The Luminaries
Never judge a book by an interesting cover.
(Eleanor Catton) The 2013 Man Booker Prize judges must have super-sensitive metal detectors, for they found gold in this boring, pointlessly complicated novel. After working through the dross, slag and tailings for only a short time I lost interest in magic bullets, missing crates, who had seen whom when and where and I had no idea anymore why it mattered. Snore. I still might have given this sometimes evocative book an additional star…but then I got to the appalling, awful courtroom scenes. Grrr.
Continue Reading →Much Ado About Nothing
"This looks not like a nuptial."
(W. Shakespeare) (1598) (Dir. Kenneth Branagh) (1993) (Dir. Megan Dansie) (Theatre Guild, 2 May 2015) This is not the Bard’s best comedy but it endures as pure rollicking farce, with Beatrice and Benedick as a prototype Martha and George from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? TVC quite likes the Kenneth Branagh film with him and ex wife Emma Thompson as the leads, staged in Tuscany with a roving, loving camera. And on Saturday last, we walked our pleurisy into the night and caught the nice production at the Adelaide Theatre Guild. Bronwyn Palmer and Adam Tuominen starred as the verbally-crossed lovers…
Continue Reading →We Gotta Go
Vale Andrew Lesnie, who died on April 27, a great cinematographer who enhanced the films he shot with dazzling light and shade – Babe, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Water Diviner among them. Vale Jack Ely, who died the following day, and mumbled his way, on April 6 1963, through the Kingsmen’s recording of Louie Louie, a lucky mix of prehistoric recording techniques, throwaway vocalising and Ely’s new braces, which gave a raw and dirty sound to an old standard. Two generations have extemporized their own smutty lyrics to this Dance Hall classic and TVC recommends the live…
Continue Reading →Lawrence of Arabia
"The trick is not MINDING that it hurts."
(Dir. David Lean) (1962) Despite Lesley having almost invariably impeccable taste, we strongly disagree with her charge that this is the Worst Movie of all Time. Dare we suggest L was prejudiced by the abundance of sand, the monolithic presence of her beloved Peter O’Toole, and the undeniable fact this is a ‘blokes’ picture’? Long (few films these days have an overture, an intermission, an entr’acte) but not overlong (compare and contrast The Hobbit), this is film history on an heroic scale, focusing on T(homas). E(dward). Lawrence’s fostering of the revolt in the desert by numerous squabbling Bedouin tribes, against the…
Continue Reading →Deconstruction of Desire
How strange to find Ms Kahlo at M. Manet's café...
Rich, bored, and the afternoon is wet. Turning the pages of Vogue, sipping anisette In the big window of the coffee house, Staring at him from shiny pages is a black girl in a white blouse. Without, on bumpy pavements tripped upon by swanky heels No rainbow settles with the rain splashed by Mercedes wheels And mediocre men and women scour shop-fronts in their quest To find something or, perhaps, someone who’ll pass their personal test. This street is where the rich pass time, Where recession does not stroll And at the sidewalk’s end there is no crime, No quiet…
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