The Saturday Briefing …

Martin McKenzie-Murray
For years now, the word “perceived” has been frequently added to the word “power” when pondering the influence of broadcaster Alan Jones. Periodically – whenever Jones has outraged or transgressed, as he did last week in his interview with Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron – opinion pieces emerge like mushrooms, pointing to Jones’s shrinking, ageing listenership. Rebecca Huntley, an author and social trends researcher, said this week: “Fifteen years of research and I haven’t found Alan Jones to be that much more influential with voters than ABC Radio or The SMH. He is only powerful because politicians think he is.”

Jonathan Pearlman
The spy known as Witness K, and his lawyer Bernard Collaery are allegedly accused of revealing confidential information about an Australian operation to spy on Timor-Leste during sensitive negotiations about the division of a lucrative underwater oil and gas deposit. Prosecutors have revealed no details about the alleged crime and the government intends to keep it that way. It wants to have the case heard under the National Security Information Act, which would keep almost all elements of it secret. The government, said ex attorney-general Gareth Evans, had been spooked by the security establishment. “I presume the advice from the security agencies was that this leak was outrageous and someone had to be punished.”

Katherine Gillespie
Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is best known for his film scores, including The Last Emperor, Goodbye Mr Lawrence and The Revenant. Ahead of his performance at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, he reflects on his long career, from pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, to writing on a piano salvaged from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

“Making music for me is a chain reaction, always going towards something,” he says. “Some ideas, a glimpse of something, a fragment of a memory that triggers more images. That kind of imaginative fantasy, that journey, is already very musical.”

Annie SmithersThere’s nothing like a change in seasons to send you longing for treats banished due to lack of seasonality. When I put out a call in the kitchen the other week for what sort of sweet thing I should write about, my lovely dishwasher replied with, “Oh, I’m an ice-cream man.” This in turn reminded me of an ice-cream dish I made as an apprentice at Stephanie’s, one that has always been a favourite. Stephanie Alexander remembers publishing this many years ago in Good Weekend magazine, her memory jogged by the image that accompanied it, and was more than happy for me to share it again. Making frozen dairy desserts at home can be a little fraught because the result is often different in texture from what one is hoping for. This amaretti semifreddo has stuck in my memory for more than 30 years for good reason. It is delicious. A little like the very best iced coffee you have ever had. Augment it with beautiful Fabbri cherries, just like it was on the Stephanie’s menu somewhere in the mid 1980s.

Shaad D’SouzaWithout the crutch of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s characterisation, A Star is Born falls short as a standalone album. In the film, Cooper’s Maine is a Garth Brooks-meets-Neil Young country rock star with a drinking problem who stumbles upon an unknown named Ally, played by Lady Gaga, with whom he becomes personally and professionally entangled. They fall in love and Ally soon gets swept up in the music industry as a pop ingenue. Much of A Star Is Born revolves around the tension between art and commerce, and how cash can, supposedly, turn good art bad. In the film, this process is reflected in the transformation of Ally’s music from raw piano balladry to glossy electronic pop, of the kind Gaga used to make. Both the “authentic” and “inauthentic” sides of Ally’s music are showcased on the soundtrack, but here they have no narrative arc to signal which songs are fraught and which aren’t. When “Shallow” arrives, though, the record’s many problems seem to melt away.