Marie Antoinette

At last! And it was exactly what I wanted it to be. Seeing Marie Antoinette has really made me happy - after all the anticipation and excitement and everything, it was just wonderful. I don't really know what to say. The picture looks scrumptious, candy store pretty - costumes and decorations, and lots of widescreen shots of Versailles, and the party and court scenes sparkle. That Sofia Coppola mood - atmosphere - is present, especially in the sequence where the queen and her attendants trail through the fields after her birthday party before watching the sun rise (and, the counterpoint which tips it further bittersweet - the emptiness of the morning-after comedown as she sits silent and alone in her bath). And there's lots of light and lightness, energy and whimsy (I especially liked the first morning dressing scene).

Kirsten is really, really good - cute, charming, kittenish, poised, hinting at depths. She's onscreen for virtually the whole running time of the film, and she lights it up (as she must); the partying, the ceremonies, the moments of quiet desolation - it's all conveyed sensitively and seemingly intuitively. Totally gorgeous. Jason Schwartzman, about whom I haboured serious doubts beforehand, also v.g.. Anachronistic soundtrack worked for me: "Plainsong"! "Ceremony"! Um, the Strokes (it works in context)! And lots of other nice, fitting stuff. Liked the somewhat odd dialogue style, too.

I think that I like both Lost In Translation and The Virgin Suicides more than this one, but the way I feel about Marie Antoinette is quite different from how I respond to those earlier two (though it's very much a Coppola film in 'feel') so that comparison may not be entirely meaningful. Oh, whatever. I haven't really found the words to describe it, but that's alright. I think that I'm still a bit on a cloud from watching it.

(w/ Kelly - exactly the right company for this one.)

Thomas Pynchon - Against The Day

Very good, very Pynchonesque. More human, and humanistic, than previous Pynchon novels - more 'ah' moments where the response is drawn out by the situation or thoughts of a character rather than by some linguistic or intellectual pyrotechnics in the text itself. Perhaps as the flip side, less frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Generally less off the wall (friendly ball lightning notwithstanding) and less screwball. The archivist in me may regret this in the future (there's so much to say!), but I'm going to leave it at that.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

A bit of a disappointment, this. The PG rating ought to've been a clue - it's a children's film, and while there's nothing wrong with that (and it looks the part, in a good way), the film pulled its punches in a way which made it unsatisfying (so you never actually see anyone die onscreen, for example - again, nothing wrong with that per se but it does tend to dilute the impact of the climactic battle sequence). Sense of wonder only partly there...good acting though.

100 favourite songs: The list

1. “Lazy Line Painter Jane” – Belle and Sebastian
2. “Hyper-ballad” – Björk
3. “Fade Into You” – Mazzy Star
4. “Venus In Furs” – The Velvet Underground
5. “Just Like Honey” – The Jesus and Mary Chain
6. “Wrecking Ball” – Gillian Welch
7. “Losing My Religion” – R.E.M.
8. “Paranoid Android” – Radiohead
9. “Lorelei” – Cocteau Twins
10. “This Love” – Craig Armstrong (featuring Liz Fraser)
11. “Blue Thunder” – Galaxie 500
12. “Everybody Here Wants You” – Jeff Buckley
13. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Joy Division
14. “You’re In A Bad Way” – Saint Etienne
15. “Talk Show Host” – Radiohead
16. “Shivers” – Boys Next Door
17. “Like A Rolling Stone” – Bob Dylan
18. “Wise Up” – Aimee Mann
19. “Can’t Be Sure” – The Sundays
20. “Sometimes” – My Bloody Valentine
21. “Spark” – Tori Amos
22. “Gorecki” – Lamb
23. “September Gurls” – Big Star
24. “Ceremony” – Galaxie 500
25. “Seal My Fate” – Belly
26. “Hold On, Hold On” – Neko Case
27. “Cowgirl In The Sand” – Neil Young & Crazy Horse
28. “El President” – Drugstore (featuring Thom Yorke)
29. “She’s A Jar” – Wilco
30. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
31. “Teardrop” – Massive Attack
32. “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” – The Smiths
33. “Pink Orange Red” – Cocteau Twins
34. “American Flag” – Cat Power
35. “Lucky” – Radiohead
36. “Noah’s Dove” [demo] – 10,000 Maniacs
37. “Little Bombs” – Aimee Mann
38. “Birthday” – The Sugarcubes
39. “The State I Am In” – Belle and Sebastian
40. “Right In Time” – Lucinda Williams
41. “Save Me” – Aimee Mann
42. “Heaven Or Las Vegas” – Cocteau Twins
43. “Nude As The News” – Cat Power
44. “The Ship Song” – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
45. “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” – Neutral Milk Hotel
46. “Marquee Moon” – Television
47. “Sea Of Love” – Cat Power
48. “Little Stars” – Lisa Miller
49. “Heroes” – David Bowie
50. “On The Beach” – Neil Young
51. “Not Too Soon” – Throwing Muses
52. “Where Is My Mind?” – Pixies
53. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” – Neil Young
54. “Ride The Wind To Me” – Julie Miller
55. “Musette And Drums” – Cocteau Twins
56. “Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd
57. “Torn” – Natalie Imbruglia
58. “Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)” – The Arcade Fire
59. “The Killing Moon” – Echo & the Bunnymen
60. “Consequence” – The Notwist
61. “Daisy Glaze” – Big Star
62. “Be Mine” – R.E.M.
63. “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” – Radiohead
64. “One” – U2
65. “Breakfast In Bed” – Dusty Springfield
66. “Rebellion (Lies)” – The Arcade Fire
67. “Midnight Singer” – Laura Veirs
68. “Electrolite” – R.E.M.
69. “Colors And The Kids” – Cat Power
70. “Without You I’m Nothing” – Placebo
71. “Revelator” – Gillian Welch
72. “There Is An End” – The Greenhornes (featuring Holly Golightly)
73. “Feed The Tree” – Belly
74. “Maps” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
75. “Utopia” – Goldfrapp
76. “Wuthering Heights” – Kate Bush
77. “Dance Of Sulphur” – Scout Niblett
78. “Fake Plastic Trees” – Radiohead
79. “Mimi On The Beach” – Jane Siberry
80. “How Soon Is Now?” – The Smiths
81. “Everybody Hurts” – R.E.M.
82. “In Love With A View” – Mojave 3
83. “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” – Cocteau Twins
84. “Good Woman” – Cat Power
85. “Cornflake Girl” – Tori Amos
86. “Today” – Smashing Pumpkins
87. “Nothing Natural” – Lush
88. “If I Give You A Smile” – Whistler
89. “Way To Blue / Day Is Done” – Nick Drake
90. “Simple Things” – Belle and Sebastian
91. “Daybreaker” – Beth Orton (Four Tet remix)
92. “Under The Milky Way” – The Church
93. “Wide Open Road” – The Triffids
94. “Ghost World” – Aimee Mann
95. “Helpless” – Neil Young
96. “I Know I Know I Know” – Tegan and Sara
97. “Lovefool” – The Cardigans
98. “Faster” – Manic Street Preachers
99. “Alison” – Elvis Costello
100. “Sand” – OP8

Babel

This was an interesting film, but I don't think that it was really about anything. There are some clear threads running through it but, for me, they don't really come together into an entirely coherent whole. Still, 'coherent' is one thing but 'convincing' is another altogether, and Babel does convince - it's a bold, striking thing, with some really striking images and sequences, concepts to burn (another distinction: concepts yes, developed ideas maybe not so much), and characters to catch hold of. The most affecting storyline is that of Chieko, which took me longest to warm to (because it felt a bit exploitative...but I think the film earns its gestures), but all of it is involving. I found Babel sort of gruelling, but on balance I think it's an impressive bit of film-making, if not one that makes me feel I need to revisit it in a hurry.

(w/ Sid)

100 favourite songs: #1: "Lazy Line Painter Jane" - Belle and Sebastian

Really, what does it mean to call any song my ‘favourite’? I’m not sure, but whatever I mean, I think that “Lazy Line Painter Jane” has to be it.

In its wryly urgent, off-kilter kind of way, the duet is six minutes of utmost genius … it has a sensibility and a gentle, unexpected delicacy … - 2/8/03

Heard it on the radio — didn’t know who it was (it was the first Belle and Sebastian song that really spoke to me) but I was enthralled.

It’s ramshackle, full of heart, rapturously joyful.

I listen to it too loud every time I listen to it.

If I had to pick one song to explain who I am, this would be it.

The Best of McSweeney's volume 2 edited by Dave Eggers

There is definitely a unifying sensibility that runs through the stories collected here. I'm not sure how to put it - a kind of terse opacity or apparent (but not necessarily all-the-way-down) depthlessness, maybe. Difficult to put one's finger on it. Had read a couple before - Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" (about a circus and a murderous elephant) and K Kvashay-Boyle's "Saint Chola" (for mine, the best story in the collection). Kevin Brockmeier's "The Ceiling" v.g. and, I think, A M Homes' "Do Not Disturb".

Also, working my way through the volume, I found myself feeling at a few points that all the thinking about (and doing) writing has made me a better reader.

Eskimo Joe - "Black Fingernails, Red Wine" cd single

One of the solicitors in the group I'm rotating through (GB) gave everyone a block of chocolate and a cd single for Christmas, the latter being picked based on what he thought were the best songs of the year; I got "Black Fingernails, Red Wine", which I'd heard a few times before but not really listened to. And it's alright - pleasantly, mildly epic radio rock, a sturdy song with some nice trimmings.

The Killers - Sam's Town

This is the story of Howard and the Killers.

First, heard "Somebody Told Me" on the radio. Over and over. Thought it was catchy but kinda dumb.

Then, heard "Mr Brightside". Thought it was excellent.

Was told that the Killers were now one of the biggest bands in the world. Decided that I felt a lot better about this than I would about a lot of the other candidates.

A gap.

Heard the new Killers song on the radio a few times, the one with the lyric that goes "he doesn't look a thing like Jesus". Thought it was okay and all, but whatever.

Kept reading about how the new album was all Springsteen and stuff.

Last Saturday night, doing nothing in particular at home, got it into my head that I wanted to own the new one, immediately. Put Born in the U.S.A. on to inspire myself then went out and got the album.

Was initially a bit underwhelmed by it. More U2 than Springsteen, really (exhibit A: "Read My Mind"). But have kept listening to it, not forcing myself but rather enjoying it. So it's growing on me - the anthems aren't as anthemic as I would like (and let's face it, why would I listen to a band like the Killers if not for the anthems?) but they're pretty good still. Yeah, it feels like the band might've overreached themselves a little bit but Sam's Town is pretty good.

100 favourite songs: #2: "Hyper-ballad" - Björk

“Hyper-ballad” is, somehow, what its title promises — a beautifully shimmering, beats-driven, string-touched meditation from the top of a mountain, in which the melody, despite its disregard for conventional structure and progression, lingers and resonates long after the final, shivering strings have drawn wistfully away. It’s a brave, expressionistic, unutterably touching love song … - 19/1/03

As happened with many of these songs, I fell for “Hyper-ballad” back in high school, and I’ve loved it unreservedly since…it’s perfect, and I wear it close to my heart.

A moment: Saint Etienne - "Mr Donut"

Oh Saint Etienne, they do have a way of making me feel. This time it was the sweet, gauzey sigh of "Mr Donut", from their smashing 1998 record Good Humor (also home to "Sylvie" and "The Bad Photographer"), as I was driving home from Mulgrave late in the afternoon today. I've heard the song before, plenty of times, but today it caught at me, leaving me feeling light and wistful in the sunshine; listening to it tonight, now, lying on my bed and feeling slightly unmoored, I hear the music in bright, wispy pastels - turquoise and aquamarine and fuchsia and eggshell blue, concrete grey and motion-blurry at the edges. It's delicate and pretty and sophisticated and simple and somehow unobtrusively mournful, too, though you can never put your finger on why.

100 favourite songs: #3: "Fade Into You" - Mazzy Star

I reckon this to be one of the truly great singles of the nineties, its woozy, dreamy beauty getting me every time. - 18/4/04

Mazzy Star’s back catalogue is studded with glories, but for mine, “Fade Into You” is far and away their finest moment — mysterious, languorous and ineffably nocturnal, its hazy, velvet sway is pure magic, a dark-stoned bracelet glimmering in the night. I’ve been listening to this song for years and it’s still as immediate and as impenetrable as ever, its layers as beguiling and as inscrutable, the tones of yearning and contentment as perfectly mingled, the quiet wonder as unshakeable and undeniable.

Reassessments

I. Since seeing Kasey live, I've listened a lot more to Carnival and realised that it's actually really good - and remembered the same about Wayward Angel.

II. The more I think about it, the better The Prestige becomes. It left me a little bit cold immediately after I'd seen it, but the further away I get from that actual viewing, the more it's sinking in, especially the human tragedy of it all (the character of Fallon is particularly poignant in this respect). Really darn good.

Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission annual oration: Julian Burnside QC - "Protecting Rights in a Climate of Fear"

Went to this with a few others from MS - Leana, Nicolette, Tamara and Rachel, plus a couple of others and a bunch of summer clerks including Steph - and stretched it out to a three-hour lunch break (including the oration itself)...am definitely winding down for the year. So anyway, there were a couple of EOC speakers, and then Rob Hulls got up and gave a vintage Hulls performance, bringing the dynamism and really talking up the Charter and the importance of formal rights instruments generally as well as giving Ruddock and Howard a good kicking re David Hicks and general inhumanity. It took me a while, but somewhere in the last couple of years I became a fan of the man, and I enjoyed today's effort.

As Burnside began by saying, it was a hard act to follow (even though he was obviously the main act), but as one would expect he did a good job. Leana said afterwards that she thought he'd pitched his 'oration' at exactly the right level, and I think that's right given that the audience probably didn't predominantly have a legal background. He stepped us through some of the more egregious of the recent counter-terrorism laws, expressed his appalledness about the federal government's immigration policy and attitude towards Hicks, and ran through (at a very high level) some of the threats to rights - ineffectual opposition party, unengaged or compliant media, and the existence of a prevailing climate of fear - considering the first two conditions to have been met for the last 10 years and the third to have been gifted to national western governments worldwide by September 11, and generally showed why he's carved such a formidable reputation for himself as a human rights and social justice advocate.

* * *

Also, I don't usually bother mentioning presentations that take place at MS, but there've been a couple of noteworthy ones lately. We'd arranged for President Maxwell of the Court of Appeal to speak to us about the Charter in honour of Human Rights Day last Friday, and he was very good - very passionate and inspiring, and more willing to express opinions on certain matters than we're accustomed to seeing from the Australian judiciary. We always talk about his judgment in the Royal Women's Hospital case but it became evident that that judgment reflects a real commitment on his part. And the climate change and clean energy folks scored Ziggy Switkowski to come in and talk about the conclusions of the uranium mining/nuclear energy taskforce that he's heading up at the moment (apparently, before he was Telstra's CEO, he did substantially research into the area - post-doctoral, I think) - that was interesting, and I thought that he was very impressive, though I'm not so sure that some of the stuff that he considered to be uncontroversial (re safety, etc) is as scientifically widely-accepted as he suggested...

The New Pornographers @ the Prince, Tuesday 12 December

Randomness. I got all excited about this on Friday morning when I read about it in EG, mainly because the article mentioned that Neko Case was coming down, so I threw out a few tendrils to a few likely coattendees and figured I'd work it out over the weekend. But then the weekend was stinking hot and I was exhausted and sluggish and in kind of a bad mood and it all just seemed too much of a hassle, especially given that I had the FSG practice group Christmas party to attend that night as well. But then it turned out that said Christmas party was at the St Kilda lawn bowls club - ie, 5 minutes' walk from the Prince - so when things wound down at the party I figured that I might as well try my luck.

Lucky I did, too. I thought that there was an outside chance that the show might be mindblowingly good (they just seem like the kind of band with that potential), and though it didn't turn out to be that, it was still v.g. Six of them on stage, each integral to the clatter and noise being produced - the songs sounded good live, a bit rougher around the edges than the recorded versions and not as subtle (I would've liked it if the keyboards were mixed louder), but in a good way. And they played "Mass Romantic" and "Testament To Youth In Verse" (my two faves) back to back, and ended the encore set with "Letter From An Occupant" (my next fave), hooray! Plus, it was totally ace to see Neko doing her thing, tambourine and all.

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

Time was, a few years ago now, when I'd have gone so far as to call Kate Atkinson one of my favourite writers - I read Human Croquet, then Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and then Emotionally Weird, all during that time around the tailend of high school and the beginning of uni (Not the End of the World came a bit later, I think), and thought them all rather wonderful.

When Case Histories came out, though (2004 - was it really only two years ago?), I was disappointed. At the time, I thought it was quite a shift in genre from her earlier stuff (from whimsical family narratives to stolid crime investigation stories?), and it didn't grab me in the same way. Revisiting the novel now - taking a break from Against the Day, which I've been reading solidly for the last few weeks - I like and appreciate it more, and can better see how it connects up to Atkinson's work, both thematically and stylistically. One thing that Atkinson does marvellously is evoke the quiet sadness and spaces in everyday life - and this time I was able to appreciate Jackson's musical taste a bit more (he drives around listening to sad country songs about people leaving - "From Boulder To Birmingham" (mentioned twice!), Sweet Old World, Hell Among The Yearlings, etc). And boy can she write.

Talvin Singh @ the Prince, Thursday 7 December

Asked, I went along out of curiosity, but neither I nor my inviter, Jarrod, realised that it would be a dj set. Tedious - if I'd been on my own, I would've been out of there about 10 minutes after he started, once I'd caught on.

Jerry Maguire

I thought I was going to watch Coffee and Cigarettes tonight, but I turned the tv on and Jerry Maguire was showing, and I guess the rest of the story writes itself.

It's not that JM is particularly a Meaningful Film for me, but I remembered it as being good, and, well, it is. It's sweet and warm and funny, and it has a heart; Tom is spot-on and Renée as adorable as ever (well, this was really where it all started with her, at least for me) - and *big confession* I found myself actually a bit teary when they reconciled at the end (and a lot of the other scenes got me, too). How totally embarrassing, but it's true.

I've got to say, as well, I have a feeling that it was the same the first time around, years ago - then, as now, I was moved. Well (and here I'd like you to imagine me shrugging at the screen), I never pretended to be cool...

Neko Case: Live from Austin TX

A bare bones dvd but of course it's all about the music, which is pretty good, Case running through a set of songs mostly from her first three lps and in fine voice. Highlights probably her "Wayfaring Stranger" (gave me chills - not unusual for renditions of the song) and "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)".

"Castan Centre for Human Rights Law: Human Rights 2006: The Year in Review" conference

Only went to the afternoon sessions: Joo-Cheong Tham on counter-terrorism laws and civil liberties, Carolyn Evans on RRTA-related issues, Julie Debeljak on the judicial interpretation and declaration provisions of the Victorian Charter of Rights, and Paula Gerber on human rights education in secondary schools. All quite interesting though not particularly arresting and I got a bit out of each of the papers; I especially liked Carolyn Evans (who I've met in passing before), even though her topic was, on its face, probably the least immediately interesting to me.

(MS-sponsored; took place at the Malthouse. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon of the last day of my M&A rotation, by the way.)

Nellie McKay - Pretty Little Head

At last, the album in the double cd form that McKay wanted from the outset. My copy arrived in the mail a couple of days ago - delicious packaging, by the way - and while the songs are rearranged slightly from the version which circulated a few months ago, and there are some additional ones (all relatively slight but congruous - of these new ones, "Food" is a particular delight), Pretty Little Head is still utterly great.

Also, just for the record, I'm basically totally in love with Nellie McKay. Well, no surprises there, really.

Sin City: The Very Best of the Flying Burrito Brothers

Collects the whole of the first two Flying Burrito Brothers albums (which were also the two with which Gram Parsons was involved) - The Gilded Palace Of Sin and Burrito Deluxe - and some other songs from the time. I've had it for ages, but it really is coming into the right time of year for this music now, and I've been listening to it properly lately and basically bathing in how unimpeachably good it all is (particularly that first album). I think I like solo Gram better, but the charms of the Flying Burrito Brothers' stuff are of a somewhat different hue and in many ways they run just as deep.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand - "Earth from Above: An Aerial Portrait of Our Planet - Towards Sustainable Development"

Wandered through this, outdoors on the banks of the Yarra behind Fed Square, one Friday night a few weeks back. Impressively extensive exhibition of large photographic prints of vistas from all over the world, curated with lengthy text descriptions highlighting (environmental) sustainability issues relevant to the images. I didn't go through it all carefully, but it was good.

Yann Tiersen @ the Corner Hotel, Monday 27 November

I hadn't (knowingly) heard any of Tiersen's stuff - only the soundtrack to Amelie, and that only in the course of the film itself - so I didn't know what to expect when I rolled up to the Corner last night [Mon night]. I had vague ideas of Dominique Ané type chansons, and there was a bit of that, but in general it was much more on the rock side than I'd imagined, with much of it being jagged, thuddy post-punk edged guitar-bass-drums stuff but taking as much from 60s garage as from 80s alternative (and when the guitars got to chiming it was positively Interpol) and all very French in sensibility, especially the melodies. Some of the highlights provided by Tiersen's intense violinin' when he wasn't hunched angularly into his guitar, and a cello was onstage for nearly the whole time. Great show.

(w/ trang)

An Inconvenient Truth

Worthy, and I've been reading a bit about climate change lately so it was timely, but it just wasn't all that interesting, you know?

(w/ Sid)

Hem - Rabbit Songs

Simply gorgeous.

(Also: Eveningland.)

"What Difference is Australian Writing Making?" @ BMW Edge, Federation Square

This happened last week, one evening. All four speakers - Alex Miller, Hannie Rayson, Dorothy Porter and Barry Jones - good in their different ways, covering the sort of ground that you'd expect them to but doing so convincingly and engagingly, and each staking out different ground: Miller in a very literary way, his words falling like lines from a poem; Rayson more casual, with a sparkle and a patter; Porter putting the politics a bit more upfront; and Jones showing his politician's grounding in his amusing discursive polemic. None of them spared the literary references, of course ("The Second Coming" - my favourite poem in high school - getting a guernsey, and Gide, and Proust (but of course), and so on) and all did a good job of addressing the question from their chosen perspective. No summaries, exegeses or criticisms from yours truly, 'cause I'm still struggling with this enervation thing I've got going.

(w/ Nicolette)

Kasey Chambers @ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Wednesday 22 November

I got my ticket so long ago that the gig kind of crept up on me, but this was a darn good show - Chambers just stood up there and belted out song after song, tuneful and strong and clear, and it was great. (Songs interspersed with very warm, genuine-feeling banter with band and crowd.) Listening to them all, one after another, made me wonder if perhaps I've undervalued her, both as a songwriter and an artist - I tend to think of The Captain and Barricades & Brickwalls as her only really good albums, but seeing her play live made me realise what a strong back catalogue she has, at least as measured by its highlights. If I have undervalued her, it may be on a similar basis to my slightly ambivalent but strong liking of our Zadie - p'raps I take her for granted because she's always seemed so close to home.

The concert also brought me to realise how familiar I am with Chambers's songs, and how much a part of my life they've been. I don't think there's ever been a period when I was especially into her music, but I've liked her for a long time (well before the current wholehearted plunge into country music) and, well, it means more to me than I'd realised.

(Also, the way she presented, both during and between songs, reminded me of Reese Witherspoon's June Carter Cash in Walk The Line.)

Highlights (but these are mainly just the ones which most stick in my mind): "If I Were You", one of my faves on record and well-placed in this set, third song up; "I Still Pray" (another favourite, and done live a cappella in a bit of a bluegrass style with spectral male harmonies); "The Captain", which obviously means so much to her; "A Little Bit Lonesome" (obviously she enjoyed the rollickin' numbers); and a couple of the more upbeat anthems from the last couple of albums were really good too.

So yeah, heaps of fun and very impressive - a good 'un.

* * *

Support act, Angus & Julia Stone, I thought were very raw but rather endearing, and they had some pretty good songs up their sleeve and a bit of talent to make up for the relative lack of polish. I liked them - thought they were good and wouldn't mind hearing more of them.

The Prestige

The reasons I went to see The Prestige, more or less in order:
1. It's set in turn of the century (19th to 20th) London - and it's about stage magicians. Glitz and grime, costumes and conjurations!
2. The promise of cinematic sleight of hand, and the name of Christopher (Memento) Nolan.
3. Scarlett.

(Though of course they can't be taken in isolation - 1 and 2 both carry a lot more weight than 3, but it's that last which tipped me over the line into going and seeing it.)

So: it's pretty good, I got what I expected, and I've no complaints. It looks great, and it's neatly constructed too. Also, it's gripping (bonus!). And it has an unrecognisable (well, I didn't recognise him[*]) Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. But it didn't amaze me...

* * *

[*] Particularly unforgiveable given that just the night before, someone had told me that he was in it; actually, she told me that he was in it and that she completely didn't realise till the end credits, whereupon I plunged right in with a "how could you possibly not recognise David Bowie?" type line...more fool me.

Objet du désir: Symbol coat rack

Now, normally I'm not at all an acquisitive person except when it comes to books and music (and occasionally much loved films and nice clothes), but, well, plans to move out are vaguely afoot and I suppose I'll have to do some decorating and all in all that's ample justification already for yearning after this gorgeous thing:




(Desu design)

Mary Gentles - 1610: A Sundial in a Grave

Gentles' novel Ash is one of the most extraordinary genre pieces I've ever read, but Sundial, the second of hers that I've done, isn't as good - a response on my part which no doubt owes something to raised expectation and something again to it not having the same figurative dagger up its sleeve as that concealed in the turns and peregrinations of the earlier. That said, it's still a rather good bit of fantasised history ('historical fantasy'?), if not quite on the sharp edge of greatness.

What I did on the weekend: Saturday (Rush - Hemispheres) / Sunday (Children of Men)

Well, extemporanea is supposed to eschew the personal, but lately I've been lazy with the journal-keepin' (well, with the hand-writing in general) and so, in violation of that rule (more of a guideline, really, as I may've mentioned before) this'll serve in partial lieu of said journaling [so, as is customary: currently listening to Laura Cantrell - When The Roses Bloom Again]:

Had a couple of errands to run in the city on Saturday, but had disposed of them by about 2, so I took lunch, books, and pen and paper to the grass outside the state library and abandoned myself to the charms of sunshine and a velvet afternoon. After a time, lying on my back, I noticed an irregular flotilla of tiny red balloons unhurriedly drifting high above me, strings trailing, never more than about half a dozen visible across the wide blue panorama at any given time; a few minutes of this and then - and this will sound too artful for words, but it's what I saw - unexpectedly but fittingly, a single blue one in their midst, eddying sunwards like the rest. It was really rather beautiful. (Learning afterwards that their source was the Myer Christmas parade didn't take even an iota of the gloss off it.)

Anyway, a while after that charmful procession, my phone rang. It was David, asking if I was up for an impromptu road trip to and dinner at Daylesford (Adrian H being stationed there for a few days by his work) - and, while unreliability and unavailability are practically my watchwords when it comes to planned activities, I rarely say no to spontaneous ones, so by about 4.15, post-haircut, we were en route.

The trip took less time than we'd anticipated - something less than an hour and a half from the city, I think - leaving us with a bit of time to fill. I remembered a good secondhand bookstore from my previous trip, a few years ago, with Kim - although I'd forgotten that it was called the Avant Garden, to which my response can be summarised in a single word and an exclamation mark: "yes!" - so we went there and rummaged through the dusty cassette tapes looking for suitable return trip music, eventually settling on Rush, for reasons best known to David.

So we had dinner with Adrian (fish and chips sitting on a small pier we found jutting out on to the local lake, swans and other aquatic birds all around, drizzle falling occasionally) and then listened to Rush (Hemispheres - 1976 [?]) on the way home. It reminded me a bit of Muse, and also of the Heart songs I've hard, and somewhat of mid-period Pink Floyd, with shades of Pavlov's Dog, too - all a bit much for me, in that mostly boring but occasionally groovy prog/70s heavy rock sort of way. Best song by far was the last one, a complicated 10 minute instrumental with guitar epics a-plenty and more weird time signature changes than you could shake a stick at.

Sunday turned out fine again, and I was enticed out in the afternoon for secondhand book-browsing and general contemplation (enticed by the weather and my own driftiness, not by anyone else, natch). Both of these having been a success, I walked back up from that grassy stretch between Swanston St and the law building to Lygon St at around 5 and decided to watch a film; of those which seemed possibilities, Children of Men was on first, so I got my ticket and settled in.

So it turned out to be one of those films that, by just a small twist, could have been one that I really liked, but instead more or less passed me by, leaving me with a vague 'that was Quite Good' feeling at its end...all the pieces seemed to be there, but something was just slightly off. Reminded me of V for Vendetta in a lot of ways, though it doesn't have the explosiveness of that other. I did think that the depictions of the refugee camps were well-aimed (obviously) and well done - the camp scenes were of a sort to remind us, if we needed reminding, of the barbarity of treating people as if they were less than human simply because they have entered a country otherwise than through officially-sanctioned channels. (Unflinching depiction of the perils of extremist responses to authority, too.)

100 favourite songs: #4: "Venus In Furs" - The Velvet Underground

I love “Venus In Furs” for its crazedly hypnotic effect, sounds and textures diffracting in all directions; it’s like some weird ever-unspooling dream or vision, reflected and scattered by sharp-edged shards of broken glass, its vivid opalescent glamour shimmering with all the different colours of the spectrum. The song’s cacophonous clatter and jangle — that sound — is shot through with the clarity which underlies all of the Velvets’ music, but there’s something else about “Venus In Furs”, something singular — some further aspect which gives the song a murky but distinct air of poetic disclosedness and, I don’t know, some non-representational and still mostly inaccessible (ie, musical) but very real truth, maybe.

Truman Capote - Breakfast At Tiffany's

So I was thinking about why I like reading Capote, and I reckon that a large part of it is this: he writes great sentences, one after another. I've read Breakfast At Tiffany's before, years ago, and it didn't make much of an impression then, but in the time since I'd sort of retrospectively reassessed it and decided that I'd probably like Tiffany's rather a lot if I were to reread it.

And, as a matter of fact, I did like it rather a lot on this reread - the pathos and the delicacy held me, and it's a work which says what it means without descending into the merely obvious. Funny, though - I wasn't really colouring in the character of Holly Golightly in my mind in the way that I'd expected to, which made me wonder if perhaps I no longer romanticise that certain sort of girl (or, at least, not as much as I once did). But she rang true, she really did - the description (and depiction) of her as a 'real phony' made absolute sense, for I reckon I've known a few girls like that (and liked each one of them a great deal), and there's probably a bit of that in my own character, too, though obviously it works itself through in a different way from how it does with the dazzling Holly G.

The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes

This is great!

Obviously I was going to like the concept of the Pipettes when I heard about them - three gals in polka-dot dresses doing classic girl group-styled pop, given a modern twist - but it took several songs before one really hit me between the eyes and inspired me to go looking for the album.[*] That one was "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" (a blast from start to finish, and every individual bit is great, but of course the best bit is the soaring-swooning "and you might cry..." part and the clatter of the drums underneath), and I'm still totally into it, but there's also so much else on We Are The Pipettes to savour - they dig deeply into the 60s girl group bag of tricks, but it's done so inventively and selectively, and, miraculously, without a hint of repetition or misplaced pastiche, and each of the album's 14 tracks is a gem. (Apart from "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me", "Pull Shapes" and "Because It's Not Love (But It's Still A Feeling)" are especially fab.)

So anyway, We Are The Pipettes is possibly my favourite Pop record that I've ever heard.

* * *

[*] Which I've only managed to get my hands on by the expedient of buying it on vinyl, the cd being elusive in Melbourne stores.

The Bristols - Introducing... & Tune In With...

Two of the source records for the best of - good stuff.

"Six Good Reasons to Stay at Home: Hiraki Sawa Video Works" @ NGV International

Have been feeling quite abstracted lately, and also fairly antisocial (like, even more so than usual), which has translated into plenty of gallery time, mostly in the NGV's permanent collections, gazing at favourites. But I also thought that this video exhibition might be interesting - six works, 4 to 9ish minutes in length, mostly shot in Sawa's apartment, magical goings-on taking place when no one is present (tiny animals and naked human figures migrating in self-absorbed, unconcerned columns, model aeroplanes criss-crossing in unhurried flight paths) all very deadpan and whimsical and mysterious, like a Chris van Allsburg book come to life (especially the large, colour, three-screen one - "Going places sitting down"). Repetitive and lulling, and rather nice.

Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle

By way of background: [1], [2], [3].

Whereupon your faithful chronicler can't help but sigh (again).

Rewatching this film was just one extended emotional-associative-imaginative-intellectual plunge for me - lots of memories and realisations...these things are at once both complex and simple, I guess.

"Light Sensitive: Contemporary Australian Photography from the Loti Smorgon Fund" @ NGV Australia

Largely unthemed apart from the 'contemporary Australian photography' thing and as such covers a fair bit of ground. My favourites:
• Anne Ferran's ghostly photogram images of individual items of clothing, suspended in the dark
• Deborah Paauwe's "Double tresses", a cryptic image of two girls locked in an embrace, their long hair obscuring their faces (she says: "I aim for an enduring air of the unresolved")
• Annie Hogan's "Comfort", two images of the same empty room, sea-blue walls, light and shadows
• Jane Burton's "Number 1" and "Number 2", two Lynchian shots of a murky underground carpark, one with a plainly dressed woman (white blouse, black dress, I think) and one without

Black Cab @ Spanish Club, Saturday 4 November

Didn't know anything about these guys, but wasn't doing anything tonight[*] so went along with Nenad and crew. They were pretty good - a rock band with an electronic edge, groove-heavy and jagged with the guitars, and a singer who, vocally, had more than a hint of the Ian Curtis to him. Reminded me of the sound of a lot of the tracks on the Tales from the Australian Underground 2 x cd from the 70s and 80s. Quality songs, too - the type that grab on first listen.

Plus, Black Cab are obviously true believers in rock 'n' roll while also seemingly aware of its darker side - video footage from Woodstock (I think) was projected onto a screen behind the band for the whole set (apparently their first album was based on the concept of the Stones' Altamont show - the one with the Hells Angels stabbing). Plus [#2], they were introduced and their set interspersed with ramblings by a worn old fella - Sam Cutler - who, in his day, road managed the Rolling Stones, the Band, the Grateful Dead and others, and is now serving the same function for Black Cab. I must admit, seeing him on stage telling stories about Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, with that concert footage rolling on behind him and the slow jam of the band in the background, made an impression - reminded me of the promise and the dream of rock 'n' roll - it's so easy to become cynical about the whole thing (and I am), but there is another side, too, even if it really seems as if that was another time as well.

* * *

[*] Sat night.

Omissions

Things I meant, but in my haste and distractedness forgot, to note:

I. Watching season 3 of Arrested Development reignited my desire to lay in the ingredients for martinis and splash out on a flask from which to pour and drink said cocktails.

II. Once in a while, a book contains a perfect descriptive image, and Cloud Atlas has one: "After ten pages I felt Nietzsche was reading me, not I him ..." - not only does it precisely capture the slightly unsettling, doubled experience that reading Nietzsche can be, but it also invokes that famous line about gazing into the abyss.

Cosmopolis: On Cities & All Yesterday's Parties: On Rock 'n' Roll (Meanjin volume 65 issues 2 & 3)

Have been reading both of these in a fairly disconnected way, at intervals, over recent weeks. Cosmopolis is all over the place - appropriate, one might say, given its theme - and I didn't find it very satisfying. I was hoping for an interesting kaleidoscopic set of perspectives on ideas of 'city' and place, but the pieces tended to be either: (a) quite specific and concrete; (b) unconvincing in the lines they draw between the specific and the general; (c) only tangentially connected to the notional theme of 'cities'; or (d) more than one of the above.

All Yesterday's Parties is focused on Australian rock 'n' roll, and a lot of the pieces are penned by music industry types, giving it a rather different flavour from the usual Meanjin style. As far as the canon-identification goes, Johnny O'Keefe, the Saints, the Go-Betweens and the Triffids are the major figures to emerge from these pieces taken as a whole; more generally, though, the pages of the issue are peopled by lots of familiar figures, making it fun to read. Not particularly deep, but you know, whatever. Liked the way that Brian McFarlane, apparently a seasoned film critic, obviously completely lost his head over Walk The Line, too.

The Arcade Fire - The Arcade Fire ep

Not as fully-formed and world-bestriding as Funeral, but pretty darn good nonetheless. Best songs: "Old Flame" and "Headlights Look Like Diamonds". Best title: "Vampire / Forest Fire".

Camille - Le Fil

A grab-bag of nouveau-chanteusey musical styles, with the accent (so to speak) on popist experimentation - nice.

Les Cowboys Fringants - La Grand-Messe

Jarrod lent this to me after hearing that I was into country music - Quebecois country music with socialist lyrics, he promised - and while there is a fair dash of country to this record, there's pretty much an equal part of something rather more folksy, not to mention dashes of ska and goofy college-style power-pop. (Can't tell about the lyrics since my schoolboy French has long degraded past the point at which I could've had a go at deciphering 'em.) As the above precis suggests, runs a fairly large gamut of moods and sounds, but it hangs together pleasingly - I like it.

The Lisa Marr Experiment - American Jitters

Sturdy and traditionally-grounded but distinctly modern twang. The modernity is most apparent in the lyrics - through which expletives and words like 'paradigm' are nonchalantly scattered - but also comes through in the casual integration of rock elements in a mid-period Lucinda/early Wilco kind of way, maybe leaning a bit more to the rootsier end of things. A bit of a schizophrenic record, but pretty listenable thanks to the upfront and high quality songwriting though it lacks a real hook.

100 favourite songs: #5: "Just Like Honey" - The Jesus and Mary Chain

It’s all there in the first 20 seconds: “Be My Baby”-quoting drums ring the song in, the fuzzed-out jangle of the guitars soon follows, and then come those broody, reverb-coated vocals — it all promises nothing less than shimmering undiluted dreamy pop glory, and in its 3:00, crashing, cascading waves of guitar noise and echoey vocal layers wrapped around its blissful melodic core, that’s exactly what “Just Like Honey” is. (Then, too, the song’s appearance in Lost in Translation only makes everything even more perfect, of course.)

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

v.g.:

As Mitchell has Robert Frobisher, 1930s itinerant opportunist and composer, write (of the 'Cloud Atlas Sextet' that he is composing):

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet' for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe and violin, each in its own language of key, scale and colour. In the 1st set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the 2nd, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late, but it's the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J. is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds.

Each of the six narratives making up the Russian doll structure of Cloud Atlas is convincing and extremely readable - they're stories in their own right, not simply exercises in style or concept - which is no mean feat given the diversity of voices, genres and settings they collectively embody. The plots move along at a cracking pace, all equally interestingly. And the whole is knit together by its depiction with the effects of the Nietzschean will to power as particularly manifested through colonialism, market capitalism and industrialisation/technological development, the imagining taking place both retrospectively (via 'historical' settings) and prospectively (in the sci-fi chapters), as well as by lots of subtle details connecting the various threads. And there's an unobtrusive concern with art and language, too - just as with the placing of the pivotal Crommelynck chapter at the dead centre of Black Swan Green.

Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea - Dead Wood Falls

I'd heard "Better Off Dancing", which is excellent, but didn't know what to expect of the album; turns out that, in a low-key sort of way, the album is pretty excellent too, not to mention much more country than I'd expected. The title track makes a good, moody scenesetter, but Dead Wood Falls really kicks into high gear with its next song, the almost PJ Harvey-esque "Peaks and Valleys", a smokily rollicking country-blues-rock fusion number with a verve and an edge. From there, Cloher slips into an engaging groove, mostly sticking with the folk-hued, downtempo stuff, but always with a brooding dynamic and an atmosphere which keeps things interesting. There are no gimmicks on this album - it's just all good.

Smoosh - She Like Electric

Two girls, one on keyboards and vocals and the other on drums, banging out cute, quirky indie-pop; 15 songs in 35 minutes...exactly my thing, right? Right - and it's actually completely incidental that the band members (also songwriters) were, if I have this right, 12 and 10 years old respectively when this album was recorded, though their youth may account for the off-the-wall originality of a lot of the record. They're at their best with the relatively straight-up piano pop numbers - "Massive Cure", "It's Cold" and "To Walk Away From" are particularly good - and the main missteps are on overly goofy, childish moments like the rap of "Rad", with its "uh huh, uh huh, yo, yo" refrain.

100 favourite songs: #6: "Wrecking Ball" - Gillian Welch

… each summer seems to have one particular album which, in retrospect, seems to’ve been everywhere in the air over that time. I’m pretty sure that 2000/01 was Powderfinger’s Odyssey Number Five; from 01/02, it was Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlily; in 02/03 it was Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No 2; in 03/04 it was Wilco’s Summerteeth — and in 04/05, Gillian Welch’s Soul Journey.

Indeed, the most striking thing about Soul Journey is its summeriness. At this stage in her career, Welch has, it seems, largely moved beyond the relatively unadorned bluegrassy and trad-folk flavour of her earlier recordings, now mining a perhaps richer and certainly broader seam of rootsy americana, in terms of both instrumental palette and general ethos — I fancy that Gram’s old term ‘cosmic american music’ ain’t a mile away from what’s going on here.

The sound isn’t as old-timey as on any of Welch’s previous, uniformly great albums, 1996’s Revival, 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings and 2001’s Time (The Revelator) but it’s equally warm and dusty-feeling — and equally great. There’s an end-of-day languor to it all — a sense of the interstices between sunshine and shadow, of hazy still afternoons flowing into breeze-touched evenings, of drift and ebb and flow, and of the necessary relationship between transience and permanency. Music that exists in the intersections of country, folk and more popular stylings today is, of its nature, in a sense suspended between past and present — informed by and tied to what has come before it (not least the suffering and hardship out of which ‘mountain’ music was born) — and Welch seems to have achieved some kind of contingently perfect synthesis out of this ongoing process of retrieval and renewal…it’s somehow out of time.

What does this mean ‘on the ground’ of Soul Journey, as it were? Well, it means acoustic guitar, dobro, fiddle, unobtrusive drums, and sometimes bass and (I think) even organ, and all melded into something which feels old and new all at once. And then, of course, there’s Welch’s wonderful yawn (in the best possible way) of a voice. A lot of the warmth of this music comes directly from that voice — down to earth and forthright, and yet somehow expressive and delicate, too. A voice which is crystalline, not in a perfect Alison Krauss kind of way (something which I say without meaning any disparagement of Krauss’s lovely and amazing voice!), but instead has echoes of history and life woven in with its clarity…if that latter’s voice is silvery, then perhaps Welch’s is golden.

…

“Wrecking Ball” in particular really is something else; preceded by the wistful prettiness of “One Little Song” and “I Made A Lovers Prayer”, it picks the pace up a bit, and fills out those implied spaces to create a fuller sound than anywhere previously on the album, swinging Soul Journey home on the back of a scything fiddle, prominent guitars, Welch’s voice, and a gorgeous melody…it brings my heart into my throat nearly every time. In a way, it — and the album as a whole — does, as Welch sings, show us colours we’d never seen, but it’s the kind of showing that brings with it the realisation that, after all, those colours were always already there.

- 6/10/05

100 favourite songs: #7: "Losing My Religion" - R.E.M.

The memories and associations evoked by this song are at once specific and general. The specific image is summer-hazy and from long ago besides, but I’m almost certain that it was originally attached to a particular occasion: it was late in the afternoon one day years ago (I would’ve been in primary school, I think), and I was with my family on a holiday somewhere in Victoria, most likely along the coast; the day had been sunny and that was still in the air, but there was a breeze, too. I remember the breeze.

We’d been driving and had stopped at some high point, near a cliff edge or lookout of some kind; everyone else got out, to stretch and take in the view, but I stayed in the car, doors open and windows down, overtaken by that particular kind of end-of-day summer torpor (or call it langour, or maybe lassitude), wide open spaces all around and something ungraspable and inexpressible within me. And “Losing My Religion” came on the radio, and I’d heard the song many times before — enough times to recognise it instantly, although of course the mandolin intro is particularly instantly recognisable — but this time it was the perfect soundtrack to the moment and to the inchoate swirl of half-coalesced feelings slowly swirling inside me, that heady concoction of freedom and yearning and other things both experienced and anticipated.

I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t now. But I think that all of that was in some sense already ‘in’ “Losing My Religion”, just waiting to be revealed: the song itself has the breeziness, the colour and the light and the lightness, the hint of melancholy and shadow, the surface simplicity which conceals unchartable depths, the commingling of all those interstices and intangibles which make it great. It has an easy familiarity and, at the same time, the hue of complete originality. And, most of all, it reminds us of the essential mystery of pop music: the way a few notes and a melody can invoke and create a whole world, carrying us away and enriching and deepening everything we feel and know.

100 favourite songs: #8: "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead

OK Computer was the single album that most captured the spirit of the pre-millennial Zeitgeist — self-aware, cynical, almost resigned, and yet spine-chillingly grandiose and oh-so-faintly hopeful (ifeelmyluckcouldchange); spacey, melodic, progressive, and undeniably great, it struck a chord with depressed, tired_nhappy indie kids everywhere and remains popular guitar music’s closest approach to perfection yet. … It’s not overstating the case to call [“Paranoid Android”] an opus, and in amidst the crazy tempo changes, intensely imagined lyrical (paranoiac) insights, and moments of real pathos and beauty, it’s also a kick-ass, buzz-guitared rock song — what’s not to like? - 2/8/03

Take for granted that, to understate the case fairly dramatically, I like the song a lot. Then, a part of me feels that “Paranoid Android” really should be my Favourite Song Ever: it’s suitably epic, and it’s been a suitably large part of my life — it came at just the right time, both for me specially and in the wider context of society as a whole, and now it stands as a massive landmark in every sense…for me (and probably for most everyone who loves the song), it looms very, very large whenever I look back.

It’s been a while since Radiohead’s music really immediately engaged me, but “Paranoid Android” is still a marvel — painting with the broadest of palettes but remarkably concise at the same time, it’s probably the single best individual argument for Radiohead’s genius and certainly one of the most striking reminders of what a gift to all of us Thom Yorke’s voice is…I feel that I can really only skirt the edges of explaining why the song is so great / why it’s so significant to me / why I love it so much — picking out particular aspects and elements which can never, individually or collectively, account for the whole — but I guess that’s how it goes with these things; songs like this always exceed any attempt to describe or contain them, and they don’t go away.

Sara Storer - Chasing Buffalo

Entirely listenable but hasn't made much of an impression. Then again, though I've listened to it several times over a period of months, I'm not sure I've yet done so with my full attention...

Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys

I must be honest - I still haven't really listened to this properly. It's hella cool though, and at some point I really will give it the attention it deserves.

Janet Evanovich - Twelve Sharp

heh, this is a good one, and made even better by my recently having identified a certain girl I know with Stephanie Plum (for no very good reason, but what can you do?).

Talulah Gosh - Backwash

Just as great as I expected. Apparently this cd collects basically the whole of the band's recorded output (and a substantial proportion of it is live at that), and I love every minute of it. (Somewhere down the line, when I'm feeling less suffocated, I'll write something more substantial about Talulah Gosh and why they're such a touchstone for me.) See also here.

Arrested Development (season 3)

Finally got round to watching this - first six or seven episodes expectedly great, second half of the season less so as it goes a bit over the top and a bit all over the place (and also maybe overly self-referential). All up extremely good though, of course.

season 1

season 2

The John Collier Reader

Mostly the same stories as those included in Fancies and Goodnights, plus the full text of his novel His Monkey Wife (I bogged down a few chapters in and abandoned it) and a couple of chapters from another novel, Defy the Foul Fiend OR The Misadventures of a Heart (quite good but lacking the sly magic of the short stories). Still a neat, occasionally nasty little trip. Noticed the preoccupations with psychoanalysis and art/writing more this time, and also the directly satirical elements.

Brevity

By way of note: for a variety of reasons (lack of time, lack of inspiration, general difficulty in writing anything at all, etc), I'm not finding maintaining this blog particularly rewarding at the moment - it's just not giving me anything at present, and is starting to feel like a bit of a chore - so entries for the next little while, with the probable exception of the last 8 songs on that 'favourites' list and anything particularly anticipated/inspiring/provoking, are likely to mostly be shorter and more inelegant than has previously been the case.

100 favourite songs: #9: "Lorelei" - Cocteau Twins

I once faintly, as if in a dream, heard someone describe the Cocteau Twins’ music as a floating cloud of fuchsia mist, and I don’t know if I could do much better than that; the quintessential 4AD band, this outfit practically invented dream-pop, and their muse found perhaps its most perfect expression on Treasure. Ringing percussion, guitars which by turns crash and trill, ethereally shimmering layers of sound, and all topped by Liz Fraser’s outlandish, nonsensical vocals, delivered in the most beautiful voice — this is music in which to lose oneself. ‘Music is feeling, then, not sound,’ or so the poet Wallace Stevens once said, and he was half right, for the truth is that music is essentially and immanently both feeling and sound, and it’s in the interplay between the two that we respond to it. Listening to Treasure, one is haunted by a succession of atmospheres — now funereal, now urgent, now contemplative, now violent, now hymnal, now joyous, always just beyond the limits of ordinary definition — and for a while, at least, what you experience is what you are; feeling and sound, sound and feeling. - 27/2/03

Treasure … houses what is probably the Cocteaus’ finest individual moment, the glacially roiling, incandescent “Lorelei” … “Lorelei” really does see them at their most evocative. Liz Fraser’s voice, always uniquely compelling, soars and swoops and dives and soars again, assuming an aspect that is somehow both reverent and commanding, and everything else — that indescribable dream-fabric of sound that the Cocteaus seemingly so effortlessly wove — just coheres around it. - 2/8/03

Romeo + Juliet

Alack, this was nowhere near as good as I remembered - main criticism would be that it's too insubstantial (gosh, I'm turning into an old fogey). Fishtank scene still lovely, though. Other bits quite good, too.

The Abyss

Thoughts prompted by watching this film:

1. If there isn't already, there ought to be such a word as 'abysm' - you know, halfway between 'abyss' and 'chasm', and linked to 'abysmal'.
2. Ed Harris = surprisingly effective leading man, but still kinda too dorky to be really compelling.
3. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (or however you spell that surname) = only moderately effective leading woman, much better in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
4. Weird twitchy SEAL villain = would've been much more convincing without the distractingly naff moustache.
5. Armageddon = total Abyss ripoff, but Armageddon was better.
6. That column of water snaking through the corridors is pretty cool.
7. But the film as a whole is kinda boring.

Dirty Pretty Things

A good one. Kind of a thriller/drama with a healthy dose of social commentary; both leads very good (you'd think that the whole Amelie thing would be a lot more distracting than it actually is - ie, not at all) and direction likewise.

Leonie Swann - Three Bags Full

I guess you kind of know what you're going to get when you start reading a book about a flock of sheep investigating after their shepherd is found dead in the middle of their field, a spade driven straight through him (with names like Miss Maple, Cordelia and Othello no less - that last being the only black sheep in the flock). That is, tweeness and preciosity red alert! But Swann does it right, and while there is indeed much cuteness to be derived from the basic premise, and she does indeed take full toll (sheep leaping up with all four feet in the air when startled, sheep falling asleep at inopportune moments, sheep constantly eating, sheep totally misinterpreting human behaviour, etc), the overall effect is charming rather than cloying. Three Bags Full is fond, disarming, involving and frequently funny, and has a pleasant air of seriousness worn lightly and, to trot out the ol' cliche, I was sorry to leave this world of plucky, characterful ovine detectives...I find myself hoping for a sequel.

100 favourite songs: #10: "This Love" - Craig Armstrong (featuring Liz Fraser)

… just lovely — as well one might expect with the amazing voice of Liz Fraser … given such space in which to drift. - 10/04

Some music simply must be listened to in pitch darkness, immersively, and “This Love” just may be the ultimate song of that kind. It’s one of those songs that has something of the miraculous to it (not least because the album on which it appears, The Space Between Us, is elsewise so overblown as to be practically unlistenable) — tentative, probing, but fully-fledged upper register verse-lines, strung together by dramatic, sweeping strings, and then those elliptical soaring heights to which Fraser ascends so gloriously and in such otherworldly fashion, cooing and gasping, tugging one along in her wake, star-dazzled and exalted and heart-struck and transfixed.

100 favourite songs: #11: "Blue Thunder" - Galaxie 500

Stripped-back, bare, and resonant with echoes in its wilful walking of the line between elevation and despair; everything crashes in Galaxie 500’s music, and droning guitar lines and simple, repetitive chord progressions twist about the plaintive, reverb-drenched voice of singer Dean Wareham’s voice in a manner which is compelling precisely because of its starkness. It’s easy to drift away to this music, to immerse oneself in its glorious, yearning melancholy — but listen to it louder, and the dreams which come will be all the more intense. Anyway, “Blue Thunder” opens with the sound of a guitar being gently strummed, and immediately it feels as if the music has always been there; it’s with a sense of homecoming that one hears Wareham’s ethereal vocal enter the mix. For me, this will always be the Galaxie 500 song — plangently rising verses and glorious falsetto choruses, all underpinned by that same downbeat, rhythmic strumming, and finally culminating in a characteristically off kilter, weeping guitar solo. There’s more than a little of the Velvet Underground to Galaxie 500 (imagine “Pale Blue Eyes” played in the middle of a blizzard, while the cold sun is still visible above you), and truly, it’s not so far wrong to say that the fabric of this song must be something akin to all the different colours, made of tears. - 1/04

This song has always just made sense to me.

100 favourite songs: #12: "Everybody Here Wants You" - Jeff Buckley

It took years for “Everybody Here Wants You” to really hit me — the song made a bit of an impression when it was all over triple j, but it wasn’t until much later that it properly took hold of me, and even then only incrementally, by a gradual series of successive deepenings of feeling.

In a way, though, I suppose it must have never really gone away. The first time I can recall the song taking on an aspect of something special was while I was away with Kim and DWR, a few years ago (2001?); I’d borrowed Kim’s copy and was lying on my bed at night listening to it (I think it had snowed that night) on my discman, maybe scrawling in my journal, too, and I can’t put it better or more precisely than to say that a feeling stole over me, and, while of course everything stayed the same, something changed.

Soulful, thundering, swooning, intense, this is the one. “Everybody Here Wants You” shivers and burns, and when I listen to it, I feel elevated.

100 favourite songs: #13: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division

This is the sound of everything falling apart — glass shattering, hopes atrophying, hearts failing. Here’s something I wrote a while back — about Closer, actually, but it’s just as apt to describe “Love Will Tear Us Apart”:

… unremittingly dark soundscapes of jagged guitars and resounding percussion … and working with themes of depression and tragedy — echoed in the life of iconic singer Ian Curtis — Joy Division yet wrested a measure of beauty from their divine sadness … [The record is] moving in every sense of the word — shot through with synths which are both ominous and danceable, and trembling as if it might fall apart at any moment … touched by a mysterious sense of grace … Human, all too human … (1/04)

The heaviest song I know, and the most despairing — and also one of the most immediately, enduringly memorable. Somewhere, a brooding 17 year old boy with my name is still listening to this in his bedroom, over and over.

100 favourite songs: #14: "You're In A Bad Way" - Saint Etienne

Sometimes a song is just right. Daintily tripping, deliciously (dis)affected, delightfully pealing silvery pop — for me, “You’re In A Bad Way” is an anthem, a touchstone and an unending joy.

100 favourite songs: #15: "Talk Show Host" - Radiohead

There’s something a bit unearthly about “Talk Show Host” — something about the song that’s not quite of this world, as if it’s been dialled in from some other place and arrived shot through with static and wind and interference, spectral dreams and thoughts all around, but at its centre an irregularly beating human heart and a pure lonely voice.

(Another way of putting it: while it’s the swirling, spacious instrumental/tone-bed which gives “Talk Show Host” its unique atmosphere, it’s Thom Yorke’s voice which truly compels one’s attention and drives the music directly into the listener’s spine.)

I’m pretty sure that this was the first Radiohead song I ever heard (another which came courtesy of the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack) and the desolately pretty, fragmentarily poetic jitter and shimmer of both music and words has haunted me ever since; even after all this time, I don’t feel at all as if I’ve grasped or understood the song — it’s always glimmering just out of reach like some horizon-dwelling sprite, hazy and ghostly and ever yearning.

Fight Club

First saw this when it was on the big screen, between high school and uni for me, and so probably the perfect time to've seen the film. I saw it with Nenad at the George in St Kilda, late (it may even have been a midnight screening) and I remember walking back to his place afterwards, both of us totally psyched by what we'd just seen - as I said, it was the right time in my life. I hadn't watched it since (at least not in full), and returning to it now, all these years on, I still admire the film and think it's pretty great, but the initial impact has all long dissipated and ironically its outlines are still too clear in my mind for it to really grab me anew, and so many of its concepts and catchphrases have become so much a part of my working ideas-vocabulary (though I'd forgotten how funny it was - especially Tyler's antics).

David Mitchell - Black Swan Green

I sailed through this and found at its end that it had left me all feeling all stirred-up inside. In many ways, it's an unassuming novel (or, at least, so it appears on the surface) - 13 chapters charting a year and one month in the life of Jason Taylor, a boy growing up in Thatcher-era Worcestershire, wrapped up in the unforgiving politics and power shifts of his peers and held suspended with his family all about his, preoccupied with the mysteries of his time of life. Things happen, some of them quite interesting and others not so much (looked at from an outside perspective, as opposed to that of Jason himself), but it all retained my attention, balancing subtlety and eventfulness tremendously well.

It's written in vernacular - the argot of a 13 year old English boy - and sustainedly so, so that neither the voice itself nor any slipping from it ever intrudes. Works the trick of allowing glimpses of what's going on at the edges of the narration and the narrator's awareness without ever slipping into annoying over-naivety or preciosity, and likewise with the way that Mitchell develops story, character and theme, elegantly and unobstrusively but with a sure, definite hand. Whatever it is that real literature has, Black Swan Green has it - I think that this one's a stayer.

Black Hawk Down

Not entirely satisfied by the library visit, and being in a bit of a bad mood besides, the next day I extended the search for escapism to the video store. So this film (after I'd watched it) struck me as a gritty, convincing portrayal of the horrors of war, strong on the heroism etc but not on the glorification of battle at all, but it's not the kind of thing to send me into raptures. Damn, I need to go into raptures more often these days. But then again, probably not over war movies...

John Birmingham - Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1

Read a very positive review of this a while ago - in a 'good clean escapist fun' type of way - and, looking for something escapist in the library over the weekend, remembered the review and borrowed the book. (I've been quite off my game for the last fortnight or so, and wanted something in which to lose myself, at least temporarily.) So the premise is this: in the near future, a multi-state military force is sailing into Indonesian waters to restore order, the country's government having been overthrown by a radical Islamic force, when a scientific experiment being conducted by the inhabitants of a ship which has been caught up in their wake tears a hole in the fabric of space and time and sends nearly the whole lot of them slap-bang into the middle of the US fleet sailing to war in 1942. Alarums ensue, and after the frenetic initial engagement, things continue at a cracking pace - the book's obviously been written with page-turnin' in mind - with much focus on the cultural clash which results when the people constituting the two forces meet face to face and are forced to work together against the common threat of the Axis, and more on the ACTION (also has fun with writing the future - Hillary as President, for one - and peopling its pages with famous historical figures). Lots of loose ends notwithstanding (I think there's a sequel, too, which may explain it), succeeded admirably in keeping me reading.

100 favourite songs: #16: "Shivers" - Boys Next Door

I’ve been contemplating suicide
But it really doesn’t suit my style
So I think I’ll just act bored instead
To contain the blood I would’ve shed —

This song has always been there — at first, admittedly, through the Screaming Jets’ cover of it, but I worked my way back to the Boys Next Door version pretty early in the piece and was instantly converted. “Shivers” was actually written by Rowland S Howard, but the combination of mordancy and feeling, touched with the merest hint of wryness, with which the young Nick Cave sings the words could not imaginably be bettered.

She makes me feel so weary
My heart is really on its knees
But I keep the poker face so well
That even mother couldn’t tell —

Somewhere along the line came Love and Other Catastrophes, about which I’ve really already said everything I need to say — the scene in which “Shivers” appears just one perfect vignette amongst many, lingering still, having taken on its own particular lighting and hue in the endless sequences being played out in the theatre of my imagination, memory, call it what you will.

But my baby’s so vain
She is almost a mirror
And the sound of her name
Sends a permanent shiver —
Down my spine…

All of which wouldn’t count for half as much, of course, were the song not such sheer greatness in and of itself. From the unutterable (yet uttered) weariness of the first eight lines, breaking through into the long moan of the next four and then the bizarrely affecting drawing out of the word ‘spine’ on which everything really hinges, and then once more through, enveloping itself ever more deeply in a sadness that’s beyond expression in the lines themselves but makes itself felt everywhere else, it’s a masterpiece of sustained, allusively-conveyed mood and sentiment.

I keep her photograph against my heart
For in my life she plays a starring part
Our love could hold on cigarettes
There is no room for cheap regrets —

With all of the songs on this list, and the ones right near the upper end especially, there’s something more about the song that makes me think of it as one of my favourite songs — something that sets it apart from all the other songs that I really, really like, and I don’t think that this ‘something’ is simply quantitative. Rather, it’s something else — something of an altogether different quality — and, whatever it is, for me, “Shivers” has it in spades.

100 favourite songs: #17: "Like A Rolling Stone" - Bob Dylan

I’m convinced that he knew the truth (and perhaps still does), whatever that may mean, and “Like A Rolling Stone” represents probably his finest distillation of aforementioned truth. … I don’t think I’ve ever heard another record that so perfectly balanced eloquence and rage. - 2/8/03

What could I possibly say about Bob Dylan that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before? He is, of course, one of the truly great singer-songwriters to have graced popular music, and I’ve had so many meaningful Dylan moments — many of them involving this song — that I’ve long since lost track of specific instances. What remains is the sense that this song engenders anew every time I listen to it — the sense of desolation, and rage, and long, lonely, windswept roads down which we all must walk. It’s the end of the day melancholy, driving home into the distant sunset. It’s the wind in your hair as you stand on the edge and wonder, ‘what next’? It’s the glorious poetic widescreen sadness of just trying to get by. If you need to have it explained to you, you’ll never understand. - 1/04