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Canberrans need culture, and with the Arc cinema (at the National Film and Sound Archive) soon to give its last picture show the city's precious few film societies, that are endangered species, become especially deserving of our support.
But Tuesday's offering by the Reel McCoy Film Society doesn't require you to show any altruism because, it being Casablanca, one of the most adored films of all time, it's a film you're itching to see anyway on the (quite) big screen.
Reel McCoy asked the mass membership of Friends of the National Library to nominate their favourite film, which the society would then show. A majority of the discerning Friends voted for Casablanca.
One of the reasons some of us, Kleenex-clutching, watch the endearing, wistful 1942 classic again and again is surely the subconscious hope that everything will end a little more happily, this time, for Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman).
But even if doesn't work out better for them this Tuesday it is still, in Reel McCoy's words, a story in which "cynical people in a cynical world end up doing the right thing, almost despite themselves."
The world will always welcome filmgoers, as time goes by, and the Reel McCoy's Casablanca (with a modest admission fee for non-members) is shown on Tuesday July 22 at 6pm in the theatre of the National Library of Australia.
One the many quotable quotes from the film is Rick's wistful remark to Ilsa that "we'll always have Paris" by which he means that even if their love is impossible now they'll always have the memory of when they were in love and together in Paris.
At the eccentric, retro A Bite To Eat cafe-restaurant - at not-very-Parisian Chifley shops - there is wall of little notes and postcards put there by patrons. Two Casablanca-echoing lovers have put up a postcard saying: "We'll always have Chifley."
By the way, what if Canberrans are so culture hungry because the ACT's excellent air (proclaimed last week by the Environmental Protection Authority's Chris Collier to be "the envy of the major cities") is so stimulating to the brain?
This place's "bracing" climate was crucial to its choice as the federal capital site. A host of federal parliamentarians came here on a glorious August day in 1906. They, and the Sydney and Melbourne press with them, were beguiled. Canberra's chances never looked back. The man from the Daily Telegraph reported that breathing Canberra's clear mountain air "was like drinking a draught of champagne".
Multi-purpose newsprint (how we'll all miss it when it's gone, and all of our news comes to us on screens!), famous as a wrapper for fish and chips, here is wrapping up two slumbering cats.
Friday's column sang the praises of the Canberra Mob team of Canberra vets and vet nurses that every year descends on remote Utopia in the Northern Territory to deliver care to indigenous locals' teeming dogs.
But, while there, the Canberra Mob attends too to the place's cats. Here is a sweet picture of two wrapped up Utopia cats.
Canberra vet and Mob member Dr Louise Nicholls explained to us by phone (busy at work in Canberra she was halfway through anaesthetising a puppy about to be desexed) that these are two just-desexed cats.
"We do this [cat wrapping] because it helps the cats feel comfortable as they wake up. It gives them a contained, wrapped feeling. They like it and it helps to stop them from freaking out and worrying."
Animal lovers! Fundraising is underway for the next intrepid Canberra Mob expedition to the Northern Territory. If you would like to help call Kippax Vet Hospital - 6255 1242.
Forgive us our schoolboy crush on New York LEGO virtuoso Nathan Sawaya, triggered by the LEGO homework we've been doing as the next Canberra Brick Expo looms.
Sawaya is a kind of Van Gogh of LEGO art. We used to scoff at LEGO zealots, but Sawaya has shown us the error of our ways.
We've tried (in vain so far) to have him explain what's going on in his Stairway (pictured) but perhaps it's better left anyway to our imaginations. We see in it Clive Palmer (for it is a burly figure) climbing, panting, up into Parliament, pursuing ambitions (why does a billionaire want to be an MP?) no one yet understands.* Parliament (the giant figure) looks on apprehensively.
"I have about four million LEGO bricks," Sawaya has told an interviewer, "and then a few million in storage in case something comes up."
"I still pay for them myself. I buy my bricks just like everyone else. And I don't paint the bricks. I stick to with what LEGO has made. And the idea behind that is I do want to hopefully inspire kids to go home and create on their own. And if I do, I want them to be able to buy those very same bricks I use. It's an interesting challenge, but it's part of being a LEGO artist."
*Palmer is so backflip prone that Sportsbet is offering punters a whole field of Palmer opinions and asking us to bet on which of them wlll be abandoned next and become his next backflip. “Clive is so keen on doing these U-turns," Sportsbet's witty Will Byrne observes, "it's a shame he wasn’t the captain of the Titanic."