Film
I worked front-of-house at the Melbourne Recital Centre for the better part of my twenties, sitting in on hundreds of classical music performances during that time. The highlight for me was a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra of Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa. I was to accompany a number of VIPs who would be seated onstage for the duration of the performance, just behind the orchestra, facing out – inverting the perspective I had grown so accustomed to. Now, with the musicians’ backs to me, and the audience in darkness, there was only one person for me to focus on: the conductor.
... (read more)There is a scene in Maria Schrader’s film She Said where two New York Times journalists debate the merits of pursuing an investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse, given, as one of them says, that actresses already have a voice. ‘Are there other women to be looking at?’, she asks.
... (read more)'Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind: An ever-prolific American polymath' by Sascha Morrell
Here is a list of things you won’t see the great American writer Joyce Carol Oates doing in this documentary: looting, detonating a bomb, strangling children, having sex, eating, eating human flesh, sleeping, kissing, cussing, masturbating, masturbating over a corpse, screaming, lobotomising a lover, shedding tears (though she comes close), or being murdered.
...After the uneven space operatics of Ad Astra (2019), American writer–director James Gray returns to Earth – specifically to Queens, New York, 1980 – with Armageddon Time, a burnished, contemplative, and astutely observed autobiographical coming-of-age tale. This is a rapidly escalating micro-trend in cinema; it seems that every auteur with enough critical clout will soon be expected to churn out their very own childhood memoir movie, from Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018) and Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast (2021) to the upcoming self-told Steven Spielberg origin story, The Fabelmans.
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