Bred from dissatisfaction in homo culture’s convergence with mediocrity through its inter-breeding with the mainstream, Melbourne-based They Shoot Homos Don’t They? has proved its point well and truly by becoming a widely anticipated publication by humans gay, straight and everywhere in-between.

Issue 004 features a truly world-class list of contributors, interviewing legendary fag-band Limpwrist’s frontman Martin Sorrondeguy, a focus on fashion godfather Walter Van Beirendonck, and pictorials by Jesse Burke, Hayden Fowler, Ryan Foerster and many other notables.

A series of ‘top friend’ profiles are included on gay-friendly public figures such as the world’s first transsexual MP, and there is also a highly speculative list of dead gay European heads of state.

This slick, tough and very funny periodical is often a confronting read for a straight skater dude like myself, but that’s the way it should be. Like all really good magazines, it never speaks down or attempts to ‘school’ the reader, preferring to provide a direct line of communication with some very onto-it people.

A thousand copies also contain a free mix CD of ‘manjams’ from No Bra, Yo Majesty, The Presets, Khan, Glass Candy and Xiu Xiu.

By Max Olijnyk

Where:
Metropolis, Mag Nation and here

When:
Out now
Launching Thurs Nov 15 at Utopian Slumps, 25 Easey St, Collingwood with DJ set from Cheeky Dog Soundsystem and a special guest performance – perhaps the cover stars?

How much:
$12.50

In this instance, the singer is songwriter Markland Starkie. Known as Sleeping States to you and I, Markland has produced an earnest charm of an album, minimal in volume but not in effect. Opening compositions gently overlap into a hushed blur of soft electric guitar work and delicate vocals that float between delightful and haunting.

For the most part, its whimsical tones are best listened to alone in the bedroom, though half way through, ‘September, Maybe’ makes you want to take Friday off work and hit the highway so you can tap along to its delightfully simple rhythm on the dashboard. The following track, ‘I Wonder’, will have you taking Monday off as well, as its dreamy vocals flatter an uncomplicated arrangement that is just so enjoyably easy on the ear. It’s an addictive track.

From there on, Markland jettisons the rhythm section and curls back to the calmer guitar and vocal compositions with ten-minute long ‘Memory Games’ winding down proceedings to a mere melancholic twang of guitar. It’s a suitably brooding outro to what is best description as an intimate and entirely worthwhile listen.

By Matt Hurst

Who:
Sleeping States

On:
Etch n Sketch

Where:
here

MySpace:
here

Win:
Thanks to Speak n Spell and Etch n Sketch Records, we have three copies of the album to give away. Just email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line: ‘tapping my dashboard’

Anyone remember Pop Will Eat Itself? No? Probably for the best, but their name and their slogan “Sample it, Loop it, Fuck it and Eat it” pinpoints artist Christian Marclay’s attitudes to art, noise, music and film. Marclay’s been sampling and recombining things for almost as long as Grandmaster Flash. Key difference is an avant-garde bent that doesn’t quit at just mixing and scratching. When this guy cuts a record up he does it with a jigsaw. To re-build as a Franken-vinyl LP to play Hendrix-style on his custom-made Phonoguitar.

ACMI’s greatest video hits package assuredly brings the noise – check out Guitar Drag, where an amped-up guitar is dragged behind a pickup truck. Simultaneously it salutes the great guitar-destroyers of yore and makes you think about recent lynchings in Texas. That’s heavy metal. Premiering in Australia are Crossfire, where movie guns get all percussive – it’s Tarantino in a shootout with Woo; and Video Quartet, an endless movie musical where Harpo Marx socks it to Presley, who Sinatra never liked anyhow. So get down to Fed Square, and if PWEI call while you’re out, tell them “Not now James, we’re busy!” Oh, forget it.

By Dylan Rainforth

Where:
ACMI Screen Gallery

When:
Thurs Nov 15 – Sun Feb 3

How much:
free

Artists should learn to leave their work alone. Director’s cut are often vanity projects or novelty acts: sometimes worrying their own work to death, like Richard Kelly’s recut Donnie Darko, or sometimes just PC-gone-mad, like Spielberg replacing his guns with walkie-talkies in E.T. And it still hurts too much to talk about what George Lucas did to the 10-year-olds inside us all.

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner doesn’t require introduction. Skirting between art-film ambiguity and mainstream sci-fi, it helped define the look of the cinematic future. Its influence has leaked into popular culture in odd and innumerable ways, from Pop Will Eat Itself’s “Wake Up! Time To Die” to the Voight-Kampff Test being posed to very confused San Francisco mayoral candidates.

Blade Runner already had a director’s cut in 1992, excising the voiceover and the studio-forced happy ending. Now a five-disc ‘final’ edition is being released. Every version, newly added scenes, a much sharper print, and hopefully no CGI muppets.

You can see it on the Astor’s big screen for just four short days. For anyone who discovered Blade Runner on loved-to-fuzz video cassette, this is unmissable.

By Martyn Pedler

Where:
The Astor Cinema presented by Popcorn Taxi

When:
Nov 15-18

Watch the trailer:
here


Win:
We have ten double matinee passes to give away. (A piece of the apocalyptic future for your afternoon!) Just email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line 'no CGI muppets'

If folklore has taught us anything, the woods are enchanted and hold lessons to learn. Snow White sought refuge by hitching her gown and bolting for the woods. This tale taught us that being swept away by one handsome stranger is much, much better than cleaning up after seven little strangers with wandering hands.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh himself travelled the cedar forest despite his petulantly nagging Mother having a gripe. After experiencing nasty dreams and fighting a demonic creature, it turns out that Gilgamesh probably should have listened. Lesson learned: It doesn’t matter how great a king you are, or whether you happen to be half-God-half-human. Mum will always be cleverer.

Then there’s In The Woods. Northcote folk: step in there and explore the Penelope Durston knick knacks, Limedrop threads and the shelves brimming with tea sets by Japanese designer Mountain Mountain.

The lesson learned is that once you’re served coffee and mind-bogglingly mouth-watering cupcakes by charming shop people, it is okay to accept the offers of strangers and the woods aren’t as frightening as those folklores cracked them up to be.

By Isabel Dunstan

Where:
246 High St, Northcote

When:
Tues-Sat 10.30am-6pm, Sun 11am-6pm, Mon closed

Contact:
9486 3311
mail@inthewoods.com.au

For one of America’s most famous auteurs, David Lynch’s best work has always been with someone else reining in his more insane impulses – like Barry Gifford co-writing Lost Highway, or TV writer Mark Frost co-creating Twin Peaks. Inland Empire, though, is 100% Lynch, Lynch-up-to-eleven, too-much-Lynch-is-never-enough-Lynch.

The high-concept – a story of a haunted film production – gives him the leeway to do, well, whatever the hell he wants. Three hours of ominous corridors, random screaming, dream sequences, and a Beckettesque sitcom starring humans with the heads of rabbits.

Shot on consumer-grade digital video, the traditional two-shots look a little like cut-scenes from dated video games, but the close-ups are intimidatingly, terrifyingly close, and there’s a strange warmth in the large pixels and topographical lines.

Mulholland Drive was disappointingly Lynch-by-numbers; except for the stark humanity in its final act, it felt like a cover-band stuck playing greatest hits. Love it or hate it, this does feel like something new. It’s moments like these that I’m glad we don’t use star ratings, because I’d have no goddamn idea how to rate Inland Empire. A better question might be: is it something or is it nothing?

It’s something.

By Martyn Pedler

What:
Inland Empire

Where:
Kino Dendy
Cinema Nova

When:
Opens Nov 15

Official site:
here

Or YouTube the trailer:
here

Win:
We have 5 double passes valid for the season to give away. Just email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line ‘too-much-Lynch-is-never-enough’

Many people who enter these types of competitions put their eggs in that ol’ basket labelled ‘all of the above’. It’s a bold approach that sometimes pays off. There’s one place, however, where All Of The Above will never let you down, and that’s at 109 Victoria Street Fitzroy.

Just over one year old, this retail space slash design studio slash gallery slash fashion house has established itself in our hearts and in our wardrobes. If you haven’t visited for a while, drop by and see what’s happening. We can offer you the following taster:

AOTA is now an exclusive Australian stockist for Soulland (crazy Copenhagen streetwear), Twelve Bar from California, Copy (grown men’s street wear also from California), AIAIAI swirl headphones and Victoria shoes (rainbow plimsoles for the ladies). And this list is a long way from comprehensive.

If you’re one of those people who live in Perth but subscribe to all the thousands as a way of pretending you live on the east coast, then you’ll need to visit the online store.

By Penny Modra

Where:
109 Victoria St, Fitzroy (of Brunswick St, one south of Johnston)
Online store here

When:
Tues-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12-4pm, Mon closed, online 24/7

Contact:
8415 0461

So why would we write editorial on the advertiser? Look at this damn picture – that’s why. You don’t do that justice in a horizontal banner shape. In fact you don’t really do it justice on a computer screen either. You have to feel the grass beneath your feet, enjoy the wind as it caresses your cheeks, smell the sweet Cookie kitchen fumes as they blast out the chimney and thoroughly relax as you watch some of the most sensational cinema this side of the Highpoint Shopping Complex.

Rooftop Cinema Season 02 starts next Tuesday night and if last year was anything to go by tickets fly faster than those funny Jamaican guys in Cool Runnings… a film that will not be shown. But there is a full week of Johnny Depp films so sweet baby Jesus buy me a ticket.

By Penny Modra

What:
Rooftop Cinema

Where:
Level “7” Curtin House, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne

When:
Wed Nov 21 – end of summer
Launching Tues Nov 20, 7.30pm, invitation only

How much:
$18 / $15 for cinema tickets

Win:
We have a double pass to the opening night screening party to give away. Just email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line 'I looked at the damn picture, that's why'.

We all know how starved Northcote has been of a decent bar proper, the Darebinshire crew have long craved a good stool to call home, that ain’t of the pub variety.

Thank the high heavens then for these adept new cobblers. With a name that draws to mind Hoxton, London’s similarly hip Dream Bags, Jaguar Shoes, this class lodestone (located next to the iconic Pizza Mein Leibe) has charm and talent to boot.

If we’re talking tipples, Joe’s owning triumvirate are highly qualified in the pressed grape. Theirs is a master-blaster course in wine consumption. And suffice to say their gin and tonic would make the Queen’s petticoat fall off, it’s that breezy. There’s also the requisite range of foreign beer with Sicilian longnecks and Argentinean lagers to wet ya whistle.

On the aesthetics angle, picture a back wall hung with a giant metal mirror reflecting an oxidising view of a deco New York cocktail house married with an Italian coffee bar. Minimalist magic. Out back they’ve a killer roofless games arena, equipped with a netball hoop and an epic petanque court. Good times!

By Josh Gardiner

What:
Joe’s Shoe Store

Where:
233 High St, Northcote   

When:
Tues-Thurs 4pm-late Fri-Sun 2pm-late (late is 1am-ish)

Contact:
enquiries@joesshoestorebar.com.au