Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

Last Saturday, Cavendish and I took advantage of the long weekend and went to see the “New Objectivity” (“Neue Sachlickeit” in German) exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, just a couple of days before the exhibition’s closing date on March, 9th.

In short, a great day out. Fantastic art and after that a nice stroll through the inner city of Mannheim, including a visit to Mannheim Baroque Palace, which is one of the largest palaces in Europe and nowadays serves as one of the main buildings to host the city’s university.

Pleasant and safe train ride back home.

I have no words for how I felt when, two days later, on Rose Monday, around lunch time the news broke that two people had just been killed in a deliberate attack by a 40-year-old German who had driven his car right into the crowds at Mannheim’s main city centre shopping area.

In light of this, it took me a while to decide whether I really wanted to post an entry that was originally intended to be nothing more than an artsy picture spam with a few extra words how poignant, inspired and incredibly well curated “The New Objectivity - A Centennial -2024/11/22 - 2025/03/09” is as an exhibition.

( Thoughts and pictures behind the cut )

I’ve been wondering whether I should get back into some sort of (semi) regular posting mode instead of just lurking and leaving the odd occasional comment in friends’ journals.  Mostly, I’d like to have some sort of record of the various things that I watched or read during these *cough* interesting times. Also, I’d love to let people know I am still out there and enjoying their posts. So, here we go, just for starters.

Recent movies:
Better Man, Juror #2

Recent shows:
For All Mankind, SW: Skeleton Crew,  The Good Place

Recent books:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriél Garcia Márquez (which I started ages ago, completely unrelated to the current Netflix adaption), and could only now bring myself to finish.

Current books (non fiction):
Post-Aufklärungsgesellschaft by German Professor of philosophy and didactics at TU Dresden, Markus Tiedemann, in which Tiedemann makes a quite convincing case for the age of enlightenment being one of humanity’s greatest achievements before setting out to argue how and why we are currently about to throw away all the humanist and secular-rationalist principles that we, as a society, have gained.

Current books (fiction):
Antichristie by Mithu Sanyal, in which a fifty-ish screenwriter of half German, half Indian descent working on an anti-imperialist, politically correct take on adapting an Agatha Christie crime novel gets transported to early 20^th century London and involved with leading revolutionary Indian nationalists of that time.

Celebrating your 45th birthday at a time when the German federal state that you live in is also the federal state with the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases (1041 so far, and rising) is a pretty strange experience, I can tell you. Filled with a kind of decisions I wouldn’t have dreamed of a month ago.

Cavendish and I are, luckily, still young enough not to fall into any of the high risk groups; however it’s a different matter with our 75+ parents, especially with my father-in-law, who is terminally ill with colon cancer.

So we are thinking a lot about risk minimising measures these days, for example stuff like cancelling our reservation for the super-nice but also somewhat crowded Indian restaurant where we had originally wanted to take my own Dad on Saturday for a slightly belated birthday dinner. The restaurant owner, who is of the loveliest, helpful and most welcoming type you can imagine, is having a three course takeaway meal prepared for us now, so that we can enjoy at least part of what their sumptuous weekend buffet has to offer without having to consume our food in a room full of people.

Not that I believe contracting SARS-CoV-2 right at this point is all that likely, the case numbers even here in North-Rhine Westphalia are still too low for that. But what I believe in are the accumulated effects of people’s behaviour. Science, mathematics and expert projections. Everything coming down to the inconvenient, unpleasant fact that every decision with potential to slow down the virus’s spread is a good decision and a responsible one.

Thus I’m still rather torn about the Lichtburg Essen’s decision to have their great Star Trek: Wrath of Khan screening on March 11th take place exactly as scheduled. (The theatre usually holds 1250 people but apparently managed to keep the audience under 1000 by cancelling evening ticket sales and not putting any returned tickets back into sale.) William Shatner, in his late eighties now and still very much William Shatner as you know, love, or hate him, is touring Europe with Wrath of Khan at the moment. Movie screening followed by extensive Q&A stage program.

The film, with its opening scenes taking place on Kirk’s birthday, is a wonderful film to see on your own birthday. Especially if you are someone like me for whom Star Trek has been there all their lives. (One of my earliest conscious memories of watching TV is a Star Trek one, my Dad was watching, I was about three years old and sitting next to him on the sofa.)

Cavendish and I had bought our tickets sometime last September, practically as soon as we had seen the event first announced. Very much looking foward to it and learning that, against all odds, Wrath of Khan would definitely take place, we decided to go (The ratio behind this being that it was just the two of us, and it would be several days before we would meet with any of our parents again.)

Wonderful evening, full of fun, excitement and the priceless experience of feeling like the Star Trek loving kid I once was all over again. But a lot of anxiety and scruples before and after.

To quote Mr. Spock: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Whatever you do, people,wherever you are, take care!

ETA: It has just been publicly announced that all North-Rhine Westphalian schools are going to be closed down until the end of the Easter holidays, which means no school until April 17th. We are living in interesting times…

Anyone else watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix?

The show is a very smart, atmospherically intense reimagination of both the Robert Wise’s 1963 black and white genre classic The Haunting as well as the original Shirley Jackson novel.

Somewhat sceptical at first whether any modern day TV adaption could pull off the same level of psychological horror and deeply intense fright, I was soon taken in by the effective story telling (seemingly non-chronologic and elliptical, but in fact revealing itself to be perfectly concentric in a dark, twisted dream logic kind of way).

Also, intriguing characters, well-nuanced and coming with fascinating dynamics. (If you are familiar with their Robert Wise versions, names and depictions will be a sheer delight!)

The show’s ensemble cast is as female-dominated as it is superb.

Oh, and then there is that! cameo! Chilling and brilliant! Hell, yes, on so many levels! ;)

After our old cocker spaniel Wesley had died in late November last year, Cavendish and I felt it was high time for a new fluffy housemate.





Little Jasper (right) and one of his brothers on the day we decided that it just had to be this pup, sometime in February. I think what finally won us over were his eyes and that special air of sensitivity and sweetness. That and the way how, within the space of five minutes, he managed to both steal my woolen cap and then fall asleep on my feet.

( More fluffiness behind the cut... )

I figure it’s high time I started to kick off the new year journaling-wise, if only just to wave at folks and say “Well, hi! I’m still hanging out here, having a good time :)”

TV Shows I’m currently watching or have watched just recently:

• The Crown
• Mindhunter
• Star Trek: Discovery
  
• Bates Motel (only season 1 so far, but definitely planning to catch up on the rest)

Movies

Nothing worth writing about at the moment. Well, during our New Year’s holiday, Cavendish and I ended up seeing Victoria & Abdul (2017, directed by Stephen Frears) at the Spiekeroog island cinema. However, we found ourselves so frustrated by that movie’s amount of kitsch and gross diminishing of British colonial crimes that we almost would have got up and left. (We probably would have left if it hadn’t been raining so strongly outside. Both of us were without umbrellas.)

Hard to believe Victoria & Abdul came from the same director who did such a smart and brilliant film as The Queen back in 2006. But then again, The Queen’s screenplay was written by Peter Morgan.

Books

selenak , knowing how highly you think of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, have you ever read this one?
 

 

Paul M. Sammon, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. Revised and updated 2017 edition.

Described as “The ultimate guide to Ridley Scott’s transformative Sci-Fi classic", Sammon’s decade-long labour love so far 100% lives up to its promise. Well written, intriguing background infos and interviews on just about every aspect of Blade Runner’s making.

Over the last couple of weeks, I got quite a good dose of Sci Fi. New Star Trek, new Blade Runner, plus the first one and a half seasons of The Expanse, a show that I had never heard of until Netflix rather successfully marketed it to Cavendish, who decided to give it a try, watched the pilot, and then, on the very next day, decided to watch said pilot again, this time together with me.

And wow, am I glad that he asked me to join him, because already said pilot left me speechless due to spoilery plot stuff that best remains untold so you can view for yourselves .Not only does the show offer a complex, well-developed and richly detailed universe (you can tell The Expanse is based on a series of novels), it also features nuanced characters and probably the most diverse cast I’ve seen in ages, characters and actors of various ethnic backgrounds and various age groups.

Oh, and on top of that absolutely stunning visuals. Seeing what The Expanse does with its space stations and ships, the newer ones as well as those rundown and falling apart, I immediately thought of Babylon 5, and that B5, a true pioneer back in the 1990s, would look just like this if it had been filmed today and not some twenty years ago. Shiny and gritty and lived in and quite amazing.