Entertainment

The SMH called her a “mediocre pop star” and a “fashion victim.” Every FM breakfast presenter worth their salt has cracked jokes about her having a penis, which is not very nice.

The Daily Telegraph today speculated she didn’t even have the stamina to make it through her Australian concerts.

And The Sunday Telegraph on the weekend wondered if the film clip for Telephone was too racy for her young fans. The video does address the penis rumours, to dramatic effect, and contain a bit of girl-kissing-girl. If you’re still shocked by that in 2010, you need to get out more.

Why is everyone giving Lady Gaga such a hard time?

Continue reading "Why are people so unkind, to Lada Gaga" »

Today I’m going to be a curmudgeon.  Let’s start with Avatar.  I hated it.  Before anyone starts:  yes, I know the special effects are amazing.  Yes, I saw it in 3D.  Yes, I know it’s nominated for a Best Film Oscar.  I still hated it.  The plot was lame and I resented being bashed over the head with the groaningly obviously political message.

While we’re at it, I also didn’t like Lord of the Rings. Fell asleep in the cinema in fact. Hell, as long as I’m bucking conventional wisdom, I may as well really disgrace myself: I find Monty Python terminally unfunny. I don’t get the big deal about Bob Dylan. And I don’t reckon Brad Pitt’s that attractive.

I usually keep these views to myself because of the reaction they provoke. The Monty Python one in particular attracts gasps of disbelief and horror.

Continue reading "Well readhead: Avatar, Dylan and Monty Python suck" »

Whitney Houston arrived in Australia with an airport controversy and now there’s backlash surrounding her first concert in Brisbane and her Sydney show last night.

By some accounts it doesn’t appear the shows were a resounding success. All I can say is: the poor unfortunate. I’ve never really followed her but I can empathise with anyone who has a bad night on stage.

She’s 46 years of age, has a well documented history of an excessive lifestyle and now she’s back on the road trying to recreate the magic of her hits. It’s a tough undertaking and will take a lot of strength and character.

Continue reading "Whitney’s bad reviews will be a real test of character" »

In Adelaide today Miranda Kerr was asked what three things she would take to a desert island. She said: “My Kora rosehip oil because it is multipurpose, definitely my boyfriend and maybe my little dog.”

Maybe she means “multipurpose” as in it helps you build a shelter and possibly even a boat. I’m not sure what use Orlando Bloom would be but perhaps you could eat the dog.

Tors would take sunblock, waterproof matches and Bear Grylls. I think my list would be a Swiss Army knife, an iPad - and Miranda Kerr. Anyway, it’s obvious what comes next: what would you bring?

Get your exclamation marks at the ready – Naomi Robson’s new online love and relationships internet show went live this morning and it’s offering some tired and hackneyed advice on a website near you!

There are some odd assignments on The Punch but so far none has been as left-field as getting up at the crack of dawn on a Monday to listen to Naomi Robson talking about sex. But tally-ho.

The Naomi Show clips open with the sound of an audience golf-clapping politely, followed by some whoops building to a cheer. Then Robson’s on screen, staring into the camera with that customary, hyper-professional glare that makes you believe she’d be delivering those lines even if, striding to her seat seconds beforehand, she trod on a puppy.

Continue reading "Where is the Naomi Robson we love to click on?" »

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole.  It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.  ~ Goethe

It’s amazing how you can carry something around with you. Tic-tac teeth for instance.

A number of years ago somebody referred to me as tic-tac teeth on National television and since that point I’ve carried the comment everywhere I’ve gone.

Continue reading "Strength and comfort from being honest about flaws" »

UPDATE 9am: Ah, Hollywood. Entertainment news sites in the US cite sources close to the couple denying Angelina and Brad are breaking up. “It’s B.S.” was the quote to TMZ. No denial that they’ve seen a lawyer, but maybe the fairytale isn’t finished yet.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly set to break up. Without wanting to be too facetious about it, how could any couple survive with all those kids, money, and fame?

Dysfunctional, doomed relationships are the rule rather than the exception among Hollywood’s megastars. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore seem pretty happy together but with a relationship that smacks of a public relations power play as much as theirs, it is hard to see them growing old happily together, him in his 50s lovingly tending to both a vegetable patch and the needs of his septuagenarian wife.

“Brad Split” and “Pitts all over” was how the UK’s News of the World broke the news that the world’s best-looking couple in Hollywood had been to see a top divorce lawyer to negotiate their separation (they’re not legally married). There have been rumours for a long time now that their marriage had become difficult following the death of Jolie’s mother. Repeated public claims that a relationship is doomed must start to create a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Continue reading "And they lived happily ever - wait, no, this is Hollywood" »

UPDATE 10.30am: The author is in a panic following the release of a study this morning that showed watching television can result in early death. As a confessed hypochondriac who persistently frets about dying he is now considering his future and will discuss his position tomorrow on The Punch.

I love television. Absolutely, bloody love it. And I have a real distrust of people who say, “I don’t really watch television”. I’m convinced that I detect a smug sneer as they say it.

My Pavlovian reaction to anyone who says this is to immediately picture the person – and I swear this is true – in a wood-panelled drawing room, sat with their partner in high-backed leather arm chairs, either side of a big old-fashioned radiogram, smiling serenely at each other. Sometimes the female of the pair is engaged in some sort of embroidery.

I have no idea where this mental picture comes from, but I guess it may be some weird visualisation of my inverted snobbery trying to puncture their television condescension at the first whiff I get. (Not sure what this all means psychologically, but I’m sure Dr Phil would know).

Continue reading "Liking television doesn’t make me a vacuous idiot" »

I’d struggle to tell you more than one of the titles to Elvis Presley’s songs. And I certainly couldn’t name any of his movies.

His outfits are outrageous and from what I’ve seen of his wink and swaying hips it’d it be enough to make anyone gag. 

But I’m completely mesmerised by the Elvis festival that’s happening in Parkes this week. And my question is: Why?

Continue reading "Want to be Elvis? You’ll need more than blue suede shoes" »

I woke one morning in December feeling a little queasy and was instantly reminded that my tolerance for alcohol is no longer what it used to be.

I like to tell myself that lack of sleep associated with being a father of two little boys has affected my partying ability. But with the onset of a few (only a few) grey hairs, I have to ask who I’m kidding.

There was a time when I could lead the march into the dawn in search of the next club, bar or party but nowadays I’m more concerned with getting enough rest and being on top form for the following day. How boring.

Continue reading "Inspiration for staying creative as you get older" »

The just gone year was crowded with bad news and the chances are this one will be the same.

As Laughing Outlaw Records’ Stuart Coupe said when he heard that Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard had died, for many musicians 50 is the new 80.

2009 was a year that took the uber famous (Michael Jackson), the old timers (Dickie Petersen from Blue Cheer), the hugely influential and talented (piano-playing producer and engineer James Luther Dickinson), the way-too overlooked (Willy De Ville) and the iconic (guitar virtuoso Les Paul).

Continue reading "Tragic end for the talented victim of a failed system" »

With nothing coming out of Copenhagen to rile the world’s anti-green conservatives, they’re aiming their Hummers at Avatar, James Cameron’s decade-later follow-up to Titanic.

For his right-of-centre critics, Cameron is a new Michael Moore; a manifestation elitist Hollywood whose 3D spectacular is filling kids’ minds with terrible ideas like greed is bad and green is good.

Miranda Devine wrote a few days ago in The Sydney Morning Herald that Avatar is infused with “Cameron’s sanctimonious hippie sensibility.” That’s right, the bloke who made Terminator and T2 – movies in which explosions and a Republican Governor save the day – is a hippie. It’s not hard to see why Devine et. al. are going after Cameron.

Continue reading "Avatar’s a film, not a call to take up arms" »

Curators of obscure movie history will, if they’ve had their eyes open, likely record 2009 as the year the ‘chick flick’ smartened up.

Rounded female characters showed up in everything from straight-out Oscar bait to rock ‘em-sock ‘em horror flicks, while some of the best films of the year centered around women and their distinct set of needs and challenges.

2009’s diverse honour roll includes everything from Drag Me to Hell and Whip It to An Education and Coco Before Chanel.

This year’s femme flicks starred women saying and doing interesting things, a seismic shift from the decades of wish fulfilment pap clued-up female moviegoers have had to sit through.

Continue reading "A blokes guide to the best chick flicks" »

Maybe it’s because free-to-air TV programming in this country is ludicrous, but I have only just gotten around to watching the first two seasons of a critically acclaimed US TV series I had been longing to scratch off my ‘To Watch’ list.

Ironically, Mad Men - the show set in the un-pc world of Madison Avenue circa 1960 - did more for my own personal consciousness raising than Gloria Steinem ever did.

Falling into this fictional world really rocked mine.

Continue reading "Mad Men changed my life" »

Last fortnight, I posted my ten favourite links from the year’s Well-readhead.

This time, I’m going a step further with my Christmas holiday recommendations, posting my favourite fiction books of the year, along with my top five non fiction books and top five TV series on DVD.

If you’re looking for something to do over the holidays, let me simply say: my name is Leigh, I’m from Queensland and I’m here to help.

Continue reading "Well readhead: Summer holiday reading and viewing" »

Spoiler alert: Life is complicated.

The finest, noblest and most powerful motion picture ever made, with the obvious exception of Weekend at Bernie’s, is without doubt Superman: The Movie.

Superman: The Movie is not just a work of staggering scale and genius, it was also the pioneer of movies identifying themselves as movies so as to avoid any confusion among the lower end of the demographic, who may have mistaken it for, say, Superman: The Stepladder.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema: Superman the Movie (1978)" »

This handy ready-reckoner is offered in the spirit of the silly season for those of you with a song in your heart at the tail end of a night out. I have now been to karaoke a couple of times and quite enjoy it - I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Rule one: Full action.

This is a term coined by a karaoke-obsessed Indonesian journalist called Donny Dahono, the first bloke to ever drag me along to karaoke, who would explode with rage if the singer remaining seated, turned away from the crowd, or offered anything less than what he defined as “full action”. Donny makes a crucial point. None of us can really sing anyway so why not over-compensate with stage presence? Also, to use a radio term, there should never be any “dead air”. When you get in make sure everyone has a song lined up and wait your turn for the first hour, before taking on all-comers in a shameless bid to sing everything.

Continue reading "The twelve rules of karaoke" »

The booming piano chords that kick off Baby One More Time by Britney Spears constitute one of pop music’s great moments. Like the start of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel or the staccato guitar strums in Faith by George Michael, the Spears intro heralds the start of what is unquestionably one of the genre’s best songs - and one of its last.

Amid all the analysis and reflection on this tumultuous decade as it winds to a close – there’s a powerful interactive trip down memory lane here – there has been a change in contemporary culture, in some ways a sad one, that has gone pretty much unnoticed.

Pop music disappeared.

Continue reading "R.I.P. pop music. We’ll miss you" »

Hit the play button. Enjoy.

The national moral microscope shifted in the United States last Sunday from an intern-loving late night host to an androgynous American Idol runner-up named Adam Lambert.

For those living under a rock – or floating outside the blogosphere and twitterverse for a day or two – here’s what went down.

The American Music Awards ceremony was moving along Sunday night as blandly as expected. Shakira shook her booty for a bit, MJ continued to rewrite the last ten years of his life with some more posthumous honours and Taylor Swift collected a slew of awards, sans interruptions. So far, so meh. Then came the finale.

Continue reading "He kissed a boy, and I liked it" »

When director Chris Weitz took on The Twilight Saga : New Moon, he took on a juggernaut.

The first film in the franchise, Twilight, grossed over $380 million worldwide.

New Moon has already smashed box office records set by ‘Harry Potter and The Dark Knight.

Continue reading "A tick for Twilight New Moon" »

I watched Twilight New Moon at an inconspicuous cinema, at a very un-trendy hour. I figured that by strategically selecting the time and location, I would not have to be overwhelmed with screeching teeny boppers drooling over Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) or Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) as they vied for the attention of leading lady (and I use the term loosely) Bella Swan (Kirsten Stewart).

I figured wrong. When Edward made his first appearance, there was a scream, and it was not dissimilar to the cheer that enveloped practically all cinema patrons when Jacob took his shirt off (though admittedly, that was not an all too terrible sight).

It seems that where society was once divided along the axis of east or west, Angelina or Jennifer, Vegemite or Marmite, it is now divided along an axis of Edward or Jacob.

Continue reading "Thumbs down for Bella, Edward and Jacob" »

Every now and again a film comes along that defies your expectations, raises the bar for all film-makers working in the genre, and leaves you feeling much much better than when you went in.  When that happens you feel blessed; films that hit the mark like that come along so rarely they deserve your respect, your money and, dare I say it, your love.

I am an unashamed fan of disaster movies; they capture the essence of what is important about humanity and remind us that we people are one with nature and not apart from nature.  The first genuine disaster movie was Deluge, made in 1933 in which a paper model of NYC, and most especially the Statue of Liberty, is destroyed by a tsunami (Roland Emmerich referenced this in The Day After Tomorrow). Like all such films to follow it concerned the struggle of a good, honest working man, trying to protect his loved ones in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

Disaster films tend to introduce a new kind of special effect to the audience.  The Poseidon Adventure gave us the first realistic depiction of a capsised boat (though if you watch the capsising scene frame-by-frame you can actually see the actors pulling the table-cloths off the tables as they run past them).  The Towering Inferno was the first to show fire in reasonable proportion to the building (watch old episodes of The Thunderbirds  to see the opposite of this, where flames and water give away the scale of the models to humourous affect.)  Earthquake in 1974 introduced Sensurround to the jaded masses and The Swarm in 1978 (I saw it with my Mum) gave us some pretty convincing bee-clouds.

Continue reading "Best apocalypse I’ve ever had" »

The Blues Brothers, 1980. Spoiler alert: Marriages don’t always work out.

There is something about The Blues Brothers that is at once reassuringly wholesome and wildly decadent. It’s a bit like having a home cooked meal and then having sex with your cousin.

It begins as all good movies – and Hildebrand family stories – do, with somebody getting out of jail.* The person in question is of course Jake Blues, who exits a prison in suburban Chicago to be picked up by his brother Elwood Blues. It is at this point that some credit should be given to the parents of these two gentlemen, as had they not both had the surname “Blues” it is unlikely this movie would ever have been made.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1-a-week cinema #12:  The Blues Brothers" »

I read today that those wacky zany kids at Channel Seven are rolling out something called “Pump TV”. I thought they’d gone all naughty and were setting up a new digital porn channel, but it turns out they’re wacking in TV screens into petrol pumps.

Well that’s a great leap for mankind. You need to get a bit of Mel and Kochie action while you’re filling up at the servo. Actually Beauty and The Geek will look a whole lot better while you’re topping up the brake fluid.

How’s it going to work? Are they abridged, five-minute episodes of everything – or the time it takes to do your business and screw the cap back on? Or will we be faced with oceans of Shell V90 flooding out over the concrete Zoolander style, as motorists are totally engrossed with the latest love tryst between Dr. Rachel, Alf and Hugo on Home and Away?

Continue reading "Pump it louder: the stupid rise of the servo television" »

They say attack is the best form of defence and so I should have expected the very personal attack from Britney’s tour promoter Paul Dainty in today’s Australian.

You see, I was the journalist who wrote on Friday night that fans were walking out of her concert.

``It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard,’’ Paul Dainty told The Oz. ``I’m so angry. We can take heat if there’s something wrong and people can review shows badly - that’s something you have to live with - but to say people stormed out of the show was an absolute fabrication.’’

Continue reading "The truth about Britney" »

It’s Halloween this Saturday, and though we’ve never quite gotten into the whole ghoul thing in Australia, people do attempt to celebrate.

There’s the odd, weak-themed club night, annoying neighbourhood kids who to trick or treat until they get to a door behind which a grouch refuses to give them anything (is there a name for the Halloween scrooge?) and those people whose birthdays fall on Halloween, instantly bestowing a lifetime pass for dress-up parties.

In the States, they go a bit nuts at this time of year. The amount of pics I’ve seen in the last week of celebrities shopping for a pumpkin outnumbers those carrying a Starbucks - and that’s saying something in La La Land.

Continue reading "Halloween: Because Hollywood needs an excuse" »

This started with Punch music writer Dennis Atkins writing in the Courier Mail that Jimi Hendrix once came up in a conversation with a young Kevin Rudd. The PM-to-be said: “Who’s that?”

Punch readers suggested some songs that would suit the PM. This is the result. The full list is over the jump - add your suggestions in the comments. We might even send him the real tape.

1. Hip to be Square - Huey Lewis and The News

Kevin Rudd’s theme song and a shoo-in for the opening track.

Continue reading "Mix tape for Kevin Rudd" »

One of the more accurate musical predictions of the past eighteen months was that the sparkly retro glamour of recent years would give way to a more introverted breed of shoe gazing hipsters. 

What no one saw coming, however, was that the new kids would take a far more confident and far less faddish approach than the recent crop of faux popsters. 

A perfect example is the arrival of The XX, a morose looking bunch of 20 year olds from South West London who have created what must surely be the finest debut of 2009. 

Continue reading "The finest debut album of 2009" »

Acting funny, I don’t know why / ‘Scuse me, while I ask why the hell Kevin Rudd doesn’t know who Jimi Hendrix is.

Is this one of those momentary memory lapses, a mis-statement, a quote taken out of context? In his Courier Mail political column today, Punch music writer Dennis Atkins recalls a conversation from some time ago with the then Prime Minister-to-be:

During some music banter, the cultural icon and guitar-playing [Jimi] Hendrix was mentioned, which drew a complete blank from a 33-year-old Rudd: “Who’s he?”

Continue reading "Let’s start a record collection for the Prime Minister" »

I saw Rosanne Cash play at Dooley’s Hotel in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in the early 90s, on a bill to die for. She teamed up with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lucinda Williams, providing a small but enthusiastic audience with a banquet of musical delights.

One old mate – an unreconstructed journo who never sat behind the wheel without a traveller – slurred in my ear that he didn’t realise girlies could sing. He didn’t know the half of it.

Cash became familiar not so much through her daddy but her ex-husband, Rodney Crowell, who attracted attention as part of the Steve Earle/Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark Texas crowd from the 70s.

Continue reading "This is Rosanne Cash’s Patsy Cline record" »

You won’t find much argument to comments that the Sydney live music scene is behind that of other major cities across the country. So, with the closure of iconic venues like the Hopetoun Hotel and potential barring up of the Annandale Hotel and the Harp, one has to wonder if we’re not shooting ourselves in the foot.

Yes, the financial issues of an establishment are beyond the control of those outside, but can be helped by the simple patronage of the public.

I don’t have the influence of more established musicians, nor the years of industry insight of others who have exposed themselves to hundreds of hours of beer-soaked carpet and screaming amplifiers; but as an unknown, independent musician, the future’s looking bleak.

Continue reading "Closing live music venues will hurt your ears" »

The TV stations are in the final throes of the ratings year and over the past few weeks they have launched the shows to lead them into the Christmas break.

The big three stations have included some new reality TV shows in their arsenal to win over the viewers and therefore gain advertising dollars. How are they going?

The Apprentice:
One of Channel Nine’s highly promoted new programs, made by reality TV gurus Fremantle Media. The show started off to very poor ratings of under 700,000, but this week it improved and look like it is gaining traction. The problem with attracting viewers may not be the show but people lacking faith in Nine not sticking with the program.

Continue reading "How the year-end reality shows are holding up" »

Remember Buck Rogers and the 25th Century, where the women all wore space age silver outfits and zipped around in metallic all-in-ones with sharp shoulders, bubbles on hips and weird shoe contraptions?

Well it appears the 25th century has come early, and I’m not entirely sure I’m happy about it.

It started last year with Balmain and The Shoulder, as it’s now referred to in fashion circles, which became an accessory all on its own. The Balmain jacket which featured The Shoulder, cost over $11,000 sold out in one week.

Continue reading "Is the future of fashion here?" »

Aussies consider themselves as pretty funny but sadly Australian TV comedy is no laughing matter.

Perhaps that’s not true if you are satisfied, wit-wise, with a boy smearing vegemite all over himself on a Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Exhumation special.

Still, such antics may have a lowest rung place on the spectrum of disposable panel/skit/stunt shows that Aussie TV throws and sometimes throws up at us.

Continue reading "Even the Americans are doing better comedy than us" »

When good ships go down, most of us are left dumbfounded, stranded on the desert island of despair, powerless to do naught but shout “no!” as our once-cherished idol disappears into the drink.

Disciples of the boot would recall the sinking feeling as Matty John’s sordid sexual past was plastered over the papers. Ditto for fans of a certain yeast-based sandwich spread which now appears to be a sacred part of their cultural identity.

But for fans of homegrown independent music, this week’s Titanic disaster was the news that The Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney’s breeding ground for emerging rock talent, had hit a few icebergs and wouldn’t be opening for schooners any time soon. And if you read between the lines, that meant maybe not ever.

Continue reading "Pub rocked: is there hope left in the Hopetoun?" »

Once upon a time there was a woman who watched a new show on Channel 10 called Life on Mars. She enjoyed this show and looked forward to watching more episodes.

But one day, without any warning, Channel 10 decided to cancel this new show. The woman cursed Channel 10 and its near-sighted programming executives and vowed never to watch a new show again.

This sad tale can be retold, again and again, simply insert the name of any number of shows - Eli Stone, Dirty Sexy Money, Torchwood, 90210 - the list goes on.

Channel 7 is heavily promoting two shows at the moment, FlashForward and Mercy and they look like shows I would enjoy. But I won’t be watching either of them because history tells me that their chances of lasting a season are about as good as Kyle Sandilands chances of being nominated for Australian of the Year.

Continue reading "I can’t watch because the networks keep axing shows" »

So Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig are on stage performing A Steady Rain and an audience member’s mobile rings. You can read the story here.

After seeing The Boy From Oz I think Jackman is far more suited to the live environment of the theatre than the silver screen, and this shows his gift for handling the things that happen in live performances.

But the real question is: how does someone still forget to turn off their mobile in a theatre?

As Grand Final barbecues around the country were just starting to get greasy on Saturday evening, for family reasons I was watching a balding Belgian sing Frank Sinatra numbers to a theatre full of grannies.

Unique, inspiring, breathtaking, rousing – none of these words applies to the performance of Helmut Lotti, Belgium’s answer to Kenny G. 

And yet somehow it was a ripper show. What’s going on? What is the appeal of a Benelux crooner who dances like Kevin Rudd impersonating Freddie Mercury?

Continue reading "Old crooners never die - they are reborn as Belgians" »

Kanye West has once again shown up off his guts to an award show and gotten all boisterous about who should or shouldn’t get a silly trophy, his fourth strike for the same offence.

At this week’s MTV Video Music Awards the prodigious hip hop talent leapt on stage to proclaim the clip for Beyonce Knowles’s floor-filler Single Ladies ‘one of the best videos of all time’.

I admire his passion for the music video form, but can only deride his timing: West made the statement during 19-year-old popstress Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the best female video award, which she’d won ahead of Knowles.

Continue reading "Kanye’s rant exposes the stupidity of awards nights" »

I cried watching Ghost. But then I cried at the end of Platoon, so maybe I’m not the best judge of a movie’s weep-inducing capabilities.

“Ditto,” though, is surely one of the great one-word one-liners. Patrick Swayze‘s character in Ghost, Sam, couldn’t bring himself to tell Molly he loved her, and used the phrase whenever she said “I love you.”

It’s at the top of our list of the most memorable quotes from Swayze, who has died of cancer. He was 57. We’re looking for your input to build the list so add your suggestions and discuss your favourite Swayze moments in the comments.

Continue reading "Patrick Swayze’s greatest movie moments" »

Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, which broadcasts on New York’s Sirius XM satellite radio and the BBC, produces some of the best broadcasting around. The maestro’s remarks about Australian singer and artist Rolf Harris included, after he played Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, a detailed reference to the cultural insensitivity attached to calling indigenous people “Abos” and a surprise performance on “my didgeridoo”.

As Dylan’s producer dissolved in laughter, the Theme Time host finished his playing and suggested “that’s something you can tell your grandkids”. It sure was. It’s a genius moment showing just how good Dylan’s production and research team is and illustrating what a compelling radio talent he is.

The show produced some news in the last few weeks – first, his musing about being the voice of a satellite navigation system and later talking about this 34th studio album (47th overall), being issued in time for Christmas.

Continue reading "At the roundabout, turn left and revisit Highway 61" »

Filming in the Big Apple started this week on the latest instalment in the Sex and the City hexology, sending upper middle-aged women around the world into mildly incontinent hysterics.

Sarah Jessica Parker was snapped in character as the ever-youthful Carrie Bradshaw, skipping across a Manhattan street in a pair of Hush Puppies, falling into the arms of her on-again-off-again lover Mr Big (who has been played by Zac Efron since SATC V).

All four of the leading ladies have returned for the sixth film, after protracted negotiations rumoured to have almost broken down over the huge cost of providing their health insurance.

Continue reading "Meet the GILFS*: Imagining Sex and the City VI" »

MasterChef has a lot to answer for, and not just because my work colleagues have been spending their weekends at home teaching their 10-year-olds how to make croquembouche.

And it’s not over yet. The MasterChef season two cattle-call is closing this week, so it’s only a matter of time before it all starts again.

Now, while I missed out on watching the first season of MasterChef (it’s a long story) what I did watch was the rest of Australia watching MasterChef. And you all went a little crazy.

Continue reading "MasterChef created a nation of know-nothing food tossers" »

This is Vanessa Hudgens, one of the teen stars to come out of Disney’s insanely successful High School Musical trilogy.

She’s also the girlfriend of the most lusted after young male star in the world, Zac Efron (he even eclipses Twilight’s Robert Pattinson as the love object du jour), is currently starring in a successful new movie, Bandslam, has a coveted cosmetics contract with Neutrogena and … she has just come through another nude photo scandal.

Yes, another nude photo scandal. Great achievement, non? All by the ripe old age of 20.

Continue reading "Sexifying young Hollywood" »

Today is the 64th anniversary of the mass publication in America of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a book considered one of the most influential of all time. 

What a pity I’ve actually never read it. 

And this is despite the fact that I’ve owned a copy since I was 17, when everyone else I knew read it. Or did they?

Continue reading "Five reasons to read the book before watching the movie" »

I have four children. That’s not an easy thing for me to admit in public. It’s not that I am ashamed of it, far from it, but it brings with it an expectation from people about how I should be/have that I don’t always live up to. Let’s just say it’s one of many well-worn-out stereotypes I don’t do well.

It bothers me though that I feel compelled to somewhat mask this side of my life, not out of privacy, but for fear that my own identity will be drowned out by the din of social constructs that requires one’s personality to drop out of your vagina when giving birth to your first child.

I can’t believe that “motherhood” is still in need of an image shake-up in 2009, or we at the very least we need to extend the parameters of how we expect mothers to behave.

Continue reading "Apprentice’s tale: mums don’t lose personality in birth" »

With only four months left until we leave the awkward-to-say noughties behind, why is no-one yet talking about the annointment of the “best film of the decade”?

Despite terabytes of movie blog and opinion sites, all hungry for content, there’s precious little undercurrent for this film or that: no “camps” of bloggers waving the flag for Adaptation, There Will Be Blood, Ratatouille or even the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Quentin Tarantino this week listed his top 20 favourite flicks since 1992 (the year Reservoir Dogs was released) and even that didn’t spur a response narrowing things down to the decade.

Continue reading "You’ve never heard of the best film of the noughties" »

Yes! Stick this in your eye, over-analytical movie critics: Quentin Tarantino has named his favourite 20 movies of his directing career, and it’s a laundry list of pop shtick including Speed, The Matrix, Fight Club, and Team America - World Police, while the closest it gets to a Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is the palatable Lost in Translation. 

To my fellow trashy-movie-loving Philistines who have been hiding in the closet: it’s time to celebrate. Liking movies with bad guys and guns is OK. Quentin Tarantino, one of the finest directors of his generation, says so.

The list includes some off-the-wall Japanese and Korean martial arts and monster flicks - which I haven’t seen and probably won’t, ever - but the rest help make up one of the most quotable lists you’ll see this year.

Continue reading "At last, a movie buff who says it’s OK to love trash" »

Special Edition: First Blood, 1982; Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1985; Rambo III, 1988; Rambo, 2008. Spoiler alert: Rambo has difficulty re-adjusting to civilian life.

Centuries from now visiting aliens will come across humankind’s 2008 film catalogue and think that the most powerful warriors among us were chosen by the length of their ear-hair.

They will have discovered The Age of the Late Sequel – an era of elderly Indiana Joneses, Rocky Balboas and John Rambos – and they will pity earthlings for it.

“No wonder they didn’t see that meteor coming,” they will say.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #6: All the Rambo movies" »

Hollywood director John Hughes, who directed some of the greatest comedy movies of the past 25 years, has died of a heart attack at 59. The one standout of his life’s work is, of course, the utterly brilliant Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

A question, though: What was it that made Hughes’s Bueller character so great? He wasn’t especially good at anything: he was neither clever nor witty, he didn’t wear cool clothes, he liked daggy songs. And yet women wanted to be with him, and men wanted to be him. Was it just raw confidence?

Some links to some online Bueller memorabilia below, but over to you: How much did you love Ferris Bueller, and why?

Continue reading "Just what was it that made Ferris Bueller so great?" »

Most music fans first heard about the Felice Brothers – especially us blokes – with a reference to the opening lines from their song The Ballad of Lou the Welterweight.

Email inboxes chimed with the words: “Powder your nose/pull off your panty hose/let me love you from behind/my darlin’”.

Of course this band, who have been dripping drinking, bad behaviour , remorse and death from the get-go, were richer and more inventive than this eye-catching opening stanza.

Continue reading "You may have heard of his family, but listen to him" »

That’s all she wrote for ‘newspaper movies’, with the fruitful subgenre to breathe its last once the Russell Crowe thriller State of Play slips this week from Australia cinemas.

No longer will Hollywood stars loosen their ties and roll up their sleeves as scoop-hungry newspaper reporters, no more will veteran character actors bring knowing splashes of avuncular charm to the stock role of the grizzled editor. No longer will the movie news be broken in print.

State of Play, with Crowe as a Washington journalist chasing a far-reaching Capitol conspiracy, marks the end of an era simply because 21st century audiences assume, correctly or not, that news now happens online.

Continue reading "Time to pronounce the death of the newspaper ... movie" »

Tango and Cash, 1989. Spoiler alert: Tango and Cash start out hating one another but become friends.

The Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell film Tango & Cash was the last of the great ampersand films of 1989, following hot on the heels of Turner & Hooch and Milo & Otis.

For all of that landmark year filmmakers had been experimenting with various human/animal combinations in an effort to find out what audiences would most respond to. In Milo & Otis they tried using two animals, in Turner & Hooch they tried a human and an animal and in Tango & Cash they used a human and Sylvester Stallone.

Continue reading "Joe’s $1 a week cinema #5: Tango & Cash" »

Last weekend marked the launch of the sixth in the now eight-part movie saga that is Harry Potter. As is surely apparent by now, the movies sit not as a substitute for the books but a complement to them. They succeed where they can visualise magic that cannot be done in words - the creatures, the castle and a large part of the action. But they fail where the books have their most significant: in the complex characters and the deeper moral issues.

But in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince one of those deeper but unstated moral issues arose neatly and somewhat humorously in the movie: the role of academia. It came in the form of Professor Slughorn, a marvelously imagined character who is a teacher who cares only about the best in the class and seeks them out to the exclusion of all others. He, in turn, is a character that is perhaps the most instrumentalist of at least the “good” guys in the saga. Slughorn, at various points, commits self-interested acts claiming “academic purposes”. For instance, he is caught removing valuable leaves from a plant, claiming their scientific merit but we know being motivated by the black market value.

That, however, is not where this issue comes to the fore. It is hard to describe it without giving away too much of the plot but Slughorn cites the very same “academic” disclaimer when handing over clearly dangerous knowledge to a young Voldemort. Slughorn later clearly realises his error and attempts to cover his tracks but the message is clear: there is a danger to the academic shield.

Continue reading "Harry Potter’s uneasy relationship with academia" »

Just back from a quick visit to the capital of North, or if you are to believe Mancunians, the capital of all England.  Indeed this is a city over brimming with ballsy self-confidence.

Manchester has always had a ladish swagger but glamorous football teams, shiny hotels and a vast new shopping precinct have replaced some of the grit with an unlikely sparkle.  Recently added to this is the bleedingly hip new Manchester International Festival, described as the world’s first international festival of original, new work and special events. 

In practice this means a new opera by Rufus Wainwright, a public procession by Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller and a homecoming par excellence by local legends Elbow united with Britain’s oldest orchestra, The Hallé.

Continue reading "Elbow grease for a rusty northern city" »

There was a time, not so long ago, when critics predicted the end of reality television.

Big Brother had the infamous ‘turkey slap,’ incident, Extreme Makeover and The Swan filmed people surgically mutilating themselves in order to look like Barbie and Ken dolls, while programs like Survivor, The Bachelor, Boot Camp and even the Biggest Loser, not only revealed the depths to which human nature would sink, but invited competitors and viewers to revel in displays of excess: flesh, emotions, psychological reactions and banality.

Cheap to produce, it seemed that ‘actuality’ programming had reached its nadir. Lately, however, there is a rebirth of the genre.

Continue reading "The tasteful TV show that saved a toxic genre" »

I just saw Public Enemies, the upcoming Johnny Depp-as-John Dillinger gangster flick, and boy oh boy did it get me thinking about ‘guy movies’. With its suite of expertly choreographed bank jobs and jailbreaks, smoothly criminal wardrobe and salty tough guy dialogue, it’s exactly the sort of muscular entertainment best enjoyed in the company of men.

And even though Depp-as-Dillinger does find time to romance a Depression-era beauty played by French Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose), she’s on hand mostly to get him philosophising about armed hold-up.

‘’I can hit any bank I want, any time. They got to be at every bank, all the time,’’ he tells her, dropping the first genuinely quotable line of dramatic Hollywood dialogue in many years.

Continue reading "Public Enemies and the top 5 guy movies of all time" »

The Australia’s Next Top Model final was on Foxtel last night and producers of other “reality” shows that are based on US formula were hopefully watching.

Unlike other perennials such as Australian Idol, Australia’s Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance, which are clones of their American parents, just with Australian accents and a smaller talent pool, ANTM could not have felt more Aussie.

Especially when they left the 17-year-old winner Tahnee sitting on stage with a bleeding nose for a good five minutes without cutting to an ad break. “Can you bear with us?” host Sarah Murdoch cajoled as Tahnee sat there clutching her ever reddening face. What were they thinking?

Continue reading "How to rip off an American reality TV show properly" »

Gifted comic Sacha Baron Cohen has shown misplaced restraint by snipping an inoffensive Michael Jackson joke from his upcoming moneymaker Bruno.

[Bruno in the early days. Clip contains strong language]

So what do we deduce from this? A public figure’s ripe for a skewering as long as they’re alive, but become off-limits on death?

When can we start forwarding those corny text message jokes about Jacko’s plastic surgery and questionable private life? How soon is too soon?

Continue reading "Bruno cuts Jackson scene - who’s the biggest loser?" »

It seems that our obsession with having a bet has even reached the rat community.  If, however, rats can have a punt while considering the odds and make a decision based on reason, as the article suggests, it probably puts them a step ahead of most of us.  As Kent Brockman may have said in response to this: “I, for one, welcome our new Rat Overlords.”

This news of course comes at a time when the ongoing practice of everyone’s favourite network, Channel 9, of giving live betting updates during sporting events, continues apace.  During the summer it was Betfair odds during the cricket and now it’s TAB Sportbet during the rugby league season.  Many people, including me, find the practice appalling, but Nine have never really been known for giving two hoots about what the ethical among us think, as long as there’s a dollar in it for them.

The League calls feature renowned punters Ray “Rabbits” Warren and Peter “Sterlo” Sterling giving live updates on the current Sportbet odds as the match they commentate on progresses, accompanied by a rather feeble-sounding closing rider about betting responsibly.  Older readers in non-NRL states probably know Rabbits, aka Rabs, from his previous life as a horse racing caller.  Younger ones may know him from his swimming commentary, which sounds much like his horse racing commentary.

Continue reading "Forget footy - give us odds on being sent to the doghouse" »

Whether you love or loathe the Academy Awards, there’s no doubt that winning one of those heavy gold statuettes can be a career-changing experience for those in the movie industry.

It’s not surprising then that the announcement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has lifted the number of nominations for Best Picture from 5 to 10 for 2010 has drawn interesting responses from fans and critics alike.

Some film professionals are delighted that the pool of competitors is being deepened, declaring that this decision will allow more cinematic contenders to vie for what’s undoubtedly the most prestigious prize of the night. Hope for the Australian film industry has even been expressed – but apart from this year’s winner of Canne’s best film, Warwick Thornton’s Sampson and Delilah, that wish is more akin to chasing rainbows.

Continue reading "Double the chance of nomination for an Oscar" »

Somebody very annoying once said that “Life is like a rainbow, you need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear”.  Let me tell ya, there are no rainbows here in Edinburgh where the sun is stubbornly refusing to shine through the gloom.  As Bill Bryson once put it “It’s like living inside Tupperware”. 

The Antlers @ Music Hall of Williamsburg from Patrick Duffy on Vimeo.

We are well into summer and it looking like topping out at a balmy 13 degrees today. This is the third consecutive disastrous summer in this part of the world and it’s even testing the patience of the hard-as-f**k Celts. 

I was talking to a friend in Sydney yesterday who was moaning about your gloriously mild winter – it was like complaining to a starving man that there were no petit fours at the end of their five course dinner.

Continue reading "An album giving warmth to a depressing northern summer" »

RUSSELL Crowe knows better than most the blurred line between news and entertainment. “I’ve been living it for 30 years,” he tells The Punch while in the UK to film his latest blockbuster Robin Hood.

So it’s a little surprising to hear him bemoan the death of the “noble profession” of newspaper journalism, as across the United States, in particular, flag ship periodicals are closing or are being slashed to the bone.

Clearly the recession is to blame, combined perhaps with poor overall management. But Crowe believes it’s also because the reader has evolved into a cynic with an inability to discern fact from fiction due in no small way to the celebrity culture.

Continue reading "This generation doesn’t know bullshit from truth: Crowe" »

It would appear the knives are starting to come out in the MasterChef Australia household as the $100,000 prize gets closer, with allegations of game playing and possible sabotage. And you thought it was just a cooking show - no, it is an extremely entertaining reality TV show.

With the ratings of MasterChef Australia nudging the two million mark it would appear that people who do not usually partake in reality TV are watching this show. To the horror of MasterChef UK fans the Australian version uses a different format, and has cherry picked the best bits from other reality TV shows.

So if you are a fan of MasterChef and this is your first foray into reality TV, here are some other shows you may enjoy. Key elements of each of these have been cleverly pinched by Masterchef Australia’s producers.

Continue reading "And you thought Masterchef was a cooking competition" »

I have never seen as many dead animals on screen as I have in the past two weeks. From grasshoppers roasted over an open flame in to kangaroos mercilessly slaughtered in the night, I have been witness to a macabre cinematic menagerie of dead and dying fauna.

The Sydney Film Festival ended on the weekend, over for another year. And while there may not have been a programming strand dedicated to films with dead animals in them, the sheer number of those that did will remain with me as one of the most striking and unexpected things about those twelve days.

Obviously, it is the sort of observation that can only be made when one has attended a lot of films at the festival, an observation supported, as it is, by sheer weight of numbers. When more than one third of over forty-five features contains either a dead or dying animal, one begins to take notice of the trend.

Continue reading "Animal death toll soars at groovy film festival" »

The other week I got hit on, rather aggressively, by a woman. So what, right? I thought so too, but when I relayed the story to my male friends, their response was uniform: “Were you wearing this purple nailpolish at the time? Of course you got hit on by a woman! Those nails are screaming out that you like it kinky!”

Excuse me? Really? And here I was thinking I was just being fashionable. On further investigation (read: insightful office polling and questioning others via email), turns out that you can, indeed, give off the wrong message with your clothing. Tight white jeans? You want some. Florals? You’re a prude. Yellow? It scares men away.

To allay any confusion and make sure you don’t leave the house broadcasting unintentional signals, I’ve had a go at translating what celebrities are saying with their outfits. Shouting, in most cases. Here, let me demonstrate:

Ashley Tisdale

“I’m so ridiculously young, famous and good looking that it doesn’t matter if I’m wearing something that looks like I nicked it from Maria Sharapova’s wardrobe. I’m allowed to wear a tennis outfit with fringed, slashed, suede ankle boots if I want to. You know why? ‘Cause I’m the best thing to come out of the most publicized movie of 2009 and as long as my hair is done and I have all this arm jewellery, you’ll still love me. And 15-year-old girls will copy me.”

Continue reading "If clothes could talk, here’s what they’d say about you" »

There are new kids on the celebrity block. New sheriffs in the town of fame. They’re not captains of industry or masters of any particular discipline. They’re not even particularly good at anything. They are the people who are famous for no other reason but that they were fortunate enough to exist at a time where minute details travel faster and further than large-scale ideals, and there ain’t a damn thing any of us can or seem to want to do about it.

These new celebrities are your Paris Hiltons. Your Corey Worthingtons. Your Axel Whiteheads. Anyone who decided that there was a future in the media after being evicted from the Big Brother house. Their fame is fame, and they want to live forever.

But until now these rampant fame whores have almost been taking the piss out of the famous-for-nothing genre. Even though their accomplishments and hills of beans are pretty much of equal proportion, they still possess even the slightest trace of talent for something. They’re not truly connected to the source of nothingness, and like devout disciples of insignificance, have been waiting for their mundane Messiah to return and show them all the bland, dim light. Well, Hosanna in the lowest has arrived, and the saviour’s name is Arthur Kade.

Continue reading "Touching the void - the new celebrities of nothing" »

A couple of months ago, no-one had heard of the plump, bushy-browed lady who lived alone with her cat, Pebbles, and volunteered at the local church. A woman who not only dared to dream of a different life, but sing about it as well. Initially hostile, audiences and judges were swept off their feet, including the millions that watched her performance on YouTube.

Susan Boyle has experienced 15 hellish minutes and then some. Now she’s paying the price. So many long for the patina of stardom, but the cost is high – public adoration, humiliation and desecration – and they must do it without the attendant minders, spin doctors, psychologists and personal trainers to boost the flailed ego that Hollywood stars know is essential.

Continue reading "Is anyone surprised that Susan Boyle cracked?" »

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: a group of children resembling the cast of Oliver! win the final of Britain’s Got Talent and the cash money prize of 100,000 pounds to share among themselves, Susan Boyle comes second and gets a trip to a luxury celebrity hang-out.

Even converting it to the much larger sounding amount of $202, 439 Australian dollars, those kids are in line to walk away with an estimated $27.50 each.

Meanwhile, Susan Boyle, who has either reached Boyle-ing Point or had a Boyle-Over,  is ensconced, possibly with notorious loser Rafael Nadal, in the exceedingly glamorous Priory Clinic in London, the first port of call for “exhausted” stars.

Continue reading "Stage-managed Boyle-over" »

UPDATE: Susan Boyle has been admitted to The Priory after suffering a nervous collapse, Britain’s Daily Mail reports.

Susan Boyle’s life has changed for ever. It is now rumoured that she will obtain a recording contract, a book and movie deal. Her days of unemployment and living in public housing in a small village in Scotland have come to an end. But is she at risk of exploitation and will she be able to handle to the pressures of fame? Should the producers of Britain’s Got Talent have a duty of care because they ‘created her‘?

Continue reading "Should reality TV producers have a legal duty of care?" »

Check her out. You know who I’m talking about! Blake Lively (the golden girl, far right) has taken over our small screens with one dramatic sweep of those blonde locks, a soft ka-boom of her hips, and now seems to be intent on taking over her cast members if that outfit is anything to go by.

The show, in case you’ve been living under a rock, is Gossip Girl. 2009’s answer for women experiencing Sex and the City withdrawals. Even though the majority of the cast are in high school and are impossibly beautiful, rich, impeccably dressed in designer duds, and not relatable whatsoever, it’s completely addictive viewing. What started out as an internet series is now a worldwide phenomenon and Blake Lively, who plays most popular girl in school, Serena van der Woodsen, rocketed to instant pin-up girl stardom.

Continue reading "Gossip on Gossip Girl is even hotter than the show" »

What is there not to love about Eurovision? This year we had breakdancing Albanian midgets cavorting with a man in a sequinned aquamarine bodysuit and the winner was a fiddle-wielding Norwegian boy-singer. Plus, the Warsaw Pact still seems to be in force but nobody cares.

What is there not to love about it?

Oh yeah, the music.

Continue reading "10 reasons why Australia needs its own Eurovision" »

KELLIE from Hi-5 has always been a favourite at our place. The kids also seem to like her. But at the risk of sounding like the Reverend Fred Nile, I’m a bit disappointed with her semi-clad efforts on the pages of Ralph.

Not angry. Not suggesting the photos should be banned, nor pretending that I didn’t have a discreet squizz at them like many other dads. Not questioning her right as a 34-year-old woman to engage in some entry-level eroticism to avoid being pigeon-holed as a cheesy children’s entertainer. Just annoyed that I might find myself having a conversation with our six-year-old daughter which begins: “Dad, isn’t that Kellie from Hi-5?”

The woman shouldn’t be crucified for doing what she did and the reaction from family groups and feminists to her shoot has been over the top.

Women’s Forum Australia spokeswoman Melinda Tankard Reist described the photos as an “abuse of her position with tens of thousands of little girls looking up to her”, as if from here to eternity Kel should be quarantined to a life of G-rated entertainment despite no longer being a member of the children’s group. But Tankard Reist was on the money when she said the problem was that Kel’s appearance on the cover was “particularly problematic because magazines like Ralph are on shop shelves at kiddy eye level”.

Continue reading "Dad, isn’t that Kellie from Hi-5? What’s she wearing?" »