Monthly Archives: July 2013

Beethoven, Game of Thrones and the Pure Aesthetic Kick

The kind of total or pure aesthetic experience I wish to describe here only happened to me (at this pitch of intensity) once in my life before that I can remember, and I’m not sure that this should be grounds … Continue reading

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Ricky Gervais and Michael Haneke: together at last

Ricky Gervais’ sitcom Derek concluded its first season around the time Michael Haneke’s Amour won the Oscar for best foreign language film, and my viewing of both overlapped in a way that made comparison perhaps a bit more obvious that … Continue reading

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Preacher Man

Walton Goggins.  What a name.  Worthy of Dickens, everything about it just fits when you know his work: the Depression-era mountain-boy Sunday morning re-run buzz of the Christian name and the boggle-eyed hillbilly, gin n’ grog stutter of his family … Continue reading

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Selling the medium: a brief history of the BBC’s commercial arm

The recent attention given to the various troubles associated with the Murdoch media empire, not to mention anxieties about the continued expansion of new media giants like Facebook and Google has had the effect, perhaps, of slightly occluding the workings … Continue reading

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Criticism, Submission and Time: Mad Men and The Killing

I remember watching ‘Mystery Men’ the fourth episode of Mad Men’s extraordinary fifth season and being struck by the moment when Joan at the breakfast table, tells her husband Greg, an army surgeon who is voluntarily returning to Vietnam, to … Continue reading

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The Principles of Garden Design

On Tuesday this week I arrived back in Australia, early in the morning, from three weeks conferencing and researching in Europe. I spent the day engaged in the gently restorative process of unpacking, washing, and sorting through the accumulated notes … Continue reading

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