The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: What are you looking forward to in 2009?

To discuss why the dingo should be on our coat of arms, go to Who We Are.

by David Dale
It's going to be a wonderful year. Oh, we may lose our jobs and our homes, but to balance the misery there'll be unprecedented opportunities for escapism - on half price Tuesdays at the multiplex, in the little Lebanese tapas trattoria round the corner and via the big screen TV we bought before the bubble burst. Here's an alphabetical analysis of the entertainments I'm looking forward to this year:

Avatar. James Cameron, creator of Terminator and Titanic, returns with a sci-fi epic in which Australia's Sam Worthington plays a human whose mind occupies the body of a genetically engineered alien.

Bruno. Moving on from Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen finds there are still Americans dumb enough to believe he's an Austrian fashion writer. Sample dialogue: interviewing a conservative clergyman, Bruno asks "So hypothetically I can admire a man's penis in the shower, but the moment I put it in my mouth, some sort of line has been crossed?"

Che. Steven Soderbergh, director of Ocean's 11 and Erin Brockovich, gets serious in a two-part biopic about the socialist saint, starring Benicio del Toro.

Desperate Housewives. The new season has blacker humour, as we see how the women have changed five years after last year's season. Gabby is fat!

Eating honestly instead of pretentiously. Restaurants which have been importing foie gras, gold leaf and truffles to decorate main courses that cost $60 will disappear, along with the expense account exhibitionists who sustained them. Peasant will replace pheasant.

Flaming Sword of Fire. The new British sitcom parodies Dungeons and Dragons games. Its hero, Krod Mandoon, is a sensitive freedom fighter who battles the wicked Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas of Little Britain)

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. Recovering from a series of flops that included his marriage to Madonna, the director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels recruited Robert Downey Jnr to play the cocaine-addicted detective and Jude Law for Dr Watson. How can he go wrong?

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The trailers make it look dark, thrilling and not for kids.

Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This was an unfinished project for Heath Ledger, and director Terry Gilliam (ex Monty Python animator) replaced him with Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. The creator of Buffy and Firefly is back with a spy series starring underappreciated hottie Eliza Dushku.

Killing Nazis and scalping them. That's the theme of Quentin Tarantino's latest comeback attempt, which he insists on spelling Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt leads a team of Jewish soldiers trying to spread fear through the German populace.

Lost. Yes, it did get complicated, and we did suspect the writers were throwing in random mysteries, but enough has been explained to give season five a second chance.

Monsters v Aliens, the next amazing animation from Dreamworks. It may manage to surpass the spectacle of Pixar's Wall-E (out this week on DVD).

Neurotic geniuses, preferably British, are the problem-solvers of prime time TV. After House, Monk, Bones, Criminal Minds and The Mentalist, Tim Roth is an English eccentric who can read body language in Channel Ten's Lie To Me.

Our sexiest export is what we'll be calling Melissa George, as she moves from playing a sex addicted patient in In Treatment to playing a sex addicted doctor in Grey's Anatomy, just before it jumps the shark.

Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones is on a smaller scale than King Kong and Lord of the Rings, but has a typical twist: a girl watches from heaven as her family tries to find her murdered corpse.

Queer as Folk, the pioneering series about gay men, was created by Russell T Davies, who then became head writer for Doctor Who. That's why some viewers imagined a homoerotic subtext in the male bonding and female fearing of The Next Doctor, the Christmas special on the ABC this Sunday. They will continue to seek it in the other specials Davies writes this year before he leaves the show, along with David Tennant.

Revolutionary Road and The Reader both won Golden Globes for Kate Winslet, who plays a yummy mummy stultified by suburbia in the first and a former concentration camp guard who has an affair with a 15 year old boy in the second.

Sandra Bullock soared as a comic talent in Speed, peaked in Miss Congeniality, then slumped into sentimentality. In The Proposal, she plays a calculating bitch, and a star is reborn.

Tina Fey is legendary for impersonating Sarah Palin but that won't convince Channel Seven to give a better timeslot to Fey's satirical sitcom 30 Rock, forcing viewers to resort to paragraph W, below.

Underbelly Two will convince the nation that Sydney's criminals are as interesting as Melbourne's.

Vampires are cool again, thanks to Twilight, and they'll extend their fangs in True Blood, a series for which Anna Paquin won a Golden Globe.

Watching TV programs on your computer will be the theme of next week's column.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine lets Hugh Jackman show his dark side (a relief after Australia) and introduces new shapeshifters Gambit, Sabretrooth, Deadpool, the Beak and The Blob.

Year of the Terminator. Channel Nine will pass The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Fox 8, which will give them due respect, and Christian (Batman) Bale will play John Connor in the fourth movie, Terminator: Salvation.

Zachary Quinto was the brain-sucking Sylar in Heroes, but will redeem himself as young Spock in the sexy reimagining of Star Trek by Lost creator J. J. Abrams.

Live long and prosper. Go to Comments to discuss what you are looking forward to this year.

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.