Today Donna and I went to the first audience screening for a new Australian film called Kenny. It’s a fake documentary following the life and work of a portaloo person, Kenny, who works for a Melbourne company called Splashdown as he copes with customers, family, the public and, of course, sewage.

Kenny is much more than just a very funny film, it’s a film with a good heart and a sharp eye on the human condition – especially where it concerns those “invisible” folks doing the dirty work that keeps society going. The filming is great and it makes quite a convincing documentary, the character of Kenny is strong, humble, funny and very warm hearted.

The authenticity is helped by the fact that Splashdown is a real Melbourne company (doing “Corporate Bathroom Rentals” – the owner Glenn Preusker is the sole investor in the film) who lent them the equipment, yard and vehicles. You could say that’s the ultimate in product placement, and sure, it won’t do their image any harm, but that’s not what the story is, the story is how Kenny copes with lifes ups and downs with good grace and humour – whether that be trying to persuade a new recruit to retrieve a lost wedding ring at a festival, defending their precious thunderboxes from this years annual torching at a race meet or coping with your first flight to the US.

It was my first time at a test screening and what we got to see was not the finished movie, still left to do is doing the sound (we had the audio from the camera used, which was still damn good & added to the authenticity in my book), fixing up the colour matching between scenes and some tidying up. The films creator, producer and director Clayton Jacobson (IMDB entry) was there to introduce the film and lead discussion and questions afterwards, but also there was Kenny himself (believed to be Claytons brother Shane) and a number of others from the cast (ex-wife, son, co-worker) and the camera man.

The audience reaction was brilliant, they loved the film. A couple felt there was a flat bit prior to the trip to the US, but to me (and according to Clayton) that was because Kenny was going through a difficult patch and that life isn’t all roses. It also gave a good contrast to what came after.

Anyway, I think it was an awesome film and well worth going to see when it comes out!

It’s being distributed in Australia by Madman Entertainment and is due out around July – keep an eye out for it.

Oh, and Clayton, if you read this, any chance of keeping the soundtrack we heard at the test screening as an alternate option on the DVD ? Please ? 🙂

Review Score: 4.5 out of 5! 

We went to see Joyeux Noël tonight, a film about the Christmas 1914 fraternisation between the opposing sides in the First World War.

We both thought it was a really good film (well, asides from the lip synch for the opera singing), very moving and showing that the people in the trenches on both sides were human, no matter what the propaganda might have said. Of course as a fictionalisation of the real events purists may find things to complain about, but as a depiction of those trying to remain alive & keeping their humanity in the midst of so much death it really works.

It’s probably best to go and see it without reading about the film first because I’ve found that some of the sites that talk about it don’t really do it justice – not even the official site.

Returning to the question of what actually happened, the First World War site has an extensive section on the Christmas Truce and this section I thought summed things up nicely.

With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches.

Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain’s birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches.

The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides.

The Germans then asked the British to join in. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’