"Margaret Preston" / "Passage: The Art of Atong Atem" @ NGV Australia

Margaret Preston

It's striking how clearly the different strands of European modern art - and the ukiyo-e style that influenced the same - are visible in Preston's work across the first two or three decades of her career, across the 1910s through 1930s, evolving from her early still lifes and maybe easier to see because flowers were such a consistent subject, as well as her perspective on them and some of her motifs (e.g. reflections in vases' surfaces). Also striking of course, when seen at once - how great a painter she was.

"Still life" (c. 1915-16)

"Australian wild flowers" (1923)

This exhibition - a general purpose retrospective -  is also strong on Preston's desire to assert and establish a modern Australian art and the way her use of Aboriginal and First Nations motifs and style was, while progressive in its recognition of their value and relevance to any project of 'Australian' art, was also thoroughly appropriative and uninformed.

"Eucalyptus" (1928)

"Banksia on a window ledge" (1934) ... Dali much?

Passage: The Art of Atong Atem

Portrait photography, drawing together "a lineage of African studio photography, family archives, Catholic imagery and science fiction, connecting the earth and cosmos". "Surat series" (2022) below - portraits of Atem's family.

Fury

Doesn't stint on depicting the horror and brutality of war, but doesn't fully avoid glamourising it either. As spectacle, it's consistently tense and high on adrenaline, but lacking in true narrative stakes.

Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend

Lost Weekend is a bit of an epic, and what most gives it that quality is the ground it covers while feeling like a cohesive whole - at the level of vision and musical statement. A few songs stand out - the driving pop pleasures of "Lost Boys" and "Bobby" early on, "Haunted" and its folky skew, and especially "I Can't Wait" which is probably my favourite Phoebe Bridgers song yet.

The Long Walk

I've read the novella multiple times and this adaptation is faithful - in spirit and to a fairly large extent in its details - and effective, which means it's a brutal affair. In one sense it's impressive the adaptation so thoroughly doesn't pull any punches - though it's impossible to imagine the story making it to screen any other way, the shocking violence of the premise being what The Long Walk is all about.

Digger

Righteously angry and constructed primarily to draw attention to the present day (not just future) climate crisis and hypocrisy sustaining and accelerating it, secondarily to thematise the way truth and perception are distorted towards the same result. The ambition is clear, and if only partially realised, it's still a film that's worth the engagement. Plus Tom Cruise in a different type of OTT mode seems always enjoyable.

(w/ David)

Minority Report

Chillier and more full of shadows than I'd expected, solid entertainment.

The Chicks - Gaslighter

I slept on Gaslighter, despite how much I've enjoyed the Chicks' earlier back catalogue - a few cursory listens when it was released in 2020, only returning to it a few weeks back and even then over several listens finding nothing particularly notable about it. But then the first time I listened to it properly, with no distractions, it punched through - this is something deliberately a bit different, with of-the-moment pop elements strongly reflected in both the production and the song-writing, while still carrying readily recognisable elements of the contemporarily flavoured country they made their own across Wide Open Spaces (1998) to Taking the Long Way (2006). Listened to on its own terms, and probably in that order (personality-laden pop with elements of country, rather than vice versa), it's good - the tunes are strong even though a bit different than we're used to from them, the heart's still there, and there's a creativity that while not always fully coherent, still produces plenty of moments worth the listening.

John Wick chapters 1-4

I realised about three-quarters of the way through this rewatch that the appeal of these films is fundamentally aesthetic - in a way that only makes sense in the context of a highly kinetic and stylised action movie genre. Which maybe goes a fair way to explaining why they don't bore, even on a rewatch like this.

(previously all the way through)

Kevin Morby - Little Wide Open

On first impression, neither Morby's singing nor his tunes seem to have a lot of range or texture to them. But keep listening and the interest emerges, and Little Wide Open reveals itself. I still most like the most ready-to-hand of these songs - especially "Javelin" (my introduction to Morby via David) and "100,000" - but the whole thing is good, in its straight-up, low-key midwestern Americana summonings.

Sheryl Crow - Pick You Up

It seems Sheryl Crow's now acknowledged as a big influence on much that followed - but on this new, shortish collection, Crow herself sounds like no one so much as Aimee Mann. It's ok, quite good even, but unmemorable.

Send Help

This movie was already giving throwback vibes even before Danny Elfman's name shows up in the opening credits - its gleefully black comedic energy, sustained right through to its fourth wall-breaking end (Rachel McAdams eyeballing the camera to really drive home the point that no one else is going to help the oppressed against the powerful), feels like something from a bygone decade ... the 80s/90s I guess. It's entertaining, including the gruesome bits.

Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

The clue's in the title, with melodies and motifs recurring across this quiet album. Not up there with her best, but welcome company regardless.

Lauren Groff - Brawler

Lauren Groff is an outstanding short story writer, right in the sweet spot of straightforward effect delivered with awesome craft. It's true that her stories can feel very 'New Yorker', almost invariably zeroing in on significant moments in a life, unspooling from there, and ending on a note that propels forward while also summing up what the story has been about. But another way of thinking about that is as a sign of the consistency and sturdiness of Groff's story-writing - the way they arrive with lightning-flash vividness without any notable stylistic tics or gimmicks. And another way of saying that could be to say these feel sometimes like contemporary classics. Maybe Florida as a whole hit me more in the stomach; this one goes more for the heart.

Thanks to the New Yorker I'd read several of these before, and was happy to re-read. Violence runs through many - most - of these, likewise desire; against and of women. And the complexities, shades of grey, and settlements of which we're all capable. These stories always have a point of view, but their events and endings aren't predictable - so, for example, late middle-aged Eliza's turn back to her husband at the end of "Between the Shadow and the Soul" after the final-section reveals about him and the reasons for the childlessness, or the way Joanie's decision and trials to get her brother Buddy to the institution are vindicated in "To Sunland", or the lifelong tangle of Nichole and Birdie's friendship and the choices they made as teenage girls ("Birdie"), or the damage unwittingly done by the narrator - damage that any of us might have done when younger, less wise or at least less experienced - and the forgiveness granted to her amidst all the daughters and mothers in "Annunciation" (not the best story in this collection, I don't think, but maybe my favourite for its grace and flow - not that Groff requires comparisons, but this one reminded me so much of Rebecca Lee's seeming once-off Bobcat).

Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide to Getting Lost

A re-read felt timely, as part of a reset and clearing of the mind.

(previously)

The End of Oak Street

The End of Oak Street is directed by David Robert Mitchell and has the same air as It Follows, which I still think of a lot more often than most films. The dinosaurs are scary, the ending I think is deliberately dark-edged with how it makes seemingly clear that Anne Hathaway's choice leads to the alternate versions of herself and the children meeting their fate.

The Rip

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, crime drama, definitely wanting to be taken seriously. Pretty decent entertainment.