Category Archive: Uncategorized
“The Elephant”
“{Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant (The only harmless great thing), the giant Of beasts, who thought none had to make him wise, But to be just and thankful, loth to offend (Yet nature hath given him no knees to bend) Himself he up-props, on himself relies, And, foe to none, suspects no enemies, Still sleeping stood; vex’d not his fantasy Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.” “The Elephant” by John Donne
Continue Reading →“This cruelty too will end”
Anne Frank (born 12 June 1929) would have been 91 today. “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps…
Continue Reading →Girl’s Night Out
Simone Young and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Guests, Adelaide Town Hall, 9 August 2019 One can be ambivalent, even resentful about Richard Strauss, with his ‘stress-without-storm’ tone poems, dalliances with flaxen-haired girleens, Daddy-jokes, and general frivolity, even (and perhaps especially) concerning Nazis. Yet who could resist an evening of his pieces by the ASO conducted by Simone Young, featuring 4 great female singers, the romantic feminine being the essence of his oeuvre? The programme of works says it all: included were interludes from Intermezzo, Capriccio and Salome; snippets from Ariadne auf Naxos, duets from Arabella, and a selection from Der…
Continue Reading →Save the Glory of Art
I’ll never leave, or if I do, I shall always return to you, For it’s you, it’s you, always you, Save the Glory of Art. Feel no jealousy; Raphael won’t draw from me Emotion I might save for you – It stays tucked in my heart. And while’s I’m talking true, We can stop or start, Right the wrong in part; Save the Glory of Art. I’ll never leave, or where I go You shall be the first to know, What’s on the wall is just for show Save the Glory of Art.
Continue Reading →Swinging Safari
(Directed by Stephan Elliott) (2018) We at TVC stand up for the 1970s but this coming-of-age-weren’t-mum-and-dad-shockers film sums up the shakiness of such a gesture. Lurching from the 1960s Eden to the next decade’s Gethsemane, this Australian comedy tries to be an amusing take on the generational poison encapsulated in Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse. Instead, it serves up a meaningless pastiche of Don’s Party, Puberty Blues, Porky’s and The Ice Storm. Whilst the parents (Guy Pierce, Kylie Minogue, Asher Keddie, Julian McMahon and Jeremy Sims among them) seem to be living it up, most of the comedy is so broad as…
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