At the Verona. I also signed up for their movie club: it costs $12 for a student, you get two free tickets per annum and the ticket price drops to an unbelievable $8.50 for oneself and one's friend. I'll make that money back in a month.
Took me a while to get through this one. Barry's writing style is a bit opaque, and the dry humour is welcome but unfortunately sparse. He has a tendency to explain his experience by referring to others', and then omitting concrete descriptions for those of us unfamiliar with his references. The book overflows with a self-aware immodesty, and the publisher's gamble is that the paying readership will indulge him on the basis of his historical place in the nation's bosom.
The last chapter is quite out of place in an autobiography, being a commentary on the post-reason, post-Enlightenment politics of 2006. Good to see John Quiggin get a guernsey though.
Ah, dear old Mr Blue wrote a movie. His schtick is timeless. It's a bit trying if you like a strong plot or dislike bumpkin-ism. Directed by Robert Altman, and his last.
Very well edited but the plot is a bit paint-by-the-numbers.
I scored some free tickets from The Program. First time at the Ensemble Theatre, a tiny theatre on quite a pretty little stretch of the harbour at Kirribilli. Met up with Jen at Milson's Point train station and had a drink at what seems to be the only pub in the area; it pulls a strange cross-section of punters, that's for sure. We had a quick dinner at Luigi's (Italian, in the hub of restaurants) and hurried down the backstreets to be there just in time.
The play itself was a pretty standard exploration of themes surrounding relationships, e.g. as listed in this review in the Smage. I found it stultifying for extended periods, though the actress provided great relief whenever she was on stage. I just can't imagine too many new things to be said in this format, and a retreat to novelty as happens here is a bit of a cop-out. The social upheaval in Argentina over so many years could surely yield something more than this.
Yep, I feel like some cyberpunk right now. The plot makes little sense. (e.g. How could Deckard not know that replicants have a limited life span? — surely if there was blood spilt on Earth over these things then the resolution would have been broadcast to reassure the citizenry.) Heck, we're not watching it for the plot though, are we? It's all about noir in a dyspeptic future.
This was quite a lot better than I remembered. (The copy I have cost me $3.50 back in the early 90s.) I can't believe it hasn't been made into a movie, well, excepting The Matrix of course.
How cool is this, someone's organised a family tree of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) translations. Who would have thought there's so damn many.
This is Barry's long-in-coming autobiography. The launch itself was another in-conversation-with Jennifer Byrne, who surprisingly managed to get some words in edgeways without talking over the big man. Bazza's schtick has always been to ramp up the geek in a self-deprecatory and seemingly oblivious fashion, though it is a pretence that he can't keep all the time. His anecdotes (e.g., roughly, "the return of Halley's Comet may well be the single greatest achievement of the Hawke government", uttered to the press gallery in his role as Science Minister, circa 1987.) make him human, but he also likes to use the ramble to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Still, it's more entertaining than the bald dissembling and visionless blandness of the current mob.
Interesting in the light of Petro Georgiou's recent spray was his claim that Bob Menzies, late in life, gave up voting for the Liberals and went for the DLP instead.
Urk, a sci-fi romance. Not one of his memorable works.
Again, students and the unwaged gain free entry to New Theatre, it being the first Sunday of the month for these godless socialist types. My last two visits had proven less than exciting, and so it was with a what-the-heck sigh that I put my bum on the seat this time.
The play itself is an update of a century-old tale of inherited avarice, and examines the angles a family may take on ruin: honour, nonchalance, legalism, morality. It works. The cast was large, dynamic, well-used and effective. The narrative was a bit unwieldy at times, and the love sub-plot betwixt Alice and Edward suffered a bit in this abridged version, though what is there is funny enough.
Definitely worth a look.
