Something to watch tonight: Thursday 6 March

Dean Spanley (Fraser, 2008)

The news­let­ter you are cur­rently hold­ing in your hands* is the 400^th edi­tion that we have sent out. Amazing.

Thank you to every­one who has sup­por­ted this some­times shaky endeav­our (espe­cially the editor-in-chief). When we launched back in July 2023, I com­mit­ted to send­ing a recom­mend­a­tion every week­day at 3.15pm (except pub­lic hol­i­days and the Christmas/New Year break) and I think I’ve only missed one appointment.

To cel­eb­rate, we are offer­ing a spe­cial 50% dis­count on the one-year paid sub­scrip­tion – only NZ$30. For a whole year!

Why should you upgrade to paid?

• All the ori­gin­al work here has a pay­wall placed part way through it. Only paid sub­scribers get to read the full article.

• Those pay­walls are going to start appear­ing high­er up the page – at the moment they are minor incon­veni­ence but they may become more frus­trat­ing. I may even start mak­ing some edi­tions 100% for paid sub­scribers only.

• Most weeks there are at least two (and some­times three) ori­gin­al pieces. The ‘new releases’ art­icles in par­tic­u­lar take a con­sid­er­able amount of time as does sur­vey­ing all five Documentary Feature Oscar nom­in­ees.

• Archived news­let­ters go behind the pay­wall auto­mat­ic­ally after 30 days.

• I’m a pro­fes­sion­al but pro­fes­sion­al oppor­tun­it­ies are shrink­ing (as they are in lots of areas). Even the usu­ally reli­able RNZ is increas­ingly run­ning reviews from the ABC in Australia rather than com­mis­sion­ing loc­al writers.

On this day (or there­abouts) in 2009, I reviewed Toa Fraser’s delect­able second fea­ture, Dean Spanley:

Dean Spanley is a delight­ful, semi-local, sur­prise dir­ec­ted by No. 2’s Toa Fraser and star­ring Sam Neill, Bryan Brown and Peter O’Toole. Once a week Fisk Jr (Jeremy Northam) duti­fully vis­its his iras­cible old fath­er (O’Toole). On an out­ing to hear an Indian swami talk about rein­carn­a­tion they meet Dean Spanley (Neill) who, when suit­ably lub­ric­ated, reveals his own exper­i­ences with rein­carn­a­tion (or his own men­tal befuddle­ment depend­ing on your point of view).

Utterly charm­ing, mov­ing and sweet, Dean Spanley is a very safe bet for a night out. Fraser is a dir­ect­or with a sure touch and O’Toole is noth­ing less than a magi­cian – I can’t think of a bet­ter word for the spell he casts in this film.

Fraser makes his liv­ing in tele­vi­sion these days (includ­ing epis­odes of inter­na­tion­al shows The Terror, Daredevil, Swamp Thing and The Rookie) and also revealed a few years ago that he is suf­fer­ing from early onset Parkinson’s Disease. He’s one of our very best.

Also reviewed that week in the Capital Times: Rob Schneider in Big Stan, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and French smash hit Welcome to the Sticks. I intro­duced it like this:

My favour­ite post-Oscars quote came from David Thomson in The Guardian: “When the Slumdog mob – Europeans and Indians, adults and kids – took the stage to claim the best pic­ture Oscar, a land­mark was being estab­lished which dir­ectly reflects America’s reduced place in the world.” And as if to illus­trate that very point, this week Hollywood have offered us a piteous pris­on com­edy called Big Stan and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It’s like they aren’t even try­ing anymore.

*may not actu­ally be hold­ing in your hands.

Where to watch Dean Spanley

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from Apple, AroVision or NZ Film On Demand

Australia, Canada, USA: Digital rental

Ireland & UK: Digital rent­al from Microsoft

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online