The Return of the Antelope
by Willis Hall (The Bodley Head, 1985)
Hall excels in depicting minor characters and incidental detail, yet there remains a largely untapped visual element to this children’s fantasy of Lilliputians who have ill-fatedly retraced Gulliver’s Travels back to England. The book reads like — and is — an adaptation from television.
The Blues Brothers 2000
dir. John Landis (1998)
Openly based on and playing homage to its predecessor (though consequently making little sense as a standalone film), this Blues Brothers reprise justifies itself through time-appropriate character progression, in-joke nostalgia, a new car pile-up record and an all-star rhythm and blues soundtrack.
The Witches and the Grinnygog
by Dorothy Edwards (Faber & Faber, 1981)
Somewhat abstruse and unlikely to appeal to post-millennial YA readers, Edwards’ tale of pagan magic reawakening in a small English village remains a curious, highly ambitious work, told always indirectly and sketching out its titular characters by painting the landscape around them.
The Eighteenth Emergency
by Betsy Byars (Viking, 1973)
Benjie is running scared from the school Goliath, an emergency that offers no blithe, fanciful solutions such as have been devised for escaping shark attacks and the like. Betsy Byars’ well-rounded social survival tale both takes seriously yet contextualises Benjie’s all-consuming dread.
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss
(Random House, 1995)
A collection of unconstrained flights of fancy: art for art’s sake, featuring some of the characters that inhabited Geisel’s picture books, but presented in surreal (and often quite adult) Dalí-esque compositions — or sculptures! — owing no allegiance to storylines or considerations of audience.
Jackie Chan’s First Strike
dir. Stanley Tong (1996)
A light and loosely scripted action comedy that takes Jackie Chan to Australia in pursuit of a stolen warhead. Although nothing special by and of itself, the movie is worth watching for Chan’s bedazzling and impish do-it-yourself stunt-work and martial arts sequences.
Men at Work
dir. Emilio Estevez (1990)
Critically panned for representing the oncoming glut of 90s turkeys, Men at Work actually belongs to the oeuvre of 80s classics: pointless but utterly endearing, with much of its value resting in incidental details; a film that grows better with each rewatch.
A Pelican at Blandings
by P. G. Wodehouse (Barrie & Jenkins, 1969)
Though less satirically relevant nowadays, Wodehouse’s novels of the (farcically characterised) idle rich retain their charm, not least of all by way of a prose style that in tone both adopts and parodies the lifestyle, romping with indifference, self-indulgence and Machiavellian remove.
The Matrix
dir. the Wachowskis (1999)
This cyberpunk martial arts neo-noir SF classic swept the cinemas upon release (unlike Wild Wild West, which Will Smith inexplicably preferred when choosing between lead roles) and holds up well in retrospect, using CGI prudently to stylise action scenes beyond human normal.
The Super-Roo of Mungalongaloo
by Osmar White, ill. Jeff Hook (Wren, 1973)
There is something delightfully enthralling — and quintessentially Australian — in Osmar White’s tale of Scotsman Angus McGurk’s intrepid expedition into the perilous heart of the Dreaded Deadibone Desert, this fanciful undertaking gaining impetus through the punchy illustrations of acclaimed newspaper cartoonist Jeff Hook.