https://twitter.com/NGruen1/status/1627142530126184448 The first I saw or heard of Casablanca was at the beginning (and end) of Woody Allen’s “Play it again Sam”. It was many years later I saw the film. I loved it, but mainly because it’s such classic (Hollywood) movie making....

Continue reading →

What do you do as an Australian parliament when a foreign company censors mainstream media content in Australia, undermining free speech ? Do you organise an inquiry to hold those foreign companies to account and to see how you might prevent foreign meddling? Or do you fall in...

Continue reading →

One can tell many stories of how current times resemble some earlier historical period. The conflict between nationalism and internationalism, as personified by the controversies surrounding Brexit and Trump, has been seen as somewhat of a re-run of the conflict between fascis...

Continue reading →

[spoiler alert!] As a fan of the “Hunger Games”, a dystopian trilogy where teenagers are thrown into gladiatorial games to fight till the last survivor in a world that is a blend of ancient Rome and modern America, I eagerly awaited its prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Sna...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks The Extraordinary (Opening Night) The Extraordinary is based on the real-life figure of Stéphane Benhamou who runs an informal shelter in Paris for autistic youth who have fallen through the cracks of a system unable to care for th...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Military Wives (Opening Night) The life of a military wife can be thankless. Separated from loved ones, their suffering and sacrifice go unnoticed while they live with the dread of a fateful knock on the door. But Kate finds freedo...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks 1968 (Opening Night) April 4th, 1968: Greece is under right-wing military rule. In Athens, 80,000 people have gathered at the stadium, while millions are glued to their radios — like the tram driver who witnesses a miracle, the wid...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks The Champion (Opening Night) Christian Ferro is a young superstar striker for Roma. Growing up in a rough area is a far cry from the millionaire lifestyle he is now living, which has attracted party-animal friends from home as well...

Continue reading →

If these kinds of things existed in my country, I wouldn’t need to be running for President to fix everything up. Elizabeth Warren The only thing that didn't leave a nasty taste in my mouth last year was the food. Barry the hypothetical troll from last year (He's been debunked...

Continue reading →

Episode 5 of the final season of Game of Thrones showed us a vengeful fallen angle, Daenerys Targaryen, after whom thousands of children in the real world have been named. Even though her enemies had been defeated and surrendered, she nevertheless used her massive weapon, a fi...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks The Trouble With You (Opening Night) Yvonne is the principled young widow of the local police chief who was killed in the line of duty. Each night she puts their young son to sleep with tales of his daring and bravery, and so natur...

Continue reading →

In the dynamic media environment we have in Australia, broadcasting regulation has become an exceptionally tricky exercise. If regulations are to work, they require creative application and on-going monitoring as commercial players will always seek to outmanoeuvre them, especi...

Continue reading →

Today’s kids are way ahead of our broadcasting regulators and television producers in the way they use both television and digital media. It’s time for a radical rethink of content regulations, quotas, and subsidy for children’s media education and entertainment in their best...

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="795"] Google images selected this image as the most relevant to "ABC Trust" for obvious reasons.[/caption] Cross-posted from John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations . Trust is an interesting concept. It takes time to develop trust which...

Continue reading →

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWHYJpJcLcU

Continue reading →

Cross-posted from John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations . The ABC has been an extraordinarily resilient organisation. It has withstood management and Board upheavals, survived remorseless budget cuts and harassment. But the current attacks on staff and on its role are as overt...

Continue reading →

Beginning tomorrow. Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks The Silent Revolution (Opening Night) It’s 1956 and during a visit to West Berlin, high school students Theo and Kurt witness dramatic footage of the Budapest uprising. Back at in Stalinstadt, they spontaneously...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Kiki, Love to Love (Opening Night) Through five stories, the movie addresses sex and love. Paco and Ana are a married couple looking for reactivate the passion of their sexual relations. Jose Luis tries to recover the affections of...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks C'est La Vie! (Opening Night) Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Max Angély has enjoyed a celebrated career as a caterer and event organiser. Today, it’s all hands on deck for Pierre and Héléna’s nuptials in a breathtaking...

Continue reading →

* cross-posted from Screen Hub . The #MeToo sexual harassment tsunami generated by the unmasking of American screen industry heavyweights Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey has hit Australian shores with a vengeance. As an old Monty Python sketch observed: ‘Nobody expects the S...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks You're Killing Me Susana (Opening Night) You’re Killing Me Susana tells the story of Eligio, a man who wakes up one day to find out that his wife Susana has left him without warning. What follows is Eligio’s earnest quest to win hi...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Subdued (Opening Night) Mina, recently divorced from her husband, struggles to maintain an independent life with no supportive family. She eventually finds a job in a restaurant. A friendship between her and the manager gradually b...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Roza Of Smyrna (Opening Night) Preparing for an exhibition in the Turkish city of Izmir (formerly known as Smyrna), a collector of historic objects and curiosities, Dimitris, finds an untold story waiting in the depths of a small a...

Continue reading →

A new programming approach for children today (Continued from Parts One and Two .) There is no justification for the Government to fund children’s television and media, if it is not for the clear developmental benefit of children. There are ample other opportunities for childr...

Continue reading →

‘Tell me a story!’ What child has not expressed those words? Children find the fantasy world a story transports them into, comforting, entertaining and enlightening. As a prelude to sleep stories allow them to dream the impossible. They explain the strong emotions children exp...

Continue reading →

And sing out below if you're planning to go to a film – perhaps we could encourage some visits to the cinema by the TLA (Troppo Latte Auxiliary). Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Let Yourself Go! (Opening Night) Dr. Elia Venezia is a psychoanalyst who is separated...

Continue reading →

Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="620"] B1 and B2, or as they're known here at Troppo, T1 and T2 "Are you thinking what I'm thinking T2?"[/caption] The contentious issue of obligatory quotas for commercial children’s television is now under review and has polarised the...

Continue reading →

Continued from Part One . The ABC and Children’s Programming - The Highs, Lows and Power-plays Part one here and part two here . The promise of the early years When ABC television first aired, on November 5, 1956, children’s programs presented a dilemma. There was no Australia...

Continue reading →

And yes, if you've not seen it, Annie Hall really is that good. It's a four and a half from me. Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks 20th Century Women (Opening Night) Dorothea is mother to Jamie and he’s growing up fast. It’s a challenging time and Dorothea decides s...

Continue reading →

As you know, despite spending millions on marketing to get the word out, our arts industry, for easily understood commercial reasons , doesn’t effectively get the word out about whether their products are any good or not. So for the cost of an hour or so’s outsourced, offshore...

Continue reading →

John Clark died yesterday, a very sad day, he will be greatly missed RIP. This is my all time favorite piece of satire. Am sure that troppo can come up with more. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule The Films Atlantic Atlantic tells the story of three fishing communities in Ireland, Canada and Norway who battle big business to maintain their traditional ways of life. ☆☆☆☆ ☆ IMDB A Date For Mad Mary 'Mad’ Mary McArdle needs to find a dat...

Continue reading →

As you know, despite spending millions on marketing to get the word out, our arts industry, for easily understood commercial reasons , doesn't effectively get the word out about whether their products are any good or not. So for the cost of an hour or so's outsourced, offshore...

Continue reading →

Reg ular readers may know of my fondness for the recent film of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, so I was intrigued to come upon this fantastic book on the subject. I say 'book' because in many ways this is how I think books should be written. It's written on a Wordpress bl...

Continue reading →

Last Friday I attended a speech by the new ABC CEO Michelle Guthrie put on by the New News conference which is always good value and a tribute to the forward-looking energy of Margaret Simons - Melbourne Uni professor of Journalism and frequently practising journalism. Simons...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Denial (Opening Night) In the 1990s, an impassioned and articulate American Professor Deborah Lipstadt publishes a book titled 'Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'. Soon after, a prominent 'denier' refer...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Life and a Day (Opening Night) Somayeh is at a loss. Her only desire is to leave her family and take her destiny in hand, yet the love of her sick mother holds her back. Her elder brother, introduces her to an Afghan who wants to m...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Chevalier Six average guys are on a private yacht in the Aegean Sea for who-really-knows-what reason. When a mechanical hiccup leaves them marooned at sea, they choose to wile away the time playing a game of one-upmanship called ‘C...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Perfect Strangers (Opening Night) Fueled by a fiendishly clever screenplay and an all-star cast, Perfect Strangers gathers a group of good friends around the dining table-three thirty something couples and a bachelor-where one sugg...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Neruda (Opening Night) Neruda is a lavishly-mounted re-imagining of the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s pursuit into political exile. It’s 1948, and the Cold War has reached Chile. In Congress, Neruda accuses the left-wing government of...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Time Out of Mind (Opening Night) George seeks refuge at Bellevue Hospital, a Manhattan intake center for homeless men, where his friendship with a fellow client helps him try to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter....

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Spanish Affair 2 (Opening Night) Returning from months at sea, Koldo is met by his beloved Merche, who is less than impressed with him after his long absence. With her head held high, she storms away in a huff leaving him with an e...

Continue reading →

I went to see The Secret River last night - and returned from the experience underwhelmed. It tries to be a truthful depiction of one aspect of the 'frontier wars' and so it presents a bunch of Europeans setting up shop in an area that the local indigenes (surprise, surprise)...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Rosalie Blum (Opening Night) Thirty-something Vincent Machot is a hairdresser, like his father before him. Life rotates around work, his overbearing mother who lives in the apartment upstairs, and a womanising cousin constantly try...

Continue reading →

Some readers will be aware of my distaste for costume drama - films about the past without any serious effort to engage with the difference of the past. It's a crime against Oscar Wilde's great admonition to Bosie. Shallowness is the supreme vice. Anyway, we have two more crim...

Continue reading →

When my niece Emma first told me the plot of the Hunger Games I was blown away. What a great story to reflect on our contemporary lives. A totalitarian state with media hype and reality TV at its cultural and political epicentre. A couple of kids - a boy and a girl - in the Hu...

Continue reading →

At least according to our sleuthing, there are lots of films, but only six could reasonably be called Troppolicious, if indeed it is reasonable to call anything Troppolicious Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Dough Nat is an old Jewish baker who reluctantly hires A...

Continue reading →

Sorry about this, but I managed to get this content up after the event was over. But thought I'd post it for the record as they say. As you were, as they say in the army. Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks What's the Time in Your World? Goli makes a snap d...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Youth (Opening Night) Two old friends vacation at a prestigious hotel in the Swiss Alps. Fred is a suave socialite and retired composer who the British royal family is pestering to play again. Mick is a film director rush...

Continue reading →

Better late than never - but this is definitely late - owing to some imaginary mechanical problems with the Troppo chopper Bronnie which was recently recovered from deep within a mine shaft near a golf course in Geelong. Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks...

Continue reading →

Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Who Am I-No System is Safe Benjamin is a socially inept nobody. Max is handsome and charismatic. What these strangers have in common is computer hacking. After proving his skill, Benjamin is invited to join Max and his fr...

Continue reading →

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqoXrjQQ9x8 This is a re-post of a post I did on Testament of Youth last December when the lead actress and I sat down to watch it for the first time (as you do). My excuse for reposting it is that the film has now been released in Australia and...

Continue reading →

Here's another post highlighting a film festival. It derives from my frustration at being able to actually work out what's worth seeing and when from festival propaganda which is mainly directed at trying to get you to go, not helping you work out what you'd like to see. Regul...

Continue reading →

I saw The Imitation Game last night and enjoyed it very much. Engaging and really well paced. Go see it if you can. Keira Knightley was a disappointment. Her fate is a little like Helena Bonham Carter's. Spectacular looking Young Thing HBC ended up parlaying her prim young ing...

Continue reading →

On any trip one takes in a bunch of movies, at least on the plane. I've seen two that I heartily recommend. Belle dramatises (meladramatises?) the true story of a girl who was the product of a British military seaman in the 18th century and a black west indian woman. Before he...

Continue reading →

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqoXrjQQ9x8 There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives — wher...

Continue reading →

Top Picks (Looks like a good crop!) Testament of Youth The young Vera Brittain, an irrepressible, intelligent and free-minded woman who overcomes the prejudices of her family and hometown to win a scholarship to Oxford. With everything to live for, she falls in love with her b...

Continue reading →

Films Marina True story of beloved singer, songwriter and accordionist, Rocco Granata, from his early life as an immigrant in Belgium to his emergence as a worldwide musical phenomenon with his 1959 song Marina, one of the biggest international hits of that era.1948 Calabria,...

Continue reading →

It is remarkable - non? - that, with the vast amounts spent on arts marketing it's so hard to know what great arts events are on, where they're on and whether you should go to them ahead of other arts events. In other words that it's so hard not just to ensure that the informa...

Continue reading →

You know the drum. There's a film festival on and these are the films that rate four stars or more. Living is Easy with Eyes Closed In 1966, John Lennon was determined to leave the Beatles to become an actor, and arrives in Almería to shoot 'How I Won the War'. Antonio, a scho...

Continue reading →

As the festival is now upon us in Melbourne anyway, I'm sticking it up the front of Troppo for a while for your delectation. Below is a timetable of the French Film Festival in Melbourne together with a table of the films rating better than most. I hope it helps you get to see...

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="557"] This image came up on a Google search for "What's On". It's from The Central Tavern at Springfield Lakes , wherever that is. Seems nice enough, the cocktails can be very red by the looks of things, though there does seem to be qu...

Continue reading →

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are the rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried than before - more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. I went to see Mr Pip last night. I chec...

Continue reading →

I went to see Lincoln last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The first five minutes was pretty dreadful with Lincoln meeting a couple of black soldiers who repeated the various lines of the Gettysburg Address to him. Ugggghhh. Death by anachronism. But the film gets down to the...

Continue reading →

Osper is a smart new London startup. Here's its pitch to Angel investors . Osper is a cash card for young people with a mobile banking app with login for mum and dad (with parental controls) and login for young people (which teaches responsible money management). The cash card...

Continue reading →

Amid all the praise for the Daniel Craig era of Bond films, it's time for all patriotic Aussies to understand the case for the only home-grown James Bond, George Lazenby. I am not especially a Bond fan, but I've long maintained that his sole Bond film, 1969's On Her Majesty's...

Continue reading →

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wz9CbuC--w Enthusiasm alert: Well folks, some of you are aware that I suffer from bouts of enthusiasm. In the cold light of day, perhaps things don’t look so good. So here I am blown away by something I’ve just seen. But then I’m on a plane tra...

Continue reading →

The ABC has broadcast a two part doco on Woody Allen's life which I really loved. He's a remarkable person, and just keeps churning out films, great, good, bad and indifferent. In any event by the end of watching this documentary I was an admirer of his, not just of his films,...

Continue reading →

Like lots of people, I've always been fond of Marilyn. She was an interesting and courageous person. I liked her apparent seriousness. And the cut of her ideological jib. She was one of the few people who stood against McCarthyism. Yet I always harboured the view that this was...

Continue reading →

I'll be making a few overseas trips in the next little while so will be catching up on some movie watching. I've just discovered 475 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc. so that's been a boon. However unfortunately a lot of them are on YouTube and/o...

Continue reading →

In the spirit of an earlier post addressing the French Film Festival, I'm now repeating my bleg, this time for the German Film Festival . Just to recap, this is an extract of what I said there . Film festivals are great things. Yet in my case I see them come, think “I’d like t...

Continue reading →

http://youtu.be/-4V40twk63A Screen tests are fun to look at, letting you peek before the actors peak, as it were (or crash). There must be some good philosophy to be written about the uncanny. (Hasn't Susan Sontag written something on this?) [On checking , it turns out that Si...

Continue reading →

It's a strange thing. Film festivals are great things. Yet in my case I see them come, think "I'd like to go to some of those movies" and an awful lot of the time I don't manage to make it. We have two sectors - the commercial sector that advertises its little head off and ser...

Continue reading →

[caption id="attachment_18324" align="alignleft" width="865" caption="A cool graphic curtesy of McKinsey"] [/caption] Hard to believe we have a share of the global film industry revenue which is about a fifth of the revenue of the US industry. Anyway, it's a cute graphic.

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="Tilda and her Very Nasty Offspring wait for expert assistance"] [/caption] I went to see We need to talk about Kevin on Saturday night. It may not be universally well reviewed, but that's how it's seemed to me having spent...

Continue reading →

'You go with the information you had...' I'm probably almost the last person to have seen Charles Ferguson's documentary Inside Job . But the film is still showing in a few cinemas in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, so it's worth making a belated recommendation. If only for th...

Continue reading →

Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged is so popular even Angus & Robertson stock it . And now after years of rumours , it's finally become a movie . That's odd because it's longer than Tolstoy's War and Peace and climaxes with a philosophical speech that runs for 70 pages. Most...

Continue reading →

About to book United Airlines to the United States, I thought I'd let any Troppodillians who don't know of this video, that it exists, and that it's fun (and it lopped around $170 million off UA's market cap according to some factoid crazed journalists). And looking it up, I j...

Continue reading →

Being in holiday mode, my brain is deeply immersed in trivial thoughts, not least who the Australian selectors could sensibly pick to begin the process of rebuilding a competitive cricket team. However an even more burning question is this: why are there so many cooking progra...

Continue reading →

I can finally see the point of Twitter. It lets you inflict isolated thoughts on people that are too trivial or even self-indulgent to merit a full blog post but that you need to share. The Librarians is the best Australian TV sit-com. Ever. Discuss. My ideal final episode: Oi...

Continue reading →

HT Three Quarks, I enjoyed this wander around the James Bond genre. How can we take such pleasure from such bad movies. It's a mystery. I liked the essay and don't dismiss the author's principal explanation which is Freudian fantasy for boys. But I'm in the demographic he's wr...

Continue reading →

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHlN21ebeak

Continue reading →

It's easier to declare a film a work of genius than to figure out its secret. But I think in the case of Boy , it's balance. This film tempts you at the start to expect a feel-good movie, but ends up steering clear of sentimentality. There's menace and heartbreak, but it doesn...

Continue reading →

I went to see this movie owing to a misunderstanding. I heard that the director had directed Love Serenade and having enjoyed that, and hearing that this movie was good, and wanting to see a movie, I went along. The premise is, well, dull. A woman and her uncle settle into a b...

Continue reading →

I have it under control. I flatter myself I can judge a film from the trailer, but I got it wrong in this case. It looked like a bunch of fancy special effects strung together with some half-baked premise about hacking people's dreams. I expected tedious chase scenes, endless...

Continue reading →

This film won both the Palme D'Or and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film last year. Paul Martin endorsed it a couple of months ago, but since it's approaching the end of its run in Australian cinemas, I thought one last recommendation wouldn't hurt. I find myself in comple...

Continue reading →

It's been a Fatih Akin blitz this week, having watched his new comedy and two older films - a music documentary and his dramatic feature debut. I've also revisited The White Ribbon , the must-see film of the festival (though it has a cinematic release just after). All up, ther...

Continue reading →

It wasn't in any deliberate attempt to celebrate Anzac Day last night that I went to see Beneath Hill 60. (My spellchecker wants me to respell 'Anzac' as 'Antacid' but I'll press on!) Eva and I just wanted to go and see a film and she'd heard good things about it. It's a good...

Continue reading →

The Festival of German Films 2010 is now open in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, with Brisbane and Adelaide to come. It's the 9th year of the festival and this year there are 33 films to be screened. I spoke briefly to festival director, Klaus Krischok from the Goethe Institute,...

Continue reading →

I'd firstly like to thank Nicholas for inviting me on board Club Troppo. This is not my first appearance here - some of you may recall Alison Croggon from Theatre Notes , who posted here my article on Pedro Almodóvar's Volver in 2007 (which seems to have evaporated from Club T...

Continue reading →

I wanted to post this video of Ronald Reagan (not to be mistaken with Ronald McDonald) and James Dean. However WordPress's new software strips the code away - ostensibly because it will handle it all without the code. But I can't master what I'm supposed to do. Anyway, click t...

Continue reading →

Some Troppodillians may be familiar with the wonderful Melbourne Film Blog . A few weeks ago I decided that it was just ridiculous that I didn't consult it more. I only see about one film every month or two, and almost invariably the ones that are advertised in the papers. And...

Continue reading →

I confess to not having read a proper biography of Leo Tolstoy. My conception of Tolstoy the man is based, unfortunately, on the relevant chapter of Paul Johnson's notorious Intellectuals . If you haven't come across this book, it's a series of case studies (or hatchet jobs) a...

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="464"] Not the ABC's logo, but a very nice looking image whatever it is![/caption] I think this is the first post on Troppo that's 'hoisted from archives' which is to say it's an earlier post that I'm reposting. It was done as preparation...

Continue reading →

They don't get much better than this. HT Three Quarks Well for the umpteeth time, WordPress has spat out the 'embedding' code I put into it. But this link is fabulous. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFabjc6mFk4&feature=player_embedded PS - I find on reviewing the site that it...

Continue reading →

Richard Ronald Brautigam:'What's really remarkable is not so much that he could compose something like this, but that he could play it.' I've only just managed to see In Search of Beethoven , and it's probably nearing the end of its inevitably short season. But it's still show...

Continue reading →

just thought Id drop in here and offer a heads-up for Troppo readers that ABC will be re-broadcasting the first three series of The Wire on ABC2 at 9:30.

Continue reading →

I read Disgrace before seeing the film; thanks to that, once again , the film didn't have much impact in its own right. It was well made, as expected, and faithful to the novel. So the principal interest was in judging its merits as an adaptation, discovering small points of d...

Continue reading →

Having just read this pussy footing review of this film, I am brought back to thinking about it, though not that much. I saw it last week in Sydney while killing some time before heading off to my hotel for the night. I was very keen to see it having seen it get five stars (th...

Continue reading →

Penélope Cruz? You decide. I saw Elegy last night. It's been around for a while but hadn't caught my attention, mainly because I haven't been paying much. These comments will be of interest only to readers who have seen the film, and might spoil it for someone who still intend...

Continue reading →

Am I mistaken or is this a reasonable description of the last - say - thirty years in cinema. A generation ago, you could do a film about foreigners in a normal English speaking accent. The Sound of Music was done in a mix of fairly unobtrusive (to us) English accents (the adu...

Continue reading →

Notes written at 12,000 metres. On various planes between Australia and Europe going hither and yon I had the chance to see most of the film Australia. Ive just filled in on most bits I missed going hither (from Beijing to Helsinki) going yon (from Helsinki to Honkers). There...

Continue reading →

New Page 1 I finally got around to seeing The Reader , and for once I'd read the book first (it helps that it's short). The film was well made. The acting was impressive, especially by young David Kross -- I was confirmed in my hypothesis that Kate Winslett deserved her Oscar...

Continue reading →

Apologies to Nicholas, who I've just discovered has already reviewed this film . But I know he'll be consoled by the knowledge that readers will appreciate his wisdom and sobriety all the more when contrasted with my naive gushings. ----------------------------------- I saw An...

Continue reading →

I was underwhelmed I'm afraid. Here are a couple of good reviews which say the film is good. So go ahead and don't believe me. But for me this was (yet another) Hollywood film with good acting covering up a film that didn't quite do it for me. (Others include the other Kate Wi...

Continue reading →

I've just been to see the film, and I'm afraid I wasn't impressed. It is of a piece with 'Doubt' which is very well acted but has a slick and ultimately superficial script. I had no idea what the film was about but somehow by osmosis I took in that it was a Good Film and I wan...

Continue reading →

John Clarke, living national treasure, is on ABC radio national again. On poetica this weekend, or downloadable here .

Continue reading →

The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Better Know a Beatle - Paul McCartney Colbert Report Full Episodes Paul McCartney Appearance Funny Political Videos More Funny Videos

Continue reading →

After uncomplainingly sitting through two episodes of Brideshead Revisited earlier this evening (even, I confess, with a degree of appreciation I didn't feel on first viewing 25 years ago), the prospect of backing up for Mansfield Park was a bridge too far, despite the lusciou...

Continue reading →

The spirit of 1974: Man on Wire This is the most enjoyable documentary I ever watched. Andrew Denton's program on Philippe Petit contained quite a bit of the footage, but even if you saw that, you should still see the film. (And, whether or not you've seen or intend seeing the...

Continue reading →

I went to see the film The Dutchess the other night about Georgiana Dutchess of Devonshire Tea (In the film they pronounce her name Georgaina in case you care). I didn't expect much but just wanted to see a movie and knew that if it was awful the costumes would be just fine. A...

Continue reading →

There have been a bunch of things I've wanted to post about, but have simply not had the time. I still don't have the time, but I with a bit of enthusiasm and not much time, I thought I'd mention some good things. The first is that I listened to this podcast of Dan Pink talkin...

Continue reading →

Quite a dancer! HT The incomparable Kathy G .

Continue reading →

I'm reading one of the better Web 2.0 books around instructively and amusingly called Here comes everybody which Peter Gallagher told me today came from Finnigan's Wake. I thought I was terribly clever when I discovered this book on the net within a day or so of it having been...

Continue reading →

In a recent post I argued that "Over the very time we were clearing away the detritus of the various collectivist institutions we cobbled together under the name of the Australian Settlement, or ‘protection all round’, while we proceeded with economic reform by deregulating ma...

Continue reading →

They're all off to America and the UK .

Continue reading →

Watching The 7:30 Report last night, I found myself quickly checking the remote to make sure I hadn't accidentally switched over to A Current Affair or Today Tonight . The ABC's slant on a story about the "need" for enforced ISP filtering to protect the kiddies from porn was e...

Continue reading →

Odnyam Odsuren as the young Temudjin So Mongol has lost out to The Counterfeiters in the Oscars and I'm aggrieved. Mind you, Mongo l was the only nominee in the Best Foreign Film category that I'd seen or indeed knew the first thing about, so I'm slightly biased. But I loved i...

Continue reading →

I found my ten year old watching the end of a TV show about kids tonight. He was watching it because he was anxious that he wasn't doing his homework. Sound familiar? Anyway, the show was Brat Camp is a reality TV show that aired tonight. The blurb says that it's been on befor...

Continue reading →

Juno is a great movie -- but there's something a little odd about the music. So you haven't seen the film? It's about a 16 year old girl called Juno who gets herself pregnant. And yes ... I can hear you. You're saying, "Gets HERSELF pregnant! Isn't there some male person who's...

Continue reading →

The receptionist's fingers paused over the keyboard. The heat was making it difficult to think and the din of hundreds of amorous black cicadas wasn't helping. She wanted to show Mr Farrell how completely he'd misunderstood Ian McEwan's novel , but at the same time she didn't...

Continue reading →

As I took my seat to watch Atonement last night, I was thinking that I should have read the book first, and the feeling was even stronger by the time I walked out. It was beautifully filmed, and mostly very well acted. The chemistry between Keira Knightly and James McAvoy was...

Continue reading →

Well, it's not standard Troppo fare I know - though aficionados may recall similar departures from me in the past , but Natalie Gauci won Australian Idol on Sunday night. Idol is quite a show - for the few who are uninitiated it's a kind of souped up talent quest in the age of...

Continue reading →

As usual my correspondents seem incapable of taking responsibility for their own emotions. Troppo reader Don Arthur asks : Dr Troppo, I’d like your advice on something I read in the newspaper this morning . According to Peter Hartcher subjects in a Dutch study found politician...

Continue reading →

I've just been to see Hairspray - a cinematic version of a Broadway Smash - well I don't know if it was a box office smash but it won lots of awards. It's a musical set in Baltimore in 1962 about rock and roll and a plump girl who takes a rock and roll show by storm with her e...

Continue reading →

What a slimy, condescending, pox-ridden excrescence is ABC's Media Watch program. And Phillip Adams isn't far behind, judging by his response to Helen "skepticlawyer" Dale's complaints about his characterisation of an interview with her that apparently never took place ("chill...

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Thank God you're here is a lot of fun. Here's the best effort I've seen. From Shaun Micallef a truly funny and very silly fellow. In the (likely) event that Wordpress won't properly embed the screen, you can click here .

Continue reading →

Killing a night in Sydney I went to see Knocked Up which I'd heard good things about. Thoroughly accurate things. It's terrific. I'm afraid I couldn't take my eyes of Katherine Heigl. These are the unfair things that Hollywood does to us little people out here. Anyway, go and...

Continue reading →

I've just been to see Romulus my father. To the left is a picture of the actual Romulus. The filmic version is another story. I enjoyed the book a lot when it came out. Recently I heard Raimond Gaita reading some sections of the book on 'first person' on the great Radio Nation...

Continue reading →

This post is exclusively for anyone who saw The Lives of Others , which I finally got around to seeing. If you haven't seen it, you won't know what I'm talking about; and what you do understand will spoil it for you anyway. I enjoyed it enormously, for all the reasons other di...

Continue reading →

What if I go to Italy and my mother comes here looking for me? How will she find me? So asks Vanya, a six-year-old boy in a depressing orphanage in the middle of Russian nowhere. A nice Italian couple have applied to adopt him. This ought to be a profitable transaction for eve...

Continue reading →

In the newly dumbed down and still decending A2 Supplement in The Age comes a nicely written review of a bad book about a great actress. My all time fave I think. From the review: " How, one wonders, could she not have wanted to give more sense of Bergman's career highlights?...

Continue reading →

What is Michael Caine doing playing God? He's in the forthcoming film Sophie's World. You might wonder what they're doing turning a kids book on the history of Western philosophy into a film. But then you might have thought a similar things bout the book - which was a huge bes...

Continue reading →

This is a film with lavish sets and costumes, set in Vienna , about the last years in the life of history's greatest composer. We see his life and work through the eyes of a fellow composer who, though less talented, uniquely comprehends the extent of the composer's genius. Th...

Continue reading →

Media ethics and psychology experts have been in great demand for their opinions on whether the American TV network NBC should have shown the video they received from Cho Seung-Hui, justifying his planned rampage. If you google 'Cho video public interest', the first page of hi...

Continue reading →

I just went to see the film Becoming Jane . Having read a couple of reviews, I didn't want to see it but I arrived at nine p.m. at the cinema determined to see a movie and it was the least bad of my options. On returning and doing a quick Google I can't find a good review of i...

Continue reading →

In the world of the Matrix , Richard Layard would side with the machines. After all, the machines are only doing what any good government should do -- keeping people as happy as possible. During the war between humans and machines, the earth was plunged into darkness. Knowing...

Continue reading →

Some people are little grumpy before they've had their first cup of coffee. And maybe that's why Sunrise co-host David Koch got so many complaints when he repeated this joke at 6:50am. But how risqué can a joke be if versions of it have appeared in respectable magazines like t...

Continue reading →

Ahead of this weekend's announcement of the 2006 Australian Idol , today's Age Green Guide acknowledges the popular culture phenomenon. The paper then labels the show, for about the tenth time, as "karaoke". The Age is not alone; a large part of the Australian pop/rock music i...

Continue reading →

A clever bit of econometrics seems to confirm something that Mark Latham argued in his tome Civilizing Global Capital. That the tele undermines social capital. It seemed a plausible argument, but what was the evidence other than the historical concurrence of the rise of tele a...

Continue reading →

[photopress:Australian_Intellectual.jpg,full,pp_empty] Australians love a good competition. We can turn anything into sport. So if shows like Australian Idol can give young singers a chance to crack into the music business why not have an Australian Idol for public intellectua...

Continue reading →

Andrew Landeryou , who I've faithfully promised not to call a "bovver boy", makes the following colourful observation on another Troppo comment thread: It honestly matters very little who they put on the ABC Board, it's the culture of the place that's the problem. It is stacke...

Continue reading →

I had a free Village pass to the movies which expired tonight so went to see Wah Wah . I don't recommend it - but then again it's not bad. Like a lot of movies these days it has excellent acting. It's consciously serious and 'art house' rather than going for the ratings. It's...

Continue reading →

The lefties over at Larva Rodeo have gone into a Henny Penny "sky is falling" frenzy ( here and here ) over the appointment of Keith Windschuttle to the ABC Board , joining Janet Albrechtsen and Ron Brunton as appointees seen by many on the Labor side as unacceptably partisan...

Continue reading →

The Sydney Morning Herald certainly seems to be making a determined pitch for the airheaded end of the Generation Y demographic, at least judging by its blog Sam and the City (whose author is if anything even sillier than The Australian 's Emma Tom ) and an opinion piece yeste...

Continue reading →

There's a certain nastiness about a certain cadre of Australian expats. The big four are Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Clive James and Robert Hughes. They didn't like the Australia of the fifties and early sixties, and a lot of them think we're still the same. This was the...

Continue reading →

[photopress:Ricki lee_1.jpg,thumb,pp_empty] I realise this is not core Troppo business, and perhaps better put as a question to Dr Troppo, but I was running along the Port Melbourne beach, as is my wont when I saw some filming going on. I jogged around the line of vision so I...

Continue reading →

When two men kiss, is it ideologically offensive? News Limited columnist Paul Gray thinks so : My young family were among the viewers. At Christmas, they all sat down to watch the Spicks and Specks yuletide special, A Very Specky Christmas. Despite my often caustic anti-ABC co...

Continue reading →

I've just been to see the above film and recommend it. It seems to have a fair bit of verisimilitude. For those that don't know, it's about the role of CBS news and what we now call 'current affairs' in the downfall of Joe McCarthy. At a time when people are being deported fro...

Continue reading →

Most Americans leave high school knowing little about their nation's history . The latest Zorro film isn't going to help. According to Eric Cox in The American Enterprise , the latest Zorro sequel -- The Legend of Zorro attempts "to reconcile Latino identity politics with Amer...

Continue reading →

I've just got back from a trip to Canberra which allowed me to pick up the family copy of Pride and Prejudice - my Dad's favourite book by his favourite author. I wanted to bring it back for my 11 year old daughter to read as she'd loved the movie. There was quite a few books...

Continue reading →

I thought of a post on this film, and then thought it wasn't worth the effort. Suffice it to say, it is very pleasurable to look at, and everything clicked into place when I saw on a bus stop poster that it was by the producer of Bridget Jones Diary and Love Actually and Notti...

Continue reading →

Having bagged Australia's latest efforts with film - or more specifically said that the New Zealanders were leaving us in the shade, I'm pleased to say that I thought "Little Fish" was a very good flick and good enough for you to try to go and see it - even if I wouldn't put i...

Continue reading →

Having an 11 year old daughter, I watch a lot more reality TV talent shows than I otherwise would. (My seven year old son prefers to use the TV to study the footy a figure of quiet pathos as he clutches a black and white striped 'Beanie Baby'). Herewith a review of one of the...

Continue reading →

I have just been to see the German film 'Downfall'. If you're concerned about it 'humanising' Hitler, it does. It presents him as a three dimensional character with charisma, and gravitas. He's even courteous a lot of the time at least when he's not apoplectic with rage partic...

Continue reading →

For those who are interested..an actual scene from 'Melo', the film mentioned in my last entry.

Continue reading →

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research on early French 'Talkie' films, not only as background for my 1930's crime series, which has a great deal to do with the film world, but also because my paternal grandfather, Robert-Rene Masson, known as 'Bob' , worked from 1929-1933...

Continue reading →

Another sad thing to report on the Australian film front, as yet another 'great white hope' looks set to segue into 'big flat flop.' Apparently, the film version of Robin Klein's well-loved, funny, tender and whimsical novel of school and family life, Hating Alison Ashley, is...

Continue reading →

The other day, in Sydney, I went to see Bride and Prejudice with my daughter. In case you don't know, this is a Bollywoodised version of Jane Austen's great work(which is always put at no 2 on world 'top hundred' reading lists these days, behind Lord of the Rings!). I'd heard...

Continue reading →

Sadly, Irish comedian Dave Allen has passed away unexpectedly . His show was one of the highlights of my week's viewing as a kid. May his God go with him .

Continue reading →

Fresh from a coup in snatching the free to air coverage of The Ashes series against England which Channel Nine declined and the ABC dithered over, public broadcaster SBS will tonight show highlights of the Danish Royal Wedding . I'll be watching - I still have Princess Diana's...

Continue reading →

Directly inspired by Nabokov's comment on my earlier post, 'Best Shakespearean plays', I'm giving you all an opportunity to bury or praise the screen versions of Will's work. Here are my own cheers and boos: Cheers: Trevor Nunn's 1999(I think)version of Twelfth Night, set in a...

Continue reading →

First, it was Kinsey : ... the right-wing police have turned their sights on Bill Condon's new biopic, Kinsey, in the same hysterical terms that greeted Alfred Kinsey himself more than half a century ago: Such immoral subjects shouldn't be made public. Robert Knight, the (pred...

Continue reading →

On another thread, Chris pointed out an uncanny resemblance between Princess Mary and Emma Peel . This leads me to muse - why is it that the film adaptation of The Avengers is largely without grace, charm or wit compared to the wonderful original tv series ? Bad scriptwriting,...

Continue reading →

The Academy Awards ceremony was just dedicated to US military forces serving overseas.

Continue reading →

No doubt everyone's heard of the fracas over the premature end--or at least the postponement--of the latest Great White Hope for Aussie filmmaking, Eucalyptus. From what you read in the press, the reasons for the implosion are fairly complex, but centred around the script. I h...

Continue reading →

OK, by 'popular demand'--well I can call it that if I want to!--and following on from 'dullest authors', here's the latest list: what are the most boring, awful movies you've ever seen? Of course there are many, many candidates for this, as the wide field for the Golden Turkey...

Continue reading →

On the weekend, we went to see one of the best new films I've seen in quite a while--French director Julie Bertuccelli's first feature film(her previous work has been in documentaries), Since Otar Left. It is an almost perfect film, with glorious acting, fantastic setting, gre...

Continue reading →

or, Bollywood Bliss I'd never seen a Bollywood film before today. I'm a longtime fan of Hong Kong cinema, particularly the work of director Tsui Hark , and this genre has well and truly become a crossover phenomenon, both in terms of style and effects in action films, and in H...

Continue reading →

Ok, although we're doing the poll thing on Troppo a lot of late (on recent popular music and children's books that influenced us ), it's been a while since we've had a good old fashioned Troppo contest. The topic is David Lynch's Mulholland Drive . The usual prizes will be awa...

Continue reading →

There've been some interesting discussions developing on the thread about Andrew Bolt's demonisation of Desperate Housewives . If I'm reading it correctly, commenters are having difficulty agreeing to a definition of what constitutes "quality" in television, and the issue of t...

Continue reading →

... if Andrew Bolt is really a right wing op/ed columnist or a master of satire? Check out his thoughts on Channel 7's Desperate Housewives or feast yourself on this Bolty appreciation by Jess at Ausculture , and make up your own mind about the mystery of the preacher-teacher...

Continue reading →

The other day we watched what I thought was impossible--a bad Cary Grant movie. Or rather, it was a bad movie--a lame, wooden, limp(to thoroughly mix metaphors) in which Cary Grant had the misfortune of being completely miscast. It's the historical potboiler, 1957's The Pride...

Continue reading →

A big issue in the Australia-US FTA debate last year was the possible implications for local content on tv. It's reasonable to ask whether there is that much compulsively watchable Australian tv around at the moment. Certainly, as just about every tv reviewer in the country ha...

Continue reading →

In a review of Elektra , Paul Byrnes in the SMH makes this astute observation : Garner looks terribly serious, her plump lips pursed into a parody of determination. Boy, that top lip is plumper than I remember it being in Suddenly 30, the last film I saw her in. That lip would...

Continue reading →

The SMH previews new tv shows for 2005. This is really sad : Rock Star (Nine) In a nutshell INXS search for a new singer, with auditions in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain and Japan. Biggest hurdle Too much American polish on an Australian band. X factor Producer Mark Burne...

Continue reading →

Or, Should Columnists Condemn Puppet Porn? Some denizens of the leftish Oz blogosphere heart conservative columnist Andrew Bolt - in a big way . He's MsFits' "one true love" . Darlene Taylor has a post entitled "A Quickie with Bolt" . Jess at Ausculture addresses Andrew thusly...

Continue reading →

Some of us were wondering in the thread about the SBS Movie Show what Zoe was on about when she compared Fenella Kernebone to Roger Waters. She's now provided a case for Ms Kernebone to answer at her blog Crazybrave . Go see for yourself and decide if Zoe's onto something here...

Continue reading →

Troppo Contest of the Week! Continuing the TV theme , I think I watched the worst ever American reality tv show set in Australia last night. Outback Jack . The host is called J. D. Roberto. The premise is that twelve "uptown girls" think they're going to a mansion to pick a ba...

Continue reading →

I caught SBS' Movie Show last night. I've only occasionally watched it since the departure of David and Margaret to ABC. I was half curious because the distinguished Mr Stratton has attracted some negative press in the right wing corners of the blogosphere of late . But the Da...

Continue reading →

As promised, here are the awards for Mark's movie homage contest and my micro-story competition . Mark has passed me 3 envelopes. Here are the awards and the winners: Phil K. Dick Award (First Prize): Tie between Big Bob and Alan Dr Bloodmoney Award for the Commenter Who Alway...

Continue reading →

For as long as I can remember, I've been an aficionado of the spooky and supernatural in literature and film. Note, not horror exactly, or not as it's been interpreted in modern times, with altogether too much grue and gore, but the kind of spooky that evokes the strangeness o...

Continue reading →

Or, Yet Another Troppo Contest At Fafblog , the Medium Lobster has a post which begins: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when you look down and see a tortoise. This is standard procedure, designed and developed to protect you and the homeland. Do not be alarmed:...

Continue reading →

Posh and Becks feature in a nativity scene at Madame Tussaud's. Photo: Reuters. Continuing my musings on fame and its contemporary cultural significance, what's going on when our Nic is named UN Citizen of the World alongside Hans Blix and Lakhdar Brahimi, Angelina Jolie saves...

Continue reading →

We seem to be returning to Ancient Greece for our film plots. The latest entry in this genre, Alexander , being an Oliver Stone film, has stirred up some controversy . And it's not just about Colin Farrell's silly wig, or Angelina Jolie's portraying his mum when she's only a y...

Continue reading →

Do films based on printed fiction do justice to their source? Or do they trash the original spirit of the book? Can a film be better than the book it's based on? Or is it always, inevitably less satisfying? I don't think there are general answers to those vexed questions, but...

Continue reading →

As the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a new BBC Channel 4 reality tv series will show footage of couples having sex (in a tasteful way and for educational purposes, of course), news.com.au brings us the tantalising tidbit that Gretel Killeen has dumped Saxon . The wonderfu...

Continue reading →

Last night, we watched 1940's The Philadelphia Story (starring Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant), the latest in a long line of old romantic comedies that we've greatly enjoyed--mostly, much, much more than modern romantic comedies. And it set me thinking again a...

Continue reading →

As I mentioned in my earlier posting (Screen pleasures), I did not have TV when I was growing up, as my parents found it second-rate and a waste of time, compared to films. That didn't stop us children from being quite 'au fait' with a lot of TV programmes, mostly because we'd...

Continue reading →

I was brought up on films as well as books, and the silver screen loomed quite large in our family story. My paternal grandfather worked as a cameraman in the French film industry in the inter-war period, and indeed the story goes that he stood in for Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who...

Continue reading →