melbourne

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Tim Burton’s nightmare

johnny depp in edward scissorhands

Note to self: do not — DO NOT — leave it until the last minute to visit a best-selling exhibition.

I was mightily impressed by the Tim Burton exhibition at Melbourne’s ACMI, even if I could only see maybe half of it through the barely moving wall of heads and shoulders. There were LOTS of the gothically inclined directors drawings, both artistic and conceptual, dating back to his childhood, a stint with Disney, and of course, his famous work — Edward Scissorhands, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, a touch of Sweeney Todd, to name some of my favourites.

In fact the exhibition was heavy on the artwork, showing his preoccupation with distorted perspective, particularly with the human form, body modification, zany critters, the lonely and the outsider, a touch of disfunctional family and the opposites that attract. Particularly eye-catching was a display of costumes featuring The Mad Hatter’s exquisite outfit from Alice in Wonderland, Catwoman’s slinky bodysuit from Batman (the Batmobile was parked in the foyer!) and, of course, Edward’s striking leather and scissor gloves. Add some puppets and sculptures and audio-visuals and you have a comprehensive round-up of the man’s career.

The audio tour (a mere $5, taking the price of admission to only a very reasonable $24) definitely value-added, with commentary from curators and Burton himself about the themes of his work.

And how great was it to see and hear Vincent Price in short early films being screened as part of the exhibit: a bizarre Hansel and Gretel with edible architecture and the touching stop-motion Vincent.

I’m sorry I didn’t take the opportunity to see the exhibit at a more relaxed time, but I’m glad I went, if only to appreciate the sheer magnitude of Burton’s creativity and imagination.

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Pat Benatar, then and now

live from earth by pat benatar

Music is a moment. I have a clear memory of my mate Andrew telling me, so excited, about a Pat Benatar release he’d recently acquired: “That’s all it’s got on the cover, just the word Benatar,” he said, or words close to that. He was referring to Live from Earth, a live album — I had it already, on tape (yes, it was a long time ago), along with the rest of the catalogue, but wasn’t overly hooked on the stadium sound. While Benatar was a chart-topping powerhouse in the ’80s, it wasn’t always her hits that kept me coming back for more.

Benatar was one of the first rock acts, certainly one of the first female rock acts, I discovered and engaged with, as opposed to those acts I fell into via teenage osmosis through school friends. Music didn’t play a big part in my family’s life — for many years our only source of music outside the limited range of rural radio was a reel-to-reel tape player with an even more limited range of recordings. I think I remember a Johnny Cash doing the rounds from spool to spool. And when we did step up to a cassette player, it was country, and country, and Elvis Presley.

Music is an ongoing discovery for me. It’s an important part of life, a passion, one that’s best and easily shared, one that adds depth to any friendship and breaks down all barriers. It can be a common love.

Those who are into music can trace the changes in their lives — in their growth, if you like; maybe evolution is a more accurate word — through their collection. Some of these milestones are simply that — moments in time, attitudes of the day, interests of the day — but others endure, managing to not just be a point in the rear vision mirror but a companion along the way. Not necessarily a fulltime companion — it recognises the need for change and exploration and novelty — but a loyal one, always there when it’s needed. Sometimes, it comes with ghosts: the best ones make us smile. Where were you when you first heard…? Who were you with?

Benatar’s Seven the Hard Way remains one of the albums I listen to most. I find it one of the most consistent in her canon. It speaks to me of defiance from within a dystopia, particularly once the opening track, Sex as a Weapon, is past. The other big single off the album was Invincible, with the remainder being more meditative, sublime offerings, tinged with melancholy and loss. The album ends with The Art of Letting Go, to me a treatise in acceptance of the things we cannot change, of life enduring after the mourning for that which has been lost.

Which is why I’m shelling out, thanks to a sweet deal this weekend, to see Benatar strut her stuff at the Palais. Benatar has made only one album in the past decade, so I’m expecting a lot of hits, which will suit me fine. This isn’t a step forward in the journey but a look behind. In a way, it’s another small exercise in the art of letting go. Sadly, we are not invincible, but the music goes on.

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Aussiecon4 highs and lows, Voyager blasts off

Cherie, Kylie, Lindy and Amanda keep me company at the signing desk - a kaffee klatsch without the kaffee!

Aussiecon4, the 2010 Worldcon, is over, and I’m home snuffling and coughing with a dose of persistent pre-Worldcon flu, feeling totally knackered but yet energised as well.

This was my first Worldcon and it was thoroughly enjoyable, even with the flu.
Downsides were:

  • Sean Williams being too ill to attend.
  • Ellen Datlow having to leave early due to sickness in the family — all the more poignant for her Hugo win.
  • The Christchurch earthquake was also worrying, a relief that there were no casualties. The Kiwis are bidding to host Worldcon in 2020.
  • Not catching *anything* involving China Mieville.

The program was massive, spread across ground floor auditoriums and an array of rooms on the second floor of the convention and exhibition centre, and it just wasn’t possible to attend everything of interest, nor report everything here. What I did catch was generally informative and at times downright inspiring. I particularly enjoyed hearing Peter Brett (The Painted Man) speak of his “survivor’s guilt” after having his novel picked up while pals were still striving to get theirs on the shelf. I also took heart from Will Elliott’s passion and Fiona Macintosh’s work ethic.

I was chuffed to have people I didn’t know attend my reading and that, despite my hoarse flu voice, they stayed to the end, and was very grateful indeed to have company at the signing desk while the most engaging guest of honour Kim Stanley Robinson made the day for a very long line of fans indeed. His self-interview, complete with coat on-and-off, was a delight. Kyla Ward, who organised the horror stream in which I took part, proved exceptional as an organiser — she also masterminded the horror ball that I sadly failed to attend, though I heard gushing reports. I also really enjoyed talking vampires with a bunch of clued up and inquisitive teenagers and talking taboos with Richard Harland, Deborah Biancotti and Catherynne Valente.

UK writer Robert Shearman performed a most entertaining reading of a rather poignant story about a boy and his love of love songs, and Kirstyn’s reading of her story from the Scenes from the Second Storey collection (launched at the con) also drew a pleasing response.

The Hugo awards (full list of winners here) also proved an enjoyable affair, running smoothly and not overlong, with a feeling of camaraderie rather than competition, and absolutely nil ego. MC Garth Nix was, as always, personable and engaging. Lovely to see, amongst others, Aussie artist and con guest of honour Shaun Tan recognised, and to see the splendid movie Moon score a gong.

My appreciation for George RR Martin has also been cemented thanks to his wit and delightful chuckle. (Do read his Fevre Dream if you haven’t already: one of the best vampire books evah!)

At the end of the day, after the launches (yay Angela Slatter and Kaaron Warren’s double launch, complete with publisher Russell Farr in a kilt doing the honours; and the massive collection of Aussie horror in Macabre, amongst others) and parties and panels and awards (some well-earned Ditmars were given out — the full list is here), it was the people who made the convention, and it was amazing bumping into so many friends from throughout Australia and overseas.

Let’s do it again — but not till I’ve had a nap!

There are some pictures at my flickr site.

Voyager going global

Voyager’s 15th birthday party held in conjunction with Aussiecon prompted this (annotated) announcement of a new global (or is that Orbital?) approach to marketing its genre fiction:

“Eos Books, a US imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, will be rebranded as Harper Voyager, joining together with the celebrated Voyager imprints in Australia/New Zealand and the UK. The move is anticipated to create a global genre-fiction powerhouse.
“This move enables us to offer authors a strong global publishing platform when signing with HarperCollins – whether the acquiring editor is in New York, Sydney, or London,’ said Brian Murray, president and chief executive officer of HarperCollins Worldwide.
“Two authors, Karen Azinger and David Wellington (writing as David Chandler), have recently been signed and are expected to publish with Harper Voyager and Voyager for a worldwide debut. The Eos imprint will officially change to Harper Voyager starting with the January 2011 hardcover, trade, mass market, e-book, and audio publications.
“The Voyager/Harper Voyager editorial leaders are: executive editor Diana Gill in the US; editorial director Emma Coode in the UK (working with publishing director Jane Johnson); and associate publisher Stephanie Smith in Australia.”

Exciting and interesting stuff with an apparent focus on breaking down the regional publishing territories, or at least making more effort to spread product globally. It’ll be interesting to see the impact this has.

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Worldcon/Aussiecon appearances

the darkness withinI’ve scoured the Aussiecon4 program online and come up with these appearances at the convention, at Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Centre, for those who might like to catch up (outside of the bar area):

Saturday, Sept 4, 5pm

If anyone has a dusty copy of The Darkness Within lying around they’d like signed (or maybe an anthology such as Dreaming Again), I’ll be in Room 201-02 with pen in hand. (I believe Guest of hHnour Kim Stanley Robinson, amongst others, is also signing at that time.)

Sunday, Sept 5, noon

A reading in Room 215

Sunday, 1pm

Presenting a chat (for teens only) about the evolution of the vampire from Dracula to now, in Room 218.

Sunday, 2pm

I’ll be joining some very cool people indeed to support the anthology Dreaming Again (probably my proudest publishing credit), in Room 211 (keep your eyes, or ears, peeled, as there *might* be an audio version of my story ‘Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn’, available during the con).

Monday, Sept 6, 1pm

Joining a discussion on the taboos in dark fantasy, again with some very cool people, in Room 211.

I’m very happy indeed to be able to support the worldcon through this participation, so I hope some folks can come along to any and all of these: the more input the better 🙂

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Bret Easton Ellis and a writerly weekend

american psychoI had to laugh when an audience member got to ask a question of Bret Easton Ellis and opened by telling him that she, like many in the audience, was an inner-city hipster and out here on a Friday night and her students were kinda dumbstruck by that and didn’t even know who he was. I’m glad she’s in touch with her self-categorisation, her calendar and her righteous outrage that the young’uns don’t share her taste in authors. The audience questions were, by and large, infantile and embarrassing, mostly concerned with being twee and trying to suck Ellis’s dick and do drugs with him, not necessarily in that order, which only made me appreciate his performance all the more. And it was a performance, one that reminded me a bit of Lunar Park in which the lead character is called Bret Easton Ellis, the guy who wrote American Psycho, but it’s not really him, is it …

I felt a little more sorry for Alan Brough, conducting the interview at the grand ol’ Athenaeum: this was the last night of Ellis’s Aussie tour and he was really interested, kind of, in deconstructing the whole book tour thing. I think. Ellis was hard to know, based on that performance: charming and assured, happy to ramble regardless of the question, and often reflecting on the evening’s Q&A as though something of a spectator himself. Here’s a writer still living in the shadow of American Psycho, who might possibly only be judged by that book, though I enjoyed his (much later) Lunar Park much more. The Delta Goodrem saga reared its head, a reminder of how shallow our interests are, and how easily Twitter allows us to prove it (really: why would a comment about enjoying a music clip spark such outrage?).

For the writers in the audience, I got this out of it: Ellis says the novel’s evolving, he prefers working on television as a story-telling device, that obsession is a key driver for writers (once a story gets into your head, you have to write it eg his most recent, Imperial Ballrooms).

Slippery, Ellis, but enjoyable and slick and I suspect he gave the inner city hipsters what they wanted (blow and blow job aside).

Anyway, it was a good springboard into the weekend, spent in front of a wood fire not far from a rather windy, rainy, weed-strewn beach on Phillip Island, where the coffee pot ran hot and the ideas dribbled onto the keyboard in chaotic fashion. Today was largely a wash, spent mostly on the couch with a book, but that’s important too: downtime, a chance for the noggin to relax and kick things around behind the scenes, and guilt-free, despite the sound of two other keyboards tap-tap-tapping and word counts being bandied around like some kind of auction. All in all, a very pleasant, writerly weekend, a fine priming for a week of words (I hope!).

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Goldfrapp rock Melbourne

All kudos to Alison Goldfrapp, but let’s also hear a cheer for her band and sound team, who all came together with nary a missed beat to provide a thrilling climax to her Australian tour at Melbourne’s Palace Theatre on Tuesday night.

Goldfrapp, soldiering on despite the death of her mother (announced on her blog in July), headed a band as tight as her body suit: a keyboardist with a Chrissy Amphlett fringe who was either busy with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the synthesiser or boogeying away at the front with a keytar; a Sheena Easton lookalike drummer presiding over a hybrid electric-acoustic kit; a cruisy bassist who might’ve been Jason Statham’s little brother; and a ringmaster who bounced around with a certain impish glee with his wild hair and beard and pyjama style body suit as he added highlights with an electronic violin thingy, guitar or keytar – the double keytar attack on some songs was truly awesome. And then there was Goldfrapp herself, raising hairs with those high notes, and otherwise enthralling with a set to seduce, all breathy and note perfect as she strutted centre stage and reeled off an hour and a half of hits, including two encores.

The lighting was striking, centred on a silver doughnut at stage rear, with lots of strobes and smoke, but it was the sound that made the night: the keyboards were working overtime, laying the foundation with a huge sound complemented by the rhythm section’s driving beat.

There was little chitchat from Ms Goldfrapp, looking resplendent in her mix-and-match black bodysuit and makeup lifted from the Alive music clip – minimalist but for the dark eyeshadow that enhanced the silvery undead gleam from the stage lights.

Light and shade were provided by a range of songs (penned by the songwriting duo of Goldfrapp and Will Gregory) from the cruisy Utopia, from debut album Felt Mountain, to more wistful Black Cherry to the joyful dancefloor pop of recent singles Alive and Rocket. The band were sharp, stopping and starting in perfect sync, and the tunes arranged to provide moments of quiet for Goldfrapp’s high range to weave its magic.

It was an impressive display of slick musicianship that could only have been improved by having Tycho Brahe in support!

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Madigan Mine: launched!

kirstyn mcdermott at the launch of her novel madigan mine

Madigan Mine has been officially launched! A most excellent crowd attended at Melbourne’s Carlton Library (three cheers for the brilliant staff) to see a metaphoric bottle of bubbles broken over the bow of Kirstyn McDermott’s debut novel. Lucy Sussex (who has her own launch coming up) did the honours, fitting the Melbourne-set thriller into the wider context of Australian Gothic and saying some very nice things about Kirstyn’s prose.

It was grand to see such support for a local writer, with publisher Pan Macmillan sending representatives, including the artist who designed the superb cover.

Kirstyn provides the author’s perspective of the event, and there are more pictures here.

Lucy Sussex launches Madigan Mine

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Recent reading: Ellis and Marsden

BRET Easton Ellis is on his way to Melbourne so I thought I’d better swot up, starting with Lunar Park (2005; his only book since then, Imperial Ballrooms, came out last month and is a sequel to his debut, 1985’s Less Than Zero).

Lunar Park is a very clever book, all about a writer called Bret Easton Ellis whose career path seems to mirror the drug-snorting, much-screwing celeb career path of the real life character (there’s a fascinating interview with Ellis in the Guardian about his new, drier, quieter life, and his public persona). It also offers some of the spookiest scenes I’ve read in ages, as fictional Ellis realises the mansion he shares with his wife, their son and her daughter is, shall we say, under a cloud. And it’s not just the fact that the wild child is grasping on to what passes as a normal life when you’re famous and your missus is an actress. Mixed in with acerbic observations about a certain well-to-do class of society is a plot of vanishing teenagers and some even stranger goings on at chez Ellis; there’s a son’s difficult relationship with his deceased father and the whole issue of fitting into this strange, new family; there’s drugs and booze and a certain girl at the university where he teaches who he’d really like to screw; there’s the dog, a truly delightful character.

The climax left me a little underwhelmed, but the writing was so smart and, despite some long (very long) sentences here and there (that for the most part worked), accessible, the characters so engaging (if the narrator is a tad, well, useless (he’s an addict so, d’uh)), that I really didn’t mind the letdown. The denouement was fetching, so maybe that helped.

FAMILY is also central to Tomorrow, When the War Began, but the focus is different and the comparison ends there. While Ellis and co are snogging and snorting in McMansions, Ellie and her small band of high school pals are sweating it out in the Australian scrub in the aftermath of an invasion by an unnamed and unidentified foreign power. All we know is that the soldiers probably hail from Asia or the Pacific — you do the math. John Marsden doesn’t say, at least not in the first three books. Given Australia’s traditional xenophobia, it’s probably wise to keep it obscure, but I can’t help feeling that wanting to know where the invaders were from would be on the minds of the invaded. It’s a small thing, and it’ll be interesting to see how the makers of a movie based on his series (opening in August), first released in 1993, tackle the subject of just who launches this comprehensive strike with an eye to colonisation.

Ellie’s from the bush, a rural town where most of her friends are farmers’ kids, so they know there way around machinery, animals and the scrub. They’re resourceful and plucky, and altogether human. Watching the characters rise to the occasion, mature under the pressure, grow and change, is part of the joy.

One of the most compelling features of the story is the way Marsden balances the action with the insight — this war is not patriotic, it’s survival, and questions of hate, morality, love and the future under foreign rule are handled with such care it’s a pleasure to read. There are some explosions — Ellie’s mates work out that they have a compulsion to fight for their land and their way of life against those who would take it by force. But the kids don’t turn into commandos overnight. They don’t use karate and explosives and guns with an innate Hollywood sensibility. Rather, they use their nous, they learn from their mistakes, and they pay a physical and moral price for making some hard decisions. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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On seasons

autumn leaves

The trees put up a good fight, basking as long as they could, but finally, winter has pried their leaves from their branches.

Likewise, I’ve been doing some shedding of my own. It’s not so much a winter of discontent as a spring clean come early. Winter is a good time for taking stock, working out the way ahead, the path travelled. The memorabilia has been reduced to a few tubs, the books and CDs pared back. If only regrets were so easily discarded, and joys enshrined.

Autumn has always been my favourite season, and now that I’m down in the south, I’ve been able to truly appreciate it: a low sun, the dropping temperature, and of course the glorious colours of the turning leaves.

As I said, the leaves aren’t the only things that are changing down here — even though it’s winter, there’s that touch of spring, an air of renewal. As Bowie might say, Ch-ch-ch-changes … there’s no future without a past, but the past isn’t something to be dwelled on. Learnt from, certainly, but let’s try to dodge it’s little Gothic claws and enjoy the sunshine ahead.