BOOK – Saki: The Complete Short Stories (H.H. Munro)
Writing around the turn of the last century, Hector Hugh Munro’s short stories became so famous for their irreverent and dark humour, they earned their author the pen name ‘Saki’. These have always been a favourite of mine, but recently I’ve been revisiting them, and they never fail to reduce me to tears of laughter. From fictitious bishops to insidious felines, and murdered peacocks to charming werewolves, Saki’s macabre prose is excruciatingly funny. None of the stories is more than a few pages long, so I always tend to have a copy in my bag for whenever I need a dull five minutes filling.
FILM – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
I love Wes Anderson’s quirky approach to filmmaking, with every shot packed with so many weird and wonderful details that you have to watch each film again and again before you catch all of it. The Life Aquatic, a fabulously bats story about a marine explorer going through a mid-life crisis with his crew of insecure and red-hatted mariners, I think is Anderson’s best. With an amazing cast, with Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson and Michael Gambon, and a soundtrack of David Bowie sung in Portugese, everything about this film is wonderful.
MUSIC – Push The Sky Away (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)
Nick Cave really is the modern Renaissance man, whether he’s publishing novels, composing for the theatre, directing films, acting, or putting out great albums with any one of his bands. Drawing inspiration from Dante, gospel, jazz, garbage rock, and well, whatever takes his fancy really, Nick Cave, with the accompaniment of his Bad Seeds, always manages to create something totally unexpected and fab. Push The Sky Away is the band’s fifteenth album, and came out this year. They’re playing in the UK at the end of the month – tickets sold out months ago, but there’s a ballot going for eager beavers.
ART – Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone (The Ashmolean Museum)
Francis Bacon and particularly Henry Moore are two of my favourite artists, and the Ashmolean is currently hosting the work of both in one exhibition – bliss. Although working in different disciplines, the two artists drew on surprisingly similar influences, and the same themes can be traced in both their art. Flesh and bones were in fact key to Moore’s modelling process – he used to take bones and leftovers off his plate at the end of a meal and use them as a starting point for his maquettes. Getting to see how the two artists’ work developed separately but in parallel is very exciting.
Lucie Dawkins is directing the Ashmolean’s next Live Friday, ‘The Art of Theatre’, 25th October, 7-10.30pm. It’s a free evening of live theatre, music, workshops and tours, with bars in the crypt and on the roof, in association with OUDS.
