Arts, Culture & Entertainment News – February 3

"The stain of racism and sexism is not just for people of color and women," said Viola Davis in her Screen Actors Guild Awards acceptance speech this week. "It's all of our burden, all of us."

Davis won the Best Actress award for playing Aibileen Clark in The Help, with fellow cast-member Octavia Spencer (Minny Jackson) winning Best Supporting Actress. The film, based on the book by Kathryn Stockett, is set in the 1960s and gives us the story of three women – two maids and young journalist Skeeter (Emma Stone) – on the domestic front of the Civil Rights movement.

The film also won the Best Cast Ensemble award and is expected to be a serious contender at the Academy Awards. Get a rundown on how the The Help was made via this report on The Hollywood Reporter or read our review of the film and book. Disconcertingly, the book's author, Kathryn Stockett, was sued by her brother's nanny on the grounds that her story bared too much likeness to her own character and caused her embarrassment. The lawsuit has caused division between Stockett and her brother.

Australia played host to the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards (AACTAs, formerly the Australian Film Institute Awards/AFIs) at the Sydney Opera House this week with Red Dog winning the Best Film award. While Red Dog was the highest grossing film in Australia last year, taking in $21.3 million at the box office, it was the sinister murder movie Snowtown, which made $1 million locally, that got the most accolades in the peer-voted awards. The Awards, which cover TV, too, have moved from December to coincide with the global awards season, making Australia "part of the global screen awards conversation".

Jamie Oliver is making his way to Australia for a food tour in aid of his Ministry of Food mission, while Australians are falling out of love with weight loss shows, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

Vera Farmiga

Also at SMH, pieces on actors Vera Farmiga ("As I age, I want to see stories about women my own age; inspirational, illuminating stories. I'll develop them, I'll produce them, I'll direct them, I'll finance them, I'll distribute them if I have to") and Rachael Taylor ("'Sometimes I think we just fill our lives with stuff so we don't really make any choice at all, which is certainly incredibly luxurious. This idea of how to choose the path that's right for you as a person is a very moving and complicated subject matter for a movie.'')

Frankie/Smith Journal creative director Lara Burke has compiled a cute list of Valentine's Day treats for the Etsy blog – a great way of extending the magazine's already impressive online community.

The second trailer for The Hunger Games is out. Based on the Suzanne Collins dystopian novel of the same name, the movie follows Katniss Everdeen as she enters the fight-to-the-death games.

Each Friday, Inside Out magazine will be posting a staff profile on its blog. First up is editorial coordinator and "problem solving queen" Rebecca Carlsen who says, "I truly believe that no one person is too busy or important to at least say “please”, “thank you” and “I’m sorry”." The March/April issue, which takes you inside the home of designer Marnie Skillings and introduces you to I Like Birds store opener Tamara Turnbull, is out now.

Some great articles care of The New Yorker include, 'What Facebook can sell' ("Facebook knows who’s getting engaged, and also who’s listening to pop music right now, and who read the Washington Post this morning. Your friends, and your advertisers, now know thousands and thousands of things about you that would have been private a few years ago"); 'J.D. Salinger's Spirit' ("All of the reckless clichés that are tossed around about him (“recluse,” “crank,” etc.) seem to be voiced by people who are bitter or enraged about their own frustrations"); and 'The Harder They Fall' ("For the audience [of ballet], shamefully, an onstage injury is not just a misfortune. It’s also an adventure, like something in a movie").

Still with ballet, The Australian Ballet company's 2012 repertoire includes Romeo and Juliet, which starts in Brisbane on March 23 and finishes in Perth October. "Love is a many-splendid thing – and in a corrupt world it blooms fast, burns bright and dies young."

Gold = John Clark and Brian Dawe's satirical take on "Warm and Fuzzy" media news. "Instead of analysing the news, Brian, and encouraging people to think very deeply about what's going on in their world, we're going to try to put people more in touch with how people feel... We're going to put people in touch with their feelings in a way that helps create a community." Also, back on the ABC next week: Q&A and Landline (2012 is the "Year of the Farmer").

Also the the ABC, episode nine of Nigella Kitchen is worth catching up on iView if you missed it. It takes in her favourite go-to flavours and contains such gems as, "Life without garlic would be unimaginable", and, "When I want almost instant choco-gratification, I turn to my everyday brownies." Love it. The lady certainly has a way with words.

Sydney journalist Sarah Ayoub has composed a beautiful reflection on her fledgling cross-cultural marriage, which was published in Sunday magazine this past weekend. Worth a read at her blog, The Aphrodite Chase.


"Literally" is the "much misused" word of the moment, reports author Ben Masters in a rollicking piece for The Guardian. "I'm no socio-linguist or cognitive-scientist, but I do like to float some hypotheses: maybe we're a generation that is scared of commitment, linguistically deferring reality with our false literallys and our compulsive "likes" and "sort ofs" and "kind of things" that make everything seem only tentative and approximate... Of course, we might just be lazy and imprecise users of language."

And, lastly, a mesmerising film by Sean Ohlenkamp of Type bookstore in Toronto, Canada care of Maggie Alderson, who is putting the finishing touches on her new book...

Girl With a Satchel