from the morgue

Under The Mountain (1981)

Over the last few weeks Cal and I worked our way through classic Kiwi kidult series, Under the Mountain. Consisting of eight 25-min episodes, on its '81 broadcast this became one of the defining TV experiences for NZ kids. It is available now as the first release in a new line of TVNZ Classics DVDs.

Under The Mountain was a kids book written by NZ literary legend Maurice Gee. It concerns two twins, eleven years old, whose psychic potential is unlocked by a friendly alien and who join in a war against a family of degenerate, destructive monsters.

And these monsters are truly monstrous. Their appearance in episode one is chilling - a slow reveal as something barely seen out at sea, then a strange shape in the dark, and finally a terrifying full-body shot as they menace the twins. The costumes aren't anything special but they're lit and shot well enough to work - strange lumpy, slimy menaces straight out of Lovecraft. (In fact, it is easy to imagine Gee was paying homage to Lovecraft, with the shoggoth-like monsters and the sick, Innsmouth depravity of the strange Wilberforce family; not to mention the weird cosmic amorality of it all.)

Warning: It gets heavy. Not all the sympathetic characters survive. The eleven-year old twins have to grapple with failure and hopelessness as well as more prosaic threats; they argue about the morality of trying to kill the monsters. The whole thing is very deeply felt, and all the more impressive for it.

In fact, I'm surprised to see it marketed here in NZ as "children's classic". It is definitely for adults as well as kids, and apart from not talking down to anyone, its actually quite scary. There are some great jump moments, some bits of real suspense, and some unnerving body horror mixed in with the sheer b-movie joy of the monsters themselves. Add in the deeply creepy set design (clearly inspired by H.R.Giger's work on Alien) and it's no wonder this gave rise to so many nightmares in this country.

UtM was the first of NZ's celebrated run of "kidult" dramas, followed by Children of the Dog Star, The Fireraiser, and others. (The genre reappears now and then, e.g. Mirror Mirror in the 90s and Maddigan's Quest in the 00s.) For a while, there was a lot of pride in our kidult productions - they crossed over the young/old audience barrier and were internationally successful, perhaps our most successful televisual exports ever?

The supremacy of the "kidult" drama disappeared in the 90s with the coming of commercial television, and its a shame - all the more so considering how well UtM stands up today. The acting, sets, effects, and staging are all far better than I had any right to expect. Sure, it bears the marks of its era - the acting is often a bit stagey, the effects are dramatic but not exactly convincing, etc. - but overall it is a great piece of craftsmanship.

Its also obvious that a lot of money went into it - not just from the effects and giant, fascinating sets, but also the direction and camerawork. It was all shot on film, not on tape, with heaps of location shooting. There are little touches that surprised me - a shot that started looking at the kids on the beach, that then turned right around to follow them as they left the beach and finally craned high above their heads to track them as they went into a nearby house. For a shot that doesn't have any particular significance, that's a lot of trouble to go to - and its indicative of the care that went into the whole production.

The DVD has no extras, which is a real shame. Still, I'm just pleased its available. The picture quality is okay, nothing special but not poor - for some reason the clips on the TV ad are much fuzzier than the actual release. The episodes even have the cuts to and from commercial breaks left in, apparently there aren't any clean copies of the episodes left in the archives! Its also a Region 0 release, which as all right-thinking people know, is the best region to be - it plays anywhere in the world.

Cal and I invested in Under the Mountain for the nostalgia value, but it deserves far more respect than that. It's a genuine classic, in fact I'd go so far as to call it a triumph. I'm as surprised as anyone to be saying this, but here goes: my highest recommendation.

On My Knees

Last few blog entries, and this one, composed in a few minutes and hastily posted. This is, safe to say, not my blogging golden age. Thank heaven for the friday linky that keeps you all coming back, I suppose...

Doco season chez morgue + cal has continued. Watched Rats in the Ranks a few weeks back, splendid nailbiter about a local body election in Oz. And Jesus Camp the other night, great wee film, Cal and I talked most of the way through it which is usually the sign of a good doco for us. Much I could blog about it but I won't just now. Anyone out there seen either of these gems?

Sad that George Carlin died.

I am currently in the habit of kneeling, instead of sitting, while working at my computer desk.
(It occurs to me that I studied for exams in high school standing up.)
Make of this what you will.

After Democracy

Saw Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School's second-year production of one-act plays by Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill, which they group-titled ''After Democracy".

It's a good series of pieces all with political subjects (per the title). Pinter's Mountain Language opens, which demonstrates military torment of an occupied people; and Pinter's Party Time, in which the glamourous elite smarm while trouble brews in the streets, finishes.

Between is Churchill's oddly-formed Far Away, which itself has three parts (so loosely tied it took some googling after the fact to work out the same characters were in each part). The third of these took me out of the show completely; it pushes too far into absurdity with tales of animals and professions choosing sides in a complex global war, and came off much like an unused and typically overlong season five Monty Python sketch. It was made up for by the second part with the hatmakers, which is probably the piece I'm going to remember for the rest of my life - excellent stuff.

Nevertheless, the whole piece was a fun and intriguing time, making good use of space and a large cast. It's definitely worth a look if you're up Newtown way. On until Weds at 8pm.

Remake Fail

They've only released a teaser poster and they've already got it fatally wrong.

Paul Verhoeven's Robocop was a lot of things. Violent, smart, satirical, more than a little emo. One thing it absolutely was not, was a movie where Robocop smirked like a self-satisfied Val Kilmer.

Stan Winston (1946-2008)

A moment of silence for the passing of one of the all-time great in-camera effects geniuses, Stan Winston, who with his studio populated my youthful imagination with a series of incredible creations. The alien queen, the predator monster, and the terminator robot - the stars of the big three 80s tech noir films - were all from Winston. His distinctive style also distinguished huge hits like Edward Scissorhands, Jurassic Park and Baman Returns, as well as lesser-known cult faves like the Monster Squad and his own directorial debut, Pumpkinhead.

(And I just checked wikipedia to see if I missed anything crucial, and turns out I did: Winston designed the Mr Roboto mask for Styx! He had a "special thanks" credit on The Thing, to boot.)

Through his visual imagination and ability to translate that into screen reality, he has been the cause of countless nightmares for those of my generation. (Me included, oh yes.) Nicely done, Stan. You went earlier than anyone would have wished.

Darwin's Nightmare (2004)

Many of the people I mentioned this to responded the same way: "that is one depressing film". So it was.

The key image is the Russian cargo planes that land and depart from an airstrip on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. This leads to an exploration of many problems: the voracious Nile Perch, an introduced species that completely outcompeted the native fish and proved unfishable by traditional methods, forcing industrialisation; the demand for Nile Perch overseas that means all the best parts of the fish are too expensive for the locals to eat; the lack of options for those scrabbling to make a living off the fisheries; the lack of local ownership of anything of substance (the fisheries are run by an immigrant Indian/Pakistani cohort, the planes are owned and flown by Russians, etc.); the orphan street children, manufacturing their own narcotics so they can sleep rough without fear; the unchecked spread of AIDS and HIV; the deliveries of foreign arms to sustain local wars.

The film keeps peeling back layers to reveal connections between its problems it depicts, until you are left with a picture of a system that has found temporary stability as it devours its own foundations. Because it is stable, it resists change fiercely; because it is a large and complex system, each individual actor seems powerless to move things in a different direction. And that, I suspect, is why it comes across as depressing - there doesn't seem to be a way to unpick the terrible knot in place. And implicit in it, although never onscreen, is us - the Western consumer, with our demand for products for our markets, the effects of which set the base conditions that lets everything else unfold as it does. We are profoundly implicated although the film doesn't come close to pointing the finger - it doesn't need to.

Anyway. Wikipedia reveals a controversy over the film - unsurprisingly, the Tanzanian government have spoken out against the film. More curiously, a French writer has attacked the film, calling it a colonial exercise, and feuding with the producer - all the relevant links are to articles in French that are beyond my limited grasp of the language. Francophones are invited to follow the resource links at the bottom of that page and report on the substance of this controversy...

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Mike Leigh's new one (after Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, both wonderful and memorable character pieces) is about Poppy, a relentlessly cheerful woman who learns to drive. And that's about it. It's marvellous.

There's a lot of ground covered in H-G-L, but I'm most interested in how the film explores learning. The theme of how our social interactions shape us. Using the device of formal education of different sorts, it highlights the hidden lessons that exist all around us and that shape us from early childhood onwards.

This is obliquely explored through different kinds of talk. Poppy's responses to life are fascinating for their incoherence - she contradicts herself repeatedly, and it's clear that what she says isn't representative of any inner set of beliefs, but is entirely strategic to build positive relationships. Her counterpoint, Scott the driving instructor, is similar in how what he says doesn't relay any deeper truth - but in his case, it's because his talk is founded in self-deception.

There's a scene in the middle that has not been well-received in reviews, a lengthy sequence where Poppy interacts with a derelict. I loved that sequence, for its sustained tension and its avoidance of clear meaning, and for showing how Poppy's talk works even when all obvious meaning is stripped away. It's a brave scene, that exasperates the viewer as much as it should enchant and unnerve - and it's at the midpoint of the film for a good reason.

See it sometime. No big-screen needed, at all; wait for DVD with impunity. But if you want a change of pace after some big-budget popcorn flicks, this is worth checking out.

Celebrating 'The Wire'

Despite me being wall-to-wall busy, Cal and I found time this weekend to finish watching the fifth and final season of 'The Wire'. Fantastic, urgent, essential television. The flaws in the last season - it had plenty - faded as it built to a pleasing and unexpectedly tight conclusion.

In celebration, then, here are a bunch of links about the greatest TV show of the decade:

Seven minutes of Wire creator David Simon talking about why he loves Baltimore (with cameos from some Wire cast members) (no spoilers)

David Simon on The Wire, talking right at the beginning of season one in 2002

The Guardian interviews Snoop Pearson about how she went from prison to acting (no real spoilers)

Salon on 'everything you need to know about The WIre' (no spoilers in the excellent overview in page one, then it describes seasons one and two in detail)

The Atlantic interviews David Simon at the start of season five

Simon writes in the WaPo (which, by the way, gets a hammering in season 5) about his experience of journalism

Simon's letter to viewers at the end of the series (no spoilers, actually)

On Wednesday, briefly

Wednesday gave me much to post about but I didn't post about it because Thursday was a dog of a day, by which I mean, it was very busy, in the way that dogs are busy, with their sniffy noses and waggedy tails and the bounding.

Briefly then:

I went to Drinking Liberally - the debut get-together of liberal-type people to drink and chat and network and so on. I found it to be full of potential, even if most people there were clearly devoid of the right social script to go to. Anyway, mundens has the overview, go check his account for more. Fortnightly on Thursdays from now on, worth a look if you're that way inclined.

And I went to the 48 Hr Film Fest heat to see the premiere of our Jenni's Angels film, Borkhard Hates You Too. It was fun. And VISUALLY AWESOME. Again, mundens has the scoop.

And I did other stuff that was busy but not blog-interesting, so I'll spare you.

The Munchy Worlds Hypothesis

The Many Worlds Hypothesis is a solution to a puzzle of quantum physics. Basically, quantum physics produces an impossible result, that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, and the many worlds hypothesis resolves this impossibility by saying both outcomes are true in different worlds. In this universe that we experience, the cat lives; in another universe branching off from this one, the cat has been deaded. (For a detailed discussion, see here.)

Inspired by this hypothesis, I would like to propose my own. It has been seen that television has produced an impossible result: John Munch is in both this show and that show at the same time. The Munchy Worlds hypothesis resolves this by saying John Munch is on both shows, which are in different worlds.

To elaborate: in every fictional world, there is a separate and distinct John Munch. Each world has its own fictional detective John Munch. Sometimes the universe's Munch comes on screen (e.g. Homicide: Life on the Street, Law and Order, The X-Files). Sometimes, there are no overt signs of that universe's Munch. Even so, it is reasonable to believe that he is out there somewhere, whinging about his ex-wives and making with the gallows quips. If we stayed long enough in the world of Grey's Anatomy, Bones, How I Married Your Mother - he would eventually lurch into frame.

Inevitable corrolary: when you create a fictional world, somewhere in the vast and ineffable depths of that creation, there's a pockmarked Richard Belzer glaring at you through his specs. Sleep on that, creatives of the world. We must all make our peace with the Munchyness of our Worlds.

Robert Downey Jr.

Just a quick one here. Cal and I made it along to see the new movie Robert Downey Jr. the other day. It features Robert Downey Jr. playing Robert Downey Jr., and he gives an excellent portrayal - not only is he faithful to the source material, but he makes the character of Robert Downey Jr. far more charismatic and charming than you'd believe was possible. You just can't take your eyes off him.

Also features Gwyneth Paltrow playing A Girl, and she does it well.

I really did enjoy this film. It's far from flawless - the gender and geo politics are both a bit askew (but then, that's in line with the source material), and the final fight between Robert Downey Jr. and Bald Jeff Bridges was lacking something or other - but what the hell. Robert Downey Jr.! Whatcha gonna do!

Anyway, word on the street is that Robert Downey Jr. makes a cameo appearance as Robert Downey Jr. in the upcoming film, Not By Ang Lee. Yet another reason to go see that one!

The Lost Sport

An oddity I stumbled upon yesterday - forgive me if you've heard this one... The Beijing Olympics, with sponsorship from McDonalds, are running an Alternate Reality Game right now. (No big surprise - as James Wallis has noted, "ARGs have become a standard part of a marketing strategy".)

'The Lost Ring' ARG has complicated backstory up the wazoo, as is always the case with these things. The bit that fascinates me is this: they're trying to create a new sport. (Okay, I'm also fascinated by the commitment to different languages on display - game content seems to be divided among about a dozen different languages, including Esperanto.)

The new sport is "labyrinth running". Check the details here. It's a timed race where a blindfolded runner begins at the centre of a labyrinth and escapes as quickly as possible; teammates form the wall and hum to help the blinded person's orientation.

As part of the ARG, groups have sprung up playing this old/new game all over. There's a bunch of neat videos at the blog of Jane McGonigal (clever ARG designer-person who is presumably a key player behind the scene). The local Wellington crew are going hardout, Jane gives them props and you can see more of their videos and chat on their own site.

The Wellington crowd communicate the appeal nicely: "Basically, Labyrinth Training is a really fun team "sport" we've been playing outdoors with a good sense of humour, tea, coffee and biscuits." (From this page of photos and description.) "Yes, we really gather to play labyrinth running, and yes, we'd love you to join us. No, we don't take it po-faced seriously. Yes, we are aware we look silly." (From the NZ site's FAQ.)

It's really interesting how this game has been designed - it seems decidedly unGrecian to me, but very in tune with the goals of the ARG which seem to be to build community and cross-cultural understanding. Games historians (or those like me whose parents owned a copy of the book) will immediately click to the comparable ethos of the New Games Movement. The New Games came out of hippie-era San Francisco alternate politics, changing away from zero-sum equations and working productively towards new community-affirming fun. This goes in the same direction, and while there's a competitive element, it's much more a communal, team-based, participatory and mutually reinforcing process. (With tea and biscuits, apparently.) The design of the new game is utterly ingenious - I wonder how long it took to come up with? It involves group trust, it can and should be played without language and thus cross-culturally, it invokes ancient forms and symbols, it's cognitively demanding, it's physical but not so physical that the participation bar is high... an impressively long list of attributes that serve the greater message.

I'm fascinated to see this ARG at work. I'm not sure if its profile is high or low in ARG terms, and I'm bemused by how the ARG's aficionados are negotiating the tricky politics of a Beijing Olympiad. But the wider politics of the ARG are very much in tune with mine - games as a medium for communitas? That sounds like a big part of what I value in RPGs, and I'm sure the Creature Collective Ultimate players will also find that resonates. I'm curious about this ARG, and will keep an eye on things as they develop. If you guys come across any labyrinth running, give me a shout...

(also: go the Wellington Labyrinth runners!)

Shihad, Flesh D-Vice and a Postcard

*** EDITED - SEE END OF ENTRY

So I've been listening the heck out of Shihad's new album, Beautiful Machine. (You can listen to much of it over on their MySpace page.) It's good, and occasionally great, and I think over time will settle comfortably into "second best" in their album catalogue, right after the unbeatable Killjoy.

The 'had are a funny wee band. A Welly high school metal covers band that grabbed its own sound and then never stopped evolving. Going through their catalogue and every single album debuted a new sound for them. They've never hit the big big time, but they make a living from their music and they're pretty much entrenched as NZ's favourite band. Their reputation as a live act is deservedly big. There's apparently a band biography on the way that I'm really keen to read - squaring the circle on their many contradictions will make for some fascinating content.

So, nice album. But that isn't what this post is about.

---

When they started out, Shihad were managed by Gerald Dwyer, himself of seminal Kiwi hard rock band Flesh D-Vice. (Is that even the right label for Flesh D-Vice's music?) This new album reminded me of a Flesh-D-Vice oddity I've had sitting in my drawer for a while now.

In '06 I picked up the hardback 'The List of Seven' for a couple bucks at a book sale. This is a fun riff on Sherlock Holmes and pulp action by Mark Frost, co-creator of Twin Peaks. When I went to read it, a postcard fell out of the pages.

On closer inspection, it turned out it wasn't a commercial postcard - it was a photo that had been used as a postcard. The photo showed a wee girl wearing a hand-knitted Flesh D-Vice jersey. The postcard on the back had a Wellington 1990 postdate on it, sent by "Jennie & Ian" to "Sue and Gerald" in London. The writing mentions getting back from a Faith No More gig and that "Shihad played really well".

(Shihad's 1990 support for Faith No More was one of their earliest big moments.)

As I looked at this card, eventually the penny dropped - this was likely a postcard being sent to Gerald Dwyer. Why else the Shihad mention + Flesh D-Vice knit? (I tried to check out some facts - was Gerald in London at the time of Shihad's big gig? Was Sue his partner? No luck.)

Further realisation - the book it was in as a bookmark is a '93 release, so at the time it was being used as a bookmark it was already three years old. The photo was a keepsake for someone, and should properly be returned. But to who? I didn't have the first idea where to look. Dwyer himself died over a decade ago. I traded a few emails with Karl from Shihad, but he couldn't figure it.

So I now hand over to the internet. Maybe someone will Google Flesh D-Vice or "Gerald Dwyer" and find this post. Maybe a reader will know someone who knows someone - everyone knows everyone in NZ. I've got this photo/postcard that someone might care about, and it's easy enough for me to pop it in an envelope.

Here's the card (click for big version):

EDIT: The postcard has been returned to its rightful owner!

Doctorow's Little Brother

Since we were talking about Cory Doctorow the other day, I want to plug the man's new book.

Important bit first: it's free. You can download it in a variety of formats, including html and pdf, here. Doctorow practices what he preaches around this stuff.

What is it? It's youth fiction with tech smarts, street savvy and one hell of a political kick, as you would expect from a conscious followup to Orwell's 1984. Check out the blurb:

Marcus, a.k.a "w1n5t0n," is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Go download it. Then read it. I've done the first, plan on getting to the second real soon now.

(But I've got the busy. Blog may fall silent for a day or two.)

Where do you get your music?

I don't get it by paying for it, nosirree. (Largely because I don't have any money.)

I get my music now from teh bloggery*.

Pearce does a regular Friday music slot, providing mp3s of stuff as it takes his fancy.

Gareth Michael Skarka has been doing his Friday music series for years now, and there's usually one or two tracks I'll pull down from him each week.

Warren Ellis does his The 4AM podcast specifically to bring the new music to the huddled and adoring body-modified masses.

And just now Mike has launched a weekly MP3 feature.

The music is in abundance. The old ways are already dead, even if they don't quite know it.

* Also from the partners of my two sisters, who regularly send odd mix CDs my way, but they aren't webpages so I can't share the bounty I'm afraid...

'The Beach' (Danny Boyle, 2000)

I watched The Beach on DVD a few days ago. I wasn't expecting much. I enjoyed the throwaway pleasures of Alex Garland's novel, but had steered clear of the film - I didn't think the unmarked Leo DiCaprio was a good pick for limit-pushing backpacker RIchard; Danny Boyle's 'A Life Less Ordinary' was unrelentingly terrible; and the bitterly ironic story that a genuine natural paradise had been wrecked by the production turned me off.

Turns out it's quite good. The expected nadir, where DiCaprio gurns and cavorts as a live-action Super Mario character while hallucinating the video game around him, is just as ridiculous as I'd been warned, but I wasn't ready for it to recover from this and deliver a climax that I actually found more genuine and more powerful than the one in the novel.

DiCaprio doesn't convince as the world-weary backpacker, either, and he plays Richard as a bit of a goofus at all the wrong moments so its hard to see why all the ladies swoon over him, but in general his undoubted charisma carries him through.

The film and novel both dig around in fertile ground, the line between 'authentic traveller and exploitative tourist. Relatively unexplored in fiction, but urgently at stake in every backpacker hostel you find on the road, where travellers play sincerely-meant status games establishing who is more authentic than who. The truth, of course, is that the traveller culture we have today inevitably changes everything it observes, just as it did when Dr Livingstone went on his journey, only faster and more profoundly. There is a profound moral dilemma in travel at this time on earth, and The Beach is a grotesque exploration of the consequences of ducking out of this dilemma; and the film version is worth a look if any of this resonates with you at all.

The Wire

As a white person, of course I like The Wire, the Baltimore-set depiction of a city struggling against the drug trade and its own systemic inertia.

The show's title is a reference to the phone taps that the police unit use to crack cases. It's also, more importantly, a reference to the ethos of the show. The Wire is itself a wiretap, letting us listen in to the conversations that happen behind closed doors, so we can see for ourselves how the business of managing power creates our society.

Also it's compulsive, thrilling, and often hilarious. Add it to your Netflix queue or whatever.

(Props to my brother for steering me to the Wire. Thanks Nature.)
(Please no spoilers in the comments.)

North Island in January

Malc has put up some amazing photos from our trip through the North Island in Jan.

A taster from my morgueatlarge email:

We set off Jan 11, stopping at the Army Museum in Waiouru before circling Mt Ruapehu and setting up camp in its shadow. It was a rare clear day, offering unfettered views of Ruapehu and its companion mountain, Tongariro. Next day we pushed up to Whangamata in the Coromandel Peninsula, east of Auckland. Had a lovely swim at the beach there, a wonderful golden-sand curve. Didn't see any sharks...

Read the rest if you so desire, but the real joy is those photos.

"We have to change the way we live"

Finished off my Writers/Readers week presence Friday night, seeing former World Bank head Joseph Stiglitz at the Michael Fowler Centre. Mostly the same old crowd - anti-globalization hippy types were thin on the ground, although Ed of Ed's Juice Bar fame was a few rows in front of us.

After a painfully overlong introduction by the moderator (he actually got heckled by this most genteel crowd for taking too long), Stiglitz got into it. He was great to listen to, avuncular and friendly with a sharp turn of phrase, and while he's obviously aware he just needs to drop a dig at BushCheney to get a crowd applauding he didn't go to that well too often.

Mostly it was standard stuff from him - the IMF and World Bank and G8 are part of the problem, not the solution, because they are dogmatically applying economic models that do not work on the ground and make life worse for people rather than better. Good to hear him say it but nothing eye-opening. He talked a bit about the New Zealand context, and how our economy is so small that we're stuck in globalisation now - even if we wanted to control our trade borders to the extent China and the US do, we couldn't, because our economy would fall over.

In question time, audience questions quickly got on to the subject of the environment and climate change and didn't look back. Stiglitz didn't go into heavy detail, just wasn't enough time for it, but generally weighed in behind full-cost accounting where atmosphere and water (etc.) are codified into the economic system so there's some representative cost when they are despoiled. He made a point of saying that he believes we're going to have to change the way we live, sooner rather than later, and that preparedness means ceding power and resources to the developing nations - somethng the developed nations are reluctant to do.

It was a great session but far too short. We could have sustained another hour, easily. Oh well.

So that was that. Thanks to the parentals for the gift of my WritersReaders week experience, and respect to my brother for going to all three with me.

"Most importantly, I'm a comic strip artist"

Garry Trudeau was Thursday night. My expectations of the Doonesbury creator were dashed - his reputation as reclusive and publicity-shy did not match up to the slightest bit of reticence or awkwardness, indeed he was incredibly comfortable before the audience and downright effusive. Sean Plunket would ask a question and he'd skid off on long, winding replies full of well-practised gags and insight. He had well-worn anecdotes for everything that was thrown at him, but there's no cause to resent that - the guy's a legend and just seeing him was neat.

Still, not much of note to report. Much more fun to be there listening than to read about it afterwards, I expect.

I was pleased by his opening words, where he said yes, he was a satirist and social commentator and even soap opera writer, but most importantly he was a comic strip artist.
Was even more pleased that almost the first question from the staid, politics-minded 50-something crowd (one always gets such a crowd at Writers and Readers week) called back to this, by asking him what other comic strips he enjoyed. No surprises in his response (Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side and currently Dilbert) but it was nice to hear. Classic newspaper strips are enjoying a surge in legitimacy with lots of well-assembled archival collections on release, such as the Complete Peanuts and Complete Popeye; I would have liked to hear more on that, but to be honest I'm a politics-minded dude like everyone else in the crowd so I was delighted with what we got.

For more on Trudeau, Grant enthuses here.

"A Failure of Empathy"

Writers/Readers Week @ Festival of the Arts: New York Stories

Three authors spoke about their novels, each responses to the events of 9/11. Of the three, I'd only heard of Mohsin Hamid, whose recent book The Reluctant Fundamentalist has caught my attention if not my reading commitment. He proved to be the most compelling guest, despite being present only by voice linkup from London.

Hamid spoke about 9/11's cause and consequence as "a catastrophic failure of empathy", on the part of the Muslims celebrating when the towers fell (who were, like the character in his novel excerpt, "caught up in the symbolism of it all" and at a remove from the human cost); on the part of those in the US and UK who turned to war.

Empathy also in his answer to Terry Eagleton's recent broadside at Martin Amis et al, ("I have no idea why we should listen to novelists on these matters any more than we should listen to window cleaners.")

Hamid suggested that what novelists bring that others don't is empathy. Through story and characterisation, good writing can deliver empathy. And empathy is crucial.

Eastenders vs. Saint of Killers

"Last Friday's episode of "EastEnders," the popular British soap, took a slight detour, as one of the characters spent three minutes extolling the virtues of the "Preacher" comics."
(Rich Johnston)

"Then on Thursday Stephen ("I was a womb-shooting nutcase last year but I'm all better now.") spends one whole minute discussing the popular but unpleasant comic Preacher with Stacy. The way he described it was clear that is was written by someone who's read most of the Preacher story-arch." (LJ of "Skitster")

About Preacher.

Heh.

Fun With Amazon.Com

Sometimes the comments on Amazon are brutally hilarious, as in the comments on a Playmobil Security Check Point.

And sometimes they become something entirely impossible to describe, such as these comments, essays, poems, and analyses for Tuscan Whole Milk (1 gallon).

Wild Things Filmed

Cool. A visually stunning clip from Where the Wild Things Are. This adaptation of the greatest ever children's book is by Dave Eggers.

Oscar Predictions 2008

I just don't care this year, actually.

But for form's sake: Coens, No Country, Day-Lewis, Christie, Wilkinson, Dee, Transformers for the techie awards, Atonement for the style awards, writing to Juno and No Country, doco to anyone but Moore, etc etc.

Please let Once get best song.

Smoke Him A Duck Cigar

Steve Gerber 1947-2008

Announcement on Gerber's Blog

Fruitman in the Middle East

Of the many crimes committed against the state of Israel by their Islamic neighbours, perhaps the least-well remembered are the Orange Raids of 1970.

Thankfully, with the declassification of certain secret files that are now available on the internet, you can finally learn the truth.

Superbowl

Man, I only watched the second half of the Superbowl this year, but it was probably the most exciting bit of sports-spectating I've enjoyed since the Tall Blacks came 4th at the '02 basketball worlds. If I'd been a partisan of either team it would probably have topped that experience. What an incredible game it was.

I think I first watched the Superbowl in '91? Or '92? Can't remember for sure. Somewhere in that early-90s run when Buffalo lost four Superbowls in a row. It's always been a fun diversion, particularly with some buddies who are really into it, but today was just a hell of a good contest between two great teams.

Awesome.

See also disappointed Jarratt.

Big Day Out: The Screen

All through the day, the main stages were accompanied by a giant screen showing closeups of the band on stage. Above the screen was one of those scrolling text banners. People in the crowd could text messages to the screen and they'd show up on the banner.

Some of this was predictable: teenage girls saying "Liam is sexy lolz" and random maroons saying "Raaaaaaaage" and so on. What took me by surprise was the full-on uprising of the geeks. Serious geek chatter dominated the banner. There were countless references to Chuck Norris, to WoW, to LOLCats, to NomNomNom, etc. Above all else, there was Trogdor the Burninator. Trogdor's name appeared on the banner literally hundreds of times throughout the day.

My question, then: was this geek hijack of the text banner (at a huge rock gig) unusual? Or am I just so old and crusty that I don't realise this is what such banners are like everywhere?

Cloverfield - How I Would Have Done It

Saw Cloverfield last week, on its first day of release. Waited to post this until a bunch of other people have seen it too. I enjoyed it a lot, but I had lots of issues with it too. There's actually another post in me on the subject, if I get around to it.

This post, though, is full of spoilers. Don't read if you haven't seen (unless you don't care).

This is how I would have done Cloverfield.

CLOVERFIELD - How I would have done it

First thing, about halfway through, you explicitly address why Hud is still filming everything. By this time, his “people are going to want to see this” rationale just doesn’t work any more. So you have a scene where Rob and Lily try and talk him into ditching it. It’s a hindrance, it’s a distraction and it’s annoying them. He keeps saying, No, I’m documenting. Then Rob reaches out and tries to take the camera from Hud, and Hud just FLIPS OUT. The camera tumbles and we see Hud totally beating on Rob, shouting at him, as Lily pulls him off. Then Hud, breathing heavily, take up the camera again and settles in behind the lens. The camera stares at Hud’s feet for a while. No-one talks about this again, and Hud’s goofball demeanour takes on extra resonance because it’s obvious just how close to the edge he is and that he's using the tenuous distance the camera gives him to help keep it together.

Second thing, I’d play the parasite things very differently. Hud mentions that the one that got him was trying to drag him away. I’d play that up - they’re not trying to bite people so they pop, they’re trying to *collect* them for something. I’d make the parasites less aggressive and more weird and sinister. So one parasite gets wounded when they attack in the subway, but it gets away...

Third thing, I’d run the ending completely differently. (After all Miracle Mile already did it, way better, twenty years ago. Cloverfield is just a big remake of Miracle Mile, you see.) When the copters come in, everyone climbs aboard and they’re getting away and it’s the ending of Rob and Beth’s story because he rescued her and they love each other. Then - instead of the big monster improbably coming to smash them - that parasite from before turns up. Because, it jumped on the outside of the helicopter! And Hud realises it still wants to get him - to take him away. Him, personally, like it has his scent or something.

So he lets the parasite take him. It has wings or something, I dunno, but it grabs him and takes him away from the helicopter back toward Manhattan and the destructive monster. And he’s still filming. You see Beth and Rob receding into the distance in the escaping copter, and you see Hud’s view of the huge monster rampaging, and then Hud ends up in Central Park. And all the parasite creatures are there, and they’re... changing everything. It’s hard to even understand what we’re seeing. And the parasites are fascinated by the camera. They take it from Hud, and turn it on him, and we see Hud surrounded by many of the creatures as the great monster looms overhead - and Hud talks to the camera, something about Rob and Beth - how he's glad they got out of there alive.

And then something weird and scary happens on screen and we don't know what it is because it isn't clear, and maybe Hud lives and maybe he doesn’t, but the footage cuts away to that final Coney Island shot. End film. It turns out that it wasn’t actually Rob and Beth’s movie. The movie was really about Hud, and about his growth, about how he faces his fears and rises above them.

Yeah, that’s how I’d do it.

Also, because it’s completely implausible how everywhere they went they ran into a big monster - well, have a reveal at the end that there’s, like, five big monsters. Why the hell not?

Also also, in the final frames of the movie you see in the background something splashing down to earth. The movie’s surrounding media claim that this is a falling satellite that does something or other and what the hey? No way, man, that falling object is the monster arriving on earth. The movie has to stand on its own two feet, and nothing else makes sense from the movie point of view. Satellite? Pah. That's gotta be the monster, or the movie is lessened.

Seen: Whare Ra

Over Christmas I was up in Hawkes Bay with Cal and her family. This visit I made sure to organise a visit to Whare Ra, the house-temple of the Golden Dawn offshoot that settled in Havelock North a century back. I wrote at length about it here, an entry that gets a lot of google traffic (perhaps unsurprisingly).

We didn't get to go in, but I took a look from the outside. The house itself is recessed from the street so I had to creep up the driveway and peer over the ridge to see it. It is instantly recognisable as an interesting old house; most buildings in the neighbourhood (heck, in the *country*) are 70s/80s creations but this one looked like a handsome stone cottage of a type rarely seen in NZ. A brass plate on the house frontage bore a simple mark that I wish I'd copied down; it looked like a meaningful symbol rather than a decorative design.

In any case, it was neat to see the building. Apparently it is opened up for public view each year as part of the garden tour, when you can visit gardens throughout Havelock North. I might be curious enough to take advantage of that opportunity some day.

The curious might like to examine these scanned images of a Whare Ra pentagram ritual document. Found via google. Fascinating.

Humble Mountain Man - Trillion

Heh. A nice wee ditty about Sir Edmund Hillary by the good-hearted Trillion hipsters. You'd never believe a track with the chorus "You may be gone but you live on in my wallet" could be so respectful.

BDO: Rage Against The Machine

At the Big Day Out in Auckland, Rage Against The Machine played their first gig outside the USA since they re-formed. (At least that's what the publicity said.) They were a big drawcard for me - in fact, I haven't been to a Big Day Out since the last time they came, back in 1996. My hopes were fulfilled, for they delivered a very tight set, absolutely in sync and looking like they've been waiting for this moment for the last decade. The enormous crowd became a seething mess of bodies, roaring out the words to their anthems. And Zach de la Rocha sang that line: "so we move into '92, still in a room without a view", stubborn as ever about the year he mentions. Heck, by the time he recorded the line for the debut album it was already late '92; it was anachronistic even then. Now it's sixteen years out of date, older than a lot of people who were dancing around me.

And it got me thinking. It was a pitch-perfect early-90s Rage performance here in January 2008. They'd been split up for nearly a decade and yet they had masses of young fans. What was going on?

RATM's first studio album (released, according to Wikipedia, in November 1992) turned up in New Zealand in early '93. I remember reading the review in the Listener, and thinking it sounded exciting. My friend Brad had read the same article, and after we talked about it enthusiastically, he went out and bought it. It became the soundtrack of our final year in high school.

I remember RATM cancelled a Wellington concert shortly before the Big Day Out in 1996. I'd had a ticket, and was disappointed, but they looked after me - full refund, and adding me to their freebie mailing list, so for the next few years nifty little vinyl releases would drop through my letterbox when least expected. At the BDO itself, I was impressed that their t-shirts cost less than half the price of every other band t-shirt; the one I bought stood the test of time and in fact I'm wearing it as I type. Overall, Rage seemed like a band that actually gave a damn on some level.

Round about the same time, Chris Knox (among other indie worthies) was going off on one about how Rage professed to be "Against the Machine" while being signed to a major label. I always found their counter-claim convincing enough: they retained creative control, so if they could use that distribution chain to get their message out there, it was worth generating profits for "the man".

And so it continued. Two more albums followed the first, and I still like them both. If truth be known, all three are really the same album, just split up into parts. Rage didn't develop their sound - they just kept doing the same thing over and over. The incredible trick was that they kept doing it extremely well, finding new musical variations on their established theme while they explored all aspects of their obsession with systemic injustice. (They also enjoyed playing covers, eventually releasing a fairly good covers album.)

So come to BDO 2008. We're down in the crowd, and it's getting packed in. The Rage crowd is pretty much the Shihad crowd, so everyone was sitting tight after that and waiting. There's a lot of young faces, lots of teenagers, and the crowd is almost entirely male. Bjork comes on the other stage. She is, to put it mildly, not well received. Impolite comments here and there eventually erupt into full-scale booing and shouting by the masses, who only want Rage to come on. (Me, Malc and a few others made a point of clapping visibly at the end of her songs, just to stand against the tide.) This troubled me. Not for the first time I wondered if anyone around me actually paid attention to what Rage was about. Or was it just the thrill of shouting the F-word over and over again that made the band so popular?

When the group finally came on, there was a frenzy. Everyone was dancing. Almost everyone was singing, and not just the ferocious swear-anthem Killing in the Name, but all the other ones too, with all their dense political imagery and rhetoric.

De la Rocha was mesmerising. He's become an even better frontman over the years, somehow making the lyrics to these roaring tracks incredibly clear and easy-to-follow, like he's sitting in the room with you explaining how the world works as he sees it. Some of the time he just gazed out at the crowd as we sang the words for him. Mostly he leaped around the place; as I remarked to Malc, you can tell that Zach is getting old now because instead of jumping up and down 100% of the time he only does it 90% of the time.

When he mentioned Bush - the only time during the night he offered up words that weren't lyrics - the crowd went wild. Everyone in that enormous BDO crowd hated George W. Bush. (Although I'll wager most people would think twice about hanging him.)

So whatever else was going on, the crowds of young people were entirely engaged in the political stuff. Perhaps only in a shallow way, but I don't think there were many people there who wouldn't have at least some appreciation of Rage's political stance and what they fight for. The romance of rebellion, of course, is all the more appealing when it's delivered with power cords and obscenities. But it would be a mistake to think that this is all that was going on.

Then again, they roared their disapproval of Bjork like a bunch of munters.

More than a few commentators have said "Rage's music seems more appropriate now than ever." That makes me itchy, even if it's true. with de la Rocha coming right out and saying that he hopes the Bush administration are put on trial for war crimes and hung. But the Rage tunes that had everyone leaping around were written in the Reagan/Bush-the-first era, but were the soundtrack of resistance in the Clinton era. RATM's anger parallelled the fury of the new progressive movement, which came fully into being at the battle for Seattle in '99. It makes me wonder more generally about the fate of what remains of this movement in the post-Cheney era. Removing the Cheneyites from positions of power in the US will be a huge achievement towards making the world a better place, but at best it will just land us back where we were in the 90s. Still in a room without a view, so to speak. And yet, I can't help feeling the momentum of resistance will plummet when CheneyBush goes.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I think I had a point when I started but I can't find it now. Suffice it to say that I still love Rage. They're so earnest and proud and right and they're good for the world to have.

So instead I'm going to close on another memory. 2002, Portugal, in a shopping mall near Lisbon. There was a fancy and expensive clothes shop. In the window display, alongside the incredibly pricy clothes, were some large reproductions of album covers, including that of RATM's first album. with the famous cover picture of the monk self-immolating to protest Vietnam. This is how the world works, in the end - everything will eventually be used to sell products.

More BDO notes, plus a clearinghouse of sorts for YouTube footage of Rage and others, can be found at the Public Address system.

A First Post

Spooky. It's like walking back in time.