Hugo

A sweet love letter to cinema. For once - and aptly - the 3D actually enhances the film (the only other film I've seen use it as well was Coraline). The two children at its centre are each just right; the many established adult actors around them disappear impressively into their roles: Robin Williams and Sacha Baron Cohen I only picked after watching them for some time; Emily Mortimer I thought I recognised but wasn't sure about; and I missed the fact that Melies was Ben Kingsley altogether until the credits - though Jude Law and the completely ummistakeable Christopher Lee hold up their ends well too. There's a hint of both of those great fantasists Gilliam and Jeunet to Hugo, but it's softer-edged and more golden than anything that either of those others have done (though, for the most part, correspondingly without the shadowy, sinister nightmare edges that really make films like The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus or The City of Lost Children linger); and it's a film utterly in love with Paris. I liked it.

(w/ C)

Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

I’ve been listening to this album pretty solidly for two or three weeks now (post-laneway), and have spent much of that time trying to figure out what classic – or at least older – acts Girls reminds me of, but I’m increasingly thinking that maybe there are no particular influences or touchstones here, but rather a general vibe taking in a whole heap of iconic, mostly guitar-y outfits from the 60s and the 70s (Beatles, Beach Boys, and Big Star, to name just a few, though really it’s the general  backdrop of which they’re crucial parts, rather than those three bands themselves) with dashes of a more modern guitar-rock sound as well as a surprising folky strand. 

It’s a compelling mixture, and a strong record – high points are the driving, catchy “Alex” (the scything Manic Street Preachers-style guitars are what really make it), the wistful, slightly countrified “My Ma”, “Vomit”, with its gasped/blared ‘looking for love’ refrain, the most anthemic indie-rock anthem I’ve heard in a while, and the pastoral epic “Just A Song”.

“Song Truck”

Not that I make a lot of mix cds these days, but when I do, I definitely tend towards the shorter and more carefully-chosen end of the spectrum; this one (from JF) fits that bill, at a bite-sized nine tracks. It starts off with a song, the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Shake Some Action”, that, wreathed in cascading guitar lines, sounds like a lost classic, and maybe it is; I also particularly like “Oslo Skyline” by an outfit called Jaga Jazzist (an instrumental, dynamic, dramatic, interestingly unpredictable and wendy, and by its ending, heavy as anything) and the frankly uncategorisable “Beg Waves” by Pony Tail (if you threw Life Without Buildings, Love Is All and a fair dose of crazy into a big pot and stirred, the result might be something similar). Elsewhere, there’s a baroque, Magnetic Fields-y song called “Ban Marriage” by the Hidden Cameras, the Chills’ “As Far As I Can See” (reminds me of the Triffids), Destroyer doing his best Talk Talk on a song called “Kaputt”, a sweet folk ditty called “Scarred For Life” (Slapp Happy), David Sylvian’s “Small Metal Gods” and the first Lambchop song I’ve actually liked in “Paperback Bible”.

The Hollowmen seasons 1 & 2

Funny and ever topical.

(last time)

Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey

The move from his usual realm and the seemingly too-cute premise (a world in which the ability to see colours is limited and determines class and social status) had made me sceptical, but Shades of Grey is actually good - very well-written and quite sharply satirical, though not as funny as Fforde's Thursday Next / nursery crime books.

Harry Turtledove - Into The Darkness

Bought to fill some hotel/airport time in Sydney over the weekend. Finished it, but it's nothing special, though the WWI(I) analogues were a nice touch.

Gotye - Making Mirrors

"Somebody That I Used To Know" is one of an increasingly long list of extremely popular songs that I discovered for myself - in this case, a few months ago, early morning radio hearing followed by groggy lyric googling ("Gotye? Who?"), only to be told when I mentioned it to David that it was then number 1 on the pop charts - being happily innocent of a lot of what gets played on the radio nowadays. (The most amusing example, maybe, being the discovery of Rihanna's "Umbrella" - genuinely a great song - via a live Amanda Palmer cover of it.) Anyhow, it's the song is memorable, the rest of the album less so (though not wholly uninteresting), etc.

Siri Hustvedt - The Summer Without Men

Siri Hustvedt is obvious a very careful writer, and very aware of voice and effect in her writing; The Summer Without Men is not only the first of her novels that I've read to be written from the perspective of a female protagonist (cf What I Loved and The Sorrows of an American) (*), but it's a novel that is overtly preoccupied with femaleness and female experience); taking all of those together, it's interesting that this is also the first of hers that I've read to occasionally strike a false note in its presentation of character and experience.

That said, I doubt there's any particular psychological or even gendered element to the presence of what are, after all, only occasional lapses in what is generally a very fluently written, engaging work, when compared to the near-perfection of those two earlier novels. More likely, they come about because The Summer Without Men sees Hustvedt stretching herself, exploring a looser, lighter style, more playful and with more flashes of humour, and a less overwhelmingly cerebral, emotionally controlled (though still extremely analytical, sensitive, erudite, etc) narrative voice. And while it hasn't struck the same resonances for me, it's still very good - thoughtful, wry, insightful.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Convincingly grey and shadowy; well made, and terrifically (and unshowily) acted by all, especially Oldman.

St Jerome's Laneway Festival, Saturday 4 February

My return to laneway-ing last year at the current Footscray site, following a break after the first three (2005, 2006, 2007), made me think that the organisers had got it right with set-up and facilities, making for an enjoyable festival experience even though the music itself tended towards being merely good rather than in any way exciting. Anyhow, this year was another noticeably smooth operation and the music was overall a notch better, so a definite score.

Looking at the lineup beforehand was another reminder of how out of touch I am these days. It's been a long time since I had any idea what was going on in the pop charts or any real contact with the mainstream of triple j's playlist; it's really the pitchfork/internet music-writing stream that would be most relevant for laneway, but my travels only cross that particular stream from time to time. Still, the absence of any obvious monstrously huge acts was a drawcard in itself, and there was enough there to make me think it was worth a go.

We arrived reasonably early - C wanted to see Husky, who were on at 12 - but I lost a while to needing to organise some work stuff on the phone, so while I heard some of Geoffrey O'Connor (of Crayon Fields fame) from a distance (it sounded good), the first set I caught properly was one of the ones I was most keen on, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They were great - listening to Belong at home, it was always obvious that these were songs - anthems - that were made to be played live, and loud, and the band rocked convincingly, with the more subtle elements of the songs preserved too; also given a run were several from their first lp which were equally good in the early afternoon sunshine.

After that, saw a bit of a band called Austra that the booklet compared to Kate Bush and Bat For Lashes - didn't make much of an impression. Abandoned them for Neil Finn's Pajama Club - pleasant but also largely passed me by (though their cover of "Moonage Daydream" was good).

We'd intended to see Laura Marling, but changed our mind and went to see a band called Girls instead - turned out to be a great call. On yesterday's evidence, they're kind of a jangly guitar-rock/power pop band with maybe a few jagged edges, drawing on past greats (Big Star came to mind; also, at times, the cleaner end of the Replacements' repertoire) but contemporary-sounding. A good find.

After that, some r&r on the grass (I'm getting old, and it was a hot day) with Twin Shadow in the background. Then over to see Cults, about whom I was probably most excited, having listened lots to that album of theirs over the last few months. They put in a good set, and only having one album to draw on, played all of their good songs - it would've been better indoors, I suspect...although the late afternoon-ness and river/faux-tropical backdrop fitted their Spector-y vibes, the singer's voice wasn't the strongest and while they were deliberately mixing up the dynamics so that the choruses would hit harder (which worked), it meant the other bits got a bit lost at times. Still, it was fun to see them.

Then, a bit of Feist, who I would've wanted to see anyway (Metals is still getting plenty of spins) but particularly after everyone said how great her Palais show earlier in the week was - she was good, and willing to mix things up a bit from the recorded versions. And after that, over to Chairlift, of whom I didn't actually expect great things, but they delivered a good set. I didn't know most of what they played - it was nearly all new stuff, off a just released (seven days ago) second lp - but it sounded good, poppy and fun.

M83 closed it out - I haven't really listened to them before, but their widescreen shoegazey electro-rockisms were a perfect festival closer.

(w/ C and Rob - ran into Dale B, Julian H and Leana)

"Unanswered" (@ Theatre Works)

A contemporary dance performance - one of C's instructors was in it. Not bad.

(w/ C)

The Space Opera Renaissance edited by David G Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

An attempt at a definitive genre overview anthology, complete with introductory essay and biographical and contextualising notes about each story's author. Easy to read, but I prefer fantasy.

Nive Nielsen & The Deer Children - Nive Sings!

"Room" got completely under my skin (in a good way) last year, an uncategorisable treat. The album is broadly more of the same - ie Greenlandic indie - though not as memorable as that lead-off track ("Done & Gone" is my favourite of the others, mainly for its crashy ending).