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Cinema

New and Improved

By Cinema, meta

I’ve just got the gig as Film Reviewer for Wellington’s Capital Times and will post full ver­sions of of all the pub­lished reviews here, start­ing tomor­row. My word lim­it there is slender so I’ll also post on films watched in ser­vice of Capital Times read­ers but not pub­lished. I’ll also be adding col­our to the prin­ted ver­sions by com­ment­ing on screen­ing con­di­tions, cof­fee and oth­er items only semi-related to the film itself.

The first review appears in the paper itself tomor­row and will be pos­ted here first thing in the morning.

Hopefully, this will res­ult in this little endeav­our get­ting more atten­tion (from me and an audi­ence) than it has man­aged so far!

Tuesday Allsorts #3

By Asides, Cinema, Magazines, Music

Trying to get back to a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule. Here goes:

Holy Hell, pos­sibly the fun­ni­est thing in the world: Some deranged geni­us adds James Earl Jones dia­logue from oth­er movies to Star Wars. I shit you not!

The Be Good Tanyas live at The Barbican in London (reviewed in The Grauniad);

A.O. Scott in the NY Times (reg. req.) pon­ders why crit­ics and pub­lic respond so dif­fer­ently, so often (I just watched POTC:DMC and can see both sides “com­plete shit” v “a $9 diver­sion with a few laughs”;

Amazon are in big trub for selling cock-fighting magazines – but that’s not all they sell… (thanks Gawker);

Bob Geldof gets a hard time for can­cel­ling in Italy when 45 people turn up to the 12,000 seat sta­di­um (“Harden up, Sir Bob!”) but let us not for­get that he helped organ­ise a bene­fit con­cert in Auckland when the Neon Picnic was can­celled in 1988 so he’s alright by me – the $1,500 a plate shindig in Auckland the oth­er week is much harder to excuse.

Tuesday Allsorts #2

By Asides, Cats, Cinema, Cricket, Music

Alright then, while I am fid­dling with css here are some links to amuse and alarm you:

There, all of these are weeks late but none the worse for that I should­n’t wonder.

Tuesday Allsorts #1

By Asides, Cinema, Football, Music, The Net, Theatre

David Beckham 27 Feb 2006Why is this man smil­ing? “Er, Victoria, a pigeon’s just crapped on my shoulder.”
Presenting the first of my weekly (weakly?) lists of stuff I’ve stumbled across via the web over the last sev­en days.

Firstly, it is unlikely that I will be pur­chas­ing the new red England away top des­pite my being a prime can­did­ate (I bought the 2002 revers­able ver­sion and still wear the blue side). Even though it is un homage to the clas­sic 1966 World Cup win­ning shirt it’s still too busy for me. What is it with the little white “thing” on the right shoulder and the Umbro logo is as wide and prom­in­ent as the three lions? And they have per­severed with the tiny gold star which made the last shirt seem like it belonged to the People’s Republic of China. Anyway, on to the inter­est­ing stuff:

  • The Guardian talks to Underworld, Ray Davies, Pete Shelley, Richard X, Johnny Marr, Nick Hodgson, Rhymefest, Peter Hook, Tony Hicks, Gary Numan, Ron Mael and KT Tunstall about how some of their sig­na­ture tunes came to be:

The drum pat­tern was ripped off from a Donna Summer B‑side. We’d fin­ished the drum pat­tern and we were really happy, then Steve acci­dent­ally kicked out the drum machine lead so we had to start from scratch and it was nev­er as good.” (Peter Hook from New Order talk­ing about “Blue Monday”)

Not only is there a pre­ma­ture gear change after the second chor­us, but towards the end of the song there are a fur­ther two in a row. They’re so ill-advised that you can hear the nervous­ness in his waver­ing voice as he tries to res­ist each time. All it achieves, though, is the effect of everything going hor­ribly out of tune. I’m not abso­lutely cer­tain that the word “caco­phon­ic” exists, but that’s the most apt way to sum up this atrocity.”

255. Casting a black Desdemona along­side a black Othello is kind of miss­ing the point a bit.
256. The Montague clan are not ali­ens. No, really, they’re not.
257. No mat­ter how much homo­erot­ic sub­text has been built up over the course of the play, I will not end Richard II by hav­ing Henry pull Richard’s dead body out of a pool of water, hav­ing him pro­ceed to lie on top of it, and then roll, the one over the oth­er, all over the stage in com­plete silence until the cur­tain comes to hide them from the audi­ence’s bleed­ing eyes.

  • Finally, not only has someone in a fea­ture film got my name, he’s the title char­ac­ter – and this is a film with Bruce Willis and Ben Kingsley! Some people are used to shar­ing the same name as char­ac­ters on screen (I know an Anderson and a Harper who must be sick of it) but will be a new exper­i­ence for me.