Extemporanea

Friday, May 08, 2026

Courtney Barnett - Creature of Habit

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There's a brighter sound to some of these songs, and some of those brighter sounding ones are some of my favourites - like "Mantis...
Saturday, April 25, 2026

Rebel Moon Directors' Cuts

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Too excessively EPIC and generic and lacking in lightness of any kind to take seriously, yet still somewhat absorbing through sheer spectacl...

Hoppers

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I wanted a stronger, less muddled message but that might be an unfair ask. Other than that, Hoppers  has heart and zip, and some welcome wei...

Sashi Perera: Fruit Tree (ACMI, Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

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Likeable, professional, authentic, relatable.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Ballerina

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I wasn't too fussy a watcher of this one - 'from the world of John Wick'. And so it hit the mark - Ana De Armas convincing, the ...

"2025 EOY MIX" from David

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New and enjoyable: "New York, Let's Do Nothing" - King Hannah (Cassandra Jenkins-esque), "Time Waited" - My Morning ...

George Saunders - Vigil

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Even the best can't get it right every time - for me Vigil is a miss, the style and the sentimentality too much to the fore, without the...
Monday, April 13, 2026

Neko Case - Neon Grey Midnight Green

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I don't know how she does it. We're a long way on from Blacklisted  (2002) where I came in, never mind the ones that came before it....

Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

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Just Jason and his guitar, and the tunes are strong. These songwriting paths are well worn - as in, by Isbell himself - but continue to offe...
Friday, March 20, 2026

Aimee Potwatka - The Parliament

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Just a good read, another reminder of how it feels to read fiction for pleasure. The main storyline is exciting enough if somewhat predictab...
Friday, February 20, 2026

Tomihiko Morimi - The Tatami Galaxy

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A bit of a goof, but the voice is appealing - though the narrator, deliberately, often isn't - and so is the zip with which it moves thr...

"Women Photographers 1900-1975: A Legacy of Light" (NGV International)

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Not seeking to be the type of comprehensive overview that I'd hoped for, the ambitions of this exhibition are hinted at in its framing a...

Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia

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I'd more or less assumed any likely new music from Alison Krauss & Union Station would fall into an elevated easy listening vein, gi...

Geese - Getting Killed

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Nice to know that a proper rock band can still give me that chill down the spine. Highlights all the way through - "Cobra", "...
Monday, February 02, 2026

Perfume Genius - Glory

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Classy, emotive and interesting but for me doesn't have the lightning-strike quality that the best of this type does.
Saturday, January 24, 2026

Mona Awad - Bunny

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This is the type of novel I'm always seeking out, in more than one way - as readable lit-fic with a distinctive voice, an edge and a wil...

Patty Griffin - Crown of Roses

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A bit of an oblique one, and without any true stand-outs, but Griffin's voice is as strong and clear as ever - figuratively, though no l...
Sunday, January 18, 2026

Joy Williams - Concerning the Future of Souls: 99 Stories of Azrael

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It's metaphysical, and sideways even when it seems direct; the directness comes in at least three forms, namely direct appearances from ...
Sunday, January 11, 2026

Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein - The Mushroom Tapes

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A woman killed some family members with poisonous mushrooms in a meal she cooked, somewhere in regional Victoria - to great public fascinati...
Friday, January 09, 2026

Julien Baker & Torres - Send a Prayer My Way

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It's nice, nothing more. Not really meaning to damn by faint praise - there are some good songs here and the whole album's charismat...
Sunday, January 04, 2026

2025: "Don't be a stranger"

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1. Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down - Margo Price Hard Headed Woman   (Lorna Vista, 2025) 2. Hungover in a Deer Stand - Dylan Marlowe...
Thursday, January 01, 2026

KPop Demon Hunters

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The soundtrack was already thoroughly embedded and now I've finally actually watched the thing, I have the rest of the pieces to see why...

CMAT - Euro-Country

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What a trio this album starts off with - the title track with its curling melodies, whoops and ululations, the almost (or maybe actually) OT...

Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party

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I don't know why so many acts remind me of Metric, specifically Metric circa Fantasies  and Synthetica  - how much is anything truly dis...
Sunday, December 21, 2025

Kathleen Edwards - Billionaire

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Honestly not all that dissimilar to the one before it - Total Freedom - and if the pleasures here are more in familiarity than in new groun...

Lucy Dacus - Forever Is A Feeling

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For mine, Forever Is A Feeling  doesn't have many of the obvious high points that appeared in her previous albums - show-stopper "A...

Margo Price - Hard-Headed Woman

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Here Price takes a turn back towards hardcore country and the honky-tonk sound that was more prominent in her first couple of records ( Midw...

Alex G - Headlights

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 I like the vibe here - a torch-y heartland rock sound. But it hasn't really hit home somehow.

Brandi Carlile - Returning to Myself

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Sturdily, reliably excellent - more quality from Carlile. She's hit a vein these last several years and continues to produce songs that ...

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

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There's a nice touch to each of these, and if they're pretty big and glossy, well that feels a natural continuation of the style tha...

The Witcher season 4

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I've always thought there's been a bit of a dynamic with this show around just how seriously it actually takes itself, but maybe tha...

Slow Horses season 5

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Maybe a bit of a dip in quality but the built-up goodwill keeps you watching. ( 1-3 ; 4 )

Thunderbolts*

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Even when they're a bit different, as this one is, there's almost always also a sameyness to these movies. Florence Pugh is fun thou...
Saturday, October 04, 2025

Someone Like Me edited by Clem Bastow and Jo Case

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I found Someone Like Me  illuminating and enjoyable (the latter in the sense of the interesting perspectives and overall quality of writing ...

"The Playground Project" (Incinerator Gallery)

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The history of playgrounds. A topic I've found a bit interesting in the past - even before becoming a parent - especially interventions ...

Sarah Jarosz - Polaroid Lovers

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Nice but too sleekly polished. A handful of more memorable songs.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Valerie June - Owls, Omens, and Oracles

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Across a roving, at times meandering, at times rousingly joyous, and even occasionally frankly dull 14 songs, June's voice is always cle...
Sunday, September 07, 2025

Frances Hardinge - Unraveller

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Another good one, curses and all, and filled with strong images and an overall sense of imagination.

Haim - I quit

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It could be (probably is?) an illusion but I quit  feels like it breathes 'we're doing what we want to', roaming in mellow, tune...
Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

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In which Van Etten leans into the gothy, post-punk strands that have been there at least since Remind Me Tomorrow  and goes vibier and more ...

Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor

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Some bright moments of slightly off kilter pop - "Like I Say (I runaway)" and "Call It Love" are both keepers - but the ...

Black Bag

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The cast helps a fair bit and Soderbergh does seem to have a bit of a touch. The spy vs spy + domestic affairs stuff holds the attention and...

Frances Hardinge - The Lie Tree

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The atmosphere is strong - just spooky enough, science and its margins, convincingly Victorian and with a terrific, spiky, sympathetic but n...
Saturday, July 19, 2025

Tenet

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Tenet ... the story mechanics are hard to follow, the emotional core's difficult to find (indeed it's split, between Kat and her chi...

The Great season 3

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If anything, even better than the first two seasons . The Great  has a mode all of its own and it's fizzingly irreverent, profane and sh...

Solvej Balle - On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)

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In its accretion of everyday detail, this intriguing first volume works with the idea of the infraordinary, which I've been drawn to sin...

"The Veil" (Buxton Contemporary)

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Works by six artists, exhibition themed around liminal spaces in the world, particularly through portals to the spirit world. Most impactful...

"French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" (NGV International)

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I remember some of these from my visit a few years back and, more particularly, from the NGV's own exhibition of French impressionism ...

"Black In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience" (Heide Museum of Modern Art)

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The first section is focused on the systemic drivers of the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the seco...
Thursday, July 10, 2025

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

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It wasn't long ago that I refreshed on the whole series , and - as it's increasingly foreshadowed as it's gone on - that's j...
Tuesday, July 08, 2025

Megan Moroney - Am I Okay?

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The title song's a killer, first up on the album, fizzily euphoric with just an undercurrent of melancholy. There are some other good mo...

Ellen van Neerven - Personal Score

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Personal Score  feels all of a piece, unified by the way van Neerven writes the connections between Country, their own story and the other t...

The Old Guard 2

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The first one was good, this one isn't. Leans too much on the first and its desire to set up for a third. I like how strongly it centre...
Saturday, June 28, 2025

Steven Erikson - The God Is Not Willing

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Sickbed re-reading. ( previously )

Dylan Marlowe - Mid-Twenties Crisis

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Basically, there's the ones that anthem it up with emo-lite electric guitars and they're mostly my favourites (especially "Heav...

A Complete Unknown

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I don't know, should it have been a surprise that the soundtrack and the songs were such a large part of why this was so engaging? James...
Friday, June 27, 2025

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

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A slept-on classic it isn't, but it's winning enough even on a rewatch. ( previously )

Jennifer's Body

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Yes it's a bit messy but the core of what Jennifer's Body  has to say about gender and power is clear enough, and the black comedy /...

Black Hawk Down

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Remains as tense and gritty as ever, for all its obviously problematic elements.

Predator: Killer of Killers

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The funnest part of this is the different historical settings, and it being animated worked well enough. The way it brought them all togethe...
Saturday, May 31, 2025

Jess Hill - "Losing It: Can We Stop Violence against Women and Children?" (Quarterly Essay 97)

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Thoughts while reading this: Hill is strong on not focusing only on 'gendered drivers' (in the language of the National Plan) vs oth...

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

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I liked the more off-the-wall visuals, the little horror elements, and Benedict Cumberbatch but as a movie this is a bit of a mess, and noti...
Sunday, May 18, 2025

Esther Rose - Want

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Want  is a sweetheart of an album, carrying a good part of the charm that made How Many Times  in particular such a winner (especially on ea...

Andor seasons 1 & 2 / Rogue One

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Andor lived up to the reviews - staying focused the whole way through on the perils and costs of resistance in the face of tyranny, spies a...
Monday, April 21, 2025

Geelong Art Gallery

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The John Norman Mann Bequest A bequest directed to contemporary art, with a particular focus on First Nations practices and works by non-Ind...
Saturday, April 19, 2025

Helen DeWitt - The Last Samurai

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This really is an unusual, and unusually good, novel. Everyone in it feels like a character in a book - Ludo and Sibylla most of all - but T...

On at the Counihan Gallery

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Three installations each by Australia-based artists with Asian cultural heritages who identify as queer.  From "Fairy Tales from the Ce...

MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

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This is great! It comes in a package that maybe lends itself to being dismissed - another guy wielding an electric guitar, indie folk rock s...

"David EOY 2024"

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Mostly breezily indie-sounding pop and crunchy guitars, plus quirks. My favourites - "Rip Off" (Momma), "Cheapskate" (Du...
Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Rebecca Solnit - Recollections of My Non-Existence

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I suppose by definition any memoir by Rebecca Solnit would be Solnit-esque. What that means in Recollections of My Non-Existence  - which I ...

Encanto

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High quality, with a lot of that due to the songs - music and lyrics - which add depth.

Station Eleven

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Impressive how much this series is infused with the same mood as the book , while genuinely adapting (not just transposing) it for the tv fo...

Rebel Ridge

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 Tight modern Western.
Thursday, February 13, 2025

Queensland Art Gallery

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On was the 11th annual Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art; I was pretty piecemeal in how I took it in given this was a bit of a snat...

Marisha Pessl - Darkly

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The concept is fun, the execution solid enough without rising to any great heights.
Monday, January 13, 2025

"Yayoi Kusama" (NGV International)

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In a way Yayoi Kusama has crept up on me over the years. I've liked her quite a lot for a long time now, including some memorable encoun...
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Howard
Listening to the rain, hearing something else.
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