The typewriter considered as a bee-trap (Martin Johnston 1984)

Thinking about the dreaded power-grabbing Generation of 68 among Australian poets, I was drawn to re-read this, by sweet, obscure, shy, died-too-young Martin Johnston.

Les voies d'Anubis (Tim Powers 1983, 1986)

This translation of The Anubis Gates became available on BookMooch, so I get to combine my catching up on SF/F calssics with my current desire to brush up my French.

DVD: Return of the Secausus Seven (John Sayles 1980)

This is still excellent. The Big Chill was a flabby unacknowledged hommage, or do I mean rip-off.? David Strathairn and others are so young!

DVD: The Reader (Stephen Daldry 2008)

Apart from Kate Winslett's appalling septuagenarian make-up, this is wonderful, It makes me want to reread the book, because I remember being surprised by something that is signalled loud and clear here.

Leave to Remain (Abbas El-Zein 2009)

I'm expecting this to be something of a complement to Once Were Radicals, and also in a different way to Edward Said's Out of Place.

Every Little Step (Adam Del Deo & James D. Stern 2008)

Wonderful! Almost a mis en abîme: a film about auditions for the restaging of a musical based on 12 hours of tape of dancers talking about their lives. Very rich on art under capitalism – deeply human and also ruthless.

The Myth of Mars and Venus (Deborah Cameron 2007)

Pressed upon me by my Chief Recommender-of-Books, this sounds like a) fun and b) sound rebuttal of noxious and heavily promulgated ideas about gender difference.

Sunshine Cleaning (Christine Jeffs 2008)

This has quite a bit of heart, with quite an efficient mechanism keeping it in check.