Radio Show #1

The inaugural voyage of the Outland Institute radio show set sail today – Josh Kinal assures me that the “one show anniversary” is traditionally lined notepad paper, freshly torn. And who am I to say he’s wrong?

On today’s show:

Josh Kinal talks about All Saints and televised eating contests, Narrelle Harris and Mary Borsellino discuss Robin The Boy Wonder‘s place in culture, Our Almost Fabulous feature looks at Neighbours’ Andrew “Macca” Mackenzie, Glenn Dunks picks some hits from this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, Toby Sullivan tells us the right way to approach football, and our Crime Against Pop is Buckner & Garcia’s Pac-Man Fever:

You can find the podcast in the usual places or download it directly from here!

Show notes after the jump:

Words, Words, Words: The World Of Blurbs

It’s festival time in Melbourne. Actually, it’s always festival time in Melbourne. Arts, Film, Comedy, Fashion, Writers, Design, Stencil, Cycling, Jazz, Brass, Animation, Fringe, Moomba, Tap, Travel Writing, Italian, Scarf, Funk… and that’s just the first five pages of Google results. Melbourne has a festival for everything. But how do you decide which film to see? Which comedy show? Which travel writer? Which scarf?

In most cases your guide will be the festival program, and the description of each event. 150 words need to convince you to commit your time and money, to get off the couch and turn off those old tapes of Chances – “The best kabuki puppet western you’ll see all year!” “I laughed so hard I mislaid my socks!” “Gong Li is the most beautiful woman on Earth!”

Anne-Marie Peard wrote about the launch of the Melbourne Fringe Festival program a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about blurbs during the Melbourne International Film Festival. But what makes a good blurb? What needs to be in that magic paragraph to pull in the punters and let the sun shine in?

The Outland Institute assembled a panel of experts to address this deeply important issue…