tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46701453729914375732024-03-13T23:17:39.051-07:00DavidFree.netEssays, articles and reviews by David FreeDavid Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-4184977198320359872024-03-13T19:21:00.000-07:002024-03-13T19:21:31.927-07:00The Podcast<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2H8vPB84iZvraZx4XmVt0KKVvrypTOb1GahlMtCTrUTvHA_64UUBFF3NPpDbV6QmWdNq3ITaJe7MTEBheOwPzbwOebwUg1dmXIQcMBXuOow2jW-iSq_l4HyJ0Q3m3LyWBZr691bmn3sPfRK-5Pg-54u71kMV1GnzZQTg9HbQF23fQfUyHmPm9jrFOyQ/s2994/Ghosts%20of%20Dallas%203rd%20final%20under%201MB.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2994" data-original-width="2994" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2H8vPB84iZvraZx4XmVt0KKVvrypTOb1GahlMtCTrUTvHA_64UUBFF3NPpDbV6QmWdNq3ITaJe7MTEBheOwPzbwOebwUg1dmXIQcMBXuOow2jW-iSq_l4HyJ0Q3m3LyWBZr691bmn3sPfRK-5Pg-54u71kMV1GnzZQTg9HbQF23fQfUyHmPm9jrFOyQ/w200-h200/Ghosts%20of%20Dallas%203rd%20final%20under%201MB.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">To mark the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I'm releasing a longform podcast this year, entitled <i>Ghosts of Dallas</i>, that will tell the epic story of Kennedy conspiracism. </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Why is it that more than half the American population has always believed there was a conspiracy behind Kennedy's death? Who were the pioneers who made JFK denialism into an industry? How did six decades of myth-making about Kennedy's murder set the scene for the conspiratorial presidency of Donald J. Trump? And why did Jack Ruby bring his favourite sausage dog along on the morning he shot Lee Harvey Oswald?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Episodes 1-12 are available now wherever you get your podcasts.</div><p> </p>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-86358570188802000222024-02-16T18:09:00.000-08:002024-03-13T19:14:05.595-07:00Capote and The Swans<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNIzJNwFPL44ySMg0wx0-_mhgtLVavaiFgFLJV4oHQPtRqcVmOewq0syJvMSBLvpm9cDFCg0LWSfo-ZI5_vzpClOzhBhefWLBeQDgMjfFI0ZvfvR5vR8DSnwIbD4acLQLPfoxrP7tbxAhQBoP06CLGL9QHLDbUszNyrCyx5p4uKqdzUtnyZRH2Ny0v0Z1q/s318/Truman_Capote_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="318" data-original-width="220" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNIzJNwFPL44ySMg0wx0-_mhgtLVavaiFgFLJV4oHQPtRqcVmOewq0syJvMSBLvpm9cDFCg0LWSfo-ZI5_vzpClOzhBhefWLBeQDgMjfFI0ZvfvR5vR8DSnwIbD4acLQLPfoxrP7tbxAhQBoP06CLGL9QHLDbUszNyrCyx5p4uKqdzUtnyZRH2Ny0v0Z1q/s1600/Truman_Capote_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg" width="220" /></a></div><b>First published in <i>The Sydney Morning Herald</i> and <i>The Age</i>, February 17, 2024</b></div><div><br />When Truman Capote died in 1984, his arch rival Gore Vidal called his death “a wise career move.” Unkind as that suggestion was, it hasn’t turned out to be untrue. Capote’s career was indeed at a low ebb when he died at the age of 59. He hadn’t produced a full-length prose work since In Cold Blood (1966). Mainly he had spent the last third of his life destroying himself with drink and drugs. <br /><br /></div><div>Since his death, things have taken a positive turn for Capote. He has published a series of posthumous works, including the lost novel Summer Crossing (2005). He has been the subject of three major screen productions. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing him in Capote (2005). Some said that Toby Jones made an even more convincing Capote in Infamous (2006). <br /><br /></div><div>Now we have Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (Binge), in which Tom Hollander brilliantly becomes Capote at all phases of his career, from glittering wunderkind to bloviating old wreck. Feud has put Capote back in the headlines. Suddenly he’s the talk of the town again. Gore Vidal must be spinning in his grave.<br /><br /></div><div>What other American author has been portrayed on screen three times? But Capote was always a one-off: the story of his life is as extraordinary as anything he wrote himself. At his peak, he was the most celebrated writer in America. Norman Mailer, who wasn’t known for heaping praise on his contemporaries, called Capote “a ballsy little guy” and “the best writer of my generation”. <br /><br /></div><div>The ballsy little guy had humble origins. An only child, Capote was unwanted by his father and mother. When he was 6, his mother left him to be raised by a houseful of her elderly cousins in rural Alabama. <br />Apart from the Bible, there were few books in the house. As a reader and then a writer, Capote was largely self-taught; his favourite childhood toys were his dictionary and typewriter. By a remarkable coincidence, the young Capote lived right next door to the young Harper Lee, future author of To Kill a Mockingbird. The two became fast friends; Lee later helped Capote do the legwork for In Cold Blood.<br /><br /></div><div>Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was published in 1948, when he was 23. It caused a sensation, partly because of the brooding photo of the boyish author on the back cover. Capote was a striking figure. He stood at just 5 feet 3 inches, or 160cm. His head looked too big for his body. He spoke in a voice so high-pitched that – as Vidal quipped – it could be understood only by dogs. <br /><br /></div><div>Right from the start, Capote made not the slightest attempt to conceal his sexuality. Considering the era he grew up in, this policy was astoundingly courageous. In the 1970s, when the novelist Jacqueline Susann went on TV and implied he was gay, Capote was unfazed. “Big news!” he said.<br /><br /></div><div>Capote’s career as an author of pure fiction peaked with the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). When Audrey Hepburn was cast to play Holly Golightly in the movie, Capote was peeved. He had wanted Marilyn Monroe.<br /><br /></div><div>After Tiffany’s, Capote felt an itch to turn from fiction to the documenting of American fact. In 1959, his eye was caught by a newspaper story about a brutal unsolved murder in Kansas. He set out to chronicle the crime from all angles, using all the tools of a novelist. He even claimed to have invented a new form: the non-fiction novel. <br /><br /></div><div>But writing about reality had its challenges. When Capote went to Kansas to start the book, his story had nothing more than a beginning. If it was going to have a middle and end, he would have to wait until reality supplied them. <br /><br /></div><div>He soon found himself saddled with ethical and emotional problems, too. After the two murderers were captured and convicted, Capote spent hundreds of hours interviewing them on death row. He formed an especially intense bond with one of them, the diminutive, poetry-writing Perry Smith. <br /><br /></div><div>This put Capote in an agonising position. Clearly, his book couldn’t be finished and published until “the boys”, as he called them, were executed. On the human level, he dreaded that outcome. But as a writer, he couldn’t help wishing that the denouement of his story would hurry up and happen. <br /><br /></div><div>Smith and his partner in crime, Dick Hickock, were hanged in 1965. In Cold Blood appeared the following January. Immediately hailed as a masterpiece, it earned its author $2 million by the end of the year. Capote celebrated by throwing a lavish masked ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Among his 500 guests were Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.<br /><br /></div><div>By the end of 1966, there was no doubt that Capote had made it. The flamboyant outsider from Alabama had become an insider. To prove it, he’d become an intimate friend of New York’s most prominent socialites: Babe Paley, wife of the CBS boss Bill Paley; Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy; the elegant trend-setter Slim Keith. Capote called these women his “swans”; he told them his most outrageous secrets, and they told him theirs. <br /><br /></div><div>But how was he going to follow In Cold Blood? Capote began telling the world that his next book would be his masterpiece: the American answer to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Entitled Answered Prayers, it would be a dark comedy about American high society – a world that Capote seemed ideally qualified to describe from the inside.<br /><br /></div><div>Capote signed his first contract for Answered Prayers in 1966. Before writing a line of the book, he sold the movie rights for $350,000 – an outrageous sum at the time. He was contracted to deliver the novel on January 1, 1968. Too busy living the high life to meet that deadline, he negotiated the first of many revised contracts, which featured ever-larger advances and ever-later delivery dates. <br /><br /></div><div>By 1975, Capote’s work on Answered Prayers had ground to a halt. After writing a handful of chapters, he’d become lost in the fog of his addictions. People were starting to wonder if he was still a writer. To prove that he was, he took the drastic step of letting Esquire magazine publish four chapters from his work in progress. <br /><br /></div><div>It was a remarkably self-destructive move. Capote’s supposed masterwork turned out to be little more than a hotchpotch of ugly, mean-spirited gossip about thinly disguised real-life figures. Among those easily identified figures were his swans. Stories they’d told him in confidence were plastered all over the text. When a friend warned him that the swans could hardly fail to notice this, Capote said, “Nah, they’re too dumb.”<br /><br /></div><div>He wound up paying for that callous miscalculation. His cherished swans understood what he’d done, all right. Feeling betrayed and hurt, they shut him out of their glamorous lives. <br /><br /></div><div>Capote was shattered. Whether he wrote another word of Answered Prayers afterwards remains a mystery. He assured interviewers that the book was still happening. “Just wait till they see the rest of it,” he said. Some of his friends later swore that Capote had read them other completed chapters of the work. But when his files were searched after his death, no other parts of the novel were found. <br /><br /></div><div>What happened to the rest of the book? For a while, it was rumoured that Capote had stashed the finished work in a safe-deposit box somewhere. Another theory had it that he’d destroyed the manuscript before his death. Others believed that Capote never wrote any more of the book than the fragments published by Esquire, which posthumously reappeared in book form as Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel.<br /><br /></div><div>Another mystery is psychological. What made Capote betray his swans, and why was he so stunned when they reacted in the normal human way? The best theory is that it had something to do with his mother – “the single worst person in my life,” as Capote called her. When she dumped him in Alabama with his elderly aunts, the young Capote seems to have decided that he would never be rejected again. From then on, he would always get his rejections in first.<br /><br /></div><div>In Feud, Capote’s mother appears to him as a garishly dolled-up ghost, played by Jessica Lange. The show is full of juicy roles for fine actresses: Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Demi Moore. At one point Chloe Sevigny, playing the socialite C. Z. Guest, blasts Capote for his failure to heed the laws of ordinary human decency. <br /><br /></div><div>“What about civility?” she asks him. “Respect for people one loves?” Answered Prayers may well be a work of art, she says. “But it seems too high a price to pay.”<br /><br /></div><div>That last point looks stronger when you consider that Capote paid the price without delivering the goods. By the time he wrote Answered Prayers, his literary judgment was fried. Much as he wanted to show the world he was still an artist, he could no longer do it by producing a work of art. The best he could do was make the kind of ruthless, self-destructive gesture that dedicated artists are known to make. <br /><br /></div><div>Capote was already pushing it when he set out to emulate Proust. The idea that he could do it while self-medicated to the eyeballs was a fantasy. Instead of writing a cool satire about American materialism and excess, he became a casualty of those very forces. The title of his doomed book came from a maxim attributed to St Teresa: “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” Capote began by imagining that his title referred to the answered prayers of his swans. By the end, it also referred to his own.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-69345675745355129792024-02-02T17:46:00.000-08:002024-03-13T19:07:16.715-07:00The Australian Open<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOAil9xyybiOqkp-hW9EUq8-_fzuW5BKALcAh_QnsoeKRZjHunyg-fz4VN0K1ufHXBeIepvXHxpdnuVXTjgr0KQy5jYIWye3Gx4A80sc8b6y1DkAZOzYgDsyPJilEm-Eb1scMWM1lPCO9n9To3ZT442hcPIxrJPOjh6hSlZb85iDNK1L7sQCETDP5Fp3CF/s1200/Rublev.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">Firs<img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOAil9xyybiOqkp-hW9EUq8-_fzuW5BKALcAh_QnsoeKRZjHunyg-fz4VN0K1ufHXBeIepvXHxpdnuVXTjgr0KQy5jYIWye3Gx4A80sc8b6y1DkAZOzYgDsyPJilEm-Eb1scMWM1lPCO9n9To3ZT442hcPIxrJPOjh6hSlZb85iDNK1L7sQCETDP5Fp3CF/s320/Rublev.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div><b><i>First published in </i>The Sydney Morning Herald<i> and </i>The Age<i>, February 3, 2024.</i></b></div><div><br /></div>We seem to have two New Year’s Days in Australia. The first one – the one that happens on January 1 – is harmless, because it doesn’t really signal a return to the yearly slog. There are fireworks on TV, the calendar flips over, then the summer party resumes. <br /><br /></div><div>For me, the real New Year doesn’t begin until the Australian Open ends. Straddling the last two full weeks of January, the Open is the great watershed event. When it begins, the silly season is still in full swing. The air is still thick with barbecue smells and far-fetched resolutions. By the time the tennis ends, there’s no denying the carnival is over. It’s time to get back to real life. <br /><br /></div><div>This week I’ve been walking around with a tennis hangover – the post-Open blues. I’ve still got an after-image of centre court branded on the back of my eyelids. I’m still hearing phantom tennis sounds. The squeak of rubber soles on hardcourt, the slap of ball against net tape. The sound of Jim Courier getting all hushed and grave in the commentary box (“This is some tough sledding for Stefanos”) before exploding with approval on a big point (“Oh, that is clutch!”).<br /><br /></div><div>I’m also still hearing the ads. At the Australian Open, a change of ends lasts for just one minute. Advertisers have a limited chance to get into your head. Borrowing an approach from the field of enhanced interrogation, they assail you with the same insufferable ad over and over, as if they can infuriate you into parting with your cash. <br /><br /></div><div>Last year it was the fantastically annoying ANZ ads (“You make me feel like financing”). This year it was Andre Agassi for Uber One. “You know what is disappointing?” Agassi kept saying. “Not having a mullet and mullets are back.”<br /><br /></div><div>Even after four hundred viewings, I never quite made up my mind about Andre’s mesmerisingly naff line-reading. Was it so bad it was good? Or was it just bad? Why did he say “and” instead of “when”? Did he botch the line or was it written that way? Did the ad’s makers know it would play thirty times a night for fifteen nights straight? If so, why didn’t they politely ask Andre for one more take?<br /><br /></div><div>But these are quibbles. The star of the show was tennis, which is surely the greatest spectator sport ever devised. Like a cross between boxing and chess, it’s a supreme test of both body and mind. The key to the game’s magic lies in its scoring system. No match is over until it’s over. The biggest lead can melt into defeat if you lose your nerve.<br /><br /></div><div>Out on the court, the players engage in a struggle that feels like a metaphor for life itself. Work hard in the small moments and the big moments – the clutch moments – will come. Seize those moments and glory will be yours.<br /><br /></div><div>But it won’t last forever. Time comes for everyone in the end. This year it came for Novak Djokovic, the most formidable player in history. Going into the tournament, he hadn’t lost a match at Melbourne Park since 2018. This year he meekly succumbed in the semis to 22-year-old Jannik Sinner, who went on to win the final. Watching the 36-year-old Joker run out of answers, you felt the sun setting on an era. <br /><br /></div><div>No other game reveals the personality, or the character, the way tennis does. The distinction between those terms is important. Martin Amis once said that in tennis, “personality” has effectively become a synonym for another word – one that starts with “a” and ends with “hole.” He also observed that the game’s all-time greats – Rosewall, Ashe, Navratilova – didn’t need “personality” because they had character.<br /><br /></div><div>Among the current Aussie players, Alex de Minaur has the winningest blend of character and talent. Like Ash Barty and Dylan Alcott, the Demon comes across as an exemplary human being – a paragon of pluck, energy, and commitment. <br /><br /></div><div>This year he was stopped in the fourth round by the flame-haired Russian Andrey Rublev. Even as his dream unravelled in the fifth set, the Demon continued to applaud Rublev’s canonball winners in the time-honoured way, by clapping the heel of his spare hand against his strings.<br /><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, up the other end, Rublev was being a personality. With a hairstyle like the top of a Bunsen burner, Rublev ranted in Cyrillic after every bad shot. This would have been easier to take if he was losing, as opposed to crushing the Demon’s dream. But I’d be lying if I said that Rublev’s anger-management struggles were not, in themselves, deeply fun to watch.<br /><br /></div><div>By historical standards – by the standards of McEnroe and Connors – Rublev is a poor excuse for a tennis bad boy. But tennis misbehaviour is a dying art these days. The Australian Open did away with line judges in 2021. Since then the line calls have been fully computerised. <br /><br /></div><div>As a result, today’s tantrum-chuckers have precious little material to work with. You can’t argue with a computer. A modern hothead like Rublev has nothing to rage against except his own shot selection. <br /><br /></div><div>This is why I’m calling for the Australian Open to scrap the computers and bring back human line judges. Gripping as this year’s tournament was, something vital was missing from it. Tennis has robbed itself of the crackle of suspense – the tasty danger that a bad line call, real or imagined, might trigger a spectacular psychological meltdown at any moment. <br /><br /></div><div>Purists will say that’s a good thing. But I freely admit that I’m not a purist. I watch tennis for the theatre as well as the skill. I appreciate a good drop volley, but I also like watching cheesed-off adults behave appallingly under controlled conditions. <br /><br /></div><div>I’m also a sucker for quality sports commentary. The best line of the tournament was uttered by Peter “Salty” Psaltis, during an epic five-setter between Alexander Zverev and Cameron Norrie. As the final tie-break began, Salty dug deep for the clutch phrase, and delivered the line that said it all. He said, “I just feel sorry for people who don’t have sport in their lives.” </div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-55004562180225564122023-12-15T18:16:00.000-08:002024-03-13T19:20:15.144-07:00Rate and Review<div><b>First published in <i>The Sydney Morning Herald</i> and <i>The Age</i>, December 16, 2023</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglbLQOlkK_JI7FwpwQanmW2ut1guLJUCYMBlaYvg2fR5_-eO7g24UNPfD0BXk3dyrryELz7q9coMqrWr9aPbjBXCBDqAKXjjW7VzRqSUPZpmwbleg_MoXROGa2JrvefAG3YyMaNZuIpgvzK2SC2aussQeHWNlaWIJZ3yD8WPXYbjtpnRbkDuP3m3wDgXT9/s978/Old%20Spice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="978" data-original-width="754" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglbLQOlkK_JI7FwpwQanmW2ut1guLJUCYMBlaYvg2fR5_-eO7g24UNPfD0BXk3dyrryELz7q9coMqrWr9aPbjBXCBDqAKXjjW7VzRqSUPZpmwbleg_MoXROGa2JrvefAG3YyMaNZuIpgvzK2SC2aussQeHWNlaWIJZ3yD8WPXYbjtpnRbkDuP3m3wDgXT9/s320/Old%20Spice.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>David, we’d like to hear from you. How did we go? Please take a moment to share your experience. On a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (extremely) how likely are you to recommend us to your family, friends and colleagues? <br /><br /></div><div>How annoying is the internet’s insatiable lust for feedback? I ask this rhetorically. I’m not inviting you to answer on a scale of 1 (mildly irritating) to 10 (a clear sign that our civilisation is going down the tubes). There’s not much you can do these days, from going to the doctor to buying a whipper snipper, that you won’t be asked to rate and review afterwards. And if you get the whipper snipper delivered, expect a separate email from Australia Post inviting you to rate and review your “delivery experience.”<br /><br /></div><div>Even as a professional critic, I find it tricky to compose a telling review of a postal delivery. Don’t get me wrong, I like my postie, and I like it when she puts a parcel on my doorstep. But exactly how many stars out of 10 should I give her for doing that? <br /><br /></div><div>Anything less than a 10 would imply, falsely and harshly, that she could somehow have delivered the parcel better. But if the accurate placement of a package on a doorstep rates a 10, what would a 4 be? Leaving the package a metre shy of the porch, partly concealed in a hedge? And what ungodly act of postal dereliction would warrant a 1? <br /><br /></div><div>Also, I hate to break this to the marketing people at Australia Post, but even if I feel that a given letter or parcel has been delivered impeccably, that doesn’t mean I will be urging my “family and friends” to get things mailed to them too. The topic of postal efficiency rarely crops up in my day-to-day conversations, and I don’t want to be the guy who keeps raising it.<br /><br /></div><div>Recently, I bought some Old Spice deodorant from a prominent online retailer. I would hesitate to call this an “experience,” let alone an experience I want to commemorate or “share”. But if you saw my email Inbox, you’d think my whole life revolved around armpit hygiene. Was the deodorant as described? Did it arrive promptly? David, we’re still awaiting your feedback on the Old Spice experience. Based on your recent purchases, we have a recommendation for you: more Old Spice! <br /><br /></div><div>When I buy something, that generally means I like it. If the item is not as described – if it’s a box of nails instead of a stick of deodorant – the vendor can safely assume they’ll be hearing from me. Otherwise, paying for something and then getting it doesn’t strike me as an experience that calls for comment or celebration. Even in kindergarten, you had to do something a bit more spectacular than that to earn five gold stars. <br /><br /></div><div>Anyway, the giving of the stars is just the beginning, in the field of online criticism. Next you’ll be asked to describe “your most important reasons” for giving that many stars. Suddenly you have to come up with an original work of prose: 150 words, for free, on the merits of a bag of dried orange peel. <br /><br /></div><div>A few weeks ago I went to the football. The next day I got an email grilling me about every conceivable aspect of my game-day experience, including the half-time promotions. On a scale of 1 to 7, how “satisfied” was I with the experience of watching a couple of random contestants from the crowd trying to catch bombs in a giant novelty KFC bucket? <br /><br /></div><div>I was also (and I’m not making this up) invited to rate the “spirit and desire to win” of the home team, and the level of “enthusiasm and elation when tries were scored.” Here I sternly selected the “prefer not to answer” option. I like player elation as much as the next person, but I want it to be organic. I don’t want footballers getting hauled over the coals because I’ve given them 1 out of 7 for enthusiasm. <br /><br /></div><div><br />I want my views to matter, but I don’t want them to matter that much. Some things can’t be quantified on a numerical scale – things like team spirit, and the smell of Old Spice, and watching a sunset with a friend, family member or colleague. Prefer not to answer? It’s more that I would prefer not to be asked in the first place.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-19845951718290187292023-11-21T15:28:00.000-08:002023-12-12T15:34:46.187-08:0060 Years of JFK Conspiracy Theory<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRh23vb9kRjUOpGt5L9k-ITMp9ec_tBnskYZDmQhSD1LR4uOZc65PONtoi5m866ic4tkvVqSA2RIVYfvLCpX2TSniGkW9RtVZWnPVBkCReu6lm9ffxvFElC4VdOOAcEBFLHA6PVTQ9_4BfMr2Jy7JmdpfNmvlNX1Vq4rSOut2a7DETOunvVGKZfMwjsm4/s1014/Lee_Harvey_Oswald_1963.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1014" data-original-width="653" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRh23vb9kRjUOpGt5L9k-ITMp9ec_tBnskYZDmQhSD1LR4uOZc65PONtoi5m866ic4tkvVqSA2RIVYfvLCpX2TSniGkW9RtVZWnPVBkCReu6lm9ffxvFElC4VdOOAcEBFLHA6PVTQ9_4BfMr2Jy7JmdpfNmvlNX1Vq4rSOut2a7DETOunvVGKZfMwjsm4/s320/Lee_Harvey_Oswald_1963.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>60 years ago this week, a nasty loner with a cheap rifle changed the course of history. At 12:30 on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, as his open-topped limousine moved through an echoey, wedge-shaped city park called Dealey Plaza. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Most witnesses heard three shots. One witness saw a gunman aim and fire the third from an upper window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Before police could seal the building off, a 24-year-old Depository employee – an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald – left via the front door ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/sixty-years-on-has-jfk-conspiracy-theory-finally-run-out-of-steam-20231113-p5ejja.html"><br />READ MORE</a>] </span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-32123966688542083212023-09-20T19:13:00.001-07:002023-11-11T17:17:37.020-08:00Martin Amis 1949 - 2023<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjppfRA_O6B197LqcJXTEr_POIHfCUbMhYCl7nbfFgny_l5KXJ8vT9ibeKiFsSPCkSWBcFWZZf4EegUOO1o9sjGzlyslaUrRrWUIVGoK4RXtmYDZLkEK5ZobWUVXWuVwABRFgsTQ2CPQGYCbrpacvubbex5_bAZhbstVDWO_o-WJ6BZlEC8Wn2Aqu099X4_/s330/Martin_amis_2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="220" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjppfRA_O6B197LqcJXTEr_POIHfCUbMhYCl7nbfFgny_l5KXJ8vT9ibeKiFsSPCkSWBcFWZZf4EegUOO1o9sjGzlyslaUrRrWUIVGoK4RXtmYDZLkEK5ZobWUVXWuVwABRFgsTQ2CPQGYCbrpacvubbex5_bAZhbstVDWO_o-WJ6BZlEC8Wn2Aqu099X4_/s320/Martin_amis_2014.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>When Martin Amis died in May, I caught the announcement at the tail end of a TV news crawl. Hoping I’d misread the flash, I Googled Amis’s name. The top search result offered the standard précis of his Wikipedia entry. “Martin Amis,” it began, “is an English novelist …” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The present tense was heartening. Maybe I’d been seeing things. Then I clicked through to the full wiki, which began: “Martin Amis was an English novelist …” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So it was true. Wikipedia had absorbed the news and moved on, but Google’s webcrawler was still in denial. I therefore had one last chance to think of Amis as a living presence, before watching him vanish for good into the past tense ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/how-does-it-feel-to-read-your-favourite-living-writer-after-they-die-20230912-p5e3y8.html">[read more]<br /></a></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-90084317714386310062023-07-20T19:07:00.007-07:002023-11-11T17:18:43.737-08:00Cookbooks<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCIDnFHR-fE1fwhWxrwYVKgqT44t8ZsoqNCIuZRXrXlVcN8-LKaHpV5PxR0l_py5hyphenhyphen7jDIt3jLXjALuNGMKNtSrUSrabeC9xeS6qllo5t5JcvLWVi7IbPb4XNy4uNPPw5zi6CPXoWPfjhQvGl75JYnSmoeykRktzKvOBfMD4ATCHOottZe4UH0WgnMgwB/s220/Keith_Floyd1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="220" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCIDnFHR-fE1fwhWxrwYVKgqT44t8ZsoqNCIuZRXrXlVcN8-LKaHpV5PxR0l_py5hyphenhyphen7jDIt3jLXjALuNGMKNtSrUSrabeC9xeS6qllo5t5JcvLWVi7IbPb4XNy4uNPPw5zi6CPXoWPfjhQvGl75JYnSmoeykRktzKvOBfMD4ATCHOottZe4UH0WgnMgwB/w320-h253/Keith_Floyd1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Name one facet of Australian culture that has unquestionably improved over the last fifty years. Movies? TV? Popular music? Literary fiction? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You could argue, if you wanted to, that some or all of these things are better than they used to be. But in each case the claim would be debatable, as such claims generally are. Cultural judgments are nearly always a matter of opinion, not of objective fact. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But I think there’s one element of our culture that is measurably, and irrefutably, better than it’s ever been. Food. What serious human being would claim that food was better fifty years ago than it is now? <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/everything-about-food-has-improved-especially-the-books-20230904-p5e1w1.html"><br />[read more]</a></div><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-71313018149113423482023-06-05T18:24:00.002-07:002023-11-11T17:03:50.809-08:00Hillsong<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoWqX70XJBrhBbCkQfPV5UTVIAc22sNwTBdAD2kHNxpBBtbCB2Dk5VFb-Rw8r4hiC6YRMJIHmhY9jkIkg4AtNo-I-YRL978jFE4vVarE22Rs6188RaM3amNraoHfNvsn2eZrYxgzFsjxsa3HEHNzJBAJCUbhlrqOpjAVfSASGQXOpELt_SfI9siqLpdDOV/s1024/Hillsong_Convention_Centre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1024" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoWqX70XJBrhBbCkQfPV5UTVIAc22sNwTBdAD2kHNxpBBtbCB2Dk5VFb-Rw8r4hiC6YRMJIHmhY9jkIkg4AtNo-I-YRL978jFE4vVarE22Rs6188RaM3amNraoHfNvsn2eZrYxgzFsjxsa3HEHNzJBAJCUbhlrqOpjAVfSASGQXOpELt_SfI9siqLpdDOV/s320/Hillsong_Convention_Centre.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>As a rule, it’s a bad sign when multiple documentaries and podcasts about you come out simultaneously. A single documentary can be cause for celebration. Two or three at once is rarely a reason to break out the champagne. More than three and you’re really in strife. </div><div><br /></div><div>A few years ago, Lance Armstrong got the multiple documentary treatment. More recently it happened to Elizabeth Holmes, and the late Jeffrey Epstein, and the organisers of the hilariously disastrous Fyre festival. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now it’s the season of the Hillsong documentary ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/it-s-the-season-of-the-hillsong-documentary-which-is-a-bad-sign-for-hillsong-20230531-p5dctc.html"><br />[read more]</a></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-51590775786477129232023-05-04T20:46:00.003-07:002023-05-04T23:05:10.749-07:00Read the Room: A Mantra for Moral Hacks<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSg5Ll0bsuTpclo3lWk7_mFY5yUcMvTCU_IMUNa0M0i4ugoHASZW54lxoRc6bIAMV3E49Rg7Ecjo1itrvOGsiWvq969Tnpf8eTnMoxTKiiqIWD2rvTIceFiwLymh107dxsQiq-Ibiftyp0X9JRy8AC8-QAFkZvj_Ncya0oiCdesLCTUuRHC-FMEN2qng/s450/Barry_Humphries_December_2000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSg5Ll0bsuTpclo3lWk7_mFY5yUcMvTCU_IMUNa0M0i4ugoHASZW54lxoRc6bIAMV3E49Rg7Ecjo1itrvOGsiWvq969Tnpf8eTnMoxTKiiqIWD2rvTIceFiwLymh107dxsQiq-Ibiftyp0X9JRy8AC8-QAFkZvj_Ncya0oiCdesLCTUuRHC-FMEN2qng/s320/Barry_Humphries_December_2000.jpg" width="249" /></a></div>When Barry Humphries died last month, the ABC kicked off the 7pm news with his obituary. It was a generally fitting tribute. Nevertheless, I braced myself for the part where it would be made clear that as illustrious as the decedent’s achievements had been, a couple of things he said late in his life did not meet the exacting moral standards of the national broadcaster. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The reprimand was duly delivered at the obituary’s end, courtesy of a young comedian who gravely told the camera that it was a pity that Humphries, in his declining years, “lost his ability to read the room.” </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What exactly does it mean to “read the room”? People seem to think it’s an awfully clever thing to say. And they’re beginning to aim this directive not just at public figures like Humphries, but at the rest of us too. We’re all expected to read the room now. So how do we go about doing it? ...[<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/comedy/barry-humphries-is-a-reminder-that-we-should-laugh-the-phrase-read-the-room-out-of-existence-20230501-p5d4lq.html">read more</a>] </span></div><br /><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-63234984965518650992023-05-04T20:42:00.005-07:002023-05-04T23:13:35.129-07:00Heartburn at 40<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5tldft1qVoiZr70kFnlCUAHVMpFFB2--n2GDJdogU-rzik4s9vZjr8l02wDg1BDcYrHqCm86BkrwH10chsEYTDFA15FhcDLZ8c7sZXDB_C1quvrYhzrS91ROqirMq3DRsu_7hEtT8BnpwzQNOva-poUAIeEqaDhvwhotqszVAUkDTdU5dBT8ufcZL6w/s390/Heartburn_(novel).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5tldft1qVoiZr70kFnlCUAHVMpFFB2--n2GDJdogU-rzik4s9vZjr8l02wDg1BDcYrHqCm86BkrwH10chsEYTDFA15FhcDLZ8c7sZXDB_C1quvrYhzrS91ROqirMq3DRsu_7hEtT8BnpwzQNOva-poUAIeEqaDhvwhotqszVAUkDTdU5dBT8ufcZL6w/s320/Heartburn_(novel).jpg" width="209" /></a></div>Last October, the <i>Daily Mail</i> ran a story with this lengthy yet cryptic headline: “When Harry Met Salad! Olivia Wilde LEANS INTO bombshell revelations about collapse of her relationship by sharing vinaigrette recipe from Nora Ephron’s book about divorce from cheating ex-husband.” </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There was a lot happening in that headline. To make sense of it, and to get every nuance of the Harry-met-salad joke, you had to be familiar with a backstory that spanned four decades and involved five different celebrities, living and dead. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The backstory was this ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/forty-years-on-this-novel-about-heartbreak-remains-a-must-read-20230420-p5d21i.html">read more</a>] </span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-35383845379716540882023-05-04T20:33:00.001-07:002023-05-04T22:52:00.172-07:00Alone Australia<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHHPI8L_4Iqo3YXL33FK70OJX1q0vDqcFLBwPQgs8lgyNfjSqRX5-gsaia1AlsWVj-ke94MQgKFBg5fB3uTSau10vEQrL8bhRlen-Rfk4adBDjr7ePHKSuz0C58KuR6hgYsRLqmjkV-NGjrHbXFyiNqvTqyV_9rwvGCJLT9-dup1FV0RRQBauUtmxAg/s600/Gage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="353" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHHPI8L_4Iqo3YXL33FK70OJX1q0vDqcFLBwPQgs8lgyNfjSqRX5-gsaia1AlsWVj-ke94MQgKFBg5fB3uTSau10vEQrL8bhRlen-Rfk4adBDjr7ePHKSuz0C58KuR6hgYsRLqmjkV-NGjrHbXFyiNqvTqyV_9rwvGCJLT9-dup1FV0RRQBauUtmxAg/s320/Gage.jpg" width="188" /></a></div>In 1848, an unfortunate American named Phineas Gage had a nasty accident while overseeing the construction of a railroad in Vermont. Gage was packing explosive into a rock with a pointed metre-long rod called a tamping iron when a stray spark caused the charge to blow prematurely. Shooting out of the rock like a javelin fired by a rocket launcher, the rod speared into Gage’s face, passed through the left frontal lobe of his brain, flew out the top of his skull, and landed point-first in the earth 25 metres away. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gage survived the accident, but his personality was drastically altered by the damage to his frontal lobe. This was a stroke of luck for the era’s brain scientists. Long before the days of fMRI, Gage’s injury offered valuable information about which parts of the brain did what. It would have been grossly unethical for medical researchers to obtain this information by ramming a metal rod through somebody’s head. But since that had happened to Gage already, scientists made the most of his misfortune ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/find-your-ferro-rods-alone-is-back-and-in-our-backyard-20230327-p5cvno.html">read more</a>]</span></div><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-18807432743217558532023-05-04T20:30:00.000-07:002023-05-04T22:53:23.418-07:00Cocaine Bear<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This seems to be a season for films with bluntly informative titles – titles that tell you precisely what you’ll be getting for the price of your ticket. At one end of the spectrum of respectability you have Sarah Polley’s <i>Women Talking</i>, a solid contender for this year’s Best Picture Oscars. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the other end of the spectrum you have <i>Cocaine Bear</i>. Released too late to be eligible for this year’s Oscars, <i>Cocaine Bear</i> isn’t the kind of movie that people give awards to anyway. On the other hand, the film deserves high praise for delivering, riotously, on the promise of its title. It’s everything you could wish for in a movie about a giant bear that goes on a killing rampage after snorting a ton of cocaine ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/cocaine-bear-is-a-raucously-cheesy-hamburger-movie-it-s-not-to-be-sneezed-at-20230221-p5cm9m.html">read more</a>]</span></div><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-51474854458364831312023-01-24T18:20:00.002-08:002023-01-24T18:29:25.852-08:00Ghosting<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZ3Avr-QD_ip_cKclEsYW30GbVbpIGQxlICUGSukGB19s42cLxBBzJTK3x6AYn2pF3uK7r8FSgIxIeQAUspZOwXkoa9jCsY3o8vx9bJhYch85LTgkHtSAarekhoQhPiQpbfy-aG5O2IynjZ6pjneW9YIDWTtCliTla2m8wNXi-vt1gtesedmEl4ixSA/s2560/Haz.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1684" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZ3Avr-QD_ip_cKclEsYW30GbVbpIGQxlICUGSukGB19s42cLxBBzJTK3x6AYn2pF3uK7r8FSgIxIeQAUspZOwXkoa9jCsY3o8vx9bJhYch85LTgkHtSAarekhoQhPiQpbfy-aG5O2IynjZ6pjneW9YIDWTtCliTla2m8wNXi-vt1gtesedmEl4ixSA/w132-h200/Haz.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>My late friend Clive James was a prolific emailer. One of the trickiest things about corresponding with the great man was trying to recommend books to him that he hadn’t already read. It was like walking a tightrope, which you could fall off in two ways. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One way was to recommend a book so well-known that you would look like a rube for thinking anyone hadn’t read it. The other danger lay in recommending something that was obscure for good reason – i.e., because it was tripe. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I once thought I’d found the ideal needle-threading recommendation for him: <i>Open</i>, the 2009 autobiography of Andre Agassi. For starters, the book was freakishly good ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/how-your-ghostwriter-can-come-back-to-haunt-you-20230117-p5cd31.html"><br />[READ MORE]</a> </span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-2056103004129349882023-01-19T17:26:00.002-08:002023-01-24T18:28:21.156-08:00Creepy Dolls<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6AObKgV5P4kKIuPhXUxbPOUeJ-0lDsbWATs19cLdcX4nVQiA8iDx-5IpSgfHE-lgoaWpp2p2lnGZVQTv0L1cc6KMCQrEil1OXU8Aef8ovpM3Q81I5CxtXKMeIbg5tgwbjJX6XMuTZvsib1_K8mLanSE0XewIfFutYacolM5jXXwsPi_g2C5Y5zaZiQ/s283/Megan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="178" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6AObKgV5P4kKIuPhXUxbPOUeJ-0lDsbWATs19cLdcX4nVQiA8iDx-5IpSgfHE-lgoaWpp2p2lnGZVQTv0L1cc6KMCQrEil1OXU8Aef8ovpM3Q81I5CxtXKMeIbg5tgwbjJX6XMuTZvsib1_K8mLanSE0XewIfFutYacolM5jXXwsPi_g2C5Y5zaZiQ/s1600/Megan.jpg" width="178" /></a></div>When the first trailer for the film <i>M3GAN</i> dropped in October last year, it achieved the highest honour that any modern content-creator can aspire to. It went viral, thanks to a five-second sequence in which M3GAN, the expressionless robot doll of the title, performed a very capable and therefore very eerie dance. Reaction videos proliferated. M3GAN memes multiplied. Within a month, TikTok videos with the M3GAN hashtag had racked up 300 million views.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">M3GAN is short for Model 3 Generative Android. In the film, her name is pronounced the American way, to rhyme with beggin’ rather than vegan. Whether the film will make a bigger splash than its own trailer remains to be seen. Philosophically, it has interesting things to say about the perils of artificial intelligence. More primally, it taps into a theme that’s been freaking people out since the dawn of cinema: the theme of the creepy doll ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/chucky-annabelle-and-now-m3gan-have-dolls-ever-been-this-creepy-20230109-p5cba8.html">[READ MORE]</a></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-80581865044975132982023-01-19T15:21:00.003-08:002023-01-19T15:21:48.988-08:00Satire with Guts<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Whoever decided to release <i>Triangle of Sadness</i> at Christmas time in Australia must have a sense of humour as wicked as that of the movie itself. Written and directed by the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Ostlund, <i>Triangle</i> is a bracing movie, but it isn’t your standard holiday fare. When it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, it won the Palme d’Or, and got an eight-minute standing ovation. It also prompted some audience walkouts, for reasons we’ll get to.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I knew I was going to love the film after an early scene set at a fashion parade ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/decent-satire-should-go-too-far-even-if-that-s-a-15-minute-vomit-scene-20221222-p5c8e2.html">[READ MORE]</a></span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-38884642663728883882022-12-16T15:26:00.000-08:002022-12-16T15:26:05.780-08:00Christmas Carols<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Is early December a reasonable time to start singing Christmas carols? We seem to agree it’s about right. You can hardly leave it much later, if you want to get your school carols night in before the end of term.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We also seem to agree that candles are an essential part of the carolling experience, despite the fact that candles, at this time of year, don’t take full effect until it’s about time for young kids to go to bed. Hence, every televised Aussie carols event will feature a mandatory crowd shot of toddlers crashing out to Away in a Manger while their parents carol on, wielding child-safe candles with something that looks like a surgical dog collar around the flame ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/it-s-time-to-face-the-music-your-favourite-christmas-carol-is-a-lie-20221129-p5c23d.html">[read more]</a></span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-67277926579861805472022-12-16T15:23:00.000-08:002022-12-16T15:23:05.582-08:00On Proust<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Around 20 years ago, I went to the Carnavalet Museum in Paris to see Marcel Proust’s bed. The mission was less frivolous than it sounds. Proust’s bed isn’t any old bed. He didn’t just sleep in it. He wrote millions of words while lying in it. It was his office, his workstation. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1909, at the age of 38, he hit the sack more or less permanently to write the great novel he’d always believed was in him. He lined the walls of his Paris apartment with cork to keep out the street noise. He wrote by night and slept by day. The novel would be called <i>A la recherche du temps perdu</i>: <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>. It took him 13 years to complete. The finished work ran to 3000 pages, or 1.25 million words ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/why-it-s-time-to-get-lost-in-the-greatest-novel-ever-written-20221114-p5bxz9.html">[read more]</a></span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-28809143735546404532022-09-19T16:41:00.000-07:002022-09-19T16:41:08.197-07:00She Did Not Change<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1977, the English poet Philip Larkin was commissioned to write a short poem to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee. Larkin wrote:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In times when nothing stood</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But worsened, or grew strange,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There was one constant good: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">She did not change.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The penultimate line was the result of a late alteration. Originally Larkin had written, “We had one constant good.” At the last moment he crossed out “We had” and wrote “There was" ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/and-are-you-also-a-when-poets-punks-and-performers-met-the-queen-20220912-p5bhck.html">read more</a>] </span></p><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-50659556588209645392022-08-18T14:55:00.004-07:002022-08-24T15:22:43.180-07:00Steve Martin's Last Bow<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When the magicians Penn and Teller toured Australia in June, I had the privilege of catching one of their shows at the Opera House. Here were two supreme masters of their art performing at the height of their powers. Watching them work was an unmitigated treat – a chance to sit back and revel in what the great Aussie critic Robert Hughes called “the spectacle of skill.”<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Penn and Teller are no longer young. Penn is 67 and Teller 74. But at no point in their show did they seem past their prime. When rock stars of that age go on tour, you can’t help wishing you’d seen them forty years ago. In Penn and Teller’s field, advanced age is irrelevant. Or rather, it’s relevant in a good way. You can’t be as technically assured as they are without having plenty of years under your belt. Making things look that effortless takes a lifetime of effort. <br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Similar levels of maturity and craft are on display in <i>Only Murders in the Building</i>, the second series of which is currently rolling out on Disney+ ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/only-masters-in-the-building-the-joy-of-watching-comedy-icons-at-work-20220815-p5ba22.html">[read more]</a></span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-60611057861381755902022-08-09T14:49:00.001-07:002022-08-24T14:53:59.528-07:00Now a Minor Motion Picture<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Now a major motion picture,” says the cover of the new edition of <i>Where the Crawdads Sing</i>, the Delia Owens novel that has sold 12 million copies since its publication in 2018. Has anyone ever admitted to turning a book into a minor motion picture? Or just a motion picture full stop, leaving it to the public to supply the appropriate adjective?<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyway, what is “major” supposed to mean in these cases? Is it just another word for costly? Or is it meant to assure us that the picture in question is a substantial artistic event? Alas, the word is now out that Crawdads isn’t that kind of major movie ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/this-bestselling-book-became-a-minor-motion-picture-but-it-didn-t-have-to-be-20220802-p5b6qu.html">[read more]</a></span></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-63017532289736792892022-06-26T14:59:00.001-07:002022-08-24T15:02:28.627-07:00To Infinity and Beyond<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had an odd experience at the press preview of <i>Lightyear</i>, Pixar’s keenly awaited <i>Toy Story</i> spin-off. Lightyear is a kids’ movie, but everybody at the press screening was an adult. With no kids there, I found it weirdly hard to tell if I was liking the film or not. In the row behind me there was a famous entertainment reporter with a very distinctive belly-laugh. He seemed to like <i>Lightyear</i> a lot. <br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Did I, though? I could see the film was visually brilliant. Computer animation keeps getting better and better. But was the story any good? Did it have enough heart? I’m really not sure. I can only say I’d have liked the movie more if I’d had a kid watching it with me, especially if that kid had liked it too ... [<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/will-lightyear-make-it-to-a-future-where-kids-want-to-watch-it-over-and-over-again-20220627-p5awwl.html">read more</a>]</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-90848805154916315082022-05-29T18:31:00.001-07:002022-06-14T18:34:01.541-07:00Self-Help<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Until 2010, the Texan psychologist Brené Brown was an obscure professor, working in what academic researchers call “the field of shame”. Then she gave a Ted Talk called “The Power of Vulnerability,” which became one of the five most-viewed Ted Talks of all time. She’s published six books since then, all of them best-sellers. Her latest, <i>Atlas of the Heart</i>, came out last year. Now she’s made a five-part docuseries of the same name, which is currently streaming on Binge. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Self-help is a fantastically lucrative industry. According to Forbes magazine, Americans spend more than $US10 billion a year on self-improvement paraphernalia. Brown is one of the genre’s rising stars, and the blurb for her series suggests she’s invented a radical new form of entertainment: the binge-worthy “interactive” TV show that’s also thoroughly good for you. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Actually, there’s nothing very groundbreaking about the format of Brown’s show. She stands on a stage in front of a studio audience and imparts the lessons of her book, using slides and movie clips to illustrate her points. There’s a lot of talk about “relatable learnings” and going on journeys together. There’s a lot of thanking each other for sharing ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/life-as-an-endless-group-therapy-session-bren-brown-isn-t-the-only-way-20220523-p5antx.html" target="_blank">[READ MORE]</a></span></div><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-1942184254737616902022-05-29T17:49:00.002-07:002022-06-14T17:51:14.406-07:00Depp v. Heard<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I can’t claim to know everything there is to know about the Depp v. Heard case. But I know enough to know that I wish I knew less. When you stopped watching it long enough to start thinking about it, the trial was a terribly sad affair. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard might be glamorous movie stars, but they’re also real human beings. In court, they were obliged to revisit some of the most painful and exquisitely private moments of their lives. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Given that there was a lawsuit in progress, these private matters were undoubtedly the jury’s business. My news feed kept telling me they were my business too. They weren’t, but my news feed was insistent ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/celebrity/don-t-call-the-depp-heard-trial-a-circus-it-s-not-meant-to-entertain-us-20220530-p5apk9.html" target="_blank">[READ MORE]</a></span></p><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-64414639159834035492022-05-04T17:43:00.001-07:002022-06-14T17:45:50.038-07:00Bob Dylan: Overrated<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let’s begin with some clarifications. When I say Bob Dylan is over-rated, I’m not saying he’s no good at all. That would be an absurd claim. I’m not even saying I dislike his work. Some of my favourite songs are Dylan songs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nor do I doubt that Dylan’s influence has been profound. From Joni Mitchell to Bruce Springsteen, all the great singer-songwriters have hailed him as a pioneer. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If people were content to praise Dylan for his actual merits, I’d have no beef. What irks me is that Dylan stands at the epicentre of a tenacious mass delusion, which causes its victims to see qualities in his work that aren’t really there ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/bob-dylan-a-great-poet-a-great-delusion-more-like-it-20220502-p5ahrz.html" target="_blank">[READ MORE]</a></span></p><div><br /></div>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4670145372991437573.post-49291845011129756562022-04-18T18:01:00.001-07:002022-06-14T18:03:32.970-07:00David Foster Wallace<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was a dark day for literature when David Foster Wallace took his own life in 2008, at the age of 46. Wallace was hands-down the most talented American writer of his generation. Arguably he was one of the most striking and original prose stylists of the past century. And yet he’s never really been a household name, unless you live in an unusually highbrow household. He had enormous gifts, but an equally enormous propensity to get in his own way. Maybe that’s why America’s Wallace industry has been busier since his death than it was during his life. The man himself is no longer around to impose his artistic standards, which were both fanatically strict and strangely self-sabotaging ... <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/david-foster-wallace-was-a-genius-now-let-me-convince-you-to-read-him-20220411-p5acjo.html" target="_blank">[READ MORE]</a></span></p>David Freehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09630507597048210511noreply@blogger.com