Author Archive: Guest Reviewer
Dumb Things
Photo of Paul Kelly by Andrew Braithwaite
Songs in Our Heart # 88 Dumb Things (by Paul Kelly) (written by Paul Kelly; released January 1989) [Pure pop by a lyricist with classical learning and sensibility. They just don’t write these anymore, more’s the pity. Kelly has written over 500 songs, and there are lots of great pieces in that portfolio, but none better than this.] “And I get all your good advice It doesn’t stop me from going through these things twice I see the knives out, I turn my back I hear the train coming, I stay right on that track In the middle, in the…
Continue Reading →Brighton Rock
(Directed by Rowan Joffe) (2010) Graham Greene’s late1930s razor gangster novel, suffused in Catholic guilt, became a successful stage play during the War and a good, gritty film (1947) with Richard Attenborough (the perfect actor for this kind of nasty, cowardly little thug), showing the barnacles under the boardwalk. It’s a murder story that morphs into a domestic horror scene, and it doesn’t work too well in terms of cohesion, but nevertheless contains some starkly effective squalor. But why film it in 2010? Why film it predominantly not in Brighton? Why set it in the 1960s and drench it in pretty…
Continue Reading →Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Portrait of Wordsworth by Benjamin Haydon
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem…
Continue Reading →The Lawyer in the Freezer (Part II)
Unley Town Hall, 24 August 2017 We have written previously on this strange case: see our earlier piece here. The Varnished Culture had a representative at this lecture by Tom Mann, re-visiting his book on the Stevenson / Szach case. There’s not not too much new in Mann’s thesis: the forensic evidence as to time of death is wobbly – the distance travelled by Szach to Coober Pedy overnight is inconsistent with his presence about the time of the killing – the execution-style and surfeit of possible suspects – the dodgy identification evidence – the…
Continue Reading →Gay, Straight, Other…Let’s Have an Adult Conversation on SSM
Photo c/- Montrealais
[The Federal Parliament has seen fit to compromise upon its election policy of a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, so that we are to get a postal survey or some such, in which the citizens can have a say and from which, possibly, legislative reform might ensue. There has been a considerable resistance to the move, on the grounds of cost, the non-binding nature of the poll, its vagueness and uncertainty, and the disharmony wreaked upon the minority by a national debate. Under the Constitution, the Federal Parliament has exclusive power to make laws with respect to Marriage, Divorce and matrimonial…
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