annoying media trends
An Australian Has Been Nominated For An Award, We Repeat, An Australian Has Been Nominated For An Award!
10:08AM Clem Bastow | Long time Defamer Australia readers will know how much we just love seeing the Australian press wet themselves when one of ours is touched by the hands of the gods and gifted with an award nomination on the hallowed shores of America or Britain, so they’ll no doubt be rustling their Thesauruses in glee at the news that Rachel Griffiths has picked up her fourth Emmy Award nomination.
Break out the Bolly, sweetchops!
Rachel Griffiths has picked up her fourth Emmy Award nomination for her role opposite dual Academy Award winner Sally Field in US drama series Brothers and Sisters.
In Australia filming Rachel Ward directed and Bryan Brown produced feature film Beautiful Kate, Rachel Griffiths, 39, happily toasted the best supporting actress nomination news with close friends and family following the announcement after 11pm last night.
“I got a call telling me I had been nominated when I was out to dinner with friends in Australia,” the mother of two told Variety magazine.
“We were just finishing up and were determined to go home not too drunk and not too late. Then we heard the news and got champagne and stayed an extra hour.”
Bless. Also, I feel we should take this moment to welcome Griffiths in our “top celeb chicks we’d sink the piss with” list (she now breathes the same rarefied air as Sienna Miller and Charlotte Church).
And that’s a nomination to write home about if ever there was one! More » 
Abbie Cornish Read Good, Speak Good, Too
9:08AM Clem Bastow | There’s nothing more the Australian media like than hearing someone from right here in lil ol’ Aussie is doing good overseas (second only to making sure we all hear when an Australia doesn’t win an award), so gather round gran’ma’s rocking chair on the porch overlooking the canefields as we hear of the latest expat to do our tiny, culturally bankrupt country proud…
It would seem Abbie Cornish, who makes her trade as an actor, can actually act! And the critics are prepared to say so! Good job, deary, you show the world how good us Aussies can be if we’d only get a break, etc:
Aussie star-on-the-rise Abbie Cornish continues to win friends and influence people, with her turn in Stop-Loss, earning solid reviews in the US.
Cornish stars opposite real-life love interest Ryan Phillippe in the film.
“Ms Cornish, in spite of some accent trouble – her native Australia is a long way from Texas, geographically and phonetically – gets every nuance of her character’s toughness and bewilderment exactly right,” the New York Times critic said.
Actually, hang on, that’s not really glowing praise, is it? If it’s A.O. Scott, who has recently softened to endearing “best ever!!” enthusiasms, then it’s definitely not.
But you know, we’re just a tiny little colony of bright-eyed hopefuls, we’ll take what we can get! More » Australian Does Not Win International Award; Military Action Encouraged Against Uk For Ruining Our Party
11:00AM Clem Bastow | If there’s one Australian media tendency (aside from Angela Bishop continuing to be employed) that really gets to us time and time again, it’s this odd obsession our press has with Australians being nominated for awards, and – inevitably – not winning them, and the accompanying moaning and wailing.
The latest installment in this curiously jingoistic journalistic trend is today’s mopey piece from News Ltd on the topic of Cate Blanchett not winning in either of her BAFTA categories.
Blanchett was up for two gongs at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) – leading actress for her starring role as Queen Elizabeth 1 in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and best supporting actress for her portrayal of music legend Bob Dylan in the acclaimed biopic I’m Not There.
The Academy Award winning actress had been a hot favourite to take out the supporting actress prize, but lost out to Tilda Swinton for her role as a workaholic lawyer in the thriller Michael Clayton.
The 38-year Australian, who is pregnant with her third child, also missed out on the best actress award which went to Marion Cotillard for her portrayal of the revered but troubled French singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
That froggy bitch, she made Our Cate cry!
Every year at awards season – whether it’s the Oscars, Globes, BAFTAs, Tonys or the frigging Nobel Peace Prize – our press wets itself over our “special” arty people, revving themselves up so that in all but the most exceptional circumstances they are headed for a fall.
The darker side of this is the implication that in not winning, our nominated expats have in some way ‘failed’ us. Plenty of Australian athletes (for example) fail dismally all over the world, but that is apparently a worthy struggle against the odds; actors, musicians and other creative exports were lucky to be allowed to join the international party, but should probably look into a real job, etc etc.
Now, we love Our Cate as much as the best of them, and her I’m Not There performance was memorable (not so sure about The Golden Age…), but as inconceivable as it may be to True Blue™ papers like the News Ltd stable, we actually care who does win these awards, because – as shocking as it may seem – we actually watch films that don’t feature Australian actors, actresses and artisans, too!
To continue to lead into stories in this fashion is to grossly underestimate the Australian public’s cultural IQ. More » 