Usually I write only when genuinely inspired -- even if that "inspiration" is over something trivial -- and that usually happens a bit more often than it has this week. But even though "inspired" does not really describe me as of this moment, I do have a little something, even if only to reassure you I did not die in an epic waterslide accident last weekend.
On Monday I attended my second critics screening of the COVID era, the first having come a few weeks earlier with Penguin Bloom. The movie this time was Long Story Short, as the corresponding poster may have indicated to you. It was a gloomy affair, which did not have anything to do with the premiere itself.
It was my first time at the shopping complex in South Yarra housed in a former jam factory, known (appropriately) as Jam Factory, and the place was desolate. There's a food court area with about seven restaurants and only one of them was open. I think I saw an actual tumbleweed blow lazily through the place. More of them might have been open if it had not been a Monday, but some of them look likely never to open again.
The phenomenon continued down Chapel Street, where every second shop had a for rent sign. This is not a particularly uncommon thing in the world at large right now, I suppose, but Melbourne, or at least the parts of it I frequent, seems to have weathered the worst of the storm. South Yarra appears to be the exception.
But the cinema was open, so I settled down for what was a very charming and escapist romantic comedy with a high-concept twist to it. Long Story Short is about a guy (Rafe Spall) who hesitates to commit to anything good in his life, and when he finally gets married, a mysterious woman curses him to begin moving forward a year at a time to his next anniversary, without any memory of what's happened in between.
I was reminded particularly of the Adam Sandler movie Click, which has not really endured anywhere except in my own mind. That's the one where he has a magical remote control that will allow him to pause and fast-forward his life (though if I remember correctly, the rewind button is broken). It's one of those movies that considers what I call "the uncontrollable slippage of time," which I wrote about here, and these movies are pretty much always a win with me, even when they are not that great (some examples included in the aforementioned post).
This one was pretty great -- 8/10, as you can see here -- but neither the decimated South Yarra shopping district nor the uncontrollable slippage of time is what I actually came here to write you about today.
In fact, I came here to write about actress Noni Hazlehurst.
Who?
Exactly.
Here she is:
She's an Australian actress in her 60s, and considering that she's been working since the 1970s, I feel like I should have heard of her before now. I've only been in Australia for seven-and-a-half years myself, but in that time I've seen a fair bit of Australian cinema and TV. Nothing with her in it, though.
So when the trailer for June Again came on before Long Story Short -- a movie where she's an Alzheimer's patient who has a temporary bout of clarity -- I got kind of a quizzical look on my face when her name appeared in the credits. These are the types of Australian films that usually feature a Jacki Weaver or a Robyn Nevin (Relic), but here was someone I'd never heard of. And with an eccentric name like that, I should have.
I thought nothing of it until Long Story Short started, and the final credit in the acting section at the beginning was "and Noni Hazlehurst."
She has a small role in the movie and I thought she was good. I don't know if that means I'm going to rush out and see June Again, but at least I know who she is now.
It's just funny that I should have never heard of this woman and then her name appears in front of my eyeballs twice in about ten minutes. I guess that's how things go in life. Besides, often a trailer for a movie, especially at an advanced screening, bears a connection to the movie it's playing before. Maybe it was chosen because of the Noni connection.
Was this the most interesting of the three topics I touched on in this post to give the post's title? Maybe not. But hey, I wasn't supposed to really be writing a post today anyway. At least now you know I'm still alive.
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