Voicing Doubts

As October 14, Referendum Day, beckons, Australians are asked whether to say “Yes” or “No” to the insertion of a new Chapter (IX) with a single section, s.129, into the Commonwealth Constitution. The key Chapters in the existing Constitution set out the main sources of power, and how that power is balanced, between the Federal Parliament (Chapter I), the Executive Government (Chapter II), the Judicature (Chapter III) and the States that complete our federal system (Chapter V). In Australia’s Federal system, the States have exclusive legislative power over their territories, but the Federal Government can override this by having the…

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A Double for Me

September 29, 2023 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | AUSTRALIANIA, LIFE |

Sunday 24 September 2023: Glenelg v Sturt Grand Final(s) The Big Day dawned, and it was warm, a little like 50 years before. A Glenelg v Sturt double-header, with both challenging for a Premiership at Reserves and League level. The Reserves Grand Final was a tight tussle all day, with over 10 lead changes. It took until half way through the last quarter for the Bays to grab the game by the throat, winning 11.10 (76) to 10.6 (66). Vindication for a dominant season, with a number of players unlucky to miss selection for the main event. The Main Affair…

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Valley of the Dolls (Jacqueline Susann, 1966)

August 21, 2023 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | FILM, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

In 1945 Anne Welles is a prissy but astonishingly beautiful young woman who will do anything to get away and stay away from her small home town.  She trips in, all nice and fresh, to New York and immediately gets a job with a marvellous legal firm that specialises in managing movie stars’ contracts.  Her new friend Jennifer North is astonishingly beautiful too but most importantly she has SENSATIONAL KNOCKERS.  Everyone admires her boobs.  The brain dead but astonishingly beautiful singer she marries wants to drink from them (vomit). The sensitive upright senator she is later engaged to calls them…

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Barbie (2023 Dir. Greta Gerwig)

August 19, 2023 | Posted by Lesley Jakobsen | FILM, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |
Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and Charlize Theron glammed up.

One of these three plays Barbie in the eponymous movie. No, not that one, not her either. That one. I know!? Weird, right?

Not the least weird thing about the ‘Barbie’ film is the casting.  Margot Robbie is just not…Barbie enough…but she does invest the role with a certain joie de vivre and that’s something.  Our Barbie (‘Stereotypical Barbie’) lives in a lovely dollhouse world where all the Barbies party and sort of wander about doing physics and stuff.  The Kens don’t do anything and are deeply stupid.  (Our Barbie’s Ken’s job is not surf lifesaver, as so many people mistakenly believe. His job is ‘beach’).  Fittingly, Ken is played by Ryan Gosling, but it might as well have been Ryan Reynolds or…

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Oppenheimer

(Directed by Christopher Nolan) (2023) On 16 July 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated, at a test site named “Trinity”, in New Mexico, USA. It went so well that, on 6 August 1945 at 8.15 am, the US tried it on an actual city: Hiroshima. A blinding flash shot over the city, and then some 100,000 people were vapourised. The morning turned dark; a priest, Father Kleinsorge, wandered in the garden of his mission, dazed and bleeding, to see his housekeeper, Murata-san, crying out “Shu Jesusu, awaremi tamai!” (‘Our Lord Jesus, have pity on us!’).* Of course, President Truman’s…

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