Chris

detail from a painting showing two women’s heads and their hands interlocked, under the words “Botticelli’s Primavera’

#Beamafilm Botticelli’s Primavera, 2025. Howard Burton has a close look at this magnificent painting, gathering diverse research and abundant imagery to build a convincing portrait of what it is and why. Amazing analyses and closeups in an OK doco (unless you’re a fan of this masterpiece!)

views of a crowd holding flags and banners at a city intersection near a huge building with a dome

#latergram Huge rally in the city, part of a series nationwide, to protest at the ill-advised and manipulative visit by the president of Israel, deliberately intended to inflame feelings and stoke social incohesion, with the Labor government striding blindly into a well-set trap.

film still of a man and a girl in a crowd of lights

#HBOMax Trap, 2024. M Night Shyamalan pits Josh Hartnett’s goofy dad, who becomes an impassive mask, against Saleka Night, who flutters eyelashes nicely. But though nice to see her, Hayley Mills is dreadful & MNS doesn’t have his hero Hitchcock’s winking eye for absurdity & doesn’t know when to stop

two television film stills showing two women meeting at a train station and then the same women in disguise

#PrimeVideo Agatha and the Truth of Murder, 2018. Another charming and effective fiction based on historic events, as a crime mystery author reluctantly bumbles into sleuthing. The three ‘Agatha’ films are gently quality productions.

a file of rubbish in a bag on a street, topped with a gay party poster

#SmithSt #Midsumma Pride of Victoria Street Party: the morning after.

photographs of two men with ice-creams and a crowd under trees hung with streamers

photographs of a stage performance, an inflatable rainbow 🌈, three shop-front performers, and two shops

photographs of street festival tents and umbrellas, and a man in the street

photographs of crowds under trees

#GertrudeSt #SmithSt #PeelSt #Midsumma Pride of Victoria Street Party. Ice-creams and crowds.

two photographs of art photos of tattoos of birds and butterflies in dark disco light looking pink and mauve

#14Gallery @14 #Midsumma Jessi Ryan ‘Skin’ celebrating queer tattoos in a dark disco environment.

an empty courtyard

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed.

three photographs of a crowded dance floor, one showing a young man dancing on a raised area

three photographs of two young men dancing on a bartop

Drink downstairs at #Sircuit along with the occasional bar-top gogo dancer.

crowded gay bar

eight photographs of drag queens performing

eight photographs of drag queens performing

Drinks at #Mollies and the occasional performance to the drag-thirsty crowd.

two photographs of young men in a party

two photographs of young men in a party

#latergram Significant birthdays from young guns Darren and Ben, and the lovely hosts Darren & Alastair.

two photographs of ancient mosaics, one with a near-naked god between two winged supporters, and one with two boxers and a bull in the background

Ancient Roman mosaics showing gods (from Orbe, Switzerland) and boxers (now in the Getty Villa, LA).

When I grew up everyone I knew called it “wuster sorse”

Amazing reconstruction, but aim guessing you get no credit for the new icon!

six images from a television programme title sequence with 1950s-style graphics getting increasingly more fraught

#HBOMax IT: Welcome to Derry, Season 1, 2025. Very Serious prequel to IT giving backstory and context to the malevolently devouring spirit. But, though the graphic horror is high and the cast do well, I wasn’t totally convinced. The credit sequence is amazing, though.

two photographs of tchotchkes on a shop shelf

Our local #SmithSt chippy, #RockSaltAndVinegar, has transitioned and is now more reliable in its output, as well as less heteronormative.

To his coy mistress by Andrew Marvell

Sadly they’re sold out!

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.

It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.

www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

a person holds a disco ball like a basketball

#ExplosivesFactory #TheatreWorks Disco is Dead! Very broad comedy with stylised movements, broad characterisations and literal eye rolling, this isn’t high art but some of the drag king performances are fun and the music is *wink*

four photographs of an operatic production with fancy clothes and strong graphic backgrounds

two photographs of a decorated theatre safety curtain lit differently for the beginnings of acts one and two

two photographs of an old theatre, one of the underside of the canopy, one of the inside of the new upstairs lounge extension

#PalaisTheatre #VictorianOpera The Pirates of Penzance. Gilberto & Sullivan’s 146-yo comic opera is a joy & this production is utterly delightful: fantastic singing, playing & acting/mugging throughout. Ruddigore’s famous song makes a welcome appearance & the 20-yo #OA sets & costumes are sparkling.

still from a television series showing two men sitting on a park bench, not interacting

#Stan Sherlock, Season 3, 2014. I found myself annoyed during the first half of each episode by the tricksy pleased-as-punch filming style and self-congratulatory plotting, then inthralled by the last half as the plot machinations worked through. Grrrrr.

three paintings of men and one old photograph of another, nothing seems to link them physically; one has music paper as a background

#Beamafilm Austrian Composers, 2017. In no-nonsense style Malcolm Hossick recounts the lives of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert & Mahler, with some pointers to their most representative composition highlights. Extremely no frills but great if you’re a fan of these stupendous composers.

painting in earthy browns of a group of thirteen figures surrounding a table of food, with circles over their heads and the surrounding space crackling with electric energy

Tiwi Islander Johnathon World Peace Bush’s The Last Supper and the Big Breakfast, 2023, part of the ‘Punctuate’ group show at #ThisIsNoFantasy #GertrudeSt #Fitzroy

Digital reconstructed view of a city at sunset, viewed from a boat on the Bosphorus, with the buildings bathed in a pinkish-orange light and a massive curved structure across the city skyline like the prow of a ship; a huge domed building is in the background, elevated above all else.

Digital reconstruction of C6th Byzantion/Nova Roma/Constantinople/Istanbul by Eric Chauvin @ericchauvinart Chauvinart.com, 2015. At sunset viewed from the Bosphorus, with the massive Hippodrome like the prow of a ship. The church of Hagia Sophia is in the background, elevated above all else.

particularly stupid television show promotional image showing teachers dodging cell phones thrown by a group of students

#DisneyPlus English Teacher, Season 2, 2025. Brian Jordan Alvarez’s high school comedy is consistently funny as well as constantly affirming what dreadful characters he’s created, particularly his own.

film still of a woman looking out of a window into a dark garden

film poster of a woman reacting in restrained horror to figures in a black and white drawing of an old house

#HBOMax Night Watch, 1973. Ho hum creaky so-called thriller with below-par dialogue and OTT performances as the predictable plot plays out - wait, what?!!! From our perspective, the 40yo Elizabeth Taylor looks very middle-aged, what my parents would have called ‘blowsy’.

film still showing a young woman leaning over and with her hand on the heart of a distressed older woman with two ghostly figures on either side: an old man and a disfigured female

two film stills showing a young woman on a balcony, one with a dove and multiple reflections, the other as she starts to step off into the rising sun

film stills showing locust plagues in Ethiopia being wardened off, a clifftop church, and a man wandering in an orange city

two film stills showing a young woman, one where she turns against drawings, one where she sits upright smiling strangely with her eyes blank

#HBOMax Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1977. John Boorman creates a feverish, saturated nightmare of psychic paranoia pitting religious and scientific belief. Though often cited as one of the very worse films ever made, I quite liked it: despite its clumsy script & variable acting, it’s got *something*.

film poster of four people in black with sunglasses posing against palm trees in a spot of light; one man in significantly shorter than the others and above is “Get Shorty”

#Stan Get Shorty, 1995. Amusing cultivated-gangster-moves-to-LA-and-tries-to-get-into-films story, with increasingly good cast and extremely pleasant outcomes. If that is damning with faint praise, so be it: I would have loved to have loved it more.

film poster of various characters including a central man wearing a black and white striped suit, wrapped by a striped snake-worm, with a notice “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”

#HBOMax Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, 2024. This sequel is fair fun, with most of the original cast in good form, though the inventiveness of the original is replaced with retreads. Sadly a tired Michael Keaton just goes through the motions.