Pale Imitations
“If this is supposed to be a chick flick I don’t get it,” my regular companion exclaimed as we were leaving Australia (the movie). She was right. Australia is anything but a film about teenage fantasies, even if this was suggested by the early publicity. Director Baz Luhrmann has been only too willing to provide a filmography of influences for the talk shows—Gone with the Wind, The Overlanders and Red River. I was also able to spot homages to Sergio Leone—eyes peering out of the shadow cast by a cowboy hat of course—Crocodile Dundee, and just about any range war western you like to name.
Then there is Luhrmann’s use of devices from the women’s melodrama (the reason for the early chick-flick publicity). Alarmed by reports that her husband is philandering on his enormous cattle station in northern Australia, Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels from England just in time to find that he has been murdered, supposedly by King George (David Gulpilil) a mysterious Aborigine who has fled…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins