Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Un-Australian
(26 January, 2016) When you start a thing, who knows where it ends? Throw a party, prepare to make new friends. Make a nation, make your nation state From plasticine, so to shape its fate. I watch TV and see this once great land Has changed and absolutely nothing’s planned For me: I’m persona non grata; I’m packing, and leaving, to foreign laughter. I feel a stranger, right here, right now, I’m going, I’m gone, if you’ll allow. [Note, It is instructive to track the Australian of the Year Award, which has become an Australia Day feature since its inception in 1960. The first…
Continue Reading →Goodfellas
(Dir. Martin Scorsese) (1990) Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) – by Irish Dad out of Sicilian Mom – doesn’t get school at all. He’d rather hang around and run errands for the local gonifs. And for about 30 years, it pays, but all bad things must come to an end. Probably Marty’s best film, a generational gangster saga both comedic and dramatic. Full of rich characterisation and smart, funny performances, authentic violence, amoral fun, and brilliantly directed. There are many truly inspired set pieces, such as the long tracking shot where Henry takes his girl Karen to a nightclub via the tradesman’s entrance; the bar-room ‘argument’ between psychotic…
Continue Reading →Monster
I’m in love with a monster, She means everything to me, Goes out all night, I know not where And comes home after three. Wheresoever have you been? She smiles negligently, Never you mind; I think you’ll find That you cannot suppose There’s blood on my clothes. So I pout, crinkle my mouth And do a Bogart wince. If she is stopped, will I be copped For my silence then and since?
Continue Reading →Good Night, and Good Luck.
'How do we gas this up?" "We could get Dianne Reeves to sing a few tunes..."
(Dir. George Clooney) (2005) Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908 – 1957) knew he was on a winner, in the early 1950s. There was a cold war on. There were active attempts to infiltrate American government and security services by Soviet agents and fifth columnists. The only thing is, the junior Senator from Wisconsin couldn’t prove any of it, but he carried on as if he could, and would. A real problem was therefore lost in the fog of McCarthy’s bombast, bluster, dreamed-up lists of traitors, Senatorial kangaroo courts, and perversion of natural justice and the Constitution. Eventually, he was ‘censured’ (or…
Continue Reading →Winter is Coming
'Winter is Coming and I don't care...' (photo c/- Russian Presidential Press and Information Office)
(Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped) (by Garry Kasparov) When the Soviet Union finally bit the dust, and the new Russia elected itself a vodka-swilling party animal (Boris Yeltsin) as President, who could have foreseen that a mere few years later, an obscure KGB Lieutenant, a colourless unknown, would assume power, and rise to the status of absolute dictator after the style of that chap Hitler? Well this fellow, Garry Kasparov, did. He has suffered for it, certainly, but in the face of ignorance, cowardice and corruption, he is a valuable Cassandra to remind us what President…
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