JCVD (omg, omg!)

I can't help myself. I'm so excited about this film. Below is cut'n pasted from the ACMI newsletter that I'm subscribed to:

Who gives a Van Damme?

JCVD

You will after witnessing the rebirth of the 'Muscles from Brussels'

Jean-Claude Van Damme, aka "the Fred Astaire of karate" (according to Jean-Claude Van Damme) and "that guy who was in those martial arts action films in the 80s and 90s" (according to almost everyone else) is back with a vengeance. In Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD, screening in an exclusive Long Play season, the Karate King plays an ageing movie star called JCVD. He's broke, he's making crappy action shlock that's destined to go straight to DVD (because Steven Seagal is getting all the decent parts) and he's embroiled in a bitter custody battle for his daughter (his entire filmography is used against him as proof of his unsuitability as a parent). And when he innocently finds himself caught up in a post office robbery-cum-hostage crisis, the cops and the fascinated throng that wait outside all think that their once national hero has finally gone, well, postal. It sounds like a big farcical parody of Van Damme's persona, and it is, but at the heart of the film is the conflict between Van Damme the knuckleheaded action star and Van Damme the man. JCVD is Van Damme's doppelgänger - the actor's real life has become fodder for gossip rags worldwide with his failed marriages, custody battles and drug and money problems. In El Mechri's film, he's a defeated yet sympathetic hulk of a man, one who is only too sadly aware of his lost potential. "It's hard for people not to judge me", he says. JCVD goes a long way to changing our own clouded judgements of the 'Muscles from Brussels'.

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My family has had a long-standing love of martial arts flicks in general. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were the biggies when I was growing up. Most of the first Jackie movies we saw were in Cantonese, with JC sporting his infamous bowl-cut hair and doing amazing kung fu training feats that involved pummelling pebbles into sand, or doing moves while balancing atop the lips of jars, etc. Our family finally owning the entire Bruce Lee oeuvre was a momentous occasion.

Jet Li joined our embrace of the genre much later on, and consistently there in the background with their B- and C-grade efforts were Steven Seagal (Glimmer Man, one of the best worst movies in the entire action/martial arts movie scene [see pic below]! And I know that's a grand claim to make!), Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Chuck Norris (oh, and let's not forget Sammo Hung).

Keenen Ivory Wayans envying
Steven Seagal's sharp Oriental threads
[Glimmer Man, 1996]
[Photo from www.steven-seagal.net]

Even though the latter's films are mostly awful, cardboard, and pain me on many levels, I still find it hard to pass up a chance to watch one of them (though Van Damme's Replicant [2001] did sorely test me...). I find it's the same relationship I have with Christopher Lambert movies (Mortal Kombat, anyone?); often, it's so bad, it's gold!

I'm really excited about JCVD because I love it when actors self-parody and, let's face it, Jean-Claude has a lot of material to work with. Who could forget Jean-Claude and Kylie Minogue in Street Fighter? The film's premise looks like fun, and one hopes it can deliver.

What is also an amazing thing about Jean-Claude is that he's still pumping out the movies after all these years and all those turkeys. He has two currently in the pipeline: The Eagle Path (post-production) and Universal Soldiers: The Next Generation (filming). You could never say that those Kickboxer fans are fickle or disloyal!

De-irritating Wordpress blogs

Do you browse Wordpress blogs (or own one)? Are you sick of the whacking great 'snapshot' of links that intrudes on your reading pleasure?

Well, this blogpost shows you how to be done with it!

Many thanks to JG on Memes of Production for the heads-up.

Pimping: Peril, and the good kinds of committees

Oooh, can't wait for the stats on this entry and what kind of search terms folks put in to arrive here...

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REMINDER - Call for Submissions - Peril #7 - "Fashion Fetish"

'Fashion Fetish' is the theme for Peril Issue 7! Love it or hate it, everyone has an opinion on fashion and fads. Is it, as Bowie says, big, bland, loud and tasteless? Or is it the realm of risk-takers and visionaries? Do you follow or buck trends? Is Oriental in (yet again) this year? Are we talking clothes or cultures?

Below are some prompts that we hope are only the start of what you might do with the theme:

* (Un)healthy obsessions
* 'So hot right now' – lure or deterrent?
* Extreme fashion
* Fashion, culture and identity – who or what does it say you are?
* What's class got to do with it?

Let's see and hear what you think about 'Fashion Fetish' – write, create, draw, compose, collaborate! We accept submissions of any kind of text, sound or visual art, as long as it can be presented online (e.g. essays, blog entries, reflections, poetry, fiction, memoir, spoken word tracks, photos, etc.). Text limit is 1000 words, preferably submitted in .txt format.

We are fortunate enough to have two issues sponsored by the Australia Council this year, and will be paying contributors for Issues 7 and 8. Issue 8's theme will be "Why are people so unkind?"

The deadline for Issue 7 material is March 31 2009, to be published online by May 2009. This issue will be launched at the Sydney Writers Festival by Annette Shun Wah (full details forthcoming).

Please send your submissions and queries to peril@asianaustralian.org

Check us out at http://www.peril.com.au

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If you didn't already know, I'm one of the editorial advisors on Peril (and if you don't know what Peril is, go HERE and check it out for heaven's sake). It was established in 2006, the same year that AASRN officially came into being, so that was a rather smashing year for Asian Australian culture and scholarship.

We just had our second board meeting on the weekend and, as always, I come away from those (and our editorial get-togethers) inspired and hepped up to do more. Hence, the spamming of my networks with Peril material today, as well as this post. I like working with this editorial team a lot. One of them, who had a baby less than a month ago, was at the meeting - I was so impressed, as I wasn't able to contemplate facing the professional outside world for quite a few months after I had E.

I have three editorial teams I work with now. Two of them I really love and find stimulating, fun and constructive. The third is very new so I haven't got as much of a feel for it yet; it's also a group that's much larger and more articulated so I haven't seen all of them in one room as yet (and not sure if this will be something that ever happens).

I've also attended an ACSANZ meeting recently, our first of two for the year. Seeing as I'll be on mat.leave for the latter part of 2009, I won't be seeing them again till late 2010. I was on this committee for many years, from when I was a PhD student. I took a break from it for a couple of years and re-joined in 2008. One of the things I like best about it is the range and calibre of people I've had to work with. Right now, I have a few buddies who happen to be Can.Studs folk, and that kind of bond on a committee is great. Because I've worked with many of the current committee members before, there's a sense of collegiality and support that isn't quite there when you join a group 'cold.' Knowing the strategies and personalities of various people also helps a lot in the necessary maneuvering during tricky discussions. I like being part of larger organisations that still feel 'cosy,' and this one, with its connections to the Canadian High Commission in Canberra and the govt and international association in Ottawa, has added perks and heightened interest. I remember going to a 3-course lunch at the house of the Canadian consul (I think that's what his title was...), and feeling totally out of my depth. I'm not au fait with diplomatic chit-chat and embassy-level etiquette.

I feel disappointed at times that I don't currently have a focused Canadian component to my research (it's almost all Oz focused, with the ARC project broadening it to include USA perspectives). While I enjoy the committee and association, the networks and events aren't really feeding my work at all for the moment.

Lemming behaviour and generosity +

I saw that one of the blogs I read regularly has swapped over to WordPress and, knowing that many have shifted over there, I went to check it out for myself and ended up creating a replica of this blog there (no real entries). The posting interface for WP is much nicer than this one's, but I think - being a creature of habit - I'm used to the quirks and format of blogger so I'll stay put for the moment. The other one is just reserving interweb real estate...

I did the same thing on Facebook with starting up an Asian Australian Studies Research Network group. I've been on Fb a while now and I have yet to see the worth of those Fb groups. I just find them clunky. Some of them have novelty value, but the interface seems to depend on you going there regularly to find out what's happening with the group. I don't like bulletin boards for the same reason, much preferring the direct 'news' or interaction that a mailing list provides.

That said, since I've stepped down from moderating asian-australian_discuss, I've changed my delivery options for that list to "no email." I find the emails from that list too distracting and, if a topic takes my fancy, I'll want to respond straight away. This way, if I just catch up on what's happening there every week or so, I can just pick and choose the ones that interest me most (and overlook the annoying ones). It's such a basic thing, something I should've done a while ago. Feels liberating nonetheless!

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I know I go on about bookmooch a lot here. I'm not exactly sure why that is because it's not as if I spend all my waking hours stalking and mooching books. I only drop by the site if I have to check off certain activities/receipts, or if someone's newly recced me something and I want to see if it's moochable. This means, perhaps, once a week; several times if I've just uploaded inventory and people are snaffling items. Blathering aside, I've always admired the way bookmooch started and what it stands for, which is why I persist with it even though it means I generally spend more on books than I did before (because of the postage/packaging costs for mailing books out; the books themselves are 'free'). This is the case because, before, I wasn't reading very reguarly at all, and not tapped into the habit like I am now. I much prefer now, but yes, it's not a money-saving development for me.

Recently, John Buckman (the guy who created it from scratch) posted an entry on the bookmooch blog outlining how much it costs to run the mooching site. I found it an amazing read, and my jaw dropped when he mentions that he's put in about $70K (US dollars, people!) to get the site to the stage it's at now. I have self-quibbling sessions sometimes about the money I toss into 'hobby' endeavours that I wish someone would step up and fund properly, but my piddly expenses pale in comparison. I've signed up to give a little each month to help keep bookmooch non-commercial (one of the things I like about it).

As with all of my friends, I wish I had more time to read and the browsing the vistas of what's on offer in people's inventories is my cyber-version of loitering around 2nd-hand bookshops (which I just don't really get to do anymore, unless I'm killing time before meetings or conferences...). I've seen some delicious inventories from which I'd like to mooch about a half dozen books but I stop myself from being that greedy. I usually limit myself to mooching two books at a time from people (unless they offer more because of particular author sets, etc). I've got more points than I know what to do with, and have twice given points to charities listed on bookmooch (once to the Australian lesbian and gay archives, and another time to the Auckland Women's Centre Library - obviously, I was endeavouring to give 'locally'...there aren't many charities on this side of the pond at all).

If you are on bookmooch and haven't friended me, let me know you're out there. I'm easy to find. I don't have an internet 'handle' to save myself...

Here endeth the sermon about bookmooch.

Gratuitous pic post: Venice Carnevale

The 10-day, super-touristy Venice Carnevale starts this weekend. I've never been to Venice, having only dipped my toe into Italy via a very short week in Florence in 2005 (incidentally, my last overseas trip to date).

Found this gorgeous pic on my trawl through the NY Times 'The Moment' blog.

During Venice’s 10-day Carnevale, Caffè Florian on the Piazza San Marco,
admits only those with the finest costumes.
(Photo by Chris Bickford)

More flouncy, OTT photos can be found on the Google image search HERE.

Harold and Kumar 2, + Day of the Jackal, Harold and Kumar 2

Two things I wanted to write about as I've read/watched them very recently:

1. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)

My expectations for this movie were surprisingly high. I say 'surprisingly' because: a) it's a crass buddy movie, and b) it's a sequel. I had had good reports about it from my brother and others (though I do wonder why I trust my brother's judgement sometimes; this is a guy who prides himself on his collection of zombie and gore movies, and who actually wanted to watch Dracula 3000 in its entirety) and, at the very least, it starred John Cho and Kal Penn.

Upshot? Well, it is very much a crass buddy movie and sequel. And we thoroughly enjoyed it.

I think Cho and Penn carry the film in ways that may have left lesser actors flat and just embarrassed. Granted, 'embarrassed' was a key trait of the film, yet the grotesquerie was strangely charming. The Doogie Howser cameo still worked well, and I love the fact that the bordello's owner was Beverley D'Angelo (of National Lampoon fame). As a Law & Order: SVU fan, I enjoyed the cameo by Christopher 'Elliot' Meloni a bit too much in the first film (who doesn't love their repressed hero covered in boils?).

It probably won't be the most memorable film you'll ever see, but it was fun enough.

I do wish Cho would appear in more internationally marketed films. He was the lead in 2002's Better Luck Tomorrow and, since then, has had a fairly patchy TV/film cv. He is in good company as Sulu in the new Star Trek movie (to be released in Australia in May 2009; directed by J. J. Abrams), what with Simon Pegg and Eric Bana as co-stars. That said, I note that Winona Ryder is also on board the Enterprise...hmmm.

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2. The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth)

WARNING - This is going to be chock full of spoilers, so if you haven't read it and don't want to know what happens, move on now!

As I've mentioned in another post, this author was recced to me by Book Boy. One of the best uses for bookmooch.com is to stock your shelves with copies of novels by authors who are quite prolific or have been around for yonks, and you've liked for ages, but just never got around to getting that book or two from their oeuvre. Many of the genre fic novels that I've enjoyed are precisely of this category (e.g. Elizabeth Peters' 'Amelia Peabody' novels). I'm partial to crime thrillers and mysteries, and some pockets of sci-fi/fantasy. I dipped into a bit of chick.lit when I first joined bookmooch, just because I could (and there was so much of it floating around), but I've sworn off it now. I've found that it's quite a poisonous genre, and the examples that I read were rather shabbily/quickly written, not to mention eye-rollingly stupid in terms of denying any smidge of progressive gender relations or conception of a world without cliched romantic gimps.

ANYway, back to Jackal: I was pre-disposed to like it; partly because Book Boy liked it, and partly because well-written spy thrillers are another thing I can't resist. I haven't read many in recent decades because they seemed to have made way for a flood of crime/forensic thrillers, genres that still hold major sway today. My father was a big fan of Martin Cruz Smith, Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth, but I never read the books when they were his (except maybe Gorky Park...). Jackal sucked me in within the first couple of chapters. The precision of the writing was wonderful, and the pace so apt. The background was sketched with great restraint (thank god - I don't think I would've persisted if Forsyth were the type of author to impart whacking slabs of historical context; I usually give those books a short time to save themselves from the 'unreadable' pile) and relevance. I loved the figure of the assassin and the small window into his routines and desires. The latter played such a credible role in the novel's final sections, and I finished the book very satisfied. In addition, while the book as a whole was satisfying, I found myself mourning the assassin. I think I wanted a Hollywood disappearance once the smoke cleared and Lebel (an excellently drawn character) managed to grab the other gun. Perhaps it's the sequel-isation of my reading habits. I wanted the Jackal to live and snipe another day.

So, yes, my first brush with Forsyth was positive and I now have The Fourth Protocol to consume (as well as his other books, which will be a doddle to source 2nd hand).

Shop on Friday 13th this week!

This sounds like a Good Thing, and is normally not the kind of thing I'd on-post.
It also doesn't count as a blog post so will be getting to that soon...

COLES to donate profites from Friday 13 Feb to Bushfire Appeal Fund

Coles is asking customers to plan their supermarket shop for this Friday (13 Feb), to help raise badly needed funds for the victims of the Victorian bushfires.

Coles, BiLo, Pick N’Pay and Coles Online are donating this Friday’s profits from all stores nationally to the Bushfire Appeal Fund, and hope to raise between two and four million dollars.

Coles Managing Director Ian McLeod said he hoped customers would plan to do their grocery shopping this Friday.

“Our customers often have set days for their supermarket shopping, but we’re asking people to change their habits this week and to do their shopping on Friday, to support this special fundraising event,” Mr McLeod said.

“The more people who support this Friday’s fundraising, the bigger the donation we’ll be able to make.”

Mr McLeod said stores were already preparing for the day.

“There’ll be extra team members working in stores to help manage what we hope will be a very busy day. We’ve also ordered extra stock deliveries into stores.”

Coles is continuing to support ground level relief agencies, providing essentials such as food, water and toiletries. Coles today gave $30,000 to the Salvation Army and the Australian Red Cross to help provide immediate food relief to those affected by the bushfires.

[This text was taken directly from a Coles corporate press release - which can be found HERE - by me]

Exempting exemptions, eh?

This entry will try and resist being a rant.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was in the process of completing two major research project funding applications. They were to be submitted through the ARC (Australian Research Council), which is the peak research funding body in Oz. Every year, hundreds of academics slave over huge applications, massaging jargon, honing buzzwords, fitting all manner of national priorities, and coming up with credible, hugely time-consuming budgets. It's a huge industry within the institutions. There are specific administrative staff members whose roles are to support academics in putting these arcane, multi-part applications together. It all feels very Brazil.

While one of my applications is internally submitted and is shaping up nicely (it's a collaborative one with Monash U colleagues), the other is dead in the water. Yes, dead in the water after solid weeks of work in the writing and checking and reviewing. Why? This 2nd application is for a fellowship, a QEII/Austn Research Fellow application to be precise. It requires that applicants be less than 8 yrs post-award of their PhD. At first glance, I am outside this time-frame, seemingly closer to 9.5 yrs. Once one counts maternity leave (6 months) and non-academic work (1.5 yrs), this comes down to just under 7 yrs. Never mind, there's an exemption process where you ask for consideration of time out of academia, where you outline career interruptions. It was all going to be quite straightforward, or so I thought.

My exemption request was refused. Despite the best efforts of the research office and myself, we've been unable to ascertain on what grounds. The implicit advice that we've managed to glean gestures towards the idea that, even though the work I was doing was 'non-academic' (i.e. affected my research track record), it constitutes professional experience that I have chosen to pursue. 'Chosen to pursue' is an interesting way to put it. I guess one does choose to have a wage once in a while, or take a job because nothing else is around at the time. I wouldn't say, though, that I was choosing to interrupt my research career when there wasn't actually one to be had. Things are still a bit up in the air about the whole process (and I'll have a few official words to say about the utter lack of transparency from the ARC on this issue), but I think the fellowship application has been skewered. Which is rather a pity as I'd worked on it enough that I was excited when thinking about carrying it out.

OK, maybe I haven't been successful in not-ranting.

The issue I wanted to bring out here is about career choices in academia. I've written about this several times, and my paper on Academia 101 about this career trajectory stuff gets a gratifying number of hits; this # of hits is probably dismal to some, but I'm used to a very cosy readership... ;)

The notion of a seamless career path appears to be a cherished one, even in this day and age of (still) scarce humanities academic positions, the casualisation of university labour and the corporatisation of the university itself, the reification of 'industry experience,' etc. I've been on a research fellowship selection panel where many profs around the table were shaking their heads at the work history of a particular applicant. This applicant had worked for a couple of years in a totally non-academic job, to pay the bills and sustain his family (this was stated in his application). One panel member said that (paraphrasing) if this person wanted a research career badly enough, he would've done whatever it took to stay in the game. You can imagine my internal eyebrows shooting up about that one. The darndest thing was that the comment came from someone whose work, and attitude to his peers, I'd admired tremendously.

If you finish your PhD, and there are no decent academic positions going (and you would prefer not to have to traipse around the country/world for a paltry fixed-term position), and you need money to live on, are you really choosing to opt out of academia? I should declare my bias here: I find it difficult to imagine that many tenured professors would have a very good handle on the current struggles and career dilemmas of newly graduated/graduating academics, especially if the profs emerged in a time when it was common for continuing jobs to be offered before people even submitted their doctoral theses (which still happens occasionally these days, but the number of these situations are like the teeth of hens, no?).

Because I've chosen a research-only path thus far, I know I've had to compromise on several fronts: job security being number one, and promotion/career progression another.

I think it's a bit rich, though, for peak organisations and senior institutional staff (among others) to presume that those who take work outside the straight'n narrow research/teaching modes are not serious about having a research career (and to penalise them for this).Taking a wage outside academia is often necessary, and not many of us are spoilt for choice when it comes to options for working within universities at a level commensurate with our years of study and experience. As much as I love the flexibility, independence and focus that comes with a research-only position, I daydream constantly about job security, roles that allow you to 'check out' mentally when you go home (I'm getting better at this, it must be said), and no more endless hoop-jumping. Very occasionally, when my masochistic streak surfaces, I relish the hoop-jumping, especially if it's a hoop I've never jumped before. It's not a pleasant or peaceful way to live a professional life, though. I want to rest on my laurels for a while, and for those laurels to proliferate even though I'm resting on them very heavily...

Juggling reading

Since I started this academic caper, I've regularly whinged about how reading has become 'work' and, therefore, less enjoyable. It was true for quite a few years, particularly because I was neck-deep in literary studies and felt the need to read all the books that might be useful to my project, even when the novels in question weren't the type of texts I'd enjoy. Work reading isn't meant to be enjoyable reading, and it depleted my textual focus such that I found solace in the shorter and more shallow embrace of glossy and/or trashy magazines (Who was a staple, with the occasional Vanity Fair thrown in when I was feeling flush with cash and time), and that stalwart of mental-bubble-gum-chewing, the TV.

Now that I'm working on projects that have nothing to do with literary studies per se, and take me off on paths more sociological, historical and cultural researchy, I'm reading again with a vengeance. Well, with as much vengeance as a full-time job, 2+yr-old and half-decent home-life will allow. Joining bookmooch boosted my 'To Read' pile immeasurably, and it supplemented my usual book infusions from birthday and xmas presents. I also take many recs from friends, and bookboy in particular (whose taste in books and genres is very similar to mine, even though he persists in reading Patricia Cornwell and on that particular author we've parted ways...!). Recently, a very good buddy came to stay for a few days and handed on a couple of novels she'd finished. I'd recently passed Status Anxiety (Alain de Botton) on to her, which I'd been sent by an online friend. I love circulating books. When it works smoothly and richly, it's such an intimate, yet non-intrusive, mode of social bonding. There have been a few friendships that have developed in leaps and bounds because of bookswapping, and a handful of folk I've always regretted not knowing better after getting a glimpse of their exciting and well-loved collections (regretting the 'not knowing better' because of a missed possible friendship, not because of lost opportunities to cadge books!).

That said, when one's tastes in reading and a friend's diverge significantly, it can get awkward. It has often been the case that friendly acquaintances whose bookcases are full of things I would never read/enjoy do not go on to become good friends. I remember being invited to another postgrad's place for the first time and meeting her chatty partner and beloved cat. She had beautifully carved shelves full of books, which I automatically started browsing. She was very sweet and immediately said that I should feel free to help myself to whatever might be of interest. I was a bit stuck. She had every Charles Dickens novel there was (some in several editions), buckets of (approx) Victorian poetry, expensively-bound Shakespeare, and many other uber-classical texts. I'm not a classical text reader, and have had an aversion to Dickens ever since studying Great Expectations in high school (then having to re-read it when I was doing a critical analysis of Brian Castro's Pomeroy, which drew on Dickens' narrative/characters in a typically playful manner). I had to beg off and declare that I shouldn't be taking anything home right then as the thesis was misbehaving, etc. We didn't stay close after we finished our degrees.

Right now? I'm finishing off The Day of the Jackal (Frederick Forsyth; a bookboy rec), and am about a third of the way through an Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody) novel. I'm also partway through The Dumas Club, but lost momentum on that because I started reading Forsyth on a plane trip and it sucked me in.