Something to watch tonight: Thursday 8 February

Mt. Zion (Kahi, 2013)

The oth­er day I was hav­ing a polite and con­struct­ive* dis­cus­sion online with some film media col­leagues about why dis­trib­ut­ors and cinemas are pay­ing no heed to offi­cial release dates any­more. It feels like there are sneak pre­views as far as the eye can see.

One of the par­ti­cipants also wondered why it was that the new Bob Marley biop­ic, Bob Marley: One Love, wasn’t open­ing in New Zealand on Waitangi Day (Bob’s birth­day and for a long time a day of con­sid­er­able sig­ni­fic­ance for Marley fans in Aotearoa).

I was reminded of the last time a movie got a con­scious Waitangi Day release, Mt. Zion in 2013:

Kiwi crowd-pleasers don’t come much more crowd-pleasing than Tearepa Kahi’s Mt. Zion, fea­tur­ing TV tal­ent quester Stan Walker in a star-making per­form­ance as a work­ing class kid with a dream. Slogging his unwill­ing guts out pick­ing pota­toes in the mar­ket gar­dens of 1979 Pukekohe, nervously mak­ing the first steps in a music career that seems impossible and fan­tas­ising about meet­ing the great Bob Marley, Walker’s Turei is out of step with his hard work­ing fath­er (Temuera Morrison) and the back-breaking work.

When a loc­al pro­moter announces a com­pet­i­tion to be the sup­port act for the reg­gae legend’s forth­com­ing con­cert at Western Springs, Turei tests the bound­ar­ies of fam­ily and friend­ship to get a shot at the big time. The bones of the story are famil­i­ar, of course, but there’s meat on the bones too – a slice of New Zealand social his­tory with eco­nom­ic changes mak­ing life harder for a people who don’t own the land that they work. Production design (by Savage) and authentic-looking 16mm pho­to­graphy all help give Mt. Zion a look of its own and the music – though not nor­mally to my taste – is agree­able enough.

Also in that February 2013 review are Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren in Hitchcock, the utterly exec­rable Movie 43, You Will be My Son, Step Up to the Plate, On Air and Denzel Washington as a booze­hound com­mer­cial pilot in Flight.

Where to watch Mt. Zion

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from NZ Film On Demand

Rest of the world: No chance, sorry

I find it extraordin­ary that a prom­in­ent New Zealand film like this should be so hard to find. If the Australian pro­gram­mers of the AU/NZ ver­sion of Netflix had any clues about Aotearoa, Mt. Zion would be on there.