It’s so funny how two people can look at or watch the exact same thing and come up with two completely different opinions.

Straight up, I’m not a massive art appreciator. I mean, I can see a painting or a photo and tell you whether I like it or think it's rubbish. For Instance, this one below won a $10,000 prize this year.

Image: goldcoast.com.au 01 January 2010
The controversial winner of this year's Duke art prize by Melbourne artist Christopher Jones.

What the fuck? Seriously a) this makes absolutely, NO sense and b) it’s just words painted. Probably with a template - hardly art.

I mean, is this the emperor’s new clothes of the art world? If one guy who is respected in the Art World says throwing shit at a blank canvas is brilliant, do the rest of his peers simply agree with him for fear of looking like a an uneducated fool?

I only ask, because today I wrote my take on Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland. I absolutely loved it. Loved it and to be honest, I really didn’t expect to. I thought it would be crazy bonkers and full-on Tim Burton/Johnny Depp batshit craziness. Plus I'd read reviews like this “a wildly inventive film straight jacketed in conventional narrative...that grows increasingly one-dimensional and simple-minded.'' Or “So let me call it now: Alice in Wonder- land - the most disappointing film of 2010” So polar opposite to me. What does this all mean?

Every Friday night, we go to the video store, ok ok, the DVD store. I know this is very rock star and you are all wildly jealous but it has to happen to someone. You've probably seen us there. The errant family paying $56 in late fees, whilst swatting the 3 year olds grubby kindy fingers away from the Freddo Frogs. Anyway, we (my husband and I) generally get a new release. One for me, one for him. Occasionally there is one we both will watch together. Often I just look for the most violent one I can find for him. Something that has zombies, high violence and naked beetches. Then he’ll go off, watch it and without doubt, walk back in 2 hours later. I will say “So how was it”. His response is ALWAYS “Shit”. Why in the hell did he sit through it then? Because that’s what he does. So he will sit and watch Shit but refuses to sit through PS I Love you, even though it will probably, at the end of the day, be far more entertaining than any of that crap he’s been suffering through.

My idea of a good movie is to be entertained. I don’t expect to find the meaning of life inside a cinema. Great if I learn some new stuff. Fantastic if I walk out with a new resolve to join Yoga or volunteer more. But at the end of the day, I get reality stuffed down my freaking throat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I just want to escape.

I find it funny to find some people hated movies I loved or vice versa.

Take Bruno for instance. Recently we discussed this with my brother and his girlfriend, who LOVED it. Texted me to tell me they were watching it and it was hilarious. Phil and I had seen it not long after it came out on DVD and whilst he sat through it (as he does); I got, oh, about 20 minutes before I had had enough.

But on the flipside, Couples Retreat came out recently and I absolutely thought it rocked. It was funny and escapist. It got nailed in the reviews. Barely anyone seemed to like it.

Perhaps it’s me? Actually, reading back, I think it may be. Sometimes I’m a bit of a slow burner. I remember seeing Zoolander for the first time and thinking it was shite. Then I went back a few years later and it cracked me up. I now consider it in my top 10 of favourite movies. Along with Kindergarten Cop, Napoleon Dynamite, 50 First Dates and Juno.

So, now I’m off to go paint my own $10,000 winning canvas. I’m thinking

THE BRAIN DOES
LEECH MARBLES
TRIPPED
THE MONGOOSE

It’s certainly mental enough. Think I've nailed it.