http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/11/19/Australia_review_Lurhmann_ticks_all_boxes_in_magic_epic

Australia review: Lurhmann ticks all boxes in magic epic

• Baz Lurhmann, Nicole Kidman at yesterday's Australia press conference

It’s a bold task to squash an entire country into a single celluloid. But if director Baz Lurhmann can be noted for one thing, then that is certainly his ability to take the plunge into ambitious projects with full gusto.

The results of his experiments however, have always maintained a split reception. You either love his boldness and his artistry, or you think it is over the top nonsense.

And while the fruits of his last work, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, could be easily dismissed as a post-modern jumble of baubles and trinkets – his latest film, Australia, has stripped back his gimmickry and revealed a full-hearted, sympathetic story teller – with an acute eye for not only the magic in our environment, but also the alchemy of human potential.

Bringing together pinnacles of our combined acting talents, landscapes, people, history and culture, Luhrmann weaves the fibres of our nation into a dense tapestry that is a striking celebration of our uniqueness – but also a glimpse of the soft underbelly of our darkness.

Set in 1939, with the threat of the Nazi menace an ephemeral buzz in the background, we are introduced to an English Aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), a zipped up prude who quickly finds herself in possession of a large cattle station in the Northern Territory, after her husband’s murder.

Acting as her reluctant guide of sorts is The Drover (Hugh Jackman), an enigmatic, yet fiercely determined and individual rogue, who despite being a white man, has an inexorable link to the indigenous people – an aspect of his personality that is met with disgust by his community.

As leads, they fill traditional roles, and Australia is a traditional film in the truest sense of the word.

Harking back to the sweeping epic thrust of Gone With The Wind and Laurence Of Arabia, Lurhmann’s film strides forward with a gushing sense of majesty, and embodies the spirit of these classic films with relative ease. It also gives a thorough ticking of all the important boxes which make up the characteristics of the classics.

But augmenting the high falootin’, and bringing the tone of the film truer to Luhrmann’s joviality is the guttural, warts-and-all quality of its Australian acting alumni cast.

The puffer-fish gills of Jack Thompson’s eternally drunk accountant, Kipling Flynn, are spread out on the screen with grotesque hilarity, and the lanky dodginess of Bryan Browns King Carney gives a frank friendliness along with a vicious streak that hints he could be a distant relative of Pando from Two Hands.

Infused in the mix is the solid support of David Wenham, John Jarratt, Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Hunter and Sandy Gore, making Australia almost a who’s who of our cinematic past – a yearbook of sorts that facilitates a healthy respect for our acting elite.

But despite the sweeping rushes, the comic relief, and the sexual tension between Kidman and Jackman, it is the quiet dignity of David Gulpilil’s King George and the astonishing performance of 13-year-old Brandon Walters’s Nullah that steal the show.

King George, the Aboriginal elder who rests high on the hill, watches over all proceedings – from the complex task of droving 1500 head of cattle, matched with the challenge of divining water in the face of dehydrated desert peril, right through to the annihilation of a city by Japanese Air Forces – it is King George that is the stone face and the sacred heart of the entire film.

Most importantly, King George watches over his grandson, the wizardly prodigious Nullah, who has quickly switched himself onto the hidden magic of his surroundings – it’s best seen to understand what the little man is capable of doing.

Nullah’s childlike wonder, slowly growing realization of the evils of men, and final accordance with his culture and spirituality, is the warm fluidity in a picture that could have easily turned into a stogy and stiff affair.

Luckily, Luhrmann’s direction maintains a balanced harmony – all strings are tightly wound and are plucked in a masterful symphony of romance, action, comedy, tragedy and triumph.

Australian audiences however, might grimace through a few instances of the film – where the appeal to the American and international markets peeks its head around corners to remind us that it is a part of the intention – but in the politeness of taking in a guest, its important to remember that at times you will be made a little out of sorts.

It’s hard to say if Australia will have the seismic impact of a runaway success like Crocodile Dundee – but given the incredible depth and scope of the film, it’s a celebratory postcard we can all be proud of.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/peter-hartcher/palins-prolife-code-loud-and-clear/2008/09/04/1220121427304.html

A snapshot of the scene just after Sarah Palin had finished her big address to the Republican National Convention was worth more votes than anything she had just said.

After she gave her spirited speech accepting the Republican nomination for the US vice-presidency, her family joined Palin on stage and handed over her youngest child, four-month-old Trig.

When Trig was born in April, Palin said that she "initially felt sad" when doctors had diagnosed the boy in her womb as a Down syndrome child.

"When we first heard, it was kind of confusing," she said. "It was very, very challenging. [But now,] it just feels like he fits perfectly. He is supposed to be here with us."

The 44-year-old Governor of the state of Alaska later added: "We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed."

As she embraced Trig on stage in the full glare of national attention, there was no stronger way of sending the message - this is a candidate who is deeply pro-life. That picture was worth millions of votes.

The issue of abortion is central to US politics. It was enough to swing the 2004 presidential election for George Bush. Astonishingly, Bush won a million more Catholic votes than his opponent, the Catholic candidate John Kerry, largely because Bush is staunchly anti-abortion and Kerry was not.

According to a poll by Time magazine in July, 20 per cent of likely voters said they would only vote for a candidate whose view was the same as theirs on abortion. For these people, abortion is the only issue. In the 2004 presidential election some 62 million people voted. If the same number of people vote in the November presidential poll, 12 million will decide their vote on the abortion issue. These very strongly committed "abortion voters" are split down the middle, roughly half in favour of legalised abortion and half opposed.

Until the announcement of Palin's candidacy, there was nowhere for a passionate anti-abortion voter to go. The Democrats' Barack Obama and his vice-presidential candidate, Joe Biden, are both in favour of the status quo, legal abortion on demand.

And the Republican candidate for president, John McCain, has a history of being equivocal in his anti-abortion position. For America's social conservatives, this was a source of deep disquiet. Many were planning to respond by staying home. Much of the Republican base, in other words, was on strike. Sarah Palin has changed that. She has given millions of anti-abortion voters a reason to turn out on November 4.

Some anti-abortion activists believe that they need only one more sympathetic judge on the Supreme Court to be able to reverse the historic 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalised abortion. And the Supreme Court judges are appointed by the president, albeit subject to confirmation by Congress. With Palin in the White House alongside McCain, the pro-life movement considers that its great goal may be tantalisingly close to becoming achievable.

Australian abortion politics exist in a parallel universe. A Tasmanian Liberal, Senator Guy Barnett, is sponsoring a motion that would end Medicare funding for abortions carried out between the 14th and 26th weeks of pregnancy. It is expected to be put to a vote in the next couple of weeks.

This has the potential to ignite a great political conflagration as the pro-life and pro-choice lobbies fire up. Abortion remains one of the most emotionally powerful issues in human affairs. But are the Australian political parties gearing up for a mighty struggle on this?

Not a bit of it. The Labor and Liberal parties have both decided that they will not put a party position on this. Both parties will allow their members a conscience vote. There are to be no party positions; only personal ones.

This is the standard approach in the Australian system to difficult matters of reproductive morality. It is one of the starkest differences between the US and Australian systems. Passions over abortion are stepped down in Australia even as they are stepped up in America, defused here even as they become more highly charged there.

The chief reason is that the parties know that this is an issue that can tear them apart, both of them. For instance, the Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson, and the deputy leader, Julie Bishop, have diametrically opposed positions on another abortion-related measure - whether Australian foreign aid should be made available to countries so that they can provide abortion advice.

Such funding is now banned as a result of a deal between John Howard, who wanted the Senate to agree to the privatisation of Telstra, and the now-retired Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine, who wanted the abortion advice funding cut off. Both got their way. The Rudd Government is reviewing the policy. Nelson wants the ban kept in place; Bishop wants it scrapped.

The party chiefs allow conscience votes in order to avoid bitter division. Does this short-change Australian democracy? In the last parliamentary vote on an abortion issue, members and senators voted in 2006 on whether to retain the health minister's power of veto over the abortion drug RU-486. In a conscience vote, 65 per cent of members voted to liberalise supply of the drug, and in the Senate 62 per cent supported liberalisation. Interestingly, this is broadly the level of polled community support for legalised abortion on demand.

So we get a broadly representative outcome, but without the bitter divisiveness. In a conversation with the conservative US political philosopher Francis Fukuyama last year, he asked what the Australian political position was on embryonic stem cell research. I told him that it had been approved by the Parliament but on a conscience vote, not on party lines. It was the way Australia handled all such issues. There had been impassioned speeches, but no great partisan clash. There was a long pause before he replied: "It must be nice to live in a country like that."

Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.

Whenever I travel overseas, I'm always glad to return home to my country, Australia. I suppose some of this has to do with being tired of living out of a suitcase; tired of the frantic pace where one feels one must fill every day with sight seeing activities; and the recurring thought that "this is costing a bloody fortune!". But I think it's more than that. In this country of mine that I love, my accent isn't out of place.; this is where I understand the cultural mores that were instilled in me during my formative years, and that make me feel rather privileged to be an Australian; this is where I belong. But, above all, this is where I can appreciate a luxury that most other countries that I've visited don't have. And that is the luxury of space.

I can remember reading that one of the highlights for Japanese tourists is to visit the outback in the Northern Territory where one can look around and see not another living soul. For them, this is a novelty they experience for the first time. I'm only now beginning to understand why they feel this way.

For in every country that I've ever visited, with the possible exception of New Zealand, space is at a premium. Yet, I've always had that luxury in this sparsely populated country of mine. In the small Western Queensland town where I grew up, each house was built on its own one acre block. Every summer weekend my friends and I would swim in the waterholes in the river, yes, bare arsed, as I recall. We'd go exploring the bush around the town. Sometimes we'd visit the waterhole that bears my grandfather's name, because he had a dairy farm nearby where he raised his ten children. I used to feel rather important when other kids asked my permission to swim there. I always generously gave it. They were not to know that the little farm had long been sold to a large cattle station nearby.

I live now on a quarter acre block in a city of 90,000 people. Yet I know I can be in the bush within ten minutes drive if I want to. I also know that the only place on this earth where I ever completely relax is in that little town where I grew up. I'll be forever connected to that little patch of ground in a dying outback town. Because that's my little patch.

And ever since I've returned from overseas, I've had a yearning to go back to my little patch. To visit my grandfather's grave, and to tell him that I visited the little village in Cornwall that he left as a child, and to reassure him that his father did the right thing when he emigrated. Because he gave us more than material comforts. He gave us space.

And I think that it is this space that is the soul of my country. And that is what the aborigines mean when they say that their spirits are linked to the land. There, in that space, their spirits can soar unimpeded by the earthly concerns that enslave we of European descent. I think I experienced it in my little outback town, but didn't recognise it. My aboriginal friends did, but they had forty thousand years start on me.

So, I've been listening to a CD of aboriginal spirit music that I bought in Alice Springs. You can listen to samples here. Close your eyes, and imagine yourself under the stars somewhere in outback Australia.

Then let your spirit soar.
 

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=374956&rss=yes