Green Guide's Critical View
The Age
Wednesday July 22, 2009
FREE TO AIRWORLD'S STRICTEST PARENTSCHANNEL SEVEN, 7.30PMAFTER the moving and affecting series Brat Camp, this Australian show seems really lame. Whereas Brat Camp generated much of its heat from the tantrums and fireworks of the truly scary teenage tyrannosaurs, the adolescents selected for this show just seem grumpy by comparison. The grimly troubled and self-destructive yoof of Brat Camp were broken down and then remade over many weeks in the wilderness. Here, they clean a toilet or two, dish out some food to the homeless, get a letter from home and all is right in the world again. What you really want to see is these kids suffering in the same way they have made their loving parents and grandparents suffer. All they end up getting is a bit of a boring trip to the US Bible Belt and some reasoned talk about consequences. -- MARK ELLISPAY TVTHE TUDORSSHOWCASE, 8.30PMLIKE the story of Apollo 11, this is a tale that never tires, so rich is it in incident, romance, intrigue and violence. The beheading of a few wives was the least of it. Tonight, whole villages are laid to waste in the wake of the northern insurrection and poor Mr Aske finally receives what I think we all knew was coming to him. It looks as if it is all too much for that nicest of dukes, Charles Brandon, who is starting to seriously unravel in the most poignant way. -- MELINDA HOUSTONMOVIESTOGETHER (2002)SBS ONE, 1PMIN TOGETHER, Chen Kaige examines the bonds of father and son and the sacrifices required to forge an artist's life. In a rapidly changing Beijing, which is moving from one century to the next, arrives provincial cook Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) and his 13-year-old son Liu Xiaochun (Tang Yun), a violin prodigy who needs the tutelage and opportunities of a large city. With matter-of-fact dedication the father is devoted to sacrificing his own needs for that of his child, an act of love that slowly comes to divide the pair. -- CRAIG MATHIESON
© 2009 The Age
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