The Pretenders - Greatest Hits

When I think of the Pretenders, I think, on the one hand, of chiming, surprisingly tough rock-pop numbers like "Brass in Pocket", "Don't Get Me Wrong" and "Back on the Chain Gang", and on the other hand of their big ballad, "I'll Stand By You", which I've listened to loud, late at night and on my own more times than I'd probably care to admit. This best of hasn't done much to shake that impression, but I know a lot of the songs and like them well enough.

Smoosh - Free to Stay

Much like their debut She Like Electric, Free to Stay finds Smoosh making bright, surprisingly interesting indie-pop - it's not particularly memorable, but it is pretty likeable while it lasts.

Beautiful Kate

So I hadn't really known much about Beautiful Kate before seeing it, but it turned out to be a quietly stunning example of the kind of Australian cinema that seems to come down the line quite frequently whose success lies in the way it integrates its more dreamily poetic impulses with the more concrete, character-driven elements that give the film its punch. The flashback scenes are hazily nostalgic without obscuring the harshness that is so integral to Ned's past; over and over, the past bleeds into the present and vice versa, the physical landscape providing both continuity and indicia of change (most particularly, the dried up dam), each as unforgiving as the other. Much of the credit must go to director Rachel Ward, but she's also gifted with uniformly strong performances from her Australian cast; this is a really good one.

(w/ Kai)

Faith Hill - The Hits

Whle I quite like this kind of pop country when done well, this set's a bit too sunnily bland for me. I do have fond memories of "This Kiss", though, I must admit.

District 9

Grit, dust and blood galore in this tale of alien immigration. I'm not sure how much I'd say I enjoyed it, but it did grip, and it's an honest to goodness action film amidst the pointed references to the gross mistreatment (dehumanisation) of refugees and other marginalised people in the present and recent and not so recent past.

(w/ M, Noelle, Adam and Jonathan)

Fred Uhlman - Reunion

One of those small but perfectly formed novelettes that comes along from time to time; published in 1971, it recounts the developing friendship between two 16 year old boys, one Jewish and the other the golden son of an aristocratic line, in early 1930s Germany as Nazism begins to make itself felt in earnest. Throughout, a misty, backward-looking atmosphere coexists with an unexpected specificity which removes the narrative from the field of nostalgia; the ending is poignant and piercing.

(This was a gift from Sarah V, who was back in Melbourne for a few days, reviving our old idea of book exchanges, and at the same time giving me a few others to add to the 'to read' pile of the floor near my desk - Durrell, Goethe, Leroux.)

Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union

In some ways, this one-two from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a novel that's equal parts detective/noir genre piece and contemporary-Jewish-lit, captures what the book is all about:

"It's not much," Landsman says, rain pattering the brim of his hat. "But it's home."
"No, it isn't," Batsheva Shpilman says. "But I'm sure it makes it easier for you to think so."

In this book, it's often in the dialogue that the melding of the two divergent literary streams with which Chabon is here engaged is most evident, and also in the dialogue that some of the hidden consonances between the two become apparent (a cynical wisecrack is a cynical wisecrack, after all, whether hard-boiled or ancestrally resigned). The Yiddish Policemen's Union is no mere exercise in style or cleverness; rather, it's a genuine attempt at synthesis, which entails grappling with the conventions and concerns of both of the main forms on which it draws (in the passage above, the play on the meaning of 'home', itself of course particularly significant for the Jewish diaspora, is characteristic). It's not a complete success (I liked Kavalier and Clay much more), but, at once extremely enjoyable and unobtrusively serious-minded, there's plenty to like about it.

Sarah Blasko - As Day Follows Night

One that I've had to listen to quite a few times for it to really make itself known, but worth the perseverance. A collection of sprightly, spacious, vividly coloured singer-songwriter pop which hits its straps at the start, falters with a couple of dreary numbers in its midsection and then runs home strongly, it deliberately eschews the spectral atmospherics that characterised The Overture & The Underscore and What The Sea Wants... in favour of a lighter, more delicate (if equally introspective) palette which, married with a bunch of pretty good songs, I find rather charming, if not quite as memorable as her two earlier lps.

Minority Report

Not too bad, but then not great either; a pretty decent fusion of 'proper' science fiction and cyberpunk-lite with blockbuster sci fi/adventure.

Tennessee Williams - Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays

Often, a writer's shorter pieces can provide a kind of key, or perhaps more aptly a map, which aids in navigating their longer (if not always more substantial) work - themes and ideas which may not emerge as clearly or as simply in full-length novels, with all their associated foliage, may be laid bare in shorter stories and novellas, for example. There's something of that sense to the short plays in this volume, mostly from early in Williams' writing career; they certainly have the characteristic flavour that I've come to associate with his plays, and nearly all of them stage some kind of confrontation or collision between youth and age, innocence and experience...has definitely added something to my relationship with his work.

Braveheart

Sometimes I just get in the mood.

Steven Erikson - Toll the Hounds

A lot of what's set up in the seven books preceding this one is revisited and, seemingly, brought to fruition in Toll the Hounds, with Dragnipur, the Tiste Andii (and particularly Anomander Rake) and the increasingly fated city of Darujhistan at its heart, all related in Kruppe's distinctive voice. I've said it before, but it bears saying again - Erikson really is masterful...over the course of this series to date, he's created something which stands apart from anything else ever written in this vein.

"Rockabye" (MTC)

Post-show discussions following this, Joanna Murray-Smith's take on the ethics of celebrity adoption of third world children (and a fair bit else besides, extending out fairly directly from that central question), quickly revealed a clear consensus - alas, it's a rather mediocre play. I found it hard to damn as bad per se (others weren't so temperate) - rather, it was just all too middling, never raising its sights above the ordinary and so not even an interesting failure. Punchy enough, but there was just nothing to it.

Incidentally, greatest feel-good song of all time is almost certainly "Son of a Preacher Man"; possibly "Superstition" (in a slightly different way, too, "Lazy Line Painter Jane", of course). For some reason "A Whiter Shade of Pale" comes to mind too, but that can't be right.

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

Coraline

Deliciously dark and creepy, if not quite to the same degree as the book from which it draws its inspiration. At times, Coraline reminded me of "The Path", a thoroughly atmospheric little game/immersive experience that I downloaded and spent some time with a while back, with its unsettling little-girl music and partly cropped explorations of apparently innocuous indoor and outdoor landscapes which acquire an increasingly ominous character as things progress, and also in a certain deadpan character which grounds the fantastic events which proliferate over its course. It looks great, with everything suitably shadowy and nocturnal (the 3d-ness adds an extra dimension (ha) to the experience), and the most fantastic sequences have a visual flair and crackling elan which befit the happenings that they depict. A really good adaptation, and an equally good film on its own terms.

(w/ M)

$9.99

Stop-motion claymation; more downbeat and less whimsical than I'd expected, though replete with flights of fancy. Had an unexpected realist streak running through it, despite the many departures from 'realism'. And yes, it was about the meaning of life.

(w/ Steph)

Knowing

Considerably better than I'd expected. Nicolas Cage, often good in this kind of role, is really only so-so - but he has the right kind of look for the film, haunted by his past and tormented in the present, and the visuals are sometimes striking. It's really more of an 'idea' film than a blockbuster, though it has many of the trimmings of the latter; it falls somewhat short, but nobly so. Reminds me a bit, actually, of Aronofksy's The Fountain, in the attempt to meld metaphysical messages with darkly dream-like imagery and a sprinkling of action.

Flame & Citron

Beautifully shot and tensely involving thriller focusing on the activities of a famed pair of Danish resistance fighters during the second world war. Benefits immensely from tremendously charismatic performances from the titular figures and the shadowy, heavily contrasted cinematography, where scenes are composed of deep, textured blue-blacks and vividly lit, almost luminous pales (often faces). Also digs deeply into the moral uncertainties of their actions while emphasising the violence of the killings perpetrated by them and others in their shadowy war.

(w/ Jaani and M)

Love Exposure

MIFF program descriptions are often very misleading, but the one for Love Exposure, somehow, turned out to be spot on, viz:

* * *

Clocking in at just under 240 minutes but never skipping a beat, visionary filmmaker Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Noriko’s Dinner Table) presents an epic love story peppered with religion, perversion and martial arts.

After being forced to confess his sins by his priest father, high school student Yu embarks on a spree of wrongdoing, becoming a ninja-like master of sneak-photography – taking photos up girls’ skirts. Yu’s world is knocked even further off-kilter when he meets Yoko – a man-hating riot girl – and gets involved with a mysterious cult.

Sion’s masterwork is a one of a kind – an iconoclastic, scattershot action-comedy-romance.

* * *

Four hour running time notwithstanding, it's tremendously kinetic and fun, soundtracked by a pop-pastiche stream and packed with free-wheeling action and drama. Blood, scatology, absurdity and perversion all flow freely (erections play an important part in the plot and themes of the film; likewise, even apart from the 'peek a panty' aspects, schoolgirls variously beating up casts of dozens using martial arts, kissing each other in close up, and being tied up by rope feature prominently); at the same time, it has some thoughtful things to say about religion and society (among many other things), and the notion of 'perversion' comes under moderately close scrutiny. Really one of a kind.

(More, including trailer, here.)

(w/ Meribah, Wei, M and JF)