ASR – StopPress 103
1) George
Valentin and his dog Uggie from The Artist 2) William Kentridge’s
Five Themes exhibition is at ACMI
Black
& white culture shock
25.3.12 – My good friend Maria
has now returned to the ACT, but before she left we went to
see the multi Oscar nominated movie, The Artist. As
you know I was very disappointed with Hugo, so I was
nervous that the shitstorm of hype accompanying The Artist
might inevitably mean I would be equally disappointed with this
French take on old Hollywood. Happily that wasn’t the case.
The Artist maintains momentum for its entire length (quite
long at 2½ hrs) and and it manages to come across as
joyfully affectionate despite the intellectual rigour required
to make a ‘silent’ movie work for a modern-day audience – it
was a massive relief to find there were no Busby Berkley moments
for instance. Highly recommended if you’re simply looking to
be entertained.
Maria had also seen the William Kentridge Five Themes
exhibition before she left and said she was very impressed –
I believe ‘confronted’ might’ve been the specific term. Anyway,
I determined that I should see it and mentioned it to Dick and
Mary – and before you know it we’d arranged to meet at the Athenaeum
Library and do lunch at Bistrot d’Orsay before wandering down
to ACMI to see the exhibition.
We met as planned and enjoyed a lunch of such scale and splendour
as to render me barely capable of breathing – luckily the walk
to Federation Square (aka Bedrock) was all downhill
otherwise I might’ve had to hi-jack a bicycle or catch a cab.
I’d only managed to (faintly) appreciate two of the five Themes
on offer when I glanced at my watch and saw that my parking
meter had expired. I made my apologies to Dick and tottered
off to my thankfully unblemished van. I will make a point of
going again and offer an opinion then.
1) A
grove of Black Boys 2) A platter of cheese with the pinot 3)
Melbourne’s founder Batman has a good idea
4) An
example of some exquisite Persian illumination 5) My good friend,
Maria, at
the State Library
6)
The reading room at the Victorian State Library 7) Young Coby
works himself into a guitar frenzy
8) Joss
sticks some Choclatté chocolates in my face
A
week or more of culture has Mike reeling..
15.3.12 – Maria Gravias, whom I’ve described
rather coyly as my cultural attaché, has been in Melbourne
for the past week or so recovering from a severe bout of ACT-itis,
which has been very much Canberra’s loss and my gain. So busy
has been our cultural schedule I shall be hard put to remember
every detail, but I shall give you the gist of the
many goings-on.
Chris had a holiday on Monday, so he, Maria and I drove out
to visit the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, right next to the Cranbourne
race track. From a distance it looks like a small-ish open-cut
mine, but you can’t help but be very impressed as soon as you
begin the walk around – it’s a triumph of artistic landscaping
of almost exclusively native
flora. The couple of bandicoots
we spied were the cute bonus Aussie fauna.
On Tuesday I met Maria at the Arts Centre for the Australian
Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Infinity show, featuring
three ballets with specially commisioned music and choreography.
I was particularly taken with Graeme Murphy’s piece, (Brett
Dean’s score was striking and inventive) and I liked the whimsy
and humour of Gideon Obarzanek’s annotated Swan Lake, (music
by Stefan Gregory after Tchaikovsky), but the Bangarra piece
was a disappointment, the mind-numbing banality of both the
music and the choreography leaving me quite angry.
On Wednesday we went to see A Separation, the movie
that David and Margaret, in almost unprecedented unanimity,
each gave five out of five stars. While we agreed the film
was near perfect in execution, we left the theatre dubious
of any resolution to the Middle East problems as a result
of this brief exposure to an Iranian domestic crisis, where
the medieval presence of the Koran as a third player just
served to complicate an already precariously nuanced situation.
Still, highly recommended if you’re looking for something
quite different.
We ate at the Carlton
Wine Room afterwards and had a truly memorable meal topped
off with a half-bottle (!) of Mt Difficulty (Otago) pinot
noir. All beyond reproach and more than highly recommended.
On Thursday I had a long-awaited visit from James Feldman,
(the Shepparton PC Doctor), to help install my new monitors,
which required a new graphics card for the pair (!) on the
music computer so it was just as well he was around.
On Saturday I met Maria at the Victorian State Library in
town, mainly to take in the Persian Love & Devotion
exhibition at the Keith Murdoch gallery, (pic 4)
but I was also looking forward to seeing the rest of the library
as I’d not visited it before. The exhibition was good value,
(it was free), replete with exquisite manuscripts illuminated
in such detail as to utterly defeat the naked eye – well,
my naked eye, anyway. We looked with some awe at
the reading room, (pic 6) (I would actually travel
there to read a book I think), and sniffed around the historical
paintings in the gallery, (which gave me a real sense of Victorian
history), before lunching (adequately) in the bistro (pic
5) and going our separate ways.
Monday was Labour Day and Chris Kay had invited me out to
Croydon to help celebrate his latest bottling, which this
year for the first time includes a pinot noir. I brought Maria
along with me plus a box of Choclatté chocolates, (pic
8) which generated a great deal of comment. I had a roaring
time with young Coby (pic 7) and we all spent a very
congenial evening eating, drinking and chatting – as y’ do.