Gun powder meets lasers

I quite like a good po-mo mash up of genres. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz for example. Gotta love a Rom-Zom-Com or a Slasher-Cop flick.

And the combination of Western & Sci-Fi has worked before - Joss Whedon's uber-brilliant-and-tragically-short-lived Firefly is a perfect case for this.

But I can't say I've ever been the hugest fan of the Western genre. Deadwood was entertaining, but I only saw a couple of episodes with Irish, and I haven't touched on it since. It seems incredibly blokey to me - battling the frontier, men against the elements, men against each other. There is also an inherent racism in Westerns. Them damn Injuns! The Native Americans and Mexicans are so far removed from mainstream, their otherness screams loud and clear in their sullen facial expressions and lack of brimmed hats. And as for women? Whores and virgins abound, except for a few hard-as-nails she-males, leathered and weathered from that same battle against the land. There also seems to be this overarching obsession with the father-son relationship... Doing daddy proud or some such macho nonsense.

The third installment of Back to the Future was always my least favourite.

I guess that formula has always just... bored me. It is the kind of films my grandfather watched. Long silences that I suppose are meant to build tension. Grubby faces and squinty eyes - oh won't someone give that man a pair of shades?

But still, with Jon Favreau at the helm, the icon of Harrison Ford, the hotness of Daniel "Mr Pout" Craig and Olivia "Turquoise Eyes" Wilde, how could I resist a little bit of excitement about Cowboys & Aliens?

What have I said about expectation management?

Like all westerns, this one starts off slow. We have stage coach robberies, and shoot outs on dusty streets. An amnesiac protagonist always helps in the exposition of information, because they can hide behind the idea that the character learns as we do. And Daniel Craig makes amnesia look pretty darn attractive. Plus there is the added mystery of that weird angular manacle...?

Hey Harrison! How cool is my Indiano Jones outfit?!

Anyway, it starts off slow. And there are a few brief moments of action, mostly when the aliens attack, and steal away the townsfolk. Lasers, and retracting chains, and exploding buildings. And flight craft that resemble beetles. But that's about it for pace. Key feature of the Western: move SLOW.

So the Wild West has been taken over by the hungry-for-gold space crabs. Closely resembling the "Prawns" from District 9, the invading forces take that idea of Vagina Dentata to a whole other level. In fact, the phallic and vaginal imagery goes a little bit bonkers in this genre mash up. And it's possible I am viewing in through my own post-feminist lenses, but it all just got a bit too much for me. The huge phallic spaceship. The guns, and pulsing hot rod weapons. The protruding digits from mucusy, triangular fleshy caverns.... This is not just me, is it?

I think the point they were trying to get at is that money ruins us all. Corruption and power and violence and green are all inextricably linked. When you get the money, you lose perspective of the important things. Like the love of your wife, the respect of your community, the motivation to be a good man (because really, it's all about the men in the Wild West!) and the decency to other living things. Aliens want gold, and they're happy to destroy everyone in their path to get it. Which is not a huge stretch from Daniel Craig's Jake (before he went all forgetty) and Harrison Ford's Dolarhyde (pron: Dollar Hide. Man who runs cattle for a living... Really?) before their purposes were united by a common alien enemy. So yeah, I get the point of the film. I see the moral, through all the glowing blue lasers exploding green blood.

Doesn't mean I have to like it though.

Cowboys & Aliens didn't really arrest me. I don't think there is quite enough sci-fi in it for the geekiest of us, but if you're into the dusty westerns, it may work for you

Both Kinds of Music: The Bushwackers

When we were kids, Australia Day was brilliant. Before I knew about the genocide of the First Fleet and the invasion of Terra Nullius. Before Triple J's Hottest 100 became the world's biggest music poll, and the rudder that steers the whole hot January day. My parents and brother (because there was only one then) would join forces with a couple of other families from the Northern Beaches. I imagine the parents got boozy, but there was always lots of great food. And dancing. And music. A real life lagerphone. Other home-made booze related instruments, such as the goonbox filled with rice. And a steady soundtrack of Australian bush music. Redgum featured heavily. And The Bushwackers. These memories are young and golden and untainted with self-conciousness. One of the first memories of music I have, like my musical spiritual home.

The Bushwackers are a staple of the West Bubblefuck Both Kinds of Music Festival. This year they celebrated their 40th Anniversary, and have kicked off the year in style. Their Chardonnay Show is a yearly feature of the Festival Program, and it is almost always sold out. Sunday afternoon in the Beer Garden of the Longyard, armed with squirty bottles and stubbie coolers to last the whole day through. It is the Full Stop of the 10 day festival, except a full stop is not nearly flamboyant enough a piece of punctuation to really give this show justice.

They pride themselves on a complete lack of American influence, and are instead more heavily rooted in traditional Irish music. A double bass, a piano accordian, fiddle, bodhran (Irish drum), tin whistle and all manner of other percussiony and guitary kinds of instruments create a wall of upbeat and rollicking sound. They tend to sing about folk heroes, like Ned Kelly, and the best things about being Australian. They do focus on the bushmate cliches, and are very heavy on songs about sheep - and both seem entirely fitting in the lofty wooden hall and beer garden at the Longyard.

The Bushwackers in flight

They are also brilliant showmen. Or show people, really. Dobe Newton, lead singer and random percussionist, is a pretty out there dude. His penchant for the flamboyant suits is always riveting, and this Sunday was no exception. The first outfit was a silver lame shirt with a black and white fresian coat, and his second was a white tuxedo jacket, splattered with enormous and luminous sequened flowers. He had a whinge toward the end of the show that there wasn't another break in the set, because he had another outfit to show off. And his tween-songs banter included a shout out to all the Spotlight members, offering a free solo CD to anyone who presented their membership card at the merch stand - There was a steady stream of middle aged ladies for the next fifteen minutes, collecting the booty to play while they sewed curtains or bedazzled their I Survived West Bubblefuck 2011 tshirts. Dobe is a sweaty man, with a bald pate, but a curtain of hair around his face. He swings his lagerphone with so much gusto, you feel sure it will break with each blasting beat, and the stage and shrapnel of washers and bottletops will rain over all the band and crowd.

The other band members compete for laughs, for limelight, but all hold up in talent. Roger Corbett is the primary songwriter of the band (though arguably their most famous song, "We Are Australian" was penned by Newton), and can swing his guitar too. His son Ben was on the electric guitar, and tucked in the corner on the double bass was Michael Vidale. The long-haired Mark Oats (also playing with The Pigs as I have mentioned before) is a brilliant fiddle player, but his banter leaves a fair bit to be desired.

But the one I love best is the token chick. Clare O'Meara plays the squeeze box, the most complex of all the instruments on the stage. There are keys and buttons and pulling the thing in and out. I really do love a good piano accordian player. When I first saw them a few years ago, she was all corkscrew curls under an enormous top hat, and she didn't stop bouncing along with the music for the whole show - which is about 3 and a half hours long! These days she is a little more sedate - and considering she has been playing for over twenty years, I am thinking that it is forgivable. She took the mic for just one song, the iconic Men at Work tune, "I Come From A Land Downunder" and she was mesmorising. Plus, as Newton said, she is easily the most photogenic in the band. Yes, I have a girl crush!

They actually did play an American cover - in honour of the plastic faced Kenny Rodgers, who was playing in the big shearing shed across the road. And Dobe promised us, his loyal crowd, that it would be the first and last time they would play an American song. And they do "The Gambler a great deal of justice too! There was a steady stream of superstars of the Both Kinds of Music World, including Kasey "Cat in a Bandsaw" Chambers, the very charming Sara Storer and the very boozed Beccy Cole. They did their own stuff, or covers of Bushwackers, or other Australian classics, like John Williams' "Old Man Emu", and brought a different energy to the stage, and to the crowd.

This year to raise money for the QLD Flood appeal, they auctioned OFF THEIR LAGERPHONE!!!! At only $2.50 a ticket, there were a lot of hungry audience members, including most of the members of my tribe. I was delighted, but they were a little disappointed, when my mum's cousin was announced as the winner. Just a warning, Margey, they are plotting to get an invite to your house and pilfer the prize for their own ends. The raffle raised about $2000, incidentally.

Margey, Dobe Newton and her brand new prize!

The Chardonnay Show is a brilliant part of the Festival. It is reportedly named after the very first Sunday performance the band did in 1994. Don Spencer (of Play School and "Don the Kelpie" fame) brought his family to the show on the way back to Sydney, thinking they would stay for one show, and one class of Chardy. But one song was not enough, and one glass was not enough. And nor was one bottle. They shared the wine, and drank the pub dry. It seems a fitting name for the show; a little bit fancy, and a little bit bogan. And a whole lot of fun.