13 schoolyards, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 76 of 114

Vale Utopia (the Australian one)

The fact that the final episode of Utopia involved the Nation Building Authority missing out at an awards night was yet another might big clue that whatever Working Dog were seeking to achieve with this sitcom, a bluntly realistic look at the infrastructure management of this once-great nation probably wasn’t it. (ok, sure; there probably... Read More »

Something To Think About

Twitter time: PMJG questioning why ABC isn't making an At Home With Tony if it wasn't another gendered attack on her #GillardMelb — Comtesse de Illyrie (@OliviaIllyria) October 7, 2014 “PMJG”, in case you were wondering, is Julia Gillard, currently giving a talk in support of her autobiography. And while we tend to think the... Read More »

Turning Up Your Toes

And so Greg Fleet’s long awaited sitcom Die On Your Feet died the way it lived: ignored by pretty much everyone. Hey, members of the Australian media rabbiting on about how Please Like Me is “the best comedy you’re not watching”; how about mentioning the comedy starring actual big comedy names like Greg Fleet and... Read More »

Le Petite Mort à L’arrivée

So Australian comedy actor Josh Lawson has turned writer-director and made a film called The Little Death. But how to get your small quirky comedy noticed in a cinema marketplace where half a dozen films from overseas debut every week? Maybe like this: Why is Josh Lawson bashing Australian cinema? You’d think that a guy... Read More »

Critical Failings (part 17 of a seemingly endless series)

It’s a sad indictment of the mental prowess of the people who run the Australian media that they seem to think hiring people who work in an industry to comment on that same industry is in any way useful to their readership. Oh sure, we can see how they’d come to that conclusion: who better... Read More »

We’ll Take It For As Long As It’s On Offer

Nice things: we just can’t say enough of them about Shaun Micallef. It’s not just that he (and his trusty regular cohorts, co-star Francis Greenslade and writers Gary McCaffrie and Michael Ward) are funny: he’s hard working too. Not for him vanishing for a few years in some behind-the-scenes gig or personal project no-one ever... Read More »

It’s All Fun & Games Until Someone Gets Hurt

Press release time! ABC APOLOGISES FOR THE CHASER’S MEDIA CIRCUS ABC TV has today issued a pre-emptive apology for the whole series of the Chaser team’s new show, The Chaser’s Media Circus, which starts on ABC on Wednesday 15 October at 8.30pm and continues for 8 weeks. “Looking forward a few weeks, we’ll definitely have... Read More »

Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number

How to explain this? Currently halfway through its ten-episode second season, Please Like Me steadily gaining the attention of local audiences. Perhaps it was ‘Josh Thomas baggage’ – as cultural critic Dion Kagan dubs it in his wonderful Metro Magazine article – that kept local audiences away. “Josh Thomas Baggage”. There’s the name of our... Read More »

Heaven Is A Place On Earth

Has anyone put together a program to randomly generate Utopia episodes yet? It shouldn’t be all that hard, going by this list of discussion points we just whipped up: *Malfunctioning office equipment / computer (VERY IMPORTANT) *Interchangeable dialogue for the two ditzy office assistants (though their running jokes don’t overlap – if one is struggling... Read More »

It Seems You Can’t Spell Community Without Money

Press release time! MEDIA RELEASE For immediate release Community Television Press Release In a statement on his website today Malcolm Turnbull justifies his recent shock decision to axe community television services by quoting some audience statistics that throws into question whether the sector deserves a place on the spectrum.As with all use of statistics, it... Read More »