An aside

I read an article yesterday which pointed out that 'It Follows' means 'therefore' - a nice point, and what a terrific film it is.

The Assassin

Has an unusual pace and approach to narrative to it - not just in its slowness and ellipses, but also in how the interiority of its central character's motivations is thereby framed. There's something almost abstract about it - all the essential elements of a martial arts film present, but distilled and filtered to emerge as something unusual and elusive. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed The Assassin, but it left an impression.

(w/ Rob)

Richard Mosse - "The Enclave" & Celeste Boursier-Mougenot - "Clinamen" (NGV)

Richard Mosse's multi-screen installation - war-rent Congo rendered on film capturing parts of the colour spectrum not ordinarily visible:

"Clinamen", like a blue version of Kapoor's "My Red Homeland". And, because blue, liquid and musical (porcelain bowls chiming as they meet, moved around the circular pool by subtle currents) rather than waxily earthy and monumental. Liked it very much.
 

Spectre

Entertaining enough, mostly, from moment to moment yet overall kind of uninteresting. Skyfall was much better.

(w/ Erandathie)

Eighties music

A couple of Friday nights ago, dinner with Ruth at Chin Chin and the music seemed to be spot on - Fleetwood Mac when we walked in ("Go Your Own Way" I think), "I Want to Know What Love Is" (actually a really good song - who knew?), it might have been a Cure song next (can't remember which - maybe one of the singles off Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) - and anyway it took quite a while before I realised that the common element amidst the run of songs that was generating such positive vibes on my part was that they were all from the 80s, which was a touch surprising seeing as the decade most likely to send me (so to speak) must surely rather be the one that followed (ie the 90s, during which I grew up). Anyway, others included "With or Without You", "Billie Jean", "Take My Breath Away", "The Killing Moon", more Cure, etc, etc and plenty more that have since slipped my mind. Altogether very good.

(somewhat a propos)

"Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes" (NGV)

A fine exhibition, taking a broad perspective on its subject, from an enjoyable selection across the 30s and 40s (James Gleeson,[*] Eric Thake, Peter Purves Smith, Russell Drysdale, Roy de Maistre, Robert Klippel) through to some thoroughly contemporary pieces - in many cases much more in the vein of 'echoes' of surrealism than being 'actually' surrealist through and through.

[*] As an aside, Gleeson is one of the first artists whose work I can remember striking me - I don't remember which painting it was, but it was probably in the NGV's permanent collection and years ago, long before I'd come across surrealism as an idea or movement or indeed discovered any particular interest in art within myself.

Game of Thrones season 5

Was this season particularly absorbing or was I just paying more attention than to previous ones? It seemed like all of the many narrative threads running through it were equally interesting, with many of them feeling like they got a pretty decent amount of time through individual episodes and across the season (especially Jon, Daenerys, Arya) - the show pretty much nailed its formula from the get go back in season 1, but it's finely honed by now, delivering its dramatic punches with verve (nearly every episode ends with something really bad happening to someone important).

One interesting aspect is the way that, as the show has departed in various ways for the books and, by the end of season 5, in some respects actually gone beyond what the books are up to, the two have increasingly intermingled into a whole that's intriguingly indeterminate - increasingly they seem like aspects of a single story or source, yet the clear inconsistencies between tv series and books make the melding imperfect, so that the 'actual story' has become a particularly fluid notion or entity.

Also, I think that this was the first time that the show has introduced a major-seeming character and killed them off in the same episode - played, it happens, by Birgitte Hjort Sørensen aka Katrine from Borgen.

Rick and Morty season 2

hehe

(season 1)

Beach House - Depression Cherry

A record made not for parsing or analysis, but rather for experiencing in a single continuous stream. Sweetly humming, like aural fairy floss, in the best way.

Black Mass

A gangster movie, aiming for prestige status and well made but ultimately with no point to it - nothing new in the story it was telling, no particular psychological or societal insight, no real connection to wider world.

(w/ Laura M and Andreas)