Kazuo Ishiguro - When We Were Orphans

Such a sad novel; the final pages in particular are crushing. Ishiguro is a wonderful writer, and his Christopher Banks is, like The Remains of the Day's Stevens, a study in one person's inability to find happiness or love because of an unshakeable external preoccupation (in The Remains of the Day, it was, in essence, duty and doing what was expected of one; in When We Were Orphans, it's the trauma of the loss of Banks' parents in Shanghai and his obsession with solving cases and detective work). There are hints of the fantastic - of the non-realistic - in When We Were Orphans, by contrast to the thoroughly realistic (if exceedingly mannered) world of the earlier novel, and perhaps it's not coincidental that war is a much more direct presence in this one than in the other. The formality of the tone and structure of the novel is misleading, though at the same time integral - just below the surface is a far more subtle intelligence, exploring the ways in which we are who we are with a clarity and elegance that penetrates deep.

Alison Krauss - Now That I've Found You: A Collection

A collection of some of her early work, uniformly good. Alison Krauss has never quite set my world on fire, but she's reliably good; I suspect that I might listen to her more than I realise.

Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House

For all that they proudly wear their varied patchwork of influences (60s pop, 90s disco, general indie), Saint Etienne only ever really sound like themselves, and 2005's Tales From Turnpike House is unmistakably a Saint Etienne record. It's a good one, too, very much from the pop end of their palette, with plenty of nice, wistful melodies.

Twilight: New Moon

Christmas watching with family. Kind of boring, really, and it doesn't help that Twilight has now become a cliche - didn't enjoy it half as much as the first one.

Centurion

A bloody little few reels of cinema, tracking an ill-fated Roman attempt to wipe out a Pictish resistance to their empire-building during the second century AD, with plenty of none-too-subtle references to modern wars.

"We Bumped Our Heads Against the Clouds" (2010 Believer music issue cd)

Compiled by Chuck Lightning, an Atlanta producer type, this mix covers a spectrum of music well beyond my usual shoals - in a nutshell, and quite explicitly, it's black music, soul, funk, rap.

And that is the charge I believe all black artists need to be taking up right now. We need to be complex freedom fighters. There is serious work to be done, real discussion to be had in terms of art, culture, entertainment, technology, and politics in America.

So, somewhat surprisingly, I've ended up getting into the cd. There's lots to like; stand outs are a slow-burning cover of Stevie Wonder's "Cold War" by Janelle Monáe, a mellow pop track, "Chaos" by Spree Wilson, and a polished indie-soul number called "Rewind" by Scar (described by C. Lightning as an underground Atlanta superstar whose upcoming album is full of songs that sound like Phil Collins loitering in a seedy, outer-space trip club, telling the scantily clad girl across from him all about his broken heart), none of whom I'd heard of before, and also an amazing version of an Alice Cooper song called "I Never Cry" by Nina Simone.

Inglourious Basterds

The press makes you think Inglourious Basterds is going to be all about the squad of soldiers, all Jewish, led by Brad Pitt on a mission in Nazi-occupied France to basically nastily kill as many Nazis as they can, but it's really the story of Shosanna (a ravishing Melanie Laurent), survivor of a purge of her family by a villainous Nazi officer known as 'the Jew Hunter' who finds herself managing a Parisian movie theatre with ultimately fatal consequences. It's all very knowing - of course, we expect no less from Tarantino - and there's an underlying design and craft to it (the use of the cinema theme, for example, is integrated into the logic of the film as a whole rather than just being a throwaway piece of meta-referentiality), but I didn't find it completely satisfying. It's entertaining for most of its running time (though too long), and there are individual bits that sparkle (Pitt's fake Italian accent and constipated persona at the premiere is hilarious, and there are some knock-out individual shots), there was just something missing, some essential fire (ahem), soul maybe, I don't know.

30 Rock season 4

Maybe it's just the tyranny of expectation, but season 4 seemed a bit of a dip from the heights of the last couple of seasons. Still, it's never less than great fun to watch, and it certainly has its moments (often involving Kenneth); the greater emphasis on longer story arcs is also noteable. (Also, pleasingly, a couple of days after starting watching the dvds, I bumped into the friend who most reminds me of Liz Lemon on the street, not having seen her for several months before.)

Tilly and the Wall - Tilly and the Wall

There was a period when last.fm kept bringing up Tilly and the Wall, prompted presumably by the twee-ish indie-pop that I was prone to plugging into it. It's bright stuff, good ear candy, but not distinguished by any special quality (a couple of particularly catchy songs - "Pot Kettle Black", "Blood Flower" - notwithstanding).

Joe Haldeman - The Forever War

A taut sci-fi/military novel that doesn't do much wrong, written in the shadow of the Vietnam war and unmistakeably, but never distractingly allegorical in its depiction of the struggles of its soldier protagonists to adjust to the relativistic effects of their campaigns, where time passes vastly quicker on earth than it does for them subjectively, decades passing on earth while they experience only weeks or months in training and battle on alien soil.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt1

The tone's been set for this series - every instalment has to be darker and more adult than the last, the stakes higher, the dangers more profound. And on that front, this, the seventh, delivers. It does feel like half a film, despite its not inconsiderable length, but doesn't seem a cheat in the context of the series as a whole, which has turned out to be quite an achievement.

"Unnerved: The New Zealand Project"

I think it's to do with not just the experience of art, but specifically the experience of art in a gallery or museum - it can create, or maybe crystallise, feelings and emotions in ways that aren't normally accessible. It doesn't come every time, but when it does, it's at once acute and textural, complex, polyphonic. I suppose it has something to do with way in which engagement with art requires openness - openness to the 'larger than oneself' nature of the particular works while at the same time

This time, it really hit me while I was looking at a set of photographs by Gavin Hipkins, 80 in all, about 50 x 30 cm each, arranged consecutively, side-by-side, along three walls, under the collective title of "The homely". The series explicitly explores a theme that's at least strongly implicit in many of the other works in the exhibition - that of the uncanny (here, via its other common translation of 'unhomely') - through simple shots of familiar sites and objects, taken from unfamiliar angles and perspectives, in a way which makes them seem like fleeting glimpses of things we both know and are puzzled by: crosses, coastal scenes, war memorials, museums, corridors, lights (indoors and out), all given neutral 'place/subject' names ("Napier (Monument)", "Auckland (One Tree Hill)", "South Island (Trout)", etc). I started at one end and worked my way along; by about the seventh or eighth, I'd realised I had a lump in my throat and a fluttering in my chest, and I couldn't have said why.

The exhibition generally is heavily tilted towards photography, and explicitly sets itself to explore a particular stream within contemporary New Zealand art, drawing on complex senses of disquiet and disease mingled with reflections on national and cultural identity and appearance. Some which particularly struck me:
* Anne Noble - "Ruby's room". Six large, high-gloss, close-up photos of a child's mouth, distorted in various ways (edges of lips pulled down by a piece of string, tongue stained a vivid blue, a bright green piece of apple between the lips, etc).
* Bill Culbert - "Sunset III". Cibachrome photograph of a metal sculpture at sunset against a blue sky. And also his other gelatin silver b&w ones. As the plaque had it: "Light is treated as an active force in opposition to its ephemeral effects - incandescence, glare, reflection and, importantly, shadow."
* Sriwhana Spong - "Candlestick Park". Six minute video, b&w - screen divided in two, as hand-held camera circles around an outdoor installation (flags, shadows, shrubbery, garden path) clockwise on one side and anti-clockwise on the other. Weirdly compelling.
* Lisa Reihana - various large photos depicting Maori gods and goddesses; in its use of shadow and heavy, velvety darks, reminded me of Bill Henson.
* Yvonne Todd - "January" and "Limpet". Two beautiful young girls, cloaked in a doomed, seedy glamour.

(On at the NGV, but mainly sourced from the Queensland Art Gallery.)

Mongol

Handsomely produced and filled with stunning landscapes, Mongol's version of the early life of Genghis Khan manages the trick of being bloody without seeming gratuitous, in part because of its subject matter and in part because it seems committed to that subject. It didn't really stir me, but it's well done nonetheless.

Florence and the Machine - Lungs

Neat! Florence and the Machine come(s) on like a 21st century Kate Bush, rousing songs like "Dog Days Are Over", "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", "Drumming" and "Blinding" providing the sometimes almost tribal-sounding high points amidst a record stuffed full of interesting ideas welded to songs that are always sturdy and often positively exciting.

Best Coast - Crazy For You

iTunes says that this album is "Surf Pop", and that's not a bad start: fuzzy-edged jangle, mostly two to three minute (the longest of the record's 13 songs is 3:02, the shortest 1:43) summertime pop with just the slightest hints of shadows at the edges. Radio single "Boyfriend" is representative - a rollercoastering, summer-hazy ditty which quickly grabs the attention but doesn't have the melodies or depth to really stick with the listener afterwards...two songs stand out, and do stay in the mind: the slower, heavier, JAMC-meets-Breeders-by-way-of-the-Concretes sulk of "Honey", and the catchy "When I'm With You", which boasts easily the best tune on the album.

Terry Pratchett - Small Gods

I'm pretty sure that Small Gods was the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read; I can't remember what led me to pick it up, but at the time (it was either grade 5 or 6) I was in the habit of scouring the 'best sellers' shelf at the Pines library - a habit that also led me to David Eddings and Donald E Westlake at around the same time - and I do remember being intrigued by the cover and by the irreverent blurb. Anyway, I read it, and that was the beginning - I didn't look back. These days, like most of his books, I basically know Small Gods inside out, so reading it doesn't carry any of the charge or fizz of excitement that that first run of reads brought with it, but, like an old friend, its company never palls either.

Gregory Maguire - What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

A bit of a throwaway book from Maguire, a novella probably nominally aimed at children, though with some pretty adult themes - imagines tooth fairies as a species which lives on the margins of human society, living in warring communities and collecting teeth for reasons of their own (which have something to do with finding meaning in their own lives through giving something to humans).

Agora

I hadn't heard of the 4th century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia before this film, Amenabar's latest, started getting promoted, but I can see why her name has come down the ages to us - as presented in this film, at least, and portrayed by Rachel Weisz, she's a memorable proto-Enlightenment figure, deeply committed to the ideals of human reason and philosophical understanding to the extent that her death is ultimately brought on at least in part by her beliefs.

Agora is well made, if unusually structured: a slowish beginning followed by an extended, pell-mell action sequence culminating in the burning of the library of Alexandria - and then a kind of pause and then part two, several years later, of equal length to the first part and focusing on the huge changes then sweeping Alexandrian society. It dramatises the city-state in a time of social, political and religious flux, setting Hypatia's intellectual explorations against that backdrop, and foregrounding the effect that the increasingly ascendant (and intolerant) Christian religion has on the development of that thought.

(w/ Kai and Ben K; also Steph for dinner but not movie)