McCabe & Mrs Miller

An unusual but quietly pleasing film, wryly deconstructing the western before it was fashionable to do so, and in the end leaving a real feeling of both humanity and sadness as well as telling a story about America and how it was made. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie inhabit their characters, evolving (or perhaps revealing themselbes) organically before our eyes; indeed, the whole film feels very organic, soundtrack (entirely Leonard Cohen), camera-work, dialogue and all. I think that it'll stay with me.

The New Pornographers - Together

Comparisons are generally invidious, but they're oh so tempting, and when a band is following up a four album opening streak in which every record has been at least extremely good and two (Electric Version and Twin Cinema) are candidates for greatness, then expectation alone forces the comparison to what has come before, and so:

Quality-wise, Together is probably about on a par with the relative dip that was Challengers - it certainly doesn't get anywhere near the heights of the Electric Version/Twin Cinema one-two. There's more ornamentation and more jangle, less in the way of surging, full-tilt, sugar-rush highs (which are, after all the best thing about past New Pornographers albums). The best songs here come at the start - namely "Crash Years" and sort-of title track "Your Hands (Together)" (the stomping "A Bite Out Of My Bed", near the end, is also neat), but even they don't have the glorious abandon of past record highlights, and there are just too many indistinct, undistinguished tracks on Together that don't really go anywhere...so, good, but, at least judged against the very high standards they've set for themselves, this is a bit of a disappointment.

Robin Hood

Exciting enough, and well made (as you'd expect with Ridley Scott at the helm), this Robin Hood works pretty well as a 'historical' adventure. But it's a touch disappointing nonetheless, for it lacks a certain depth, grit and sense of significance, all of which it clearly aspires to - something about it feels just a bit by-the-numbers (a bit of Braveheart here, a bit of Gladiator there, a touch of The Lord of the Rings elsewhere...), and though the story arc is clear, there isn't the overwhelming sense of being immersed and swept along that I look for in this kind of film.

"The Ugly One" (MTC)

A barbed little satire, "The Ugly One" reminded me in some slightly ineffable way of Amelie Nothomb's short novel Fear and Trembling, in its brevity and apparent slightness coupled with a cutting edge, piercing focus of vision and intimations of larger concerns, all imbued with an allegorical flavour (it also reminded me of Yasmina Reza's "Art" and "God of Carnage"); also, it embodies a certain kind of postmodernism in which the modernist antecedents of that later -ism are clearly apparent.

Moreover, the Sumner proves an excellent space in service of a crafty staging which makes good use of lighting and a small handful of props (most notably a large supply of green apples, often being significantly peeled in line with the plot, which revolves around the surgical makeover of a remarkably ugly man's face and all that follows), and the talents of Alison Bell, Kim Gyngell, Patrick Brammall and Luke Ryan, form well matched to content in a way that allows the play to emerge naturally.

"The Ugly One" is the work of a young, contemporary German writer, Marius von Mayenburg; the Malthouse's staging of his (quite different) "Eldorado" a few years back left a great impression on me. Definitely one to watch and explore further.

(w/ Steph)

Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

One and a quarter readings into Rivka Galchen's cerebral, accomplished first novel (it's one of those that demands a reasonably immediate re-read), I'm still unsure about how naturalistically (or perhaps 'realistically' is a better way of putting in - ie, in line with what the book's psychiatrist narrator calls the 'consensus view of reality') it should be read. On balance, despite the hints of outright anti-realism, at least in the representational/mimetic sense (the implausible happenings it apparently chronicles, the deliberate echoes of Borges and The Crying of Lot 49), I think it can more readily be read as a particularly intriguing 'unreliable narrator' text, the unlikely convictions (the book's starting point and central story driver is the narrator's belief that his wife has been replaced by an impostor who looks and acts almost exactly like his wife), perceptions and experiences of the narrator, including his weird emotional responses (or lack thereof) and diminished affect, symptomatic of some psychological disturbance of his own. But it's hard to tell - perhaps not only are both valid readings, but in some slippery (undecidable?) sense need to be engaged in at the same time to really get anywhere near the bottom of Atmospheric Disturbances.

Also occupying me a bit: to what extent is it a story about love, and to what extent a love story? (Answer, I think: to a very large extent, both. Either way, it made me sad - I felt sorry for the characters, but especially Rema.)

Anyway, file on the same shelf as, I reckon, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and it's not a world away from what I was trying to get at a while ago in relation to Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, either.

(Incidentally, while carrying Atmospheric Disturbances around and reading it in a range of more or less public places over the last few weeks, I've noticed an inordinate number of people looking at its cover, sometimes surreptitiously and sometimes quite openly - there must be something about it that catches the eye, though that thought didn't prevent me once or twice slipping into brief daydream reveries about the possibility that the looker was, say, the author's sister or somesuch other concerned party...)

Terry Pratchett - Feet of Clay

A comfort re-read. Not a highlight of Pratchett's considerable oeuvre, but as enjoyable as always.

Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Pretty much since I read White Teeth, Zadie has been a touchstone for me. In January '06, I wrote this (in re: On Beauty):

...while I like her heaps, I also tend to be particularly critical of our Zadie. There are probably a few reasons for this: first, there's a sense in which I feel as if I've grown up with her, and as if I've watched her grow up as a writer (a continuing process on both ends, natch); second, and relatedly, she's a contemporary writer, writing about contemporary times; and third, and relatedly again, the milieus [pl?] about which she writes aren't all that far removed from my own (all things being relative)...

All of that is still pretty much true, but the balance is tipping, and more and more she's coming to seem one of the most cogent, engaging voices of her (and my) generation - she actually has about seven years on me, but near enough - and this collection has done a lot to cement that sense for me. Arranged in five sections along roughly thematic lines - 'reading' (books), 'being' (writing/society/identity), 'seeing' (movies), 'feeling' (family, etc) and 'remembering' (an extended appreciation of / testament to David Foster Wallace) - but with her key preoccupations bleeding across those divisions, it highlights what a good writer she has become, capable of writing clearly and insightfully in a vein at once personal and critical/analytical...maybe the next novel, whenever it arrives, really will be the great one of which she's always seemed at least potentially capable.

"Carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees": The National - High Violet

When, on my first couple of listens to High Violet, it felt a bit monochrome, featureless - monotonous even - I was unfazed, because, you see, the thing with National albums is that they're growers. Alligator and Boxer are both remarkable records, both flat-out great, and, it turns out, High Violet deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as those predecessors - it has the same hypnotic quality, the same surging musicality, the same silvery velvet deepness.

The songs on High Violet are basically bulletproof, carefully constructed and lit from within, and decorated with subtle details. Like Boxer, it feels as if it's made up of a series of suites, the scene-setting, exploratory, increasingly definite building blocks of "Terrible Love", "Sorrow" and "Anyone's Ghost" leading into the "Little Faith" - "Afraid of Everyone" - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" run which, for me, forms the solid centre of the album; then the gathering of thoughts (and, to be honest, weakest cut) that is "Lemonworld" before the closing run, "Runaway", "Conversation 16" and "England" repeatedly building and subsiding and building again until finally flowing over on melancholically triumphant finale "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks". There's a natural flow to it - a sustainedly brooding mood, shot through with well-timed crescendos and rushes of energy. I listen to it over and over; it continues to startle me; sometimes I think, all albums should be this good.

"Waiting for Godot" (Theatre Royal Haymarket) @ Comedy Theatre

Not amazing, but predictably good, what with Ian McKellen and Roger Rees (aka Lord John Marbury from The West Wing) as Estragon and Vladimir; the actors playing Pozzo and Lucky also v.g. This production elects for a lighter, more comic slant than I'd imagined while reading the play; setting the action on a ruined stage is a nice touch, and apt.

(w/ Sunny, Kim, Ruth, Hayley and Meribah - front row)

OP8 - Slush

I tend to romanticise origins - well, I tend to romanticise everything - but I'm reasonably sure that the first time I came across OP8, years ago, it was through seeing the music video for "Sand" late one night on rage, dazed and exhausted and generally in the state when everything seems to come through blurry and in waves; I half-suspect romanticisation (or perhaps 'idealisation' would be more accurate) because those would, in retrospect, have been close to the ideal circumstances in which to be introduced to this unusual, rather quixotic collective's music.

Slush isn't all like "Sand", which is to say that it isn't all dusty, evocative campfire duets, but it does, across all of the diverse terrain that it covers, share with that opening track a certain sense of reaching the listener as if crackling with distance, through some old transistor radio, Howe Gelb and Joey Burns' experimental americana sketches and Lisa Germano's warm, fractured almost-pop tunes alike; it's an unusual record, slow-burning and low-key, but scattered with subtle pleasures.

"Richard III" (MTC)

You know you're seeing Shakespeare done well when the play itself really comes through and envelopes you - when the greatness of the source material is most clearly legible - and that's certainly true of this very strong "Richard III". Turns out that I knew the play pretty well, though I can't remember the last time I read it (years ago, at any rate), and this production does it justice, Ewen Leslie's vivid turn as the titular villain and the handsome sets particularly striking. One issue - and frequent stumbling block - with staging Shakespeare is the extent and manner to which the play is contemporised, but here it works well, with a consistent thread running through costumes, sets and the more intangible aspects of style, the play's bloody action located in a non-specific but more or less contemporary setting, dressed in images of militarism and political power and thereby dramatising the murderous impulses that underlie their exercise and expression, which in a sense is what the play itself is all about.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

Near Dark

Why did I like this film? Two words: Vampire Western. Throw in a bit of southern gothic, a melodramatic romance and some serious Mood (equal parts the blue filter cinematography and noctural settings and a synth-heavy Tangerine Dream soundtrack that's by turns brooding and energised), and it's pretty much a perfect Friday night film. (Though I could take or leave the heavy lashings of blood, I suppose they come with the territory.) It was made in 1987, directed by Kathryn Bigelow; films that could plausibly have been influenced by it would include, I reckon, From Dusk Till Dawn and Twilight.

(w/ M)

Regina Spektor @ the Palais, Saturday 1 May

A good show, Spektor v. polished (though still real-seeming); highlight probably "Samson", first song into the encore, performer, stage and the ornate surrounds of the Palais luminous in the scattered lights.

(w/ trang)

Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot

My copy of this book is secondhand (like most of my books); the careful cursive inscription on its half title page indicates that it was formerly owned by Leonie Scudds (Form Six). Apart from those details, there are two handwritten annotations, one on that front page, the other about halfway through, both piquant:

The characters talk for a while + get no where

making us wait + see what he is leading up to. How many conversations are significant? yes. same here.

I've never read Beckett before, though I've seen a couple of excellent productions of his plays in the last couple of years or so (Endgame and Happy Days), and got a lot out of Godot despite the vast amount of cultural detritus that has accumulated around the idea of it. The play is oblique in its meanings, but strikingly direct in other ways; reading it, one is left with an overwhelming sense of entropy, repetition, absence, failures of meaning and understanding, an uncaring universe. It's remarkable in its artistry, in the way that it lays out and revisits its themes over and over (with repetition itself one of those very themes) without ever seeming overdetermined, in its understanding of the specific and the universal and how they necessarily relate to each other, in its sustained worldview and in the balance between the tragic and the comic that it achieves throughout.

The Boat That Rocked

Utterly uninteresting nostalgia trip alas. Top cast, bright set and costumes, decent premise, an underlying message with which I have a fair bit of sympathy (though it's not given anything but the shallowest treatment) - but completely average in the execution, oh well.

Nellie McKay - Normal As Blueberry Pie

Oh, there are few things that make me as happy as Nellie McKay does! Her latest is a set of songs made famous by Doris Day (kicking off with "The Very Thought Of You"), and sees her playing it straighter and more restrained than her previous stuff - her takes on these songs seem sincere rather than ironic, and there's no genre-hopping whatsoever - but it's still delightful.

Kick-Ass

By the sounds of it, there's been a bit of moral panic / general wowser-ish controversy about this film, but for me, the main point is that Kick-Ass is hella entertaining. The action scenes are kinetic and exciting (and completely over the top), the characters kind of thin but vividly drawn, the story economical and pacy, the mood surprisingly deep and at times dark; it plays like a comic book, not least in its knowingness...much fun.