Whither the AACTAs?
Some years ago, when this writer worked as a media officer for the National Film and Sound Archive, a proposal was made to add a new category to the Australian… Read more
Portrait of the hacker as a young man
The hero of Underground, the new Australian telemovie, is good-looking, courageous, brilliantly clever, with high morals, willing to sacrifice everything — his family, his freedom — as he uncovers a… Read more
Are superheroes really a menace
During the Forties and Fifties, one of Australia’s most popular comic-book heroes was the Lone Avenger, about a masked do-gooder in the Wild West. (The setting wasn’t Australian, but the… Read more
Hanging by a thread?
The musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been on Broadway, officially at least, for four months now. The initial previews, last year, received scathing reviews. Later, it was substantially… Read more
Mavis Bramston, your country needs you
Just before 9/11, America’s Comedy Network briefly produced a sitcom called That’s My Bush!, set in the White House, about the domestic and political life of the then-President and his… Read more
Flamboyance for sale
The announcement that Strictly Ballroom – The Musical will premiere in Sydney in 2013 was perhaps the year’s least surprising entertainment news. For the uninitiated (if there are such people),… Read more
Good luck making an Australian Great Gatsby
A month before the election, the NSW Labor government triumphantly announced that Baz Luhrmann, one of Australia’s most beloved film directors, would be filming F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great… Read more
Who laughs last…
In hindsight, nobody should have been surprised. Ben Elton’s show Live from Planet Earth, the series that was supposed to herald the Nine Network’s new eminence as Australia’s ‘home of… Read more
Who’s that girl?
Politicians are a bit like pop stars, or like to think they are. Paul Keating compared himself to one of the more highbrow pop stars, calling himself ‘the Placido Domingo… Read more

