"My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid" (RMIT Gallery)

Cool theme, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Quite a quick whip-through but Jane Alexander's pieces stood out (below: "Post Conversion Syndrome (in captivity)", 2003). Also below, a confrontational Patricia Piccinini ("Belly", from the 'Hair Panels' series, 2011) and Lisa Roet's "Blond Venus 1932" (2014).

(w/ R)

Beirut

Solidly put together political thriller, Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike the best things about it. And I usually enjoy films about negotiation.

(w/ Erandathie)

Jamie Marina Lau - Pink Mountain on Locust Island

Electric-sharp and disconnected, sprinkled through with unusual turns of phrase ('Trapped between this white envelope or for everybody to be the way they used to be'). Figurative speech blurs all over with rhythms that suggest meaning which may or may not exist ('In here it's a greasy intergalactic mission); it's all wrapped up in a first person present tense (my old favourite) affect that's diminished or odd or both ('This is good, this is working').

Convincing seediness, contemporary art-making, drugs. Chinatown blues, lots of food and a teenage narrator. I went to the book launch a little while back and the author said something like she wanted it to be like the actual experience of a teenager and teenagers don't go around noticing things and being empathetic with others; she's tapped something here. Excellent.

Tomb Raider

Not that exciting, though I liked the way it kept ambiguous until the critical moment whether the tomb actually did contain a supernatural threat. This was the recent Alicia Vikander one.

VCA Masters of Contemporary Art First Year Exhibition

(w/ R)

Chris Stapleton - Traveller

Probably as close as I get to 'country' country, and even then taking in an alt-ish swing, a bit of southern rock crunch and some real old rock n roll gospel-tinged blues (e.g. "Might As Well Get Stoned"). Traipses from relaxed to wistful to more fiery, and has worked its way under my skin along the way.

"Nothing quite so poison as a promise": Neko Case - Hell-On

Yeah! Favourite new album of the year so far I think, and at a minimum right up there with Golden Hour and 7. Hell-On is as warm, rich, enveloping and textured a record as Case has released; the last song's called "Pitch or Honey", and the album feels full of both, flowing through all kinds of underground chambers.

The bright moments are as generously bright and modern-retro as they always have been (exhibit A: "Bad Luck", which could almost be taking cues from Camera Obscura[*]), the propulsive sections as urgent (e.g. the commanding crests to which songs like "Halls of Sarah" and "Curse of the I-5 Corridor" work their way), the ballads as touching ("Sleep All Summer"!), the fragments as alluringly oblique and casually great (there's a terrific mid section pairing of "Dirty Diamond" and "Oracle of the Maritimes" - two songs that don't seem to be doing anything special but definitely are, especially the stormy drama summoned by the latter's end). It all works.

(prev.)

[*] The sung-chanted "another happy new year" coda to "Gumball Blue" also brings them to mind.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol & Rogue Nation

I've watched these before (though only with a note about one); they're still fun.

Kingdom of Heaven

Director's cut = 3 hours.

(previously: lots of times!)

While We Live

A tragedy from the past resurfaces, and a family splinters in consequence; we've seen this done before. It holds its cards close to its chest at first, and the 'initially undisclosed two different historical timeframes interspersed in parallel' device probably added to the impact, albeit partly by disguising some of the lack of distinctive characterisation, with some of the critical action being motivated in only the broadest of generic strokes. It was involving enough, though, so despite its flaws, pretty good in all its seriousness. (Also, a bit of a quibble but I didn't like the way Q is more or less a plot device who doesn't get her own story or ending.)

(w/ R - part of Scandinavian Film Festival)

Melancholia (Malthouse; Declan Greene / dir. Matthew Lutton)

Impressive stage adaptation of a film that just looms larger and larger as time goes on. Effectively conveys the enormity of the mental event that Justine experiences and the symbolic layers associated with the planet Melancholia and the approaching end of the world. The staging and conception are top notch, with some of the imagery and sound design feeling likely to linger. I wonder what this would have been like without the shadowy presence of the source film; differently powerful, I suspect.

(w/ Hayley)

A Quiet Place

Well I enjoyed this one. Actually quite thrilling, neat in its set-ups and resolutions of tension, with just the right amount of plot, and a nicely paced ending.

Gurrumul - Gurrumul & Rrakala

Two gentle, nice records with occasional peaks.

Blackie Blackie Brown (Malthouse)

A righteous, angry burst, which makes the humour even more welcome and impressive. Queer, uneven and excessive, all as a matter of sensibility and politics,[*] with the several aspects of staging - set, lighting, projections - gelling well in aid of the stylistic mash-up that ensues when Blackie Blackie Brown goes on her murderous vigilante rampage to right historical wrongs.

(w/ Hayley, Cass, Ruth + Cassandre, Meribah + Stuart, and R)

[*] My response to the tonal unevenness in particular is informed by some articles I've read recently about how valorising tonal consistency within a piece of art - and criticising works which don't have that consistency - can often be a strategy to reinforce existing (white, straight, male, etc) power structures.

k.d. lang - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Curious but good grab-bag of country-hued songs and instrumentals. (The soundtrack to what sounds like a total hot mess of a movie.)

Foxtrot

Powerful, heavy and rather great - by turns emotionally claustrophobic, surreal, naturalistic, (literally) cartoonish, metafictional (including a quasi-direct address to camera) and, across all of those modes, frequently beautiful, and taking in grief, loss, guilt, trauma, responsibility and masculinity as themes, including specifically in relation to Israel, Jewishness and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and wrapping in an intergenerational context to all of the above.

(w/ Erandathie)

Disobedience

Somewhat slow going, but with some interesting elements. At its heart it's a character study and drama, and the film makes an effort to keep its events generally plausible-seeming, including the way in which the tension plays out between the conservatism of the London Orthodox Jewish community it depicts and the attraction between Ronit (Weisz) and Esti (McAdams) that reignites when Ronit returns from NYC following her Rabbi father's death. I liked that it was quite muted in some ways, even though that also sapped some of the (melo)dramatic air from the developing action. Also, even though it kind of stuck out, I didn't at all mind the appearance of "Lovesong" on the radio at a critical moment.

(w/ R)

Joe Kelly & J M Ken Niimura - I Kill Giants

Good!

"Rod McNicol: Portraits from my Village" & "Tsuka: An Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Photography" (CCP)

Rod McNicol's 'village' is Fitzroy and Collingwood, and the portraits range from the 80s to today, with much of the interest arising from the changes over that time. Liked these.

There were several amongst the contemporary Japanese photography exhibition that I liked, though as a whole it was thornier and more difficult than I'd anticipated/hoped. Favourites were Mayumi Suzuki's hazy "The Restoration Will" series (2015) and Go Itami's interesting, large-format 'photocopies' (2018), some of which reminded me, in a fairly ineffable way, of Andreas Gursky.

(w/ R)

Game Night

Enjoyably rough-edged caper, aided by Rachel McAdams's pleasing comic touch, a willingness to get a little bit dark, and a deft hand with all of the action-y bits, the marital/relationship elements, and the actual comedy.

The Blackcoat's Daughter

Kind of spooky, the 'what if someone possessed wanted their demon to return?' angle created some interesting possibilities, and the three lead actors are all pretty good, but the potential, including as arising from the overall mood, didn't feel realised. I'd hoped this would be one of that handful of horror films that affects me. It wasn't.

"Confessions" (Emerging Writers Festival)

Ana Maria Gomides, Aimee Knight, Jamie Marina Lau, Bastian Fox Phelan, Mira Schlosberg and Nevena Spirovska. Each reading a 'confession' in a darkened theatre, in which the audience members wore blindfolds. The confessions leaned heavily towards identity; my favourites were Jamie Marina Lau's, starting from that Dorothy Parker short story about the woman awaiting a phone call, and the one (I don't know whose) that was mostly excerpts from a university diary, before she knew (or 'knew') she was lesbian. All female or non-binary.

(w/ R)

"MoMA at NGV" (second visit)

Another enjoyable pass-through, though the exhibition didn't feel like it especially deepened for me from the first time - I basically again liked the same ones, which in addition to those I already singled out, included:

Paul Cezanne - "Still life with apples" (1895-98), clearly figurative, but interestingly heading towards abstraction on at least a couple of dimensions, the kind of thing I like, and well chosen for inclusion in the first room of an exhibition like this one.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - "Street, Dresden" (1908, reworked 1919), luridly expressionistic, and maybe with more of an air of horror than intended by the artist, who can say.

Fernand Leger - "Propellers" (1918). Futurist Cubism!

Also in there from that earlyish-mid 20th century period: good pieces by both Delaunays (Robert and Sonia), Mondrian, Picasso, Wifredo Lam, etc.

Jasper Johns - "Map" (1961), simple while also visually appealing and sort of obviously iconic like so many of his.

Three Raymond Pettibon illustrations of his character Vavoom, "a little Inuit who can move mountains by shouting his own name" (if only). 1987.

This time I found Rineke Dijkstra's series of photos of Almerisa, a Bosnian child of refugees, from 1994 through to 2008, more moving too.

(w/ Yee Fui)

Chappaquiddick

I don't know much about the Kennedys, and hadn't heard of the Chappaquiddick incident before watching this film, which was quite serious and quite good, including in the eeriness of the scenes leading up to the fatal accident, the weight it gives to Mary Jo Kopechne's death, Ted Kennedy's characterisation (was his father's breathing over the telephone meant to invoke Darth Vader?), and the way the political hardheads handle the situation.

An aside - Jackie has turned out to be one of those films which has really stuck and grown over time.

(w/ Erandathie)

"5 x 5 Rules of Writing" (Emerging Writers Festival)

Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Isobelle Carmody, Stuart Grant, Melissa Lucashenko and Ellen van Neerven. Hosted by Izzy Roberts-Orr. A diverse panel, and a diverse set of responses.

I was most struck by Ellen van Neerven's, which were, close to in their totality:

1. Write with your body as well as your brain. Look after your body.
2. Living is more important than writing.
3. Limit the notifications in your life - social media and other forms of instant gratification.
4. Know who you are before you write, and take responsibility for that.
5. Honour your heroes.
(And for First Nations writers and writers of colour: don't underestimate your power.)

Also, Melissa Lucashenko quoting James Baldwin: "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive."

"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!