Lori Carson - The Finest Thing

I have a feeling this might actually be quite good, but it's far too indistinct and muted for me in the present state of my musical preferences...

"A Gesture in Reciprocation"

A mix from Kim of a while ago, made up entirely of covers (a perennial favourite mix cd theme, of course). An intro (Bobby McFerrin's "From Me To You") and four parts which could be broken down as 'women', 'men' and 'legends' (Waits, Cash, Joni Mitchell) and then a one-track closer in a lovely version of "When I Fall In Love" as done by the Keith Jarrett Trio.

Favourites: Eva Cassidy's "Time After Time" (of course), Vonda Shepherd's take on "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" (much less predictably, and only after a few listens), Jeff Buckley's searing "Je n'en Connais pas la Fin" (live), Fanfare Ciocarlia's "Born to Be Wild" and the Keith Jarrett piece.

The Orphanage

A haunted house movie, basically - and one which deliberately invokes all of the tropes of the genre to good effect, often putting a spin on those familiar elements that pushes them in just a slightly different direction. In particular, the film's knowing in its use of The Turn of the Screw-esque trappings in playing out that old real/imagined ghosts ambiguity, the rendition of which, I've thought before (in a slightly different context), the medium of cinema particularly lends itself to; and, then, the way that that ambiguity is eventually resolved/left unresolved is both unsurprising and deeply consonant with the most interesting aspects of the film, not to mention rather satisfying.

It is quite scary - unsettling, with a few huge 'jump' and, separately, 'chills' moments in its second half - and I think that's part of the film's primary purpose: it's supposed to have that kind of effect, just for its own sake. But then, too, the unsettling elements of The Orphanage are wrapped up with, and feed into, its wider narrative concerns, particularly the 'Peter Pan' thread and the questioning of perception/reality; there are creepiness-induced chills throughout, but then the last couple, which we experience (physiologically) identically to those earlier ones, are actually brought on by something rather different (if bound up with the earlier creepiness inasmuch as they follow from them), a genuine emotional experience.

(w/ Michelle, Tamara and Andrew B - all enjoyed the film, I think, though MF and TV seemed seriously creeped out by it)

Mates of State - Re-Arrange Me

I never noticed before that Mates of State sound a bit like the New Pornographers; then again, it's probably on this, their latest, that the resemblance is most obvious. I imagine that it's still just the two of them (husband + wife, infamously), but the sound is fuller, facilitated by an instrument change-up, meaning that the whole record has more of a richness to it and its best songs ("The Re-Arranger" and "Blue and Gold Print" in particular) pack more of an immediate punch than before. They're not a band to set my world on fire, especially given that I haven't especially been feeling things 'twee' of late, but in a small, unassuming way, they do make it a slightly better place.

Dixie Chicks - Home

Another extremely solid album from the gals (tho I'm more or less working my way backwards from most recent to earliest) - they just know how to do what they do. It's the weepies and the ballads that stand out on Home - their "Travelin' Soldier" and "Top of the World", say - but, as ever, whatever they tackle here, they do well.

Blonde Redhead - 23

23 is a rush of an album, kaleidoscopic and star-like, spinning from one bright, sparkling point to another. It reminds me a bit of Asobi Seksu's last, Citrus, in its 21st century outer space-y take on dream-pop/shoegaze swirl, but whereas that other tends to crash through in swathes of sound and colour, 23 has more of a downbeat, twilight zone fm radio air and a hint of a prog feel at the edges (somewhat a la Air); it also retains much of the fraught, fragmented elegance of Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (a while ago, Michelle set me up with a whole stack of the band's back catalogue - all of the albums actually, I think - so they're there for me in due course, too).

I've mentioned the title track before, and listened to it an awful lot since then; the others that I especially like are "Dr Strangeluv" and "Silently".

The Ruby in the Smoke

Passable-to-good adaptation of the book. Some popstar named Billie Piper played Sally (okay, that was a bit disingenuous - I'd heard of her before, but don't know her stuff) and carried it off pretty well; the production has 'bbc' written all over it, but that's no bad thing in this case.

Laura Cantrell - The Hello Recordings

I adore Laura Cantrell - I just find her music so very winsome and she's one of my very favourites these days. Anyway, this was her first record, I think - an ep - and, while a bit rough and ready, it shows definite signs of what was to come.

lps
Not The Tremblin' Kind
When The Roses Bloom Again
Humming By The Flowered Vine

Emilie Simon - The Flower Book

An appealing record, this, covering a wide range of electro-pop styles - the shimmering stomp of "Fleur de Saison" proves to be both representative and extremely misleading when it comes to forming expectations of the whole. It's hard to pick favourites, but I do like the rainy-day tendresses of "To The Dancers In The Rain", the feyly jaunty "Flowers" ("I want to buy you flowers,/ It's such a shame you're a boy,/ But when you are not a girl/ Nobody buys you flowers"), and the slightly tougher, cut-and-paste "Song Of The Storm"...sure, it verges on the precious at times, but forgivably so for mine, particularly given how goshdarned romantic it so frequently is.

Previously: live.

Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers

It's taken a little while, but Asking for Flowers has grown on me. More folksy and perhaps a tad more wide-ranging than her previous records, it's also, I think, more sophisticated - the songs are less immediate, but somehow more deeply musical and faceted. Downbeat "Alicia Ross" is a case in point - delicate and wistful, but lit with a strong emotional burn, it's miles ahead of the slower songs on Failer and Back To Me; and the rockers, too, are more nuanced than previous efforts without sacrificing the catchiness that's such a strength of Edwards' - witness "The Cheapest Key", "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" and "Oil Man's War"...and in a different category again is the title track, a mid-tempo tune which just hits the spot. All of that said, I don't think that Flowers will replace Back To Me in my affections - that other is too closely wrapped up with a particular time and mood for me to be impeachable, and its high points are higher...but it's really damn solid anyway.

The Big Lebowski / Blades of Glory

The Saturday night before last's viewing with Wei and Julian F. Blades of Glory I'd seen before and it was still pretty funny, but somehow I'd always missed The Big Lebowski previously despite the universal rave reviews. For my part, I liked it well enough but didn't get hugely into the film - it's funny and I like what it does, but I don't think I'm wired to really respond to its mix of subtle humour/wryness and brazen splashes of colour...I'm just left feeling as if I've bitten wholeheartedly into something that was sweet enough but evaporated in my mouth almost straight away (erm, unnecessarily picturesque attempt to convey my response, obviously).

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

This film probably would've been charming anyway, but what particularly makes it is the turns put in by its leads - Amy Adams is delicious and Frances McDormand just right, and their interplay hits all the right notes. As the somewhat grave older love interest, Ciaran Hinds (previously known to me as Julius Caesar in Rome) is good, too, and another of my Brit female actor crushes stakes, Shirley Henderson, also cut a swathe, her character pleasingly sharp-edged and aloof, always black and incessantly smoking, of course. (Such wonderful names, by the way, too! Guinevere Pettigrew, Delysia Lafosse, Edyth Dubarry, and so on...)

It's frothy, but has a serious side as well; without particularly being a 'message' film, it's not blind to the social realities of the milieu it depicts (that of the well-to-do and the rather less so at the very tail end of the jazz age), and when the happy ending we knew all along was coming does, indeed come, it's unsurprising but doesn't rankle in the slightest. The film - it is what it is, and entertaining at it.

(w/ Kai)

30 Days of Night

Totally thought this was gonna be rad, or at least that it had a serious shot at it, based on cool premise - vampires in Alaska, where once a year the sun doesn't rise for 30 days (ie, = vampire buffet). Actually, though, it's only okay...watchable but sorta not all that satisfying. Oh well.

Lars and the Real Girl

Really sweet. It doesn't poke fun or take the low road at any point despite a premise in which the risk of all of the above, whether advertent or otherwise, is ever-present - who'd have thought that a film about a sex doll could be so gentle, kind and hopeful?

A lot of that comes from Ryan Gosling's performance - above all else, it was critical that he be (a) believable and (b) sympathetic, and he comes through on both counts, sweet, bemused, seemingly torn between hopefulness and resignation - and a fair bit's owed to the warm turns put in by Emily Mortimer (surely one of the most sheerly delightful actors going around at the moment - and definitely a good candidate for 'British female actor' crush-dom) and Paul Schneider (whose character was a kind of 'me' surrogate in more than one way at various points), but the main thing about it is really the air of the whole, which kinda reminded me of Me and You and Everyone We Know. I'm not sure how to describe it - kind of removed but close at the same time, like hot breath on the other side of a pane of glass, or something.

For some reason, the 'sensitive outsider boy is saved by quirky beautiful girl dropping from the sky' (see Garden State, etc, etc) thing didn't irritate me at all in this one - maybe because one can't help but feel that he really earns his happy ending, and maybe because that particular narrative isn't the primary focus of the film (though it's strongly implied throughout). Plus, it has a cool soundtrack including good use of "Naive Melody".

(w/ SL)

Philip Pullman - Once Upon a Time in the North

Kind of a cowboy tale, as the title suggests - and we already knew from the trilogy that Lee Scoresby was in that mold. The general appeal of this novelette (novella?) is obvious - it takes us back to the His Dark Materials universe (I use that word advisedly in this context)...the particular (subsidiary) appeal is equally apparent - it recounts the first meeting between Lee and Iorek.

Anyway, it's got a bit of energy to it - yeah, it's pretty good. But ultimately more a deepening of the original pleasure of the main trilogy than a particular delight in its own right, I think (although of course the whole point is that it's impossible to tell).

"Garage2V"

I forgot to mention that, when I saw Stars a while back, the support act was a neat little act called Plastic Palace Alice, who were sorta one part Arcade Fire and one part Stars (though a bit more modest than either) and good at it. Anyway, a bit further down the track, picked up this eight track sampler-type cd at the local 7-11 (free, obviously) - all local acts aiming to make it. Nothing much particularly grabbed me - the shadow of the AF lies heavily over several of the cuts (including PPA's "Empire Falls"), and there's a bit of Rapture vibe coming through on a couple as well...

Three novels in first person present tense

Greg Egan - Quarantine

This was a loan from Andrew B, in response to a mass-emailed request for recommendations of first person present tense writing; it hasn't turned out to be particularly useful or illuminating from a 'learning the craft of first person present tense writing' perspective, but where it did prove effective was in blowing my mind a bit with its play on ideas surrounding wave function collapse and quantum mechanics generally, and 'working through' of some imagined implications (cosmological genocide, anyone?).


Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife

Dear reader,

Let me tell you what I did a few Saturdays ago, viz: woke up, felt a bit under the weather, saw that Wei was reading The Time Traveler's Wife, decided to read it, read it (yeah, that's right - all in one rather long session and with a certain amount of skimming to find out what happened next and rather in a haze but still).

And? And it's good - it made me want to keep reading, and it got to me. I still think that it's basically a marginally more clever take on the chick-lit thing (not particularly more emotionally clever, but certainly cleverer from a craft point of view), but I understand what all the fuss was about, and thanks to my direct response rather than in any particularly distanced way. Nice.

Also, by way of a historical document, an extract from an email, NV to me, 19/6/06:

I think I need to have a talk with you though Mr Choo regarding your bold pronouncements regarding the written word. Actually just so you know, the following tirade by me is given to you with love rather than anger and is prompted not by Kite Runner buy by the Time Traveller's Wife.

I understand that you are a student of literature and therefore are very worthy of making the bold pronouncements, but I worry that by branding a book (as you sometimes do) before you read it, you go to it with a preconceived notion of what it will be like and this skews your later interpretation. Why not come at it with a cloudless mind, take the journey, and see how you feel as a result. Any pronouncements you make after the fact I am sure will be more accurate of your own experience.

[...] literature is art and one purpose of art is to make you feel, and if you come to art with a notion of how other people felt, you deny yourself your own true feeling.


M J Hyland - How the Light Gets In

Carry Me Down was unexpectedly excellent - it gripped me and got a bit under my skin when I read it last year. Re-reading my impressions of that other, I'm fortified in my response to How the Light Gets In, Hyland's debut novel: it's not quite as skillfully crafted as Carry Me Down, nor (commensurately) quite as good, but it's much like it, particularly in the impression that it leaves - faintly unsettling, maybe, but also more something else on which one can't easily put one's finger...

Charade

Watched this on the last night of book club weekend away at Trentham, a while back now. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant - much fun.

So, yesterday...

Re-read South of the Border, West of the Sun.
[Edit 6/9/17: most of this one deleted on the grounds of being autobiography]

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson @ Corner Hotel, Wednesday 9 April

Album launch - pretty okay. Sounded more country/bluegrassy and less glossy than Carnival [and see also here], which might or might not bode well for the album itself...

(w/ Kevin and Shaun)

V Festival @ Melbourne Showgrounds, Saturday 5 April

Morning dramas, disorganisation, etc led to SL and I getting there too late for Robyn, which was a bit of a disappointment - but so it goes. Actually playing when we arrived were Hot Hot Heat, who were underwhelming - didn't seem especially into it (not especially not, either - they just didn't particularly have it going on)...though neither were they well served by the perplexingly low volume at which the music was mixed (a problem which afflicted all of the acts on the "this stage", at least, with the possible exception of the Pumpkins at day's end).

Then we saw a bit of Cut/Copy - they didn't leave much of an impression. And after that, Modest Mouse, who were wicked excellent. I've never really listened to their stuff, though I've kinda heard quite a lot of it along the way, but live I could dig it - very Indie Rock but very good with it. SL and Nenad both afficionados and clearly feeling the love. Oh yeah, and Johnny Marr was part of the band! Too bloody marvellous to hear that straightaway recognisable guitar sound...things were looking up. (Hooked up with Michelle and others somewhere around this point...throughout it was very much a day for meeting and then re-meeting.)

Then we went and saw Roisin Murphy who, colourful and energetic and charismatic as hell, could really potentially have been the highlight of the day had we been able to stay for more than about a song and a half before the tyranny of the irritating overlapping times dragged us back to the main stage to ensure a good position for the Jesus & Mary Chain - the main reason why I decided to hit the festival in the first place.

About the JAMC, well, a part of me thought that it was pretty great to hear all those familiar songs (especially the Psychocandy ones) and a fair few that I didn't know, too, being played live right in front of me (we worked our way pretty close to the front for this one)...that was quite a large part of me, natch. But at the same time it wasn't quite all that - the band was too tight, its sound too clean, too lacking in feedback, squalls, roughness...the sound of a bunch of 40-somethings covering familiar ground rather than of kids in their 20s searching something out. It gave me something, still, but wasn't a patch on last year's reformed icon the Pixies.

Then went off to other stage and caught a bit of Air, who were fairly rock star and really pretty good, a bit to my surprise. I've never taken the duo to heart, but somehow they seem to keep bobbing up - "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch The Stars" (both of which we saw them do at V) are lodged firmly in my consciousness, Talkie Walkie picked up a few associations when it came out, and then of course there's the S Coppola connection - and this was pleasant and even a bit more...

We were in two minds about whether QOTSA or CSS was a better option next - but we swung by the first of those and they were playing all songs that we knew, so we stuck around and were rewarded with a solid set of rock tunes, intensely played. Dudes know how to play their instruments - and, in Homme's case, to sing.

And finally the Pumpkins, fronted of course by Corgan, loving every moment of the rock star adulation that was offered up by the crowd. Kicked off with "Today" and ran through plenty enough of the old hits to satisfy ("Bullet", "1979", "Zero"...) as well as a bunch of other stuff (not least a jagged cover of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun") - it was spectacular and messy and not really incredibly satisfying, but still, it was, you know, the Pumpkins (or at least two of four plus others) and they've been there for me in some sense since high school and all, so yeah.

All up, the festival was okay - some good moments but a total lack of great ones. Suffered from a lack of atmosphere (see above re: volume, and also the general vibe of too many people just standing around and not really into the music) and an absence of any one act (at least of those that I saw) that really threatened to tear the figurative rafters off...too glossy, too safe. Maybe this is what comes of stacking the lineup with tasteful acts with plenty of cred who are now past their peak of popularity (and having the festival prominently sponsored by a corporate)...

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

More good stuff. I've been listening to this album a lot in the last few days, including on the ol' late night work patrol. Especially into the way it starts, airy-then-crashing "Is there A Ghost" and then the rocky-then-delicately oceanic "Ode to LRC" (is it actually a song about a dog? or about a dog and a town, maybe? oh yeah, and "the world's such a wonderful place"...but it works, it really does); also like the way that it's short! Really, really good in patches - and not always the same patches from listen to listen. One to try to see live when they come down for sure.

Also: Everything All The Time

The Kinks - The Singles Collection

Well, it sure is great to be able to walk around just listening to the Kinks and feeling, you know, the way one feels when listening to the Kinks.

(My faves tend to be the ones I already knew - "You Really Got Me", "Lola", "A Well Respected Man", "Waterloo Sunset" of course...though that last has never struck quite the same chord with me that it seems to with many others.)

Sarah Blasko - The Overture & the Underscore

More wistful, ghostly, strangely familiar sounding Sarah Blasko song-weaves (actually, her first lp I think).

Also: What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have

"John Dies At The End"

Low-brow, scatological, consistently in bad taste, and frickin hilarious and impossible to stop reading. Schlock horror comedy - all available online. Check it and don't look back.

(here - and the first half of the sequel here)

The Anniversary Party

I can tell you the whole reason why SL and I rented this in three words: Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Obviously my doing, not hers.) Not only does Leigh star in this one, but she also co-wrote/directed it, too...anyway, it's clearly her baby and that of the other central creative figure in/behind the film, one Alan Cumming. All of that said, I thought it was only so-so - an ensemble drama-comedy full of Hollywood types (Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others familiar by face if not always by name), about Hollywood types, that never properly gets beyond its obvious 'write about what you know' origins.

Patty Griffin - Children Running Through & live @ the Palais, Friday 28 March

Bought the cd - my first of hers - in anticipation of the show, having been carried along by Kevin's momentum. It's a much more diverse affair than I'd anticipated, but all of the ground she covers, she covers well, from airy, Eva Cassidy-styled folk wisps through blues 'n soul infused jams to classic stripped back country ballads and rollicking bar-room rockers - and that's just the first four songs! It all works, partly because the girl knows how to write a song, and partly because - damn - the girl can sing.

It comes through on the album, but just how great a singer she is wasn't fully apparent until the show...live, her voice was simply magnificent. Were it not for the sheer unlikelihood of this happening, I would have been convinced that she was miming to a pre-recorded track - it seemed unfathomable that one person could be producing so rich, pure and expressive a sound...yeah, it was somethin', and a very solid show through and through.

Listening to Children Running Through, I initially got stuck on the sun-dazed "Burgundy Shoes" before the upbeatness of "No Bad News" replaced it in my affections - pleasingly, that latter drew the biggest response from the crowd at the Palais...it's definitely one of my personal anthems so far for this year; also, and somewhat oddly, it's pretty similar to the AF's "Keep the Car Running" - which is no bad thing, of course.

Dead Like Me season 2

As much as I liked its first season, Dead Like Me gets even better in season 2. I'm not sure about this, but I have a feeling that the focus shifts somewhat from the various deaths that punctuate each of the eps to the main characters; it's definitely increasingly involving as it goes on, no doubt in part because of the amount we have invested by then...I felt that it really hit its stride in the episodes dealing with George's dalliance with Trip; another memorable story arc involves Daisy - especially the ep where we see her with the 'other woman' who meets her end in the hotel room.

I don't know, the show just has a way - it's gentle, kinda wry, and full of life. It's not overtly moody, but it casts a spell. There's just something about it.

(season 1)

Perfect pop songs

Got into a pub conversation with Shaun and Kevin about perfect pop songs the other evening - before Kasey Chambers, actually, which I'll get round to writing about at some point in the course of working through the increasingly massive blog backlog that I've developed - and was then inspired to come up with a list. Twenty-five, because that's where Shaun drew his line (ie, 'the 25 most perfect pop songs'); I think that there are a few different notions of 'perfect pop song' working their way through here, but it's an honest to goodness attempt at it in which I stuck to my guns and valiantly resisted all thoughts of the 'but surely there must be at least one Beatles/Beach Boys/Kinks/Supremes/Elton John/Talking Heads/etc song' variety...the flip side being that some of my preoccupations come through fairly clearly (jangly songs, and anthems-masquerading-as-ballads and vice versa, in particular). Anyway, in more or less chronological order:

I Fall To Pieces - Patsy Cline
Be My Baby – The Ronettes
Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas
A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harum
Breakfast In Bed – Dusty Springfield
Perfect Day – Lou Reed
Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack
September Gurls – Big Star
Life On Mars? – David Bowie
Alison – Elvis Costello
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
Close To Me – The Cure
When Doves Cry – Prince
Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
Just Like Heaven – The Cure
Debaser – Pixies
Losing My Religion – R.E.M.
You’re In A Bad Way – Saint Etienne
The State I Am In – Belle and Sebastian
Save Me – Aimee Mann
The Way We Get By – Spoon

Wilco & the Drones @ the Palace, Wednesday 26 March

So yeah, liked I'd expected, the Drones are pretty kick-ass live - bluesier than on record, and equally rockin'...I got pretty into it.

But the main event, natch, was Wilco. Last time round was sit down and faraway - this time, we were in the thick of it and close...far, far better. As shows goes, after a tenuous, country-heavy beginning, it was pretty total - two and a half hours of selections from their whole discography, even including several from A.M., and all good. So many of the songs just made me so happy and light and a little bit giddy ("California Stars", "She's A Jar", "A Shot In The Arm", etc, etc...)...I figured out a while ago that Wilco're one of my favourite bands, and this gig was a reminder about why even though I'd put it in the 'good' rather than 'great' show category.

It also, incidentally, reminded me of how many of the songs on the last couple of albums, and Sky Blue Sky in particular, are really all about the awesome guitar bit which kicks in somewhere near the middle to end. I've thought before that one of the great things about Wilco is the way they make me feel both happy and sad at the same time; to that duality add 'drifty' and 'energised', too, I reckon. Oh, yeah.

(w/ Jon)

Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers

It's not exactly that I'd given up on the Manics, but more that a creeping kind of apathy had overtaken me when it came to the band - I still liked their early to mid period stuff, especially The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go, though more in the abstract than in the actuality of ever really spinning them nowadays, and even Know Your Enemy had its share of moments, but I never got round to Lifeblood and, I guess, disinterest reigned.

But a while back I read an review of Send Away The Tigers, their latest, somewhere on the internets which was all like oh my god the Manic Street Preachers are back in form, so I thought I should listen to it, and guess what - while it's not a patch on those older classics, there's a lot to like here. The album comes across like a glossier Everything Must Go, with a dash of the more riffy hard rock Generation Terrorists, and in "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" (smashing duet with Nina Persson from the Cardigans - I got totally stuck on this one last Saturday while hanging around at home vefore V festival), "Autumnsong" ("Sweet Child O Mine"-esque guitars!) and "Underdogs" has some quality to it, too.

"Sidney Nolan" @ NGV Australia

It's easy to slip into accustomed ways of experiencing things - definitely something to which I'm prone - and in the spirit of avoiding that kind of laziness of the imagination, I went into the Nolan exhibition determined to open myself to whatever it might hold.

One thing that was striking about the exhibition is the extent to which it highlights the relationship between Nolan's travels and the art he produced, with dramatics shifts in not only subject matter but also style seemingly closely correlated to the particular places through which he was passing or had recently passed at the times of their creation; my favourites, as far as I can remember (it was a couple of weeks ago now), were the deep, craggy central Australia rockscapes and the second series of Ned Kellys (the later, messianic ones as opposed to the more famous earlier ones) which if I remember correctly were inspired by his exposure to sacred art in Italy. Also striking were the colours he used, particularly the vivid azures (which always strike a chord) - those, and some other aspects, put me a bit in mind of James Gleeson's stuff. And some cool tricks with perspective, too, including a recurring trope of things appearing too large or 'foregrounded' in a scene relative to everything else.

Overall, though, it wasn't especially my thing. I liked bits, but nothing really spoke to me - some engaged me viscerally but fleetingly, others tugged at more critical/analytical/experience-of-experiential parts of me but similarly didn't really lodge...well, we like what we like, and increasingly so, I suppose.

(w/ Jade T)

Three things to anticipate

Very exciting...new Philip Pullman, newish but I hadn't heard about it before Nellie McKay (oh Nellie McKay, how I do love her), new Kathleen Edwards...

"Love Gone Bad" (IMP February 2008)

Any mix cd that throws in "Reno Dakota" (as in the Magnetic Fields) and "Torn" (as in Natalie Imbruglia) back to back gets major points in my books. Extra props for a pair of very nice jangly alt-country weepies in the Drive-By Truckers' "Goddamn Lonely Love" (the title says it all) and Steve Earle's "I Thought You Should Know" (which, oddly - and I'm pretty sure I'm not just making this up - cops some girl group licks). And bonus points for ending with a "Pink Triangle"/"Hate It Here" split.

A couple of other familiar songs - Ben Folds Five's still grin-inducing "Song for the Dumped" and Elvis C's rather saccharine (if not all bad) "A Good Year For The Roses" - and a few other fun/good ones (Jay-Z's "Song Cry" and Ween's "Piss Up A Rope" particularly fitting both parts of that compound phrase)...all up pretty good.

(from Bruce in Chapel Hill, NC)

Kate Nash - Made of Bricks

Fun! Probably not a stayer (unlike, a bit to my surprise, Alright, Still, which I still get out pretty often, especially when out and about) but with enough good bits to make listening to it as a whole a viable option, an' I like the attitude. Standout's "Pumpkin Soup" (previously known to me, with equal if not greater justification, as the "I just want your kiss boy" song).

J'attends quelqu'un

Unexpectedly, my favourite of the three I've caught at the french film festival over the last fortnight or so. It's carefully equivocal in its layering and interweaving of its various narratives, such that resonances &c are always implied rather than actually rendered, but also eventually succeeds in bringing everything to a satisfying and affecting resolution while at every point avoiding the obvious move (see, eg, the 'making a pass while moving furniture' and the 'I'm having a baby' bits).

(w/ Ruth and Meribah)

Philip Pullman - The Scarecrow and His Servant

I didn't see anything special about this one, to be honest. It's not a patch on the His Dark Materials series, nor on the Victoriana ones - although nor does it set out to cover that kind of territory, being aimed at a younger audience and accordingly simpler.

Le voyage du ballon rouge

My first Hou Hsiao Hsien, and not precisely what I'd expected - much more in the social realist vein than I'd expected, to begin with! But 'social realism' isn't precisely what was going on here - more a kind of cinematic naturalism, interleaved with moments of pure cinema (the latter mostly involving the course of the red balloon itself). The film's pleasures are subtle but real, and it has an affect which has lingered even though 'the film itself' didn't leave much of an impression at the time.

(w/ Ruth, Jarrod, Steph and Roslyn)

"Love Song" (John Kolvenbach) (MTC)

Near the end of the rather excellent "Love Song", one of the characters declares "death to literalism!"; I wondered whether that line mightn't have been the genesis for the whole play. "Love Song" is about love and imagination, and how the two can (perhaps always must) meet, and it's pretty much perfect on its own terms.

Four main characters: Beane, one of society's misfits, living in his apartment under the barest of conditions, has his life illuminated one day by a spunky burglar with whom he falls in love; his career-minded sister and her husband find their lives also affected by this unexpected turn of events. All of the actors were pitch-perfect (Julia Zemiro particularly stole all of her scenes as the sister), the sets were unobtrusively integrated into the play text, and all told it was just one of those in which all of the elements came together - the play itself perfectly balanced between sweetness and edge, the production bringing out that delicate interaction and the interesting contrasts it entails to a treat. It's a minor thing, but the emotional palette from which it paints is nuanced and pleasing, and I liked the play a lot.

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph, Sunny & co]

Chacun son cinéma

Cool concept - a whole bunch of basically most of the most famous mainstream arthouse contemporary directors going around today (Wenders, Polanski, Egoyan, Campion, Kiarostami, the Dardenne brothers, Davids Lynch and Cronenberg, Lars von Trier, Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, to name just a few), each doing a very short (~ 3 minutes) piece on the subject of the cinema. As one would expect, it's pretty hit and miss, the narrative-oriented ones just as likely to be successful as the more impressionistic pieces, and a few reasonably predictable themes emerge, most notably the transformative, immersive, participatory and (of course) magical nature of the cinematic experience, but the good ones are strikingly good, and there are plenty of minor pleasures in amidst the real highlights, too.

My fave was the Inarittu piece, "Anna", which is simply one of the most lushly Romantic things that one will ever see in a cinema. It's beautiful - three minutes of holding your breath and feeling opened up to something that's at once completely familiar and utterly foreign. The David Lynch one was extremely David Lynch, and a nice snippet of his unique brand of craziness (ware the giant scissors!); the Atom Egoyan contribution also marvellous - a miniature existential meditation, inscrutable and poetic. Jane Campion's odd lady bug piece also stood out...

(w/ Ruth and Bec P)

Jens Lekman @ Corner Hotel, Monday 10 March

For various reasons, my mind wasn't on the music as much as it might've been, but nonetheless I enjoyed this show; he played "Black Cab" second song up, which was basically the whole reason I went along, so I was happy, and the rest of it was nice too.

(w/ SL, Ruth and Keith)

Do You Believe in Love? A Creation Compilation

Break it down: this came out in 1990, and it's a Creation comp, so there are three main threads running through it - acid/ravey Screamadelica type stuff, post-80s guitar indie, and shoegaze of varying textures. The cd's frontloaded with three of its best tracks - "You're Just A Skin To Me" (Primal Scream), "Girl Go" (Jazz Butcher) and "Chelsea Girl" (Ride) - but keeps up the quality throughout (it doesn't hurt that there's a MBV classic, "No More Sorry", in the middle there somewhere). Nice.

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

Got a message from Michelle the other day; words to the effect of "have you listened to the new Goldfrapp yet? It's exquisite"; wouldn't go that far myself, but I can see where she was coming from. Seventh Tree is the band's most pastoral and soupily dreamy to date, from airily disconnected opener "Clowns" through the succession of downbeat electro-ballads and wispy sketches which follow (I especially like "Cologne Cerrone Houdini" / "Caravan Girl" near the end), and there's much to relish about it.

Felt Mountain, Black Cherry and Supernature collectively set an impossibly high bar, and I think that Seventh Tree falls slightly short of those other three - but it's still a worthy addition to the discography and another jewelled link in the increasingly glittering Goldfrapp chain.

Now, bring on the new Portishead!

Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon - Preacher: Alamo

The last in the series, and suitably explosive and bloody. Reflecting on how I came to work my way through the lot despite not having any particular taste for ultra-violence nor for the grit that characterises the series, and particularly while having some serious reservations about the politics / ideological standpoints of the books, I think there are (lemme count) three main reasons.

First, they're written and drawn with a helluva sense of pace - each one flies by (I read this last in a single sitting in the Fitzroy library a couple of weekends ago). Second, while Preacher isn't long on character development as such, Ennis excels in deepening our understanding of the characters as he goes along. And third, there's the mythos invoked by the books, and ultimately that's what gets me (even if, on closer inspection, it possibly turns out to be bound up rather closely with the essentially conservative viewpoint espoused by the books that troubles me).

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6 & 7], [8].

"2007 cd"

David's mix of his key tracks from last year (which reminds me that I should put up the tracklist from my own, made a while back). It was the soundtrack to my very gauzey, distracted last Sunday, particularly "McFearless" (Kings of Leon) and "23" (Blonde Redhead); of the ones that were new to me, the other that I particularly like is the National's "Fake Empire". A lot of very 'David' stuff on here, natch, much of which falls in the overlap between his and my tastes (Radiohead, Spoon and the Arcade Fire all get multiple slots), and some which are definitely in his camp (QOTSA, White Stripes, Ian Ball, Pete Yorn) - lots of replay value for me and, in those first three I mentioned, a trio of genuine song 'discoveries'.

"Astor Piazzolla" (10-cd set)

10 cds of recordings which tend more towards the 'song' end of Piazzolla's spectrum - an impression added to by the high proportion of them which have vocals - and which are just as pleasing as the more polished "rough guide". Yes!

"Rock 'n' Roll" (Tom Stoppard) (MTC)

My first MTC outing this year, having subscribed for '08 as part of Steph and Sunny's troupe, and quite possibly the one about which I've been most enthused, it being a Stoppard and all, and not only that, but also being about (a) revolution; (b) communism and (c) (but of course) rock 'n roll.

Well, I liked it well enough, but in the end the play didn't do that much for me. I found it a bit stagey - a fault which resided partly with the actors (it didn't help that Matthew Newton's Jan reminded me entirely incongruously of Manny from Black Books (manner of talking, hair, and, as Ben K pointed out, wardrobe)) but lay primarily in the play itself, I think. The first half was rather overly schematic, particularly in terms of the laying out of the various perspectives on (a), (b) and to a lesser extent (c) by way of their exemplifying characters; the second half moved a bit more, the characters and ideas better coming to life; the ending really didn't satisfy me at the time, but with a bit of distance, it's better than I'd initially thought...

Kelly Clarkson @ Rod Laver Arena, Tuesday 4 March

I'd been anticipating this more than I do most shows - I don't see much out and out Pop live, and I really expected Kelly to be an experience, particularly given how much I listened to Breakaway over the second half of last year. Lest there be any doubt, there's not a smidgeon of ironic or postmodern expectation of kitsch, etc - this is all grounded in genuine love of pop music done well.

So anyway, it was pretty much what I wanted it to be without quite being the bee's knees. I got to hear the songs I really wanted to hear, and she's definitely got a powerful voice...but the sound wasn't as full as one might hope (a bit of a problem with the venue as much as anything else, I suspect) and for the most part she seemed to more be belting the songs out rather than imbuing them with any particular expressiveness - so while it was good, it wasn't the, y'know, spectacular spectacular that I'd thought it might be.

* * *

Supports Mandy Moore and Sean Kingston - both worth the seein', in this context, anyway.

(w/ Steph)

The Cardigans - Best Of

Well, of course this is great. "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer" is still a brilliant pop streak and "Lovefool" somehow never gets old, but it's actually the band's first single "Rise & Shine" (which I hadn't heard before) and old radio favourite "My Favorite Game" which have most had me hitting the repeat button. It's all, barring a small handful of tracks that drag a little, very, very delicious.

The liner notes are a feature, too, the band having put together some thoughts about each of the songs on the cd, and showing themselves to be very knowing (both about themselves as pop stars, and as musicians) and cutely witty (eg, of "My Favorite Game": "Nina recorded her vocals in the attic of our studio, with the corpse of a bat as her only company. Potential hit makers, take note!").

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

David came round last Monday, which happened to coincide with a low emotional and physical ebb for me - too much going out, too much doing things, and not enough recharging - which maybe made it kind of a happy or at least apt coincidence that we settled on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to watch, for while it was a bit of a gruelling experience in the state that I was then in, the insane whirligig it plays out wasn't a world removed from my own exhaustion-hued (albeit entirely un-drug affected) take on things. The result, anyway, is that I wasn't left with any coherent sense of the film - just a bewildering series of impressions - which maybe is the way that it would always have taken me anyway. Certainly, the sense of inhabiting the film's world was strong, even overwhelming.

Francoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse

Reminded me a fair bit of Gatsby, although not as perfect, of course. This was Nicolette's prospective take on it, which, in retrospect, paints a fair picture of what Bonjour Tristesse is like:

As an interesting aside, this book was published when our author was just 18. Apparently she was nicknamed "the charming little monster" which makes me grin no-end. Anyway, she had a varied life, writing several books and plays, getting married a couple of times, hanging out with Truman Capote for a bit, being convicted of using cocaine, and being left in a coma after a car accident in her Aston Martin. Ooh, she was also done for tax fraud in 2002 which resulted in the French government taking the royalties from all her works and leaving her essentially penniless and relying on the kindness of her friends. How fun!

Basically it's one of those glittering literary baubles, fleeting but somehow perfectly crystallised, both in itself and in terms of what it depicts - here, a kind of summer-dream end of innocence narrative of the sort that we all always hold so dear when done well, recognisably universal precisely inasmuch as it's writ in the details of Cécile's rueful recollection of the fateful events surrounding her and her supporting cast (Anne, Cyril, Elsa and, of course, her playboy father Raymond).

Lisa Miller @ CERES, Friday 29 February

Saw her here around this time a couple of years ago (I really thought it was just last year, but a check of the archives tells me otherwise!), and this was a similar experience. Not transcendent, but nice.

(w/ Swee Leng and her friend Sara, and Wei and Julian F)

King Arthur

This - or at least the director's cut version, which I saw - was surprisingly satisfying in patches. Clive Owen always brings a certain something, and his turn as Arthur, reimagined as a Roman centurion commanding a group of Salmatian [?] 'knights' south of Hadrian's wall in partly-conquered Britain, is no exception - he has a suitable controlled ferocity, as well as the gravitas that almost allows one to take seriously all the speechifying about free will and destiny...but parts of the film just don't ring true, and that's where it falls down - there are too many false notes (the real classics of the genre - the Bravehearts and the Gladiators - don't have any), abovementioned explicitly fixation on freedom and individual liberty being one particularly intrusive example (it's a perfectly fine theme, but the problem arises when the characters continually talk directly about it, particularly when said talk's in platitudes). Still, a fun enough film (in that oh-so-serious kind of way).

Stars @ East Brunswick Club, Thursday 28 February

This is how I put it when suggesting to David that we check out Stars: "I think they will be sweet live, and they might be just under the radar enough that the rest of the punters will actually be starry-eyed (pun unintended) indie romantics rather than idiot hipsters." And you know what, I think that that was actually pretty close to the mark in the end (and with a sell-out crowd no less). What I can say for certain is that it was a very nice show despite Stars turning out to be only really an average-to-good live act, not as crashy as I'd expected and a bit wavery in places, but still from opener "The Night Starts Here" and minor classic "Elevator Love Letter" through most of Set Yourself On Fire and In Our Bedroom After The War (the obvious ones, "Take Me To The Riot" and "Bitches In Tokyo" really taking off from the latter, and the cast-iron high points from the other, particularly "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" and "One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead" hitting hard from the earlier) it was a nice way to spend an evening.

(w/ David + Justine)

Napoleon Dynamite

I've been deliberately steering clear of Napoleon Dynamite - I'm not much of a one for what I (unkindly) dub quirky indie loser films and this seemed likely to be the epitome of the type. But everyone kept telling me how good it is, and eventually I caved in, and what do you know, it lives up to the hype in its low-key, off-kilter way. It's a film that genuinely goes its own way - it doesn't seem to be ticking boxes or anything of that kind. Instead, it just does its thing, and a good thing that is. I value films like these, because they remind me - oh yeah, I am an outsider...and possibly that part of me isn't nourished near enough these days, I suspect. (It also, not entirely unrelatedly, left me in a terrible mood the night I watched it but that's the flip side I suppose.)

The Village

Unfortunately I knew the twist, and (independently) the film tends towards being overly schematic and obvious, particularly near the end, but The Village is still a pretty effective bit of film-making. It definitely benefits from a top notch cast - Joaquin Phoenix, now that I've gotten over my instinctive dislike of him, is consistently convincing, Bryce Dallas Howard, who I've not seen before, was very good in coming to be the centre of the film (her air of luminous innocence is critical), Adrien Brody also held the gaze, playing against type as the village idiot - and it has that M Night Shyamalan feel...

Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon and John McCrea - Preacher: All Hell's A-Coming

This is where I stalled when I was reading these a couple of years back, entirely because it was missing from Rowden White. Yeesh, they're violent - but gripping, yeah.

Terry Pratchett - Making Money

Enjoyable - there's just something so comforting about Pratchett books. I liked being able to read another Moist von Lipwig one so soon after the last, too - and the series has developed in a way that allows recurring characters to just drop in (in this one, mostly members of the watch) without any explanation but very pleasingly for long-time readers. Most of the way through my second reading at the moment...

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Well, I pretty much knew in advance what I was going to get with this one (in a word: PIRATES), and it satisfied. Also, this was the first film in which Keira, latterly the subject of so many strongly-held opinions of both the 'love her' and 'hate her' (ie, 'think she's hot' / 'can't stand her') variety, has made any particular impression on me - the realisation that she is, after all, very attractive coming more or less simultaneously with a strong feeling of irritation at the way she just pouts all the time...catch 22.

PJ Harvey @ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Wednesday 20 February

Well, to begin with, what a great kick-off to the show - "To Bring You My Love" / "Send His Love To Me", Polly Jean standing in the middle of the stage on her own, in full voice and tearing out the chords on her extremely plugged-in guitar...hard to imagine how it could've been much better. The show in general was pretty well-balanced, with a bias towards the last couple of albums, neither of which I've listened to (though some of the Uh Huh Her stuff has turned up on mix cds from David before - including "The Desperate Kingdom of Love", which was a bit of a highlight); the ones that she introduced as being from the latest, White Chalk were reminiscent of solo Kristin Hersh and markedly spectral (good, too, though I'm not sure if they'd stand up to repeat at-home listening). All up, I was pretty happy with it - it was a good concert. The highlight was "Horses In My Dreams", which led off the encore - it's always been a bit special, but its dynamics came through more clearly when done live...it was a bit of a Moment.

(Support was Mick Harvey - just him on guitar + cello. Created a very warm sound and was all round good; did some nice covers including one of the Triffids' "Raining Pleasure" which worked a treat.)

(w/ trang, and her friends Ee-Lin and Liah)

3:10 to Yuma

It's a Western. More nuanced than those of yore, sure, but equally surely not revisionistic in any substantial way - it's a Western. Neat landscapes, middling in the viscerality stakes, good performances by Crowe, Bale and the others, and a gee-whiz finale which is ridiculous but sorta fitting. Not anything remarkable, but what it is, it is to the hilt and it was plenty diverting.

(w/ Swee Leng, late show a couple of Fridays ago...sadly, the Nova seems to be phasing them out, but make hay while the sun shines (or the moon glows, as the case may be, I suppose), &c)

"Chillaxin" (IMP December 2007)

A mix of mostly funk and soul/soul-esque, old school an' new - Earth, Wind & Fire, "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green, Fugees, Blackalicious. Some cool songs: "100 Days, 100 Nights" by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "Slow Down" by Ghostface Killah & Chrisette Michele, "The Mating Game" by Bitter:Sweet; also "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" by Radiohead, off In Rainbows, which I really oughta listen to properly some time soon...likeable.

(from Marcia in Brookline, MA)

The Bourne Supremacy

Yeah, yeah, so this was pretty good but you know, whatever. I don't think I was really in the mood, whatever mood that may be.

28 Weeks Later

The opening sequence is one of the tensest you're ever likely to see, but the film doesn't maintain the pace thereafter and is probably a bit short of the first, but it's still a pretty effective zombie flick. I could've done without one of the two most overt nods to the genre's gore roots - the eye-gouging scene - though I have to say that the other, in which a helicopter plows through a crowd of zombies with predictably splattery results, had a certain grotesque magnificence.

J M Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello

With Waiting for the Barbarians, this makes two of two Coetzee books that I've raced through and yet haven't wholeheartedly liked (or, in the case of Barbarians, liked at all). It's engaging, but many of the responses it engages in me are negative, starting from its central gambit of being a book about a writer and progressing from there. That said, I'm certainly glad that I read Elizabeth Costello, and I feel that doing so has made me a better person (which is certainly not true of all books, nor even of all 'literature', that I get through) - it is a very humanistic book, honestly and sparely engaged in interrogating itself and its own ideas (ie, being what a book about a writer should be). Yeah, thinking about it more doesn't shed any more light on what it's actually 'about', but does somehow reveal more of the text ('novel' is strictly accurate, I reckon, but the term doesn't quite feel accurate) anyway. Yeah, I liked it...so maybe the jury remains out on Coetzee after all.

Sorry / literature-philosophy / a personal state of the nation

[Edit: re-housed elsewhere 28/7/17]

Cat Power - Jukebox

Musically, Jukebox is largely a continuation of the lush sound that characterised The Greatest, but with a more nocturnal twist whereby Marshall puts up her hand for the title of world's best lounge singer (check out her hauntedly echoing "Ramblin' (Wo)Man", which is as Portishead as she's ever been - and also one of the two or three best songs on the album) - it's certainly not a "Covers Record mk 2", except inasmuch as this new, well-selected set of covers also seems a faithful document of where she's at musically at the moment.

It's certainly not a great Cat Power album (for mine, the only two deserving of that appellation are probably Moon Pix and You Are Free), but it's a good one, and in her re-take on "Metal Heart" it has one great song up its sleeve, so I ain't displeased. Her takes on two faves of mine, "Woman Left Lonely" and Joni's "Blue", don't give me much (the first is too by the numbers, and the second, while interestingly atmospheric, ultimately doesn't go anywhere special); other songs worth mentioning are the delightful stroll of "Aretha, Sing One For Me", her chugging rock n roll take on Dylan's "I Believe In You" and "Song To Bobby" (this album's simple, sad one).

Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

It took a few listens, and I was pretty sceptical after the first spin, but I've been won over by this one. The rockers may sometimes veer a bit close to Bon Jovi territory and the ballads on occasion tend rather too much towards the glossy and the schmaltzy, but for all of that, Lambert can sing and the songs are strong, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a more than solid contemporary country album.

CocoRosie - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn

Consistently interesting and very good in patches, but I haven't taken this one to heart - it just feels a bit all over the place, for all of the high points scattered through the album. I like it, but I think I would've liked it more two or three years ago...it's like Mum + Tujiko Noriko + Cibo Matto! Then, too, it's one of those with which one always feels that one is just about to get it, while that moment is always being deferred again and again...

Sweeney Todd

All the elements were there, and so Burton's Sweeney Todd is what it is, and very good that is too - lush, dark, bloody and memorable (not to mention more than a bit stressful once the (rather graphic) throat-cutting starts...though one becomes a bit inured to it after the second or third). All commit themselves nobly with the singing; technical perfection's not what's required for a production of this kind, after all. And the sets look every inch the part (as do the actors, it does without saying). I'm not really in a hurry to watch it again (I rarely am with Burton films) but it sure was grand to be immersed in its streams for those couple of hours.

(w/ Michelle - I almost said 'of course', but actually there are any number of people with whom it would've made just as much sense for me to be watching this...Tim Burton is great, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter likewise, and who wouldn't want to see them take on Sweeney Todd? We all know it.)

Rufus Wainwright @ Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre, Friday 1 February

A really good show - as Tamara said, something like what one imagines an Elton John show 30 years ago would've been. I don't think I knew any of the songs (maybe one or two) - went along because Bec P suggested it a while back and I have fond memories of "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" - but the songs themselves, and his delivery of them, were such that that didn't make any difference at all. The Judy Garland ones were ace; likewise the Rufus W originals...and the boy can sing (to say nothing of the outfits he ran through - particularly the Liza Minelli one - and his endearing sense of humour) - I'm sold.

(In a nice little resonance, the Cure was playing before the show - just as had been the case at the Corner before Spoon the night before...)

Spoon @ the Corner Hotel, Thursday 31 January

Got there early, and so saw most of the support sets by Little Red (x 2) and the Smallgoods - both jangly sixties revivalists, the former bringing some solid rock n roll voices, sweet harmonies and a sense of humour, the latter adding some proggy soundscapes (and a great cover of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes") to their mix.

Then, Spoon, taking the stage to loud acclamation, and kickin' off with "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" and then a spectacular "Small Stakes", after which basically an hour and a half of nearly every Spoon song that I could've hoped to hear - it was very buzzy and a good vibe all round (Britt Daniel said at one point "this is our crowd!") and the sound was great. They brought their A-game and their brass band, mixing up the songs so that each was sort of 'the same but different' when compared to the recorded version. Also liked the way that the appropriate sound for all of Daniel's different facial expressions is an expostulated 'yeah' (exclamation mark optional).

As it had been at the Big Day Out, "Finer Feelings" was a bit of a highlight; likewise "Don't Make Me A Target" and "Cherry Bomb" and spectral "The Ghost of You Lingers", and of course all those brill songs from Gimme Fiction ("the Beast and Dragon, Adored", "Monsieur Valentine", "I Turn My Camera On", etc). They also did "The Way We Get By" (though it wasn't a live standout, I still got a kick out of hearing it), and all up it was very, very fine - along with Bjork's BDO set, the best show I've been to at least since Neko Case about a year ago, and another brick in the 'Spoon are really damn great' wall that's been built in my parts over recentish (scale of years) times.

The two recent Spoon shows, by the way, have fortified me in reckoning that Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is their best yet...

(w/ David + Justine)

Big Day Out @ Flemington Racecourse, Monday 28 January

My first in years - since the 2000 festival, actually (Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beth Orton, those were the days!) - and a good day out, dust, heat, crowds and all. Started off seeing bits of Eddy Current Suppresion Ring and then of Cut Off Your Hands with David; neither made much of an impression but both seemed pretty okay. Next was Kate Nash, who had a Lily Allen kind of vibe going and was quite good - had a bit of spark and warmth, and her songs had lots of catchy little hooks and instrumental/sampled breaks, though the best bits of her songs were often their opening bars.

Then Spoon, the first of the acts who'd really drawn me to the BDO this year in the first place, and they didn't disappoint. There wasn't a huge amount of energy in the crowd, but the band sounded great in running through a selection of songs from their last four albums, with a bit of a bias towards Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ("Fitted Shirt" getting a run from Girls Can Tell, "Jonathon Fisk" and "Stay Don't Go" (I think) from Kill The Moonlight). They sounded tight and focused, and the 'Spoon sound' translated well from record to live, with the little uneven-nesses and stutters still present, even if in a way that flattened them out a bit - and of course the joy of knowing every song carried the set a long way for me. Very happy with it.

Saw a bit of Billy Bragg, although we possibly could've picked a better 10 minutes or so to be passing through, only catching the tail end of a political diatribe on the importance of faith and believing that Rudd is really different from and better than J Howard (a sine qua non, of course), and a Shangri-Las cover in duet with Kate Nash, before heading for the Arcade Fire - who were, of course the main event for me.[*]

Alas, getting into the D-barrier for them proved completely impossible, so we settled for a spot a bit further back. So, you know, they kicked off with "Wake Up" and they sounded really good, and after the who knows how many times I've listened to all of their songs (at least those on Funeral and Neon Bible) it was cool to have them blasting out right there, but really it wasn't a particularly satisfying experience...so it goes.

Next, saw a bit of Battles from a distance, and then, after meeting up with Michelle and her friend Eunice again (we'd bumped into them at Spoon earlier), went off to Bjork, who was definitely the highlight of the day. She basically played a greatest hits set, getting through nearly all of my favourites ("Unravel", "Pagan Poetry", "All Is Full Of Love", "Bachelorette", a disintegrating "Hyper-ballad" - those could well actually be my five faves of her solo stuff), and it was a reminder that, as mediocre as I've found her last couple of records to be, she really is something special - amazing songs and blessed with talent which is off the scale to boot. The one act for the day, too, whose live reworkings of songs I already knew really significantly invoked my existing associations with those songs and added something to my store of 'moments' wrapped up with that music.

And finally, festival wound up for me on a chilled note with Sarah Blasko - it was pretty intimate, presumably because most were camped out for RATM or else at the next stage over for Paul Kelly at that point. What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has proved to be a stayer and a vivid part of my mental musical landscape, and Blasko was a beguiling presence on stage, investing both the songs I knew and those I didn't with an air of fragility and of the ethereal, held together by a distinct clarity of vision - ending with her was definitely the right choice for me.

* * *

[*] The chronology went like this: didn't get my act together to buy tix for BDO initially ('cause these days it's apparently one of those be online at midnight, or 6am, or whatever type deals and I wasn't near excited enough for that, and figured I'd get tix to sideshows instead anyway); got it into my head that Arcade Fire weren't doing a sideshow and so went into BDO ballot; found out at 5pm on day that AF tix had gone on sale that (a) they had gone on sale and (b) they had all sold out; cursed all hipsters with renewed fervour for a day or two; got the good news that the ballot had come through for me (QED).

Slumber Party - Musik

This is a seriously neat album. Slumber Party've still got that 3rd/4th album Velvet Underground vibe going (vocals sometimes kind of a cross between Lou Reed and Nico, though it's really the instrumental parts and the riffing-and-strumming which evoke the comparison...some of the soloing comes near Galaxie 500 territory, too, say on "Becuz") - see previously - and the addition of more electronics, mostly by way of keys, adds a level of interest and lushness which is thoroughly complementary...I listen to it all the way through, and then want to go all over again.

The Empire Strikes Back

Like the first one, a bit underwhelming all these years (and layers of 'familiarity') on; still, it's got something, I guess.

Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn

I don't know how she does it, but Kate Atkinson always pulls me in. There's nothing about the story of One Good Turn that ought to draw me, but she's just such a great storyteller that I'm carried along regardless; the characters aren't the kind to particularly attract me (though Jackson Brodie is, in his rumpled way, pretty compelling), yet almost immediately I feel as if I'm inhabiting their world, that I understand them, and (usually) I'm rooting for them; it doesn't seem that the mood she creates is anything remarkable, but her books always leave me with a lingering sense of strongly felt but curiously indefinable feelings. For mine, this one and Case Histories don't quite match those giddy first couple she wrote (Behind the Scenes... and Human Croquet) in terms of their effect on me, but they're a step up in 'quality' - give me more!

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

I can't decide whether it's an obvious comparison or not, but the record that I Am A Bird Now most reminds me of is Grace - it's there in the soulful (fiery) upper register tentative-now-certain vocals, in the elegant stutter and flow of the songs, and in the way that chamber/baroque trimmings adorn and inhabit what's essentially a brooding pop album, but more, it's in the record's effect, you know, the kind that you can't put in words but always know. The "What Can I Do?" (Rufus W's mournful croonings sounding the part) / "Fistful of Love" pairing is the part that I most listen to over and over, but all in all it's a record that's exactly right for what it is.

Batman

Somehow not as good as I'd expected it would be on a revisit - not as intense, dark or conflicted as I'd built it up to be in my mind. But yeah, still pretty alright.

A play (The Darjeeling Limited redux)

And now for something a little bit different...

Not everyone got into The Darjeeling Limited, or at least not all in the same way. In Tamara, for example, the film produced a string of questions to her friend Jamie - questions which, when reproduced for my benefit and taken out of context, struck me as notably existential and oddly apposite (apposite to what, exactly? It doesn't matter)...so much so that I decided to write a mini-play taking said questions as my jumping-off point - and so here we are. Not the most substantial thing I've ever written (it was pretty much all done over the long weekend, while watching the cricket and listening to triple j's hottest 100), but it did come out pretty close to how it initially looked in my head - a rarity.

(Apart from Darjeeling itself, traces of Closer, Juno and Mrs Dalloway may also be apparent, depending on how you look.)

* * *

DANCES

(a play in five short scenes)

* * *

SCENE ONE

“Jamie, I don’t get it”

Two rooms, roughly equal in size, separated by a wall. Sonic Youth’s “Superstar” plays softly in the background.

One room is completely dark. JOCELYN, a young woman, sits in the other, holding a telephone to her ear. She curls her hair distractedly between her fingers as she speaks. If you look closely, it seems possible that she’s just been crying.

JOCELYN: Jamie, I don’t get it. It all seemed to be going so well.

(Pause.)

JOCELYN: It’s been almost a week now.

(A longer pause.)

JOCELYN: No, that’s not how it happened at all. Esther told me all about it. You see, they met at a party...

(Lights come on in the other room as those illuminating JOCELYN dim to darkness. Judging by the shadows flickering on the back wall and by the noise, the room must be full. ANTHONY and ESTHER stand about a metre apart, not quite looking at each other.)

ANTHONY: Nice, isn’t it?

ESTHER: They’ve used the space well.

ANTHONY: It’s never looked better.

(ESTHER looks over at a grandfather clock standing in the corner of the room, and ANTHONY steals a glance at her while she is distracted. He begins to speak, stops, starts again.)

ANTHONY: So, how long has it been? Three years? Four?

ESTHER: (Ambiguously) Yes.

(Pause.)

ESTHER: Well, we’re here now.

ANTHONY: (Uncertainly) Yes.

(Another pause, then they both make as if to speak at once. Their eyes meet.)

ESTHER: (Diffidently, but smiling now, and speaking all in a rush) Shall we?

ANTHONY: (After half a beat) I thought you’d never ask.

Blackout

* * *

SCENE TWO

“Why are they going there, then?”

An aquarium.

Brightly coloured tropical fish dart inside a large glass tank. Light streams in from overhead. ESTHER and ANTHONY, holding hands, are watching the fish from the other side of the tank.

ANTHONY: They make nice patterns when they move, don’t they?

ESTHER: Yes, if you watch them for long enough.

ANTHONY: Like clouds.

ESTHER: Or waves, in the ocean.

ANTHONY: Though these wouldn’t last five minutes in the ocean.

ESTHER: Well, like you said before, everything has its place.

(Pause.)

ESTHER: Do you think — do you think that they’re aware of us?

ANTHONY: It probably wouldn’t make any difference to them even if they were.

ESTHER: (Practically) Well, they might never have ended up here.

(They both watch the fish for a while, peaceably. ANTHONY taps on the tank and tries to catch the fishes’ attention, with no discernible success.)

ESTHER: (Gesturing) You know, I read somewhere that it’s bad for fish to be directly in the sun like that, even under water.

ANTHONY: Why are they going there, then? There’s plenty of shelter.

ESTHER: I suppose they just don’t know any better.

Blackout

* * *

SCENE THREE

“And what did he do with those feathers?”

A hotel room.

ANTHONY finishes fixing ESTHER a drink and then walks over to join her on the sofa.

ESTHER: (Laughing) And what did he do with those feathers?

ANTHONY: No one knows. That was the last we ever saw of him.

ESTHER: I’m sorry I ever asked! Poor Andy. Still, I’m sure he’s happy, wherever he is.

(A companionable silence.)

ANTHONY: (With an air of summing up) Well, that wasn’t so bad.

ESTHER: It was alright.

ANTHONY: Are you okay?

ESTHER: I’m fine.

(Pause.)

ESTHER: I felt a bit disoriented at the start, though — when everyone was standing around in the lobby and waiting for something to happen.

ANTHONY: (Nodding) Still, your family certainly saw the old man off in style. He would’ve liked it.

ESTHER: (Non-committally) Yeah...

(ESTHER fiddles with a ribbon (black) on her dress (likewise), glances at her watch and then at ANTHONY, and then stands up. Wordlessly, they walk towards the door together.)

ESTHER: (Turning to ANTHONY with a sudden smile, just as they are going through the door) So you really don’t know what happened to the feathers? Well, you know what? I don’t believe you for a second.

Exeunt

* * *

SCENE FOUR

“And where’s Natalie Portman gone?”

A busy city street.

ESTHER is standing on her tiptoes, peering ahead, while ANTHONY looks around with a slight air of impatience.

ESTHER: It’s no good. I can’t see a thing over all these people.

ANTHONY: I guess we’re not going anywhere for the moment, then.

ESTHER: No. The street’s completely closed and no one’s moving at all. All this fuss for some movie star.

ANTHONY: Is she even there?

ESTHER: She must be. They said they were going to be shooting all afternoon.

(A bird flaps by overhead.)

ANTHONY: Pooh, how boring.

ESTHER: (Archly, but with a hint of irritation) Remind me again whose idea it was to come and try to get a glimpse of her, then?

ANTHONY: Oh, whatever. Don’t take it out on me that we can’t get through to —

(He breaks off at the sound of a crash and a car going by. The unseen crowd murmurs.)

ANTHONY: What happened? And where’s Natalie Portman gone? That must’ve been her — all those people in front wouldn’t be so excited otherwise.

ESTHER: I don’t know. I wasn’t looking. Do you think it was anything important?

ANTHONY: (Shrugging) Who knows? Well, at least the press is clearing. Come on, let’s go.

Exeunt

* * *

SCENE FIVE

“And why don’t they like each other again?”

An expensive restaurant, night-time.

ESTHER and ANTHONY are sitting across from each other, empty plates, wine glasses and cutlery on the table in front of them.

ANTHONY: (Musingly) Did you see that coming?

ESTHER: No, I never would have imagined.

ANTHONY: And why don’t they like each other again?

ESTHER: Your guess is as good as mine.

ANTHONY: You think you know someone, and then...

(Pause. The lights around them gradually begin dimming.)

ESTHER: (Softly) Anthony?

ANTHONY: Yes?

ESTHER: I was going to say that that couldn’t ever happen to us.

(ANTHONY’s expression is unreadable; ESTHER’s is wondering. By now, only their faces are visible in the failing light.)

ESTHER: (Continuing) But I guess you never can tell.

Blackout

Juno

I was excited about this one, and it's as good as I'd hoped. Juno is a bit like a messier, better version of Garden State - less realistic and more real than that other (the fact that its protagonists are about five or ten years younger than those in Garden State is really neither here nor there).

At first, in the initial flurry of quirk upon quirk, I feared that the movie was trying just that little bit too hard, but it completely won me over as it went on. The trick is, I think, the entirely sweet-natured character of the film - given its nature and many of its characters and set pieces, Juno could easily have been quite dark and acerbic, and yet it never shows more than a hint of such elements, and is a better film for it.

It's one of those unexpectedly subtle films that wraps up the sympathetic viewer and brings them into its own world for its duration, and then releases them with a feeling of wanting to hug somebody. Plus, there are two Belle and Sebastian songs on the soundtrack ("Piazza, New York Catcher" and the classic "Expectations"), the marvellous If I Were A Carpenter cd gets a shout out, and the film-makers find room for the whole (I think) of Cat Power's "Sea of Love" over a tender moment - gold.

Comet Gain - City Fallen Leaves

Has a certain musicality which belies the simplicity of the strands on which it draws - indie, garage, a bit of girl group, a hint of punk - but doesn't lift the record above the run of the mill. Nothing here's as good as "Why I Try To Look So Bad", a spectacularly clangorous earlier single of the band's.

Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

I've thought of "The Funeral" as an indie-rock "Lightning Crashes" before, and I'm standing by that - but it was a nice surprise to find that there's a fair bit more to Band of Horses than just that one song (lest there be any confusion, I like "The Funeral" a lot). The obvious comparison is My Morning Jacket, as much for the spacy acoustic vibe as for the reverb-y vocals, but Band of Horses' songs are tauter than MMJ's, and their stuff has clearer alt-rock overtones (another reference point would be Siamese Dream era Pumpkins in some alterate universe where the Pumpkins were just a bit lighter and Corgan just a bit less self-absorbed). The songs are good, balancing melancholy with optimism, and so are the melodies, and it's just about the right length.

Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War

A bit of a middling album, to be honest. I had no real expectation of it being a great one, and would have been satisfied with two or three really good songs on the level of "Elevator Love Letter", "One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead)" and "Celebration Guns", but In Our Bedroom falls short of even those moderate hopes - there are no real standouts, and the record as a whole tends towards being a bit indistinct.

Terry Pratchett - Going Postal

Not a laugh out loud Pratchett, but a good un (as all of his latter day ones are). The second time I've read it, or maybe the third? I lose track.

(ah, the last time: here. This must be only the second time, then.)

Gangs of New York

A real Scorsese epic, sweeping, full of striking action set pieces, blessed with a tops cast at the top of its game, and in this instance not shy with a message, either. (This is the second time I've watched it.)

The Complete Black Books

Deliciously tart and frequently surreal, Black Books is hilarious. Each of the three main characters - misanthropic, vice-riddled Irish bookstore owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), his supernally capable and eternally oppressed long-haired assistant Manny (Bernard has an endless array of insulting handles for him, 'Genghis' and 'Lord of the Rings' being just two), and their friend Fran (surname: Katzenjammer), who drinks like a trooper and stumbles from one misadventure to another but by and large does her best to keep up appearances for all of them - is a treat, and the array of mishaps that they bring on themselves and on other people is delightful. A bit of a wish fulfilment show for me, I must say.

The Smiths - The World Won't Listen & Louder than Bombs

Lately, I've been listening to the Smiths again, but I listen to them differently these days. Until recently, going right back to the beginning in high school, their music has always been overlaid with a sense of tumult and urgency - a feeling of drowning or at least drenchedness - but something has changed, and now it's more the surging, slightly giddy, perfectly weighted pop joy of their music that predominates, songs like "Girlfriend in a Coma" and "Shoplifters of the World Unite" taking on a new life and freshness. Anyhow, I haven't listened a great deal to these two compilations, but I'll dip into them in time - I guess the Smiths aren't going away for me any time soon.

Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time books 1 to 11

Phew. As I got towards the end of this massive series (wikipedia says that, in their most widely available paperback editions, they range from 704 to 1024 pages each), or at least as much of it as has been written so far, I began to wonder what I'd do with the sort of post-11pm ish parts of my evenings that they'd largely consumed in recent weeks (not that reading was restricted to those times, of course). Having said that, I suppose it goes without saying that these are darn good - possibly the most epic series going around today in a genre for which 'epic' is practically the raison d'etre, and just as good on the intimate scale. I read up to book 7 back in high school - as far as Jordan had got at that point - but never followed through because it was getting a bit boring, but no such problems here.

(There's one book to go - Jordan passed away between completing Knife of Dreams, the most recent, and the projected 12th in the series, but apparently he left detailed notes and someone else is going to finish it off down the track.)

* * *

The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadow Rising, The Fires of Heaven, Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords, The Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart, Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams

Jean-Dominique Bauby - The Diving-Bell & The Butterfly

There is something called 'locked-in syndrome', a condition in which one is almost completely paralysed and therefore rendered unable to communicate in the usual ways. In J-D Bauby's case, the only movement available to him was the blinking of his left eyelid, and it was in that way that he 'dictated' this series of short musings, anecdotes and recollections, composed after he suffered the massive stroke that brought on the syndrome.

In its whimsy and gentle discursive swoops of the imagination, it's recognisably French, and the writing has a flow which makes it easy to read; for all that it's concerned with J-D B's life post-stroke (both inner and outer), there's not a self-pitying word in the book. To be frank, it didn't give me much beyond two or three hours' diversion (it's an impressive accomplishment given the circumstances of its composition, but in itself that's not enough), but I didn't begrudge the time spent reading it, either.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand

One of the most striking things about Raising Sand is the way that Krauss and Plant, both distinctive vocalists in their own right, generally sound so little like themselves while singing these songs. It's an effacement, and a blending, which is emblematic of and integral to the record's achievement - which is to create a contemporary American roots album of genuine quality. Plant has a background in the blues evident to anyone who's listened to any Led Zep, while Krauss draws deeply from the bluegrass tradition, but the music they create together is, while enriched by both of those streams, not wedded to either in parts or as a whole.

This is apparent, say, in a fantastic run near the end, which in the space of three songs goes from a lovely dusty folk-country shuffle ("Stick With Me Baby" - a real old harmony duet), to a ferociously slow-burning Townes van Zandt cover done by Plant in full-on "The Rain Song" epic mode with Krauss' menacing plugged-in fiddle cutting through and above the layers of electric guitar (all of the songs are covers, actually, coverees including Tom Waits, Sam Phillips, the Everly Brothers and others), to a honkytonk-infused country-rocker in which Krauss takes her best shot at singin' just like Plant did in his prime and which is actually rather like Alison Krauss covering Led Zeppelin at their jauntiest ("Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson" - the most sheerly delightful song on the album)...they cover a lot of ground, taking both musicians in lots of directions both individually and together, but it's held together by the spirit of the thing (not to mention T Bone Burnett's characteristic production style).

All told, it's a real winner - Raising Sand may not quite be one for the ages, but on its own terms it doesn't put a foot wrong.

Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

Exactly the way I imagined it would be - that is, a bunch of slightly less catchy versions of "Monkey Wrench", "My Hero" and "Everlong", plus "Walking After You". Not that I'm complainin'.

Hero

What's surprising about rewatching this one is how little advance knowledge of the twist actually affects the way that one watches the film - a testament, no doubt, to the elegance of how it unfolds and of the fight scenes. Also, it struck me that there's a hint of Invisible Cities to Hero.

D.E.B.S.

This time, there was no doubt in my mind that Devon Aoki was the best thing about D.E.B.S. - she's completely incidental to the story, but has nearly all of the best lines. But it's all still just as much fun a second time round, really. (It ended up lying around because I'd recommended it to Penny after our trip to the Blockbuster downstairs to satisfy her desire for a re-watch of Mean Girls was stymied by that one being out - D.E.B.S. seemed a reasonable substitute.)

(the first time)

Constantine

Loses a bit when you know what's coming (the deaths, the details, the debonair-ness, the (melo)drama, the devil-out-of-the-machine at the end) but still convincingly comic-book diabolical, and all the good things about it are still good.

(the first time)

Chuck Norris facts

Hey, I never knew there was a whole website of these. Good clean fun.

The Oxford Book of French Short Stories edited by Elizabeth Fallaize

Unusually for me (when it comes to multi-author short story collections), I went nearly all the way through this from start to finish, with very little skimming and only one skip (Simone de Beauvoir's dense, barely paragraphed "Monologue"). There's something about French literature in translation - the writing seems always so lucid and clear, transparent somehow. I don't know exactly what it is, nor whether it's intrinsic to 'French writing' or rather something which occurs in the translation into English, but that quality makes the writing a pleasure to read, and it's present to a greater or lesser extent in nearly all of the stories collected here.

It's an impressive collection, both in terms of authors (it seems that every second French writer of note in the last 200 years is represented - Balzac, Flauberty, Stendhal, Zola, Sade, Huysmans, Colette, Sartre, Camus) and quality of the stories; the chronological arrangement gives a sense of the development of the form (complete with splintering into different national/racial backgrounds in recentish times), and Fallaize includes a useful historical and thematic introduction.

I've read bits and pieces of a few of these authors before, but only one of the stories (Sartre's "The Wall") was already familiar to me. My favourites tended to be 20th C; the ones that I liked most:
* Villiers de l'Isle Adam - "Gloomy Tale, Gloomier Teller". One of several which are directly concerned with the acts of story-telling and narration, and a nicely barbed account of an account of an account of an account of a duel to the death (and, for the outer layers of 'accounting', a dinner party) in which pretensions are laid bare without any apparent interposition by any of the narrators (including l'Isle Adam).
* Joris-Karl Huysmans - "Knapsack at the Ready". Comes across like a French Catch 22, and it's just as ridiculous and as funny as that other. Following the adventures of a dissolute soldier during the Prussian War (he spends much more time in various hospitals and wreaking havoc in towns than actually en route to battle, never mind seeing actual combat, which never occurs at all) and slipping between present and past tense from sentence to sentence, it's a treat.
* Georges Simenon - "The Man on the Street". A Maigret detective story which at once plays by the rules and turns them upside down, almost Austerian but also an honest-to-goodness crime mystery with an eventually clear resolution.
* Christiane Baroche - "Do You Remember the Rue d'Orchampt?". A misty, allusive wend through memory and the present which also has some interesting things to say about character and relationships. Unfortunately, the only thing of hers that's been translated into English!
* Monique Proulx - "Public Transit". At about 1000 words, more of a vignette than a story as such: a man saves a woman from being hit by a train and discovers that he has won a live televised test of everyday heroism - ending with a deliciously acerbic aside.

Roxy Music - Roxy Music

Yeah! This is great - an unholy mix of glam, prog, rock n roll, and saxophone, it doesn't sound much like anything I've heard before, though there are flashes throughout (a flavour of Bowie here, a dash of what might become Talking Heads there, even sometimes hints of something that might've made the lads from Joy Division sit up and take notice, such as on "If There Is Something", say). Heavy as all get go in places, and seemingly barely grounded in others, it's a vivid concoction and very listenable.

Natalie Imbruglia - Glorious: The Singles 97-07

Two reasons why I bought this despite already having all the albums (Left of the Middle way back when, White Lilies Island[*] and Counting Down the Days): it includes five new songs, and it comes with all of the music videos. Anyhow, I haven't got around to the videos yet; as to the songs, "Glorious" is a sunny, slightly breathless Imbruglia tune, much like many of her others but good with it, while the others explore moodier possibilities.

Coeurs

... shot on a soundstage, on sets that never pretend to be anything else. But it's a cinematic experience in every way, a delicate, melancholy and graceful film about shared space - literal and metaphorical - and universal longings.

It's about proximity and coincidence, crossed paths and overlapping relationships, but it's also about the distance between people, the gap between what they have and what they want. ...

People are constantly in search of something: whether it's a new flat or a new relationship, or something that they can't even quite define. They aren't always what they seem, and they don't always give their real names, and they don't always tell the truth to the people they are closest to. ...

Small revelations occur but don't always clarify things; sometimes, they create further problems or indecisions or disappointments.

Coeurs could appear slight in its carefully calibrated combination of warmth and chill, its formal grace and apparent simplicity, its exploration of confined spaces and confined lives - but its transparency and ease are misleading. It's a film unafraid of uncertainty or sadness; to the very last moment it feels not only assured and deft, but also mysterious and unresolved.

I don't think I've ever read a review which has more effectively enticed me to watch a film than Philippa Hawker's of Coeurs, from which all of the above is taken; to me, everything in that review suggested that Coeurs would be exactly the kind of film I like, not least in the way that much of it could literally have come word for word from my own notes towards API.

The film itself, though, didn't live up to those hopes (well, expectations). It's obvious that the people who made it know what they're doing - the film is impeccably put together, every scene carefully framed and subdivided, every line of dialogue well weighted and pregnant with multiple meanings, every interaction balancing and adding to the whole, and overlaid by a motif of snow which goes a long way to tying it all together, and yet -- . And yet -- it's very human for all of its chill, and yet -- it doesn't quite breathe, it doesn't shiver and resonate...somewhere, amidst the elegant subtleties of Coeurs, the true heart of the film is submerged. It's pretty fine, but it could have been so much more.

The Darjeeling Limited

Two ways of describing what The Darjeeling Limited is about spring to mind: one, it's a film about the 'spiritual journey' undertaken by brothers Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), initially on the Darjeeling Limited, a cross-country train running through India, and then, unexpectedly, off the rails (so to speak); and two it's a film about the things we do to ourselves, the things we do to other people, and the things the world does to all of us (and, in all of those veins, it's more than a little about family, too).

Whatever else it may be, The Darjeeling Limited is certainly a Wes Anderson movie - it has the hyper-coloured magic realist flourishes and deadpan surrealist touches, and also the desire (and many of the tools) to be a genuine character piece. But it's more serious than The Life Aquatic or The Royal Tenenbaums, its deliberate absurdities marginally more muted, its yen towards the universal clearer (which hinges mainly on the montage near the end showing all of the characters riding that there train), its message more overt by film's close.

I wonder, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was better on a second viewing, too. There's something very pleasing about Darjeeling that's difficult to pin down - a sort of elegance. (The one outright hilarious scene had all of us laughing out of all proportion to how funny it actually was - though admittedly Brody and Schwartzman doing straight-faced slapstick was always likely to be pretty great - which I reckon was due in no small part to the cumulative effect of the film, both its humour and its seriousnesses.)

Also, film proper was preceded by a two-handed (Schwartzman and Natalie Portman) short, Hotel Chevalier, which is excellent in its own right, and adds considerably to one's appreciation of what comes after.

(w/ David; Patrick and Simin also coincidentally there)