I Am Sam OST

Exceedingly tasteful soundtrack to film of a few years back - contemporary artists covering Beatles songs, generally a bit too reverently, making for a pleasant but not especially interesting or illuminating listen.

Steven Erikson - Dust of Dreams & The Crippled God

The end of it all. The massive, multi-layered complexity of the series and impossibility of keeping all the pieces in one's head without recent reading made me think that I should re-read Dust of Dreams before tackling The Crippled God, particularly given that Erikson had explicitly set them up as two volumes of a single final novel; also, doing so added to the sense of anticipation about hitting the finale, which promised so much.

Anyhow, reading these two in succession makes it clear how much they do fit together as an integrated conclusion to Erikson's epic Malazan series, as a whole heap of things are gathered together and set up in Dust of Dreams that then come to fruition in The Crippled God - and more generally, that last is a fittingly explosive end to the whole ten-book cycle, most (though by no means all) of the main threads pulled together, its first half highlighted by the Shake's stand at Lightfall as Light and Dark are finally thrown directly into conflict, and its second all about the convergence and shattering series of engagements in and around Kolanse as the remaining Malazan forces and virtually every other major power clash over the heart of the crippled god himself. It's a spectacular ending, worthy of the series as a whole - like the nine that came before it, it's something out of the ordinary.

(Previously: [1-8], then starting again with [1-3], [4-5], [6], [7], [8], & [9] ... plus (1), (2), (3).)

"Hamlet" (MTC)

A very solid production, though not outstanding. (Last season's "Richard III", also starring Ewen Leslie, was better, for mine.) This Hamlet is clearly sane throughout, if given to outbursts of anger and anguish - a far more satisfying reading than Bell's from a couple of years back - and Leslie's performance is strong, while the supporting cast is slightly uneven, but generally fine; I thought more attention could have been given to the delivery of lines, which sometimes seemed a little overly rote/conversational, with not enough attention to the language itself. Fortinbras is omitted, some care is given to Ophelia's character, the production's choices make sense of Horatio's uncomplaining loyalty, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius are all largely as one might expect.

(w/ C)

Charles Burns - Black Hole

Another from the Borders voucher - this one Kim's recommendation. It's unlike anything I've come across before, starkly, sinuously beautiful and gritty - altogether memorable.

Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

This series has been hotly touted, and its Battle Royale-esque premise appealed; having read this first entry, I get it - the book is very well crafted, pacy, exciting...also, notably bloody for a kids' book.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 2

A suitably spectacular close to the series. Nothing revelatory or significantly different from what has gone before, but very enjoyable anyway.

(1, 2 & 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

(w/ C)

"Love Victoria" (Malthouse)

Saw this because a friend of C's was in it, but its familiarly polymorphous take on modern relationships didn't grab me.

Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs: Instrumental

With the passing of time, it only becomes clearer that Deserter's Songs is a flat-out classic; this instrumental mix is a reminder of its swelling grandness, largely preserving the original arrangements, and adding various types of instrumentation/programming in place of the vocals, often with the effect that things become even more grandiose and epic, most effectively on "Goddess on a Hiway".

John Doe and the Sadies - Country Club

A warm roots-country record that takes a few listens to grow but then settles in comfortably, Doe's rich voice wrapping around the songs as the Sadies, possibly the world's best backing band, do their thing.

Thao & Mirah - Thao & Mirah

Clattery, enjoyable ear candy.

How I Met Your Mother (seasons 1 to 5)

Finding myself watching this a lot on tv, I was sufficiently hooked to go through the whole thing to date on dvd. It's really a very nice show, insightful, sharp-witted, fresh-feeling, and sweet-natured without tripping into sentiment. The love of wordplay is a feature, as is its use of structure - along with the basic framing device, the frequent temporal stop-starts and reversals are very effective, not least in keeping things interesting - and the deliberate, self-conscious use of repeating motifs and images (the yellow umbrella being probably the most obvious, but the technique is apparent from the very first episode, with the blue french horn). But what really keeps me watching is the characters and the situations they find themselves in - with all the inevitable self-aware qualifications, HIMYM seems like an idealised version of the familiar.

Intolerable Cruelty

Nice. Been feeling kind of Coen brothers lately. Not sure why.

(last time)

Mean Girls

Still good.

(previously - #1 & 2)

Alternative Nation: 100 Alternative Classics

One of a stack of cds I picked up from JB Hi-Fi for the impromptu road trip we took down the coast and through various forests of Tasmania once it became apparent that the volcanic ash would strand us for several days past the planned long weekend (this was ages ago now), and while it's a terrible name, it's excellent driving music.

Colette - Claudine at School

One of three books that Sarah V gave me this time, having bought them for me straight after she got back to France after our literary acquaintance began in '05 and carried them with her since (the other two being copies of Lautréamont's "Maldoror" and a biography of Apollinaire); it's most amusing, and really the cover grab says it all: "the famous French novel about an amoral young innocent".

London

- Tate Modern. Very good, in fact probably the best of the major modern art collections that I saw this time around. The main action for me was in three of the four major survey exhibitions: (in the order that I went through them, reflecting my own preferences) "Material Gestures: New Painting and Sculptures, 1945-1960", "Poetry and Dream: Surrealism and Beyond", and "States of Flux: Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism" (the fourth, "Energy and Process", focusing on arte povera, was less exciting). "Material Gestures" focuses on abstraction and figuration, and includes the Rothko room, a darkened chamber given over to nine large works from the 1950s Seagram series - all dark reds and blacks...a room that I've literally dreamed about being in before, having seen photos of it in various Rothko monographs. Finally being there was really something - an experience for the heart and the mind. Also illuminating was the large, luminous, and rather beautiful "Water-Lilies" (after 1916), its presentation in this setting providing a compelling argument for the connection between Monet's late period semi-abstraction and the subsequent works of Rothko et al.
- "Jake or Dinos Chapman" @ White Cube Hoxton Square. Deliberately ugly anti-aesthetic art. The bestial childen were striking. (Wei)
- "Alternative London" street art walking tour. Guided East End street art tour, with a bit of history and contemporary street-level politics thrown in - nice. (Wei)
- [Oxford]. A nice interlude, and a very Oxonian experience thanks to Jarrod and Jaani, put up in a fellow's guest room at Magdalen, croquet at night on the college lawns, punting, blackberry picking, etc - and a trip out to the house where my earliest days were spent.
- "Out of This World: Science Fiction But Not As You Know It" & "The Worlds of Mervyn Peake" @ British Library. Enjoyed the sci-fi exhibition, which reminded me of a school project I did in grade 5 (?) on the subject - though not in a bad way - in its thematic-chronological approach. The Peake was smallish - accompanying a broader set of events focusing on the author/illustrator at the time.
- "Nightwatchman" (Prasanna Puwanarajah) / "There Is A War" (Tom Basden) @ The Paintframe, National Theatre. Put on in a pop-up space, a pair of well written, strongly performed and staged plays. The first staged a familiar personal/professional (in this case, sporting)/political narrative of discovery through the dark of the night, and while it may have been just a tiny bit pat in places, it had a basic sturdiness and craft that made it worth the viewing; the second, an a-realistic, blackly funny excursion into the absurdity of war, wouldn't have been out of place at the Malthouse, and hit its points well. (Wei)
- Museum of Childhood. Fun - main collection given over to all sorts of toys, games and sundry paraphenalia of childhood...the doll houses were my favourite, remarkably ornate and coming in all varieties. Miscellaneous other bits and pieces, including "The Stuff of Nightmares", a visual re-telling of The Brothers Grimm's "Fundvogel". (Wei)
- "Takashi Murakami" @ Gagosian, Britannia Street. Hyper-hyper-sexualised commentary on modern Japanese society. Enjoyable in its OTT-ness. (Wei)

Paris

- "Modern Collections from 1905 to the 1960s" & "Contemporary Collections from the 1960s to today", and "Paris-Delhi-Bombay" @ Centre Pompidou (Musee national d'art moderne). I wasn't sold on the building - it's a bit obvious - but the two showpiece collections are both very good, starting from Matisse and fauvism, and aiming for a representative survey of the major movements since. (I only skimmed through the "Paris-Delhi-Bombay".)
- (A literary walking tour with Sarah V). We always said that maybe one day we'd meet in Paris and, five and a half years on, finally did; Sarah picked me up in the morning and took me on a day-long literary ramble, concentrated around the 5th and 6th - one of the highlights of the whole trip.
- Musee des arts et metiers. I'm not normally all that interested in how things work, but this museum did sound kind of cool, and it was. Plus, it's the home of Foucault's pendulum. (Meribah - who, by happy coincidence, was reading Eco's book at the time)

Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Goon Squad

Just as good as its victory in this year's Tournament of Books would lead you to expect. It's about time, and turning points, and what it is to be human and alive; the sentences are wonderful, the characters affecting and real. Reading it, one feels happy, sad, reminded of how deep life runs, the piercing everyday specificity of all the moments and choices and actions that make up a life. Despite the formal playfulness of the 'linked short pieces' structure, there's something unassuming about Goon Squad; for all that, it's a quiet marvel.

Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck

A while back I ended up with a $250 Borders voucher, asked a few people for one book suggestion each, and then bought them. I'm not sure, but I think The Vintner's Luck is the first that I've got around to reading - Kelly's suggestion, and while I'd normally have been very dubious about the premise (Burgundy, 1808: a young vintner meets an angel in his vineyard and they agree to meet every year thereafter on the same date), she was spot on as usual. It turns out to be a rather luscious, passionate novel, full of human and historical drama - and a love story on more than one level, too. I'm glad that I've read it.

Steven Erikson - The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach

Three short novellas focusing on the havoc wreaked by the eponymous pair, marginal travellers in the main series of books. Enjoyable and often darkly funny, and the action scenes have some bite; excitingly, the final book in that main series is out now.

Vienna

- Schloss Schonbrunn. Figured I wouldn't have time to make it to Versailles, so this was my chance to see a palace. It was actually kind of fun, if inescapably somewhat tacky; the gardens were worth the hour or so I spent in them, too.
- Albertina. Spent most of my time in the two showpiece exhibitions of works from the museum's permanent collection - "Albertina Contemporary: Gerhard Richter to Kiki Smith" and "Monet to Picasso". From the first, it was Richter's work that most appealed, some abstract, others blurrily representational, even the abstract ones bearing hints of the objects from which they're abstracted; liked the pop-inspired Raymond Pettibon pen and ink works too. The second was a pretty good survey; my favourites were Munch's sublime (in both senses) "Winter Landscape" (1915) and Paul Delvaux's mysterious nocturnal vista "Landscape with Lanterns".
- Haus Der Musik. An interactive sound museum, exploring the experience of sound and how it's processed by the brain. Cool, but seemed to do horrible things to my inner ear or something, leading to some nausea and dizziness...but apparently I'm a bit of a wimp about those things. (Ruth)
- Esperanto Museum. Part of the 'Collection of Planned Languages' in the Austrian National Library. Who knew? (Ruth)
- Globe Museum. Random, but why not? Claims to be the only museum world-wide where globes and globe-related instruments are acquired, investigated and displayed to the general public. It's sure an impressive collection. (Ruth)
- Wiener Riesenrad. I have a weakness for ferris wheels; we went a night; the view was memorable; the amusement park in which the wheel sat, less so. (Ruth)
- Belvedere. Only went to the upper Belvedere - the permanent collection. Klimt and Schiele were the main events and neither are particular favourites of mine, but it was worth seeing a whole lot of their (and other Vienna/Austrian) artists' work together.

Europe museum and gallery round up - Berlin

Briefly (and incompletely):

- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of England. The memorial itself is impressive, public art with a sense of weightiness owing at least in part to (but not wholly dependent on) its object. The underground information centre was good too - very sombre-making. (w/ Jade, Ruth)
- Deutsches Historisches Museum. Large, well put-together survey of German and pre-German history and culture, from 100BC to today (or near enough - 1994). Impossible to go through comprehensively, but it held my attention, and I'm not normally one for historical museums at all. (Jade)
- "Based in Berlin" @ Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Part of a wider set of exhibitions of contemporary Berlin art. Didn't especially take me. (Ruth)
- Hamburger Bahnhof. Several exhibitions in a wonderful space. I liked the large-scale Richard Long pieces laid out on the floor and far wall of the central hall/exhibition space, but the Rieckhallen, a long, converted basement space accessible from the main building by a long corridor, provided a true highlight, filled with a great range of 20th C and contemporary art set out in a series of bare, industrial chambers. To name just a few: Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, and Gordon Matta-Clark are represented with characteristic, and striking, pieces; Donald Judd's "Untitled (Bull Nose Progression)" also left an impression. And three others whose names I hadn't heard before particularly impressed me - Jeff Wall's "Little Children" (three circular photos mounted high on a wall, porthole style, each with a child shot against a moody sky backdrop - accompanied by a model pavilion and exterior/interior schematics by Dan Graham with the circular photos inside), some deceptively flat, plain paintings by Thomas Schutte ("Museum", "Sackgasse", "Tor"), and Bruce Nauman's darkly Beckettian installation "Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care". (Ruth)
- Museum Berggruen. Smallish but carefully chosen collection of key classical modernists with a strong focus on Picasso. Also, some very nice Klees, and Matisse and Giacometti plus a couple of Braques. (Wei)
- "Surreal Worlds" @ Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg. A mirror building to the Berggruen (spiral staircase and gallery layout), just across the road. Exhibition covers early antecedents of surrealism (inc. Max Klinger and of course de Chirico), then running through the usual suspects, though disappointingly light on for Magritte. Tanguy's "Je suis venu, comme j'avais promis, Adieu" was a delightful discovery. (Wei)
- Australian Chamber Choir 2011 European Concert Tour - Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. Europe dates were planned in part to be in Berlin to coincide with the choir's touring itinerary, since not only is ZG a standing member, but Kim was also touring with them. Enjoyed it, though I wasn't much of a fan of the (divisive) final work, Philip Nunn's "I Heard The Owl Call My Name". (Wei & others)
- "1900-1945: Modern Times. The Collection" @ Neue Nationalgalerie. A hot day, to the point of oppressiveness, as it was for much of my stay in Berlin, and I was pretty tired, so not ideal circumstances. Still, a cool ven der Rohe building, some nice pieces, and it contributed to my sense of the overall landscape of early 20th C German art, plus I discovered Georg Schrimpf ("Rundfunksender (Furstenfeldbruch)" [Radio transmitter], "Bahnubergang" [Railway Crossing], "Zwei Madchen am Fenster" [Two Girls By the Window]), whose elegant, finely rendered paintings reminded me of de Chirico's metaphysical style and appealed to me very much. (Kim)

A quick round up

Thursday night, last minute trip organisation in full swing (flights and accommodation in process of getting worked out, packing not so much as yet); tomorrow's a work day and will be out at night, then flight out's Saturday; thought I ahould do a quick few capsule notes before the upcoming month in Europe obliterates all recollection.

* * *

Seeker Lover Keeper - Seeker Lover Keeper

As sweet as you'd expect a Sally Seltmann / Sarah Blasko / Holly Throsby collab to be. Best is "Even Though I'm A Woman", followed by "If the Night is Dark" - both Seltmann-composed (though Throsby sings the former), which is unsurprising given that she seems to be some kind of low-key songwriting genius, without meaning any disrespect to Sarah Blasko, who is also clearly lovely and amazing.

* * *

Deb Olin Unferth - Revolution

I'm not much of a one for memoirs, but I read some extracts in Believer and have read a bunch of interesting bits and pieces written by Unferth elsewhere on the internets and that was enough for me to order Revolution and her debut novel Vacation from bookdepository. So Revolution is very winning and full of great writing and unforced neatnesses; I liked it a lot.

* * *

"Moth" (Declan Greene - Malthouse)

Very impressive; reminded me a little of "Terminus" from a couple of years back - high praise - in its fluidity and confident theatricality (for want of a better way of putting it). Sharply, authentically, pungently written; it uses dialogue and stage in service of a work that couldn't have been done better in any other form. It employs artistry in the service of the everyday, or maybe vice versa, or more likely still, both at once.

(w/ Sunny, Kai + Neil, Hayley and Adam W, & C)

* * *

"Princess Dramas" (Elfriede Jelinek - Red Stitch)

Stylised, disorienting, challenging - I had to work at this while watching it, consciously trying to be open to what it was doing and suspending/interrogating various immediate reactions, principally aesthetic and linearity (not just in the narrative sense) oriented ones. I have a feeling that the production, while vivid, may have obscured the words of the play itself but maybe that's unavoidable. "Princess Dramas" is the most difficult play I've been to for a while, but with more time to chew it over, it may well be one of the more rewarding; at any event, I've been sufficiently intrigued to try to track it down in translation.

(w/ C)

* * *

"A Golem Story" (Lally Katz - Malthouse)

A much more traditionally narratival,character-y work than Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, and a lavish, sumptuously mounted thing it is. It's played relatively straight in its telling of the legend of the golem of Prague, all enwrapped with Jewish mysticism, and it's certainly engaging, but for me didn't hit home as hard as it clearly aimed to. Good, very good actually, but for mine, doesn't quite have the whatever-it-is that just sets some theatre apart from the pack and makes it really special.

(w/ Kai + Neil, Adam W, Trang and David; Sunny also ended up coming with friend Anthony)

* * *

Kick-Ass & Scott Pilgrim vs the World

A matched pair of dvd hires (with C) - Kick Ass still kinetic and fun and slightly surprisingly hard-edged on a second viewing, Scott Pilgrim an unadulterated, snap-crackle-Pop delight, just like I'd imagined it would be.

"Whodunnit" (Playhouse Theatre, Hobart)

With all apologies, there's only so much to do in Hobart, so one night of our extended sojourn, we went to see this affectionate riff on the classic English country house murder mystery. It felt kind of provincial (would 'amateurish' sound less snobby?) - a nearby audience member actually took out a bag of nuts and started eating her way through it shortly after the second act started (average audience age: probably about 50) - but it was perfectly good natured, fine.

(w/ C)

Tina Fey - Bossypants

I do like Tina, of course I do, but this was slightly disappointing; I suppose the bar is set high by 30 Rock, so when Bossypants turned out to be more a few hours' worth of pleasant diversion with the occasional chuckle than cover to cover comic genius, there was a small element of let-down. Still, she makes the world a better place.

"Monanism" (MONA, Hobart)

MONA was what drew me to Tasmania, and happily I made it over there - with C - in time to catch the inaugural, eponymously apt exhibition. MONA itself is an impressive set-up, with its own ferry from town, a striking building housing the museum itself, very engaging and effective self-guided 'tour' material on customised ipods issued to all visitors at the door, and appealingly labyrinthine internal layout; we made a day of it - 11am ferry out, 5.30pm back, only a short break for lunch at the internal cafe - and while museum fatigue had started to set in by the end, I didn't feel close to having exhausted the art.

In part, that was because there's a focus on video and 'moving image' work (generally taking longer to absorb because of their specifically temporal dimension), reflecting the generally extremely contemporary flavour of the collection. There was something of a feel of the works being the collection of an individual (rather than an institution) - there were a few threads running through a lot of the works, particularly certain expressionist-surrealist and kitsch-grotesque elements, as well as a bit of a Romantic streak, although a thoroughly post-modernist, contemporary flavour is very much dominant in the exhibition as a whole.

There weren't many individual pieces that really stood out at the time or immediately after, but with the benefit of the passage of a week or so, here are some that have particularly stuck:
* Reynold Reynolds - "Secrets Trilogy" ("Six Easy Pieces", "Secret Life", "Secret Machine"). I stood there and watched the whole of this, a series of stop-motiony HD video transfers from 16mm and stills that reminded me of Svankmajer's Alice, cryptic meditations on art, science, philosophy, consciousness, corporeality, nature, life.
* Patrick Hall - "When My Heart Stops Beating". In a room - on one side, a wall of square boxes that can be pulled out to intone, repeatedly, 'I love you' and reveal a poetic, elliptical set of thoughts about love and loss; and on the facing side, a wall of vinyl records, spinning, each in its constituent layers radiating out from the centre. In some ways obvious, but also cute, and not entirely unaffecting.
* Anselm Kiefer - "Sternenfall / Shevirath Ha Kelim". A large room, unusually (for this exhibition/gallery) well lit by sunshine from outside. Large lead books, shattered glass on the floor. Monumental and personal. Unsurprisingly, artist studied law, literature, linguistics.
* Balint Zsako - Untitled (2010). Two women painting themselves then the canvas in a giddy flurry of inky, acrylic and water colour.
* Nolan - "Dog and duck hotel". A painting of a duck in the air alongside a hotel. Appealing. Curious.
* Callum Morton - "Babylonia". From outside, it's a huge, knobbly rock. You walk inside and find yourself in a low-ceilinged hotel-style corridor, swirling Italian-sounding romantic music, a mirror at either end of the corridor reflecting into infinity, all very Alice in Wonderland.

... and there are scattered images from others that have stuck in my mind, too, fragmented, disjointed, adding to an already cluttered internal associative landscape, which is all to the good.

All in all, a very satisfying trip.

Baskery - Fall Among Thieves

Kind of a blues-roots-country-jam thing - 'noise and beats' (Greta Bondesson), 'bottom and rattle' (Stella Bondesson), 'rhythm and whine' (Sunniva Bondesson), banjo and all - created by a trio of Swedish sisters. Enjoyable, but not memorable; best moment is the slamming, knees-up "One Horse Down".

Ghost World

...and another; like Heathers, its impact now diminished, though I still remember how it made me feel on first encounter.

(Previously - the first time, then the second.)

Heathers

Sometimes a film can be a signpost, different each time you come to it. Last time I watched Heathers, about six years ago, its razor-sharp, barbed edge and midnight-black satire still had an immediacy to it; this time, the primary register for me was nostalgic, a reflection of the different point in my life that I'm at...six years is a long time.

Source Code

Watchable, but really nothing special, neat premise notwithstanding.

(w/ C & Sunny + Sunny's friend Katherine)

"Six Characters in Search of an Author" (La Mama)

Lively, engaging, enjoyable staging of the Pirandello in the intimate surrounds of the La Mama theatre; as called for by the play itself, thematises and then obliterates the fourth wall with a touch at once light and serious.

(w/ C)

Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

He just keeps on keeping on; while Pratchett's more recent books have lost half a yard in laugh out loud-ness, their quality has remained remarkably high considering the number he's turned out, the large majority Discworld novels. I Shall Wear Midnight, a Tiffany Aching entry, continues the run - without in any way setting the world on fire, it's a very good read.

Shane Jones - Light Boxes

A quirky little bit of metafiction; on the insubstantial side, but good.

Fish Story

Quietly whimsical Japanese film in which an obscure (pre-Sex Pistols) punk song saves the world from comet destruction decades later. (See also, in far more riotous vein, this one.)

Craig Mathieson - Playlisted

A collection of short essays, each nominally about a song, more broadly about the artist behind the song, and (usually) more broadly still about some aspect of Australian music or pop music generally (there's one exception, a slightly longer piece on possible de facto Australian national anthems). Nicely contemporary, and hits on most of the biggest and most prominent - and representative - acts going around, most of which I've heard a lot on the radio over the years. A pretty good read, though more as a diversion than for anything more substantial.

Sucker Punch

A great big spectacle - it holds the attention and it's exciting, steampunk zombie nazis and all. But as visually striking as the film is, and as vividly realised, it's as if some more subcutaneous imaginative layer is lacking - I'm not sure whether it's in the vision or the execution - something that would have given Sucker Punch an extra dimension that would have raised it from the level of 90 minutes' simple entertainment to the something more that it seems to aspire towards.

Mix cd (untitled)

A pleasing mix of folky-chamberish-miscellany from a rogues' gallery of eccentrics and iconoclasts. Favourites: "Go Do" (Jonsi), "Black But Comely" (Baby Dee), "Dreamer" (Tiny Vipers), "Saro" (Sam Amidon) - and also the mix made me realise for the first time how wonderful Joni Mitchell's "Amelia" is, and that one, which I've heard before but never really got, is the highlight.

(from JF)

Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be

Sub Pop's website quotes Dee Dee, the driving force behind the Dum Dum Girls, as describing her MO as "blissed-out buzz saw", in which case: mission accomplished. The referents here are obvious and cascading, most particularly the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las and then the Jesus and Mary Chain, but it's done with a nice touch and a fistful of good tunes - neat.

Giant Drag - Hearts and Unicorns

Scuzzy, catchy, loose-feeling indie-rock; at times Giant Drag come on like a noisier, trashier Breeders, at others they're a bit dreamier and strummier, more dazed. Actually, sounds very 90s to me, though it came out in 2005 - not that that's a bad thing.

James Blake - Echoes

Haunted contemporary chopped-up electro-soul. Been listening to it for a while now, but haven't made up my mind. Still, there's something about it that sticks in the mind.

"Best of the Edinburgh Festival" (Melb Comedy Festival)

Three acts - Carl Donnelly, Tom Allen, Seann Walsh. All pretty good - good for a Friday night.

(w/ some folk from work plus alumni - ET + 1, ZG + 1, EB, AM, HM)

Amélie Nothomb - Sulphuric Acid

Not up to her usual standard - her usual sharp-edged fable/fabulist style feeling a bit thin on this occasion. Many of the motifs are quintessentially Nothomb - most notably the fascination felt by one central female protagonist for another - but the premise (a satirically rendered concentration camp reality tv show from which viewers have the ability to select those who are executed) doesn't serve her well; the prose, too, isn't as sharp or as pleasing as in her other books.

"Sadness is my boyfriend": Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

Lykke Li's first lp, Youth Novels, piqued my attention with its interestingly sparse, rhythm & melody popisms, but despite a handful of stand-out songs, didn't really sink into my musical landscape; her second, Wounded Rhymes, while in some respects quite different, has taken me in a similar way.

For me, the highlight is "Sadness is a Blessing", the most overt of several homages to classic girl-group pop on the record; also outstanding are the shuffle 'n' snap of tracks like "Rich Kids Blues" and "Jerome". And there are other good moments, too, and not really any obvious low points - but somehow the whole doesn't really inspire. Still, I guess, I do like it quite a bit and sometimes bits get stuck in my head for a while, and you know, greatness doesn't lie under every bushel so overall the record is still well ahead of the game, etc.

Roxy Music - Avalon

It starts with "More Than This", nowadays inseparable from Bill Murray and Lost in Translation, and in any event addictive. And it turns out that Avalon as a whole is really good, synths, sax, smoothness and all - colour me surprised, because normally this wouldn't be my kind of thing at all. At times it reminds me of the Cocteaus' amazing Victorialand, at others of ABC (less surprisingly); I find myself wanting to listen to it without knowing exactly why, or what it's giving me - which is perhaps how pop music should be.

Arrested Development

Things have been a bit hectic lately, and I've been rewatching Arrested Development in the gaps, as a way of unwinding. Extemporanea tells me that I first watched the show in '06, but in the years since I've often dipped into it, caught parts while others were watching, etc; going back and watching it from go to self-reflexive 'whoa' only makes its greatness clearer...no other tv series is even close in terms of the amount of joy that Arrested Development has brought me.

Howl

An odd sort of film, but it made me happy. The beats have never been a particular touchstone for me, but of course the idea(l)s they stand for resonate very strongly, and this rendition of the "Howl" obscenity trial dramatises (performs) the poem itself - through a series of animations that are interspersed with scenes from the trial and a retrospective 'interview' with the poet - in a way that Ginsburg might have approved of...the film also made me realise how much the beat generation have influenced the modern hipster, consciously or nay, for better or for worse.

(w/ C)

Glenn Richards + Amaya Laucirica @ Northcote Social Club, Friday 18 March

Early Summer has sunk in quite a bit over the last few weeks, and I was keen to see Laucirica, albeit as a support act...it was pretty much the way one might've imagined she would be live - I enjoyed it.

As to Glenn Richards, I was open-minded - I remember those early Augie March radio songs very fondly, but haven't particularly followed their/his career since. Anyway, his set was a pleasant mix of folky/rootsy pop-rock with that distinctive troubadour flavour, quite nice for a Friday night but not memorable.

(w/ David + Justine)

The Hollowmen series 1 & 2

I've been noticing lately that my expectations of modern life have apparently been heavily shaped by sitcoms, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is certainly a thing and perhaps best in moderation; unrelatedly, I've been meaning to sit down and watch The Hollowmen for a while - and the combination of those factors led me to go through the two series (they're only six episodes each) in the last week or so.

The show's undeniably amusing - much of it did chime with my experience and impressions (albeit in exaggerated form), and of course satire depends on that kind of recognisability for its effectiveness and humour. The depiction of the public service rang less true than that of the Central Policy Unit and the other political operators who move through the show's corridors - but that's probably just quibbling given the show's intent, namely to send up the whole system as much as possible.

Catfish

As well as being a cautionary tale of sorts, Catfish is a documentary, or at least a 'documentary' (I'm not sure I believe it really was entirely real and unscripted). Given the premise - man develops relationship through facebook, but it turns out that not everything is as it seems - it's easy enough to predict the general direction in which things go, but what's surprising is how gentle the depiction is (it's also a bit sad, though for me the element of hope in the ending was more prominent)...and it did make me think about the pitfalls of getting to know others - both online and otherwise - and the different ways in which we construct our selves, and in which those constructions can be meaningful.

(w/ Caroline - last Saturday)

Starship Troopers

Generally, I value films that provoke me, but those made by Verhoeven tend to be an exception - there's a nastiness to them, a brutality, that rubs me the wrong way...

Anyway, I think Starship Troopers was the first of his that I saw, back in high school, and I really hated it. Since then, though, I'd revised my opinion upwards, having realised that it must be a satire (while feeling some disappointment in my younger self for not having picked it up at the time) - but catching it on tv last night (my life is rather glamorous) made me realise that the satire really isn't that cutting or clever, and in fact it is basically a flashy sci-fi b-movie seemingly as interested in glamorising the militaristic values it depicts as criticising them (on the other hand, it did have the bonus appearance of Neil Patrick Harris, now better known to me as Barney from How I Met Your Mother...again with the tv).

Joseph Kosuth - "(Waiting for -) Texts for Nothing" Samuel Beckett, in play (ACCA) / The End @ Malthouse / "The End" (Beckett)

So I arrived at the Malthouse/ACCA precinct lateish afternoon, planning to see the Kosuth first; the main event was "(Waiting for -) Texts for Nothing" itself, an installation of neon white Beckettian (including Godot) words running high on the walls on the inside of a large dark room, and immersive, the kind of installation that you think about while experiencing, but whose effect is much more in the way that it sinks in, subtly, at the time and afterwards as it stays with you.

After that, picked up tickets for The End (and also Moth and A Golem Story) and then went outside, planning to maybe start a letter I've been meaning to write and also do some reading for uni - only to come across Kim at one of the outdoor tables, waiting for a photo shoot of some kind (I'm hazy on the details). So we shot the breeze for a while, and after a bit, the photographer and other subject came by, they wandered off, I read for a bit, and then Sunny arrived, and then Trang and a friend of Sunny's, Caroline, then Kai and Neil (we'd had dinner in the meantime).

In due course, the call came and we filed into the Beckett Theatre (incidentally, and curiously/coincidentally, not named after Samuel B). Completely bare stage - plain black backdrop. Performance started unassumingly and unannounced - Robert Menzies entering through an unobtrusive door in the black backdrop, moving to the centre of the stage, and then spending an age peering at his surrounds, before beginning to speak, the beginning of a remarkable performance, a 70 minute-ish monologue, a ruined tramp, recounting the some of the last days of his degraded existence in language everyday, profane and occasionally lyrical and finally ending on a note of something else...

Afterwards, I said that I wanted to read it, and Sunny told me that it wasn't in fact a play at all, but rather a novella - and today I remembered that I actually own a book purporting to compile the complete short prose of Beckett (a gift from a while back), and turns out that that indeed includes "The End". So I did read it, this afternoon, and it's given me a renewed appreciation for the craft of the stage production, as well as for Beckett himself...the word 'genius' gets bandied about, but surely he must qualify.

First Aid Kit - The Big Black & The Blue

If you crossed the Indigo Girls with Joanna Newsom and then made them Swedish, you might end up with something like First Aid Kit. The 'Swedish' element isn't merely a detail - for whatever reason, a lot of pop (or, in this case, folk) singers coming out of the country seem to share a certain timbre and enunciation (and, of course, accent) - but the main musical style from which they draw is squarely American, namely the folk/mountain tradition that still holds such fascination for our (or at least my) modern ears, and they do it well, too.

Robyn - Body Talk lp

Context can make all the difference. This record collects songs from the two 'Body Talk' eps and adds some new ones; when I listened to the first of those eps last year, my main response was disappointment, and yet most of the songs have made their way on to this lp, where they (mostly) sound suddenly fresh and exciting, just like her last full-length. It goes one-two-three - "Fembot" opening and serving as mission statement, "Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do" buzzing and building, and then "Dancing on My Own", whose greatness I somehow completely missed on the first pass. And then a run of five more of equal quality - "Time Machine" is probably my favourite of those - before the rest, which is a bit more hit and miss but still good. My faith is restored!

School of Seven Bells - Disconnect From Desire

A step up from the itself quite charming Alpinisms, Disconnect From Desire moves further in the shimmery-droney anthemic pop direction of the best moments from their debut - it feels more fully formed, as if the band's ideas have coalesced, and it's a better record for it. Listening to it, I feel a bit of a drumming in my chest and a suggestion of lightness in my head - a sign of good pop music.

Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud - A Life on Paper: Stories

A collection of short stories from across this French fabulist's more than thirty year career, A Life on Paper reminds me a bit of Borges, a bit of Calvino, a bit of Kafka, and a bit of John Collier; Chateaureynaud shares with all of them the ability to take the everyday - the ordinary - and introduce an element of the strange to disconcerting effect. The stories are short and have a fable-like air, an effect arising as much from the elegant, epigrammatic style of the prose as from the stories' subjects, which range from a man who one day finds the word 'mortal' ineradicably emblazoned on his chest, to an antiques broker with a supernatural ability to source anything his dealer's clients can conceive of, to a small island community where sirens have survived to modern times, to a man who stumbles across a museum dedicated to entirely to him and his life. And there's a strong metafictional streak running through, too (just like in the work of seemingly every other French writer ever)...there's much to like here.

Martha Wainwright - I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too

There's something very seductive about Martha Wainwright's singing - the rough edges are attractive, alluring, as is the intelligence and emotional openness and even rawness (or at least the appearance of such emotional disclosure). I've kept listening to her first album - it's turned out to be a grower - and this one is also good, though not yet as addictive. It feels like there's more going on on I Know You're Married..., and perhaps the pop song-craft doesn't come through as clearly - but maybe this is another that I need to live with for a while.

Predators

Predators opens with a man in free fall, his parachute opening just in time to save him from a messy landing, and continues in a similarly frenetic vein thereafter. The man is Adrien Brody, convincing (against the odds) as an amoral mercenary - and he quickly links up with the sorts of variations on the 'human predator' type you might expect in a movie like this (a Chechnyan soldier, a member of the yakuza, an Sierra Leone death squad-er, Danny Trejo, etc) as they band together in an effort to survive the game preserve into which they've been dropped, hunted by Predators. I have a big soft spot for the original Predator, and this one's not a million miles from it - not exactly high art, but it delivers.

Date Night

It's not that Date Night is disappointing, exactly - it's perfectly watchable, and even has a few laugh out loud moments - but it could have been so much better...Steve Carell I don't have any strong feelings about, but with Tina Fey alongside him, Mark Wahlberg and William Fichtner to play with, an extended cameo from James Franco and Mila Kunis (both of whom have caught my eye lately), and an early appearance by Mark Ruffalo to boot, the film has comedic talent to burn. But it never quite gels, caught perhaps between its zanier impulses and the desire to remain grounded in an emotionally real context involving its two central 'boring marrieds'.

Blonde Redhead - Penny Sparkle

When I first listened to this last year, it seemed a bit indistinct, a bit too pretty and insubstantial. But having returned to it over the last few weeks, I've realised that for all of its smoothness (a process that's been on at least since 23, and probably earlier) and airiness, the fraughtness and jagged edges that, in combination with the band's more dazzling pop impulses, have always been crucial to their genius, are still there, just a bit more subterranean - and that Penny Sparkle is in fact very good, insistent, sensuous, lingering.

Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks

"She Said" caught my ear on the radio. I though it was a duet - one guy singing soul, and another rapping the alternate stanzas, but it turns out they're one and the same person, recording as 'Plan B', and on repeat listens the song stands up very well, coming on like a new "Billie Jean".

Strickland Banks is essentially a modern soul/r&b record with hip-hop/rap elements, but it's inspired by a range of musical streams from the 50s and 60s, even classic rock & roll at times - it makes for engaging listening.

Easy A

Knowing, a bit snarky, fun.

Amaya Laucirica - Early Summer

There's something of the woozy, late night country of bands like Mazzy Star and the Cowboy Junkies to Early Summer, including hints of the Velvet Underground at their gentlest, along with pronounced but integrated folk and psychedelic threads; there's a lot to like on it, but the clear highlight is the airily widescreen "This World Can Make You Happy", on which Laucirica sounds rather like Isabel Monteiro (frontwoman for the sadly missed Drugstore - wikipedia tells me they're still alive, but it's been a long time between drinks...but I digress). Also very sweet - "Most Times I Feel Alright", "When I Think Of All The Places", "Sun On My Face".

Au revoir les enfants

I wasn't sure I'd find anything in this to draw me, but I did, the film's naturalism working well with its more subtle tones of elegy and regret. Also - and this is very much a personal dimension - it invoked two novels that I always strongly associate with French literature and art generally, The Counterfeiters with its schoolboys behaving badly, and The Red and the Black via the central character's name, Julien.

Jenny and Johnny @ East Brunswick Club, Thursday 10 February

Similar set to the one they played at Laneway (understandable given that they only have one record to draw on, plus Lewis' solo back catalogue), with a few added - including a rousing version of "Carpetbaggers" and a very stripped back and slowed down "Silver Lining" (it's obvious that Lewis has thoroughly left her old band behind - it was the only Rilo Kiley song they played, and as it was she forgot the words). Rilo Kiley are actually quite a big band for me, and I've followed Jenny Lewis since because she really is a star; there was nothing here to set my world alight, but it was a relaxed, enjoyable gig, played in hot, sticky conditions at the East Brunswick, with the added novelty of there seemingly being some kind of back stage issues, leading to the band taking and leaving the stage through the crowd, along the near wall.

(w/ Hayley and Meribah)

Laneway Festival, Saturday 5 February

Hadn't been to a Laneway for a few years, but was lured back by the solid line up and positive buzz about last year's, at the new venue at Footscray. Heavy rain was forecast, and we arrived beneath grey skies, expecting at any minute to be drenched, just in time for Stornoway, a bunch of Oxonians purveying bouncing, folksy, rather twee guitar-pop who'd been highly recommended by Penny, and they were good - both music and band charming and charismatic in a slightly dorky way.

Following them were Jenny and Johnny, who were nice, taking the stage in matching sunglasses (and rounded out to a four piece by a drummer and another guitarist - Jenny played bass) and selling the songs from I'm Having Fun Now in style. Unsurprisingly, the catchier, rockier numbers tended to come to the fore ("Committed", "My Pet Snakes", "Big Wave"), but they brought the other cuts out well too - and absolutely killed with the epic version of Acid Tongue's "The Last Messiah" that closed the set.

Next up (all of this was on the same stage) was Beach House, whose woodsy, sometimes clangorous dream-pop actually sounded really good in a live setting - I haven't really listened to them before, but this set made me think I should check them out more. (And the crowd was super into them.)

We were meant to be seeing Blonde Redhead next, but an on the day reschedule led to us catching Local Natives instead. They were pretty good, though I suspect that the festival setting flattened out some aspects of their sound that might have distinguished them more on record, most notably the harmonising - but they were tight, loud and anthemic, so not too bad at all.

After that, we intended to check out Yeasayer but went to the wrong stage and found ourselves at Les Savy Fav, which was just as much crazy as the last couple of times I incidentally saw them (once at an earlier laneway festival, and the other time as part of a double header with Pretty Girls Make Graves), complete with fence climb, river swim, river-water-drink-from-shoe, wriggle-into-unsuspecting-audience-member's-tee-shirt (said tee still occupied by audience member), marauding runs through centre of crowd, etc.

...and then, finally, Blonde Redhead, having picked them over Deerhunter, and unfortunately they were only so-so - solid enough, but there wasn't much engagement from the crowd, and when it was over, I had a definite 'was that it?' feeling...well, it happens sometimes.

Anyway, by that point, we weren't super excited about any of the closers (Cut Copy, Gotye, !!!), so we left and headed out in search of a cold drink, which brought us to the Footscray Hotel, quiet and patronised only by a handful of locals when we arrived, but soon (and amusingly) completely overrun by other festival-goers who'd had the same idea as us.

(w/ Meribah)

> 2005
> 2006
> 2007

Stephen R Donaldson - Against All Things Ending

Against All Things Ending takes a long time to get going - it's something like 70 pages in before anything even happens, the intervening time having all been taken up by the characters talking to each other and thinking about things...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, for the genius of these books has always been the way that they've dramatised both the interior and the external journeys and quests of their central protagonists, Thomas Covenant and, as the series have gone on, Linden Avery. I think that the first and second chronicles are a notch above these 'last chronicles', but the quality has only slipped a bit, and this is still fantasy well worth reading.

Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics

A collection of pieces which are really more imaginative excursions than short stories, for all that they do have identifiable protagonists and at least the outlines of narratives, and as such the obvious comparison is Invisible Cities. And indeed, the two books turn out to have a lot more in common than their superficially different subject-matters initially suggest (a series of descriptions of fabulous cities visited by Marco Polo, framed by longer philosophical conversations between the Venetian explorer and the emperor Kublai Khan, versus Qfwq's by turns breathless and oddly matter of fact accounts of crucial moments in cosmic 'history').

Ultimately, I think, Cosmicomics is principally concerned with the creative and productive forces that, for Calvino, drive Everything; the literary device of representing these both literally and anthropomorphically functions on at least two levels, one purely metaphorical (and playful), the other suggesting more profoundly that we can only make sense of such cosmic happenings (or circumstances) by way of metaphor (something like, 'if no one can imagine the big bang, did it really happen - and what does it mean to say that we can imagine it?')...and as such, it's fundamentally concerned with the theatre of the imagination, and the implications of what transpires there. For example, this, which closes "The Spiral", the final piece in the collection:

And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her, the most faithful image of her, in that beyond which opens up, past the sem-liquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries.

If that is what Calvino's about here (and it's not clear that it is), then no wonder that he only partly succeeds. I found Cosmicomics interesting to read, but it doesn't approach the limpid perfection of Invisible Cities - it may be missing the point to insist on the book having a point, but nonetheless I felt it lacked a clarity of focus, something to raise it above the level of a diverting, even often entertaining, play of ideas to being something more.

(Incidentally, book club rode again with this one after a long hiatus - a hot day upstairs in AB's current North Carlton apartment, WL joining us by skype from the UK.)

True Grit

So the Coen brothers do a western, Jeff Bridges at its centre, and turns out it's darn good. In many respects, it's quite a straight western, really, but there's certainly something of a Coen bros flavour to it, most notably in the dialogue but also a bit in how it's shot, and in the sly humour and mingling of tones/registers (funny how those ideas - phrases - both have a musical connotation (origin?), though I use them here in an emotional or 'genre-y' sense). V. enjoyable.

(w/ Andreas)

"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)