This week marked the fifty-year anniversary of Australia’s first appearance at the FIFA World Cup Finals.

The achievements of this squad are legendary – a group comprised of amateur players who qualified against the odds to take their place among the top sixteen teams in the world.

Drawing both East and West Germany in the group stage was always going to be a tough ask, and the Socceroos lost both matches – after putting up a serious fight. The third and final game was against Chile, whom the underdogs managed to hold to a 0-0 draw.

No one would have thought at the time that 32 years would pass before Australia would make their next appearance at the World Cup Finals.

Over the past week, Football Australia have been releasing some great articles and videos about the ’74 Socceroos, such as the team profile from the official tournament programme, as seen below.

Perhaps second only to Bradman’s ‘1948 Invincibles’ – the 1974 Socceroos will forever hold their place among the giants of Australian sport.

Link below to the brilliant documentary on the Football Australia YouTube Channel.

Photos courtesy of Football Australia and other online sources.

I thought a 15% audience score was as low as this would get, but it seems the downward slide is continuing. The question that remains now is: – will it drop below 10%?

I should point out that the critics are once again on another planet here with a combined 84% score. How can the ‘experts’ miss what is arguably some of the worst writing ever seen on television? To me, at best – and being very kind, I would give this two stars out of five.

So, in unison with fellow ‘Star Wars’ fans everywhere, I decided to step up and play my part…

To be fair, if this show – which I’m only watching for comedic value – suddenly turns around and starts resembling actual ‘Star Wars’, then I will add half a star or more to my rating.

“The power of one… The power of two… The power of MAAANNNNYYYYYY!”

The 2011 Lars Von Trier film ‘Melancholia’ is at times grinding and slow-burning, and starts off with an hour-long dysfunctional wedding scene featuring some truly dislikable characters.

It does not get any easier to watch beyond that point, as serious mental illness is a major theme throughout. However, this is somewhat balanced out by the spectacular visuals and locations, not to mention the intrigue surrounding the arrival of a rogue planet near Earth’s orbit.

Any film from Von Trier is an acquired taste, with his directing style not to everyone’s liking.

I would say ‘The House That Jack Built’ would be the only other of Von Trier’s projects considered anywhere near ‘mainstream’ – although it was extremely violent. On the other hand, I found his previous film ‘Nymphomaniac’ so offensive that I could barely make it half-way through.

‘Melancholia’ is worth a watch, if you’re looking for something to challenge your senses – with a little science-fiction added into the mix. It is neither violent, nor offensive – but does feature some nudity. The cast is solid too, with Kiefer Sutherland, Kirsten Dunst, and Alexander Skarsgard.

Von Trier may be an eccentric film-maker, but as you can see in the screenshots below, he is no mug when it comes to cinematography and creating fantastic visuals.

All photos courtesy of Zentropa Productions.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since watching ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ and also hearing about the destruction of ‘Doctor Who’ – shows that both happen to be on Disney Plus.

We desperately need a reset – Dallas-style!

‘Dallas’ was perhaps the biggest TV show in the world during the 1980’s, and the story of the ninth season – also known as ‘The Dream Season’ is legendary.

It all started with the killing off of the Bobby Ewing character (the only man without a hat in the photo), as the actor Patrick Duffy had decided to leave the show after the eighth season.

When Duffy made his return a year later, the producers accommodated this by retro-writing the entire ninth season as a dream experienced by his mourning wife Pamela, played by Victoria Principal (wearing the blue suit in the photo). That’s right – an entire season of thirty episodes was turned into a fantasy that never happened, hence the ninth season of ‘Dallas’ being commonly referred to as ‘The Dream Season’.

‘Dallas’ then continued on like nothing happened.

So, can someone please do the same with ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Doctor Who’? – A one-season rewind won’t be enough – these shows need to be taken back at least twenty years!

Before people start jumping up and down, I’m going to begin by saying straight up that I had NO issue with any of the casting – I couldn’t care less about representation quotas and DEI policies.

**MILD SPOILER WARNING AHEAD**

The opening two episodes of this show were complete garbage; nonsensical at times, riddled with poor timing and lazy scene jumps, and with more plot holes and inconsistencies than anything I have seen in television or film for a very long time.

And if the rumours are true, the show starts to get EVEN WORSE from episode three.

I’ll give one small example of how it kept missing the mark – the outline you see in the photo above is presumably the main villain who is referred to as ‘The Master’. This was the final scene of the first episode and was intended to end things on a thrilling and menacing note. Instead, I couldn’t stop laughing when listening to his voice, as he sounded like the hapless ‘Shockmaster’ from WWE wrestling.

Look, I was prepared to give the show a chance, and it ended up far worse than I imagined.

I do admit to having some concerns when the showrunner Leslye Headland continually made comments regarding gender and queerness, rather than selling the series on its story and action – speaking of a project that was a cross between ‘Frozen’ and ‘Kill Bill’.

I was concerned that Headland was in over her head with ‘Star Wars’, and I think this will prove to be the case. It felt wrong, it looked wrong, it tried to be ‘cool’ at times but fell short, the fight scenes were not good, even the special effects looked a little off.

I do hope that people reading this may disagree with me, and actually enjoyed the show. I really do.

All screenshots are courtesy of Lucasfilm – Disney Plus.

One by one, as they become eligible, my stories will be available to purchase on Books2Read.com.

First cab off the rank is ‘Barren Point Road’, with ‘Blasters!’ and ‘Vindictive Pursuits’ coming soon.

Once all the stories are listed, they will be advertised across multiple online bookstores.

The layout certainly looks professional enough, so let’s see how we go.

Five of my titles are now listed on Kobo, as their exclusivity arrangements with Kindle Unlimited expire over the coming weeks.

Please note, they are still available at the Kindle Store in both eBook and paperback format.

Link here – https://www.kobo.com/au/en/search?query=sean+carslake&fclanguages=en

Once you get the hang of it, Amazon’s cover design builder is pretty good.

The screenshot below is of my final, ready-to-print cover art.

Using photo editing software, I firstly join two separate images: – one for the back cover and the other for the front and spine, ensuring that I make them larger than needed for the print bleed.

If you wish to use your own font and title design, you must superimpose this to the artwork before uploading to Amazon’s cover creator, as you can see in the above image.

From there, Cover Creator will ‘fill in the blanks’. When comparing both templates, note that the author profile, book blurb and author name on the spine were added by the Amazon software – and they are placed perfectly according to the printing requirements.

Getting the exact measurements can be a pain, and it involves a lot of adjustments back and forth until the print areas are lined up perfectly within the allocated borders. I tend to start with the spine and once that is in place, it is easier to set up both front and back covers.

At the time of writing, my cover had already passed the publishing standards, but the paperback itself is still pending. Once it is approved, I will order an author copy of the book to undergo final checks.

‘Hobart 1983’ is now available at the Kindle store.

Link here – https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0D4YDNVV6