Adelaide and the Last Ride premiere
Apologies for the lack of Poetry Friday last week. I had planned to schedule one on Thursday, but then one of those drop-your-plans-to-respond-to-this things came up, and I didn't get to it. Then I needed to get up before the crack of dawn on Friday to go to Adelaide for the weekend. I'd set the alarm for 4:40 am, then woke up at 3:30am anyway, tossed about for next the half hour or so, then got up. But that was just the horrible start to a fabulous weekend.
I went to Adelaide with an old friend from Tamworth, who now lives in Sydney too, to visit an old friend from Sydney, who now lives in Adelaide, with her parents and her little 20-month-old daughter. But we specifically went this weekend to coincide with the Adelaide Film Festival and the premiere of a film directed by another old friend from Tamworth, Glendyn Ivin, called Last Ride, which I have written about here. We were a bit naïve in that we hadn't thought to book tickets earlier when we should have, and then each screening was completely sold out, so Glendyn was doing his best but told us to turn up and join the stand-by queue and see what happened then also invited us to the after party.
So, we thought we'd just go and say hello and if we couldn't get in to the movie then so be it. When we got to the cinema there was a red carpet out front and all and it was just so exciting! When Glendyn arrived I dashed over just to say hello and he put two tickets in my hand and said "I've given you my ticket, but I think they'll let me in". How cool! It even has his name on it. There were three of us and only two tickets, so our other friend waited in the stand by queue and also got in, which was just great.
The film was truly superb. You must go and see it. It will be shown in Sydney at the film festival in June, and then goes to general release on the 2nd of July. It's not the sort of film I would normally rush out to see for entertainment value, because it's intense, it's disturbing and it just might haunt me forever. But I was pleasantly surprised on the "brutal" front. I simply do not cope with suspense or violence in movies, and so I was expecting this film to be quite harrowing and that I would just have to steel myself, close my eyes for a good portion and endure it. But you really don't see much of what is brutal, and there is much else in it such that afterwards some could say to Glendyn "it's just beautiful". He has produced something quite amazing, the likes of which I don’t think I have ever seen in a feature film. It’s worth watching, even just to observe what happens with the music. I won't tell you anything about the story, because you need to watch it without knowing what comes.
Chatting to Glendyn afterwards he mentioned how they found the wrecked-car yard featured in the film on one of their reconnaissance trips and decided that they had to use it — and that because the film is called Last Ride and wrecked-car yards are full of cars that have taken their last ride, and this film is just one story, but out there are many stories ... I will never be able to look at an unsightly wrecked-car yard again.
Here are some pictures. This one is Glendyn with the two producers Nicholas Cole and Antonia Barnard, his wife Natalie Poole and a guy called Mike. After this curious little huddle out the front is when we were handed our tickets.
Below are two old friends from Tamworth, Katrina and Jill, with Natalie. Jill, on the right, was one of my youth group leaders.
I took a bunch of photos without the flash so I wouldn't be disruptive, which didn't turn out on my unsophisticated camera. But in this one is Glendyn, Hugo Weaving and the amazing little Tom Russell.
This is most of the cast and crew out the front (note the plastic chairs they set up down the front of the theatre to let more people in).
And here we are after wards at the party. I am the weird looking person on the left with the dead-straight hair. My friends did that to me, just for fun. I don't know that I like it that straight, but you have to try these things. I've also got the highest shoes on ever, because I borrowed them off my friends Mum. We are film premiere nincompoops and didn't think about the fact that we'd need to dress up (and were travelling hand luggage only), and also didn't know about the party afterwards till we got to Adelaide, so we made do.
For the rest of the weekend we had fun gallavanting about the South Australian countryside, including the Barossa Valley on Saturday (once we finally got out of bed after the biggest day ever - the film didn't start till 9 pm (remember that early morning!) and the party was afterwards) and McLaren Vale on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon we went to Maggie Beer's farm shop and ate tarts out on the verandah overlooking the pond. I also stocked up on quince paste. Then we did Peter Lehmanns winery. It's all so scenic. Before the Barossa Valley we went in search of scenes out of MacLeod's Daughters. I didn't watch this program, so it meant nothing to me, but here are my friends out the front of the pub featured in the show, complete with a girl on horseback who just happened to come by.
Life was certainly different with a 20-month-old along, but she is a very sweet little thing and we had a lot of fun — making up songs, playing with anything and everything, interpreting the babble, jumping on the trampoline and just generally being the sorts of gooses you can be in the presence of children.