A quick round up

Thursday night, last minute trip organisation in full swing (flights and accommodation in process of getting worked out, packing not so much as yet); tomorrow's a work day and will be out at night, then flight out's Saturday; thought I ahould do a quick few capsule notes before the upcoming month in Europe obliterates all recollection.

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Seeker Lover Keeper - Seeker Lover Keeper

As sweet as you'd expect a Sally Seltmann / Sarah Blasko / Holly Throsby collab to be. Best is "Even Though I'm A Woman", followed by "If the Night is Dark" - both Seltmann-composed (though Throsby sings the former), which is unsurprising given that she seems to be some kind of low-key songwriting genius, without meaning any disrespect to Sarah Blasko, who is also clearly lovely and amazing.

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Deb Olin Unferth - Revolution

I'm not much of a one for memoirs, but I read some extracts in Believer and have read a bunch of interesting bits and pieces written by Unferth elsewhere on the internets and that was enough for me to order Revolution and her debut novel Vacation from bookdepository. So Revolution is very winning and full of great writing and unforced neatnesses; I liked it a lot.

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"Moth" (Declan Greene - Malthouse)

Very impressive; reminded me a little of "Terminus" from a couple of years back - high praise - in its fluidity and confident theatricality (for want of a better way of putting it). Sharply, authentically, pungently written; it uses dialogue and stage in service of a work that couldn't have been done better in any other form. It employs artistry in the service of the everyday, or maybe vice versa, or more likely still, both at once.

(w/ Sunny, Kai + Neil, Hayley and Adam W, & C)

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"Princess Dramas" (Elfriede Jelinek - Red Stitch)

Stylised, disorienting, challenging - I had to work at this while watching it, consciously trying to be open to what it was doing and suspending/interrogating various immediate reactions, principally aesthetic and linearity (not just in the narrative sense) oriented ones. I have a feeling that the production, while vivid, may have obscured the words of the play itself but maybe that's unavoidable. "Princess Dramas" is the most difficult play I've been to for a while, but with more time to chew it over, it may well be one of the more rewarding; at any event, I've been sufficiently intrigued to try to track it down in translation.

(w/ C)

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"A Golem Story" (Lally Katz - Malthouse)

A much more traditionally narratival,character-y work than Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, and a lavish, sumptuously mounted thing it is. It's played relatively straight in its telling of the legend of the golem of Prague, all enwrapped with Jewish mysticism, and it's certainly engaging, but for me didn't hit home as hard as it clearly aimed to. Good, very good actually, but for mine, doesn't quite have the whatever-it-is that just sets some theatre apart from the pack and makes it really special.

(w/ Kai + Neil, Adam W, Trang and David; Sunny also ended up coming with friend Anthony)

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Kick-Ass & Scott Pilgrim vs the World

A matched pair of dvd hires (with C) - Kick Ass still kinetic and fun and slightly surprisingly hard-edged on a second viewing, Scott Pilgrim an unadulterated, snap-crackle-Pop delight, just like I'd imagined it would be.

"Whodunnit" (Playhouse Theatre, Hobart)

With all apologies, there's only so much to do in Hobart, so one night of our extended sojourn, we went to see this affectionate riff on the classic English country house murder mystery. It felt kind of provincial (would 'amateurish' sound less snobby?) - a nearby audience member actually took out a bag of nuts and started eating her way through it shortly after the second act started (average audience age: probably about 50) - but it was perfectly good natured, fine.

(w/ C)

Tina Fey - Bossypants

I do like Tina, of course I do, but this was slightly disappointing; I suppose the bar is set high by 30 Rock, so when Bossypants turned out to be more a few hours' worth of pleasant diversion with the occasional chuckle than cover to cover comic genius, there was a small element of let-down. Still, she makes the world a better place.

"Monanism" (MONA, Hobart)

MONA was what drew me to Tasmania, and happily I made it over there - with C - in time to catch the inaugural, eponymously apt exhibition. MONA itself is an impressive set-up, with its own ferry from town, a striking building housing the museum itself, very engaging and effective self-guided 'tour' material on customised ipods issued to all visitors at the door, and appealingly labyrinthine internal layout; we made a day of it - 11am ferry out, 5.30pm back, only a short break for lunch at the internal cafe - and while museum fatigue had started to set in by the end, I didn't feel close to having exhausted the art.

In part, that was because there's a focus on video and 'moving image' work (generally taking longer to absorb because of their specifically temporal dimension), reflecting the generally extremely contemporary flavour of the collection. There was something of a feel of the works being the collection of an individual (rather than an institution) - there were a few threads running through a lot of the works, particularly certain expressionist-surrealist and kitsch-grotesque elements, as well as a bit of a Romantic streak, although a thoroughly post-modernist, contemporary flavour is very much dominant in the exhibition as a whole.

There weren't many individual pieces that really stood out at the time or immediately after, but with the benefit of the passage of a week or so, here are some that have particularly stuck:
* Reynold Reynolds - "Secrets Trilogy" ("Six Easy Pieces", "Secret Life", "Secret Machine"). I stood there and watched the whole of this, a series of stop-motiony HD video transfers from 16mm and stills that reminded me of Svankmajer's Alice, cryptic meditations on art, science, philosophy, consciousness, corporeality, nature, life.
* Patrick Hall - "When My Heart Stops Beating". In a room - on one side, a wall of square boxes that can be pulled out to intone, repeatedly, 'I love you' and reveal a poetic, elliptical set of thoughts about love and loss; and on the facing side, a wall of vinyl records, spinning, each in its constituent layers radiating out from the centre. In some ways obvious, but also cute, and not entirely unaffecting.
* Anselm Kiefer - "Sternenfall / Shevirath Ha Kelim". A large room, unusually (for this exhibition/gallery) well lit by sunshine from outside. Large lead books, shattered glass on the floor. Monumental and personal. Unsurprisingly, artist studied law, literature, linguistics.
* Balint Zsako - Untitled (2010). Two women painting themselves then the canvas in a giddy flurry of inky, acrylic and water colour.
* Nolan - "Dog and duck hotel". A painting of a duck in the air alongside a hotel. Appealing. Curious.
* Callum Morton - "Babylonia". From outside, it's a huge, knobbly rock. You walk inside and find yourself in a low-ceilinged hotel-style corridor, swirling Italian-sounding romantic music, a mirror at either end of the corridor reflecting into infinity, all very Alice in Wonderland.

... and there are scattered images from others that have stuck in my mind, too, fragmented, disjointed, adding to an already cluttered internal associative landscape, which is all to the good.

All in all, a very satisfying trip.

Baskery - Fall Among Thieves

Kind of a blues-roots-country-jam thing - 'noise and beats' (Greta Bondesson), 'bottom and rattle' (Stella Bondesson), 'rhythm and whine' (Sunniva Bondesson), banjo and all - created by a trio of Swedish sisters. Enjoyable, but not memorable; best moment is the slamming, knees-up "One Horse Down".

Ghost World

...and another; like Heathers, its impact now diminished, though I still remember how it made me feel on first encounter.

(Previously - the first time, then the second.)

Heathers

Sometimes a film can be a signpost, different each time you come to it. Last time I watched Heathers, about six years ago, its razor-sharp, barbed edge and midnight-black satire still had an immediacy to it; this time, the primary register for me was nostalgic, a reflection of the different point in my life that I'm at...six years is a long time.

Source Code

Watchable, but really nothing special, neat premise notwithstanding.

(w/ C & Sunny + Sunny's friend Katherine)

"Six Characters in Search of an Author" (La Mama)

Lively, engaging, enjoyable staging of the Pirandello in the intimate surrounds of the La Mama theatre; as called for by the play itself, thematises and then obliterates the fourth wall with a touch at once light and serious.

(w/ C)

Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

He just keeps on keeping on; while Pratchett's more recent books have lost half a yard in laugh out loud-ness, their quality has remained remarkably high considering the number he's turned out, the large majority Discworld novels. I Shall Wear Midnight, a Tiffany Aching entry, continues the run - without in any way setting the world on fire, it's a very good read.

Shane Jones - Light Boxes

A quirky little bit of metafiction; on the insubstantial side, but good.