This Thing Has No Heart
Statue of Lady Diana, Kensington Palace, England, unveiled 1 July, 2021 Move over, Robert Jacobsen: the title of Worst Sculptor in the World now passes to Ian Rank-Broadley, whose repulsive statue of Diana Spencer is scaring people. Stiff, awkward, vapid, completely lustreless, uncomfortably masculine and soapy in texture, the hulking, virtually generic Princess stands, surrounded by three kiddies, one lurking behind her recalling the artful dodger. She is wearing something from a discount couturière and has the casual indifference of smooth bronze. It is kitsch enough to be by Jeff Koons. Great sculpture entails inserting heart into stone or metal:…
Continue Reading →I Think You Should Leave – Again
Created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin (Netflix, July 2021) For those who like their comedy dark, psychotically dark, and salted with real tears, the first season of I Think You Should Leave was hysterical, although we can understand why some people might absolutely hate it. The Varnished Culture has to report that the 2nd season is even darker, shorter, more arbitrary and occasionally jaw-dropping.. Highlights: An employee hides, snacks and chokes on his hot dog at an impromptu meeting because ‘you can’t cancel lunch.’ A man disguised for a prank candid-camera show loses his will to live at the…
Continue Reading →Never Let Me Go
Book written by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) Film directed by Mark Romanek (2010) Ishiguro, Romanek, please let us go, you heartless bastards. Not since Chris Lilley killed Pat Mullins (We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year of the Year, ABC TV, 2005) have we at TVC been rendered sleepless by an afflicted fictional character. And we could laugh at Pat. Laugh at any of the characters in Ishiguro’s book or Romanek’s film of the book and you will go straight to hell. It is best perhaps to watch Romanek’s realisation before reading Ishiguro’s pitiless novel. The film transforms…
Continue Reading →Top Cat
Glenelg v South Adelaide at Glenelg Oval, 17 July 2021 In what might be the last Tigers game for awhile, given an impending Covid clampdown (not a lockdown, our masters stress), we had a beauty against southern neighbours, the South Adelaide Panthers. The storms of Friday had blown out by the early 1.35 pm start, and an arctic sun waxed and waned over the afternoon. With a brisk southerly breeze, the scoring favoured the Kerhanan end of the ground, leaving the teams close at the half. And the Bays couldn’t break open the game in the third quarter, with each…
Continue Reading →The Covid-19 Hall of Shame
911 deaths in Australia from (with?) Covid, in 18 months. 169,301 registered and received deaths in Australia in 2019 (pre-Covid). Are we missing something here? Like a sense of proportion? Pardon our manners, but here we must quote ourselves : “In this plague year…we saw Australians banned from returning to their own country; banned from leaving it; banned from crossing state lines, in apparent/arguable breach of section 92 of the Constitution; locked in their homes unless adjudged by a bureaucrat as ‘essential workers’; arrested on beaches, golf courses, parks (and in the case of one pregnant woman in Victoria, handcuffed…
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