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From Lincoln to Little Dizzle: My favourite films in 2013

31 Tuesday Dec 2013

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American Hustle

 New Films

1. American Hustle – a film of surprises, lit up by Amy Adams’ performance, with a script which knows how to use the conventions of drama while also being fresh and strange. The playful evocation of the seventies fascinated me.

2. Lincoln – the sort of serious drama I appreciate more and more as I get older. Review here.

3. The Great Gatsby – I thought at first the drama would be lost in the glitz, but in the second half, the film hits hard. Particularly devastating for me is the realisation that Daisy is not a good person.

4. The Turning – the adaptation of Tim Winton’s short story collection (my favourite work of his) misses the connections between the stories because each story is individually adapted by different creative teams, with different actors for the same characters. But this is also the film’s strength, a kaleidoscope of Australian talent around the theme of remembering the town you grew up in from middle age.

5. Mystery Road – this film noir set in the Australian outback makes my list on the proviso that I understand the ending next time I see it, because I was just confused. But it is an atmospheric clash of genre and setting as an Aboriginal detective returns to the town he grew up in to solve a murder mystery.

On DVD

1. Safety Not Guaranteed – a quirky drama-comedy about a reporter and his two sidekicks who go to answer a classified ad looking for people to accompany a time-traveller. It’s not about time travel at all; it’s about outsiders finding meaning in life. It stars one of my favourite TV actors (Aubrey Plaza) and is a surprise delight.

2. Seeking a Friend For the End of the World – a film which shares some of the same tone of Safety Not Guaranteed. It brings together two wonderful actors – Keira Knightley and Steve Carell (US Office) – wondering what to do when there’s only a couple of weeks left to live. It’s dark but funny and made me cry. A lot of critics didn’t like it; I respectfully disagree.

3. The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle – this is one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen, and makes it on the list for being so bewilderingly interesting. My wife saw it on the videostore shelf and thought it worth trying; I’m glad of her serendipitous find. It’s like Fight Club meets David Cronenberg. After becoming addicted to experimental cookies discarded in a lab, an anarchist cleaner obsessed with the meaning of life gives birth to a blue fish creature. Obviously not a film for everyone. Unfortunately, it ends suddenly and unconvincingly, but even that’s part of the charm – like a dream which you suddenly wake up from.

My favourite books of 2013

31 Tuesday Dec 2013

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brightabyss

1. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer / Christian Wiman

A beautiful memoir of faith, doubt, death and poetry. I feel he gets to the heart of our existential dilemma as well as anyone I’ve ever read. I noticed in The Australian that Tim Winton had this as one of his favourites of the year too. I wrote on it here.

2. The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist / Martin Thomas

The amateur anthropologist R.H. Mathews lacked all reflexivity; he would not yield any of his secrets to his biographer, Martin Thomas. So, like great biographical questers before him, Thomas makes a narrative of the quest itself. This being the theme of my thesis, I found it riveting and beautiful.

3. Unapologetic / Francis Spufford

Much like Wiman, Spufford writes beautifully about faith, which is all too rare. Review here.

4. Dear Life / Alice Munro

Reviewers were falling over themselves to pin new superlatives to Munro’s work even before she won the Nobel Prize this year. I completely agree with them: her short stories seem perfect to me. I read this collection on a bus through Italy, giving both the landscape the flavour of Munro and Munro the flavour of Italy. I can’t hold in my head all the marvels of this collection; I just went back to my copy and, flicking through, I was shocked at how much I had forgotten. One which sticks is “Amundsen”, a story about a young woman’s doomed affair with an asylum doctor; it has the scope and profundity of a novel—as do many of the others.

 5. The Aspern Papers / Henry James

If I was reading more fiction, I would spend a lot of time with Henry James, because my failed attempts to read his longer novels have still given me some hint of his brilliance, if only I had the perseverance. I read his novella, The Aspern Papers, on the plane between Melbourne and Perth, and it absorbed me. Set in Venice, it is the elegiac story of a biographer desperately trying to win over the aging lover of a late poet to gain access to his papers. I got to see Venice later in the year, and I kept thinking of Henry James and the biographer walking the same strange streets I was walking. ‘Just here—this is where it could have happened.’

The best books I read in 2012

07 Monday Jan 2013

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I had a reading drought in 2012. No clear favourite, no book which even blew me away – and yet I still discovered some interesting and worthy ones. I have been scared I’ve been losing my love of reading, but I cured that re-reading an old favourite, Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved, which I finished when I couldn’t sleep on New Year’s Day. She reminded me in that novel of why I read, the pleasures and insights I hope to have, after I was so disheartened at feeling unable to finish three novels in a row.

1. Promised Lands / Jane Rogers (1996)
I wonder how much attention this received when it came out; it deserves to be read, as it is excellent. The frame story is that of a historian, Stephen, a failed idealistic school teacher now writing the story of William Dawes, part of Australia’s First Fleet in 1788. Kate Grenville wrote about Dawes in The Lieutenant, which I haven’t read, but the two books would make an interesting comparison.

2. The Sense of An Ending / Julian Barnes (2011)
I’m not sure it deserved the Man Booker Prize, but it certainly got my attention – a simply written story of a man looking back on his life and failed love that plays with the reader’s mind.

3. The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography / A.J.A. Symons (1934)
This the nonfiction antecedent for the biographical-quest genre I have been writing about and in. Symons goes in search of an obscure writer, ‘Baron Corvo’, a strange man who burned everyone who tried to help him.

4. Winter Journal / Paul Auster (2012)
Perhaps it is just for fans. But he’s my favourite writer, so this memoir certainly captivated me. Auster writes a memoir of his body, detailing his illnesses, scars, memories, and listing the address of every place he has ever lived. (He leaves his current address vague.)

5. Accordion Crimes / Annie Proulx (1996)

6. Too Much Happiness / Alice Munro (2009)

7. 11/22/63 / Stephen King (2011)

8. Ice / Louis Nowra (2008)

 

What was the best book you read in 2012?

My Top 10 Films of 2011

02 Monday Jan 2012

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Unlike my antiquated novel list, these are films which were actually released in 2011.

10. Contagion –an effective, chilling account of the spread of a pandemic. Marks off for Jude Law’s annoying character.

9. I Love You Philip Morris – the most surprising film I saw all year; an offbeat, strange comedy about a man who keeps breaking out of prison.

8. True Grit – a Western by the Coen Brothers.

7. The Debt – stylish, quality thriller about the assassination of a concentration camp doctor.

6. Melancholia – a film I need to see again, but I don’t have the endurance required for it. The way von Trier shows the planet moving closer and closer until it engulfs the Earth is truly frightening. The whole film is disturbing.

5. Higher Ground – a woman begins to doubt the 1980s evangelical world she is immersed in. For anyone who knows the world and is willing to hold it up to the light, this will surely be engaging.

4. Black Swan – an intense thriller about an obsessive ballerina losing her grip on reality.

3. The Guard – black, black comedy about an Irish policeman with his own contrary code of honour. I laughed so hard at all the outrageous things he says and does.

2. Source Code – a man keeps up waking up inside someone else’s body in a train about to explode. A science fiction thriller which will probably come apart under scrutiny, but it gripped me like no other film this year.

1. Tree of Life – it’s difficult and sometimes boring, but it’s brilliant because it captures as much about the meaning of life as a film can hope to do. It also shows what it is to be a child, giving us an experience of life through a boy’s eyes.

Honourable mentions:

  • Ides of March – it really is very good and probably belongs in the top 10.
  • Voyage of the Dawntreader – far better than Prince Caspian, I enjoyed this Narnia film.
  • Anonymous – a likeable, loud historical conspiracy thriller about the ‘real’ author of Shakespeare’s plays.
  • We Need To Talk About Kevin – a fine adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel, but without its beauty or compulsion.
  • Incendies – melodramatic but fascinating drama.
  • The Eye of the Storm – an interesting attempt to film Patrick White.

The most underwhelming films of the year: 

  • Get Low – a boring, competent film about a hermit who stages his own funeral.
  • Red State – Kevin Smith bombs out with this crazy, rather pointless shoot ’em up.

The 10 Novels I Liked Best in 2011

29 Thursday Dec 2011

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The ten novels I liked best in 2011, one of which was actually published in 2011.

10. The Summer That Never Was / Peter Robinson

Once or twice a year, I want to be comforted by crime fiction, by a detective who sets things right, and importantly, Robinson writes page-turning, well-plotted fiction about Inspector Banks without the cringeworthy prose of others I’ve tried.

9. The Bloodstone Papers / Glen Duncan

A sharply written novel about an Anglo-Indian man and the legacy of his parents. Duncan is one of those precious writers who get to the essence of things, his sentences giving frequent small thrills of insight.

8.  The Historian / Elizabeth Kostova

Three generations of researchers at different times in the twentieth century search through archives across Europe for clues to the whereabouts of Dracula’s tomb. A bibliophilic thriller following its questers through ancient libraries and monasteries.

7.  Due Preparations for the Plague / Jeanette Turner-Hospital

Years later, the events around the hijacking of a plane and the deaths of all the adults aboard still haunt the child survivors and relatives. It starts so well that I thought this would be a brilliant novel about living in the aftermath of grief; her prose is distinctive and her characters fascinating. Yet the novel falls apart in the second half, the worst section being an excruciatingly unrealistic transcript of the victims’ final speeches.

6.  To Your Scattered Bodies Go / Philip Jose Farmer

The kind of science fiction I read as a teenager and I wish I still did more often. It is the first of the Riverworld sequence, as everyone who ever lives finds themselves resurrected in a strange world without explanation.

5. The Ghostwriter / John Harwood

A quaint and fascinating ghost story by the son of the poet Gwen Harwood. The prose is beautiful and the story a strange and unexpected one, as a shy librarian uncovers the truth about his mother’s past and his own mysterious penfriend.

4. Swann: A Mystery / Carol Shields

Swann is simultaneously a sharp satire and an engaging drama about the minor industry of publishers, tourism, and academics which springs up around the poems of an untalented murdered farmer’s wife.

3. The Stranger’s Child / Alan Hollinghurst

I read this novel twice because I’m discussing it in my dissertation, and it holds up well. The changing reactions to a minor war poet’s work over the century after World War One are used to create a novel of the changing fabric of British society and its attitude toward remembering and toward homosexuality. It’s a big novel and yet also an intimate one.

2. Runaway / Alice Munro

These stories were perfect, and moved me deeply, yet months on I can’t remember them clearly, which is why I can’t give the collection the top spot.

1. The Poisonwood Bible / Barbara Kingsolver

I haven’t even finished this book yet; I’m listening to it on tape and I’m not in the car alone enough over the holidays. But I have nearly finished it and I declare it to be brilliant: the story of the daughters and wife of a missionary in Congo in the late 1950s and the long shadow that time casts over the lives of these women. Kingsolver’s achievement is immense, narrating the novel with five distinct, compelling voices, creating characters I feel I know and love.

My Favourite Novels In 2010

14 Friday Jan 2011

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What a year of novels! I found at least five I loved.

This list does not include the big pile of novels I discarded. So all of these had some merit, or I wouldn’t have finished them.

1. Gilead – Marilynne Robinson (2004), USA
It got even better this second time I read it, a novel which embodies grace and what it means to be alive. 10/10

2.  Freedom – Jonathan Franzen (2010), USA
It is a deeply perceptive novel. Franzen is smart and cynical, but he knows how to break my heart and then patch it up again with hope. He knows our inner worlds, and he also knows the outer political worlds. He seems to know everything. 10/10

3.  Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) , Brit
A devastating tale of a dystopian childhood and youth. I’m still waiting for the film to be released in Australia. 9/10

4.  Home, Marilynne Robinson (2008) USA
The companion to Gilead; some will find it ‘slow-burning’, others ‘boring’, but I came to love it. 9/10

5.  Journey Through Space – Toby Litt (2009) USA
A ship travelling to the nearest habitable planet at 1/10th light speed, taking generations to get there – what an amazing concept. Litt covers the span well and the civilisation of the ship comes to symbolize the behaviour of humanity broadly. It is bleak and sad, but also fascinating and compelling. 9/10

6. Cold Mountain [audiobook] – Charles Frazer, Charles (1997) USA
A cruel ending sours an incredibly rich and beautiful account of the dark days of the Civil War.  8/10

7.  On Beauty – Zadie Smith, (2005), Brit
An engrossing drama-comedy set around a university. She perceives the young and old well, it seems to me. 8/10

8.  Rabbit at rest – John Updike (1990) USA,
It was a perfect book last time I read it; what changed? 8/10

9.  Howards End – E.M. Forster (1910) Brit, 8/10

10. The Final Solution [audiobook] – Michael Chabon (2002)
Delightful, wise descriptions of life are what this novella are about, rather than the detective story. Missed crucial aspects listening on tape – like the fact the ‘old man’ is, of course, Sherlock Holmes! 8/10

11.    The Bell Jar [audiobook] – Sylvia Plath (1962) USA, 8/10

12.    Solar – Ian McEwan (2010) Brit, 7.5/10

13.    Unless – Carol Shields (2003) Canada, 7/10

14.    Oranges are not the only fruit – Jeannette Winterston (1985), Brit, 7/10

15.    The Reincarnation of Peter Proud – Max Ehrlich  USA (1974)
There is a satisfying narrative symmetry to The Reincarnation. It begins with Peter Proud’s recurring dream from his previous life of being drowned in a lake at night by a woman named Marcia, and it ends with this same woman drowning Peter in his current life.  The plot is well structured. Peter Proud has disturbing, recurring dreams of his past life. He seeks answers from a sleep researcher, a clairvoyant and a ‘psi-researcher’ in order to recover his past. But the break-through comes when he sees footage on television from the town where used to live, and eventually tracks it down. Once he’s discovered who he was, he has two tasks to juggle: he finds his daughter and wife (Marcia) from his previous life and learns as much information he can from them; and he re-enacts each of the recurring dreams, as the re-enactment has some sort of psychological healing effect on him – it stops coming back. 7/10

16.    The American – Henry James (1877) USA, 7/10

17.    In A Dry Season – Peter Robinson (1999) Brit, 6.5/10

18.    The Lovely Bones [audiobook] – Alice Sebold (2002) USA, 6.5/10

19.    Sunset Park – Paul Auster (2010) USA, 6/10

20.    A Personal Matter – Kenzaburo Oe (1964) Japan, 6/10

21.    That eye, the sky – Tim Winton (1986) Aust, 6/10

22.    The Three Evangelists – Fred Vargas (2006) France, 6/10

23.    So Much For That – Lionel Shriver (2010) USA, 5/10

Murdering Stepmothers – Anna Haebich (2010) Australia (Unrated)

When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro, Brit (Unrated)

My ten favourite novels read in 2009

08 Friday Jan 2010

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  1. Libra / Don DeLillo (1989)
    DeLillo uses the contradictions and paradoxes of the assassination and of what we know of Lee Oswald to create a complex situation and a paradoxical character, represented by the scales of Libra – a man weighing contradictory things at the same time, ready to tip one way or the other. The paradoxes make for a postmodern novel, a postmodern character, a postmodern world like DeLillo always evokes.
  2. Ragtime / E.L. Doctorow (1975)
     Perhaps Doctorow achieves what Geoff Nicholson wishes he could achieve – to say much and to say it with brilliant comedy. But more precisely he brings to mind Don DeLillo with his ambitiousness, tackling big American themes through real historical figures. He writes with a lot of wit. His panorama shot captures a millieu, a decade of American life. The family at the centre recur throughout without ever being named – Father, Mother, Son, Grandfather. Harry Houdini makes several appearences; Pierpont Morgan too few as a man obssessed by pyramids and attempting to set up a secret society with the only man made of the same stuff – Henry Ford.
  3. Gilead / Marilynne Robinson (2004)
     Her characters have a wisdom and identity tied to family and place that make me wish I had all these things. A novel which embodies grace.
  4. The Furies / Janet Hobhouse (1993)
     Everyone treats it as autobiography rather than the novel it was published as, and it certainly has the feel of autobiography. The trajectory of the narrative has all the repetitiousness and random intrusions of life itself. Her prose has an unusual quality: confessional, honest without a hint of apology. Her story is compelling, giving the feel of life without even zooming in on many scenes, but capturing the flow of it.
  5. Possession / A.S. Byatt (1990)
     An engrossing story of two contemporary literary scholars – Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey – who discover a secret affair between two (fictional) nineteenth century poets – Randolph Ash and Christobel LaMotte. The scholarly world is captured with all its interesting intrigues.
  6. Kafka on the Shore / Haruki Murakami (2002)
     A strange world and a strange voice, colloquial yet elegant.
  7. The Line of Beauty / Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
    An engrossing and elegant portrait of the top end of town during the Thatcher years, through the eyes of a young gay man attaching himself to a well-to-do family.
  8. Invisible / Paul Auster (2009)
     Familiar themes – the mysterious stranger offering a young man the chance of a lifetime; the allure of his beautiful girlfriend. More complete as a novel than Man In The Dark but less complete than the glory days of Leviathan, Moon Palace, Music of Chance. Notable for being the most sexually explicit of his novels.
  9. War and Peace / Leo Tolstoy (1868)
     It’s common to hear that War and Peace contains all of life, depicting the full range of human experiences. As a reader, it also evoked the full range of reading experiences for me, from the exhiliration of acute insight that resonated with my experience of life, to boring pages I wanted to flick over; from thrilling narrative drive to moments of narrative listlessness.
  10. The Cement Garden / Ian McEwan (1978)
     A transgressive novel set over a hot summer as orphaned children negotiate life and sex together. I couldn’t put it down.
  11. Bech at Bay / John Updike
     A superbly entertaining book, written in Updike’s exquisite prose, about Bech, the Jewish writer.

(What was I going to do, leave Updike out the year he died?)

Non fiction

  1. Library: An Unquiet History / Matthew Battles (2002)
     A highly readable but immensely learned and witty accounts of libraries through history, and their inevitable destruction.
  2. Nothing To Be Frightened Of / Julian Barnes (2008)
     I couldn’t put this memoir down. I didn’t mean to read it all but I couldn’t help it. I could discern no structure at all, but just followed Barnes for two hundred pages of reflections on death and God through the lens of his family. The whole memoir has the sort of wistfulness of the opening line quoted in the title of this post: ‘I don’t believe in God but I miss him.’
  3. Ex Libris / Anne Fadiman (1998)
    A delightful book of ‘reading memoirs’ – Anne Fadiman’s life in books. The kind of essays this blog would aspire to.
  4. The Genessee Diary / Henri Nouwen (1976)
    A profound exploration of one man’s spirituality, as he reflects each day on the world and himself during a season in a monastery.
  5. American Journeys / Don Watson (2008)
     A rambling travelogue, beautifully written, that keeps recurring around the centrality of fundamentalist Christianity to the experience of living in America. I have an endless fascination and horror with fundamentalist Christianity, and so I find this interesting, all the things he hears on the radio and sees on the telly, all the signs he sees about Jesus. There’s a lot more to it, of course, it’s just as much about politics and history and travel.

(That’s it for the lists for a while. )

My favourite novels of the decade

02 Saturday Jan 2010

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I don’t read many new release novels – maybe only a couple a year. I’d rather draw on the decades of great novels published in the past. But there’s something to be said for reading current fiction – it keeps one’s finger on the pulse and engaged with the current conversation. This list is an account of my favourite novels published between 2000 and 2009 – of the limited number I’ve read. There are quite a few obvious choices which made a big impact on the world, as well as some underrated, lesser known works. What do you think of my choices? And what are your favourites?

1. Atonement / Ian McEwan (2001)
One of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. McEwan’s prose has an exquisite transparency and elegance. His page turning story of a young girl’s jealous accusation against her sister’s working class lover turns into a bigger exploration of forgiveness and writing itself. He has such insight into the characters’ minds, and an ability to represent everyone’s reality. For me, a perfect novel.

2. The Corrections / Jonathan Franzen (2001)
This is the best portrait of the decade I’ve read, even though it’s probably set in the late nineties. It is an engrossing picture of a family set against all the anxieties of a world of economic rationalization and a middle class which doesn’t know why it’s alive. A bit like John Updike, but darker, more blackly humorous and less warm. Like Updike writing as Easton Ellis. It has the funniest scenes I have ever read in any book, especially when Chip tries to steal a fish stuffed down his pants and when he decides at the last moment to send out some Christmas presents.

3. What I Loved / Siri Hustvedt (2003)
A story of art and a story of family, full of the poignancy of years. It is a strange novel, spanning a couple of genres with some twists that reflect life itself. The elegiac beauty of the title captures the tone of the whole work.

4. The Book of Illusions / Paul Auster (2002)
Auster near his best. A grieving academic is summoned to the house of a silent film star, Hector Mann, long thought to be dead. It’s a sophisticated page turner, a kind of treasure hunt where the treasure is some films previously unknown to the world. But it’s also an examination of death and the meaning of life.

5. The Turning / Tim Winton (2004)
This collection grabbed me completely. A beautiful Western Australian portrait of big moments in small lives. The connections between the stories make reading the book compulsive, hoping but not guaranteed to know more about the characters as we are shifted back and forward between narrators and decades. In the end the tapestry is almost a novel, particularly the story of Victor and Gail.

6. We Need To Talk About Kevin / Lionel Shriver (2003)
The story of a high school massacrer, told by his mother. Shriver has an ability, like McEwan, to articulate experiences I thought were inarticulatable, modes of thinking, feelings which I am only half aware of.

7. Youth / J.M. Coetzee (2002)
A sparse account of a troubled youth who dreams of literary greatness in London as an exile from South Africa. He cannot connect with people. The prose is lean without a spare word, getting so well to states of mind and insight into youthful ambition and disappointment.

8. On Chesil Beach / Ian McEwan (2007)
A heartbreaking short novel about a couple’s disastrous wedding night, brilliantly insightful into the differences in perception and emotion that can cause devastating conflict between lovers.

9. Saturday / Ian McEwan (2005)
Manages to show the state of the world through one man’s mind on one day. Perowne is a neurosurgeon; the Saturday in question is the day of the anti-war protests just before the invasion of Iraq. In his relationship to his family, a game of squash and a road-rage incident which turns into a home invasion by a thug, he feels and thinks about the state of the world and the state of his life. McEwan’s prose has these moments of intense insight that are beautiful to read. He manages to write about what it’s like to listen to a certain piece of music, or the subtle feelings you might have waking in the middle of night and watching your wife sleep. The final scene lifts the whole novel another notch, an inspired piece of writing with Henry Perowne looking out on the square at the end of the long Saturday and thinking about what will come in the future, the leaving of his children, the death of his mother and father-in-law; the terrorist attack that has to happen. He imagines another doctor standing looking out at the square in 1903, and how this doctor would not believe what was to happen in the next one hundred years.

10. Sweet / Tracy Ryan (2008)
The story of three women caught in the thrall of a manipulative pastor of a conservative Baptist church in the outer-suburbs of Perth circa 1986. The Reverend William King is a complex figure, genuinely caring but always controlling. The prose is smooth and unintrusive and filled with flashes of beauty. The structure effectively balances and interweaves the stories of the three women connected by William. It is at once an engrossing drama of broad interest and yet also an important portrait of the evangelical world, a world rarely depicted in literature.

11. The Diviners / Rick Moody (2005)
An ambitious, sprawling novel depicting America in the uncertainty of the disputed election of 2000 through the prism of the flurry around a mini-series project that is picked up and hyped throughout the media industry. It is the same sort of book as Ulysses – with constant literary innovation and such a wide range of voices and styles. Of course, it’s not nearly as good; the only passages that approach brilliance are those where Moody returns to his forte – the suburbs and the family. But even where it isn’t brilliant, it is always good, entertaining, engaging and insightful. It finishes with a futile flourish, as the network CEO is assured by a judge in the disputed returns that the climate is right to crush the mini-series and everything it stands for; the future is reality TV, Republican and patriotic.

12. The Blind Assassin / Margaret Atwood (2000)
A literary mystery with a span of decades. Her characters leap off the page.

13. Gilead / Marilynne Robinson (2004)
The best Christian novel I have ever read, a testimony of grace and faith in small town America in the 1950s as an old man looks back on the life he has lived and hopes for the future of his young son.

14. Trip to the Stars / Nicholas Christopher (2000)
A beautiful novel of coincidence, tracing a boy after he is kidnapped from a planetarium in the 1960s. One for fans of Paul Auster.

15. The Brief History of the Dead / Kevin Brockmeier (2006)
A rare book set in an afterlife in which the dead live while people on Earth still remember them. Wonderful territory, stretching our imagination and beautifully told.

16. Atomised / Michel Houellebecq (2000)
A bleak novel about death and the way it wipes out any hope in the world, tempered by the (disturbing) hope of a future individual-less Buddhist utopia.

17. Liv / Morgan Yasbincek (2000)
A lyrical Western Australian novel told in short fragments and telling the story of the daughter of an immigrant family finding her feet in the world.

18. Dirt Music / Tim Winton (2001)
Winton has done something special in writing a book so full of Western Australia, a compulsive story with broad appeal and moments of profound observation.

19. Notes on a Scandal / Zoe Heller (2003)
Page-turning diary of a passive-aggressive teacher observing her teacher friend embark on an affair with a student. Witty and insightful.

20. Bedlam Burning / Geoff Nicholson (2000)
A comic novel in the best British tradition telling the story of a writer-in-residence at an asylum.

[Thursday 3pm #35] Nathan’s Top 30 Films of the Noughties

26 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in film review, lists, Series: Thursday 3pm feature posts (2009)

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1. American Beauty (2000)
I need to watch this film again (I saw it four or five times early in the decade) and see if it still has the hold over me it had then. It is, by turns, a beautiful and savage look at suburban life.

2. The Science of Sleep (2007)
A film with the atmosphere of a dream in the best possible sense; Stephane pursues his neighbour Stephanie and his artistic ambition in a world with all the distortions and twists of dreams.

3. The Virgin Suicides (2000)
I love this film’s evocation of the 1970s and of adolescence. It is a film of rare beauty, humour and drama.

4. Synecdoche (2009)
A sad film about death and art, and a play which consumes the world.

4a. LATE ADDITION : A Serious Man (2009)
A comic film about suffering and the meaning of life, sharply witty.

5. I’m Not There (2007)
The lives of Bob Dylan told in myth; strange and wonderful.

6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Would you erase all the memories of a failed romance if you could? Crazy and beautiful at the same time.

7. Me, you and everyone we know (2005)
A film about awkward people in love; quirky and warm with splendid dialogue.

8. Donnie Darko (2001)
I don’t pretend to understand it, but it’s a startling, inspiring journey with Donnie, an authentic and brave teenager.

9. Amazing Grace (2007)
The most mainstream of the films on this list, an inspiring biopic of William Wilberforce’s fight against slavery.

10. Amelie (2001)
Every second person’s favourite film is genuinely brilliant, a whimsical, exploration of the meaning of life.

11. Adaptation (2002)
Charlie Kaufman for the third time in this list; he was meant to adapt The Orchid Thief, a conventional non-fiction narrative, but instead he wrote a script about the whole idea of ‘adaptation’ and a writer battling to write the script for The Orchid Thief.

12. Atonement (2007)
A classy adaptation of one of my favourite books, retaining much of the tragedy and drama; also visually stunning.

13. 24 Hour Party People (2002)
Director Michael Winterbottom has crafted a brilliant postmodern biopic of Tony Wilson and his involvement with Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays.

14. The Quiet American (2002)
An excellent adaptation of the Graham Greene novel; a sombre exploration of colonialism and personal ethics.

15. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
The Coen brothers’ film noir about a barber who gets himself in over his head. The first time I watched, it was an all time favourite, but it had less impact on repeat viewings.

16. Death at a Funeral (2007)
The funniest film I saw all decade.

17. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
As good as the hype – an energetic, pulsing thriller-drama.

18. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
Two teenage boys go on a holiday with a married woman.

19. Palindromes (2004)
An awkwardly funny and disturbing film about abortion and paedophilia; I don’t think I’m brave enough to watch it again.

20. Memento (2000)
A crime film about a man with no short term memory, with a very effective narrative innovation.

21. Storytelling (2001)
I love the creative writing class scenes early in this film; a shocking and funny film about ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction’ from Todd Solondz (Palindromes).

22. Pan’s Labrinyth (2006)
A violent fable set in wartime Italy.

23. Match Point (2005)
The only Woody Allen film of the decade I liked, and I speak as a fan; a kind of Dostoveskian drama.

24. As It Is In Heaven (2004)
A heartwarming Swedish film about a composer who goes back to his small home town; I saw it in a tiny seaside cinema in NZ on our honeymoon.

25. Team America (2004)
A puerile, hilarious satire on the international politics of the decade from the South Park creators.

26. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
A kind of J.D. Salingeresque look at a crazy family from Wes Anderson.

27. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
A nasty thriller/ family drama brilliantly executed by octogenarian director Sydney Lumet; you’d need to be in the right mood to enjoy this.

28. Mullholland Dr (2001)
I don’t know what to think of David Lynch’s nightmares; there was a time I lived by them.

29. He Died With A Felafel In His Hand (2001)
A funny Australian look at share houses.

30. The Dark Knight (2008)
Batman as he should be; epic filmmaking at its best.
A strong contender for the number one place – Fight Club – was released in November 1999, just outside the decade. It was still playing at cinemas well into 2000 when I finally saw it. American Beauty was released in 1999 in the USA, but not until January 2000 in Australia. Some arbitrary decisions, then.

[Thursday 3pm #18] American Habits

30 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in autobiographical, lists, reading, Series: Thursday 3pm feature posts (2009)

≈ 1 Comment

On Tuesday night, when I should have been doing something productive or relaxing, I created a graph showing how many novels (and other narratives) I had read by country since 1996. The results were predictably homogenous, but even more weighted toward the USA than I imagined.

Novelsbycountry

There you have it – 220 from the USA, 101 from Britain, 68 from Australia, 14 from Canada for the top four places. I don’t have records from 98-00; maybe I was much more cosmpolitan in those years. The figures are also skewed toward the USA because in 96 and 97 when I was a science fiction addict, just about everything I read came from there.

I was thinking of resolving to read more Australian, European, Asian and African texts to broaden my horizons. And maybe I will. But I’m not going to worry too much. There’s too many things in this world to feel guilty about.

But I am curious about why I’m so drawn to American fiction. I have an aversion to consumerism, patriotism, fundamentalism and unchecked capitalism, all those things America is famous for. But I am also fascinated by America, and even to prod and gawk at those things I hate. Many of my favourite authors are American – Auster, DeLillo, Franzen, Moody, McCullers, Updike. I’d like to visit the USA some day; I’ll just have a hard time convincing my wife. (I think I would like to travel by train across its heartland; keep meaning to read Don Watson’s account of this.)

I think its easier to read in tune with our own culture, rather than cross cultural boundaries; and interestingly I don’t feel like I have to cross much of a boundary to read American fiction – or British fiction, I suppose, but I’ve found less authors there whom I love.

Interestingly just about every European novel I have read has been brilliant. This is merely a reflection of how selective I’ve been, but there’s an untapped continent there. In fact, there’s at least four of them.

What are your reading habits like? Regale and shame me with the stories of how you spend your leisure time reading Afghani novels in the original or 13th century Chinese epics. Go on, show me up. 🙂