James Lovelock champions the dawn of the A.I. age and much more!Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ Νβ€Œ 
 

MY FAVOURITE THINGS | Dream Baby Dream

β€œThe intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

β€” ALBERT EINSTEIN
 

To celebrate my thirty-third birthday, Ridley and I eloped up the coast for a couple nights of solitary R&R before Billie joined for the weekend. With days spent exploring dog beaches and enjoying homemade meals on the deck of our Airbnb rental, I came to purge the last vestiges of lockdown angst. Before the pandemic took the world hostage, I would have deemed such a humble getaway as being a poor excuse of one’s travel time. Yet the end result of almost two years of global lockdown has shed new perspective on the simple joys of sunny days in the company of good books (and a furry four-legged monster). It also helped me put the finishing touches on a brand new playlist.
 

Novocene πŸ“š

Who would of thought James Lovelock’s final treatise would afford such a sense of optimism on the forthcoming age of robotic super-intelligence. As the 100 year-old chemist and inventor makes plain, there have only been three singularly profound moments that have shaped life on earth. The first occurring 3.4 billion years ago with the arrival of photo-synthetic bacteria, the second when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine in 1712 and the third occurring as we speak with the dawn of singularity. While I’ve found surprising solace in Yuval Noah Harari’s observation, imparted in 21 Lessons For The 21st Century, that we’ve always been far better at inventing tools than using them wisely, Lovelock offers refreshing perspective. As this new intelligence masters machine learning β€” a reality that already exists β€” it will outstrip its core coding to become the intelligence it was always intended to be.

 

Why Is Every Young Person Watching The Sopranos? πŸ—ž

Everywhere I look, I see reminders of a TV series which not only heralded the renaissance of long-form content but my own formative years. After reading Willy Staley’s phenomenal piece in the New York Times, so many buried truths came rushing forth. As Staley muses, the family crime drama has never been more relevant for its ability to capture our divided selves with startling clarity. Tony Soprano, the show’s anchor, is a man whose Machiavellian tendencies are masked by a truckload of charisma. Yet for all his personal and professional success, the crime boss can never shake the feeling that he’s living through the end of days. While the show was not witness to the pervasive decay of social media, it nonetheless mourns the loss of community and tribe, usurped by the power of the almighty dollar. 
 

Incendies πŸŽ₯

In the lead up to the release of Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s latest blockbuster adaptation, I wanted to better understand the formative roots of this filmmaking savant. Incendies, a 2010 release adapted from a play by Wajdi Mouawad, offers a fascinating look at the complexities of grief. When a set of twins witness the will reading of their recently deceased mother, they are summoned on a journey to find a father and brother they never knew they had. What follows is not only heart wrenching but deeply illuminating in offering an honest look at how sectarian conflict can taint the bonds of family long after the return of peace. The French Canadian native infuses the gripping drama with an array of visuals delights that would lead to his collaborative partnership with the one and only Roger Deakins. I dare you to sit through its harrowing finale and not feel truly alive.

 

The Tap Dancing Knife Thrower πŸ“š

I’ve been on the hunt for answers to Aussie stories that clean up at the box office. While the search has yielded few answers to date, I was astounded to learn that a film from 1986 was still the most commercially successful flick to release Down Under. That the film’s screenwriter and principal talent was a former rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge makes the story all the more remarkable. After a recent rewatch of Crocodile Dundee, I quickly understood why Peter Faiman’s directorial debut will most likely hold the top spot for many moons to come. Tucking into his recent autobiography has been just as refreshing. Paul Hogan, or β€˜Hoges’ as he is affectionately known, is truly a one of a kind personality. An ordinary bloke whose humble ideas went on to create a billion dollar franchise and inadvertently put our little country on the map.

 

Running On Empty πŸŽ₯

It was while reading this engrossing Indiewire article on Jake Gyllenhaal’s pandemic productivity and the making of his new Netflix drama The Guilty that I was turned onto Sidney Lumet’s Running On Empty. The quiet family drama, written by Gyllenhaal’s mother Naomi Foner, explores the inner workings of a fugitive family living in plain sight. Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti are exceptional in the shoes of former eco-terrorists desperately trying to outrun an act of defiance gone wrong. Yet the film’s true centre heart lies with River Phoenix and his coming of age dalliance with onscreen (and offscreen!) love interest Martha Plimpton. The teen heartthrob is electric as a high school senior chafing against the restraints of familial obligation and yearning for the opportunity to stop running and start living.

 

The Inspired Unemployed πŸ“»

It was only a matter of time before these coastal buffoons translated their viral Instagram feed into their very own podcast. Jack Steele and Matty β€˜Falcon’ Ford are the twenty-first century successors to Paul Hogan, former tradies who traded in their high-vis gear to piss-take on life in the age of Instagram. What I love most about their satirical skits is their ability to put their ego on the line, to follow any comedic angle no matter the outcome. And while the Sydney pair are cashing in on their unlikely position as brand ambassadors, they’ve done a bang-up job of throwing each and every client under the metaphorical bus. The first few episodes of their Spotify podcast remind me of Popcorn Therapy’s core message; two fellers getting together to talk about what they love and how it makes them feel. The end result adds a touch of humanity to their off-the-wall social antics.
 

Mall Maker πŸ“š

I came of age in the wide open spaces of the shopping mall, a choice motivated by convenience and the pre-teen illusion of independence. From these formative beginnings, I still find strange comfort in these places, even while stubbornly accepting that their primary purpose accelerates the modern pastime of mindless consumption. When I first picked up Mall Maker, I struggled to conceive how an ardent Viennese socialist came to mall America, and by extension the world. M. Jeffrey Hardwick’s exact accounting of Victor Gruen helps to unpack his super-sized legacy and documents how his bold ambitions helped to shift the consumer mindset for packaging over price and ultimately usher in the age of the impulse purchase.
 

She Made Music Jump Into 3D πŸ—ž

It was while reading up on the life of New Zealand composer David Parsons that I came upon Wendy Carlos. Not only did the Rhode Island composer produce an ambient album ahead of my hero Brian Eno but possessed a similarly indefatigable curiousity for creative experimentation. Carlos would go on to work with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, a rare distinction that didn’t stop her from pulling any punches in her touching tribute to his passing on her retro 16-bit website. While I was saddened to learn that her talents were overshadowed by her transition to a woman, changing her name from Walter to Wendy in the process, it never dampened her prodigious spirit. Streaming her groundbreaking 1972 Sonic Seasonings, a monumental achievement that illuminates the sonic transformation of the seasons, led me to hunt down a vinyl copy to better savour the experience.

β€œStanley Kubrick told me I was the most outspoken, candid person he had worked with. This merely means in my case that I had a big mouth, and sometimes still say too much, perhaps even here.”
 

King Richard πŸŽ₯

My first Sydney Film Festival outing was Reinaldo Marcus Green’s (Monsters & Men) touching biopic on Richard Williams. Williams is best remembered as the outspoken father and self-appointed coach of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams. As the film unveils, he was a complicated figure, whose murky past was eclipsed by his dogged determination and singular vision. Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton are sublime as the pre-teen sisters who carry their own alongside a withered Will Smith. Having grown up with the game of tennis, I found myself marveling at the poor sportsmanship of the all-white competition, child stars whose shameless on-court behaviour shamefully reminded me of my hot-headed younger days.

 

It’s Time To Stop Talking About Generations πŸ—ž

One of the delights of reading is the thrill of coming across ideas and articles that challenge and collapse ideological certainties. Louis Menand awakes us to the fact that our talk of generational gaps and labels are not only unhelpful but lacking in any concrete truths. The New Yorker staff writer takes us through the birth of this trend, a marketing gimmick originally used to sell kaftans and bell-bottom pants back to us. I love how he likens the overwrought claims of the tech-savvy Gen-Z with their Haight Ashbury grandparents from the nineteen-sixties. As Menand reminds, each so-called β€˜generation’ represented little more than a small minority of the population. A pimple on an otherwise unblemished face.

 

Joan Harrison πŸ‘€

It was while perusing a recent issue of the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine that I came to learn of Joan Harrison’s remarkable life. Starting out as a secretary for Alfred Hitchcock in the nineteen-thirties, she was soon promoted to a reader and creative confidante in the development of his films. When Hitchcock was lured to Hollywood to work for the great David O. Selznick, Harrison was invited along and was soon entrusted with writing assignments for Hitchcock’s debut American films. Her work on Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca, both released in 1940, led her to become the first female screenwriter to be nominated for an Academy Award. After watching the 1944 film noir classic Phantom Lady, which also celebrated her debut as producer, I sought out Christina Lane’s aptly titled biography Phantom Lady on her remarkable life.

 

Yogyakarta: Gamelan of the Kraton πŸŽ™

As Aussie airline carriers celebrate the return of international travel, the announcements have had me dreaming of exotic destinations. Indonesian Gamelan music has been the music du jour over the past few weeks and this 1997 release has been a balm to the soul. Recorded in the ancient palace of Kraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat in central Java, it features an ensemble of musicians in the employ of the Sultan of Yogyakarta. I was blown away at how this awe-inspiring recording came about and soon found myself diving into the phenomenal life of David Parsons. Parsons, a New Zealand jazz drummer turned ambient composer, would become an itinerant wanderer, traveling the world and recording some of the oldest forms of music through Asia and the Middle East.

β€œYou go to the Himalayas and you hear the rumble of the ice, and the low long horns of the monastery. Tibetan Buddhism has that darkness: it’s not evil, it’s the awesome power of the universe, the sound of Om. That’s the darkness I’m drawn to.” β€” David Parsons
 

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WRITING | @jamespillion
FILM | @jamespillionfilm

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Bondi, NSW,
Australia

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