Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

I'd had the impression this was quite well reviewed, but if that's true, expectations must have been very low. Although, thinking about it, it's hard to say how the movie could've been actually good - what tone that would have required, if nothing else.

In The Loop

Holds up over time I reckon.

(previously)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

This movie certainly has a vibe.

Rachel Kushner - Creation Lake

There was a moment while reading Creation Lake where I felt that hard-to-describe feeling in my stomach that only comes when reading something especially enjoyable and interesting at the same time - almost always literary fiction, which is less about any intrinsic hierarchy of worth and more about its nature as a genre. The feeling or sensation is hard to describe, but it's a bit stirred-up, a bit excited, a feeling of pleasure. 

Neither the spy plot nor the big ideas about humanity and civilisation felt out of balance - that they're woven so well together has a fair bit to do with the novel's voice, Sadie Smith's harsh judgements and decisive observations rubbing up interestingly with the occasional hints of a less self-contained inner self, and the way that Bruno's emails and the rural French setting eventually leave her unmoored.

In the end I felt this was more 'very good' than towards 'great' - but books as simultaneously grippingly readable and intellectually substantial (not to mention, enjoyable) as this one don't come along that often.

Tom Greenwell & Chris Bonnor - Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools

Things that this book reminded me about:

• What makes Australia extraordinary, and not in a good way, isn't the extremely high rate of public funding to private schools per se, but the lack of any reciprocal public obligations accepted by those schools as a result
• The achievement / outcomes gap between public and private schools is almost entirely attributable to peer effects
• The immense power of the vested interests of the status quo - combined with the huge blind spots that many carry about the influence of privilege - has done huge harm to attempts to enact evidence-based reform post (and for the matter pre-) the first Gonski report
• What a difference genuinely needs-based funding would make across the whole education system
• The social justice imperative of focusing on school funding and school education policy more broadly.

Lucas Mann - Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

I found it a tiny bit annoying at times, but overall I appreciated this book. And I couldn't swear that the moments where I found it grating didn't reflect more on me than it.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland

Warmly welcoming, Woodland is my favourite Gillian Welch album since the flurry of those first four classics Revival, Hell Among the Yearlings, Time (The Revelator) and Soul Journey ... the long gaps between records since then - from Soul Journey (2003) to The Harrow & The Harvest (2011) and then All the Good Times (2020), with Woodland coming relatively quickly now - have added to the sense that the music Welch (and Rawlings) makes is somehow timeless, almost as if she's the vessel or the channel rather than an active creator, an impression that of course does her a huge disservice while also speaking to the quality of the music itself. 

This one's got a bit more texture to it compared to most - more instrumentation, and as a result a touch more production - but it has the same air as all of her others as having always already been there yet arriving fully present in the now. It really sings.

Kelly Link - Magic for Beginners

So, so good. All of these stories are interesting and most of them have something more than that - a particular intrigue. Particular stand outs: the title story (I've read it before), "Stone Animals", "Some Zombie Contingency Plans", "Lull", as much for their feel and the way they linger as for anything else. It's trite but there really is something of the magician to Link.

"Magritte" (Art Gallery of NSW)

Dream-like has always been the first way to describe Magritte's work, and maybe it remains the best. He's certainly among the oldest of my old favourites, and if the jolt of his art has been dulled a bit by familiarity, time and changes in my own sensibilities, it still holds plenty of charge regardless.

"La condition humaine", 1933

"L'empire des lumières", 1954

"L'enfance d'Icare", 1960

Nobody Wants This season 1

It's charming and peppy; kind of silly but not one-dimensional. Honestly, it's mostly Kristen Bell's presence that sold it for me.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Interesting and sympathetic depiction of 'radical' eco-activism, structured as a procedural action-drama.

Slow Horses season 4

Still good in all the same ways, and manages to delve into back stories and personal lives in a way that doesn't detract and even adds to the intrigue.

Miranda Lambert - Postcards from Texas

First few listens, I had Postcards from Texas clocked as median Miranda Lambert - nice but overly familiar, the sound a return to the polished sheen she settled into a few records back, the tempo mostly mid-, the melodies much like others she's offered before (tracks 2-4: "Dammit Randy" the type of ballad she does well but she's done it before (it plays as a less soaring, 15-years-on "Love Song"), "Looking Back on Luckenbach" the type of song that everyone's done before, "Santa Fe" having almost exactly the same verse as Pistol Annies' "Best Years of My Life" but far less dynamic). 

It gets better with repeated plays though - she's such a strong songwriter and singer that the songs come through more in their own right even when their packaging isn't at first particularly distinctive. And even though they're not all-timers amidst her excellent back catalogue, numbers like "Armadillo", "Dammit Randy", "January Heart", "Run" and "Alimony" have more than a sprinkling of what it is that's made Lambert such a stand-out across her career as a whole.

Trap

Fine as a diversion.

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.