ABC’S ‘PINE GAP’ IS A CROCK, ANOTHER ARTS VICTIM COMES ALAN JONES’ WAY, ‘FIRST MAN’, ‘MANIAC’ MELBOURNE FESTIVAL AND BELVOIR THEATRE REVIEWS
If you ever find yourself lamenting the fact that much smaller countries than Australia produce binge-worthy, sophisticated political thrillers, well, keep lamenting.
The ABC’s much promoted Netflix co-production Pine Gap brings more of the dumbed down dialogue and black and white characterisation you’d expect from Home and Away.
Helen Razer reviews and says: “This is the accidental genius of Pine Gap: it’s a stinking turd laid in a tepid bath by a toddler. It’s just such a childish attempt at manufacturing consent, I feel almost affectionate toward it.”
On Friday the ex-head of Australia’s most extravagantly funded arts company, Opera Australia, was made head of the Australia Council. Adrian Collette returns to Sydney after five years. Let’s hope he doesn’t displease Alan Jones (again).
ABC TV’S PINE GAP: THE TRUTH ISN’T OUT THERE
By Helen Razer
Compared to, say, Homeland or to NCIS or any other US TV program that seeks to romanticise state power, Pine Gap is a wreck. Laborious exposition about the ANZUS treaty in episode one sounds like it was written as a Wikipedia entry. I was just so happy to know that Australians are somehow stubbornly incapable of writing good propaganda.
FIRST MAN: A HIGH ART AMUSEMENT RIDE
By Luke Buckmaster
What is more important for a filmmaker: telling an interesting story in interesting ways, or attempting to evoke the sensation that ‘you were there’? In First Man, about the career and NASA missions of first man on the moon Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), director Damien Chazelle pursues the latter at the expense of visual clarity and emotional depth.
FRESH MEAT FOR ALAN JONES?
By Daily Review
Formeropera singer, publisher and long time CEO of Opera Australia, Adrian Collette is heading back to Sydney as the new CEO of the Australia Council. In 2008, shock jock Alan Jones screamed for Collette’s head to roll.
NETFLIX’S MANIAC IS ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST
By Luke Buckmaster
The new Netflix series Maniac, from True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga, embraces the idea that the future looks a lot like the past. Clothes are broadly the same as today – but the aesthetics of technology are super retro, stuck in the Atari era.
A SAMUEL BECKETT PLAY FOR BECKETT SCEPTICS
By Fiona Blair
If you have some sort of Beckett phobia, Watt, ruthlessly edited and performed by Irishman Barry McGovern, might be the cure. If you’re tired of the shouting world, this radiant, exquisitely judged performance, might lift your heart.
SELLING (AND SELLING OUT) THE ARTS
By Esther Anatolitis
Victoria faces a state election in November. Arts lobbyist Esther Anatolitis looks at how the state’s arts policy compares to the other states – and how a Melbourne vs Sydney rivalry is alive and well when it comes to selling public spaces.
EUREKA! A DEMOCRATIC BIENNALE. IN BALLARAT
By Rosemary Sorensen
The inaugural Biennale of Australian Art (BOAA) in Ballarat in regional Victoria is restorative for a visitor who may have lost faith in contemporary art. It feels real, and important, and enlivening, without being preachy or exclusive. (In spite of artists’ statements mostly full of artspeak banalities and strings of nonsense).
PODCAST: THE ‘VALUE’ OF ARTS IS NOT MONETARY
By Neil Pigot
Neil Pigot talks to theatre director Julian Meyrick (co-author of the new book What Matters – Talking Value in Australian Culture) and Mark Williams (author of Falling Through the Gaps – Our Artists’ Health and Welfare). Both publications address how the complexity and meaning of the arts in public discourse been co-opted and corrupted.
ONE OVERACHIEVER ON ANOTHER
By Rosemary Sorensen
Stuart Kells is a rare kind of writer. He is able to tackle global economic power on one hand, and, on the other, write with panache and credibility about whether Shakespeare was a literary conspiracy. He has a friendly, warm style, and packs in heaps of information without lecturing.
AN EMEMY OF THE PEOPLE (BELVOIR SYDNEY)
By Jason Whittaker
Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People has always been about power, truth and morality. Indolent directors have long reached for it in times of heightened anxiety. But there’s nothing lazy about Melissa Reeves’ rebuilding of the text with the headlines, tweets and trauma of 2018.
RICHARD THOMPSON’S 13 RIVERS ALBUM REVIEW
By Warwick McFadyen
Thompson, along with say Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, are iconoclasts. They have their own language – their own vocabulary, phrasing, timing, volume and feel. They they turn sound into their selves and send it out into the world.
PRIZE FIGHTER (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
Kill everyone over 15 and under 8 and bring the woman to me. Turns out there’s not really much to say about Prize Fighter. That it’s an exceptional piece of theatre is probably the least important thing about it.
FIRE GARDENS (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
There are small but exquisite mesh structures, memorials one might think, floating on the water and, magnificently long stretches of raised fire-pits, like snakes, like dragons, with embers billowing above. To walk between these is to feel the intensity, the power of the fire in a way none of the other structures attempt. It’s almost too much.
LEXICON (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
There’s a fluidity to the show that’s striking – rigging and scenic adjustments are almost as beautiful to watch as ‘acts’ – sequences segue one into another, reinforcing the feeling that this is a miraculous place, where to be airborne seems like a birthright.
ABC’S ‘PINE GAP’ IS A CROCK, ANOTHER ARTS VICTIM COMES ALAN JONES’ WAY, ‘FIRST MAN’, ‘MANIAC’ MELBOURNE FESTIVAL AND BELVOIR THEATRE REVIEWS
If you ever find yourself lamenting the fact that much smaller countries than Australia produce binge-worthy, sophisticated political thrillers, well, keep lamenting.
The ABC’s much promoted Netflix co-production Pine Gap brings more of the dumbed down dialogue and black and white characterisation you’d expect from Home and Away.
Helen Razer reviews and says: “This is the accidental genius of Pine Gap: it’s a stinking turd laid in a tepid bath by a toddler. It’s just such a childish attempt at manufacturing consent, I feel almost affectionate toward it.”
On Friday the ex-head of Australia’s most extravagantly funded arts company, Opera Australia, was made head of the Australia Council. Adrian Collette returns to Sydney after five years. Let’s hope he doesn’t displease Alan Jones (again).
ABC TV’S PINE GAP: THE TRUTH ISN’T OUT THERE
By Helen Razer
Compared to, say, Homeland or to NCIS or any other US TV program that seeks to romanticise state power, Pine Gap is a wreck. Laborious exposition about the ANZUS treaty in episode one sounds like it was written as a Wikipedia entry. I was just so happy to know that Australians are somehow stubbornly incapable of writing good propaganda.
FIRST MAN: A HIGH ART AMUSEMENT RIDE
By Luke Buckmaster
What is more important for a filmmaker: telling an interesting story in interesting ways, or attempting to evoke the sensation that ‘you were there’? In First Man, about the career and NASA missions of first man on the moon Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), director Damien Chazelle pursues the latter at the expense of visual clarity and emotional depth.
FRESH MEAT FOR ALAN JONES?
By Daily Review
Formeropera singer, publisher and long time CEO of Opera Australia, Adrian Collette is heading back to Sydney as the new CEO of the Australia Council. In 2008, shock jock Alan Jones screamed for Collette’s head to roll.
NETFLIX’S MANIAC IS ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST
By Luke Buckmaster
The new Netflix series Maniac, from True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga, embraces the idea that the future looks a lot like the past. Clothes are broadly the same as today – but the aesthetics of technology are super retro, stuck in the Atari era.
A SAMUEL BECKETT PLAY FOR BECKETT SCEPTICS
By Fiona Blair
If you have some sort of Beckett phobia, Watt, ruthlessly edited and performed by Irishman Barry McGovern, might be the cure. If you’re tired of the shouting world, this radiant, exquisitely judged performance, might lift your heart.
SELLING (AND SELLING OUT) THE ARTS
By Esther Anatolitis
Victoria faces a state election in November. Arts lobbyist Esther Anatolitis looks at how the state’s arts policy compares to the other states – and how a Melbourne vs Sydney rivalry is alive and well when it comes to selling public spaces.
EUREKA! A DEMOCRATIC BIENNALE. IN BALLARAT
By Rosemary Sorensen
The inaugural Biennale of Australian Art (BOAA) in Ballarat in regional Victoria is restorative for a visitor who may have lost faith in contemporary art. It feels real, and important, and enlivening, without being preachy or exclusive. (In spite of artists’ statements mostly full of artspeak banalities and strings of nonsense).
PODCAST: THE ‘VALUE’ OF ARTS IS NOT MONETARY
By Neil Pigot
Neil Pigot talks to theatre director Julian Meyrick (co-author of the new book What Matters – Talking Value in Australian Culture) and Mark Williams (author of Falling Through the Gaps – Our Artists’ Health and Welfare). Both publications address how the complexity and meaning of the arts in public discourse been co-opted and corrupted.
ONE OVERACHIEVER ON ANOTHER
By Rosemary Sorensen
Stuart Kells is a rare kind of writer. He is able to tackle global economic power on one hand, and, on the other, write with panache and credibility about whether Shakespeare was a literary conspiracy. He has a friendly, warm style, and packs in heaps of information without lecturing.
AN EMEMY OF THE PEOPLE (BELVOIR SYDNEY)
By Jason Whittaker
Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People has always been about power, truth and morality. Indolent directors have long reached for it in times of heightened anxiety. But there’s nothing lazy about Melissa Reeves’ rebuilding of the text with the headlines, tweets and trauma of 2018.
RICHARD THOMPSON’S 13 RIVERS ALBUM REVIEW
By Warwick McFadyen
Thompson, along with say Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, are iconoclasts. They have their own language – their own vocabulary, phrasing, timing, volume and feel. They they turn sound into their selves and send it out into the world.
PRIZE FIGHTER (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
Kill everyone over 15 and under 8 and bring the woman to me. Turns out there’s not really much to say about Prize Fighter. That it’s an exceptional piece of theatre is probably the least important thing about it.
FIRE GARDENS (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
There are small but exquisite mesh structures, memorials one might think, floating on the water and, magnificently long stretches of raised fire-pits, like snakes, like dragons, with embers billowing above. To walk between these is to feel the intensity, the power of the fire in a way none of the other structures attempt. It’s almost too much.
LEXICON (MELBOURNE FESTIVAL)
By Fiona Blair
There’s a fluidity to the show that’s striking – rigging and scenic adjustments are almost as beautiful to watch as ‘acts’ – sequences segue one into another, reinforcing the feeling that this is a miraculous place, where to be airborne seems like a birthright.
