"Love and Information" (Malthouse)

Extremely good, its many mini-scenes building a cumulative effect in a way only possible through the theatrical form - eight actors playing a succession of characters in an array of configurations and sometimes as briefly as only a few moments and half a dozen words of speech.

Love and information - and especially information - are woven through and in dialogue with a great deal of the everything else that shapes and concerns us as individuals in society (the focus is more on immediate human relationships and the self, and somewhat on questions of knowledge, than on wider issues of politics, society, culture and religion), and it's thought provoking and affecting, snappily written and executed but broad and open in its interests and ideas. Also, has a sense of humour.

Very strong cast including a number of familiar faces, some of which I could place and others needing some googling afterwards (the familiar-for-various-reasons included Zahra Newman, Alison Whyte and Anita Hegh). Must be a lot of fun, given the multiplicity of roles assumed by all of them throughout and the dynamically modular but simple set.

(w/ Meribah)

"Exploration 15" (Flinders Lane Gallery)

Ten or so emerging artists being exhibited - this was the opening. High quality all round. There may have been a bit of bias but if so it would only have been very small, but my favourites actually were the Harley Manifold oils (especially the larger ones); also Thomas Bowman's tiny figurines.

(w/ Meribah; Erandathie)

"The Kaleidoscopic Turn" (NGV)

A selection of pieces from the NGV's collection unified by an interest in light, colour and movement, and broadly spanning from Bridget Riley and Op Art through to today, drawing on both international and Australian artists. Given its theme, it was unsurprising that I enjoyed it!

I'd seen a few of these before, but that didn't detract in the slightest, say, from the experience of Olafur Eliasson's beautiful, transfixing, planetary "Limbo lamp" (2005) room (* - amongst other previous visits) or Tomaslav Nikolic's green-framed pink study "3: We all have a dream of a place we belong" (2003) (*).

Also, Sandra Selig's "Heart of the air you can hear" (2011) - a piece which somewhat reverses expectation (or does it? A contemporary art version of the Sicilian's dilemma in The Princess Bride maybe) in appearing from a distance as if it is line drawn on to the wall (a la Sol LeWitt) and only on inspection from close up (or the right angle) reveals itself as a crafty and engagingly dynamic thread installation.

Ben Ambridge - Psy-Q

It's packaged as a series of interactive quizzes to enable the reader/taker to test their 'psychological intelligence', but actually it's a guided tour of contemporary insights into the way our minds work, taking in the suite of cognitive biases, Thinking, Fast and Slow etc. Much of it familiar but breezily digestible (mixed metaphor) and the reinforcement doesn't hurt.

China Mieville - The Scar

Ok - this is the last of the recent stream of genre fiction that I've been reading...time to focus. But - what a pleasure The Scar still is - my favourite of the Bas-Lag three. In Bellis Coldwine, an appealingly sulky central character; in Armada a vivid and endlessly intriguing setting; and all around them a host of monsters, wonders and memorable ancillary characters (the Brucolac has always stuck in my mind).

(last time)

The Very Best of the Mavericks

There's a pretty decent correlation between the extent to which crooning lead singer Raul Malo sounds like Roy Orbison and how much I like these songs ... frequently, that would be: 'a lot'. (Most Orbison-like: "I Should Have Been True".) Smoothly country with classic pop overtones staying always on the right side of lounge, and often quite delightful.

Hugh Howey - Wool

More escapist fiction - post apocalyptic community living in a 144-level class-segregated silo connected only by a spiral staircase. Shades of Snowpiercer. Made me want to find out what would happen next - especially once it showed its hand in terms of twists and seemingly main character killing-off.

Kelly Clarkson - Piece By Piece

Nice enough, with some catchy moments, but the problem is that this album's in no way surprising, which means that it's missing an element essential to even the most straight-up of pop music. Clarkson has been impressively enduring, but this one's not a stayer.

Lorrie Moore - "How to Become a Writer"

However the next few weeks play out, it's about time to give the novel writing another big push, which makes this an apt time to have read this story, a Faber 'single' from Moore's collection Self-Help ... because it's a spikily acute (post-)modernist piece with a distinctive voice of the kind that I admire rather than because of its title and subject which, given the path it takes, are actually rather more on the dispiriting side.

Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, "I'll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it?" Your lips dry to salt. Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can't imagine being a writer even making the top twenty. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. "I bet," they always sigh, "you'd be great with kids." Scowl fiercely. Tell them you're a walking blade.

Lauren Beukes - The Shining Girls

Time travelling serial killer pursued by the one girl who got away; predictably page-turning. Chicago back and forth through the decades also good, and likewise the care taken to ensure that all of the titular girls are not only victims but rather vivid subjects in their own right.

Parks and Recreation season 6

Still charming, if at times leaning a bit heavily on sentiment and beginning to show its age with more of a reliance on formula - both its own and that of sitcoms at large. But, importantly to its appeal, also still ultimately good hearted even if it leans a bit heavily on the ignorance and self-interestedness of the residents of Pawnee throughout, both for comedy purposes and to generate conflict with Leslie's do-gooding.

(1-3, 4, 5)

"Luminous World" / "Weird Melancholy: The Australian Gothic" / "Nature/Revelation" (Potter Museum)

Three different exhibitions, all with at least some nice pieces to recommend them, although the last (on the top floor) was definitely the highlight.

"Luminous World" comprises contemporary works from the Wesfarmers collection, themed around light. One room is mostly black and white and plays more on the theme of shadow (including a couple of Bill Hensons - breathtaking as always - the one below untitled 2009-10), while the other is more obviously 'luminous' and colour-lit.

"Weird Melancholy" stages the Australian bush as haunted house and presents its pieces through Gothic lenses - the uncanny, the repressed (Aboriginal Australians), the haunted land. The reading isn't too forced, but not that many of the works (mostly paintings) especially caught at me; one exception, which I liked a lot, was Boyd's "Spring Landscape" (1959).

And "Nature/Revelation", concerned with enlivening a sense of the profundity of nature, frequently via the sublime, in the context of concerns about anthropogenic climate change. Several striking works here.

Berndnaut Smilde's interior photographs of clouds that he generated himself ("Nimbus II", 2012):

The full wall, life size charcoal-drawn sperm whale of Jonathan Delafield Cook (it even casts a shadow) - 2013:

And several luminously beautiful Ansel Adams photos (eg "Mt McKinley and Wonder Lake", 1947):

(w/ Derrick)

Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria seems to carry a lot on its surface, such that in some respects - notably the suggested but never directly determined reflection of the relationship between Sigrid and Helena in that between Binoche's Maria and Kristen Stewart's Valentine, and indeed between Maria and Chloe Grace Moretz's Jo-Ann, the rather obvious metaphor of the Maloja Snake (the cloud formation, in addition to the synecdoche (?) that is Maloja Snake the play) and the somewhat obvious (dangerously close to trite) dialogue about art and movies themselves - it seems decidedly simple, even artlessly so.

Yet, in contrast to that impression, the film as whole registers as profoundly poetic and enigmatic, not least in the satisfyingly elusively real feeling to its rendition of its characters and their relationships and interactions and the spaces between them, legible in what they say (or don't), and how, and also in their physicality (and that latter rarely, if indeed ever, in a way that's explicit or obvious). Curiously, in those respects the film that it most reminded me of was Closer, with which it doesn't otherwise have a great deal in common (at least not on the surface).

And then there's the direction more generally, unexpected cuts and transitions and all, along with the generally undistracting but always intelligent and occasionally outright beautiful cinematography, especially in and amidst the Alps where much of the action - such as it is - takes place.

So really, it's on that deeper, more allusive level that Clouds really does operate, in a way that's integrated with the - increasingly interesting, the more its implications sink in, even without the meta-textual dimension of Assayas' own casting, which itself is, I think, integral - layers of plot, character and theme. For all that it appears to lay out on the surface what its concerns are, there's something altogether more slippery and difficult to pin down going on in its interstices (which, of course, are fundamental to what it, itself, is) - to which there's clue, climax and anti-climax in the ending of the second part and the unresolved epilogue.

Speaking of casting, as an aside, Juliette Binoche is a personal icon essentially entirely because of Three Colours: Blue in ways that have to do with every aspect of her self as an actor including her beauty (still luminous many years on) and Moretz has been a welcome streak of energy through everything that I've seen her in throughout her shortish career, but for mine Kristen Stewart (who I've always said was a really rather good actor) is the stand out, producing an unaffected, naturalistic performance that brings Valentine to life while - ipso facto but this is all too rarely the case in film - also holds within it a sense of unnamed depths and mystery.

(w/ Jade)

Musical slices

Last weekend, North Carlton in the morning, listening to Plant/Krauss on Raising Sand; walked into store and took headphones off to discover Led Zeppelin all around, something from Houses of the Holy or Physical Graffiti I think, but either way a good three decades plus earlier.

Today, Southbank. Cold air and sunshine and green apple ice cream; and, somehow aptly, Belle and Sebastian.

And then, just a few minutes ago, walking home with some groceries after a run around Princes Park, "Dirty Dream Number Two" came on and even after all these listens it brought a smile to my face (...dream two you couldn't see her face, but you saw everything else...).

Inherent Vice (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Jonny Greenwood bits and pieces, other bits and pieces (including Can and Neil Young), all up not particularly much of a listening experience out of film context I don't think ... the one with Joanna Newsom narrating Pynchon prose over musical murmurings good though. 

Dan Gardner - Future Babble: Why Pundits Are Hedgehogs and Foxes Know Best

The argument in a nutshell (the diagnosis is convincing; the overall prescription of a healthy scepticism of highly confident predictions by hedgehogs likewise; the specific sketching of how this might be applied in the context of climate change somewhat less so in being somewhat unsophisticated in treatment of real world implications and opportunity cost):

The world is complicated and not linear.

The illusion of control.

Tendency to see patterns and causation where there is none; difficulty with randomness.

Optimism bias - feeling good about own judgements.

CONFIRMATION BIAS.

Status quo bias: tomorrow will be like today, only more so (tendency to project current trends). Affected by anchoring effect from today's trends. Even more so by availability heuristic: the most recent is always freshest in our mind.

Dislike of uncertainty.

Power of authority; certainty convinces.

We remember the hits and not the misses. Experts' and media organisations' incentives reinforce this.

Cognitive dissonance - actively seek to avoid. Seek a story that avoids confronting a failed prediction.

Hindsight bias: knowing the outcome makes us judge it more likely than before we knew that outcome.

Foxes are better at predictions than hedgehogs.

Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher

Has inspired me (maybe) to start writing letters myself again; highlights both the text and the materiality of letters - the latter by reproducing the original, handwritten or typed or even inscribed into clay wherever possible. My favourite perhaps the one from the NASA person responding to a nun's question about how the expenditure on space exploration can be justified in a world of famine and want. Littered with little insights into what it is to be human and how we relate to each other on both an individual and a historical scale, as well as into a wide range of social, historical and cultural happenings large and small. (Started life on the web.)

Lydia Loveless - Indestructible Machine

Her previous and first lp, and also excellent (Somewhere Else has turned to be really outstanding - I haven't been able to shake it). There's a punkier edge to this one as well as some clearer rockabilly elements on songs like "Bad Way To Go", "Jesus Was A Wino" and "Do Right", but the voice and the tendency to jag electric guitar down the middle of a melody is the same, as is the overall songwriting style, and it's clearly recognisable as the work of the same artist. Favourites: "Steve Earle", "Learn to Say No".

"Timeshare" (Malthouse)

The first part (the first day) plays mostly as enjoyable almost-farce, the tone off-kilter but then that's what one expects from Lally Katz and it's entertaining and hints at something deeper, but the second, coming after the reveal about the identity of the narrator, the appearance of the sea turtle (another in Katz's line of magic-symbolic animals) and seemingly climactic events of the first night takes on an increased poignancy as well as throwing the musical numbers and kitsch lightness of the previous day into a new light as Sandy's condition is revealed.

Typically for this most intriguing of playwrights (along with Declan Greene, the clear standout of the current Australian crop for mine), the true nature of the slipping through time, slipping out of the world, isn't clearly resolved but instead - more satisfyingly - is allowed to coexist (perhaps aptly) in something like a perpetual oscillation between a literal and a more fantastic explanation, where both could be 'true' at once.

Anyhow, also, good set, sympathetic direction, strong performances from all four of the actors. Very good.

(w/ Laura F, Erandathie and Meribah)

Emily St John Mandel - Station Eleven

I do love a good post apocalypse, and this is very good - a thoughtful, well-written novel of art, loss, humanity, connections and (somehow unobtrusively despite it being central to the narrative, not to mention the presence/absence of a significant character named Miranda) the enduring power of Shakespeare's work that takes place both after and - in flashback - before the catastrophic flu that delineates its events, and works as effectively as thrilling, kept me up late to finish reading it tale of survival as elegant literary exploration of its themes.

Also, I see, winner of this year's tournament of books.

"New15" (ACCA)

Shakey Graves - And The War Came

Sort of a folkish bluesy mix with some country thrown in there, including nicely crunching electric guitars. Pretty good, though a bit uneven.

John Wolseley - "Heartlands and Headwater" (NGV Australia)

When I was younger - much younger - I liked watercolours. Indeed, they were the first method of painting or making art that I remember being specifically aware of. It's tempting to think that it was the blurry dreaminess that drew me, although it's probably just as likely that that's me projecting aesthetic tastes that only became dominant much later in life onto a younger self who was blissfully far more straightforward. Who can say?

Anyhow, that early affection didn't particularly last into adolescence or subsequently, but I was reminded of it by John Wolseley's exhibition, which tackles his broad subject of Australian landcapes and particularly wetlands using watercolours amidst a range of many other things (below - "A Daly River Creek, NT", far from the most diverse, but also taking in pastel, pencil, charcoal, ink and woodcut).

It's a very nice show, unfolding in layers of painting, drawing, collage and assemblage including - entirely aptly - organic material from nature as well as the effects of engagement with nature (eg via frottage).

Music for running

Well, I have a running playlist of 300-odd songs - as many as will fit on an ipod shuffle - and it evolves over time but there a few mainstays: Spoon, always welcome as they are in most contexts; Slow Down Tallahassee, whose music could've been made for this; Bon Jovi, a rather unreconstructed favourite of mine from way back and unusually congruous in this context; Chvrches, whose terrific record keeps on being terrific long after it might've been expected to wear off; Belle and Sebastian, mostly, I think, because their music almost always takes me someplace other than my immediate surrounds; the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (they hit some fairly direct pleasure centres for me); Metric (likewise); and then there's Taylor Swift - when it's one of hers, well, it's like having a friend right there beside me, urging me to keep on going, to keep going for another few minutes again, which is sometimes just long enough.

C J Hendry - "50 Foods in 50 Days" @ The Cool Hunter

This one's from a couple of weekends back - got lost in the recent shuffle: an artful exhibition of finely detailed pen and ink drawings of various food on luxurious Hermes plates, some gourmet and others not so much (I think there were m&ms on one), stumbled across on Gertrude Street.

(w/ Jade and Rob)

It Follows

Well, It Follows has gone straight into the top handful in the (short) list of my favourite horror films.[*] Seriously good.

It works through the interplay of several pieces - the ingenuity and metaphorical richness of its central idea, the unnerving way in which the thing that follows is rendered, the out and out scares, the lushly languid rendition of setting and characters (unavoidably bringing to mind The Virgin Suicides for me) including a deliberately ambiguous sense of period, the easy interweaving of the teenage friendship, detective gang and 'getting out of town' elements (Stand By Me seems, if not a direct inspiration, at least a spiritual predecessor), the heighteningly swooning and ominous synth music that scores it (reminded me of the music in Drive), the overall mood.

In all, just very satisfying, and more as cinema qua cinema than particularly as genre.

(on my own, in a cinema 3 at Nova that seemed remarkably full for a small-name film on a Thursday night)

[*] The only others that I can recall thinking were this good are Let The Right One In, The Others and maybe The Orphanage, and also The Descent (the most straightforwardly, leanly terrifying of the lot).

Jane Gardam - The Man in the Wooden Hat

On the plus side, the writing is surprisingly personality-filled and there are moments of poignancy; on the down, it doesn't feel really fleshed out and I suspect would have been far richer had I read its companion and predecessor, Old Filth.

St Vincent - St Vincent

Some albums you need a bit of time to live with, as well as attention to what they've got going on - this is one of them. For me, St Vincent took several listens to emerge as more than a quirky, occasionally interesting but basically incoherent melange, but at some point I twigged to just how interesting and good it actually is - maybe I needed to get my ear in and learn how to listen to it (often a characteristic of good music and indeed, in similar vein, art of all kinds). Full of personality, melodic and structural left turns, unfamiliar and jagged rhythms, and sneakily tremendous guitar bits, it's terrific!

Maria Katsonis - The Good Greek Girl

I can't say how this would've read to me if I didn't know its author, but as it was, The Good Greek Girl was compelling - an insight in many ways.

Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again

I'm sure there's some very simple explanation for why so much of the best folk-touched music sounds spooky, haunted - something obvious to those who know about how music is put together, to do with tunings or keys or somesuch. It doesn't much matter to me, and whatever it is, Jessica Pratt's beguiling songs are wrapped up in it, while also twinkling with something more contemporary in spirit, all blended very well with her unusual voice (hard to find words to describe it, save to say that it sounds out of time). Simple, and also somehow intricate, and - after enough listens - increasingly memorable in its seemingly quiet way. 

Beach House - Beach House

Their debut, and more murmury and wispy than what was to come (Teen Dream, Bloom, both exceptionally good records - and there was one in between that I haven't got to yet) but already very lovely.

Nina Simone - Sings the Blues

What the title says! 

Robert A Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Pressed upon me by Rob. I didn't find it hard to read once I got into it, but it didn't especially resonate with me either...felt pretty dated.

"Endgame" (MTC)

Disappointing beginning to the 2015 theatre round. I've grown to love Beckett since my first exposure to him via a very different production of this very play some years back, but this take felt far too literal and straightforward, lacking in the essential spirit that animates his work or any particular interpretive twist (although Julie Forsyth as Nell was excellent - sweetly, suitably pathetic).

(w/ Erandathie)

Big Eyes

Feels like one from the heart from Burton, playing out as it does - and in relatively straight up fashion - its themes of artistic self-expression and value. Doesn't quite settle into a satisfying tonal shape at any point, and also features both an oddly inwardly-directed performance from Amy Adams (who has been basically captivating in all the other things I've seen her in) and an overly mannered - to the point of caricature - performance from the usually excellent Christoph Waltz (Krysten Ritter is a welcome dash of energy whenever she appears), but still and all, okay.

(w/ Rob)

Inherent Vice

Pynchon, of course, a past icon of mine (although Inherent Vice is something of an outlier - a far less lightly coded, more straightforward version of his habitual literary thickets); Paul Thomas Anderson maybe the best director working in Hollywood today (and I still haven't even seen the so very acclaimed There Will Be Blood).[*] Plus Joaquin Phoenix, who for me has come along a trajectory matched only by Matthew McConaughey from intense dislike to considerable respect and enjoyment.

Add it up, and what you get is a film that succeeds on terms that are at once set by its source material and created by itself - Pynchon's distinctive rhythms, cadences and spirals rendered remarkably effectively (albeit probably only possible with this particular novel of his) not least via Joanna Newsom's affecting narration and appearances, Anderson bringing his usual sublime eye to proceedings while drenching it all in 70s iconography, Phoenix the shambling, human-symbolic figure at its centre, while others whirl in and out and around. Impressively, the off-kilter humour translates too.

(w/ David)

[*] Much as I love Sofia Coppola and do admire the craft and style in her work, my response to her films feels like it arises from something far more personal than in any sense objective.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Not without its pleasures, but suffers from a sense of the stakes not being high enough and overall being somewhat lacking in the richness of the LOTR films - inevitable, I suppose, given the smaller canvas nature of The Hobbit

The stretching to three films might have been an attempt at giving it more grandeur as well as increasing its box office returns by 200 per cent but actually leaves it probably even more visibly thin ... would have been more satisfying, I suspect, if instead it had been a single film and pitched as a more straightforward adventure with resonances of the broader story that was to come than attempting out and out Epic in its own right.

(1, 2)

Edge of Tomorrow

Pacy and entertaining, and I like the sense of humour too. Tom Cruise is always a figure to be reckoned with, one way or another, and Emily Blunt, who I thought I hadn't come across before but it turns out was in Looper (another time travel type flick as it happens), is good too.

Tana French - The Secret Place

One thing about touchstones, I suppose, is that - probably by definition - you see elements of them everywhere, and maybe even sometimes when the connection is faint at best. Be that as it may, The Secret Place, which I enjoyed a lot, for me summoned to mind both The Virgin Suicides and The Secret History (two of the very biggest for me).

The funny thing is that The Secret Place sets up as (and is) a piece of genre fiction, and namely crime - a genre that's always been more or less outside my interests but tends to intersect incidentally with my reading anyway.

The apparent supernatural elements are risky, but they're important to the novel's effect and they work - adding to the air of mystery as well as the intense focus on the heightened nature of the girls' friendship and insularity of feelings, coming off as at least plausibly an entirely inter-subjective mass hallucination, as well as being a kind of experience that exists naturally on a continuum with the intensity with which they respond to their evening excursions to the hidden grove (a secret place of another kind).

In any case, it's pretty terrific, with the suspense building nicely across the two timelines playing out in alternating chapters - detective Stephen Moran's investigation of the year old murder of schoolboy Chris Harper on the grounds of exclusive Irish girls school St Kilda's, and the unfolding narrative that year previously from the perspective of the four girls - close friends - who emerge as suspects and prove to have plenty of unplumbed depths and internal corkscrew twists in their individual and collective psyches: Holly Mackey, Julia Harte, Selena Wynne and Becca O'Mara ... as well as the other clique (Joanne Heffernan et al). Works as both a mystery and, just as satisfyingly, as an examination of a time of life, a particular place, and the working through of a whole set of characters and personalities.

"Alex Prager" (NGV) - second look

An hour to kill so I went back and enjoyed "Face in the Crowd" again, and this time also watched the trio of shorts on the large screen in the main chamber: "La petite mort" (erotically, symbolically charged rendition of a Claudia Cardinale-esque woman struck by a train, literal, figurative, it doesn't make any difference), "Despair" (Bryce Dallas Howard, striking colour coding, throwing herself from a tall building) and "Sunday".

(first time)

The Fall

Not bad but I'd hoped for more from it on multiple fronts - out and out visual spectacle, general narrative complexity and coherence, overall imaginative and emotional impact.

"In The Flesh" (National Portrait Gallery)

Ten contemporary Australian artists exploring the nature of humanness across a range of forms with something of an emphasis on sculpture. The exhibition was arranged according to themes like transience, alienation, acceptance, intimacy, transition and so on ... but in fact nearly all of the works could've been exhibited under the umbrella of empathy.

Apart from the Ron Mueck pieces (always welcome) - 'vulnerability' - I also particularly liked Natasha Bieniek's miniature oil portraits ('restlessness').

"James Turrell: A retrospective" (NGA)

"My work is about space and the light that inhabits it"

Unsurprisingly, it's the immersive ones that make the greatest impression - the 'ganzfeld' (complete field) "Virtuality squared" (2014) in which groups of eight or so at a time stand and wander through a large room for a timed session (about 7 or 8 minutes) as lights project all around including a concealed 2 metre drop at one end of the room, the 'wedgework' "After Green", 1993 (in fact an extremely dark room, against one wall of which is projected a series of red and violet outline squares appearing to be ramifying portals into the distance) and the similarly dark "Orca" (1984), in which the projected light images are only a muted grey against the black, creating an experience more contemplative and focused on mortality than merely sombre or depressing. All offer that kind of experience that art, and art alone, can elicit and create.

Then, too, there are the less fully physically enclosed, yet - once you focus on them - equally enveloping other projections, given abstract names ("Afrum") and distinguished by colour, with some actually projected in rooms and others rendered in etched aquatint on paper in series.

As well as a range of others, including, in perhaps the retrospective's simplest but also some of its greatest pleasures, the three reflective holograms (blue, green, red), seeming to emerge three-dimensionally from their black backdrops.

* * *

Elsewhere in the NGA, "Myth and memory in recent American landscape photography" which, despite its title, focused on the 1970s. Naturally, I liked it - especially those by Robert Adams and Frank Gohlke.

And, miscellaneously across the rest of the galleries: Anne Ferran's "Scenes on the Death of Nature" I and II (1986), John Olsen's "Childhood by the seaport" (1965), a couple of the Australian surrealist pieces (Freda Robertshaw's "Composition", 1947 and James Cant's "The Deserted City", 1939), the curved room with a whole lot of Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings, two Rothkos (that I also spent some time with the last time I was in Canberra, a few years back), "Blue Poles".

Ossian Ward - Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art

The how, it turns out, is a 'TABULA' approach (as in - rasa) - time, association, background, understand, look again, assessment (although, for the most part, the book deliberately steers clear of that last). An enjoyable and plentifully illustrated skip through a range of ways of tackling/framing contemporary art - 'as entertainment', 'as confrontation', 'as event', 'as message', 'as joke', 'as spectacle', 'as meditation'. Plus, fit well with my scattershot approach to learning anything in particular about art, as I was able to fit various artists whose pieces I've seen previously into at least some kind of context as provided by the book.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians, The Magician King & The Magician's Land

The Magicians

"It never failed to astonish him, then or ever, how much of the world around him was mysterious and hidden from view." - that, not at any of what Brakebills or Fillory hold of magic and adventure, but at something Alice says shedding light on Janet's motivations and her entanglement with Eliot.

The wonder of their flight, geese-transmuted, to Antarctica. The immensity of Quentin's journey to the pole; the bathos of the discovery that he and Alice were the only two who even attempted it.

The melancholy stone-paved piazzas, fountains and sealed, book-filled buildings of the Neitherlands. Like something straight out of de Chirico.

The way that magic functions variously as metaphor, symbol, intertext, synecdoche and metonym for language, literature, happiness and The Magicians itself without this ever becoming too overt or over-determined.

Quentin and Alice, Eliot and Janet, and, at the outskirts, Julia.

The Magician King

Julia's own journey, filled in, through magic's fringes and demi-monde. A raising of the stakes to encompass magic itself, along with a revealing of the structures and nature of said magic. The true nature of the heroism forced upon Quentin: to pay the price rather than receive the reward, and to be denied the thing that represents - and, in this case, ipso facto is - what he most wants (no further leap, adventure, to the Far Side of the World; not even to remain king in Fillory - each both standing for, and embodying, that which fills the lack which otherwise ensures his discontentment...which is, maybe, the central metaphor and idea at the heart of these books after all).

The Magician's Land

I re-read the first two because I wanted to - as much for the characters as for the everything else - but also as a run-up to this, the third and presumably final in the series. And yes, it finishes strong - full, like the two preceding it, of sequences and scenes that stick in the mind.

Does it squib on the themes of the first two books in the way that it has Quentin emerge finally as a fully sympathetic character, and in the final happy ending? I don't think so; rather, it's the culmination of an arc through which Quentin has been developing and maturing into an adult, just like the others, and the climactic re-creation of Fillory works, consistently with that. Also nice is to see Janet emerge more as a fully fledged character - both rendering her more understandable, and casting retrospective doubt on the reliability of Quentin's after-the-fact take on her motivations for sleeping with him back in book one - plus Mayakovsky's reappearance, again at once forbidding and oddly sympathetic, and the pleasure of Asmodeus' extended, explosive cameo.

(Against all of this, Plum doesn't make an enormous impression, but more or less holds her own, and knits neatly into the Chatwin back story.)

Also, like all of them, littered with little throwaway bits of wonder - like the bits about the whales and what they're up to...

Anyway, altogether, terrifically good reading.

Lydia Loveless - Somewhere Else

For a number of reasons, the very act of listening to music on one of the in-store headphones in Basement Discs summons up a bunch of memories and associations for me; it's something I've done plenty of times, and most recently last weekend, on the strength of a short piece from Rolling Stone Australia, May 2014, torn out and stuck on fridge since, starting:

SOUNDS LIKE: Loretta Lynn and Patti Smith slamming shots at a Midwestern dive bar while cowboys and punks brawl out back.
FOR FANS OF: Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, country singers not averse to using the word "fuck" when necessary.

... and then, if that wasn't enough, the even more enticing text on the sticker on the cd:

"Is Stevie Nicks singing lead on 'Born to Run' overstating it? Probably, but too bad."

Anyway, while neither of those descriptions is particularly accurate, they're still in the ballpark of the style that (the aptly named) Lydia Loveless is working - kind of Kathleen Edwards-y but grittier, rockier. There's both seethe and surge to her songs, a hustle and an energy, a rough undercurrent that churns along beneath the ringing electric guitar lines - this is a good one.

"Richard Avedon: People" (Potter Museum)

Sunny Saturday during an extended long weekend - spur of the moment repeat visit.

(w/ Erandathie and Derrick)

(previous time, a few weeks ago)

M R Carey - The Girl With All The Gifts

A page-turning piece of zombie fiction as promised, plus a spin on evolution and survival. Apart from the urgency of the plot, has some strong points (notably the child protagonist Melanie, along with the inherent pathos that comes with her situation) but a tendency to be overly simplistic and direct in some of its exposition and characterisation.

Don Watson - Recollections of a Bleeding Heart

Seemed like an apt time to re-read this one. Enjoyed it again, though it's interesting how the experiences of the intervening years have changed my perspective in certain ways.

(first time)

Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons

Reverence is an appropriate attitude towards Gram Parsons, because he was truly great, and when you pick a whole bunch of artists who've nearly all been strongly influenced by his music or at least, indirectly, by the possibilities that it opened and then get his old musical partner Emmylou Harris singing along on several of them, and it's unsurprising that reverence is what you'll get.

Truth be told, a bit more in the way of divergence from or reinterpretation of the originals wouldn't have gone astray (two of the more memorable, in the Cowboy Junkies' "Ooh Las Vegas" and Lucinda Williams and David Crosby's "Return of the Grievous Angel", go further in that direction than most), but, simply by not mucking around too much with the timeless originals, this crew - which also includes Gillian Welch, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, the Pretenders, and more - produce a pretty nice tribute indeed.

Game of Thrones season 4

The first season that I haven't been at least, say, 90 per cent confident about what was coming next at each turn, which I think was due to a combination of the books being less fresh in my mind and the tv series departing more from the books in any case. And, as a result, more immersive and involving, with the deaths of sympathetic characters continuing to hit home, plenty of others also meeting their ends along the way, and the remainder continuing to go deeper and deeper in their manipulations and turns.

"David Shrigley: Life and Life Drawing" (NGV)

heh, pretty good, the drawings especially.

White Night Melbourne, Saturday 21 February

Went by myself this year, heading out about 4.30am, skimming lightly over the surface of familiar sights lit up anew.

The Bourne Identity

Sunday night, on tv. Slightly poor effort on my part on the better living front. As an aside, and not that this film is a particularly good showcase for it, but actually Matt Damon is a good actor.

"Richard Avedon: People" (Potter Museum)

Black and whites of a roll call of luminaries, with an emphasis on New York and the 60s - Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Truman Capote, a young Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Dorothy Parker (very large and rawly exposed), Bob Dylan ('65), J Robert Oppenheimer, Pablo Picasso, Twiggy, Rudolph Nureyev, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol. More contemporarily, Michaelangelo Antonioni (with wife - one of the best), Merce Cunningham, Harold Bloom, Bjork, Kate Moss. Also, three lovely blurred shots of Santa Monica Beach, 1963.

Rick and Morty season 1

Creative lunacy - from Dan Harmon. Excellent.

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For

Not as exciting as the original, but entirely watchable still. Eva Green well cast!

"Had enough of talking politely": Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass

Sweepingly, elegantly orchestrated pop of the kind that harks inevitably back to Dusty Springfield and does it well, Prass's prettily reedy voice carrying through an appealing set of songs. Best: "My Baby Don't Understand Me", "Bird of Prey", "Violently".

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I can't remember where it came from, but for a little while now I've been feeling like rewatching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's one of those films that affected me in a big way on the first go around and has assumed an even greater significance since, and coming back to it the other night (Thursday) I felt a sense of anticipation that no doubt conditioned my response to it as much as the emotional resonance that it's come to carry (the two of course being related).

On this repeat watching, knowing where it was heading took away some of the charge of that first viewing, as did that anticipation of the effect that it might have. But there was a freshness and an affecting quality to it that has endured - I didn't feel it so intensely this time, whether because of second viewing or time of life or both...but there's still something there.

Also, the pre-film trailers on the blu-ray: Control, Lost in Translation, Amelie. Not too shabby.

Belle and Sebastian @ the Palais, Sunday 1 February

Ten years on from the last time that I saw Belle and Sebastian at the Palais and oh what memories and associations their music brings. The show started with two new songs, and then it was "Seeing Other People" and we were off.

For me, lp-wise, it's always been love and recognition in re the greatness of the first three (blue, green, red) plus a sentimental attachment to Fold Your Hands Child..., and this concert made me realise that time has elevated Dear Catastrophe Waitress somewhat in the direction of that last; it also reminded me of just how deeply writ their whole songbook is in me, with every one of those back catalogue numbers so intimately familiar.

Objectively, the gig was probably fine, really, not outstanding, and I enjoyed it accordingly - moderately, not extravagantly (not even in that quiet way that really good shows can take one from time to time). But, clearly, this isn't about objectivity - and so.

(w/ Nicolette)

"The lengths we will go to" (2014 cd)

1. Tree to Grow – The Lone Bellow
The Lone Bellow (Descendant; 2013)

2. Red Eyes – The War on Drugs
Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian; 2014)

3. Traveling Alone – Jason Isbell
Southeastern (Southeastern; 2013)

4. Afraid of Nothing – Sharon Van Etten
Are We There (Jagjaguwar; 2014) (best album of the year)

5. Waitress Song – First Aid Kit
Stay Gold (Columbia; 2014)

6. Late Bloomer – Jenny Lewis
The Voyager (Warner; 2014)

7. Poor Howard – Robert Plant
Lullaby and … the Ceaseless Roar (Nonesuch; 2014) (despite the distracting song title…)

8. The Devil Is All Around – Shovels & Rope
Swimmin’ Time (Dualtone; 2014)

A short one, but distilled down, this was what my 2014 sounded like…turns out there’s a pretty clear theme, with the roll call going Brooklyn (albeit transplanted from the south), Pennsylvania, Alabama, Brooklyn again, Sweden, California/Nevada, England, South Carolina, with even the two who aren’t ‘from’ there showing a clear yen towards American music. 

"Alex Prager" (NGV)

Heavily stylised, Hollywood-refracted photos and short films from an artist who seems very LA. I liked "Face in the crowd", in which Elizabeth Banks - as it turns out, an actor with exactly the kind of old style glamour (and beauty) for the part - emerges as the central figure in a three-screen, 12 minute drama of individual stories amidst a crowd in which much seems to be telegraphed and yet nothing is fully disclosed.

"Menagerie" (ACCA)

Animal-themed, of course. And to some extent a departure from the ACCA norm in including a large amount of non-contemporary art - mostly (if I remember right) paintings of dogs and horses from the 1800s ... although it's possible I have that wrong, not having paid that much attention to them.

More memorable were some of the contemporary pieces further in; Annika Eriksson's video narrative of poetic anomie and city-drift as narrated by an every-dog figure observing packs of stray mutts outside Istanbul, "I am the dog that was always here"; Aija-Liisa Ahtila's meditatively emotive, three-channel "The Hour of Prayer" about the death of her dog (she's caught my eye at ACCA before); Abdul-Rahman Abdullah's three small installations, each comprising a carved wooden cat and other object, "The day the sky fell down" (observing fallen chandelier on the ground), "The day the world was still" (beneath lampshade) and "The day that night was day" (atop tall wooden post).

Shehan Karunatilaka - Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

About cricket and late 20th century Sri Lanka in more or less equal parts; entertaining and sideways educational likewise, though not entirely my kind of scene with its hints of the picaresque and my usual difficulty in really enjoying the idiom and argot that often characterises literature from this part of the world. (Lent to me unprovoked by Erandathie.)

Sia - 1000 Forms of Fear

This is a pretty terrific record, and Sia seems like the complete package - soaringly dramatic songs made better by unexpected details (small and large), vocals likewise and therefore a perfect match. Predictably, I like "Fire Meet Gasoline", the most straight up power ballad on an album that has several of them, even though it sounds a lot like Beyonce's "Halo"; also the gigantic "Chandelier", Chvrches-esque "Burn the Pages" (which also sounds like it could've come off 1989, and there's a whole tale about contemporary pop music there too probably - or, at least, about my own tastes) and skitteringly quirky "Elastic Heart". 

Borgen seasons 2 & 3

Also likeable about Borgen is that, for all the focus on the machinations and not infrequent skulduggery, it allows the politicians to be smart and articulate - both the relatively principled ones and those who are less so. I must say that I like the permanent secretary type figure, too (Niels Erik) - formidable and inscrutable but seemingly also motivated by a strong impulse towards public service, including when his views of what this means don't line up with those of the current administration. And Katrine also becomes a more substantial figure over these seasons. I was just thinking about what it is that makes me particularly like Borgen and actually I'm not sure exactly where the appeal lies - somewhere in the combination of the political and social depiction and the story-telling, I think.

(season 1)

Song list

Most frequently played, from itunes:

1. (12 months ago: #1) Different Worlds - Brittany Cairns (213 plays)
2. (2) This World Can Make You Happy - Amaya Laucirica (133)
3. (3) 100 Million Little Bombs - Buddy Miller (132)
4. (6) State of Grace - Taylor Swift (120)
5. (5) New Year - Beach House (118)
6. (4) It Must Come Through - Jen Cloher and the Endless Sea (116)
7. (7) 23 - Blonde Redhead (109)
8. (9) Useless Desires - Patty Griffin (106)
9. (=10) The Mother We Share - Chvrches (103)
10. (=10) Starry Skies - Laura Cantrell (95)
11. (8) Out Loud - Mindy Smith (93)
12. (12) Aeroplane - The Everybodyfields (91)
13. (13) Coming Home To Me - Patty Griffin feat Julie Miller (90)
14. (=14) Sweet Talk - Jessie Ware (87)
=15. (=20) Don't Tell Me - Buddy Miller (85)
=15. (16) Godspell - The Cardigans (85)
=15. (=14) Slow Show - The National (85)
=15. (=17) No Bad News - Patty Griffin (85)
19. (=29) Red - Taylor Swift (80)
=20. (=26) You Keep Me Hangin' On - Janelle Arthur (79)
=20. (19) Blue Lips - Regina Spektor (79)
=20. (=17) Even Though I'm A Woman - Seeker Lover Keeper (79)
=23. (=20) Ode to LRC - Band of Horses (78)
=23. (=23) Manchester - Kishi Bashi (78)
=25. (=26) The Bleeding Heart Show - The New Pornographers (77)
=25. (=36) From This Moment On - Shania Twain (77)
=25. (new) Afraid of Nothing - Sharon Van Etten (77)
=28. (=23) Circumambient - Grimes (76)
=28. (=23) Hey, Snow White - The New Pornographers (76)
=28. (=36) Wild Old Dog - Patty Griffin (76)
=28. (=26) I Don't Ever Give Up - Patty Griffin (76)
=28. (22) All I Can - Sharon Van Etten (76)
=28. (=29) I Couldn't Be Your Friend - Tegan and Sara (76)
34. (=36) Don't Let Me Die in Florida - Patty Griffin (75)
=35. (=29) I Think I Broke Something - Dan Rohmer and Benh Zeitlin (74)
=35. (=29) I Got Nothing - Dum Dum Girls (74)
=37. (35) Mexico City - Jolie Holland (72)
=37. (=45) Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National (72)
=39. (=33) Modern Love - The Last Town Chorus (70)
=39. (=45) Burgundy Shoes - Patty Griffin (70)
=39. (=33) Lie in the Sound - Trespassers William (70)
=42. (=40) With God On Our Side - Buddy Miller (69)
=42. (new) Strong Enough - Haim (69)
=42. (new) Red Eyes - The War on Drugs (69)
=45. (=49) Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura (68)
=45. (new) Abducted - Cults (68)
=45. (=43) Alex - Girls (68)
=45. (=40) Joints - Holly Miranda (68)
=45. (=36) Perfectly - Natalie Imbruglia (68)
=50. (=43) What I Thought Of You - Holly Throsby (67)
=50. (42) Fake Empire - The National (67)

Borgen season 1

Maybe the most realistic political tv show that I've come to yet - allowing that 'realistic' remains a relative term when we're talking about television (and, also, that my whole knowledge of the Danish system of government has been gathered from watching the show itself).

Initially, the more personal elements of the human drama were less compelling than the political, but over the season, the two increasingly come together, as the dramatic logic of the narrative aligns with the theme of the increasing toll taken by the positions of power and influence held by all of the principals, and especially on Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg (who reminds me of someone I know - an apt person at that), as the demands of her office successively strip every single source of support and comfort from her, both internal and external. Nyborg herself is a terrific central figure - smart, idealistic, decisive and tough, and (in one of the show's strengths) not above the political calculation that requires her to put aside her scruples at regular intervals.

Also, even though he's an unlikeable character, I enjoy the appearances of Michael Laugesen aka the Danish Hugh Grant.

Aernoud Bourdrez - Think Like A Lawyer Don't Act Like One

Pithy negotiation tips, amusingly illustrated. Obviously, I am all over this stuff but it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

Moviegoing

I said off-handedly today that I thought watching The Babadook from the front row might be one of those memorable moviegoing experiences. I'm not sure whether that'll really prove the case, but it made me think about which are the ones that have really stuck with me, for whatever reason, so here's a list in the order that they occurred to me (avoiding ones from the last couple of years, since they're likely to have stuck in my head more through recency):

• Moulin Rouge, with a girl who I'd decided to break up with but hadn't quite managed to do so yet (2001)
• Memento, without having known anything at all about it before going in (Nova, 2000 - with Kim)
• Species, which had a remarkable amount of nudity, sex and violence for a movie that we saw for someone's (Tim Gregson's?) 13th birthday party or whatever it was (1995)
• The Last Winter, for a bunch of reasons (MIFF, 2007)
• Camino, for the sheer emotional ruin that it wreaked on all concerned (La Mirada, 2009)
• Love Exposure, all four hours of it and associated planning and snacking - turned out to be a great movie too (MIFF, 2009)
• Dancer in the Dark, mainly for the intense nausea caused by the combination of shaky camera and watching from close to the front and right at the side (2000 - with various around at uni during first year, so probably at Nova)
• Fight Club, because of the film it was and right during that period between school and university when all was possibility (1999/2000 - with Nenad and David I think)
• The Wall, for similar reasons to the above (Astor, 1999/2000 - as above)
• Marie Antoinette, following huge Coppola-related anticipation shared with Kelly (Nova, 2008)
• Brideshead Revisited, because of the massive troupe that we put together to watch it with - all 17 of us (Nova, 2008)
• Enter the Void, for the sheer endurance test that it represented (MIFF, 2010)
• Don't Come Knocking, which was the right film at the right time - true memory or not, it feels like I still have a sense-recollection of how I was feeling when I saw it, and how that meshed with the mood of the film itself (Nova, 2006)

No doubt many others that haven't sprung straight to mind...plus numerous 'in and around' memories - too many to list, and most Nova-related.

The Babadook

The Babadook literally gave me chills at several points - very creepy (and good).

(w/ Meribah)

Death Proof

Only for Tarantino would I have watched a film described in the terms that this one was - but it's pretty disposable despite his involvement as director.

The Thick of It

Much of the joy's that we all want to act like Malcolm sometimes.

(previously)

"Emily Floyd: The Dawn" (NGV Australia)

Colourful, engaging and socially engaged, and in a couple of rooms pleasingly interactive. Turns out I saw (and liked) one of Floyd's at GOMA a few months ago - it reappeared here, although laid out differently (and less interestingly). I was also particularly taken with the Crime and Punishment one, black letters piled in a heap with a few punctuated sentence fragments spelled out in front, and the various large wooden sculptural toy-like arrangements.

Nico - Chelsea Girl

Haven't greatly taken to this one, though the folk + Velvet Underground connection makes it at least a worthwhile museum piece for me.

Noah

Darren Aronofsky has always been a visionary, and all of his films that I've seen have been at least interesting (Pi, The Fountain) and in a couple of cases quite outstanding (Requiem for a Dream, though it's been a long time since I watched that one, Black Swan); I still need to get round to The Wrestler. And there certainly is a vision to his take on the story of Noah and the flood, apparent from the first, technicolour images of snake, apple &c, and even more so in the blasted, apocalyptic (and gorgeous) rendition of the lands through which Moses and his family travel, claimed by the descendants of Cain, not to mention the 'watchers', giant stone-ossified fallen angels, as well as in the human drama that he stages within Noah and across the others.

It holds the attention; I thought it was good, and while obviously I come at it from a particular perspective, it didn't seem to me to be disrespectful of its religious source material, and if anything, while obviously not seeking to be a literal depiction of the Biblical text (whatever that would mean), it struck me as very sincere and earnest in the way it grapples with the core of the questions at its heart.

Also, at 44 - I looked it up - Jennifer Connelly is still strikingly beautiful; at 24, Emma Watson seems oddly young-looking (or maybe I've just lost perspective on ages) ... and, surprisingly, only 4 cm shorter than Connelly. Russell Crowe works, too.

Arvo Part / Polyphony (Stephen Layton)

Choral music by Part. Good, of course.

Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time

A handful of sweetly fizzing pop moments, foremost among them "I Blame Myself", nestled amongst others that are more nondescript.

Nina Simone - Wild Is The Wind

Oh Nina, you never disappoint. Endless.

Interstellar

Another quite magnificent outing from Nolan, working as story, spectacle and mood piece all at once, and in ways that reinforce rather than pulling at each other. Clean construction, great images (the scenes on Earth don't suffer by comparison to the space ones), sustained atmosphere and excitement; high quality actors and acting too.

Wallace Stegner - Crossing to Safety

Humble and in some respects small-canvas, even to the extent of authorially pointing out its own lack of typical dramatic tensions or high points, but with an eye for the substance of what make a life, and what makes a life worthwhile.

The Robert Frost snippet that introduces it, and from which it draws its title, frames the novel aptly:

I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There
And what I would not part with I have kept.

Boyhood

Very nice; the film's understatedness of narrative and the simplifying drive of its structure create the possibility of both over and under-estimation, but I feel secure in saying that through whatever combination of design and good fortune, it comes off.

(w/ Kevin)

Shovels & Rope - Swimmin' Time

A raucous good time, skipping through 13 characterful slices that are equal parts swampy folk-country and americana-y indie-rock (artists I've thought of at various times while listening to Swimmin' Time: Mates of State, White Stripes, Laura Stevenson ... though Shovels & Rope are as rootsy as any of those at their grittiest).

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Both opens and closes deliberately jarringly, on notes that emphasise the costs of the protagonists' actions, reflecting the film's (and the series') concern with that theme. 'Realistic' might be going too far, but realism-minded maybe isn't. Mockingjay Part 1 isn't self-contained - it picks up where Catching Fire left off, and ends without much resolution, with part 2 in the offing - and that might be part of why it doesn't produce quite the same rush as its predecessors, but that's offset by the pleasingness of its continuing interrogation of those ideas of individual heroism and agency, social dis/order and violent change in a way that's both sophisticated and slickly (in a good way) exciting.

"The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk" (NGV)

This was actually great! Showcasing both couture and pret-a-porter pieces - and, thanks to this exhibition, I now know the difference between the two - across a mix of mannequins (many with projected, moving faces and speaking alternately in French and English, adding a considerable dynamism; some, in the 'Punk cancan' room, on a revolving catwalk) and photographs (figures like Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Lily Cole, all deserving of their iconic status in this context in a way that I rarely grasp or focus on - and, especially, Madonna).

I hadn't known that Gaultier did the costume design for The City of Lost Children, but it makes sense in retrospect; also (separately) I can't remember ever having had my breath taken away even a little bit by a piece of clothing but that's the effect that a long tortoiseshell-print silk satin cape (part of a 'Swashbuckler' collection) had. The bondage room was apt too.

Pacific Rim

I tend to like the idea of giant monsters more than I do the actual thing (well, 'actual'), but giant monsters vs giant robots as done by Guillermo del Toro is a solid proposition and Pacific Rim is enjoyable. Also, Rinko Kikuchi who is now officially in everything (this was the third thing I've seen her in over the last few months, the others being 47 Ronin and Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter).

Haruki Murakami - The Strange Library

A curiosity and a fitting addition to Murakami's oeuvre (in translation - it was published in the original Japanese some years back). Bonus appearance by the sheep man, that unassuming figure of the unconscious. Very nice presentation too.

47 Ronin

Splashily fantastic rendition of historical Japan as a set of magical islands. 6.5/10.

John Green - The Fault in Our Stars

Had this one for a while - been saving it...I'd avoided specific spoilers but pretty much assumed that someone was gonna die and it didn't take too long to figure out who that was going to be. So, well, it's good and reads remarkably like something that could actually have been written by someone aged 16 (albeit a particularly intelligent and articulate 16) - it's a bit affected and clunky in places, but that makes it feel more real. The cancer, the emotion, the argot, the asking of big questions, the True Love - all ring true. Given the reputation that this one has, I'd kind of been assuming that it would leave me basically devastated, at least immediately after finishing it, but for whatever reason it didn't have that effect; still, it was worth the time it took to read (and probably I didn't immerse myself in it as fully as I might have).

Donnie Darko

I suspect not just for me but for my whole generation (at least the relevant part of it), Donnie Darko has such an aura of the landmark to it that it's very difficult to think about - or watch - objectively. 2001 it came out - not sure whether I saw it at MIFF or afterwards, but either way I'd been keenly anticipating it and it didn't disappoint. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack - that version of "Mad World", of course, and "Under the Milky Way", "Love will Tear Us Apart", "The Killing Moon" (all three iconic for me in their own right, but that last now particularly inseparable from this film).

Revisiting it the other night, all these years on, what's most striking is the strength of the film's vision and the vividness of its imagery and iconography, particularly when Frank is on screen. And also the way it achieves its effect through a combination of the direct and oblique, the literal and the poetic, in a way that one suspects Richard Kelly himself wasn't fully in control of; relatedly, the underdeveloped - and, for me, pleasingly cryptic even if not classically coherent - nature of some of its elements (many of which were fleshed out more in the significantly more explain-y director's cut). It's still pretty great.

Sarah Waters - The Paying Guests

Enjoyable but maybe a bit too straight up, almost old-fashionedly so - which isn't to say that I knew exactly what was coming, nor how Frances and Lilian would turn out (individually, or together). Also, I don't typically look to fiction to be educated, but I did feel that I knew more about life in 1920s London by its end.

(Affinity, The Little Stranger)

Digression

"Digression on Number 1, 1948"

I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.

A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Miro, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner;
a little table by Picasso, pink.

I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand

and the many short voyages. They'll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see.

Found in the Frank O'Hara selected poems into which I often dip, earlier this evening, savouring a solitary frozen yogurt outside on Faraday Street, listening to Patty Griffin - specifically, her lovely, poignant "Making Pies".

Stop Making Sense

As good as it was last time round, pretty much exactly a decade ago. It's interesting, too, the way that the iconic artists of the past (both canonically and personally iconic, the two categories overlapping a bit but obviously not the same in either contents or intensity) separate out over time - I can't remember the last time I listed to a Talking Heads record all the way through, but Stop Making Sense was a reminder of their quality and also of how their influence continues to infiltrate today.

(w/ David and Justine)

The Newsroom season 2

A bit heavy-handed in places (with Messages), a bit cute in others (with Characters), but The Newsroom is fast-moving, well-acted and appealing - on a number of levels - enough to overcome those flaws. This second season is structured a bit differently from the first, and for the better, and each of the main characters flicks quickly to life - it's hard not to like the ones who we're supposed to like.

(season 1)

David Rosetzky - "Gaps"

Rosetzky's work has interested me the couple of times I've come across it in the past, and this 35 minute video piece (it felt much shorter) had a similar effect - four performers, a choreographed mix of dance (in rehearsal) and speech.

(w/ Julian)

Taylor Swift - 1989

I'm not infatuated with 1989 in the same way that I was with Red, but it's still a pretty delightful, personality-filled pop record, one truly solid song after another, and it still sounds like she just means everything she sings, in a good way.

Bits and pieces, reprises

Found in one of the many small notebooks that I've bought in a miscellany of gallery/museum stores so as to have something to write in, having been caught without the standing 'art' notebook of the time - this one from the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, July 2011:

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was in relation to Richard Long; also, a reminder of my own Romantic sensibilities, often obscured nowadays by other artistic etc modes of experience and understanding.

* * *

A while ago - maybe six months or a year back - I woke up with a tune running through my head, as if I'd just been dreaming it. It wasn't one of those that slipped wispily away almost as soon as waking life asserted itself, but rather hung around for a day or two - but I couldn't place it, partly because it didn't come with any words. Fast forward to last weekend, Saturday night around 10pm, stopped into Brunswick Street Bookstore for a quick browse on my way out to a drink; I was the only person in the store (apart from the girl at the counter), and it was that song playing on the system..."Body on the Water", it turns out (Luluc - Dear Hamlyn).

Stephen Mills - The Professionals: Strategy, Money & the Rise of the Political Campaigner in Australia

I got this from Readings at the same time as The Gatekeepers and have just finished dutifully wading through it - skimming a bit rather than really reading particularly closely. The subject matter is interesting, but truthfully perhaps only somewhat so - at least as treated here, largely through a blow by blow account of how the roles of the ALP federal/national secretary and Liberal Party federal director (and associated national campaign director responsibilities) have developed and professionalised over time.

Gone Girl

A sleekly effective translation of the equally (indeed, even more so) effective book.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

Gentle and ruminative, T.S. Spivet's as much a love letter to a certain idea of America (witness the series of postcard-worthy shots as the titular character crosses the length of the country from Montana to DC by train) as it is a depiction of T.S.'s journey, character and family. The 3d works well, as could have been expected in Jeunet's hands; the whimsy and imagination are there, but dialled down a notch, while the dark edges and grotesqueness of his early films have almost entirely disappeared.

(w/ Meribah)