Bombshell

Stylish and surprisingly tense (surprising because we know how the story ends, with Roger Ailes' deserved downfall), and - importantly for multiple reasons - convincing in its depiction of sexual harassment. Also very strong performances. But I struggled to get past both the intensely privileged 'white feminism' nature of it and, despite the film's downplaying of these aspects and emphasis on their humanising features, the harm that the central figures have done through their day jobs on Fox News. So even though it was very watchable, I didn't like it near as much as I otherwise might have.

(w/ R)

Joy Williams - The Quick and the Dead

The clearest through-line's that of the three teenagers - Alice, Annabel and Corvus - ranging motherless and wild in and around what I'm fairly sure is a smallish city, or perhaps other urban development, in desert-laden Arizona, and they're also the most intriguing for a range of reasons, well, especially Alice.

But the many others who intersect with them and each other in various direct and indirect ways - Annabel's father Carter, who is very literally haunted by his dead wife Ginger; the only slightly older Ray, whose encounter with them in the desert leaves him tied up and abandoned for the supposed crime of killing a ram; Sherwin, the dissolute piano player with whom Alice somewhat takes up; late-appearing eight year old Emily Jane Pickless; and more - are just as integral to the design of The Quick and the Dead, as the novel circuitously roams through its many oblique perspectives on life and death, which Williams evidently considers as both a dyad and a many-dimensioned spectrum.

The Quick and the Dead is sharp, funny, stormy and elusive, in a way which sometimes reminded me of those first few Pynchon novels. There are characters and they have arcs, and there's a strong sense of a morality working its way through the events, but not in the sense that individuals seem to meet their just deserts based on anything like conventional ideas of responsibility for their actions or character (in the other sense) - and indeed several come to what could be considered untimely ends along the story's twisting path, while others (Ray's parents, say) really seem only to have walk-on parts. As a whole, the novel feels like it can't be grasped through any conventional approach - it's too sideways-of-conventional and slippery for that.

There's something of the jagged lightning-flash nature of Williams' short stories - in The Visiting Privilege and Ninety-Nine Stories of God - without quite the same sustained effect. But that's an extremely high bar and The Quick and the Dead is its own beast - including a permeating air of the grotesque and even gothic - and quite something marvellous at that.

Come on Up to the House: Women Sing Waits

None of these are revelations: Tom Waits is a great songwriter, his songs come to us in a distinctive package when performed by Waits himself (which can be a barrier to, as well as an integral part of, enjoying those songs), and covers by other artists - often female - can work well. 

Also not revelations: Aimee Mann, Patty Griffin and Rosanne Cash (to name just my personal biggest three) are each magnificent singers, and the pool is deep in that broad genre - more of a style and a sensibility really - spanning roots, folk, Americana and 'classic' singer-songwriter pop, especially when it comes to women.

One thing I hadn't realised: there've been big covers of Waits's songs before other than Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train", notably the Eagles' "Ol' 55" and Bruce Springsteen's "Jersey Girl".

So this collection isn't revelatory but it has many nice songs of which the best are probably the versions involving the exact singers and songs I've already mentioned, especially Mann's "Hold On", Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne's "Ol' 55" and Corinne Bailey Rae's "Jersey Girl"; Rosanne Cash singing "Time" has an unsurprising depth too.

Jane Harper - The Dry

Page turner with bonus Australian-ness very much including our culture's dark side.

Little Women

Wonderful movie, so finely put together in every sense, much of the artistry especially apparent on the second viewing. I found it very moving. Lady Bird was a marvel (I also saw it twice); Little Women might be just as good.

(w/ R then a second time by myself)

[29/1/20: The scene that's stuck with me is the one where Jo tells her mother about her frustration that women are seen as only fit for love, before adding quaveringly that she's so lonely, and the way her mother doesn't go to her but instead - lovingly - stays where she is so that Jo is left to work through what she's feeling herself, drawing on her own strength, just as her mother has done all her life, that latter bit being all subtext rather than explicit and even more powerful for it. 

And that pivotal scene is connected to the film's ending. My interpretation had been that, in this 'Little Women', Jo didn't end up marrying Friedrich, but instead stayed true to the aspect of herself that led to dedication to writing rather than to marrying or love, and the intercut final scene at the educational institution with the whole family celebrating Mrs March's birthday the way her novel ended, with the conventional ending in marriage (in this case, as opposed to the other option of death) being that insisted upon by her publisher. But everyone I've talked to since had read that final scene as being the literal ending, happening as well as the publication of Jo's book, or at least thought it was ambiguous - which led me to think of it as actually indeterminate, as in left not 'ambiguous' in the sense that it's up to the viewer to decide, but rather in an either/both state which is deliberately unresolved ... which is an even more elegant solution on Gerwig's part to the problems of adapting Alcott's novel.]

[1/2/20: This morning I've been thinking about the scene with Beth and Jo on the beach, fine sand blowing out to water, Beth saying you can't stop the tide, Jo saying she will hold it back. It's affecting in its own right - one of Gerwig's clearest directorial flourishes, and it comes off, having the air of the iconic even on first viewing in its rendition of impending loss and its characters' competing emotions and responses, resistance and quiet acceptance - and heightened by its placement in a sequence of intercutting and juxtaposition between past and present; it's one of the film's several such sequences to great effect, in addition to the underlying effects its structure creates, throughout and at its climax.] 

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War

There's a bit of fizz to this novella-length fiction, constructed by its two authors in a series of short episodes and inventively dispatched letters between the two time travelling protagonists, Red and Blue, agents of opposing sides in an endless war through time and multiverse who develop a romance. It's a tricky conceit to pull off, though, and it veers a bit naff at times, and its somewhat thin science fiction premise would have benefited from more depth and concrete detail given the amount of action that it's asked to bear.

GLOW seasons 1-3

Surprisingly fun, substantial and charming; Alison Brie very appealing (see previously, when she was younger: Community). I don't romanticise the 80s but the show makes maximal - without caricatured - use of the period setting and does a good job with its themes while periodically offering writing that's just a half-step more clever than might be expected. 

"Japan supernatural" (AGNSW)

An enjoyable tracing of threads from art of the Edo period of isolation (1600-1868) to the contemporary. The through-lines were convincing and interesting, particularly the way certain types of ghosts, goblins and demons recur over time and across media, and the continuities of style across the same (eg the idea that modern animated Japanese movies are the successor to traditional scroll paintings).

Miwa Yanagi - "Rapunzel" (2004), the second time I've encountered this creepy fairytale series

Tabaimo - "The Obscuring Moon" still (2016) - I recognised her style from a distance, this one taking imagery from an 1857 Utagawa Hiroshige painting

There were a few large and splashy Takashi Murakami pieces; this was the funniest (actually it's better paired with its companion red oni demon guardian) - "Embodiment of 'Um'" (2014)

Not pictured but enjoyed: many ukiyo-e pictures, which I think (?) often had a real sense of humour about their grotesque depictions, although maybe that's just something in the conventions around exaggeration and so on; Mizuki Shigeru's insertion of yokai (types of spirit/demon/monsters) into Utagawa Hiroshige's 'Fifty-three stations of the Tokaido' series; Chiho Aoshima's whimsical, slightly troubling watercolours and pencil drawings.

2019: "If you find what you're looking for"

Annual soundtrack to the year just gone by.

1. River - Patty Griffin
Patty Griffin (PGM, 2019)

2. No One's Easy To Love - Sharon Van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow (Jagjaguwar, 2019)

3. Stay Down - boygenius
boygenius EP (Matador, 2018)

4. Nonbeliever - Lucy Dacus
Historian (Matador, 2018)

5. Twist - Thom Yorke
Anima (XL, 2019)

6. Wild Time - Weyes Blood
Titanic Rising (Sub Pop, 2019)

7. All Mirrors - Angel Olsen
All Mirrors (Jagjaguwar, 2019)

8. Fire Escape - Miranda Lambert
Wildcard (RCA, 2019)

9. Seventeen - Sharon Van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow (Jagjaguwar, 2019)

Sharon Van Etten and Lucy Dacus were the really big ones in 2019, and to a lesser extent boygenius and Weyes Blood. Female singer-songwriters ruling the roost, and not as country/Americana-heavy as some recent past years'.

On spotify.

Jojo Rabbit

Nice, entertaining, and its heart is in the right place, and I liked it more than I didn't, but this one didn't 100% hit the mark for me; the sentimentality and tweeness sit uneasily alongside the enormity of the subject matter in a way the film is aware of but - for me - doesn't fully reconcile.

(w/ Erandathie)

Jia Tolentino - Trick Mirror

Excellent collection of essays about contemporary life, with identity probably the single strongest theme. 

The Witcher season 1

A bit all over the place, but really, lots of fun.