The Sun-Herald

The things we did this summer

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The films Australia loved.
The TV shows Australia loved.
The music Australia loved.
The DVDs Australia loved.

by David Dale.
As the temperature soared and the fires raged, Australians escaped into lands where polar bears pull chariots through snow, fantasies about revenge on corporate criminals, reminiscences of cricket's glory days, and conversations with dead people.

In other words, our preferred entertainments over the past fortnight have been The Chronicles of Narnia, Fun With Dick and Jane, Steve Waugh's memoir Out of My Comfort Zone, and the TV melodrama The Ghost Whisperer.

We also helped the rapper Eminem to clean out his closet (his Curtain Call: The Hits was the top selling Christmas album), saved the career of a failed Australian Idol contestant (Lee Harding's Wasabi was the top single) and got nostalgic about a suburban satire we'd seen only two months ago (Da Kath and Kim Code was among the best-selling DVDs).

But mostly, we sat in the airconditioned darkness of the multiplex. Australians spent $35.4 million on cinema tickets in the week ending Wednesday Jan 4 -- up 46 per cent on the previous week's box office.

Narnia was the biggest contributor to that. In two weeks it has been seen by two million Australians, approaching the record of the last made-in-New-Zealand battle epic, Return of the King. Narnia's success came at the expense of another Kiwi-filmed blockbuster, King Kong, which is falling from the box office heights after three weeks and will be lucky to total $20 million. It may be too long and too scary for the summer audience.

The surprise hit of the season has been the comedy Fun With Dick and Jane, in which Jim Carrey punishes greedy capitalists. It had such strong word of mouth that its second week takings were up 80 per cent on the first week.

Holiday TV viewing was down compared to the rest of the year, but The Ghost Whisperer, in which Jennifer Love Hewitt sees spirits, is averaging a healthy 1.2 million in the mainland capitals. The surprise hit is Futurama, the satirical cartoon series which was cancelled four years ago by the Seven network and revived last month by the Ten network. Averaging a million viewers, it has become the program most watched by people aged 16-39.

The disaster is the Australian soap HeadLand. Seven is showing it four nights a week through the silly season in hopes of creating an addiction, but between Christmas and New Year it averaged only 730,000.

Instead of turning on broadcast TV, Australians seem to be using their sets to watch DVDs. The consumer research organization GfK Marketing reports that a DVD-buying surge in the week before December 25 was led by three films, Madagascar, Revenge of the Sith and War of the Worlds, and two TV shows released on disc -- Little Britain Series 2 and Da Kath and Kim Code.

The books we received on December 25 included Whitethorn, Bryce Courtenay's epic return to South Africa; False Impression, Jeffrey Archer's first novel since his release from prison for perjury; and, to help us recover from seasonal excesses, the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet.

The Tribal Mind column by David Dale appears every Tuesday in The Sydney Morning Herald and you can find past columns at www.smh.com.au/tribalmind .

And for Joss Whedon's predictions for the future of television, click here. He notes, for example, that "Lost has that one-of-a-kind alchemy that really can't be copied. Therefore, look for the original series Misplaced; as well as Unfound; Not So Much with the Whereabouts; and Just Pull Over and Ask!"

AUSTRALIA'S HOLIDAY FUN

The films we queued for
1 The Chronicles of Narnia $11.1m (total $19.9m)
2 Fun With Dick and Jane $4.1m ($6.4m)
3 King Kong $3.9m ($16.6m)
4 Chicken Little $3.5m ($3.9m)
5 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire $2.5m ($32.2m
6 Cheaper By The Dozen 2 $2.5m ($4.9m)
7 Just Like Heaven $2.3m ($3.5m)
8. The legend of Zorro $1.5m ($2.4m)
(Ticket sales December 29-Jan 4, MPDAA)

The books we read
1 Whitethorn (Bryce Courtenay)
2 Predator (Patricia Cornwell)
3 Out of My Comfort Zone (Steve Waugh)
4 Guinness World Records 2006.
5 False Impression (Jeffrey Archer)
6 The CSIRO Total Welbeing Diet.
(Nielsen BookScan, week to December 24)

The music we played
1 Curtain Call: The Hits (Eminem)
2 Back To Bedlam (James Blunt)
3 Reach Out: The Motown Record (Human Nature)
4 Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson)
5 Monkey Business (Black Eyed Peas)
(Album sales, December 26-Jan 1, ARIA)

The telly we watched
1 Nine news (9) 1.5 m
2 Today Tonight (7) 1.3m
3 The Ghost Whisperer (7) 1.2m
4 Seven news (7) 1.2m
5 Midsomer Murders (9) 1.1m
6 Better Homes and Gardens (7) 1.1m
7 Getaway (9) 1.1m
8 Australia's Funniest Home Videos (9) 1.0m
9 Cricket: second test Aus v South Africa (9) 1.0m
10 ABC News (ABC) 979,000
11 The Mask of Zorro (10) 968,000
12 Futurama (10) 955,000
(Most watched, mainland capitals, December 25-Jan 2, OZTAM)

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). His latest book is Soffritto -- A delicious Ligurian memoir. To join a daily discussion of Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.