Murder

Former University of Otago lecturer Clayton Weatherston has been committed for trial after pleading not guilty to murdering ex-girlfriend Sophie Elliott.

From the ODT.

Depositions are over for the Sophie Elliott murder which I've been following since day one. As an economics student at Otago myself I found this quite shocking.

It's interesting that Weatherston has elected to plead not guilty. I'm no lawyer but the evidence seems pretty damning and everyone I've talked to seems convinced of his guilt. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

This could be quite dull

Mr English raised the issue in Parliament today, and said if Mr Benson-Pope urged people to vote for Labour it would amount to election advertising under the Electoral Finance Act.

From the ODT.

You know. I really hope that this election isn't all about violations of the Electoral Finance Act. I can't think of a more boring way to conduct an election.

Which is better?

vs

My Favourite Paragrah of the Moment.

I would have just said, "the man was fat" but I guess that's why I'm not a novelist.

Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined dessert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe's frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe's massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God. If he stands up, or if he sits down, it doesn't make any difference in what you see.

From Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. A book I picked up at the library randomly based solely on the cover. I hadn't even heard of Michael Chabon at the time. I was then further convinced by all the praise and the crazy sounding plot.

I've been very impressed so far.

The end of one particular kind of madness.

It's over.

Internal assessment is over. Such a thing just makes me so happy.

This essay I wrote ended up being one I just couldn't care about. I am so bored with a topic like "media imperialism". It's my own fault really, what could I expect after doing papers like "understand contemporary media", "political communications in new zealand" and "theorising digital media". I'm burned out on the media after doing my fourth paper on it.

It's a relief that this is my final semester (providing nothing awful happens.... again.). Though it should be added I still find all aspects of microeconomics to be fascinating - macro bores me.

I stayed up until 4am writing before deciding to go to bed, I think I should have just done what I did last week and stay up all night fueled by unhealthy amounts of coffee but I decided to sleep. I woke up and felt ruined for the rest of the day. And today. I felt pretty good last week - I'm clearly not up for sleeping 4-5 hours at a time. It's either none or nine.

After handing in the essay I was so tired that I made my way to the AV center in the library and just watched Battlestar Galactica for four and a half hours. I had recently found out it was in the library and heard it was good so I thought I'll give it a shot. I don't know if it was the crazy talking but it was pretty fucking good. I totally want to watch more.

The way home was surreal, it was raining and everything just seemed weird, from the polynesian singers who had hidden themselves in some crevice of the postmodern library outside to the pot smokers who meet every friday at four o'clock or something who were just standing there - smoking in the rain. Just seemed weird to me.

The next couple of days will be dedicated to relaxation. Before I start getting into exam prep. The madness has only just began.

Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Well, the new one has had its premiere in Cannes so I thought I'd give the first one a watch. Introduce myself to the whole Indiana Jones thing. It's good for someone who studies pop culture to actually acquaint myself with some of it.

The most interesting thing about the movie for me though, watching it 27 years after it's been released was that I felt that I had watched it all before - everything seemed so familiar. My theory is that the entire movie has been parodied and referenced by so many different people that you could actually reconstruct the entire movie from them. The first place you'll start would be The Simpsons and then you'll move on.

The movie itself was great - everything you could want from an action film really. And what most action films have been aspiring to do since. I'll have to grab a copy of the second and watch it as soon as I can me thinks.

8.5/10

Cake & Lentil Loaf

It was my turn to cook last night... I managed the cheapest night of the year so far. Spending a mere 59c on new ingredients and using stuff we already had like brown lentils (about $1 worth), carrot (30c?), 1 egg (30c maybe?) and a couple of other ingredients such as herbs to make lentil loaf. Throw in some rice and mixed veges and you got one of the cheapest student meals out there.

Also made a chocolate cake on my flatmate's orders. She bought all the ingredients, I supplied the labour. Turned out alright.

Talking about cake... because I haven't posted a video in a while. Here's the music video for Crowded House's Chocolate Cake song (from their Woodface album)

Little Rocket Ships.

Calvin and Hobbes.

Hunting Zebras.

Pearls Before Swine.

Who even cares?

Why must the likes of TV3 rabbit on about the "golden rules" of politics? Apparently Phil Goff has broken them by acknowledging that Labour are behind in the polls and that they might lose the election and by discussing leadership after Helen Clark steps down.

What are these golden rules? They're just a buzz-phrase that reporters/journalists throw out that have no real significance in, well, anything. Phil Goff does something different, like stating the obvious and suddenly he's broken the golden rules. He might as well have raped a table. The media are just trying to make a mountain out of a molehill (to use an often-used phrase).

It's a pity that we live in an environment where the media are looking to grab onto anything to make a story out of. It would be so much nicer to live in a world where things were less sensationalised and rather have more intelligent discussion going on. I guess this just doesn't add up to big dollars for the media though. Pity.

One can hope?

National leader John Key wants to have a referendum on MMP. While he didn't say whether it will be simply MMP vs FPP or with STV thrown in it is still scary. While I don't actually object to there being a referendum on the subject (it seems like a reasonable one to me) and while I don't think that FPP will be voted back in. A referendum on the subject sends chills down the part of my spine that is interested in electoral systems. The prospect of returning to FPP seems awful. MMP may have its oddities but FPP is a system that delivers results like:

• The 1978 General Election. Labour gets 40.4% of the vote compared to National's 39.8% but National wins anyway by 11 seats. The Social Credit party manages to get 16.1% but only one seat to show for it.
• The 1981 General Election. Again, Labour beats National in the popular vote but still loses to National by 4 seats. The Social Credit gets even more of the vote - 20.65% any only manages to increase their seats by one.

So, we have a system that allows a party that gets less votes than another to win? Some may accuse of MMP of allowing this to happen (i.e. in a situation say in 1996, where NZ First could have signed up with Labour/Alliance combination) - the fact remains that those parties in power would have still represented the majority of the population.

I could spend a while discussing the negatives of a FPP system. Idiot/Savant has a large number of posts about MMP here that can be read. The main problems I have with MMP is the 5% threshold (which should be lowered) and the overhang seats (excellent example: the Maori Party) which affect the proportionality of the seats.

The Newspapers have seemed to all run editorals on the subject: my "favourite" is from the Hawke's Bay Today by Louis Pierard which attacks the existence of minor parties as the major failing of MMP, a system that, according to Pierard, makes a mockery out of our politics and takes honour and dignity out of the system.

Bah, that's enough for me.

Didn't know it was that bad...

Unknown to me, I'm on ACT's mailing list and I got an e-mail today from them asking for my vote. One bit of the e-mail was interesting..

The average New Zealand worker is now $450 a week poorer than the average Australian worker.

If we were a state of Australia, we'd be the poorest - $100 a week poorer than Tasmania.

If we were a state of the USA, we'd be 51st and last - $120 a week poorer than Mississippi.

I must say, I didn't know it was that bad. If I could be bothered I'd be tempted to check those figures. Seems a bit dodgy. I did do a little looking about Mississippi on wiki though. They were once the fifth richest state in the USA. That's what slave labour can do for you.

Joss Whedon is back!

Joss Whedon, the man behind some of my favourite TV shows of all time like Buffy and Firefly is working on a new show: Dollhouse. A trailer of which can be seen here though the show's not due to appear until January next year. Now that is a bummer.

This is probably my most anticipated new series for now, along with Alan Ball's new series True Blood which will be premiering the 7th of September in the States (according to wiki anyway).

Such a long time... sigh...

More Pearls Before Swine

After finding out about Pearls Before Swine the other day I thought I'll post a couple more...

Truth.

From PHD Comics. I tend to deviate between Mid-Center, Nearest Exit and Against the Wall.

Hehehehe

It felt so good to get a sleep after doing the all-nighter, I'm still a little screwed up from it. My hands are shaking a little, I'm finding myself walking around aimlessly a lot and I keep getting words wrong but I'm sure that'll all pass soon. It needs to, because I've got more stuff due next friday.

I found out about comic Pearls Before Swine from a post by Scott Adams and up at the top is today's. I like it.

10am

Argghhhhhhhh. This all nighter has left me feeling wasted.

Luckily I don't have far to go. I've finished essay number one and have about 800 words to go on essay number two and I'll be all done...

And still have 6 hours to go. 8 cups of coffee consumed. Yeeech!

8am

After taking an hour break to go home and eat I am now just back over where I was before I decided to be a moron and click two wrong buttons in succession.

Nearly finished one. Start next one soon.

We have 8 hours to go.

6am

Ten hours to go.

In my sleep-deprived state I have just wiped out 500 words by forgetting to save.

I hate things.

2am

It's 2am in the morning. I'm on four cups of coffee and have 14 hours to write an additional 1000 words for one essay and start and finish another 1000 word essay. Why do I do this to myself?

I wonder if I'll do it next week when I have a big essay and a decently sized assignment due on Friday. Sigh.

Diablo Cody's Thoughts.

Am going to watch a movie in my room tonight. I have a recommendation from Spielberg(!) in my bag. (Who is this Fellini dude, anyhow?)

Diablo Cody's Twitter is an interesting read. What I expect from the writer of Juno really.

Template change... again.

Like the title... I can't stay happy with a template so I did the old switcheroo.

Review: Spider-Man 2 (2004)

God, when did Spider-Man become so fucking emo?

**spoilers!**
OK, we're two years after the events of the first film, a film that I liked and it appears that Peter has not moved on emotionally at all. He still wants to fuck Mary Jane and every single time he sees her it just seems to open up some emotional wound for him that causes him to go for some emo drifting around New York City. As Peter Parker he acts as a seriously sad bitch, he has no money, he's nearly failing class and he works for a man that demonises him. Things seem to be going well for everyone else but everyone else is also miserable, Harry still wants a hug from his dead father, auntie blames herself for her husband's death, Mary Jane wants to fuck Peter but he's in emo-land so she settles for an astronaut.

Are you serious? An astronaut? Do we still send people into outer space?

There's a villian called Dr. Octopus and he's crazy... like the last villian. Peter decides giving up everything he wants isn't worth being Spider-Man so he throws his little uniform away and becomes a nerd instead with spiffing glasses. Crime rises but Peter doesn't care, he can now finally have his shot with Mary Jane, but tough luck pal. She's getting fucking married. You knew that. He tries to convince her with a smashing argument but she is somehow not convinced.

The entire plot becomes ridiculous as the movie progresses. Scenes full of plot holes arise, for instance: no one (including Mr. Super Spider Senses) notices that a man with four huge metalliac arms enters a bank until he thows open the vault door. Later in the film, the said man with the metalliac arms is given one clue (Peter Parker) to find Spider-Man and then KILLS him. Oh, wait, he didn't. Because Peter Parker has super powers. Right. That was lucky otherwise you would have killed your only clue and then you wouldn't have got your precious whatever that glowing shit was.

And don't get me started on the ending. Don't get me started on that awful speech that is repeated throughout the film. Don't get me started on the phrase "with great power comes great responsiblity". Don't get me started on the useless sequences.

We should just talk about J.K. Simmons. He's fucking awesome. I wish the rest of the movie could just live up to him.

I'll finish with a picture... from the first movie because that was so much better.

Quality Journalism from Jon Stewart

Lee Sigelman @ The Monkey Cage has a post commenting on a report by the "Project for Excellence in Journalism" on The Daily Show. (which screens in NZ on C4 Tue-Fri 10pm)

The Daily Show is one of my favourite shows but the idea that it should be taken as journalism is laughable. It's a comedy show that works as a meta-text rather than an actual text as it spends most of its time looking at the media's coverage of events rather than the actual event.

This report happened because in a poll of which journalists were admired the most, host Jon Stewart came in fourth. Really, this is reflective of the state of the rest of media rather than on the Daily Show. The questions that the report should be asking is why does no one admire the media anymore?

An interesting stat though on the front page...

Daily Show viewers are highly informed, an indication that The Daily Show is not their lone source of news. Regular viewers of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs.

Seems that people who watch the show are quite likely to get their news from other sources as well and are able to distinguish between satire and reality.

The conclusions of the report seem to be: The Daily Show has a skewed focus on Washington politics and can completely ignore other big stories (such as the Virginia Tech shootings - with good reason, there is nothing funny about that). The Daily Show also has a liberal bias, the show producers say this is because the show is anti-establishment. It'll be interesting to see if the show changes if Obama wins the White House in November.

Finally, I pulled up the Wikiquote page for The Daily Show, it has a section that has some taglines. Let's see how The Daily Show defines itself:

• More people get their news from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart... Than probably should.
• The Daily Show - the only news program with no credibility left to lose.
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We're getting a helicopter... soon.
• The Most Important News Show... Ever.

What a film that could have been...

Studying at the moment at 1am in the computer room on campus for my Robert Altman essay that is due on Friday, about three times now its been mentioned that he was dropped for the Ragtime film which turned out (apparently) rather average. I would have so loved to see an Altman version of Ragtime. Pity Altman's dead now.

Awful Policy

ACT founder and candidate the Hon Sir Roger Douglas said ACT would make the first $10,000 tax-free for full-time income earners, and inflation-index tax brackets to restore 2000 values.

-ACT

(h/t: Deborah @ The Hand Mirror)

How do you justify giving the tax break only to full time workers? Is part time work not important? Not even a little? As Deborah points out this is a spit in the face to anyone that looks after children. This policy completely distorts incentives towards full time work. Sure, that may not seem bad but kinda assumes that everyone can be fitted into a nice little homogeneous box that says that full time work is best for everyone. It's not. I used to kinda like ACT, it appealed to the inner right winger inside me but this policy seems to go against what the likes of Rodney Hide stand for - especially their rhetoric concerning 'choice' - I thought ACT would be the last party that would try to dictate how people can work through the tax system. I am very confused by this policy.

In terms of the other issue raised by this press release - tax bracket creep. I'm in favour of it and I thought it was already in place. A bit of research found that it is - just not to the extent that ACT wants it. It was announced in 2005 and the first adjustment would take place back in the 31st of March 2008 - only covering the period between the 1st of April 2005 and the 31st of March 2008. ACT wants it to cover the period going back to 2000. I'd be seriously more cautious doing that.

I do think that the tax brackets should be increasing by the rate of inflation every year. Not every three years in an attempt to build up a nice little stockpile for election year.

Man... long boring post. One question, did National increase the tax brackets in the 90s? That's something I want to find out.

Album of the Moment

The album: Hello Young Lovers by The Sparks. Released in 2006. This album is so weird in its theatrics that its impossible to become fully engrossed in their spinning web of irony. Or if, you're not into that - you'll probably find the whole thing rather stupid.

I've got two youtube videos here. One is a music video for one of the singles of the album (Dick Around - this is a shortened version of the song)

And their guest appearance on the Gilmore Girls.

Stupid Vicious Circle

The sad thing is how true it is sometimes. Not this week... I hope.

So confused right now

• I have a test at 7pm
• I study up until then, sending a text message to my flatmate about 15 minutes before test starts saying "i'm screwed"
  
• I arrive. I'm a minute early. But everyone has already started on their tests.
  
• 8.15pm, the 15 minute warning before the end of the test arrives much sooner than expected. End result: I finish 29 marks worth of the questions out of 50.
  
• I come home and something doesn't feel right. All that I do though is go to the video store to return The Triplets of Belleville.
  
• I suddenly come to a realisation of what's going on. I get back home and knock very loudly on my flatmate's door to check when I sent that text.
  
• As I expected: 7.15pm
• So I somehow lost the ability to read clocks and mistook 7pm for 7.30pm. I'm very annoyed with myself. And very confused.
• I'm also probably fucked. I needed 40% to get terms and I doubt I achieved that. I think I answered the questions fairly well but 20 out of 29? God I hope I did.
  

Quick Film Reviews: The Procrastination Edition

I was meant to be busy this week so I procrastinated and watched a whole bunch of films.

The Triplets of Belleville (2003 - Sylvain Chomet)
I gave two films 10/10 last year - Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid and Band of Outsiders and this becomes the first film this year to receive that rating. Every single frame was injected with so much energy and originality that I was giddy for the entire 81 minutes. Finding Nemo, a film I quite liked beat this one for the Oscar of best animated feature. Nemo should have been CRUSHED. But oh well; not everyone's cup of tea I guess. To emphasise the point: 10/10

Mission Impossible III (2006 - J.J. Abrams)
Having not seen the first two I don't really know what to compare this too. As an action flick I thought it worked quite well. 7.5/10

Cars (2006 - John Lasseter & Joe Ranft)
Pixar's weakest film to date. But still quite lovable and pretty. Still good. 8/10

Priceless (2006 - Pierre Salvadori)
Lots of expensive stuff on display. Everything looks pretty and its fun some of the time if it wasn't for that dull predictable plot. And Audrey Tautou, one of my favourite actresses after Amelie looks so skinny, was she always like that? 6/10

Planet Terror (2007 - Robert Rodrigeuz)
Now this was fun. Pure fun. Delivered exactly what they promised. Need to see Tarantino's Death Proof now. I read that the fake trailer at the beginning is actually going to be made into a real movie. Now that is awesome. 8.5/10

The Conversation (1974 - Francis Ford Coppola)
Part of the New Hollywood in the 70s. Coppola made this between the first two Godfather films. Interesting thriller. 8/10

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936 - Frank Capra)
I always liked that Gilmore Girls by Paris when she is in Stars Hollow for the first time and describes it as a place "that would even make Frank Capra throw up". This is one of those films with those Capra idealistic characters that are so pure and innocent and full of integrity that it'll make you throw up. Other examples is Jimmy Stewart from It's a Wonderful Life and Jimmy Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I'm sure he's got a few more movies that have these characters. If they weren't so lovable in their integrity this film will be awful but Gary Cooper does well here. 8/10

The Lady Eve (1941 - Preston Sturges)
I'm still trying to work out what happened in the end there. It kind of confuses me. No judgement yet.

Thank You For Smoking

Money...

No Right Turn talks about social dividends and Universal Basic Incomes here. I've always loved this idea. A pity that no one implements so that we can see if it works in the real world.

As an aside, he also talks about the Qantas Media Awards in another post. (A congratulations to No Right Turn for being nominated) But it's nice that the Otago Daily Times is no longer winning Best Newspaper in the country. Because, quite frankly, it's not. And (for the last five years at least) it was never the Best Newspaper.

One Man Band

Pixar short film from 2005. I love these guys.

Suplerative Simpsons: Sideshow Bob Roberts

I find it funny how the people on SNPP seem to differ wildly on their views on particular episodes. . The reviews section includes "terrible" and "SUCKED really, really, really bad" amongst the other reviews and some even seemed "offended" by the attacks on the Republican party.

Being a loopy fruity left winger I loved them. Though there were all soft satirical jabs. I fail to see how they could be offensive.

The basic plot of this episode is as follows: Sideshow Bob (my favourite Simpsons character of all time) is released from prison by Mayor Joe Quimby after some grassroots support for Bob is generated by a right wing talk radio host, Bob is then enlisted by the Republican party to run against Quimby in the latest mayoral election which he wins.

Some of the classic lines...

Barlow: Monty, I'm way ahead of you. If you'll just open that door you'll see the next mayor of Springfield.
[door opens to reveal a water cooler; everyone applauds]
[the cooler bubbles]
Senator: What'd it say?
Barlow: No, no, no, Bob. Bob, come in!
Bob: [enters wrapped in a US flag] A fine "Mahoke" to you all.
Hibbert: Why, he's even better.
Ranier: I agree. I like the human touch.

Bob: That was a big mistake, Bart. No children have ever meddled with the Republican Party and lived to tell about it.

TV Commercial: Mayor Quimby supports revolving door prisons. Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob -- a man twice convicted of attempted murder. Can you trust a man like Mayor Quimby? Vote Sideshow Bob for mayor.

Barlow: Mayor Quimby, you're well-known, sir, for your lenient stance on crime. But suppose for a second that your house was ransacked by thugs, your family tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths, you try to open the door but there's too much blood on the knob...
Quimby: What is your question?
Barlow: My question is about the budget, sir.

Bart: You were just Barlow's lackey.
Lisa: You were Ronny to his Nancy!
Bart: Sonny to his Cher!
Lisa: Ringo to his rest of the Beatles!

And the best one...

Bart: We want the truth!
Bob: You want the truth? You can't handle the truth. No truth-handler, you. Bah! I deride your truth-handling abilities.
Judge: Will you get to the point?
Bob: Only I could have executed such a masterpiece of electoral fraud. And I have the records to prove it! Here, just look at these -- [pulls out binders and floppy disks] each one a work of Machiavellian art.
Judge: But why?
Bob: Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a city to run.
Judge: Bailiffs, place the mayor under arrest.
Bob: What? Oh yes, all that stuff I did.

Cool Comics

From Dilbert & PHD Comics.

New Template MADNESS

I changed the template. This officially counts as procrastination.

I need to get ready for a four o'clock class me thinks.

Best President Ever

OK, so Josiah Bartlet was fictional. But he was an economist, a fairly left wing economist at that - which makes him pretty rare but not unknown.

He wrote a book called Theory and Practice of Macroeconomics in Developing Countries and that is just cool.

It'll be nice if we had an American presidential candidate who didn't sign up to bad economic policies. Such as McCain and Clinton's support for the Gas Tax holiday. Obama has nothing to do with it but he seems like a lightweight.

Oh well. I liked this video from The Colbert Report. And this from the Dilbert Blog.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Seven

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player
Day Six: Gosford Park

Robert Altman died about six months after A Prairie Home Companion was released so it proved to be his last and with its permutations on death turned out to be a rather foreshadowing film. It received lackluster reviews but I highly enjoyed it, this film was my introduction to Altman when I watched it at the end of last year. I picked it up at the video store with the firm intention to finally watch one of his movies. (It would later turn out that I would have to study him the next year - stuff like that always amuses me)

The video is of one of the songs amongst the many I could have chosen.

Election Prediction (The Wild Guess)

I like making a wild guess, getting it down on paper (or blog) and then getting it out months later and having a good laugh. Without further ado, my predictions for the New Zealand Election this year.

National: 53 seats
Labour: 47 seats
Greens: 8 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 3 seats
NZ First: 3 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That makes a total of 121 seats with the Maori Party providing the overhang. This situation will call for some complicated coalition building.

I'm also envisioning a situation where ACT and the Greens get less votes, NZ First is booted out completely (Winston Peters doesn't win back his Tauranga seat), the Maori Party get less party votes and National picks up the majority of these votes. That'll look like:

National: 58 seats
Labour: 49 seats
Greens: 6 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 2 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That's 122 seats. Oh well, so much can change before election day.

The Primary Goes On!

I love elections. Today is a hugely important day for the democratic party nominees. It could make or break Hillary Clinton.

These seem to the best place to get results: Indiana (72 delegates) & North Carolina (115 delegates).

Currently Hillary has a 4% lead in Indiana and Obama has a 15% lead in North Carolina. But it's so ridiculously early that those numbers are completely irrelevant. (noon - NZ time)

Movie Maps of the World

Strange Maps has an advertisement from Volkswagen that shows three different maps of the world if we represent them through movie production.

The most bizarre one is the first one based on "average budget per feature film" where New Zealand ends up utterly huge with the author offering the comment that "Australia could fit in between the North and South Islands"

Could the Lord of the Rings really have distorted the stats so much? Probably. It's a sad fact that New Zealand makes very few films and they're probably not enough in number to bring down the average budget down enough. Also, if we're counting Lord of the Rings, (an overseas financed production) why not count say King Kong, 10,000 BC, Wolverine, Narnia, etc...

If we're going to have a small number of really high budget films with a small number of low budget films then not even the United States could compete on that stat with their small number of really high budget films and a really large number of medium and small budget films.

Sideways

Review: Bon Voyage (2003)

How could a film so riddled with cliches and scenes that has already been seen be so entertaining?

I didn't have much expectations when I decided to watch it, my flatmate had rented it and hadn't gone around to seeing it and I was feeling awake and alert that Sunday night. What else was I to do? It was awesome, the film flirts with Hitchcock, Truffaut and others I'm probably not aware of (the IMDB reviewers seemed to mentioning Renoir a lot). It wasn't very substantial but was mere entertainment (those expecting a World War Two drama would have been disappointed).

My flatmate attempted to watch but gave up after about half an hour declaring it 'shit'. I'll give it 8/10.

Awesome Simpsons: Bart's Girlfriend

I watched The Simpsons today and was greeted with an awesome episode from season six: Bart's Girlfriend. It's been a while since I saw a cool episode, all the ones I seem to be seeing on TV are from the later and vastly inferior seasons. Meryl Streep guests stars as the eponymous character.

The basic plot is that Bart finds himself lusting after Reverend Lovejoy's daughter: Jessica. He tries to pass himself off as a nice boy thinking that'll impress her but he soon discovers that she is a bad girl whose antics far exceed his own.

Some cool quotes... (from SNPP)

Lovejoy: And now my daughter Jessica, who has just returned from boarding school, will read the same passage I just read. I noticed a few of you weren't paying attention.
Bart: [groans] Oh...
[Jessica walks up; a heavenly light shines upon her]
Bart: [gasps] Wow! There is a God!
[the light comes from a lighthouse outside]
Man: I'm telling you the light would work better if it pointed out to sea.
McAllister: Arr, shut up! I know what I'm doing.
[a boat crashes in the distance]
McAllister: Arr, I hate the sea and everything in it.

Lisa: Don't be so hard on yourself, Bart. It's not your fault Jessica doesn't like you.
Bart: Is it my hair? My overbite? The fact that I've worn the same clothes day in, day out for the last four years?

Bart: Excellent! You're incredible, Jessica: your throws, your catches, your spirals, and your loops -- it's like the toilet paper is an extension of your body.

Marge: Have you noticed any change in Bart?
Homer: New glasses?
Marge: No...he looks like something might be disturbing him.
Homer: Probably misses his old glasses.
Marge: I guess we could get more involved in Bart's activities but then I'd be afraid of smothering him.
Homer: Yeah, and then we'd get the chair.
Marge: That's not what I meant.
Homer: It was, Marge, admit it.

Rugby!

From Stuff...

Evans will earn somewhere in the region of $2 million for his 2 1/2 years with Quins, though it has been speculated that Carter could haul in as much as that for a single year in France.

One thing I don't understand about this is where do the European clubs get the money? Is there really such a big market for players in a region that is dominated by soccer? Then again, even in Europe rugby players make chickenshit compared to their soccer counterparts who are getting $20 million+

One question is, who is earning the most in NZ rugby? How much can the NZRFU actually afford to pay players? They'll need to up the ante or more players will leave. They have the lure of the All Black jersey but apparently you can put a price on that now (about a million or so).

Celebrating with Chocolate.

I'm about to overdose on the chocolate I bought to celebrate my "victory" over the bank. This all started way back on Friday when I was about to go to the supermarket. I checked my balance online and what did I find? That there was $1.43 left in my account. I found that the bank had taken $22.20 (as you can see - I'm not very rich at the moment) out as "interest charges". It was five o'clock and too late to go to the bank and complain.

So, yesterday I went to the bank and complained and got it reversed. They didn't know why it had happened but I got my money back and would have it the next day. So today I look in my account and find that low and behold I now only had 13c in my account (I had spent a dollar at video ezy to rent a movie). So I went back, turned out I had some bill payments that I had forgotten out sitting there unable to make payment (very little payments) because of the interest fee and the bank had charged me $22.50 for that. They reversed that as well.

So I bought some chocolate (this new chocolate by Cadburys - it's a mixture of dark and milk chocolate). Hopefully I won't have to go back to the bank for a while.

Review: Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

When I said at the start of the year that I should more Russian authors I don't think I meant this.

Nevertheless, I've found myself addicted to the Watch series since last year when I watched the Night Watch movie followed up by the Day Watch movie earlier this year. I got out the books from the library and promptly read them and now just finished Twilight Watch - the third book in the series. If you're into a mixture of magician/vampire/detective novels with a little satire on bureaucracy and some musing on modern Russia then this is will be right down your alley. If not, read War and Peace or something.

Admittedly, this book is not as good as the the first two but has it moments. Lukyanenko keeps up his annoying habit of putting heaps of lyrics in the prose. I don't let Thomas Pynchon do that and Lukyanenko gets the same treatment. What's the point? I don't even bother reading them.

There is a movie called Twilight Watch scheducled for release in 2009 but the setting has been changed from Russia to the States and it will feature American actors rather than Russians. A obviously disapointing movie with the only bright spot being that they've retained the director Timur Bekmambetov. So it should be interesting, the books and the movies are two different beasts with the movies going in a completely diffferent direction to the books. We'll just have to wait and see.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Six

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville
Day Five: The Player

Ah, the penultimate day and today's featured movie is Gosford Park. This won the oscar for best original screenplay. Beating some of my favourite films like Memento, Amelie and The Royal Tenenbaums. It beat Monster's Ball as well - but I haven't seen that.

The video today is one of the songs sung, which has been a bit of theme for the videos I've posted from Youtube. Mainly because they're about all that can be found. Altman has an interesting relationship with music. Something that totally needs to be explored... just not now.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Five

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye
Day Four: Nashville

So we go from 1975 to 1992. After making what many consider to be his masterpiece he slips a little and he makes films like Popeye. Finally, he makes his "comeback" with The Player. Though, it's not really a comeback, he never really went anywhere. People were still giving him money to sit behind a camera.

The clip below is the seven and half minute opening sequence of the movie. I can't actually watch it at the moment because my internet has seemed to have grinded to a halt. According to the comments there is some kind of error with the clip and there looks like there is a cut. But there really isn't.

I'm a genius!

I got all the questions right in this quiz I randomly stumbled upon while look at serious news.

Which celebrity is taller?

In My Father's Den

Chocolate! Biscotti! Tacos!

I was doing some random searching around on allrecipes for some stuff to try out and figured I wanted to try these recipes out sometime...

• Lime Chicken Soft Tacos
• Spring Biscotti
• Spring and Leak White Bean Soup
• Absolutely Sinful Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies (why say chocolate twice?)

Gonna be some fun times. Especially that last one. Sounds yummy.

Blue Velvet

Just because I can. My flatmate rented Blue Velvet this week so here are some random snapshots from the film.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Four

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller
Day Three: The Long Goodbye

Well, we're now onto the last film of the 70's that I've seen of Altman's. Tomorrow will be quite a leap in time after this. Many consider Nashville to be Altman's magnus opus - this three hour epic film of five days in Nashville. 24 main characters all just living. It's truly an amazing film, one of the few films that feel organic when you watch it. It truly feels like a living breathing thing. The video is one of the songs - I'm Easy by Keith Carradine, though I would have really liked to have used the 200 years song from the very beginning.

Some Quick Film Reviews

Seen a bunch of films over the last couple of weeks. So without wasting any more time...

Thelma & Louise (1991, Ridley Scott)
I now finally understand that Simpsons episode where Marge meets Ruth Powers. This is one of those movies that everyone has seemed to have seen except for me... but not anymore! The film itself was really enjoyable. 8/10

Strictly Ballroom (1992, Baz Luhrmann)
I saw Moulin Rouge! about a month ago which introduced me to the exorbitant Baz Luhrmann. The amazing thing is how effortlessly he pulls it off. This film is certainly a charmer. 8/10

A Mighty Wind (2003, Christopher Guest)
Back in first year I randomly got the poster for this film to liven up the hallway in my hall of residence. There was something about those cheery faces that I felt would unsettle everyone else on the floor. I'm a huge fan of the previous movies (Best In Show, Waiting For Guffman, etc...) and this one was nice while not quite living up to those ones. 7.5/10

THX 1138 (1971, George Lucas)
I've never been a big fan of these totalitarian visions of the future movies. They all seem too 1984ish. A good one though. 7/10

Pret-A-Porter (1994, Robert Altman)
This is the eighth Altman film I've seen and this one just felt like Altman going through the paces. It was him applying all those techniques he's known for but for what? It was funny, had some interesting characters and worked. Maybe I'm just experiencing some Altman burnout - seven of those Altman films I saw this year. 7/10

Scones!

Not doing anything tonight so got out an ancient Alison Holst cookbook and made some Cinnamon Pinwheel scones. They looked a little odd (which all my cooking does - presentation is probably the last thing I care about when I cook) but they tasted alright - which is the important thing. (not saying that presentation doesn't have it's place - if someone plonked a heap of purple mush in front of me then I'd feel funny eating it no matter how good it tasted)

I went for a walk up Baldwin St today - billed as the steepest street in the world but not actually true.

Finally, when I was making dinner some drunk guy walked into our flat. He wasn't too much different from the normal drunk person though he did claim that he would happily drink my dishwashing liquid. Don't think anyone's ever claimed that before. I was tempted to try him out but that stuff's expensive.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Three

Day One: M*A*S*H
Day Two: McCabe & Mrs Miller

Altman's 1973 adaptation The Long Goodbye, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler bombed at the box office. Initially marketed as a straight-up film noir. Elliott Gould as Marlowe didn't convince anyone. With time, it's been more accepted as what it was: a satire. The video below is the opening of the film - it shows many of Altman's characteristic techniques - a warning though - it's ten minutes long.

Selection Effects

Tyler Cowen writes...

When it comes to Roman literature there is also a significant selection effect, namely what later manuscript collectors thought was worth preserving and protecting. Many novels were written during Roman times, but not many of them have come down to us and thus the average quality of Roman literature may look artificially high, just as the average quality of today's literary menagerie looks artificially low.

Whenever someone claims to me that movies today are crap (commonly either snobs or oddly people who actually never watch old films and only watch contemporary films anyway - especially the most stale of today's genre - the romantic comedy) I normally spout out something like that. Though I replace "roman literature" with "old movies" and "manuscript collectors" with "those people who preserved film prints". This effect is magnified with old movies, especially silent films since these movies were filmed on Nitrate film stock which without proper care would degenerate into goo. Provided it hadn't blown up first.

But the market also does this work as well, more films were made back in the pre-television days than now but only a handful of them actually survive. With the digital age upon us, it increases the chances that films will survive into the future. But not all of them, the market will sweep aside those films that were picked up by neither the mass consumer or the critic. With the bad movies gone the average quality of these movies goes up.

The same thing happens with all form of culture - music, books, whatever else there is...

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day Two

In 1971, a year after MASH, Robert Altman released McCabe & Mrs Miller. His take on the Western. Youtube wasn't very giving with videos. All of them featured Leonard Cohen singing (as he provides the soundtrack) so I decided to give you the trailer.

Another Sunny Day

It's pouring down with rain and hail here... on and off in the typical Dunedin way. I was in the kitchen making my breakfast and my MP3 player had been providing me with sufficient gloomy music to match the gloomy weather. Until Belle & Sebastian's "Another Sunny Day" came on... a perky cute contrast that starts off with lyrics like this...

Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden
You were digging plants, I dug you, beg your pardon

Oh well... the rain has stopped now... again. The sun's even came out for a couple of minutes.

On to the last city!

After months of playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas I've finally made it to the last city (of three - this one is based on Las Vegas). Normally, I wouldn't bother posting this but with a bunch of controversy over the latest GTA I couldn't resist. My normal game experience normally ends in frustration as I fail to use my rocket launcher to shoot down a helicopter and end up blowing myself up because I can't aim the frigging thing.

Frustrated, I then go out and run over a bunch of children or force some prostitutes to eat some defecation. (OK, you can't do either thing in the game)

There is a comment on David Farrar's blog that's interesting. It's from a "Fletch" who quotes an interview with a former army guy about using first person shooters as part of training for army, police, etc... Well GTA isn't actually a first person shooter (bar a couple of occasions when you have to go into that mode) - you don't actually have to aim your gun - press a button and it'll happen automatically. Press circle and bullets come out and your target dies. The subject matter in the game is no worse than what you'll find in movies. I think the idea of the "immersion" effect of games is no different to the effect found in movies when you watch them in the right conditions (lights out, no distractions). So why should you attack video games when they are so much more artificial?

Anyway, I actually wanted to take a look at Family First, the organisation that's driving the controversy. Unfortunately they're another one of those organisations that seem to consider family values and christian belief one and the same. I hate these guys, I think if they ever want to be taken more seriously they need to actually divorce themselves from their christian side and distance themselves from the religious right.You do not have to be a Christian family to be a loving family that promotes good values.

These are the people that tried to have Californication banned (they were unsuccessful, though they did manage to get a large number of advertisers to withdraw). I took a glance through their recent news to take a look.

This article talks about a study that showed children watching MTV or BET (does BET even screen in New Zealand??) are exposed to something bad once every 38 seconds. Family First add their position at the bottom.

This material can be viewed free-to-air in NZ on C4 , and also on Sky TV e.g. Juice TV etc. Broadcasting standards in NZ are failing our children.

You can't directly compare C4 with the American MTV! C4 complies their programming from a wide variety of sources. They actually play music videos which MTV hardly does. MTV rather shows "a variety of pop culture, youth culture, and reality television shows aimed at adolescents and young adults" (wikipedia) which includes a lot of shit - shows like A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila that has 32 male and females vying for the love of a bisexual woman (this is actually screened in NZ on Sky on their MTV channel which may hit that mark mentioned before - that channel should be banned not because it's immoral but of the awful progamming). C4 and Juice TV would be nowhere near the "once every 38 seconds" mark that Family First is implying.

OK, I've completely gone off topic. I hate Family First, we get it. Watch this Daily Show segment on Gran Theft Auto IV.

What movies were better than their books?

Entertainment Weekly has a list of 23 disappointing movie adaptations. I must say, what a useless list. The films on the list could have been joined by hundreds of films - most of these felt like just personal gripes by the writes. Nearly every single movie made from a book is worse than its source material. It's the nature of adaptation. You leave things out, you have to change things, it's what needs to happen. Look at the first two Harry Potter films as examples of films that follow their source material to the letter. I consider them awful. Once they started to change things for the third film onwards that the Potter films became... ok.

Anyway, digression aside. A far more interesting (and shorter) list would surely be which movies are better than their source material? Out of the top of my head, some frequently mentioned ones would be the likes of The Godfather (Pauline Kael described Puzo's novel as trash - though I've also heard it described as a masterpiece. Guess I'll need to read it before passing judgement), Psycho (I guess, didn't Hitchcock buy up all the copies and hide them so he could keep his ending a secret?), Fight Club (Well, I hated the novel - the novelist even admitted that Fincher's ending was better), M*A*S*H (paraphasing Altman, the novel by Richard Hooker was awful - full of racism and sexism), Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick completely changed the tone. The novel (Red Alert) was meant to be completely serious), The Shining (Kubrick again - King hated Kubrick's version and made his own inferior version)... That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Time to search for some actual lists...

This New York Times article from 2005 is interesting... mainly for the introduction.

"Honestly, I much prefer the book," a young-looking François Truffaut says, comparing his film "Jules and Jim" to the novel that inspired it. In an old television interview included on the recent DVD of the film, Truffaut recalls finding Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 novel in a second-hand bookshop. "It made me sad to think it did something films couldn't do," he said of the book, which mesmerized him. "In a movie, if a woman loves two men, one man is nice and the other isn't."

He did more than figure out how to translate that blameless story of a femme fatale whose love swerved back and forth between two best friends; it became his masterpiece. Truffaut succeeded so well that today it's easy to say: "Jules and Jim" was a novel?

This 2003 blog has a post about it. Another 2003 blog post talks about the Lord of the Rings movies and this cracked article here also has a list.

Seven Days of Robert Altman: Day One

I'm about to write an essay about the late film director Robert Altman - so you should expect lots of writing about Altman on this blog. I find him to be completely fascinating as a director and he's currently my latest favourite director - so far this year I've seen six of his films. With the one I watched at the end of last year that's a total of seven - so I've decided to dedicate this week to Altman and will post a new youtube video every day of an Altman movie.

I start off with M*A*S*H which was the film that broke him into the mainstream way back in 1970. This video has the song that will later become the theme song for the television series... with the lyrics removed of course...

Review: Easy Rider (1969)

I'm currently doing a course about New Hollywood, the period in film history that started in 1967 when the studios relinquished creative control over to the directors. This period arguably ended about eight years later though Wikipedia puts the time of death in 1982 with Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart (which I need to see - I missed the screening on Tuesday). When I saw this on the video store shelf - I had to get it out on $1 day.

Easy Rider, always mentioned after the likes of Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate is one of the earliest films of New Hollywood and you can definitely see the aesthetic of the period shining through here. I feel that the freedom that the directors had is nicely encapsulated by the words of the characters.

However, I didn't really feel anything for this film. It was good, a very enjoyable 94 minutes of my life. Ultimately, 7.5/10

(As a sidenote: reading the Wikipedia section on the production section of Easy Rider makes director Dennis Hopper sound very intense. Not someone to mess with...)