"And then he hammered a roofer's nail up his nostril!"
Live in the US? Want to see a surf film that’ll apparently make you suck the lipstick from the boundaries of your mouth, stretch the front panel of your red panties etc?
Across three hundred cinemas in the US, and for tonight only, Heavy Water is having an advance screening before its premiere in a couple of weeks. Click here for locations.
There’s an advance screening tonight in Melbourne and in Coolangatta on Sunday, June 16.
Heavy Water is about Nathan Fletcher, the once too cute little bro of Christian, and son of Herb, who first rode the North Shore when he was eight and who, in 2011, was almost claimed by the devil during that year’s Code Red swell at Teahupoo.
The director of The Hurt Locker and Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow, has described it, apparently ’cause I’m getting this second-hand from Heavy Water director Oblowitz, as “magnificently cinematic.”
(Update: Mr Oblowitz emailed a screenshot of the exchange with the following note, “Please publish some form of retraction for implying that I might be creating fake news or lying or acting in a duplicitous manner concerning Ms Bigelow’s comment with respect to Heavy Water.)
The noted painter and director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) calls it “a profound insight into the heart and spirit of what it takes to be one of the greatest surfers of all time. If surfing is art, which I believe it is, we get to see the great artist Nathan Fletcher paint his masterpiece. The best surfing film I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen that text so I guess it’s true although Schnabel is a man prone to hyperbole and who don’t get out much, clearly.
In this five-minute short, director and subject behave in a manner that suggests the air has been laced with an agent that induces euphoria and relaxation, Nathan talking as if he’s a ventriloquist, teeth never separating, lips never moving, and Oblowitz is his hairy little doll.
(Long-form review coming shortly.)
