The Orphanage

A haunted house movie, basically - and one which deliberately invokes all of the tropes of the genre to good effect, often putting a spin on those familiar elements that pushes them in just a slightly different direction. In particular, the film's knowing in its use of The Turn of the Screw-esque trappings in playing out that old real/imagined ghosts ambiguity, the rendition of which, I've thought before (in a slightly different context), the medium of cinema particularly lends itself to; and, then, the way that that ambiguity is eventually resolved/left unresolved is both unsurprising and deeply consonant with the most interesting aspects of the film, not to mention rather satisfying.

It is quite scary - unsettling, with a few huge 'jump' and, separately, 'chills' moments in its second half - and I think that's part of the film's primary purpose: it's supposed to have that kind of effect, just for its own sake. But then, too, the unsettling elements of The Orphanage are wrapped up with, and feed into, its wider narrative concerns, particularly the 'Peter Pan' thread and the questioning of perception/reality; there are creepiness-induced chills throughout, but then the last couple, which we experience (physiologically) identically to those earlier ones, are actually brought on by something rather different (if bound up with the earlier creepiness inasmuch as they follow from them), a genuine emotional experience.

(w/ Michelle, Tamara and Andrew B - all enjoyed the film, I think, though MF and TV seemed seriously creeped out by it)

Mates of State - Re-Arrange Me

I never noticed before that Mates of State sound a bit like the New Pornographers; then again, it's probably on this, their latest, that the resemblance is most obvious. I imagine that it's still just the two of them (husband + wife, infamously), but the sound is fuller, facilitated by an instrument change-up, meaning that the whole record has more of a richness to it and its best songs ("The Re-Arranger" and "Blue and Gold Print" in particular) pack more of an immediate punch than before. They're not a band to set my world on fire, especially given that I haven't especially been feeling things 'twee' of late, but in a small, unassuming way, they do make it a slightly better place.

Dixie Chicks - Home

Another extremely solid album from the gals (tho I'm more or less working my way backwards from most recent to earliest) - they just know how to do what they do. It's the weepies and the ballads that stand out on Home - their "Travelin' Soldier" and "Top of the World", say - but, as ever, whatever they tackle here, they do well.

Blonde Redhead - 23

23 is a rush of an album, kaleidoscopic and star-like, spinning from one bright, sparkling point to another. It reminds me a bit of Asobi Seksu's last, Citrus, in its 21st century outer space-y take on dream-pop/shoegaze swirl, but whereas that other tends to crash through in swathes of sound and colour, 23 has more of a downbeat, twilight zone fm radio air and a hint of a prog feel at the edges (somewhat a la Air); it also retains much of the fraught, fragmented elegance of Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (a while ago, Michelle set me up with a whole stack of the band's back catalogue - all of the albums actually, I think - so they're there for me in due course, too).

I've mentioned the title track before, and listened to it an awful lot since then; the others that I especially like are "Dr Strangeluv" and "Silently".

The Ruby in the Smoke

Passable-to-good adaptation of the book. Some popstar named Billie Piper played Sally (okay, that was a bit disingenuous - I'd heard of her before, but don't know her stuff) and carried it off pretty well; the production has 'bbc' written all over it, but that's no bad thing in this case.

Laura Cantrell - The Hello Recordings

I adore Laura Cantrell - I just find her music so very winsome and she's one of my very favourites these days. Anyway, this was her first record, I think - an ep - and, while a bit rough and ready, it shows definite signs of what was to come.

lps
Not The Tremblin' Kind
When The Roses Bloom Again
Humming By The Flowered Vine

Emilie Simon - The Flower Book

An appealing record, this, covering a wide range of electro-pop styles - the shimmering stomp of "Fleur de Saison" proves to be both representative and extremely misleading when it comes to forming expectations of the whole. It's hard to pick favourites, but I do like the rainy-day tendresses of "To The Dancers In The Rain", the feyly jaunty "Flowers" ("I want to buy you flowers,/ It's such a shame you're a boy,/ But when you are not a girl/ Nobody buys you flowers"), and the slightly tougher, cut-and-paste "Song Of The Storm"...sure, it verges on the precious at times, but forgivably so for mine, particularly given how goshdarned romantic it so frequently is.

Previously: live.

Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers

It's taken a little while, but Asking for Flowers has grown on me. More folksy and perhaps a tad more wide-ranging than her previous records, it's also, I think, more sophisticated - the songs are less immediate, but somehow more deeply musical and faceted. Downbeat "Alicia Ross" is a case in point - delicate and wistful, but lit with a strong emotional burn, it's miles ahead of the slower songs on Failer and Back To Me; and the rockers, too, are more nuanced than previous efforts without sacrificing the catchiness that's such a strength of Edwards' - witness "The Cheapest Key", "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" and "Oil Man's War"...and in a different category again is the title track, a mid-tempo tune which just hits the spot. All of that said, I don't think that Flowers will replace Back To Me in my affections - that other is too closely wrapped up with a particular time and mood for me to be impeachable, and its high points are higher...but it's really damn solid anyway.

The Big Lebowski / Blades of Glory

The Saturday night before last's viewing with Wei and Julian F. Blades of Glory I'd seen before and it was still pretty funny, but somehow I'd always missed The Big Lebowski previously despite the universal rave reviews. For my part, I liked it well enough but didn't get hugely into the film - it's funny and I like what it does, but I don't think I'm wired to really respond to its mix of subtle humour/wryness and brazen splashes of colour...I'm just left feeling as if I've bitten wholeheartedly into something that was sweet enough but evaporated in my mouth almost straight away (erm, unnecessarily picturesque attempt to convey my response, obviously).

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

This film probably would've been charming anyway, but what particularly makes it is the turns put in by its leads - Amy Adams is delicious and Frances McDormand just right, and their interplay hits all the right notes. As the somewhat grave older love interest, Ciaran Hinds (previously known to me as Julius Caesar in Rome) is good, too, and another of my Brit female actor crushes stakes, Shirley Henderson, also cut a swathe, her character pleasingly sharp-edged and aloof, always black and incessantly smoking, of course. (Such wonderful names, by the way, too! Guinevere Pettigrew, Delysia Lafosse, Edyth Dubarry, and so on...)

It's frothy, but has a serious side as well; without particularly being a 'message' film, it's not blind to the social realities of the milieu it depicts (that of the well-to-do and the rather less so at the very tail end of the jazz age), and when the happy ending we knew all along was coming does, indeed come, it's unsurprising but doesn't rankle in the slightest. The film - it is what it is, and entertaining at it.

(w/ Kai)

30 Days of Night

Totally thought this was gonna be rad, or at least that it had a serious shot at it, based on cool premise - vampires in Alaska, where once a year the sun doesn't rise for 30 days (ie, = vampire buffet). Actually, though, it's only okay...watchable but sorta not all that satisfying. Oh well.

Lars and the Real Girl

Really sweet. It doesn't poke fun or take the low road at any point despite a premise in which the risk of all of the above, whether advertent or otherwise, is ever-present - who'd have thought that a film about a sex doll could be so gentle, kind and hopeful?

A lot of that comes from Ryan Gosling's performance - above all else, it was critical that he be (a) believable and (b) sympathetic, and he comes through on both counts, sweet, bemused, seemingly torn between hopefulness and resignation - and a fair bit's owed to the warm turns put in by Emily Mortimer (surely one of the most sheerly delightful actors going around at the moment - and definitely a good candidate for 'British female actor' crush-dom) and Paul Schneider (whose character was a kind of 'me' surrogate in more than one way at various points), but the main thing about it is really the air of the whole, which kinda reminded me of Me and You and Everyone We Know. I'm not sure how to describe it - kind of removed but close at the same time, like hot breath on the other side of a pane of glass, or something.

For some reason, the 'sensitive outsider boy is saved by quirky beautiful girl dropping from the sky' (see Garden State, etc, etc) thing didn't irritate me at all in this one - maybe because one can't help but feel that he really earns his happy ending, and maybe because that particular narrative isn't the primary focus of the film (though it's strongly implied throughout). Plus, it has a cool soundtrack including good use of "Naive Melody".

(w/ SL)

Philip Pullman - Once Upon a Time in the North

Kind of a cowboy tale, as the title suggests - and we already knew from the trilogy that Lee Scoresby was in that mold. The general appeal of this novelette (novella?) is obvious - it takes us back to the His Dark Materials universe (I use that word advisedly in this context)...the particular (subsidiary) appeal is equally apparent - it recounts the first meeting between Lee and Iorek.

Anyway, it's got a bit of energy to it - yeah, it's pretty good. But ultimately more a deepening of the original pleasure of the main trilogy than a particular delight in its own right, I think (although of course the whole point is that it's impossible to tell).

"Garage2V"

I forgot to mention that, when I saw Stars a while back, the support act was a neat little act called Plastic Palace Alice, who were sorta one part Arcade Fire and one part Stars (though a bit more modest than either) and good at it. Anyway, a bit further down the track, picked up this eight track sampler-type cd at the local 7-11 (free, obviously) - all local acts aiming to make it. Nothing much particularly grabbed me - the shadow of the AF lies heavily over several of the cuts (including PPA's "Empire Falls"), and there's a bit of Rapture vibe coming through on a couple as well...

Three novels in first person present tense

Greg Egan - Quarantine

This was a loan from Andrew B, in response to a mass-emailed request for recommendations of first person present tense writing; it hasn't turned out to be particularly useful or illuminating from a 'learning the craft of first person present tense writing' perspective, but where it did prove effective was in blowing my mind a bit with its play on ideas surrounding wave function collapse and quantum mechanics generally, and 'working through' of some imagined implications (cosmological genocide, anyone?).


Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

Dear reader,

Let me tell you what I did a few Saturdays ago, viz: woke up, felt a bit under the weather, saw that Wei was reading The Time Traveler's Wife, decided to read it, read it (yeah, that's right - all in one rather long session and with a certain amount of skimming to find out what happened next and rather in a haze but still).

And? And it's good - it made me want to keep reading, and it got to me. I still think that it's basically a marginally more clever take on the chick-lit thing (not particularly more emotionally clever, but certainly cleverer from a craft point of view), but I understand what all the fuss was about, and thanks to my direct response rather than in any particularly distanced way. Nice.

Also, by way of a historical document, an extract from an email, NV to me, 19/6/06:

I think I need to have a talk with you though Mr Choo regarding your bold pronouncements regarding the written word. Actually just so you know, the following tirade by me is given to you with love rather than anger and is prompted not by Kite Runner buy by the Time Traveller's Wife.

I understand that you are a student of literature and therefore are very worthy of making the bold pronouncements, but I worry that by branding a book (as you sometimes do) before you read it, you go to it with a preconceived notion of what it will be like and this skews your later interpretation. Why not come at it with a cloudless mind, take the journey, and see how you feel as a result. Any pronouncements you make after the fact I am sure will be more accurate of your own experience.

[...] literature is art and one purpose of art is to make you feel, and if you come to art with a notion of how other people felt, you deny yourself your own true feeling.


M J Hyland - How the Light Gets In

Carry Me Down was unexpectedly excellent - it gripped me and got a bit under my skin when I read it last year. Re-reading my impressions of that other, I'm fortified in my response to How the Light Gets In, Hyland's debut novel: it's not quite as skillfully crafted as Carry Me Down, nor (commensurately) quite as good, but it's much like it, particularly in the impression that it leaves - faintly unsettling, maybe, but also more something else on which one can't easily put one's finger...

Charade

Watched this on the last night of book club weekend away at Trentham, a while back now. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant - much fun.

So, yesterday...

Re-read South of the Border, West of the Sun.
[Edit 6/9/17: most of this one deleted on the grounds of being autobiography]

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson @ Corner Hotel, Wednesday 9 April

Album launch - pretty okay. Sounded more country/bluegrassy and less glossy than Carnival [and see also here], which might or might not bode well for the album itself...

(w/ Kevin and Shaun)

V Festival @ Melbourne Showgrounds, Saturday 5 April

Morning dramas, disorganisation, etc led to SL and I getting there too late for Robyn, which was a bit of a disappointment - but so it goes. Actually playing when we arrived were Hot Hot Heat, who were underwhelming - didn't seem especially into it (not especially not, either - they just didn't particularly have it going on)...though neither were they well served by the perplexingly low volume at which the music was mixed (a problem which afflicted all of the acts on the "this stage", at least, with the possible exception of the Pumpkins at day's end).

Then we saw a bit of Cut/Copy - they didn't leave much of an impression. And after that, Modest Mouse, who were wicked excellent. I've never really listened to their stuff, though I've kinda heard quite a lot of it along the way, but live I could dig it - very Indie Rock but very good with it. SL and Nenad both afficionados and clearly feeling the love. Oh yeah, and Johnny Marr was part of the band! Too bloody marvellous to hear that straightaway recognisable guitar sound...things were looking up. (Hooked up with Michelle and others somewhere around this point...throughout it was very much a day for meeting and then re-meeting.)

Then we went and saw Roisin Murphy who, colourful and energetic and charismatic as hell, could really potentially have been the highlight of the day had we been able to stay for more than about a song and a half before the tyranny of the irritating overlapping times dragged us back to the main stage to ensure a good position for the Jesus & Mary Chain - the main reason why I decided to hit the festival in the first place.

About the JAMC, well, a part of me thought that it was pretty great to hear all those familiar songs (especially the Psychocandy ones) and a fair few that I didn't know, too, being played live right in front of me (we worked our way pretty close to the front for this one)...that was quite a large part of me, natch. But at the same time it wasn't quite all that - the band was too tight, its sound too clean, too lacking in feedback, squalls, roughness...the sound of a bunch of 40-somethings covering familiar ground rather than of kids in their 20s searching something out. It gave me something, still, but wasn't a patch on last year's reformed icon the Pixies.

Then went off to other stage and caught a bit of Air, who were fairly rock star and really pretty good, a bit to my surprise. I've never taken the duo to heart, but somehow they seem to keep bobbing up - "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch The Stars" (both of which we saw them do at V) are lodged firmly in my consciousness, Talkie Walkie picked up a few associations when it came out, and then of course there's the S Coppola connection - and this was pleasant and even a bit more...

We were in two minds about whether QOTSA or CSS was a better option next - but we swung by the first of those and they were playing all songs that we knew, so we stuck around and were rewarded with a solid set of rock tunes, intensely played. Dudes know how to play their instruments - and, in Homme's case, to sing.

And finally the Pumpkins, fronted of course by Corgan, loving every moment of the rock star adulation that was offered up by the crowd. Kicked off with "Today" and ran through plenty enough of the old hits to satisfy ("Bullet", "1979", "Zero"...) as well as a bunch of other stuff (not least a jagged cover of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun") - it was spectacular and messy and not really incredibly satisfying, but still, it was, you know, the Pumpkins (or at least two of four plus others) and they've been there for me in some sense since high school and all, so yeah.

All up, the festival was okay - some good moments but a total lack of great ones. Suffered from a lack of atmosphere (see above re: volume, and also the general vibe of too many people just standing around and not really into the music) and an absence of any one act (at least of those that I saw) that really threatened to tear the figurative rafters off...too glossy, too safe. Maybe this is what comes of stacking the lineup with tasteful acts with plenty of cred who are now past their peak of popularity (and having the festival prominently sponsored by a corporate)...

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

More good stuff. I've been listening to this album a lot in the last few days, including on the ol' late night work patrol. Especially into the way it starts, airy-then-crashing "Is there A Ghost" and then the rocky-then-delicately oceanic "Ode to LRC" (is it actually a song about a dog? or about a dog and a town, maybe? oh yeah, and "the world's such a wonderful place"...but it works, it really does); also like the way that it's short! Really, really good in patches - and not always the same patches from listen to listen. One to try to see live when they come down for sure.

Also: Everything All The Time

The Kinks - The Singles Collection

Well, it sure is great to be able to walk around just listening to the Kinks and feeling, you know, the way one feels when listening to the Kinks.

(My faves tend to be the ones I already knew - "You Really Got Me", "Lola", "A Well Respected Man", "Waterloo Sunset" of course...though that last has never struck quite the same chord with me that it seems to with many others.)

Sarah Blasko - The Overture & the Underscore

More wistful, ghostly, strangely familiar sounding Sarah Blasko song-weaves (actually, her first lp I think).

Also: What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have

"John Dies At The End"

Low-brow, scatological, consistently in bad taste, and frickin hilarious and impossible to stop reading. Schlock horror comedy - all available online. Check it and don't look back.

(here - and the first half of the sequel here)

The Anniversary Party

I can tell you the whole reason why SL and I rented this in three words: Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Obviously my doing, not hers.) Not only does Leigh star in this one, but she also co-wrote/directed it, too...anyway, it's clearly her baby and that of the other central creative figure in/behind the film, one Alan Cumming. All of that said, I thought it was only so-so - an ensemble drama-comedy full of Hollywood types (Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others familiar by face if not always by name), about Hollywood types, that never properly gets beyond its obvious 'write about what you know' origins.

Patty Griffin - Children Running Through & live @ the Palais, Friday 28 March

Bought the cd - my first of hers - in anticipation of the show, having been carried along by Kevin's momentum. It's a much more diverse affair than I'd anticipated, but all of the ground she covers, she covers well, from airy, Eva Cassidy-styled folk wisps through blues 'n soul infused jams to classic stripped back country ballads and rollicking bar-room rockers - and that's just the first four songs! It all works, partly because the girl knows how to write a song, and partly because - damn - the girl can sing.

It comes through on the album, but just how great a singer she is wasn't fully apparent until the show...live, her voice was simply magnificent. Were it not for the sheer unlikelihood of this happening, I would have been convinced that she was miming to a pre-recorded track - it seemed unfathomable that one person could be producing so rich, pure and expressive a sound...yeah, it was somethin', and a very solid show through and through.

Listening to Children Running Through, I initially got stuck on the sun-dazed "Burgundy Shoes" before the upbeatness of "No Bad News" replaced it in my affections - pleasingly, that latter drew the biggest response from the crowd at the Palais...it's definitely one of my personal anthems so far for this year; also, and somewhat oddly, it's pretty similar to the AF's "Keep the Car Running" - which is no bad thing, of course.

Dead Like Me season 2

As much as I liked its first season, Dead Like Me gets even better in season 2. I'm not sure about this, but I have a feeling that the focus shifts somewhat from the various deaths that punctuate each of the eps to the main characters; it's definitely increasingly involving as it goes on, no doubt in part because of the amount we have invested by then...I felt that it really hit its stride in the episodes dealing with George's dalliance with Trip; another memorable story arc involves Daisy - especially the ep where we see her with the 'other woman' who meets her end in the hotel room.

I don't know, the show just has a way - it's gentle, kinda wry, and full of life. It's not overtly moody, but it casts a spell. There's just something about it.

(season 1)