Where Women Glow And Men Chunder

Australia's Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson is as chuffed as chuffed can be over the upcoming Baz Luhrmann epic Australia starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. He thinks that this will pump up Australia's tourism industry that has been flat ever since the 2000 Olympics were held there. While I admit it's probably better than the controversy generated by their last big ad campaign that centered around a sexy swimsuit model asking, "Where the bloody hell are you?", and the lesser know though far more controversial follow up to that where we heard the slogan, "Australia: It's Not That Bad Here, I Mean, Come On, There Are Worse Places,"* this quote from the article telling me all of this caught my eye and I feel it makes Martin Ferguson look like a silly little drongo:

With sweeping Outback scenery and set in northern Australia on the eve of World War Two, "Australia" will see Kidman and Jackman take 2,000 cattle overland and caught in the wartime bombing of Darwin by the Japanese.

So, the movie centers around the hellish wartime devastation that was wrought upon the northern city of Darwin in World War II, an attack that resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of refugees and untold property damage. Yeah, that ought to fill the hotels and populate the beaches. Hot on the heels of this success, you could make the next Australian movie a drama about the 1918 influenza epidemic that spread all across the country and claimed 12,000 lives.

Oh well, I guess you work with what you have and it beats the hell out of those movies that make people think that Australians are moronic crocodile poachers who have appointed themselves on experts on what is and is not a knife or that they all dress up in spiked shoulder pads and drive around the Outback in souped up motorbikes and dune buggies looking for gasoline.


*Only one of those is a joke, the other is something they actually did.

Digg This.