Does anyone else remember the clip shows they used to have? This might have been back in the very late seventies, but more likely the early eighties? People would write in requests for bits of programs that they'd seen, and would like to see again -- this would be before video recorders were widely available, so that this was pretty much the only way to get to see something a second time. (Come to think of it, this was probably also very cheap television to produce. :) I only remember that this sort of program existed; I can't remember seeing any particular clip.
It's weird... there are a bunch of experiences that people don't have to put up with any more, like watching Due South on tapes that had been passed around and copied in communities, with random episodes missing and occasional old American advertising. Or copying computer games with a tape-to-tape cassette player. Heck, even making mix tapes for the car seems pretty rare, now.
I wonder how quaint YouTube will appear in twenty years time, or even ten?
* * *
I'm not sure if I'm getting older, or the movies are getting longer -- or maybe it's this stomach bug that I've had for the past three or four days. Whatever it is, I'm starting to think that it will be a relief when Sunday rolls around.
It was around Death of a President that C pointed out that some tickets seemed to be missing -- in fact, all the tickets bar the first one on Saturday, all the tickets on Sunday, all the tickets for the evenings of the coming weeks, and all the tickets on Saturday. (The Sunday tickets were there.) I know that my tickets were bundled up in three or four packets; as near as I can work out, a whole packet went missing at some point between being printed out, and me dividing them up to give to C and Jenni. I don't know whether Ticketec accidentally mislaid them while they were packing them up, or they disappeared somewhere in the journey back to work; but I've looked everywhere I can think of, and haven't been able to find them.
So... in a bit of a panic, I went to the Ticketec office at the MFC, and asked if there was anything they could do to help. Luckily, there was -- they record your name, address, phone number and so on, as well as the seat number of the tickets you were issued, so they can tell the different venues to give you a lost ticket slip on the day. This means that if you turn up and there's someone sitting in your seat, they are out of luck.
My greatest fear was that I'd turn up and find that someone had bought my ticket in good faith from someone who found the packet on the ground somewhere; I'd hate to make people miss out through no fault of their own. That hasn't happened; but I'll talk about some of the excitement that did happen later, as well as how it was eventually dealt with by the lovely people of the Festival.
* * *
After dealing with Ticketec, and texting C to tell her it was sorted, I hurried off to Te Papa to see I Don't Want To Sleep Alone. Now, I know that I said that Belle Tojours was very slow. It turns out I was wrong -- it was merely a touch leisurely. This Malaysian film was, while not the slowest film I've ever seen, would certainly be in the top five. In fact, when the opening shot was a coma patient in a bed, listening to the radio, and the only thing moving in the shot is coma guy's chest, and the shot goes on for about three minutes, I should probably have gone with my instincts and left. On the other hand, it meant that I could watch it in a half-dozing state, just opening my eyes at the beginning of each scene to establish what was going on, and then checking every now and then to see if anything interesting was happening.
The story itself that eventually emerged was fairly simple -- a completely silent man is beaten up, nursed back to health by an Indian migrant worker (for reasons that are never made clear), and catches the eye of a waitress, which makes the migrant worker jealous; there is also a matress that is carried around. In parallel, there is a man in a coma (played by the same actor as the silent man), and the owner of the restaurant (his wife?) looks after him; the waitress lives with them, and the owner treats her horribly. It was done with very little dialogue, and some of the images that emerged were quite cool; but honestly, I feel that I've watched this film so you don't have to.
* * *
My day got more promising when I went to the Film Archive for Looking for an Icon, a documentary on four iconic examples of photojournalism. They were trying to describe what qualities a good photo (from a newspaper point of view) has, what makes a photo into an icon. They talked about how it has to be simple, often ambiguous, and will typically take advantage of the visual language and metaphors that we already know. One example was the student stopping the tanks in Tiananmen square -- they talked about how it plays into the Western myth that one man can make a difference. They also used it as example of how malleable an iconic image can be -- apparently, it's also been used by the Chinese government, but the story they use it to tell is how tolerant, restrained and reasonable the People's Army is.
They also talked about how the story that people bring to iconic pictures can override history. The example they used is the picture from the Vietnam War, with a general shooting a prisoner with a pistol. This is used in many American history books as a symbol of the point at which the American public turned against the war; but in fact, when it was published (front page, above the fold), letters to the editor poured talking about how they needed more men like the general around to win the war. As it happens, the photographer was a supporter of the war, and a friend of the general, and later declared that he wished he'd never taken the photo, and that the general deserved to be remembered with a statue, not this image.
This was a really interesting documentary, and I'd recommend watching it, even though I didn't initially recognise the other two images.
* * *
I then bumped into Ed, and we went into Cocaine Cowboys. This documentary was awesome. Slickly put together, but not in a way that made me distrust the message; full of interview of some of the people directly involved in the cocaine trade at the time, with their conflicting views of each other on display; and full of info that I might have had a vague idea about, in an easily absorbed and fleshed out manner. And they'd gotten Jan Hammer (the Miami Vice theme guy) to do their music. I found this a lot more fun to watch than the Johnny Depp movie about the same topic, and it felt much more informative, too.
Highly recommended.
* * *
I then popped over to the Paramount to see Eye in the Sky, a thriller about the Hong Kong surveillance unit. This was a straight up goo-cops-vs-bad-gangsters, with the various plain-clothes police officers trying to track down a bunch of vicious, violent and well organized jewelery thieves. I liked it; it wasn't a "best of genre" or anything, but it had a pleasant sense of humour, and all the actors fit their roles well. I could quite easily watch this film again, and may end up buying it.
* * *
You, the Living was a very different kettle of fish. Not bad, just... odd. It was a series of loosely connected scenes, effectively; and there was no way to tell what might happen within a scene, or from one scene to another. For example, the first scene suddenly turned into a musical number about how no-one understood the woman (who had been groaning about this particular subject to her boyfriend), and how she wished she had a motorcycle to drive away. While the colour scheme was a bleak grey, blue and green, there were plenty of touches of humour, like the recurring dixieland brass band; and while the people were, in general, depressed, the overall tone of the film wasn't. I liked it, but I'm not sure I'd ever see it again.
* * *
And then there was Severance, a horror film about a corporate retreat in Eastern Europe that goes badly wrong. There were a number of faces that I recognised, like Tim McInnerny (from the bumbling sycophant from Blackadder) as the incompetent team leader, and Laura Harris (Daisy Adaire from Dead Like Me) as the blonde American coworker. There were plenty of false scares, and they had a good line in building up a fright, defusing it; and then suddenly hitting you with a scare from an unexpected direction. There is plenty of humour, albeit generally of a grisly sort; the Film Society review compared it to Shaun of the Dead, which I can see; but bad things happened to good people in this film, much more so than in SotD. If horror doesn't bother you, I'd certainly recommend it.
And now, Thursday!
My first film was All In This Tea at Te Papa. I'll admit to not knowing too much about my favourite tipple, and I was very interested in the history, as well as the tribulations of a present-day American (David Lee Hoffman) trying to import organically-grown, traditionally harvested and prepared tea from China. For example, I didn't know that most black tea is Assam tea, grown from plants found on the Indian side of the Himalayan mountains when Victorian explorers were trying to find a way to break the Chinese monopoly on the tea trade. (Or "Him-aah-li-an" mountains, by the pronounciation of one the tea experts. :)
Hoffman's passion for tea was obvious, and the way that the various experts that appeared advocated describing tea was... well, no more ridiculous than the way that people talk about wine. Actually, I find that talking about taste or smell is surprisingly difficult; I'll often taste something, and recognize that I know it, but be unable to say what it is. Speaking of taste, they mentioned that green tea is picked from buds that are, at most, ten days old, so that the taste is influenced by not just the plant and soil, but by the weather of those ten days.
Also interesting was Hoffman's perspective on doing business in China -- he had to buy through a tea factory that he had no intention of using, whose focus is on bulk production (and buying tea from the farms that the factory owner also owned), rather than dealing in small amounts directly from small farmers. And the life of the man was interesting as well -- he'd dropped out of college, and wandered backpacking around Asia for many years before falling into the organic tea import business.
I think that a key indicator of the success of this movie is that I (and the people I saw it with) have been instilled with a desire to try more, different teas. Maybe I can pick up some Oolong from T-Leaf while I'm in town? :)
* * *
Next, I zoomed over to the Film Archive to see Michael King: A Moment In Time. The documentary makers were there to talk, and explained that this was basically a single interview that took place in 1991 at Writer's Week in Dunedin. They weren't able to convince anyone to let them make a full documentary at the time, and the material was tucked under the bed for a while; but they recently pulled it out (to see how it had dated), and realised that what they had deserved to be put in front of a wider audience.
Micharl King was a writer of popular New Zealand history -- "popular" in both the easily accessible and widely read sense. Although he had no Maori roots himself, he felt that the Maori view was important long before such an idea was popular, and wrote several books on Maori women, an aspect of Maori culture which had been largely ignored to that point. In the interview, he talked about this, as well as touching on the criticism he later received for "co-opting" these people, as if he could not tell anything worthwhile about their stories because he was neither Maori, nor a woman.
I thought that this interview stood up well, and I hope it gets a wider release. I think I might try and hunt down his book on his experience as a Pakeha; I think it would be interesting to read.
* * *
I followed this up with another documentary, this time German -- Con Man Confidential. It consisted of interviews with four con-men, as well as some of their victims and family. Some of them seemed obviously unbalanced, and their cons were more the result of mental illness than a desire to make money -- the guy who decided, on the spur of the moment, to set up a NATO security conference, for example. Others seemed remarkably without remorse -- the cons wouldn't have worked if people hadn't been so greedy, so eager to believe, people got their money's worth vicariously by seeing how the con-men got to live.
Some of the cons do sound unbelievable -- making up, on the spur of the moment, a 10-person moon landing that would coincide with the millennium celebrations, that no-one subsequently bothered to ask NASA about, for example. But people do prefer to trust other people; I just hope that my lack of financial ambition and innate laziness will keep me relatively safe. ;)
* * *
Gardens in Autumn was... odd, and not nearly as dreary as I feared. The basic plot is -- a government minister is disgraced, dismissed... and gets to have fun, instead. The booklet compared this to Tati's films, and I can certainly see the similarity. Talking to Ed afterwards, this director tends to make these kind of quirky movies, and all the odd stuff that I noticed (the fact that the mother is played by a man, for example) and stuff that I didn't (the orthodox priest, who has arrived, asks if he can turn the new tv on, and then grabs the remote from inside his cassock) is pretty much par for the course.
I liked this movie. It wasn't a big, showy thing, and it didn't have anything like a fast pace, and there were things that were simply odd; but it formed a pleasing shape for me.
* * *
Tragedy struck during Death of a President -- C accidentally knocked over and split my container of pineapple coconut crushed ice from Cha. This disheartening loss of my own made it very easy to sympathise with the plight of the American people in the hour of distress.
But to be serious for a moment; the scary thing about this film is how easily it could be real. If Bush were assassinated, civil liberties would be thrown out the window; and if they found a politically expedient suspect, I can easily believe that they would simply conveniently forget to release him, even if he were proven to be completely innocent.
Kung-Fu Monkey made a very coherent argument that the current U.S. Whitehouse have discovered the "exploit" in American politics, the "cheat code", if you will -- have no shame. If you don't care, you can do whatever you want, and they probably won't even bother you. And if they do tell them off, you can just stare them down -- tell your underlings to lie, make blatantly spurious claims about not needing to comply, add your own bits to laws that you're just meant to be signing, and generally be a jackass and dare them to call you on it.
Thank goodness that we're not anywhere near that stage here.
On to Wednesday!
I Served the King of England was my first movie, and in many ways it was interesting to see it so close to Black Book. It was a Czech movie, and done in a comic, almost slapstick style -- the waiters pirouetting around like dancers, the faux-silent film section detailing the main character's humble origins as a railway hotdog seller, his first employer telling him that there are two rules to service -- you must see nothing and remember nothing, and you must see everything and remember everything. But the comedy allows it to address the tricky and painful issue of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and some of the things it did to that country.
The main character is a small blond Czech determined to make money in the hospitality industry, but we see the story through the eyes of the main character as an old man. I find myself struggling to describe the naive self-centeredness the old man reveals in his younger self. He is very likeable, even when he is sneaking a medal being awarded by the Emperor of Ethiopia away from his mentor. And you just feel bad for him when he's so pleased to be an honourary Aryan, so that his German beau (who believes in the Nazi's racial propoganda) can marry him.
I liked this movie.
* * *
My next movie was Golden Door, about an Italian family and a couple of brides coming to America. One interesting thing that the film does is to finish the film at the point of immigration; you never see them get beyond the Immigration building's doors, or indeed catch any sight of the city they're coming to. And given what we see of the place and culture that they were coming from, it's hard to imagine how much of an adjustment they'll have had to make once they land on the U.S. mainland.
Another oddity worth mentioning; there are occasional dream sequences, where the father imagines what he thinks America will be like -- children carrying radishes their own size, and a carrot that needs two men to carry it. They seem to be inspired in part by some trick photographs that had been sent to one of the brides, where someone had fooled around with forced perspective to make a chicken look the size of a horse, and an onion that needs a wheelbarrow to shift it. You have to wonder how convincing such photos would be to people not used to photographs in general... heh, and what they would make of something like King Kong, any version.
It was interesting how much was left unsaid -- for example, we never find out about the Englishwoman's backstory. And I think that the scenes where everyone obviously has very different ideas of what is "good" clothes are made the point that Italy didn't think of itself as a country even more strongly than the scene in the sleeping berth, where the father says that he's not used to seeing so many "foreigners" -- by which he means, people from other valleys.
I liked it, and I think the fact it felt incomplete was probably intentional. But I didn't love it. :)
* * *
We Are Together, on the other hand, I did kinda love. It focused on "Agape", a South African school for orphans whose parents have died of Aids. The school is well known for their singing, and when the film starts, they're looking forward to recording their CD, and sending a group to sing in England to raise awareness of the problem, and to raise money to expand the school. There is one family that the documentary focuses on, which has the older brother and sisters living together at their parent's old house outside the school -- only one of the sisters has a job, and the brother has just fallen sick, and doesn't seem to be getting better...
While there were definitely sad moments in this film, I think that overall the message was much more upbeat and hopeful than, say, These Girls. I'm definitely thinking about buying their CD, both because I think that they're doing a worthwhile thing, and because I quite liked the music.
* * *
I don't think you could describe Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) as upbeat, though the presentation is anything but grim. It's a documentary about the corruption and crime in Brazil, especially San Paolo. The siege mentality among the rich was a bit scary -- people paying more for their cars than for their houses (because it has to be bullet-proof, of course), plastic surgeons specializing in ear reconstruction (because that's one of the things that kidnappers cut off to send to the family), and a businessman being eager to get not just one tracking chip implanted, but two, from different companies -- so if kidnappers cut one out, he's got a backup. And San Paolo has the largest private helicopter fleet in the world, simply because it's safer -- you can't get kidnapped in the sky. I was about to write that I couldn't imagine living in the constant fear of being kidnapped... but I guess it says something about me and my expectations that I assume that I'd be in the upper crust of the society, rather than in the slums. :)
And then there's the corruption in the politics. They talked to a number of opponents of a politician who has been involved in the biggest corruption scandal to date, and who embezzled millions of dollars in money that should have been invested in businesses in the poorest parts of Brazil, by setting up hundreds of fake companies to receive the money. He had been brought to trial, convicted, forced to resign as president of the Senate... and was then released by a friendly judge, went back to his province, and bribed his way back to his senate seat (in the same way he'd bribed his way up to the senate in the first place). The prosecutors were resigned -- they actually said, we might not be able to send these guys to jail yet, but at least we're making their lives more difficult!
They also interviewed a professional kidnapper. Perhaps scarier than his complete callousness towards the people he kidnaps was the fact that he was, to hear him tell it, something of a philanthropist and community leader within his own slum community.
In a way, this kind of documentary is much more comforting, in that there's no guilty feeling that we should be volunteering, sending money, or collecting door-to-door. And it did make me more likely to consider trying deep-fried frog. :)
* * *
Finally was The Witness, a French film about a group of friends, one of whom (a gay doctor) is infatuated with a young man; it's set at the very beginning of the Aids epidemic. It's not as grim a film as it could have been, and it was deliberately constructed to show an idyll, descending into bleakness... and then people re-emerging on the other side. I liked it, though probably not enough to watch it a second time.
Quick note -- I really liked Paprika! If you like anime, you may as well! :)
* * *
I was thinking about the fact that I haven't been talking to as many random people this festival as I have in previous ones -- I've been either typing, or reading various novels. If I see someone I know, they take precedence, of course; but in earlier years, I've been caught without a book, and ended up chatting to whoever is sitting next to me; but I haven't had that happen more than once or twice this year, and I was vaguely regretting it, Which made it ironic when, Wednesday night on the bus, someone plopped themselves down beside me and started chatting happily away... and it took them a minute or two to realise that, no, I wasn't their mate Darren who they hadn't seen in a couple of years. I could smell that they'd had a beer or two when they sat themselves down, so I had been deliberately affable initially; and I felt that I had to continue chatting until he got off in Newtown.
So, if you hear of any banks being robbed by someone that looks like me, it's probably this Darren guy. In fact, if someone that looks like me has ever said anything mean to you, it was probably that Darren guy.
Anything nice -- that was me. ;)
* * *
Black Book was my first movie on Tuesday, and I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I mean, I know Paul Verhoven from things like Robocop and Starship Troopers; what will a film about a woman, a Jew, in Holland towards the end of WWII be like? As it turns out, pretty good. I mean, there are bits of what one writer calls "refridgerator logic" -- things that, when you're looking into a fridge for a snack, make you go, "Wait a minute; did that actually make sense?" The thing is, that's not actually a huge problem in a screenplay, if the movie works while you're watching it. I mean, it's not something to aim for, but I won't necessarily ding a movie points for it.
There were a bunch of scenes that will stick with me -- the woman having to duet with the Nazi officer who she saw in charge of a slaughter, for example. Hmm, it's hard to think of examples without giving spoilers, especially since this is a film that will probably be widely available. There is a certain amount of nudity and gore, but it makes sense in the context of the film. It won't be to everyone's taste, but as an action/thriller with a bit more moral meat on its bones than most, I'd recommend it.
* * *
Next was These Girls, a documentary on a gang of Egyptian street girls. It was both interesting and sad; they squabbled and fought, by also loyally defended each other. They sniffed glue and took pills to make time pass more quickly, but they were also trying to look after their kids. And the film explored the dangers they faced -- they talked a lot about being threatened with having their face cut up, having to cooperate with men who kidnap them to stop from being cut. (They showed the documentary makers a shack where men keep kidnapped girls tied up for days or weeks.) There was also the danger of their fathers; if they found them pregnant and unmarried, then there is a real danger of them killing the girl to redeem the family honour. One of the pregnant girls actually said -- if her baby was a boy, he would be the apple of her eye; but if it was a girl, better that she killed her now, rather than have her grow up like her mother.
There was a woman who visited the girls, who seemed to be a combination of confidant and arbitrator -- she was just doing it as a private citizen, rather than having any sort of social work training. She was trying to convince them to stop sniffing, but the girls were reluctant. There are other connections with the outside world, too -- many of them had boyfriends, or potential boyfriends... but they were in jail. We did see them laughing and dancing around; but at other times, they asked where they could go? Other than the street, what options did they have?
(Why is it, I wonder, that almost all the documentaries that I see about people living lives completely alien to my own make me think, "Thank goodness I live here, now, as me"? Presumably it's because adversity is more interesting to film.)
Anyway, this documentary was a good slice of life, though I would have been interested to see more context about the "why" of their situation. But I guess that would have been a different documentary, and quite possibly one that wouldn't have sounded interesting enough to go to. ;)
* * *
Next was a Kurdish movie, Half Moon, about a famous musician and his sons trying to get from Iran to Kurdish Iraq to perform in a concert, preferably with a female singer. There were some things that were never explained -- why all the female singers were immured in a village, and why they were such an issue that the border guards had specially trained "woman-sniffing dogs", for example. But there were definite moments of humour from the irrascible musician, their fast-talking driver, and some of the more cautious sons. It wasn't as good a movie as Turtles Can Fly, but it wasn't bad.
* * *
After that, it was off to the Paramount to a full house for Antonello and the Architect, a documentary about one of the grand old men of NZ architecture. This was a gently ambling film, and the unhurried interviews of the architect telling his stories at his own pace made it feel very much as if you were having a conversation with him over a cup of tea. On the other hand, I can understand why some people might have found the pace a bit slow; after some of the other films I've seen, that wasn't a problem for me. :)
They were handing out fliers for the DVD; I might have to see if Ellen is interested in this guy's work.
* * *
My last movie was Retribution. I'd gotten tickets for Jenni and Lee, so they had to cope with the fact that I hadn't realised that the seats in the main part of the Paramount had been refurbished when I ordered them, and went for the increased leg-room of the seats next to the stairwell. Sorry, guys!
The film itself was a Japanese horror -- the central character was a police detective who is worried he committed a murder he's investigating. Jenni said that it wasn't as scary as, say, Dark Water, and I think that's true; on the other hand, I still found it plenty scary. She also pointed out that drowning seems to be a recurring theme in Japanese horror. Being drowned alone, actually, now that I come to think about it -- The Ring as well as Dark Water. I wonder whether it's anything to do with them being an island nation, or the way that water is thought about in their society. I'm sure there's a doctoral thesis lurking in there somewhere!
At any rate, while there were one or two moments that induced titters rather than gasps of horror in the crowd, it was plenty scary enough for me. And there was some really clever camera work, including some artfully placed mirrors that did more than just show you "the scary thing behind the character". I liked it a lot, and won't be at all surprised when the Hollywood remake comes out.
Jeeni & Lee had already seen Conversations With My Gardener and liked it, and I recognised a number of the actors, so I was fairly confident that I'd enjoy it. And I did -- it's not a big film, but it was a good one.
A thing that struck me during the film is how much watching medical procedurals can seep into your brain without you realising; I heard one of the characters describing crippling pains in their abdomen and a rigid stomach, and immediately thought, "Peritonitis? A perforated bowel? Whatever it is, those are bad signs, and he needs to get to a hospital right away."
It was also... I dunno, pro-Union? The gardener was an ex-railway man, and he still went on trips with the other men from the railway, and saw the doctors that his union provided. Perhaps it's better to say that there was a definite sense of nostalgia, and the good old days when it was easy to find work. And the picture of life in a small community, where everyone has a history with everyone else, was well drawn.
It's worth seeing. Unless you only like robots blowing up ninjas on dinosaurs, in which case I'd give it a miss. :)
* * *
Manufactured Landscapes was the second film I saw... and that might have been a mistake. The movie was about a photographer who specialised in images of the human impact on landscapes -- he started with open-cast mines, and has moved on to dams, factories, piles of coal, the beaches where ships are grounded and dismantled, or the dockways where they're built. They talked about how he tried to show the unexpected beauty of the sites, and allowing the audience's preconceptions and extrinsic knowledge to bring their own commentary to the piece -- and you can certainly see that a Chinese businessman would take away a very different impression of endless rows of manufacturing benches stretching out into the distance than, say, a Californian anti-globalization activist, or a Argentinean unionist.
Anyway, the reason I suggested that it might have been a mistake is because there were long sections where there were long, sweeping tracking shots, accompanied by langourous music and no commentary... which is apparently exactly what is needed to put me to sleep. There was some commentary, but not very much; a friend of mine noted that he would have preferred to have even less, which put me in mind of that other film last year on industrialized farming, where they simply allowed the images of harvesting equipment and sheds full of chickens to tell their own story. I think I agree, kind of -- either make it more informative, or have faith in your images and have little or no commentary at all. (Though that film from last year kept putting me to sleep as well. Very pretty , though.)
I'm glad that I saw it, but I'm not sure I got anything out of it that a decent website or coffee-table book wouldn't have given me.
* * *
Then it was off to the Film Archive to see The Bothersome Man. I'll just note here that one thing that has been quite bothersome with many of the films that I've seen at the Film Archive during this festival has been the quality of the experience -- the film has frequently started out to low, so subtitles can't be read, and this film occasionally bounced quite a bit, making it quite uncomfortable to watch. (And since it was all in Swedish, you couldn't exactly just close your eyes and listen to the dialogue.)
Anyway, I enjoyed the film itself, if not all of the experience. The basic summary? A man... probably dies. And he wakes up on a bus to a new life, with an apartment and a job as an accountant. And everything is muted tones, and stylish, chrome furniture, and... nice. Where the greatest sin seems to be making a fuss. Is he in some sort of purgatory, or is he just in Scandinavia?
I liked this film; the way that it explored its central idea was interesting and consistent. I'd certainly consider watching it again, in a non-juddery format. :)
* * *
Then it was off to Crossing the Line, a documentary on one of the four American soldiers that defected to North Korea during the fifties. James Dresnok came across as funny and personable; and very, very indoctrinated. And there were definitely weird things gong on -- for example, one of the other defectors married a Japanese woman, and the Dresnok said that he and the other defector quarrelled because the other guy realised that she and Dresnok had an affair. But... the wife returns to Japan to visit her family, and it turns out that she was actually kidnapped from Japan, in a weird plot to raise Japanese-speaking spies. And then the Japanese and North Korean governments arrange to allow the husband and wife (and daughters) to meet in Malaysia, because the Americans can't extradite him from there; and then he hops on the plane to Japan, turns himself in, claims that he's been held in North Korea and tortured for forty years, and that Dresnok helped the Koreans by tying him down and beating him up.
A member of the audience asked the filmmaker if he thought that this was true. As it turns out, he asked exactly that question of Dresnok; and was told, "That shrimp? I wouldn't have to tie him down; I could just pick him up with one hand, and slap him around with the other." And the filmmaker was like... yeah, you could.
Another question that got asked was whether the film-maker thought that they could get away with filming some stuff because the North Koreans don't perceive it the same way that we do. He thought that this was true; in fact, he'd had some of his previous films seen by the North Korean authorities, and rather than accusing him of subversion, they said the film was "too boring" -- what he showed was so every-day to them as to be practically invisible. And I could see that in this film, too: Dresnok talking about how he always got his full ration, even when the famine killed millions, was chilling rather than inspirational to me.
In short, an interesting film that didn't demonise the North Koreans, and gave me some insight into the Americans that defected; and gave me absolutely no desire to go and visit. :)
* * *
And the final movie of the day was Aachi & Ssipak. This is the only movie that I've gone to in the Festival that had people walking out; and I'm afraid that I can completely sympathise. I mean, I knew that I was in for fart jokes and the like; after all, the plot revolves around the fact that power is generated by poo, so the government rewards defecation with addictive "Juicy Bars". But... the animation wasn't particularly attractive, people getting punched or dismembered isn't intrinsically funny, and I never really felt any empathy for any of the characters at all.
There were some interesting aspects -- the head of government, who was drawn chibi but who was an evil cigar-smoking dictator; the numerous homages to/rip-offs of other famous films (Robocop, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.); but it just never made me care. I wouldn't bother with it.
First up on Sunday was U with C & Jenni. A French children's film, but where the Kirikou movies of last year felt like fairly straightforward retellings of folktales, this felt... well, I thought of Flight of Dragons or The Last Unicorn, though this might be aimed at a slightly younger market. (Er, but not with the patronising attitude that many English-language films for children often seem to have.) It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, with painted land and seascapes that were full of great daubs of colour. It was funny, pretty, and even the slightly melancholy ending isn't without hope. I'd certainly consider giving it to a kid, providing either their reading, French, or memory was up to it.
And I'll consider buying a copy for myself. :)
* * *
It was hard to watch A Civilized Society without wanting to throw something at the screen whenever Lockwood Smith's smiling mug popped up. (But I thought C might be a bit annoyed if I got us thrown out, so I manfully resisted.) I still remember him coming to my secondary school just before I was going to enrol for university, and promising to abolish university fees when National got into power. He got a great big cheer for that... which was presumably balanced out by the many, many boos and hisses he got over the years when university fees not only stayed, but went higher.
I fundamentally disagree with the attitudes that drove educational reform at that time. I feel that the education is a lot more like health than, say, purchasing equipment for a business -- there are lots of advantages for everyone if everyone is healthy, and there are advantages for everyone if everyone gets as much education as they can stand. It's not just a case of it being unfair that the people who got the advantage of a free education depriving me, and my brothers and sisters and friends, of the same advantage; while I'm not saying everyone should be forced into a single educational mould, I don't think that I, personally, am better off with a bit more money in my pocket while someone with a great talent but at a decile one school gets no chance.
Actually, that brings up a good point -- surely, the funding model is fundamentally flawed. If you're wanting to produce good grades, then the answer isn't to give funding to the schools that have good grades already? I mean, they're obviously doing fine with the money they've got! Wouldn't it make more sense to try and divert the money to lower decile schools, so that they can get the more experienced teachers and specialist programmes to help their pupils achieve? If the goal is to help everyone, doesn't it make sense to help those who need help more?
I understand the drive of parents to put their child in a environment that is likely to let them succeed, and why they don't want their kids to go to school with problem kids. I don't think it's okay to have disruptive kids or kids that act out stopping the kids that want to learn... or at least, have no particular objection to learning. But I don't think that the ghetto-ization of low decile schools is the right answer, or that you should have to have money to buy your way out of the problem. I wish there was an easy and obvious answer.
Um, anyway -- the documentary was good, and I learned a bunch of stuff that went over my head as a student at the time. Someone asked, in the Q&A afterwards, whether he deliberately picked out clips that made the teacher's union look fair-minded, and the right-leaning politicians look like arrogant pricks; as it turns out, he actually worked from transcripts, trying to find illustrative quotes in the archives of the television news of the day. The arrogance and smarm of the politicians were... just there.
* * *
Animation Now, which I saw with Jenni and C, was the usual mix of nifty and mediocre. There were fewer "play music and show random images", but they weren't completely absent; on the other hand, there were a number of shorts in this category that played with the idea that you can show just a little of the image, just some salient feature, like a headlight, and the brain will fill in the rest of the bus. Related to this, there was a nifty short, Weiss, with a man walking through a featureless white landscape, who could only see the obstacles by the shadow he cast. There was also a neat little CGI short of wee machines exploring a jungle planet (Burning Safari), and a wildly colourful and baroque short that had a song narrating the action (The Tale of How) Unfortunately, the song itself was quick, choral and confusing; I kind of wish that there had been subtitles. There wasn't anything on the level of Jasper Morello, but it also wasn't as bad as it's been some years.
* * *
Then it was time to say goodbye to C and Jenni, and scurry off to dinner, and then on to The Monastery, a documentary about a cranky old Danish man who wants to donate an old, decrepit castle to the Russian Orthodox church to use as a nuclear missile silo. No, actually a monastery; I was just wondering if you were paying attention. He is a bit of a obstinate sod, and there's a strong suggestion that he might have a touch of Aspergers -- he admits that he's very single-minded, and never really liked anyone in his life apart from his father. (And he had a wierd thing about people's noses.) The interactions between him and the head nun who comes to see whether the site is suitable are pretty funny, because they're both so strong-willed, though polite.
Well... fairly polite. :)
Anyway, I thought it worked pretty well as a portrait as a very interesting individual, and I'm glad I saw it.
* * *
Finally, there was the Korean gangster movie, A Dirty Carnival. There were a number of times where I thought, "Hang on a tick; have I seen this movie already?" Not that this was a bad example of the genre... perhaps because it was such a typical member of the genre, with sets and set-pieces from a half-dozen other gangster or alienated-young-Asian movies. (The kareoke bar, the dinner with all the people from school, the big fight with bats and bits of lumber where the main character and his allies are outnumbered...) The most distinctive feature was probably that the main character had a friend trying to make a film about gangsters, which lead to some movie-within-a-movie hijinks; but I'm always a little leery of those sorts of schenanigans, since it can so easily feel like the English essay on how hard it is to write English essays.
To sum up, it was not a bad film -- I enjoyed it, and think that it's a fair example of the genre. But there are certainly better ones.
The second day seemed to start with a decidedly political bent. My first movie (which I saw with C) was Run, Granny, Run. It followed the senatorial campaign of a 94 year-old grandmother who'd been unexpectedly thrust into the Democratic candidacy by the death of the previous candidate -- since they were running against a two-term incumbent, it's hardly surprising that no-one else stuck their hand up for the privilege of working really hard, and inevitably losing. Her campaign was based on (or hampered by, depending on your attitude) her belief that "soft money" and special interest donations are wrong, bad for United States politics, and bad for the politicians themselves.
This sort of behind-the-scenes politicking is always interesting, and I suspect it's not as disheartening when it's not your country being sold down the river. It was fascinating to see how difficult it was to run a campaign on a shoe-string, with a candidate who, while inspiring and sharp, was not a trained public speaker. The inevitability with which both sides of the political machine closed her out was quite sad... but the fact that she was projected to win 10% of the vote, and managed to win 30%-odd, speaks volumes... though I'm guessing they'd spend the money to crush her if they though she was actually any kind of threat.
Running for public office -- well, any kind of public service, actually -- seems to me to be something of a thankless task; I don't even like volunteering to decide about where to go for dinner. ;)
* * *
The next movie was ¿La Verdad? (The Truth?), a documentary made by a NZer who was in Cuba with her husband and children (her husband runs Havana coffee), who got drawn into the social circle of one of the grand old men of anti-government journalism in Cuba. She started recording interviews with him, documenting his life; but while she was back in New Zealand, there was a big purge of dissident writers... and it turned out that he'd been a government mole for the past 40 years. The documentary covers the documentary-maker's reaction to this, as well as talking to his former friends (both those he had during his years of deception, and before), and his daughter and former wives.
Unlike your typical documentary, the author isn't a disembodied voice of authority -- she's fallen into the story, and lets us see how she got drawn in, and her reactions to the unexpected turns the story takes. I think that this makes for a much better documentary; I don't feel that it wouldn't have been half so effective if I hadn't seen the film-maker, and seen how she'd been affected. And I think that it's different from the documentary about tabbacco that I saw a few years ago, or even An Inconvenient Truth -- in both of those, there are parts that feel like we're focussing on the lives of the documentarians, whereas in ¿La Verdad?, I never felt that she made the movie to tell us about herself. If it turned up on TV, I'd encourage you to watch it.
Heh, it sounds like the showing today at the Film Archive has sold out. :)
* * *
I knew a little bit about the Hungarian Revolution, and the police state that they lived under before and after; but Freedom's Fury, by focussing on the water polo team for the Melbourne Olympics, gave the entire thing a context to hang the facts on. And seeing the Hungarian flags with the hole in the middle, where the people had cut out the hammer and sickle... there were some powerful images there. It's hard to put yourself in that mindset; does anyone remember, was that the time that the National party ran the TV ads with the dancing Russians, about how if you voted for Labour the Communists would sneak in?
Anyway, the surviving members of the Hungarian water polo team seem to be articulate and opinionated old codgers... which is a blessing for the film-makers, I guess. I did find it a bit... slickly put together, which tends to make me a bit suspicious, but to be fair, perhaps they simply had enough money. One of the executive producers was Quentin Tarrantino; I suspect that an interesting story lies behind that.
* * *
I then got to see Forever with C, Jenni & Lee. I'm not sure it completely worked for me. Sad to say, this is one documentary where a bit of narration might not have gone amiss. There were plenty of interesting stories, both about the famous people in the cemetery, and the stories of the regular people, and the people who were associated with the graveyard -- the guide, the visitors, the people who cleaned the graves of their loved ones. But it never seemed to cohere into a whole, and I left the movie mildly dissatisfied.
I wouldn't turn it off it was on TV, but I'm not sure I'd seek it out.
* * *
And finally, Eagle Vs Shark. Not as funny as Tongan Ninja, but not as shallow, either; the characters were caricatures, but the underlying types felt real. The main female lead,Loren Horsley, was excellent, and whatever my reservations about Taika Waititi's 48-Hour films (which are strong), he seems to be able to get good performances out of children. And there were plenty of moments that felt quite true -- the geek male showing the girl all the stuff that he thinks is cool, all the while maintaining a palpable defensiveness, for example. And there's the weird little family rituals that are maintained for no apparent reason, like giving the driver "safety grass" before they set out; I think my family's "safety grass" is shouting "Bully for you" when driving around Bulli Point on the way to Taupo. Or possibly the story of the Foxton water tower and the mini, which I might tell you... some other time. :)
* * *
Hmm, I'm still two days behind. Well, at least I have links to the movies this time. ;)
One of the unexpected advantages of booking a large swag of movies is that you often only remember the vaguest details of the particular film you're going to see. This made my first movie, Red Road, even more exciting than it would otherwise have been -- apart from the fact that it had security cameras in it, I couldn't remember anything about it. This meant that during the first half-hour, it felt like anything could happen. Is this a magical realism flick, with people turning into animals? Could be! Is it a sci-fi "it's all a simulation" movie? Maybe! My confusion was enhanced by the fact that the thick Scottish accents on display meant that I was often guessing at what might have been said, and hoping that whatever it was wasn't essential to understanding the point of the movie. (I suppose the whole "guess what's happening from context" is quite appropriate for a security-camera based movie. :)
As it turned out, it was a low-key thriller, and while I enjoyed it, I don't think it would lose anything being watched at home if it turned up on TV. Possibly with teletext subtitles for the accent impaired turned on.
Someone pointed out to me that most of the people involved in writing and making this film were women, which, in retrospect, makes sense -- the female characters did feel more fleshed out than the male, for example. It may be that this film would have more of an emotional impact to people who've been affected by the central crime that drives the story. On the whole, I'm not disappointed that I saw this, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend people seek it out.
Wider question -- what about the "surveillance society" thing? The fact that CCTV cameras are being used in Britain to try and keep a lid on antisocial behaviour, and the fact that the custodes are only human, so they'll occasionally abuse their powers? I guess... if the cameras are in public places, where a policeman walking the beat might be, then the only difference to me is that people's behaviour won't be immediately changed. It seems to me to be qualitatively different from tapping phones or observing people in their homes or places of work. As the Video Kid says:
"Ain't gonna change the way I move, 'cos I'm live on CCTV.
Ain't gonna change the way I groove, let the camera catch my booty."
Words to live by, eh? :)
* * *
My next movie, Venus, manages to get an awfully large number of very good mature British actors on the screen. The story itself isn't particularly new -- an older man allows himself to be taken advantage of by a younger woman -- but whereas the man is usually made vulnerable by the possibility of social disgrace, Peter O'Toole's character is made vulnerable by age... which makes it much easier to empathize with him, I think.
The crowd was also... um... "mature", which probably meant that the film had more of an impact on them than it did for me. Like the first one, I enjoyed it; and I liked watching it with an audience which felt a resonance; and I thought that the actors were excellent. But the story... didn't make me want to rave about it. A good film, but not a great one.
* * *
My third film was Tales of Earthsea. A studio Ghibli adaptation of Ursula le Guin's setting, I can see that there were bits that might have been a little confusing if you've never read the books, though I thought that they did a fair job of explaining what was going on. There were plenty of good images in the film, an dI imagine that I'll eventually get the DVD; but it's merely an okay Studio Ghibli film. (Which puts it ahead of an awful lot of movies, right there.)
* * *
Belle Tojours was my fourth film. It is very, very, very, veeeeeery sloooooooow. And tres, tres French. There were some interesting bits in a bar involving dialogues between the main character and the bartender, with byplay from two hookers that were sitting nearby; but I'm not sure that the good bits justify watching the whole thing. Maybe if you have a remote to speed through the long, long static shots of the landscape? :)
To be fair, it was a follow-up film of sorts to another movie; perhaps if I'd seen the previous one, it would have had more impact. Or given the end, it might have been even more frustrating.
One redeeming feature was the short that showed before it, Pen Pusher. The central conceit is that a boy is sitting in a train, underlining certain passages in a book; then he notices everyone looking at the girl sitting next to him, who is also reading. He starts underlining words to communicate with her, and she gets out a pencil and starts underlining back, It was quite a nice, clever little piece, and I'm glad I saw it.
* * *
The last film I saw on the first day was The Signal. Essentially a zombie apocalypse/bodysnatchers type deal: a signal plays on all tvs, radios and phones that makes people paranoid, easily suggestible, delusional, and murderous -- but convinced that their murderousness is completely rational. It was very, very violent and bloody, with lots of sharp and blunt trauma, and at least one beheading-with-spade; but it also had a lot of humour around people's attempts to act as if nothing's wrong while the world falls apart around them. I thought that they sustained the tension well, and that splitting the film up into distinct sections, each with its own focal protagonist, moved the story forward in interesting ways; and I liked the way they explored the consequences of the world that they'd set up.
All in all, it is probably too scary and violent for many people's taste; but I would say it was definitely the best film of the day, and would recommend it to those who like horror films. Not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it a lot.
* * *
Goodness, I'm really falling behind, aren't I? I still have two days to document...
Unfortunately, I've been trying to keep up with work mail, which is tricky given that I don't get home until 11pm; and my new laptop, while awesome in many ways, is a little bigger and heavier than my previous one, which makes me less likely to take it with me. But never fear, gentle reader -- my other reviews will arrive soon! :)
In case people are curious about my movie schedule, here's what I'm seeing, when. You'll notice a couple of tense five-minute runs between the Embassy and the Paramount (or vice-versa) and some fairly tight changeovers elsewhere; but I'm hopeful that I'll handle it okay.
20 July, Friday o Pa 11:00am - 12:55pm Red Road (p71) o Em 1:15pm - 2:50pm Venus (p51) o Em 3:30pm - 5:25pm Tales from Earthsea (p141) * FA 6:15pm - 7:25pm Belle Toujours (p27) * Pa 8:30pm - 10:10pm The Signal (p149)
21 July, Saturday * Pa 10:45am - 12:05pm Run Granny Run (p111) * Pa 12:30pm - 2:00pm+ La Verdad? (p114) FA 3:00pm - ??? "Filming the Vision" (p124) * TP 4:30pm - 6:00pm Freedom's Fury (p101) * TP 6:30pm - 8:05pm Forever (p101) * Em 8:45pm - 10:20pm Eagle Vs Shark (p13)
22 July, Sunday * TP 11:00am - 12:15pm U (p142) * Pa 1:00pm - 2:40pm+ A Civilised Society (p93) FA 3:00pm - ??? "Women in Film" (p124) * Pa 4:00pm - 5:20pm Animation Now! (p137) * FA 6:15pm - 7:40pm The Monastary (p109) * Pa 8:15pm - 10:40pm A Dirty Carnival (p146)
23 July, Monday o Em 11:00am - 12:50pm Conversations with My Gardener (p29) o Em 1:30pm - 3:00pm Manufactured Landscapes (p125) o FA 4:00pm - 5:40pm The Bothersome Man (p58) * Pa 6:15pm - 7:45pm+ Crossing the Line (p95) * Pa 9:00pm - 10:30pm Aachi & Ssipak (p144)
24 July, Tuesday o Em 11:00am - 1:30pm Black Book (p41) + FA 1:45pm - 2:55pm These Girls (p113) o FA 3:30pm - 5:25pm Half Moon (p36) * Pa 6:15pm - 7:35pm+ Antonello and the Architect (p91) * Pa 8:45pm - 10:30pm Retribution (p148)
25 July, Wednesday o Em 10:45am - 12:45pm I Served the King of England (p25) o Em 1:15pm - 3:15pm Golden Door (p39) o FA 3:30pm - 5:00pm We Are Together (p119) * Pa 6:30pm - 7:55pm Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (p106) * Em 8:30pm - 10:25pm The Witness (p33)
26 July, Thursday o TP 11:15am - 12:25pm All in This Tea (p91) + FA 1:30pm - 2:10pm+ Michael King: A Moment in Time (p109) o FA 3:45pm - 5:10pm Con Man Confidential (p94) * TP 6:00pm - 8:05pm Gardens in Autumn (p30) * Em 8:45pm - 10:20pm Death of a President (p61)
27 July, Friday o TP 11:00am - 1:00pm I Don't Want To Sleep Alone (p47) + FA 1:30pm - 2:25pm Looking for an Icon (p124) o FA 3:15pm - 5:15pm Cocaine Cowboys (p145) * Pa 5:45pm - 7:15pm Eye in the Sky (p62) * Pa 7:45pm - 9:15pm You, the Living (p47) * Pa 9:45pm - 11:15pm Severance (p148)
28 July, Saturday * Pa 11:00am - 12:10pm Animation for Kids (p136) * Em 1:30pm - 3:05pm My Best Friend (p31) x Em 4:00pm - 5:00pm+ This Is New Zealand (p15) * Pa 7:15pm - 8:55pm SherryBaby (p83) * Pa 9:30pm - 11:00pm Paprika (p141)
29 July, Sunday * Em 10:45am - 12:40pm Vanaja (p36) * Pa 12:45am - 2:40pm Tekkonkinkreet (p142) * Em 3:00pm - 4:15pm Jesus Camp (p105) * Pa 5:30pm - 6:50pm Helvetica (p102) * Em 9:15pm - 11:05pm A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (p53)
30 July, Monday o Em 10:15am - 12:35pm La Vie En Rose (p9) o Em 1:00pm - 2:50pm Half Nelson (p63) o Pa 3:30pm - 5:20pm Exiled (p146) * Em 6:30pm - 8:00pm+ Quinceanera (p55) * Em 8:45pm - 10:40pm A Few Days in September (p30)
31 July, Tuesday o Em 11:00am - 12:45pm Priceless (p33) + FA 1:45pm - 2:50pm Cowboys & Communists (p95) o FA 4:00pm - 5:15pm The Digital Space (p138) * Em 6:15pm - 8:10pm The Secret Life of Words (p46) * Em 8:45pm - 10:35pm Noise (p69)
1 August, Wednesday o Em 10:45am - 1:15pm Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (p35) o Pa 1:45pm - 3:10pm+ My Kid Could Paint That (p126) o Em 4:00pm - 5:35pm The Unpolished (p85) * FA 6:15pm - 8:00pm Comrades in Dreams (p94) * Em 8:45pm - 10:45pm The Night of the Sunflowers (p45)
2 August, Thursday o Pa 10:30am - 1:00pm Inland Empire (p54) o Pa 2:00pm - 3:55pm No Mercy for the Rude (p69) o Em 4:00pm - 5:25pm Once (p37) * FA 6:15pm - 7:45pm The Bridge (p93) * TP 8:45pm - 10:40pm The Matsugane Potshot Affair (p40)
3 August, Friday + FA 12:15pm - 1:20pm Homegrown: Animation (p140) o TP 2:00pm - 4:00pm The Last Picture Show (p133) o TP 4:30pm - 5:50pm The Great Happiness Space (p102) * TP 6:15pm - 7:50pm King Corn (p105) * Pa 8:15pm - 1:00am Death Note/Death Note: Last Name (p145)
4 August, Saturday * Pa 11:00am - 12:30pm Stephanie Daley (p84) * Pa 1:00pm - 2:55pm The Long Goodbye (p133) * TP 3:45pm - 5:00pm Homegrown: Works on Video (p65) * FA 5:30pm - 7:20pm The Trials of Darryl Hunt (p114) * Em 9:15pm - 10:40pm Paranoid Park (p55)
5 August, Sunday * TP 11:30am - 1:15pm I Have Never Forgotten You (p103) * TP 1:45pm - 3:25pm The Violin (p85) * Em 3:45pm - 5:15pm Suely in the Sky (p21) * Pa 5:30pm - 7:35pm Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (p117) * FA 8:15pm - 9:35pm Them (p150)
In case anyone cares -- the "*" films can be pre-booked, the "o" films are on during the weekday, the "x" and "+" films are the lower-price sessions (pre-bookable and weekday, respectively), and a "+" after the movie end time means that the director is there for questions at the end. Oh, and things in quotes are talks, which I may or may not go to.
* * *
I've finally finished moving all my (read) fiction into the library. I ended up spilling up onto to very top shelf, which means that I've needed to use the step-stool to put them away. I'm a little worried, since I know that there are a fair number of boxes of unread books that are still to be dealt with; but I still haven't purged the collection, which should free up a bit of shelf space.
I've still got to settle on a cataloguing system. I'll be using LibraryThing, and I've already got an account with them; but they're deliberately not a general cataloguing system, and it would be nice to organise my DVDs and music, as well. One of the options I've been looking at is one of the Delicious Library knockoffs for the non-Mac -- there's MediaMan production for $40US, and ReaderWare -- that's $85US if I want to get the version that has a palm browser, and cover books, video and music. At the moment, the ability to keep a list of what I've bought in a portable, searchable format is a pretty killer feature; otherwise, I'm just going to have to print out the lists, since the only other option is to resign myself to multiple copies of books, music and movies. Or not buy anything new... Pah! ;)
Um... okay, this bit was probably really boring for people who don't care about maintaining collections of books. :)
* * *
We had two groups of people over for dinner on the weekend -- one of C's work friends (who went to Harry Potter and the Next Episode with her) gave her a ride home, and ended up staying for whatever I could rustle up, and Giffy, Erik & the Mugglester came over for something Mexican that C whipped up. Oh, and custard!
So... here's some vaguely related links! :) First off, apparently the Italian prison authorities are hard up for cash, since I can't imagine another good reason to have a restaurant in high security prison, with felons cooking and serving food.
And on a different tangent, the NZ Herald declares that Wellington bars too posh for Bacardi. Of course, on reading the article (and ignoring the editorial commentary for the benefit of Aucklanders), it turns out that they prefer to serve white rums made in Cuba rather than one that bowed to the US embargo by moving to Puerto Rico -- to me, anti-Americanism or anti-corporatism is slightly different to the elitism that the Herald wants to see. The other stuff about types of alcohol some bars are getting rid of to eliminate certain types of patrons is a kind of interesting, though.
And what would a list of links be without a YouTube video? Here's a sketch by the same people who did the Matrix Ping-Pong sketch, about why a man's girlfriend is angry at him.
Enjoy.