The critic, author and educator was known for his decades-long on-screen partnership with co-host Margaret Pomeranz, as well as his promotion of Australian cinema — plus his lifelong battle against film censorship.
It sort of feels like he’s died a second time to me, the first coming when he retired fully (he was still doing some regular review stuff even after leaving the ABC). He was not really a reviewer for the casual cinemagoer, he was a reviewer for people who loved film like he did. Even if you didn’t agree with his opinions, you could always understand and respect the level of thought he put into his analysis of a film (though he did have some funny quirks, my favourite being his hatred for “shaky cam”). I was fortunate to meet him and Margaret Pomeranz at The Mercury cinema in Adelaide when they did a Q&A after a screening of something. Seeing them in person surrounded by all these other film lovers in a small, independent cinema sort of reaffirmed to me how much I loved the art. I have a couple of his books, ‘Australia at the Movies’ which was published last year is really good and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch more Australian feature films or just read his opinions on basically every single one released in the last 30 years.
It sort of feels like he’s died a second time to me, the first coming when he retired fully (he was still doing some regular review stuff even after leaving the ABC). He was not really a reviewer for the casual cinemagoer, he was a reviewer for people who loved film like he did. Even if you didn’t agree with his opinions, you could always understand and respect the level of thought he put into his analysis of a film (though he did have some funny quirks, my favourite being his hatred for “shaky cam”). I was fortunate to meet him and Margaret Pomeranz at The Mercury cinema in Adelaide when they did a Q&A after a screening of something. Seeing them in person surrounded by all these other film lovers in a small, independent cinema sort of reaffirmed to me how much I loved the art. I have a couple of his books, ‘Australia at the Movies’ which was published last year is really good and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch more Australian feature films or just read his opinions on basically every single one released in the last 30 years.