The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Straight after this one finished on Saturday night, back row, imax, the girl to my right - a stranger - turned around to me and exclaimed "how good was that!" and I completely agreed - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was very satisfying.

Having read the books is a double-edged sword; on the one hand, it's meant that I've been primed to enjoy the films, but on the other it removes some of the impact of the turns and twists, many of which weren't at all predictable on the first pass. But in any case, like with the books, the first one was good, but the second improves on it - it hits harder on the ethical responsibilities and consequences of revolution and of Katniss's choices as well as the trauma of her experiences, and it stays impressively tough-minded in its treatment of the whole subject matter while also delivering an unflagging, enveloping piece of entertainment through the whole of its nearly 2 1/2 hours...both V for Vendetta and Children of Men [*] seem reasonable comparisons, though maybe the most impressive thing about the Hunger Games films is that, actually, they don't seem to fit strongly into any existing genre, such that it's the events of the story story themselves - and, to a perhaps lesser extent, the characters and ideas - that are most striking.

(w/ Cass)

[*] Worth noting, re-reading what I thought about that latter straight after seeing it, that time and at least one subsequent viewing have significantly raised my opinion of it.

The Avengers

Fun but I don't really see why everyone was so all up about how great it was; having said that, I did like the sheer belligerence of the bit where Thor and Iron Man fight, and all of the super-hero characters are pretty enjoyable really.

Stories We Tell

Pretty interesting and indeed about the stories we tell, and made me wonder whether Polley had discovered the 'truth' about her father before Don't Come Knocking, in which she plays the oddly parallel role of a young woman searching for a man who may or may not be her father.

The Hunger Games

I happened to see the trailer for the next one a few weeks ago and have been looking forward to it ever since; thought I might as well watch the first film again beforehand. (Also, last time I watched it was before I - and, possibly, the whole world - discovered how great Jennifer Lawrence is.) It's good!

Patty Griffin - Silver Bell

The love affair continues. This one was originally recorded around 1999, 2000 - so between Flaming Red (which formed much of the soundtrack for the recent driving around WA, songs like "Tony", "Christina", "Wiggley Fingers" and "Blue Sky" really hitting the spot) and 1000 Kisses - but got lost in record label disaster and so was only officially released (with some production changes from the bootleg that's apparently been in circulation for years) earlier this year. Clocking in at a generous 14 songs, stylistically it bounces around a bit, a mix of mellower numbers (often drifting with something of a mysterious air) and more rocky ones, but the songs, they're so good. Just wow.

Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl

I was looking for something pacy to read, and picked Gone Girl because of its strong showing in this year's Tournament of Books. A couple of nights later and I see what all the fuss was about - across the alternating narrations between Nick and Amy within each of its three parts, it's a suspenseful, surprising, and surprisingly thoughtful (not to mention very dark) picture of the nasty insides of a marriage between two extremely flawed people. Very difficult to put down once started.

How I Met Your Mother season 8

I've gotta say, after all this following along, it was a genuine thrill to finally see the face of the mother in this season's closing shot. There's a definite feeling of moving towards a close through the season, with various loose ends from the previous seven resolved to varying degrees...it's been quite the ride. One final season to go, I think.

(1-5; 6; 7)

Laura Cantrell - No Way There From Here

Laura Cantrell's one of that small handful of artists whose music I love so much and in a way that I really can't properly describe. There's something so simple about it, and so sweet, and listening to her it always feels like she's never gone away.

(In fact, it's been a little while, depending on how you figure. 2005's Humming By The Flowered Vine is where it all started for me, and while I quickly worked my way backwards through Not The Tremblin' Kind, When The Roses Bloom Again and her debut ep (not to mention all the other stuff available on her website), in terms of new material there's actually only been the "Trains and Boats and Planes" ep in 2008 and 2011's covers record Kitty Wells Dresses since Humming.)

Anyway, No Way There From Here doesn't miss a beat - it's as disarmingly wonderful as anything else she's ever released. At first I was particularly stuck on the delicately country-ballady title track, but my affections have since moved more to "Starry Skies", a gently, joyously swooning shimmy that's just a little bit transportive; having said that, it's all good - no low points here. So glad to have it to listen to.

"Van Gogh, Dali & Beyond: The World Reimagined" (Art Gallery of WA, Perth)

Compiled from holdings of the NY MoMA, tracing the development of three totemic genres - landscape, still life and portrait - from the late 19th century through to today.

Opens with one from each, all very strong - Van Gogh's "The Olive Trees" (1889), Cezanne's "Still Life With Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, and Oranges" (1902-06) and Toulouse-Lautrec's "La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge" (1891-92) - and invites reflection by closing with another trio: JoAnn Verburg's "Olive Trees after the Heat" (1998 - four large photograph panels, a sort of triptych in four parts), Urs Fischer's "Untitled" (2000 - a suspended piece made up of a half-apple and half-pear bolted together) and Elizabeth Peyton's "Jake at the New Viet Huong (1995 - actually not a world away from the paired Toulouse-Lautrec).

In between, it takes the three in turn. Probably unsurprisingly, given what draws me in art, I was most drawn to the 'Landscape' section; it, like the others, was essentially a tour of modern through to contemporary art - the fauves, expressionists, surrealists, cubists through to more conceptual work all represented, along with some of those harder to categorise but essential individuals like Cezanne, Kandinsky ("Church at Murnau", 1909), Klimt ("The Park", 1910 or earlier - I was very taken with this one), Duchamp, Matta, Gerhard Richter ("Meadowland", 1985 - an oil work that looks very much like a blurred photo).

'Still life' was haunted by the mournful sound of Laurie Anderson's "Self-Playing Violin" (1974); I was struck by the Klee apples, Boccioni's "Development of a bottle in space" (1912 - the futurism somehow made more sense to me in a bronze sculpture than it usually does in a painting) and another bronze work, Lichtenstein's "Glass IV" (1976)...given that still lives are about objects, pop art made much more of a showing in this section.

Somehow very few of the portraits made an impression, but that one that did, really lodged in the stomach for me. It was a series of photos by Nicholas Nixon, actually - black and white portraits of his wife and her three sisters ('the Brown Sisters') taken at five year intervals from 1976 through to 2011, so eight altogether (so far), all in the same ordering and all outdoors, mostly in Massachusetts - although I see from the MoMA website that there are actually many more.

There was something about them that really got to me - I guess there's an inherent poignancy in being able to see the ageing process, but I also responded quite personally to them, trying to place myself within the chronology (by age) and also seeing elements of people I know in the appearances, faces and expressions...particularly in the relatively earlier, but certainly not the earliest, of them.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians

After the first five minutes of magical wonderment passed it began to be socially awkward, blatantly following the tree-spirit-thing like this, but it didn't seem to want to acknowledge them, and they weren't about to let it go.

The Magicians isn't generally as blatant as that about its juxtaposition/melding of the contemporary-NYC-coming-of-age and fantasy lit genres, but it's a nice example to hint at what Grossman's about with this very appealing novel. The characters are believable, and so are the magic and the school at which Quentin and the others he meets there - as to those others, it's the usual miscellany but that doesn't make them any the less appealing, Alice and Eliot especially...the pitch could maybe be Harry Potter meets The Secret History (not that I've read the HP books) - which I guess would be enough to sell oh maybe 90% of my friends on it! There is a sense of wonder and, in moments, lightness to the book - but also a nicely, mutedly melancholy and downbeat air to it that works a treat.

Terry Pratchett - Dodger

Not a Discworld novel but feels a fair bit like one, not least because of the early Victorian setting; Charles Dickens is a major character. Undemanding and readable.