February 5th, 2009 by
Robert
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
Enmore Theatre
January 29, 2009
Last time Ryan Adams came to town with his incredible band, The Cardinals, he really had his cranky hat on. Appearing on a sumptuously designed stage set, under subdued purple lighting, he refused to engage in any kind of discourse with the audience. Eventually the repeated yells of “Turn the light on!” were too much, and he stormed off stage: “Maybe while we’re gone you can have a think about how to be a proper audience”. Hmmm, not exactly a warm and fuzzy experience. Then again, the musical performance was exceptional.
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February 5th, 2009 by
Robert
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova with The Frames
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
January 28, 2009
The great appeal of John Carney’s 2006 low-budget film, Once, was the power and beauty of the music created from such humble and unassuming beginnings. I wonder if Glen Hansard or Marketa Irglova would ever have expected that little film’s subsequent success, and the boost to their musical careers it provided. Joined by Hansard’s regular band, The Frames, they managed to fill the Sydney Opera House concert hall for three straight nights as part of the Festival of Sydney.
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February 5th, 2009 by
Robert
The meditative and subtle beauty of barren desert landscapes was a key motif of cinema’s Westerns from the late 60’s to the early 70’s. In juxtaposition with the harsh brutality of life in the old west, these landscapes were exploited to devastating effect by film-makers like Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. In his directorial (film) debut, Tommy Lee Jones has returned to many of the themes first explored in those “Revisionist Westerns” – corrupt US authority, the repression of Indians and Mexicans (as well as women), and masculinity as brutality, to name a few – whilst at the same time adopting the same stark aesthetic.
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February 5th, 2009 by
Robert
Will Japanese Manga-style anime become the last bastion of traditional, non-computer generated animation? Has it become a sacrosanct Japanese tradition to remain hermetically preserved from the ravages of time and international opinion a la geisha, natto and visits to the Yasukuni Shrine? Films like Satoshi Kon’s hallucinogenic gem, Paprika, make me hope that the answer to that question is “yes”.
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January 27th, 2009 by
Robert
The theories and concepts Neal Stephenson expounds in his extraordinary novel, Snow Crash, are so intricate, broad-ranging and profound, that reading the book is something like riding an intellectual rollercoaster. Encompassing technology, sociology, economics, religion, linguistics, archaeology, physiology, history, politics and ethics, somehow Snow Crash still manages to work spectacularly well as an action adventure story. Two months after reading it, I’m still coming to grips with it.
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January 27th, 2009 by
Robert
Why can’t the Academy remember back more than two months whenever it comes to selecting nominations for the Oscars? It may be academic anyway, given the overwhelming odds supporting a Best Supporting Actor gong for Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, but it would have been nice to see Ben Kingsley at least up there in contention. Emulating his previous subversively brilliant performance as Don Logan in Sexy Beast, he has created something completely new (and undeniably just as impressive) in his realisation of wayward psychiatrist Dr Jeffrey Squires in Jonathan Levine’s satisfying coming-of-age plodder, The Wackness.
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January 23rd, 2009 by
Robert
Big Day Out 2009
Gold Coast Parklands
Sunday, January 18
It’s been a while since I’ve taken the plunge into the mass of desperate youth indulgence that is the Big Day Out. As this most iconic of Aussie music festivals has evolved, I’ve increasingly found myself alienated by its tendency to present a bill so broadly appealing as to almost defeat its own intent to service a niche music market. This is certainly a charge that could be levelled at the 2009 incarnation, but for me there were just enough interesting bands dotted thoughout the lineup to induce me to jump back in.
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Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
