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Sydney Morning Herald Critic Sandra Hall, who’s been on the beat for 30 years, has posted the best-written review of Australia yet. “Nothing succeeds like excess,” she begins. “Oscar Wilde coined the phrase and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Baz Luhrmann has it embroidered on scatter cushions all over the house.

This still of Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman exudes a certain you-know-what, in part because of the placement of Jackman’s right hand.

“Not that he needs reminding. It is a mantra stamped on everything he does and Australia is the apotheosis. It has become the movie as superhero, charged with the job of rescuing the Australian film industry and giving us a new and shiny view of ourselves. And shiny it certainly is.

“It’s also much too long at almost three hours, deliriously camp and shamelessly overdone — an outback adventure seen through the eyes of a filmmaker steeped in the theatrical rituals and hectic colors of old-fashioned showbiz. To quote Oklahoma, one of the few Hollywood classics not to lend its influence to Luhrmann’s style, or rather medley of styles, the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.

“And so strong is his urge to celebrate the exoticism of old Australia that you half-expect to see the elephant, as well, lumbering across one of those majestic stretches of the Kimberley. Yet the film’s vigor and yes, its passion — that overused word — do engage you.

“Anachronisms abound. Kidman and Jackman speak quaintly of doing a drove. There’s an action sequence that pushes the concept of the cliffhanger much further than it was ever meant to go, and Sarah’s romance with the Drover is rife with Mills & Boon moments.”

In his latest “Notes on a Season” (posted yesterday), The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond reports that Clint Eastwood‘s Gran Torino “was shown to a handful of top critics (okay, exactly three) on the Warner Bros. lot last Thursday afternoon, and consensus is it’s a slam-dunk acting nomination for Clint.”

This has been speculated all along as a potential gold-watch gesture due to the assertion-belief that Gran Torino may be Eastwood’s final performance, but now the idea has a little more meat on its bones. Draw your own inferences from Hammond not passing along “consensus” talk about Gran Torino being Best Picture material.

“Eastwood always lets a very select few on his approved list see his movies first, and in this case it was a highly respected top-tier critic from a major daily newspaper” — the L.A. Times‘ Kenny Turan, one presumes — “a major Hollywood trade paper” — Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, obviously — “and a major consumer entertainment news TV show” — i.e., Entertainment Tonight‘s Leonard Maltin.

I’m about a month and a half late to the table on this, but this Sean Connery photo in the Louis Vuitton double-truck ad in the current Esquire (among many other publications, subway ads, billboards), which I happened upon while flipping through it (i.e., Vince Vaughn on the cover) on my way up to last night’s Twilight screening, is the most righteous image-and-vibe statement Connery has put out since The Rock, and before that The Hunt for Red October. Photo by Annie Leibovitz.

Page 2 and 3 within Esquire‘s December issue, Vol. 150, No. 6

IFC Films has decided to open Matteo Garrone‘s Gomorrah, the Italian Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, in Los Angeles for a one-week award-qualifying run on Friday, 12.19, at the Laemmle Sunset 5. The widely acclaimed crime pic will thereafter be eligible for all categories of the Oscars as well as Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) and other film critics’ awards. Gomorrrah will re-open theatrically on 2.13.09.

The recently-posted trailer for Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth (Yari Film Group, 12.19).

It’s only a few days until Thanksgiving and it’s 88 degrees in Los Angeles right now. You think that’s normal?

“It’s not newspapers that might become obsolete,” Rupert Murdoch said two or three days ago. “It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset — the bond with its readers.

“Their complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly — and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. And the condescension that many [editors and proprietors] show their readers is an even bigger problem.

“It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news — and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened.

“Today, editors are losing this power. The internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog, and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

“If hard times are here again, maybe it’s time for Hollywood to once again stand up for the downtrodden.” — N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott in a video assessment of John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), one of the older big-studio films that I’ve sworn by all my life.

AICN’s Drew McWeeny recently sat down with Where The Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze. After reading most of the interview I still wasn’t sure what was mandated by Warner Bros. on the re-shoots after a reportedly disastrous December ’07 preview screening. How precisely will the final film differ from the 12.07 version? Spell it out for me like I’m eight years old.

Jonze initially shot the wild things in nine-foot suits with animatronic faces in the jungles of Australia and New Zealand with the idea of pasting on CG-faces in post. Then came the 12.07 screening and hoo-wee.

The movie is “dark, adult and deep — heart-wrenching and scary,” wrote Cinemaniac1979 on AICN. “This isn’t a movie for children — it’s a movie about childhood.”

WTWTA costars Catherine Keener, Forest Whitaker and Australian actor Angus Sampson. It was adapted by Jonze and Dave Eggers.

The current plan is to release it on 10.16.09. The film began shooting in April 2006 at Central City Studios in Melbourne, Australia. The cast includes Catherine Keener, Max Records, James Gandolfini, Angus Sampson, Forest Whitaker, Michelle Williams, Catherine O’Hara, Rachel Rivera, Melissa Davis and Paul Dano. Lauren Ambrose was cast to replace Williams as the voice of one of the monsters.

Producer Gary Goetzman was quoted earlier this year as saying, “We support Spike’s vision…we’re helping him make the vision he wants to make.”

Three new members — Elle magazine’s Karen Durbin, Slate‘s Dana Stevens and Salon‘s Stephanie Zacaharek — have joined the ranks of the New York Film Critics Circle. The group will hold its annual vote on Wednesday, 12.10. The NYFCC awards ceremony will happen at Strata in Manhattan on Monday, 1.5.09.

Dana Stevens, Karen Durbin, Stephanie Zacharek

By a vote of 42 to 13, Senate Democrats have voted to allow the turncoat Sen. Joe Lieberman to retain his chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee. Of course, if Leiberman had done the same kind of thing to a mafia don that he did to Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention, we all know what would have happened. But then Obama, in forgiving and supporting Lieberman, has observed a legendary mafia rule — “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”