The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: The year of living vicariously

by David Dale
As reality grows darker, we are drawn to the light of fantasy, and this tough year offers almost too many soft options. In last week's column I began an alphabetical analysis of the best avenues of escapism in 2009, and we got as far as ....

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.