Atonement

Atonement came with some pretty positive reviews from people who oughta know, including some of the 'even better than the book' variety (having not been overly enamoured of the book when I read it some time back, this impressed me less than it might otherwise have, but even so...), and I can see what all the fuss was about, though I don't think it's by any stretch a great movie.

What it is, is a great-looking film - both in its lavishly wrought details (locations and costuming especially) and in its stunning set pieces (fountain, library, Dunkirk), it's nothing short of sumptuous. It's also a film that, to a very large extent, succeeds in having its cake and eating it: it mostly convinces as a melodrama, with the attendant emotional heft, and also mostly succeeds in conveying its several messages about responsibility, regret, imagination and 'atonement' (the conveying of which necessarily depends in part on the undermining of those emotional effects, admittedly while reinforcing them in a different way); likewise, Knightley and McAvoy look the part and, whether through good acting or the fortuity of having well-cast actors (or, more likely, a bit of both), put in performances serving both of those impulses within the film, walking a fine line between genuine expressiveness and a more distant inscrutability or unknowability. (All of the actors who play Briony at the several stages of her life are very good, too, particularly the first two, Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai, with Vanessa Redgrave having less to do than either of the others.) If, in the end, it doesn't quite succeed in reconciling those two threads, then the failure, such as it is, is, I suspect, an unavoidable one in large measure.

Oldboy

Violent, spectacular, and visceral in more than one sense, Oldboy isn't for the faint-hearted. It's certainly gripping, and stylish, too, painting from a broad but consistent tonal palette - but, all up, it didn't give me all that much, its moves wreathed in internal conviction and force but without much external reference...or something like that, anyway. Put another way (though saying something slightly different), it was well made and held my attention, but I'm just not that into this kind of film.

Paul Davies in conversation with Phillip Adams - More Big Questions

Lent to me by Cassie after one of those late night, several-drinks-in conversations a while ago: Davies and Adams in conversation on, indeed, big questions, tackled from a scientic perspective in clear, lay terms. I got a bit out of it - this is stuff about which I'm not particularly knowledgeable but that I'd like to know about (that is, the basics of current thinking about the chemistry of science, theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, etc - wanting to know about the Big Questions goes without saying!).

"Ghosts"

A mix cd from David - very enjoyable. There's a notable degree of musical/thematic coherency to the mix, ranging as it does across a cross-section of current indie-modern-rock act (or whatever they're called these days), with a couple of familiar songs from touchstone artists (Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" and Tom Waits' "Hang Down Your Head") thrown in, and a pair of more electronic-infused cuts to begin and end (Ladytron's "Ghosts" and Panda Bear's "Take Pills"). From Radiohead, covers of two of my favourite songs, "Unravel" and "Ceremony"; from Phantom Planet, a song, "Quarantine", that sounds an awful lot like Radiohead. The standout's the Walkmen's "Another One Goes By", in its scuttle and sway like an end of the day second act to the marvellous "Louisiana".

"The moral of the story"

A bit of a waste of time, to be honest. The program described it in these terms: ' "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily - that's what fiction means," according to Wilde. Barry Maitland debates with Peter Mares whether the best novels are moral, immoral or amoral. ' which is all very well, but as it turned out, completely misleading, the discussion being much more closely focused on Maitland's latest, a subject which held very little interest for me. Well, you can't win them all.

(mwf '08 - w/ Cassie, Tamara and David)

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (MTC)

One thing's for sure, the mtc went all out in an attempt to bring us an authentic "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" experience, and it's a handsome production - the set looked great, as did the costumes, and the faint snatches of music at intervals were a nice touch...also, I think (fortified by having read the play very recently) I'm right in saying that they did the thing in toto, without any omissions at all (it was Williams' original version, rather than the Kazan-triggered rewrite). Even so, it wasn't wholly satisfying - the accents wavered pretty badly at points, and the performances were generally solid rather than electrifying, a shortcoming which is difficult to overcome in a play such as this, where essentially everything hinges on the characters' interactions, often one on one...but still, I thought it was pretty good all told.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Cassettes Won't Listen - Small-Time Machine

Bought on spec, based on CWL's spectacularly good remix of Asobi Seksu's "Strawberries", but for the most part it comes across quite disappointingly as a somewhat more retro and considerably less memorable Give Up (not to mention five years on from that other), albeit with a bit more of a kitchen sink approach to its laptop-pop mode; things only really pick up for me on "Cutting Balloons" and "Lunch for Breakfast", each distinguished by some more dynamic beats and melody/rhythm lines than are to be found elsewhere on the record.

Justice Michael Kirby - "Answering the Critics - Human Rights and the Constitution"

Engaging but also measured, and he held the line for a national rights instrument. Interestingly, he seemed tacitly to accept that any such instrument would be along the lines of the Victorian Charter model rather than anything more ambitious; at least three possible explanations for that spring to mind, being variously beliefs on his part (from most to least plausible) that (1) advocating anything more radical (whether in the form of more direct human rights protection via ordinary Commonwealth legislation, or, even more so, constitutional amendment) would be doomed to failure, (2) a Charter-style Act is actually the best model for national rights protection, all things considered (perhaps having regard in particular to the UK Human Rights Act), and (3) simple oversight.

Anyway, I reckon all signs are pointing towards us getting a national human rights Act at some point in the next few years, always assuming that Rudd gets another term in office (as he surely must unless something goes badly wrong)...

Caroline - Murmurs

Maybe it's a Japanese thing, but the cover and sleeve design for Murmurs reminds me of those for Tujiko Noriko's Make Me Hard and Shojo Toshi. Indeed, Murmurs is a bit like a whole album of "White Film"s as done by a far more sweet-voiced vocalist (exhibit A: "Where's My Love", one of the softest, most sheerly lovely electro-pop things you'll ever hear); edgy it isn't, but all of the soft-toned textures and wide-eyed drifting don't come at the expense of proper melodies and interesting decoration...it's nice.

"Uncovered" (IMP July 2008)

Covers, of course. Some enticing prospects on the tracklist, but sadly only the first half of the cd works, so I miss out on hearing such intriguing combinations as The Boy Least Likely To doing George Michael's "Faith" (would probably be pretty good), Vampire Weekend teeing off on "Exit Music (For A Film)" (difficult to imagine) and Bright Eyes taking on "Mushaboom" (the mind simply boggles). Still, it makes me happy to've heard Jens Lekman singing "You Can Call Me Al", and anyone who doesn't get at least a bit 'aw shucks' about the prospect of Tegan and Sara covering "Rebel Rebel", well, anyone like that is obviously different from me (though it must be said, the cover itself is pretty average). Also notable: Of Montreal's take on M.I.A.'s "Jimmy" and Ben Folds' "Such Great Heights" - but the unexpected highlight is the Arctic Monkeys' "You Know I'm No Good", though some of that is surely attributable to how great the song itself is (something which hadn't really sunk in till I heard their version of it).

(from Angela in Clarkston, MI)

Tennessee Williams - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Sometimes the form makes all the difference; I don't think I would've liked Cat on a Hot Tin Roof half as much had it been a novel (or, more likely, a short story), well, even to the extent that that's a meaningful counterfactual at all, I mean. That said, in a lot of ways I'm drawn more to the play form than to the novel in any event - my inclination is always to pare things back, to live in the gaps and the spaces, and of their nature plays lend themselves more to such economy than their more descriptively fulsome cousins. Restraint can be more evocative than a torrent of words - and so it proves with Cat, for all of its melodramatic impulses. Williams' stage directions are unusually interiorised, most strikingly in the following long passage where the playwright actually breaks the fourth wall, at least on the page:

Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloud, flickering, evanescent - fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.

but they serve their purpose - they deepen one's appreciation of the play itself, characters, themes, structure(s), though only ever by casting light, realigning perspective, and never by cheating and introducing anything entirely extrinsic or new.

The above, too, serves as something of a statement of purpose for the play, and one which, I think, is fully achieved by the end - again, for all of the dramatics that take place, above all else Cat feels real. It doesn't have any gimmicks up its sleeve, nor any particular conceits (at least beyond those which are common to all plays, which map on to those common to all literature as written), but instead strives for, and reaches, a kind of truthfulness which cuts to the heart of the relationships and mores which are its subject (I felt that indefinable 'truthfulness', or perhaps 'honesty', more clearly in Williams' original version than in the alternate version, with its revised final act, prepared under original director Elia Kazan's influence and evincing more of a developmental arc, and liked it correspondingly more). Maggie and Brick are drawn in a broad, confident hand, and while their interactions with each other, and those between all of the other characters, are unquestionably 'stagey', they breathe with an air of reality, and one genuinely engages with them as people, and not merely as 'characters'. It's swamped in atmosphere, too - a sense of time and place. Without wanting to be too backwards lookin', they don't seem to write 'em like this any more.

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson - Rattlin' Bones

Nicholson's voice complements Chambers' well, and this record seems like a genuinely collaborative affair, but inevitably I've approached it as 'the new Kasey Chambers album', and as such, it's much as I'd expected based on the launch - much more of a bluegrass/country flavour than probably anything she's done before, and certainly more so than the thoroughly enjoyable Carnival, but retaining the crystalline, spacious production and modern touches which give the music its immediacy and much of its charm. For all of that, though, it hasn't left a great impression on me so far (and I've had the album for a while) - perhaps, I've listened to too much of this kind of stuff before, and in moving in this direction, Chambers has left behind some of the idiosyncratic elements (both edginess and sweetness) which distinguish so much of her previous work.

Clouds - Favourites

It's all very confusing. There's these guys, the Sydney outfit who I know through Penny Century and, before that, the appropriately named "Anthem" (thank you cassette tape of "100% Hits volume 4"), and then there's a Scottish mob from the 80s, whose "Get Out Of My Dream" was one of the highlights of the CD86 comp, and apparently there was another before them (also Scottish, for good measure) back in the 60s. Anyway, so this compilation: there's much to like on it, most notably the willingness to experiment with unconventional song forms while retaining a clear pop sensibility and the sound they nailed seemingly from the very beginning (crisp, state-of-the-90s indie girl rock), but the songwriting is probably a bit too indirect for the band's own good, with the result that one is left with an impression of a series of swirls of colour rather than of clearly defined pieces; tellingly, one of the few songs to stand out is their woozy take on "Wichita Lineman".

"Lands End" (Compagnie Philippe Genty)

Oh my god, this was amazing. A sort of surrealist dance theatre show, complete with giant puppets, billowing oversized stage-filling balloons, striking lighting, and sliding panels and screens which continually frame and reframe the stage as they move. Taking cues certainly from Magritte (the men in long coats and bowler hats are only the beginning) and probably in some measure from Lacan (re: that latter, I'm thinking naturally of the 'Seminar on The Purloined Letter', etc), too, it's genuinely dream-like, beautiful, unsettling, whimsical, fantastic; and set to music something like a cross between Four Tet and Victorialand, but exceeding any such attempt at categorisation. From our position near the front, in the centre of the row, it was easy to become immersed in the flow of scenes and images while allowing their 'meaning' (or, perhaps, 'narrative') to take shape at a more abstract level. "Lands End" made a lot of sense to me, both emotionally and imaginatively, and more 'intellectually' (in some respects, precisely inasmuch as it elides the distinctions between those various types of responses); I haven't had such a wonderful experience in a theatre setting maybe ever.

(w/ trang + Arthur)

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

One for the fans, or at least for those with some existing interest in Glass - it's perfectly watchable, but doesn't shed a huge amount of light on either the man or the music. He comes across as very down to earth and affable, with a healthy lack of ego and rich spiritual life, but there are hints of lacunae, dissonances - in particular, in his relationships with his parents and with the women in his life - which aren't explored; and no attempt at all is made to say anything about the music itself, although there's an implied comparison to the pointillistic paintings of one of Glass's artist friends. Still, watching it reminded me how much I like his stuff, so it has to go down as a success at least to that extent.

(w/ Jaani - a sold-out session (at MIFF), impressively)

"Strengthening Human Rights and the Rule of Law"

Seminar back at MS, a week or so ago - Robert McClelland on the above subject. Earlier that day, he'd announced that Justice Branson (FCA) would be the new head of HREOC; at the seminar, he unveiled a few initiatives (possible national anti-terror law, consideration being given of ratification of first optional protocol to CEDAW, standing invitation to special rapporteurs and investigators) which, given the necessarily woolly nature of human rights talk, are all reasonably substantive, I reckon. He was rather more 'down home' and less polished than I'd expected, but seemed sincere enough and didn't come across as if he was bluffing at any point, including while fielding questions afterwards. President Maxwell (Vic CA) delivered a response, the main themes of which were how different/refreshing it is to have a Cth A-G speaking of human rights in the way that McClelland (and the Rudd government generally) has been and the fact that the idea of human rights is neither the particular province of the 'left' nor particularly radical.

Wicked

This was good! I wasn't at all troubled by the divergences from the novel - a musical's a different kind of creature altogether, after all, and it's been cleverly reworked so as to stand satisfyingly on its own in a way which ties the ends up quite neatly (the only thing that gave me pause was the altered ending, but I suppose it's more in keeping with what has gone before than that of the book - and that it took me somewhat by surprise is probably a testament to how much of the darkness and ambiguity of Maguire's novel is retained amidst the colour and glitz of the stage version). For mine, none of the songs really stood out ("Defying Gravity" is closest) and there was maybe a tad too much reliance on repetition of one or two recurring motifs, but that didn't much matter in the face of the engaging story and characters, spectacular sets and all round energy; the best moments/songs mostly involved Glinda ("What Is This Feeling" and "Popular" jump to mind), who is a treat both as written and as performed by Lucy Durack, but Amanda Harrison's Elphaba isn't at all shaded. I didn't fall in love, but Wicked gave me more or less what I wanted and it was plenty of fun.

(w/ Kai, Steph, Tamara, Kathleen + James L, trang and Vegjie ... which was, as it turned out, pleasing from the Elphaba-association p.o.v.)

Joan As Policewoman - Real Life

Think a more piano-y and smoother-voiced Kristin Hersh, with a bit of PJ Harvey and the more nocturnal, downbeat side of Tori to her too, and then some low-key lounge and jazzy elements, and you're in the ballpark as far as what Joan As Policewoman does. I've only been moderately impressed so far, but there are enough hints in the record that I'm willing to give her a chance to grow.

Revue

A collection of Soviet propaganda videos from the 50s and 60s; much heavier on extended, fairly dour footage of steel workers and farmers going about their labours than on colourfully kitsch song-and-dance celebrations of communism (even allowing that it was all in black and white), but pretty interesting nonetheless. Some great, characterful Russian faces, too.

(w/ Jaani and Ruth)

Pärt / Maxwell Davies / Glass - Trivium (Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ)

Eight pieces, all I think composed for organ and performed by Bowers-Broadbent on that instrument, all in a minimalist vein (though I don't think that any are strictly 'minimalist') and all interesting. Pärt's regal "Annum per annum" is magnificent, and likewise the more airy, drifty "Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäer" which precedes it; interestingly, all four of his retain a noticeably 'Pärt-ian' feel despite the unfamiliarity (to me) of their instrumentation here. The Maxwell Davies pair are quiet and mysterious; the Glass compositions ("Satygraha" and "Dance IV") are swelling and sonorous and, again, couldn't have been composed by anyone other than Glass himself.

Band of Horses @ Billboard The Venue, Sunday 3 August

A good show, if not as searing as I'd hoped and at least half expected. Live, they're an extremely tight outfit, very technically proficient and cohesive as a band, and with enough raggedness about the edges to give the performances more fire than the recorded versions (which is as it should be), but it didn't quite hit the next level despite the potential clearly being there, though there were some clear highlights when they did really nail it ("The Great Salt Lake", "Weed Party", "Wicked Gil" - all, oddly, off the first album, which is admittedly more rockin', but usually bands enjoy playing their newer stuff more, and that generally comes through in the performances). Perhaps, it was just a touch too tight; maybe it needed to be rawer, louder, a bit more unhinged (not that it seemed like a show that was all too 'professional' - just one in which the indefinable spark that pushes a rock show from good to near great was missing). All told, though, I enjoyed it, so no complaints - and it was interesting to hear some new stuff, which tended considerably more towards modern Gram Parsons cosmic americana than electrified southern rock...

(meant to go with Jon, but different arrival times and lack of reception in venue defeated atempts to meet)

Sigur Rós @ Festival Hall, Friday 1 August

Agaetis Byrjun was where it all began for me with Sigur Rós, so when they led off with "Svefn-g-englar" last night, the song's distinctive 'pings' and singer Jon Thor Birgisson's still unlikely (and still rather magical) vocals coming through loud and clear, I couldn't have been happier, and things soon got even better, as it became apparent that, as a live proposition, the band comes close to genuine shoegazer territory, the swathes and layers of guitar and synth from recorded versions either sharing the foreground with Birgisson's keen or washing over the top of it, building ecstatic walls of sound inlaid with all of the baroque flourishes and weaves we know them for, not to mention some real rock and roll drumming.

So Agaetis Byrjun was where it all began for me and it holds a special place in my heart, but truth be told, I haven't followed the band's career all that closely since, keeping up mainly through the various singles and other tracks that people have put on mix cds for me, most notably the cascading rainbow-swoon of "Hoppipolla" - which meant that much of what they played was new to me, but it was easy to be swept up by each new track, and there was barely a lull. The highlight, I think, would have been the skyscraping version of "Glosoli" they did near the beginning, but the whole thing was really good.

(w/ Ruth)

Ashes of Time Redux

This was excellent - just what one might imagine a Wong Kar-wai martial arts film to be like, cryptic, melancholy, blurry, vivid...epic and intimate, focused intensely in the moment but also haunted by the past (and with a gesture towards a hopeful future, too).

(w/ Michelle, Kai, Ruth and David)

Brock Clarke - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

I've been looking forward to reading this one! And so, what a shame, then, that my predominant response to it was one of irritation. The bumbling narrator, Sam Pulsifer, basically annoyed the hell out of me, and despite that, the bad end to which he eventually comes rings dreadfully false. Sure, I get that Clarke is playing more than one type of literary game here, but it's all a bit depthless, both in the sense that it has no solid bottom (ultimately, no substance) and in that (another way of saying the same thing) it's all surface in the end, however multiplicious its layers - we're not meant to take Sam, or his narrative, seriously, but at the same time, what's being said about both is something we're clearly meant to take oh-so-seriously and I'm not down with that. A shame in more than one way, because there are some good ideas in Arsonist's and some decent writing in bursts, as well as an evident ability to hold a story together over the course of a whole novel, but the pieces just don't quite fit. Still, I admire the chutzpah and the willingness to try for something different without any obvious signposting, trusting instead to the writer's own ability and the reader's acuity for the point to be made...

Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare company)

This had a lot going for it, but all told I really didn't think it was particularly great. The main problem for me was the figure of Hamlet himself...I didn't at all like the way that he was characterised, very much in the sulky adultescent vein of interpretation which (a) seems quite popular these days and (b) (lapsing briefly into unbecoming dogmatism) is just plain wrong; Brendan Cowell had presence but didn't really work for me; he was at his best in the contemplative soliloquies/monologues ("What a piece of work is a man", etc) and at his worst when lapsing into dire overacting intended to convey the character's anguish.

A lot of this stems from the fact that I'm pretty familiar with the play (and not a little possessive of the thing) and have some strong ideas about it - ideas which run counter to many of those underlying this staging...that said, another of my problems with the production is that it doesn't really seem to have a clear idea of the play itself, nothing cohesive to unify the choices made in respect of the various characters, sets, etc, beyond a generalised sort of contemporisation which isn't near enough on its own. There wasn't a clear vision, and the truth of the play was nowhere to be seen.

Still, I did generally like the way that the characters were interpreted: Claudius was effectively played as quite a physically domineering figure, and Gertrude likewise as the attractive older woman that she so clearly must be; Barry Otto as Polonius brought out the ridiculousness of the character without descending too far into farce; Horatio, Laertes and Ophelia all held their respective lines (that last a bit insipid for my taste, but that's obviously a reading that's open to her character); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seemed to owe something to their Stoppardian counterparts in their gormlessness (their ineffectuality is played up and played for laughs), though with nothing of the anguished existential innocence of those others; all told, I thought that the acting was okay but a bit undistinguished. I did like the sets, though, and the music (courtesy of Sarah Blasko) which lent proceedings a bit of gravitas (thereby tipping my hand as to which reading of Hamlet I lean towards...).

(w/ (deep breath) Cassie, Kai, Wei, Julian F, Jaani, Sunny, Ben K and Bec P + guests of Wei's (Andreas) and Sunny's (Wilfred, Nirm and Louise [?]) - row a, three from the front)

The Cardigans - Super Extra Gravity

A winner - when it hits (which it does more often than it misses), Super Extra Gravity is a marvellous showcase for the frothy, immaculately put together popist gems in which the ever delightful Cardigans specialise. "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer" is still totally righteous and still has maybe the best title of any pop song ever, but it's "Godspell" that I've been really obsessed by lately, that latter encapsulating everything that's good about the record as a whole - a rush of a melody, hooks both expected and unanticipated, lyrics at once coy and direct, meaningful and obscure, that stick in the mind, delicious guitar jangle, ring and shear, Nina Persson's marvellous voice. Gettin' lots of spins round here lately.