Heathcliff - it's me, your rapee, you're going down!

You just know the DVDs of The Day the Clown Cried have all been pressed and are waiting to go on sale the day after Jerry Lewis kicks the bucket.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity…

This article inspired me to watch Breaker Morant - I bought the DVD a few months ago, but I hadn't yet watched it. (Digression: a video store nearby just went out of business and over its last few months of business, it flogged all its DVDs on the cheap. I bought over 300 films.) Anyway, this article was the kick up…

Throw Sidney Lumet's The Hill in there too. It's really a whole subgenre of war films, isn't it? Depressing, cynical movies about military "justice" and the corrupt chain of command.

"Stop! We are not through yet, and before you skidoo, we'd like to introduce our cast and crew!"

Murdoch University (of which I am an alum) in Perth was in negotiations with an international production company to establish a $50 million film studio (comprising three studios, a film school and museum, a 260-room hotel, restaurants, bars, a cinema and nightclub), but the deal fell through last year. Still, Perth is…

The jibe didn't work for me because even as a parody word, "chazzwozzer" doesn't really sound very Australian - it's more like the kind of word Roald Dahl would have made up.

When I was a kid (full disclosure: going through school in Australia, I was made to watch Gallipoli about four or five times), I thought the electronic cues were goofy and inappropriate. But now that I'm older and more music-savvy… Fuck, it's Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygène! That stuff is awesome!

Isn't Gallipoli's reputation for Brit-bashing based on a misconception, though? I mean, the film does have that bit about the British soldiers drinking tea on the beach while the Aussies were pinned down, which is historically inaccurate. But the main source of contention is the character of "Colonel Robinson," the…

Jack Thompson would be an awesome get for Random Roles. Appeared in a fuckload of classic Aussie films, and I'm sure would have interesting things to say about being directed by the likes of Nagisa Oshima, Steven Soderbergh, and George Clooney (probably not George Lucas though).

I think the very end of Roadgames had Stacey Keach's character finally reaching Perth.

In the course of his BBC Radio 1 show, Chris Morris hoax-announced Savile's death on Boxing Day 1994 (3:40 at http://youtu.be/ssk_oA-MFlg). Not sure if it counts, but I'm sure Morris did it because he had at least some idea of what a creep Savile was.

He's not in the 27 Club, but he's in a 27 Club.

Yeah, I never cared much for Ruby Rose back in the day, but I'm feeling oddly annoyed by the condescending crap she's getting here. I dunno if it's patriotism or what. Actually, I seem to recall my attitude to Ruby Rose changing when I heard about all the shit she got from her family and schoolmates for being a…

Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay, but Martin Bregman (producer) couldn't raise the money for filming it, and Friedkin did The Brink's Job instead. Bregman scraped together enough of a budget to begin shooting with another director (Daniel Petrie), but the money ran out and the project collapsed. The rights to the…

I like Ripley finding out about her daughter (growing into old age and dying) and being understandably distraught, as it rams home the consequences of being lost in space for so long. (In the theatrical cut, it's crap that Ripley apparently takes it in her stride that she's been in hibernation for 57 years.) And I…

Paul McGann's wacko character has more to do in the alternate cut, for a start. Which reminds me… I read somewhere that Fincher got McGann and Ralph Brown in Alien 3 because of Withnail & I, but had no luck getting Richard E. Grant (who was supposed to play the part Charles Dance ultimately got). Makes me wonder if…

Fun fact: Born on the Fourth of July was originally supposed to have been made in the 1970s, with Al Pacino starring and William Friedkin directing.

A lot of goofiness, I'll grant you, but Swing Kids still had Frank Whaley getting maimed by Nazis and cutting his wrists in a bathtub; Robert Sean Leonard's best friend Christian Bale turning into a willing Nazi; and Kenneth Branagh as a charmingly sinister Gestapo agent. (I suppose if I saw the movie now, I'd find it…