Ok so I'm a linguist not a movie critic but I am an avid movie-goer - part of the generation of Australians raised by Margaret and David to appreciate cinema and think critically about it. (I've even reviewed a few things on this blog: Short-doco Queen of the Desert , short film Lärr and some discussion of the brilliant Croker Island Exodus here ). At this years Oscars, the film Coda surprised many by taking out Best Picture. It seems like few people have even had a chance to see it. Here in little ol' Katherine, we have a brilliant film society at our local Katherine 3 cinema, where each fortnight we get to watch something a bit different. In late 2021, I had the chance to see Coda there, long before it was thought of as an Oscar contender. Now that Coda is being talked about more than ever before, I wanted to share my experience of watching the film - especially because in one scene in particular, I was so angry that I genuinely considered walking out of the cinema -...
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I was at an Earth Day expo today with some students. I cringed several times as earnest booth spokespeople used uselessly 'elevated' language to explain perfectly simple things. I was probably especially aware because I was with my English-learning students and I was listening with their ears. I wanted to tell people to speak plain English, but it would have just flustered them and made them feel bad and they really weren't trying to be knobs, it's just an unfortunate side-effect of a university education.
O, and also, (similarly to 'touching base') the phrase 'catch up'. "Let's catch up for a coffee". NO THANKS!