At McDonald’s in George Street a Quarter Pounder cost eighty cents, French fries forty-five cents, a Cheeseburger forty-five cents, and a Fillet-‘o-fish burger seventy-five cents. We walked up the street to the run-down and hot Roma Cinema where we paid four dollars each to see the screening, from 1.30 p.m., of “Public Vices And Virtues”, which came with subtitles.
It was preceded by a short film, “The Spy’s Wife”, about two spies who, unknowingly, end up in bed with each other’s wife; another on French stunt drivers in their Peugeot cars; and, finally, yet another short film — that won an award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival — about a man who practices doing more and more each day, in the lift between floors, until he dies from overdoing it. The main film is just an orgy of naked men and women and nothing like “the film of ’76” Bill Collins had labelled it to be.
New Zealand was dismissed for 175 in its second innings after Australia’s first innings had ended on 377 (Rick McCosker, 84). Australia needs to score just twenty-eight runs to win the match.