Keywords: Life Is A Franchise
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INTERNATIONAL
- Garry Westmore
- 20 October 2015
3 Comments
Hollywood need not deny the violence cartels have perpetrated upon one another, members of the public, police and military. But to almost exclusively engage with Mexico in terms of this violence provides a badly limited perspective on that country. Hollywood does something similar when it goes to Africa and tells only stories of warlords and child soldiers. To do so brings nothing to the conversation, but merely exploits tragic situations for the benefit of laughs and action.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 08 October 2015
2 Comments
A Black Mass is a travesty of the Catholic Mass in worship of the devil. In this instance it is a metaphor for FBI agent Connolly's devotion to violent criminal Bulger, due in part to the social benefit he attains through his association with this powerful criminal, but running all the way back to a formative childhood encounter that is hinted at but not articulated in detail. Of the flatly villainous Bulger and the morally complex, wilfully compromised Connolly, the latter is the more palpably evil.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Michael McVeigh
- 01 March 2015
With Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) winning the Best Picture Oscar, a lot of people are pointing out the fact that three of the last four Best Picture winners are about movies, or the act of making them. That's not including 2011 winner The King's Speech, which was about the art of performance. That Hollywood loves itself a little too much is an obvious, and probably valid, conclusion to draw. But the deeper question to ask is why films like Birdman resonate so strongly. Read more
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins, Michael Sharkey and Chris Wallace-Crabbe
- 02 December 2013
3 Comments
The diggers' catchcry, liberty, saw fascism a'yawning/ enfranchisement followed suit, with racism adorning/ its streamlined passions for the cause — White Australia Policy a'borning.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 21 March 2013
1 Comment
Frank Brennan's address 'Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in the Constitution' presented at the 18th National Schools Constitutional Convention, The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, 21 March 2013.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Michael Sariban
- 23 October 2012
4 Comments
When ideology smashed the cathedrals, turned icons into rubble, congregation into crime, religion fell down in a heap, or seemed to ... Most people believed they knew better: countless lips kept doggedly whispering the fine-print headlines of saints. If the State was a rock, religion flowed round it.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Michael Loughnane
- 12 April 2011
6 Comments
‘I don’t like middle class people very much,’ said Joe Bageant in an interview for the documentary Deer Hunting with Jesus. Bageant championed the cause of the ‘white redneck’, a social group he saw as being one of the most marginalised and disenfranchised in America.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 07 March 2011
13 Comments
Media coverage of the Church usually assumes priests form a homogeneous and disciplined body whose uniformity derives from fear of authority. Priests are more like franchisees than employees, independent and always ready to grumble. This does not amount to disaffection.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ouyang Yu and Barry Gittins
- 05 October 2010
4 Comments
No good deed goes unplagiarised; no noteworthy scheme leaves the department unharvested. Lack the intellectual capital to spend on an informed decision? Set multiple minions to work then cherry pick the outcomes, signing off with your own trotter.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Various
- 07 September 2010
3 Comments
somewhere, .. on a dusty stump .. or parched rock ... far from here on the road inside myself .. patiently fanning flies .. and hoping that I'll have the heart .. to travel on and not look back.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Adrian Phoon
- 08 July 2010
4 Comments
The toys are brought to a landfill, where they are
dragged towards an incinerator, a fiery pit equivalent to any
vision of Hell confected by Dante. It's harrowing stuff for an animated feature, but you can never tell what the toys find more threatening: death
itself or the despair of becoming obsolete.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Smith
- 10 December 2009
1 Comment
Much can be achieved in cooperation with friends who don't necessarilyshare the same faith or any faith at all. If you're homeless, who careswhether an atheist, a Christian or a Buddhist provides shelter?
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