Recent entries
- Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads'
- "I'll pay the fee," says Hinch
- 'Pathetic' and 'dangerous' sentence
- US Defence's 'news' irks Hinch
- Richmond denies St Kilda incident
- It's 'No, Prime Minister' from Hinch
- Greens' downfall imminent?
- Back-watching time for the PM?
- RSS Syndicate this blog (XML)
What we're talking about
- Christine on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' isn't it funny how DHS don't recognise the psychological effects of domestic violence on children and continue to allow ... more
- Warrior princess on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' There is a family In the Cairns Area who are Foster Carers.Atherton Child Safety have threatened the carers and own ... more
- duncan on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' i have spent time with this family. it is a house full of love. "mum", grandfather and older sblings.this cannot be an issue ... more
- Tracey on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Family Law is different from the rest of the law in this country.. Ie. Family Law is based on probability: ie if it might ... more
- carol annetta on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' having known this family for some time i am disgusted with the treatment she has received. it seems more of a witch hunt ... more
- Maureen Hillary on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Derryn,I have counselled traumatized parents as a result of DHS staff.There are great staff workers who care but they ... more
- Janet Tavener on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' I am a visitor to this country.My attention was drawn to the case of these children and their foster mother by a relative of ... more
- sam on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Happening in Tasmania also.Wewon a court case over 8 months ago and due process still hasn't been done.We spent 17,000 ... more
- Anne Glover on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' I just cannot believe what the DHS has put the Foster Mother, and the children through - I thought the DHS was supposed to ... more
- Tracey on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' DHS are the most disgraceful organization I have ever had the displeasure of becoming involved with. They are so ... more
- Vicki on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Hi Derryn,I have known this carer since primary school, she has always put others above herself. Being a carer myself I know ... more
- Gran'ma Pam on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' As any of us with any sense know, these children should NEVER have been taken from this lady (mum) in the first place, they ... more
- Dominic Lombardo on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' I see my daughter every six months DHS are conducting a vendetta against me I have not been told why I can only see her ... more
- cassy houghton on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Hello Derryn,Firstly i would like to thankyou for your support and the willingness to help this beautiful family.I ... more
- Warrior princess on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Im a carer also in Qld. I see this happen way too much from our Government. They are starting to use Carers own children as ... more
- paul on "I'll pay the fee," says Hinch I believe what Liberal Party has done is stupid. But I feel for candidates like Joh Bauch and James Buonopane who want to ... more
- Andrea on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Why are these public servants allowed to blatantly flout the law without the same consequences the rest of society faces? I ... more
- birth mother on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' i am the birth morther of these 4 children and i just want to say dhs dont care they just want the kids in care so they can ... more
- Frances Goff on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Derryn, Firstly, Happy BirthdayHaving worked in a primary school for 15 year I have seen some terrible things regarding DHS ... more
- Karen on Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads' Hi Derryn, I have known these children through "the system".for all of their lives. I have had regular contact with them ... more
Hinch/Howard on Frost/Nixon
There could hardly be a more subjective, judgmental critic than this one when it comes to a Ron Howard movie.
VIDEO: Watch Frost/Nixon trailer
Not that I don’t admire the Academy Award-winning director and have enjoyed such movies as A Beautiful Mind and Cocoon and Ransom.
I am even old enough to remember him as Ritchie Cunningham in Happy Days and as a five-year-old kid lisping his way through Gary, Indiana with Robert Preston in The Music Man.
But when I went to see Tom Hanks in his version of Apollo 13 I felt like another of Hans’s characters, Forrest Gump, who kept popping up at critical times in American history.
I was reporting from Mission Control in Houston when Apollo 13 blew up and had three astronauts stranded aboard their crippled spacecraft 250,000 miles from home. Knew every detail of their miraculous and safe return to earth.
If Howard played with history on that one I would be on to him like a seagull on a piece of hot fat. He didn’t. This director’s brilliant touch shone through.
Which leads me to Frost/Nixon – Ron Howard’s audacious attempt to turn a series of television interviews between David Frost and the disgraced Watergate President Richard Nixon into a movie. Or at least adapt a successful play into a movie. Who on earth would watch it?
It happened more than 30 years ago. A generation has never heard of Nixon or Watergate.
And, being Forrest Gump again, I was there and had covered the fall of Tricky Dick. Watched the presidential helicopter take off from the White House lawn minutes after he became the first president in history to resign.
Like many journalists I had seethed that the one person who would get to sit down face to face with Nixon was celebrity talk show host and gadfly David Frost who invented the words ‘effusive’ and ‘smarmy’.
By the time the Frost/Nixon interviews went to air I was back in Australia as Editor of the Sydney Sun newspaper and watched the first episodes with a combination of scorn and frustration. Tricky Dick was getting away with it again. Frost wasn’t laying a glove on him. But. Softy, softly, catchee monkee.
In the final installment David Frost nailed him. Or, more accurately, Nixon, with some clever coaxing, nailed himself. And director Ron Howard has nailed it too.
The big surprise to me is that Frost/Nixon is not (for most people) a movie about Watergate or really about American politics. It is a fascinating slowly-building gladiatorial contest between two disparate and desperate men. It is a fantastic movie. And an amazingly accurate portrait of those times and those events.
As I mentioned in my interview with Ron Howard, my wife Chanel is not an avid moviegoer. She has none of my interest in politics in general or American politics in particular. She saw it as a battle of wits and egos of two men. She gave it nine out of ten. From her that’s Oscar-winning praise.
Frost/Nixon opens in Australia on Boxing Day. Appropriate really. It’s all about verbal boxing.
