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Unenthusiastic owner


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I thought Surry Hills was the ice capital now? Not that I know Sydney or any big city scene.

I've got bags of fertiliser at my place.

I'm an 80's child so still into my heroin. You into making bombs with that fertilizer, or growing weed?

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Seen this?

 

 

ONE of the leading roles in ''Freedom'' is played by a low-slung Porsche Turbo. Like the expensive one in which James Dean crashed on a California highway, this one ends up totaled, but not before it becomes a dream machine and a moving target. All this takes place not on the familiar Los Angeles freeways of standard- brand television movies but on the roadways of Australia. As seen through the helicopter cameras, the landscape is stunning.

This film, which opens today at the D.W. Griffith Theater, has the potential for a modern look at striving lower-middle-class youngsters. But ''Freedom'' falls short, presenting instead a puzzling Australian variation of the Angry Young Man theme. The hero is an unsympathetic 42-year-old, played with a steady and humorless glare by Jon Blake. He is unemployed and unwilling to do much about it except fight with his employers and the unemployment office.

A portentous sign posted on a wall in the film reads: ''The Economy Is the Secret Police of Your Desires.'' That line sheds little light on the protagonist's sullen behavior or what might be normal behavior in a time of urban unemployment.

Fantasizing, he dreams movie dreams: a Porsche, a cool white suit, a sexy blonde in the seat beside him, and freedom to step on the gas. The fantasies become real in a stolen car, a shoplifted outfit and that girl in the tight jeans, played by Jad Capelja, who bears watching. Her life is more complicated and more interesting; she is trying to recover an infant daughter that unnamed authorities have taken away from her.

So they hit the road, stealing and surviving, chased by particularly dense police - whom they invariably outwit - becoming fugitives on the lam. An old couple who befriend them suggest that they resemble ''Bonnie and Clyde'' characters. That may be a clue to the intent of the film, which is directed at high speed by Scott Hicks. However, the two young fugitives are too innocent to make the planted notion work for the moviegoer because the people in John Emery's television-type screenplay keep getting upstaged by that Porsche.

Sad to report from a country that has sent us such thoughtful characterizations of its people in the past, ''Freedom,'' though clearly aiming higher than its American counterparts, finally adds up to an Aussie exploitation film with wheels.

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Okay, at the risk of getting off topic - LOVE these Sydney terraces, especially with some thoughtful gentrification. Hard to find ones that aren't a mish-mash of a layout, but from the degree of gutting going on here, I'm guessing yours will be something special.

 

Looks incredibly wide - enough for a good garage at the back!

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