The Wild Robot

The director describes this film in terms of Monet meeting Miyazaki and well it's not that. However, it is well done - the story's moving, the action and details maintain interest, and the animation does have some lovely moments.

(w/ L)

The Great seasons 1 & 2

For a show with such a distinct vibe, it's surprisingly difficult to pin down exactly what it is about The Great that makes it so enjoyable. It's something about the way its over the top absurdity coexists with such recognisable (if often base) impulses and motivations, along with the tart humour it finds at every turn. 

All the characters are grotesque with the partial exception of Catherine herself - although, particularly in this second season, the show suggests that her extraordinary will and her determination to impose it on Russia itself has a monstrous element - yet still on some level relatable, and season 2 successfully develops most of its main characters and relationships to make them sympathetic. Plus there are some fun additions, in their own right, for how they illuminate the main players' motivations, and as pot stirrers - particularly the Swedish monarchs and Catherine's mother. Aunt Elizabeth remains maybe the one genuinely somewhat heroic figure.

(season 1 previously)

Orville Peck - Stampede

There's a lot of fun to be had across this hugely enjoyable country record, entirely made up of duets (or, in some cases, larger-group confabs) that are either covers or co-writes. Peck proves a versatile collaborator and singer, with a diverse array of styles on display and the voices and sounds of the 'guest' artists tending to be dominant, while Peck offers a level of croon that ranges from 'full Roy Orbison' to 'barely at all' from song to song. 

One of Stampede's pleasures is the many ways in which it's queer, along with its traditional-ish country sounds, and that's upfront with the first song, "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" - with no less than Willie Nelson - which is as tuneful as it is tongue in cheek. In different ways, a particularly macho take on "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" with Sir Elton himself (one of the album's weaker moments as it happens), the energised Kylie duet "Midnight Ride", a team-up with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway on "Papa Was a Rodeo" (which was always already a country song) and no doubt others.

There's a whole heap of songs that stand out for one reason or another - more that do than don't - although I feel like Peck, or his record label, knew what a rouser he had on his hands with his Travelling Wilburys-ish take on "Rhinestone Cowboy" judging by its placement as the closer. The ones with Margo Price and Mickey Guyton (both great, especially the one with Price) both would've sounded perfectly at home on their own albums, the one with Nathaniel Rateliff sounds a lot like Bruce Springsteen, the one with Allison Russell sounds like an Allison Russell song but with a different type of edge, the one with Teddy Swims is soulful-as. And I haven't even mentioned "The Hurtin' Kind", with Midland, possibly my favourite of the lot.

Looking at Art with Alex Katz

This book has been on my bedside table for months - over a year probably - and I've dipped into it regularly, for the bursts of great art yes, and even more so for Katz's short, opinionated, craft-driven words about it. Whether or not I agree, or even have any kind of technical frame of reference for understanding what he says, each precis (or digression) illuminates not only the piece - and the artist - in question but also, as the title promises, ways of looking at art in general.

"Sci-Fi: Mythologies Transformed" (Science Gallery Melbourne)

Asian, First Nations, women's and queer intersections with and re-visionings of science fiction.

(w/ Jade)

Beachwood Sparks - Across the River of Stars

Nice enough but kind of bland.

Helen Oyeyemi - Parasol Against the Axe

Parasol Against the Axe is a puzzling, deliberately disjointed book that demands close reading to make sense of it on any level - including the most basic, to grasp the action of what is happening, never mind the deeper, nested dimensions of what it's about. So was it worth the effort? I'm not entirely sure, but reading it was never less than pleasurable, its voice isn't quite like any I've encountered before, and both the stories it tells and what passes for its central characters - Hero Tojosoa, Dorothea Gilmartin, and the city of Prague and its various avatars - are distinctive and sharply sidelong.

Rosali - Bite Down

Pretty nice and in many ways a bit of a throwback to various early 2000s indie-folk/country acts - at different points reminding me of the Dearhunters, the Last Town Chorus, that almost randomly acquired 'Between the Lines' compilation and (more recently) Nadia Reid. First two songs "On Tonight" and "Rewind" are especially immediate, and strong.

Lucy Crehan - Cleverlands

At this point it feels safe to say that education is an enduring interest.

(previous read)

House of the Dragon seasons 1 & 2

This show is entirely watchable, and works in a mode of modern fantasy in many ways first defined by the ASOIAF books - political, military and individual machinations with realpolitik and power at their centre, and magic woven into the backdrop rather than foregrounded. Even here, while dragons are depicted as both source and symbol of magic in this 200 years prior to Game of Thrones Westeros, they're primarily treated as being like any other resource and source of power, albeit an overpowered one (to me they don't really register as characters in their own right).

There's an article that diagnoses the problem with the later seasons of Game of Thrones as being that the show's storytelling shifted from being primarily sociological to primarily psychological; House of the Dragon is probably more evenly balanced across its first two seasons. I'm not sure if that's related to how slowly its events move, building up towards fullscale war rather than focusing mostly on the battles themselves. There's still some intrigue in where it's going, although probably more so in how it gets there, and to a lesser extent what it has to say about power and society, and individual choice.

(previously, season 1)

Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) - Passage du Desir

So relaxed-feeling and at home in its own country music skin that you could almost miss how well put together these songs are. They slip by easily, but they've got a heft that keeps them away 'easy listening'.

Deb Olin Unferth - Wait Till You See Me Dance

I don't know to what extent she was a trailblazer and influence on others vs being simply one among a loose group of other in similar vein, but the problem with this collection (which I'd been keen to track down on the strength of the title story) is that the stories in it too exactly exemplify a strain of lit fic that was very present about 10 to 15 or 20 years ago without being distinctive among them in any particular way. So it's kind of over familiar and kind of dull even though a number of them are actually of some quality.

Kelly Link - Stranger Things Happen

Kelly Link's stories nearly always make you want to work out what's happened in them, which doesn't tend to be straightforward even on the level of basic plot and action. More often than not that's accompanied by a sense that even once the puzzle of the action of the story has been solved (more or less), there's another layer to what's going on in them - so that what they're really 'about' has multiple oblique, interlinked layers.  

This was her first collection and the first I read, a while back. I appreciated it more this time, having better learned how to read her since. Interesting also to see some recurring motifs and patterns, some still reappearing in her most recent stories.

"The Girl Detective" stood out and I found myself wondering about its emotional core (I haven't verified this but my sense is that each of her stories has one). Is is that the girl detective is looking for her mother? Or is it that the narrator is looking for that which the girl detective is (which includes, without only being, the person who is always looking for their mother)? Or something else altogether?

Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

It's a delightful surprise that My Light, My Destroyer is so marvellous - cosmic, electronically-inflected rock/pop/etc that doesn't shy away from either a clear hook or an ambient interlude. "Hard Drive" was magical but of the kind that felt like a one-off; it turns out that Jenkins has plenty more up her sleeve. This whole album feels like a dream, or maybe more accurately like everyday life wrapped in something dream-like.

(An Overview on Phenomenal Nature)

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Great fun - by turns blaring, shouty, fuzzy and melodic (and sometimes all of those at once).

Kelly Link - White Cat, Black Dog

Kelly Link has got her claws into me now. These wily, elegant stories always play fair but are never predictable. In them, one thing happens after another, each sentence says what it means, yet what it all means is puzzling unless you really pay attention and make an effort to put it all together afterwards. Each one takes a fairy tale as its starting point and the familiarity of the stories embedded in the source tales - whether or not one is familiar with the specific fairy tale itself - contributes to the uncanny, slipping feel of Link's takes on them, something that's probably true of all her fiction but in particular relief given the overt links to those foundational folk stories and narratives of the ones in White Cat, Black Dog. Most notable for me are "Prince Hat Underground" (the second time recently I've run into 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon') and "Skinder's Veil", both particularly multi-layered, and the relatively more straightforward "The White Road" and "The Game of Smash and Recovery".

Camera Obscura - Look to the East, Look to the West

It's like they never went away.

Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown

This is greatness. Dummy was released 30 years ago and time has revealed it to be a truly great album, and Portishead and Roseland NYC Live too have retained their aura all these years on. I assumed they were done, the occasional solo side project or guest appearance notwithstanding, and then came Third, a marvel I hadn't anticipated in any way (a bit after that I saw them live, a genuine highlight). And now, more than another decade on, this solo album, which is equivalent in quality to anything of Gibbons' that's come before it without being in anyway a retreading of old ground. It's one of those records that feels genreless (there are folk elements, and electronic ones, but it feels inadequate to describe Lives Outgrown by reference to terms like those), by turns hushed and stormy, quietly dramatic while perfectly controlled.

Hellenic Museum

Bits and pieces with connections to Greek (or Hellenic) culture - a historical survey, other ancient/classical items, an exhibition about Lord Byron's role in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, a small series of Bill Henson photographs with ancient artifacts ("Oneiroi") and a bunch of 'self-portrait as goddess' textile doll/sculptures by Adrienne Doig. Plus an AI-enabled encounter with an 'Oracle' and three striking 'well behaved women' painted by Loretta Lizzio on display outside.

(w/ Hayley)

NGV x 2

A couple of recent visits:

Pharaoh

I've always been distantly intrigued by ancient Egypt. Probably a lot of it's down to western exoticisation, but still. When I think about the specific landmarks in my personal history, the number is very small and I couldn't say that all of them even particularly marked me: an early computer game that somehow made it on to my dad's work computer; Pratchett's Pyramids; a few different encounters at MONA and especially "Kryptos"; and most recently Kelly Link's "Valley of the Girls". Anyway, it was enough for me to visit this exhibition, which was - for me - mildly inherently intriguing and had a bit of a wow factor at times, but didn't leave much of an impression.

Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson

I wasn't really in the zone to absorb this one properly, though the colours were appealing and it was a bit interesting seeing the different modernist (abstract) art styles washing through their work over the decades.

Nina Sanadze

I liked these - monuments, sculpture, and public space.

Others

A bit of time in familiar galleries at both the NGV International and Australia, although the former is much more static. Time with those old friends: the Rothko and de Chirico especially. And a new one - Tim Maguire, "Light fall I-VIII" (2011), cropped, magnified images of flowers and fruit.