The film began quite well but around the middle it began to wander off the track before coming back to the main theme of the alienation of a solitary and self-absorbed life coupled with a very implausible career of firing employees. George Clooney has the title role which does not sit well on him. He is okay but unimpressive especially when he decides to go mellow and become a nice man at his sister’s wedding. The whole bit about the wedding was schmaltzy and weak.

George’s character has a pragmatic sexual relationship with a rather unattractive person who is supposed to be the female version of the same callous character that George is. There is supposed to be a twist in the film but it’s not really a surprise. She was too unbelievable anyway. And that’s what is wrong with this film. The characters are one-dimensional. Clooney=selfish bastard, his playmate=also selfish, his boss=uber selfish. We get it. They are not nice people and they wreak havoc on the lives of fired employees.

I can’t help but wonder how the Brits and the French would have handled this theme. They would no doubt be more subtle and sophisticated. Unfortunately, Americans just can’t resist explaining everything. Even when the village idiot shouts “Enough, I understand what you’re getting at!” Americans have to continue with their examples and incidents until you wave the white flag. It’s often what is left unsaid that has the greatest impact and I wish that American movies would adopt that approach.

The only saving spark in the whole film is the young assistant that George takes on his trips. She at least provides some of the humour in the film. After trying to be dispassionate she discovers that the job is too soul-destroying. But then how many of us could last in that lousy job? Why would a company outsource its firing to strangers, anyhow? It simply is too incredible.

So what did I enjoy about the film, if anything? Well, it had no special effects, no violence, no car chases and no crudity. So that was good. I have to confess that I thought Reitman’s other effort, “Juno” was also a bit off. So perhaps I just don’t like his films. I am in the minority, however, so there you are.

I have heard that Wayne Carey who apparently can kick a football and a girlfriend has been put into the Hall of Fame. That’s Fame with an F not SH.

Two days ago some idiot “reformed” drug addict, who used to play football, almost brought our city to a standstill when he appeared in a football match. It was an anti-climax since he played badly, fell over, hurt himself and is now recuperating for the next month.

So now we will have to put up with progress reports on his health. He’s no example for our youth either, but all is forgiven if you play sport.

It’s not just the sportsmen who get off lightly when they commit a crime. I’ve already alluded to the aboriginal who sexually assaulted a four year old girl and got a suspended sentence.

Compare that leniency with the appropriate sentence given to a young couple in Germany who starved their baby daughter to death.

The couple were drug addicts and this is an important point because if they had been Australian the drug addiction would have been a mitigating circumstance as it often is with murderous drunk drivers. Had the couple been Australian sports stars then they would not have been sentenced at all. And had the couple been aboriginal then the do-gooders would have pleaded for understanding of their culture.

You see the law treats people differently even when it’s supposed to be blind and fair. I could add “deaf and dumb” to those attributes as well, but only for a price.

Even though it’s meant to take place in an urban setting in Michigan, it is essentially a good old-fashioned western. Solitary hero, Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), suffering from tragedies in the past, is fed up with humanity but comes good at the end and saves the day. There are goodies and baddies, and the goodies win, just the way, Eastwood and the rest of us would like it to be. I am calling the hero Eastwood because it’s Classic Eastwood we are watching.

Films are often full of promise at the beginning and somehow along the way they seem to stray from the denouement and fizzle out. It’s usually because the director doesn’t know how to direct a good ending and we are left dissatisfied. Or he simply doesn’t know when to shout “Enough”. So we walk out of the theatre wondering if we had missed something along the way.

But that’s not how it is with “Gran Torino.” The ending is satisfying and yet leaves you crying. You wish all bad people would get their come-uppins Eastwood style. It’s the “don’t mess with me or you’ll be very sorry” approach that warms the cockles of my heart.

And yet, the film has much pathos in it and I noticed that the film audience remained silent in their seats after the end of “Gran Torino.” That’s always a good test of whether they have been affected by it. And no, they weren’t asleep either.

From a logical point of view many of the scenes in the film are too black or white and characters are not rounded, but that’s the way of the western. Black hat fights with white hat and white hat wins. That’s how it used to be in the old days before political correctness. And there is something comfortably reassuring in Eastwood’s style of acting. He’s older but just as determined as he was when he said “Make my day” so long ago. It is important for him to be fair and fight fair even when he is violent. It’s not violence he wants but justice. He fights for the underdog and in this instance it is the oppressed Asian immigrants who live next door to him.

We expect the hero to win and he doesn’t let us down. He does it at a cost, though, but his life was over anyway after his wife died. The film opens with the funeral of his wife and here we are shown the dynamics in the family. His two sons have no interest in him and all they want is to inherit his home. Even his granddaughter is a bit of a greedy slag as are his two daughters-in-law. I wish that at least one member of his family would have had some redeeming features, just for the sake of balance, but there isn’t one.

No wonder he’s fed up with the lot of them. Well, you can’t choose family, can you?

Embittered and haunted he may be, but bravery redeems him after his kindly Asian neighbours win him over. It’s all a bit schmaltzy at this point and I actually feel that Eastwood overacts during the first half of the film. He is meant to be surly, but he walks around growling too much all the time as if he is uncomfortable being so racist towards his Asian neigbours.

Some critics wrote that only Eastwood could play the role of the disgruntled and prejudiced Korean veteran, but I think that Rod Steiger could have done it as well and perhaps Harvey Keitel. Nevertheless, Eastwood is terrific in the second half.

The second half of the film is definitely much better. As I said in my intro, the ending is worth it. There is nothing more exquisite than retribution perfectly executed. Classic Eastwood, directing, producing and acting is a dish to be savoured in today’s world of the “what’s in it for me” generation.

As it is, we can’t help feeling that Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) are a couple of spoilt American middle class brats of the Fifties who are simply disenchanted with their marriage. Surprise, surprise, she wants more out of life than a comfortable home and two children and he is bored with his very secure job.

Today as the economic crisis grows, this couple would be envied. People losing their homes and their jobs are bound to be less sympathetic of people who are emotionally unfulfilled, who want to find themselves, as the saying goes. That’s what I meant when I wrote that “Revolutionary Road” has been released at the wrong time.

During the post-war period of the Fifties, jobs were so secure that all the men in Frank’s office in New York city have time to sit around and hardly do any work. In fact, their primary concern is to not be caught loafing when the boss comes around. Frank is one of those unambitious men who found his war service more exciting than his current job in the big company. He is bored and doesn’t want the uneventful life that his father led. But is he prepared to do anything about it?

The film director, Sam Mendes, who is Winslet’s husband in real life, has tried to represent the Fifties by having everyone going around smoking incessantly and wearing Fifties hats to work. The Wheelers have a shiny car in the driveway and Frank says “swell” quite often, but I think that perhaps the Fifties effect might have been more credible had the film been shot in black and white. Kate Winslet, for example, doesn’t look plausible as a Fifties woman. Her appearance is more 21st century. DiCaprio passes for Fifties more convincingly because of his haircut and clothes but I think that Mendes has not succeeded in representing the period as he should have.

In my view, Mendes has chosen a period which is well and truly gone. Nowadays, people can travel wherever they like. They don’t stick to boring jobs for long. They can get abortions and women have more freedom to work outside the home. So it’s hard for the audience to become involved in issues that are in the past. And I don’t believe that “Revolutionary Road” is of any value as a historical documentary because it lacks rapport and authenticity. As entertainment value, it earns zero points.

As for the casting of the two main leads, well, this is not the first time they have appeared together in a film. Winslet and DiCaprio were star-crossed lovers in “Titanic” and I said it then and I will repeat it this time that Winslet looks too old to be DiCaprio’s love interest. He has a perpetually Peter Pan young boy look and the two of them together just don’t gel.

The other actors in the film are quite good but they mostly have cameo roles as the two leads dominate the scene. Even though the film was based on Richard Yates’ novel of the same name, one could have set the entire film on a theatre stage. We are well aware that the other characters act as foils for this couple. They are Fifties archetypes of conformist personalities.

The only character who is different, however, is the son of the real estate agent. He is mentally ill and has just been let out of hospital. His role is that of a Greek chorus, a commentator who explains to the dumb audience what the film is all about- just in case you didn’t get the message, loud and clear, that the Wheelers are not happy with their lot. And, of course, he advises them to be adventurous. Carpe Diem–now there’s a novel idea!

Anyhow, April Wheeler decides that they should go and sell up everything and live in Paris for six months. She believes that it will revive their marriage and Frank thinks her suggestion is “swell.” I suspect that had April lived in the Sixties she would have travelled to India for a spell at an Ashram and come back with a dose of diarrhoea.

The puzzling thing about “Revolutionary Road” is that although the Wheelers have two young children these are conspicuously absent from the home. While the arguments and rantings continue there is no presence of children and that seems very strange in the “Father Knows Best” age. It’s as if Mendes forgot about them from time to time and then brought them onto the set only when necessary. Even my husband commented on their continuous absence.

The film is slow and ends predictably. The storyline is not devastating as we were told to expect, but perhaps I have become too cynical be shocked by married couples being fed up with one another. It’s hardly an original theme and Winslet has acted in a very similar role to this one in “Little Children” (2006)

If anyone in the slums of developing countries saw “Revolutionary Road” they would wonder what all the fuss was about. Perhaps April Wheeler should have been offered a chance to take part in “Wife Swap”. And then the boring suburbs of Connecticut would have appealed to her a bit more.

Anyhow, back to Obama. I would have thought that he would arrive on water, walking on it, in fact, and then he would turn that water into wine. My point is that too much pressure is being placed on the poor man. He is expected to be the panacea for every ill in the world, apparently, and it’s so unrealistic.

The new President will have so much to take care of. The economy, the troubles in the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan, the health system, the tax system, the education system, the illegals, global warming and carbon whatsits all demand immediate attention.

For crying out loud, give the man a break! He is not Mighty Mouse nor is he the Messiah. He seems to be an affable and talented man who wants to do his best for America. And it’s pleasing to see a man of colour become President. But if one builds him up to be any more than human, not only will the honeymoon be brief but the marriage will be annulled. And that would be a shame.

Howerd was a very weird man who had terrible sexual problems. He was homosexual but was struggling against his urges since it was illegal to be homosexual before the late Sixties. He was also into paying people to give him manual relief, anywhere and anytime. It was pretty pathetic and Walliams’ portrayal left nothing to the imagination. So quite frankly, I can never look at Frankie again without wanting to puke.

That was last night, and so tonight I decided to watch “The Curse of Steptoe” about the relationship between Harry H. Corbett and Wilfred Brambell who acted as the father and son team of rag and bone men in the famous sitcom “Steptoe and Son”. As a production, it was quite superb, far superior to the Frankie Howard one.

But I was taken aback to discover that Wilfred Brambell who was Steptoe in “Steptoe and Son” was also battling with his homosexuality. When he was seen entering toilets for anonymous sex and even being arrested, I decided that the British novelist, George Eliot, was absolutely correct when she said that if you want to go on admiring your hero, then you must never meet him in person. You are bound to be disappointed.

Sometimes it is better not to know too much about the private lives of actors and other famous people. We need illusions and fantasies and we need heroes.

The truth is that nobody is perfect and we know that to be true and yet who of us wasn’t disappointed when we learned that President John F. Kennedy was off having affairs while his wife gave birth to their son?

Who of us wasn’t disappointed that Rock Hudson turned out to be totally not interested in women? And what about Mr Brady in “The Brady Bunch” who could never have been involved with Mrs Brady?

Of course, in our minds, we know that actors are only acting, but in this age of information, it would have been nicer not to know that it was all B.S. I certainly have no respect for Kennedy since discovering how promiscuous he was, and I can’t watch Rock Hudson in any romantic role any more. In a way, I feel that we women were conned and that’s an unpleasant experience.

Nowadays, actors don’t have to be secretive about their sexuality and that is certainly progress. It must have been stressful and even dangerous to live with all that subterfuge. Blackmail would have been a terrible reality as well.

So it’s good that people can be out of the closet and yet not suffer the consequences. Except in romantic leads, that is.

I can’t think of any actor who is openly gay and yet can play a romantic lead and be accepted for it. I suspect that Rupert Everett will never get a romantic heterosexual role in cinema ever again. There’s something about love scenes that make the audience want to relate to them. It’s part of our need to identify with the heroine. It’s quite ridiculous since we are prepared to accept that Superman can fly. But that’s the way it is.

I do wonder, however, what homosexual men thought of two heterosexuals acting in “Brokeback Mountain”? Did they feel the same way as women do about Rock and Rupert and countless others?

So please, no more revelations about the ins and outs of “icons”. It only spoils it, as George Eliot said.

I could go on about the plot. I could go on about the production. I could go on about the acting, directing, lighting, sound, and all those other cinematic drivel that criticis rave on about. But no words could do justice to one of the most brilliant films to grace our screens. This is the winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for 2008 and justifiably so.

So powerful that it makes “Shindler’s List”, which is also based on actual events, look like a stroll in the park. I simply can’t block out the atmosphere created by Stefan Ruzowitzky. The characters are not archetypes in the sense of goodies and baddies. They are real people with real emotions. As for the counterfeiter himself, Solomon Sorowitsch, so masterfuly portrayed by Karl Markovics (of Inspector Rex fame) I can still see his haunting face as I write this.

His presence is indelibly etched in my mind. Sorowitsch’s determination to survive because survival means defeating the enemy resonates with me. Giving in is no option. Neither is martyrdom for the dead cannot win. So Sorowitsch will resist in his own way and it is up to the audience to decide what price to pay for survival.

The best feature of this film is that it leads to debate about the human condition. In a way, it reminds me of “Papillon” and “King Rat” whose themes also dealt with survival. But “The Counterfeiters” is by far superior to those two.

If you want to know why the Jewish people can never, ever, surrender to their enemies, this film explains it all. And it does it in a compelling, exciting and believe it or not, darkly entertaining manner.

I had read about Vassar in literature and heard references to it in American films, so it was truly a pleasure to walk around its beautiful buildings dating back to the Nineteenth Century. I was in architecture heaven and would have loved to live on campus.

This is what money can do when it is used for causes more worthy than buying a football team. But money can also be used as a bribe and as a tool for propaganda.

We must be wary of the undue influence of foreign governments who want to invest in our educational facilities. We must question what a government such as Saudi Arabia wants to achieve by supporting an Islamic faculty in an Australian university.

What does Saudi Arabia expect from its financial outlay to Griffith University in Queensland?

We have already seen how students from Saudi Arabia demanded that university timetables in Victoria be altered to suit their prayer schedules. Will they also demand that they have a say in the curriculum at Griffith otherwise they won’t cough up the cash in future?

Will they try to exert secret pressure on the Vice-Chancellor of Griffith University so that he discriminates against lecturers who criticise Wahabism? A word here and a word there and before you know it, the country which spawned the 9/11 terrorists, has undue influence on our democratic nation.

In my opinion, it is quite acceptable to receive donations from philanthropists as long as there are no foreign strings attached or we will become puppets attached to those strings. As I have already stated, you get nothing for nothing. There’s always a catch. Matthew Vassar wanted to give young ladies a liberal education. And that was admirable. Supporting female education was a welcome ideal in 1861. Other philanthropists such as Carnegie and Stanford also supported universities, but they were Americans whose loyalty was to America. To me that makes a world of difference.

My question is, to whom are the Saudis loyal first and foremost? Whose interests do they represent when they hand over money to our universities? The interests of Australian students or their own?

After I picked myself up from the floor I noticed that a Mr Tim Blair had linked to my site. I am one of his fans and so I looked up the link. Tim had picked up my blog on the 2020 Summit. He suggested that his fans should read my entire post on the subject.

Well, so many of them did as he suggested that it totally blew the dashboard graph off the page. Which goes to show how popular and well respected Tim is in the blog world.

Thank you Tim.

So for a couple of hours there I was pretty ecstatic. Probably too ecstatic… because as P.G. Wodehouse says “just when you think life isn’t too bad, you round a corner and get slapped in the face by a wet eel.”

In this case, the wet eel was a Warning on the Google search results just below my site name,

This site may harm your computer!!!

“What in the name of….” and “Oh dear” said I (or something to that effect.) “Someone’s out to get me,” I thought and wondered who could have done this to me. The list of possible enemies was too long to ponder. They do say that if everyone is really against you then you aren’t paranoid. Not much comfort in that, is there? I was devastated.

So I asked an IT friend of mine to explain what the warning meant.

Apparently, there are some nasty types out there who want to use innocent web sites to distribute all sorts of stuff. The only thing to do was to reorganise my web site, which he did, and upgrade everything, clean up any possible plugs, and then ask Google to review my web site.

I wrote to Google as well and pleaded with them.

This was the ugly face of the internet and I was its victim for one whole and very miserable day.

Google wasted no time, thankfully, and it looks as if the problem has been taken care of. But I will never again be the same Pollyanna, sweet trusting soul that I was. This experience has scarred me emotionally.

I also have to be more careful about what words I use in my titles. Using the title “Up and Down in New Zealand” linked my innocent post to a porn site. Imagine indulging in fantasies while one reads about how hilly the terrain of New Zealand is. I don’t dare say any more or who knows where my post will end up.

A man dies and the entire media world goes crazy about possible reasons for his death. Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it a drug overdose? Could it have been murder?

Now the only reason for investigating his death is to find out whether foul play was involved. If it wasn’t then why can’t he be laid to rest? Accidents do happen, suicides happen. So what?

It’s as if a saint had gone to heaven. He was just an actor! Personally, I could never understand what he was mumbling about, because he came from the James Dean and Marlon Brando school of elocution. When I saw the previews of Brokeback Mountain I decided that I would have to spend too much time trying to figure out what he was saying, so I didn’t go to see the film. Nor was I interested in the subject matter, I must admit. Of course, whether I was a fan is of little consequence, and quite frankly he was more famous overseas than in Australia.

But apparently he had talent and it is sad that he died. But then it’s sad when anybody dies young. Still, his suffering is over but I do feel compassion for those he left behind who must be feeling that they should have done something to help him. It’s the living that I think about. They are the ones left weeping.

Whatever the reason for his demise, I wish that the media vultures would leave the story alone. They are so rapacious that it makes me sick. But it’s what they do and you can’t be angry with them when you go into show business.

People die everyday. From accidents, natural causes and suicides. Was he larger than life? I don’t think so. They say Heath hated celebrity. Well, if he did he could have gone back home and decided to do something else with his life. He should have acted in small theatres if acting was his only ambition.

We all choose what we want to do in life, even though sometimes we complain about it. In fact, most of the time we do exactly what we want to do.

I get a bit tired of celebrities who are only too pleased to accept the many privileges of being famous and yet want to go on being incognito or whatever. It doesn’t work that way. If you want to be a celebrity then you have to be prepared to be chased by paparazzi. They are your breadwinners and you are fair game. In fact, if it weren’t for them you wouldn’t be famous. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

It’s easy to become unknown again. Stop acting, go hide and before you know it, someone else will be chased around the city, especially if the publicist has let the media know where the new star will be. Isn’t it all a bit of a game?

Now that Heath has gone, there will be a flurry of activity while the vultures get their last drop of blood and then all will be laid to rest. He was only a man after all and nobody leaves this Earth alive. Some leave sooner and take us by surprise. Now that he’s gone he should be left in peace. All this fuss is degrading.