The 1980 adventure movie Raise the Titanic was one of the all-time box office stinkers. Based on the unlikely premise that the wreck of the great liner contained a rare mineral that could save the world from godless communism, it had a hilarious scene in which the ship popped to the surface apparently unscathed after 68 years on the sea floor.

Audiences fled. The flick sank like the gallant first-class chaps waving farewell to their families and singing Nearer My God To Thee on the poop deck. All that floated free from the wreckage was a memorable one-liner from the producer, the cigar-chomping British impresario Lord Lew Grade. Contemplating the many millions he had lost, he quipped that ''it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic''.

Sea pictures are always a risky business. I thought of this when I heard the exciting news that the Gillard government is forking out $21.6 million to have yet another remake of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea shot in Australia. That's just over $1000 a league.

All of it goes as foreign aid for the world's largest media conglomerate, the Disney Corporation, which scraped by last year on gross revenues of $US42.27 billion, almost twice Australia's entire defence budget.

We're told that our generous contribution might be enough to secure the services of Brad Pitt to play Captain Nemo, the daring submarine anti-hero. No word yet on who'll star as the giant squid, but I'm betting Hugh Jackman. He does that monster stuff so well. As always there are the narks. Ed Husic, the backbench Labor MP for Chifley in Sydney's west, said the money should have been spent on a much-needed MRI machine for the Mount Druitt hospital.

Actually, you could get five or six MRIs for $21 million, but nobody cares. Disney needs the money and Brad and Angelina might soon grace our welcoming shores.

It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you - something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. - George Orwell, 1984.

Mike Carlton