Op + 2

Two days after the Op and the swelling around my jaw is worse. It feels swollen in my gums too. Somewhat uncomfortable. The Neurofen however is doing a top job and the codeine is on hand (although does have an unfortunate side effect of blocking one up). Didn't sleep that well last night so will look forward to a nap this afternoon.
Darling daughter is off to her op this afternoon and she is getting a little anxious. At least she will have her mother with her to keep her company. Am applying all my distraction skills to keep her mind off things!

JFK

Oliver Stone loves a big story that flirts with controversy, think Natural Born Killers, Platoon and this year’s W, a life story of George W Bush. With JFK, Stone has Kevin Costner as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison investigate the assassination of John F Kennedy.
Garrison mounts a case over the first 2 hours of the film that disproves the lone gunman theory, ie, that Lee Harvey Oswald could have been the only gunman that shot Kennedy. He further states that the entire government and security forces conspired to kill the President and keep the truth from being made public. As Hitler said, “the bigger the lie, the more the people will believe it.”
The final hour of the film is Garrison retelling the story you have just seen unfold, in the courtroom.
Costner is indefatigable as the prosecutor in this case, the only case ever tried in the United States regarding the death of Kennedy. His support characters all demonstrate the intelligent and legal thinking that went into the script while the government, Mafia and intelligence forces are all played by known actors, enjoying their roles as ne’er do wells : Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Donald Sutherland, John Candy, Kevin Bacon and Gary Oldman as the unfortunate Oswald.
This is an interesting piece of history, not something that I lived through and as such does not have the same resonance as I imagine it would had you some memory of that time in 1963. It is always said that people remember where they were when JFK was shot, similar perhaps to this generation’s reaction to the death of Lady Diana.
The film raises a number of issues which question the heart of a government that condones war in another country and will silence critics who speak out against it. Let us hope and pray that the new governments of Obama and Rudd have sufficient conviction and fortitude to lead with honesty and integrity.

Surgery - one quarter of my wisdom, gone

Yesterday (Wednesday) I had one wisdom tooth removed (lower, left side) which was impacted, that is, it was growing sideways into the other teeth. As my dental surgeon said, "it won't get any better by itself and it will get infected." With that advice I elected to have it removed.
Thankfully they only operate at civilised hours so my Good Lady Wife dropped me off at Monash Medical Centre at 1030am where, with newspaper in hand, I sat down to wait my turn. I hadn't had any breakfast, let alone morning tea or drinks of water (except for one) and was more concerned at that than anything else. Thankfully (?) the nerves kicked in and it felt like the preamble to a football match. The usual worries circulated, "how much is this going to hurt?", "what if I don't wake up from the anaesthetic?".
Reading my newspaper managed to distract my thoughts and before long I was changed into my operating gown and a name tag on either wrist (in case they chopped one off?). It was another hour before I was called to the table whereupon the anaesthetist inserted a needle into the back of my hand, told me I was going to feel relaxed and a little drowsy before he sent me off to sleep ... and I don't remember another thing.
I woke up about an hour later in the recovery room. The muscles in my jaw were (are) stiff and sore and the throat dry and coarse. That is from the breathing tube so I am lead to believe. The operation itself was straightforward and is now complete. My gum was split to allow access to the tooth and I have stitches in there now to help them heal. Anti-bios and salty mouth-washes are on the diet. Last night I was quite tired and worn out and enjoyed 9 hours sleep with no interruption.
Today the swelling around my jaw is slowly getting bigger even though I am icing it every hour (see pic, left). I haven't felt nauseous from the anaesthetic (thank god) and have managed to eat 'soft' foods, ones that don't require too much chewing on my part. Thankfully I love breakfast cereal and weet-bix and rolled oats are perfect foods.
I have the rest of the week off and as much of next week as I need. I have borrowed a number of DVDs and look forward to watching as many of them as I can take plus the crick is starting again tomorrow (Aust v NZ, test #2 from Adelaide) which will no doubt aid recovery!
Diverse titles such as Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi classic, Metropolis (by the way I have seen a couple of Lang's other pics recently : 'M' and 'Dr Mabuse, the Gambler', and they are excellent. He has become my 'silent-era' hero along with Buster), Oliver Stone's JFK, Wim Wender's 1987 Wings of Desire and a couple of Asian shoot-em-ups, my fave HK director, Johnnie To : Exiled, and three short films packaged together : Three Extremes 2. The first one was appropriately weird and scary. This one promises no different.
My darling 10-year old daughter is having an op tomorrow to have grommits inserted into her ears and so we will be quite the pair over the weekend. We have Footrot Flat's, The Dog's Tale, to help us through. Cue Dave Dobbyn, 'Slice of Heaven, yeah".
Have you seen any of these? Let me know what you thought of them.

Blogging Resumed

Its been quite a lay-off between blogs however with the success of my Good Lady Wife's micro-bag-business, I have been inspired anew. Check out her latest creations and compliment me for marrying into talent.

The Emperor - GG

The Emperor and the Assassin (SBS Wed midnight) is an earlier (1998) Chinese epic in the spirit of Hero or House of the Golden Flower. Directed by Kaige Chen whose other key credit is Farewell My Concubine, not only mines the great and rich history of tribal China, but perhaps “tells the world that China should not be ignored, and indeed feared. The narrative is gripping, the performances large and the action scenes filled with more extras than can be imagined.”

And with that rather meagre offering in this week’s bottle green newspaper, now is a good time to walk away from 2007. Many thanks for your readership, I hope you have found the posts interesting. I have covered as many weekly GG spots as time and quality has allowed; added a goodly number of movie reviews (of sorts); some personal reflections; blow by blow accounts of the hapless Eastern Rovers; and a few gags as well. I will ponder the off season for a new gimmick and speak to you all in the new year. Merry Christmas!

3rd Annual GG Awards - Winners

Thank you one and all for your nominations for the 2007 GG Awards.

The nominations for the 2007 GG TV Award are :

* American Dad

* Chasers War on Everything

* Extras, series 2

* Family Guy

* Futurama

* The Mighty Boosh

* Sad Love Story – a Korean mini-series, “I howled all the way through it”

* Sopranos – final season "The last couple of seasons were patchier, than those that preceded, but there was quality still. The final season this year reminded us in the closing that this has been one of the best dramas ever produced for the small screen."

* Sopranos – final season (yes, it was nominated twice, must have been good! – Ed.)



The nominations for the 2007 GG Movie Award :

# The Sea Inside (Spanish drama), honorable mention : Black Sheep, NZ horror comedy

# Hot Fuzz, British comedy, from makers of Shaun of the Dead

# Blood Diamond, “it will challenge your thinking about the diamond trade”

# The Lives of Others, German, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film

Independently witnessed, said monkeys (one’s children will do anything for their father’s attention) pulled one nomination from a bag-like-barrel for the winners for the 2007 GG Awards. And the winners are …

2007 GG TV Award : Futurama

2007 GG Movie Award : The Sea Inside

Ghost Dog - Jarmusch

You will need to have gained some semblance of my thematic response to the Jarmusch films I watched in succession last year, for this post to make the most sense.
I recently watched Jarmusch’s 1999 film, Ghost Dog : The Way of the Samurai and was intrigued at how it fitted into the Jarmusch canon … and how it differed.
Only with the benefit of some hindsight do I wonder if most (or all) of Jarmusch’s films are meditations on death, or life. Certainly Ghost Dog, and its predecessor, Dead Man, most obviously are.
Ghost Dog is Forest Whitaker as a hit man who follows the code of the samurai, that is, one who meditates on death, daily, amongst a great many other things we learn from extracts of his book, Hagakure : The Way of the Samurai. He is at heart a peaceful and thoughtful soul whose code of behaviour is one of respect toward his master and humility toward others.
Certainly the film fits Jarmusch’s broad pattern of a man on a journey, in this case, dispensing death with an array of high tech gadgets and pistols, as he steps inevitably toward his own death.
His French speaking, ice-cream selling Haitian friend, Raymond (Isaac De Bankole), is the “comic relief” that is very reminiscent of Roberto Benigni’s Italian babbling taxi driver in Night On Earth. It is Jarmusch’s own preference (and sense of humour?) to use the same actors and music in many of his films creating a sometimes surreal overlap that makes you wonder if he doesn’t see all his films as just one big one. De Bankole was the Parisian taxi driver in Night on Earth.
RZA (in Coffee & Cigarettes) supplies the music in Ghost Dog; Gary Farmer has a walk-on, walk-off role in Ghost Dog which reprises his character, Indian guide Nobody, from Dead Man (never mind the different city, different era … that’s just detail) in which he utters his famous line, “Stupid white man;” along with the stylistic closing and opening of chapters via a black out, in this case with the next extract from Hagakure as an interlude.
Ghost Dog is by far the most “mainstream” of Jarmusch’s films. It is almost a revenge/action type film and the meditative silences are not as long (and drawn out) as some of his other films. Personally, I still rate Dead Man as my favourite of his however this would easily come in second.

3rd Annual GG Awards - Reminder

Nomination entries for the 3rd Annual GG Awards close tomorrow (Friday 7/12) so if you have not contributed, now is your chance to do so !


We require nominations for :

2007 GG Movie Award

2007 GG TV Award

Please email them directly to myself, here

Thankyou to those faithful readers who have done so already. {Formal Neil, we are waiting for you!}

Winners will be posted next week along with the final GG for 2007.

American Psycho - GG

A modern take on the Western condition or a gratuitous hack and slash film ? American Psycho (10 Sat midnight) stars Christian Bale as the mentally flawed, physically perfect Patrick Bateman, driven to destroy those around him. Based on Bret Easton Ellis’ novel of the same name, the “Wall Street excesses of the 1980s were just the beginning and the legion of wealthy young traders were interchangeable designer drones, with anti-hero Bateman distinguished only by his capacity for brutal depravity.”