Why did the Bridge on the River Kwai?

While on the subject of comments, it's been gratifying and not a little surprising to get comments here (and on Wilson's Blogmanac) from Radio National presenters. Sandy McCutcheon, Julie Rigg, Kath Albury ... all good sports.

Fancy getting a friendly comment from Julie Rigg, ABCRN film reviewer. Of course, she hasn't been savaged by a turtle yet, so she oughta watch out!

Not that she's likely to get a hard time here. Her film reviews, while sadly pronoun challenged (eg, "he and I", "him and me", those kinds of things), are very good listening.

Much better than the 2BL film reviewer I listened to late one night about five years ago when a listener phoned in to say he liked the films of David Lean. Neither the reviewer nor the presenter had ever heard of him.

Being a movie reviewer for ABC radio must be a sought-after position since universities made film-watching the main prerequisite for humanities degrees, so anyone with the job is under a lot of pressure. Julie Rigg rises to the task even if she didn't call that new Nicole Kidman flick, The Interpreter, a great pile of dingo dung with a pretty good beginning, which it self-evidently is.

At least with Ms Rigg, you get the feeling that if someone said 'David Lean', she would know that he's commonly regarded as Britain's greatest director (The Bridge on the River Kwai; Lawrence of Arabia; Doctor Zhivago; A Passage to India, etc). And she would even know what 'Britain' meant, presumably because she doesn't have a humanities degree from an Australian university and thus a good chance at earning a crust with the ABC if she were under 30. Good luck to her.

Now you know the answer to the question, "Why did the bwidge on the wiver kwai?" Its wadio was tuned to 2BL.