Since I have my headphones pretty much permanently jammed into my head I am able to do the following thing for you: provide you with a list of favourite podcasts, amongst which you may find something quite interesting.

Start here

Infallible opinions follow… (categories from iTMS)

Name & cover	Reason for awesome	Archives
Savage Love	Dan Savage. Everything you ever wanted to know about sex and preferred that someone else asked. Funny as hell. Brought to us by the Tech-Savvy At-Risk Youth. Dan’s voice, also pretty marvelous. (Category: Sexuality.)	iTMS, website (2006–)
Democracy Now!	Amy Goodman. A daily digest of the news that matters with fascinating interviews and debate. People in their own words. Every show a driven, inspiring and unflinching look at national and global events. (Category: News & Politics.)	website (1996–)
Background Briefing	ABC journalists. Consistently the most relevant, well-researched and informative investigative journalism on the radio. Looks at emerging social, economic and political topics. Props to Dan for the recommendation. (Category: News & Politics.) See also…	website (1995–)
This American Life	Ira Glass. Wonderful collections of stories organized by theme. American culture served with humour, pathos, insight and a dash of longing. Occasional collaborations with other journalists. (Category: Society & Culture.) See also…	website (1995–)
The Conversation	Dan Benjamin. Thoughtful interviews with movers and shakers in web and software development with forays into design, production, and online culture. Candid talk that’s low on jargon; well-produced. Dan Benjamin is doing great things. (Category: Tech News.)	iTMS, website (2010–)
All in the Mind	Natasha Mitchell. Fascinating interviews with experts in the areas of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and the occasional bit of philosophy. The conversations with Thomas Szasz are fantastic. (Category: Science & Medicine.)	website (2002–)
The Bugle (paywall)	John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman. Gut-clenching satirical take on the week’s news. Think hilariously accented, ginger mopped, ancient history major and the guy from The Daily Show. (Category: Comedy.) See also…	iTMS since 2009 (2007–)
Point of Inquiry	Chris Mooney, Robert Price and Karen Stollznow. Formerly D.J. Grothe. Consistently challenging interview program promoting skepticism and science in the public interest. (Category: Social Sciences.)	iTMS, website (2005–)
The Moth	Shorts from performances at The Moth in New York City and on tour. Straight out fantastic live storytelling. Introduced each week by Dan Kennedy, whose own Moth story is particularly good. (Category: Performing Arts.)	website (2008–)
Astronomy Cast	Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay. Program by astronomy experts that’s pitched at a general audience. Though they cover some, um… hard physics stuff. Try wrapping your head around the theory of inflation. Good times. (Category: Natural Sciences.) See also…	iTMS, website (2006–)

Honorable mentions

Coming soon…

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In honour, perhaps, of Winston Smith.

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My first trip to an Athenian diner was with Elena a few days after we met. We were both living in New Haven and she had a car so she could drive us there. When I asked her how far away it was she said, and I will never forget it, “it’s farther than you can even imagine.” She was referring to 1426 Whalley Avenue, but late at night in a then-unfamiliar part of the city it could have been anywhere as far as I knew. E just called it Athenian, but I later came to understand that it was Athenian I: the first member of a regional diner quartet.

To an out-of-his-element Australian there’s nothing like the American diner. It’s one of this country’s best and most important institutions. It’s at Athenian that I finally learned how to order food in America. Know how your eggs will be cooked, know your toast options, know your salad dressings, and most importantly, ask for coffee. You only need to ask once and it will keep getting refilled as long as your arse is parked in that booth. This amazing social technology has not reached my homeland, as far as I know.

So imagine my delight when we upped and moved from New Haven to Middletown, only to discover that Athenian II is right here in Our Town. (I had dined at Athenian III in Milford a few times, on Christmas shopping excursions to the mall in years gone by, without ever knowing where II was.) Now I’m sure that others will disagree with me on this, and so be it: New Haven has The Pantry, Middletown has O’Rourke’s, up the road is the excellent Cromwell Diner, but to me the best diner in central Connecticut is Athenian. Because it’s my local, because the staff are so friendly, and because of the chrome and pink neon.

The day that I took the photo of the dessert bar I was flying solo, ordering my favourite (a Greek salad, coffee), and reading a book. It was a little hard to concentrate on the words because two old timers were sitting at the counter, one a self-identified Republican, the other a self-identified Democrat. They were jabbing each other (and the Republican guy briefly scored some cheap shots against one of the waitresses who quickly tore him a new one) and I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation, punctuated as it was by long pauses and outlandish proclamations.

“We’re all Americans, we all hate the Taliban.”

“I don’t hate anyone. I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.”

“You Democrats like the Taliban?”

“Hey, you saying that because I’m a Democrat I’m un-American?”

“This is a blue state, buddy.”

…back and forth, et cetera.

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Nothing to worry about here Tony. Climate change freak out dupes, kindly return to your porch rockers and resume whittling. I mean, it’s obviously a conspiracy, and I wouldn’t expect any different from the Greenies. But I just can’t believe that so many scientists have been taken in by it. I used to think scientists were smart and sensible people. I suppose they will come to their senses eventually. Purple skies—yeah right. Good one NASA. Kidders. Bunch of Photoshop junkies. Go launch a rocket!

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More greatness from Chris Piascik. This is from a comic strip called BANG! that Chris made a while back and has just uploaded to Internet for your enjoyment. I love Chris’s creatures. These illustrations range from stories to doodles to posters and iconic t-shirt designs. Here’s another example, just for Hallowe’en, though this is from back in June, or this one from early October. Check it out.

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The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players—“300 white guys in Manhattan,” as a former high-placed executive puts it. But over the course of the past year, that group of insiders has also proved itself brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of the state to help along the process of concentrating economic might—making it less and less likely that the financial markets will ever be policed, since the state is increasingly the captive of these interests.

Steel yourself for this one.

† Via Zed Shaw.

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Some points made in the interview:

• White people in Australia use a discourse of possessiveness when talking about their relationship to the country. This gives any discussion of citizenship—especially questions about what it means, who has it, and who deserves it—an inherently possessive quality. In fact, Moreton-Robinson argues that citizenship itself is inherently possessive.
• The very presence of indigenous people “ontologically disturbs” whites. Aborigines are, in a sense, upsetting to the Australian mindset in their very existence. Anyone who wants to get an indigenous issue on the agenda—whether in government policy, in public discussions, in talking with their neighbours, in trying to establish a program or a radio station, in trying to get access to resources, etc.—always faces a struggle. The “unfinished business” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians hangs over every encounter.
• A misconception about race relations in Australia today is that the Mabo decision in 1991 overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius (that the land belonged to no-one when Europeans showed up). It did not; it diminished terra nullius by acknowledging the existence of native title rights to land, but it maintained the legitimacy of the state’s right to Aboriginal land.^†
• Mabo saw the development of a specific white fear: that Aborigines would take over peoples’ homes by staking a claim to their properties and surrounding land—and, in a sense, forced the reassertion that “Australia is a white country.” A lot of talk by Australians since then about what Indigenous people receive from the state has unfolded in light of this panic.
• The Keating government brought legislation following Mabo intended to clarify some of the issues raised by the decision, but it stopped short of resolving the right-to-land question. It established some Indigenous rights, namely the right to hunt and gather, but it did not establish a right of residence for Indigenous people. Indigenous sovereignty is still in a murky place legally, and therefore every other way, as a result.

Moreton-Robinson and Kauanui also discuss the Howard government’s Northern Territory intervention in August of 2007, the importance of the “children overboard affair” in Howard’s 2001 election win, and the Rudd government’s apology to Australia’s Indigenous people for the “stolen generations” (the subject of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence) on February 13, 2008. I urge you to check it out; it’s a pretty great interview.

† For those who are interested in the Indigenous perspective on terra nullius and the arrival of European settlers, the book Follow the Rabit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (a.k.a. Nugi Garimara) has a lot to say (not to be confused with the film which, though excellent, doesn’t really touch on this).

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Liz Kelleher on Edward Kennedy:

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Ted Kennedy was still a sh*tty guy. He was hell on his first wife, it took him years of drinking and womanizing to get straight, years that no ordinary working person would likely be loaned. He and the rest of his clan are T Wealthy, the born-rich, born-connected, two percent of Americans who have fifty percent of the power in this country, and worse, pass it on to their kids, at the expense of yours, and I don’t forget that just because he’s a Kennedy and a Democrat.

But from the point of view of Ted Kennedy the man, I can admire the moral courage of getting up in the morning, walking out the door, and getting on with it. Having room in his heart for the sorrows and struggles of total strangers at that. Ted Kennedy, role model for the f*ck up in us all.

I think I agree with this. He appeared to be a man driven by his demons, trying to make right without apologising for being who he was. Rest in peace, Senator.

Via Kevin.

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The possibility of such a transition, after more than a half-century of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democrats, has gripped the nation’s attention. A poll released Monday by the national broadcaster NHK showed that 90 percent of voters intended to cast their ballot, far above the 68 percent turnout in the last lower house election four years ago. […]

The Democrats have been trying to seize the moment by tapping Japan’s simmering discontent. The party has tried to position itself as the choice for voters fed up with rising social inequalities, stagnating wages and other changes for which many blame economic globalization. It recently issued a manifesto pledging new spending of $177 billion a year. While economists have characterized the Democrats as slightly left of center, and the incumbents as slightly to the right, both parties are promising new social spending to win key blocs like farmers, who were alienated by the small-government reforms of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

According to Fackler, neither major party has much to say regarding Japan’s deepening economic and demographic problems:

“This could be financial Armageddon,” said Naoki Iizuka, a senior economist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo. “Foreign investors could see Japanese government bonds as worthless paper.”

Mr. Iizuka says Japan has at most five more years to get its fiscal house in order before facing the prospect of serious capital flight.

Japan must do this while confronting one of the world’s worst demographic problems. The low birthrate means that there will be fewer working-age taxpayers to support a growing numbers of retirees. In 2005, there were 3 working people per pensioner; that ratio will drop to 1.8 per pensioner by 2040, according to the Health Ministry.

Fackler’s account paints a DPJ victory as a possible means of breaking the grip of Japan’s entrenched interest groups, especially the elite bureaucratic level of the country’s civil service.

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You might enjoy “Wind Power is Not Intermittent,” and other cartoons, by Stuart McMillen. Be sure to check out the Orwell vs. Huxley one (do a lot of people read those two back to back?—that’s how I was introduced by a friend at uni), and also Matt’s comment on the wind power story. This is a lot of fun. I really dig the earnest style. It reminds me of Larry Gonnick. (Via Fake Steve.)

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After:

Better.

Update: ReadWriteWeb reviews whitehouse.gov from the beginning using the Internet Archive.

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The Australian Government wants to censor the Internet and the push seems to have gained ground because of concerns about child safety. The proposal calls for mandatory ISP filtering of Internet traffic that is supposed to prevent access to “illegal material” (content featuring child sexual abuse) and child-inappropriate material (pornography).

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is at the centre of a growing debate about the true scope and feasibility of the plan. He has equated it with similar systems in countries like the UK, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand, but there are fundamental differences. Australians won’t be able to opt out. According to network engineer Mark Newton, in a recent opinion piece for ABC News:

In actual fact, none of the countries Senator Conroy cited have anything like what he’s proposing for Australia. [...] The only countries which feature government-imposed internet censorship are nations which place more emphasis on opinion suppression than internet access, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Newton points out that Conroy has used the term “illegal” in the Senate to refer to a government blacklist of material designated as “prohibited” (deemed unsuitable for children). Former Senator Andrew Bartlett recently echoed criticism about where such a censorship plan would end. Not to mention whatever they mean by material that is “inappropriate:”

The catch-all nature of the term “inappropriate” gives me concern. I have little faith that the current government will prove much better than governments everywhere, and be unable to resist the urge to continually increase the scope of what they try to control.

Beyond this, it seems highly unlikely that the plan can be implemented as intended. ISPs hate it claiming that filtering will be extremely costly to implement, easy to circumvent and would likely yield a lot of false positives (hundreds of thousands?). The Angry Aussie says it best in a recent rant:

If you put some filter between the big wide Internet and the poor little defenseless Australian users it would strangle our already shit Internet access, let a bunch of stuff through anyway, be trivially easy to get around, and would block sites that shouldn’t be blocked. In other words, there is not a single thing an honest person can recommend about this approach.

Way to go Labor. I bet this will haunt the Rudd government if it goes much further. Why not spend the $189 million on building media literacy instead?

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Wouldn’t you rather grow up to be real philosopher comedians rather than remain bum dwelling trouser fleas? The socialist hate-cheese is rich in protein but lacks essential brain building vitamins. That kind of leftist mental death is a sorry road. Next you’ll be arrested looting shops or scrawling graffiti on train sheds during imagined Bilderberg conferences.

Now stop it and be good boys. Try funny.

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Elena and I are incorrigible fans of The Shield. Her fault. She has a cop brain so she automatically understands what’s going on. I on the other hand have to ask a lot of questions to catch up. For a long time I didn’t even like it that much but with the show entering its fifth season last fall, and regular access to cable TV, there were few opportunities not to watch. On Tuesday nights around 10:00 and The Shield roared across the screen. I’d sit awhile and sometimes leave when the carnage or noise level hit a particularly feverish point. Somewhere along the way though things started to tilt, and by the time I saw the vicious final episode of Season 5, I was the one insisting on first renting the Season 1 DVDs, then just caving and buying the whole set—I mean, at half the purchase price what a stupid waste of money renting would be, right? Impeccable logic. Anyway, now I’m in. (Major spoilers follow so be warned…)

Parallax TV

If you haven’t seen the show, and don’t mind some spoilers, here begins the overview (but check out The Shield for more detail): the main storyline in the series belongs to a corrupt anti-gang unit called the Strike Team. The team comprises four detectives: the leader is Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis, of The Commish fame), a complex character who killed one of his own team members to protect himself and the others from investigation; Mackey’s right-hand man Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), a tenacious redneck with a serious cruel streak; Curtis Lemansky (Kenneth Johnson), known as Lem, a likable cop—more of a loyal buddy than a motivated criminal—despite being a willing accomplice to the unit’s various crimes; and Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell), nerdy, affable, but seemingly most interested in maximising his gain and not rocking anyone’s boat, even when the heaviest of shit is going down. The Strike Team’s charter is to “get results” out on the streets of the fictional Los Angeles precinct of Farmington. From a policy standpoint their job is to reduce the number and severity of gang-related crimes; at street level they hit the bad guys selectively, and really hard. Mackey and his team prefer wedge strategies that lever rival factions into conflict and inflate the value of alliances with the cops—always through Mackey of course. Unfortunately for policy-makers and administrators, the Strike Team quickly gets its hands far too dirty. This is where everything starts.

Like other recent crime dramas such as C.S.I. each episode of The Shield contains a narrative fork: a primary plot that follows the movements of the Strike Team (often tracing the most hardcore activities of cop and criminal), and a secondary plot that grounds our perceptions in the more regular business of police life at “the Barn” (the police station’s nickname). It is through this secondary fork that we see beat cops like Danny Sofer (Catherine Dent) and Julien Lowe (Michael Jace) citing civilians for traffic violations and attending the scenes of domestic disputes. But the parallax effect of a forked storyline goes further than contrasting the more spectacular activities of the Strike Team with the more mundane world of everyday policing. The secondary plot also contrasts the moral decisions of its protagonists with those of the Strike Team, recasting the good cop–bad cop routine from a partner-level dynamic into a microcosm of the broader social struggle: here good cop–bad cop becomes a group-level effect that results from the fundamental difference between the kinds of criminals that each group of cops pursues. Detective Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach (Jay Karnes), a boy scout compared to Mackey (and often the butt of the latter’s practical jokes), brings down a serial killer but cannot escape an unhealthy fascination with perversion and murder and a preoccupation with his own importance. Dutch’s partner Claudette Wyms (C.C.H. Pounder), the most principled cop at the Barn, fights an incessant battle against her own mounting cynicism that any of the police around her can walk a straight path, sometimes leading her to neglect her own job security and that of her partner. When at times Wyms clashes with Mackey we feel the stirrings of titanic struggle, but since Wyms is even more politically disenfranchised than Wabenbach (as always happens to the good guys, we’re encouraged to think) nothing much ever comes of it.

By using a parallax method the show’s twin plotlines—and the points of convergence between them—highlight the ambiguity of professional police behaviour better than most cop dramas, which often try to preserve an overriding sense of solidarity amongst police officers. Certainty of moral action is displaced with each shift in perspective as we are shown moments of tenderness in which the bad cops never looked so good and moments of brutality in which the good cops never looked so bad.

Alignment

As my fascination with The Shield evolved I was reminded of those nerdy weekends playing Dungeons and Dragons during the high school years. Most people probably have an idea of what D&D is all about. It’s a game in which a team of participants each play the role of a character of their choosing in a fictional world that is described and controlled by a referee called the DM (it stands for Dungeon Master, and yes, the games’ nerdy reputation is well-earned). Acting together the characters form a party, the party undertakes a series of semi-scripted adventures involving encounters with other characters, enemies, problems, etc. Now player-characters (the protagonists if you like) are never identical with respect to their motivations, ethics and behaviour. This is built-in: D&D rules manage the interactional problems of good and evil behaviour the same way they solve most other aspects of role-playing: with a system. A player’s moral temperament is codified at the outset in terms of his or her character alignment. Alignment is two-dimensional system most easily demonstrated with a Latin square (see below). The x (horizontal) axis represents attitude to social order, while the y (vertical) axis represents moral character:

Figure 1: Dungeons and Dragons character alignments.

Alignments are typically understood to be stable across the character’s “life span,” although they can be changed through a protracted commitment to a new way of interacting (by choice), or by a sustained series of actions that so contradicted one’s previous alignment that a de facto change is effected (by proxy). In any case the most important rule is always that you cannot flip-flop around at will about the alignment axes. You have an obligation to make your character at least partially predictable at the interactional and/or motivational level. This is considered good role-playing. An interesting consequence of this system is that you can actually play your character for a while before determining his or her alignment with precision. The rules provide some guidance, and the players make an initial choice as to how they want their character to be, but it is only with time and gameplay that it becomes clearer whether the character is staying true to the alignment that his or her player has chosen.

How does this relate to the TV show? Well, the alignment system can be used as a simple device for making sense of the program’s moral narratives, and the fine-tuning process I described is a reasonable approximation of getting to know a complex TV character. I had been watching The Shield for quite a while before I began to get a solid sense of the character’s “alignments.” What’s interesting about The Shield’s presentation of moral character is that all of the major players have such a distinctive moral identity. Whereas previous cop shows representing a tightly-knit team may have styled each character as bringing a complimentary set of skills to the challenges facing the group, The Shield instead emphasises the unique temperaments that its characters bring to the ethical quandaries with which they are constantly faced. These distinctive temperaments are quite central to the program’s dramatic tensions and plot twists, while characters’ individual talents have far less bearing on narrative outcomes and interactional moments.

Certainly there are similarities between individuals: the members of the Strike Team are all prepared to do things that other characters—and clearly many viewers—regard as “evil.” But between its members there are differences. Likewise, Wagenbach and Wyms, Sofer and Lowe all share a desire to perform well at their jobs and make a difference on the streets, and yet they also differ in ways that sets each apart from the other. These differences open up space for both in-group antagonisms and out-group affinities, as we see in the falling out between Wagenbach and Wyms, Lowe and Sofer’s struggle to work together as partners, Sofer’s affair with Mackey, and Lem’s absence from the Strike Team to work in the juvenile division where he acts as a positive role-model. Alignment does not predict outcomes, but it does make for some interesting twists and turns. The endless crossing-over between and within characters is what makes people so uneasy about The Shield’s moral claims (see for example Judith Grant’s article in which she asserts that the program is “less morally ambiguous than it is just morally irresponsible”.)

Deepening the ambiguity, the Barn’s longest serving police captain, Councilman David Aceveda (brilliantly played by Benito Martinez) seems to stand perpetually at the intersection of the show’s countervailing forces, first in his position as captain, and later as a city councilman. Ambitious, ambiguous and connected, Aceveda intensifies the struggles in The Shield by almost never taking sides, despite being embroiled deeply in the machinations of both, and getting up to some dirty tricks of his own.

Down at the Barn

At the close of its fifth season The Shield had drilled down to its key story, relentlessly pursuing the incendiary effects of Mackey’s original sin, the murder of Detective Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond). The killing actually takes place in the series’ pilot episode, but Mackey manages to keep his head above water, and the Strike Team out on the streets, for most of four straight seasons, despite attempts by Aceveda and others to see him prosecuted and the team disbanded. In the fifth season Mackey’s hounds draw nearer and a new character, Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh (a deeply unhinged Forest Whitaker) arrives at the Barn on a mission. An Internal Affairs investigator, his ultimate goal is to bring the Strike Team to justice and to force Mackey to stand trial for the killing of another officer. Kavanaugh wants blood. At the point of his arrival the Barn is without permanent leadership, Captain Monica Rawling (Glenn Close)—successor to Aceveda and Mackey’s closest ally in the administration—having been dismissed at the close of season four. Kavanaugh installs himself in the captain’s office and begins a systematic pressure campaign and search for evidence that will bring Mackey down, even if it jeopardises his own personal stability. After only a few episodes the new battle lines are drawn. The next table maps the alignments of the show’s main characters at this point:

Figure 2: Positioning of characters in The Shield.

Fans of the program may like this, but in itself the table is descriptive of the show but doesn’t really explain what I’m getting at. However, by modifying the function of the table so that instead of describing individual alignments its describes the relationship between characters possessing said alignments we can develop a much more interesting picture of how these players interrelate in the bigger picture:

Figure 3: Relational meanings of character alignments.

By using the actual relationships between characters in The Shield, the alignment system can be modified into a simple explanatory map of current struggles and alliances between characters in a complex moral playing field. In The Shield’s ethical universe Kavanaugh is now the undisputed protagonist on the side of good while Mackey fits solidly into the position of antagonist (in the sense of his being “opposed to the good”), a place which he has occupied for the majority of the series. Tragically, Vendrell reveals a depth of malice we hoped he didn’t possess by killing Lem, the hardest hit target of Kavanaugh’s investigation, to prevent him from providing any information on the Strike Team. Gardocki remains an accomplice to the team’s goals (which includes holding onto loot they stole from money launderers months earlier) but quite literally carries the scars of following Mackey into one too many questionable confrontations.

On the other side of the thin blue line Wagenbach and Wyms struggle to keep their professional relationship together. Wagenbach grapples with his loyalties to his long-time partner in the thick atmosphere of distrust brought on by Kavanaugh but also demonstrates his willingness to side with the powers that be. Wyms faces promotion to captain, a move she deserves on the grounds of her commitment and abilities but which serves more directly the interests of her superiors. Officer Lowe on the other hand, driven by his own code and keeping to himself treads a difficult path between professional responsibility and loyalty to his colleagues. And at the center of this storm of allegiances and hostilities, Councilman Aceveda cannot manage to stay above the fray, nor to prevail over Mackey and the sinking ship he represents. What we have then is a fully fledged morality drama in which a quickening confrontation between the powers of good and evil forces alliances out of a more varied and ambiguous field of ethical confrontations. It is, in a sense, a story about what happens when an imposed power forces ordinary people to take sides.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

And that’s the best metaphor I can think of for the War on Terror/in Iraq.

Figure 4: Positioning of characters in the War on Terror.

Alignment is a system that forces people to take sides, to make a moral stance. It’s a useful device in describing the motivational aspect of moral conflicts. On face value alignment provides a driving force, a reason for acting. It also forces people to take sides. The New Oxford American Dictionary calls it “arrangement in a straight line, or in correct or appropriate relative positions.” Others would call it an “axis”—of moral virtue for instance. “Good and evil” stuff. And so it seems likely that one man’s intellectual suffocation is another woman’s moral decline…

Whatever, I guess. The War on Terror and The Shield are ideologically—and therefore ultimately—weak arguments. And in failing to recognize this, so too are many of the arguments about them. But one thing is clear: for the longest time the War on Terror was the least interesting thing on American TV, while The Shield was one of the most gripping and controversial. The Shield, with all of it’s post-L.A. Riot edginess contained more nods to the moral drama taking place in the Persian Gulf than the nightly news. For a short, hot stretch it painted perhaps the best picture of what was taking place in the collective mind, and for that it should be recognized, celebrated, and probably condemned.

Bloody good cop show, though.

Postscript: TV on the Radio’s Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes helped me finish this article. Quite by accident I guess, and way overdue. All but the last section was written a year and a half ago. My fault, not theirs :-)

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What began during a conversation with Dan and Jody a few weeks ago about good Australian Cinema, and continued last night as a list of Australian film recommendations for Shoham and Michel from the local video store, debuts here as the preliminary list of best Australian movies in the last fifteen years. The following list is compiled from a combination of unreliable memory traces, favourite actor preferences, and IMDb assaults undertaken by Yours Truly. It may not be the most systematic list ever put together. Do you spot any errors or omissions? Leave a comment. Let’s sort this out.

(All title links point to the IMDb.)

The Keating Years (Prime Minister, 1991–1996)

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
• Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
• Cosi (1996)
• Dead Heart (1996)
• Flirting (1991)
• Hercules Returns (1993)
• Idiot Box (1996)
• Love and Other Catastrophes (1996)
• Love Serenade (1996)
• Muriel’s Wedding (1994)
• The Piano (1993)
• Proof (1991)
• Romper Stomper (1992)
• Shine (1996)
• Strictly Ballroom (1992)
• The Sum of Us (1994)

The Howard Years (Prime Minister, 1996–2007)

• The Bank (2001)
• The Boys (1998)
• Candy (2006)
• The Castle (1997)
• Chopper (2000)
• Dirty Deeds (2002)
• Erskineville Kings (1999)
• Feeling Sexy (1999)
• Gettin’ Square (2003)
• The Hard Word (2002)
• The Interview (1998)
• Jindabyne (2006)
• Kiss or Kill (1997)
• Lantana (2001)
• Little Fish (2005)
• Look Both Ways (2005)
• Looking for Alibrandi (2000)
• Oscar and Lucinda (1997)
• Oyster Farmer (2004)
• Praise (1998)
• The Proposition (2005)
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
• Redball (1999)
• Somersault (2004)
• Suburban Mayhem (2006)
• Ten Canoes (2006)
• Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997)
• Two Hands (1999)
• Wolf Creek (2005)

The Rudd Years (Prime Minister, 2007–present)

• Love the Beast (2009)
• The Combination (2009)
• The Square (2008)

Contenders

• Alexandra’s Project (2003)
• Angel Baby (1995)
• Australian Rules (2002)
• Bad Eggs (2003)
• Balibo (2009)
• The Black Balloon (2008)
• Boytown (2006)
• Bright Star (2009)
• Clubland (2007)
• Cracker Jack (2002)
• Cunnamulla (2000)
• Death in Brunswick (1991)
• The Dish (2000)
• He Died With a Felafel in His Hand (2001)
• Head On (1997)
• Holy Smoke (1999)
• Innocence (2000)
• Japanese Story (2003)
• Last Train to Freo (2006)
• Ned Kelly (2003)
• Noise (2007)
• Occasional Coarse Language (1998)
• The Quiet Room (1996)
• Three Dollars (2005)
• The Wog Boy (2000)
• Undead (2003)

Rules for Inclusion

To plug for having a movie added to or subtracted from the list, please keep the following points in mind. An “Australian movie” is taken to be any movie that is set, filmed and produced mostly in Australia. Examples: Oscar and Lucinda is an adaptation of a Peter Carey novel, set in Australia, therefore it’s Australian. The Matrix was filmed in Australia, co-produced by an Australian company, and stars many Australian actors and the city of Sydney, but since is not set in Sydney and since all characters have an American accent, it is not Australian. Similarly, though Finding Nemo was set in Australia, and starred some Australian actors, it was produced, written and directed by Americans in the U.S., and is therefore not Australian. Finally, since most movies begin production at least a year before they are released, Keating gets all of 1996, even though he lost the bloody election in March of that year.

Update: I’ve had a lot of feedback and suggestions, so I made some changes.