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Kai Strittmatter confronts China’s unsettling future and much more! $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
MY FAVOURITE THINGS | Don’t Judge Me
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“I always thought history and memory would triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place. It now appears the opposite is true. In today’s China, amnesia trumps memory. Lies are surpassing the truth.” — YAN LIENKE
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I’ve been chewing over the power of presence since streaming John Chester’s The Biggest Little Farm. As I wrote on my blog last week, it’s helped me to accept just how much my meditation practice has helped me become a better listener. This daily practice, while honing presence, has taught me to receive the most unusual invitations from the universe. I’d be lying if I said some of these encounters weren’t a little disconcerting at the outset. Yet by leaning in and giving these ideas a good go I started to discover that these projects weren’t just creatively stimulating. They stretched the limits and bounds of my creativity and renewed my confidence in the underlying process of telling better stories.
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After tuning into this NPR interview with Kai Strittmatter I was left emotionally paralyzed. His new book, a deeply fascinating and troubling examination of life in twenty-first century China, hit just as hard. As Strittmatter tells it, the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) has successfully evolved into a hybrid of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 combined. This unlikely marriage, championed under the lifetime governance of Xi Jinping has ushered in a new age. Conceiving a nationwide state-of-the-art facial recognition surveillance system (eerily nicknamed Skynet) which can locate any ‘bad eggs’ within a matter of seconds and effectively erasing history (the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre failing to stir a ripple within the national consciousness in 2019). The German journalist has forced me to contemplate a rather disturbing future, one where the freedom of speech is supplanted by blind fealty for the state. “Today China has more than 100 cities bigger than Chicago. Many of them have grown to ten or more times their original size over the past decade, and all have completely eradicated their history in the process. — Kai Strittmatter
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As I confessed on Popcorn Therapy (the boys are back, baby!) I have a real soft spot for a good old-fashioned period drama. Francis Lee’s latest release was the perfect film to mark my theatrical debut for the year and has left me soaring for weeks after. Following the journey of two lonely and misunderstood women, the film is loosely based on the life of Mary Anning, (played by Kate Winslet) an acclaimed paleontologist of the nineteenth century. To think that such a talented specialist was denied a seat at the table for the simple nature of her sex is sadly an issue that lingers to this day. Lee gives voice to this story with such affection and heart, removing the male gaze from the equation altogether. Winslet and Saoirse Ronan breathe life into these richly-drawn characters and capture that ineffable essence when opposites attract. It still irks me to think that I’ve never come across British period dramas of yesteryear exploring such fertile ground. I never wanted it to end.
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Ever since I laid eyes on Ben Stiller’s Zoolander as a pock-faced teenager, the New York native has held a very special place in my heart. While many of his subsequent directorial choices failed to land in the same way, I’ve been over the moon for this star-studded limited series. Created by Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkin, it tells the real life story of two resourceful and resilient inmates breaking out of an upstate New York penitentiary. I love the way Stiller immerses us into this blue-collar town. Patricia Arquette is sublime as the unhappy spouse of a prison guard, a desperately unfulfilled woman who cultivates an illicit affair with two inmates (Benicio Del Toro and Paul Dano) in her textile workshop. Watching Del Toro inhabit the shoes of this calculating prisoner with Dano as his millennial sidekick brings me so much joy. A must watch.
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No matter the occasion or mood, I’ve always made time for Louis Theroux and his quirky brand of documentaries. I love the way the London native throws himself into one metaphorical lion’s den after another. Be it porn stars, alcoholics, polygamists, pro-wrestlers, exotic animal trainers, born-again Christians or survivalists, Theroux always manages to unlock the humanity within every sub-culture. Anna Russell’s wonderfully inventive profile does a remarkable job of unraveling his process and helps to shed light on his universal appeal. My lady recently turned me onto Grounded, his new podcast series launched in response to the pandemic. I sincerely enjoyed his recent interview with FKA Twigs which explores her process and dives deep on the recent civil suit brought forth against her former partner Shia LaBeouf.
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I must confess to being a negative Nancy in the opening minutes of this DIY documentary. Yet as it unfolded I found myself being won over by a beautiful story. The doco tracks the journey of two Californian urbanites looking to realize their dreams of owning and running a solvent picture book farm. As John and Molly Chester make plain, the traditional notion of farming has been supplanted by monoculture in order to stay afloat in the age of globalization. A sad reality that continues to have devastating consequences on the natural environment. In reading about the ‘making of’ process, I found myself drawn to Chester’s unconscious mantra to confront each obstacle with patience and presence. Just this week, I happened upon a Goop episode featuring John Chester in conversation with Gwyneth Paltrow. A remarkably insightful chat.
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Nothing quite compares to sitting down with a good Russian film. No international precedent that evokes a similar feeling. Kantemir Balagov’s second film, set in the immediate aftermath of WWII and following the journey of two female soldiers returning home to the forgotten wastelands of St Petersburg, is a revelation. To think that such a modern masterpiece was conceived from the mind of a filmmaker in his late twenties makes this film all the more remarkable. The millennial filmmaker has an innate understanding for telling stories with a minimum of fuss. Every scene laced with a sense of purpose (and unrefined dread). The performances from the dual leads Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina — both acting students in their first feature-film roles — are simply breathtaking. Yet for all the film’s sadness and despair I found its ending strangely uplifting.
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Bob Marley is one of those iconic figures that I’ve always taken for granted, his indelible sound and iconic dreadlocks as familiar as the golden arches. Yet it was only a matter of minutes into watching Kevin MacDonald’s 2012 documentary that I realized I knew diddly squat about the late Jamaican talent. Born into extreme poverty to a white Jamaican father and black mother, Marley would endure life-long ridicule for straddling both worlds. It was this very duality, MacDonald contends, that made his insatiable appetite for success possible in the first place. As the film makes plain, the Rastafarian disciple never stopped hustling, carving out the unique sound we still enjoy and celebrate today. The visionary director behind The Last King of Scotland rounds up an incredible cast of talking heads and has crafted one of the most innovative music documentaries I’ve laid my eyes on
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Stefano Sollima, the Italian director behind the sequel Sicario : Day of the Soldado and the acclaimed Gomorrah TV series, is one of the creators behind this international crime saga. This is the first limited series I’ve come across that sheds light on the global drug trade and the uncompromising nature of the bottom line. What makes the show all the more remarkable is its immersive portrait of this multi-faceted industry and the men and women that keep the wheels turning. Over the course of eight hours, the series confronts the ugly truth of globalization and explores the cost of human trafficking, governmental corruption, kleptocracy and the pyrrhic war on terror. Andrea Riseborough and Dane DeHaan headline this intricate series, inhabiting the shoes of two sheltered siblings desperately trying to keep their heads in a vicious melee for supremacy.
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Alice Coltrane’s music has been in my ears for hours on end this month after stumbling upon this Soundcloud link to her 1973 double LP. Music has always instilled a sense of wonder and curiousity within me but Coltrane transports me, her sound offering a metaphorical balm to the madness of modern life. After watching John Scheinfeld’s mesmeric doco Chasing Trane on the life of her second husband John Coltrane it helped me develop an even deeper appreciation for their symbiotic relationship. While John Coltrane consumed my teens and twenties, my reverence for Alice Coltrane seems to run in step with the gray hairs sprouting above my temples. Reading about her life incidentally turned me onto this incredible compilation from Coltrane’s later years under her adopted sanskrit name Turiyasangitananda.
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When I first discovered that the well-to-do Sydney neighborhood of Rushcutters Bay was once the site of a historical showdown for the heavyweight championship of the world I could scarcely believe it. After reading Geoffrey C. Ward’s uncompromising look at the rise and fall of Jack Johnson I’ve come away with a newfound reverence for the Texan native. It’s difficult to imagine the world in which Johnson moved in. Of white men and women who openly mocked him with racial slurs and metaphors alluding to his inferiority not only as a pugilist but more importantly as a man. Johnson’s ability to weather such ugliness and even thrive amongst such animosity made him a superhero of his times. He was the original African American mogul, a man who flaunted his wealth on diamonds and fast cars and courted the company of white women at a time when lynching was a popular past time. Never have I ever come across such a fascinating and complex individual whose unprecedented achievements were always overshadowed by the colour of his skin. “For more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous, and the most notorious African American on Earth. When whites ran everything, Jack Johnson took orders from no one. While most African-Americans struggled merely to survive, Jack Johnson reveled in his riches and his fame.” — Ken Burns
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Conflicted emotions stirred within me as I came upon headlines of Phil Spector’s passing from COVID-19 last week. A part of me was deeply saddened that one of the most innovative producers of all time had passed on to the other side; another side strangely relieved that the New York native, serving out his golden years for first-degree murder, had been put out of his misery. I remember digesting Mick Brown’s Tearing Down The Wall of Sound and being awed at his genius and his deeply disturbing personality traits. While I have a real soft spot for his tireless output from his wall of sound period (be sure to hunt down a copy of Tom Wolfe’s phenomenal essay The First Tycoon of Teen) it’s his collaborative efforts from the 1970s that stay with me. From John Lennon and George Harrison debut solo recordings to Dion’s Born To Be With You (an unsung masterpiece) and Leonard Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies Man. “I loved him madly, and gave my heart and soul to him. Unfortunately Phil was not able to live and function outside of the recording studio. Darkness set in, many lives were damaged.” — Veronica Bennett
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Four Tet’s Kieran Hebdan turned me onto the majestic sounds of Sharan Rani on his Instagram page. While there is limited knowledge to digest on Wikipedia, I was nonetheless fascinated to discover that Rani learned to play the sarod — a stringed instrument favoured in Hindustani music — from the great Allauddin Khan and his son Ali Akbar Khan. To listen to Rani perform is to bear witness to pure creation. Popularly known as Sarod Rani, or Queen of Sarod, she was the first renowned female instrumentalist of India. In a career spanning seven decades, Rani would travel the world and was always known for her humility and grace. Having listened to this YouTube link one too many times on my Bose headphones I sought out a vintage copy of this LP to savour in the best of company.
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