Relics, Words and Other Things

This beautifully crafted film feels much like a great American...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:15:24 -0400

This beautifully crafted film feels much like a great American novel, in exactly the same way that Baz’s Gatsby didn’t. Rather than relying on brash colours and CG trickery, Mud’s vivid world is defined by real landscapes and salty, nuanced characters. Leaving Gatsby was like crashing down from a sugar high, whereas Mud still had me in its net days later.

Mud reviewed for The Weekly Review

‘This, for me, is the shot that sums up the entire movie....

myke-bartlett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 05:49:00 -0400

‘This, for me, is the shot that sums up the entire movie. It was a Sunday on the avenue next to the zoo in Regent’s Park. The wolves are not there anymore. We had to make the rain, much to the amazement of the tourists walking by. They were treated to some Hamlet and a prop man feeding snacks to the wolves to keep them in frame.’

Withnail and Me: On-set photographs reveal the close ‘camaraderie’ between Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann while filming the cult classic

“In the best possible way, listening to the record is a...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 28 May 2013 05:42:32 -0400

“In the best possible way, listening to the record is a little like being cornered at a party by an ex, who then spends an hour whispering confessions and admonishments in your ear.”

Laura Marling’s Once I Was An Eagle reviewed at The Weekly Review

For Suede, the mythology has always been as important as the...

myke-bartlett — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:37:00 -0400

For Suede, the mythology has always been as important as the music. Listening to Suede feels like joining a gang of slightly decadent misfits, clothed in back leather and op-shop glamour. It’s music that other people aren’t supposed to like – that makes sense to you and the chosen few.

Bloodsports reviewed at The Weekly Review

Most nights the sea came rushing over the hill and punched in...

myke-bartlett — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:49:21 -0400

Most nights the sea came rushing over the hill and punched in Jasper’s window. It was always the ceiling fan that worried him most, slicing down as he bobbed up from his bed.

When it wasn’t a tsunami, it was an asteroid burning across the night sky. Once, he saw a meteor collide with the moon and massive fragments of shattered rock came tumbling in flames to Earth. Running for his life, Jasper looked back to see a fireball engulf his father.

On being scared and becoming a writer, with some brand new fiction.

“You’re a man of property if you can walk out of a room,...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:48:41 -0500

“You’re a man of property if you can walk out of a room, having heard a great tune.” Van Dyke Parks interviewed.

“But my intention is not to be sexual – it’s a much more...

myke-bartlett — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:22:52 -0500

“But my intention is not to be sexual – it’s a much more open nudity. There’s no mystery. What happened when that act went online was I lost control of it and the context in which it’s seen. The act started to be viewed through a porn context, which changed everything.”

Ursula Martinez on accidentally achieving internet fame for her magical striptease.

The full interview.

Here are 50 tracks (many of them featured in @theweeklyreview)...

myke-bartlett — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:23:44 -0500

Here are 50 tracks (many of them featured in @theweeklyreview) that I listened to a lot this year. In no particular order.

“There’s a rule of thumb that says it’s better to confuse an...

myke-bartlett — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:09:00 -0500

“There’s a rule of thumb that says it’s better to confuse an audience for two minutes than let them get ahead of you for three seconds. It’s just asking yourself how much do we need, how much does an audience need?”

Paul Thomas Anderson interviewed for The Weekly Review

Certainly Argo is a film in which Hollywood paints itself as...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 04:06:33 -0400

Certainly Argo is a film in which Hollywood paints itself as the hero. Fortunately, it’s also a film that reminds us what Hollywood does best. Affleck’s direction is confident and edgy, working from a taut and sparky script. The final act accelerates the tension to palm-dampening extremes, but only once do we hear the director crunch gears.

Argo reviewed for The Weekly Review

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Kenneth is telling the...

myke-bartlett — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:33:00 -0400

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Kenneth is telling the truth. The time travel exists as a hypothetical element to his friendship with Darius – the sort of late-night, end-of-a-party bonding where conversations edge towards the fantastical.

Safety Not Guaranteed reviewed for The Weekly Review

At once harsh and lush, the third album from British performer...

myke-bartlett — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:35:15 -0400

At once harsh and lush, the third album from British performer Natasha Khan is a striking, beautiful and, yes, haunting affair. It’s traditional to compare kooky songstresses to 80s iconoclast Kate Bush, but these comparisons feel less hollow than usual here. Not only is Khan prone to spiralling falsettos, but she manages to effortlessly fuse the pastoral with the cold, crisp lines of pop music. Opener Lilies contrasts a grunting, industrial electro beat with a lilting paean to scented flowers on a hill. The effect is something like a city commuter yearning for rural simplicity while her head bounces against a train window.

The album itself is a complex, layered beast. On first listen, its warmth is hidden behind a good dose of grey weather. There are immediate pop moments — such as recent single All My Gold — but often hooks lurk like ghosts behind blips and beats and sinister synths. As with the best albums, it’s one that rewards the persistent.

First single Laura remains the standout, mainly because it’s so utterly different to the electro landscape surrounding it. Pure and naked, the song soars on little more than Khan’s voice and a piano. Indeed, it draws its power from its simplicity, or naivety. Pop music often aspires to capture the adolescent experience, but this actually sounds like a heartbroken teen trapped in her room with nothing more than regret and keyboard. Stunning.

Reviewed for The Weekly Review

Over at my blog, I’m currently conducting a photographic...

myke-bartlett — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 01:58:00 -0400

Over at my blog, I’m currently conducting a photographic tour of locations from my debut novel Fire in the Sea.

The tour starts here

It’s a deeply sensual, sometimes violent film that reflects the...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:15:25 -0400

It’s a deeply sensual, sometimes violent film that reflects the confusion and fury of its protagonists. Heathcliff and Cathy are two wild things, wrestling in the muddy moors, tearing out their hair and kissing each other’s sores.

Wuthering Heights reviewed for The Weekly Review

Perth, Australia: Writing A Sense of Place

myke-bartlett — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:22:00 -0400

For most of us, a book is the first voyage we ever undertake. While TV and film can offer glimpses of foreign climes, it takes a book to sink your feet in strange sand or to waft the spiced scents of a market beneath your nose. Maybe this is why I was never very interested in reading books set where I was growing up. I knew what Australia was like. I’d spent a year travelling across and around it before I started school. (For those curious: it’s hot, dusty and very, very big.) Instead, I sought out books set in cold, crowded places. There was exoticism in snow and soot and underwashed masses.

It wasn’t until I left Perth that I started reading about it. As a leaving present, a friend gave me a copy of Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet — a book I’d had shoved in my direction for years. I was probably ungrateful. But, travelling around Europe, I became consumed by that book. I loved its crudeness, its poetry and, yes, its strong sense of place. Growing up, I had always felt that Perth wasn’t really part of the world. The world was over the horizon — that place ships and planes disappeared to, that place where adventures happened. Cloudstreet showed me that you could write about my small, isolated city with the same intensity and detail as you could London, New York, Hong Kong.

As a writer, that book was a turning point. Writing about Perth for Dumbo Feather, I said “Seeing my abstracted, forgotten town in the pages of a Penguin novel shrank that vast space between the world and my street.” I learned that stories — real, big, proper stories — could happen there, on those same hot pavements I grew up on. When it came to writing (Text-Prize-winning-onsale-now-novel) Fire In The Sea, I wanted to jam a big Hollywood-style narrative into those small streets. Because I felt those sort of stories didn’t have to always happen in the US.

Some years ago, I was warned by an American agent against setting stories in Australia. There was a perceived notion that Australian-based stories don’t sell. Being a contrary sod, I was determined to prove her wrong. But, in some ways, I wonder now if I took less risks with Fire in the Sea’s narrative because setting it in Perth already seemed like such a big risk. It’s certainly the most traditionally-structured story I’ve ever tried to write. I wanted its narrative to be big enough, strong enough, perhaps even familiar enough, to reassure a reader that Australia wasn’t an alien world. They knew this story, they knew these people, they could come to know this place.

There was also a great sense of excitement for me in writing about places I knew well. Places that few people had ever written about. Capturing Cottesloe in print, in a big, impossible story about mythological battles and exiled demigods, felt like a special sort of achievement. It was as if, by fictionalising these places, I had somehow made them a little more real. (Which tells you a little about how my brain works. The unreal is always more real.)

For that reason, I haven’t cheated much with the geography. I’ve used real street names and addresses, for the same reason you wouldn’t rename Fifth Avenue or Piccadilly Circus. The only real exception to this is Jacob’s house on Ocean Street. While the house is absolutely based on a house that stood derelict while I was growing up (it’s since been refurbished), I changed the name of the street. Everywhere else is where it should be. At times, I’ve described Perth as it was when I was 16. At other times, I’ve acknowledged recent changes. Sadie’s world is probably something of a compromise between reality and memory.

Two weeks ago, I popped back to Perth to visit family and thought I’d make the most of the opportunity to document the places of the book. For the rest of the week, I’ll be posting a guided tour of Fire In The Sea, in which I’ll revisit a few key scenes and, maybe, explain why they happen where they do. And, being my blog, I’ll probably throw in a few anecdotes and then draw a tenuous link to relevance.

On trial is a world in which the internet allows anyone, no...

myke-bartlett — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:25:43 -0400

On trial is a world in which the internet allows anyone, no matter how unhinged, access to the public sphere. We, as an audience, are exposed as complicit. Every time we watch something horrible, we generate a demand for something worse.

Black Mirror reviewed for The Weekly Review

A little glimpse into the damp past of my adopted...

myke-bartlett — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:22:04 -0400

A little glimpse into the damp past of my adopted city.

vimandvigour:

Rainy day, outside Flinders Street Station, December 7, 1965.

Cottesloe Civic Centre, September 2012

myke-bartlett — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:54 -0400

Cottesloe Civic Centre, September 2012

Ruby works as a playful parody of the “indie girl” stereotype...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:05:49 -0400

Ruby works as a playful parody of the “indie girl” stereotype embodied by Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl. She’s a little bit craaazy, wears “weird” clothes and shames us all with her effervescence. In other words, she’s the sort of girl who couldn’t actually exist.

Ruby Sparks reviewed for The Weekly Review

The film is centred on this childish belief in...

myke-bartlett — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:58:21 -0400

The film is centred on this childish belief in interconnectedness. One wrong deed can unravel the universe and collapse ice caps. Here, everything is always precarious.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD reviewed for THE WEEKLY REVIEW