Still alive still alive still alive still alive

Thursday music corner: Khruangbin are a world music-infused Texan three-piece who formed in 2010, whose name is Thai for 'airplane'. The band has released five studio albums, with the most recent, A La Sala, released in April 2024. Khruangbin has also released 19 singles, including two featuring fellow Texan singer-songwriter, Leon Bridges.

The infectious groove of People Everywhere (Still Alive) appeared on the band's 2015 debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You. This extended performance is from the Austin City Limits festival in October 2024.

Khruangbin - People Everywhere (Still Alive) (live in Austin, 2024)

See also:

Music: Khruangbin - Summer Madness (Kool & the Gang cover, 2020)

Music: Khruangbin & Leon Bridges - Texas Sun (live at Glastonbury, 2022)

Music: Noah Cyrus & Leon Bridges - July (2019)

Not talkin' 'bout religion, no - not talkin' 'bout fashion, no

Thursday music corner: The Dynamic Hepnotics were an Australian soul band formed by "Continental" Robert Susz in Sydney in 1979. Although the band released only one album, 1985's Take You Higher, they achieved considerable chart success with their most memorable single, Soul Kind of Feeling. Written by Susz and appearing as the final track on Take You Higher, the exuberant soul single reached number five in the Australian pop charts in 1984, driven in particular by Susz's dramatic falsetto vocals, and popularised further by numerous appearances in the soap Neighbours. The song charted even higher in New Zealand, reaching number three in March 1985. 

The band had one other Australian charting single, Gotta Be Wrong (Way to Love), which reached number 20 later in 1984. The band split in 1986, but reunited for two music festival shows in 2015.   

Dynamic Hepnotics - Soul Kind of Feeling (1984)

See also:
Music: Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back (1984)

Music: Eurogliders - Heaven (Must Be There) (1984)

Music: Pseudo Echo - A Beat For You (1984)

Precolonial maritime New Zealand

That record, since December 1642 when Abel Tasman first sighted 'Clyppygen Hoeck', to December 1840, when colonisation began, had the records of 1758 vessels arriving on the [New Zealand] coast.

They came, first to explore, then to exploit, little schooners and brigs out of the infant seaport of Port Jackson, the whaling barques out of the ancient port of London, the full-riggers from the whaling ports of Maine and Massachusetts, from Lisbon, Copenhagen, Le Havre, Bremen and Hobart Town. Sealers and whalers, spar ships and flax traders, sandalwood schooners on their way home from Fiji, ships laden with tortoise shell and coconut oil from Tahiti, and ships of war from Trincomalee and Toulon.

New Zealand, and many of its precolonial seaports, enjoyed a trade by sea that was truly international, and today, as one sails up the harbours of Akaroa, Port Underwood, Hokianga or the Bay of Islands, with only an occasional fisherman or pleasure boat in sight, it is difficult to imagine those waters thronged with barques, brigs and schooners flying the flags of many nations, of whaleboats, in countless numbers, trafficking between ships and from ship to shore.

They came in their hundreds, seeking grog and girls, pork and potatoes, and the natural products the coast had to offer: oil to light the lamps of Europe and America; whalebone to corset their women; sealskins to robe the Manchus of China or to appear on the streets of London as 'beaver hats'; flax to provide canvas, rope and cordage for their ships; and solid kauri spars for masts and yards. Whatever they sought, they came by sea, stayed a while and went on, about their seafaring business. A few were left behind, seamen from America, France, Australia, England, Scotland and Ireland, ship deserters of many nations, living with their Maori wives and laying the foundations of what was to become a multiracial society.

To some perhaps, the most significant maritime activity of these years will be seen as that occurring in 1840, the arrival in Port Nicholson of the chartered ships of the New Zealand Company, carrying between them close on 2000 intending settlers, to be landed haphazardly on the beach at Petone in the rude collection of tents, shacks and whares they proudly called 'Britannia'.

- Rear-Admiral John O'Connell Ross,* New Zealand Maritime History to 1840: People, Ships, Trade & Settlement, Wellington, 2024, p.146-7.

(* Ross was Royal New Zealand Navy Chief of Naval Staff, 1965-69)

See also:
History: The itinerant life of a tramp steamer, 11 December 2021

History: The lifeblood of a young colony, 12 June 2009

History: Tales to tell back on shore, 21 January 2009

Like two Christophers in the snow

Thursday music corner: Ocean Colour Scene are a rock band formed in Birmingham in 1989, consisting at the outset of Simon Fowler, Steve Cradock, Damon Minchella and Oscar Harrison. They first attained wider fame after being invited to tour as support to Paul Weller in 1993 and Oasis in 1995. The band achieved success as part of the Britpop boom, including scoring three top-five UK albums from 1996 to 1999. Moseley Shoals, the most successful of their albums, went triple platinum in the UK, and its successor, Marchin' Already, topped the UK album charts. Ocean Colour Scene have released 10 studio albums between 1992 and 2013, and scored 17 UK top 40 singles between 1996 and 2007. Six of the band's singles also reached the Irish top 40. 

Travellers Tune was the second single (after Hundred Mile High City) from the band's third album, Marchin' Already. Released in 1997, it peaked at number five in the UK singles chart, and number 30 in Ireland. American soul singer P.P. Arnold, another frequent Paul Weller collaborator, provides guest vocals. 

Ocean Colour Scene - Travellers Tune (1997)

See also:
Music: Ocean Colour Scene - You've Got It Bad (1996)

Music: Paul Weller -  The Weaver (w/ Steve Cradock, 1993)

Music: P.P. Arnold - The First Cut is the Deepest (1967)

The measure of Pope John Paul II

[Pope John Paul II] was a hard man to measure. Sternly authoritarian he nevertheless abandoned the use of the Royal plural in his encyclicals and allocutions: he was the first pope to write not as 'we' but in his own persona, as Karol Wojtyla. He was also a passionate believer in religious liberty, and at Vatican II played a key role in the transformation of Catholic teaching in that area. Often seen as dismissive of other faiths, he had an intense interest in Judaism, born out of a lifelong friendship with a Jewish boy from Krakow: he was the first Pope to visit the Roman Synagogue, and in 1993 he established formal diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. His openness to other religions extended to the non-Abrahamic traditions. In October 1986 at Assisi he initiated acts of worship involving not only Muslims, but Hindus, the Dali Lama and assorted Shamans. When praying by the Ganges at the scene of Gandhi's cremation he became so absorbed that his entourage lost patience and literally shook him back into his schedule. The uncompromising defender of profoundly unpopular teaching on matters such as birth-control, he was nevertheless the most populist pope in history, an unstoppable tarmac-kisser, hand-shaker, granny-blesser, baby-embracer. Convinced of his own immediate authority over and responsibility for every Catholic in the world, he went to the people, showing himself, asserting his authority, coaxing, scolding, joking, weeping, and trailing exhausted local hierarchies in his wake [...]

John Paul II's pontificate, the longest since Pius IX and the second longest in history, will also be judged one of the most momentous, in which a pope not only once more reasserted papal control of the Church, and thereby sought to call a halt to the decentralising initiated as a result of the Second Vatican Council, but in which the Pope, long since a marginal figure in the world of realpolitik, once more played a major role in world history, and the downfall of Soviet Communism. John Paul's own contradictions defied easy categorisations. Passionately committed to the freedom and integrity of the human person, he was the twentieth century's most effective ambassador for such freedoms, setting his own country on a path to liberation and thereby helping trigger the collapse of the Soviet empire. Two of his major encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, celebrate the ability of the free human mind to grasp fundamental truth and to discern the will of God which is also the fulfilment of human nature. Yet under his rule, the last quarter of the twentieth century saw a revived authoritarianism in the Catholic Church, in which, in the judgement of many, theological exploration was needlessly outlawed or prematurely constrained. Passionately committed to reconciliation with the Orthodox, his pontificate saw an expansion of Catholicism within the former Soviet Union which outraged Orthodox leaders and hardened the ancient suspicions he so painfully and sincerely laboured to dispel. This Polish pope did more than any single individual in the whole history of Christianity to reconcile Jews and Christians and to remove the ancient stain of anti-Semitism from the Christian imagination: his visits to the Roman synagogue and above all to the Holy Land in 2000, and his repeated expressions of penitence for Christian anti-Semitism, were imaginative gestures whose full implications and consequences have yet to appear. Yet he canonised Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who voluntarily took the place of a married man in a Nazi concentration camp death cell, but who had edited an anti-Semitic paper between the Wars. Wojtyla also canonized Edith Stein, the Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun and died because she was a Jew in Auschwitz in 1942. The Pope saw Stein as a reconciling figure. Jews saw her as an emblem of proselytisation and, as in the case of Kolbe, an attempt to annex the Shoah for Catholicism. Wojtyla was not deflected from his purpose, and despite protests both canonizations went ahead.

- Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale, 2006, pp.377 & 382-3.

From Mt Kaukau

 

Iona Tower

 

Songs discussed in Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022)

Bobby Bare - Detroit City 1963

Elvis Costello - Pump It Up 1978

Perry Como - Without a Song 1951

Jimmy Wages - Take Me From this Garden of Evil 1956

Webb Pierce - There Stands the Glass 1953

Billy Joe Shaver - Willy the Wandering Gypsy & Me 1973

Little Richard - Tutti Frutti 1955

Elvis Presley - Money Honey 1956

The Who - My Generation 1965

Harry McLintock - Jesse James 1928

Ricky Nelson - Poor Little Fool 1958

Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard - Pancho & Lefty 1983

Jackson Browne - The Pretender 1976

Bobby Darin - Mack the Knife 1959

Bing Crosby - Whiffenpoof Song 1947

Eddy Arnold - You Don't Know Me 1956

The Temptations - Ball of Confusion 1970

Johnnie & Jack - Poison Love 1950

Bobby Darin - Beyond the Sea 1958

Willie Nelson - On the Road Again 1980

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes - If You Don't Know Me By Now 1972

Johnnie Ray - The Little White Cloud That Cried 1951

Marty Robbins - El Paso 1959

Alvin Youngblood Hart - Nelly Was a Lady 2004

Johnnie Taylor - Cheaper to Keep Her 1973

Ray Charles - I Got a Woman 1954

The Fugs - CIA Man 1967

Vic Damone - On the Street Where You Live 1956

The Grateful Dead - Truckin’ 1970

Osborne Brothers - Ruby Are You Mad? 1956

Johnny Paycheck - Old Violin 1986

Domenico Modugno - Volare 1958

The Clash - London Calling 1979

Hank Williams with his Drifting Cowboys - Your Cheatin’ Heart 1953

Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou 1963

Allman Brothers - Midnight Rider 1970

Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes 1956

The Platters - My Prayer 1956

Warren Zevon - Dirty Life & Times 2003

John Trudell - Doesn't Hurt Anymore 2001

Little Walter - Key to the Highway 1958

Mose Allison - Everybody Cryin’ Mercy 1968

Edwin Starr - War 1970

Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two - Big River 1957

Sonny Burgess - Feel So Good 1957/58

Dean Martin - Blue Moon 1964

Cher - Gypsies Tramps & Thieves 1971

Uncle Dave Macon - Keep My Skillet Good & Greasy 1924

Tommy Edwards - It's All In The Game 1958

Ernie K-Doe - A Certain Girl 1961

Waylon Jennings - I've Always Been Crazy 1978

Eagles - Witchy Woman 1972

Jimmy Reed - Big Boss Man 1960

Little Richard - Long Tall Sally 1956

Charlie Poole - Old & Only in the Way 1928

Santana - Black Magic Woman 1970

Jimmy Webb - By the Time I Get To Phoenix 1996

Rosemary Clooney - Come On-A My House 1951

Johnny Cash - Don't Take Your Guns to Town 1958

Judy Garland - Come Rain or Come Shine 1956

Nina Simone - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood 1964

Frank Sinatra - Strangers in the Night 1966

Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas 1964

The Drifters - Saturday Night at the Movies 1964

Pete Seeger - Waist Deep in the Big Muddy 1967

Dion - Where or When 1959

Sex & Agriculture

Thursday music corner: Dance Exponents, founded by vocalist Jordan Luck and guitarist Brian Jones, were the original 1980s incarnation of the truncated Exponents that took the New Zealand music charts by storm in the 1990s. Formed in 1981 and relocating from Timaru to Christchurch, the Dance Exponents released three successful albums: Prayers Be Answered (1983), Expectations (1985) and Amplifier (1986) and had nine New Zealand top 40 singles; the first, 1982's Victoria, being their most popular. 

As the Exponents the band went on to greater success in the 1990s, including three top ten albums and ten more top 40 singles. They attained their peak popularity thanks to the Something Beginning with C album from 1992, which featured twin New Zealand number three-charting singles in 1991, Why Does Love Do This To Me and Who Loves Who The Most.

Sex & Agriculture was a non-album Dance Exponents single from 1984, which followed up the barroom stomper I'll Say Goodbye (Even Though I'm Blue).

Dance Exponents - Sex & Agriculture (1984) 

See also:

Music: Dance Exponents - Airway Spies (1982)

Music: Exponents - Sink Like A Stone (1992)

Music: Jordan Luck Band - Under The Mercury Moon (2017)

Remnants of the band that didn't play on

One day I had to go and inspect the huge Sitmar Cruises neon at the end of Elizabeth Street on Flinders Street Station. It was about 50 foot long (15 metres) and displayed three different messages, including a great big ship revolving around. It had blown a fuse, and I thought, 'Oh bugger, where's the fuse for this thing?' Because, of course, the railways had bloody switchboards all over the place. So I got on up on the roof. I was walking along the roof following this conduit to one of those little beehives along the side of the railway building. There was an old rusty lock on the thing. I just ripped it off with my screwdriver and I went in. There was a little trapdoor up in the roof and the bloody conduit went up into that and I thought, 'You bastard!'. So I had to go downstairs and get a big pair of steps and drag it up. Got them into the bloody thing, got up, pushed the trapdoor open and stuck my head in.

There was about 100 musical instruments in there. All beautiful silver trumpets and trombones, violins, guitars, banjos. All the glue had come undone and they'd fallen into a heap of three-ply on the floor and all the skins had gone off the drums. And I thought, 'What a strange f***ing thing this is'. So I went down to the man in grey and asked if he had ever lost anything here. [It turned out] the bloke who hid them up there was told to hide the instruments because at the start of the Second World War everybody thought the Japs [the Japanese] were coming. He built a false ceiling in and put all the stuff up there and closed it up. He belonged to the Salvation Army band in Brunswick and they all went away with the Second 21st Australian Brigade [sic.] to Singapore.

"They were all captured by the Japs. As they were getting taken to Japan for forced labour, the troop ship they were on was torpedoed by a Yanky [US] ship. They were locked down in the hold. Two thousand of them went to the 'bottom bank' - one of the biggest Australian losses of life in the War. And he was the bloke that hid them; he'd worked for the railways.

They searched everywhere for these instruments – in Flinders Street, Spencer Street - couldn't find them. And so I said to the man in grey, 'Well, I think I've just found them. Apparently after the Second World War there was a reward of 100 quid for finding them. Well I said, 'I'll expect a cheque'. And I'm still waiting...''

- Ian 'Podgy' Rogers, neon maintenance man, in Stephen Banham, Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, Melbourne, 2017, p.252-3.

I've been used and I've been scorned

Thursday music corner: Thomas Lee Barrett, known as Pastor TL Barrett (b. New York, 1944) is an American preacher and gospel musician who has worked mainly in Chicago and released four gospel albums on four different labels from 1971 to 1976. Recording with his Youth for Christ Choir, Barrett's music first attained wider recognition after a 1976 track Father I Stretch My Hands was sampled by Kanye West in 2016. Since then Barrett's music has been widely sampled and featured on numerous TV programmes. 

Nobody Knows appeared on Barrett's 1971 album Like a Ship (Without a Sail). In addition to its many TV soundtrack appearances, it has also appeared on the soundtracks to the 2022 film Alice and Sofia Coppola's Priscilla (2023).   

Pastor TL Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Nobody Knows (1971)

See also:

Music: TL Barrett - Like a Ship (1971)

Music: TL Barrett - Here I Am (1973)

Music: TL Barrett - Father I Stretch My Hands (1976)

Zealandia

 

You throw your pearls before the swine, make the monkey blind

Thursday music corner: Peter Gabriel (b. Surrey, 1950) first came into the public eye thanks to his teenage band Genesis, formed with Charterhouse schoolmates Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. From 1969 to 1974 Genesis released six albums, with Gabriel providing lead vocals and wearing increasingly elaborate and theatrical costumes, some of which annoyed his bandmates. After a breakdown in band relations in 1974 Gabriel went solo and was replaced by Phil Collins as Genesis' lead vocalist. 

Gabriel has since released ten solo albums, the first four of which were all self-titled, and three of which topped the UK album charts: Peter Gabriel (1980, aka Peter Gabriel 3), So (1986) and I/O (2023). Gabriel has also released ten UK top 40 singles, including the 1986 MTV hit Sledgehammer, which also topped the US pop charts. 

Shock the Monkey appeared as the first single on Peter Gabriel (1982, aka Peter Gabriel 4). Gabriel has stated that the simian reference is a metaphor for jealousy. The single failed to reach the UK and New Zealand top 40 but reached the top 40 in Australia, Canada and the US, and reached number 2 in Italy.

Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey (1982)

See also:

Music: Peter Gabriel - Red Rain (live at Giants Stadium, 1986)

Music: Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill (live in Athens, 1987)

Music: Peter Gabriel & Youssou N'Dour - Shakin' the Tree (1989)

Nga Manu Nature Reserve

 

I've been drinking down your pain, gonna turn that whiskey into rain

Thursday music corner: Singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos (b. Myra Ellen Amos in North Carolina, 1963), a child prodigy on the piano, came to fame after an abortive record-company attempt to fashion her into a popstar (1988's Y Tori Kant Read), gaining widespread attention for her richly autobiographical songwriting and classically-trained piano performances. Her first five solo albums all went platinum in America, and her second album, Under the Pink, entered the UK album charts at number one in February 1994. She has released 16 solo albums plus two live albums, and scored a UK pop number one in 1996 with the Armand van Helden remix of her track Professional Widow.

Big Wheel was the first single from Amos' 2007 album American Doll Posse. The album features 23 tracks, each under the aegis of one of five personas derived from Greek goddesses. Some American radio stations refused to play Big Wheel due to the lyric, "I am a M.I.L.F, don't you forget".

Tori Amos - Big Wheel (2007)

See also:

Music: Tori Amos - Crucify (live at Montreux, 1991)

Music: Al Stewart & Tori Amos - Year of the Cat (live, 1991)

Music: Tori Amos w/ Trent Reznor - Past the Mission (1994)

What East Germans wanted in the 1950s

Given that most of the men and women who were involved in the governmental and party structures of the newly established GDR had suffered horrendous political persecution during the Hitler years, one might have expected more resistance to the lack of democratic process within the new constitution. Here was a chance to build the better Germany many had dreamt of, why was there not more anger at the corruption of this ideal? Paradoxically, the answer lies precisely in the experiences of fascism and war, which had led many Germans to value stability and unity over pluralistic discussion. This was true East and West. Germans were exhausted and the majority wanted little to do with politics. Since 1914, there had been little respite from ideology, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change. A middle-aged German in 1949 had seen the whole spectrum of political systems in their lifetime, but none of the offerings had shown a functioning democracy. Where was a love for voting, citizens' rights and a pluralistic society meant to come from? What the German public wanted was not an array of parties on a voting slip every four years but food on the table, a restored roof over their heads and a future without war and economic disaster.

The difference between East and West was that the West delivered these things immediately while the East did not. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the FRG, was re-elected with results that modern politicians can only dream of: in 1953 and again in 1957, when his party received an astonishing 50.2 per cent of the vote despite a system of proportional representation which usually leads to coalition governments. This enabled him to run the country without forming a coalition for the only time in its history since 1949. All of this under Adenauer's famous slogan: 'Keine Experimente' - No Experiments.

East Germans too wanted no experiments in the 1950s. They wanted peace, secure jobs, food and an opportunity to rebuild their disrupted lives...

- Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990, 2023, p.109-110.

An afternoon at Wellington Zoo

A first visit in several years to take in the red panda encounter and enjoy the other animals, on a fine capital Saturday.

Leibniz, polymath

[German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz collected fossils and conducted geological research, which eventually resulted in an innovative essay on the history of the earth. He had also begun another project, one that proved a bigger boon than any amount of efficiently extracted silver. The Hanoverian dukes were an offshoot of a junior branch of the Welf dynasty, whose long history Leibniz was commissioned to write. He never finished this compendious work—there was always a fascinating new morsel to add—but his relentless archival digging helped the duchy make its case for promotion to an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire.

Medieval history, metaphysics, and geology were not nearly enough to keep Leibniz busy in early 1686. In January, he wrote an article exposing what he took to be a notable blunder in Descartes’s physics. Descartes regarded force as the product of mass and velocity, whereas Leibniz argued that it was better seen as mass times the square of velocity. This move brought Leibniz close to the modern notion of kinetic energy. In April, he began writing a hundred-page “Examination of the Christian Religion,” and not long afterward he composed his most substantial treatise on logic. It contained a pioneering algebra of propositions, similar to the logical calculus invented in the mid-nineteenth century by the English mathematician George Boole. Boole’s creation is a large part of the basis for computer languages. When he learned of Leibniz’s precursor to his handiwork, Boole said that he felt as if Leibniz had shaken hands with him across the centuries.

- Anthony Gottlieb, ‘He Was a Genius for the Ages. Can We Give Him a Break?’, New Yorker, 6 January 2025

The blazing sunset in your eyes will tantalise

Thursday music corner: In honour of what would've been David Bowie's 78th birthday yesterday, here's a BBC live recording for the John Peel-hosted Top Gear programme, recorded on 13 May 1968. The track is In The Heat of the Morning, which he originally recorded for Deram records along with the tracks that comprised his commercially unsuccessful self-titled 1967 debut album. The label's rejection of the song along with When I Live My Dream led to Bowie quitting Deram in April 1968. It would remain unreleased until March 1970 when the compilation The World of David Bowie was issued by Deram's parent label Decca, seeking to capitalise on the success in the summer of 1969 of the Space Odyssey single, which had reached number 5 in the UK charts due to its popularity at the time of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. 

David Bowie - In The Heat of the Morning (live, 1968)

See also:

Music: David Bowie - Love You Till Tuesday (single version, 1967)

Music: David Bowie - Karma Man (live, 1968)

Music: David Bowie - The London Boys (live, 2000)

My top 10 films of 2024

In 2024 I watched 286 films, a new record for me. I saw 245 of those for the first time. I only managed to see 31 films released in 2024 during the calendar year, so I singularly failed to follow through with my ambition to watch more new releases! But there were some great titles among them that I'm pleased to share.

This year's crop of most-watched actors has a healthy dose of black-and-white legends. The crop of Humphrey Bogart films was anchored by rewatches of the classic The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, augmented by The Petrified Forest, the improbably-named The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse featuring Edward G Robinson, High Sierra, and All Through The Night. Bette Davis was in The Petrified Forest too, along with The Letter; Now, Voyager; the classic All About Eve and Another Man's Poison. French actress Delphine Seyrig excelled in Resnais' Muriel, or the Time of Return, Truffaut's Stolen Kisses, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Marguerite Duras' often infuriating India Song and Baxter, Vera Baxter. It was entertaining to see Peter Lorre's Raskolnikov in the 1935 Hollywood Crime & Punishment and a later career appearance in the 1954 Disney blockbuster 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Having already seen George Sanders as a manipulative theatre critic in All About Eve it was pleasing to watch three of his light performances from the 1940s: Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), plus two French-set confections, A Scandal in Paris (1946) and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). Marek Walczewski and Stanislaw Manturzewski both appeared in a series of four brilliantly imaginative low-budget Polish sci-fi films from the 1970s and 1980s by Piotr Szulkin: Golem, The War of the Worlds: Next Century, O-Bi O-Ba: The End of Civilisation, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes. Indie darling Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Search Party TV fame appeared in four films over a span of two decades, from a child appearance in the Gulf War thriller Three Kings to quieter indie fare later on in Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves and First Cow, plus Sebastian Silva's Nasty Baby. And to add to the British quota, Kenneth More appeared in a clutch of wartime morale-boosters - Sink the Bismarck and Reach For The Skies (the Douglas Bader story) - plus The Admirable Crichton, as the unflappable butler who saves the day for a shipwrecked family and teaches them valuable lessons about the important things in life beyond the trappings of aristocracy.     

In terms of the directors I savoured in 2024, French documentarian and artist Eric Baudelaire was the most-viewed, with his idiosyncratic film projects including reconstructing Michelangelo Antonioni’s notes on un-made films (The Makes) or recounting his correspondence with his friend Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of the breakaway state of Abkhazia (Letters to Max). I watched a bunch of Noah Baumbach films for the first time: Kicking & Screaming, The Squid & the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, and The Meyerowitz Stories (New & Selected) - the latter featuring Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller being the most rewarding. I enjoyed French director Nelly Kaplan's witty and daft feminist comedies, particularly the goofiest of the bunch, the 1971 kidnap farce Papa, the Li'l Boats, with its protagonist kidnap victim Cookie (Sheila White) driving her kidnappers mad by ludicrous schemes of manipulation. It was a pleasure to watch the first three Thin Man comedies by W.S. Van Dyke, featuring the timeless chemistry of William Powell, Myrna Loy and Skippy the wire fox terrier - the latter of which also acted up a storm with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby (1938). It was a pleasure to discover the documentaries of English filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, with both her 2019 supercut documentary Romantic Comedy and her 2024 post-partum psychosis memoir Witches being highly recommended. And the brace of films displaying the highly personal vision of Ukrainian director Kira Muratova that we saw at the Wellington Film Society - Brief Encounters (1967) and The Long Farewell (1971) - were also a treat as a relatively rare insight into women's filmmaking in the former USSR. 

And so on to my top 10 for 2024 - all are 2024 calendar releases.

===

1. ENO (dir. Gary Hustwit)

American documentarian Gary Hustwit has already excelled with his design-themed 'documentart' films Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanised and Rams (a biography of German designer Dieter Rams, not the Icelandic drama or its Australian remake). In Eno he brings his interest in the structure and composition of the artistic process to the perfect subject, ex-Roxy Music and solo artist and ceaselessly-inventive music producer Brian Eno. The subject proves thoroughly charming in addition to his decades worth of insightful, playful commentary on his work and how he creates it. Eno is both disarmingly modest about his artistic gifts and the way he brings out creativity in the collaborators he works with, and passionately articulate about the value of artistic expression. Hustwit's documentary also plays with the form, thanks to the supposed 'AI generative edit' for each screening, jumbling the available content into a new, supposedly unique, structure each time it's seen. Our version felt well-rounded, but lacked any direct interviews with David Byrne; it did feature intriguing clips of a 1990 collaborative album with John Cale. Throughout, Eno displays a ready wit and spry, self-deprecating humour that are a convincing argument for seeing the documentary at least twice, to savour more of his company.

2. DUNE PART II (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

Another example of Villeneuve's almost unrivalled expertise at high-concept, highly-entertaining sci-fi film-making, Dune Part II successfully conveys Frank Herbert's complex plotting without overwhelming viewers, and dazzles with its ambitious set-pieces and, in particular, its sound design. The narrative and dialogue never plods, and the cast of many memorable names is deftly chosen. There's even a few well-needed glimpses of humour. It's rare that sci-fi blockbuster sequels maintain the momentum and quality of the originals, but Villeneuve has delivered that here. Who knows if Part III will live up to this impressive legacy?   

3. WITCHES (dir. Elizabeth Sankey, UK)

Elizabeth Sankey's expertly-crafted and highly personal documentary about post-partum psychosis is framed within the context of historical depictions of witchcraft and women's mental health in general, and the techniques of illustrating the often heart-stoppingly sad personal stories with film clips from the world of horror and dark fantasy is a thoroughly effective device to convey the eerie otherworldliness of this most isolating and stigmatised mental illness. Well done to film streamer Mubi for helping to get this work out into the world.

4. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran)

Rightly popular at this year's Cannes festival, the recently-exiled Mohammad Rasoulof has crafted a deftly-handled family drama set amidst the backdrop of the popular insurrection convulsing the brutal theocratic regime in Iran. Much like Asghar Farhadi's 2011 film A Separation, this work examines a tightly-knit family as it unravels under misunderstandings, official persecution and its own internal contradictions. The grim paranoia of life in a authoritarian regime and the helplessness of women beholden to male protectors are under the microscope, and while the final act may at least partially veer towards melodrama these are compelling, convincingly nuanced characters and the viewer is indelibly invested in their fates. Earlier last year Rasoulof disobeyed his official travel ban from the Tehran regime and escaped to Germany, where he has been given asylum. He was able to attend the Cannes red carpet event for this film.

5. BIRD (dir. Andrea Arnold, UK)

Come for the intriguing mix of director Andrea Arnold and compelling lead actors Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan, come away with an admiration for the talent of the youthful Nykiya Adams as 12-year-old Bailey in what should've been the title role - "Bailey & Bird", please and thank you - and a compellingly nuanced depiction of life in the hard-knock squats of north Kent. Also a commendable affection for 'The Universal' from Blur's 1995 album 'The Great Escape'.

6. FLOW (dir. Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia)

A dialogue-free animated environmental fable in which only animals survive on an earth abandoned by humans, or perhaps one in which humans are now extinct. An inexplicable and implacable flood forces a wary loner cat to throw in its lot with a random assortment of other animals, and as is the way with such things, make much-needed friendships along the way, including with a determinedly friendly labrador and an exceedingly zen capybara. The painstakingly rendered animation is sumptuously beautiful, and the film has deservedly won a host of critic awards, along with being nominated in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Director Gints Zilbalodis was able to attend the Wellington film festival screening to introduce Flow, which was a treat for attendees.  

7. HEAD SOUTH (dir. Jonathan Ogilvie, NZ) 

A delightful homegrown New Zealand audience-pleaser replete with self-deprecating humour at the expense of the charmingly naive hero, teenager Angus, who in late-1970s Christchurch becomes fixated on starting a punk band, despite not having an instrument or knowing how to play one. Blessed with a quality supporting cast, deftly-handled middle-class New Zealand '79 production design, and a script punctuated with plenty of wry wit, the only way I can think of improving Head South would be if Angus (Ed Oxenbould) asked his band nemesis "Why are you bloody angry all the time?', only to receive the reply, "Because I'm punk, you egg!" (P.S. Also, it was nice to see the visual homage to the cover of Joe Jackson's 1979 classic album 'Look Sharp').

8. BLACK DOG (dir. Guan Hu, China)

A relatively rare glimpse into an outsider's China, with the additional bonuses of a charismatic and mischievous canine co-star, pleasingly moody desaturated cinematography depicting the rugged Gobi frontier, a subcurrent of wry humour, and pleasing touches of magical realist flair. Only the carefully-staged depictions of animal cruelty make this a somewhat challenging watch for sensitive souls. And in case you were worrying, the actor adopted the dog at the end of filming.

9. THE RETURN (dir. Uberto Pasolini)

A well-crafted retelling of the return of the long-lost Ithacan king Odysseus to his home island, after many years of wandering following the the horrors of the Trojan wars. Ithaca is beset by villainous suitors to the stoic Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche), who is being pressed to renounce her presumed-dead husband to marry again, and to protect the life of her young son Telemachus. Little does anyone know that despite the Queen's fraying determination, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) has finally washed up on the shores of Ithaca once more, alone and bedraggled, and without the army necessary to rid the island of the murderous suitors. Fiennes is on top form in the role, and looks absolutely astonishing for a (then) 60-year-old, and the location shoots in Cyprus and Italy mean you don't have to fear for the health and wellbeing of bare-chested male actors having to pretend that Cornwall is as warm as the Aegean.

10. BEATLES '64 (dir. David Tedeschi)

A natural companion piece to the Peter Jackson-digitally-enhanced Get Back sessions, Beatles '64 works technical wonders to restore the 16mm film footage of the Beatles' first mad, barely-in-control tour of the US, including the culture-changing appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. A wonderful addition to the fulsomely-serviced Beatle tragic library, and a real treat to witness the hotel-room knockabout energy of the Fabs on the brink of their world-conquering success.

See also:

Movies: My top 10 films of 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010