LA museum wrap

Art was the main reason for stopping over in LA for a couple of days so it was a pleasant surprise none of the three big museums I've visited were over-crowded, albeit maybe in part because large areas of two - LACMA and MoCA - were closed for installation.

The Broad

The temporary exhibition, "A Journey That Wasn't", was about representations of time and included a few standout pieces from artists I didn't know, alongside some I did (a Ron Mueck, some Andreas Gursky F1 pitstop photos, a few from Gregory Crewdson's Cinecitta series):

Sharon Lockhart - "Pine Flat Portrait Studio" series (from 2005)

Marlene Dumas - "Wall Weeping" (2009) (painting inspired by a photo of Palestinians being searched by Israeli soldiers, with the soldiers cropped out)

Neo Rauch - "The Store" (2005) (I also liked the other of his own display, "Treasure Trove")

The general collection display contained plenty of large and colourful pieces, including - ubiquitously, here and elsewhere, Jeff Koons (in the background of his "Tulips" below is a Takashi Murakami, itself splashy enough to hold its own in the central room).

Robert Therrien - "Under the Table" (1994)

The highlight was discovering Mark Tansey, a Californian painter whose careful, meaning-saturated images grabbed me.

"Four Forbidden Senses" (1982) ... the 'missing' one is sight 

"Achilles and the Tortoise" (1986) ... one of the philosophers, scientists and mathematicians depicted is Xeno, of the paradox

Also:

Jenny Saville - "Strategy" (1994), which arrived with a shock, this image that's so familiar and in fact iconic to me from The Holy Bible, and so much larger and more imposing in the flesh, so to speak

Anselm Kiefer - "Deutschlands Geisteshelden" (1973)

It was interesting to see a Lichtenstein sculpture ... I liked it more than I usually do his prints ("Goldfish Bowl", 1977)

I liked the roomful of Ellsworth Kellys too.

LACMA

A fairly miscellaneous visit. A few that caught my attention, all in an abstract expressionist vein:

Joan Mitchell - "East Ninth Street" (1956)

Willem de Kooning - "Montauk Highway" (1958)

Sam Francis - "Toward Disappearance" (1957)

MoCA

This wasn't the first time I've encountered one, but a room full of Rothkos - seven in all - still felt like magic.

Apart from that, a not overly large selection from the museum's permanent collection, though thoughtfully arranged to illuminate each other in each room:

Joan Miro - "Personnages dans la Nuit" (1950)

Max Ernst - "Capricorn" (1948-63); large, amusing, bemusing

Arshile Gorky - "Betrothal I" (1947)

Giacometti - "Tall Figures" II & III (1960), as moving as his pieces always are

John Chamberlain's "Red Beatts" (1988), my first encounter - as far as I can remember - with the idea of abstract expressionist sculpture; in the background, Franz Kline's "Black Iris" (1961)

And Helen Levitt's photographs of children playing in New York in the 1940s.

The Great Battle

Korean blockbuster (watched in Koreatown LA). So-so but in the many movie sieges I've seen there's never previously been one in which the aggressors try to overcome the high walls by building a gigantic mound of dirt right outside.

The Candidate

1972, Robert Redford, idealistic community lawyer runs for office, runs into the political machine. Ticks over very smoothly without ever rising to great heights - perhaps because its tone stays so even throughout rather than ever tipping into outright anger.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I know there was a backlash and all but for me Three Billboards lived up to the hype, especially in the way that it stares you in the face with all its many emotions and the unabashedly heavy hand with its plotting - and, also, the performances, from all three of the principals (McDormand, Harrelson - how does he manage to always be so likeable? - Rockwell).

Incredibles 2

Good fun. Feminism appreciated!

Jennifer Down - Our Magic Hour

I felt like reading this again, and it went down so easily. If anything I felt it in my chest even more this time round.

(first read)

Muriel's Wedding

What a great movie, especially in its heavier elements and how it treats gender. About time I watched it.

Crazy Rich Asians

Fun and good in the ways it promised to be, and with more depth than I'd expected.

(w/ R)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug & The Battle of the Five Armies

(last time: Smaug, Five Armies)

Searching

Quite twisty and with some nicely fitting together plotting and foreshadowing around the mystery of what happened to 16 year old Margot Kim (although I could tell the film wasn't going to go too dark, which made some of the possibilities it raised fairly easy to discount). The telling of the whole story through screens of various kinds (mostly internet-based) worked well. Neat that the main cast was Asian without a big thing being made out of it too.

(w/ Rob and Laura)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

(last time)

Lovesong (Abi Morgan, Red Stitch)

I liked the device of having the lovers played - often on stage at the same or overlapping times - in their old age by one pair of actors and in their younger growing together and apart by another, and I appreciated the quietness and lack of showiness to the writing. It's a nice play, reasonably well staged (but with varying performances), but didn't have any special spark to it for me.

(w/ R)

Ocean's 8

The fun here is mostly in the performance - Cate Blanchett of course, but even more so the different slynesses of Anne Hathaway and Awkwafina (not to mention Helena Bonham Carter).

Short story wrap-up

By way of a punctuation mark in my explorations of a few collections:

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

I can't think of another word than 'genius'. Davis has hit upon and refined a style so much her own and so elegantly muscular. I can't read too much of her at any one time, but I can't imagine tiring of her either.

Clarice Lispector - Complete Stories

I've really only dipped into these and they are fabulously strange. Deep waters.

Alice Munro - Runaway

I've read the title story - which is pretty much perfect - and the three after it, which are all about Juliet: "Chance",  "Soon" and "Silence". I admire these more than love them; they're deep and fine; they shed light on life.

(a gift from Sarah M & Ben)

Alistair MacLeod - Island

Quite definitively not the types of stories I'm drawn to (too slow, too rural, too much description of the weather and landscape), yet each that I've read, slowly, winds its way to being very affecting: "In the Fall" (about a horse, and also endurance), "The Boat" (father and son and the sea), "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" (my favourite I think - man returns to visit the parents of his dead former lover, and finds his son) and "The Road to Rankin's Point" (in which death hangs over a mountain road and the house at its end).

(the second time someone's given this to me - this time Hayley, previously and more than a decade ago Ruth)

Lorrie Moore - Birds of America

As it happens I'm also four stories into this, but by contrast to the Munro and the MacLeod, Moore is a breeze to read (which I already knew from Self-Help). Funny and sad, and in the patterns of her narrator-protagonists' thinking I can see her influence on more than one of my latter-day favourites, most notably Rivka Galchen.

Grease

Good things about at long last watching this movie: 1. young Stockard Channing, 2. learning where the name 'Kenickie' comes from, 3. the songs obviously.

Alex Prager - Silver Lake Drive

Career-to-date retrospective monograph, both photos and video stills. So great.

David Eddings - The Elenium

Time reveals the many flaws in this trilogy; I thought I was going to stop after the first one, The Diamond Throne, but found a couple of days later that it was still occupying some mental real estate so re-read the other two as well.

"Japonisme: Japan and the Birth of Modern Art" (NGV)

Not really the exhibition's fault that I'd hoped it would be much more heavily about the way Japanese art influenced western art (as in paintings) than it actually was; the tilt was more heavily towards decorative design and objects. Quite a bit of Streeton. At least I saw one enjoyable woodblock of Oniwakamaru subduing a monstrous carp (mid 19th C, Utagawa Hiroshige) ... to be honest there were probably other good bits, but I wasn't in the zone.

Blasted (Malthouse)

Powerful stuff. The shift from the first section to the second, when the realistic (if touched by unexplained elements, especially the ambiguity of the setting and whether Ian's fears are justified) register of the first section with Ian and Cate in the hotel room transitions to a more stylised and overtly symbolic mode, was spot-on, as the intimate violence of Ian's behaviour towards Cate is echoed and amplified through the soldier's actions and the destruction around them, as things devolve ever further - there were not one nor even two but three times when I thought 'surely it's not going there' and the play immediately did (the second-section rape, the eyes, the baby's unearthing) - increasingly what was on stage felt like something from the realm of the unconscious, an experience that theatre is uniquely able to generate. At various times it reminded me of mother!, Beckett and the Michael Kantor Woyzeck from several years back. (This one directed by Anne-Louise Sarks.)

(w/ R)

Elif Batuman - The Idiot

"That seemed to do it for our conversation. I looked around at the rest of the class. They were all still talking, laboriously, like seals."

Of The Idiot's many charms, the greatest may be how funny it is; in an interview, Batuman has said she worked hard to keep the number of jokes and surprising or delightful observations up there, and it shows. I can't remember the last book I read that made me laugh as much, and as continually unexpectedly, as this one did - occurring as frequently due to Selin's observations (sometimes for how they reveal her misunderstanding of a situation) as to the things that happen to her along the way.

I do like a good campus novel, and this one has the additional advantage of being set in the 90s, a period setting whose flagging is most evident, and significant, in the way it shapes the novel's themes and action - in particular, the novelty of email (and how it ties in with the way self, communication and relationships are in play at that time of life and via language, writing and online-ness), and the restriction to fixed-line phones (which is a major part of the plot, such as it is).

Part and parcel with the above is many of the characters making up its sprawling cast, most of whom are young (from Selin's 18/19 up to mid-20s, both at Harvard and in the Hungarian village where Selin finds herself teaching English - just one of a few stagings of the theme of education in a 'narrative' whose main focus is its main character's education, or lack thereof, in life over the period it covers) and idiosyncratically exhibit many of the typical flaws, anxieties and unwarranted instances of confidence and beliefs about themselves and the world, as well as typical behaviours (e.g. everyone has dreams and tells each other about them all the time) of that time of life. Crucially, though, most are noticeably likeable - Selin herself, for all of her flaws and blind spots, her friend Svetlana and roommate Hannah, even the spikier Rózsa ... not so much Ivan, though his behaviour is certainly recognisable.

The Idiot is enjoyable and easy to read, despite the - extremely deliberate, I think - absence of much in the way of plot. Many of its elements suggest a certain frothiness, but actually it's quite a demanding, cerebral book, albeit in some ways that aren't obvious, while its use of language is quite the marvel. A very good one.

Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories

The best literature unsettles, and Joy Williams's stories do that over and over - one after another, and again on each re-read. So many of these 46 stories - 33 from previous collections and the other 13 newly collected here - have made me gasp, their stings arriving as if from sideways yet so sharply. I've read most of them more than once now, and many of them several times.

Certain figures recur: people, usually women, drinking heavily, half-aware of a lack in their lives rendering happiness inimaginable; precocious children who show up and say inexplicable, worrying things; dogs in many guises, and frequently as bearers and subjects of elusive meaning and even grace, as in "Shepherd": "The shepherd was brown and black with a blunt, fabulous face. He had a famous trick. When the girl said, "Do you love me?" he would leap up, all fours, into her arms. And he was light, so light, containing his great weight deep within himself, like a dream of weight."

Many of the best are those in which children take centre stage; in fact, all three of my very favourites could be described in that way. There's "Train", in which Danica Anderson and Jane Muirhead, both ten years old, roam up and down a train whose adult passengers, including Jane's parents, reveal all kinds of failings, including possibly the sharpest-toothed encounter and one of the best scenes in the whole collection:

"I bet you're a professional woman who doesn't believe in men," Jane said slyly.

"Crystal, how did you guess! It's true, men are a collective hallucination of women. It's like when a group of crackpots get together on a hilltop and see flying saucers." The woman picked at her chicken.

Jane looked surprised, then said, "My father went to a costume party once wrapped from head to foot in aluminum foil."

"A casserole," the woman offered. 

"No! A spaceman, an alien astronaut!" 

Dan giggled, remembering when Mr. Muirhead had done that. She felt that Jane had met her match with this woman. 

"What do you do!" Jane fairly screamed. "You won't tell us!" 

"I do drugs," the woman said. The girls shrank back. "Ha," the woman said. "Actually, I test drugs for pharmaceutical companies. And I do research for a perfume manufacturer. I am involved in the search for human pheromones."

... a scene that ends with a climax:

 "I know what a placebo is," Jane muttered.

"Well that's terrific, Crystal, you're a prodigy." The woman removed a book from her handbag and began to read it. The book had a denim jacket on it that concealed its title. 

"Ha!" Jane said, rising quickly and attempting to knock over a glass of water. "My name's not Crystal!" 

There's "The Excursion" which, slipping through time, may be the saddest of the lot, which is really saying something. It's hard to tell, but to me it seems that Jenny actually does have foresight into what her future holds, in some shadowy ungrasped present-tense way; and actually it doesn't matter, because either way by the end the story has well and truly paid off the promises, many implicit, of its opening paragraphs:

Jenny lies a little. She is just a little girl, a child with fears. She fears that birds will fly out of the toilet bowl. Starlings with slick black wings. She fears trees and fishes and the bones in meat. She lies a little but it is not considered serious. Sometimes it seems she forgets where she is. She is lost in a place that is not her childhood. Sometimes she will say to someone, Mrs. Coogan at the Capt'n Davy Nursery School, for example, that her mother is dead, her father is dead, even her dog, Tonto, is dead. She will say that she has no toys, that she lives with machinery she cannot run, that she lives in a house with no windows, no view of the street, that she lives with strangers. She has to understand everything herself.

Poor Mrs. Coogan! She pats Jenny's shoulder. Jenny wears pretty and expensive dresses with blue sneakers. The effect is charming. She has blond hair falling over a rather low brow and an interesting, mobile face. She does everything too fast. She rushes to bathtimes and mealtimes and even to sleep. She sleeps rapidly with deep, heartbreaking sighs. Such hurry is unnecessary. It is as though she rushes forward to meet even her memories. 

And there's "Escapes", in some ways one of the more straightforward stories here, but so deftly layered that its many sorrows and absences, more than the simple action of the trip to the magic show, are what remains, along with the sense that the little half-stories and recollections scattered through it are all secretly linked.

I had a dream about the car. My mother and I were alone together as we always were, linked in our hopeless and uncomprehending love of each other, and we were driving to a house. It seemed to be our destination but we arrived only to move on. We drove again, always returning to the house, which we would circle and leave, only to arrive at it again. As we drove, the inside of the car grew hair. The hair was gray and it grew and grew. I never told my mother about this dream just as I had never told her about my father leaning on the cane. I was a secretive person. In that way, I was like my mother.

These stories are funny, dispiriting and razor sharp, full of conversations in which people talk past each other, with statements and questions that don't but might almost follow as sequiturs if we only knew the context and what was going on in the speaker's head, often to the dismay of at least one of them, for reasons which she (it's nearly always a she) can't articulate, even to herself. The perspective shifts around, now omniscient, now somewhere around the mid-range of what James Wood calls free indirect style, now so close to a point of view character that there's barely any distance at all, yet it all has a strange unity. There are stories that feel aphoristic, others shiver with a sharper realism, but they all feel metaphysical or, as Williams herself might have it, anagogical. And those endings, they really are murderous, always sneakily more than they seem; for example:

As it happened, my mother was not able to pull herself through, but this was later. At the time, it was not so near the end and when my mother woke we found the car and left Portland, my mother saying my name. "Lizzie," she said. "Lizzie." I felt as though I must be with her somewhere and that she knew that too, but not in that old blue convertible traveling home in the dark, the soft, stained roof ballooning up as I knew it looked like it was from outside. I got out of it, but it took me years. ("Escapes", again) 

She could not go forward. Then, she couldn't go back. ("The Visiting Privilege")

They all lay on the bed. After a few moments someone began to snore. Janice wouldn't want to bet her last fifty that it wasn't her. ("Charity") 

I must arrest this, Preyman thought, I must arrest what this is, and he opened his mouth with a cry to do so. ("In the Park") 

"There it is, Steadman," Denise said. It all just hung there for an instant before the car swerved around them and turned in inches beyond their front bumper. Then, whatever was driving it slammed on the brakes. ("Craving") 

Others that I especially like: "Shorelines", featuring many plain declarations that make you suspect the opposite is true, "The Country" (still), and "Charity", with its slowly, unpredictably veering situation and troubling hints:

"I think of God as a magician," ZoeBella whispered, looking closely at Janice. "A rich magician who has a great many sheep who he hypnotizes so he won't have to pay for shepherds or fences to keep them from running away. The sheep know that eventually the magician wants to kill them because he wants their flesh and their skin. So first the magician hypnotizes them into thinking they're immortal and that no harm is being done to them when they get skinned, that on the contrary it will be very good for them and even pleasant. Then he hypnotizes them into thinking the magician is their good master who loves them. Then he hypnotizes them into thinking they're not sheep at all. And after all this, they never run away but quietly wait until the magician requires their flesh and their skin."

ZoeBella's skin was very pale and her eyes were large and blue. "Goodness," Janice said, perturbed. Only a piece of bread was going to find this hair, she decided. She pushed one into her mouth.

Zorro said, "I think of God -"

His mother yanked his arm sharply. "We don't want to hear that again," she said.

Joy Williams having been discovered, in pretty quick succession, via a handful of the stories from Ninety-Nine Stories of God (initially in Tin House), which came out after The Visiting Privilege, and "The Country" in New American Stories, which continues to haunt:

I begin to speak but find I have no need to speak. The room is more familiar to me than I would care to admit. Who was it whose last breath didn't bring him home?

Or am I the first?

On Chesil Beach

Should I make anything of the fact that I identified with both Florence and Edward? (An alarming prospect.) More likely, it's that the core - or most operative - parts of their personalities, which lead to the failure of their romance, are drawn vividly enough to be readily recognisable just as aspects of being human. I wasn't sure where this film was going, not having read the book; it was heavy and, at points, piercing, but also a bit indistinct in tone and what it was saying, with some odd pacing, so, good but flawed.

(w/ Erandathie and Nic)

Shin Godzilla

Two particularly delightful things about this recent reboot by the original Godzilla studio: the focus on the bureaucratic and political response to the threat posed by the creature's emergence near Tokyo (with additional resonance, google tells me, in the context of post-Fukushima Japanese society, as well as effective weaving in of Japanese post-WWII society and relations with the US); and the seemingly unabashedly crappy practical and other special effects associated with Godzilla itself. I liked it.

Amaya Laucirica - Rituals

I don't know how difficult it is to make good music in this vein - dreamy, droney guitar-keys-and-voice driven pop - but Laucirica is very good, and has been across now three lps (previously, Early Summer and Sway). Good when punchier - such as on tracks 2 and 3 "Under The Tide" and "All of Our Time" - and equally so when stretching out a bit more (say on "Could This Be", later on), atmospherically sustained, and nearly completely free of melodic or arrangement/instrumentation cliche. An album that's easy to be carried away by.

"Living Dyingly: On Writing Death" (MWF)

Buddhist monk Gyatso (Adrian Feldmann), doctor and author Leah Kaminsky and journalist Deepanjana Pal. Moderated by Sophie Cunningham. Bits and pieces:

• It's a sign of maturity when you achieve independence from needing to be loved and gain joy from loving others - a point where Buddhism meets psychology, according to Gyatso. (Very debatable.)
• Sex-selected abortion in India criminalised (ie parents opting for abortion upon learning their baby is a girl).
• Writing as a form of meditation and transcendence.
• On the funeral pyre, there's a 'popping' sound from particular bones in the back of the neck, and that's when you can leave. (India; rituals surrounding death.)

(w/ Ash and Sara)

Mothermorphosis (La Mama @ Trades Hall)

Enjoyable and real-feeling, complete with vegemite sandwiches, pumpkin soup and a live chicken on stage throughout; the change that becoming a mother brings. Written and performed by Liz Skitch.

(w/ R)

Ready Player One

Splashy and fairly entertaining, but also middle of the road. (book)

"A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness" (ACCA) / "Yours Internally: Kiron Robinson and Grant Stevens" (Margaret Lawrence Gallery)

ACCA

Contemporary Indigenous art. Somewhat bits and pieces for me, but I liked Lisa Waup's sculptures (2018), Vicki Couzens's 'cuppa tea' installation "Djawannacuppatea" (2018), Peter Mungkuri, Alec Baker and Kunmanara Pompey's stockman western video "Never stop riding" (2017) and Jonathan Jones's ceramic budgerigar wall "untitled (gidyirriga)" (2018).

Margaret Lawrence

Also a quick tour through what was on here. Didn't get much out of the neon illuminated words, though they weren't totally uncharming either.

(w/ R)

Whitney

A sad kind of documentary. I can be a bit unsympathetic towards people who attain lifestyles of great privilege, even when that comes through hard work on their own part, but I couldn't help but feel a lot of sympathy for the singer, and even more so her daughter.

(w/ R)

Grass (MIFF)

These things are so delicate. Grass could so easily have been completely minor, even boring, as its cafe conversations cycle one after another in close, still black and white shots. But at some point, helped no doubt by the priming effect of director Hong Sang-soo's wonderful Yourself and Yours, something flipped and I was struck by the sense that it was magic. Unprogrammatic while rippling with meaning; I liked the female writer-observer, and I liked the way she was pretty unpleasant in ways seemingly beyond her control.

Shoplifters (MIFF)

My first Hirokazu Kore-eda, and quite the thing, its family of barely-getting-by types sympathetically observed, and with a surprising amount of plot, turns and shifts in perspective in the final stages.

(w/ R)

Natalie Prass - The Future and the Past

Prass's debut was excellent, and didn't at all lead me to expect a follow-up so heavy on funk and even disco of the more organic variety, never mind that the turn would be as good as it is. A good surprise!

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

It felt long, there was a lot of explain-y dialogue (monologue, really), it really is basically one info-dump followed by action sequence after another, and it lent heavily on the previous films (including the last couple) in ways that weren't always super obvious, and yet for all that it was still a good time at the movies. I don't know whether it hindered or helped that I reminded myself just before going in that (a) this was a movie about Tom Cruise saving the world and (b) he was definitely going to save it.

(w/ Andreas and Adam)

The Breaker Upperers

Light and fun and buoyed by the Kiwi comedy bonus (everything is funnier that comes from New Zealand ... at least when Taika Waititi is involved, even if, as here, as producer).

(w/ R)

The Girl Without Hands (MIFF)

Hand-painted French animation of a Grimm fairytale, complete with blood and sex. The main drawcard was the animation style; I enjoyed this, but was glad it was only a little over an hour in length.

(w/ Kevin)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (MIFF)

That it's relatively restrained in its depiction of the manipulations and encouragement of self-hatred engaged in by the counsellors of the Christian gay conversion camp to which Cam is sent makes The Miseducation of Cameron Post all the more effective - the emotional violence and damage being done is perfectly clear without the need for physical abuse or deliberate attempts to harm the children ('disciples') who are there. The streaks of lyricism running through the film, most notably in the homecoming ball scenes at the start, work too.

Chloe Grace Moretz is good, and I didn't mind the way Cam was characterised as being - mostly - on the inarticulate side (i.e. like an actual teenager). If anything, even better is the ensemble cast of the other teens (albeit probably all played by twenty-somethings), nearly all of whom manage to find real poignancy in their characters. John Gallagher Jr (showed to also be a victim) and Jennifer Ehle also. Reminded me a bit of Short Term 12 (which was better). Very good.

Also, latest addition to the 'great use of a song in a movie' list: "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes, here treated as the (90s) classic that it is.

(w/ Hayley)

Burning (MIFF)

A striking film, loosely adapted from (and improving on) the Murakami short story "Barn Burning" - although, interestingly, foregrounding some very Murakami elements, some of which aren't even in the source story[*] - and transposing it to Korea. Disconnected people wracked by huge feelings they don't fully understand and can't articulate - that goes for both Jongsu and Haemi - is only the first layer of a film that's oblique in some ways and direct in others, and lyrical in both major and minor keys. Some of the cinematography reminded me of All About Lily Chou-Chou (though I'm pretty sure this one wasn't shot in digital). What are the greenhouses? What is the burning? What even happened? I'm looking forward to living more with this one; it feels like maybe it will stay somewhere in my chest.

(w/ Hayley + her cousin (Mel?))

[*] A well to fall down, a cat who might lead you places, a mysterious attractive woman who disappears (bonus: she's also a recurrence from childhood), phone calls that raise more questions than they answer, running, pasta (albeit assigned to the antagonist rather than the nominal protagonist), general mood of loneliness.

"Spring 1883" (Windsor Hotel)

I deliberately let this just wash over me, 20-odd galleries each exhibiting in a room or suite across four of the hotel's floors; my favourites were often those in the bathrooms, not least because of the unfamiliar setting. An encounter with Danielle Freakley (I also liked her 'be my friend' rocks etc installation), with this as a souvenir:

I also liked Emily Hartley-Skudder's pastel-at-home paintings, alluringly flat.

(w/ trang)

"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.