Colourful Secrets Emerge From The Past, And One Or Two Mark The Way Of The Virtual Future
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday July 8, 2005
The Memphis Trousers Half Hour
9.45pm, ABC: The show leaves Memphis - epicentre of the Presley legend - and ventures to the Midwest city of Duluth, Minnesota, where a curious secret from Roy's colourful past emerges. A series of dreams, you might say. How many roads must a man walk down?Sophie's World8.30pm, SBS: Existentialism for adolescents? Why not! Sophie Amundsen ventures into the Renaissance with the help of a friendly dog and the guidance of her mentor, Alberto Knox. She encounters Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus as the identity of the Major begins to clarify. Intelligent fantasy, contrived with care and genuine heart.Webcam Girls10pm, SBS: No time for introspective teenagers like Sophie Amundsen here! The d(igital) generation propels everyone into the seething domain of cyberspace, where emails and text messages are the tar stains and passive smoking of the 21st century. Virtual porn, internet celebrity and online art are part of the new (virtual) reality - as are the femcam chicks whose cyber adventures are examined in this Canadian doco. Assassins of silence? Get a life! Get a hundred ... and deal with reality later. Big Brother couldn't be bothered watching any more - there's an overload and it's not information. It's exhaustion. If, as Dr Felix Boddey-Bagge suggests, heroin is war on yourself, what is webcam blogging? Art? Mobile graffiti, ego pollution or a form of masturbation? There's a new breed of vanity afoot that makes Michael Flatley seem shy and retiring. But, as Suicide Sal once noted: "The problem of being a modern woman is that you have to pretend to be stronger than you really are." Better than pretending to be weak and submissive. Better latte than never.2005 MTV Awards9pm, Ten: MTV insanity, full bore, fully loaded, unplugged, wired and weird. You'd have to be desperate.FOR THE WEEKENDForging the Ring9.45pm, Sunday, ABC: Not blessed with a sufficiently well-developed sensibility to properly appreciate opera, the prospect of Wagner's 16-hour, four-part Ring cycle is, for this viewer, a daunting prospect as yet unfulfilled. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since it has never been mounted in Australia, in full, by any of our state opera companies. This doco reveals much of the detail of how the epic production was staged - to effusive acclaim - by the State Opera of South Australia last year. (In Monday's issue of The Guide the date was erroneously given as 1998). And what an undertaking! The result is shown in snippets, giving some idea of the spectacle - particularly the innovative set designs, Stephen Curtis's amazing costumes and the mechanical elements involved in the staging. Formidable work which suggests how easy it was to blow out the budget to $15 million. Olympian - as in Olympic Games - and, according to those who appreciate the art (particularly the Wagner groupies who roam the world indulging their passion for opera), a magnificent achievement. In pondering such curiosities, where art and chaos collide creatively, it's worth speculating on what alien life forms might make of our species were they to arrive on Earth and witness human activities such as (say) State of Origin or high opera. I reckon in both instances they'd have a good look and decide to leave us alone.Lost Worlds7.30pm Sunday, SBS: King Solomon's Tablet of Stone, bearing ancient inscriptions which appeared genuine, excited scholars when it surfaced in Israel. The detective story stemming from efforts to determine its authenticity - or otherwise - spans 3000 years and stretches from Babylon to Canada.
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald