A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

HAND ME MY LONGSWORD: The release of Baz Luhrmann's Australia invites a career appraisal of a director whose films are far more alive than almost anyone else's. Even if you're not a huge fan of his Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! (and why not?), you can't deny that the man is putting maximum effort into providing ecstatic, original thrill rides brimming with intelligence and wit, set elsewhere but with a contemporary cultural vocabulary. In re The New One:

Dargis: "[O]ne demented and generally diverting horse-galloping, cattle-stampeding, camera-swooping, music-swelling, mood-altering widescreen package, this creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion."

Ebert: "Baz Luhrmann dreamed of making the Australian Gone With the Wind, and so he has, with much of that film's lush epic beauty and some of the same awkwardness with a national legacy of racism.... Coming from a director known for his punk-rock William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and the visual pyrotechnics of Moulin Rouge!, it is exuberantly old-fashioned, and I mean that as a compliment." (Though Ebert has real problem with some Magical Aborigine issues, apparently.)

Anyone with the gumption to pull off the "Roxanne" tango and Shakespeare by way of MTV, and who has the balls to name a movie after his home country? That's someone whose career I'll keep following.