Garrett Hedlund

Dirt Music

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Luther and Georgia up close

A popular and critically acclaimed novel somehow just doesn’t make it to the screen in Dirt Music, an Outback tale about people with broken lives trying to find romance. It’s the slushy sort of story often associated with women’s fiction – chick lit, if you like. Georgia (Kelly Macdonald) is out swimming naked in the sea one hot, hot night when she spies a boat stealing crayfish from her husband’s fishing grounds. She says nothing but the poacher sees her and they exchange a couple of meaningless words and some more meaningful looks. Sparks would fly if she weren’t so damp. Some days later they do, when Georgia’s car breaks down and Luther … Read more

Burden

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Judy and Mike sitting on a log

Burden? As in “white man’s burden”? Ironically, no. There’s a white saviour theme running right the way through Andrew Heckler’s film but it actually takes its name from its key character, Mike Burden, a lifelong member of the Klan who saw the error of his ways. With the flying of Confederate flags in the US an ongoing point of contention when this movie was released in 2018, Burden has timeliness on its side, and a core cast so accomplished most first-time directors would auction their mothers to get hold of them – Garrett Hedlund as Mike, Andrea Riseborough as the woman whose love makes him see the light, Tom Wilkinson as the local … Read more

On the Road

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Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart in On the Road

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 October Jack Kerouac dies, 1969 On this day in 1969, the writer born Jean-Louis Kérouac died, from internal bleeding brought on by long-term alcohol abuse. He was the child of French Canadians and his first language was French, though he picked up English later and was fluent in his teenage years. He won a football scholarship to Columbia University, New York, but dropped out. There, in New York, he met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs, among others, the core of the Beat Generation writers, the latest iteration of 20th century romantics. Discharged from war service in the … Read more