One of the great artists of the motion picture industry died on Wednesday. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who did some absolutely splendid work for Ingmar Bergman over the years before becoming a regular member of Team Woody Allen, was 83.

Bloggage via Technorati.

September 16, 1956: Channel Nine begins transmission with station manager Bruce Gyngell (long before his pretty in pink days) uttering that profound line:

Hello, and welcome to television.

Well it seems that it was actually Janet Gaynor who was the first face on Australian television, during laboratory tests in the 1934. The Ipswich City Council website documents it in detail, but of course we know never to let the facts get in the way of a good anniversary.

But there can be no better way to celebrate the half-century of commercial TV in Australia than that concocted by the people behind Naomi Robson. Summed up succinctly on the editorial page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Naomi Robson, a glamorous and determined reporter, is on her way to save Wa-Wa, a boy marked, perhaps, for consumption by his cannibal tribe. She falls into an elaborate trap set by a fiendishly cunning Indonesian immigration official: she is asked for her visa. Not having a valid one, she and her crew are entombed alive in a three-star hotel. Using only their corporate credit cards, they cut their way to freedom and ratings success.

It’s still 48 hours away from the next episode of Media Watch, but until then we can follow the reportage from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph and the ABC. (Where is Boris Johnson when you need him?)

Special 72-and-a-bit-years of Australian television celebratory link: the best of Naomi Robson on Youtube.

Benny Sixteen has cancelled the annual Vatican Yuletide concert.

Initiated by John Paul II in 1993, the annual pop music event has been canned by Benedict XI, apparently because of his disdain for music written by non-German composers alive since 1791. Which kinda narrows it down a little.

Ekklesia takes up the story.

Sexually charged music directly impacts teenage sexual habits, new study says - (BP)

Who else but the Rand Corporation could do a report on the impact of music on teenage sexuality?

And who better than the Southern Baptists’ media arm for us to look to for reportage of the findings?

The full Randy press release can be found here.

Dancing on Lies

The latest Flash animation from Peter Nicholson and the Rubbery Figures crew.

Red card for Zizou.

Big day on Norton Street.

V for Italia.

Chris Masters’ long-awaited unauthorised biography of infamous Sydney squawkmeister Belford Parrott has been shelved. The book, tentatively titled “Jonestown”, was intended as a follow-up to Masters’ Four Corners report on Mr Parrott in 2002.

The ABC issued a press release this afternoon, possibly the first press release I can ever recall announcing the non-publication of a book. The decision, according to ABC Enterprises director Robyn Watts, was made for “purely commercial reasons”.

Ms Watts went on to say:

“ABC Enterprises has a clear responsibility to deliver a commercial return to the ABC. To proceed with publication will almost certainly result in a commercial loss which would be irresponsible.”

While I get back to reading “Simply Stuffed” by HG Nelson, feel free to take a browse through the ABC Shop’s book section at all those titles responsibly published by ABC Enterprises to deliver a commercial return.

It’s been about eighteen years of waiting for a decent opportunity, but at long last I have made it this year to the Sydney Film Festival.

So far I have seen nine films, ranging from the earnestly good to the bloody brilliant, and I’m booked in for two more before the Festival closes next Sunday.

Here are some brief reviews of the first three films that I saw, with more to follow in future posts:

A Hero’s Welcome - Documentary about, and narrated by, Timor-Leste president Xanana Gusmao, shot before the current problems flared up. The film is something of a hagiography of Xanana, but by all reports he’s that kinda guy. Directed by Grace Phan, the former CNBC Asia presenter who answered questions following the screening (which was in fact the world premiere). The aerial photography of the Timorese countryside is quite beautiful.

An Inconvenient Truth - The best motion picture adaptation of a Powerpoint presentation I have ever seen (and hopefully the only one). Al Gore’s lecture on the impact of global warming is quite powerful and very persuasive - and if you live on the coast, any coast, start worrying now. Question though: which special effects unit was responsible for making Gore appear human? I’ve seen this film debunked on the basis of Gore’s politics and the wonky environmental track record of the Clinton administration. Don’t shoot the messenger. This is one film that should be seen by everyone. (And no, he gives no opinion on the future of nuclear power.)

Cinemas, Aspirin and Vultures - It’s a road movie. Yes, I find the genre boring too, but at least this was an offbeat story in an unusual location - rural Brazil during World War II. A German flees to Brazil to escape the War and becomes a travelling salesman spruiking the new wonder drug, aspirin, and showing commercials to people who get no other movie entertainment. He befriends a bloke who apparently is based on director Marcelo Gomes’ father, and they travel around together until Brazil declares its entry to WWII. At which point all German nationals are ordered to either return home or enter an internment camp in Sao Paolo… The Brazilian swing music of the 20s and 30s makes for an interesting soundtrack, including a young pre-Hollywood Carmen Miranda.

The tune commonly known as “The Star Spangled Banner” has been around since the 1760s with quite a few sets of lyrics. The most recent, timed for release on May Day 2006, is “Nuestro Himno” - an anthem for the USA’s second largest ethnic group. It hasn’t pleased El Presidente Jorge W Bush, but you can’t make everyone happy, especially an Anglophile neo-con.

Take it away guys:

Amanece, lo veis?, a la luz de la aurora?
lo que tanto aclamamos la noche caer?
sus estrellas sus franjas
flotaban ayer
en el fiero combate
en señal de victoria,
fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada.

Por la noche decían:
“Se va defendiendo!”
Oh decid! Despliega aún
Voz a su hermosura estrellada,
sobre tierra de libres,
la bandera sagrada?

Sus estrellas, sus franjas,
la libertad, somos iguales.

Somos hermanos, en nuestro himno.

En el fiero combate en señal de victoria,
Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada.
Mi gente sigue luchando.

Ya es tiempo de romper las cadenas.

Por la noche decían: “!Se va defendiendo!”

Oh decid! Despliega aún su hermosura estrellada
sobre tierra de libres,
la bandera sagrada?

Nuestro Himno is not the first Spanish version of the song whose tune was composed by John Stafford Smith and first published in around 1778 as “To Anacreon In Heaven” (and more about that later). La Bandera de las Estrellas was published in 1919. The Germans did a translation in the 1860s. It’s been translated into Yiddish, and the citizens of American Samoa have recently identified a need to use their own translation:

Aue! se’i e vaai, le malama o ataata mai
Na sisi a’e ma le mimita, i le sesega mai o le vaveao
O ai e ona tosi ma fetu, o alu a’e i taimi vevesi tu
I luga o ‘Olo mata’utia, ma loto toa tausa’afia
O Roketi mumu fa’aafi, o pomu ma fana ma aloi afi
E fa’amaonia i le po atoa, le fu’a o lo’o tu maninoa
Aue! ia tumau le fe’ilafi mai, ma agiagia pea
I eleele o Sa’olotoga, ma Nofoaga o le au totoa.

There’s a translation into Latin of FS Key’s famous ditty, composed while he was a POW on a British warship in 1813 - but it’s only a translation of the third verse!

Surely Mad Mel can commission an Aramaic version for us?

In 1969 at Woodstock, NY, presumably in protest at the lack of a Cherokee translation, Jimi Hendrix performed an electric guitar version of JS Smith’s original score with no lyrics at all.

But back to the original, which had nothing to do with bombs bursting in air, la bandera sagrada, dem soynes makhne iz fartayet in shrek, or even caligata lues expurgatast cruore!

To Anacreon In Heaven has six verses, but as you watch the FS Key rendition being performed at the NBA playoffs, don’t forget to sing the following when they get up to the “O say does the star spangled banner yet wave” bit:

And besides I’ll instruct you,
Like me, to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus’s Vine.

Passion, passion and more passion. Such was the story of Good Friday. Three of the more interesting and non-standard Passion performances that I experienced over Easter:

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), which I watched on DVD, is actually a better movie than I had feared it would be. Intense, grim, bloody, but not gratuitously so in my opinion. The actor portraying Jesus seemed remarkably uncharismatic in the flashback scenes. I’m not in a position to discuss the theological merit of the film, although the English subtitles did seem faithful to the Gospels. Next time I watch it, however, I intend to switch the subtitles off and see how well I can follow the film having no understanding of Aramaic.

La Pasión según San Marcos - St Mark’s Passion - by Osvaldo Golijov (2000) is an absolute joy to listen to. Available as a 2CD, I bought it in MP3 format from emusic (which, of course, has the downside of no liner notes or libretto). An utterly dazzling blend of musical styles, primarily, but not only, South American.

Good Friday evening saw the Manchester Passion - a re-enactment of the last hours of Christ through the streets of Manchester at dusk, told through the music of Manchester-based musicians, and televised live by the BBC. The Guardian reviewed the performance in their Saturday edition.

I listened online to BBC Radio Manchester (and recorded it - all right officer I’ll come quietly). I was surprised how well some of the songs (for example, Love Will Tear Us Apart) were placed into context. It sounded fabulous to me and I do hope it turns up on the ABC some day. Being a live broadcast on local radio, however, did mean the occasional interruption for reports on that other great religion, Manchester United, from the Old Trafford Cathedral of St Matthew the Busby. That turned out to be another sombre occasion, United drew 0-0 with Sunderland. For Man U, that meant they could no longer catch Chelsea at the top of the Premiership. For Sunderland, it meant relegation.

It begs the question: would the Crucifixion have gone ahead on Friday if Jerusalem United had a home game against Corinthian Lions in the Imperial Premier League that evening?