Laura Stevenson - Laura Stevenson

From 2021, so-so.

Kate

I guess it's progress of sorts that a film featuring a woman as an action hero, without making a big thing of her gender, can be as predictable as Kate turns out to be.

Under the Silver Lake

I was primed to like Under the Silver Lake and willing to work at it if needed, thanks to how great It Follows was, and the way that earlier film so completely nailed style, mood and (sly) thematic substance. In the event, there were bits of it I liked - the sinisterly glossy atmosphere, the twinned depiction of Andrew Garfield's character's anomie and shagginess of the story, the bursts of humour, the way it was all coiled around a thesis about the experience of emptiness of the current generation of youngish people amidst the ahistorical detritus of contemporary culture. But I'm not yet convinced, relatively fresh from watching it, that what it had to offer was worth the absence of most of the more conventional pleasures of movies.

Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres

Just a great read.

Last time - over a decade ago - I think I was more caught up in the grand human drama and emotions of it, and while that still tugged at me, on this read it was Ginny's and Rose's childhood trauma and the way it's both paradigm and operating cause for the broader setting and events of the novel that I found most striking.

Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

A cracking record, all 80 minutes of it. Covers heaps of ground - many of my favourite moments are the most 'yee-haw' songs which are in the territory of Wussy - and is interesting, accessible and good the whole way through.

Cat Power - Covers

Not the most memorable.