Something to watch tonight: Friday 6 September

Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale (Ball, 1986)

On the 7^th of September 2011, I pos­ted this Capital Times review to the ori­gin­al Funerals & Snakes site.

It was a good week but a couple of the films that I’d like to recom­mend from it are only avail­able as rent­als so I’ll hold them back for anoth­er day.

In that week, a Kiwi clas­sic cel­eb­rated its 25^th birth­day (mak­ing it 38 now) with a res­tor­a­tion and a return sea­son in cinemas:

I’d like to com­mend Event Cinemas for cel­eb­rat­ing the 25^th anniversary of the Kiwi clas­sic Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale by put­ting the new digit­ally cleaned up ver­sion back on the big screen for a couple of weeks. I hadn’t seen it since it first opened at the Embassy back in 1986 and was pleased to see that the anim­a­tion had scrubbed up pretty well and that the humour remained intact. There are many pleas­ures, not least (greatest liv­ing New Zealander) John Clarke’s lugubri­ous vocal per­form­ance as Wal.

It’s good to be reminded that there was a time when one of the main plot threads in a New Zealand movie could be the impend­ing vis­it of an All Black select­or to watch the annu­al grudge match between Raupo and The Mill Team. Like anoth­er Herbs’ song (from the same era as Footrot Flats’ “Slice of Heaven”) once said so sagely: “Long ago, was so long ago.”

Sadly, John Clarke is no longer the greatest liv­ing New Zealander and I’m sure you’ll all go along with myself when I say that he is greatly missed.

NZ On Screen has the whole ‘mak­ing’ of doc­u­ment­ary that screened on tele­vi­sion at the time and that’s an inter­est­ing watch, too.

Where to watch Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tale

Aotearoa: Streaming on TVNZ+ (free with ads)

Rest of the world: YouTube here. I don’t nor­mally link to YT because the leg­al­ity of so much that’s uploaded there is sus­pect but this seems legit. “COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER. This video is offi­cially licensed via Magpie Productions the copy­right hold­er of the fea­ture film. ‘Anyone caught pir­at­ing this pic­ture will be eaten by The Murphys’ Hellhounds.’”