Sydney Film Festival 2013: round-up reviews

I've been doing Sydney Film Festival fairly cautiously in previous years - a movie or two each time - but this year I decided to see six movies in seven days. It didn't seem like an enormous undertaking while making the bookings - friends of mine did eight, nine, even ten in similar time periods - but of course I came down sick the weekend screenings started and of course work was going through a busy period. 

Despite the sniffles and the eventual fatigue I enjoyed myself anyway! And I also managed to double the amount of movies I've seen this year in one fell swoop. :) 

So here be some quick thoughts. 

Stoker (2013, d. Chan-wook Park)

India's (Mia Wasikowska) beloved father dies on her 18th birthday, and in the wake of this tragedy her long-lost uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) comes home to charm India's barely grieving widow of a mother (Nicole Kidman) and unsettle India. 

The creepiness of the film was unnerving at the time of watching but this one really grew on me. While on first watch it seemed to show its hand too early, making Charlie's backstory and his connection with India too obvious and over-the-top; but in all honesty I was surprised by the ending, and the more I think about it, the more the whole movie works for me as a whole, the meticulous construction of mise en scene and plot and atmosphere. 

I'd warn that while I've heard it's not as violent as Park's other movies, it's not without its horrors. But it's all so elegantly stylish, taking its gothic elements and drenching them with sunlit days and shadowy nights, and an almost anachronistic opulence in the setting of this amazing, lonely house. Mia Wasikowska is wonderful as always, Nicole Kidman is great too, and as Alison and I discussed afterwards, Matthew Goode continues to work that niche of 'good-looking yet creepy' like a pro. 

Blancanieves (2012, d. Pablo Berger)

A Spanish black-and-white retelling of Snow White as a silent film where Carmencita (Sofia Oria, as adult) takes on her dead father's profession as a bullfighter when she runs away after her evil stepmother (Maribel Verdu) schemes to have her killed. 

What a great concept! What a beautiful lead actress! What an attractive throwback to old film! And yet - this is slight, so very slight, and maybe a little too faithful to the original fairy tale. Even with its inventions and new locales, it just unfolds without much tension or feeling until an unexpectedly bitter, but tender, ending. And I really liked the ending for diverting from the expected. But the fact it doesn't fit in tone and direction with the rest of the movie just serves to make the rest of it more disappointing. 

The Look of Love (2013, d. Michael Winterbottom)

Steve Coogan plays Paul Raymond, the King of Soho" who built an empire starting with the UK's first strip club and popular soft-porn magazines. The film is interesting from a salacious, recent history point of view, with a good eye for the changing fashions and attitudes towards sex throughout time, from the conservative 50s to a high point with the swinging 60s and 70s and then in decline during the bleaker, more hardcore 80s. 

But overall it's a bog standard biopic with a fairly loose story arc. The real drama is in the story of his daughter Debbie, a lost little rich girl, groomed to take over for her father, without the steel in his soul, the ability to cut and run. Imogen Poots is really lovely in this role. Actually, all the women are quite interesting in this and the actresses are great - Anna Friel as Raymond's first wife who loses him to other women once his empire starts to grow, and Tamsin Egerton, leggy and gorgeous, as his long-time girlfriend who's a big part of that growing success. But the constant parade of female nudity with more than a dash of tired "ooh-er" naughtiness remains unexamined throughout the film and that gets kind of depressing by the end. 

I was really looking forward to this reunion of director Michael Winterbottom and Coogan, but this is the least of their collaborations for me; it could've been so much more.

Stories We Tell (2012, d. Sarah Polley)

It hurts me to say this as a Sarah Polley fan, but this was probably my least favourite of the films I saw at the festival. It's not bad, per se, but it doesn't pull off what it promises - a look at how we tell the stories of our personal histories, how our pasts are shaped by the storytellers, our futures shaped by things of the past. 

And the thing is, Polley does have a really interesting story to tell, and comes up with what appears to be an interesting way of telling it through this documentary. She discovers as a teen, after her mother's death, that the man she has always thought of as her father is not her biological dad. But when she goes searching for the man who everyone believes to be her bio father, she accidentally stumbles across an unexpected truth. 

The film itself is really ambitious. It layers interviews with her two dads, her siblings and friends of her parents with archival footage of her mother (herself an actress) and a rereading of her father's elegant memoir of the events.  There are also re-enactments by actors of stories from their shared family history, embedded as super 8 home movies.

But that's part of its downfall - it appears to reach for too much and doesn't quite know which avenues to explore, how to focus on what it wants to say. Plus Polley is just too close to the subject to be ruthless in paring it back. So in the end, it's more than a little messy and doesn't know where to end. Barely 90 minutes, it really dragged in the last third, when the beats of the film kept making me think/wish it was finishing, but the "story" would keep going, becoming looser and looser with each thread Polley chased. 

Dragon Girls (2012, d. Inigo Westmeier)

Probably my favourite film of the festival. I was really moved by this and it resonated a lot with me even as I felt at the same time that I was watching lives so removed from mine. But the film captured and conveyed so strongly a sense of the "idealised Chinese person", this unattainable perfection of body and moxie and nationalism that I recognise from my parents, embedded into their upbringing and values, which has trickled down to me in dribs and drabs. 

The documentary focuses particularly on three girls (ages 9 to 16) with somewhat varied experiences of the Shaolin Tagou Kung Fu School in the Henan province of China. The little girls are so great before the camera, often wise beyond their years and able to withstand so much internal and external pressure and hardship; so much so that I did feel somewhat manipulated by the possible clever construction of the story. And yet, I can't get a lot of this movie out of my head, and I really want to find a copy of this to show this to my parents as well to see what they think. 

The Bling Ring (2013, d. Sofia Coppola)

A thinly-fictionalised account of the teens who robbed the homes of celebrity Hollywood during a period in 2008-09. This was another very light, sort of formless movie that was easy to watch but ultimately felt very empty. 

It's at times really beautiful and striking - the silent robbery at Audrina Patridge's box of a house, filmed from a distance with the lights of Hollywood twinkling in the distance lasted long in my mind after other details about the movie faded. And as you'd expect from Coppola, the film is great at capturing aimless, teenage energy in music and look and mood.

But the thing is, the real story is fascinating, and left me wanting to know more, an itch that went unscratched by this film. I read The Bling Ring - Nancy Jo Sales' book expanded from her Vanity Fair feature on the subject - after seeing the movie and felt it much more satisfied my desire to dig and dig deeper behind these kids and what might have led to them dream up and actually, casually, carelessly go through with this string of robberies. 

The thing is, the movie had access to and seemingly works from similar sources of truth so it's inability or unwillingness to say anything made me frustrated the more I thought about it afterwards. It's not helped by some miscasting - Israel Broussard as Marc, our 'everyman' character entrance to the story, Leslie Mann as Nicki's airhead "cool" mom - that even stronger performances (Katie Chang, Emma Watson) couldn't quite save for me. 

Garbage - 25 Feb 2013 - The Metro

Not a band to see live, I've learnt. For nostalgia's sake, the show was fun, and Shirley Manson is as beautiful and hot as ever. She had great presence, coming out in a severe bun and a cape (which she removed after the first two songs), and it was exciting to watch her pacing round and round on stage as if barely contained, prowling with feline grace. Her voice was great too, slinky and strong.

But the sound was so muddy, the crisp cool stuttering music not coming across live at all with the pedestrian grunt of the guitars and drums. I saw a review that called it a colourful wall of sound, but it just sounded like an unsubtle messy noise to me, with songs having no place to go as they started at full throttle and bludgeoned their way to end (ruining the quiet melancholy of classics such as #1 Crush).

Set list was fun though - lots of old songs, particularly from the first and second album including some deep cuts that were enjoyable for an old fan. Highlight was probably (and somewhat surprisingly) I Think I'm Paranoid, which had the requisite lightness, and I got to hear Only Happy When It Rains, which was the song that made me love them in the first place all those years ago so the show was worth it to the 13 year-old fangirl inside of me. :)


Automatic Systematic Habit
Queer
Blood for Poppies
Push It
Hammering in My Head
Control
Why Do You Love Me
#1 Crush
I Think I'm Paranoid
Milk
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)
The One
Battle in Me
When I Grown Up
The Trick Is To Keep Breathing
Only Happy When It Rains
Vow
You Look So Fine

Special
Stupid Girl
Beloved Freak

Tripod: Men of Substance

13 Jan 2013 - Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

from 3pod.com.au

I hadn't been sure of what to expect actually - this was the first time I'd seen Tripod perform something closer to a comedy set, rather than their D&D musical 'Tripod versus the Dragon'. As we sat down in our great seats (third row, in the middle) my friends nodded approvingly, but joked that we didn't need this good a view as we'd had in my previous feat of excellent ticket karma that saw us admiring the um, talents of the bare-chested cast at Pirates of Penzance. 

"No shirtlessness here!" we chortled - then BAM! Tripod opened with pasty middle-aged beer guts for comedy. ;) It made me wonder what the 'substance' in their show title referred to. Thickening waistlines? or maybe the experience gained with age, after more than 15 years together as an act. They milked this for all it was worth throughout the show, memorably about Yon not changing in all that time ("He's like Benjamin Button - on pause!"). 

Other highlights in the compact show (a little over an hour) included the opening song, Adult Contemporary ("Haven't had a new musical experience since 1994!"); Close all the Local Pubs Down ("Let's move to where the music is - and stop it."); the tax song that becomes a Barry White parody to great effect (and was educational too!) and Yon's hilarious paen on looking back on your twenties with unrealistic fondness ("I think I would've remembered sacrificing a child..."). Oh, and encore song YouTube Party though my only complaint would be that there weren't enough references to cats. :)

In fact, this show felt like it made just for me and my friends - I mean, it featured stupid dancing, age anxiety, musical geekery and just plain geekery, things we're all extremely familiar with. Tripod even sang about Waiting for the Game to Load when we'd literally had a conversation about the days of cassette-loaded games before walking in. What were the chances of that?!

All in all, this show was terrific fun. It was a great showcase of their ability to knowingly and lovingly parody a wide range of musical genres. And apart from being good musicians with great harmonies, I appreciated how nicely constructed the set was, jokes upon jokes that set up for even bigger laughs later in the night. It left wishing for a longer show, more jokes, more songs...so here's to another 16 years!

Two Door Cinema Club/The Vaccines - 3 Jan 2013 - Hordern Pavilion

Due to a mix-up with the run times on the Hordern website, we rocked up not long after doors opened and had to queue, the horror (no really, I don't think I've queued for a band since forever). Once we were in we decided to give The Jungle Giants a go. They struck me as very young, and as Al noted, their sound is just like a dozen other bands you'd hear on triple J at the moment (we thought maybe early Dappled Cities, Vampire Weekend, Givers, etc etc). But props for a confident, tight set that was a crowd-pleaser. 

The great thing about punk(-ish) bands is that if you don't like a song, you know another one will be along in less than two minutes. The Vaccines were on for only 40 minutes but they managed a full-sized set in that time! Since they're quite bouncy on record, I kind of expected them to be even louder and more fun live, but it didn't translate completely. Justin Young's vocals were a bit thin and seemed a lost in the mix at times; so upbeat singles like Teenage Icon and If You Wanna didn't quite have the punch expected. Highlights for me were I Always Knew with good audience sing-a-long, and surprisingly, All in White from 2011's What Did You Expect...  

No Hope

Tiger Blood

Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)

I Always Knew

Wetsuit

Aftershave Ocean

Teenage Icon

Ghost Town

Post Break-up Sex

All in White

If You Wanna

Bad Mood

Norgaard

I'd been told good things about Two Door Cinema Club as a live experience, and I'm happy to say they lived up to them. It was an energetic, enjoyable set - tuneful and lots of fun to dance to (which meant, unfortunately, lots of flaily, drunk dudebros, but what can you do?). Lead singer Alex Trimble's voice was good and strong, cutting through the sound and rhythm to soar in songs like Wake Up and Sun. Nice staging too - the ever-changing light show backdrop was simple but effective and worked well with the music. And you can never go wrong with giant balloons for a strong finish. :)

photo thanks to Al

Sleep Alone

Undercover Martyn

Do You Want It All

This is the Life

Wake Up

You're Not Stubborn

Sun

Pyramid

I Can Talk

Costume Party

The World is Watching

New Year

Something Good Can Work

Handshake

Eat That Up, It's Good For You

Someday

Come Back Home

What You Know

Theatre 2012

So Al and I have been joking that you can tell we're getting old because we're starting to swap music gigs for theatre productions. 


26/10/2012 Les Miserables @ Riverside Theatre (Riverside Lyric Ensemble)

Musically the cast and orchestra of this production were very good; at the start, it even sounded (spookily) similar the CSR but the main actors managed to give their very well-known parts a bit of their own character. My only quibble musically would be that the whole show was played at a quicker tempo than I'd like, which gave some of the more emotional moments a rushed feeling (though it possibly allowed the quite long show to end at a decent hour??). 

The actor playing Valjean was the standout, vocally and in acting. Eponine was also great in her part vocally, and she had the best death scene with a fantastically judged performance of A Little Fall of Rain; but bizarrely, she also decided to play all her scenes with Marius with hunched shoulders and sagging posture as if she were Gollum watching over his precious...it was very distracting. 

The major problem with this production was probably direction, or lack of it. It was particularly noticeable in how movement around the stage was terrible; often actors were left to sing their solos at the front of the stage as if in recital rather than in a theatrical performance, and in some group scenes the energy of the main performances would be sapped by background characters haphazardly moving across the stage into each other's paths and in distracting ways.

I went with a mixed group of friends, from Les Mis diehard fanatics to someone who turned to me after the show and asked, in all seriousness, "So tell me about this French Revolution thing". So I think the fact that everyone really enjoyed it speaks to the appeal of the musical despite the flaws to be expected from an (semi-)amateur production. 

20/10/2012 Much Ado About Nothing (Globe Shakespeare on Screen)

This would've been so much fun to see in person, I think, and even on film it comes across as a really charming production that handles the balance between comedy and drama in this play really well. Beatrice and Benedick's sparring never gets tiresome and still gets laughs, no matter how many times I've seen/heard it. Nice, simple staging and I loved how the actors used the audience as part of their performance!

30/9/2012 Private Lives @ Belvoir

Fairly straight-forward adaptation, though in modern-dress with some other anachronistic touches that mostly worked (still not quite sure about that Phil Collins moment). Very funny, and the actors did well with the furious pace of Coward's cracking script, but there's still a weird disconnect when your brain registers the casual racism and the violence against women that's just laughed off.

6/7/2012 The Duchess of Malfi @ Playhouse, Opera House (Bell Shakespeare)

Oooh, depressing. I mean, any synopsis of the plot would make that clear but geez, when it's compacted down like this it's just one terrible thing after another. Coupled with a dark, claustrophobic set full of sharp edges and it was all a bit much after a while. Lucy Bell delivered a nice, subtle performance of as the Duchess but the male cast veered between OTT villainy and blank ambiguity. 

19/5/2012 Les Liaisons Dangereuses @ Wharf 1 Theatre (STC)

Simple and elegant staging, overall really good production with particularly strong performances by the female cast. Justine Clark was heartbreakingly lovely as Tourvel. Pamela Rabe was great too, though almost unrecognisable in her grey wig. But - and it's probably an unpopular opinion - I thought Hugo Weaving was a bit too arch in this, even allowing for the source material. 

21/4/2012 Macbeth @ Drama Theatre, Opera House (Bell Shakespeare)

Hm. Great staging - instead of the traditional stone walls of Scottish castles, it all takes place on an empty, grassy stage with a mirror above casting a reflection that serves to make the emptiness seem ever darker and more foreboding. Interesting choice to collapse the three witches into one portrayal, using body shape and voice distortion to bring a creepy, eerie tone to Lizzie Schebesta's intriguing performance. 

But overall, I didn't enjoy this - didn't enjoy the choice to sexualise Macbeth's connection with the witches, didn't enjoy Katie Jean Harding once again histrionically playing another bereaved mother, didn't enjoy the way it dragged and dragged even as it got closer and closer to everything falling to pieces. 

24/3/2012 This Is Our Youth @ Drama Theatre, Opera House
Really enjoyed this. Despite it being a play written in the 90s about kids in the 80s it still felt relevant and applicable to the predominantly (and unusually) young audience watching 20, 30 years on. I like that Lonergan managed to capture a portrait of youth that's going to feel true even if the clothes, the drugs, the phones and presidents keep changing. 

The three young actors were all very good. Michael Cera played to type as the hapless perpetual screw-up Warren, and at first his distinctive voice took a little getting used to in a live setting, but he is a very good, subtle physical comedian and he also managed to bring to surface surprising moments of joy and choked-up sadness in turn. Emily Barclay was all coltish teenage girlishness and nerves, perfectly performed. But Keiran Culkin was the best as the fast-talking Dennis, full of barely-suppressed rage. He owned the part so well that we were surprised to find out afterwards that he'd originally played Warren in a NY production! 

**


I also saw the all-male production of Pirates of Penzance at Sydney Theatre, which was very enjoyable and provided a lot of food for thought about gender roles, but I forgot to make notes on that...

Anyway, I have a Belvoir subscription for next year (5 plays!) and I'm hoping to get some tickets to some of the major productions STC will put on, so bring on 2013! 

Les Misérables (2012, d. Tom Hooper)

Unpopular opinion time...

So the Boxing Day movie for this year was the new Tom Hooper directed version of Les Misérables. Some of you have asked what I think of it, and some of you unfortunate souls who saw it with me already heard this rant, so I apologise in advance.

That said, I stand by my opinion that this a bad movie. It's still a fantastic musical, but it is a bad film.

Seriously, Tom Hooper confirms for me with this movie that he is completely undeserving of that Oscar. The direction is DIRE. It's stolid, heavy-handed, unimaginative and ridiculously literal. 

Though the religious aspect is obviously a big part of the story with the key themes of mercy and grace, of justice and repentance, Hooper again goes for entirely unsubtle visual reminders on top of the lyrics and story, hammering home the Christ-parallels for Valjean, and he didn't seem to meet a cross he didn't want to shoe-horn in. 

And the whole thing, despite the roller-coaster vista shots, and the many changes of time and place, still feels frustratingly static, with performers moving awkwardly around sets while singing their key songs (e.g. Valjean singing What Have I Done while pacing the chapel, Javert singing Stars while standing figuratively and literally on the edge of the fakest looking Paris ever, Marius singing Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, etc etc). The camera does nothing but twirl around them and up their noses while they sing, and the pace slows to the a crawl. It's perfectly standard for the stage show, but it begs the question: why bother translating it to film if you're not going to use that to your advantage at all?

So that the movie succeeds as a piece of entertainment at all is in spite of Hooper's work, is because there's still some fantastic performances, and the story and music itself remain wonderfully involving and moving. 

Anne Hathaway stood out the most for me; she does her best with a rushed sequence of Fantine's fall from grace, and I Dreamed a Dream is so heartrendingly good, from her singing to her huge, sad eyes, the way she can subtly convey the change from bitter reminiscence to dead-eyed present within the performance...it was probably the most emotionally true moment of the film. 

Hugh Jackman is great too as Valjean, though I expected as much, and I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Eddie Redmayne as Marius, both acting-wise and vocally. Most of the others in the main cast are good, if not outstanding: Amanda Seyfriend makes a beautiful Cosette and her clear, high voice works for the character; Samantha Barks sings Eponine a little more stagey than the others but is fine; Aaron Tveit is a suitably stern and a little fanatical as the idealistic Enjolras; Helena Bonham Carter was better than I thought she would be 'cos much as I love her she's not a great singer, but the part of Madame Thenardier calls more for comic timing than singing ability, and she got great laughs from the audience. 

While Sacha Baron Cohen couldn't quite match her as Thenardier and was given some incredibly broad humour to carry, he was not the worst performer - that title would fall to Russell Crowe, who clearly struggled vocally with the demanding role of Javert. His higher register was noticeably weak, verging on nasal, and he didn't have the vibrato which meant a lot of his lines were clipped and lost their power. And he didn't give his actual performance a lot of colour either, so overall it was just plain that he was out of his depth with this. 

In the end, I couldn't hate this movie because of my love for the musical, and I don't regret the 3hr+ sitting. But I spent more time thinking about what was wrong with it, and snorting about the literalism and the anvil-ly emotionalism, than actually being carried along with it. And my impression on coming out of the theatre was not 'what a beautiful, grand and uplifting end!', but rather 'Tom Hooper, you hack'.

Patrick Wolf - 8/9 Sept 2012 - The Studio, Sydney Opera House

Writing this MONTHS after I made notes reminds me that I really really should write these fresh. Oh well.

Support act Brous were a weird mix of Kate Bush and Fleet Foxes, except not as enjoyable as that sounds. They had elements that I normally like and thought would be a great match for Patrick Wolf - Baroque harmonies, plenty of unusual instruments (such as the harmonium, zither, bassoon and recorder) - but it just didn't work for me. In part, it might've been because they tried for awkward banter that assumed too much engagement with the audience to start with; they obviously did have fans there, but there wasn’t enough warmth coming the stage, nor returning. It was an awkward set that dragged for me. 

But then we were rewarded with one of the most enjoyable gigs I've been to in a while. Between Patrick's fun commentary between songs, and the intimate atmosphere, this night was absolutely charming. Like sitting in a living room with someone lovely and having them make absolutely beautiful music just for you. To introduce a haunting Wind in the Wires, he told us about being inspired by the windswept minimalism of other artists working with unusual implements like wine glasses, etc. Then he backed that up with "That's what I'm inspired by - that and Nicki Minaj of course."  

And there was even more instrument porn, but done right! It was just Patrick on stage with one other musician, and they cycled through a range of instruments each, from violin and piano and harp and even a saw; and also his beautiful voice, used just like another instrument. There was a lot of emotion in the performance too the clear joy in The Magic Position, gratefulness for his aunt (who was in the audience) for supporting him, love and acceptance in House and Bermondsey Street. 

I really appreciated the depth of his back catalogue, and the lovely mix of older (Hard Times) and newer (Together), popular (The City) and rare (such as Penzance). The Sundark and Riverlight arrangements were great, giving a fresh sound. Standouts for me were Tristan and Oblivion, which despite being acoustic kept their edges; Tristan was slinky has hell, and Oblivion sounds completely different in a really melancholic, beautiful way. 

So we only planned to go the once…but this show was so so so good that as soon as it ended, even as we were still sitting in our (front row!) seats, Al and I turned to each other and almost simultaneously said, “If there are still seats for tomorrow…” And there were – and even more amazingly, they were the EXACT SAME SEATS IN THE FRONT ROW for a near-sold out show. No, we don’t understand how that could be possible either. But we didn't question our luck and bought them, quick smart. 

The Sunday night show was a much more subdued affair. Patrick seemed to be in a hurry to race to an end, with a lot less banter, not opening himself up to the audience like first night. With less connection, so the night seemed to go a lot faster and ended rather abruptly. 

But he did change up the set list, and Bluebells was my standout this night. I also loved hearing Overture at the start, with another great arrangement. And the music was still beautiful and totally worth the impulse buy. :) 

Sept 9 setlist
Overture
London
Demolition
Tristan
Paris
Bluebells
Oblivion
Hard Times
Together
Wind in the Wires
House
Magic Position
Trust

Penzance 
The City

The Living End - 27 Nov 2012 - Hi Fi Sydney

I am old, I am old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. So I’d enthusiastically agreed to the idea of reliving being 14 as soundtracked by The Living End, but after dinner, a cup of a tea and a rest of a super soft couch, I was feeling much less enthusiastic about venturing out at 9pm into the pouring rain.

 And when I finally entered the Hi Fi, soaked from waiting at the door, finding myself at the back of the room packed with tall people, and realised The Living End weren’t going to be on until 10:30, I had a mini tantrum inside my head. Gah, It’s a work night, I think. Then, FFS, I’ve really turned into a grumpy old woman.

But we’d arrived mid-set for Area 7, and I’d forgotten just how many of their fun songs I knew. And by the time they finished their set with Bitter Words I was smiling and singing along. Things were looking up!

 I’d seen The Living End once before, though seen might be too optimistic a description because their average fan is a burly dude twice my height, so the last time I saw people’s sweaty backs a lot. But we got lucky this time around and found a patch of good ground with a decent view of the stage, and juuuuust shy of the inevitable circle pit in the middle of the room.

The night got off to a great start with the delicious irony of a roomful of adults regressing gleefully to their teenage years by screaming out, “I’m a brat and I know everything”. After that blistering start with Prisoner of Society, Chris said fondly, “This album never gets old.” Pause, and following cheers, “Even if we do.” So so true.

But there was so much love in that room – the band for their creation, for each other, for the fans, and vice versa for the fans. This was the perfect nostalgia show, seeing a beloved band from your teenage years playing an album that’s aged well and seeing them enjoy it as much as the audience.

 All the big hits got the loudest singalongs, the most frenetic dancing and movement. But even the deeper cuts were great: Trapped was so much fun live, with the Area 7 brass section adding even more oomph. Have They Forgotten sounded immense and angrier live, and it’s sad that the lyrics are still so relevant today to the asylum seeker situation today.

 In fact, the whole album has aged remarkably well. And as me and my friends said over and over to each other after, hearing their self-titled album played end to end live only serves to remind what a great album of singles it was; there wasn’t a dud song in the mix, not one song we couldn’t sing almost word-perfectly, even after 14 years.

 The band also kept the set fresh and interesting by deviating into great, tight jams that played with familiar songs, like in All Torn Down. And watching Chris Cheney play guitar is still….what do the kids say these days? Ah that’s right, he can still get it, yeah.

At night’s end, teenage me (okay, adult me too) was in raptures at seeing them play Closing In live, which has been one of my favourite songs forever and ever. Scott even still does the trick where he slings the double bass over his shoulders to play behind his back! Though I guess with age this only lasted for like five seconds, hahah.

 To further remind everyone of their advanced age, towards the end of the night, Chris thanks the audience for “buying the album…yeah, remember buying?” Cue LOLs from a roomful of people who still remember and own CDs.

 But all in all, a great gig - high energy atmosphere, awesome playing, and incredibly catchy tunes. I ended the night so sweaty, so happy, and with so many fond memories - what more could a girl (okay, an elderly lady) ask for?

Prisoner of Society
Growing Up (Falling Down)
Second Solution
West End Riot
Bloody Mary
Monday
All Torn Down
Saves the Day
Trapped
Have They Forgotten
Fly Away
I Want A Day
Sleep On It
Closing In
(Georgie Girl – Seekers cover)
Tainted Love – Soft Cell cover

In Time (2011, d. Andrew Niccol)

So last year, I saw In Time and was horrimazed at what an absolute mess this movie was on just about every level possible. This belated post is to try and explain why, from a bunch of stream-of-consciousness notes (rants) I made at the time. 

Be warned: I'm just going to go ahead and spoil the whole movie for you. One, it's not possible to talk about the crazy badness of this film without discussing the details, and two, hopefully after reading this you'll not want to see it for yourself. Unless you happen to like complete trainwrecks, in which case I recommend you rent it for cheap, then down a few drinks beforehand if you don't want to be going "...what the - did they just - but that didn't make sense - really?!" every couple of minutes.

So you know you’re in for something awful with the first line - the first time (chortle) there’s a portentous use of the word ‘time' (and there will be many of these) - when we start with Justin Timberlake staring pensively (i.e. blankly) out a window. 

Oh JT. Such a great musician. Such a terrible actor. The king of literal choreography goes all out in his first starring role but is shown to be lacking within minutes of the start. In his face off against Matt Bomer, a quiet one-to-one scene in an abandoned warehouse, Bomer manages to convey more with one look in his pretty blue eyes than JT can even try with his whole body. 

In fact, Matt Bomer comes off best in this whole movie because he looks utterly gorgeous, he's only in this travesty for 5 minutes, and his last scene doesn't involve flinging his dying body into JT's arms so he can weep horribly and scream “NOOOOOO” dramatically to the sky (sorry Olivia Wilde). Vincent Kartheiser comes a close second, well cast and doing his best with the poor material as the cold, rich bastard dad of Amanda Seyfried's character. Of course, when one of your villains is the most logical, intelligent and relatable person in the whole movie, you have problems...oh, and what problems they are!

Apart from JT being so wooden and unconvincing as an actor, Seyfried looks like she’s here only to pick up a pay check in a bad wig. But that might not be all her fault - she's been given absolutely nothing to do as her character, Sylvia, is entirely underwritten as the clichéd sheltered rich girl longing for some excitement in life. When excitement supposedly comes in the form of being Stockholm’d into a Bonnie-and-Clyde lite relationship, it's unfortunate JT and Amanda having zero chemistry. The relationship comes out of nowhere except for the fact it’s scripted and it’s literally laughable - when they mechanically move into place to kiss for the first time, the only thing I could do was giggle incredulously, as did the two rows of people behind me in the cinema. Even more unfortunately, JT has more chemistry with Olivia Wilde, who plays his mother. 

Wait, there’s more! On top of the bad acting, there's odd choppy editing, really terrible lines (poor Cillian Murphy - completely wasted as a character whose incomprehensible motivations waver all over the place - has to utter inane gems such as “I'm a timekeeper...I keep time”), the egregious mis- and overuse of the word time ALL OF THE TIME, and some completely random characters for god knows what reason. Alex Pettyfer as the only British gangster in an Ohio ghetto in a ridiculous and unnecessary subplot - why not? Johnny Galecki, hopelessly miscast as an unbelievable 25-year-old alcoholic - hey, this cast can't look uniformly hot! 

But even more than these sins, this movie hurt me most, deep in my soul, because there was absolutely no internal logic or consistency. Niccol (the Australian writer and director) blow his wad trying to set up and exposit this complex world of rules using time as currency, and then flies in the face of it all in just about every scene and plot twist. Firstly, the monetary system itself. Four minutes for a cup of coffee! Loans of a month at 30% interest! People living literally day to day! Dear sir - no economy could ever run like that .And then supposedly, the solution Will and Sylvia come up with to right all wrongs is to steal 1 million years from Sylvia’s dad (which just made me lol and think of “one miiiiiiillion dollars”). And again, Vincent Kartheiser is the only one who’s smart enough to point out that um, what good's that going to do for the larger population? 

It's like no one understands maths in this world!

And yet, more stupid events occur - like Will and Sylvia robbing a timelender with a smash and grab. You mean no other criminal element in the ‘ghetto’ has ever thought to do the same thing? And then Will and Sylvia able to do this extraordinary crime five more times without getting caught by either the non-existent guards at these timelenders or the cops? Not to mention Will keeps hiding out at the same places within blocks of his crimes, over and over again, and yet the police don’t find them for ages. And when they do finally catch up with Will AT HIS OWN DAMN APARTMENT they park right out in the street so Will and Sylvia can see them coming and have enough time to get dressed and escape out the back – which no cops had covered. Because there's only three cops in this universe. 

Also, while the rich people all have bodyguards, they must really suck because Will manages to hide himself in a pack of them without detection. And when he reveals himself, the other 9 armed guards give up without a fight, and none of them raise any alarms when their wealthy employer is kidnapped and taken hostage. Uh. 

And don’t even get me started on the ARM WRESTLING. That's right, in order to expound on Will’s sob/back story, JT and Pettyfer have the world's most boring and ridiculous confrontation where they arm wrestle TO DEATH. Then there’s the other stupid death scene, with Cillian Murphy killed by the most stupid deus ex machina ever (and yes, once again, it involved impossible time shenanigans). So Will, earlier in the movie, manages to make his 2 hours from capture last from night to day and across several "timezones", overtaking even Sylvia’s clock, but somehow Cillian dies because his character forgets to top up his per diem at just the right moment after surviving 50 years of policing. Riiiiiiiiiight.

I could go on but let me summarise: this movie's not just bad, it's lazy and careless and a waste of some real talents. I mean, Oscar nominated cinematographers! Oscar winning costume designers! The writer of Gattaca and The Truman Show! A really attractive cast, with some fantastic talent (plus JT). And yet, the sum of its products is this fiasco that is so terrible that ripping it to shreds kept Al and I amused for hours afterwards.

Manchester Orchestra – 4 Mar 2012 – Hi Fi Sydney

Um, long time no see…I blame tumblr (and occasionally, life). Anyway, back with an old favourite, the gig write-up.

Manchester Orchestra (4 Mar 2012, Hi-Fi Sydney)

It was a wet night, the rain at one point so heavy that Al and I despaired of having to walk up to the Hi Fi (formerly the Forum). But rain had not stopped Manchester Orchestra from playing last night, though it had cancelled the festival they were originally coming out for, so I sucked it up as well and ended up with squelchy, gross shoes for the rest of the night (yeah yeah, first world problems, I will quit whining).*

But Manchester Orchestra were totally worth it.

The band were obviously happy to be here despite everything, and in fine form. Andy Hull was such a sweetheart, thanking the audience a fair few times for coming out, saying they hadn’t been expecting the obviously enthusiastic crowd - admittedly, the Hi-Fi appears to hold less than the Metro, but the room was well-packed last night. There were way more dudebros present than I’d expected (and TALL ones, at that), but it was a mostly pleasant crowd apart the obnoxious jerks who were trying to start a circle-pit centre front. There were plenty of sing-a-longs, for songs from all three albums, but the crowd was good at keeping a hushed, awed silence during the beautiful, quiet moments; all the better to listen to Andy’s fantastic voice.

And he was in such fine form, from the get go with that distinctive voice on show (and Simple Math) opener Deer. The whole band was great, really tight and giving the massive, monstrous songs their all. But mostly, I found myself thinking, at different times during the night, that Andy Hull really was both the master of the melodic scream (such as in the angrier, powerful songs like Everything to Nothing), and also of the most delicate heartbreak.

It wasn’t a show with a lot of banter (though Andy and Robert were funny and easy-going when they did speak), but it was a beautifully thought out set. There was a really great flow from one song to the next, whether it was the almost perfectly natural slides from one musical theme to a complementary one, or a thrilling jump from the soft and lulling to the shock of the loud and vice versa.



Highlights for me included the a monster-sounding My Friend Marcus early in the set, an utterly gorgeous near-solo performance from Andy of a summer demo (see video above), and then the entirely unexpected The River, followed by a stripped, slowed down version of The Only One that drew out the anticipatory build to the moment everything cut loose, followed by the sombre take of their cover of The Party’s Over – “Turn the lights out / All good things must come to an end” - to lead them off the stage for the first time.

They returned after a short break for an encore, starting with I Got Friends, “the only popular song we’ve had here” (which I’m sure is a LIE considering how well the crowd knew most of the songs), followed by a fun Now That You’re Home. There was some self-deprecatingly funny banter thrown in there too; Andy brushing back his sweaty almost-fro like hair and saying despairingly, “I hate my hair. That’s all I’ve been thinking about all night,” to which Robert tried to reassure him he looked like Dylan. “Bob DYLAN?” Andy answered disbelievingly. But to end the night, I’m glad they went with Where Have You Been, one of my favourites, and its haunting refrain lasted with me long after the show.



Deer
Pride
100 Dollars
April Fool
My Friend Marcus
Pensacola
Pale Black Eye
We Were Made Out of Lightening
Shake It Out
I Can Barely Breathe
Colly Strings
Simple Math
Everything to Nothing
The River
The Only One
The Party’s Over

I Got Friends
Now That You’re Home
Where Have You Been

* PS I just realised that the last time I saw them, I was also wet and damp and they were also totally worth it then too. :)

Okkervil River - 18 Oct 2011 - The Metro

The last time I saw Okkervil River (in May 2009) I never wrote up the concert in detail, but this was my gobsmacked, joyful summary:

"Oh my god, Okkervil River. They were AMAZING and totally renewed my faith in the power of live music. Will Sheff had the audience completely enthralled with his musical storytelling, and the whole band was having fun and playing well - loose and a little rough, but really good, and passionate. <3333333"

It still sits in my personal pantheon of best live shows EVER. So while I was really really looking forward to the gig on Tuesday night, part of me was also worried that I would be disappointed because of my stratospheric expectations.

But I needn't have worried. They are still one of the most face-meltingly fantastic acts live. They dove straight into it with a rollicking Wake and Be Fine from their latest album I Am Very Far, and then just barrelled through one high-octane, wonderful song after another, the energy levels lowering for just a few quieter moments here and there, like on the lovely A Girl in Port.


A Girl in Port

While last time what I came away with was an awe at the intimate, intense experience at the Annandale with more broody songs like A Stone and Another Radio Song, this time around I was struck by the energy and joy emanating from the stage. Hearing Okkervil songs live is a revelation; it's not about hearing a note-perfect copy but the the music coursing through your body, thrumming with energy and emotion.

I loved hearing every song on the set list, though particular surprises and highlights were Piratess came across like a torch song, more haunting in person with Will Sheff's mournful voice; and the one-two-three punch of Your Past Life as a Blast, Our Life is not a Movie or Maybe and Lost Coastlines where each song ended on such a terrific burst of energy that I thought surely, they're done for the night, and prepared myself for their exit - and then they'd throw themselves into the next song with glee.


Lost Coastlines

For every song they played I could think of another I wanted to hear played, but still I walked out humming their songs, grinning from ear to ear, madly proselytising about Okkervil's supremacy as a band to treasure.


Wake and Be Fine
For Real
Rider
Black
Piratess
A Girl in Port
Son of Our So-Called Friend
We Need a Myth
The Valley
No Key No Plan (Will Scheff, Richard Pestorius)
So Come Back I Am Waiting
John Allyn Smith Sails
Your Past Life as a Blast (mp3 from last.fm)
Our Life is not a Movie or Maybe
Lost Coastlines

The Rise
Westfall
Unless It's Kicks

Pulp - 27 Jul 2011 - Hordern Pavillion

Jarvis Cocker made this show – whether dancing awkwardly at the front of the stage, making near-pornographic whispers into the mike or climbing all over massive speakers, he’s so on, possibly more than any other frontman I’ve ever seen. And even though it’s been 10 years since they’ve had a big hit, and over 10 years since I came to love them, there’s something wonderful in seeing his skinny, floppy haired silhouette in person.

The show itself is slick, with giant screens, the band name literally up in lights, and even a night-vision cam, but it wouldn’t work if the band weren’t so damn committed and good at what they do, even after a long hiatus. They played all the hits, sprinkled liberally through a setlist heavy with songs from Different Class (they played all but two songs from that album). Pop hits Disco 2000 and Common People were the most heartily received with a collective singalong and the terrible dancing of a generation of 20 and 30 somethings who were once the awkward, sensitive, sexually frustrated teens and youths that Pulp captures so well in its songs - and for a few golden moments we were those kids once more.

But it was more than just teenage nostalgia – the highlights for me were the songs that allowed Cocker and his band to bring on the layered musical brilliance and the over-the-top psychosexual melodrama such as I Spy, F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E and This is Hardcore.

Apart from being annoyed the the show started way earlier than advertised, so that we turned up halfway through the first song, this was such a brilliant, high-energy night full of great music that was part nostalgia trip but also somehow didn't seem dated at all.


Do You Remember the First Time?
Pink Glove
Bad Cover Version
Pencil Skirt
Something Changed
Disco 2000
Sorted For E's & Wizz
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
I Spy
Babies
Underwear
This Is Hardcore
The Fear
Sunrise
Bar Italia
Common People

Like a Friend
Live Bed Show
Mis-Shapes

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (TBR Challenge Book 3)

Leaving on a jet plane in a little while, so this will be short!


I always think Atwood is going to be harder to read than she actually is, though this might be because I gravitate toward her books about women and their complicated, often hurtful, relationships with each other.

However, because of this, it was also emotionally wearing to read. I was bullied as a child when I was around Elaine's age and there were times when I had to put the book down because my skin was crawling at the spot-on voices of Elaine's friends, the things they said to and *how* they said it, the way they used niceties to police her in really not-nice ways.

And yet, the sections about her life as a child were the most vivid, the most interesting to me - the descriptions of her unusual family, their trips away, the day-to-day minutae of being a child and finding out piece-by-piece how the world works. Elaine the grown woman, the artist, while she continues to talk in first person, seemed to become more and more distanced from the reader, from the world around her, as she reveals more about her past, revels more in the stories of the past than in her present.

But in the end, I liked it - couldn't say I enjoyed it, but I liked it. And hopefully this makes me more willing to read more Atwood.

**

Also, RIP Diana Wynne Jones. My first DWJ book was Black Maria (which hardly anyone mentions anymore) at around age 9 and it was creepy and wonderful and made me want to read more about magic worlds. I then went on to read Magicians of Caprona, then in quick succession all the Chrestomanci books. I will miss the joy of coming across new DWJ books in Kino - I will continue to look out for those books of hers I haven't managed to read yet.

Belle and Sebastian - 10 Mar 2011 - Opera House

Set list
I Fought in a War
Expectations
Dirty Dream No. 2
I'm Not Living in the Real World (Stevie)
Piazza, New York Catcher
I Want the World to Stop
Antony
Sukie in the Playground
Fox in the Snow
A Century of Fakers
Travelling Light (Stevie)
Write About Love
I Didn't See It Coming
Boy with the Arab Strap
Judy and the Dream of Horses
Sleep the Clock Around

Blues Are Still Blue
Me and the Major

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (TBR Challenge Book 2)

On the Road is jazz music; it's made up of riffs and improvisations. It sprawls at times - over space, time, form - but it can also seem rather hermetic at other moments, sealed in the repetition of yet another drifting/madcap travail from one end of America to the other, narrator Sal once again towed along by his best friend Dean. Or more correctly, by Dean's manic energy and his endless dreams - both in his limitless capacity for dreaming, and foor the fact that these dreams never come to fruition, never reach the end.

It's Dean that's the pulsing heart of this book - he's fascinating, and at the same time, you can't help be aware that if he were real he would the most infuriating person to be around. And then you realise he *was* real, that the beauty of the book in part is the way Kerouac has captured this portrait of his friend Neal Cassady, the way he manages to make music out of his character who leaps off the page, burning so bright that you can see why Sal/Jack stuck with him for so long, why he was drawn into Dean's schemes again and again.

It's actually taken me around five goes to finish reading this book. Some of the writing - oh, perfect in its poetry, its precise story-telling.

Marylou was watching Dean as she watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye - with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of her tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew woulld never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad.

But some other sections I couldn't leaf through fast enough, bored, frustrated. I'm not sure if I ever will attempt to give it a solid read through again - it seems to me such a rich text that it's best served in small bites, snatches of music, bursts of life at its most haphazard.

TBR Challenge - my 12 books for 2011

related reading

On the Road, Revisited
Loved reading this back and forth discussion between Megan O'Rourke and Walter Kirn on Slate about their reading of On the Road. I particularly enjoyed O'Rourke's response to the book, the way it expresses an idea of an America that was and never was and could've been.

Andrew McMahon - 10 Feb 2011 - The HiFi (Brisbane)

"Wouldn't it be funny," Al said to me as we ambled along Boundary St in Brisbane’s West End, “If we came all the way to Brisbane to see Andrew McMahon and then somehow missed the show?”

I think she said this to tease me about my worry that we’d forgotten to bring the tickets from Sydney, knowing full well we had them. But I admit to having a moment of panic when, upon entering the venue at 9:45pm ahead of the advertised 10pm starting time, we heard Andrew’s distinctive voice drifting down the corridor through the building.

Yes, he’d started early — so we only made it to the surprisingly packed floor as Andrew finished playing his first song, solo on the piano. He stayed seated at the piano for the rest of the show though he was joined by Jack’s Mannequin bandmate Bobby Anderson on the guitar for the rest of this set. They were lovely in harmony with each other, and even with just the two of them and an instrument each on stage they played with gusto and had a surprisingly amount of energy.



Andrew was adorable on stage — endearing and utterly earnest in performance. He introduced every single song, sometimes adding colour with anecdotes about song name choices and his motivations for writing a song (or admitting he couldn’t remember why he’d written it!) Some of them were serious and illuminating, like the story behind the rather depressingly titled Hey Hey Hey (We’re All Going to Die), and some were just amusing, like his reminiscing about being a stoner and insisting on a blue light in his room for about six months as an intro to She Paints Me Blue.

The set list was a treat, with both Jack’s Mannequin and Something Corporate songs getting an airing. It was a fun singing along to JM songs I love (like La La Lie at Andrew’s urging and the affirming The Resolution) but it was also great, as more of a latter-day JM fan, to be introduced to older Something Corporate cuts like the beautifully sad Down. Andrew even threw in a cover of Elton John’s rocket man, which worked well with his voice and his great piano work.



Andrew left the stage after just over an hour. All through the night there’d been the occasional call for Konstantine from the audience, but as Andrew returned to the stage for the encore, some obnoxious fans started to really yell for the song. Andrew tried charmingly to reason with them about why wouldn’t be playing it, but he became a little flustered as his words fell on mostly deaf ears, and the calls continued. (For the interested, the reason is to prevent him from having to play the song every night of his life — if he plays it at one gig then every following audience would demand and expect it. Fair enough.) However, the night still ended on a lovely, upbeat note with a singalong to Dark Blue, the song staying with me and looping through my head as we walked back to our accommodation.

All in all, I loved seeing him play again, to hear him play a longer set than I've ever managed before. Even though it was a solo tour, which restricted him to the piano and he couldn’t bounce around and be all energetic and muppety, he really is a pleasure to see and hear live.


photo from primroserobinson

Hammer and Strings (A Lullaby)
Mix Tape
Crashin’
As You Sleep
Holiday from Real
She Paints Me Blue
La La Lie
The Resolution
Rocket Man (Elton John cover)
Swim
Down
21 and Invincible
Hey Hey Hey (We’re All Going to Die)
Bruised
Spinning

Punk Rock Princess
Olive (Bobby Anderson side project)
Dark Blue

Menomena - 7 Feb 2011 - Factory Theatre

The last two Menomena albums made my favourites list of their respective years of release, so I was really really looking forward to this show, on their first tour of Australia. And they did not disappoint!

They started loud, strong and muscular with the aptly named Muscle’n Flo followed by two great tracks from Mines, their fantastic album from last year, including the awesome, funky TAOS. All through the show they were such a joy to listen to; the multilayered music, bouncing from atmospheric to rocking, from energetic to haunting and reflective, all with the restless, driving rhythm. I loved the vocals provided by the whole band, strange lines of harmony weaving in and out of each other, an odd mix of voices that shouldn’t work and yet sound so good together.

The four-piece band were fun on stage, with a great line in sweetly snarky banter between themselves and the small but dedicated audience. Justin Harris made time to thank the crowd for appreciating the deep cuts they were playing as they dipped into material from first album I am the Fun Blame Monster!, including The Late Great Libido, one of my favourites, which Harris said was the first time they’d played it live in four years! They were also fairly patient with the obnoxious elements of the crowd who kept heckling and yelling for Evil Bee, which the band demurred from playing since it’s usually sung by recently departed band member Brent Knopf.


The Late Great Libido

Despite the fact it was only their fourth show with Brent’s replacement, the enthusiastic, prone-to-dancing Paul Alcott on keyboard, the band were great, throwing themselves into the performance with abandon, giving it their all. Justin Harris was suffering a cold that was causing him to lose his voice – he apologised after some songs where his voice was noticeably breaking but powered on through the show, singing and playing with skill the baritone sax (to my great instrument-geek joy). And Danny Seim was just AMAZING to watch as he pounded away - the drumming, oh the drumming.



Even though their set was a little over an hour long, they were so charming and talented live, with a show so full of wonderful music, I didn’t feel cheated at all and enjoyed every moment.


Muscle'n Flo
Five Little Rooms
TAOS
Weird
Tithe
Strongest Man In The World
Twenty Cell Revolt
BOTE
The Late Great Libido
Queen Black Acid
Dirty Cartoons
Rotten Hell

Ghostship
The Pelican

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (TBR Challenge Book 1)

It all starts at that well-known symbol of the Australian summer, the suburban backyard BBQ. In attendance at Hector and Aisha’s house one hot summer afternoon is a party doubles as a cross-section of modern Australian society - young and old; friends, family and colleagues; and a mix of races and cultures. Then in one heated moment, Hector’s brother slaps the recalcitrant child of another guest. The Slap then follows the story of ten people at the BBQ that afternoon as they navigate and weather the repercussions of that moment in their own lives.

If you’ve never encountered Tsiolkas’ writing before, The Slap may be the place to start – it’s his most accessible novel to date. He leaves behind in-your-face tales of the marginal and the grotesque that so marked Dead Europe and Loaded and focuses on the heart of the suburbs, that bubbling cauldron of fidelity, friendship, family tension and race relations in every day Australian life. The characters he draws are so vivid, so human; presented with myriad flaws that can make them hard to like, but Tsiolkas is smart enough to flesh out their motivations that you can never fully condemn each person for their apparent sins.

My main issue with the book is that the divergent character points-of-view never quite gel together as one narrative for me. ‘The slap’ ties all the characters together but not their stories, and the exploration into the personal life of each character takes away from the overall narrative drive. But as standalone character pieces, they’re each an interesting commentary on romantic, familial and platonic relationships in contemporary Australia, though some are arguable more successful than others in their critique and/or emotional impact. The sections that struck me the most were Manolis’ bittersweet elegy on ageing, as Hector’s father reconnects with his past, with the brothers-in-arms who immigrated to Australian alongside him, who supported each other through those early days in an unfamiliar clime; and the joy of being young and alive in the tender, surprisingly hopeful ending section seen through Richie’s eyes.

Tsiolkas is such a powerful, angry writer that in the end, it doesn’t really matter that this ambitious, sprawling novel doesn’t completely hold together. I appreciate that it’s a good, uncomfortable read, a book that challenges, repels, and provokes thoughts about the ugly truths and issues that are too often kept hidden under the facade of polite and respectable society.

TBR Challenge - my 12 books for 2011