"Oh How They Come and Go"

A bit of a David 'best of' in some ways - it's a mix cd from him, from several months back - with tracks from Spoon, the Flaming Lips, Thom Yorke, Julian Casablancas, "River Man", "I See A Darkness" (the Johnny Cash version) and others. I hadn't heard either the Spoon or Yorke songs ("Tear Me Down", which is kind of Television-y and very Spoon, and "Hearing Damage", respectively). Best, for mine, is "Hideaway" by Karen O and the Kids (off the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack), saved for last, which, slow and end-of-the-worldly, sounds like it was recorded by some lost Velvet Underground-associated chanteuse some time in the 60s, equal parts Nico and Nancy Sinatra.

"What's the worst that can happen?": Splice

A sci-fi/horror riff on the dangers of science - and, more specifically, the ethical minefield associated with genetic engineering and particularly human DNA - Splice has some shocks up its sleeve, delivered in a lowish budget but consistently unnerving frame. People who saw it at MIFF last year talked it up, and the presence of Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley was also promising, and it pretty much comes through - the premise is intriguing, if not fully developed, and it goes to some uncomfortable places while forcing the viewer to retain at least some sympathy for its three central protagonists (not least the alien, uncanny Dren).

Metric - Live It Out

Energetic, slightly rougher-edged precursor to almost-minor-classic Fantasies.

Tift Merritt - See You On The Moon

Another elegant modern country record from Tift Merritt, this one more spacious, perhaps more mellow than the last couple, but equally golden.

Ken Blanchard - The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey

Lent to me by PG as I begin acting again (for three months, this time) - will be useful, though more in the way of spelling out techniques and systems that one has already been applying intuitively than by actually bringing any completely new insights.

Black Swan

Black Swan is certainly intense; it's also really good. It's an extremely interior film, which makes sense given that Black Swan is thoroughly concerned with identity and everything else that lies just below the surface of consciousness; in the creeping sense of unease and disquietude, of things being somehow not right, that it produced, it reminded me of David Lynch, and of Amenabar's memorable Open Your Eyes, which figures, since, from opening dream sequence to shattering end, it shares with them a preoccupation with effacing the distinctions between the inner and external worlds, between dreams and waking life. And it's also about art, and the toll that it takes, and in this it's lifted by a brilliant turn from Natalie Portman - one simply forgets that it's her, and it never feels as if she's acting at all. Her achievement is to take us deep into Nina's mind, when that very mind is shattering before our very eyes.

Black Swan flourishes its motifs with a boldness typical of Aronofsky - mirrors, doubling, control/letting go, dreams/reality - which works to the film's advantage because its themes demand such grand treatment, particularly in the context of its structuring metaphor, the tale of Swan Lake itself, recounted early in the film as a 'white swan/virginity - black swan/seduction - liberty in death' plunge, and then played out in terms which could almost be as literal or as figurative as each viewer pleases.

I thought after seeing the film, yesterday, that my dreams might be affected, so vivid and intense an experience was it - and (unusually) that actually happened...I think it'll stay with me.

(w/ Sunny and his friend Caroline)

Jenny and Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now

It may just be knowing that this is a girlfriend/boyfriend side project, but I'm Having Fun Now feels loose, tossed off, casual. That said, it's an enjoyable listen - basically relaxed boy-girl countryish rock with a dash of indie, and it doesn't hurt that the girl is Jenny Lewis; best are "My Pet Snake" and "Committed", both of which ride super-catchy tunes while making much of the vocal interplay between Lewis and partner Johnathan Rice.

Kira Henehan - Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles

An intriguing and often very funny entry in one of my favourite sub-genres - postmodernist existential detective novels (cf The Raw Shark Texts, Icelander (*) and, of course, the grandfather of them all, The Crying of Lot 49, Murakami a neighbour too, especially in A Wild Sheep Chase (*) and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (*) mode).

      There once was a one person who
      Knew that all that she knew was untrue
      She fell asleep in her head
      When she woke up instead
      Of being one one, she was two.

In Orion, we're in the hands of a wilful and inscrutable (even to herself) narrator, one Finley, engaged on a mysterious Assignment set by the equally mysterious Binelli - an Assignment whose very nature is unclear to Finley, but which has something to do with puppets. Her syntax is curious, but then so is everything about her (in more than one sense):

      They are also an unending source of pain and fury for myself and The Lamb. We are neither of us even close to a size 9.5. Who is. A penguin. A clubfoot. A saintly redheaded sister with no need for shoes, not ever again, wafting about the clouds in her wherewithal, no doubt, in her birthday suit, in the buff, with specially made size 9.5 wings erupting from giant shoulder blades to carry her wherever she might deign to go. An entire room filled with handcrafted, timeless, useless shoes.
      One could go mad.
      One does go mad, often, and then the other one, and then both for some time, and then some shoes get thrown about and the memory of the sister desecrated and defamed and then all are yelled at and then all get crappy Assignments next time around.

There's much confusion in Finley's world, not least on the question of who she is; many of those she encounters seem strangely doubled. (Not that this prevents her frequent application of 'logic' to what she encounters.) There's also a large snake, Lavendar, who is her 'beast of burden' and goes everywhere with her in a satchel, sometimes emerging to the consternation of those around. And there's also the odd recurrence of Tiki Ty's Tiki Barn, whose owner makes magnificent shrimp:

      Wherever we went, wherever the concerns in need of Investigation took us, we always stayed at Tiki Ty's Tiki Barn. And unlikely seeming as it seems, it always seemed to be exactly the same place.
      One learns that certain questions are unanswerable.
      This is why we need words like 'conundrum'.
      Tiki Ty's was always where we stayed and was always a large bright generous sort of bookstore-slash-vintage surfing memorabilia museum. The books were not necessarily about vintage surfing memorabilia; I perhaps misspoke. There were few, if in fact any, books on vintage surfing memorabilia at Tiki Ty's and perhaps in the whole of the world. Vintage surfing memorabilia being one of those memorabilias that people prefer to see accidentally or even on purpose, in person, but rarely, if ever, to read about.
      Though perhaps they would enjoy a picture book of vintage surfing memorabilia?
      This may not even be the case.
      This may be something that warrants further investigation, but perhaps by someone else.

Very pleasing indeed.

Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library

So you suspect that it'll turn out that you've heard plenty of this kind of thing before, indie girl hits the scene with more 'sensitivity' than actual talent or originality, and so on - but you buy the album anyway, just in case, because the passing mentions are intriguing and besides openness is important. And at first it seems like your fears might be realised, because the album seems all wispy and pretty and insubstantial, and there don't seem to be any real melodies, so what's with that?

But you keep listening, and it begins to sink in, the airy vocals emerging, from the ornate gusts and thickets, electronic and organic, of Dave Sitek's production (relevant to mention because he's really got a sound), and not longer after, the songs themselves, first the sweeping "Joints" and "Waves" (the one coming across like a more soulful, slowed-down, 23-era Blonde Redhead cut, the other sounding like a more orchestrated Cat Power, and both in a good way), then the even slower-to-reveal-themselves pleasures of songs like "Slow Burn Treason" and "Everytime I Go To Sleep", and then the whole things, in bits and pieces but with a kind of inevitability once it's started to make sense - and it turns out that this is why you keep the 'just in case' in your armory, after all, for albums like these, that just come along and surprise and disarm you and take you into their own worlds as they do it.

The National @ the Palais, Sunday 9 January

Happily for me, the way I feel about the National at the moment, as I get my first chance to see them live, is pretty much the way I felt about Wilco when I saw them for the second time a couple of years back - that is, if they're not the best rock band going around today, then I don't know who is. And the show didn't disappoint - a solid 8 out of 10 rather than anything transcendent, but still really good (and I wonder if, like that Wilco show, there might be a later reappraisal upwards, because obviously the songs were all great and I can't really fault the actual concert).

Live, it's even clearer than on record that the drummer is the real genius in the band, but the whole outfit was solid, frontman Matt Berninger's baritone selling the songs well enough and bringing out throat-shredding screams for songs like "Abel", "Mr November" and "Squalor Victoria" that demanded it, guitars squalling through their parts, and trumpet and trombone featuring throughout. They mix it up dynamically, too, emphasising different aspects of various songs that could otherwise sound a bit same-y, with the ones that really should feel like complete blasts of momentum doing just that. On their last three albums in particular, there's barely a weak song, and the set drew almost entirely from those three, and so never flagged. I really did enjoy it a lot.

(w/ Nenad + Emma & friend Matt; and David + Justine seated elsewhere)

Blue Valentine

I didn't know much about this film - both its attendant controversy and its gruelling nature had passed me by - but what I did know was enough to make me strongly suspect that it was going to be a downer (I'd intended to avoid the film, but Jade wanted to see it). In fact, it was one of the most uncomfortable films I've watched in a while - entirely deliberately so - Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams disappearing into their characters and delivering a naturalistic, almost improvised-feeling rendition of the lives of two people, unhappily married, alternating with scenes from seven (?) years previously, when they first met. (Gosling in particular is fantastic - he's an unassuming-seeming actor, but seriously talented...he was equally good in a very different role in Lars and the Real Girl.)

The discomfort came from the way that the characters are unpleasant to each other, Gosling's Dean in particular. There's physical and emotional (including sexual, which is both) violence and bullying, but more than that, there's two people just unable to get along, trapped by circumstance and by who they are; the oral sex scene which has caused so much fuss, while moderately explicit, isn't troubling at all, and that's because of its context - it occurs early in the relationship, while they're happy, before everything goes gradually to hell.

I was glad that the film didn't overly play up the contrast between the 'early' scenes and the later ones - there are plenty of signs of what's to come in those early sequences, though much more light and promise too. It makes it more realistic, though of course it's that realism which causes much of the squirming.

So definitely a downer (though the actors' comments at the very end of this interview gave me a slightly different perspective on it), but impressive.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech did make me think about how debilitating it would be to have even a moderately severe speech impediment, even if one's job didn't (as did Firth's George VI's) entail inspiring a wartime nation through public broadcasts - or, for that matter, general talking (as mine does). It's a good film, the central relationship likeable, the more minor characters well drawn, and the story (rather surprisingly) engaging, though I can't imagine rewatching it.

(w/ Sunny)

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter have never really registered, but I bought Halcyon Digest after hearing part of it in a record store; no wonder it caught my ear, because it has bits and pieces of a lot of my favourite things, from Cocteau Twins chime to Wrens-esque jangle and post-Arcade Fire modern orchestral indie-rock. Anyway, it's all good, very good actually, the two standouts being the epic "Desire Lines" and "Helicopter", both absolute killers.

On Sofia Coppola: Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere

Rewatching Lost in Translation, it wouldn't have been at all suprising had my viewing been overlaid by an awareness of the way in which the nature and quality of Bob and Charlotte's experiences, interactions and inner lives in Tokyo (and Kyoto) precisely, metaphorically, profoundly reflects my own experience of the world and my place in it. But it's a mark of the film's quality that, while watching it, those kinds of thoughts weren't uppermost in my mind; instead, I was absorbed by the relationship between Bob and Charlotte themselves, and their experiences, alone and together, in the strange land where they find themselves and each other. Of course, there's a strong element of identification and recognition in my response to the film - but that element remains always just below the surface, or perhaps is glimpsed only in fleeting moments, a snatch of music, a blurry night city landscape, a still moment alone above everything.

I usually think of The Virgin Suicides as my favourite Sofia Coppola film, but Lost in Translation is probably her most perfect - the way in which it invokes the aloneness of the two main characters, and the sense of transience, quiet alienation and inevitable failures of understanding and communication which are always there but merely especially evident in a foreign country, and then sets that against the desire for connection and the unexpected, miraculous way in which we occasionally, briefly find it, is note perfect, as is its ending. (cf 1, 2)

What The Virgin Suicides does that Lost in Translation doesn't is that it really stirs me - it produces pangs that feel almost physical. It was five years between the first time I saw it and the second, and it's been another five to now, the third, and it feels like the way I've responded to it on each of those occasions has been basically the same: what I wrote about it after that second watching still rings true (...coming to hold collective memories of times we hadn't experienced...).

All of Coppola's films feel very personal (it's impossible to imagine someone making such perceptive, subtle films without themselves possessing the sensitivity that animates them), and it's tempting to see this one, her first, as the most personal of the four to date - but it's in the sensibility that she brings to it rather than in the details of the story or characters (after all, it's an adaptation - and a notably faithful one - of the Eugenides novel), and it's that sensibility that has so drawn me in the past, and still does, intensely, bittersweet, languid, melancholy, cryptic.

So, after The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation came Marie Antoinette, which I'd been keenly anticipating and wasn't at all disappointed by. I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who I know who like the film (and I've sure talked, and argued, about the film with a lot of people) - in fact, it would top out at two - but I think that most people just aren't wired in the way that you need to be for MA to pierce, as it does me.

Going by extemporanea, I'd seen Marie Antoinette those first two times on the big screen (the first time with KB, who did like it, and then a second time on my own) and not since, but I could swear there'd been another time, on dvd - perhaps I forgot to note it, whenever it was. In any event, to watch it again is to be reimmersed in its many pleasures - visual, musical, associative.

* * *

This recent round of rewatching was, of course, inspired by Somewhere; Lost in Translation on Monday, The Virgin Suicides on Tuesday, Somewhere itself at the Nova, again with KB, on Thursday, and then Marie Antoinette tonight (Saturday).

And I liked Somewhere, a lot actually, though I wonder if I would've liked it as much had it been directed by someone else. It looks and feels very much like an independent film (in the American sense) - a reminder that, for all of her ubiquity and ability to score A-list Hollywood actors for her films, Coppola is fundamentally an arthouse director - and it has the slowness and contemplative air of the genre. Not much happens, but what does happen (or fails to happen) is closely observed.

The film's vision of the hedonism and excess of Hollywood life is rendered in dull colours and shades - a striking contrast to Marie Antoinette's sparkling, brightly-lit court of Versailles (in Coppola's rendition, an antecedent of modern Hollywood) - and that artistic choice fits with the gentleness of the film's tone and approach. While Somewhere is squarely concerned with the hollowness of the Hollywood lifestyle, it's content to observe, highlighting the culture's many absurdities (the deadpan shooting of the pole dancing scenes and Johnny's reactions, for example, is hilarious) and contrasting the warmth of Johnny's relationship with Cleo and Cleo's own good nature and level-headedness, rather than taking a more overtly satirical or cutting approach to its subject.

It's a quiet film, but nonetheless satisfying. There are some small epiphanies - Cleo in the car, Johnny breaking down on the phone at night afterwards, the final scene - all of which add something, though I would've preferred it had the film ended (as I'd thought it was going to) with the slow zoom-out long shot of Johnny and Cleo sunbathing side by side on deck chairs; for me, it didn't need that final scene with Johnny getting out of his car and walking into the future, though perhaps I'll feel differently next time I watch it.

There are things that set Somewhere apart from Coppola's previous films, most notably its slowness and the sense of distance to it. The Virgin Suicides is overtly bathed in nostalgia and narrated through the distorting lens of memory and recollection, but in themselves those are immediate experiences and sensations, even if their subject is a past event. Lost in Translation takes a pair of adults in a foreign land, constrained by the roles that life has forced upon them, and takes us directly to the heart of their relationship in a way that's characterised by interiority and practically forces us to bring our own experiences and readings into how we understand their interactions. And Marie Antoinette makes a hyper-coloured dream of its 'historical' milieu and shows us what it is to be a bauble in such a glittering setting in the only way that it's possible to understand such a character - through flash and surfaces, and glimpses of the feelings and quiet desolation that lie below them.

But while the protagonists of those films are cryptic and, in at least some (and, really, probably in all) cases unknowable, in Somewhere, Johnny seems blank - he doesn't know who he is, and he doesn't have the inner resources (except, perhaps, until the very end) to change his circumstances. He has a role in his world that he plays, but he's utterly disconnected from other people and from any real understanding of himself. And the film dramatises (enacts) that distance, creating a detachment in how we observe Johnny and his world while at the same time drawing our attention to it. (The film's use of music is typical - while it often begins playing as if it's part of the film's 'soundtrack' and therefore separate from the events of the film itself, in all but one or two instances, Coppola is careful to show us that the music is in fact part of the film's narrative, playing from a stereo or a sound system somewhere.)

That said, Somewhere has much more in common with Coppola's other films than it is dissimilar. Like those other films, it avoids psychologisation of its characters; instead, the mysteriousness of people's inner lives (even to themselves) is highlighted, as are the spaces between people, and the failures to 'only connect' - with others, and with the world at large - which inevitably follow. And, while it's slowed down, it shares with Coppola's earlier films a certain dreamy sensibility which gives those thematic preoccupations a wistful, poetic colour.

* * *

Movies came up, as they often do, in a conversation with CStCW a few weeks ago, and I mentioned Godard, Wong Kar Wai and Sofia Coppola as three who I love. C wholly endorsed the first two, but balked at the third (and particularly Marie Antoinette) and was entirely puzzled by my liking of her; the conversation made me think about just what it is that I like about Coppola's films so much, because there's no doubt that they do resonate with me.

Godard (at least in his golden period) emphasises the disjointed and essentially constructed nature of experience, understanding and narrative in his riffs on cinema and artistic form, but with flashes of sentiment that emerge in the gaps (perhaps unwittingly, despite his best efforts) and defy any attempt to read or experience his films in a joyless, anti-humanist fashion; WKW has adopted the new wave ethos and married it to a giddy romanticism, all ecstatic expressionistic stylised swoons which defy the alienation that is so often the defining aspect of his characters' experiences; and then there's Coppola, about whom I've already written a mini-essay above.

Each has a distinctive cinematic idiom through which form and content are matched and expressed; for me, what all three have in common for me is that they make films that are essentially cinematic renditions of the way that I see and experience the world, rendered in a heightened, poetic fashion - Godard's take is more cerebral and WKW's more emotive, but Coppola's is the most immediate and the most piercing, the closest to a literal depiction of the world as it appears ('phenomenologically') to me. Coppola's films speak to me - I guess that's enough.

Kazuo Ishiguro - When We Were Orphans

Such a sad novel; the final pages in particular are crushing. Ishiguro is a wonderful writer, and his Christopher Banks is, like The Remains of the Day's Stevens, a study in one person's inability to find happiness or love because of an unshakeable external preoccupation (in The Remains of the Day, it was, in essence, duty and doing what was expected of one; in When We Were Orphans, it's the trauma of the loss of Banks' parents in Shanghai and his obsession with solving cases and detective work). There are hints of the fantastic - of the non-realistic - in When We Were Orphans, by contrast to the thoroughly realistic (if exceedingly mannered) world of the earlier novel, and perhaps it's not coincidental that war is a much more direct presence in this one than in the other. The formality of the tone and structure of the novel is misleading, though at the same time integral - just below the surface is a far more subtle intelligence, exploring the ways in which we are who we are with a clarity and elegance that penetrates deep.

Alison Krauss - Now That I've Found You: A Collection

A collection of some of her early work, uniformly good. Alison Krauss has never quite set my world on fire, but she's reliably good; I suspect that I might listen to her more than I realise.

Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House

For all that they proudly wear their varied patchwork of influences (60s pop, 90s disco, general indie), Saint Etienne only ever really sound like themselves, and 2005's Tales From Turnpike House is unmistakably a Saint Etienne record. It's a good one, too, very much from the pop end of their palette, with plenty of nice, wistful melodies.

Twilight: New Moon

Christmas watching with family. Kind of boring, really, and it doesn't help that Twilight has now become a cliche - didn't enjoy it half as much as the first one.

Centurion

A bloody little few reels of cinema, tracking an ill-fated Roman attempt to wipe out a Pictish resistance to their empire-building during the second century AD, with plenty of none-too-subtle references to modern wars.

"We Bumped Our Heads Against the Clouds" (2010 Believer music issue cd)

Compiled by Chuck Lightning, an Atlanta producer type, this mix covers a spectrum of music well beyond my usual shoals - in a nutshell, and quite explicitly, it's black music, soul, funk, rap.

And that is the charge I believe all black artists need to be taking up right now. We need to be complex freedom fighters. There is serious work to be done, real discussion to be had in terms of art, culture, entertainment, technology, and politics in America.

So, somewhat surprisingly, I've ended up getting into the cd. There's lots to like; stand outs are a slow-burning cover of Stevie Wonder's "Cold War" by Janelle Monáe, a mellow pop track, "Chaos" by Spree Wilson, and a polished indie-soul number called "Rewind" by Scar (described by C. Lightning as an underground Atlanta superstar whose upcoming album is full of songs that sound like Phil Collins loitering in a seedy, outer-space trip club, telling the scantily clad girl across from him all about his broken heart), none of whom I'd heard of before, and also an amazing version of an Alice Cooper song called "I Never Cry" by Nina Simone.

Inglourious Basterds

The press makes you think Inglourious Basterds is going to be all about the squad of soldiers, all Jewish, led by Brad Pitt on a mission in Nazi-occupied France to basically nastily kill as many Nazis as they can, but it's really the story of Shosanna (a ravishing Melanie Laurent), survivor of a purge of her family by a villainous Nazi officer known as 'the Jew Hunter' who finds herself managing a Parisian movie theatre with ultimately fatal consequences. It's all very knowing - of course, we expect no less from Tarantino - and there's an underlying design and craft to it (the use of the cinema theme, for example, is integrated into the logic of the film as a whole rather than just being a throwaway piece of meta-referentiality), but I didn't find it completely satisfying. It's entertaining for most of its running time (though too long), and there are individual bits that sparkle (Pitt's fake Italian accent and constipated persona at the premiere is hilarious, and there are some knock-out individual shots), there was just something missing, some essential fire (ahem), soul maybe, I don't know.

30 Rock season 4

Maybe it's just the tyranny of expectation, but season 4 seemed a bit of a dip from the heights of the last couple of seasons. Still, it's never less than great fun to watch, and it certainly has its moments (often involving Kenneth); the greater emphasis on longer story arcs is also noteable. (Also, pleasingly, a couple of days after starting watching the dvds, I bumped into the friend who most reminds me of Liz Lemon on the street, not having seen her for several months before.)

Tilly and the Wall - Tilly and the Wall

There was a period when last.fm kept bringing up Tilly and the Wall, prompted presumably by the twee-ish indie-pop that I was prone to plugging into it. It's bright stuff, good ear candy, but not distinguished by any special quality (a couple of particularly catchy songs - "Pot Kettle Black", "Blood Flower" - notwithstanding).

Joe Haldeman - The Forever War

A taut sci-fi/military novel that doesn't do much wrong, written in the shadow of the Vietnam war and unmistakeably, but never distractingly allegorical in its depiction of the struggles of its soldier protagonists to adjust to the relativistic effects of their campaigns, where time passes vastly quicker on earth than it does for them subjectively, decades passing on earth while they experience only weeks or months in training and battle on alien soil.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt1

The tone's been set for this series - every instalment has to be darker and more adult than the last, the stakes higher, the dangers more profound. And on that front, this, the seventh, delivers. It does feel like half a film, despite its not inconsiderable length, but doesn't seem a cheat in the context of the series as a whole, which has turned out to be quite an achievement.

"Unnerved: The New Zealand Project"

I think it's to do with not just the experience of art, but specifically the experience of art in a gallery or museum - it can create, or maybe crystallise, feelings and emotions in ways that aren't normally accessible. It doesn't come every time, but when it does, it's at once acute and textural, complex, polyphonic. I suppose it has something to do with way in which engagement with art requires openness - openness to the 'larger than oneself' nature of the particular works while at the same time

This time, it really hit me while I was looking at a set of photographs by Gavin Hipkins, 80 in all, about 50 x 30 cm each, arranged consecutively, side-by-side, along three walls, under the collective title of "The homely". The series explicitly explores a theme that's at least strongly implicit in many of the other works in the exhibition - that of the uncanny (here, via its other common translation of 'unhomely') - through simple shots of familiar sites and objects, taken from unfamiliar angles and perspectives, in a way which makes them seem like fleeting glimpses of things we both know and are puzzled by: crosses, coastal scenes, war memorials, museums, corridors, lights (indoors and out), all given neutral 'place/subject' names ("Napier (Monument)", "Auckland (One Tree Hill)", "South Island (Trout)", etc). I started at one end and worked my way along; by about the seventh or eighth, I'd realised I had a lump in my throat and a fluttering in my chest, and I couldn't have said why.

The exhibition generally is heavily tilted towards photography, and explicitly sets itself to explore a particular stream within contemporary New Zealand art, drawing on complex senses of disquiet and disease mingled with reflections on national and cultural identity and appearance. Some which particularly struck me:
* Anne Noble - "Ruby's room". Six large, high-gloss, close-up photos of a child's mouth, distorted in various ways (edges of lips pulled down by a piece of string, tongue stained a vivid blue, a bright green piece of apple between the lips, etc).
* Bill Culbert - "Sunset III". Cibachrome photograph of a metal sculpture at sunset against a blue sky. And also his other gelatin silver b&w ones. As the plaque had it: "Light is treated as an active force in opposition to its ephemeral effects - incandescence, glare, reflection and, importantly, shadow."
* Sriwhana Spong - "Candlestick Park". Six minute video, b&w - screen divided in two, as hand-held camera circles around an outdoor installation (flags, shadows, shrubbery, garden path) clockwise on one side and anti-clockwise on the other. Weirdly compelling.
* Lisa Reihana - various large photos depicting Maori gods and goddesses; in its use of shadow and heavy, velvety darks, reminded me of Bill Henson.
* Yvonne Todd - "January" and "Limpet". Two beautiful young girls, cloaked in a doomed, seedy glamour.

(On at the NGV, but mainly sourced from the Queensland Art Gallery.)

Mongol

Handsomely produced and filled with stunning landscapes, Mongol's version of the early life of Genghis Khan manages the trick of being bloody without seeming gratuitous, in part because of its subject matter and in part because it seems committed to that subject. It didn't really stir me, but it's well done nonetheless.

Florence and the Machine - Lungs

Neat! Florence and the Machine come(s) on like a 21st century Kate Bush, rousing songs like "Dog Days Are Over", "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", "Drumming" and "Blinding" providing the sometimes almost tribal-sounding high points amidst a record stuffed full of interesting ideas welded to songs that are always sturdy and often positively exciting.

Best Coast - Crazy For You

iTunes says that this album is "Surf Pop", and that's not a bad start: fuzzy-edged jangle, mostly two to three minute (the longest of the record's 13 songs is 3:02, the shortest 1:43) summertime pop with just the slightest hints of shadows at the edges. Radio single "Boyfriend" is representative - a rollercoastering, summer-hazy ditty which quickly grabs the attention but doesn't have the melodies or depth to really stick with the listener afterwards...two songs stand out, and do stay in the mind: the slower, heavier, JAMC-meets-Breeders-by-way-of-the-Concretes sulk of "Honey", and the catchy "When I'm With You", which boasts easily the best tune on the album.

Terry Pratchett - Small Gods

I'm pretty sure that Small Gods was the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read; I can't remember what led me to pick it up, but at the time (it was either grade 5 or 6) I was in the habit of scouring the 'best sellers' shelf at the Pines library - a habit that also led me to David Eddings and Donald E Westlake at around the same time - and I do remember being intrigued by the cover and by the irreverent blurb. Anyway, I read it, and that was the beginning - I didn't look back. These days, like most of his books, I basically know Small Gods inside out, so reading it doesn't carry any of the charge or fizz of excitement that that first run of reads brought with it, but, like an old friend, its company never palls either.

Gregory Maguire - What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

A bit of a throwaway book from Maguire, a novella probably nominally aimed at children, though with some pretty adult themes - imagines tooth fairies as a species which lives on the margins of human society, living in warring communities and collecting teeth for reasons of their own (which have something to do with finding meaning in their own lives through giving something to humans).

Agora

I hadn't heard of the 4th century Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia before this film, Amenabar's latest, started getting promoted, but I can see why her name has come down the ages to us - as presented in this film, at least, and portrayed by Rachel Weisz, she's a memorable proto-Enlightenment figure, deeply committed to the ideals of human reason and philosophical understanding to the extent that her death is ultimately brought on at least in part by her beliefs.

Agora is well made, if unusually structured: a slowish beginning followed by an extended, pell-mell action sequence culminating in the burning of the library of Alexandria - and then a kind of pause and then part two, several years later, of equal length to the first part and focusing on the huge changes then sweeping Alexandrian society. It dramatises the city-state in a time of social, political and religious flux, setting Hypatia's intellectual explorations against that backdrop, and foregrounding the effect that the increasingly ascendant (and intolerant) Christian religion has on the development of that thought.

(w/ Kai and Ben K; also Steph for dinner but not movie)

Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

A good collection of stories, some by writers notable for their work in particular genres and others by those associated with more 'general' fiction. The choice of writers gives an indication of the theme, such as it is, of the anthology - the genre types generally being recognisably of their genre but known for working at the margins and incorporating more 'literary' elements (Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, Walter Mosley), and the others a catholic mix of unarguably literary types and bestseller list popular fiction writers (there can't be too many short story collections out there featuring both Joyce Carol Oates and Jodi Picoult). What these stories have in common, as Gaiman suggests in his introduction, is that they're all genuine stories in the sense of being about the imagination and the 'and then what happened?' - many have fantasy and/or horror (or fable/fabulous) elements, but generally situated in the real world.

Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

So one night last week I was feeling the walls closing in on me a bit, and needed a distraction - and voila.

The New Pornographers @ Hi-Fi Bar, Saturday 13 November

Touring without Bejar but with Neko, and they seemed a band completely comfortable in their own skin, right down to the ultra-casual outfits - ripped through a set of songs drawn from across all of their albums, starting with "Sing Me Spanish Techno" and ending (main set at least) on the high note of "The Bleeding Heart Show". In fact, they showed the happy knack of being able to pick the high points from their back catalogue for their live show; pretty much all of the songs came to life, but "Testament to Youth in Verse" (still my favourite of theirs), about midway through the set, stood out.

Also, support was an outfit from Brisbane, Little Scout. They were pretty sweet, and actually really good - melodic, colourful indie-pop.

(w/ Meribah)

(last time - December '06)

Ashley Crawford - Directory of Australian Art

Actually sets out to be a directory, in the sense of containing listings of practical information about the Australian art world as well as more general historical and encyclopedic material; chapters titled 'A brief overview of Australian art', 'Investment', 'A select dictionary of Australian art and artists', 'Around the galleries' and 'Art people'. I learned quite a bit from reading it - both from the concise, readable overview of the history of 'Australian art' it provides, and from the context it gave me for various individual artists whose work I've come across around the galleries over the years.

Happy Together

There's something about Happy Together that reminds me of Godard's Vivre sa vie - apt, as Wong Kar-Wai and JLG have more than a bit in common. I've intended to watch Happy Together for ages - in fact, I bought the dvd a good couple of years ago, thinking that I could watch it before heading off to Buenos Aires, where most of the film takes place. It's a beautiful setting, and WKW and cinematographer Christopher Doyle use the city and some spectacular natural settings from elsewhere in Argentina to dizzying effect, enhanced by the Piazzolla soundtrack and of course by (and with) the 'narrative' of two unhappy lovers, Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung (a dream pairing if ever there was one), and a third with who has also become becalmed in BA while drifting on his own journey (Chang Chen). It's a film that has an impact at the time, but then really lingers, the intensity and textural quality of the mood it creates sinking further in as the film and its images become part of one's own internal landscape - like things already familiar, but now heightened.

The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers & The Return of the King

Have been rewatching these (long versions) since getting a new tv a few months back, and they're still extremely impressive, not least in the way that they're still exciting after multiple viewings and while knowing exactly what what's going to happen.

Disquiet, Please! More Humor Writing from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder

The kind of humour that you'd expect given that it's all drawn from the pages of the New Yorker - literary, satirical, self-deflating, urban, strongly Jewish-flavoured (and short)...Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor, Steve Martin, George Saunders, David Sedaris, etc, including plenty of newer voices, most of whom I didn't know. Diverting, but only a handful of laugh-out-loud moments (McSweeney's humour, by contrast, regularly has me helpless with laughter) - which maybe comes with the territory, the humour tending much more towards the wry than the broad.

"Mortality"

You have to learn everything, even how to die. - Gertrude Stein

ACCA exhibitions always have a particular flavour, and they're almost always good. "Mortality" is a suggestive title, and the physical layout and 'environment' of the exhibition is suitably dark; that said, while themes of death and passing loom large, the perspective it takes on 'mortality' is broad enough to include all phases of life and some of its key markers, most notably infancy and early childhood, and desire and relationships. There's a strong emphasis on the moving image - video work, mostly - and a mix of other pieces in the series of darkened rooms through which one moves when exploring the exhibition.

Individual works that stood out, for various reasons:
* Bill Viola - "The Passing". Nearly an hour long, so I didn't see all of it, but I did catch the last bit and there was something very monumental and moving about it - drowned in water, it had the heaviness and immensity of, well, mortality.
* David Rosetzky - "Nothing like this". A video work which loops a few short vignettes (sometimes with small variations) with a series of voiceovers delivered in different sequences (and, again, with variations) so that there's no necessary relationship between any particular narration (or the character delivering it) or images, all framed as anecdotes from the uncertain mores of, I guess, modern romance.
* Charles Anderson - "dis/appearance: repatriation". A room installation, "various found and prepared objects, improvised constructions, light, bandaging, honey, and bee's wax" - bunk bed, table with objects, etc, much heavily swathed in white bandages and with lights set from underneath scattered around. Something of a Mary Celeste feel.
* Giulio Paolini - "L'altra figura". Two plaster cast heads on plinths in classical style (meant to invoke/pass as white marble), their gazes cast down at the shattered pieces of a third on the ground below (being the ground of the gallery itself).
* Tony Oursler - "Talking light". A dark room with only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling in the centre, flickering on and shedding light when it speaks, loud-whispering menacing phrases at intervals - "look at me ... look at me ... give me colours ... give me colours ...". I wondered if it was Pynchon-inspired (on balance, probably not).

Chloe

Felt like watching something on the big screen last Tuesday (Melb Cup Day), and this had the significant advantage of having been directed by Atom Egoyan, whose The Sweet Hereafter is, I still think, a small, quiet miracle. Chloe's not in the same league, but it sets itself at doing something quite different and mostly succeeds. It's a very adult movie, both in the frankness with which its characters discuss and engage in/with sex, and in the hard-edged ways in which they relate to each other (up to and including the manners in which they reveal their vulnerabilities) - and while none of its moves are exactly surprises (the film deliberately signposts the direction in which it's heading from very early on), it holds the attention.

(w/ Jade)

Stephen Donaldson - The Mirror of Her Dreams & A Man Rides Through

Like Thomas Covenant, the central figure of Donaldson's other fantasy series, Terisa Morgan is plucked from a less than happy existence in a world that is recognisably our own and finds herself a central figure in a struggle between forces that she only partly understands, some of which reside within her own person, while grappling with doubts about her own agency and self which are essentially existential.

This (Mordant's Need) series doesn't have the same depth and complexity of the Covenant books, or the symbolic, archetypal power of those others, but it stands up well to repeated re-reads (last time), and while it's a relatively minor work, Donaldson is one of the greats of the field and The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through unmistakeably have his stamp on them.

Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres

I'd been saving A Thousand Acres for a while, and it was worth the wait and anticipation. Set in contemporary Iowa - farm country - it deliberately invokes King Lear, but would have stood as a marvellous novel even in its own right. Oddly for a city boy like me, its theme of the relationship between landscape and people resonated, but in fact the whole thing caught at me. There are no tricks or gimmicks to A Thousand Acres - it's a story (about family and other things), populated by characters, in which themes are readily discernible...but it does it so well.

Sharon van Etten - Epic

I listen to a lot of countryish female singer-songwriters, and Sharon van Etten is one of 'em. She's good, and has a pretty strong voice (both literally and, songwriting-wise, figuratively) though it feels like she perhaps hasn't quite come into her own yet - that she may still be a bit raw. One to watch out for.

The Social Network

So I was persuaded to see this despite my instinctive reaction - ie, it's a movie about facebook, so how can it possibly be any good? - because of the Sorkin/Fincher connection, and indeed it sounds like it was written by Sorkin and looks like it was directed by Fincher. Anyway, it's a pretty good film - involving enough while it lasts, and with a story to tell - but not one that's likely to stay with me.

(w/ Steph and Sunny)

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

This is a hell of an album - majestic, finely-wrought, lucid, emotive. At various times they sound like any number of their brit contemporaries, but there's something kind of stately, ornate maybe, about their songs and production which makes them distinctive; it's also noteworthy that every song on The Seldom Seen Kid is strong, built around clear melodies which often go in unexpected directions and decorated with details that become integral to the whole. Best, or at least current favourite, songs: "The Bones of You", "Mirrorball", "Grounds for Divorce".

Four Tet - There Is Love In You

I've never been able to explain to my own satisfaction why I like Four Tet, but the point is that I do. There Is Love In You doesn't break the pattern - I can listen to it over and over, and it catches my attention each time through, but I don't know why. There's just something about it - something that draws me.

Eels - Hombre Lobo

Alternates between anger and depression (not that the two are particularly incompatible, in principle or on this record), muscular, electric guitar-driven rockers sitting alongside pretty Eels-style laments. Not too bad, but doesn't leave much of an impression.

Burial - Untrue

Apparently this is a bit of a classic of its kind (at least according to Nenad, who recommended it a while back), but it hasn't really taken with me. Its ghostly, sample-woven electronic mood and sound remind me of the abstract hip-hop of DJ Krush, and like that other, I don't find much to grasp hold of on Untrue - its pleasures are not for me.

Yann Tiersen - Les Retrouvailles

Cinematically dramatic song-pieces, given focus by Tiersen's facility with dynamic and unusual melodies and guest vocals weaving through (most notably a couple from the endlessly fascinating Liz Fraser). Actually something of a grower - one of those that you need to get your ear in for. Liking it.

"Tomorrow, in a year" (Hotel Pro Forma)

Picked this out as the show I most wanted to see at this year's MIAF when the program came out, cause it looked like it might be a real (artistic) experience - advertised as a contemporary opera, organised around Darwin and Origin of Species, music by the Knife, touting comparisons to "Einstein on the Beach" (seeing a good live performance of which remains one of my mostly fondly cherished cultural hopes).

For all that, it looked like inertia was going to get the better of me until I found myself at a loose end on the last night of its (brief) run - last Saturday - and bought a ticket a few hours beforehand ... and I'm glad I went, although my feelings about the show were mixed. I think a lot of that mixedness flows from the relationship between the strength of the show's high concept and the relatively literal, programmatic feel of the execution - that is, the idea of an 'opera' built around the notion of evolution, and both musically and sets-wise structured to reflect humankind's own evolution, both in the strict and in broader senses, where the form is, to a large extent, the content, rather than being structured around any kind of conventional narrative, is striking and impressive, but the actual show/performance doesn't get very far beyond that idea, instead playing it out in fairly predictable, pedestrian ways (if those are fair ways of describing a work that is, in a way, inherently interesting and unusual).

One way of looking at this is to suggest that the component parts often seemed pedestrian because, for all of the graspability of that basic idea, the piece's commitment to rigorously embodying that idea (and working through its implications for contemporary 'opera') requires a degree of repetition, build-up, etc - that certainly goes for the way that the Knife's score 'evolves' over the show's 90 or so minutes from relatively minimal, soundscape stuff to out and out triumphant electro-popness. But I'm not sure that this would excuse the unexciting nature of the actual songs, the uninteresting choreography (case in point: a lot of the dancers' movement could, for example, without too much of a stretch evoke the delicate fluctuations and waverings of the simple forms of life as viewed under a microscope with which we're all familiar - but that in itself doesn't make them interesting) and the lack of a really coherent stage language (lots of imagery, including repeating motifs and stage elements, which themselves develop or, again, 'evolve' in various ways - but, to me, nothing really underpinning it), unless it really demands an entirely different way of looking at the work (in which case it's incumbent on the work itself to do more to open up such a way).

Overall, "Tomorrow, in a year" was well worth it - the fundamental interestingness (audacity is putting it too high, but it's something like that) of what it was, coupled with the elements of genuine spectacle to it and the artistic intelligence that it embodies, as well as the thought that it provoked, saw to that. But it didn't feel totally satisfying or immersive - something just wasn't quite there.

Shawn Colvin - Polaroids: A Greatest Hits Collection

I've always thought fondly (if vaguely) of Shawn Colvin thanks to "Sunny Came Home" having chimed with me when it was all over the radio in high school (in retrospect, it was an early forerunner of the stuff that I'd get so heavily into some eight or nine years later); this collection shows her to be a fine songwriter with a nice singing voice into the bargain - nice.

Steve Earle - The Collection

Pleasantly crunchy collection of Earle's countryish roots-rockers from the first (MCA) part of his career, including the Copperhead Road period.

Lost season 6

It's striking that, as Lost becomes more overtly supranatural, particularly over the course of this sixth (and final) season, it also comes to seem increasingly concrete and literal - I suppose it's that the answers that the show finally provides are, indeed, answers, but answers arising from causes and explanations that are inherently anti-realistic (or, at least, beyond the bounds of the consensus view of reality).

I have mixed feelings about the wrap-up - on the one hand, I'm glad that there is, indeed, an explanation of sorts, and I think that the way the show resolves, including the dual narrative running through this season, is faithful to the overall structure, narrative logic and thematic preoccupations set up in seasons 1 through 5, but on the other hand I could wish that things were less clear-cut, more puzzling, more open-ended (though had that last wish been granted, no doubt it would have been even more unsatisfying).

All up, I'm glad I've gone on the journey offered by Lost. For me, ultimately, it's about the story and the mystery - the metaphysics, such as they are, are a bonus. But all told, it is something out of the ordinary - I'll miss it.

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Closer

I liked Closer well enough when I first saw it, but it's since become something close to a touchstone for me, or at the very least a frequent point of reference, in art (egs 1, 2, 3) and in life, as its virtues (most notably the brutal, cutting truth of it - a truth that is no less true for being far from universal) have grown in my mind and, I guess, it has, in some respects, become more real for me.

Sometimes rewatching a film that has undergone this kind of personal reassessment since its first (or more recent) watching leads to disappointment, but if anything Closer was even better than I'd come to remember. I still can't quite put my finger on why I like the film so much, but obviously something about it resonates.

Dark City

Twelve years on, Dark City is still impressive - in its imagery in particular, but also in its ideas and how it executes them. The sci-fi/noir setting is wholly convincing, there are spectacular visuals at every turn, and the few flashes of colour (the goldfish at the start and the Shell Beach interludes) are carefully chosen for thematic and emotional impact; also, it reminded me how stunningly beautiful Jennifer Connelly was back in the day (maybe still, for all I know).

Robert Plant - Band of Joy

Another very solid outing by Plant, somewhat in the same vein as his fantastic collaboration with Alison Krauss of a couple years back, Raising Sand. On Band of Joy, he has a dream pair of collaborators in Buddy Miller on guitar (and production) and the glorious Patty Griffin singing backup, and a great roster of songs to do over (nearly all covers, and mostly obscure ones), and it all works very nicely.

The album starts brightly, with the folksy country-rock of "Angel Dance" (Los Lobos) followed by a Gram and Emmylou-esque Richard Thompson number, "House of Cards" (one of my favourites), the only original Plant-Miller composition on the record (a loose, melodic bluegrass number, "Central Two O Nine") and then a wonderfully ethereal Low cover ("Silver Rider"), which, all murmured lyrics and exhalations and spiralling, layered guitars, sounds like nothing so much as Death in Vegas covering Galaxie 500. The rest of it's as diverse as that opening four-song run, though not as consistently strong, covering country ballads ("The Only Sound That Matters"), psychedelic-edged groovers ("Monkey"), bright good-times tunes ("Harm's Swift Way" - oddly reminiscent of the Arcade Fire's "City With No Children In It") and experimental rave-ups ("Even This Shall Pass Away"). It's all very tasteful, but in a good way - a definite graceful ageing, and a real success.

"Soak + The Hollow Air"

A pair of contemporary Australian pieces, both drawing on a range of influences / musical streams - indeed, it was the panoply of such influences for "Soak", in particular (Eno, Part, Gorecki, ambient, filmic, jazz) which intrigued me. I could see why they were programmed together; I liked "Soak", which genuinely did blend all of the claimed influences, but found "The Hollow Air" (completely with shakuhachi) a bit too abstract to really grasp.

(w/ Ash and Penny @ Melb Recital Centre)

China Miéville - Kraken

Not as thrillingly outré and alien as his New Crobuzon books - indeed, deliberately located in a parallel-universe London, albeit one that is thoroughly warped and infiltrated by the weird - but still tremendously compulsive, immersive reading.

"Red Hot Shorts" session 12

A fun Friday night compilation of NYC-themed shorts and music videos at ACMI, focusing more on the city's gritty side than on the glamour, fashion, romance &c that it often brings to mind; music-wise, iconic figures like Patti Smith and Lou Reed were represented, as well as contemporary figures like Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and Santogold.

(w/ Jade)

Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

... in which Band of Horses get way too mellow and dreamy for their own good. There aren't any really exciting moments on Infinite Arms - the album's not unpleasant at all, but it's all a bit boring.

The Like - Release Me

Pitching their tent about halfway between the tougher, more garage-oriented rock of Fabienne Delsol and the Bristols and the purer girl group pop kicks of the Pipettes, the Like have come up with an enjoyable take on the 60s revivalist thing kicking around at the moment. For me, only three or four of the individual songs really stand out, but the overall sound is great and there are hooks a plenty so it hardly matters.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Funny in moments but very minor. The only really good thing about it is George Clooney.

Gentlemen Broncos

A film by the director of Napoleon Dynamite - which is relevant, because before I knew that, my main response to Gentlemen Broncos was that it felt like a lesser version of that other. The silliness and scattershot-ness is deliberate, but that doesn't redeem it.

Jeffrey Toobin - The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

I read some good review of this book when it came out, and for some reason recently developed a strong desire to read it. Anyway, it's a good read, Toobin's journalistic background coming through in the way he brings to life the characters and issues that have shaped the recentish history of the US Supreme Court. The appeal of the book is really twofold - first, the way it gives some insight into the behind the scenes workings of the institution and the way its members are appointed, and second, the way it dramatises some of the key social debates of modern US society through the seminal decisions that shaped the way they continue to play out (abortion, capital punishment, affirmative action, military detention, civil rights generally) and provides a window into broader social/legal trends and developments re conservatism/liberalism.

Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice

You can definitely tell that Inherent Vice is a Pynchon novel, but its hippie-era detective-noir-caper genre structure is something of a change of pace for him - not least in being centred around a character, perpetually stoned gumshoe Doc Sportello, who actually feels real. It's interesting seeing so many classic Pynchonian motifs in such an apparently different format - although of course all of his previous novels can themselves be read as sprawling, discontinuous detective anti-narratives. Indeed, in many ways, the plot of Inherent Vice is beside the point (just as with his other novels), even though it ultimately resolves after a series of increasingly unlikely coincidences and twists - tellingly, in that sense, its structure precisely replicates that of the genre in which it situates itself. Fun!

Assorted management books

* Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson - The One Minute Manager
* Loren B Belker - The First-Time Manager
* Stephen P Robbins - Managing People

Lent to me by PG - I actually found them quite interesting, though more for the concepts and ways of thinking about managing people that they suggested than the particular prescriptions they contained.

Sleepy Hollow

Burton plays it quite straight here, creating a dark, impeccably moody, almost painterly genre piece. In Depp's Ichabod Crane and Ricci's Katrina it has two archetypal Burton protagonists, and they're surrounded by a host of suitable supporting actors, not to mention a wonderful, gothically wracked landscape; the story gallops forward, and if there are no real surprises, well, it's still an enjoyable and sometimes strikingly spectacular ride.

(w/ M @ ACMI - last time I saw it was when it came out, in '99)

Please Give

One of those films that gets it exactly right - a pitch perfect dramatisation of NYC-style upper middle class manners and mores, complete with guilt, neurosis, aspiration and well-meaning misunderstanding of others. Clear eyed and so sometimes cutting, but ultimately kind to its characters in all their imperfections - and funny, too.

(w/ Steph and Sunny)

Valkyrie

Not that there was anything wrong with Valkyrie exactly, but it was kind of boring (I must admit, knowing the ending - ie, Hitler doesn't die - probably didn't help).

Talk To Her

Talk To Her is a difficult film to pin down - for all of the simplicity of its set-up, the film's many flourishes (the melodramatic twists, the structural sleights of hand, the film and various other performances within the film) and its subtle, allusive quality keep it from easy graspability...whatever else it may be, though, it's a very fine film, quietly powerful in a way that reminds me of The Sweet Hereafter.

Dead Like Me: Life After Death

Disappointing - has nothing of the charm that animated the tv series. Suffers from Rube's absence and from the substitution of a different actress to play Daisy, but more than anything it's a comprehensive failure to find the right tone which cripples this made-for-dvd feature - the characters are unlikeable (even with the significant stock of goodwill built up by the show to draw upon), the plot risible, the deaths perfunctory, the whimsy forced.

Made in U.S.A.

A cleverly ingenuous cinematic pleasure, just on the right side of being too cute. Loses a bit on a second viewing, but not much. (First time)

(w/ Penny)

Tift Merritt - Tambourine

I've listened to the one before (Bramble Rose) and the one after (Another Country), and with the benefit of that context, Tambourine sounds like Merritt's Memphis record; not coincidentally, it's also a notch above her others, both of which are extremely solid modern country albums. Tambourine invokes Dusty Springfield (see esp. "Good Hearted Man") as well as brilliant contemporaries like Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams, and makes clear that, when at the top of her game, Merritt has the songwriting chops and vocal abilities to be far from disgraced by the comparisons. By turns swinging, rocking, and tenderly folky, and shot through with a distinct gospel flavour, Tambourine deservedly sounds celebratory. for it's immensely enjoyable and likeable.

Arcade Fire - "The Suburbs"

The Arcade Fire are kind of a totemic outfit for me. It started with Funeral, which didn't immediately hit me, but over time sank in, deep. That was in '05, as I was falling into country music in a big way, and I remember thinking that it might just be the last rock album that I'd ever love - a thought that probably, on some level, also owed a bit to the record's summatory, (end-)of-an-era sound. Then came Neon Bible, and while I didn't take it quite as much to heart, it had a grandeur and scale, coupled with a sense of intimacy and a distinctly human core, which equalled Funeral - and, if anything, these days I'm more likely to find snatches of that second album running through my mind.

So the appearance of "The Suburbs" in record stores a few weeks ago was a welcome sight - and even more welcome was the discovery that, while their sound has evolved, they've still got whatever it is that set them apart from the beginning. The tides and oceanic surges of their earlier records are still here, but in a more subtle, smoother form, and the album's intricacies sit easily with the melodic thrills it offers up, song after song. The Suburbs is thoroughly of the now, but it also takes many of its cues from the 80s - the Arcade Fire have always had something of the anthemic flavour of early to mid period U2, but they've before never sounded as much like them, and there's a strong New Order flavour to several tracks, and even, a couple of times, synth washes that could have come direct from classic Cure or Joy Division.

There are plenty of highlights, but so far two songs have most demanded the replay button for me: "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", coming on like a lost Tom Tom Club track, all spritely (spelling/meaning intended) anomie, and probably the sweetest pop song they've ever recorded; and the jangly, building-to-high-drama of "Suburban War"...I also especially like the "Ready to Start"-"Modern Man"-"Rococo" run near the start (that last in particular perilously close to ridiculous, yet instead rather brilliant). End to end, it's another great album from them - I know I'll get a lot more out of it, and it has me looking forward to the next.

Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 1

However you dice it, Robyn was a gem...the fizz and snap of tracks like "Konichiwa Bitches" and "Who's That Girl", the chilly post-millennial electro-pop waves of "With Every Heartbeat", the pared-back genius of "Be Mine!" - it all added up to something somewhat out of the ordinary, and an album that stood up to repeat listens remarkably well.

Coming after that, Body Talk Pt. 1 is a confounding record. It plays more like a longish ep than an album, leading off with four cuts of polished commercial dance-touched pop before a second half comprised of three songs in wildly disparate styles (none particularly successful, and one, "Dancehall Queen", actively annoying) and then the 2 minute, lullaby-like "Jag Vet Dejlig Rosa", which does work, though by the time it appears, it feels completely out of context.

The main problem with the record is that the personality of Robyn herself, which came through so clearly on her self-titled lp, is largely buried - while the first half of Body Talk Pt. 1 is perfectly listenable ("Cry When You Get Older" in particular is catchy), there's nothing on it that demands attention or that feels especially fresh, a few tantalising hints of the pop thrills of which she's capable notwithstanding, and the second half is just a hodge-podge. Alas!

Mates of State - Bring It Back

One thing about MoS - for all of their undeniable twee-ness, their melodies, singing and arrangements are a model of clarity...songs like "Fraud in the '80s", "For the Actor" and "Running Out" stand out because they're cleverly written songs with strong melodic backbones and some interesting twists, delivered brightly and winningly, and not because of any particular studio gloss or gimmickry. Bring It Back is an enjoyable set from an always charming outfit - keeping it simple, and doing it well.

Summer Wars (MIFF)

Shy maths whiz boy accompanies popular female classmate to large family gathering at ancestral manse where he discovers that she is passing him off as her fiance and becomes entangled in the machinations of a rogue AI in a virtual world called 'OZ' that is intimately connected with external society - very anime (which it in fact is).

(w/ M)

Symbol (MIFF)

One of the more purely enjoyable films I've seen for a while. Hard to do justice to it by way of a summary, but at its centre is a man who wakes up to find himself in a large, white, apparently featureless room but, on closer inspection, discovers that there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of little protrusions from the walls and floor - turns out they're little cherubs' penises - which, when pressed, produce some more or less repeatable effect (various objects shoot out from concealed hatches in the wall; water starts pouring from above directly onto his head, wherever he moves to; a mysterious, African appearing figure materialises and sprints across the room to disappear through the opposite wall).

It's played for laughs, often of the slapstick, the absurd and the more purely metaphysical all at the same time, and it is frequently laugh out loud funny; intercut are scenes from another story, involving a conspicuously mediocre Mexican wrestler ('Escargot Man'), the connection to which is made apparent near the end. Inventive, deadpan, unashamedly low-brow at points, ultimately gesturing at a vague sense of the profound, it's a peculiar (and perhaps peculiarly Japanese) kind of divine comedy.

(w/ M; Wei and AM also there; likewise Adam P, and a pair of his/M's friends, C & P)

"let it die"

There was a time when mix cds were really important to me - when they felt like a way of expressing things that couldn't otherwise be externalised. For better or for worse, the intensity of that feeling has since much receded, but I've been reminded of it, a little, by listening to "let it die", which was handed to me the other day with the words "it's a break-up mix cd, but still a mix cd" - or something to that effect. It doesn't hurt that the mix begins with Cyann & Ben's glittering merry-go-round lullaby "I can't pretend anymore", an old mix cd favourite of my own, but mostly it's the sense that the mix really does reflect a feeling, a state of mind - not a particularly happy or positive one, of course, but one that has found expression in a form that still, after all, makes sense to me.

Sin City

Still excellent. I'm not surprised they never got around to making another instalment - so vividly and effectively does this one mark out the stylistic terrain that it occupies that it seems the last word on that count...anything further, one feels, would be redundant - an arid exercise in repeating something that has already definitively been done.

Daybreakers

I'd got the impression that this one might be an unusually stylish, intelligent vampire flick, and while that's probably a fair call, it's also undeniable that the film's genre heart is very close to the surface. It goes like this: most of the world's population has been turned into vampires by a mysterious outbreak, but apart from a newfound thirst for blood (preferably human), things go on much as before...until the human blood supply begins to run low, it becomes apparent that a vampire deprived of blood undergoes a degeneration to a rather more atavistic and terrifying state, and a small group of surviving humans stumbles upon a cure for the vampirism. Neat concept, but it doesn't do all that much with it, being content instead to make the predictable moves en route to its bloody climax, with the result that it feels like an opportunity missed.

Enter the Void (MIFF)

Not a film that I would've picked out for myself, but Jon suggested it, and I was willing to take a risk. Anyway, first things first: I can't say I enjoyed Enter the Void at all. Its quasi-mysticism didn't sit well with me (afterwards, Adam W told me that it was a very faithful representation of the ideas of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which features in the film's 'plot'), and the closing stages suffered badly from an overly literal depiction of the abstract/metaphysical/spiritual notions with which it was by then turning out to be principally concerned (from that perspective - and several others - the low point was unquestionably the 'vagina eye' close-up of the penis going in and out, in and out...which was the point at which large parts of the audience started laughing and more or less didn't stop for the rest of the film); at 154 almost relentlessly disorienting, largely non-linear, frequently ugly, sometimes outright hideous, and occasionally jump-in-your-seat shocking minutes long, it was also a pretty gruelling viewing experience.

That said, I'd stop short of calling it gratuitous - while it certainly pushes the bounds of good taste very hard, and certain scenes/montages went on for way too long, I did feel that it was a serious artistic project on Noé's part, and not mere provocation - the film seems committed to pushing the viewer for a purpose, namely to experience, in all its intensity, the life of its central protagonist (including the traumatic events that have shaped his identity, to which his consciousness, being the vehicle through which the film is presented, recurs over and over) and the willed journey towards reincarnation that he undertakes following his seedy, untimely death in a Tokyo toilet.

So, all up, I don't regret having seen this film, even though sitting through it was a real endurance test, and even though I don't think there's any particular profundity to it - it was certainly an experience, it did provoke me, and I do respect its artistic integrity, however ultimately flawed the film is.

(in the end, Jon couldn't make it, so went with Adam, David + Justine; also, trang + 1)

Daria seasons 1 & 2

Daria has a special place in my heart. It looms very large in my memories of my adolescent years, and there's no other tv show to which I have anywhere near the same sentimental connection; it doesn't require any great self-understanding to grasp why my teenage self was so drawn to the sarcastic outsider-dom of Daria and her angular, arty friend Jane, nor why it feels as if the show helped considerably in getting me through that turbulent period. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way, and the show would have been a natural candidate for a dvd release, but licensing problems prevented that, and so for years I felt - again, this isn't overstating it - a kind of void, created by its unavailability.

Anyway, a while ago, I mentioned much of the above to Julian F, who nodded sympathetically, and then, the next time I saw him, presented me with a burned dvd containing seasons 1 and 2, which he'd downloaded in the meantime. So I've been watching it in fits and bursts since then, and finding, rather to my surprise, that I've seen all of the episodes before (ie, back in high school) - surprising because I don't remember watching Daria particularly faithfully or systematically back then, as great a significance as it's since assumed. And I still enjoy it very much, though in a different way, of course - overlaid by the intervening years and by the fact that I no longer feel like my life could be saved by a piece of popular culture (nor that I need saving, at least not in that way).

* * *

I read somewhere that, more recently, there's finally been a dvd release, incidentally, but I think the deal was that they could only manage it by excising all of the musical snippets that are such an important part of the show (particularly given the quintessential 90s-ness of the songs and artists represented) and replacing them with other stuff; that being so, it seemed a better bet to stick with the downloaded, original versions, occasional blurriness and pixelation notwithstanding.

Folk Rock and Faithfull / Marianne Faithfull - Easy Come Easy Go

In principle, I like Marianne Faithfull, both in her winsome 60s incarnation and upon her subsequent, gravel-voiced re-emergence. In fact, though, I tend to find her music - from all points in her long, if sporadic, recording career - more or less uninteresting; I suppose that while she's unquestionably an icon, that hasn't come about particularly because of her musical talent. Indeed, the liner notes for Folk Rock and Faithfull, a collection of songs recorded in the vein of her early, wistful, folky girl-pop between '64 and '69, obliquely make a similar point, remarking that "[Faithfull's] influence on mid-sixties Brit Girl pop was rather out of proportion with her tally of hits - just four Top Tenners".

The compilation itself brings out both the strengths and the weaknesses of the style: the mood and sound are evocative - both of their particular era and of a more intangible state of mind, the latter explaining why the style has been so persistent, recurring as a strong influence on a range of genres at intervals since the sixties - but individual songs and performers don't tend to stand out, probably in large part because the form itself doesn't lend itself to innovation.

As to Easy Come Easy Go, this is Faithfull's most recent album and I wanted to like it (particularly given that it was a gift from Kim), but there's just not much to it - Faithfull growls her way through a double cd of covers (including of Neko Case's "Hold On, Hold On"), but doesn't add anything to the originals other than the simple act of doing them over in her own, rather montonous latter-day style.

K J Parker - The Company

The Company is an unusual kind of novel - a hard-edged work of military fantasy in which the battles are all in the past but the ex-combatants are unable to leave the war behind them, and which gradually reveals itself to be something of a parable on the very nature of war.

David Sedaris - Santaland Diaries

Six David Sedaris Christmas pieces; I like the two which are apparently based on real experiences (accounts of working as a Macy's Christmas elf and, as a teenager, meeting a co-worker of his sister's who also happens to be a ho - he doesn't fail to bring out the seasonal pun - respectively) much more than the others, whose satire is biting but, with the exception of the misguidedly critical theatre reviews of elementary and middle school Christmas productions ("Front Row Centre with Thaddeus Bristol"), too mean-spirited for my liking.

Inception

Had Inception been any less good than it was - ie, very good - it would have been a crushing disappointment - writer/director Christopher Nolan has a huge number of runs on the board, and so far as my personal reckoning goes, it must have one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled: in Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt the crucial figures in two of the films that I've most taken to heart in the last few years (Juno and (500) Days of Summer), Page in particular being a favourite (but then who doesn't love Ellen Page?); in Cillian Murphy the most enthrallingly odd, more-or-less mainstream character actor in the business; in Marion Cotillard one of the most talented, not to mention most sheerly hot, Movie Stars going around; and in Leonard DiCaprio, an actor whose considerable abilities are forever at risk of being obscured by his looks and stardom but who nonetheless never seems to put a foot wrong.

Really, Inception is the complete package. Its stars all positively exude charisma (speaking of which, apart from those mentioned above, Michael Caine and Ken Watanabe are no slouches in that department either, nor the other key players), breathing life into their characters and navigating the film's many action sequences with equal aplomb; said action is frenetic and genuinely exciting - the equal of that in Nolan's Batmans - and things move along at a ferocious pace.

And of course there's the plot. Like Memento and The Prestige before it, Inception is ingeniously conceived and intricately plotted, but in a way that always plays fair with the audience - Nolan tells us what he's going to do, and then goes ahead and does it. The mechanics of the extraction and dream architecture processes are clearly laid out for us, as is the design for the central heist, and while the history of Cobb's relationship with Mal is revealed in stages, there's no suggestion that the way it's told to us is inaccurate (until a final scene which adds a layer that was always implicit)...the trick, such as it is, is in the construction. Even though all the pieces are there in plain sight (and Nolan handles his narrative elements with impressive economy - there's no place for MacGuffins here), it isn't until afterwards that it becomes obvious just how neatly everything fits together. Would that all blockbusters were this intelligent, this thrilling, this good.

Justin Cronin - The Passage

I'd seen a few references to The Passage over the last few months, and intriguing ones at that, with the result that its publication in Australia felt like something of an event. I burned through its 766 pages in a few days; basically, it's The Stand with vampires (plus a Watership Down interlude), and as immersive as that description makes it sound. Cronin moves things along quickly, creating mood and atmosphere effectively while also throwing in plenty of action, so that the book is as frequently unnerving as it is exciting, and sometimes genuinely moving; also, for better or for worse, it ends with the suggestion of a sequel. There's not much to fault about it, for what it is - a real good bit of genre fiction.

"Dead Man's Cell Phone" (MTC)

Pleasant but kind of forgettable; Lisa McCune fairly charming though also fairly stagey (to be fair, it could have been intentional - but one of the problems with the play as a whole is that its arch, contemporary-whimsical-quasi-magic-realist stagey-ness doesn't take it anywhere in particular while undermining any real audience investment in its characters).

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

David Mitchell - Ghostwritten

Feels like something of a dry run for Cloud Atlas - less fully developed than that later effort, but sharing elements of its structure and method of developing its thematic concerns and, crucially, its storytelling flair. Mitchell whips from milieu to milieu, inhabiting (the choice of words is deliberate) character upon character, including some very non-traditional subjects (two of them outright non-corporeal). Motifs recur; ideas are recapitulated and spun from an array of different perspectives. An impressive feat, and all the more so for a first novel.

Constantine

It's not that I particularly love this movie, yet this was the third time that I've seen it; still, I enjoyed it on this pass too, for there's a lot to like, most notably a cracking pace, a willingness to be literal in its depiction of hell and its denizens, and vivid performances from its principals (including Keanu wreathed in dark clothes, cigarette smoke and a bad attitude, a young Shia LaBeouf adding a lighter touch, Peter Stormare's memorable cameo as a poncingly menacing Lucifer, and of course turns from Rachel Weisz and Tilda Swinton, two of the most attractive women in Hollywood today).

Kingdom of Heaven

Ridley Scott, Orlando Bloom, 12th century Crusade setting, modern attitudes towards religious tolerance, etc - not bad, not great.

"Boston Marriage" (MTC)

Mamet's version of a drawing-room comedy, "Boston Marriage" is on the light side but clever, and entertaining enough, buoyed by good performances from Pamela Rabe, Margaret Mills and Sara Gleeson (the last particularly enjoyable as the perky maid Catherine), a sharp edge (though more cutting would have been better) and a pleasing vulgarity in moments. A slyly happy ending, too!

[part of an MTC subscription with Steph & co] 

The Secret in Their Eyes

A tough-minded crime/thriller/drama/thwarted-romance piece set in Buenos Aires with things to say about passion, responsibility, opportunity and living with the past - pretty watchable, if (deliberately) on the heavy side.

M J Hyland - This Is How

Like Hyland's previous novels, Carry Me Down and How The Light Gets In, This Is How is a quiet, disquieting excursion into a mind that is, if not outright damaged, then at least subtly but devastatingly unsuited to the society of others; again like those other books, the first person present tense voice is increasingly claustrophobic and uncomfortable for the reader.

The first part, in which the sense of unease builds to Patrick's fatal act, is stronger than the second, in the prison, which suffers from a sense of over-familiarity despite Hyland's taut, incisive style; overall, though, another very strong novel.

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

I'd been looking forward to reading Infinite Jest for a while, and the recent India trip seemed a perfect opportunity to finally get stuck in. Perhaps the most striking thing about the novel (after the obvious fact of its massive length) is its generosity - in its abundance of ideas and connections (and words), in its willingness to reiterate and return to connections and linkages in case they were missed when first mentioned, in the many brands of humour that are sprinkled throughout, in the breadth of its thematic coverage, and in the way that it treats its characters and respects their essential humanity in a way that DeLillo and Pynchon, two obvious points of reference for DFW, often don't.

Some of the book's funniest passages involve two characters ostensibly having a conversation but in fact barely if at all engaging with each other, so that what instead emerges is effectively two fragmented, almost surreally juxtaposed monologues; as with many, or indeed perhaps all, of the book's comic devices, it also serves a deeper purpose, dramatising the failures of connection and communication that litter Wallace's post-contemporary America. A satire, a serious-minded examination of modern cultures of addiction, entertainment and (over-)achievement, a remarkably disciplined sprawl, paradoxically highly readable while deliberately self-disruptive, itself a consummate entertainment with innumerable stings in the tail, Infinite Jest is really something.

The Book of Eli

Fairly standard post-apocalyptic-action-film-with-Christian-imagery-overtones.

Michael Collins

Plenty watchable; nice to see Alan Rickman in a role involving no hamming whatsoever (and he does it well, too).

Shutter Island

Painted by Scorsese in bold, confident strokes, Shutter Island doesn't quite satisfy despite a bunch of good actors, a suitably shadowy cinematographic palette, and a convincing period setting - the trimmings are all there, but the plot is too familiar, as is the way it unfolds.