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Appalling... in a school of wittering idiots, Sarah Silverman rules in hell, apparently. Her weak co-option of human rights should make the most noble of us shudder. SS humour includes such dissociative as MLK and farting, AIDS = lemonaids and the charming imagining of "wouldn't the Jews have been better off if there were Blacks in Nazi Germany?" Her cruelty knows no bounds, especially to the elderly, Blacks, Ethiopians, her parents, her dead grandmother, everyone wins! She likes Fiji Wadder! If you, as I, were watching this DVD expecting a cinematic début of a rising talent and found yourself bored... try this trick: Use a mental computer find-and-erase and for every instance of the words "um", "like", "gay" and "oh my God", renders the entire performance half as long... Score! Or in her own words, "My sh*t... it belongs offstage."

Mad Men succeeds on so many levels for modern television fans yet fails on one very integral and basic level: Where is the brilliant advertising? The costumes, sets, interiors and exteriors are a feast for the eyes... the prop objects are nearly fetishistic in their detail (apart from some already well-noted anachronisms mentioned here.) While the accents and regionalisms are as weak as on most shows about the past, the content is pretty accurate of a society still preoccupied with its own sense of progress and invention. Even the soap-opera storytelling is done with flair and foreshadowing. What is NOT inventive is the lack of advertising principles, ideas, brainstorming, and even devil's advocacy so prevalent in Madison Avenue then as now. The print work is dire... text printed over model's faces, and everyone seems to love it. Sure we drink (and even smoke) even today in this business (moreso here in London or Europe), but I know for certain that we would not be in advertising long if we were unable to come up with plausible multi-national ideas and artwork in meetings. Drinks or not.

While the DB reviewers all seem to be unsure of what to make of this film, it does indeed have a growing tradition in style with other Australian quirky movies such as Strictly Ballroom, Priscilla, and the Baz Luhrmann Red Curtain series. The staging, cinematography, execution and editing of shots are quick, colourful and energetically paced.

This allows the bizarre story to unfold, and the characters to develop, with explanations for their motivations being revealed gradually. The genius lies in Anna Maria Monticelli's beautiful script which intelligently begins to unravel events that have already occurred without explanation, all in a comfortable linear format. Such imaginative exposition is rarely given without confusing flashbacks, and is the heart of this film. I found the structure elegantly clarified all of the initially obscure scenes.

The mother Lola never becomes sympathetic, however Lola Marceli's sterling debut convinces the viewer of a person becoming truly disturbed by her transplanted identity as Spanish woman amongst Italians, in an uncaring Australian society, deserted by her husband and scorned by her neglected daughter. Alice Ansara's Lucia cool-as-a-cucumber performance is understated and believable, and all the more commendable for her excellent language skills which define her character, and serve as some of the funniest bits of business as she gently toys with her clients' own lack of linguistics.

And of course Alex Dimitriades yet again demonstrates his smouldering leading man persona which we first saw in 1998's masterful "Head On".

Lourdes Bartolomé's turn as catty sister Manola chews the lush scenery and deftly steals the show, particularly in the dancing and cooking sequence! I might point out that she is most entranced by a courgette (zucchini), rather than a cucumber, as one reviewer has written...