The Curse of ”The Sound of Music”
(Dir. Robert Wise) (1965) We’re sorry, but we can only watch The Sound of Music in 15 minute increments. Any more attracts a risk of type-two diabetes. This cloying, sacchariferous, candied, 174-minute dollop of goo would have received one or less review stars from us, but for the superb cinematography, sweeping over and around the chocolate-box town of Salzburg and its surrounding mountains, and the overall production values, which are first-rate. The (bizarre and stupefying) success of both the stage musical and the film have led to endless revivals around the globe, the mawkish meld of Nuns, Nazis and warbling infants a seemingly irresistible combo. We are…
Continue Reading →Great Hall
Ceiling of the Great Hall of the People (Photo by Forezt)
Late editions The Great Hall The Varnished Culture‘s nourishing mother has sent news it will build a Great Hall by 2017. This Maoist-sounding edifice is to have courts for various ball games, a swimming pool, a yoga area and gym – all the things a world-class university needs. “The Great Hall has been designed to artfully blend into the streetscape.” Alumni, staff and supporters are invited to “embed themselves in the DNA of the Great Hall” and have your name woven, etched and displayed in 3 dedicated spaces and sculptural forms, together with three personally chosen inspirational words. It seems appropriate…
Continue Reading →Faster and More Furious
"Just...be better."
1986 S.A.N.F.L GRAND FINAL – GLENELG v NORTH ADELAIDE This was to have been North’s revenge year. The Roosters had been put to the sword by the Tigers in 1985 and ahead of the Big Replay, the Roosters’ Coach Michael Nunan (a man popular with Bay fans as a bubonic plague) stated that “we want to level the scores.” The North fans settled in the Spring sunshine of bleak Football Park, licking their chops and rubbing their hands, channelling Madame DeFarge, wanting to be in at the kill. Glenelg was not quite the same team as 1985. One young fellow*, who…
Continue Reading →We should be kind
Statue of Philip Larkin at Hull by Martin Jennings; photo by Paul Harrop
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) The cult of celebrity infects the quest for perfection: how can we expect the best from a human endeavour if we require general perfection of those that strive? You could play a parlour game and cite ceaseless examples of the highest art that would never been born had its creator been held to some prevailing standard of conduct (or thought). Take Philip Larkin, the best English poet of his time. We find from certain biographies* and the gleeful poring over of unguarded correspondence that he had thoughts, impulses and views. [*We except the very accomplished and mature book, Philip Larkin,…
Continue Reading →The Wagner Operas
"Should be bigger...?" (Unveiling the Wagner Memorial in Berlin by Anton von Werner, 1908)
(Ernest Newman) This ‘earnest new man’ was a precise and authoritative Wagner enthusiast, but he stowed away gush and did not indulge in panegyric. Newman certainly had the measure of Wagner the man (as his 12 cassette audiobook Wagner As Man and Artist shows). Yet his love and appreciation of Wagner’s work shines in this single-volume complete Opera companion, the kind of work to thoroughly research beforehand if you want to accentuate the payoff of seeing a Wagner, or to skim afterwards to clarify any nuance or symbol left opaque by a particular production. As Newman says in his introduction, whilst “…a…
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