Culture

  • Magic Realism Hollywood-style

    A Walk in the CloudsStarring Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Anthony Quinn and Giancarlo GianniniDirected by Alfonso ArauReviewed by Barry Healy Magic Realism, the heady mix of gritty emotion and surreal dreaminess, has started to seep out of

  • Nostradamus' Media Watch

    Based on highly reliable international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe. Bosnian war crime trials begin Before the

  • Garbage to treasure

    GarbageGarbageWhite Records through MushroomReviewed by Jen Crothers One person's garbage is another person's treasure, to paraphrase an old saying. That's how the name of this new band originated. On hearing some early material, one musician's

  • Laughing with Australian Samizdat

    I enjoyed this book, but I won't tell you to rush out and buy it. If you tried to do so, you wouldn't succeed. In the '70s and '80s, dissident writers in the Soviet Union invented samizdat — "self publishing" — the distribution of manuscripts by

  • On the box

    Programs of interest on Sydney Community TV (UHF 31) — Perleeka, indigenous Australians' program, nightly, 7pm. Art Experimenta, Mondays, 8pm and 11.30pm, and Tuesdays, 3am and 6.30am. Bent TV, Gay and lesbian program, Thursdays, 10.30pm and

  • Not a feminist text

    Women in the Age of Economic TransformationEdited by Nahid Aslanbeigui, Steven Pressman & Gale SummerfieldRoutledge, 1994, 232 pp.Reviewed by Carla Gorton Does privatisation marginalise women? How are women affected by the development process? Are

  • Polemical titbits against creationism

    River out of Eden:A Darwinian View of LifeBy Richard DawkinsWeidenfeld & NicholsonScience Masters Series1995, $19.95Reviewed by Dot Tumney This river is a river of DNA flowing through time. Genetic information flows through living things in the

  • Going separate ways

    The SeparationDirected by Christian VincentScreening at Cinema Como in South YarraOpens in Sydney on November 16 at Verona Cinemas, PaddingtonReviewed by Margaret Allan. The Separation is a very good French film about the deteriorating relationship

  • A skilful defence (7K)

    Trotsky as AlternativeBy Ernest MandelVerso, 1995, 186 pp., $44.95 (pb)Reviewed by Phil Shannon Leon Trotsky has defied the efforts of enemies and friends alike to wilfully or inadvertently blacken the political heritage of one of the twentieth

  • 2nd look

    At the Barricades (1981) Radical Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's autobiography covers the high spots of politics from the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. A reporter during World War II, Burchett was the first western journalist to report on

  • Secondary Students in Dissent (10K)

    Student underground papers: 1968-6 Secondary students in dissent Student underground papers: 1968-6 By Natasha Simons "This news sheet ... is an attempt to make students realise that there is another attitude to the [Vietnam] war besides that of the

  • Flawless rhythms but lacking soul

    Arturo Sandoval and the Latin TrainArturo SandovalGRP through MCAReviewed by Norm Dixon Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval is one of Latin jazz's high profile artists. Sadly, this status has as much to do with his decision to flee to the US from his native