America's most famous river journey is also highly underrated
In the Jungle Room, Elvis' tropical man cave, it's not hard to imagine his ghost lounging on the green shag pile carpet. His pink Cadillac gleams in the Presley Motors Automobile Museum, while the bling and dazzle of his stage costumes are an exercise in fabulous maximalism.
At Gladys' Diner (named in honour of Elvis' mother), a peanut butter banana toastie tastes better than I expect it to. I skip the bacon-grease glaze.
Over at Sun Studio, the Elvis tour continues, with a history lesson in how legendary producer Sam Phillips launched the careers of many early rock icons. In 1953, a teenage Elvis recorded two demo tapes as a gift for his mum. Phillips, recognising the kid's talent and charisma, brought him back in for more recording sessions. The rest is history.
Memphis is also a key location in the civil rights movement, and has become a place of pilgrimage, education and remembrance. It was in Memphis that Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine motel. A popular accommodation choice for African-American travellers during the segregation era, the motel has been transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum.
Saddle up for Nashville
It's a three-hour drive from Memphis to Nashville, an interstate highway journey that passes quickly as I enhance it with my iPhone soundtrack of classic Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline tunes. The two-night post-cruise Nashville extension tour leans in to the rich musical heritage of the city, a place where countless stars of country, blues, folk, soul and gospel music have found their feet and their fame.
Inspired by Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and other boot-scooting mega-stars of country, Nashville is a supremely popular destination for bachelorette getaways. Along the neon-lit Broadway strip of live music bars, many of them owned by the biggest names on the Billboard Country charts, we see groups of prancing young women dressed in the cos-play gear of the genre: Western hats, cowgirl boots, denim miniskirts and lots of fringing.
Many of those bar-owning big names are honoured at the Country Music Hall of Fame, an impressive, high-tech, interactive museum. With so many legendary attractions to visit in a couple of days, I trot from one end of Nashville to the other, fuelled by delicious barbecued beef brisket, pulled pork and coleslaw.
The grand dame landmark is the Ryman Auditorium, home until 1974 of the world's longest-running live radio show, the Grand Ole Opry. While the show now has a permanent, 4400-seat home at the Grand Ole Opry House, some 20 kilometres from downtown Nashville, the Ryman remains a must-visit for its incredible acoustics and legacy as the 'mother church' of country music.
Across the street, the National Museum of African American Music tells another story – that of the incredible influence African-American music has had on American culture. If you love the music of Elvis Presley, you can thank the influence of black music, particularly gospel and rhythm and blues. From the earliest spirituals, rooted in African traditions and sung by enslaved people as religious expression and secret codes, to the music world domination of Beyonce and her contemporaries, credit is given where it's due.
Uplifted in the South
Two weeks in the Deep South have flown by, and it's now time for our Viking journey to come to an end. The music, the flavours, the heartbreaking history and incredibly warm welcome create unforgettable memories.
Say what you will about politics in the US, but the charming people of the South and their famous hospitality sure do leave a sweet impression. The person-to-person connections seem stronger and more sincere than ever, even more so when locals hear an Australian accent.
'Thank you for coming, we're so glad you're here,' is a sentiment visitors will hear, over and over. 'Y'all come back soon now.'
Five other great rivers of the world to cruise
Yangtze River
For a taste of Chinese cuisine, culture and spectacular scenery, consider the Yangtze. Most cruises pass through the Three Gorges area, known for dramatic, towering cliffs and lush valleys.
The Nile
Egypt's mighty Nile River is hot, hot, hot this year, and not just in the sweltering summer months. Avid cruisers are seizing the opportunity to explore ancient sites, mystical temples and fascinating museums.
The Danube (and the Rhine)
A river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam is a classic Europe cruise itinerary for a reason, winding along the Danube and the Rhine rivers past interesting cities, charming small towns and pretty countryside. The hearty food is reliably delicious and the port stops provide enough variety to keep the most inquiring minds entertained: thermal bathing one day in Budapest, classical music the next in Vienna.
The Seine
A cruise that begins with a starry sail-away from moonlit Paris bodes well for a good time. And so it is with Seine River cruise itineraries that typically include visits to Monet's gardens at Giverny, Joan of Arc's old stomping grounds in Rouen, and the Normandy landing beaches. As you would expect in France, there are also visits to flower markets, patisseries and wineries.
The Amazon
The awesomely potent Amazon runs for 6400 kilometres through South America's biodiverse rainforest and jungle. Cruising is a smart choice to cover the most ground, some of which is very remote, with many itineraries beginning in Peru or northern Brazil in a region that is home to about 10 per cent of the world's known animal species.
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The details
Cruise
Discover Southern heritage and quaint towns along the banks of the Mississippi on Viking's eight-day Mississippi Delta Explorer journey. From $6495 a person in a Deluxe Verandah with savings up to $4800 a couple on new 2025, 2026 and 2027 sailings. Available now through to June 30, 2025. Longer cruises on the Mississippi (11, 15 and 22 days) are also available. See viking.com
US entry
The Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advises travellers that entry requirements to the US are strict. Travellers should be aware that the US authorities have broad powers to decide if you're eligible to enter. Thoroughly check US entry, registration, transit and exit requirements. See smartraveller.gov.au
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Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
IMDb founder on how a 14-day Alien bender gave birth to an internet monster
Col Needham greets me with a big smile and an outstretched hand and slides me his business card. 'Founder and executive chair of IMDb', it says on one side, and on the other, 'all of life's riddles are answered in the movies'. The line comes from Grand Canyon, the 1991 ensemble drama from Big Chill writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, and is spoken in the film by Steve Martin as a bearded Hollywood producer. 'It's a movie quote about movie quotes,' says Needham, chuckling merrily. Of course it is. Needham is in Australia for the first time, and over the past month he has snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, lived it up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and soaked up the sites of the Great Ocean Road. But the real reason he's schlepped across the world from his home in Bristol, England, is to serve on the jury of the Melbourne International Film Festival, alongside Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, as chair, and American indie darling Alex Ross Perry, among others. On Saturday, they will reveal the winners of the Bright Horizons Prize for a first- or second-time director – at $140,000, it is one of the richest on the planet – and the Black Magic Design award for an Australian filmmaker, worth $40,000. Judging those prizes requires him to see 13 feature films, but Needham arrived here with a hit list of 91 he intended to catch. 'I've now seen 52 of them,' he says. If he doesn't tick them all off, no problem. 'There's always a carry-forward column.' Loading Columns, lists and movies are the essential ingredients of Needham's life. 'I've been tracking every movie that I've seen since the first of January, 1980,' he tells me. The 58-year-old Mancunian began his working life as a computer engineer at Hewlett-Packard, and owes his career and his fortune to two other pieces of technology: VCRs and the internet. But it all started in his bedroom, as a 14-year-old, with a simple notebook and pen. It was 1981, and his family had just leapt on the latest thing in home technology – a video cassette machine. A 25-minute walk away was a store that sold and rented the machines, and had a small stash of movies on VHS to demonstrate what this marvellous new device could do. And Needham was able to borrow them for two weeks at a time. 'My obsession began, really, with Ridley Scott's Alien,' he says. 'I watched it every single day for the two weeks that we had it – 14 times in 14 days.' He was fascinated by credits, too, reading them to the end long before post-credit sequences became a staple. And he soon started spotting patterns. 'I'm not sure if I understood what a cinematographer was when I was 14, but I knew they were in the opening credits, and then and I'd start to notice that this director often works with this DoP, or this producer is often producing things by this writer.' Loading As his viewing racked up, he began to lose track of what he'd seen. So he started jotting it down in a notebook, which he'd pop in his pocket as he headed off to the video store for his latest batch of three tapes. (As an aside, Needham tells me that by 1982 or 1983, some entrepreneurial character had started doing the rounds of his neighbourhood with a stash of VHS tapes in his car. 'The doorbell would ring, 'Oh, hey, video man'. He'd pop the boot open, and you'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, heard of that one'. It was an entirely different kind of streaming.' ) The first inklings of IMDb would soon emerge, as he transferred his jottings to his home computer. 'It was a Sharp MZ80k,' he recalls. 'It was 48KB [of RAM], and a cassette hard drive.' Needham spent his summer pausing and rewinding videotapes and typing credits into his database. He backdated his entries to January 1, 1980, though he admits some of those entries, which are still on IMDb today, might be a bit sketchy. 'I've been meaning to go back ...' For years it was a solitary pursuit, but in 1985, he discovered online bulletin boards, where members could dial a number, get online, sign up for a mailing list, and message other members. 'You'd probably be mailing, like, 100 fellow movie fans,' he says. 'But that's when I discovered there were other people like me. I was not the only crazy one.' Loading In the early days, it could take a couple of days for someone to respond. But by the late '80s, things were picking up pace. 'You might get a response the same day – shock, horror,' he jokes. He was sharing his database with anyone who was interested, and others shared their own lists: one kept tabs on actresses, but only those still alive; another tracked directors. In September 1990, someone – their name is lost to the mists of time, so no credit there – suggested collating all those separate lists into a single database. 'And so, on October 17, 1990 the first version of IMDb was published onto the public internet,' he says. It was 1993, though, before this hobby pursued by a few film nerds really crossed the Rubicon. Someone at Cardiff University emailed to say he'd downloaded the movie database software and thought it was amazing. 'And he said, 'have you heard of this World Wide Web thing, because I think it might be quite big'.' It was the early days of the internet, so early that a site called What's New on the Web published a daily list of new sites, typically just a couple each day. And Needham was all over it. 'I'd done the web,' he says, laughing. 'I'd been to every website that existed.' Fast forward to late 1997, and Needham received a call from someone at Amazon to say Jeff Bezos would be in England in January and would like to meet. 'We thought we were going to talk about an ad deal,' he says. 'But Jeff had other plans.' On April 24, 1998, IMDb became an Amazon company, and Needham and everyone who'd been working on it swapped their shares in their start-up for cash and shares in Amazon. 'In retrospect, I should have taken all shares,' he says. He's done all right, though. Needham now gets to indulge his nerdy passion as much as he likes, all over the world. He's done jury duty at around 20 festivals, he thinks, including alongside Taika Waititi at Sundance in 2015. 'This is not my first rodeo,' he says of MIFF. His favourite film? Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which he estimates he has seen about 50 times. His most-watched? Not Alien, but its sequel, Aliens, which he has seen 63 times. And the running tally? 'It's 16,446, plus the 13 jury films,' he says. He'll add those to the total once the deliberations are complete. There's always a carry-forward column.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
IMDb founder on how a 14-day Alien bender gave birth to an internet monster
Col Needham greets me with a big smile and an outstretched hand and slides me his business card. 'Founder and executive chair of IMDb', it says on one side, and on the other, 'all of life's riddles are answered in the movies'. The line comes from Grand Canyon, the 1991 ensemble drama from Big Chill writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, and is spoken in the film by Steve Martin as a bearded Hollywood producer. 'It's a movie quote about movie quotes,' says Needham, chuckling merrily. Of course it is. Needham is in Australia for the first time, and over the past month he has snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, lived it up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and soaked up the sites of the Great Ocean Road. But the real reason he's schlepped across the world from his home in Bristol, England, is to serve on the jury of the Melbourne International Film Festival, alongside Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, as chair, and American indie darling Alex Ross Perry, among others. On Saturday, they will reveal the winners of the Bright Horizons Prize for a first- or second-time director – at $140,000, it is one of the richest on the planet – and the Black Magic Design award for an Australian filmmaker, worth $40,000. Judging those prizes requires him to see 13 feature films, but Needham arrived here with a hit list of 91 he intended to catch. 'I've now seen 52 of them,' he says. If he doesn't tick them all off, no problem. 'There's always a carry-forward column.' Loading Columns, lists and movies are the essential ingredients of Needham's life. 'I've been tracking every movie that I've seen since the first of January, 1980,' he tells me. The 58-year-old Mancunian began his working life as a computer engineer at Hewlett-Packard, and owes his career and his fortune to two other pieces of technology: VCRs and the internet. But it all started in his bedroom, as a 14-year-old, with a simple notebook and pen. It was 1981, and his family had just leapt on the latest thing in home technology – a video cassette machine. A 25-minute walk away was a store that sold and rented the machines, and had a small stash of movies on VHS to demonstrate what this marvellous new device could do. And Needham was able to borrow them for two weeks at a time. 'My obsession began, really, with Ridley Scott's Alien,' he says. 'I watched it every single day for the two weeks that we had it – 14 times in 14 days.' He was fascinated by credits, too, reading them to the end long before post-credit sequences became a staple. And he soon started spotting patterns. 'I'm not sure if I understood what a cinematographer was when I was 14, but I knew they were in the opening credits, and then and I'd start to notice that this director often works with this DoP, or this producer is often producing things by this writer.' Loading As his viewing racked up, he began to lose track of what he'd seen. So he started jotting it down in a notebook, which he'd pop in his pocket as he headed off to the video store for his latest batch of three tapes. (As an aside, Needham tells me that by 1982 or 1983, some entrepreneurial character had started doing the rounds of his neighbourhood with a stash of VHS tapes in his car. 'The doorbell would ring, 'Oh, hey, video man'. He'd pop the boot open, and you'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, heard of that one'. It was an entirely different kind of streaming.' ) The first inklings of IMDb would soon emerge, as he transferred his jottings to his home computer. 'It was a Sharp MZ80k,' he recalls. 'It was 48KB [of RAM], and a cassette hard drive.' Needham spent his summer pausing and rewinding videotapes and typing credits into his database. He backdated his entries to January 1, 1980, though he admits some of those entries, which are still on IMDb today, might be a bit sketchy. 'I've been meaning to go back ...' For years it was a solitary pursuit, but in 1985, he discovered online bulletin boards, where members could dial a number, get online, sign up for a mailing list, and message other members. 'You'd probably be mailing, like, 100 fellow movie fans,' he says. 'But that's when I discovered there were other people like me. I was not the only crazy one.' Loading In the early days, it could take a couple of days for someone to respond. But by the late '80s, things were picking up pace. 'You might get a response the same day – shock, horror,' he jokes. He was sharing his database with anyone who was interested, and others shared their own lists: one kept tabs on actresses, but only those still alive; another tracked directors. In September 1990, someone – their name is lost to the mists of time, so no credit there – suggested collating all those separate lists into a single database. 'And so, on October 17, 1990 the first version of IMDb was published onto the public internet,' he says. It was 1993, though, before this hobby pursued by a few film nerds really crossed the Rubicon. Someone at Cardiff University emailed to say he'd downloaded the movie database software and thought it was amazing. 'And he said, 'have you heard of this World Wide Web thing, because I think it might be quite big'.' It was the early days of the internet, so early that a site called What's New on the Web published a daily list of new sites, typically just a couple each day. And Needham was all over it. 'I'd done the web,' he says, laughing. 'I'd been to every website that existed.' Fast forward to late 1997, and Needham received a call from someone at Amazon to say Jeff Bezos would be in England in January and would like to meet. 'We thought we were going to talk about an ad deal,' he says. 'But Jeff had other plans.' On April 24, 1998, IMDb became an Amazon company, and Needham and everyone who'd been working on it swapped their shares in their start-up for cash and shares in Amazon. 'In retrospect, I should have taken all shares,' he says. He's done all right, though. Needham now gets to indulge his nerdy passion as much as he likes, all over the world. He's done jury duty at around 20 festivals, he thinks, including alongside Taika Waititi at Sundance in 2015. 'This is not my first rodeo,' he says of MIFF. His favourite film? Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which he estimates he has seen about 50 times. His most-watched? Not Alien, but its sequel, Aliens, which he has seen 63 times. And the running tally? 'It's 16,446, plus the 13 jury films,' he says. He'll add those to the total once the deliberations are complete. There's always a carry-forward column.
Courier-Mail
6 hours ago
- Courier-Mail
Amanda Knox: The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox tells true story behind 2007 Italy murder
We've sifted through the latest offerings from TV and streaming platforms to find the best shows you should be watching this week. Grace Van Patten as Amanda Knox in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. THE TWISTED TALE OF AMANDA KNOX NEW EPISODES WEDNESDAYS, DISNEY+ It's understandable why Amanda Knox would want to make this eight-part retelling of her arrest, trial, conviction, demonisation and eventual exoneration for the 2007 murder of her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher, while studying in picturesque Perugia. The salacious story with sex, drugs and even Satanism that saw her dubbed Foxy Knoxy and spend four years in an Italian jail is absolutely hers to tell after all the indignities and injustices she suffered. Knox herself is on board as an executive producer for this well told dramatisation that draws from her books Waiting To Be Heard and Free and it's presented as her chance to correct her 'often mistold and madly twisted tale'. By the same token, the producers are at pains to point out that liberties have been taken with characters and timelines and that knowledge – after movies inspired by the case and a 2016 Netflix documentary – can make it sometimes uneasy viewing. Kercher's sister last year said it was 'difficult to understand' the purpose of series that puts the awfulness front and centre and again – and she has a point. JAMES WIGNEY Grace Van Patten and Giuseppe De Domenico in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Imagine coming home to find your apartment has been broken into and your housemate brutally slain. Now imagine your confusion and frustration as you are interrogated for hours – in a foreign language – by police who seem hell bent on proving you are a cold-blooded, sex-crazed killer. This new true crime drama offers almost visceral insights into the bewilderment of American student Amanda Knox as she finds herself wrongly accused of murdering her British friend Meredith Kercher in 2007. The trial, imprisonment and subsequent exoneration of Knox, which made headlines around the globe, are all detailed in this new series starring Grace Van Patten as Knox and Bad Sisters' creator Sharon Horgan as her devoted mum. Certainly, Knox is an imperfect victim. Her response to the tragedy – canoodling with her boyfriend at the crime scene, doing cartwheels in the police station and pointing the finger of blame at her boss during a 'confession' – is far from textbook. And that's partly what makes this series so compelling. SIOBHAN DUCK Monica Lewinsky (who is a producer on the series) with Grace Van Patten and the real Amanda Knox at the premiere of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Picture: AP US celebrity chef Adam Richman in Adam Richman Eats Football. ADAM RICHMAN EATS FOOTBALL WEDNESDAY, 9PM, SBS FOOD It's not often you hear fine dining and football mentioned in the same sentence, but American celebrity chef and world game enthusiast Adam Richman is out to change that in this series that travels around the UK finding ways to combine the two. His first stop is East London, home to West Ham United, a traditionally working class area that's been gentrified and now has the culinary choices to prove it. From scoffing a pie and mash made from an 80-year-old recipe to sampling fancy wood pigeon on an up-market barge – and of course a match day curry – Richman looks like he's having an absolute ball. Coming episodes will take him to Nottingham, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle. Erling Haland is back in action for Manchester City. Picture:TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR V MANCHESTER CITY SATURDAY, 9.30PM, CHANNEL 9, 9NOW What a joy to see the English Premier League back on free-to-air television with a game each week (the rest is on Stan, live or on demand). London club Tottenham Hotspur began its post Ange Postecoglou era in style last week with a convincing win over 3-0 win over Burnley, while the Manchester City machine also fired up early with 4-0 belting of Wolverhampton Wolves that sent them straight to the top of the table. Having won six of the last eight titles, City underperformed by their own lofty standards last season, so fans will be expecting a better showing to wrest the top dog status back from arch rivals Liverpool. The Colosseum is getting a new station in Rome Underground. ROME UNDERGROUND SUNDAY, 7.30PM, SBS If you think any of the recent underground rail projects in Australia have been complicated, try digging holes in a city where hidden, ancient treasures lurk underneath just about every street. That's the dilemma facing the engineers and archaeologists tasked with constructing a much needed extension to a rail line in the Eternal City, where nearly 3000 years of history are stacked on top of each other and only 10 per cent has been excavated. While trying to improve access to tourist hotspots such as the Colosseum and Piazza Venezia, they discover huge barracks with delicate mosaics and frescoes, and never-before-seen auditoriums and private houses, and have to figure out a way to balance the lessons of the past with progress. Quarterback Troy Aikman helped make the Dallas Cowboys a powerhouse in the 1990s. AMERICA'S TEAM: THE GAMBLER AND HIS COWBOYS NETFLIX With the new NFL season just over two weeks away, American football lovers can kick off a little early with this seven-part series on the rollercoaster ride that was Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s. Renegade owner Jerry Jones took over the popular Texas franchise known as 'America's Team' in 1989 and sacked its beloved two-time Super Bowl winning coach Tom Landry in favour of his firebrand friend Jimmy Johnson. Together they assembled a team of superstars that would dominate the decade with three championships – despite a string of scandals – and help turn it into a $9 billion juggernaut. Key players including Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith – aka the Triplets – are interviewed along with high-profile guests such as former President George W. Bush and Nike co-founder Phil Knight. Harry Lloyd as DCI Hector Morgan in I, Jack Wright. I, JACK WRIGHT SUNDAY, 8.55PM, ABC There are mysteries and mayhem aplenty in this pulpy six-part UK drama about an already volatile family thrown into further turmoil after the apparent suicide of its patriarch. The title character is a thrice-married hard man, who has pulled himself up by the bootstraps to preside over a 100 million pound brick business. But when he's found dead on his country estate, seemingly with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his wives, children, in-laws, colleagues and staff are all left wondering what will happen to his fortune. After gathering to see the old boy off at a boozy wake, the will reading that follows is nothing short of explosive, setting the stage for a family battle royal, while the cops investigate whether everything is as it seems. Trucker Sludge with his wife on Outback Truckers. OUTBACK TRUCKERS TUESDAY, 8PM, 7MATE Driving an enormous beast of a vehicle through the parched Aussie interior sounds like my idea of a nightmare, but there's something strangely compelling about watching these resourceful and resilient pros performing an essential service in the toughest of conditions and weighing up the cost of time away from family. There's veteran Steve, who is dragging an excavator through 1000km of blistering heat and rutted roads to an amethyst mine. Mike is delivering much needed firefighting equipment to a remote community, and performing emergency surgery on his malfunctioning rig. And Sludge is on the comeback trail after an accident and feeling the pressure to turn up on time for a very short shutdown window of the only rail line between the east and west sides of the country. The wonders of orcas are revealed in a new ABC documentary. KILLER WHALE: AUSTRALIA'S MEGAPOD TUESDAY, 8.30PM, ABC Killer whales are all too often painted as the villains of nature docos – the bullies of the sea who bump adorable seals off slabs of ice or gang up to hunt down playful dolphins. And yes, they are absolutely partial to a sea lion snack or a cetacean canape, but they are also extraordinary and fascinating creatures with complex social structures and methods of communication. This outstanding documentary, narrated by Richard Roxburgh, follows a couple of orca experts operating out of Bremer Bay in Western Australia as they track, tag and study a community of the ocean's apex predators and make some extraordinary discoveries about an animal that developed a complex brain 30 million years before we did. Prince Andrew is back in the news again. Picture: AFP TENDING – PRINCES OF THE PALACE STREAMING, TUBI Whether it's the revelation a jealous Prince Andrew made snarky comments about Kate Middleton or cringey home videos of Harry and Meghan Markle bumping and grinding in the delivery suite, the spare heirs keep making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Having weathered Andrew's car crash interview with Emily Maitlis and Harry's biography Spare, the Palace is now dealing with the fallout of Andrew Lownie's biography Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York which digs up more dirt on Randy Andy. Some of the lesser known the antics of Andrew, Harry and the House of Windsor's other menfolk are also detailed in this salacious 2016 documentary. Originally published as Sex, drugs, murder and injustice: Amanda Knox tells the real story behind THAT 2007 murder
