David Hunt remembered

Former NSW defamation judge and chief judge at common law dies at age 84 ... The List with Socratic case management ... Defamation exotica ... Refinement of pleadings, perhaps over-refinement ... Prodigious worker ... International criminal law ... UN criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda ... A league of his own ... Tributes from Graham Hryce, David Rolph, Justice Mark Ierace and Judge Judith Gibson 

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Mike Carlton

Veteran broadcaster, foreign correspondent, columnist and acidic Twitterer is on Justinian's Couch ... A masterful wordsmith ... Tireless combatant of the Murdocracy ... Issues with refrigeration and Christian piety ... The lure of the sea and its saltiness ... T.E.F. Hughes at the urinal ... Raging against the dying of the light 

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Never Look Away

A new film from the maker of Lives of Others ... Portrait of a young artist in Germany during and after the war ... Sterilisation of the "unfit" ... The aunt, the artist, the Nazi doctor and his daughter ... A romantic epic about art, love and war, reviewed by Miss Lumière 

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Reds in the bed

Unreal events rendered lifeless in Red Joan ... The churney-making housewife who passed on atomic research secrets to the Soviet Union ... A nice job at the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association ... The true story of the spy Melita Norwood is yet to come ... Miss Lumière is deeply unmoved with this version 

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Love of the French

Distress that Australia's great wine commentator and educator celebrated his birthday with a selection of French wines ... Born in the wrong year ... Discrimination ... What's wrong with local wines for a well-deserved celebratory toast? ... Gabriel Wendler stirs up a storm in a wine glass ... Epistle to a Burgundian 

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Muddied oafs

Ancient rugger buggers ... It was 1956 and Sir William Slim was Governor General, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean surfaced in Moscow and My Fair Lady opened on Broadway ... It was also the year that two teams of NSW solicitors and barristers squeezed into their footy gear and scrummed down ... 

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A long, slow burn

Burning is not a doco about global warming ... It captures the urban and rural reality of South Korea ... A languid and intriguing film where things are never quite what they seem ... Burning greenhouses and mystery cats ... Disparity and enigma ... Miss Lumière at the cinema 

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Melissa Davey

Melissa Davey is the ace reporter from The Guardian who covered the Pell trial from beginning to end ... Compassionate, driven and intense ... Book under steam ... Journalism and the meaning of life ... Plenty of gluten for her last meal ... A questing spirit is On The Couch 

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Wilde's Dieppe into despair

Rupert Everett gives us the post-Newgate decay of Oscar Wilde ... Dieppe, Paris and Naples ... The Happy Prince, reviewed by Miss Lumière ... The tail end of a regrettable defamation action ... A rouge dabbed reminder of Death in Venice ... The not-so-gay final chapter of an Irish wit, complete with the famous wallpaper scene  

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The crabs run free

Christmas Island reopening for business ... The lives of detainees laid bare ... Australian policy at its most primitive ... Miss Lumière reviews Gabrielle Brady's film Island of the Hungry Ghosts ... Trauma counselling curtailed by the dead hand of Canberra ... How we make them suffer ... From phosphate to fear 

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