Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

I'd had the impression this was quite well reviewed, but if that's true, expectations must have been very low. Although, thinking about it, it's hard to say how the movie could've been actually good - what tone that would have required, if nothing else.

In The Loop

Holds up over time I reckon.

(previously)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

This movie certainly has a vibe.

Rachel Kushner - Creation Lake

There was a moment while reading Creation Lake where I felt that hard-to-describe feeling in my stomach that only comes when reading something especially enjoyable and interesting at the same time - almost always literary fiction, which is less about any intrinsic hierarchy of worth and more about its nature as a genre. The feeling or sensation is hard to describe, but it's a bit stirred-up, a bit excited, a feeling of pleasure. 

Neither the spy plot nor the big ideas about humanity and civilisation felt out of balance - that they're woven so well together has a fair bit to do with the novel's voice, Sadie Smith's harsh judgements and decisive observations rubbing up interestingly with the occasional hints of a less self-contained inner self, and the way that Bruno's emails and the rural French setting eventually leave her unmoored.

In the end I felt this was more 'very good' than towards 'great' - but books as simultaneously grippingly readable and intellectually substantial (not to mention, enjoyable) as this one don't come along that often.

Tom Greenwell & Chris Bonnor - Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools

Things that this book reminded me about:

• What makes Australia extraordinary, and not in a good way, isn't the extremely high rate of public funding to private schools per se, but the lack of any reciprocal public obligations accepted by those schools as a result
• The achievement / outcomes gap between public and private schools is almost entirely attributable to peer effects
• The immense power of the vested interests of the status quo - combined with the huge blind spots that many carry about the influence of privilege - has done huge harm to attempts to enact evidence-based reform post (and for the matter pre-) the first Gonski report
• What a difference genuinely needs-based funding would make across the whole education system
• The social justice imperative of focusing on school funding and school education policy more broadly.

Lucas Mann - Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

I found it a tiny bit annoying at times, but overall I appreciated this book. And I couldn't swear that the moments where I found it grating didn't reflect more on me than it.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland

Warmly welcoming, Woodland is my favourite Gillian Welch album since the flurry of those first four classics Revival, Hell Among the Yearlings, Time (The Revelator) and Soul Journey ... the long gaps between records since then - from Soul Journey (2003) to The Harrow & The Harvest (2011) and then All the Good Times (2020), with Woodland coming relatively quickly now - have added to the sense that the music Welch (and Rawlings) makes is somehow timeless, almost as if she's the vessel or the channel rather than an active creator, an impression that of course does her a huge disservice while also speaking to the quality of the music itself. 

This one's got a bit more texture to it compared to most - more instrumentation, and as a result a touch more production - but it has the same air as all of her others as having always already been there yet arriving fully present in the now. It really sings.

Kelly Link - Magic for Beginners

So, so good. All of these stories are interesting and most of them have something more than that - a particular intrigue. Particular stand outs: the title story (I've read it before), "Stone Animals", "Some Zombie Contingency Plans", "Lull", as much for their feel and the way they linger as for anything else. It's trite but there really is something of the magician to Link.

"Magritte" (Art Gallery of NSW)

Dream-like has always been the first way to describe Magritte's work, and maybe it remains the best. He's certainly among the oldest of my old favourites, and if the jolt of his art has been dulled a bit by familiarity, time and changes in my own sensibilities, it still holds plenty of charge regardless.

"La condition humaine", 1933

"L'empire des lumières", 1954

"L'enfance d'Icare", 1960

Nobody Wants This season 1

It's charming and peppy; kind of silly but not one-dimensional. Honestly, it's mostly Kristen Bell's presence that sold it for me.