Le Pas Sage
(“The Naughty One” – 24 Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide, February 2026) This delightful French brasserie is in the north-eastern corner of the Square, tucked-in between the Pullman Hotel and the Griffins Pub. It is very pretty (though small) inside (one can also laze on the terrace out front) and the staff are fully switched-on, hip and amusing. The maître d charmingly explained that whilst we were in the premier wine state of Australia, they only served French wines – Hourra pour l’arrogance francaise!! We had: Médaillon de Poulpe – a fresh and colourful dish consisting of Octopus medallion, red capsicum coulis,…
Continue Reading →The Camp of the Saints
(By Jean Raspail) (1973) [Trigger Warning] Western self-loathing has been increasingly documented, with the focus rarely on shame (the healthy recognition of past cultural excesses and infamies) but more particularly on Guilt and Submission. And white people have had their anti-racism homework set. Despite and perhaps because of this, we’ve seen, in recent decades, an elitist multi-cultural rejection of assimilation, an undocumented invasion of the West, run by an unholy trinity of criminal networks, corrupt NGOs and cynical governments (on the supply side, sending away not-their-best; on the demand side, pursuing a growth mirage and co-opting a furtive voting demographic)….
Continue Reading →Lou, the Velvets, and Nico
(A celebration, at the Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide, 31 January 2026) The first record I bought with my own money was Transformer, which started a lifelong love of the music of Lou Reed. And a discovery of his really diverse work, travelling from poems of urban depravity to ones of great love and beauty. Did get to see him once, and he was wonderful, but he was definitely emblematic of the truism, ‘never meet your idols.’ Orson Welles didn’t sell a huge amount of tickets, but he made every moviegoer want to be a cinéaste. The Velvet Underground made every amateur…
Continue Reading →The Road
(By Cormac McCarthy, 2006) [It is timely to comment on this book, as we read a report in The Weekend Australian newspaper (24/1/26) that Federal Treasurer, Dr. Jim Chalmers, planned to read it over the summer break. Appropriate, for a man under whose stewardship Australia, economically, feels like it is circling the drain.] This dystopian, post-apocalyptic fable won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007, so we were duly warned. Evocative? Perhaps. Repetitious? Certainly. Dully and deliberately so. Fatuous? ‘Okay.’ Day after day – gray, ash, cold. Gather wood, light a fire, drink water, eat from cans, walk down a…
Continue Reading →Eternity (dir. David Freyne – 2025)
This TVC reviewer avoids weepies because they are for weak girls and, if she does accidentally watch one, will sit with defiantly non-running mascara whilst yawning at the tear-jerky bits. Unfortunately, one or two weepies have snuck their way through her defences (when Beth dies in Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 Little Women) and when Eddie Scissorhands goes up his mountain to make snow. What is it about Winona Ryder?). Films about the afterlife and memory can be strangely compelling (Heaven Can Wait, The Lovely Bones, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or ghastly like the schmaltz we haven’t watched, so…
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