Hi friend,

Seoul, 1988: Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson and Flo-Jo all writing their names into history, but I don’t remember a thing.

Barcelona, 1992: Barbara Kendall wins gold, so at school the next day, we all colour in a gold medal.

Atlanta, 1996: “When the sun is setting in the sky, everybody knows it’s party time,” sings Gloria Estefan at the closing ceremony, and the moment — the party, after a disastrous but fascinating Olympics — resonates in my preteen mind with Alexei Nemov and Donovan Bailey and Michael Johnson with his distinctive lean, and I solemnly swear I will be there next time, somehow.

Sydney, 2000: “Best Olympics ever,” says Juan Antonio Samaranch, and I am not there; I am on my brother’s sofa, and because it’s school holidays and the time zones are so similar I watch nearly everything, most memorably Eric Moussambani swim the 100m freestyle in 1:52.72.

Athens, 2004: I spend two weeks on the sofa in the living room of our Riccarton flat, huddling under blankets with a laptop and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, while Sarah Ulmer gives it absolutely everything on the other side of the world.

Beijing, 2008: “Great Britain’s doing brilliantly, aren’t we?” says my English friend, and I say, “Are they?” because I haven’t been watching, I’ve been pining for a lost love on sultry Yuigahama beach.

London, 2012: Apart from Mr Bean’s Chariots of Fire fever dream, this one almost completely passes me by.

Rio, 2016: My fiancée and I are housesitting and grieving for our infant niece, so Fu Yuanhui and her charming soundbites are a welcome distraction.

Tokyo, 2021: My three-year-old daughter, watching the trampolining final: “That is not safe — that is not a single drop of safe.”

Paris, 2024: The Black Ferns Sevens haka at 6.50am NZ time to honour their victory, their opponents and the people who got them there, and I’m on my feet in my living room in Paraparaumu, face swollen with pride.

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More? Here’s a look at my books and movies of July-August 2024, plus a couple of records.

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BOOKS

Brown Bird
by Jane Arthur, 2024

Rebecca’s profound anxiety makes the pages vibrate, like all the worst moments and feelings of my childhood stretched out to cover weeks and months and years, the skin of a balloon that could pop at any moment. She has to learn that others have it rough, too, and that if she can understand she’s not the only one in pain — as acute and crippling as it is — she may find it easier to relate to others, and in turn sense her pain dulling a little. A charming, challenging, good-natured book, intent on progressive ideals and reducing the distance between us all.

You Are Here
by David Nicholls, 2024

This book is all about the little character details, descriptions and similes that ring true immediately, as if their damp, windswept clothes are truly lived in. The spell breaks a little in some exchanges of dialogue, and some hasty progress from one weigh station to the next. But it’s not a guide book, it’s a sweet, relatable tale of finding companionship in middle age. I’d forgotten I’d reserved this at the library, and had no idea what it was when I picked it up, but thought oh well, might as well read it now we’re here — and now I want to read more David Nicholls.

Sisters’ Day Out Stories and Holiday Adventures (Ella and Olivia Treasuries)
by Yvette Poshoglian; illustrated by Danielle McDonald

Simple stories for five-to-seven-year-olds. I gave them all Australian accents for some reason, then realised halfway through Holiday Adventures that they are indeed Australian. I can spot ’em a mile off.

AMMA
by Saraid de Silva, 2024

A remarkable first novel for its swift and deft rendering of family, immigrant, and sexual dynamics, in vivid settings as diverse as a frozen Invercargill street at night and a sunny Colombo campus, with characters you quickly feel like you know. For me, the final act rushes the catharsis, but it’s almost like these long-suffering people deserved things to be a bit neater in the end. Certain scenes are indelible: Josephina’s early act of sharp and lasting trauma, Annie’s ultimate confrontation with evil. I can’t stress enough how smoothly rich and readable de Silva’s prose is, especially considering how deep she cuts.

In the Skin of a Lion
by Michael Ondaatje, 1987

A book that was always on my mother’s bookshelf, its name spoken like a body part she couldn’t imagine being without, but I didn’t read it until she spotted a copy on a recommendations shelf at the library and pressed it into my hands. First, this is a novel of work, of grease and explosives and pits, of a stench you can’t get off, and the pittance earned for such dangerous and exhausting labour. Second, it’s a novel of unions, specifically the early ones who had to fight in all senses of the word (and die) for the collective good. Third, it’s a poet’s novel — which could be faint praise in a lot of cases but I mean it in the best sense here, Ondaatje building up his stunning, indelible images with the most carefully chosen words, structuring the thing in pauses and leaps. Anne Enright says this novel is dangerous for young writers because it’ll make you think you can do things you can’t, and I see exactly what she means.

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MOVIES

ALL OF US STRANGERS
directed by Andrew Haigh, 2023

A ghost story the same way as A GHOST STORY. Haigh is a genius with dialogue and his cast are perfect here, zeroing in on the most banal and human implications of meeting your dead folks as an adult — and just as importantly, your folks getting to see who you’ll grow up to be. That’s the most interesting thing about this ambitious, formally exceptional, not-quite-convincing film, because what child and what parent haven’t had these fantasies? It turns out to involve quite a loss of control on both sides, and a lot of crying.

AFTERSUN
directed by Charlotte Wells, 2022

Weeks later, I’m still thinking about that climax. If you’re looking for catharsis — I mean proper, dam bursting — look no further. Those two minutes work so well because of the carefully observed script and performances throughout, all calibrated around a simple proposition: a daughter wants to connect with her father, but he remains distant. Wells does it with technique, too: notice how the first shot of the film, superficially banal and messy and only a minute or so, establishes their personalities and the distance between them AND lays much of the ground work for the big payoff. I’m trying to write more but coming up short because the film speaks so eloquently for itself.

TWISTER
directed by Jan de Bont, 1996

I told my wife I never saw this so we RENTED it through Apple, which felt just astonishingly frivolous, but needs must when you’ve just got to see a classic 90s blockbuster. It’s great how in the 90s, they threw a bunch of strong actors into the supporting cast and just let them build a character, whereas nowadays, every line and look has to be in service to the story. But then there’s the terrible CGI, even for 1996; the unbelievable love triangle with a massively self-centred arsehole at its heart; the silly machine; that cow. Tremendous fun in mostly bad ways. When the credits rolled, my wife looked at me, thrilled, and said, “Wasn’t that just so amazing?!” I replied, “It was not good, but I enjoyed it.”

PAST LIVES
directed by Celine Song, 2023

They fall in love over Skype at almost the same time (2012) as I did. I remember the excitement of getting up early (or staying up late) to call across time zones; the filtered, guarded feelings, somehow concentrated by distance; the constant what-ifs, even when the person so dear is right in front of you. Song nails it all, but that’s incidental to the film’s point, which is to examine one of those few intimate relationships you wish you could have had. What makes this one so good — apart from an exceptional score by Grizzly Bear alumni — is the third wheel, John Magaro’s Arthur, is superbly written and acted, an imperfect and decent guy who isn’t a roadblock in the way of fate but a full and active party to it in the most moving way.

THE ROCKETEER
directed by Joe Johnston, 1991

Nostalgia for the 90s AND the 30s all at once. After TWISTER, I insisted upon showing my wife a 90s classic she missed, and I think this was an excellent choice. It’s funny: when I saw this as a kid, I found it really dark and mysterious and genuinely frightening. It felt like a more serious offering than the usual Disney fare of the day. Maybe it’s the extraordinary, COMMANDO-level body count, because it’s certainly not the script, or the hilariously broad music, or the editing, or by God the acting, which is either as hammy or as wooden as it comes. Incredible to think Jennifer Connelly honed her craft so much over the years, and Timothy Dalton somehow chews more scenery here than he does in HOT FUZZ. The climax involves a Nazi zeppelin appearing in shot behind the Griffith Observatory like it’s a bloody star destroyer. There’s a giant wearing a fantastic prosthetic face that can’t actually move when he speaks. But I suppose all of this is the point, isn’t it? It’s the 30s, it’s a serial, it’s Errol Flynn and hordes of baddies and a thrill a minute. It’s an escape.

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MUSIC

BRAT
by Charli XCX

COWBOY CARTER didn’t get through to me; nor did The Tortured Poets Department. BRAT did. No reason why any of them should: this is music for a newer generation heavy with the latest memes, TikToks, celeb gossip and proudly autotuned vocals, birthing petabytes of discourse that seem largely to circle back to what tribe you belong to (are you a BRAT?) and whether you get the reference. I’m everywhere, I’m so Julia; don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show. IYKYK. For me, BRAT hits with great tunes from the off, hook after punchy synth hook that sounds like a greatest hits, even while lyrically it reads to me as jarringly narcissistic club posturing. Then the brief and striking penultimate track, ‘I think about it all the time’, an ode to the biological clock, has her looking in wonder at a friend with a new baby — “She’s a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father, and now they both know these things that I don’t” — before dashing back to the 365 party girl we know and love on the closer. Makes you think. None of this came up in the RNZ review of the record, which had plenty of tea about the apparent Taylor Swift connection on ‘Sympathy is a knife’ but no mention of the awesome, thudding bass drops that punctuate each chorus. It feels like the discourse around this record is more about the moment than the music, and indeed, it may be that the moment has outgrown the music. But there’s room for all kinds of BRATs.

Made Mistakes
by Clara La San

“To our ears she feels like one of Burial’s imaginary vocaloids from ‘Untrue’ made flesh: a back-of-the-bus singer manifest as the real thing,” says Boomkat’s reviewer, and I’m tempted to just copy and paste the full piece here. My favourite records of recent years have been brief-but-epic, done inside half an hour but wearing years of craft proudly, and here’s another. She’s apparently a perfectionist, and it shows: these are ten tightly constructed songs, varied and comforting but also deep and rewarding of repeat listens, particularly how she layers her laptop instruments with care, leaving space for the listener. Relationships, or the ways they fail to spark or drift or fall apart, are the appropriately R&B focus here, and I find it interesting how many songs are directed at a ‘you’. Not the usual poetic and floaty lines I usually gravitate towards. Actions, and inaction, have consequences.

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Love b