You Didn't Win That! Somebody Else Won That For You!

Fr Z strikes again - and he's got a whole PAGE of them. http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/07/usa-gold-as-seen-by-pres-obama/

Alive and Quite Possibly Kicking

I'll be speaking at the three-day Colloquium to be held at Campion College, Old Toongabbie, at the end of August.

The Colloquium will run from Friday 31 August - Sunday 2 September, on 'The Christian view of history and the revival of the Liberal Arts'. For the details, see below. The registration form also gives you a preliminary program of speakers and papers.

http://www.campion.edu.au/studies/western-traditions/events

I'll be speaking on Saturday, late afternoon, and my topic is 'When Worlds Collide: the Catholic histories of Warren Carroll and Eamon Duffy'.

Those Pesky Grants

Andrew Bolt agrees with me (not for the first time, either, and even after I provoked public comment about his physique):

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_to_write_a_modern_grant_application/

As does the Australian Taxpayers Alliance:
http://www.taxpayers.org.au/how-to-get-any-taxpayer-grant-add-climate-change-to-the-application/

And Watts Up With That:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/24/add-the-words-climate-change-pass-go-collect-200/

And EcoWho:
http://www.ecowho.com/blogs/75293/Climate_change_and_literary_studies/b975f

And Pindanpost:
http://pindanpost.com/2012/07/28/science-fiction/

Atta boys!

Climate Change Where You'd Least Expect It

Had a bad day? Then do read the ARC's list of successful grants for 2011, beginning this year. I haven't laughed so much in years.

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/07/climate-change-where-you-d-least-expect-it

Garbo Speaks!

Campion College have very generously archived an audio recording of a presentation I gave in December 2011.
'Breaking the 180 degree rule: is God back in the movies?'
http://www.campion.edu.au/images/stories/audio/2011%20Symposium/Dr_Philippa_Martyr.mp3

The full series of talks can be found at: http://www.campion.edu.au/component/content/article/63-media/231-symposium-2011

My presentation begins at 1 minute 30 seconds, after the ad for Campion College and my introduction by Dr Susanna Rizzo.

Here's (Another) One We Prepared Earlier

'Unworthy of Strong Women', in J Biggs, R Davies (eds) The Subversion of Australian Universities (2002).

My musings on the Orr, Rindos and Ormond College affairs, and also - for the first time in print - self-defence tactics for use at a wine-and-cheese. Some advice never goes out of date, even after 10 years.
http://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/sau/sau08.html

Our First-Class 'Second-Class Citizen'

This just in from Michael Kirby, a man who recently announced that he felt like a second-class citizen because he and his longtime partner could not marry.

On this occasion - his receiving yet another public award, to universal acclaim, while enjoying his presumably well-funded retirement from the top ranks of the legal profession - we feel his pain.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/a-man-of-justice-20120721-22gou.html

Obama 3: Someone Else Did That!

And Catallaxy -

http://catallaxyfiles.com/

Obama Again: You Didn't Earn That!

Thank you AGAIN, Fr Z - keep 'em coming.

http://wdtprs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/12_07_20_Obama_Notre_Dame.jpg

Mother Nature Network: encouraging long-haul, highly-polluting air travel

http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/get-in-quick-the-10-sites-to-see-before-they-vanish/story-e6frfq80-1226430714004

You Didn't Do That! Someone Else Did That!

Thank you, Fr Z -

http://wdtprs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/12_07_18_Obama_prize1.jpg

Quadrant (magazine) Articles, 1996-2012

Reaping the Whirlwind
December 2012

[Featuring disappearing files, a traduced Catholic lawyer and an almost-castrated Italian Archbishop. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Taken for granted: funding arts and humanities research in Australia
October 2012

Imagine a world in which humanities and arts academics were given credit not for winning enormous grants, but for their ability to function without them. What if academic excellence was measured by who could produce the most for the lowest cost?

Fact, counterfactual, and fiction: some current dilemmas in history

January-February 2012

[Featuring an extract from my kiss-and-tell forthcoming historical novel Only For Sheep, a thrilling tale of love, lust and colonial expansion in the dusty plains of New South Wales. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

The Reason Why: Cecil Woodham-Smith and the art of history-writing

November 2011

[Featuring a chauffeur-driven historian, Florence Nightingale in a fugue state, and the perils of knowing things about people. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

The Sorrow and the Pity

March 2010 

Indigenous Australians, far from languishing in brute savagery under white domination, appear in the archives—and consequently in this book—as lively, irrepressible, audacious, ambitious, clever, eager, talented. 

Rich as Fiction? Historians and history-writing

June 2009

[Featuring the Rule of St Benedict, Geoffrey Blainey, and people who are obsessed with Germans. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Dunlop and MacKillop

March 1996: 59-60

[Featuring me on the subject of sanctity, heroism and not fitting in. Not hinting or anything …]

Quadrant (magazine) Book and Film Reviews, 1996 - 2011

Blameless yet talented
R J Stove, Cesar Franck: his life and times, Scarecrow Press, 2012.
July-August 2012

[Featuring a happily married composer, the Prussian Army, and a very large box of chocolates. Quadrant subscriber access only.]
 

A different way of looking

Jan Gothard, Greater Expectations: living with Down Syndrome in the 21st century, Fremantle Press, 2011.

June 2011

[Featuring a bitchy obstetrician’s nurse, devious Education Departments, and the triumph of the human spirit. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Builder of Beauty

A.G. Evans, William Wardell: Building with Conviction, Connor Court, 2010.

November 2010

In June 1865, St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney burnt to the ground. When Archbishop Polding heard the news, he was almost as flattened as the cathedral, but he was sensible enough to approach a really good architect—a proven cathedral-builder and a man who clearly knew his onions. And so he commissioned William Wardell to design the new St Mary’s.

Juno-esque in Saffron [review of Claire McCarthy’s The Waiting City, 2010)

September 2010

[Featuring a collapsing marriage, a bout of food poisoning, and the supreme warrior-mother goddess Durga. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Hitting the Hard Stuff

Linda Himelstein, The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire, HarperCollins, 2009.

May 2010

This is where the story of Pyotr Smirnov enthrals, because he overcame the constant obstacles, maximised his opportunities, and, importantly, never allowed a setback to reduce him to sitting on the stove all day and complaining like someone out of Chekhov.

Still Thinking about the Fall of Rome

Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2009

April 2010

[Featuring global warming, the fall of Kevin Rudd, and some slitty-eyed Huns. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Broody Mary: A Good Thing?

Eamon Duffy, Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, Yale University Press, 2009

October 2009

[Featuring the original Vicar of Bray, a scandalised Quadrant editor, and an archiepiscopal slipper. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Widow of Opportunity

Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, HarperCollins, 2008

May 2009

Madame Clicquot was plain, tough and sharp-tongued, and like a lot of plain, tough and sharp-tongued women in trying circumstances, seemed to have a penchant for handsome young men with promise.

Ships of Fools

Stephan Talty, Empire of Blue Water: Henry Morgan and the Pirates Who Ruled the Caribbean Waves, Simon & Schuster, 2008

March 2009

[Featuring my speculations about (a) what would have happened if Oliver Cromwell had joined the Mayflower voyage, and (b) Burt Lancaster in tights. Quadrant subscriber access only.]

Learning to Fly

Virginia Nicholson, Singled Out: how two million women survived without men after the First World War, Penguin, 2008

January-February 2009

I especially liked the Irish-born French scholar Enid Starkie, the blue-trousered scandal of the Senior Common Room.

Civilised disagreement

Peter Coleman (ed), Double take: Six incorrect essays, Mandarin, 1996

May 1996: 80-81

Doomed Planet - Donna Laframboise in Australia

Donna Laframboise in Australia

Laframboise represents a long and noble tradition of investigative journalism. Long may she prosper - and what a timely reminder of all the good reasons to attack the Finkelstein project here.

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/07/donna-laframboise-in-australia

Quadrant Poetry - updated!

Poetry  (updated! and now in reverse chronological order by date of first writing)

Hope Road (2012)

Toulouse-Lautrec (2009)

Paradox (2009)

Sea Shanty (for Captain Les) (2009)

Saturdays (2009)

Knit (2008)

Self-Defence (hommage a John Whitworth) (2008)

Personals Ad (2008)

A Difficult First Date (1998, 2008)

Fickle (1998, 2008)

My Friendly Neighbourhood Psychiatrist (1997, 2008)

Belladonna (1996, 2008)

Witch Hunt (1993, 2008)

Spirit Level (1989, 2008)

The reply of the Marxist professor to the used-car salesman (for R J Stove) 

Quadrant, October 1996: 71

Love song of the modern woman to her partner

Quadrant, July/Aug 1996: 86 [*a shorter version of this also appeared in Chronicles magazine in the US, but I can't for the life of me find it now]

Quadrant QED posts, 2009 - present

Rodents overboard!

February 2, 2013

Labor's ship is foundering and some of the nastiest creatures Australian political life has seen in living memory are bolting for their comfy, pension-padded holes behind the skirting board. Hallelujah!

Beeb Boobs Bowdlerise Basil

January 25, 2013

The campaign to regulate speech and save the preciously sensitive from offence has added the name of Basil fawlty to its long and growing list of unlikely martyrs. What's next, neutering Mrs Slocombe's animal companion?

Gillard white-outs the rules

January 22, 2013

A perfectly presentable Labor senator from the Northern Territory has been bumped by prime ministerial edict, to be replaced by an Indigenous woman who is not even a member of the ALP. Tokenism, anyone?

Roll out the (Pork) Barrel
January 14, 2013
Journalism is history's first draft, but sometimes a re-write gets much closer to the truth.

The usual suspects (Doomed Planet)

January 9, 2013

It is only a draft copy of the IPCC's next report and a leaked one at that, but the names of the Australasian section's authors are unlikely to be revised. That's the thing about making a career in warmism -- it's good, solid, dependable work. 

What to do with a dangerous dill?
January 7, 2013
Does a green-dipped sense of moral superiority give an anti-coal activist the right to mount a hoax that throws the stock market into turmoil? That's a question it may well fall to the courts to decide.

Strange bedfellows
January 3, 2013
If Jenny Macklin ever shacks up with Adam Bandt,  they will find the welfare system offers adjustments and rewards for cohabitation. There is even a little calculator to work it all out.

Rich pickings, but not for long 
January 1, 2013
Funny thing about people whose wealth attracts the attention of those determined to redistribute it: the well-heeled can afford the sharpest accountants

Harassment? Well, that depends...
December 12, 2012
If you work for a member of parliament, especially a Federal one, you might like to think about the following.

Bob Carr, blind to all but the main chance

December 4, 2012

John Faulkner has begged the NSW branch of the ALP to clean up its act. This would be the same NSW where our unelected Foreign Minister Bob Carr was Labor Premier from 1995-2005.

Gillard's less-than-shining knight
November 27, 2012
Bruce Wilson has finally emerged and said that his ex-girlfriend of 17 years ago knew nothing about his profitable slush fund and other unusual financial activities.

Wither my free speech?
November 24, 2012
I drive to work along Stirling Highway, and on the way I pass the electoral office of the Member for Cottesloe, who also happens to be the Premier of Western Australia. On Fridays, it’s not uncommon to see a very, very small group of protesters outside this office. They are mostly female and of indeterminate age and sexual orientation, so I probably shouldn’t speculate on either.

Let's have a proper probe
November 14, 2012
There ought to be a Royal Commission, and so say all of us. I think everyone will be very happy to see that decades of child abuse are finally being investigated by the highest moral authorities in the land (the ABC, the Fairfax press, and the Gillard government).A deluded feminism's real damage
November 12, 2012 My Quadrant Online colleague Steve Kates is in the crosshairs for daring to note that modern feminism has produced a bitter harvest. Those screams of outrage? Sometimes the truth hurts.

Degrees of corruption
November 9, 2012
It seems some academics are finding a lucrative little money-spinner, or so authorities assert. Let us hail the profit motive, if not the debasement of our universities that has brought it to the fore.

Early Christmas for the ARC crew
November 6, 2012
No need to wait for Santa if you are one of the recipients of 2013's research grants because the goodies are in the mail. As expected, projects focusing on climate change do very, very well.

Rocky dawn of that Asian Century
October 31, 2012
Kevin Rudd had a reputation for airborne surliness when still jetting about the world, as a balled-out flight attendant could testify. Just lately he has missed a chance to redeem himself.

Wives and mothers-in-law first
October 25, 2012
The polls strongly suggest the Gillard government is a sinking ship, which may explain why Labor insiders are lining up at the purser's office to make their withdrawals.

Australia comes of age, like really
By Ainu Campbell-Barracks October 19, 2012
Australia bags a seat on the Security Council! Surely this is our nation's greatest achievement since the stump-jump plough.

Rogue citizen alert!
October 15, 2012
An unauthorised visitor to Parliament House has landed in a bit of trouble. Didn't he know the right ways to mix and mingle with Canberra's servants of the people?

How to offend Julia Gillard
October 9, 2012
Union ripoff artists, dirty texters, a brothel buff on the cross-bench and whispering catalysts for an Australia Day race riot don't ruffle the PM in the least. But point out her tolerance for crooks, sleaze and spivs and the shrieks will be deafening.

Goring the right ox
October 8, 2012
So, you thought honesty is a universal concept. Not for those on the left, where consistency is a very fluid concept.

Free speech saves lives
September 13, 2012
Use your words, parents tell tantrum-prone toddlers. The same advice applies to Muslim mobs whose readiness to take offence has so often erupted in violence and bloodshed.

A gay-marriage tax?
September 7, 2012
If all those smokers were to quit their habit, Prime Minister Gillard would need to find something else to tax.

Gillard's incorrigible dunces
September 5, 2012
Another day, another election-inspired plan to “fix” education. Expect more waste, cant and the profligate incompetence that this government has made its hallmark.

Hiding Behind Her Own Skirts
August 24, 2012
How dare they, those sexist brutes! Why, if a male lawyer had set up a bogus bank account for a light-fingered lover no one would have had a harsh word. That's what our PM wants you to believe

News from a parallel universe
August 22, 2012 Calls for an inquiry into the Reserve Bank are all very well and good, but isn’t there another target whose dirty laundry is worth a public washing?

Snappy as Larry

August 17, 2012

A reader's guide to cartoonist Pickering's ongoing coverage of our Prime Minister's misadventures, amorous and otherwise, with former beau Bruce Wilson and those AWU bank accounts.

NDIS - coulda, woulda, shoulda?

August 7, 2012

Here are some of the ways in which the NDIS - a scheme which is supposed to help genuinely disadvantaged people who are doing it really, really tough - could have been funded from as far back as 2007, when this government was first elected.

Baby, He Was Born to Run
August 4, 2012
Now it’s just getting plain weird. A roomful of painfully embarrassed people will witness Australia’s clown prince of economics and unreconstructed distributivist Wayne Swan engage in death-defying feats of Dad-trying-to-be-cool.

Climate change where you’d least expect it
July 24, 2012
UPDATED. Did you know that climate change will impact upon our sheds, our ability to reason, our food supply, our newspapers, our Trekkies, and - most surprisingly of all - former Australian Attorney-General H V Evatt?

One-woman army

June 20, 2012

I see Gina Rinehart raising an invisible two fingers to the Gillard government, the ABC, and indeed an entire host of people who I wouldn’t cross the street for if my life depended on it.

What Craig could do next

May 25, 2012

Take my advice and he could have a nice career ahead of him as an after-dinner speaker and even have his own talk show.

The Craig Thomson Hour

May 22, 2012

When a very public person is innocent of a crime of which they have been accused, what do they do?

The Thomson twins

May 14, 2012

At the weekend, Craig Thomson claimed that he has been set up. Here are some suggestions which he might like to pursue as possible explanations.

Defending Craig Thomson

May 9, 2012

Spending someone else’s money on dinners and hookers and plane fares is pretty much illegal; that should be fairly obvious. But if he bankrolled his election campaign with union funds, Thomson can argue that he had ample precedent.

Delingpole mania hits Perth

April 18, 2012

James Delingpole began his tour of Australia in Perth last night and when he opened the floor up to questions that we really saw him in his element.

Brown down, deeper and down

April 16, 2012

So why has Bob Brown stepped down?

Cut the cord

April 5, 2012

Isn’t it reassuring to think that all along we had an arts sector that thrived on lack of funding - that positively cried out not to be subsidised, as this would surely strangle the muse?

Payback: OK for you, not OK for me

March 10, 2012

No wonder payback has proved unstoppable in remote Aboriginal communities — no one is actually trying to stop it.  

Wealthy Wayne whinges

March 2, 2012

Wayne Swan, on around $270,000 a year, minimum, not counting his allowances, tells us that the super-rich (viz., people much richer than Wayne Swan) are trying to poison our country.

Your ABC has done it again.

March 1, 2012

While every other headline in Australian newspapers on this troubled issue of child protection focused on the need to overhaul Victorian state government services  your ABC decided that, as usual, the real culprit was organised religion.

A weekend of regrets

February 19, 2012

Kevin Rudd and the ‘porn star”.

The real cost of Craig Thomson

February 16, 2012

What most people seem to overlook in this ongoing and fascinating scandal is exactly what union this is. Just whose money are these people mismanaging and quite possibly misusing?

The Slipper trajectory

February 9, 2012

Being the life and times of Peter Slipper.

Tinker, Tailor, Gary Oldman

January 31, 2012

Gary Oldman’s wonderful, but only because you know he’s not being Gary Oldman’s usual screen self. Instead he just potters about with a big pair of glasses on.

Everybody’s Wiggling

January 20, 2012

This really is serious news: given the state of the rest of the economy, we may be looking at a Wiggles-led recovery in 2012.

Christmas 2011: Philippa Martyr

December 13, 2011

I don't know what it is about Christmas that makes me think of gangster movies, but they do seem to go together quite nicely. This may be a reflection upon my upbringing.

Abbott 1, Obama nil

November 17, 2011

Tony Abbott showed that he has a greater love for America and her abundant ideological gifts to the world than Obama does; the influence of Mark Steyn was unmistakable. (Steyn should be charging Abbott royalties).

Singing in the West

November 2, 2011

David Hobson and Teddy Tahu Rhodes in concert. Both exercise a strong pull factor for women of a certain age: Hobson verges on the Liberace school, while all Rhodes has to do is take off his shirt.

I came, I saw, I CHOGM’d

October 31, 2011

Well, thank goodness that’s over – although here in Perth we are confiding to each other that it turned out to be a lot more fun that any of us expected.

By the minority, for the minority

October 14, 2011

This week, a mere 60 ordinary Australians paid a protest visit to Canberra and secured the undivided attention of no less than 40 MPs. They had come to ask for gay marriage legislation.

The Eye of the Storm

October 12, 2011

I’m not keen on Geoffrey Rush at the best of times, principally because I have a very low luvvie threshold, which is a genetic problem and one over which I have little control.

Fright Night

October 6, 2011

Thankfully there is no singing or crotch-grabbing; just a human fireball and a wooden stake blessed by St Michael, which is all that any self-respecting vampire slayer really needs.

Canberra knows best

October 4, 2011

Poor old Angry. It’s a shame, because he’s got the bald head right – but if only he’d written more songs about fashionable minorities and the rape of the environment.

This was today

September 30, 2011

Tony Abbott pilloried, Footy Show excused, shop assistant pardoned, Wayne Swan praised and Andrew Bolt guilty.

Red Dog

August 25, 2011

It’s adorable: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll vote Liberal in the next election. It’s what Red Dog would have wanted.

Captain America: The First Avenger

August 2, 2011

In The Spectator recently, Nick Bryant compared Arnold Schwarzenegger to ‘an anvil dipped in caramel’, and that’s kind of what you get here.

Doing the Vatican Rag

July 27, 2011

I wasn’t the least surprised to see Enda Kenny, in the face of an economy destroyed by stupidity, greed and irresponsible government, decide to be a man, take responsibility, and attack the real culprit: the Catholic Church.

The faces of fear

July 22, 2011

I know anti-Semitism when I smell it, even when it’s dressed up as human rights – and so do they. The demonstration I saw was not a manifestation of free speech; it was bullying, plain and simple.

The Lincoln Lawyer

April 13, 2011

The good news is that they’re making Dirty Harry movies again. The other good news is that they’re making them really, really well.

Unknown - the movie

March 11, 2011

Much to his surprise, Liam Neeson is hit by a falling fridge and almost drowned, waking from a coma four days later to find that he has missed most of the conference’s swanky cocktail parties and hobnobbing. From there, I think it would be safe to say that things go from bad to worse.

True Grit

February 24, 2011

Unreconstructed aspects of this movie that Quadrant readers may enjoy are the prevalence of heavy drinking, smoking, eating cholesterol-laden food, and a travelling dentist clad in a bearskin.

The King's Speech

December 29, 2010

It’s quite superb, and easily one of the best movies made in the last ten years, and it richly deserves to win everything thrown at it.

Megamind megareview

December 26, 2010

I chortled right through my first viewing of it, and then made my nephew (already goggle-eyed from Tron: Legacy in the cinema next door) come and see it while I sat through it a second time.

Christmas DVDs: Philippa Martyr

December 18, 2010

I’d forgotten what a superb film it is; a once-in-a-lifetime combination of tension, laziness, comedy and righteous indignation. Just the thing for long warm evenings and mint juleps.

BOMB alert!

November 29, 2010

Don’t be fooled by the trailer: you’ve actually just seen all the best bits of the movie, and at a thrilling pace. If you decide to see the movie, you have to sit through the other eighty minutes of it. You will regret this. 

Facebook face-off

November 5, 2010

I’ve just been reading Andrew Marr on the pimply, unhappy and very drunk males who – in his view – make up the blogging community. What I didn’t realize was that this was how Facebook was invented.

Film: The Other Guys

September 28, 2010

The only disappointment is Ray Stevenson as the purportedly Australian tough guy-cum-bad guy with an accent that ranges uneasily between the Thames Estuary and Johannesburg.

Salt

September 6, 2010

It’s a good old-fashioned Cold War movie but updated to include a planned nuclear attack on Mecca and Tehran (just to spice up Armageddon a little).

Inception deception

August 24, 2010

Leonardo di Caprio is basically your everyday married man with a terrible past involving violence, bodies of water, knives, an unstable wife, his innocent young children, a great deal of guilt, and some major psychiatric problems.

Third thoughts on porn culture

August 19, 2010

I am inclined to think that this newfound morality stems not from having little ones sitting next to you on the couch during Video Hits. Rather, I think it’s coming from a collective music-biz envy of (the admittedly repellent) Lady GaGa’s astonishing mega-multi-media empire, which is currently coining money out of every orifice.

The Waiting City

August 6, 2010

Philippa Martyr has discovered an Australian film worth watching.

Chop Phooey

July 15, 2010

Having not seen the original Karate Kid, I was willing to give this remake a try. I now actually want to see the original movie, because apparently it looks like Shakespeare compared to this one.

A-Team Mental Competency Test

June 29, 2010

Herewith my personally-developed brief psychometric evaluation tool which you can use to assess whether you are capable of enjoying this film.

Animal Kingdom

June 16, 2010

There is nothing PC about this movie; there is no chai-latte inner-city angst or posing. It’s just a really hard but really good film, and a moral one.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

March 22, 2010

It doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and this too is a pleasant change from movies which have stupid plots and mediocre acting but take themselves very seriously indeed (cf Avatar).

Offending Nowra, defending Greer

March 2, 2010

It only took Greer twenty years to work out what it’s taken Louis Nowra forty years, which proves conclusively that women are at least twice as smart as men.

Bombs, Away

March 1, 2010

There is a staggering gulf between Western good intentions, albeit ham-fisted, and a local world view of fatalism, neglect and corruption which has pervaded an entire region for centuries. The Hurt Locker manages to show this without a single word of pontification.

Marianne et moi

by Ainu Campbell-Barracks

January 31, 2010

Marianne Faithfull is the most amazing woman. I was backstage at the Sydney Festival, of course, catching up with old friends, and I am just so at home in that milieu, so I thought I’d pop along and see if she was anywhere about.

Avatar reviewed

December 27, 2009

With these bald caricatures wearing black and white hats, it’s a good thing the film is lovely to look at, because otherwise it would stink to high heaven.

AFI AWARDS: The Nite of Nites

by Ainu Campbell-Barracks

December 14, 2009

The real surprise at the AFI Awards was that Cate wasn’t nominated for anything. I mean, this is Cate we’re talking about.

Don't ask, don't tell

December 7, 2009

Trouble is, I can’t write about this film without introducing spoilers, and this is a film which is best seen without knowing too much about it.

2012

November 23, 2009

The nice thing about disaster movies is that you can show things that could never happen in real life, like having the US government take the heads of European nations seriously.

Prawn cocktail

October 26, 2009

The full complexity of modern South Africa – drugs, gangsterism, crime, black African superstition, white superiority, a desperate and corrupt military – is aired for public consumption, and a very unpleasant mess it is.

Red Shoes

October 19, 2009

The parts I enjoyed the most in Mao’s Last Dancer were the ballets. Vivid, lively, colourful, fast-moving, energetic and thoroughly entertaining, they were everything the rest of the movie wasn’t.

Nobel-esse Oblige

by Ainu Campbell-Barracks

October 12, 2009

Wow! Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize! Gosh, I mean that one really came out of nowhere, didn’t it?

Charlie & Boots

September 27, 2009

This authenticity is a joy after the paralysing self-consciousness which usually affects Australian film. Refreshingly, this movie seems to be pitched at people who don’t live in expensive inner-city terrace housing and don’t actually care who edits The Monthly.

The Young (and the Restless) Victoria

September 21, 2009

Apparently Martin Scorsese had something to do with this film; I find that hard to believe. I do, however, find it very easy to believe that Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, had plenty to do with it.

14 things about Teddy

August 31, 2009

In retrospect, I don’t think many of Teddy’s really great achievements have been praised enough. It’s easy to remember minor achievements like driving his first wife to drink and Mary Jo Kopechne into a pond, and yet so many other things go unacknowledged. So here is a list of what I think are the defining achievements in his career.

Robbing Hoods

August 24, 2009

It’s intriguing that the movie industry can portray even closeted gays in the military as just as tough as, if not tougher and even more meritorious than, everyone else, but when it comes to Hoover, gays in the FBI are effeminate and rather cowardly snobs.

Colette at the movies

August 17, 2009

So I watched the gorgeous scenery (apparently France basked in perpetual summer for the last quarter of the nineteenth century), admired Lea’s real pearl necklace, wondered when Chéri was going to strangle her with it, and regretted that he didn’t.

Harry without magic

August 3, 2009

Julie Walters is winsome and heroic and red-haired; Helena Bonham Carter dresses up in corsets and does her by-now-patented mad girl routine (Hamlet, Fight Club, Sweeney Todd, etc etc etc). Michael Gambon was the cause of some serious sniggering with his faintly paedophilic visit to the young Voldemort’s ghastly orphanage.

Online newspapers

June 15, 2009

The project aims to digitise the vast newspaper archival resources in every state, and create a searchable database which will, for the first time, open up thousands of previously-forgotten news items to historical researchers.

Sex and the single footballer

May 25, 2009

When Australian Rules footballers invite a stripper to perform in the dressing room before a show, "it is absolutely, completely unacceptable and inappropriate and it sends all of the wrong messages.” Name the source of that quote -

Sex and the single girl

May 18, 2009

Feeling bad about oneself is the first sign of wrongdoing in present-day antipodean culture, and finding the culprit – who is invariably someone else – is the customary solution.

Fat chance

May 4, 2009

As I walked in, I was greeted with the sight of a rubber model of 15 kilos of fat and two pleasant ladies who appeared to be in charge. I was handed over to a man who was going to be my personal weight-loss consultant. He was a cheerful man.

Music without instruments

May 4, 2009

Kitchen sinks, polypipe, empty tin cans, bin lids, water, newspaper, brooms, dustpans, brushes, boxes of matches, hubcaps, and all the other detritus of any industrial workplace are transformed by STOMP09 into a symphony orchestra.

Eavesdropping on a cultural crisis

April 30, 2009

Mervyn Bendle is dead right when he writes about Asian students haplessly absorbing mega-jive about Australian history and culture.

The Boat that Sucked - Big time

April 17, 2009

The only thing I can recommend in this film is the clothes. The costume department excelled itself: Chris O’Dowd’s patchwork velvet wedding jacket is to die for; ditto Rhys Ilfans’ purple velvet sharp-fitting suit. The irritating lesbian wears some lovely crocheted waistcoats.

The Flea Market

April 13, 2009

At the Flea Market you will also discover that many middle-class Australians have no idea of fundamental economics, which could be why they are currently in debt up to their eyeballs. 

Whale songs

March 30, 2009

Members of parliament caught attending strip-joints in foreign cities can argue that magnetic field deviations caused them confusion.