Community service announcement

I feel compelled to advise anyone thinking of going that The Machinist is the least enjoyable film I’ve seen in a very long time. I mean it’s groan, laugh in despair and stare at the ceiling indeed anywhere else but the actual screen kind of bad. I am really starting to question my ongoing allegiance [...]

On tele tonight

Readers in Oz: That documentary I wrote about a while ago, Fahimeh’s Story, is on SBS tonight at 8.30pm. (Hey, late notice? Yeah, I just got home and read the TV Guide. The glamorous life of the young quasi-academic). I really recommend it.

Call for submissions

While I appreciate the help with making sense of Gary Wickham’s article in the previous post, I think that maybe my request was taken a little literally… i.e. I wasn’t asking for a recap of the last 50+ years of political theory in order to understand it (I think I managed that bit). I was [...]

Disappointment

I canâ€šÃ„Ã´t believe it, another idyllic image comes crashing down! Robert Doisneau’s famous â€šÃ„Ã²Kiss At City Hallâ€šÃ„Ã´ was staged. And the couple only lasted a couple of months. Sigh. Apparently this is old news. The photographer cleared the record in 1992 with these interesting words: “I would have never dared to photograph people like that. [...]

McDonald’s and nationalism

If you’re watching commercial television in Australia over the next 36 hours, keep an eye out for the McDonald’s ANZAC Day ad. I’ve heard it run at least twice this morning during my (even more football mad than me) neighbour’s Sunday morning sports show. It’s a fascinating example of how multinationals articulate with particular national [...]

Curious

Smart Women in Current Popular Culture: Call for Contributors to a New Forthcoming Anthology For a new anthology on the depiction of intelligent women in the contemporary U. S. popular media (1980-present), I am seeking essays that explore the complex and sometimes contradictory depictions of smart women in popular media. How are women’s real lives [...]

Shifts

Steve Looking Wistful Seeing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou last night made me think more about something I’ve been noticing at the movies lately, that is, how unfamiliar and welcome it is identify with the form of nostalgia represented on screen. I should qualify all of this in the usual way by saying this [...]

Fahimeh’s Story

The SBSi day was fantastic. The highlight for me was Faramarz K-Rahber’s Fahimeh’s Story, which I had missed when it screened on TV, but won the IF award for embodying the ‘independent spirit’ last year. The director and star were both at the screening, which was evidently moving for them but also for us as [...]

A dark day ahead

I’m looking forward to this SBSi event in Brisbane tomorrow. Not so much for the John Safran Q&A, though John Saffran vs God was some of the most fascinating television I’ve seen. I’m going more for the Homemade History features, which Jane mentioned in her paper at the Perth CSAA conference. And ‘cos it’s a [...]