Game of Thrones season 4

The first season that I haven't been at least, say, 90 per cent confident about what was coming next at each turn, which I think was due to a combination of the books being less fresh in my mind and the tv series departing more from the books in any case. And, as a result, more immersive and involving, with the deaths of sympathetic characters continuing to hit home, plenty of others also meeting their ends along the way, and the remainder continuing to go deeper and deeper in their manipulations and turns.

"David Shrigley: Life and Life Drawing" (NGV)

heh, pretty good, the drawings especially.

White Night Melbourne, Saturday 21 February

Went by myself this year, heading out about 4.30am, skimming lightly over the surface of familiar sights lit up anew.

The Bourne Identity

Sunday night, on tv. Slightly poor effort on my part on the better living front. As an aside, and not that this film is a particularly good showcase for it, but actually Matt Damon is a good actor.

"Richard Avedon: People" (Potter Museum)

Black and whites of a roll call of luminaries, with an emphasis on New York and the 60s - Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Truman Capote, a young Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Dorothy Parker (very large and rawly exposed), Bob Dylan ('65), J Robert Oppenheimer, Pablo Picasso, Twiggy, Rudolph Nureyev, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol. More contemporarily, Michaelangelo Antonioni (with wife - one of the best), Merce Cunningham, Harold Bloom, Bjork, Kate Moss. Also, three lovely blurred shots of Santa Monica Beach, 1963.

Rick and Morty season 1

Creative lunacy - from Dan Harmon. Excellent.

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For

Not as exciting as the original, but entirely watchable still. Eva Green well cast!

"Had enough of talking politely": Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass

Sweepingly, elegantly orchestrated pop of the kind that harks inevitably back to Dusty Springfield and does it well, Prass's prettily reedy voice carrying through an appealing set of songs. Best: "My Baby Don't Understand Me", "Bird of Prey", "Violently".

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I can't remember where it came from, but for a little while now I've been feeling like rewatching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's one of those films that affected me in a big way on the first go around and has assumed an even greater significance since, and coming back to it the other night (Thursday) I felt a sense of anticipation that no doubt conditioned my response to it as much as the emotional resonance that it's come to carry (the two of course being related).

On this repeat watching, knowing where it was heading took away some of the charge of that first viewing, as did that anticipation of the effect that it might have. But there was a freshness and an affecting quality to it that has endured - I didn't feel it so intensely this time, whether because of second viewing or time of life or both...but there's still something there.

Also, the pre-film trailers on the blu-ray: Control, Lost in Translation, Amelie. Not too shabby.

Belle and Sebastian @ the Palais, Sunday 1 February

Ten years on from the last time that I saw Belle and Sebastian at the Palais and oh what memories and associations their music brings. The show started with two new songs, and then it was "Seeing Other People" and we were off.

For me, lp-wise, it's always been love and recognition in re the greatness of the first three (blue, green, red) plus a sentimental attachment to Fold Your Hands Child..., and this concert made me realise that time has elevated Dear Catastrophe Waitress somewhat in the direction of that last; it also reminded me of just how deeply writ their whole songbook is in me, with every one of those back catalogue numbers so intimately familiar.

Objectively, the gig was probably fine, really, not outstanding, and I enjoyed it accordingly - moderately, not extravagantly (not even in that quiet way that really good shows can take one from time to time). But, clearly, this isn't about objectivity - and so.

(w/ Nicolette)

"The lengths we will go to" (2014 cd)

1. Tree to Grow – The Lone Bellow
The Lone Bellow (Descendant; 2013)

2. Red Eyes – The War on Drugs
Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian; 2014)

3. Traveling Alone – Jason Isbell
Southeastern (Southeastern; 2013)

4. Afraid of Nothing – Sharon Van Etten
Are We There (Jagjaguwar; 2014) (best album of the year)

5. Waitress Song – First Aid Kit
Stay Gold (Columbia; 2014)

6. Late Bloomer – Jenny Lewis
The Voyager (Warner; 2014)

7. Poor Howard – Robert Plant
Lullaby and … the Ceaseless Roar (Nonesuch; 2014) (despite the distracting song title…)

8. The Devil Is All Around – Shovels & Rope
Swimmin’ Time (Dualtone; 2014)

A short one, but distilled down, this was what my 2014 sounded like…turns out there’s a pretty clear theme, with the roll call going Brooklyn (albeit transplanted from the south), Pennsylvania, Alabama, Brooklyn again, Sweden, California/Nevada, England, South Carolina, with even the two who aren’t ‘from’ there showing a clear yen towards American music. 

"Alex Prager" (NGV)

Heavily stylised, Hollywood-refracted photos and short films from an artist who seems very LA. I liked "Face in the crowd", in which Elizabeth Banks - as it turns out, an actor with exactly the kind of old style glamour (and beauty) for the part - emerges as the central figure in a three-screen, 12 minute drama of individual stories amidst a crowd in which much seems to be telegraphed and yet nothing is fully disclosed.

"Menagerie" (ACCA)

Animal-themed, of course. And to some extent a departure from the ACCA norm in including a large amount of non-contemporary art - mostly (if I remember right) paintings of dogs and horses from the 1800s ... although it's possible I have that wrong, not having paid that much attention to them.

More memorable were some of the contemporary pieces further in; Annika Eriksson's video narrative of poetic anomie and city-drift as narrated by an every-dog figure observing packs of stray mutts outside Istanbul, "I am the dog that was always here"; Aija-Liisa Ahtila's meditatively emotive, three-channel "The Hour of Prayer" about the death of her dog (she's caught my eye at ACCA before); Abdul-Rahman Abdullah's three small installations, each comprising a carved wooden cat and other object, "The day the sky fell down" (observing fallen chandelier on the ground), "The day the world was still" (beneath lampshade) and "The day that night was day" (atop tall wooden post).

Shehan Karunatilaka - Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

About cricket and late 20th century Sri Lanka in more or less equal parts; entertaining and sideways educational likewise, though not entirely my kind of scene with its hints of the picaresque and my usual difficulty in really enjoying the idiom and argot that often characterises literature from this part of the world. (Lent to me unprovoked by Erandathie.)

Sia - 1000 Forms of Fear

This is a pretty terrific record, and Sia seems like the complete package - soaringly dramatic songs made better by unexpected details (small and large), vocals likewise and therefore a perfect match. Predictably, I like "Fire Meet Gasoline", the most straight up power ballad on an album that has several of them, even though it sounds a lot like Beyonce's "Halo"; also the gigantic "Chandelier", Chvrches-esque "Burn the Pages" (which also sounds like it could've come off 1989, and there's a whole tale about contemporary pop music there too probably - or, at least, about my own tastes) and skitteringly quirky "Elastic Heart". 

Borgen seasons 2 & 3

Also likeable about Borgen is that, for all the focus on the machinations and not infrequent skulduggery, it allows the politicians to be smart and articulate - both the relatively principled ones and those who are less so. I must say that I like the permanent secretary type figure, too (Niels Erik) - formidable and inscrutable but seemingly also motivated by a strong impulse towards public service, including when his views of what this means don't line up with those of the current administration. And Katrine also becomes a more substantial figure over these seasons. I was just thinking about what it is that makes me particularly like Borgen and actually I'm not sure exactly where the appeal lies - somewhere in the combination of the political and social depiction and the story-telling, I think.

(season 1)