Frances Hardinge - Unraveller

Another good one, curses and all, and filled with strong images and an overall sense of imagination.

Haim - I quit

It could be (probably is?) an illusion but I quit feels like it breathes 'we're doing what we want to', roaming in mellow, tuneful vein across 90s/00s sounds. The Sheryl Crow-ism of "Down to be wrong" stands out and there's plenty of other likeable moments. 

Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

In which Van Etten leans into the gothy, post-punk strands that have been there at least since Remind Me Tomorrow and goes vibier and more atmospheric, and at the same time (in moments) brighter and clearer, to produce a record that breaks new ground for her. 

Music has a much different place in my life now than in my younger days - but SVE is probably the one artist who I've really come to in the last 10 or so years (actually a bit more than that) whose music has hit me with something approaching the intensity of that very different, earlier time of life. And while this one hasn't shook me as much as that remarkable Are We There - Remind Me Tomorrow - We've Been Going About This All Wrong run, it feels of a piece with them and shares in their power.

Nilüfer Yanya - My Method Actor

Some bright moments of slightly off kilter pop - "Like I Say (I runaway)" and "Call It Love" are both keepers - but the whole doesn't stay.

Black Bag

The cast helps a fair bit and Soderbergh does seem to have a bit of a touch. The spy vs spy + domestic affairs stuff holds the attention and never becomes more ridiculous than it inherently is, though overall it feels minor.

Frances Hardinge - The Lie Tree

The atmosphere is strong - just spooky enough, science and its margins, convincingly Victorian and with a terrific, spiky, sympathetic but not at all a Mary Sue main character in Faith and a deft feminism, including in its final stage reveals and resolutions. A book that reminded me how it feels to read purely for pleasure - including for the quality of its craft.

Tenet

Tenet ... the story mechanics are hard to follow, the emotional core's difficult to find (indeed it's split, between Kat and her child (and Sator), and the Protagonist and Neil) and once it's found it lands more intellectually than in a way that's actually felt ... and the sound mixing doesn't help. There's still something to it, as there is with all Nolan's films but I still think it doesn't quite work. (first watch)

The Great season 3

If anything, even better than the first two seasons. The Great has a mode all of its own and it's fizzingly irreverent, profane and sharp-toothed without ever being fundamentally mean, to its principals or in its worldview - for all of the many flaws of its large cast of characters and the society they participate in, you always feels the show kind of loves them. Once in its rhythms, it's absorbing.

Solvej Balle - On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)

In its accretion of everyday detail, this intriguing first volume works with the idea of the infraordinary, which I've been drawn to since first encounter - and puts the technique to a new and apt use, as its narrator lives and re-lives the same day over and over, the eighteenth of November. 

The concept has an inherent interest - what are the rules, how will the protagonist's engagement with their stuck-ness evolve, where is the narrative tension? And here it's coupled with some meaningful reflection on the nature of all of our lives in time - our isolation and (inevitable) solipsism amidst the relationships and ties we have with others, our relationship to the world and our consumption of it (coming to see herself as a monster for the way that things she consumes are removed forever, and her partner as a ghost - ever repeating the same day from her point of view - who inhabits her own life).

I liked it, maybe not enough to continue reading - but maybe.

"The Veil" (Buxton Contemporary)

Works by six artists, exhibition themed around liminal spaces in the world, particularly through portals to the spirit world. Most impactful for me were Hayley Millar Baker's three black & white video pieces, each overtly grounded in Aboriginal femininity and working on me as portals in another sense, drawing me into their worlds and into reflection on my self.

from "Nyctinasty", 2021

from "The Umbra", 2023 - an encounter between two young women, night-time

"French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston" (NGV International)

I remember some of these from my visit a few years back and, more particularly, from the NGV's own exhibition of French impressionism from the MFA Boston as recently as 2021. 

This current exhibition at the NGV gives a lot of emphasis to the close-to-contemporary influences on French impressionism, along with some earlier as well as more representative works from all the expected figures. In this context, the 'almost-too-much' of Renoir sometimes tipped into too much and somehow the effect of the many Monets was more muted than usual while still providing many of the highlights - though maybe that was my frame of mind? 

Most of the highlights were those I'd seen previously - along with several of the Monets, Cezanne's 'Fruit and a jug on a table' (c 1890-94) was once again a particular standout.

"Black In-Justice: Incarceration and Resilience" (Heide Museum of Modern Art)

The first section is focused on the systemic drivers of the over-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the second on art that enacts and celebrates the strengths of culture and peoples including art by people with experience of imprisonment. Plus a third focused on Pentridge and The Torch program. Collectively lands with plenty of power.

Melissa Bell - "The Murray River" (2024)

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

It wasn't long ago that I refreshed on the whole series, and - as it's increasingly foreshadowed as it's gone on - that's just as well because this 'final' instalment goes heavy on trying to tie together everything that's gone before. And you know, it's basically good entertainment even though it does feel weighed down both by the cumulative amount of story that it's trying to smooth out in some kind of thematically and narratively satisfying way, and by a prevailing air of thudding seriousness. The action's tense - both the fights and the big set pieces - and the characters (major and minor) pretty much all have some level of charisma and likeability. So.

Megan Moroney - Am I Okay?

The title song's a killer, first up on the album, fizzily euphoric with just an undercurrent of melancholy. There are some other good moments here too, and if the glossy country-ish sound isn't that distinctive, well there's a reason why I like it so much.

Ellen van Neerven - Personal Score

Personal Score feels all of a piece, unified by the way van Neerven writes the connections between Country, their own story and the other through-lines of sport (football ie soccer), identity, culture and colonisation. They're a wonderful writer, in this form as in their short fiction and poetry, which has struck me whenever I encountered it - and memorable in person also. It's an illuminating and engaging book, filled with ideas, passages and connections that I want to retain.

The Old Guard 2

The first one was good, this one isn't. Leans too much on the first and its desire to set up for a third. I like how strongly it centres female characters though.

Steven Erikson - The God Is Not Willing

Sickbed re-reading. (previously)

Dylan Marlowe - Mid-Twenties Crisis

Basically, there's the ones that anthem it up with emo-lite electric guitars and they're mostly my favourites (especially "Heaven's Sake" and "Hungover in a Deer Stand", the latter a genuinely excellent song I think), the more country-rock radio-ish ones that are mostly a bit too generic-sounding and in some cases offputtingly unironically down-home for me (although "Heart Brakes" is good), and the slower ones (all boring).

A Complete Unknown

I don't know, should it have been a surprise that the soundtrack and the songs were such a large part of why this was so engaging? James Mangold has form with musical films - Walk the Line was strikingly watchable - and this one's got Chalamet front and centre. Bob Dylan means something to me, but not in a way that I'm protective about - a good starting orientation for a movie about him (it focuses on the few years at the start of his career, but in a way that implicitly makes an argument about who he is at large). Anyhow I don't think A Complete Unknown is anything special but I liked it - for its subject, its music, its central performance, and the garnish of Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Elle Fanning as Sylvie.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

A slept-on classic it isn't, but it's winning enough even on a rewatch. (previously)