Regularly added bite-sized reviews about Literature, Art, Music & Film.
Voltaire said the secret of being boring is to say everything.
We do not wish to say everything or see everything; life, though long is too short for that.
We hope you take these little syntheses in the spirit of shared enthusiasm.
(Dir. Dan Gilroy) (2014)
‘’Nightcrawling” is a term of art for paparazzi who nocturnally trawl the urban underbelly, shooting footage of mayhem for TV news (to be breathlessly shown as an exclusive, after the sanctimonious preliminaries warning “viewer discretion is advised”). Jake Gyllenhaal (see: Donnie Darko) co-produced and stars in this intriguing film as Lou Bloom, a cross between Travis Bickle, Rupert Pupkin and Carl Kolchak, surely selector’s choice for Creep/Worst Employer of the Year. To paraphrase Harold in The Boys in the Band, Lou doesn’t have charm; he has counter-charm.
With no back story as such, Lou is clearly a sociopath, and rather naive, considering. Yet he triumphs through being bright, following his business plan, discarding middle class morality and exploiting anyone and everyone. The film does not pretend to focus on crime and criminals other than through the narrow lens of popular culture, and in this limited optic it succeeds.
From small corruptions (moving fridge photos in a victim’s kitchen), Lou moves up the greasy pole through major obstructions and perversions of justice, his success made believable by Gyllenhaal’s terrific grinning, swivel-eyed-loon malefactor. Also note: Rene Russo, cast again as the ‘strong older woman’, impressive as the TV exec. who realises the glass ceiling needs constant hammering, even if it means spending time with Mr. Wrong; an unrecognizable Bill Paxton as a cynical competitor and Riz Ahmed, playing Lou’s sad-sap outworker wannabe.
It might strike one as easy to demonize the voyeurism of modern culture but it is there, it flourishes and in a land of free speech, debased mores, diminishing conventions and relativist ethics, who’s to stop it? As Lou Blooms rise and rise, that question becomes not only urgent but more important.
Continue Reading →(Dir. Vittorio De Sica) (1948)
To glue posters to walls around ration-bound post-war Rome, a man needs a bike. When that bike, obtained with pawnbroker money, is stolen, the man is driven to desperate measures. A simple lesson in how adverse circumstances can break anyone, filmed and played naturally and without sentimentality. A classic.
(Dir. Shirley Barrett) (1996)
There is simply something fundamentally wrong with Dimity and Vicki-Ann, lonely-heart sisters in Sunray, Queensland, back of nowhere. Why the wheelchair? Why the obsession with lounge lizard Ken Sherry? Why are they so obviously mad as hatters? Why does Sherry eat no fish yet has a giant marlin mounted on the wall? Why all the casseroles left on his doorstep? Why did he leave big time radio and TV in Brisbane? Why does he quote “Desiderata” (with due respect to Max Ehrmann, the most pretentious farrago ever twaddled)? Are there killer fish or black holes in the river? And why has Chinese restauranteur Albert come to embrace nudism?
These and many other questions are not properly answered in the best Australian comedy film ever. All comedy is black (as the saying goes) but for it to work somehow, you need actors to follow their mad, daring instincts and a director to give them the lead. Miranda Otto (Dimity), Rebecca Frith (Vicki-Ann), George Shevtsov (Ken Sherry) and John Alansu (Albert) are perfect, as is this film. It ‘caught us on the hop.’
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(Dir. Peter Glenville) (1964)
Henry II raises his Saxon friend to Archbishop against his friend’s very advice and then asks: who will rid me of him? Adapted from the Anouilh play, this is terrific, brilliantly shot and souped-up by Richard Burton as Becket and Peter O’Toole as the King. Burton captures the saint’s worldliness and stoic integrity that seduced and then baffled his monarch; O’Toole makes Henry authentic, likeable yet murderous.
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(Dir. Billy Wilder) (1960)
David Shipman (“The Great Movie Stars” 1982) wrote the best thumbnail review for this: “bitter-sweet, tragical-comical, sordid and sad”. Jack Lemmon gives an immortal performance as the heel who finds his spine in the last reel, an insurance schmuck who lets superiors use his handily located apartment for sexual rendezvous, till he falls in love with Big Boss Fred MacMurray’s latest conquest.
Only when midnight chimes on New Year’s Eve does she realize she loves him back. Features great, authentic playing by MacMurray as the ogre (Mr Sheldrake), a lovely turn by Shirley MacLaine as the depressed gamine, Lemmon’s charming work, great support roles and the scariest champagne cork-popping moment in film*. “That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.”
[* scarier even than in ‘Meet the Parents’]Continue Reading →
Stirring accounts of Cook’s scissoring across the world in leaky boats, to places often unexplored, from South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Bering Sea & Strait and all over the Pacific.
This book is based on Cook’s journals and reports to Admiralty, selected by Glyndwr Williams for the Folio edition (1997).
Cook was one of a handful of giants in exploration when about a third of the world was unknown. By the time he was lethally sandwiched by natives in Hawaii, he had become famous in his homeland and well known to much of the rest of the world.
This acclaim was appreciated by TVC when we dropped in on his cottage, built in Yorkshire (1855) and transported to the Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne, stone by stone and reassembled in 1934.
Continue Reading →Wouldn’t it be nice, if like a girl who comes out of her emo stage and puts on a pink dress, Australian restaurants decided that now it is ok, in fact perhaps even desirable, to look pretty. Bistro Vue in Little Collins Street, Melbourne understands that it is ok and its eclectic, Frenchy, art nouveau style quite warmed the cockles of TVC‘s heart – starved as we are for carpet, flowers and colour.
L regretted not choosing the snails when the neighbour’s molluscs, little balls in pastry, were served. P’s onion soup was almost as good as his version, but he declared his confit duck perhaps the best he has ever eaten. L and Close Relative N found their beef braise and seafood pasta respectively a little too salty but otherwise excellent. Service is brisk and courteous. Best of all, it all looks so purty.
When you win at the races, go Vue de Monde! When in Melbourne Bistro Vue will do!
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