This week I’ve been working on yet another obituary – for Peter Powditch, who died a few weeks ago. As per my agreement with the Sydney Morning Herald, I can’t run these pieces until they’ve appeared in print, so it will be a little before it gets to the site. Next up is Ken Whisson, another big loss in 2022, which is shaping up as a fatal year for artists. I can’t recall such a succession of casualties at any time in the past. Only last week I learned that George Johnson, the veteran Melbourne abstract artist had died. I really believe in the importance of obituaries, but I’ve never liked writing them. It’s a terrible responsibility to try and sum up someone’s entire life in a thousand or so words. It can’t be a simple list of achievements or a hagiography. In any worthwhile obituary, one needs to get a sense of the essential person, with all their idiosyncrasies.
I’ve delayed this newsletter in the hope that the SMH will run the piece they commissioned for this week, but I’m still waiting, as they ponder whether to run it as a column, or in some other part of the paper. So apologies for only posting the film review this time. I’ll make it up in the weeks ahead.
At least you get two films for the price of one, as I hasten to complete my Academy Award round-up before the Oscars with reviews of CODA and Don’t Look Up. The only film I haven’t discussed in any depth is Steven Spielberg’s new version of West Side Story. Neither of the movies being reviewed this week struck me as possible Best Picture winners, although they’ve made it to the short-list. CODA is an American remake of the French movie, The Bélier Family (2014), and Don’t Look Up, a rather broad satire on America today, in the face of impending apocalypse.
I’m giving the politics a rest this week, largely because the war in Ukraine seems to dominate everything, and there’s nothing new to say, with Putin continuing to decimate cities and attack civilians while his troops seem to become more reluctant by the day. It was a bit much, however, when he and his henchmen took offence at Joe Biden calling him a war criminal. He never struck me as the sensitive type. And as for banning Joe from visiting Moscow, ouch! that will really hurt.
In Australia we’ve had the spectacle of The Boiled Egg warning Beijing that if they give Russia a hand there will be consequences! One imagines that’ll keep Xi Jinping awake at nights. We’ve also seen Scummo attacking Labor for promising money to marginal seats (!!) and complaining that three female Labor pollies were horrible to the late senator, Kimberley Kitching. We may never know the truth of this, but at least we can collectively retch at the sight of Our Leader showing such sensitivity to a woman wronged. He’s certainly evolved since the Julia Banks saga, and Brittany Higgins, and…. It seems the word “hypocrisy” is not in his vocabulary, along with most words of four syllables.