leebutler Review

Shit & Champagne (2021) – Effervescant

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Shit & Champage Info

It’s been no secret on this blog that I’m a very big fan of drag queen films, having reviewed more than a few of them over the last few years. The drag queen film can be split up into two seperate but equally important groups, the first one being where it’s about drag queens and the film acknowledges that these are drag queens. Things like Cherry Pop, To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar or Death Drop Gorgeous (to name three films I reviewed and can therefore link to, thus improving SEO) would fit into this since all the characters involved are stated to be drag queens, even if they’re in drag the entire goddamn movie. The second kind of drag queen film casts drag queens in female roles and treats them as though they were just regular women, basically any role that Divine ever played is a role that’s meant to be a woman and they just happened to cast a Drag Queen. 

Today’s movie, Shit & Champagne, is a beautiful and glorious example of the second kind of drag movie.

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leebutler Review

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché (2021) – Obsessed with This

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

After the gut-punch of a documentary with Lydia Lunch, it feels right to wash it down with a documentary about another performer that broke boundaries in her own unique way. The idea of course was to try and watch something that was a little lighter and maybe a little easier to take on… stupid me forgetting that the Sydney Underground Film Festival thrives on really just fucking with the audience. So, time to talk about Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché.

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leebutler Review

Fanny: The Right To Rock (2021) – Wonderful Feeling

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Fanny: The Right To Rock Info

The history of music is filled with some truly great female bands. The Go-Go’s, The Runaways and The Bangles just to name a few that hit big mainstream success. One band however is considered to be the first all-female rock band to be signed to a major label, a band that would influence all the others that followed, were championed by such icons as David Bowie and would open for bands like Slade and Jethro Tull… that band was named Fanny and they were at the forefront of women’s right to be rock stars (which is great because that gives their documentary a fantastic subtitle to put after the semicolon).

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leebutler Review

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (2019) – Unearthly Delight

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

I’ll be honest and admit the name Lydia Lunch was not one I had heard of before I started watching the documentary Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over. Why would I? I’m an unhip Aussie who wasn’t even conceptualised back in 1979 when Lydia started performing with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (which… yeah, best band name ever, calling it now). In a way, I feel like not knowing anything about Lydia worked to my advantage because watching the film felt like being punched in the face with shock and awe, which feels like it fits in well with her aesthetic.

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leebutler Review

Sleeze Lake: Vanlife at its Lowest and Best (2020) – Van-tastic

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Sleeze Lake: Vanlife at its Lowest and Best Info

There’s an old truism that “If you remember the 70s then you weren’t there”. This has also been applied to the 60s, largely because of Woodstock, but it can also apply to the 70s when everyone was just doing endless amounts of drugs… like, enough drugs that anyone who was around in the 60s or 70s isn’t allowed to ever talk shit about what drugs the youth of today do. Anyway, this era led to a lot of memorable big festivals where a lot of people did a lot of drugs. Today’s Sydney Underground Film Festival entry is about one of the lesser-known drug-filled festivals, but also one of the strangest.

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leebutler Review

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest (2021) – GAME ON!

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest Info

It’s been two years since I’ve been able to go to a film festival, specifically my favourite film festival on earth. The Sydney Underground Film Festival, a festival dedicated to strange underground films that are usually shown in this great little venue that’s clearly not really meant for a film festival but some nutbags decided to put up a projector in a few rooms and boom, you got a festival.

This festival provided 2 previous entries to my “best of” list, that being Greener Grass and Use Me, and I was hoping to get to go again this year but… well, that thing that meant I only got to review Fast and Furious 9 yesterday moved the festival to online only. The upside? That means that for the next month I’ll be able to get through a lot of these films that I might not have been able to see if I was going in person (maybe that’ll keep me sane until this lockdown ends). 

So, let’s start this off with a documentary about a guy and his arcade system.

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leebutler Review

Fast & Furious 9 (2021) – Deliciously Dumb

Released: 17th June
Seen: 9th September

Fast & Furious 9 Info

Remember when the Fast & Furious franchise was just about underground car racing? Remember the early films that were just about this cop who infiltrated an underground racing ring? Feels so long ago, now they’ve turned into superhero films but with cars instead of superpowers where every movie has some giant cataclysmic world-ending event that can only be stopped by Vin Diesel doing a really sick burnout off the top of a skyscraper. It’s the dumbest movie franchise and it is just endlessly fun almost because it is so spectacularly dumb. Now we’re up to Fast & Furious 9 and god damn it keeps getting dumber and I keep just enjoying its celebration of stellar stupidity.

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leebutler Review

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021) – Paints An Interesting Picture

Released: 25th August
Seen: 6th September

Bob Ross Happy Accidents Betrayal & Greed Info

Between 1983 and 1994, Bob Ross delighted viewers with his charming little show The Joy Of Painting. For over 400 episodes, Bob and a series of guest stars would talk the viewer through methods of painting landscapes and he became a cultural phenomenon. Even now, years after his passing, the image of the cheerful man with the giant afro and the well-used painter’s palette is iconic. Hell, it’s well known enough that a recent episode of Drag Race had someone recreate the look with a wig made of squirrels (and sure, they were in the bottom that week but you still knew who they were). Well, turns out the story of Bob Ross’ legacy wasn’t exactly as happy as the little trees that were in many of his paintings.

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