ReadWrite-grogsgamut

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Geoffrey Rush from his role as Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean to his work as Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabeth.

We here in Australia get rather excited when there is talk of a foreign actor portraying one of our heroes or villains. Mick Jagger’s role as Ned Kelly back in 1970 still gets a mention in shuddering terms (though that might be mostly because Mick Jagger obviously was not put on this planet to act). But spare a thought for the English. They have a movie about their greatest Queen, and an Aussie plays her. Not only that another Aussie plays her advisor Walsingham. And not only that, they both do the job so well they get them back for a sequel. Think also of poor old Robin Hood – twice now played by Aussies – and in the latest incarnation the same bloody actress who saw fit to usurp the throne with her portrayal of Queen Bess also played Maid Marion!

The problem of course for the Brits is their heritage is so damn long it’s hard for them to keep hold of it. They could hardly say that because they are based on English plays no foreigner should play the lead in a Shakespeare film .

At least they can ask that they get the accents rights.

I have written about this film before – as part of my “Oscar is always wrong” series, but that was back in July 2009, so bugger it, let me write of this now (it helps me get to the flick of the week I want to get to next).

When writing of Elizabeth, first one must always acknowledge the travesty of the Oscars. Look, I love Shakespeare in Love – it is a joy that I have no real problems with having won Best Picture – especially as it beat the ponderous pro-America Saving Private Ryan. But Cate Blanchett losing to Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the worst crimes of Oscar history. It’s up there with  Denzel Washington’s Malcolm X losing to Al Pacino’s work in Scent of a Woman or Singin’ in the Rain losing to The Greatest Show on Earth (actually it didn’t lose to it – it wasn't even nominated!)

A lot of ink has been spilt on how good is Blanchett’s performance but it probably only needs to be said that she pretty much has killed the role for any other actress for a good generation or two. Taking on the role now in any film or TV series is a guaranteed way to have yourself referred to in sentences as “she’s good but she’s no Cate Blanchett”. She takes Elizabeth from a free spirited girl to a monarch; and not just any monarch but the most steely hearted female monarch that ever was. And she does it believably and tragically, bit by bit you see her character change, and struggling against the changes as well.

The film itself is one I don’t altogether love. I do love watching Blanchett and Rush put on an acting class. I don’t mind Joseph Fiennes playing Shakespeare Robert Dudley (watch this and Shakespeare in Love back to back and see if you can tell Fiennes’s portrayals apart), but the fact that this is a history with so little reference to facts I find rather ruinous to my enjoyment. 

The treatment of Elizabeth’s story is so distant from reality that it is pretty much “based on the life of” rather than a retelling. Imdb.com describes the multitude of historical inaccuracies as “Details of some historical characters and events have been changed to fit the dramatic narrative”. Well yes, that is nice. So changed have they been it would be as if someone were to write a screenplay on the life of JFK where he was assassinated on the orders of Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy.

The film’s narrative arc revolves around Elizabeth and Dudley’s relationship and his eventual treasonous act of converting to Catholicism and supporting the Duke of Norfolk in his attempt to overthrow Elizabeth. Very tragic it is – and Fiennes does nicely explaining why he did so:

Lord Robert: Madame, is it not plain enough to you? It is no easy thing to be loved by the Queen.

The only problem is that it is all complete tosh. As we find in Wikipedia:

The real Robert Dudley did not betray Elizabeth, and remained a loyal subject until his death, nor did Elizabeth ever end their close friendship, as is implied here.

Similarly, Dudley is shown in the film as converting to Catholicism when in fact he was a staunch Protestant (of the type that would later become termed as Puritan), making such conversion unthinkable.

Meh – small details. I guess this is the type of film Tony Abbott would write if he were to write it “in  the heat of discussion”.

It’s why I haven’t bothered to watch the sequel – Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I was pretty ignorant of Elizabeth’s early years, but I know enough about the period in which the sequel is set to wish to avoid more “dramatic licenses”.

I’m not a pedant about such things – heck I know most representations of history are compressed for dramatic license. I know an American character will be in a film for no reason other than it will help sell the film to American audiences. But surely there was enough drama in Elizabeth’s life to not have to make stuff up. Or maybe I’m just a crotchety old sourpuss who can’t enjoy a bit of fun. (Actually I am more a film hypocrite as you’ll see with the next Flick of the Week!)

1998 was an interesting year to have this and Shakespeare in Love out at the same time – both featuring Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush and the character of Elizabeth.

What the two films also have in common is the subsequent careers of their respective directors. Since this film Shekhar Kapur has done:

Passage (2009/I)

New York, I Love You (2009) (segment "Shekhar Kapur")

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

The Four Feathers (2002)

That ain’t exactly an overflowing of brilliance (or quantity). The director of Shakespeare in Love,  John Madden, has similarly gone on to, umm well on to this:

The Debt (2010/I)

Killshot (2008)

Proof (2005)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

Yep, I haven’t bothered with them either (I watched about half of Captain Corelli one night on TV).

But let’s not be churlish, not everyone is Spielberg or Weir (two other directors nominated for Best Director that year), and if you don’t mind a bit of historical laxness, this film is a thoroughly good couple of hours entertainment – especially as you are in the presence of acting genius.

This scene also shows Rush and Blanchett together in performances that are as good as you can get. Rush wasn’t even nominated for Best Supporting Actor, he was for his Shakespeare in Love role – a much more hammy performance – he should have been nominated for both, and won for this. James Coburn in Affliction? Oh geez.

Best scene:

Sir Francis Walsingham: Your Grace is arrested. You must go with these men to the Tower.
Norfolk: I must do nothing by your orders. I am Norfolk!
Sir Francis Walsingham: You were Norfolk.
Sir Francis Walsingham: [shows him his own signature on the treasonous letter from Rome]
Sir Francis Walsingham: The dead have no titles.
Sir Francis Walsingham: [approaches Norfolk] 
Sir Francis Walsingham: You were the most powerful man in England. And you could have been greater still, but you had not the courage to be loyal, only the conviction of your own vanity.
Norfolk: So cut off my head, and make me a martyr. The people will always remember it.
Sir Francis Walsingham: No... they will forget.

Previous Flicks of the Week:

Pirates of the Caribbean – Johnny Depp
Platoon – Willem Dafoe
Inside Man – Clive Owen
Gosford Park – Robert Altman
The Player – Tim Robbins
Bull Durham – Kevin Costner
Field of Dreams – Ray Liotta
Goodfellas – Samuel L Jackson
Pulp Fiction – Frank Whaley
Swimming with Sharks – Kevin Spacey
Working Girl – Sigourney Weaver
Aliens – Bill Paxton
Apollo 13 – Ron Howard
American Graffiti – Richard Dreyfus 
The Graduate – Dustin Hoffmann
All the President’s Men – Jason Robards
Once Upon a Time in the West – Henry Fonda
Mister Roberts – Jack Lemmon
Some Like it Hot – Billy Wilder
Witness for the Prosecution – Marlene Dietrich
Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
The Third Man – Trevor Howard
Brief Encounter - David Lean
Lawrence of Arabia – Claude Reins
Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart
The Big Sleep – Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday – Cary Grant
Charade – John Williams
Schindler’s List – Liam Neeson
Love Actually – Emma Thompson
Sense and Sensibility – Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Michelle Yeoh
Tomorrow Never Dies – Pierce Brosnan
The Thomas Crown Affair – Renee Russo
In the Line of Fire – Clint Eastwood
Where Eagles Dare – Richard Burton
Zulu – Stanley Baker
The Guns of Navarone – Peter Yates
Breaking Away – Dennis Quaid
The Right Stuff – Ed Harris
The Rock – Sean Connery
The Longest Day – Richard Beymer
West Side Story – Ernest Lehmann
North By Northwest - The first one

If we were to go back in time some 30 odd years, and you were to go looking for me in the library of my primary school, the most likely spot you would have found me was either re-reading Asterix comics (which I wrote about here) or in the reference section going through the volumes of the World Book encyclopaedia.

I loved the World Book Encyclopaedia – loved that they had a double page of the the highest mountains in the world depicted as one mountain range. Loved that each US President got a huge write up. I didn’t care that they were obviously American biased. I probably should have been concerned that I could name all the US Presidents at about the age of 10 , but wouldn’t have been able to tell you who was Edmund Barton, but I figured that was the school’s fault not mine.

I loved to grab volumes and just dive in -  did I learn anything? I must have, but if not at least I am now a pretty handy trivia night contestant.

As I grew older and left Primary School and the World Book behind (I never really got into the High School’s Encyclopaedia Britannica) what did stay with me was a love of non-fiction. I’d have to say I was a heavy non-fiction reader well before I discovered fiction – and definitely well before I came near some “literature”. It is a trait that probably explains why my first degree was in Economics and not English – though the literature magnet became too impossible to resist. And now, even with my bookshelves stuffed with fiction – far too many I must admit, and far too many still yet to be read – it is non-fiction that more often is the object of my gaze as I read in bed each night.

I find non-fiction is relaxing – I don’t need to invest in the characters; I don’t need to get in the rhythm of the prose; I don’t need to lose myself in the suspension of disbelief.

Mostly I read histories and biographies, but these are more like novels – works that need to be read front to back. At the moment I am reading Richard Rhodes’s excellent Dark Sun (not as good as The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but then few works are), and it has taken me a few sittings to get into the narrative – to connect with the scientists around the world in post WWII as they attempt to create the Hydrogen Bomb. But when I truly am tired, and want to just have some easy reading there are a few favourite, well dog-eared works of non-fiction that I have read and re-read, re-read and read. Books that like the World Book I can just dip in and start reading wherever the pages open. Books that I think I’ll just read a few pages, and before I know it the night is now very late and that early night I had promised myself is but a promise for the next night.

The Dictionary of World Biography, edited by Barry Jones

The dust jacket of this has long been lost/destroyed. The spine is barely left intact.

I have a couple Dictionary of Biographies, but this is my favourite. The tone is chatty, almost gossipy. It is the type of book I suppose I would read less of were I to have an ipad, and were able to sit in bed surfing through Wikipedia.

But I still believe I would read this. The Wik is all well and good, but to be honest, it isn’t all; that well written. You go to Wikipedia for the facts (to an extent!) not because the pages are themselves worth reading. Jones here has put in some of his own opinion amidst the facts, and it makes it all the more enjoyable to read. Also the Wik gives you too much information. These short bios – some little more than a paragraph give you what you need to know, and let you know if the person is someone you’ll want to know more about. Otherwise it’s on to the next page. Harking back to my Primary School days I sometimes will run through the Presidents, or the English monarchs.

Other times I’ll start with a random person and see how long I can keep going until I get to a person who does not link to anyone else. The book would be great in electronic form – because then I might not continually think of a person to look up and then while flicking the pages become distracted by someone else and then forget who I was looking for.

 

The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics, edited by David Wallechinsky

While I might have been reading the World Book encyclopaedias in the library, the book I would have been most borrowing to read at home were earlier incarnations of this great, great work.

I love the Olympics – love them more than is probably healthy. Two things helped create that love (aside from the sports themselves) and that was Bud Greenspan’s brilliant documentary series, and Wallechinsky’s “complete books”.

The book has every result from every Olympic Games (as you can see I need to update mine – if only to get the drug cheat off the cover), but more than that Wallechinsky has the stories behind the events. A few reads of this and come the London Olympics you’ll be able to bore your loved one and friends with bits of information about who won the team Sabre title in 1936, and whether or not Chariots of Fire is truth or fiction based on about 2 bits of fact (the later unfortunately).

For the Sydney Olympics we had two night of athletics. In preparation I had printed out the top 30 all-time bests for each event that we were to see, plus the top 50 best times/distances for that year for each event. So when I say I am a bit of a athletics stats nerd, you can take it to the bank. It’s me and Bruce McAvaney head to head, and I’m taking him down.

It’s why when I first moved to Canberra and went to a work trivia night I was able without too much thought to write down the progression of the men’s 100m world record since 1958. It was a good night for me, especially because they also needed to know about Best Picture winners…

 

Alternate Oscars, Danny Peary

As you can see this book has gotten a lot of love. I bought it in 1994. It was the last copy left in the Dymocks’ store in Rundle Mall – literally the shop assistant had found one out the back (this was before Amazon, so such things mattered). It contains every Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Actor winner and nominee till 1991, and more to the point contains Peary’s own choices – eg Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974 instead of The Godfather II, or Cary Grant for Best Actor in 1937 for The Awful Truth instead of Spencer Tracey for Captain Courageous.

I agree with many of Peary’s choices – such as the above two, but also find he likes Chaplin just a bit too much, and Wesley Snipes for Best Actor in 1992 for New Jack City??

Peary’s essay that accompanies each choice are informative and interesting. The book introduced me to many films I had never heard of – such as The Awful Truth, and many of my favourite films I first read about in this book. I love the book and his concept so much I started doing it myself (and really must get back to it). 

 

 

Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman

Another well-loved book. Peary’s book may contains the facts of winners of Oscars, but this book contains the truth about some of the films that won Oscars, and also the whole sordid world of working in the film industry.

Goldman, who wrote among others, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the Presidents Men and The Princess Bride, lets you know what happens when you find yourself writing a film script – first lesson don’t expect a hell of a lot of respect.

It is the book that contained the now universally regarded mission statement of Hollywood: “Nobody knows Anything”. It contains advice for producers working out their film budget: “Add one-third for the shit”, and how to explain why a film was a success when you have no damn idea why it was a success: “A non recurring phenomenon”.

The book is divided into chapters on the industry – “Stars”, Directors”; chapters on making a film: “Agents”, Endings”, “Subtext”, and then on the stories behind the films he has written (note, Carl Bernstein does not come across well). Structured as it is you can read any chapter independent of others, so it is a great one for dipping into.

If you love film, you no doubt already have this. If you don’t, get it.

 

Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, Third Edition, edited by John Leonard

This one is special for many reasons.

When I was first at university way back in the dark ages of 1990, I was the lone Economics student at my boarding college (it was a college mostly for those doing teaching degrees). One of my best friends was doing Arts at Adelaide Uni, and like many English students across the land, she had this copy of Leonard’s anthology of poetry. At the time I had an interest in literature that I didn’t quite understand – after all the only “literature” I had read was what I had done for Year 12 English. The only poets I really knew were thus Judith Wright, Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen.

And yet on those many, many nights that I would be in her room late at night drinking coffee and talking of cabbages and kings I would often grab this book and flick through almost in a confused manner. I knew of John Donne, knew he had written “For whom the bell tolls”, but had no idea he wrote other poems. Which one was Yeats and which one was Keats again? And you mean TS Eliot wrote things other than the poems that Cats was based on?

I was given this copy for Christmas in 1996, by which time I had seriously fallen hard for books. I was to go back and study English Lit in 1998, and that I got (and was in raptures at getting) an anthology of poetry for Christmas says a bit about how much I had fallen.

It is here I discovered “The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. Here I found the poetry of Whitman mentioned in Dead Poets Society. Here I came across that wonderful amalgam of perfection and fragility that is Silvia Plath. When I read “Arrival of the Bee Box” I realised poetry ain’t all daffodils and sunshine. What writing, what pain, what imagery.

This book is also special because John Leonard taught at James Cook University- where I did my PhD, and so I feel a connection. I love that when I was a young Economics undergrad in Adelaide I felt an attraction to a book of poetry, in which the supervisor of the English Lit PhD I would do in Cairns was thanked.

I also got to meet Leonard when he was launching another edition of the book – the fifth I think – and so I was able to ask him about his selections – why none of Shakespeare's songs, why not Tennyson’s “Ulysses”?

It was a long way from the third floor of my uni boarding college wondering so this Wordsworth guy? Didn’t he write “Paul Revere’s Ride”?

***

And so these books stay by my bed – there for me to grab when I am too tired to read anything else, but which I want to read because without doing so I know I will not sleep. And as I look at the clock, and think about what I want to do before I go to sleep tonight, I know it’ll probably be another late one, and I know once more one of these five will capture my mind when the clock gets near midnight.

Have a great weekend.

So I am a cat person. I don’t dislike all dogs, and I don’t like all cats – to be honest I don’t understand the whole must like one or the other – but were I forced to choose between the two animals, it would be an easy choice.    

I would be a good example that whether you prefer cats to dogs depends on environment – because growing up we always had cats. My wife on the other hand would be an example that cat lovers are born not made. She never had cats growing up and yet all her life she was determined as soon as she left home that she would get a cat of her own.

When she left university and got her first job she proceeded to get a cat, who very quickly died. She got another one. It followed her one day when she was on a walk, got scared by a car and ran off never to be seen again. She got another one. And yes the time was brief but well… brief.

A few of us who knew her used to joke that she was getting a reputation at the RSPCA cattery as the evil cat lady whom all the kittens were scared she’d pick them. She finally got a good one – a cat she called Hamlet who decided to stick around.

When we moved from South Australia to Cairns we left Hamlet with her parents. Thinking back now I’m not sure why we did. Most likely it was because we were driving up there and the cost of sending a cat by plane back then was pretty prohibitive.  

So for our first Christmas together I bought her a cat – this was 1995. We bought her from the Young Animal Protection Society, and she was shivering with fright as we brought her home wrapped in a towel in a cardboard box. Yesterday as we brought her home from the vet wrapped in a rug and resting on my wife’s lap she was moving no more.

Our dear friend of fifteen years was gone and so much joy has left with her.

When we went along to YAPS all those years ago, we went in with a plan – a male at least 3 months old that had been desexed. We walked out with a 4 week old female not desexed.

When we entered the area where all the cats were kept we made the sensible decision to let the cat choose us (or more correctly, choose my wife). There she was this little, truly pathetic thing. She was in a cage with two ginger cats who were obviously picking on her, for she was surely the runt not only of the litter but all litters. She had ears that were far too big for her head; eyes that seemed to have been created by some Disney animator.

She held on to my wife like her life depended upon it. We discovered her age and sex and put her down and went looking at some other cats. And though they were nice I knew my wife, and I knew there was no way we were walking out of that place without having picked the most desperately little and in need of care cat there was.

We named her Scamper, because she did.

She was it must be said, a hunter. From a very early age she delighted in bringing home her trophies – though why she thought we’d be impressed by her dragging  along a huge palm frond I am not sure.  Let it be said – very few leaves were safe in our backyard.

She also liked to sit in our backyard and make bird noises. I’m not sure which birds she thought would be tricked into thinking that a bird that looked suspiciously like a cat was calling to it and might be worth flying down for a chat, but nonetheless she persisted.

She was a peculiar cat. Very early on we knew we were lucky. Unlike other cats she didn’t have an ounce of that feline snootiness. She didn’t like being held – but she loved being petted, and she loved to sit on your lap and keep you company. She had an affinity for picking out the laps of people who until that point had professed to not liking cats.

She also liked being wherever we were. We lived in a townhouse and if we were upstairs she would be there. If we went downstairs she would follow. This also seemed to mean that she had an uncanny knack of knowing precisely when I had started reading a newspaper, and thus she would jump on the table and sit right in the middle of the page looking at me sweetly.

At night – because I was working shift work and would often be awake at night she would find a spot halfway between where I was and our bedroom until I went to bed whereupon she would jump up on the bed, find my wife’s pillow and sleep there.

The sleeping on the pillow was nice when she was a little kitten. When she was and roughly the size of the pillow it was less enchanting (at least for my wife – Scamper never bothered with mine).

She also had an odd way of sleeping. It was through lacking an older cat to show her how to do it she looked at me on the couch and thought that that is how it must be done, and so she slept on her back. It was not a habit she broke out of even as she aged, which often led to “Is there something wrong with your cat” questions from visitors. 

Of course there was nothing wrong with Scamper, just as there is never anything wrong with a loved pet.

We were massively biased, but to us we had the perfect pet – a cat who wanted to be part of the family, not just there for us to serve (as some cats seem to think is their role).

Scamper’s only annoying habit was her utter hatred of any closed doors inside the house. A closed laundry door would soon be discovered, so too a bedroom. The scratch at the door would continue until one of us (usually me) was getting out of bed and opening the door for her. Often this would result in her looking in the room and not bothering to enter. She didn't want to go in, she just wanted to be able to should she so desire.

This habit wasn't too annoying, though it did get a bit trying when you were sitting on the toilet and she wanted to know what was going on inside.

In time she developed this hatred onto the closed outside door – meaning I would be forever getting up, letting her outside, only for one minute later to be letting her back in, only to let her out, then in, then out…

Of course I could have put my foot down and not, but Scamper had long discovered that I was unable to watch TV or write while she was scratching at the door, and thus she would win.

And now of course we can close the doors and there is no scratching. It is too early though to do so. It feels wrong, almost disrespectful.

We thought Scamper would be with us for many years to come – we knew she was old, but she hadn’t seemed to change. Oh yes in the last two or three months she did seem to be losing some weight, but nothing that seemed too out of the ordinary for an old cat.

And then last week she stopped eating. I thought it might be just one of her moods where she was sick of the brand of food we were giving her. But then on the weekend my parents came to visit and usually this would lead to Scamper feasting due to my mother’s incessant desire to feed her as often as possible. Scamper went through the motions of wanting the food, but when it came to the eating part she didn't do it.

We also noticed that she was breathing hard – her stomach sucking in with each breath.

My wife and I feared the worst and so booked an appointment for Monday morning at the vet. We hoped maybe she had an infection that some antibiotics would cure. After all this was Scamper and only a week earlier we had been talking about how good she seemed to be – how she still jumped up on our bed, how she would be at the kitchen on the dot of 5pm wanting to be fed.

But we realised that she wasn't doing that anymore – in fact she wasn't even really walking around. We would pick her up and put her on my daughter’s bed and she would not do her usual trick of walking around and finding the most inconvenient spot to settle down. Instead she just lay where we put her. This was not Scamp.

I was not however ready to hear kidney failure, and heart condition. That she was not pumping enough oxygen from her heart, and so she was breathing as deeply as she could in the vain hope to get more oxygen. That her kidneys were no longer working. That she was in pain.

I wanted to ignore the truth, but as I looked at her I knew it was all true. It was as though she had fought off these things and then last week had run out of strength.

That night my wife and I knew what decision we had to make.

My eldest daughter was calm – she understood that Scamper was old and sick. But then when Scamper was on her bed, she realised that this would be the last time Scamper would be there and then the tears came and stayed.

That night when my wife and I went to bed, we picked up Scamp, put her on our bed and said our goodbyes to her. But she didn’t want to go on my wife’s pillow. She just lay there gasping with each breath.

We both hoped that when we woke she would be at rest – denying us the act of doing what we knew was the only right thing we could do. But when we woke, Scamper was still there, awake breathing hard. We’re pretty sure she was unable to sleep, because she couldn’t relax enough to let her breathing be calm.

And so after once again saying our goodbyes we took her to the vet for the last time.

We knew we were doing the right thing, but geez we hated ourselves.

When we brought her home, we put her in her rug in a basket and we had one last look at her, and we knew immediately we had done the only thing we could have, because there she was looking as relaxed as she ever had.

My wife and I will always miss her. We knew we were lucky, and I am worried about getting another cat, because I think I’ll always compare it to Scamp, and it’ll come up short. I am glad my daughter knew Scamp – but I know she’ll forget her, as we forget most things of our youth. In time she’ll remember more the photos of Scamper than Scamper.

But for me I still wait to hear the scratching at the door and know I won’t. But regardless our bedroom door will stay slightly ajar just in case.

 

***

Maybe due to Scamper’s death or perhaps due to listening to the utter drivel and intellectual barrenness of Karl Bitar and Brian Loughnane addresses at the Naitonal Press Club in the past two days, but I feel a bit burnt out on politics.

I also have realised that next week I’ll be out due to work or family reasons every night, so won’t be able to post on Question Time. So I’m taking a bit of a break on politics posts till the last sitting week – usually an interesting 5 days.

Generally I find that having music on while working or writing at night is the best way for me to get in a zone to bang out some words. It's a habit developed over the last 20 odd years where just writing in silence doesn't seem to produce a productive output.

When I was younger I would mostly listen to music with lyrics - now I find instrumental is best.Sometimes it'll be classical, but mostly I find it is movie themes.

There;s something about a great theme that just elevates a film . There is a story recounted in Peter Biskand's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that Chinatown first had a horrible score that Polanski for some reason thought was genius. Thankfully he was convinced otherwise and Jerry Goldsmith was commissioned to write an absolutely stunning score that captures the mood of the film absolutely perfectly. It is inconceivable to think of seeing the film without that score now.

And that is the mark of the great score - it becomes so indelibly linked to the film that some scores actually take over the film. Ennio Morricone's score for The Mission is much better than the film, and now probably better known.

In 2005, the American Film Institute came up with its top 25 scores of all time (US films of course). Here;'s the list:

1 Star Wars, John Williams
2 Gone with the Wind, Max Steiner
3 Lawrence of Arabia, Maurice Jarre
4 Psycho, Bernard Herrmann
5 The Godfather, Nino Rota
6 Jaws, John Williams
7 Laura, David Raksin
8 The Magnificent Seven, Elmer Bernstein
9 Chinatown, Jerry Goldsmith
10 High Noon, Dimitri Tiomkin
11 The Adventures of Robin Hood, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
12 Vertigo, Bernard Herrmann
13 King Kong, Max Steiner
14 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, John Williams
15 Out of Africa, John Barry
16 Sunset Blvd., Franz Waxman
17 To Kill a Mockingbird, Elmer Bernstein
18 Planet of the Apes, Jerry Goldsmith
19 A Streetcar Named Desire, Alex North
20 The Pink Panther, Henry Mancini
21 Ben-Hur, Miklós Rózsa
22 On the Waterfront, Leonard Bernstein
23 The Mission, Ennio Morricone
24 On Golden Pond, Dave Grusin
25 How the West Was Won, Alfred Newman

Now it's a good list, but I'd take issue with a few of them. I prefer Elmer Bernstein's score for The Great Escape to The Magnificent Seven, and I'd go for Jarre's score for Doctor Zhivago over the Lawrence of Arabia one.
 
And Star Wars the best ever? Sorry not even in my top 10.
 
What also strikes when you see the list is that there is a lot of common names - Williams, Bernstein, Steiner, Goldsmith. These guys knew (know) how to write music that fits perfectly with a story, and they're also very much of their times. Max Steiner's scores often were full of bombast and melodrama but they seem right for The bombast and melodrama of Gone with the Wind, in a way that a more subtle score would not.
 
In keeping with the commonality of musicians, two scores that I would have included in the list are both by Ennio Morricone. I have written elsewhere about my love of Once Upon a Time in the West.
 
But I would also argue Once Upon a Time in America is just as good, and if we're talking indelible sounds, his The Good the Bad and the Ugly is up there with Jaws as being instantly recognisable (and hummable by people who haven't even seen the film).
 
Of recent film scores, I'd put in Philip Glass's brilliant work for Powaqqatsi - so good Peter Weir used it for The Truman Show.
 
I also like Maurice Jarre's work in Dead Poet's Society - Peter Weir films as a rule have great scores - the theme of Master and Commander by Iva Davies (!), Christopher Gordon and Richard Tognetti is an underrated favourite of mine.
 
Carter Burwell is one composer whose work also is generally top drawer. He is the Coen Brothers go to guy, and his score for Miller's Crossing is my favourite of his:


Of the last decade (or so) Thomas Newmann has done some amazing work for The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Wall E, Cinderella Man and Revolutionary Road. Little wonder he has been nominated for an Oscar 10 times... hasn't won one yet, not that that means much, Elmer Bernstein was nominated 14 times and only one once (not for The Magnificent Seven of course!). Bernard Herrmann didn't even get nominated for his Psycho score!
 
There are so many films I could keep going for an age, but I'll leave you with a score that I have only rediscovered in the last few months. It is by Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto for the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. I haven't seen the film since it came out (when I was rather disappointed to find it was not much like Bridge on the River Kwai at all). I don't have much desire to watch it again, but the score? Magnificent.

Have a good weekend.

So today Tony Abbott went to the Adelaide Hills to fan the flames of hate meet with community groups and talk about detention centres.

He had a look around and decided he didn't like what he saw. It was too pretty. How dare a nice part of Australia be used to house those stinking asylum seekers:

"Bringing asylum seekers to a place like this is hardly sending the right message to the tens of thousands of potential boat people in our region,"

"[It] is basically saying to the people smugglers and their customers that the welcome mat is out, that the red-carpet treatment is available.

"You do not send idyllic picture postcards from Australia to the people smugglers and their customers."

What bollocks.

What is attractive to asylum seekers is Australia. They don't give a damn about our detention centres, they give a damn about Australia. If Abbott really wants to get rid of the "pull factor" he should come up with some policies that make Australia a horrible place to live in. Make it a place less inviting than Indonesia.

There is a fair bit of crap being represented about the Inverbrackie detention centre. For a start it is not in Woodside. From my home town to Adelaide I would drive through Woodside (an oft made trip). I only once saw the Inverbrackie barracks and that was when I was about 10 and wanted to be join the army, and so Dad took me to the barracks to see what it was like.

And here's the view across the road:



Yep - there goes the neighbourhood.

But let's get back to Abbott and his message. What message does he want us to send? If being tough on detainees is what he thinks works, then lets get out the razor wire, and get the kids behind it. Let's reduce the rations and see if we can't weed out a few through natural attrition.

All in the interests of sending a message, mind.

We don't want to be subtle about it - because you just know those infidels don't grasp subtlety, so let's make sure the message that gets sent is of a decent camp were people are treated indecently. Last thing we want is anyone to think Australia is a place of compassion.

But hell, the asylum seekers who are here most likely are terrorists so we can't be too careful. If they are found to be "genuine" refugees why not let them out in the public, but make sure they are known to all. Look they're all Muslims so let's get them to wear a crescent moon on their clothes so we know who they are. That will send the right message to those wishing to come here that Australia isn't the place for them.

Geez... the bile it rises.

This sending a message crap needs to get stomped on for the utter stupidity it is. Abbott and Morrison if they knew anything about asylum seeker policy would realise that the only way (the ONLY way) to any long term solution is through a regional solution.

The whole objective of the proposed East Timor centre is that getting sent there is not a fast track to Australia. The problem of course is it requires the region to agree to the process.

That is bloody hard.

Indonesia quite frankly doesn't give a damn about asylum seekers coming to Australia, and truth be known most likely thinks the whole attention our media and parts of the electorate gives to it is rather humorous. But Gillard's visit to Jakarta was a good start. Any media reporting that it was a negative outcome because President Yudhoyono didn't give the East Timor idea a ringing endorsement really needs to be taken with a bucket load of salt.

No one expected an endorsement. Naomi Woodley got it spot on yesterday when she reported:

NAOMI WOODLEY: Mark he's spoken in positive terms of the Government's attempts to put in place a regional framework to deal with people smuggling and asylum seekers. He's pointed to the fact that there are already two different forums looking at those sorts of questions.

And like Julia Gillard he thinks the talks known as the Bali Process are the right place for these discussions. He says that should happen next year and that is the timetable that the Federal Government was already working towards.

On the specific question of a processing centre you know proposed for East Timor he hasn't given it the Indonesian government's endorsement. But Julia Gillard would have been encouraged by his response.

Exactly - it's encouraging. It's just a start. This is going to be a long process - but one worth following. (Or should Gillard only bother with policies that can be sorted within the 24 hour news' cycle?).

The ALP needs to hold firm on this. They have got to abandon the attempt to appear tougher than the Libs. It doesn't work with the asylum seekers, and it doesn't with the voters. Do you think anyone who wants a tougher asylum seeker policy is still with the ALP?

Chris Bowen has got the response spot on when he said:

Mr Bowen says detention centres are not meant to be punitive or send a message of deterrence to asylum seekers.


"I don't think, for example, that children and families should be located in remote locations in high-security facilities which is what Mr Abbott seems to be implying.

It's time the ALP stuck to its guns and not worry about the asylum seeker dilemma. We are at a point in the electoral cycle where the polls are almost irrelevant (one of the reason why I haven't bothered to report on Newspolls etc since the election).

If they think they are right; if they think their policy is the best for Australia - then be bold and argue it - explain it (God, please explain it, because I bet 95% of the electorate don't understand it yet) - convince the voters as best they can, but not worry if they don't convince a majority (because they won't). If they think it is right then do it. Don't do it because they think it is the least worst way to tackle the issue politically.

Peter Brent is right when he says people thinking the ALP Government doesn't stand for anything is hardly stunning news - people thought that of Hawke and Keating (I certainly did as an angry-young man at university). But that doesn't mean the party shouldn't stand for things.

This is one issue on which the ALP needs to make a stand.

So today the Reserve Bank decided to trick the market for a second month in a row and lifted interest rates by 0.25%. The market wasn't really expecting it - though Peter Martin and Michael Stutchbury were leaning towards them going up rather than remaining steady. So it should not have been too great a surprise (actually it was one of those decisions where whatever they did would not be too shocking)

But just how much did it take the market by surprise? Check out the reaction of the Australian dollar the moment the result came out (the green bar at the far right). That's a jump of around a cent, which gives you a good idea of how many traders had factored in the rate rise.

The Commonwealth Bank decided to take the role of most hated shylock-type institution of the week and raised their marginal home loan rate by 0.45%, but only increased their rate for savings on deposits by 0.25%. Yep shylocks. You half expect to them to refer to their vig rather than mortgage rate..

As you can expect Joe Hockey lept into the fray with glee. After giving him such credit last week, it is somewhat nice to see him revert to form:

The Federal Opposition's treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, says the Reserve Bank's increase could have been avoided if the Government cut back on stimulus spending.
"The Government now owns these rate increases," he said.
"It's done nothing about banking competition and it's done nothing to put downward pressure on interest rates. Australians should be understandably angry about this."
Well now, he may have a good point on the competition front (though it's hard to see anything happening on that front in the short term). But stimulus? Let's have a look at what the RBA said about fiscal stimulus:

Information on the Australian economy indicates growth around trend over the past year. Public spending was prominent in driving aggregate demand for several quarters but this impact is now lessening.
 
Not exactly powering the economy is it. So what was powering us along so greatly that the RBA is now worried about inflation?
 
concerns about the possibility of a larger than expected slowing in Chinese growth have lessened recently and most commodity prices have firmed, after a fall earlier in the year. The prices most important to Australia remain at very high levels, with the result that the terms of trade are at their highest since the early 1950s. The turmoil in financial markets earlier in the year has abated, though sentiment remains fragile.


Ah, the terms of trade. A nice easy way to think of what that is is to think of it as our exports inflation rate. So while consumer prices that you and I are paying at the shops is falling, let's have a look at what is happening to the prices of the things we dig out of the ground and sell to Chinese factories.

As you can see, it's not exactly flat (even if the last month did dip ever so slightly).

What this means is all those mining companies who earlier in the year were saying the arse was out of their pants and they were thisclose to needing to ring meals on wheels? Well you can stop praying to Mary McKillop, miracle number three has occurred - they're rolling in more money than ever before and laughing all the way to... err the bank.

Let's have a bit more of a look at how the mining boom is so wonderful that we have to pay higher mortgages:

The exchange rate has risen significantly this year, reflecting the high level of commodity prices and the respective outlooks for monetary policy in Australia and the major countries. This will assist, at the margin, in containing pressure on inflation.

The demand for labour has continued to firm. While the labour market is not as tight as in 2007 and 2008, some further strengthening would appear to be in prospect, judging by the trends in job vacancies. After the significant decline last year, growth in wages has picked up somewhat, as had been expected. Some further increase is likely over the coming year.

Firstly, God bless you PJK - if we still had a non-floating exchange rate inflation would be through the roof and so too would interest rates. The high dollar actually helps reduce inflation (can someone please send that line to Andrew Robb).

But mining companies are going to need labor, and while it ain't break the glass time, that skills shortage that Howard and Costello sat by and watched occur for 11 years is still with us, so in time we'll see people leave for the mines, meaning the supply of trained labor in the cities will become more scarce - which means of course labour gets more expensive - you have to pay more to keep guys from leaving for the mines, and because electricians etc know they are in short supply they can raise their prices because there is less chance you're going to be able to find someone else to do the job.

Don't you love supply and demand?

Here's how much fun this recovery is. Usually when you get a boom like this that leads to interest rate rises the Government will be able to help offset some of the rise because the increases in Company Tax revenue due to the boom would mean they can give us some income tax cuts or middle-class welfare (this is not actually a good thing economically, but it feels nice in the short term - Howard was very aware of this). But this time the Government won't do that because it is trying to get the budget back into surplus. The reason it is in a deficit in the first place is because it had to stimulate the economy while the industries like the mining industry went into massive decline which in turn meant that Company Tax revenue went through the floor.

Don't you just love the budget?

The good thing about this is if the Government maintains budgetary discipline throughout this boom. By the time they get the budget into surplus the economy will actually be in a much stronger and leaner state than it was when Howard and Costello were enjoying the first boom.

But that's for then. For now it just suck that we have to pay more each month.

So what impact will this have on the economy. Well obviously it will slow it - that's the whole point of interest rate rises. The reason the RBA increased the rates though was that they think the economy is pretty well powering along, and they expect inflation to go up next year - go up by more than they like. So instead of waiting for that to happen, which is what they did in 2007 (as Christopher Joye points out), they got in first this time. Their hope is by moving now it means they only need to touch the breaks rather than slam on them.

And if we had to give a name to this pre-silly-season silly season, it would have to be the "Gravitas Season".

Suddenly gravitas is what is needed, gravitas is what makes a country strong - it defeats mean bank CEO's, quells disruptive audiences and brings stability to a nation. Oh if only we could bottle it, think of the killing we could make!

Firstly we had Joe Hockey telling us that the banks were ignoring Wayne Swan's 31 warnings because he lacks gravitas - you know the stuff apparently Peter Costello had in abundance besides jelly knees whenever John Howard stared him down. (And yes these banks have ignored Swan 31 times by not putting up their interest rates - what cunning buggers they be, I can't wait till they start listening to him) .

Today we had Errol Simper over at The Oz saying, apparently without sarcasm, that QANDA host Tony Jones had the right amount of "gravitas, humour and authority". Gravitas. Really?

Also in The Oz today we had Peter Brent telling us that:

Several observers have commented that after four months Julia Gillard is not yet looking prime ministerial. She lacks that hard-to-define ‘something’: gravitas; authority. This might account for the absence of a post-election opinion poll bounce.

These observers may have a point.

Ah those "several observers", gotta love 'em. They're always so good. Yep, they may have a point. They also might be just talking out of their backsides but who can say? I might have to find some more observers to tell me.

Brent, who had been floating this thought bubble on Twitter yesterday, reveals to us what is one of the likely reasons for this mystifying lack of gravitas on the part of our Prime Minister:

Are Gillard’s hand movements contributing? She insists on inserting the things into every head and shoulder shot and waving them around. It was learnt in politician school - something about trust and open palms, nothing up sleeves. But her words, however convincing, are negated by those flapping hands. She seems defensive and rehearsed. Like a job interview.

Yep, hand movements. Silly me here I thought the reason Gillard lacked gravitas was her hair style, her earlobes or her lack of a handbag.

To Brent's credit he suggests her lack of gravitas could also be due to her needing to get comfortable with the whole role of being PM, and he may have a point - she has only had the job for 4 months, but he ends with a nice:

She could start by moderating the hand show.

Yeah, that'll do it, because then we wouldn't be reading stories about how Julia was moderating her way of speaking because she was worried people didn't think she was PM enough...

Here's the thing, I never once thought John Howard displayed any gravitas in his 11 years as leader. Dignity? Quality of substance? Depth of personality? Nope sorry, never detected any of that. I just saw a guy who was determined to be PM for as long as he possibly could and who would do whatever it bloody well took to ensure that would happen.

I thought Howard a good performer at the dispatch box, but a poor speech giver. His voice you see... it lacked gravitas of tone. And those eyebrow really needed some trimming - how the hell could anyone take him seriously with those bushy things growing ever higher as the years passed? And don't get me started on the tracksuits...

Ah Bob Hawke, there's a leader with gravitas - he knew how to be PM. Guess what, plenty of people thought him a disgrace, a joke. What the hell was he wearing when Australia II won the America's Cup? What's all this talk of "silly old buggers", and for the love of God could he stop pulling his bloody earlobe? Bob Hawke had such gravitas that it seems amazing that Max Gilles made a career out of taking the absolute piss out him...

Ah Keating - now he had gravitas in spades. Even "several observers" would agree with that. And the electorate kicked him right in the gravitas in 1996, in favour of a bloke who at the time adopted a target so small you wouldn't have been able to find any gravitas with a microscope and a pair of tweezers.

Oh but yes he grew into the role - Howard gained gravitas? Really? Says you. For me he remained a politician. He still is - for all the calm and grace he had last week on QANDA did he ever answer a bloody question?

What about Rudd? Well in February 2008 when he gave his sorry speech, I'd have said he had gravitas pouring out of every orifice. Great good that did him.

Now look, I don't think Gillard is quite PM yet either, but she is showing good signs.

Several observers (like me for one) want some reform. Well I don't know about you but putting a price on carbon would be a bloody big reform - and a hell of a lot more important than a flat tax scale.

Here she was last week in parliament on the issue:

Ms GILLARD—Of course, what the Leader of the Opposition is seeking to distort is the nature of this debate. The reason that you put a price on carbon is to create incentives to engage in economic activity and, when engaging in that economic activity, to not produce the same level of carbon emissions—that is, you want to create an incentive structure so that people reduce emissions. Let me adopt the words of Marius Kloppers to explain this to the Leader of the Opposition, because I think he put it elegantly:
… carbon emissions need to have a cost impact in order to cause the consumer to change behaviour and favour lowcarbon alternatives.
...
If the Leader of the Opposition has not found that persuasive then I would refer him to the editorial of the Australian Financial Review where it says:
If the Coalition wants to play in this game, it will have to abandon its opposition to “a great big new tax”, acknowledge that a carbon price is inevitable and desirable, and lend its weight to the effort to find the best formula. There is opposition and there is opposition for opposition’s sake, but this is a necessary reform that the Coalition should support.
Across this week the debate in this parliament has been focused on those who support economic reform and strengthening our nation for the future. To those that believe in opposition for opposition’s sake and simply wrecking reform, and clearly the Leader of the Opposition does, I would say it comes at the ultimate cost of the strength of this nation and the future of Australian

Here is a Prime Minister acknowledging that a price on carbon will (brace yourselves) raise the price of things.

It may sound like a small thing to those of us who have been advocating a price on carbon for a while, but for a politician - the Prime Minister no less - to admit it is a big step. I don't recall Kevin Rudd ever going that far - for him it was always talk of offsets and pensioners and working families not being worse off etc etc. But here is Gillard laying it all out - you put a price on carbon to change behaviour because costs go up (good old supply and demand).

Now yes we are a long way off getting there - and the final legislation may be weak (though less likely given the make up of this parliament) - but if you want to end up with this huge reform you need to start with the right attitude, and here she has it.

Gravitas? Who knows - or cares. Some people (including several observers) will never think she has gravitas (just as I never did of Howard). So let's drop the dumb term and any focus on superficial things she may have to do to please those who will most likely never be pleased by anything she does.

Focus on results - and also let's realise we're four months in, and I seriously doubt anyone would think to judge Hawke's or Keating's or Howard's or Rudd's Prime Ministership after what they had done after that length of time.