What Would You Do?

Defaulting Or Hyperinflating

About a month ago, Kenichi Ohmae of Japan put out this column here (it's in Japanese, unfortunately) pointing out that there are only 2 real options for Japan if it can't fix its budget deficit. Since then of course the credit rating for Japan has been downgraded, and this year's budget is headed for more of the same as previous years which is only going to make things worse.

The more recent column by Kenichi Ohmae (again, it's only in Japanese), goes through just how screwed the Japanese budget is, given that more than half of the budget is going to be funded from bonds. In a sense, if the budget is about 5-6times the actual income of the government. The debt is AUD$7.077 trillion, while the annual government expenditure is looking about AUD$1.774 Trillion. More than half of that latter figure is going to be funded from bonds - which will dutifully be bought by the Japanese.

The point Ohmae makes in his recent column is that the Consumption Tax necessarily has to be raised from 5% to about 30%, and even then the government barely has a shot at paying the interest on the bonds. It has to cut expenditure by half (!) to be able to pay off the principle; all the while trying to look after its welfare obligations. As it stands, the Democrats in Japan under Naoto Kan don't seem to have a chance of raising the Consumption Tax to 10% which is not even close to being enough; and there are no real cuts being mooted, which in turn means Japan won't be able to meet its debt payments, leading to a default.

The other option is of course to print money and hyperinflate away the debt, which is another way of the government to seize hold of the savings of everybody to pay off its debts. Either way there's going to be a furor, but judging from the headlines in Japan, it's hard to see anybody being able to make any decision that won't lead to a default or hyperinflating away the debt. The ramifications of this for the world are going to be really interesting to say the least.

It's a sad state of affairs that the opposition Liberal Democrats who presided over the economy for 60 years with the bureaucrats of the Treasury created the problem, so it's strictly not just about the Democratic Party that is being questioned. Ohmae is essentially demanding an apologia in the face of the final judgment of the marketplace, but really, how worried are people in Japan? Ohmae thinks that everybody is so used to talk of the crisis without feeling its impact, they've become inured to it, which is not a good thing.

Yet, if Japan defaulted and did what the Argentinian Government did and paid 30cents in the dollar, there would be riots to rival Tunisia, Egypt and Lybya. Which leaves hyperinflation as the more probable option. Ohmae observes that the idea there would be to write down debts by destroying the value of the debt, taking with it everybody's financial assets. The nation is essentially commandeering everybody's savings in Government Bonds. it's an ugly business. It would only be then that the people would realise that it would have been better to have paid the extra tax so the government could pay off the debts, but it would be way too late by then.

Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea.

Blast From The Past - 27/02/2011

The Beatles 2009 Remaster Box Set

I go in and out of phases where I can listen to the Beatles and not. It's a whole lot different when you grow up listening to the Beatles looking up to them and to being older than the Beatles when they wrote the songs. One's own transition into middle age makes it harder to stay attached to the Fab Four especially when you end up with other bands that mean more to you in so many other ways. The being said, any opportunity that gives you a reason to go back and have a close listen has got to be welcomed.

For years the 1987 set of remasters has bee the standard that is readily available as a bench mark. Prior to that, you'd have to go back to the LP releases, and scour trans Atlantic catalogues to fill out the missing tracks that appeared as singles, which got collected in the 'Past Masters' double CD set. The 1987 set was interesting in that George Martin had turned his hand at re-mixing some of the material to bring it up to date to late 1980s tastes which in hindsight have turned out to be rather a particular kind of use of digital. It was also ever so possibly hampered by the relative lack of tools to polish things up in a way that modern digital audio workstations can do. In any case the reputation of the 1987 set has been sinking for years, with some fans demanding yet another re-master.

I have to admit I've been sceptical of these demands because if it meant they were mastering to late 2000s standards, we were likely to see a highly compressed set with limiters being pushed hard to squeeze out ever more volume. My view had been, if the 1987 doesn't seem quite loud enough for you, then all you really had to do was turn up your system. In other words, my suspicion had been that the crowd demanding a re-master were wanting the Beatles to be brought up to date in a way that doesn't help the musicality of the recordings at all.

'Let It Be - Naked' didn't exactly make me feel like I needed to hear anew the Beatles from the beginning to the bitter end. While it was nice to hear the stark arrangement for historicity's sake, there was something really un-inviting about that album - A bit like revisiting the hotel where you once had a dirty weekend. It might have been a great experience once but what the hell is it to you today? Do we really need to relive Beatlemania once more? The Beatles get better in every fan's living memory each year, but it's only natural that the recordings become more outdated with time. The gap that ensues is actually our growth as listeners. I felt it's something we should be resigned with. "You want all this with more slam on the limier?"  I thought.

Fortunately the people who undertook the 2009 remastering were a lot more sensible than to take the whole lot and slam limiters on them all to make them all louder. The albums that have benefited the most are in fat the middle period albums from 'Revolver' through to 'Magical Mystery Tour' where all previous versions have sounded murky. I used to put a lot of that murk down to the fact that the Beatles pre-mixed parts of their arrangement to get down to 4 tracks and 8 tracks, and the murkiness was a result of the loss of fidelity and build up of tape noise. The 1987 remaster of 'Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band' is particularly murky through the slow numbers and the reverbs all seem to wash the beat obscure. 'Magical Mystery Tour' has always been a mystery tour through some hazy sounding recordings including the masterpiece, 'I Am The Walrus'.

The good news is that it is these albums that have scrubbed up incredibly well. Suddenly you can hear the nuance of various percussion instruments and sudden surges of effects much better. The texture on the sitar in 'Within You Without You' cuts through the mix in a way that adds so much more definition to the song. It's funny because I remember being quite happy listening to these albums on a standard D-90 cassette recording with tape hiss through some cruddy walkman, so it behooves me to be writing about sound quality in some ways, but it's nice to find a new tangible benefit in listening to this new set.

There seems to be much discussion about the frequency response across the board and what is natural and what is not, but to my ears the biggest difference is just how much you can hear the guitars and bass guitar clearly. Whole passages come alive with the immediacy of their playing their main instruments. While the mix hasn't changed, the overdubbed instruments have been placed further back in the sound, which is a great improvement. It's nice to hear the detail in John's strumming, the snap of Ringo's drum heads, George's picking on his Gibson SG, and the body on Paul's Rickenbacker 4001 bass. Especially when I don't feel I need to hear so much of the damn trumpet or the cellos. In other words, it brings you so much closer to the Beatles as players, and that has got to be a big bonus with this set.

And you know what? It's so unmistakably, definitely, 'Cranberry Sauce', and not 'I buried Paul'.

Difficulty Of Gaining Perspective

Nothing So Worthless As An Uninformed Opinion

I'm being cruel, but I have to let loose with this one.

I recently procured for myself the boxed set of the 2009 Beatles Re-Masters (the one in stereo, not the hard-core Mono set) and had it sitting on my shelf for a good 2 months without even taking the plastic wrappers off each album inside the box. I figured I already had the 1987 boxed set which is bad enough, and it wasn't going to surprise me in any way shape or form, so what was the rush?

Today, I finally decided to open them up and at least encode AAC files for the iPod, which meant I had to hunt up some artwork because believe it or not, "Get Album Artwork" got me sweet F.A. which meant I had to go to Amazon to pull off the album art (as you do). But that's not the bit that's 'worthless', no no, - that's actually the cute ironic bit.

The bit I'm going to have a cruel laugh about are the 1 star reviews the Beatles are getting on Amazon. Some of this stuff is side-splittingly hilarious in what it reveals about the writers, more than the Beatles. After all, what possibly more can be written about the Beatles that could add to the weight of their cultural significance, and our collective understanding? But these people not only try, they're trying to push back the tide of historic and world opinion. It's brave, funny and idiotic.

Take this one from 'Beatles For Sale':

1: No Reply: a depressing song about a cheating girlfriend. Its songs like this and Run For Yr Life that make Lennon to be the hypocrite that he is. In his songs he bitches about cheating, and yet he destroys his family with an adulterous affair with Yoko Ono. He obviously knew neither Jesus Christ or cared about his family. In ways, he disgusts me. And yet, this is not the love of God. Adultery is a bitter subject for me, and I cannot be real objective. But I try. And I listen.

I cracked up laughing. I mean, what is one to make of this? clearly the guy is struggling with balancing his faith with his love of the Beatles, but this is pretty silly stuff. Then Amazon asks, "was this review helpful to you?"

No.It wasn't, but it amused me for 15 seconds. Heck, I'm still laughing. Yes it's freakin' hilarious. Here's another from the 1 star reviews for 'A Hard Day's Night':

The preformance quality on these songs isn't good. The Beatles sound like they did this disc just to take commercial advantage of the movie. They don't sound energetic on more than half of the tracks, and most of the songs have no meaning and are pointless.
Most are two minute half-effort run throughs that make the listener bored. If the group were to record this album with the same songs even two years later,it would've been better but they sound like a fish out of water.
I think their songwriting wasn't completly developed at that time, notice they did cover tracks on the next album, also notice how much more sincere that one sounds. If this was the band's only or first album they would've never made it. They sound like the Monkees here! This is terrible, I'm sorry you guys can't stand me criticizing a Beatle's album, but this is the worst (trust me, I have all of their albums).
Poor playing, manufactured sound, bad album.

You shake your head in laughter at reviews like that. This is some person's conception of an early album by the Beatles with absolutely zero awareness of the era in which it was recorded; worse still, they're expounding on some faulty notion of historicity and musicality as if they're going to convince the world that 'A Hard Days Night' isn't an important piece of recorded history.

Here's another equally outlandish minority opinion:

this album let alone the stupidity of beatle lovers is outragous. this isn't that great and NEITHER was the POP group you losers like so much. in case you don't know THERE WERE OTHER ACTUALLY BANDS IN THE 60'S not strictly these losers as the media impleays. the media what do they know NOTHING they know NOTHING about or between a REAL ROCK band or the diferrence between a POP group and A ROCK GROUP. the beatles a "rock" group AS IF. they were BEARLY in the studio and whenever they played live you know right away that they are ALL studio. the beatles were NEVER a rock band just A TEEN IDOL POP GROUP WITH BORING SONGS THAT ALL SOUNDED THE SAME.

I cracked up. Who does this person think is going to be convinced by this rant? But hey, they took the time to type it into Amazon, and Amazon asks...

I know I always put the boot into bad reviews and bad reviewers of films, but I have to confess I've been misguided. There's much worse out there. The general public let loose upon the virtual soapbox is an even worse promulgator of uninformed idiotic opinion. There's a book out there that says the web is making us dumber. It's not true. Judging from these reviews, there are plenty enough dumb people, it's just that they're all getting a say, and if you're bored like me, you'll probably come across it and get to read it. The funny thing is, some of the people handing out 5 stars are just as gob-smacked stupid.

Australian Content

No Explaining This One Away

Baz Luhrmann's going to bring his Great Gatsby production to Sydney. Strikes me that he's missed the point already, but be that as it may he's bringing it down under, and he's going to qualify for the 40% producer's off-set. Predictably, this has set off a bit of a row.

The Warner Bros-backed film is believed to be eligible for a producer offset allowing filmmakers to claim back 40 per cent of qualifying expenditure from the Tax Office. Neither Luhrmann nor Screen Australia would confirm the film had the offset, which would mean Warner Bros would get a $120 million movie for less than $80 million.

Australian producers say they are not angry about Gatsby; they are angry that other films that met similar criteria had been rejected.

There have been claims of inconsistent decisions by Screen Australia on television projects, and several companies have or are planning to appeal.

Beyond International's fifth series of the documentary Taboo, about faith healing, was produced and filmed in Australia and employed Australian producers, directors and writers, with most of budget spent here, said its chief executive, Mikael Borglund. But it failed to get the offset, partly because it had little Australian content. An appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal failed.

Mr Borglund said that made no sense in light of the other Beyond projects that had received the offset.

''We just think that the same assessment tests and criteria should be applied by Screen Australia to our projects as those films that are produced with Warner Bros, Universal or Fox,'' he said. ''With Gatsby, it is set in New York in the 1920s. So how could you argue it has significant Australian content?''

Indeed-a-mundo. Pray tell, right?

Anyway, the same article goes on to report Screen Australia's response as:

Some applications might be rejected because they are more suited to the 15 per cent location offset, said Screen Australia's chief operating officer, Fiona Cameron. ''Our role is to differentiate between the location offset and the producer offset.''

Which is a total non-sequitur response to the question at hand: how can Screen Australia reject other Australian productions, only to hand out the welcome mat and the 40% off-set to a Warner Brothers picture just because it's Baz Luhrmann's production? And the answer is of course, it can't explain how that happened - hence the very strange, borderline idiotic non-sequitur.

I dunno. Sometimes the emperor has no clothes and knows it, and still just doesn't give a shit. I was talking to some people just today, and came up with the metaphor that the Australian arts industries as a whole is a flee on the back of a dog, riding a ute called the mining industry. That's us.

$1 Computer, $3 Game

All Fucked Up On The Eastern Front

Some time ago, I inherited a 17" laptop PC from a company that went under, for $1. It's a little old now, and it's missing its battery so it needs the power point all the time, but it works just fine. In its heyday when it was new it was a $5k machine, but depreciation and writing it down and neglect brought the price down to $1 when I bought it off the dying firm.

Since then I've been putting on some old PC games for kicks. Some of them run, some of them don't. It's a shame that I can't run 'Baldur's Gate' 1&2 on it, but I did manage to pick up a copy of  a game called 'Commander' for $2.97 at Dick Smith last week. It's been a while since I've played a strategy game set in Europe, where you fight hard on the Eastern Front. So for less than a McValue meal, I've been having much fun with this game for a few days now.

The game dumps you in on the German side in 1939, so you're committed to marching into Paris and then doing your own Barbarossa, but once you're underway, the Eastern Front turns into a very nasty mess very quickly. Quite frankly, the Western Front is nothing like the bloodbath that takes place in the East, which to some extent is a reasonably accurate reflection of what really happened. I certainly haven't made it close to Stalingrad, but the equivalent stalemate blood-bowl bone-grinders are taking shape.

Once out East, the aim of the game ends up as trying to wipe out as many Russian units comprehensively at a faster rate than they can create units. The rate of attrition is quite horrendous. One imagines this was precisely the kind of nightmare scenario the generals on both sides faced. I know we in the anglophone world are much more familiar with D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and all that, but what took place out East was probably 3-5 times more ferocious than anything the western allies faced. For the price of a sandwich, I guess I've been given yet another history lesson.

The World Wide Cinema

Hollywood's Stake In It

Here's The Economists' take on the globalisation of distribution as seen from a Hollywood perspective.

The success of a film outside America is not purely a marketing matter. As foreign box-office sales have become more important, the people who manage international distribution have become more influential, weighing in on “green-light” decisions about which films are made. The studios are careful to seed films with actors, locations and, occasionally, languages that are well-known in target countries. Sony cites the foreign success of “The Green Hornet” (Taiwanese hero, Austrian-German villain) and “Resident Evil: Afterlife” (Japanese location) as evidence of that strategy.

Big noisy spectacle travels best. Jason Statham, the close-cropped star of many a mindlessly violent film, is a particular Russian favourite. Films based on well-known literature (including cartoon books) and myths may also fare well. Films that trade on contemporary American cultural references are about as popular abroad as an oil slick on a NASCAR track. (Note to our non-American readers: NASCAR is an American sport involving fast cars.) Comedy travels badly, too: Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler provoke guffaws at home but incomprehension abroad. As the market swings away from America, funny films are less likely to find financing or broad distribution anywhere. “You won’t see us doing a lot of comedies,” says Brad Grey, head of Paramount Pictures.

The growing internationalisation of the film business suits the biggest outfits, and not just because they can afford explosions. The major studios’ power lies not so much in their ability to make good films—plenty of smaller operations can do that—but in their ability to wring every possible drop of revenue from a film. With their superior global marketing machines and their ability to anticipate foreign tastes, they are increasingly dominating the market. For everyone else, there is a chance to win a gold statue.

World cinema is the catchphrase for films not dominated by Hollywood structure, or made outside of Hollywood structures, but that may well change as Hollywood's reach goes even more global. If they start buying up distribution channels in non-English speaking countries, it's going to impact on those local cinemas much more than in the past. After all, they're competing for every disposable dollar going towards the screen, around the world.

Autopsy?

Check This Out

...And make up your own mind. They don't really come at anything structural. They just talk about what worked for them.

The Property Bubble In Australia

Steven Keen Still Thinks It's There

Pleiades put me onto this one after I wrote about the demographic wave last week. It's not popular to say this, but Steven Ken keeps telling us we're in a property bubble in Australia. The argument against it is that because supply is constrained, it shouldn't burst any time soon. Still, if you can be bothered to sign up at Business Spectator, there's this article here. This bit caught y eye:

This is not a new phenomenon: though I apportion most blame for the Australian house price bubble to the finance sector, there’s little doubt that the fuse itself was lit by the government’s interventions via the First Home Owners Scheme, which began in 1983.

This scheme has always been used as a means to stimulate the economy, and it’s worked – but in much the same way that an anabolic steroid will help an athlete win a medal: it pumps up the performance at the event, only to leave the athlete with long-term health problems in the future.

From 1951 until the FHOS was introduced in 1983, the average quarterly increase in house prices was 0.07 per cent – which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, given that the standard deviation was 1.73 per cent.

After the scheme was introduced, the average quarterly growth increased by more than a factor of ten to 0.94 per cent, and the volatility rose as well. Since there have also been periods where the scheme was removed and when it was doubled, it’s possible to drill down further on its impact – and it’s bleedingly obvious that it both increased house prices and their volatility.

The graphs don't paint a pretty picture. Steven Keen then gos on to show that demographics don't mean much, it's the amount of debt that's been taken out that has directly pushed up prices - which of course is the working definition of a bubble. In any case, it's clear that both Sydney and Melbourne are over priced by historic standards and people are peddling all kinds of arguments as to how this is okay.

What's interesting in all of this is that the RBA hasn't raised interest rates since the Melbourne Cup. The last 2 occasions it was mooted, the rates ended up staying the same. It is a distinct possibility that the RBA wants to raise it to combat the inflation generated by the booming mining sector, and yet it can't because it knows that households are stretched out so far with mortgages than any more rate rise could bring down the house of cards. The repeated claims of a two speed economy do seem to be true when you look at just how over-priced property in Australia has become.

The flip-side of all this is that we can only read from this that governments of both sides of politics think the last thing they want is a property price correction. To that end they will support/inflate the property market with these grants and allowing foreign investors to come in. That suggests the property sector has something in common with the banking sector in that the government has deemed it as too large to fail. There are too many vested interests who make a direct political contribution to both major sides of politics. The best news then may be that there won't be a bursting bubble, but a slowly deflating asset class. The worst news is that if you're a have-not right now, you'll likely stay that way for a very long time.

Compensation For Carbon Price

This Is Going To Get Interesting

Less than 5months from now, the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate and not surprisingly they will be pushing politics to the left by a long way. This might be a good thing given how far to the right things swung under John Howard. Some Gen-Y kids are going to be in for a surprise. Besides which, the Greens aren't green through and through, they're more watermelon-like: green on the outside, red on the inside.

That being the case, the Greens are already shooting down calls for a compensation package for there being a carbon price.

As chief executives from some of the nation's biggest companies attended climate change talks in Sydney yesterday, the Greens highlighted the fraught political landscape confronting the government's push for a carbon price.

After the Herald revealed growing unease among business leaders over the government's negotiations with the Greens, the party's leader, Bob Brown, vowed to challenge the resources industry in its campaign for compensation.

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Senator Brown accused Rio Tinto of trying to ''gouge'' public money after this week unveiling a record profit of $US14 billion.

Rio Tinto, which owns half the country's aluminium smelters, is understood to be lobbying to ensure it is protected against higher electricity prices.

But Senator Brown said he would ''take on'' Rio, which he said would have pocketed $565 million a year under the abandoned carbon pollution reduction scheme. The Greens blocked that scheme, claiming that the compensation it offered to trade-exposed sectors and the power industry was excessive.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, was co-chairman yesterday of the meeting of executives from companies including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, NAB, Woolworths, Qantas and Origin Energy.

It is understood most of the executives agreed a carbon price was inevitable, but stressed the need to avoid ''unintended consequences'' for the economy. One said trade-exposed companies including BHP and Rio Tinto appeared ''nervous'', and were the most vocal in explaining their situation to the government.

I guess the mining business headed up by such hard-done-by types like Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest and Gina Reinhardt are going to take to the hustings (or the back of flatbed trucks) and spend scores of millions to discredit a government trying to do something to address the fact that there needs to be a carbon price. I'm even guessing that the same bunch think that they can roll the Labor government if they can get to the two independents, Windsor and Oakeshott but there's every chance they can't. Let's face it, Windsor and Oakeshott were up to taking the punishing, bullying pressure from Tony Abbott. If the corporate world start launching ads attacking these men, they're more than likely going to push them away; not turn them so they join Tony Abbott.

The uncomfortable truth is that the Senate with the Greens holding power is going to be much, much more progressive than the old Senate so any number of these deals such as the revised Mining Rent Resource Tax and Carbon Pricing are going to be harder to negotiate. It's clear Bob Brown is spoiling for a fight, and he's got his numbers down.

All this is to say once again what a colossal fuck up the move against the ETS and Malcolm Turnbull was, and because of that move the corporate sector is going to pay a heavier toll than if the Coalition had let the Emissions Trading Scheme get up. The boot's going to be on the other foot come 1st of July.

And Just Why Should They Get Any Compensation?

This is the crux of the Greens' position. The reason a carbon price is being discussed is to create a deterrent for wanton emissions, as well as build a fund to combat the effects of climate change. The Corporate sector says they're only part of the problem, and ask why must they pay first before the private citizens? The answer to that is that they can always pass on the cost to the consumer, and therefore the punter is going to get hit with the carbon price; but also the notion that the government should compensate these polluting businesses for the losses they make when they have to factor in a carbon price is just another way for these firms to try and socialise the losses, just as they seek to continue privatsing the profits by avoiding the mining super-tax.

There's really not much more to it than that, so you can easily expect the Greens to ask, why should the tax payer fund any compensation for any of the polluting activity that these companies engage in and contribute to? They've been getting a free ride to date but the free ride is over. There is no reasonable argument to give compensation to freeloaders who suddenly must pay their way. Certainly it's the exact same argument they mount when they attack the welfare system and dole bludgers (do such entities exist any more?).

They can surely cop their own medicine. There shouldn't be any compensation at all.

How To Hand Over Bribes

The Kakuei Tanaka Way

Alrighty you bribe-delivering political aspirants, here's the grand master's lessons on how to hand out political bribes. Read it carefully because you will need to execute this perfectly.

1. Everybody you will hand over the bribe to, thinks they are a good person. They might even be a good person, but the important thing is they think they're good people. So to them, needing this money is the worst feeling in the world. It's particularly bad at the very moment when they receive the money packet.

2. Therefore when you hand the money over, be very careful, because this is the moment that counts. Don't toss it over the table as if it doesn't matter. If you even have half a thought like that, the other party will recognise it in you. Then it won't matter a penny that you're handing over 100million yen. Instead, you should get down on your knees and grovel as you hand over the money. At least, approach it that way.

3. Hand over the bribe to the target and nobody else.

4. Always hand it over where there is nobody else there. Even if it has to be done in a toilet cubicle.

5. Never, ever, ever hand it over to their campaign manager or secretaries. This is because you'll hurt the integrity of the bribe-receiver in the eyes of his subordinates. They shouldn't have to know where the money comes from or why.

6. If you have no choice, hand it to their spouse, but you have to make sure they're tight. You have to be the best judge of character to decide it.

7. The point of this is politics, and the point of politics is to lessen your enemies and create a great field of intermediates who are favorably disposed towards you. It's more important to have fewer enemies than to have more allies.

Good luck with the package, son. Then again, there's always Beth Morgan who was happy just to get a good shagging.

Vested Interests And Corruption

Why Things Stay The Same

I've been reading about corruption and money politics in Japan for the last 2months and I'm struck by how complicit the bureaucracy were in letting things get to where they got. The reason why they acquiesced so easily to the money was because of the very competitive nature of the bureaucracy internally. As the bureaus shed staff as they proceeded up the ladder, the discarded staff would have to find jobs in the private sector where they had few connections. Enter the politician who could help them in exchange for a favor here or favor there. Except it was played out more subtly; there was a tacit understanding that that is why a bureaucrat did favors for a politician, and in turn this was why politicians ferried money from private interests.

You can see that the entire government was captive to money simply because the bureaucracy functioned in a particular way. That's not to say it shouldn't have been as competitive. It is that the bureaucracy made itself vulnerable to corruption by being what it was.

The politicians for their part needed money. Money represented favours and therefore power, in a structure of quid pro quo exchanges. Money exchanged hands between politicians just so that deals could be made and the imbalances of the deals could be off-set by other favours and payments of money. In practical terms, it was the politicians' jobs to placate the complainers and whiners with more money. In turn, private industry spent the money so they could shore up favorable positions against the competition, and they all assumed the competition was paying as much in bribe money as they were.

No wonder things went the way they did. If you looked at the structure of this corruption in Japan, it is clear that the construction industry ended up being the emblematic industry of Japan, just as the military has become that industry for America. The construction lobby was simply too powerful to stop, let alone oppose.

What this wrought was a system where politicians would have prior knowledge of where certain developments would be and they would either tip of their corporate contacts or go in there themselves and profit from the insider information. The net result was increasing land value for over 40 years right up until when the bubble burst; since then it's been a deflationary spiral. Between 1945 and 1989, there was only 1 year where the mean property price went down.

What's really interesting about this is that Japan has been in a deflationary spiral for 20 years. it is possible the deflationary spiral will continue until the full inflationary effect of 40-odd years of Liberal Democrat-led is completely wound back down.

Demographics That Say No


The further interesting thing about 'the Bubble' bursting in 1989 is that signs of stress were there right up to the point where it popped. As property prices rose, it was becoming evident that Generation X in Japan would not be able to live as their parents did and have children as their parents did. Adding in the effects of abortion and contraception, there was a collapse in birthrates, which continues to this day. The deflationary spiral experienced by Japan has greatly to do with the shrinking population.

With fewer people to consume, it has been virtually impossible to ignite internal demand. The prognosis is even worse. This diagram is from Naoto Kan's prime ministerial blog:

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="568" caption="Japanese population projections"][/caption]

That doesn't bode well. The population peaked in 2000 and has been sliding down ever since. It's amazing what a small kink World War II was in the scheme of things, but that is an entry for another day.

What this seems to indicate is how quickly a combination of an aging population and inflated property price can send a nation into a deflationary spiral. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, I thought 'Australia'!

This sort of curve is probably why the previous government brought in the baby bonus, shore up the upward curve of the population. It is also why immigration is active. There are a lot of people invested in property in Australia - and the prices are so high most of the major cities in Australia make the international list for least affordable cities - and this is being kept up by squeezing supply to keep up the demand. The question is, how long can this keep going before birthrates really crash? And when they do crash, doesn't that imply there's a deflationary spiral ahead?

So Who's Vested Interests?

Back to the point of vested interests. Here's the thing about the deflationary spiral in Japan. It's all about the deleveraging, but none of the banks want to give up on the paper value of properties they've ended up owning. So they're simply waiting for buyers who will buy these properties at an approximation of what the banks have rated them as, as opposed to writing them off. In other words, they want to maintain the fiction that the bubble era prices are somehow still relevant. And successive governments in Japan have been shoring up these banks at the expense of the tax payers, and these banks have not lent to small businesses. That part sounds familiar to what is going on in America in the aftermath of the GFC.

The politicians in Japan for most part since the bubble have been borrowing money to prop up moribund banks and construction companies, and now they're running out of credit. There's talk of increasing the consumption tax as well as simply printing money and hyper-inflating out of debt like the Weimar Republic tried. Given how the Weimar experiment ended, it seems like an idiotic move; which leaves only the hard option of raising taxes and paying off the debt with an ever shrinking workforce. Understandably there's very little stomach to make that hard call, which is the same hard call they have been unable to make in Japan.

Which leads me to ask, to whose benefit are they persisting? Surely it can't just be endless gormlessness? It seems again, it's for the bureaucrats who need a place of employment after their careers in government, the politicians who need money to run elections, and general construction companies that need tenders to build more unwanted civil projects.

The thing about all of this is that if you substitute 'general construction' with say 'mining', you start to get a picture of the so-called two-speed economy in Australia. If our government keeps bowing to pressures from these industries, and keeps avoiding doing what is right for the rest of the nation, it's going to eat the future. That's the lesson of history we're seeing in Japan.

Opaque Forecasts For Oil

Whither Peak Oil

I don't get it, I guess. There's the school of thought that the production of oil is either about to peak, or has peaked, or is at its peak as we speak. That's the theory known as 'Peak Oil'.

In Time Magazine, there's an article about how some of the diplomatic cables leaked reveal that Saudi Arabia is overstating its oil reserves by 40%.

A cable from December 2007 tells the story. U.S. diplomats in the Saudi capital of Riyadh met with al-Husseini. The American representatives had been told earlier by current Aramco executives that the company had 716 billion barrels of total oil reserves, of which just over half were considered recoverable. ("Recoverable" oil means that petroleum that is economically worth the cost of getting it out of the ground.) Current Aramco executives believed that in 20 years the company would have over 900 billion barrels in reserves, and that advances in technology would mean that 70% of it would be recoverable—good news for those who want to keep oil prices from rising in the future.

But al-Husseini, the former Aramco exec, told the U.S. diplomats that his successors were far too optimistic. He said that Aramco was overstating its reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels. He believes that Saudi Arabia has approximately 360 billion barrels of proven reserves—meaning oil that has already been produced or which can be exploited with current technology. Al-Husseni said that once 50% of those reserves had been produced, the country would reach an inflection point, resulting in a slow and steady decline in output. He also believes that inflection point would be reached in 14 years at current rates of production (12 million barrels a day), and that it would be followed by a plateau in output and then a decline. Al-Husseini also told American diplomats that Saudi Arabia lacked the engineers and other resources to push production to the max.

That all fits the theory of Peak Oil that's been bandied about since the late 1990s.

Yet at the same time, I read this article on the very same day.

A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.

"That's a significant contribution to energy security," says Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.

Oil engineers are applying what critics say is an environmentally questionable method developed in recent years to tap natural gas trapped in underground shale. They drill down and horizontally into the rock, then pump water, sand and chemicals into the hole to crack the shale and allow gas to flow up.

Because oil molecules are sticky and larger than gas molecules, engineers thought the process wouldn't work to squeeze oil out fast enough to make it economical. But drillers learned how to increase the number of cracks in the rock and use different chemicals to free up oil at low cost.

"We've completely transformed the natural gas industry, and I wouldn't be surprised if we transform the oil business in the next few years too," says Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, which is using the technique.

So it seems there's more oil to be squeezed out of the earth, depending on the technique. The previous theory was that it was hard to access but this is being turned on its head. Presumably if these can help America find more oil, then surely the same techniques can be used to extract more oil in the Middle East. This would then account for this article.

The reality is that we are in uncharted waters. The world has never, ever seen anything like the rise of major developing countries like China and India—over a billion people growing into the middle class, demanding meat, cars, planes, electricity. Just because we proved smart enough to innovate our way out of periods of past growth doesn't mean we'll be able to handle a world with 9 billion plus people by 2050, most of them richer than now. We may already see that impact on the U.S., which will likely have to dig its way out of recession with the added burden of high energy prices thanks to healthy demand from the developing world.

It's actually hard to see if 'Peak Oil' will play out the way the theory predicts. If they keep finding oil, and in the case of Russians - they're finding them in odd places but they do find them - it seems we'll have more than plenty. The question is how are we going to control all that carbon getting emitted. I guess that's another problem altogether.

For those who like reading way-out-there things on the internet, I'll share this link with you. This one in particular is way way way out there.

Movie Doubles - True Grit & True Grit

Not A Remake, A Re-Adaptation

These days any time the Coen brothers make any film, it's an event. Their oeuvre keeps expanding in new and surprising directions and even when it is the most bleak of films, there's something to cogitate about for days afterward. In this instance the burning question was 'why?'. To get some insight, I decided I'd go back an watch the 'original' (a tenuous claim on a previous adaptation) that netted the Best Actor Oscar for John Wayne.

It proved rather interesting. There are 3 main areas that stand out as worth discussing. First is how acting has changed since the late 1960s thanks to the explosion of method acting in the 1970s; second is how technique and technology have changed for a different narrative, a different way to tell the story; and thirdly how the central myth of America remains unchanged partly because of the western.

So here is the obligatory spoiler warning, don't read on if you haven't seen the films.

Acting Evolution

It's a strange feeling watching the Coen brothers version with Jeff Bridges playing Rooster Cogburn, knowing full well that John Wayne came before him and therefore seeing ghostly echoes of that performance. What's weird is when you go back and watch the John Wayne performance, you feel the echoes of Jeff Bridges' work in the new version. You get the feeling that both men got something very good out of playing Rooster Cogburn.

In the case of John Wayne, he obviously got an Oscar, and in Bridges' case, his own Oscar win allowed him to take on the role; yet through the two performances we can see a character with great unity through the two versions. While their deliveries are very different and acting styles are different, the persona is surprisingly consistent.

This breaks down completely with the wildly different performances of Mattie and 'Le Beef'. The character conflict written in the story and the 2 scripts are essentially the same in both films, yet because of the acting styles they play very differently in the two films. Kim Darby's Mattie is an insistent, cantankerous teen while Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie is a precocious, verbose bush lawyer. Both are motivated characters, but the modern version plays with a lot more edgy confrontational feel because of the acting style Similarly, Glenn Campbell's 'La Beef' is like a smiling cowboy right out of his own songs ('Wichita Lineman' springs to mind), while Matt Damon's 'La Beef' is a fine study in character comedy. Both men have pretensions but Campbell's presentation is unaware of the irony, while Damon's 'La Beef' lives in fear of his own inadequacy. The latter is a nice touch.

It's interesting how the prevalence of wider shots and fewer close ups in the older version makes the actors seem more corny. They all appear to be playing to an audience the size of a small playhouse. The closer shots in the Coen version is in line with developments in directing since the late 1960s so has a higher pace and energy, but the acting is delivered for a much tighter space. It is how we've come to like our performances collectively as an audience, but it is also a highly stylised form of acting.

Reversed Symmetry

Rooster's eye patch is on different eyes for Bridges and Wayne, but that is not the only symmetry. Mattie Ross is bitten by a rattle snake on the left hand in the modern version and on the right hand in the old version. When Mattie shoots Chaney the  first time, she breaks his rib on the left side in the new version and the right side in the old version. I don't know if these changes are intentional or not, and there's really not much to be gained from knowing if they were but they too are consistent.

Interesting Faces

A fresh-faced Dennis Hopper plays Moon in the old version, and Robert Duvall plays Ned Pepper, who in the old version has a scarred lip. Barry Pepper plays Ned in the new version, but has bad teeth instead of a scarred lip. Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney is a kind of over-casting as it is such a minor role, but he does play a great idiot.

Kim Darby as Mattie Ross in the first version is also a name worth poking at.

Darby began acting at age fifteen and has appeared in many films and television shows. Her first appearance was as a dancer in the 1963 film Bye Bye Birdie. Among her best known roles are True Grit (1969) playing a fourteen-year-old when she was twenty-one years old; Gunsmoke (episode "The Lure"); Better Off Dead (1985); and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).

After she starred in True Grit, film critics predicted that she was at the beginning of a long career as a great actress. In fact, she has made almost no films of note since. This has caused some critics[citation needed] to put her in the same category as Bo Derek (in 10) and Maria Schneider (in Last Tango in Paris), because all three actresses made spectacular splashes in their first films, but never acted in successful films again.

The funny thing in there is that she played John Cusak's mother in 'Better Off Dead' - it's a pretty goofy role, totally unlike Mattie Ross. There is a distinct possibility that the radical changes to the style of acting in the 1970s simply left her behind.

Limitations Of Era

There are few night sequences in the old version. This is probably a function of budget and film technology. One of the few night scenes is clearly shot in the studio while key scenes all happen under daylight. The skies are blue, the leaves on trees are radiant, the water sparkles and there's hardly a shadow. The modern version is a much darker patina, with greater texture in the dark areas. Clearly the colour has been digitally graded and shows a great deal of detail where you wouldn't expect. Dark rooms, night exteriors, all have a fantastic hyper-realism while maintaining a slightly sepia, old look.

Beyond the look of the two films, it is clear that certain aspects of the book couldn't be brought to the screen the first time, namely the loss of Mattie's arm to the snake bite and the fate of Rooster Cogburn. What's interesting is that the nature of the violence is identical but it is more confronting in the modern version.

It's not surprising that Wayne played Rooster Cogburn again in a 1978 sequel. The same events happens in the hut by the river sequence; the violence in the old version is almost prosaic; there is a visceral presence to the direction that makes the violence truly sickening in the new version.

What's interesting perhaps is how gun violence is/was abstracted in the older iterations of the violence genre that it seems arbitrary. John Wayne shoots somebody and they keel over. The old Western shooting style puts the victim in the distance in a wide landscape, so we don't get close to the result of the gun shot - we relate to the shooter, Wayne's Rooster Cogburn. In that fact alone you can see how far cinema has come to conveying violence, for better or worse. Conversely, it reveals how much further we've come from the wild west.

Cutting To The Chase

The overwhelming difference in the the two films in the area of camera directing is actually the style of coverage as well as music. The older version is a first order text in the classical genre of the Hollywood western so it comes with all the stylistic trappings of the genre. There are plenty of wide shots of landscapes with people riding their horses to the sound of an orchestral score that sounds like it was lifted from Aaron Copeland's oeuvre. It's not that the music itself has an emotional cue, it is the combination of the landscape and the music that is supposed to evoke the wild west.

It's remarkable how un-reflective the old version is when it comes to the presentation of the wild west. Irony is so far from the direction that it is only in the moments written in the novel that carry irony that make it to the screen. The language of the screen itself is so straight it makes you look harder for deeper meaning which isn't there.

In the latter film, the music tracks the emotional ups and downs carefully, while the camera moves ever closer to catch the subtle changes o expression and nuance. Not only does the latter version come after the 1990s revival of the Hollywood western which followed the success of 'Dancing With Wolves' and 'Unforgiven'; it comes after the Coen Brothers' own body of work which carry with them certain kinds of expectation.

The end result in the latter film is a layered work with plenty of irony, both in the style of language spoken as well as the directing and editing. Even the way the story starts is cut short to get to Mattie's arrival in Fort Smith, and the epilogue goes straight to a elder Mattie arriving too late to meet Rooster Cogburn one last time. By honing down the text to make it Mattie's emotional journey of both revenge and sacrifice we come to understand the deeper moral framework in the novel. American cinema has come a long way in 40 years.

The Lady Deserves A Beating

Sexism? I think Not

Kristina Kenneally may not indeed be the most odious Premier of NSW. It is a point I must concede. After all, Robert Askin sounds like he was as crooked as they come, and Bob Carr seems like one of the most insufferable human beings a man could meet. Nick Greiner left such a slimey impression what with his board memberships on so many dodgy PPPs, and Neville Wran was... Neville Wran.

The point being it is entirely possible she has not been the worst human being to grace the position of Premier of NSW. However, this puff piece had me choking.

During Verity Firth's husband's ecstasy scandal last week, Keneally's staff almost fell over laughing when asked if their boss had dabbled with drugs. She similarly fails to grasp sexual innuendo during office banter, they say.

For all these reasons the Premier is likely to recoil, rightly, at the disturbingly sexist view of her that has arisen in focus groups assembled by the Liberal Party.

A senior Liberal source says a theme has emerged, particularly among male voters, that can be boiled down to: Keneally is the one-night stand who was fun at the time but insisted on hanging around the next morning, even though you wanted her to leave.

It's always hard to know if selected snippets of internal polling like this reflect the true results or, more likely, illuminate one element for damaging effect. But there's no argument that opinion polls showed voters had an immediate attraction to Keneally when she took on the job from Nathan Rees in December 2009.

''It was a flirtation, or some sort of infatuation,'' the senior Liberal said. ''She's obviously attractive but it was more than that; it was a novelty to have an American as premier - an American woman as premier.''

Almost everyone is surprised by how hard and fast Keneally fell in the polls when the love affair ended - to the extent that she now lags the Liberals' Barry O'Farrell by 20 percentage points as preferred premier.

If people believe they've somehow been taken in by Keneally, that's their view, fine. But our first female premier deserves better than being objectified because of her gender.

The last bit  is nuts. What she deserves is the line from 'Unforgiven', "deserve's got nothing to do with it." along with the electoral bullet to put her out of her misery.

But before getting to that point, here are at least 2 problems of Kenneally's own links to scandal that this article glosses over. Number 1 is of course just how deep her dealings with Ron Medich (and the whole corrupt dealing aspect of Medich's empire) actually go, and number 2 is the allegation that the Barangaroo contract for car parks benefits her husband Ben directly. So no, it is not true to say she is scandal free herself.

The four women who marched in to replace Nathan Rees with Kristina Kenneally as Premier, if I recall correctly were Verity Firth, Angela D'Amore, Carmel Tebbutt and Virginia Judge. Of these 4 MPs, Verity Firth's in this drug scandal with her husband even if she had nothing to do with the said pill; Angela D'Amore has since been found to have been corrupt and been kicked out of the ALP; Virginia Judge has been accused of handing out grant money to her mates; which leaves Carmel Tebbutt the only one free of scandals.

I think the electorate has actually been highly supportive of the politically correct/anti-sexist line to the extent that when these women engineered the first female premier of NSW - though unelected she may be - the electorate perhaps was willing to give her a go. Okay, it's true, I made a commitment to never vote for her government - one which I will keep - but other people around me have been umm-ing and aah-ing. They've told me they like the reality of having a female mayor of Sydney, a female Premier of NSW, a female Prime Minister and a female Governor General, plus a Queen.

In other words, sexism isn't what's going to kick Kristina Kenneally out. In all realistic appraisal, when Kristina Kenneally's government does get voted out on 26th of March this year, it would be because of the collective shenanigans of all the NSW ALP members and staffers. That she contributed very little to the parade of scandals is not going to persuade people to keep this NSW government. Any argument mounted in favor of Kenneally's government should face up to that daunting, brutal, frank reality.

In that light, the article was one of the dumbest things I've ever read in the SMH in a long time.

Blockbuster Saturation

Lemmings At The Cliff

I've been saying for a while that the movie business has got some fundamental problems that is making it unsustainable, and that we may see the end of Hollywood as we know it. Apparently I'm not alone in this diagnosis:

The idea of spending $300 million to make a two-hour fantasy is kind of weird if you think about it. That kind of spending only makes sense if you can convince millions of people to spend between $10 and $20 each to see the result. This is one case where the format is the content — there's no other format in which you could spend such an obscene amount of money on just two hours' entertainment. It's not going to happen on television, it's not going to happen with direct-to-DVD movies. There's really no other format I can think of that would justify that kind of opulence.

Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people put on masques. These were lavish plays, put on at royal courts, or in wealthy aristocrats' houses, and they involved architecturally ambitious sets and fancy costumes. Often the whole point of these entertainments was how cool they looked — if you read their scripts nowadays, they're kind of dull, because you're not seeing the amazing costumes, scenery — and yes, special effects. The masque was a huge spectacular that dominated culture for roughly a century — and then it was extinct.

Nobody expects movie theaters to implode this year. The Hollywood blockbuster, as a format, will probably keep existing for years. But eventually, the unsustainable business model that drives these things will fall apart, and the movie as we know it will transform into something more suited to home viewing, and maybe more integrated with web content. So it's a good thing they're making tons of huge Hollywood movies right now, so we'll have plenty of examples of them to look at once they're gone.

That's the concluding 3 paragraphs so I've cut to the chase, but the figures cited in the article leading to it exactly what I've been saying here, so I feel like I'm not some lone nut Cassandra.

The real argument is that the revenue that the studios can collect from the films is shrinking for various technological reason as well as demographic reasons, while unit cost of the films have soared to ridiculous heights. And now they're all doing this as we pick and choose which ones we want to see based on hearsay reviews moving faster than advertising, the studios can't keep their product out in the market place to find its audience. Something's got to break and it won't be audience indifference.

I think it was back in 2003 I was asked which movies I was looking forward to seeing and I replied the depressing thing was that they all had numerals behind them as they were all sequels. Yes, they were some good movies there, but it ode really ill for the creativity of the industry. Ever since the GFC, the business is even more risk averse to the point that they will only put big money into these 'proven properties' which are adaptations of comic books and graphic novels. If they still made good smaller films otherwise, it would be gratifying, but no; they're making these films at the expense of the good smaller films. The industry really is cannibalising itself. Lucas and Spielberg and James Cameron will always be able to make a movie, but just as it happened here at a smaller scale, it's at the expense of the future. The future is now, except it's also already the past.

This Is Still Normal?

Cyclone Yasi

Only a fortnight after the floods that hit Queensland, Cyclone Yasi is bearing down on the northern end of Queensland.

Authorities have recorded wind speeds of 295km/h and warned that storm surges of up to 7 metres could hit Cardwell, between Townsville and Cairns, as the cyclone’s expected arrival late tonight combines with a high tide.

The life-threatening system is forecast to cross the coast near Innisfail, with furious winds, torrential rain and floods adding to Queensland’s massive damage bill from natural disasters this summer.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has announced that Cyclone Yasi is even bigger than Cyclone Larry that hit Innisfail 5 years ago, and that it is in fact a storm with a scale of which has been unseen in generations. I take that to read it's a once in a hundred hear event - just like the floods that hit Brisbane.

In the aftermath of Brisbane, it got pointed out by some people that Brisbane was always prone to flooding and that the councils that allowed construction of houses in such places were to blame. A lot of it came from people who had the usual climate-denial axe to grind.

It was conveniently missed that the Wivenhoe Dam was built after the 1974 floods in order to control flooding, and that it had been overwhelmed with the scale of water that was way beyond what the designers had foreseen. The precipitation that led to the recent floods was reported as double the precipitation in 1974.

Indeed, where did all this water come from?

Uhh, in case you're wondering, that's a rhetorical question. It seems incredibly ornery to ignore the volume of water that has been introduced into the system with melting polar caps and glaciers. But I guess that's what you get from climate change deniers.

From Texas To Maine

So while the north end of Queensland is getting inundated in historic proportions yet again, we find out that North America has been hit by a historic snow storm.

The monstrous storm billed as the worst in decades delivered knock-out after knock-out as it made its way from Texas to Maine, bringing Chicago and the rest of the Midwest to a halt and prompting a region-wide snow day.

"I'm usually skeptical about predictions of a big storm," 50-year-old law firm librarian Janet Smith said Tuesday afternoon while waiting at a downtown Chicago train station. "But I'm kind of excited. I wasn't around for the storm of `67, or the storm of `79, or the storm of `99. I've missed all the greats. I'm excited about experiencing it."

For the first time in history, the state of Missouri shut down Interstate 70 between St. Louis and Kansas City due to a winter storm. The newspaper in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the first time in more than a century. And in Chicago, public schools called a snow day for the first time in 12 years.

Now, here's the thing. I experienced '79 and it was billed as the worst snow in 30years in the New York area at the time. But that was superseded by a snow fall in the mid 1990s that was billed as worst in 60 years. It's a little odd that we're seeing once in a life-time sort of events in regular succession.

Yet, this is exactly what is predicted by climate change models where global warming has led to more water in the system, giving rise to wilder and wilder storm events. These things aren't coincidences and chance happenings.For it to be chance you'd expect more of a regression to the mean. Instead we're seeing a shift towards a 'new normal' where we're hit with more extreme storms more frequently and marvel at the historic ferocity. Hurricane Katrina anybody?

Yes, it could all be chance an coincidence and luck and within the bell curve of events that could realistically happen. However, it's a lot more scientific to explain it as largely because there's more water in the climate system, causing frequent extreme weather events. Occam's razor says it's the latter. This whole extreme storm thing is about global warming.

Whatever You Reckon, Russell

Feckless In Filmsville

I got this link from Mrs. Pleiades today. Seems Russell Crowe wants to spend more time in Australia to look after his business portfolio which consists of some Australian film projects. You don't say, Russell...

Having released three Hollywood movies in two years, The Next Three Days star told The Daily Telegraph he intends to expand the projects in the pipeline for his local production company, Fear Of God Films.

"I don't really have any plans to go overseas and make any movies this year," he said.

"We've got a lot of things going on in Australia and I need to spend some time here to solidify and build."

While the Souths co-owner wouldn't go into the specifics, we understand the main focus on his solidification schedule is the adaptation of My Brother's Keeper, a book based on Aussie underworld figure Anthony Hines and his fatal clash with the notorious Bra Boys surfing tribe.

"We've got a bunch of projects we've been developing, one of them for the last seven years," he said.

"For the next little while I want to become part of this magic wave that is rising in Australian film again with Animal Kingdom and a bunch of other films ...

"It's feeling really good. The energy is here."

To which we say, "bollocks, Russ." The Australian Film Industry has got its back against the wall - and amazing to say, more so than ever - and the high Australian Dollar has knocked out the part of the industry that services Hollywood. The point is, there is no energy to be felt. It's dead.

Panalux is up for sale. When it's gone, all those lights are going to leave these shores, probably for South Africa where the low Rand is making it the next destination of Hollywood in search of Techno-Mexicans (yes, that's what they called us). Once they leave our shores, that's actually a chunk of our film-making capability, gone. Don't pretend this isn't going down the gurgler fast.

Russell wouldn't sound so callow and wrong-headed if it weren't for the fact that as late as 12months ago, he wouldn't read anything from Australia. There's also the little yarn about when Martin Bedford said, "Russell, you can save the Australian Film Industry," and Russell snidely retorted "Martin, nothing can save the Australian Film Industry."

I figure it must have been really nice to have been so right for so long while being so successful, far away from the mess; so please spare us the bullshit that you're back here because "the energy is so good". We've been here all along. We know exactly what the energy is like and it's anything but 'good'.

Top 10 Historically Misleading Films

Just thought that Australian actors seem to contribute greatly to misrepresenting history. Of that list over at Time's website:

• There's Mel AND Heath Ledger in 'The Patriot'


• There's Russell in 'Robin Hood'


• There's Mel in and directing 'Braveheart'


• David Wenham in '300'.


• Geoffrey Rush in 'The King's Speech'


• and again, Geoffrey Rush in 'Shakespeare in Love'

That's 6 out of 10 films listed. I don't know if 'Shakespeare in Love' really counts as a historic film, but by the same token, Geoffrey Rush AND Cate Blanchett have been party to the gross historic misrepresentations of both 'Elizabeth' and 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'. I'd also add Heath Ledger's turn as Casanova, and Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in 'Australia' to that list (amazing how we can't even get our own history right)(perhaps this is emblematic of the problem itself).

You see what I'm getting at.