'1883' and 'The Power of the Dog' are chalk and cheese in framing the American West. The former, a prequel to the 'Yellowstone' series, takes its liberties but is overall an often moving repackaging of the frontier legend. Jane Campion's effort, on the other had, takes a powerful novel and laces it with her personal input, a curious homoerotic fascination not least of all

Read More

Cut to the Horse Pain under the ribs? Mr Hypochondriac, take a number. 1. Tumor 2. Blocked artery 3. Constipation The familiar roulette wheel of maladies. (1 & 2 get special attention). Should I have a hot bath, or book an x-ray, put my affairs in order, take a nap, or prepare my unfinished oeuvre […]

Read More

'Cornwall is different to anywhere else in the world and it’s that difference that I want to try to explain and tell you what Cornwall means to me,' declares TV chef Rick Stein, whose SBS series makes as fine a meal of the county's often curious history and characters as of langoustines, mussels and prime cuts of wooly pigs

Read More

The Half-light the Low Light The half-light the low light the candlelight match-lit and flickering shadow and suggestion the romantic light the mysterious light the light of Rembrandt and van Eyck the light tempered by darkness a tonal softness the golden light the amber light the burnt-ochre light the light for cuddle and caress the […]

Read More

Before the troubled illustrator produced his thousands of anthropomorphised felines, cats weren't generally regarded as respectable pets. His images of moggies smoking pipes, pushing wheelbarrows, parading on their hind legs and reading newspapers changed all that

Read More

Ulysses for Bogans Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. —James Joyce, Ulysses I was a Lily of the Grampians, yeah? when I put the wattle in my hair like the Goolwa girls used or shall I wear a jumper, yeah? and […]

Read More

There has been no shortage of movies about the life and career of the Iron Lady, but 'The Long Walk to Finchley' leads the field. A wonderful, visually gorgeous period piece charting a remarkable young woman's unshakeable faith in herself and her principles, the film is a much-needed counterweight to the many depictions of a loathed and unlamented ice queen

Read More

Monkey-Skin Pillbox Hat It’s said that an infinite number of monkeys, typing for a month, or a year, would be able to discover all the works of William Shakespeare. I think that half that number, working from a trailer, could come up with the collected works of Norman Mailer, and a mere cageful, at the […]

Read More

The artistic licence director Justin Kurzel and scriptwriter Shaun Grant brought to 'True History of the Kelly Gang', which presented Ned Kelly as a beardless buffed-up teen with a mullet, is no less at work in their account of the Port Arthur massacre. Be that as it may, Bruce Beresford regards the film as 'easily the best I’ve seen about one of those awful shootings'

Read More

Short Poem Verbophobia: fear of words. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: fear of long words. Joe Dolce  

Read More