The late newspaperman Frank Devine, author of Older and Wiser, at The Australian in Sydney

The brains trust at Sydney production company Zapruder’s Other Films know when they’re on to a good thing which is why Andrew Denton and his right-hand-woman Anita Jacoby are in the middle of finishing another series of their top-rated Elders series for the ABC.

The first series of the show, itself a spin-off from Denton’s much missed Enough Rope, featured fascinating, in-depth interviews with members of our superannuated generation – all of whom still have much to offer and are offering it.

Denton and Jacoby, to their credit, realised that there were plenty more people to mine for knowledge and experience – some of it good, some of bad, but all of interesting.

Which brings me to my point: Frank Devine’s posthumously published prince of a book called Older and Wiser that will hit bookstores tomorrow.

The book is a collection of Devine’s essays from 2002 to 2009 originally published in Quadrant magazine after he retired “as a day labourer at the age of 70” from The Australian newspaper where he had previously been editor.

His intention was to examine getting old but after five years of writing his columns he realised he’d been “goofing off” and writing about everything but. Well almost. Devine’s facility with language ranks among the very best and his essays are sensible, endearing, charming, enlightening, clever, provocative and laugh-out-loud funny in equal measure.

Australia has a peculiar notion about age and retirement. Unlike many European and Asian nations, we don’t revere our elders or take from them the infinite wisdom they possess about life and living. They’ve been there, done that, which is why we should appreciate it. Yet, somehow, we don’t.

Remember the push to have former Prime Minister John Howard retire at 64 – as if 64 was the intellectual use-by date for employment? Whatever you think of his politics, there is no denying Howard was still as vigorous as a 44 or even 34-year-old. Not for nothing is he currently working on his memoir while travelling the world at the invitation of various heads of government and businesses that wisely seek his counsel on all manner of things.

So back to Devine and Older and Wiser. As an example of his acute insight and wit (and that of a grandson) take the following extract from an essay called Two Degrees of Separation about being a grandparent (he was that six times over – one granddaughter and five grandsons).

Frank Devine's new book, Older and Wiser

“It’s a mistake for grandparents to get ideas above our station. This was made clear to me when, in the temporary and unavoidable absence of his parents, I took a grandson from the rugby wing of our family (we also have a robust soccer wing) to his under-eights game one recent Saturday. We get on well and he was his usual ebullient self on the way to the ground. On the return journey, however, he was somewhat taciturn.

“You missed your dad?” I suggested.

Tactfully: “A bit.” His father is the team coach.

“What’s wrong with a grandfather?”

“Well…you’re old.”

“So?”

“Well, you can’t run around the field.”

“How do you know? You’ve never seen me try.”

Recourse to his gift for comic invention had become inevitable: “Sometimes at training we accidentally step on Dad’s foot with our sprigs. He just swears but, if we did it to you, I think you’d go down.”

Each of the essays in the hardback volume – the first title to be published by Quadrant Books – contains sentences, ideas, logic and laughs that sparkle like newly polished gems.

An early shot of newspaper man Frank Devine playing billiards

Devine writes about the “special choreography” of a marriage that survives and thrives after 50 years; about Margot Kingston’s “insistent drone of scold” in her book Not Happy, John!; about the delights of reading Wodehouse out loud to his wife – “once caught in the Wodehouse web there is no escape”; on Winston Churchill “pommy bastard”; about being home alone – “my household duties over the years have been light but I am by no means hapless. Not everybody accepts me as fully hap, however”; and extracts a revelatory and compelling conversation with historian Geoffrey Blainey who admits “to some extent I lead two lives”.

Devine’s brilliance can be found in the myriad of subjects he tackles and conquers, and the subtlety and finesse with which he executes the written word.

Older and Wiser is as beautiful to behold as the words contained therein. And as this collection of 34 essays from a total of 67 amply proves, Devine is among the finest wordsmiths Australia, sorry, New Zealand, has ever produced.

(Full disclosure: Frank Devine, who died in July from cancer, was a close personal friend.)

The book retails for $44.95

Aden Young, one of the stars of Bruce Beresford's new epic, Mao's Last Dancer. Picture by Marco del Grande @ The Sydney Morning Herald

The incredibly talented Aden Young, one of this country’s most under-utilised and under-rated actors, was on the red carpet last night at the Australian premiere of Mao’s Last Dancer.

The 37-year-old Canadian-born Sydney transplant has a small but strong role in the Bruce Beresford epic based on the best-selling autobiography of the same name by Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin, who defected to the United States in 1981, and is played by another incredible dancer Chi Cao in the film.

Young was worried that his characterisation of the Texan oil tycoon Dilworth – who helped Cunxin defect – was “too big”.

It’s not. Young recently told me it was the first time he had played a real life character in his two-decade long career that includes 30 films not to mention work behind-the-scenes.

“The great bonus of being involved in something like this is being face to face with Li and meeting him and being able to, I guess, come face to face with somebody of such exquisite talent,” Young told me.

I met Young at the 1991 Toronto Film Festival when he made his feature film debut in another Beresford epic, Black Robe. Back then, Young was touted as “the next big thing” but he determinedly took a low-key route and by-passed Hollywood where he was dubbed “Dr No” because he turned down roles that didn’t appeal to him.

He admitted the decision had taken a financial toll.

But after his partner of seven-year, Loene Carmen, fell pregnant with their son Dutch – who is now almost three years old – he threw himself back into the picture, so to speak.

Mao’s Last Dancer - which I loved  - is the third film in which he has teamed up with Beresford.

“What I like about him [Beresford] is that his irreverence to the craft is married to such a wealth of cinematic language. He knows what he wants and allows you to find it. I am always quite amazed,” Young says of working on the $25 million film with the director. “He [says] essentially ‘what would you do?’ and you might suggest a particular range of objectives and actions and he’ll say, ‘can it fit within this physical structure?’ and away you go.

“There’s not an extraordinary lot of discussion, at least there wasn’t from my point of view. Whereas with other directors you really nut [the role] down to every single word and syllable. What I love about acting is how every single project is completely different. You meet a first time director who is absolutely assured it’s going to work this way, whereas you’ve worked in five different processes where it’s never worked that way and then you’re amazed that it does work that way because he’s coming at it from a different perspective.”

Young is about to embark on another Australian-made film, Beneath Hill 60 and has just finished working with Charlotte Gainsborough in Queensland on a film helmed by Julie Bertucelli (Since Otar Left).

Stars of Mao's Last Dancer Chi Cao and Amanda Schull at Australian premiere in Sydney. Picture by Gay Gerard/Getty Images AsiaPac

Also at the premiere were fellow actors Jack Thompson (who also has a small role as a judge in the film), Michael Caton (The Castle), and a chorus line of ballet stars including the debonair artistic director of the Australian Ballet David McAllister and Graham Murphy. Sarah Murdoch was a towering presence, The Today show co-host Karl Stefanovic worked the mezzanine with aplomb, Ros Packer was spied chatting to friends, and John and Caroline Laws held court. Other guests included magazine maven and Australian Women’s Weekly heavyweight Deborah Thomas and her husband, Vitek, former sports reporter Mary-Anne Dibbs (who now looks after media and communications for the luxury resort Pinctada at Cable Beach in Western Australia), Sydney businesswoman Glenn-Marie Frost, and Jane Fraser, one of the smartest columnists at The Australian.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in Australia

You’ve got to pity Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman. The 42-year-old actress has a permanent target on her chest and the latest to take aim is influential Hollywood reporter Nikki Finke.

In her must-read DeadlineHollywoodDaily website, Finke has attacked Kidman for daring to change her American publicist after a professional relationship that lasted 15 years.

Hang on, isn’t that Kidman’s prerogative? After all, things change, we move on. It’s called life. And besides, she is still with her Australian publicist Wendy Day, who has been at her side through thick and thin for more than two decades, proving Kidman is more than loyal.

But her decision to change PR agent has upset Finke, who calls Kidman “box office poison” and says she “has zero charisma on screen; women don’t like her and men think she’s sexless”.

Previously, other critics agreed. Recall how she unfairly copped a caning for her last film, the super-hyped Baz Luhrmann, Australia. Melanie Reid in The Times newspaper in London was scathing about her performance and said the director had made a “big, big mistake” in casting the lanky redhead.

“Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful. She can’t act,” Reid wrote. Meow!

Even though others were less cruel – a Los Angeles Times reporter said she was not a movie star – you get the picture.

Kidman arouses the critics, but is she really box office poison?

Australia might have earned mixed reviews but it still managed to pull in US$211 million at the international box office – which is not too shabby (that figure does not include important DVD sales.) Another critical dud, The Golden Compass also did good business – so she’s got to be doing something right.

Yes, Kidman has been in some shockers – The Invasion, anyone? – but I’m curious why she evokes such a strong, usually negative, reactions from so many people.

I’ve met her and interviewed her a couple of times, the last being on the set of Australia in outback Kununurra. I’m no apologist for her, and I’m not on her payroll, and I’ve been critical of the hype surrounding her and her ex-husband Tom Cruise in the past, but she’s pleasant, she’s sweet, she’s professional, she’s inoffensive and she genuinely wants to do a good job.

It’s hard to muster up the fiercely negative feelings for her that Finke and others have. Folk might not instantly warm to Kidman, but she’s not an effusive Labrador puppy bouncing around looking for instant friends. She’s a woman who admits to being painfully shy, as do most actors. And there is no denying her  talent – just look at the brilliant performance in To Die For. Not every film is a winner and that’s true of all actors, even the incomparable Meryl Streep (Death Becomes Her) and Johnny Depp (the recently panned Public Enemies).

Still, for someone who is supposedly box office poison, Forbes magazine rated Kidman the eighth top earning actress in Hollywood last year with $15.7 million in income – that’s in Australian dollars.

If that’s box office poison, I’d happily drink from the cup.