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Asides

Extra bits and links

Jul 15 2009
Love0

Further

By Asides

Still about a month behind post­ing reviews, sorry. At least the Now Showing column actu­ally reflects what is play­ing in Wellington at the moment. I’ll get some review excerpts in there as soon as I can but that’s it for me tonight. If you’re still look­ing for online read­ing try Robyn Gallagher’s site:

The nation­al anthem of Eastbourne is polar fleece. The nation­al bird is a mosa­ic let­ter­box num­ber, cre­ated at an even­ing craft course. Eastbourne is where you grew up, where you vis­ited your grand­par­ents, where your boy­friend lived, where you’re bring­ing up your fam­ily, and where your par­ents have retired, all rolled into one.

She’s used her sick leave well, giv­ing the place a good spruce up, but the writ­ing is why we vis­it.

Jul 05 2009
Love0

Online reading and listening tips

By Asides

Time to draw your atten­tion to a couple of bits of media that I’ve enjoyed recently, namely an excel­lent art­icle by William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair about Captain “Sully” Sullenberger and the ‘mira­cu­lous’ land­ing on the Hudson River back in January. Langewiesche tells the story of the spe­cif­ic flight adroitly but also man­ages to tie it to mod­ern air­craft man­u­fac­ture, pilot polit­ics and even has a hint of a Right Stuff “what makes a pilot” going on too. Superb and engrossing.

In a dif­fer­ent arena entirely, I can recom­mend you down­load and listen to Elvis Mitchell’s inter­view with Rusell Brand, a fam­ous West Ham fan and some­times annoy­ing pres­ence as an act­or who I had thought was inex­plic­ably pop­u­lar. Well, now, thanks to Elvis, it is explic’d. I get it. In the inter­view Brand is pro­mot­ing the US edi­tion of “My Booky Wook” and he is funny, supremely intel­li­gent, spir­ited and self-aware. And he talks at 100mph. Download the inter­view from the KCRW site here, or down­load to the reg­u­lar pod­cast via iTunes here. Mitchell is a former crit­ic for The New York Times and his pro­gramme The Treatment is the most con­sist­ently intel­li­gent half hour on cinema on the web.

Apr 18 2009
Love0

The Wisdom of Buddy

By Asides

Buddy Hackett talk­ing about work­ing in Vegas, quoted by Ebert:

“I was offered twice the dough to move to a cer­tain hotel,” he told me, “but noth­ing doing. Comics who work that room always flop. There’s a phys­ic­al reas­on for that. The stage is above the eye lines of too much of the audi­ence. At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audi­ence is look­ing down at the stage. Everybody in the busi­ness knows: Up for sing­ers, down for com­ics. The people want to ideal­ize a sing­er. They want to feel super­i­or to a com­ic. You’re try­ing to make them laugh. They can­’t laugh at someone they’re look­ing up to.”

Apr 13 2009
Love0

Free

By Asides and Wellington

I rarely, if ever, have any­thing to give away here at Funerals & Snakes but my pals and col­leagues at Welingtonista have a jolly expens­ive Nokia 5800 smart phone to give away (cour­tesy of Vodafone). Click here for more info.

Apr 08 2009
Love0

Back

By Asides and meta

Don’t you just hate it when you have a con­ver­sa­tion with someone that (without them mean­ing to) forces you to exam­ine the way you live your life, the assump­tions that you make about your­self and wheth­er you are, in fact, totally kid­ding your­self? I had one of those today so I’m feel­ing introspective.

Anyway, I’ve had some tech­nic­al issues but I’m back now, and the back­log of reviews will make their way to the site shortly.

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