Sandra Hall is an Australian author and journalist, best known as film reviewer for ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'' and ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuous ...

''.

History

Hall began her working life as a cadet at the afternoon tabloid, ''

The Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot Plasma (physics), plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as ...

'', studying Arts at Sydney University at night. She wrote a few movie reviews for ''The Sun'', then in 1964, she left Sydney for Canberra to join the staff of Rupert Murdoch's new national daily, ''The Australian''. The following year, she went to London, where she worked on the magazine, '' Woman's Own'', returning in 1966 to work on

Network Ten Network 10 (commonly known as the 10 Network, Channel 10 or simply 10) is an Australian commercial television network. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paramount Global's Paramount Networks UK & Australia, UK & Australia division and is o ...

's current affairs programme, ''Telescope'', before becoming a contributor to '' The Bulletin'', edited by Donald Horne, and ''The Australian'', where she was a television critic for a time. In 1971, she became ''The Bulletin'' 's film reviewer and in 1973, she won a $6,000 Fellowship from the Literature Board to write a history of Australian television. Entitled ''Supertoy: 20 Years of Australian Television'', it was published in 1976 by Sun Books. In 1978 she was awarded a $10,000 fellowship for a year, to write fiction. Her first novel, ''A Thousand Small Wishes'', was published in 1995 by

Allen & Unwin George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It became one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and established an Australian ...

. Other books: ''Turning On Turning Off: Australian Television in the Eighties'', Cassell Australia (1981), ''Critical Business: The New Australian Cinema in Review'', Rigby Ltd (1985), ''Beyond the Break, a novel'', 4th Estate (2006), ''Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton'', 4th Estate (2008). In 1994, she won the Pascall Prize for critical writing on film and in 1996, she became a film reviewer for the ''

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

''.

Recognition

Hall served as president of the Film Critics Circle of Australia from 1991 to 1993.

Partial bibliography

;Film and television *''Supertoy: 20 years of television'' 1976 *''Critical Business: The New Australian Cinema in Review'' 1985 *''Turning On, Turning Off: Australian television in the eighties'' 1981 *''Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton'' 2008 ;Novels *''Beyond the Break'' 2006 (long-listed for the 2007

Miles Franklin Literary Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...

) *''A Thousand Small Wishes'' 1995

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Sandra Australian film critics Australian women film critics 20th-century Australian women writers 21st-century Australian women writers 20th-century births Living people Year of birth missing (living people)