Hungo

This blog has on occasion made mock of Mungo MacCallum in these his declining years, but occasionally he has seen his predictions come true. Admittedly, not in 1992, when he wrote in the Weekend Australian Magazine just before the Tasmanian election that the State's Hare-Clark electoral system ("also known as the 'Hare-Brained System'.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Brilliant! Never heard that one before!) was certain to deliver a hung parliament.

But back in the day, at the height of his powers, Mungo was indeed a journalistic force to be reckoned with, for in 1977 he managed to predict the result of an election one-third of a century later:

"... Win, lose or draw (a very real possibility which must be causing the incoming Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowen, the odd sleepless night)..."

- "Malcolm's Last Joke," Nation Review, 1-7 December 1977), repub as Chapter 21 in Mungo on the Zoo Plane: Elections 1972-77 (UQ Press, 1979), p 196.

As did John Howard's former chief of staff, Grahame Morris, back in the now-expunged era of the Latham Ascendancy:

"There is every chance after the election the Prime Minister will have to wake up every morning worrying about what Bob Katter had for breakfast."

- Glenn Milne, Hamstrung by the minors," The Australian (6 September 2004).

"Heaven's gate" - always a good omen (so to speak) for an ambitious film producer

Okay, well, the much-trumpeted (so to speak) Paradise Lost film doesn't seem to be happening after all (surely not copyright claims? I knew the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act had a long reach, but even so...). However, all hope do not abandon. For in lieu thereof, there is another: Lucifer: The Movie, to be directed by conservative activist Ray Griggs. Preview clip at YouTube here.

My verdict: The CGI's brilliant. Depicting heaven as Pandora-meets-Lothlórien, as an Edenic forest-island floating in the clouds, is inspired (so to speak). Establishing Michael and Lucifer as besties who later become deadly enemies during the War In Heaven does not come entirely out of left field (even as a mortal bound by linear time, I foresee the line "You were like a brother to me!" being uttered at some point *) but it can certainly make the characters resonate if done properly. The dialogue could do with some trimming, and please, not Warwick Capper/ David Lee Roth as the soon-to-befallen archangel. But this is a promising start, and hopefully the hairstyling budget can match the CGI budget on the final cut.

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* And then, when Lucifer is kicked out of heaven, he - hmmm.... - falls into a pit of molten lava, and emerges looking all burned and hideous, with his skin stripped off. Something like the attached artwork by Ong Chew Peng, which I have christened (so to speak) "Eric Bana arm-wrestles a flayed Malcolm Heather."