The Soloist

On my recent trip to Adelaide I was left with the better part of a full day to entertain myself, with limited resources I decided that a trip to the cinema was as good a solution to kill a couple of hours as any.

Besides bumping into Cale Hooker, Tayte Pears and Tom Bellchambers in the Cinema Foyer and yelling out encouragement for the then pending Footy final. I found myself in the next most interesting scheduled session. With little to pick from and having already seen District 9 and expecting to see some of the other candidates with my wife I settled on 'The Soloist'

The irony isn't lost on me that I found myself watching the Soloist alone. For the most part I've no issues with checking out a movie, event or even an interstate football final solo. There is a remarkable amount of freedom when you only has to consider their own whims and fancies and not require a general consensus before deciding on a course of action. Interestingly the movie did touch on some of these emotions which induced a little self reflection

Nevertheless I digress. The Soloist isn't my usual cinematic genre but given my selection criteria my expectations where non existent. Brilliant performances by Iron Man err … Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx made this a very compelling Drama that did captivate me at times. The dramatic undertones and serious characters did feel like attempts at getting nominated for the upcoming cinematic award season. As professional actors its in their best interest to get critical acclaim so it's hard to really fault Downey Jr or Foxx for this.

While I did enjoy the movie you would typically need to be in the mood for the themes this picture exposes the viewer too. Personally I'm probably only open to this heavy a movie half the time unless they can disguise the intellectual context behind thrilling or action packed sequences.

The other true marvel of this film is how Downey Jr can look so good all the time even in a random arrangement of hats ...

Adventure to Lake Mountain well everywhere but

I learnt two invaluable lessons yesterday. The first one is that you need snow to ski. The second is you make your own fun.

A group of eight of us decided midweek that a trip to Lake Mountain was worthwhile. Lake Mountain is a popular cross country skiing resort around 90km from Melbourne. For the knowledge curious there is no lake at Lake Mountain, but rather the area was named after ‘George Lake’

It seems yesterday a lake wasn’t the only thing missing as the last solid snow coverage landed a week ago. Conditions had deteriorated to poor tobogganing and snow play and reduced visibility which negated sightseeing. I’d like to thank the honesty of the ski hire attendant at Marysville who winced as he explained to eight potential customers than it wasn’t worth our while.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, we hopped in our rides and headed to a neighbouring town also devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires. The other reason for heading to Lake Mountain was to support the rebuilding communities affected by the fires. Having had breakfast in Marysville, heading to Kinglake was the obvious choice.

It is the second time I’ve headed to the affected area and not having experienced the fires but remembering the weather conditions on the day it is almost impossible to imagine what it would have been like. Kilometres and kilometres of flora and Australian bush show signs of burning but now six months on a plethora of new life has also sprouted everywhere.

Arriving at Kinglake we completed the obligatory stroll down the main drag and settled ourselves in the local wood-fire heated pub. After a couple of quiet frothies, a few games of pool and a hearty lunch we decided it was time to hit up the wineries, so back in a convey formation we rolled out. One boutique and one commercial goliath of a winery with grand views and its own helicopter later we were back in the car heading to Warburton to - you guessed it - the pub for dinner.

So a day of cross country skiing and exercise turned into to a marathon of eating drinking and being merry. At the end of the day, the same amount of fun was had ...