bank statements and found the cheque had been cashed in early June.
So, last week he dropped into the state government's service centre in the CBD to ask if his payment had been recorded and to make sure his business name was still registered. A few clicks of the keyboard by the very helpful woman behind the counter soon turned up the fact that his payment had indeed been received by the OFT.
"But I didn't get a receipt or a new certificate saying the name had been registered for another three years," he stated. The very helpful woman's response stunned him. "Oh, the OFT doesn't send receipts or new certificates," she informed him.
Well this was odd news to my colleague, given the OFT is the agency overseeing consumer rights in our state. Plus, a quick glance at its website reveals the following advice: "Businesses must supply you with proof of transaction (a receipt) for goods or services valued at $75 or more. Examples include a GST tax invoice, a cash register receipt or a receipt number provided for a telephone or internet transaction."
It goes onto say if they do not, you have the right to ask and receive one within certain time frames. My colleague had paid more than $200 to renew his business name, so he felt that perhaps the body giving such advice might actually follow it and issue receipts or renewal certificates when they are paid for.

***

Remember Tony Blair? He was British Labour Party PM for a decade from 1997 and will be remembered mostly as a compliant performing poodle to former US president and failed military strategist George W Bush.

Now as an unconvicted war criminal, Blair spends his time globetrotting and being paid lots of money to make unrevealing speeches to big rooms full of big wallets. He is also paid as a Middle East peace envoy, and his and Bush's record in Iraq must have been overlooked on his CV when they chose him for that one.
Anyway, enough of my spleen. Blair was in Sydney recently giving one of his fatuous, self-serving speeches to an audience that included one of our former PM's, Bob Hawke.
In his speech Blair made reference to a remark made at the lunch table by Hawke, now almost 82. Apparently Blair had asked Hawke what kept him looking so fit. "Sex," the Silver Bodgie replied, according to Blair. Pleeeeeeeease Bob. Too much information.
Having of late regularly been subjected to sights of Hawke puckering up to much, much younger women when on the campaign trail in the past year at the federal and NSW polls. One thing we do not need to live with is the image of Hawkie and Blanche in the throes of passion.
Hawke was once regarded as a sex symbol, especially in his younger, hard-drinking years. From all reports his reputation as a ladies' man was well deserved. But at 80-plus it is perhaps time for him to call in quits on that image, don't you?

***

This column has previously complained about the high cost of those microscopic ink cartridges used in home printers. Recently my latest printer ran out of ink in three of its four cartridges.

So, lucky me, there was a generic brand of cartridges in my cupboard that were purchased for when my brand-name ink cartridges ran dry. Well, it was a good plan to start with.
What I had not counted on was the sneakiness of IT hardware makers these day, especially those peddling printers that cost less than $100 but whose brand-name ink cartridges cost almost as much to replace.
You see, the current brand of printer sitting on my home desk has little electronic chips on each of its cartridges. They tell the printer that the right brand of cartridge (ie: the really expensive ones made by the people who make the cheap printer) are installed.
On opening the box of generic cartridges, which incidentally cost around $60 compared with almost $100 for the brand-name ones, it at first seemed this problem had been foreseen. The generic cartridges came with a little plastic tool for prising off the chips from the brand-name ones, plus instructions on how to do the job, and a little plastic glove to use when doing it.
Well it worked a treat until the printer went on strike and refused to recognise what it clearly thought were imposter cartridges. So not only did I spend $60 on the unusable generic cartridges, the next day saw me visiting the stationery store again and forking out close to $100 with little change for brand-name cartridges.
Technology – and those who profit from it – wins again.

Star signs

With Horace Cope


VIRGO (Aug 24 to Sept 23)
Just when you thought the Gillard Government’s stocks could not possibly get any lower, you read that it’s given Peter Beattie a job.

LIBRA (Sept 24 to Oct 23)
But you do recognise Beattie’s outstanding expertise in manufacturing ... as in having Labor governments manufacture jobs for him on the public purse rather than have him find his own, like the rest of us.

SCORPIO (Oct 24 to Nov 22)
You wonder whether Queensland Rail has ever thought of getting someone to spray images of railway carriages over the top of trackside graffiti.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 23 to Dec 22)
And given the number of times CityRail trains are delayed or services cancelled because of a single incident throwing the suburban network into chaos, you also wonder if QR has ever thought of concreting all their lines and just running buses.

CAPRICORN (Dec 23 to Jan 20)
That Dagwood dog you consumed at the Ekka is still repeating on you – which is quite worrying seeing you ate it at the 2009 show.

AQUARIUS (Jan 21 to Feb 19)
You suspect the news that former Health Services Union official Craig Thomson spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars at a single fancy meal sitting has union officials all over Australia shaking their heads in belief.

PISCES (Feb 20 to Mar 20)
On that subject you wonder why no national media has labelled the Craig Thomson controversy “Rootgate”.

ARIES (Mar 21 to Apr 20)
You ring all four of the Channel 9 staff who lost their jobs over the “Choppergate” incident just to commiserate with them and your whizz-bang new smart phone pinpoints all of their locations as “near Beerwah”.

TAURUS (Apr 21 to May 20)
You are shocked to hear that last night’s Channel 9 news footage purporting to be a live cross to a reporter covering a fierce firefight in central Tripoli was actually shot in a suburban street selected at random in Sydney’s west.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 21)
And vision that the station claimed was of the scattered bodies of Gaddafi loyalists lying in the forecourt of his Bab Al-Aziziya compound was actually file footage of Cavill Avenue, Gold Coast, after venue closing time on no particular Friday night.

CANCER (June 22 to July 23)
You strike upon a great new idea to cut your Christmas bills by telling the kids Santa has been intercepted on his way to Australia and sent to a refugee camp in Malaysia.

LEO (July 24 to Aug 23) Which prompts you to ponder the question, if there are refugees are there also refugers?

Fair dinkum Spanish style offerings

WINE .... with David Bray

Spanish food is in favour in the restaurant business right now so it is timely that the wine industry in Queensland can match the trend with wines made by Argentine-born and Spanish-trained Paola Cabezas Rhymer.

Winemaker for the Summit Estate, she knows what she wants and she is getting it. After nine years in charge of vineyard and winery, recognition of the quality of the work and that of her team has begun to roll in. It is European-style winemaking, and it can be a revelation.
Most recently James Haliday’s 2011 Australian Wine Companion recognises Summit Estate as a five- star winery, giving both the Queensland Cabernet and Alto Monastrell Blend top marks. The only other Queensland winery awarded five stars is neighbouring Boireann.
The same edition also included the Summit in its list of top-10 special Australian wineries, the only Queenslander to achieve this status. Summit Estate is at Thulimbah, 12km north of Stanthorpe, 50 south of Warwick and nice and high at 920 metres, high enough to score plenty of frosts.
It is the property of the Stanthorpe Wine Co, owned by a group of Brisbane professionals who in 1977 chose Queensland’s oldest, cool climate wine region in which to produce premium wines and to enjoy the experience. The winery’s goal is to grow and produce some of Queensland's finest red wines.
It operates the Stanthorpe Wine Centre, which offers wine education as well as selling wines from other makers in the region. The 17-hectare vineyard produces quality grapes from which are made European and Spanish style wines: Verdelho, Marsanne, Viognier, Chardonnay, White Muscat, Shiraz, Cabernet, Merlot, Monastrell, Malbec, Garnacha, Tempranillo, Tannat, Petit Verdot and Pinot Noir.
A good deal of the vineyard work, pruning and harvesting, is done by owners and their friends, who also are invited to blending sessions. There is a small, specialised contract winemaking facility. Summit Estate says it treats grapes as a most precious resource.
“Using the best winemaking techniques our dedicated team hand picks the grapes, de-stems, hand sorts on our selection table and then gravity feeds the berries into the press for whites, fermentation vats for reds or new French oak fermentation barrels for premium reds.
“We manually plunge the fermenting red grapes and after maceration the wine is then gravity fed into the basket press.” In charge of all this, and more, is Paola (left). Trained in Spain, she worked as winemaker and senior winemaker at various wineries there until moving to Queensland where she was winemaker for Heritage and Summit Estate 2002 to 2005, when she moved fulltime to Summit.
Here is part of James Haliday’s comments on the Summit operation: “That a region, whose entire southern and eastern boundaries mark the border with NSW, can produce such good wine is due to one factor: its altitude (which varies little) of 810 metres. “The downsides are spring frost and late summer rainfall; when these do not strike, the Granite Belt is capable of ripening all of the major varieties plus many alternative varieties.”
Extracts from Mr Haliday’s tasting notes in the 2012 Australia Wine Companion: “Summit Estate Alto Spanish Collection Monastrell Garnacha Shyra Tempranillo Cabernet", 2009, 94 points, while you might expect red fruits to dominate, the opposite is the case, aided by the savoury tannins and oak.
“Summit Estate Alto Spanish Collection Tempranillo, 94; an attractive example of the variety with spicy dark cherry aromas and flavours, the tannins precisely balanced, the length seriously good.
“Summit Estate The QC Queensland Cabernets Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Petit Verdot Malbec, 2009,94, a highly fragrant bouquet of cassis/blackcurrant, then a light- to medium-bodied palate that has excellent balance and length; 15 months in French oak has brought the components together and not diminished the fine dusty tannins.
“Summit Estate Limited Release Shiraz Garnacha, 2009, 91; an 80/20 blend, but the grenache plays a disproportionately important role; only light-to medium-bodied, yet the wine has a complex array of spicy/earthy characters around the core of fresh and poached red fruits, followed by persistent, superfine tannins.
“Summit Estate Ryan’s Daughter Reserve Pinot Noir, 2009, 91. A wine that demonstrates positive varietal expression can be achieved in the Granite Belt; there is a considerable underlay of savoury forest floor and a strong tannin backbone – this is a pinot not to be taken lightly.”
“Summit Estate Barrel Ferment Chardonnay, 2010, 89, a delicately framed chardonnay, with gently ripe melon and stone fruit aromas and flavours, given a whisk of oak.”
The cellar door is open every day 10am to 4.30pm. There’s a coffee shop and look out for the Primavera Spanish Tapas, Saturday, November 12 from 5.30 and Sunday breakfast. All up: $90, members $75.

• More at www.summitestate.com.au

Disclaimer: The author holds shares in Stanthorpe Wine Company.

Loopy venture misfires

MOVIES with Michael Dalton

Cowboys & Aliens
Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, & Adam Beach.
Rating: 2/5
Running time: 118 minutes

Undeniably one of the most packaged movies to hit the screen this year, Cowboys & Aliens has all the ingredients for a great opening weekend. If only the director Jon Favreau had maintained more control and understood how to milk a cliché (for he clearly doesn’t), this loopy, popcorn adventure might’ve worked.

Instead, he presents us with images that have been long imprinted on our movie-going consciousness and then leaves them, and us, hanging. It begins with Lonergan (Daniel Craig), a stagecoach robber, waking up in the middle of nowhere, with no memory and a strange metal bracelet clamped on his wrist. After a quick demonstration of his lightning-speed agility (he flattens three roughnecks), he stumbles into the town of Absolution, which is ruled by the wealthy Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and soon to be overrun by fast-moving spaceships that neatly lasso the residents up, one by one.
There’s not a second here we’re meant to take seriously and from one scene to the next, Favreau keeps kicking the insanity higher. Lonergan soon learns what his bracelet is for, the motives of the extraterrestrials become clear, the Indians show up and join in, Olivia Wilde disrobes, and Ford, still looking good at the grand age of 69, growls relentlessly in a role I could dub “Uncle Indiana”.
Apparently Steven Spielberg (whose DreamWorks studio bankrolled this “effort”) handed Favreau a bunch of western movies and ordered him to study them but even with all the nuttiness and the melding of genres, Cowboys & Aliens quickly wears thin.
Clocking in at two hours and heavily padded by an overlong climax, watching Indians hurling spears through the strangely clichéd aliens turns out to be less fun than you might think. This is for audiences who thought Fast Five was good.


A decade that seems to have just flicked by....

Last week, when Dear Editor, Don Gordon-Brown, delivered an edict ordering his loyal minions to draft up some glorious words in praise of our ten years of publishing excellence, my mind took me back to the moment I walked out of the Schonell Theatre after the curtain closed, and wrote my first review for The Independent – for the record, the film in question was Fernando Trueba’s Calle 54, a documentary about Latin American jazz.

My, how things have changed! I had always been a cinephile, but the last decade has heralded some huge changes in my own tastes for cinema, but also for the film industry at home and overseas.
More of us are watching films in our own hi-tech theatrettes, and cinemas have reacted for the most part by finding ways to increase the cost of going to the movies, with the latest debacle involving surcharges for 3D glasses that drive the cost of a ticket in excess of $20 for some screenings. DVDs are going the way of VHS, with Blu-Ray positioning itself as what may become an ill-fated replacement in the face of downloading.
Almost eight hundred reviews later, my personal highlights include a terrifying interview with Helen Buday, who seemed well cast as the deranged housewife in Rolf de Heer’s Alexandra's Project. The Schonell also cemented what has become my central passion (for Korean cinema), after I went there to see Park Chan Wook’s gloriously violent Oldboy.
And reporting for The Independent back in 2009, I sat on a Brisbane Film International Film Festival jury that chose Robert Connolly’s powerful Balibo as Best Film. I cannot finish up without offering a parting jab at my film reviewing counterparts at The Independent’s sadly-missed sister journal, The Bug.
I still consider the castigation of my sixty word review of Hollywood Homicide by David Pomeranian and Margaret Strappon as entirely unfounded. Despite this single lowlight, writing for this paper has been a great pleasure, and I look forward to many more years of working with Don and our other colleagues, especially given our exceedingly generous remuneration packages, which have doubled each and every year!

Tim Milfull

THE BINGE




Worth a trip to the DVD store

Steve Coogan Live now available through Roadshow
Thirteen (MA15+) available through Icon from 14th September
Babies (G) now available through Madman
The Illusionist (PG) screening from 1 September at the Blue Room
The Magnificent Tati (G) now available through Madman

Roadshow has recently released a very funny DVD compiling two stage shows by British comedian, Steve Coogan, whose faux-documentary The Trip is still on screens around the country.

Painting Coogan as a painfully egotistical performer surrounded by a long-suffering support cast and crew, Live ‘n’ Lewd and The Man Who Thinks He’s It sees the comedian trot out a series of well-crafted characters, and occasionally offers a glimpse of the man behind the impressions; or is this just another construction?
A few years ago, I was stunned by Géla Babluani’s film 13 Tzameti, and the director evidently impressed someone in Hollywood as well, because the film has been remade as Thirteen, and features some big names. Sam Riley (Brighton Rock) stars as Vince, a struggling electrician who steps into the shoes of an overdosed junkie to take on a job he knows nothing about. Unfortunately, the junkie was due to take part in an elaborate game of Russian Roulette, and while the stakes are high, the rewards are even greater.
Alongside True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Statham, and Mickey Rourke, Riley quickly ratchets up the tension in this taut thriller.
For some, the prospect of eighty minutes of screen time about brand new babies would be tantamount to poking blunt pencils into one’s eyes. But Thomas Balmès’s fascinating film, Babies, is surprisingly engaging. Over the course of a year of filming in San Francisco, Mongolia, Namibia and Tokyo, the director watches the growth and learning of four children.
The resulting story — without any narration or dialogue — is utterly absorbing and entertaining.
Almost a decade ago, writer-director, Sylvain Chomet brought the beautiful animation The Triplets of Bellville to our screens. With The Illusionist>,(pictured above) Chomet returns to his glorious, understated form telling the story of a magician forced to leave the stage in France for a career in the backblocks of Scotland.
Using a screenplay written by the famed absurdist, Jacques Tati, Chomet’s quietly gorgeous story eschews dialogue in favour of form, and the result is enchanting. In fact, if you wish to know more about The Magnificent Tati, check out Michael House’s fascinating documentary about the multitalented writer, director and actor. have doubled annually over the last five years.

Tim Milfull

Where am I?

This very old advertisement - for a long-gone carhire company - has recently been exposed as a new building gets under way somewhere in the Indie’s circulation area.
If you have an idea as to where exactly, email your answer to: editor@theindependent.com.au to reach us no later than 5pm on Friday week, 9 September 2011. Or drop us the answer in the post by the same deadline to PO Box 476 Valley Q 4006. All correct entries will go into the barrel for the chance to win a $60 food and drink voucher at the Brunswick Hotel in New Farm.