Category Archives: Entertainment

Australian acting legend Bill Hunter dies

Australians to a man are proud of the great talent that was our Bill Hunter, and now we have lost him to cancer. His screen career was launched as an extra in ‘On the Beach’ filmed in 1959 in Melbourne with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, and his talent proceeded to rise in stature and class during a time when the Australian film industry was beginning to earn the worldwide respect it so deserved.

Bill Hunter was as Aussie as the Opera House, Uluru, the Simpson Desert and the Holden Kingswood. Each character he portrayed – whether the stoic and dependable Major Barton in Gallipoli, or a shady two-timer such as Barry Fife in Strictly Ballroom, or Muriel’s corrupt politician dad in Muriel’s Wedding – you saw a strength in the man, an innate quality that made you wish he was one of your mates. A fine actor and a very fine Australian, I’m not sure he’d be all that fussed about being referred to as a legend because everything about Bill Hunter was real and genuine. I reckon he’d prefer everyone just have a beer on him and toast a man who was very much one of our own.

Bill leaves us with so many fine moments on screen but for me, his portrayal of Major Barton preparing to lead his young Anzacs in the doomed ‘over the top’ assault at Lone Pine in the final scene of Peter Weir’s film, Gallipoli, embodies just what an instinctively fine actor he was.

He will be very, very deeply missed.

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

Has the Daily Mail blown some super-injunctions out of the water…?

Sunday is my day for scanning the newspapers for things to consider writing about over the coming week and like most people I have had my curiosity raised by the recent stories regarding the super-injunctions taken out by some famous British personalities in the the sporting and entertainment world lately to protect their marital indiscretions. One in particular centred on a very famous, ‘family man’ footballer and, the other, a world-famous actor of stage and screen. The names of course could not be reported in the media but the blogosphere has been rife with names and identities – but just looking at the Daily Mail’s story on the supposed ‘secret life’ of stage and screen actor, Hugh Bonneville, today I can see that some shit is about to hit the fan…

“But then Hugh’s devotion to wife Lulu is so strong it is understood he is known to fellow thespians as the Ryan Giggs of the showbusiness world, after the famously family-orientated footballer.”…

The above excerpt is a very interesting little riddle when you read it over. The DM of course is not accepting readers comments on the article ‘for legal reasons’ – but there it is, and all speculation of course…interesting as well to see that Wikipedia has ‘locked’ his profile from any possible attempts at editing – I understand certain information kept popping up in his profile lately which kept the Wiki editors very busy with their delete buttons for a while ;)

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.

Love Thy Neighbour: nice village but I’m not so sure about Bunty and Co.

Grassington, in the Yorkshire Dales, is the subject of an interesting TV series at the moment where couples vie for the ultimate prize of a quaint little house in the picturesque village and the opportunity to live the life that the locals there enjoy, as villagers. Entertaining enough it is to see each week desperate couples and families hoping to be chosen by the voting locals to be the winners and join their community. But I see far more sinister things in this TV show – and leading them all is the local doyenne named, appropriately, Bunty.

Bunty, dear bless her, acts as chaperone to the couples who arrive to try their luck as outsiders being accepted – fat chance they have. Bunty – a name more likely to be found running a little girls pony club in Devon rather than a Yorkshire village – is a little too touchy-feely in the friendly-stakes for my liking, this woman is not your friend, she is to be feared. Looking like a British version of Bea Arthur in the Golden Girls, she heads a vicious little clique whose sugary, English-rose smiles hide fangs that would choke a vampire bat. Bunty has a certain standing in the Grassington community no doubt and I would say that her chummy-jolly exterior would change to hissing, claws-bared animosity if you dared to upset her. And interestingly as Bunty goes about advising those poor, grovelling couples to promote themselves and ‘what they could bring to the vill-age’ to the suspicious locals, one notes that her own accent is not a local one…nor are many of the local’s accents Yorkshire-bred either.

Tonight I watched two young couples demean themselves by selling their souls to try and buy votes from a community that does not really want anyone new setting up shop on their territory. That’s the problem with the English-village-idyll…the locals have long since marked their territory and they don’t want outsiders moving in on it. I found it uncomfortable to watch those two young couples grovelling to those smug villagers, most of whom are imports to the area themselves and who wish to draw up the bridge behind them. Whoever wins that darn house had better have a thick skin because they will need it – they will be constantly reminded why they are able to be there, and I have a feeling that the treacherous Bunty and Co. are capable of withdrawing the welcome mat as quickly as they put it out.

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.