Natalie Zina Walschots - Hench

Zippy and fun and also pretty hard-nosed. It's not as razor-focused as say The Other Black Girl but nor is it difficult to see what Hench has on its mind when it comes to capitalism, celebrity, patriarchy, state violence, and the ills of the contemporary world - funnelled through the lens of an alternate universe populated by villains and superheroes plus of course their henches and kicks.

C Pam Zhang - How Much of These Hills Is Gold

Here's the section that made me really certain that I was reading something 100% worth my time - good in isolation, and far better in the context of the associations that, by page 42, the novel has already set up to resonate when activated here.

They've nearly reached the foot of the mountains, one week later, when the rib in the sky thickens. Wolf moon, rarest kind. Bright enough that after sunset and star rise comes moonrise. Silver pries their eyes awake. The blades of grass, the bristles of Nellie's mane, the creases of their clothes - illuminated.

Across the grass, an even brighter glow.

Like two still sleeping they rise from their blankets and walk. Their hands brush. Did Sam reach across? Or is it a coincidence of strides grown similar thanks to Sam's new height?

The light comes from a tiger skull.

It's pristine. The snarl untouched. Chance didn't place this skull; the beast didn't die here. No other bones surround it. The empty sockets face East and North. Follow its gaze, and Lucy sees the very end of the mountains, where the wagon trail curves to the plains.

"It's -" Lucy says, heart quickening.

"A sign," Sam says.

Most times Lucy can't read Sam's dark eyes. Tonight the moonlight has pierced Sam through, made Sam's thoughts clear as the blades of grass. Together they stand as if at a threshold, remembering the tiger Ma drew in the doorway of each new house. Ma's tiger like no other tiger Lucy has seen, a set of eight lines suggesting the beast only if you squinted. A cipher. Ma drew her tiger as protection against what might come. Singing, Lao hu, lao hu.

Ma drew her tiger in each new home.

Song shivers through Lucy's head as she touches the skull's intact teeth. A threat, or else a grin. What was the last word of the song? A call to the tiger: Lai.

"What makes a home a home?" Lucy says. 

Sam faces the mountains and roars.

In some ways, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is deceptive. There's a surface flashiness to it, in the present-tense, image-rich argot through which it's narrated (to start with, by Lucy, age 12) and the self-reflexive myth-making it wears on its sleeve, mega-buffalo and tigers roaming late Gold Rush California and refracted through the prism of its Chinese-American experience. And then there's the apparent simplicity of its high concept - the two lost sisters with their Chinese parentage, seeking opportunity in an America whose frontiers are still seemingly untamed, but already haunted by the ghosts of western 'progress'. But in truth those elements are strengths, and wrapped together by the control that Zhang exerts over her material so that the symbols and motifs operate as plot as well as theme. It's very satisfying, and very good.

Natalia Lafourcade - Un Canto por Mexico, Vol 2

A lot of music comes heavily pre-contextualised, by the superstructure, personal expectations, and everything in between - especially after a lifetime spent listening to a great deal of music of certain types. By contrast, while for me the music on this record summons plenty of associations, I have next to nil exposure to its underlying sources - the traditional Mexican songs that Lafourcade contemporises to wonderful effect - so it arrives as something of a revelation, and absent ready reference points, which makes it only the more enjoyable, which it is, very.

Robert Finley - Sharecropper's Son

This record has a roar to it. I can't really assess the the authenticity of its blues and soul lines but it has the ring of truth to me.

Allison Russell - Outside Child

Quite the mixture, roaming across a range of roots and folk streams. It ties together well - there's depth to it.

Zakiya Dalila Harris - The Other Black Girl

This is ferocious and good. It's focused in its rendition of race and racism, in the broad and with specificity, and page-turning in its plot, structure and sentence-level writing. Doubtless it reads differently, and deeper, to Black readers but it scans strongly for me regardless. I could quibble with some aspects - especially the way some of the secondary characters and background plotting feels underdeveloped - but the overall energy of the novel carries it easily over those things.

Art

Some discoveries via last year's and this year's (to date) Metropolitan Museum of Art desk calendars which have been part of my home work space - along with others, including many existing favourites - over the last while.

Janet Fish - "Raspberries and Goldfish", 1981

El Greco - "Christ Healing the Blind", 1570

Utagawa Hiroshige - "In the Kameido Tenjin Shrine Complex", 1856

Leon Bibel - "Brooklyn Bridge", 1938

Camille Pissarro - "Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen (Effect of Sunlight)", 1898

Amedeo Modigliani - "Jeanne Hebuterne", 1919

Winslow Homer - "The Bather", 1899

Walker Evans - "Subway Passengers, New York City: Two Women in Conversation", 1941

Kerry James Marshall - "Untitled (Studio)", 2014

Leonora Carrington - "Self-Portrait" , 1937-38

Ruth Chaney - "The Writer", 1935-43

Martha Marlow - Medicine Man

Ornate, faintly Disney-ish singer-songwriter pop in the vein of Natalie Prass's debut. Has some nice hooks, but not the songs to lift it above the throng.

The Wolf of Wall Street

What struck me on this watch was how well The Wolf of Wall Street conveys the distastefulness of its main characters - both DiCaprio's and Jonah Hill's. Champagne film-making. (last time)

Derry Girls seasons 1 & 2

Part of what makes it so great is how little there is of it - just 2 x 6 episodes of 20 minutes each, so it never runs the risk of outstaying its welcome or repeating itself while also displaying a nice modesty. The brevity also probably contributes to its sense of having captured lightning in a bottle - all its bits coming together just right.

(previously)

Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & John Randall - The Marfa Tapes

Relaxed and dusty session-y sounding record, including a prompt - by way of a more unadorned version - as to how actually great "Tin Man" is, a fact somewhat obscured by its placement amidst a double album, The Weight of These Wings, that's full of actually great songs.

girl in red - if i could make it go quiet

This is kind of fun but I guess I'm too much not the target audience - it has no stickiness at all for me.

Kathleen Edwards - Total Freedom

Turns out it was eight years between Edwards' previous album Voyageur - which has had real staying power - and Total Freedom, which dropped last year. Flashy it isn't, but its high quality is unforced, and it still sounds like her, just eight years or so on.

Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness & Star Trek Beyond

Disposable but well made entertainment, with a light enough touch and sufficiently believable stakes.

Previously: 1, 2, 3.

The Great season 1

The easy formulation would be The Favourite (with which it shares a creator) crossed with Marie Antoinette but The Great develops a more layered human-ness than those - excellent - predecessors over its 10 episodes. For all of the colourful world-building, present-to-past anachronism, zippy dialogue ('huzzahs' and 'indeeds' galore) and outright grotesqueness, it feels almost like the show can't help itself in fleshing out the characters and relationships at its centre as it goes - especially between Elle Fanning's Catherine and Nicholas Hoult's Peter, who are both wonderful creations from actors who evidently know what they're about in performances that are both deliberately mannered and seemingly natural in a way that makes them recognisable.

Julia Stone - Sixty Summers

Jumps around across styles but never quite lands. Best is the somewhat oddity of the French version of "Dance" at the end.

Kishi Bashi - Omoiyari

When you know that an artist is capable of a perfect song, and especially by working basically their standard vein rather than through some kind of out of the box different mode - and Kishi Bashi is, as evidenced by the joyous "Manchester" - it's hard to not hope for a reprise ever after. Omoiyari doesn't have any individual heights to match that earlier peak (from 151a), but it's fairly terrific in general - sweetly melodic, textured, lightly orchestrated pop music which I enjoy most in its most dramatic and violined moments.

serpentwithfeet - Deacon

♫ "Me and my boo wear the same size shoe" ♫  Great song.

Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

Seven songs and a bit over 30 minutes of space-ily jazzy folkish singer-songwriter art pop - without any sense of being fussed over or preciousness. 

"Michelangelo" is noteworthy, riding one of those melodies that seems to be all a single line, with lots of little arrangement bits to keep it interesting, and all round pretty lovely. All the other songs are good too and quietly intriguing.

But can we talk about "Hard Drive", which is something else, spoken and sung, ineffable, and with a spirit that reminds me of some of those other one-off classics that come along only so often, like "Mimi on the Beach", or "Body's in Trouble", and I'm not sure there are any others really. It feels dropped in from a sideways dimension, arriving in waves.

The Social Dilemma

Not really eye-opening at this stage but sobering nonetheless.

Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Kind of an epic record; my favourites are mostly the faster tempo ones.

Taylor Swift - evermore

More in the general vein of folklore.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Carnage

Eight of Cave's heavy hymns, arriving as if through a storm - just as likely a purely interior one as external. It's not easy listening, but its musical pleasures are real.

Esther Rose - How Many Times

The lilt and delicacy of Rose's singing, and the cleanness of her arrangements, is misleading - the songs themselves are sturdy, muscular even. I would call this country music, albeit with a contemporary pop-inflected sensibility, and it's very charming. It reminds me of Laura Cantrell (high praise) while being enough its own thing too - and has the good trick of being able to throw in little sly hooks and melodic surprises with some regularity.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

This one had slipped by me until now despite the large mark it made on the culture. It's pretty pleasant, buoyed by committed performances and a deep batting line-up of supporting and minor actors.

Cowboy Junkies - Pale Sun, Crescent Moon

From the distant year of 1993 - an era rich in this kind of thing. For me, only now coming to this album gives it the air of a lost classic, a dispatch from another time - yet I suspect it always had something of that air, even back when it was first released. I never went deep into the Cowboy Junkies beyond The Trinity Session and Rarities, B-Sides & Slow, Sad Waltzes (both iconic enough in their own right) but they cast a long, wispy shadow.

Brandi Carlile - By The Way, I Forgive You

"There are reasons why the body stays in motion / At the moment only demons come to mind" ... Carlile hasn't lost her way with a couplet that's for sure, and nor has she lost her facility for Americana warmth and melodicism combined with vocal rawness and well placed drama. All were there in 2007's The Story and 2012's Bear Creek and presumably in the other albums she's released too along the way to this one, from 2018 and her latest. 

By The Way, I Forgive You is full of good stuff, ranging across lots of ground. The first three songs - "Every Time I Hear That Song", "The Joke" and "Hold Out Your Hand" - are all excellent in strikingly different ways, respectively nailing relaxed country, anthemic folk-rock power ballad (she's done this kind of thing before, eg "The Story", and it might be her sweetest spot), and Rilo Kiley-esque country-rock / power-pop. And there's plenty to come after that - the build and release of "Whatever You Do", the pep of "Sugartooth", the rise of "Harder To Forgive". Quality.

Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

Early on in re-reading Fates and Furies, I had a feeling similar to that of re-reading The Secret History - something about the novel's intrinsic story-ness and texture (including a well fleshed-out world, vivid characters, and memorable events and scenes along the way), and something about the pleasurable sense of re-entering a novel with those qualities. And maybe something about the mythic - or quasi-mythic - register, with explicit call-outs to the ancients and a Grecian interest in character at its centre, including, as Richard Papen puts it early on, 'that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life'. It's a memorable novel all round, and well executed - although not quite as good as I'd retrospectively elevated it to being, with the first section certainly benefiting from having previously read the second, but some of the rest of its charge lost on a revisit.

Quan Barry - We Ride Upon Sticks

The 1989 Danvers High School Falcons field hockey team, Massachusetts, taps into something of the same powers that animated the Salem witchcraft accusations some 300 years previously and finds not only success on the hockey field beyond their wildest imaginings - all the way to States - but also, more importantly, their own fullest selves beyond the strictures of patriarchal (heteronormative, white-supremacist) control. 

Proudly we pimp walked back to our beachhead. The football team watched us roll by. Even through their helmets you could hear them sniggering, though on a lower frequency you could smell their teen-boy fear. We laughed in return because it was obvious their own coaches were getting ideas and that they'd all be running Deering Stadium sooner or later.

Eleven girls-to-young-women (ages 17 to 18) making up the team, narrating in the first-person plural of "we" - Mel Boucher, Sue Yoon, Julie Kaling, Heather Houston, Little Smitty, Becca Bjelica, Boy Cory, Jen Fiorenza (and the Claw), AJ Johnson, Abby Putnam and Girl Cory - and all given equal prominence, which is done with an impressive ability to bring them all to life beyond the one or two traits that most strikingly signals each of them. 

We ran off the field like a bunch of frenzied maenads carrying aloft the head of some poor slob that we'd recently torn off his shoulders. When Little Smitty got home to Smith Farm, she was still so pumped, she reached over and punched her dad when he asked how her day had gone.

It doesn't make for the strongest narrative drive, though there's some intrigue arising from the heavy foreshadowing, along with the basic sports narrative arising from their progressing from game to fame and, later, the investigations of intrepid student reporter Nicky the Chin which threaten to reveal all - but ultimately We Ride Upon Sticks is more about horizontal texture (also writ large in the loving 80s detritus scattered throughout) than forward momentum ... other than the strong feminist drive towards self-realisation, taking a different and differently intersectional form for each team member, including a nice pay-off with the final sections 30-years fast forward.

We should have loved her back, openly and without apology, but between the teen heart and the teen brain, only so much gets done.

Among other things, Barry is a poet and it shows - again, impressively - in the close control of language and in the absence of any floweriness or overt reliance on showy cadence and rhythm, in a voice that serves her story well. Plus - it's a bonus, but also integral to what makes the novel a success - it's funny.

Just as the two reporters turned and started walking away, the Claw screamed, We're red freaking hot!

Charlie Houlihan stopped in his tracks. "What'd you say?" he said.

 "Nothing," said Jen Fiorenza, soothingly patting her hair the way one might try to calm an overly excited lapdog, her head in profile same as Lincoln's on the penny.

The Highwomen - The Highwomen

Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby - Carlile's the only one of this country supergroup (see also: Pistol Annies - who are good but the Highwomen are better) who I really know, and even then only from earlier in her career, but that doesn't matter because the quality on display speaks for itself.

There's soul here, right from the get go with "Highwomen" the song, along with mid-tempo melody ("Redesigning Women", "Crowded Table"), a good line in ballads when they want to ("My Only Child") and a repertoire of enjoyable upbeat variations on country, roots and Americana styles among which the blues/rockabilly "Don't Call Me" is my favourite. And it's an explicitly feminist project too, beyond even the simple fact of these four highly capable women coming together in a vein and genre traditionally dominated by men.

Daniel J Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson - No-Drama Discipline

A 'whole-brain child' approach to discipline; 'connect and redirect' based on brain development science and a reminder that discipline is about teaching. Seems sound to me.

Julien Baker - Little Oblivions

The force is strong with the boygenius troika just now, with their respective most recent albums turning out to be among my very favourite of the last few years - Lucy Dacus's Historian, Phoebe Bridgers' Punisher and now this one.

Little Oblivions is the first time I've listened to Baker in any sustained way and it has a heavy punch along with the glittering melodies and cathartic crescendos that drew me in. In songs like "Hardline", "Relative Fiction", "Repeat", there's a weight that's of a piece with the surface enticements and the album as a whole grips.

I read an interview by Jia Tolentino recently where she said that, when she was a child, she has this idea that "Unchained Melody" and "I Love You Always Forever" were the two perfect pop songs that existed, and, in a different vein, a piece by Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker about the end of genre, both of which seem relevant, somehow - maybe in the way that Baker et al continue to forge forwards, drawing on elements familiar while creating something new.

Lucy Dacus - 2019 ep

Three originals (all quite good; none knockouts) and four covers of which "La vie en rose" is the standout, "Dancing in the Dark" also worth the listen as covers of "Dancing in the Dark" generally are.

Moxie

Well meaning and clearly on the side of right, and bends over backwards to be intersectional and inclusive, if also very cheesy and totally lacking any of the punk spirit that it invokes via the Bikini Kill inspiration of present-day high school feminist action. Then again, I'm probably not the target audience. Also you could draw some interesting lines between Mean Girls (2004; Tina Fey) and this one (2021; Amy Poehler - and Netflix).

Nina Simone - To Love Somebody

The title song is the star, although there's much more grit elsewhere on this set. From 1969.

Shovels & Rope - Busted Jukebox Volume 2

I liked their album Swimmin' Time and the prospect of covers of songs like "Joey", "Epic", "The Air That I Breathe" was intriguing, but I found the actual album quite charmless - too heavy handed and monochromatic.

Archie Roach - Let Love Rule

In its combination of country, soul, percussive folk and piano-led balladeering, Let Love Rule reminds me of no one so much as Nick Cave (it's also only one word away from a Nick Cave album). But it's its own thing too, twined around Roach's characterful voice - he's one of those singers you believe when listening to - and songs of love of different kinds, at least some of them being love of country and land. There are some beautiful songs here.

The Weather Station - Ignorance

A sinuous and slyly oblique singer-songwriter record that doesn't skimp on the melodies. Like more than a few others going around at the moment (eg Weyes Blood) she seems to look back to the 60s/70s in producing a set of woodsy and folk-touched yet also distinctly digital-sounding songs that move in waves. I'm liking this.

Yesterday

The best thing about this film is the way it allows the songs to shine - a reminder of the Beatles' true greatness.

The second best thing is the concept - what if the Beatles were erased from history instantaneously and no one had any memory of them other than one extremely struggling singer songwriter?

Maybe Yesterday should have done more with those two elements but even as it is, and even with some problematic bits (especially the romance), it's a feel good film ultimately just as it aspires to be.

SAULT - Untitled (Black Is)

A melting flow of styles and textures - Black music and very good music.

Big Thief - Two Hands

Forceful stuff. "Not" is an outlier, with the rest of the album veering more electric-folk but it all hits hard.

Wonder Woman 1984

I gather this wasn't universally liked in the way its predecessor deservedly was, but I enjoyed it. I like the way it has a different shape from most comic book movies, taking its time in setting up and lingering in her loneliness and self-imposed isolation at the beginning and working in some nice character moments with both Barbara Minerva and Steve Trevor, and finding a genuinely lovely sequence in the fireworks over DC as they take off in the invisible jet. The movie seems to care just as much about who its characters and and what it's about as it does about its action scenes. Gal Gadot is the same empathetic figure she was last time, and Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal both hit the mark for me, including via the latter's embodiment of the 'greed in the 80s' theme that runs through the plot - providing a neat interlock with the period setting and the contrasting sacrifice that WW makes and the way she literally saves the world at the end by reaching the whole world and persuading everyone to act for the greater good. 

Nadia Reid - Out of My Province

Smooth and lonely (but not too lonely) contemporary folk; voice and songs both strong. Best are "High & Lonely" and the more propulsive "Oh Canada".

Promising Young Woman soundtrack

This is one where the music is integral to the film, and so the soundtrack unsurprisingly stands up.

Most memorable are Charli XCX's still terrific "Boys" (in lightly remixed form), Donna Missal's brooding "Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby" and "Angel of the Morning" (the Juice Newton version - one of those songs that's somehow endlessly present in popular culture).

Also, surprisingly, the Paris Hilton song - "Stars Are Blind" - is really quite good, in a throwaway kind of way. Listening to it of course brought to mind that scene where they dance to it in the pharmacy, which plays at the time as a classic date-cute moment with an extra layer from his implied sensitivity based on his knowledge of such an out and out pop song's lyrics and willingness to sing along to them, and later with much darker undertones flowing from Hilton's status in our culture, ie becoming famous due to a leaked sex tape.

Juno

Ripe for rewatching and stands up well. It was clearer to me this time how deftly it sidesteps the pro life / pro choice argument by centring Juno's own decision; also the contrast between Juno's growing maturity and the Jason Bateman character's stuckness-in-adolescence and general jerkishness, and the validation of both single parenting and blended families and the implicit mirroring of the non-mainstreamness of Juno herself and the relationship between her and Michael Cera's Bleeker. Also a reminder of how good an actor Page was from the beginning, both interesting and believable.

(last time, in 2008)

Kate Atkinson - Big Sky

A more recent Jackson Brodie book. I read the first couple, Case Histories and One Good Turn, but haven't followed the rest and I suspect Big Sky would've been a fair bit richer if I had. Nonetheless, it's an easy read, and Brodie hasn't lost his tendency to reference country singers at every turn, especially the women. (I wonder whether his reflections are deliberately - on Atkinson's part - generally quite hokey? I wouldn't put it past her.)

He had Miranda Lambert on his headphones. She was his absolute favourite. She was blonde and curvy and sang about drink and sex and heartbreak and nostalgia and he suspected he would be slightly nervous of her in real life. But she was still his absolute favourite.

Belle and Sebastian - What to Look for in Summer

A live album and a peppy one at that. The first proper song is my latter day favourite B&S song, "Dirty Dream Number Two", and they do it justice, and there are plenty of classics across its 23 tracks, among which "Beyond the Sunrise" stands out for the way this rendition elevates it and gives it new texture and "The Fox in the Snow" and "My Wandering Days Are Over" stand out for just being such completely great songs. Plus there are a couple of newer ones I hadn't heard before along with a couple from Write About Love, which I never really internalised. Two from way, way back when in "Dog on Wheels" and "Belle & Sebastian". And it all fits.

Promising Young Woman

Very good. Plenty of both style and substance, and the two are complementary. For me it ended the right way - a film as much about the effects of trauma inflicted on women by male violence and patriarchal oppression as this one needed to stay the course, and it did. R told me about a podcast she listened to where one of the presenters was saying they wouldn't recommend it because of the moral dubiousness of Cassie's actions in taking revenge upon the perpetrators (including those complicit) and because the ending wasn't empowering for victims (survivors) of sexual assault, but to me both are, while reasonable, beside the point - the film's concern is with depicting the effects of such assault and the institutional and cultural structures that enable it, not with making a moral argument about how victims ought to or could respond. Carey Mulligan is great, and so is the casting of a cavalcade of 'nice guys' and the women who enable them.

(w/ R)

Boogie Nights

A long time since I watched this one, and I wonder whether I ever sat down and watched it all the way from start to finish before. It's lively and human, and PTA's flair was already well in evidence at this stage even though some of the depth wasn't quite yet. The warmth and optimism of the 70s, followed by the crashing fall of the turn to the 80s, and something of a happy ending for those left standing, wrapped up with a bit of a theme of 'family' which sits naturally with the porn industry setting when taken together with the lostness of the people who find their way to it.

Robin Barker - Baby Love & Katrina Bowman and Louise Ryan - Twins

Getting ready.

"2020 MIX" / "2020 in short"

End of year mixes from David and trang. One big standout on each - "Not" by Big Thief and "Wildfires" by Sault, each my introduction to that artist.

iTunes most played

I'm switching from iTunes to Spotify as my primary music player, so here's a final record of the songs I've listened to the most times over the iTunes part of my life, circa 2007/08 to now.

Accompanying entry from a few months ago: most-listened to artists over that same period.

The Queen's Gambit

The Queen's Gambit is a fantasy. Shall I count the ways? The trail of defeated boys and men, including those characterised as notably arrogant, condescending and dismissive of women - which rings true to my lay stereotype of elite chess players - left by Harmon as she ascends, ultimately all helping her towards her ultimate triumph (their individual aid is forgivable on a story-telling level, the way they all band together at the end much less credible). The her celebrity and rockstar-like treatment (the association for me was crowds mobbing the Beatles) in Russia during that ultimate tournament is depicted as emanating from what she stands for as a successful woman, implied clearly by the way the crowds of cheering fans seeking her autograph after each victory are overwhelmingly, if not wholly, made up of women. The respectful recognition, and indeed celebration of her victories, that she is accorded by her Russian opponents at the end - both the ageing champion Luchenko and her main adversary Borgov. 

But it's a beautifully put together fantasy. Not just on the obvious level of how it looks - although it looks sumptuous, and its stylishness across an array of settings and set pieces, as well as in its fashions, makes it very appealing in a way that reminds me of Killing Eve (the parallel is reinforced by the implacable, often opaque figure at its centre in Beth Harmon). And there are some striking visuals, made even better by their connection to story, character and theme (rather than being there for their own sake) - especially the imagery of the looming chesspieces overhead when Harmon visualises moves. 

But it's also well assembled on the level of story construction - it feels aware that many of its own moves strain credulity and makes an effort to maintain at least enough suspended disbelief (eg the various type of obnoxiousness displayed by other defeated men in that climactic tournament in Moscow). Another example is the character of Jolene, whose speech asserting her own agency and framing it in terms of family - the latter especially clever given that the women had met as girls in an orphanage - in making the choice to return and rescue Beth at a critical moment gets close, but doesn't quite get the show over the line for reproducing what looks awfully like the trope of the magical black person saving the white hero.

I suppose another beautifully put together fantasy is the character of Harmon herself. I don't have any trouble accepting the idea of a chess prodigy - that particular figure lives in our culture and in reality. Nor with the idea of a female one. The notion that childhood trauma and addiction may both underpin her extraordinary successes and be the greatest barrier to them, likewise, is familiar from this broad genre - as is the structure of escalating success, setbacks, and ultimate triumphs with its inherent suspense as seen in many a sports film. The less believable bit is how extremely glamorous she is - which hopefully doesn't reflect my own sexist beliefs about how extremely capable women should, or can, look, but is more disbelief that anyone playing such a demanding game at such a high level could look that way. But that can be overlooked in a tv series, of course. 

What's more important is how compelling she is, as played by Anya Taylor-Joy. There's something uncanny in her appearance, which serves the character well, with all those demons in her psyche and the extraordinary way her mind works, and both her composedness and the way it's broken down by drugs and alcohol are of a piece in Taylor-Joy's performance. (In terms of the typical spiral of out-of-controlness, it's refreshing how matter of fact she is about sex without that matter of factness itself being particularly pathologised.) The supporting characters, too, have a bit of fizz - especially her adoptive mother (a poignant figure and a counterpoint in terms of the limitations placed on women at the time, and their consequences) and rival turned supporter Benny Watts (played with huge swagger by Jojen Reed from Game of Thrones), while there are some nice dramatic moments generated by the way several of them disappear and then return at crucial moments.

In the end I don't think this was a great show - it has too many flaws and at its heart is too straightforward. But it's a very entertaining one that doesn't outstay its welcome, and put together in a way that its best and most interesting aspects (which are considerable) are able to shine. I'm glad I watched it.

NGV Triennial (second visit)

This visit took in the 3rd floor and I've now seen most - not quite all - of what this Triennial has to offer and it's confirmed the impression that I had from my first visit that this instalment isn't of the same high standard as the inaugural one in 2017. Still, there were plenty of pleasures across the many pieces of contemporary art and design gathered and thoughtfully installed as part of the exhibition.

Veronique Ellena - "Santi Luca e Martina, Rome" (2011) - from a series showing the poor and homeless amidst the splendour of ancient city buildings

Susan Philipsz - "A single voice" (2017), a video and sound installation in which the sound of the first violinist playing the score of a film (Aniara, a sci-fi tragedy) is separated from the rest of the score, deconstructed into its twelve separate tones and played through individual speakers around the darkened room

Daniel Arsham - "Falling clock" (2020)

JR - "Homily to Country" (2020), one of several installed in a pavilion outside drawing attention to the environmental and human harm arising from the degradation and drying-out of the Darling river system

(w/ Jade)

Netflix

A few things incompletely watched over the last year or so:

• Archer seasons 1 to 7 and a bit - a cynical, crude and extremely fun piece of animated action tv candy, enlivened further by a surprising ability to flesh out its characters into something more than just cartoons.
• 3% season 1 and a bit of season 2 - enjoyable Brazilian semi-dystopian future show in which members of the living-in-poverty majority get one chance each to win their way to the pampered land of the elite (the 3%) through an allegedly merit-based series of tests and contests, like a less blood-thirsty Hunger Games but with the political commentary equally - if anything, more so - up in lights. 
• Warrior Nun - two or three episodes only before losing interest.
• Bojack Horseman season 1 - this show hasn't landed with me in the way that everyone on the internet had led me to expect it would (maybe that comes with more perseverance?) but its first season shows at least flickers of greatness, with one episode in particular, "Say Anything", punching pretty hard in the stomach in the way it unwraps Princess Carolyn's situation.
• The Forest of Love - I got through about half of this movie before giving up and scrolling forward to find out what happened at the end, which required some synopsis reading anyway given the significant twist. It was hard going - too nasty for me and without the bubblegum pleasures of the director's Love Exposure. 
• New Girl - I think I'm about halfway through season 1 of a show that I can't imagine going deep on, but offers the lightest of entertainments at times when such is called for.

Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others

I felt like re-reading "Story of Your Life" and finished this collection with a renewed sense of how good they are - I'd call this book a modern classic. This time, "Tower of Babylon" especially impressed me.

(last time)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine seasons 1-7

Seven seasons of pretty consistently joy-bringing television. More than anything, the show's consistent kindness stands out, along with its diversity and wit.

Spotlight

Rewatch and liked again. 

(last time)

Brandon Sanderson - Dawnshard & Rhythm of War

The next novel plus extremely full-length novel in this series. Reading these, and Rhythm of War especially, had me thinking about what it is that I read genre - and (including) literary fiction - for. There's a relatively heavy emphasis on character here, and particularly on mental illness and disability, in a way that's impressive for a fantasy novel but would be only passable in lit fic - along with the depth of the world (and universe) being built, and the moments and crescendos of excitement and intrigue. I'd like it if Sanderson went a bit darker, in a way that was hinted at in parts of the first in the series, but that's a matter of taste rather than a reflection of quality. All told these continue to be pacy, richly imagined stories told in a way that doesn't insult the intelligence (at the level of both prose and characterisation), and a good way to escape for a time.

(previous entries in the series)

NGV Triennial

Highlights from a first pass through. As a wide-ranging celebration of contemporary art focused on established and well-known artists - international and Australian - there was plenty to enjoy. It didn't seem as densely teeming, nor to have any with the same wow factor, as elements of the previous one in 2018, which would be understandable if true given the circumstances, but might also reflect that we only made it through the southern section of the ground floor and most of the pieces interspersed among the collection on levels 1 and 2 (and along the ramp).

Sarah Waiswa - "Seeking to belong" (2016), from a series of a an albino woman photographed in the Kibera slums in Kenya

Alicja Kwade - "WeltenLinie" (2020), a disorienting and at the same time aesthetically engaging walk-through experience which messed around with my perceptions as much as it did everyone else's in terms of uncertainty about which were empty spaces and which mirrored

Lee Ufan - "Dialogue" (2017), a series of individual marks combined to appear like a single brushstroke (previously)

Cerith Wyn Evans - "C = O = D = A" (2019-20)

Angela Tiatia - "Narcissus", 2019, in which "Behind the kneeling self-absorbed figure of Narcissus, which specifically references Caravaggio's Narcissus, 1597-99, a cast of forty Narcissi performs acts of self-worship, ritual, joy, love, lust, complacency, despair and disregard" in an era of social media - made me think of a more overtly contemporary (albeit with much older reference points) Alex Prager

(w/ Hayley)

(previous Triennial: visits 1, 2, 3, 4)

Valeria Luiselli - Lost Children Archive

There's something elusive about Lost Children Archive, arising from its many effacements - the namelessness of the family whose road trip across America it focuses on, the slipperiness of the present tense in which it begins and the story-telling mode into which it shifts, the elisions inherent in its use of short sections and intertexts, the deliberate absence of the migrant children whose journeys from the 'northern triangle' of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to the US-Mexico border are set up as the book's nominal subject. The elusiveness is apt, though, and of a piece with the mysterious, poetic tone in which it works. 

I never entirely sank into it, nor loved it as much as I'd expected to - and I found it slightly jarringly over-determined in the way all of its plotting and much of its characterisation connected more or less directly to its themes - but still it held many pleasures, and that central concern, and the way it deals with the worlds of children, together with the power and delicacy of many of the individual scenes, go a long way.

2020: "Potential"

In line with this year's general blurriness, it felt like I was listening to a lot of this music all the way through 2020, give or take. Jason Isbell and Margo Price were the big ones - two excellent albums from two consistently excellent artists. Although maybe Fetch the Bolt Cutters sounds the most like 2020 to me, and it was also, by the end, somewhat slyly a year of Phoebe Bridgers.

(on spotify)

1. Dreamsicle - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Reunions (Southeastern, 2020)

2. Held Down - Laura Marling
Song for Our Daughter (Chrysalis, 2020)

3. Circle the Drain - Soccer Mommy
Color Theory (Loma Vista, 2020)

4. Shameika - Fiona Apple
Fetch the Bolt Cutters (Epic, 2020)

5. Love Song - Miranda Lambert
Revolution (Columbia, 2009)

6. I'd Die for You - Margo Price
That's How Rumors Get Started (Loma Vista, 2020)

7. This Is Me Trying - Taylor Swift
Folklore (Republic, 2020)

8. Me in 20 Years - Moses Sumney
grae (Jagjaguwar, 2020)

9. Graceland Too - Phoebe Bridgers
Punisher (Dead Oceans, 2020)

10. Sunblind - Fleet Foxes
Shore (Anti-, 2020)

11. Idoru - Grimes
Miss Anthropocene (4AD, 2020)

The Letter String Quartet - All the Stories

Elements of minimalism and folk, organic and treated, with vocals. A gift from Kim.

Bendigo Art Gallery

First gallery trip in many long months.

The exhibitions had a strong Indigenous theme running through them - not all but most.

Void

Contemporary Indigenous art speaking to the theme of 'void'. Two of the most striking had a superficial resemblance to notable Western art movements of the 20th century in Op Art and Land Art while actually arriving in a very different space.

Doreen Reid Nakamarra - "Untitled" (2006) - designs associated with the rockhole site of Marrapinti, west of Pollock Hills in WA, the tali (sandhills) and puli (rocky outcrops) that surround Marrapinti

Hayley Millar-Baker - "Meeyn Meerreeng" (Country at Night) (2017)

Also James Tylor's photos (2013-14) with their dark geometric excisions, and Mabel Juli's iconographic night sky "Garnkiny Ngarranggarni" (2006).

Paul Guest Prize 2020

A prize for drawing, which seemed broadly defined with many of the works having drawing as only one component of themselves.

Richard Lewer - "2020" (2020)

Zoe Amor - "Architecture of a Dream - The Gift I + II" (2020)

David Sequeira - "Song Cycle" (2020) - each one is titled, eg "Song for Arvo Part", on sheet music paper

In addition, "Piinpi" - contemporary Indigenous fashion exhibition - which I didn't engage much with.

(w/ R)

Blade Runner 2049

Not exactly subtle, but strong-lined and persuasive, and graceful with what it is. A particularly impressive feat is the emotional weight it wrings from the relationship between K and Joi.

(last time)

I, Tonya

This is a snappy take on Tonya Harding and 'the incident', foregrounding class, competing stories and human fallibility. Good performance by Margot Robbie goes a long way to rendering Harding if not exactly entirely sympathetic then certainly recognisable as a product of circumstances as well as individual choices. Alison Janney indelible as the mother too.

The War on Drugs - Live Drugs

The War on Drugs are a band whose music is made for the live format - large, expansive, sweeping rock and roll with long builds and extended climaxes and outros - and they come through strongly on this set, which was compiled across multiple shows as is often the way. 

There's a few songs from each of Lost in the Dream and A Deeper Understanding, including several of their most exciting - "An Ocean Between the Waves", "Pain", "Strangest Thing", "Red Eyes", "Thinking of a Place", "Eyes to the Wind", "Under Pressure", "In Reverse" - and an older one ("Buenos Aires Beach") and a cover of Warren Zevon's "Accidentally Like a Martyr" in the middle. 

No revelations in these versions, which are pretty faithful and just a touch more earthy and organic, but a general slightly new perspective on all of them, with a few bonus little details like the clarity of the "be the writer of your own story" refrain throughout "Strangest Thing" and the airy grandeur of the saxophone wherever it shows up.

Munich

Meets the minimum requirement for any work dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is to recognise the situation's complexity - moral and otherwise - and the cycle of violence that accompanies it. I did feel a bit morally queasy during Munich's first hour or so, until it became clear that the film's program did indeed extend in that way, after which I was able to give myself over more fully to the suspense of its plot and the growing toll taken on Eric Bana's Avner by his actions as he faces questions of conscience, family and home in pursuing the plotters of the titular massacre.

Drive-By Truckers - The New OK

A pretty good all-round Drive-By Truckers record, released this year, that never gets to really great heights except on the soulful "Tough to Let Go" which really nails it.

The Big Lebowski

I never watched this one before somehow. I guess I'm too late to it; I found it diverting but not much more.

Tenet

As distinctively Nolan-esque as all of his films - in style, theme and treatment - and with some of the strengths of his best, Tenet nonetheless didn't completely do it for me. 

Hard not to compare it to those others, and by that yardstick, Tenet doesn't have quite the interlocked high-concept and character-based (emotional) dimensions of The Prestige, Inception and Interstellar, the combination of sheer excitement and moral texture in his Batman films, the satisfying neatness of Memento as well as a couple of those others, or the same sustained sense of stature and charisma about all of its characters. The one I haven't mentioned there is Dunkirk (my memories of Insomnia are vague), which I still look back on as an impressive but maybe my least favourite of his; interestingly, it - like Tenet - is also an overt take on genre, in that case war as opposed to spy.

Having said that, it was still a very good watch, with plenty of intrigue, a lot of action, some characteristically great set pieces, an intricate - and difficult to follow - construction, and plenty of uncertainty about where it was going and how it would get there, with all of its central performances highly watchable (especially charming is Robert Pattinson - it's a bit remarkable that the two principals of Twilight have turned out to be two of the most interesting, and maybe best, of their generation of actors). 

(w/ R)

Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?

Takes aim for the dancefloor, and while there's bits I like, there are no real standouts in the vein that each of Ware's three excellent previous albums offered.

(Devotion; Tough Love; Glasshouse)

The Dark Knight Rises

Unsurprisingly a bit thinner after multiple rewatches but then again there's a reason I've been moved to watch it that many times!

Inglourious Basterds

As suspected, not as good on a revisit as I'd come to think of it as over the years since I previously watched it, but still packs something of a punch - and maybe watching on a big screen might have made a particularly large difference with this one.

Fleet Foxes - Shore

On initial listens, Shore suffers by being so evidently a Fleet Foxes album (years after I last listened to a new record of theirs, it's like they never went away) and also by being so uniform in its texture and quality - both of which tend to cause the individual songs to blur together. Luckily, on repeated listens, it turns out to be excellent, and if there aren't any real individual stand-out moments (closest are maybe "Sunblind" and "Maestranza"), that matters less when the whole is sustained at such a high level of quality.

The Nice Guys

Is there something about the 1970s, and especially its seedier elements, that makes the decade especially conducive to cinematic look-backs? Think Boogie Nights, American Hustle, Inherent Vice - a trio of truly great films, with two of them admittedly having the leg-up of being directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The Nice Guys isn't in their league, but it shares with the two PTA ones a Los Angeles setting, and with all three a mood which feels just very suited to the movies. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are a good double act, with both showing pretty fair comic moves; Margaret Qualley shows up in what in retrospect could have been an audition for her turn in the 1969-set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; and scenes are stolen by Angourie Rice as Gosling's precocious PI daughter.

The Irishman

Much craft on display in this gangster film that acquires some heft - even beyond the leg-up that a 3 hour plus running time always offers - despite what initially presents as a lack of psychological backstory or insight into the inner life of De Niro's Frank Sheeran but gradually comes to appear more a depiction of a person whose interiority is in fact completely bound up with his external life and actions. Indeed, the narrative - moving back and forth through time - stages a series of decisions that Frank makes, revealing him through his choices, none more so than when things come to a head between his two primaries in Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa and Joe Pesci's mob boss Russell Bufalino.

Maria Konnikova - The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

This is just a great read all round. I've liked Konnikova's writing whenever I've encountered it - I like what she writes about (decision-making, cognitive biases, psychology, personality, behaviour and general interestingness) and I like the way she writes about it (clearly and engagingly) - and The Biggest Bluff's premise is a cracking one, namely, Konnikova herself taking up poker from scratch with the aim of playing in the Main Event at the World Series of Poker in one year's time.

Of course, as she lays out along the way, her aims were deeper than just that surface motivation, and so is this book. The 'hook' is how far her background in psychology - when coupled with coaching from a living legend of professional poker, Erik Seidel, together with what's clearly a formidable intellect and capacity for focus and hard work - would take her in a hyper-competitive world dominated by maths-y and aggressively masculine types. But there's an equally compelling narrative line built around the inquiry that her training and experiences with poker enable her to make into the respective limits of luck and control in determining outcomes (in poker and in life), with a third strand comprising the investigations into Konnikova's own insecurities and psyche prompted by her experiences in competition.

She's excellent at opening up each of those through-lines, while at the same time introducing the rules, strategy and culture of high level poker and its attendant circuit and players, and there's also a built in narrative tension associated with her overall improvement arc and performance in individual tournaments along the way. Impressively, the connections she makes to lessons for life never feel forced - taking in both really direct applications of particular disciplines and skills that she hones in poker, and broader mindsets and orientations which can help make sense of life's challenges and how to navigate them.

Noelle Stevenson - Nimona

Quite charming and quite good 'monster girl' graphic novel.

Ted Chiang - Exhalation

More of Chiang's clean-lined and thoroughly thought-through excursions into 'what ifs' that always also illuminate the world we actually inhabit. 

Some of these do feel a bit 'thought exercise'-y, their animating ideas and how those are worked through dominating the story structures housing them. But the best are exceptional, especially the title story, in which a species discovers they're living inside a self-enclosed sphere within which their breathing will eventually create entropy through a complete equalisation of air pressure everyone in their closed universe, and "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom", in which portable divergent-timeline creating devices have been invented, allowing their owners to communicate with their other-timeline self and other counterparts, and one of the ones in which Chiang's moral concerns are at the forefront.

(Stories of Your Life and Others)

The Quick and the Dead

I'm fond of westerns, and The Quick and the Dead might have been the first I ever saw, a long time ago. 

It stands up okay, I guess - it's not difficult to watch anyway, aided by the inherent drama of the gunfight competition that structures it, the range of acting talent of various kinds on display (Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and a host of fairly memorable others in supporting roles), and the flashes of visual flair in the direction and cinematography.

Tony Kushner - Angels in America

I'd been feeling like revisiting Angels in America, and now that I have, I can speculate about why that was - a feeling of Zeitgeist in the air, the sense that an end of times of sorts is approaching, questions of law and justice and the difference between them unavoidable, a growing urgency in the tension between stasis and progress coupled with increasingly yawning fault-lines in the notion of progress itself, and America at the heart of it.

I encountered the play through the National Theatre 'live' version a couple of years back, and this time I found myself reading the play text and watching the 2003 HBO miniseries with its murderers' row of talent across many of the key roles (notably Al Pacino as Roy Cohn, Meryl Streep as Hannah and Ethel Rosenberg, Emma Thompson as the Angel, Mary-Louise Parker as Harper, Patrick Wilson as Joe, and James Cromwell in the smaller role of Cohn's doctor) in parallel with each other. 

Prior, Louis, Harper, Joe, and the monstrous Cohn are characters who linger in the memory, their personalities and actions reverberating with a force that's individual to them and not just referable to the lofty themes with which they're woven - some of which I mentioned earlier, along with desire, prophecy, theory, history, responsibility and love. It's human at every turn, while convincing in its rendition of angels - and funny, too, while never sentimental. The play is a true modern classic, and the HBO version maybe comes as close to doing it justice as could be imagined.

Birds of Prey

This movie is a colourful. vibrant, violent mess, and all up it's actually pretty good. Margot Robbie is fun, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is funner.

Triple J Like A Version 15

Best:

AURORA, "Across the Universe" - I guessed from the vocal style before looking her up that she was Scandinavian.

Skeggs, "Here Comes Your Man" - apart from a drop-in from the Velvets' "I'm Waiting for the Man" at the start, a basically faithful version that plays up the always at least latent surf-rock elements of the original, and a good excuse to revisit a classic song in fresh clothes.

Cosmo's Midnight, "Sing It Back" - it turns out this is one of those songs that's so good that any fairly recognisable version of it can still be good in much the same way as the original, and also that this (Moloko's) might have been a sleeper classic in its own right.

GRAACE, "Complicated" - which is cool and, with its up and down melody, sorta-mournful piano arrangement, folkish flourishes and emotional vocal, would've fit in seamlessly on folklore, which in itself is a pretty cool realisation in a layers-on-layers sort of way. Also, it seems all-caps artist names became fashionable somewhere in the last few years.

SAFIA, "No One Knows" - successfully preserves the QOTSA drama while stripping the song to bare bones.

Jack River, "Truly Madly Deeply" - as I said above, a good and fairly faithful cover of a great song is an excuse to revel in the greatness of that song. What makes this take even better is that Jack River herself is also clearly revelling in what "Truly Madly Deeply" has to offer, most evidently in the liberal use of saxophone.

YUNGBLUD, "I Will Follow You into the Dark" (Death Cab for Cutie) - this is just an all round sweet song.

Thelma Plum, "Young Dumb & Broke" (Khalid) - a chirpy earworm.

Cub Sport, "When the Party's Over" (Billie Eilish) - this one is just a dark star of a song and it's made me properly a bit interested in Eilish for the first time.

BROCKHAMPTON, "Un-thinkable" (Alicia Keys) - soulful.

Ruby Fields, "The Unguarded Moment" - another of those that strongly summons the joys of the original, and in this case hits its pleasure centres if anything more crisply.

Thandi Phoenix, "Glory Box" - which finds the party in this song while remaining true to its spirit.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Number of highly charismatic leads who were a large part of why I watched this again: Two (Kristen Stewart, who even here finds ways to bring subtle interesting twists to her role, like the hunched way she rides into battle, and the way she plays the scene when the wicked queen is dying, and Chris Hemsworth)

Number of bonus impeccable villains: One (Charlize Theron)

Number of dwarves she meets in the forest: Eight (played by an impressive array of well known British actors)

Number of dwarves left alive at the end: Seven

Number of times I was struck by how overwhelmingly white this movie is: Many

(last time)

Zadie Smith - Grand Union

Expectation is a demon, and maybe it's why so many of these stories felt to me like exercises - workings-through of concepts rather than the you-know-it-when-you-see-it red meat of the real thing. Almost without exception, they're unquestionably well crafted, but somehow mostly a bit too controlled-feeling (even when they're clearly written to unravel), their high concepts too apparent even when the stories themselves are constructed to be oblique, their ending points too close to being pat even when pleasingly abrupt. That that sense of control - combined perhaps with a close attention to the world - is the closest thing to a unifying voice is a problem.

But, you know, maybe I would've responded to these differently if I'd encountered them individually - three of them, "Just Right", "Meet the President!" and "Now More Than Ever" (the latter, about cancel culture, one of the stronger ones), I had, but also already through the frame of being 'Zadie Smith stories' - and out of context, or would I even then have felt that each was in the thrall of some other writer or style, whether that being one I specifically recognised or more broadly in its nature.

I read the whole collection, and I'm not hesitant about abandoning books - maybe particularly short story collections - so that's a recommendation in itself. And there are some good ones in here - but somehow all too few that truly came to life. The ones I liked most were "The Dialectic" (but it's like a more programmatic Lydia Davis), "For the King" (this one made me think of a more warm-blooded Rachel Cusk), and two which are primarily about character and story and maybe those are ultimately Smith's strengths - "Sentimental Education" and "Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets".

Neil Young - Homegrown

Recorded in 1974/75 and only just released, Homegrown hits the spot - Neil Young from his classic era, in fine form.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Greatest Hits

If you'd asked me to name a Tom Petty song before I listened to this greatest hits (covering the period from the beginning of his career in the late 70s through to 1993), I couldn't have named one, but it turns out there are at least a couple that I would've recognised - in "Don't Come Around Here No More" and "I Won't Back Down", both memorably melodic and also not particularly characteristic from what I can tell - and a few others that have the sound of familiarity, though I can't be sure whether I'd actually heard them before or whether that's just the way they sound (eg "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "You Got Lucky", "Free Fallin' "). And in fact that familiarity of sound is striking across this greatest hits, shedding light on why Petty gets mentioned so much as an influence on the heartland rock sound that artists today continue returning to.

Freeman

Amazing story about an amazing person, but despite those advantages and the innate drama of being structured around the lead up to the Sydney Olympics, this documentary was really only so-so in quality. The one thing that does justify its existence, apart from its subject and the timely reminder of what Freeman's victory meant - and could have meant into the future - and the context of the Reconciliation movement at the time, is the comments from Freeman herself, telling her story.

Zadie Smith - Intimations

Short meditations on the present moment, written during the early lockdown period. Predictably clear-sighted, light of touch, and profound.

The Vast of Night

I was pretty sure I was going to like this one from about five minutes in, as the camera swoops along behind and beside fast-moving teenage radio DJ Everett Sloan and his rapid-fire, slang-laden patter into and through a local basketball stadium, then back out into the night-time streets, sweeping up similarly aged switchboard operator Fay Crocker and her new tape recorder along the way - the setting, 1950s small town New Mexico. 

It basically starts in medias res, leaving the viewer to catch up as they can, and the off-kilter tone intrigues from the outset; the film continues to groove as it goes along, building its Cold War era vibes of paranoia and possible alien invasion through score, mounting mood and tension, and some spectacular scenes, especially Fay at the switchboard as the fear mounts, on a trajectory towards its ending that's neither wholly predictable nor arbitrary-feeling.

Artists

The artists I've spent the most time listening to since itunes came into my life in around 2007 or 2008:

I've done this before, in 2016. 

Rush

James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) vs Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl), F1 1976. Quite good and the racing scenes work surprisingly well, but never truly elevates beyond the conventional.

Wasp Network

Assayas is always interesting but Wasp Network misses the mark. The premise is intriguing enough - a network of Cuban Castro loyalists infiltrating the anti-regime movement operating from Miami in the 90s - and the cast talented and good looking (including Penelope Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal and Ana de Armas) but the movie doesn't gel into anything in particular.

Taylor Swift - folklore

A low key super lovely contemporary pop record, built on twinkling melodies and arrangements, songs which are equally gentle whether downbeat or mildly anthemic, and that Taylor Swift feeling running through it all. On folklore, Swift moves airily between and integrates genres more than ever before (admittedly, I've missed her last couple) and the result is dreamy. I haven't fully absorbed its 16 tracks but there's a pair just after the album's mid-point - "This Is Me Trying" and "Illicit Affairs" that I think is particularly good. Also "Epiphany".

Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer & Oathbringer

This is the first three 'main series' books out of a projected 10 - plus a fill-in novella to flesh out the back story of a key character, Lift - in what is, of course (given that description and the books' titles), an epic fantasy series, and the most promising mainstream fantasy series I've come across in a long time at that. 

It's very page turny, but one of those that feels good to race through, while also rewarding a bit of attention to what's actually on the page. The craft of it is quite exceptional - it starts fast, with a few major characters amidst the action, and their connections to the main thrust of the story quickly apparent. The way it follows a small number of major characters - Kaladin, Shallan, Adolin, Dalinar - and brings them together keeps up the interest (with secondary characters also nicely fleshed out - Jasnah, Szeth, Taravangian, various of the bridgemen), combined with ample use of relatively short flashbacks that track through time to meet the present.

Sanderson is good at keeping the reader oriented without too much exposition every time a new character, place, event, idea etc is introduced, and he uses interludes to introduce other characters whose significance is often initially unclear - in their own right or caught up in larger machinations and events? - but which adds to the richness of the world and often presses into the main narrative over time without detracting from the overall momentum. 

Also notable is the way that the obligatory introductory quotations at the beginning of each chapter are used to actually advance plot and build suspense, not just 'worldbuild' and provide historical colour, as are the illustrations, which sometimes provide important info and are interestingly diegetic (eg Shallan's drawings).

The characters are sturdy enough, especially by the standards of the genre, and rarely fall into cliche or shortcut characterisation (Shallan's wordplay is distractingly arch at times, but what Sanderson does with her character via Veil and Radiant pretty much makes up for it), and the narrative, while somewhat standard issue, holds the attention. Familiar motifs - knights, magic, spirits, monsters, talking swords, humans as invaders, ancient and powerful beings - are given a do-over that's impressively thought-through and integrated. It's not overly dark but it does have a sense of stakes, and manages some striking images, like the scenes with the men carrying the bridges into battle to lay them across the chasms, and the 'cognitive realm' of Shadesmar with its oceans of small dark beads.

I don't know how much this series really has up its sleeve, but it's plenty well enough done for me to continue reading.

Hamilton

Great to watch a second time around, and this time - from the vantage of this filmed version - with the benefit of seeing the actors and set close-up, and with the words in subtitles so as not to miss anything, not to mention the original Broadway cast including Lin-Manuel himself.

(on stage)

Miranda Lambert - Four the Record

Has some good tunes and a few interesting flourishes up its sleeve, but overall one of the less distinguished in Lambert's back catalogue.

Joe Abercrombie - Best Served Cold

 Pacy enough, and convincingly gritty and lived-in, but on the thin side.

Haim - Women in Music Pt III

A peppy outing from Haim, as always, with a bit of evolution in their sound. Good, but largely not that exciting. Best songs (and exceptions to the not being that exciting): "The Steps", "Gasoline" and closer "FUBT".