An open thread where you can, at your weekend leisure, discuss whatever you like.
72 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are overrated. Angelina Jolie showed good sense in not sleeping with the latter.
I have not slept with either of them either. Quite proud of myself.
Tom Cruise = crazy scientologist. Brad Pitt’s a bit mad I’m afraid.
Speaking of which, I think Jolie’s a bit nuts herself.
Who is the most normal person doing the rounds in Hollywood at the present?
Is there any truth to the rumour that a leading blogosphere personality will be one of the BB intruders going in on Sunday night? If so, who?
J.F Beck?
Haven’t they already had one liberal supporter in there? They’re down one girl with Angela gone. More likely to be two girls than guys.
What was Gianna thinking with the nurse’s outfit again tonight? They’ve reached the stage now where they’re totally ignoring her.
Is it you, Kim? Or you, Amanda, throwing us off the scent with your cunning suggestion of an RWDB?
Who is the most normal person doing the rounds in Hollywood at the present?
Naomi Watts.
I heart Gianna. Just read the diary, missed the dhow as I had to come into the studio.
Kate says Michelle will be her successful model friend who visits all the time.
God. *I* want to be someones model friend who visits all the tme. Its like a sitcom!
Maybe… hehe.
Or maybe they’ll send Amanda in to be Gianna’s model friend.
I don’t think FXH is going to give us any of his hard-earned now.
A model T maybe.
Can you watch the live feed from the net Amanda? It’s all happening!
Kate is something of a party girl when she’s trashed.
Why does she waste her charms and affection on the gormless shearer? Are Aussie girls all suckers for inarticulate country boys?
Think outside the square. Today we have teams like Bulls, Storm, Bulldogs and whatnot, Crusaders even. What a triumph for peace and aesthetics in sport if tomorrow night we can all raise a glass for the Mighty Waratahs! Go the Tahs!
I have tried a couple of times to get the live feed up and running but nothing doing.
I must be missing something - rugby (both codes) leaves me absolutely stone mullet bored, and so does BB. Is there something in the middle? Anything?
Tom & Brad over-rated in what sense, Kim? I sense we’re not talking about their technical proficiency at their art.
Most normal? Robert Duvall.
Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumy is a cartoon for 7 year old Indie-Yuppies in training.
Tony: You’re not from one of them ALF states are you?
As for actors, I believe that George Clooney is the closest thing that Hollywood now has to an old time Hollywood star like say Cary Grant.
Cruise was good in “Collateral”.
My AFL selections for the weekend: Melbourne (expected that one to be close), Geelong, Hawthorn, Brisbane, Sydney Swans, Adelaide, West Coast, Essendon (perhaps). In the minor leagues, Crusaders and Brisbane.
Rex, yes, I am, but I’m forced to confess AFL doesn’t really do it for me either. I’ve often wondered about my aversion for winter ball sports. I was crap at playing them, but that goes for cricket as well, which I love.
Cruise has been good in any number of roles, Brad Pitt less so.
Not being an ER fan, I haven’t seen Clooney in much but I liked Solaris. I think I’m in a small club there!
Curse you Rafe!
Clooney is a looney.
If Harrison Ford is still around, I’d call him relatively sane.
No, Mark - Solaris was pretty good, and Clooney was good in it. I’m a huge fan of the original (just love Tarkovsky), and I thought he did a better than average job of it.
And I’ll confess I really enjoyed both Ocean’s movies - I know it’s a commonplace, but the ensemble of Clooney, Pitt, etc really does have a charming “Ratpack” raffishness.
I haven’t seen the original, Tony - I really liked the remake. I think the original is now available on dvd?
Oh Tarkovsky puts me to sleeep, I did my honours thesis on Soviet cinema but could never sit through old Andrusha. That last one he made, set in Sweden was OK though.
To change the topic a little: It has long been my view that a great Keating redemption will eventually take place in this country, publicly, and historically. Witness evidence in today’s Age (cant find online link, Im afraid; op-ed piece.
People are already getting the message that the economic boom was largely his doing. Now Howard’s Johny-come-lately to the Senate reforms will reveal all the stupid, counterproductive ideological nasties. Come July, its goodbye Howard-light - hello, Howard bitter. And the real ideoligcal sacred cows - VSU, IR reforms are either completely daft and unworkable (VSU) or an economic and social calamity in the making.
And as for his 14% increase in real wages line. Bah! Does that average include executive salaries? Does it acount for the near 10% increase in effective tax rates over that period? Most importantly - does it acknowledge that these increases have occurred, essentially, under Keatings EBA system? The one they’re about to toss?
My feeling is that Howard will really on the nose come 2007. The question is whether the ALP will be up to the job.
Here’s the Keating link.
It’s well known that I’m a great PJK fan so I’m also glad to see more recognition of his contribution.
You want boring, Amanda, my thesis was on use of ceramics in cylinder head design. Makes the average Soviet era film look like Die Hard.
Tarkovsky’s long & slow, and so boring becomes a matter of personal taste (I can’t abide Barry Lyndon, for example, although I generally like Kubrick). Stalkers is just mesmerising - while watching it I just lose all sense of time.
Dunno if any of them are available on DVD - I’ve only ever seen them on the big screen at festivals, and have really avoided giving them the small screen test (because I suspect they won’t make the translation well).
My honours thesis was on the political strategy of the Miners Federation in the Accord years and the abolition of the Coal Industry Tribunal.
My honours thesis was on the penetration of clay by root hairs.
‘Tahs to win!
Get a a move on Geelong and Hawthorn, you bludgers!
My honours thesis was on the anthropology of prosthetics use.
So far Rafe’s honours thesis is the sexiest - penetration, root, hairs.
Stop Mark, you’re turning me on. ‘Hairs’!
Mmmmm.
Seriously, though, I happen to know of some cutural studies heads, possibly at UQ, got an ARC on porn narratives. Imagine being the research assistant!
I know the Research Assistant in question, Hermes. Suffice it to say not all of his colleagues in Sociology regard this as serious research…
Mark you just have to see Tarkovsky’s Solaris. I love Tarkovsky. Andrey Rublyov is a masterpiece. The Sacrifice is very mediative also. Stalker may be mesmerising by in the end, Solaris is Tarkovsky’s masterpiece. Also I reccomend the book by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, in fact anything by that author but also The Futurological Congress (P.K. Dick before P.K. Dick) and The Cyberiad (a collection of short stories of ‘Robot Fairytales’, it is a marvellous work).
I never watched E.R, I’ve seen Clooney in several things, (Three Kings, Oceans Eleven, Intolerable Cruelty on tv just the other day, for example), he just exudes this charisma, old time Hollywood charisma. A sort of urbane but masculine charm. Pitt tries hard but fails to hit the spot. Cruise has almost hit the spot in some roles, but I think that Collateral is his best dramatic role so far (Minority Report was good, but 30 mins too long).
Tony it’s funny you mention Barry Lyndon, I fell asleep during it, and like you I generally love Kubrick. The English Lit types over at The Valve praised it, while subtly mocking Kubrick in general and to my mind they, as English professors, fail to understand cinema almost completely. They see cinema as merely storytelling, and dissect a film’s narrative only. What they neglect is the nexus of the cinema’s uniqueness, that is, its cinematic technique that makes it cinematic (as opposed to novelistic, for example). Kubrick I feel is a master of this art, his films are what my wife Lisa, once termed as ‘pure cinema’. Narrative is certainly present, but as only a package of elements including things like mise-en-scene, framing, camera movement, editing, soundtrack and sound effects. Funnily in all the comment action on that thread, the most praised of Kubrick’s films was The Shining, and the one film least mentioned if at all was 2001. I feel that many academics shun 2001 for it’s popular sci-fi character, when it is precisely Kubricks real cinema masterpiece. Many characteristic sound and visual idiosyncrasitic tropes of Kubrick’s film either first appear, or appear to their greatest extent, in that film. (such as: the symmetrical shot, especially the doorway shot, the deep focus shot, the on-off harsh sound editing). Not to denigrate The Shining. It’s soundtrack is breathtaking beautiful. But a high minded English literaryness is not always the best way the approach the cinema.
Sorry to go on for so long. I’m soon off to the most important game of rugby this weekend, and no, cs, it certainly doesn’t involve the Tahs, but it does sort the men from the boys for the top 8 rankings of the NRL season - Easts V Canberra at Gosford stadium.
Hermes, one of the lead investigators, Alan McKee was at UQ but is now in Creative Industries at QUT. I think from memory that Catherine Lumby from UTS - well known for the gender consultancy to the ARL - is also one of the researchers.
I thought she was at Sydney - but she must have moved on. However, flicking through the website I discovered the best named academic for such a project in the Department of Gender Studies at Sydney - Dr Natalya Lusty. She teaches Sex, Violence and Transgression.
Thanks, Rex - I’ll see if it’s on dvd.
I have one of Lem’s books lying around in the “read after thesis completion” pile.
Hermes, what are you saying about UQ? The reason I’m moving up to Brisbane is because my wife is scored a position on the faculty of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, which has strong links to the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.
Maybe it _does_ make you blind
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Health/Viagra-linked-to-blindness/2005/05/28/1117129925885.html?oneclick=true
Hotbed of cultural studies-ism is EMSAH! CCCS does some good work - though my criticisms of the political orientation of cultural studies are well known. There is also an aging Marxist component in EMSAH who still like teaching literature. There was a fine tradition of left political activism in the old English Department but the cultural studies people don’t carry it on.
I don’t know too much about the internal politics in the School. I used to work one floor above them when I worked in Social Science at St. Lucia but there was very little socialisation between humanities folk (with the exception of the Historians and the Studies in Religion people) and the social scientists.
The people I do know in EMSAH - one who was my Lecturer as an undergrad and one who teaches creative writing whom I met through a poetry festival - are both thoroughly nice folks.
Well, Lisa’s there for Film, Australian Film (Prof. Tom O’Regan wrote the book) and Genre Studies. Her thesis was the cultural reception of the human image in digital cinema, a history of the human image and the doppelganger in literature and media. Before that she’s been teaching Electronic Media In Perspective, Censorship, and other subjects at UNSW.
They’re very well regarded for their research record, Rex. I’m sorry I don’t have too much more to tell you but the divide between the social sciences and the humanities is a real one - probably to the detriment of people on both sides.
The St. Lucia campus itself is beautiful and a great place to work - library very good, staff club and Red Room good drinking holes, pizzas at the Schonell pizza caffe are the best and the cinema’s great too - and excellent physical surrounds. Coffee at Wordsmiths is over-priced and shithouse, though, and the bookshop is a disappointment.
Tony, my *thesis* wasn’t boring. My thesis, in fact, was a real page turner. Tarkovsky was/is boring but I managed to get through the thing barely mentioning him. I focussed on Askoldov’s The Commisar which turns up on SBS sometimes and is bloody brilliant.
“the divide between the social sciences and the humanities is a real one” - who’d've thunk it, eh!
Keating is deserving of a lot of recognition - but he ought to watch out he doesn’t queer his legacy by a Whitlam/Fraser/Hawke-like desire to be loved and respected by everyone (and so hold forth at every opportunity about everything). It’s one thing I agree with Phillip Adam’s about - Keating got out of politics too young.
Well, Amanda, you’re one up on me there - both the subject of my thesis and the weighty tome itself were stultifyingly, stupendously boring. I think that’s why I passed - no-one read it, they just weighed it.
Yes, I still like the suggestion someone made on a blog somewhere that Keating should go and become the new New Labour PM when Blair steps down!
Amanda - you’re lucky you were interested in your thesis. I wanted to do a critique of the Accord and a broad study of the Labor-Union relationship but was told this was too big and would be more appropriate for a PhD. What I was actually interested in was cultural change in the labour movement and its relationship to wider social trends, but I ended up pouring over minutes of Miners’ union meetings instead!
Still it was a very worthwhile exercise in terms of my intellectual development.
Yeah but you both did worthwhile, intellectually prodcutive things. I just stuffed arund watching movies and making up pomo jargon as I went along.
My honours thesis was a history of SBS, which I found very interesting, which has led me into a PhD into the ethnic media more generally, which I find terrifyingly broad. 18 months to go.
Long live cultural history. Death to po-mo jargon!
By the way, the 30th anniversary of the first transmissions of Radio Ethnic Australia—later SBS—is this June 9. Just so you all know.
I just stuffed arund watching movies and making up pomo jargon as I went along
But Amanda you could be the new Fenella Kernebone one day!
Was Hayek mentioned in Rafe’s thesis? If not, why not?
If Rafe didn’t is he responsible for the historical crimes of the Left?
Saturday afternoon alt.country goodness listening: Neko Case and Her Boyfriends.
Amanda, I put it to you that you are the Fenella Kernebone of the Australian blogosphere.
Is that good? I admit now to skimming over the Internet Kernebone Wars. I am less Roger Waters and more Mickey Dolenz.
amanda should that not have been Mike Naismith?
my lifetime thesis is on country music and it’s effect on interstate road haulage patterns in sustenance and tragedy.
The Crusaders beat the gallant Waratahs 35-25 to claim there fifth Super 12 title.
Can some-one send out a search party for Chris? He needs a friend or two with him right now.
Well I’m deeply impressed, Amandachka. Molodyets, prelestnaya baryshnya!
I doubt it’d be Mike Nesmith, Brownie - too wholesome (gad, the man wrote songs for Linda Ronstadt!). I suspect Amanda is aware of all the implications of invoking the darker, more troubled Dolenz. Maybe not Roger Waters, but perhaps Sid Barratt?
Bugger the Tahs. The Eels won which is all that counts and if you tipped ‘em (like Amanda did) you have some bragging rights come Monday.
Bah! Eels scheels. Tahs bahs. Roosters caned Canberra 30-16 - two Canberra tries were dead dodgy video ref decisions.
I was at the game Rex. Roosters looked the better side but could not seem to finish the Raiders off. Raiders with about 20 to go and 8 points behind had a penalty right in front. They took the tap instead of the 2 points. If they had taken the points it would been a converted try the difference. Would have been very interesting.
Can’t comment on the video ref. Had a bad angle on the screen and was too far away.
I was very nervous in the middle of the 2nd half. It didn’t help that Finch was off injured and young Jamie Soward had to do it all by his lonesome. Very poor tactical mistake by Canberra not to take the 2 points on offer.
Matt Adamson’s a thug, laying into Crocker on the ground like that.
Spaciba, Fedya.
Dolenz, definately. Very definate resmeblance.
Well, as it happened, the Tahs were never in it …
… but we’ll be back, and better for the experience.
i just have this vision of the the mothers of all the ‘Tahs team playing rugby in a room with peeling wallpaper, knee deep in water as rain pours gently through the interior.
That is my Solaris moment. I’m with Rex on Tarkovski. Who else would put his own mum in a film, and then ultimately put his son in the last film, as a pledge to the future, just before he died of cancer?
That is personal cinema. You are right about Lem too, in small doses, since he is such a dedicated philosophically driven science fiction writer.
Chris, you’ll have to get them over here next year on our, if I may use the word, territory.
We didn’t even get radio coverage, the local ABC preferring a who-cares-apart-from-the-result stoush between the Broncos and the hapless Rabbitohs.
We were completely outclassed Brian. The five time finalists, three time champions, who spanked us badly in the round, never gave us a look on their home ground. They really are a fabulous football team, a complete team. Great forward pack, great halves, no slouches anywhere else, and speed to burn. The coach also seems a cool dude.
Our tactics were abominable. Repeatedly we kicked scarce posession straight back to … back to them, for godsakes. They attacked Grey and Vickerman with success - audacious assault on two players who have been Tah pillars all year. McKay also looked ordinary, and Rogers again had one of those mixed performances, notably failing to fall on a loose ball to concede a try, and being bamboozled in defence.
There were some good performances in defeat. Turinui played immaculately in attack and courageously in defence. Tiquri had a good game, Waugh stood right up, and the forwards generally performed well - must have killed them to see so much ball kicked away. Hewatt played well with out luck, and was stupdily pulled too early for Shepherd.
All that said, we never got a glimpse, and all the paper talk about “courageous Tah comeback” is crap. They had a deep lock on it from the get out, and relaxed a touch in the end, allowing us some historical face-savers.
Still, Tahs fans had a great season, with notable victories over the Brumbies at their place, the Reds, a top-shelve South African stanza, and it was great to finally make the godamned final. We’ll be all the better for the experience next year.
I will desist from any comments about the Reds.
Chris, that was a better report than any I’ve read, but not a pretty story from this side of the Tasman. Thanks.
I am officially forgetting the Reds too! Well, I’ll try! Quentin Hull the young ABC bloke here (hails fron Wagga) reckons they have good young talent. But it seems the best are going everywhere else. The latest is they’ve commissioned a review from John Buchanan and a management bloke. Forget them for 6-10 years, realistically.
Brian, fwiw, and i haven’t got a clue, my mail keeps telling me that the big problem lies with the coach, who I’m also told has QRU management responsibility, making it hard to do anything about him. Forgotten his name temporarily, but I wholeheartedly agree on the basis that a couple of years ago he left Mark Ella out of his best Australian team, not even putting him on the bench! Has to be a complete idiot on that basis alone.
Jeff Miller, of course.
Chris, that almost has to be right. Something smells, but you don’t hear about it here in the media.
Before him they had Andrew Slack who found out as soon as he got the job that he really didn’t like coaching.
Before that it was John Connolly. I seem to remember that there were complaints with him that the ball never got beyond the five-eighth.
As it stands we are going to have three teams in Oz and one Godawful muddle.
Brian,
You were asking about Parra’s new half Tim Smith the other day. Check out this article.
Thanks, Irant. Looks like the difference between a footballer and an athlete playing football.