"MoMA at NGV" (first visit)

One of those that I could feel nourishing me as I moved through it. Organised in eight thematised sections, each covering around two decades from the late 19th century on, it's a wonderful survey of modern art, taking essentially a 'greatest hits' approach to its selection of artists, with the result that there are pieces by all of the 'big five' of my favourite painters:

Giorgio de Chirico - "Gare Montparnasse (The melancholy of departure)" (1914), which is heartstopping when actually seen, not least - but far from only - because it's so much larger than in any reproduction. This is the one I spent longest with.

Rene Magritte - "The Portrait" (1935), not one of my favourites of his, but possessed of a nice slippery toughness.

Georgia O'Keeffe - "Banana flower" & "Eagle claw and bean necklace" (both 1934), charcoal drawings (rather than paintings) which I need to go back for a proper look at.

Edward Hopper - "Gas" (1940), brilliant. I reckon I saw this one in MoMA a decade ago and it's one of the dozen or so of Hopper's that's always near the surface for me. Much brighter in reality than in pictures.

Mark Rothko - "No 3 / No 13" (1949).

Also, speaking of personal favourites, Olafur Eliasson is also represented through "Ventilator" (1997) in the big ground floor space before the great hall, a fan swinging from the ceiling which I'd like to see in the daytime.

Elsewhere, Dali's "The persistence of memory" (1931), probably the most famous individual piece in the exhibition (?), was both tiny and stunning, while the Pollock, "Number 7, 1950", brought a smile to my face with its liveliness and all its associations.

One issue with the exhibition's approach, which I guess is the nearly unavoidable flipside of its near-comprehensiveness, is that, particularly until it reaches the more contemporary era (say from about the 1970s on), it very much reproduces the canon of modern art, but in this case, it's hard to feel too complain-y about that, and there does seem to be a consciousness of it in the more recent selections.

Also, this reminded me not only of those happy modern art visits in the public galleries of NYC all those years back, but also the NGV's own brilliant Guggenheim winter masterpiece show in 2007 (*), which made such an impression at the time, and which I still think about.

(w/ Alex - my first NGV Friday Night, I think)

Reign of Fire

Kind of dour and drags way too much for a post-apocalyptic film about fighting dragons that stars Matthew McConaughey and Christian Bale (not to mention a James McAvoy-looking young Gerard Butler, plus Doran Martell from Game of Thrones and ... I was pleased with myself for spotting a very young Joffrey!).

Belly - Dove

Considering that Belly's only previous two lps came out in the early 90s and Tanya Donelly's been releasing solo albums on and off since then, it's not all that surprising that this new record sounds more like the latter than the former. Pretty much all the songs are pretty good, though the hooks and choruses have a certain slabbiness rather than the more sinewy excitement of those many great Star and King-era cuts.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians, The Magician King & The Magician's Land

A re-read! A different experience but in some ways also the same.

(last time)

Heathers

Well I guess of course Heathers feels more dated each time I see it (some previous watchings: 2005, 2011), in terms of both the general culture and its significance to me, but it remains as black and savage as ever.

Screening as part of a short 'Winona Forever' run at Howler which also took in Reality Bites, Edward Scissorhands and Mermaids (the last of which I never got to).

(w/ R)

Iron & Wine - Beast Epic

The song I most enjoyed from the concert, "Claim Your Ghost" aka the "killers let go" song, turned out to be on their latest album, so I listened to it; it also has another I remember liking, "Call It Dreaming" aka the "you can have mine" song. The rest of it is nice, some good melodies, some that are less memorable.

"Wonderland" (ACMI)

Mostly I just let this wash over me, clips and accoutrements from the many filmic versions of Alice in Wonderland (and Through the Looking Glass), along with some more immersive or interactive rooms, like the tea party projections.

(w/ Yee Fui)

Richard Flanagan - The Narrow Road to the Deep North

It took a series of things for me to read this: being impressed by Flanagan at the Galle literary festival, hearing The Narrow Road to the Deep North mentioned while I was looking for novels about male friendship, and eventually being lent it by Jen. It's a type of novel that I don't read a lot of - a romance (I don't mind a good one, but they're so rare), a war story (difficult to avoid but not particularly my cup of tea), an account of one man's life (these have to be really good to interest me at all) and, most of all, essentially formally conventional. Yet I found it gripping and quite affecting, and admired the way it achieved its effects, including through its interleaving of different time periods and perspectives, occasional lyrical language, and commitment to actual story-telling, including by knitting everything together by the end (e.g. Darky Gardiner's background) and showing how things end for everyone (e.g. Amy's perspective throughout). High quality.

"Diane Arbus: American Portraits" (Heide)

Second visit.

(first time)

(w/ R)

The Bookshop

Really this movie seemed (and, it turned out, was) so middle-aged that I was up for watching it only because of the trio headlining it, Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson, of whom Nighy was the standout though all were good in their accustomed ways (lots of Mortimer making expressions like question marks and Clarkson being politely malign).

(w/ Erandathie)

Doctor Strange

Solid fun, with probably the least offensive psychedelic elements I can remember encountering in a film. Cumberbatch is good in the role, and of course there's Tilda Swinton's feyly playful, all too fallible 'Ancient One'.

Tully

Intense and good; I liked how it brought together the effects/experience of motherhood and Marlo's sense of loss in relation to her youth. The water symbolism ultimately pays off, as does Tully's (for the most part) barely-hinted uncanniness.

(w/ R)

The House of Bernarda Alba (MTC)

There was something powerful below the surface of this one, showing through in flashes; I'd have expected no less from Lorca, and especially having read the first half or so of the text earlier in the year (then I got distracted), and the transposition to rural WA worked. And the production was lively as well as dark, with a few gut punches (Bernadette refusing to open the door to Rosie, Angela dropping to the floor in fear as her mother advances on her) along the way to the inevitable tragedy - I've seen enough of this playwright now to expect blood (literal/figurative) and emotional ruin.

So I don't know why I wasn't more enthused about the play - it was strong across the board (including the performances, which pretty much nailed the difficult line between stylised and naturalistic that was required), it engaged me on a lot of levels ... maybe my hopes and expectations were just too high. Perhaps, too, I would have liked more texture, for it to go on longer and more suffocatingly, which might be a criticism that asks this production to be something it isn't trying to be, but - trying to put my finger on it - the closest I can get to explaining my reservations is that, in patches, it was just a touch thin, especially in the characterisation. Without needing to have it all explained, I wanted to know more about them.

(w/ Cass, Meribah and Stuart)

Cat Power @ Sydney Opera House, Thursday 31 May

This show was a 20th anniversary performance of Moon Pix, which was recorded in Sydney in 1998 and only sinks in deeper for me as the years roll on,[*] done with full band including Mick Turner and Jim White (which made me realise how distinctive and crucial their contributions are), strings x 3, flute and piano. Given that, it's not completely surprising that it was a special concert, but it's still also kind of amazing.

With a couple of exceptions, she stuck close to the recorded versions, and the overlaying of the live singing and the greater texture, warmth and dynamism of the live instrumentation with the intense familiarity of the songs themselves and how she sings them made for a powerful experience, with the more muted (post-"American Flag") first half of the record particularly enriched; "Metal Heart" packed a particular punch. The exceptions were back to back, as the Moon Pix part of the set started its run home: "You May Know Him" reinvented with saxophone as the through-line, building to a full-band triumphant swell, and "Colors and the Kids" fleshed out from the piano and voice recorded version.

An extended exit from the stage, then three songs that were just her at the piano (including "I Don't Blame You") and a few more with the band back on, which I was so pleased included "Good Woman" and "The Greatest", before some heartfelt words about what Moon Pix means to her and how things have changed for her since that time (see also). All through, very very wonderful.

(w/ Hayley)

[*] I called it my seventh favourite album in 2005 and again in 2009, and if anything I reckon it'd be at least a couple of notches higher these days. 

"Biennale of Sydney: Superposition - Equilibrium & Engagement" (MCA / AGNSW / Cockatoo Island)

Highlights from the last couple of days' visits:

MCA

Sosa Joseph's Kerala-informed paintings, of which my favourite was "Your Earth, My World" (2018) with its host of whimsical grotesques:

Marjolijn Dijkman's "Navigating Polarities" (2018), video projections in a circular concave screen within a standing bowl, accompanied by audio of statements from a range of sources interpreting the concept of polarities broadly while still meaningfully - e.g. "Binary thinking is rarely symmetrical", "Some people, standing in the fore peak of a craft, or lying in the bottom or bilge, can actually sense the magnetic field of the Earth":

Marc Bauer's hand-painted ceramics and the story they tell in French, "Diary, Madam F.C." (2017):

Nicole Wong's marble-engraved top 10 google results for specific phrases, which I found poignant and amusing and entirely human, e.g. "People say" (2018):

AGNSW

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's "Potentiality for Love - Mahdollinen Rakkaus" (2018) - a quite lovely installation that included a couple of pieces, the centre of which was an LED-screen projection which felt like being immersed in love, floating through blue, blinding white light, final embrace:

Miriam Cahn's smearily bright oils:

Cockatoo Island

This was a lot of fun all round, a great setting for contemporary art, and especially the large industrial precinct which housed the two highlights of the Biennale as a whole for me (at least of those bits that I managed to catch): Yukinori Yanagi's "Icarus Container" (2018), in which you make your way through a dark series of mirrored corridors inside large shipping containers, a fiercely burning sun nearly at the entrance and a blue sky visible in reflection from far away at the end, with passages from Yukio Mishima's poem about Icarus appearing throughout, also reflecting literally/figuratively on the force of nuclear power:

And Ai Weiwei's "Law of the Journey", with its massive raft full of people and accompanying text from, among many others, Kafka, Homer, Socrates, Augustine, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin and Vaclav Havel on immigration, nationhood and humanity, which I was moved by:

There was also Koji Ryui's "Jamais vu" (2018) installation, in which the sound was an important part:

Two others of Yukinori Yanagi's (obviously an artist to look out for), "Absolute Dud" (2016) and "Landscape with an Eye" (2018), the latter of which involves nuclear explosion projections onto the titular, hanging eye:

Dimitar Solakov's "New Life for the Past" series (Bulgaria, 2015 - below, "Pliska"):

Going Down (Malthouse)

A fun show that hits its bases with verve, elevated by a terrific cast and neat staging. Hyper-local inner north / hipster-adjacent (or outright immersed) Melbourne mores plus some of the specificities of being Asian-Australian / of migrant background in that context, all of which is very piquant and recognisable for me; of course, the irony and appropriateness (the two go hand in hand here) of seeing it at the Malthouse is embraced, while important settings include the Wheeler Centre and (for a sleeplessness/sugar high/accidental crossing south of the river-induced Marimekko-involving breakdown) Emporium. To be honest I found it a tiny bit broad and loose at points, especially as it moved towards resolution of its various threads, but given its many other great qualities those things were easy to ignore.

(w/ Hayley)

Iron & Wine @ Melbourne Recital Centre, Wednesday 23 May

I wouldn't say Iron & Wine was a wholly unknown quantity but I only had a vague impression of his music beforehand - beardy, quiet, plucked and strummed folk-ish. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover a fair bit more blood coursing through the veins, in the form of a full band (cello, bass, drums, keys, and backing female harmonies) and some quite up-tempo and even rather lushly epic tunes. Enjoyable, and I liked barely knowing any of the songs.

(w/ trang)

Molly's Game

Good aspects: quite exciting, good performances by Chastain and Costner (also Elba and Cera), well-told story about - among other things - how much men get away with, the one instance of physical violence is harrowing as it should be.

Bad aspects: extremely laboured textual explaining of Molly's whole psychology by and about her psychologist father (this threw me out of the film so badly that I thought it was more likely than not that the whole scene was a hallucination or dream of some kind, and I would've disliked it as too obvious even if it had been), somewhat of a deus ex machina / implausibly idealistic resolution in the final hearing (Sorkin's tendency towards over-simplification biting on both counts).

Sort of a neutral thing but more a bad thing than a good one: how similar it felt to Miss Sloane, even down to having Chastain as the lead, but not as good.

Overall: 6/10

"Robert Hunter" (NGV)

Art finds a way. I visited the NGVA yesterday, a rainy afternoon on the back of a week of little sleep, and found my way to this retrospective (1947-2014), and the first few minutes were a struggle - looking, but not really looking, at Hunter's early, very plainly geometric pieces.

But after a bit longer - and time so often is part of it - I felt something shift, as the traced curves and their intersections with the gridded straight lines began to make a kind of sense. And then, around the corner, this untitled - they're all untitled - wall painting from 1971 drew me in still further:

And by the time I came to the final rooms, with their many, only apparently nearly white - and actually layered with all kinds of shades of shapes and patterns, punctuated with little darts of clear, faint colour - large paintings, I was enveloped. I don't know that I'd say I 'liked' this art particularly - though nor did I dislike it - but the experience I had with it was unusual and, I think, maybe quite powerful.

Isle of Dogs

This time I consciously tried to watch it more as pure entertainment, with the result that my heart was very warmed, and specifically (though not exclusively) I have a lot of particularly warm feelings towards dogs right now.

(last time)

(w/ R)

Neil Gaiman, J H Williams III & Dave Stewart - The Sandman: Overture

I had this idea that maybe I'll re-read (again) the Sandman series, especially with the oversized - 'absolute'- volumes occupying what seems like a disproportionate amount of my increasingly rationed bookshelf space. Not sure whether I'll follow through on that but it was still nice to revisit Overture, the after-the-fact prequel, and the volume with which I'm least thoroughly familiar.

(last time)

Beach House - 7

Oh Beach House, so good. I'm not sure if 7 is their best yet (it might be, which is really saying something given the swirling power of Bloom and what feels like the enduring greatness of Teen Dream in particular), but I'm almost certain it's the one most made for being wrapped up in.

Their usual haze is a bit stormier on this outing, and the piercing quality of the songs they always remember to write underneath their dreamy textures punches through strongly (and much more so than on either of their 2015 releases, Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, as good as they both were too), so we get the excitement of surges that rise on songs like "Dark Spring" and "Dive", the downbeat thrum of "Pay No Mind" (maybe my favourite for now), the brighter droning edges of "Drunk in LA", and broodingly starry drift-along moments like "L'Inconnue" and "Black Car", and more. How wonderful.

Homecoming Queens (season 1)

Very delightful in every way. Created by Michelle Law - an enjoyable presence in the Australian arts/cultural landscape - and Chloe Reeson and loosely based on their real-life friendship and serious medical conditions (Michelle: alopecia, Chloe: breast cancer and mastectomy), with Law playing the based-on-herself and Liv Hewson (who was good in the short "Let's See How Fast This Baby Will Go" which, against my expectations at the time, is probably actually the one out of last year's 'best MIFF shorts' that has most lingered) as Chloe.

Seven episodes of about 12 to 15 minuteish each; snappy, funny, real, cringeworthily awkward, and incorporating 'diversity' in just the right way (wholeheartedly, directly, in a way that reflects contemporary Australia, and at the same time with what amounts to a big shrugged 'so what, people are people'). On sbs on demand.

The World's End

So I reckon I have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction against British comedy, at least in film/tv (maybe not so much in literature, given Pratchett, Douglas Adams etc), which is maybe why I wasn't red hot on either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz when I saw them - though both have grown in my opinion since, including through miscellaneous seeings of bits and pieces on tv - whereas the thoroughly North American-feeling (Canadian and American respectively) Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver were both big, immediate yeses for me.

Edgar Wright's the unifying director there, though he's shared writing credits with various others, including Simon Pegg for this so-called Cornetto trilogy, and his zippiness is amply present in The World's End, across pacing, cutting and fight scenes (and musical bits). There seems to be more seriousness here than in Shaun or Fuzz in the way it tackles the toxic effects of (men) not growing up, and the cast is good fun (I liked that Walder Frey popped up) but it rushes along at a good clip. Primal Scream prominent. Bill Nighy present through voice only.

Haruki Murakami - Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

If I had a favourite writer, Murakami would have a pretty fair claim to being it - on my three remaining shelves of fiction/plays/poetry, he and Donna Tartt are the only ones whose complete works I've kept, and that's 15 books to three (well technically Rivka Galchen too but that's a grand total of two!) - and I've gotten in the habit of thinking of Hard-boiled Wonderland as my favourite of his, which has maybe, along with its intrinsic vividness, been part of what's kept it so clear in my mind in the thirteen (!) years since I previously read it.

I'm no less interested in phenomenology and subjective experience of the world now than I was back in 2005, and the way that concern is structured into the novel so that it actually forms part of its narrative engine is still impressive. And likewise the pace at which it moves forward, in the interleaved past tense and terser 'hard-boiled wonderland' and present tense and more lyrical 'end of the world' segments, both individually and, as the story progresses, in how they cross over into each other - not to mention the many repeated and mirrored details that echo across the divide between the two stories / worlds / versions of minds and the way they're diegetically explained:

"Meaning, I'll keep producing more and more new memories?"

" 'Fraid so. Or more simply, deja vus of sorts. Don't differ all that much in principle. That'll go on for a while. Till finally you reassemble a world out of these new memories."

"Reassemble a world?"

"You heard correct. This very moment you're preparin' t'move to another world. So the world you see right now is changin' bit by bit t'match up. Changin' one percept at a time. The world here and now does exist. But on the phenomenological level, this world is only one out of countless possibilities. We're talkin' about whether you put your right foot or your left foot out - changes on that order. It's not so strange that when your memories change, the world changes."

"Pretty academic if you ask me," I said. "Too conceptual. You're disregarding the time factor. You're reversing the order of things."

"No, the time paradox here's in your mind," said the Professor. "As you create memories, you're creatin' a parallel world."

"So I'm pulling away from the world as I originally knew it?"

"I'm just sayin' it's not out of the realm of possibility. Mind you, I'm not talkin' about any out-of-this-world science-fiction type parallel universe. It's all a matter of cognition. The world as perceived. And that's what's changin' in your brain, is what I think."

"Then after these changes, Junction A switches over, a completely different world appears, and I go on living there. There's no avoiding that turnover - I just sit and wait for it to happen?

" 'Fraid so."

"And for how long does that world go on?"

"Forever," said the Professor. 

Most importantly, though, the high concept cleverness and structural intricacy are all driving towards genuine emotional stakes, as the 'external' half of the narrative increasingly folds in on itself and it's made explicit that his memory is starting to run backwards as it all moves towards the end, and the nature of the 'inner' world becomes apparent, as well as how its protagonist and his shadow came to its strange Town and the meaning of the choice that he will need to make about departing or staying becomes clear. Also, how just-right the symbolism associated with the end of the world - mind - all is, from the unicorn Beasts to the Wall and the Woods and the passing of the seasons, and the way it's music that proves the crucial, final bridge. Marvellous.

"No, I really like his voice," she said. "It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain."

Agnes Obel - Citizen of Glass

Crystalline, high strung, and fairly uncategorisable. One of those curious singer-songwriter pop albums that comes along once in a while at the intersections of streams, here including the more austere type of folk and jazz's slower notes, with plenty of eerie musical and vocal elements. It hasn't grabbed me but I think it's good.

NGV

Encounters during an NGV visit earlier in the week, some sought out and others not.

The blue Soulages and red Rothko, both of which I've spent plenty of time with in the past, now installed side by side: 

Alongside them and stunning in its own right, but even better in context, an Yves Saint Laurent ensemble (1976-77, Operas Ballets Russes collection):

A bit of time with Richard Mosse's "Incoming" (2014-17), which I didn't get a good look at as part of the Triennial (I was also pleased to see that the Paulina Olowska "Painter" which I liked so much seems to be a permanent acquisition by the NGV - still on display), which had some power to it:

And, on adjacent corners to each other (I'm sure there's a word for that), two video works that, in their slowness, deliberately recall photography, Yvonne Todd's "Denim seagull" (2013, also incorporating seagull sounds) and Gianfranco Foschino's "Apartments" (2012).

The Jayhawks - Rainy Day Music

Pretty nice. Yearning melodies, guitars that sometimes jangle and sometimes chime a bit, in that gentle folk-rock alt-countryish vein.

Gurrumul

This documentary had an impact. Part of it was probably the fairly intense few days I've had, but even still. And will certainly be seeking out his music now.

(w/ Hayley)

"Diane Arbus: American Portraits" + more at Heide

The main event here was the Arbus photos, touring from the NGA in Canberra, and they were quite wonderful, making me feel many feelings. To me they felt compassionate and specific to their subjects, pulling me in and causing me to smile with something that I'd call recognition, for all that some of the context to them seemed also to raise legitimate questions about exploitation.

And an unexpected pleasure was the inclusion of plenty of photos by other American portraitist types, both influences upon and influenced by Arbus herself, including William Eggleston (whose exhibition last year I so enjoyed), Walker Evans ("Tenant Farmer's Wife, Alabama", 1936 - below), Garry Winogrand ("Los Angeles, California", 1969 - below; and I was also very struck by "World's Fair, New York", 1964), and others.

Also, in the way of things at Heide, a bit of Tucker and Blackman and a bit of Nolan - and, in this case, some contemporary European art, amongst which my favourite was Ugo Rondinone's "The Plain" (2014); also pictured is "zwölfteraugustzweitausendundvierzehn" (2014).

(w/ Angela)

Lyle Lovett - Pontiac

So actually I think 'prejudice' is exactly the right word to describe why I hadn't got to Lovett's music till now, cos he's kind of a weird-looking guy (I've always thought he looked like the fella in Eraserhead). Pontiac is fun though, reminds me of a more countryish Lloyd Cole; favourite song is "Give Back My Heart" (as in "ooh give back my heart chip-kicker redneck woman, I can't be no cowgirl paradise" ... whatever that means). 

Islamic Museum Australia

A quick look around, including at the temporary exhibition, which taught me where the '1.6 billion ways to be Muslim' posters that I've been seeing around are from. Interesting!

(w/ R)

Avengers: Age of Ultron & Infinity War

I have a funny relationship with these Marvel superhero films. I'd thought I'd seen most of them but an actual count suggests I've actually only seen about half, not quite in sequence: Iron Man (though it doesn't seem to have made it onto extemporanea, so maybe I only saw it in bits and pieces on tv), Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and now these two. I do enjoy epics and spectacle and - as far as I can tell - am happily unhampered by any kind of snobbery about the genre/industry, so it's surprising that I'm not more into these, but somehow they haven't captured my imagination.

Anyway so both Age of Ultron and Infinity War are neatly put together and I didn't find myself bored at any point while watching them (although there were definitely points in the latter where I couldn't remember where one set of characters or another had gotten to while the film was focusing on others across its dispersed range of characters and settings), in the end I don't feel like I cared very much about anything that happened in either film - and this despite having had at least some prior-film derived investment in the characters and a seriously high quality bunch of actors (Chris Hemsworth continues to be very funny as Thor, Scarlett Johansson is impressively straight and immersed in her not-particularly-nuancedly-characterised character of Black Widow, etc).

Midnight Special

Good film. Thrums with imminence all the way through - helped by the atmospheric soundtrack - and even had some shades of Melancholia albeit summoned in large part by Kirsten Dunst's presence, though it's a much tauter kind of sci-fi / hints of the end of the world type film. Nice to see Michael Shannon in a sympathetic (though by no means easily likeable) role, I also liked Joel Edgerton and Adam Driver, and that's the kid from It! 

Isle of Dogs

On the one hand, very charming, and these days I probably don't give Wes Anderson films enough credit for their lightness of touch, humour and whimsy - having internalised his distinctive mode and style to such a degree - and especially in this more recent phase of his career (say from Fantastic Mr Fox onwards), in which optimistic tones tend to predominate over the more mixedly sombre hues that characterised his earlier films. (Having said that, I wonder if I might have oversimplified about his trajectory - re-reading what I thought about The Grand Budapest Hotel, I see I was struck by its darkness at the time.)

On the other hand, as enjoyable as Isle of Dogs was, it might have been my least favourite of his to date, which I think is mainly because it didn't really touch me and stir up my feelings in the way that pretty much all of his others have. It was nice, but in the end minor. Also, complicated questions around the film's/his treatment/appropriation of Japanese culture and gender; the latter strikes me as more problematic.

(w/ trang, Sara, Julian, Andreas, Jarrod, Farrah and Sheila, plus Rob and Laura for dinner before ... a bit of a posse resulting from my deciding that I wanted company to see this one and relying on the old 'email a bunch of people and see who says yes' approach)

Sunshine Cleaning

I've been meaning to go back and watch this since realising that its two leads are Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, two of my latter-day faves, and inevitably that was one of the main lenses through which I rewatched the film, as to which: Adams is as steely-vulnerable convincing here as she is in everything, while Blunt manages to project at least some charisma and genuine feeling from underneath some fairly thankless makeup and character-attitude (and they really do not look like sisters).

I reckon I already felt this a bit last time, but this time the film's soulfulness - not quite the right word, not least given how white Sunshine Cleaning is - touched me a bit more, though I again felt the pieces didn't quite coalesce ... I think what could've really made the film sing, rather than being merely nice, would have been the secondary characters' narratives punching through a bit more, in their own rights and as stronger counterpoints to Rose's and Norah's arcs (including the loss of their mother) - their father Joe and Rose's son Oscar especially, but also the other, less developed characters.

The Villainess

I nearly stopped watching this after the first seven minutes, which is a relentless, close to first person-view knife fight/slaughter as our heroine first shoots, then slices and stabs her way through a henchman-filled series of corridors and rooms - spectacular, but also wearying. But I persevered and so I can report that The Villainess is a fairly complicated, backstory-heavy, violent film with some surprising moments of lightness and a few striking images. Oh and it's South Korean, from which plenty of this kind of well-made genre seems to come.

Rachel B Glaser - Pee on Water

Well I've read and re-read "Pee on Water", the title story for this collection, and it continues to be a marvel. I reckon it's the most sheerly original short story I can recall reading, at least out of those that are also actually good (never mind great), and its rhythms have gotten stuck deep in my head. It's some kind of magic.

Cars come close to smashing. Flags paraded around, then stuck on the moon. A little sister orders her baseball collection by cuteness. Wild animals have no more room. Land gets so full of buildings, when town girls and city boys escape into the open, ‘God’ is waiting in the fields. Cars smash, glass in a crowd of shards. Huge ambivalent teen models lounge across highway billboards. Dust gathers between VCR remote buttons.

So it was an impossible two prongs; I suspected "Pee on Water" must be a one-off (if for no other reason than how could she tell another history of the Earth, emphasis on humankind, in eight and a half pages or so?), yet at the same time I kind of hoped for more of something like the same, whatever that could possibly be. And, while reading it, I did feel something stir in my stomach - my brain? - when I encountered a story which used language in some similar way, especially "The Sad Girlfriend" and "My Boyfriend, but Tragic".

But in fact there are a whole bunch of strikingly odd, successful modes operating in Pee on Water, with many of the best slipping through time and space not just from paragraph to paragraph or even sentence to sentence, but in at least one case - in the outstanding "McGrady's Sweetheart", which is a war story and so much more - within a single sentence itself. The writing throughout feels a little wild and at the same time thoroughly controlled, with many of those satisfying little 'ah' moments emerging as Glaser's sidelong-experimental style opens up something new and true. 

Restoration: The Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin

Elton John was one of those artists to whom I grew up a bit, but exclusively through the 2-cd 'very best of' that my parents had, so while I know only some of the originals that are re-done here, I know the ones that I know very well. And, seeing as this set's made up entirely of contemporary country acts - there's a companion 'pop' one that I haven't listened to - unsurprisingly I also know some but not all of the artists on here.

So, honestly, for the songs I do know, these melodies are just so good that it's hard to muck them up, and I do especially like Little Big Town's "Rocket Man" (spacious), Don Henley and Vince Gill's "Sacrifice" (lazy in a good way) and Lee Ann Womack's "Honky Cat" (a good trick - kind of sparse and funky like the original, but different-sounding at the same time); Dierks Bentley's "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" is nice but a bit too similar to Elton John's own cut of it.

And others that have grabbed me: Chris Stapleton's "I Want Love" (slow and sentimental), Kacey Musgraves's "Roy Rogers" (helped along by her recent favourite-ness status over here, but I think I would've liked its winsome lilt regardless; it reminds me of Kirsty MacColl, who I hadn't realised had sunk in to that degree), Rhonda Vincent and Dolly Parton's "Please" (which is extremely bluegrass!), Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris's "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore" (it sounds like a classic, although probably most anything dueted by those two would).

"Entre Nous: Clare Rae and Claude Cahun" / "I can see for miles" (CCP)

This was the first time I'd seen a bunch of Rae's photos all in the one place - and there are heaps, in a generous show - and it's only affirmed how terrific I think her work is. I'll need to go back and take a proper look, not only at hers but also at those by Claude Cahun, to which they're a response.

(w/ Angela)

The last 50 cds, or more or less the most important music of my life

In the end, I decided it would make me happier to keep a handful of cds rather than getting rid of absolutely all of them (Cf), and when I realised that the number that gave me a real twinge to think about was in the vicinity of 50, I couldn't resist the round figure.

They're arranged chronologically by when they came into my life - as nearly as I can remember or reconstruct - and that winds up telling a pretty accurate story of how my tastes have developed over time.

The 50 tilt heavily towards my formative music-listening years, for any number of predictable (and good) reasons; it's pretty close to being my actual 50 favourite albums/cds, but there are a few from the early years whose 'personal historical' significance is what has made them keepers now.

School years

Music wasn't an insignificant part of my life before then, but this story really begins in about 1997 - year 10 - which I started aged 14, and continues into '98.

I can't remember which came first, the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack or Garbage, but I do remember a period of feeling like everything on commercial radio seemed just slightly too fast, off-tempo, and then one day hearing "#1 Crush", probably on Fox FM, maybe triple j, and it being so exactly right; that was one beginning.

Probably I'd heard "Only Happy When It Rains" and "Stupid Girl", and I'd got the idea that the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack was meant to be good, so out came my pocket money for both, at the local Target I think; Garbage's whole aesthetic was spot-on for me just then (and, of course, Garbage's), while R+J turned out to be a pocketful of all kinds of interesting alternative acts and genres, some of which would loom large for me down the track.

I got to Pearl Jam and Nirvana quickly after that, chasing music that reflected how I saw myself, at a time when grunge still hung heavily over the landscape. Pearl Jam were always closer to my heart, starting from those huge Ten anthems ("Alive" especially had already been just hazily present enough in background radio that when I actually focused on the song and realised how great it was, it already felt like a classic that had always been there), but Nevermind looms so large, and already did then, in that period of personal taste-formation, that it seems right to hang on to it too.

I'm hazy on the chronology, but several other really big ones had come into my life by the end of '98:

• Automatic for the People, which I remember walking around listening to at school during lunchtime, and also during many long night-time walks
• Throwing Copper, whose anthemic and slightly mystical rock drama just hit the spot
• from the choirgirl hotel, which I found my way to via the glorious "Spark", which hit me like liquid magic, and which precipitated what, in retrospect, seems both a very unlikely and very fortuitous love affair with Tori Amos's music
• Post, which still sounds stunningly modern whenever I listen to it, and of course I'm still not really over "Hyper-ballad", which is where it all started
• U2's 1980-1990 best of, a Christmas present from my parents, which I think feels like it belongs in this company through equal parts sheer quality of the songs, expansiveness, and sense of having always been there and being likely to always be
• and, of course, OK Computer, the biggest landmark of them all when it comes to personal worldview-forming and distilling, zeitgeist-capturing and everything else.

Given what had already come, Siamese Dream, Grace and The Bends were probably all inevitable, but what wasn't inevitable is how much I've returned to each over the years since; Grace in particular gets better and better with time. Drifting over the radio waves, "Glory Box" and "Roads" sounded like transmissions from another planet, and so did Dummy, and it still does. All of those came some time during that 1998 or 1999 period.

Year 12, 1999, was also when I really started discovering how much 'old' music had to offer. I began dipping into that great trio of the Cure, the Smiths and Joy Division (though it was during the first bit of uni that I went deep into them). For the first two, it was those best-ofs that were my introduction, and which I listened to over and over before discovering the riches of their back catalogues (but, also, they were both such great singles bands!), while with Joy Division, it was the sonorous Closer that first really sunk in.

Uni

Uni, the era of all kinds of discoveries, not least secondhand cd stores and more disposable income to spend on music! Again, the exact chronology escapes me a bit but I reckon first year, 2000, took in most if not all of these:

• Kid A, which was definitely 2000, and which I remember riding back up to uni along Elizabeth Street with on the day it was released, on a tram on which every second passenger seemed to be doing the same thing, then everyone's minds blowing more or less in unison from the music itself, which we'd been warned by the reviews was different and it sure was
• to venus and back, another jewel-like offering from Tori, the live disc as good as the studio one
• Homogenic, Bjork's best album in a back catalogue where that really means something
• Low, which I think I listened to early courtesy of one of the uni libraries (ERC or Rowden White), though I only properly discovered its greatness on a slow burn over many years, and maybe the ultimate 'pop music as art' record for me
• New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which has somehow always been one of several sentimental favourites across R.E.M.'s many genuinely great albums, maybe because it's just the right era of fm radio vibes for me
• Tabula Rasa, the most enduring of Kim's many dispatches from beyond the world of popular music, and wired straight to my spine right from the beginning

Amnesiac came out in 2001, still during the period of uncritical Radiohead adoration and intense listening to every second of every song, and that was also the year when I tumbled into the orbits of My Bloody Valentine (and especially Loveless, what an edifice) and, even more headlong, the Cocteau Twins and 4AD in general. MBV I can probably thank pitchfork for, but, aptly enough for such a mysterious band, I haven't the faintest idea how the Cocteaus came on to my radar. There was that marvellous best-of Stars and Topsoil, then the dive into their many records, many of which still stand out and glimmer, Treasure and Blue Bell Knoll the brightest. Of all my favourites over the years, theirs remains the music most beyond words.

(Somewhere in there I got to The Velvet Underground & Nico, but I can't remember when, which seems of a piece with the outsized effect it seemed to exert in general, all the way from 1967...)

Blacklisted was released in 2002 and that's probably when I got it. I could tell at the time it was something out of the ordinary; I wouldn't know how much it would ripple through my own musical history until much later. And it was also in 2002 that I became wrapped up in Belle and Sebastian; I'd heard Fold Your Hands... but it was "Lazy Line Painter Jane" on the radio that made me fall in love, and then the pinpoint joys of Tigermilk, Sinister and Arab Strap from there.

And oh Aimee Mann. Who knows if I've remembered this right, but my recollection, anyway, is seeing the cd in the library, never having heard of the artist, liking the cover, and the rest is history; that was summer 2002/03. I'm not sure I have a single favourite album these days, but last time I did, Bachelor No 2 was it.

2003, fourth year at uni, and things were finding a different shape by then. That was the year Hail to the Thief came out, and was that the one for which we queued up at HMV Bourke Street at midnight? I was still deep in the Cocteau Twins and Belle and Sebastian, and of the many others who seemed to radiate out around them, Belly (all three of Star, King and Sweet Ride, really) and the Sundays (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic) hit me the hardest and have most lingered. And when I swooned for Summerteeth at the end of that year and into the next, it was seemingly out of nowhere, as fondly as I'd remembered "Can't Stand It".

The other huge album that came into my life somewhere around here, but it might have been much earlier, I don't know, was Moon Pix - another that seems completely out of time. Maybe it was 2004, because I'm sure I was still as immersed in musical discovery as at any time before, yet the only other that seems to have remained from then - and it's a big one - is Soul Journey, yet another into which I fell one summer (2004/05).

Then that extended coda, honours in 2005, and the memories are sharper here. Funeral at the start of the year, whose greatness I didn't realise at the time but which has stayed with me and sunk in deep. Alt-country, folk and americana opening up before me, Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams (especially Car Wheels) and Laura Cantrell a bit later (Humming By The Flowered Vine has lost none of its charm), and so many more. The Forgotten Arm (*) over the year's second half, which totally soaked me from the start.

And then, post-uni but pre-workforce, very early 2006, Neko Case's triumphant Fox Confessor. It's chance that it wound up in that position, but I can't think of many albums that could have better served - as it did in retrospect - as both last hurrah and a kind of bridge to what came next.

And beyond

Unsurprisingly, the pace slowed after that, but there have been a few that feel like stayers:

• In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, further into 2006, which I came to late and with wild surmise
• Boxer, in 2008, which had an immediate air of greatness that wasn't at all misleading
• a whole heap of Patty Griffin, starting in 2008 with Children Running Through and continuing to now, amongst which Impossible Dream (listened to in 2013, the year I was particularly flattened by Griffin's greatness) also stands out although at least a couple of others are nearly as transcendent
• and most recently, Sharon Van Etten's Are We There, as recently as 2014, but it hit me hard then and shows no signs of going away...

Footnotes

The most totemic acts that didn't get a guernsey: Mazzy Star, Manic Street Preachers, Neil Young, Saint Etienne, Jolie Holland. Maybe Powderfinger, Goldfrapp, Throwing Muses, Galaxie 500. Or any Sofia Coppola soundtrack!

And the other recentish albums that I came closest to hanging on to: Raising Sand, xx, both Bloom and Teen Dream, Lydia Loveless's Somewhere Else. I wonder about The Weight of These Wings too, if it might turn out in retrospect to encapsulate a moment in time.

Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World

It was a bit over a hundred pages into The Blazing World when I first felt the uncanny shiver that Hustvedt is so adept at producing in her novels - especially that great pair of What I Loved and The Sorrows of an American - and it came when Harry's friend, Rachel Briefman, is describing an intense conversation between them and the dreams she has afterwards. I don't think it's coincidental that Rachel is a psychoanalyst (and psychiatrist) - that is, I don't think it's coincidental to my response ... I'm certain that her profession isn't coincidental to the role she plays in the book! - nor that dreams were involved.

The Blazing World is a demanding novel, and then again it's not. It's demanding in that it requires attention - due to the numerous and sometimes competing texts and perspectives that compose it, the fragmentary nature of some of Harry's journals in particular, and the heaviness, both intellectual and emotional, of the whole. And yet it's also, in many ways, a breeze to read, made so by Hustvedt's wonderful sentence level writing, the intensity of the plotting and its many mysteries, the threads that run through it and ultimately pay off in more or less satisfying and unexpected ways (including Harry's relationship with her parents, Ethan's oblique presence, and the role of the Barometer), and the dense emotional centres around which the whole thing is built, especially some of the central relationships, not least Bruno's and Harry's. (Also, I think it's a little piece of novelistic genius to bring back Sweet Autumn Pinkney in the way that she does - a kindness in so many ways.)

This novel has a power and urgency that pulled me through it, and a craft that impressed me. And Siri Hustvedt was already an iconic writer for me. I don't know quite how, or whether, it will linger, but finding out over time promises to be a pleasure.

"The shape of things to come" (Buxton Contemporary)

Great to have a new contemporary art gallery in Melbourne, and interesting that it's from a private collection (I wonder how much, and what kind of, public/government support it's had in being established).

This inaugural exhibition includes an impressive array of contemporary Australian artists, some familiar and others new to me; the first category included Patricia Piccinini, Pat Brassington, Ricky Swallow, Mikala Dwyer, while the ones I liked most from the second were:

 Nadine Christensen - "Prospector" (2007) - very mysterious!

Shaun Gladwell - "Maximus swept out to sea (Wattamolla)" (2012-13) - actually I'm pretty sure I've seen his stuff before (video work), but none of it had really stuck till this one

James Morrison - "Freeman Dyson" (2008) - this is only one of its five panels, and it really needs to be seen as a whole for the full, teeming effect

Francis Upritchard - "Straight in front" (2009) - I liked all of Upritchard's stuff, both the models and the prints, all depicting these kinds of comic-poignant figures

Also, multiple pieces by Diena Georgetti (my favourite is the painting in the middle, "I don't think, I don't feel because I know nothing's real" (2006)), with their multiple references to 20th century art - among others, Malevich, Kandinsky, the Futurists, even Mondrian? - and design seeming, to me, to reclaim the former a bit from the latter while integrating them both.

And Peter Booth, whose name I didn't recognise but whose style I did. Powerful stuff.

"Risographica 4" (Lamington Drive)

Opening of a fun exhibition of 'risographic' prints, 48 artists each allowed only two printing ink colours but no other constraints (which somehow yielded several depicted potted flowers - I wondered if there was a conscious or unconscious turn to the classical art still life subject given the contemporary/pop/animation-illustration flavour of the form and the artists themselves).

I was there in support of Julian, whose piece I thought was the best in show (who cares whether that's bias talking), and Sara came too.

The Death of Stalin

Funny and enjoyable, and I realised in retrospect how impressive a balance of tone and perspective the film had struck, given the actual horror of what it depicts and the way it finds humour in it, without being intrusively didactic or uncomfortably glib. The use of their natural accents was a good call too. And Steve Buscemi, he's been bringing me joy for so long now and this was another jewel in his repertoire.

(w/ Erandathie)

Colder (Red Stitch)

Pretty good, and raised some themes that I'm very interested in - notably absence and gaps in people's lives and between people - but I would have preferred if there was more of a structure (or, perhaps, a clearer perspective or take) to it. I did like that the seven year old David's disappearance was 'only' for a few hours, and never explained in its details.

(w/ Cass; Anna also there)

Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit (Malthouse - Melbourne Int'l Comedy Festival)

Excellent! Definitely the best, not to mention most, and almost certainly only queer Asian female musical theatre piece I've ever been to. I haven't laughed so much at a show for ages. Terrific, sharp, knowing writing, good songs, and engaging performances made this an all-round winner.

(w/ trang)

Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

You know those albums that just keep stealing over you, more and more the longer you keep listening to them? Well, I think Golden Hour might be one of those. At first I thought it was just kind of nice, nothing special, but as the days have stretched on I've found myself keeping on listening to it and discovering its many aptnesses - the way album opener "Slow Burn" is what its title promises, no unnecessary grandiosity but instead an unforced opening out, the exactness and simplicity with which one-of-several-highlights "Happy and Sad" earns its title, and of course the way the whole thing is, indeed, golden.

I remember thinking there was something nicely modest about Pageant Material, and the same quality shows up here - a trust in the material and the listener's ability to appreciate it without any trickery or flourishes. True, this sort of country/pop/adult-contemporaryish is right in my lane - at different points, this album has made me think of golden period Sheryl Crow, likewise Natalie Imbruglia, and even latter-day Taylor Swift - but, like all of those, there's enough in the way of surprises, individuality and real feeling to avoid descending into undifferentiated smoothness (the most impressive thing about, say, the way banjos and vocoder voice effects come together in "Oh, What A World" is that it's all in service of a melody that goes directly down the spine).

NGV Triennial (fourth visit)

More time spent with my favourites from previous visits - Candice Breitz's "Love Story" and its satisfying mix of head and heart and sense of inexhaustibility, Ron Mueck's "Mass", the life-ness of which I've kept thinking about since last time, Paulina Olowska's magazine/fairytale paintings, Guo Pei's spectacular 'Legends' dresses.

And first looks at, or first proper engagements with, Yamagami Yukihiro's "Shinjuku calling" (2014), video projections on to finely drawn pencil on plywood, Myoung Ho Lee's poetic 'Trees' (which made me think of Magritte, as many things do, in the way it intervenes, dream-like, in ordinary perception), and Nendo's wonderful manga chairs, both playful and deep (the animated video was delightful too).

(first visit; second visit; third visit)

(w/ Yee Fui)