The ABC's new AFL-based sitcom (starting tonight) GROUND UP is a return to tightly plotted office comedy a la THE GAMES, and (for the most part) it's kicking goals. My review is over at @screenhub.bsky.social: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

The secret to breaking into *any* creative field is always the same: be really good at sucking up to people already working in that field, preferably those in a hiring position

Roller coaster of emotions as a major distributor contacts me about quoting my review of a current film as I rapidly realise everyone else hates the film so I’ll look like a chump but the posters are already printed so where can they even use my quote?

Rare to see a two word review get both words wrong but I see Jim Schembri has called the latest SCARY MOVIE “sufficiently funny”

This preview of SCARY MOVIE (they’ve dropped the “6”) is filling up fast, either this franchise still has legs or people just love seeing movies for free

It'd be nice if every time the state government did a review of local bus routes the PTUA didn't submit a proposal to make the bus route I use basically useless for anything but going places I don't want to go, but here we go again

Every time I pass Sarah Henderson's office (it's on a main street in Geelong), I'm reminded that she was voted out by the actual residents of Geelong then the Liberal Party parachuted her into a senate seat because it just wasn't right that her electorate chose someone else to represent them

Sydney Film Festival: We just got eight new films direct from Cannes! Melbourne International Film Festival: We just got hacked, don't think they got your credit card details!

Of course conservatives can (and do!) make art. Even the current gaudy culture war Trumpist lot are making art - just because it almost entirely exists as shitposts and dumbarse provocations and plastic surgery and scams doesn't mean it's not valid as a kind of performance art

One of the fun things about watching movies like BOYZ N THE HOOD, MENACE II SOCIETY or even STRAIGHT OUT OF COMPTON is that - unlike every other kind of movie made in the US - they consistently portray cops (ok, the LAPD) as the biggest loser dorks imaginable, 100% schlubby middle-aged white chumps

I feel like we’ve entered the era where the US tells other countries they “won’t allow” things and then those things happen while everyone else laughs

Just read a review that said the problem with The Mandalorian & Grogu was that “the characters don't really learn anything” and I have some bad news for that critic about the nature of corporate owned characters designed largely to sell toys

Thinking of pitching an article about the difference between movies where knives are used for stabbing and movies where knives are used for throat-cutting. Reckon there’s a good 8000 words there

Reading yet another “sorry I made a basic factual mistake, I used AI to-“ apology and yeah just straight in the fucking bin with any supposed professional writer using this bullshit

Reading that Spielberg’s latest film is “his best in over twenty years” is a reminder that for the average audience member for mainstream blockbusters he hasn’t made anything decent in their lifetimes

MAKE THAT MOVIE is the funniest thing I’ve seen this year and I’m fairly confident it won’t be beaten in 2026 - over at @screenhub.bsky.social I act like a hype man for a show that doesn’t need it: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

All my AusPol newsletters seem to be converging on the same point, which is "why won't the electorate vote the way I want them to vote?"

In my & @morrbeat.bsky.social’s novel ‘The Hot Guy’, the cinema where the Hot Guy works screens a program of submarine movies headlined by ‘K-19: The Widowmaker’, which his coworker Renton lobbies for because his website’s “oral history” of it got loads of traffic from a website called SubsAndDoms

MOTHER MARY but it’s Flavor Flav needing a new clock

Watching yet another movie where a young persons romantic life is a choice between a hottie they’re physically attracted to and a dork they’re friends with and every single time these movies get it wrong

John Safran's new doco is interesting in a lot of ways, including you get to see a turn of the century edgelord not exactly backtracking but at least acknowledging that his old work hasn't always held up: www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews...

by the way I forgot to mention i *do* have a patreon and I only ask for a dollar a month and upload rather frequently. I'd say 12 dollars a year is a fair bounty https://www.patreon.com/flemishdog

The one piece of lost media I'd do almost anything to see again is the (maybe Australia-specific?) trailer for the 90s remake of KISS OF DEATH where the voiceover said it "Pumps maximum thrash"

I still think they'll start giving these away in schools (maybe as an anti-cheating device - "now we can see exactly what they're looking at!") and after a while there'll be a generation that sees them as basically normal

Turns out my PLR payments are holding steady! It's especially impressive as I and @incrediblemelk.bsky.social were told more than once our kind of "brilliantly funny and romantically insightful"* novels were the kind of thing libraries threw in the trash after six months *AP Morris, personal blog

I'm increasingly not interested in *any* discussion about Australian film coming from someone wanting to grow the industry just so they can get a job in it. If you're complaining that there's no low-budget Australian films, all you're really saying is that you don't watch horror films

James Bond reportedly said Francis was “not bad, but not quite what I’m looking for”

Seems the Melbourne film critic best known for washing himself in public cinema bathrooms also wants to police the people who use those public bathrooms

Up late thinking about how Batman's greatest adversary is obviously Judge Dredd

Controversial fashion opinion: chore coats are uncomfortably close to safari jackets

Just a reminder that there are a surprisingly large number of horror-adjacent directors who make films that on paper sound awesome but on the screen turn out to have all the compelling storytelling and character work of a screensaver

Pretty sure the one thing that unites all voters whether you're a battler in the bush or an inner city latte sipper is a belief that your concerns are being ignored by your representatives (who are focused elsewhere) and your problems are being brushed aside by the media (who are based elsewhere)

Pauline Hanson has been in public life for 30 years now and she's never once had to back up or explain a single thing she's said. There's no more reason to treat what she says seriously or with respect than there is the drunken racist rantings of some boofhead thrown out the pub

One of the (many) things that’s weird about the US political system to outsiders is the way the courts operate as a constant separate / superior level of government rather than - as is the case most everywhere else - a “break glass in case of emergency” last resort

The trick with this stuff will be that they’ll get them into schools - just say that with AR kids can look at a screen and a teacher at the same time. After a few years you have a bunch of young adults used to wearing cameras and screens on their face, and everyone against it is out of touch

I get why Crikey is going all-in on “Victoria is a failed state arrrrrrgh” - it’s hate-clicks all the way down - but it’d be nice to have *one* media organisation in the country that didn’t treat a state most of its residents quite like as a crime-and-corruption fuelled hell on earth

Sure, no argument here. The real question is, once you've agreed to be killed and reconstructed, what are the people doing the reconstruction going to add (or subtract) from the new you they create?

About to become the biggest online celebrity of 2026 by asking the question “which word do you automatically put before Worldwide - Mister or Prestige?”

My favourite Star Wars movie is RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER 4: VENGEANCE, which is basically “what if Darth Vader was a drug dealing geezer who was hard as fuck and all the boring space fantasy shit went in the bin and you weren’t expected to have an opinion on it”

There are two separate audiences for high profile reviews: the producers and creative team, who see “three stars” and think they’ve done well, and regular readers of reviews, who know anything less than a five star rave means the subject is complete rubbish

I spent years writing top ten lists now lost like tears in rain and every single one was utterly pointless

ZERO DARK THIRTY has the same opening as FARGO and that really should have been a tip off

Also if you're gonna do it for 40ish hours a week it's gonna be a big chunk of your life. Existing just for nights and weekends is a pretty grim lifestyle.

Saw someone online rant about how telling people to "do what they love" as a job is terrible advice and that jobs are for money only. Honestly, whether to work at something you love (and be poor) or take a job you hate (to afford what you love) is such a huge decision, it should be taught in schools

Totally unrelated to the comedy content of this no doubt very funny project but geez, today's police uniforms do not in any way add a humourous vibe to wacky stories about comedy cops

Because I went to a preview of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2, I can’t review it until the morning of April 30 - but if I went to one of the public sessions tomorrow evening (April 29), I could review it the second it was over. Seems like a pretty big loophole

I don't want to say ROBOCOP 2 predicted pretty much everything about America, but trying to kill top level government officials at a fancy dinner definitely sounds like the work of one of the minions of drug lord and Nuke cult leader Cane

Thinking about how it was US$7 to have a book sent from the USA to Australia 10 years ago and now it’s US$37. International postage for everything has gone up so much it’s basically unaffordable and there’s no way those costs will ever go back down