Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl depends for its success on the extent to which it's able to find a convincing integration of, on the one hand, its hyper-foregrounded knowingness about the conventions of narrative, genre and cinema that start with its title and play out in the narration, structuring and cinematography of the film itself, and on the other, its desire to present something heartfelt and emotionally resonant - which plays out amidst a specific kind of overtly indie tone and quirk in terms of characterisation and presentation of story.

I think its intentions are good, and it's probably aware of the hazards created by the plot choices it makes (and the misdirections in which it indulges) - but in the end it doesn't manage to resolve that tension in a coherent and authentically emotional (as opposed to sentimental) way, and, in missing that mark, dooms itself to being ultimately unsatisfying. I wonder if, in a different time, I might have responded differently to it - but we can only take these things as we find ourselves when we do so.

(w/ Alex)

Raymond Carver - A New Path to the Waterfall

Unexpectedly, this one's had an effect on me; parts of it have stuck with me at the level of both individual images and, more generally, how these poems made me feel as I was reading them.

As explained in the graceful introduction by Tess Gallagher - Carver's second wife and his intimate collaborator in the book's conception and compilation - A New Path is a late collection, most written by Carver following his diagnosis with lung cancer and in the knowledge that his (untimely) death was near. They tend towards simplicity, with feeling and meaning readily accessible and lit by a spare, tight-joined lyricism and sometimes a verging - traversing - along the boundary between prose and verse, and many take as their subject mortality and death, in a way that highlights how death and life are connected, and only make sense in relation to the other. The overall mood is, while sombre, consistently celebratory and affirmatory, and I found it rather moving - these poems throw out an empathetic bridge to the reader by drawing on both Carver's own very personal situation and its universality.

Interspersed throughout are very short extracts from Chekhov - contextualised in this way, the latent poetry that Gallagher and Carver saw in the Russian's prose is brought out - as well as from others, adding to the overall effect.

(a gift from Anna F)

"The Material Turn" (Margaret Lawrence Gallery) / "TV Moore: With Love & Squalor" (ACCA)

"The Material Turn"

A mixed bag, although it has prompted me to discover what New Materialism is. The two that I particularly liked were the "Chair in Co-operation with Orange (Extended)" installation in three parts (Katie Lee with Andrew Sainsbury) - and Sophie Takach's "Granular Gradation (After Wentworth)", which I initially (wrongly) took to be rather conceptually superficial but became much richer and more satisfying after I spent more time with it and from a range of different vantage points (closer and further away).

TV Moore

I hadn't actually expected to much like this one, having anticipated that it'd be too lurid for my tastes. But it turned out to be enjoyable - satirical, sure, but also inviting and imbued with a welcome sense of fun, starting from the first video "Frat Self SUN SPACE" (animation of frat boy type obliviously taking succession of selfies against increasingly more spectacular and ultimately cosmic backdrops).

(w/ trang)

Natalie Imbruglia - Male

A covers album - songs by men. There are some moments that are nice in their own right (like opener "Instant Crush", originally by Daft Punk featuring Julian Casablancas, and wistfully countryish "Goodbye in His Eyes", with a regendered title for a song originally by a group called the Zac Brown Band), others that are also nice but drawing at least some of that from the good associations with the original versions ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "I Melt With You"), and one that is a surprisingly bluegrassy and surprisingly enjoyable version of "Friday I'm In Love" - but as a whole it's on the bland side, alas.

Inside Out

So Inside Out is very good - completely charming, imaginatively interesting and sophisticated in its metaphorically literal rendition of the inside of a mind, and affecting. Amy Poehler is the perfect Joy (because she is a joy), while Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust all also come to life amidst Riley's wonderfully realised psychological landscape. And it kind of got to me, in a way that was unexpected because the poignancy was so well integrated with the colour and fancy; after all, it is about emotions.

Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational

Been intending to read this for a while - one of the classics of popular behavioural economics. Breezily illuminating.

"Betrayal" (MTC)

The backwards narrative (1977 to the start of the affair in 1968) held me - I wanted to find out what would happen, despite the dramatic irony generated by the first scene's revelation of how it would end. The betrayals unfold not only on the level of actions (with the central infidelity being only the most obvious example) but also through words and communication (and their failure and lack). I suspect that perhaps the play maybe wasn't best served by this production - there were a few aspects of the performances, and perhaps directorial choices, that detracted from the power of the whole - but it was good anyway.

(w/ Erandathie and Jon)

Lianne La Havas - Blood

Great voice, colourful production, two or three songs which hit a sweet spot of mature, soul-touched pop ("Green & Gold", "What You Don't Do", "Midnight") - although La Havas herself is young. As a whole, though, not super interesting.

"Antigone" (Malthouse)

I tend to be pretty strongly inclined towards 20th century and contemporary art (in the broad sense of 'art')[*] and Greek theatre has never particularly been an exception to that, but this play really struck me when I came across it via Cranlana a couple of years ago. It's difficult to say what it was about "Antigone" that resonated, but resonate it did - something about the interplay between the clarity and simplicity of the way it renders its central conflict between the dictates of the state and of personal conscience and the way in which it, literally, stages that conflict without sacrificing nuance[**] or descending to the merely didactic or pedagogic (much less moralising). Somehow, it felt timeless - in some important sense universal.

... all of which goes some way to explaining why, while there were aspects of this production that I responded to and thought were strong, overall I found it frustrating. While I don't have any objection to contemporary stagings of classic works seeking contemporary resonance (including at the political level - and especially in the deeper sense of what is at stake in politics being the kind of society that we want to live in, as opposed to the shallow sound and fury that so frequently characterises party politics), the drawing of parallels to current debates and particularly the critique (however merited) of the nationalist and even incipiently fascist trends apparent in recent years in various governments globally was unnecessarily overt and repetitive, throwing me out of the inherent drama of what was transpiring between the characters amidst the ever-present (even in absence) 'ship of state' (the state here presented much more as oppressive leviathan than as plausible source of moral unity in the way that I recall it as being) - the play itself is strong enough not to need such window dressing or an obvious slant in perspective.

Having said all of that, while I thought it was ultimately a failure, it was at least an interesting one, in which the outlines of the powerful source material could be clearly seen, and with elements of an arresting production: good set and sound design (not least the river of blood); some interesting - although inconsistent - choices in diction and tone of delivery of dialogue (I would have liked it if the whole had been more consistently either anti-naturalistic, or fluently based in the Sophoclean text - or indeed both); a strong performance from Jane Montgomery Griffiths (who also adapted the script) as Creon; and a turn from Emily Milledge (who I've liked previously - eg) in the central role that left me in two minds but was certainly vivid and well defined).

(w/ Laura F)

* * *

[*] When it comes to theatre, Shakespeare being an obvious exception.
[**] Having recently read this article at Sara's suggestion, I use the word advisedly.

Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free

Looser and a touch less serious than the wonderful Southeastern, this new one offers more tuneful, unaffectedly wistful slices of americana that don't mind soaring a little bit once in a while - a nice listen.

Paul Dolan - Happiness by Design

One of the levels - and there are many - on which behavioural insights and its associated streams of thought appeal to me is the possibility that its insights could meaningfully improve my own life and perhaps even make me a better person via differently constructed choice architectures, greater awareness of my own biases, etc. And so I'd been thinking for a while that it would be great if, in addition to the many about its application to policy-making or more generally about its many interesting general emanations, there was a book about how to apply BI &c to making one's own life (and oneself) better. So it was pleasing when I came across just this one, endorsed by Daniel Kahneman on the front cover no less!

I've now read it a couple of times through over several months, discovered to my amusement that MH had written a letter to its author criticising parts of the book, given a copy of it to someone else and all that, and found it well worthwhile. I wouldn't call it a self-help book, and if it is then it's the first I've ever read - but nonetheless there's a lot in here that I think has been helping me to think about, and act on, things differently.

It turns out that the most interesting bits for me are in its first half, which is about what happiness is, what causes it, and why we aren't happier - the definition of happiness as involving both pleasure and purpose is one of those very simple formulations that, once articulated, seems both obviously true and the source of a large amount of new insight, while the metaphor of the allocation of (the scarce resource of) attention as a production process leading to happiness, where what we pay attention to and how we do so is a vital determinant of happiness is also, for me, an intuitive one - shades, even, of my old friend phenomenology and subjective world-constituting consciousness.

The matrix of types of spillover between different behaviours is also useful - one positive behaviour leading to another ('promoting') or instead to a negative ('permitting' - ie moral licensing), and similarly a negative behaviour leading to another ('promoting' again) or instead to a positive ('purging').

The second section, about 'delivering' happiness by deciding, designing and doing, is also quite good, though there's not a large amount there that feels new - priming, defaults, commitments, social norms - although the emphasis on the attentional dimension is a bit different. But, still, it was worth reading (twice!) and especially for the earlier bits stepping through a pretty concrete and satisfying consideration of happiness itself.

"David Bowie is" (ACMI)

Very enjoyable, and a reminder of what an intriguing, bordering-on-genius figure Bowie indeed is, and more particularly of how many great, truly iconic songs are scattered across his back catalogue. (Low is still my favourite album of his, "Ashes to Ashes" or "Heroes" my favourite individual song.)

(w/ Ash)

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

Pleasant if unremarkable; well, Belle and Sebastian are never that far off the mark. Carey Mulligan acquits herself decently, helped by the sweetness of the (title) song that she guests on.