tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30743066414518499012024-03-24T20:10:13.618+13:00 Quinoa Blessed [aka Chris Kirk]Quinoa is a freelance writer, performance artist and vagabond. ~~~
This website contains ten years of his poetry, film reviews, philosophy, short stories and provocations. ~~~
Recordings of his spoken word performances can be found on Soundcloud
~~~ https://soundcloud.com/christ-kirk
~~~ and Youtube
~~~ https://goo.gl/D6ugBQ
~~~
All his work is offered online for free. If you appreciate his work please support him financially https://www.buymeacoffee.com/QuinoaChrisKirk
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.comBlogger196125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-27012004226380273582023-07-28T17:51:00.000+12:002023-07-28T17:51:01.174+12:00Little Richard: I Am Everything <p> I Am Everything is more about the history than the music, not containing a complete song performance. It is committed to correcting the history of rock 'n' roll music and giving Little Richard the credit he deserves for an influence that is ubiquitous in modern popular music. His influence is abundant in rhythm, in vocal styles, in fashion, in stage presence and use of the stage and in uninhibited self expression. It contextualises the musical, cultural and inter-racial workd he emerged in and the impact he had upon it. It also tells the story of his complicated relationship with religion, sexuality and his queerness.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-671907058878371352023-07-27T02:11:00.008+12:002023-07-28T17:10:02.978+12:00Film Festival appetiser: Barbenheimer<p><span style="color: #242424; font-family: Georgia, serif;">We are
very blessed to have the film festival we have here, especially in a
city as small as Wellington. I have attended film festivals in Sydney
and Melbourne where the audience are routinely lined up and herded
like cattle. The Venice Film Festival is held on a campus resembling
a military base. With all those A-list celebrities and red carpets
there is high security, barriers everywhere and the movies are shown
in gigantic buildings resembling aircraft hangars. The New Zealand
International Film Festival remains friendly and personable despite
being comparable in size to festivals in much bigger cities.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: #242424;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
have the benefit in this part of the world of not being important.
This allows for much better programming, thanks to the programming of
Sandra Reid and Michael McDonnell, as well as the ripples of the
legacy of Bill Gosden's expansive and discerning taste. Other film
festivals are burdened with the weight of so many mediocre
“important” films. They want prestige, they want premieres, they
want sponsorship. Most film festivals are largely funded by corporate
and state sponsorship. These are expensive operations and these
festivals have obligations to their sponsors. They will for sure show
the great films, but they'll show a lot of boring stuff that looks
good on paper. The sort of films that win Oscars, or at least want
to. The 2022 London Film Festival I attended was flooded with so many
Netflix films they had their own desk in the lobby. NZIFF is rare as
a film festival that obtains about 90% of its running costs from
ticket sales, and so its obligation is to its audience, as the
programme reflects, curated for cinemagoers of diverse inclination,
but certainly for the pleasure of its audience.</span></span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: #242424;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">An
element I am happy to see has survived from the Gosden years is the
quality of the film notes. Most film festivals have brief
descriptions of the plot or the filmmaker's previous work that
resembles vapid and unconvincing advertising copy. Although certain
phrases, such as "world class", that would not have
survived the integrity and sincerity of Gosden's editorial eye, may
have slipped through, the commitment remains to writing notes that
describe the film in a way that will attract the audience that will
appreciate it. Rather than blandly sell it to whoever is credulous,
there is an attempt to describe the film's form and style as well as
content, its context and its impact in a way that can actually help
you know if it's the right film for you. Because we know that if it's
not, there will surely be others that are.</span></span></span></p><p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;"><span style="color: #242424;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;"><span style="color: #242424;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And it goes a week longer than most other film festivals! And the films play all day at all venues, not just evenings and weekends, catering not just for the unemployed amongst us, but those who take time off for the film festival.</span></span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; padding: 0cm; widows: 2;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Since having attended
cinemas in countries around the world I have rediscovered how great a
place to see a movie Wellington's Embassy Theatre is. The spectacular
and elegant lobby is great, but I prefer the comfortable seats, huge
screen and perfect sight-lines from every one of the 900 seats.
Barbenheimer is my pre-film festival appetiser.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Barbie
is Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach's attempt to make a blockbuster that is
socially responsible; a story for tween girls that will appeal to
everyone; set in a perfect world where things are complex and
confusing; encouraging girls to be anything they want to be, but that
it's okay to be ordinary; a movie about depression and anxiety that
is fun and uppifting; a frothy celebration and a serious critique of
an extremely successful and protected brand, totally approved by
them. They attempt to subvert expectations while totally satisfying
them and they pretty much succeed at all of this, which makes the
film feel a bit too thinly spread. But they made a lot of money.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nolan's directorial style
remains as oppressive as usual. He attempts to beat his audience over
the head with subtly for as long as he can get away with, in this
case three hours.</span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<br />
</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-39235194856965248232023-03-04T15:35:00.000+13:002023-03-04T15:35:09.057+13:00Punch (2022) Welby Ings, New Zealand -98m-<p>A young boxer in small
town New Zealand trains hard under pressure from his alcoholic father
and meets an unassimilated gay man living in a shack on the beach.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Tim Roth has top
billing as an exhausted alcoholic with no energy left for anything in
life apart from his son's boxing training, but his character
definitely takes a backseat to the two distinctive and empathetic
young men, played by Jordan Oosterhof and Conan Hayes. Oosterhof
plays Jim, a boxer with a lean, muscular body and sensitive blue
eyes, who passes in this shitty, uptight small town because he's an
athlete and masculine. Hayes plays Whetu, who is a social reject
from the start of the film; gay, out and M<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ā</span>ori,
with no known social connections. He is an artist and a sex worker
and has carved a tiny world for himself in a beautifully decorated
shack in the sand dunes of a big empty black-sand beach past a “no
trespassing” sign.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The two characters are
so vividly drawn and delicately performed that their coming together
is real and meaningful, because we know why they reach for each other
in such a place. Away from the highly constrictive social
expectations of the town they have a little paradise in Whetu's
shack, decorated with many odd artefacts found and created by him.
It is through each of them seeking solitude in the wilderness of the
beach that they meet, and it is here that they are able to spend
time, nurture each other and find love.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The small town of P<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ī</span>rau
and the other characters that inhabit it are merely mise-en-scene for
their relationship and the transformation it allows in each of them.
It successfully colours in the background that contextualises their
internal and external limitations and their expanding identities. A
small town with no opportunities, a culture and people who are
determined to aggressively limit each other. They are two young men
who have allowed themselves to enjoy rich inner worlds, who have not
been deadened by small town life and of course will inevitably
escape.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Their first encounter
is when Jim, passing with his straight mates, drive past Whetu and
call out “faggot”. Whetu is already known as an outsider, but at
that moment Jim is curious enough to turn around for another look.
Their first meeting is on the beach. Jim often goes out there to
train and this time, believing he is alone, he gets naked and runs
through the dunes and the surf. Whetu is hanging out with his little
dog and Jim is embarrassed and instinctively defensive. They tell
each other to fuck off and Whetu shouts, “This is M<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ā</span>ori
land!” This remote empty beach is clearly a sanctuary of safety
and self-expression for each of them, and they have invaded each
other's space. Their next meeting, Whetu is weaving flax in the
dunes when Jim gets stung by a jellyfish and screams for help. Whetu
takes him to his little shack hidden in the dunes on a stream bed,
pulls out the tentacles and rinses his stings with vinegar. Jim is
very impressed with the tranquillity of the place and the care put
into each of the strange objects that decorate it. To Whetu's
surprise, Jim returns the next day and they discover a place of
mutual sanctuary where they can connect away from the expectations
and derision of the town.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This is the first
feature film from Welby Ings, who has made various shorts. The two
characters here are clearly enriched by the protagonists in his short
films <i><a href="http://sparrowfilm.nz/" target="_blank">Sparrow</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://sparrowfilm.nz/" target="_blank"> (2016)</a> and </span><i><a href="https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-2004" target="_blank">Boy</a></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-2004" target="_blank">
(2004)</a>. </span><i>Sparrow</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is
about a sensitive and isolated boy, who wants to fly and never takes
off his home-made wings, coming to terms with the macho images he's
expected to live up to. Jim tells Whetu about how when he was a
child he used to come to the dunes with his wings and try to fly. We
briefly observe a spiritual trace of them discarded in the sand as
Jim rediscovers his open-heartedness with Whetu. The protagonist of
</span><i>Boy</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is an isolated
teenager who is scorned by the town, a sex worker who picks up men in
the public toilet and who has a sanctuary in an abandoned warehouse
where he creates strange and beautiful doll sculptures. Whetu is a
sex worker who makes no effort to fit into the roles this
small-minded town finds acceptable and who instead creates a solo
world for himself with strange, beautiful sculptures. Having seen
these shorts, both of which can be streamed for free, the lives of
these characters are real outside of the events and timeline of the
present film. Though they encounter each other at this pertinent
moment when they're both ready for change, they have pasts that can
only be hinted at, inner worlds that they can only attempt to express
to each other, and futures outside of P</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ī</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">rau
in which they will create something totally different of themselves.
We get a joyous and moving glimpse of this future at the end.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-style: normal;">These
shorts were also poetic in the sense that they didn't really work on
a narrative level and though they hinted at the beautiful inner
worlds of these strange isolated boys they remained somewhat
unsatisfying. In </span><i>Punch</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
he has created a more conventional narrative film with satisfying
character arcs, but retained the delicate, poetic hinting at rich
inner worlds; Whetu drinking wine from a china teacup; Jim running
naked through the dunes. The narrative takes breaks into moments of
subjectivity, some beautiful imagery and a little too much use of
distorting lenses. The gentle pacing of the protagonists discovering
each other was engaging, though the ending was unfortunately abrupt
and unresolved.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">It
is typical to cast pretty actors to play romantic leads, but here we
find characters who we love because they are beautiful as complete
humans. The love story refreshingly has nothing to do with
perpetuating the romantic myth or attaining the higher state of a
monogamous committed relationship. These two characters, so
coherently woven into the world of this moving film, are merely two
people who take the opportunity to open their hearts to each other
before moving on with their lives.</p><p class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSCcnFwp-BMTa9dirQmRxwkFUE0PUWsOgU4ufrjJt3JjaLZ50QTSN2YihQJHno1AmTqxov6Pm1GgVuP3X5TVKi0Hyp8FHK-kV322_tssH4-CPlNkMLQyFlpt_uGrMQzaPvMp2VBrboQziskUExQs1iPelOQd3G01xIjx9rvDrq64LWNDOOEAfuMLGO0Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1117" data-original-width="1685" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSCcnFwp-BMTa9dirQmRxwkFUE0PUWsOgU4ufrjJt3JjaLZ50QTSN2YihQJHno1AmTqxov6Pm1GgVuP3X5TVKi0Hyp8FHK-kV322_tssH4-CPlNkMLQyFlpt_uGrMQzaPvMp2VBrboQziskUExQs1iPelOQd3G01xIjx9rvDrq64LWNDOOEAfuMLGO0Q" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />
<p></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-27779523576807903152023-02-23T14:31:00.003+13:002023-02-23T14:31:32.423+13:00Mi vacío y yo [2022] Adrián Silvestre, Spain -98m-<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My Emptiness and I</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">A
young trans woman in Barcelona deals with her transition, dating and
daily life.</span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: transparent;">The
film has a straight-forward narrative style to the extent that it
borders on documentary, though every scene burns with an authenticity
that is entirely engaging. It is emotionally intense and yet
naturalistic, confronting complex existential issues, yet never
melodramatic. Nothing is played for pathos and yet I was entirely
emotionally invested.</span></span></span></p>
<p class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: transparent;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Written
in collaboration with the protagonist, played by </span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Raphaëlle
Pérez, the film depicts the process of her being diagnosed with
gender dysphoria, taking hormones, support group discussions with
other trans people and the general emotion and confusion of
transitioning. The joys and pains of dating and sex with men via an
app are dealt with candidly. Finding authenticity is difficult when
men are likely to have one of various reactions to her transness:
shock, curiosity, fetishisation, uncertainty. She moves through
these struggles neither as a victim nor a warrior, simply as a person
confronting what is necessary in order to create the life she wants
for herself.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-76391380548215406242023-02-18T16:04:00.001+13:002023-02-18T16:04:10.881+13:00Titanic (1997) James Cameron, 25th anniversary 3D re-release<p>Who hasn't seen this
already? The depressed rich girl meets the free-spirited poor boy
and the biggest boat ever built sinks into the middle of the freezing
Atlantic Ocean.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">25 years after I first
saw it at the cinema as an innocent and impressionable 13-year-old at
the start of 1998 the film remains the same, apart from becoming
slightly 3D, and yet I have changed immeasurably. Leonardo DiCaprio
is a lot less convincing as a worldly romantic hero, but he is so
gorgeous and charming that the more bitter and cynical 38-year-old
version of myself can believe that I would have fallen in love with
him anyway, if I was Rose, as did much of the world at the time. I
was so immensely moved and thrilled by the movie as a child that I
wonder whether I too was allured into giving up my domestic banality
and security to live an adventurous and nomadic life, falling in love
with any beautiful, open-hearted man I meet.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The music is
unashamedly manipulative, filling in the cracks that the thin
characters and weak performances leave to make the film as
emotionally moving as it is visually. Apart from Kate Winslet
dragging the film behind her with admirable commitment, many of the
characters are cartoonish and it's amazing that they teeter
miraculously on the right side of laughable. Luckily we only need to
care about the two romantic leads, and they are so sexy and so hot
for each other, and so blank that we can project all our most
outlandish romantic fantasies upon them. This is the sort of toxic,
unattainable romantic fantasy that seeps into the core of
impressionable 13-year-olds like me and stays there for life,
disappointing us with every real relationship that fails to compare.
Maybe I've been lucky enough to have a Leo or two in my life, maybe
I've tortured myself and my lovers in pursuit of fantasy ever since.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">At three and a quarter
hours the pacing is exceptional; the drawing us into the world, the
getting to know the situation, the escalation of conflict and of
course especially the application of the inevitable disaster are
expertly deployed. Everything comes at the moment you want it. The
sinking of the ship – the technical description, the anticipation,
the fear, the chaos, the humanity, the beauty, the tragedy, the
spectacle – all remains shockingly convincing, both in the visual
effects and the editing. When the ship is sinking there are moments
of transcendence both ironic and cinematic that don't need
protagonists to be achieved; the ornate and meticulous first-class
dining room filling up with water and then the spectacular domed
skylight shattering under a torrent of water; the half-empty
lifeboats waiting in the cold while hundreds of people drown and
freeze in front of them.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A spectacle that sucked
the whole world down with it into the depths of its allure.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-62236890571504703952023-02-18T15:52:00.007+13:002023-02-18T15:52:56.074+13:00Of an Age (2022) Goran Stolevski, Australia<p>Melbourne, 1999. A
young Serbian-Australian ballroom dancer on the verge of adulthood
discovers a surprising connection with the calm older brother of his
chaotic best friend.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A tightly focussed
dramatic portrait that successfully reveals the protagonist's
emotional state-of-being. Capturing that vivid moment at the end of
high school where he has not had a chance to yet discover who he is,
how he will live or even what life is really like for a queer boy who
will inevitably have to find his own way in a world that offers no
role-models. He is so used to being lonely that he is genuinely
shocked to discover someone who is not only openly gay, but who he
actually likes and can effortlessly connect with in a meaningful and
genuine way. Though the connection is brief, the need behind it is
deep and long-lasting. Ten years later, the tragedy is that his life
has changed drastically but the need is the same and remains equally
unfulfilled.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The film focuses on
only three characters at two distinct moments to make the most of its
limitations. One day in 1999 the two men meet in transitional
moments for them both and find a feeling of stability together. One
day in 2010 they meet again and the resonance of that brief meeting
ten years earlier is felt very strongly. Though the best
friend/sister who connects them is vividly drawn and enthusiastically
performed, the social milieu of the characters swirls around them and
the film wastes no time in cutting to its primary focus. The depth
and subtlety of how this brief and genuine encounter plays out, and
what it means for the protagonist, are conveyed in a naturalistic way
that continues to resonate after the film is over.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-57993591959885470072023-02-18T15:37:00.008+13:002023-02-18T15:37:50.505+13:00Sublime (2022) Mariano Biasin, Argentina<p> A teenage boy in
Argentina practices with his rock band and falls in love with his
best friend, struggling to tell him how he feels.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A film that has been
described as “underplayed” but I would describe as undeveloped.
Many scenes play out with no clear purpose, nothing is revealed of
the characters and nothing is developed in the plot, which becomes
quite frustrating. The aspect ratio is wide, though the camera holds
claustrophobically close on the actors' faces or the backs of their
heads, and the focus is shallow, suggesting an intimacy and
interiority. However, even the protagonist, who takes up most of the
screentime, we learn nothing about, what he is thinking or feeling,
witnessing only his moody eyes and messy, black, curly fringe.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This is a film that
wouldn't exist without the undiscriminating market of the
international queer film festival. There is an endless array of
films about cute teenage boys struggling with their sexuality.
However the actors are usually older than the characters and we are
privileged with a depth of insight into their external and internal
worlds. Here the actors look like they're actually teenagers, they
burp in each other's faces for laughs, cannot communicate their
feelings and spend lots of time staring moodily at their phones.
Rather than witnessing a penetrating artistic portrait, I felt like I
was just hanging out with immature and inexpressive teenagers, which
was not fun.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is a genuine
feeling to the milieu, but no depth to the characterisations. The
authenticity is most evident in the band performances. The
characters are clearly writing and rehearsing their own four-piece
rock band, genuinely working hard and improving. There is no
post-dubbing or conspicuously well-rehearsed performances. But like
most newly-formed teen rock bands, they're not very good.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">(Spoiler alert.) The
film does not justifies the title, awkward being a more appropriate
adjective. A more appropriate title would be Nothing Will Change, a
phrase that is whispered in one of the only sublime moments, when the
protagonist is dreaming of intimacy with his best friend and
bandmate. It is indicative of his friend accepting him after the
revelation of his attraction, but also an unfortunate admission that
there is almost no development in the entire running time of the
film. The only point of tension is whether or not he will admit his
love, and there are many frustrating scenes in which he does not.
When he finally does it is very underwhelming, though there is a
certain poignancy to it not being a big deal.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-36355709179617236292023-02-14T15:36:00.003+13:002023-02-23T13:56:40.263+13:00Lonesome (2022) Craig Boreham, Australia -95m-<p></p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A young rural
Australian man escapes a small-town scandal to Sydney, meeting
another guy through Grindr.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The plot feels less
important than the intimacy between the lead actor and the filmmaker.
The filmmaking is stark and direct, dealing with the
moment-to-moment reality of the protagonist's marginal life. The
impressive performance of lead Josh Lavery is unusual and takes time
to reach its full impact. At first I thought his character was too
underplayed, but slowly throughout the film I felt the impact of his
hopelessness and the tangible reality of his survival-mode.
Similarly, there is a lot of nudity and no aspect of his experience
is excluded for good taste, the cumulative effect of which is deep
empathy and familiarity, like the intimacy of getting to know a new
lover. Subsequently, the extent of my identification with the
protagonist by the end of the film was quite shocking.
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">His relationship with
the Grindr hook-up that doesn't end is also depicted in a
matter-of-fact way that somehow creates a cumulative impact, where
the casualness of their commitment to each other obscures the evident
fact that they have something very real and significant to offer each
other. I hope this film gets a chance to reach the world and that
Josh Lavery gets opportunities to surprise us further as a performer.</p><br /><p></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-90858292793087346212023-02-14T15:34:00.000+13:002023-02-14T15:34:19.559+13:00Close (2022) Lukas Dhont<p>An intimate friendship
between two 13-year-old boys in Belgium is damaged when the boys
start high school.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">An exceptionally tender
depiction of this unself-conscious relationship gives way to an
emotionally manipulative tear-jerker. The screening I attended there
was one person who couldn't stop sobbing before the film was even
halfway through and had to be gently led out by her partner. I
remained unmoved as I tried to throw myself into the despair of the
film's world; I wanted to cry too. The tangible reality and tragedy
of the situation were not conveyed, neither the true impact the
events had on the protagonist, so we merely watch the characters go
on with their lives, interrupted by long scenes of various people
crying. The beauty of the intimacy between boys, the protagonist
with his friend, and with his brother, is delicately conveyed in a
few gestures and expressions, and it's rarity and precarity is
poignant.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-32636714491688402152023-02-08T19:08:00.002+13:002023-02-08T19:08:21.286+13:00Blueback (2022) Robert Connolly<p>Abby, a young woman
working as a marine biologist, recalls her teenage years with her
mother in Western Australia. She is introduced to the diverse marine
life in the bay she grew up in, makes friends with a blue groper and
helps her mother fight to protect the bay's marine life from
encroaching property developers.</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A straight-forward,
heart-felt film with a pleasant, leisurely pace about pursuing a
passion to protect something you care about, aimed at a young
audience. The flash-back narrative structure is nostalgic and makes
clear why the adult Abby is working to protect the bleaching coral
reef, but it obviates any emotional or dramatic impact from either
time-period. The underwater photography of the ocean life, and the
actors interacting with it, is very beautifully shot, tranquil and
convincing of the film's thesis, to protect ocean life. Though short
on depth and complexity the film successfully depicts the simplicity
and integrity of spending your life caring for your immediate
environment.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-31109321767382408602022-11-29T19:59:00.004+13:002022-11-29T19:59:52.359+13:00Scam of Abundance<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 20pt;">Focus
family! I am deeply humbled to invite you to participate in a very
spiritual fractal exponential Divine Family, co-creating a mandala of
abundance with sacred geometry and community. Together in unity we
will embody each of the elements on an infinite journey of dream-weaving in surrender and abundance, giving unconditionally to a
sacred economy to support each other in manifesting our dreams.</span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This
spiritual journey of sacred infinite abundance begins with embodying
the element of fire, flirting with the law of attraction, and along
with seven other immortal souls, sending an unconditional gift of
$US1440 to the divine being embodying water in the centre of our
sacred mandala of abundance, overflowing with generosity from the
eternal chalice within your heart. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our
mandala then splits in two and you syncronistically flow into
embodying the sacred element of air, blowing over the sacred
landscape of our collective activated heartspace by inviting two
sacred yes beings who resonate with the magnificence of our
collective vision to join our family of love and light and financial
abundance, making sure your sacred breath supports our 16 new fires,
eight in each mandala, to make their unconditional gifts of $US1440
each to each of our new sacred water beings and keeping our mandalas
inflated and aerated. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Flowing
in divine grace into the embodiment of the element of earth as our
two mandalas become four, you will channel the energy of our
beautiful Pachamama to ground our connected family, helping ensure 32
new members join and each unconditionally gift $US1440 so we all may
advance. </span></span>
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having
moved through each of the elements week by week in harmony with the
cycle of our divine moon you will experience fullness and completion
as you finally embody the most sacred and precious of all elements,
water. In the centre of one of the eight unique and special
mandalas, as the heartbeat of the loom, as the inspiration for our
family, the positive love-light that illuminates us all, the most
spiritual and sacred of all utterly deserving beings, you will
receive the abundance of eight of our 64 overflowing new fires and
their unconditional gifts of $US1440 totalling $US11,520 to spend on
the manifestation of your most transcendent dreams of infinite
abundance. Your ego will dissolve as you allow yourself to surrender
to receiving such infinite abundance.</span></span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I
know what you must be thinking: How can a system based on the need
for infinite exponential growth, if the number of people must double
every time we move to a new level, if before we get to the end of the
tenth mandala we must involve more than twice as many people as exist
on earth, possibly bring abundance to everyone? Surely it will
collapse at some point, as all things do and all the people who have
not yet entered the centre of the mandala will feel disappointed and
cheated? That's exactly the point. It's not you that is asking that
question, it is your trauma-based fear of abundance, it is your
negative need to perpetuate the scarcity mindset you have been
taught. It just shows that your heart is beyond closed. Yes, it's a
pyramid scheme, but isn't everything a pyramid scheme these days,
isn't our whole economic system based on those in the centre taking
from those on the outside without having really done anything to earn
that money? If you go into this sacred sacred pyramid loom mandala
scheme consciously, with good intentions, how can it possibly be bad?</span></span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It
is important that you enter our divine family in full awareness that
when you make your generous gift you may not receive anything in
return, and that when you invite others to join, they may never
receive the abundance they deserve in return for their trust and
commitment. But that's the point. You are deciding in blind faith
to trust the flow of abundance, a deeper connection with community,
creatively weaving a supportive web of abundance for some; you are
feeling a sacred yes, you are committing, you are surrendering.
There is no real good or bad, everything is about intentions, and our
intentions are definitely good.</span></span></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yes,
960 people must be involved for all the people who paid you to get
paid, it is mathematically impossible that it works for everyone, but
maths is not going to advance your soul towards enlightenment, only
the unconditional belief of everyone. Let's step into our hearts
again and stop letting fear ruin our heartspaces. There is no true
or false, only different perspectives. If you have no fear-based
negative expectations then how can you be disappointed? If you are
stuck in the conditioned mindset of tangible limits I invite you to
think and feel into the infinite. Allow yourself to grow beyond the
tangible into the spiritual and you will experience infinite
abundance for eternity. Love and light, family, love and light.</span></span></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-83874551435717123532022-03-10T23:25:00.002+13:002022-03-10T23:32:54.395+13:00Tired of watching films? A 1990 Bill Gosden speech
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I was
recently reading an interview with the new director of the Sydney
Film Festival where he was asked the question anyone in a similar
position can expect to be asked about 1000 times a year.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Don't
you get tired of watching films?</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Not
at all, he replied. What could be more fun? I watch four or five
films in a day and I find it exhilarating. Wow, I thought, you can
spot the new ones.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Confronted
by an interviewer asking the same question I might attempt a
similarly ingenious response, but I know that here I can go into much
more detail. And because so many people have expressed an interest
over the years in this enthralling subject, I've decided to fill my
allotted space tonight by telling you how I see movies – and
whether or not I get tired of them.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
first thing to point out is that I became used to being paid rather
than paying to watch movies at an impressionable age. As a
first-year university student I received $20 a fortnight to preview
the movies coming to Dunedin and to write the occasional precocious,
brilliant review. There can be little doubt I considered myself an
arbiter of taste. Of course one of the tragedies of youth is that so
much of what strikes you as fresh, bold, original, daring, even
precocious and brilliant is actually being recycled by cynical hacks
for the thirty-sixth time.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> What
I saw in movies twenty years ago was probably a good deal more than
you'd know from reading what I wrote back then. Movies were mere
pretexts for trying poses. “Attitude” wasn't such a recognised
phenomenon back then, but a movie column in the student newspaper was
the perfect vehicle for lots of it. The cool and lofty heights from
which I admired Joseph Losey's <i>The Go-Between</i> (1971) and
deplored Mel Brooks's farty <i>Blazing Saddles</i> (1974) collapsed
beneath me when I came to consider the films that really moved me,
like <i>Cabaret</i> (1972) or the great movies made in the early '70s
by Sam Peckinpah. Writing about these I could only rave like a
besotted fool or rail against those who couldn't recognise
self-evident genius.</span></span></span></p><p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">During
this same period I was also being paid for watching films in another
way. I tore tickets for Amalgamated Theatres. The manager of the
Dunedin Octagon, Owen Kenny, was a kind and humorous man, but he had
enormous respect for uniform, law and order. The police were his
constant guests. The call of their RTS was a familiar sound in the
back stalls and during the era of the rock concert movie many a
patron emulating the dope smoking in <i>Mad Dogs and Englishmen</i>
(1971) quickly learnt the difference between the good times on the
screen and good times at the Octagon Theatre.</span></span></span>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Regrettably,
there was rarely any major police work for the staff, but there was
fire department work galore. I have never met anybody who worked in
a more fire-conscious theatre than we did at the Octagon. Every fire
regulation was observed to the hilt. On Saturday mornings we
practised putting out burning tyres. We sat multi-choice
fire-fighting exams in our own time and we were inspected by the fire
department constantly, always passing with flying colours. It was a
great day for Mr Kenny when <i>The Towering Inferno</i> (1974) came
to town and he was able to combine his interest in fire management
with his excellent instincts as a showman. The two fire safety
slides – no smoking and note the exits – which every cinema must
play were relocated and shown after the houselights went down in an
ominous silence immediately preceding the film. The audience could
virtually feel the flames licking the backs of their necks, and the
film hadn't even begun.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Now,
the point of all this is that fire regulations stipulated that staff
members sit with the audience at all times and this, of course,
entailed watching films. This could entail watching the same film
four times a day and it was from this experience that I learnt that
watching a film can sometimes resemble watching a clock and that a
film unspools as inflexibly and as inexorably as time itself. And
whenever watching a film is bad it is to this perception I return,
this ghastly sense of watching life blinking away at
24-frames-a-second.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> For
distraction we would watch the audience. Maybe you have no idea of
how sordid and unworthy of your attention a film like <i>Towering
Inferno</i> is until you've watched it trigger exactly the same
response from four full houses a day over a holiday weekend. Some
films illustrate the lowest common demoninator principle perfectly.
But as all live performers know, different audiences can react very
differently to the same material and there was some pleasure in
seeing this happen. There still is.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Some
films contained sequences one could watch forever; the dances in
certain musicals, the chariot race in <i>Ben-Hur </i>(1959). But
only two films ever survived such constant repetition without
becoming harrowing. One was Walt Disney's <i>Pinocchio </i>(1940),
in which every frame is so detailed that one never exhausts the
invention. The other was Walt Disney's <i>Swiss Family Robinson</i>
(1960) which had dazzled me as a child and turned out to be so
riddled with continuity errors that one almost forgot that it was
ridiculous on other levels as well.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> These
days if I see a film more than once it is usually because I choose
to: and it's a relief to note that every year there are quite a few
in that category. But every year there are many more that are a
trial to sit through once.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Most
of these can be seen at the London Film Festival where the rows are
long and close together and you have to bribe the box-office staff
with drinks if you want to sit on the aisles. Seeing films at any
major festival one is surrounded by other professional movie
watchers. You can tell you're amongst professionals because you can
hear the snoring. Not everyone is physically capable of finding four
or five movies a day exhilarating and I have to admit that at the
London Film Festival I've dozed off during some fairly excellent
films. Peter Scarlet, director of the San Francisco Film Festival,
one of the world's best, is respected by his peers for his ability to
nod off in the most uncomfortable of screening rooms and to rest his
weary head on the shoulders of complete strangers.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Even
for Peter, this is not always possible. For amongst the realms of
the professional film-watchers, there are those who seem to approach
movies the way some people approach assault courses. Most of them
are critics, readily identifiable by the glow of their pen-lights.
Tim Pulleine, from the <i>Guardian</i>, is particularly notorious.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> You
know you've really pissed off the box-office staff when you're seated
next to this guy. He writhes about in his seat, he groans, he sighs,
he clutches his forehead, he covers his eyes and he talks to himself.
Listen carefully and you might hear tomorrow's review.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Talking
through the movies is common in these circles, but it can be hard to
complain when the stars in the audience sometimes outshine the stars
on the screen. Sitting next to Jeremy Irons, in front of Peter
O'Toole and virtually underneath Adelaide Hall has definititely
coloured my view of the movies I was watching. Adelaide Hall was
with an elderly friend at the archive screening of <i>The Thief of
Bagdad</i>.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
presence of the perpetrators can exercise a major influence on how
you see their films – as many a publicist is well aware. I
remember seeing Jane Birkin in a very tedious film, aptly called <i>Dust</i>
(1985). After the film she was on stage for twenty minutes being
gorgeous and charming to all the men who stood up to tell her how
gorgeous and charming she was. Everyone left under the impression
that they'd had a great time.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> There's
no more striking example though of such audience manipulation than
that exercised by the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Before his
<i>Leningrad Cowboys Go America </i>(1989), he advises the audience
that the film is terrible, that they've already wasted their money,
but there's no need to waste their time as well and that they'd be
much better off to skip the movie and join him in the bar.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Before
the film began the Finnish contingent (all male) carried a coffin
into the cinema and placed it on the stage. There's a running joke
in the film about this coffin which the band carry across America on
their roof-rack. It contains their frozen bass guitarist and an
apparently endless supply of beer. At the end of the movie, Aki and
his retainers reappeared, picked up the coffin and left the theatre
followed by half the audience. It was five hours before the beer ran
out, the party ended and <i>Leningrad Cowboys</i> was invited to at
least ten more festivals, where they're probably partying to this
day. These guys would be a publicists dream except that they're
spending more on beer than they're taking in ticket sales.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Publicists
are paid to meddle with your responses to films and it's alarming
just how successful some of them are. The best of them have the
knack for winning the confidence of each critic or buyer on a very
personal individual level and letting slip some potent scrap of
information almost casually. In Australia I recently witnessed the
launch of a rather incoherent film called <i>Baxter</i> (1989) which
purports to represent a dog's vision of several families who adopt
him. At breakfast before the screening I hear the publicist
confiding in one of the newspaper critics that the film, for all its
surface comedy, is actually a disturbing study of the psychological
roots of facism. Two days later out comes the review saying pretty
much the same thing.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Compiling
Festival programme notes we see just how successfully publicists have
fertilised the minds of critics. Neil Jillett was perversely aware
of this. Key phrases from the presskits turn up again and again all
over the world. It was recently noted in <i>Sight & Sound</i>
that Pauline Kael, arguably the world's best film critic, always
attends public screenings. This always seems to be the best way to
see films, although not in New Zealand where there are intervals and
sub-standard projection and audiences who think they're at home
watching television.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> A
growing number of critics these days prefer to watch films on video,
which may help avoid the publicists, but it's a dangerous trend.
Increasingly I'm watching films on tape myself. I'm sure you can
make mistakes. <i>No Time for Tears </i>(1984, <i>Der Fall
Bachmeier</i>), the German film about Marianne Bachmeier who walked
into a courtroom and shot the murderer of her small daughter was one
example. On tape this film seemed white hot. On the big screen the
fury didn't look a lot different from a television disease of the
week. There are a few video experiences I remember vividly; sitting
in the basement of the old Sydney Filmmakers Coop watching <i>The
Evil Dead</i> (1981) and more recently sitting in the busy Frameline
office in San Francisco watching <i>Common Threads </i>(1989), a film
about AIDS, and choking back the tears as around me the Frameline
staff answered the phone, made photocopies, chatted to couriers and
life went on.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I'm
often in much closer contact with the film's producers or owners.
Watching a film in a small screening room with the director present
is, generally speaking, something to avoid. I haven't had to do it
too often but I did do it the first time I went to Japan.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> My
initial contact in Japan was anxious to further the career in the
West of a young director she particularly admired. It was my
birthday. She, the director, a translator and I sat in a tiny
projection room and watched what I initially took to be my first
Japanese gay movie. About the stage when the young protagonist began
masturbating into envelopes and addressing the envelopes to his pop
star idol, I began to detect a satirical edge to the work. By the
time the two central characters had bitten off each other's dicks and
writhed for ten minutes on the bloodied floor, I knew this was a gay
movie the way Norm Jones was a gay bikie. As the house lights came
up three pairs of eyes looked my way. “Why did you make this
movie?” I asked. Director and translator conferred and then came
the considered reply: “To tell queers to keep away from me.” His
wishes were respected.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Jane
McKenzie told me the story of Tony Rayns, the well-known British
critic who exercises considerable influence on what Asian films are
seen in the West, fleeing from the same man in the same screening
room, crying, “I refuse to be in the same building as this
fascist.”</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Young
directors with short films who come seeking advice are a difficult
breed. Criticism, no matter how gentle, can go down very badly, and
I've ended more than one session hearing that I'm a talentless,
envious parasite intent on destroying the truly creative.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One
of my most alarming close encounters with a filmmaker while watching
his or her film came when I had the misfortune to walk into a
producer's office three days before her first release-print on a
brand new film was due from the lab. Perfect, she said, you can be
the first person outside the film to see it. I shall be extremely
interested in your reactions. This turned out to be a major
understatement. In the large viewing theatre she sat next to me and
monitored my reactions as closely as those of the wired-up Malcolm
McDowell in <i>A Clockwork Orange </i>(1971). And she was good. She
sensed every flinch. She knew which bits I found boring and she knew
which bits I found totally implausible. She knew which bits I simply
hated. And she knew why. If she ever needs a job she could ghost
write for lazy film critics by simply sitting beside them and
interpreting their reactions.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Another
barrier to be negotiated in professional film-watching is, of course,
translation. We're all familiar with inadequate subtitles.
Simultaneous translation can be even more hair-raising. The
translator gets the pages out of order, loses his or her place, the
sound system fails. The worst I've heard was for one of Godard's
Dolby stereo exercises in which layers of overlapping snatches of
dialogue were all translated by the same monotonous British voice.
The cacophony was intolerable and I fled.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
Japan from time to time I've attended public screenings and I've
relied on friends to whisper simultaneous translation in my ear. On
one recent occasion my friend became so exasperated with the wimpy
characters on screen that his translations began to break down into
such lines as, “No, I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. I refuse to
translate this.” and, “God, I don't believe it.” until
eventually he was saying, “Believe me, they do not want this film
in New Zealand.”</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
think it would be interesting to hear this kind of story from the
filmmaker's point of view. It's very tempting to be evasive when
forced into a quick opinion. But, as you see, its not always
possible.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, when the films that somehow survive all this interference are
playing here in our own Festivals, I'm not so much watching movies as
monitoring the projection. Elsewhere in the world this is considered
a legitimate occupation for the employees of film festivals. Most
have a direct phone link to the projection box from the auditorium.
In Cannes, at the competition, the phone is in the hands of the
film's director. In New Zealand things are a bit different and
watching a movie becomes exercise as I sprint up and down the stairs.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> So
why do I insist on sitting in the front row? I guess it's because I
like the unimpeded view and the lack of distraction. I guess it's
because I've never got tired of watching movies.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.7cm; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
fact, one Sunday last year at the Wellington Film Festival I darted
back and forth from one venue to another and caught four excellent
films. The fourth of these was a piece of programming I particularly
liked: <i>Kitchen Sink</i> (1989) and <i>Dead Ringers </i>(1988).
The picture was perfect. The audience couldn't have been more
appreciative. I hadn't had so much fun in a long time. No doubt
about it. It was exhilarating.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></p><p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.4cm; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Bill Gosden (1953-2020) was the director of the New Zealand International Film Festival for almost 40 years, a hard-working and committed cultural figure and a great writer. The commemorative book of his time at the film festival, </i><a href="https://teherengawakapress.co.nz/the-gosden-years/" target="_blank">The Gosden Years</a><i><a href="https://teherengawakapress.co.nz/the-gosden-years/" target="_blank">, is now available</a>.</i> <br /></span></span></span></p>
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-62026282379541886372022-02-23T11:49:00.001+13:002022-02-23T11:55:00.389+13:00Mess of the Demiurge<p> <br />When it all started in March 2020 I was
on board with the NZ Government Covid response. I was part of the
Team of 5 Million. I was being kind. There was a global pandemic
and the solution was a well-informed leadership and a population
working together to stop the spread. The first lockdown will always
be remembered as a special time in Wellington. The CBD was
completely empty, everything was closed, no one was at work, the
weather was extraordinarily beautiful and we all walked the streets,
parks and beaches, relaxed and unusually friendly, happily keeping
our two metre distance. Apart from police harassing people for
sitting on benches on Oriental Parade, not considered essential
exercise, it all made sense: we have closed the borders, there is
very little covid here and if we don't allow it to spread we can
eliminate it before it sets in. And it worked. Covid was completely
eliminated from Aotearoa for months and life returned to relative
normality. We enjoyed our well-earned complacency as Covid swept
through much of the rest of the world. It was understood early that
in the event of mass acute Covid hospitalisations, the health system
would be overwhelmed and not be able to cope. Despite this, and with
all that Covid-free time to work with, no serious attempt was made to
increase the capacity or efficiency of the health system.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">From the very beginning there were two
narratives. There was the clear narrative of the Government,
reported every day by our charismatic Prime Minister, Jacinda even
gave us updates from her own living room with her child running
around in the background. Then there was this strange story that I
read about only on Facebook from people who proclaimed that Covid was
a hoax or that it was caused by 5G. “Let's be honest,” I posted.
“You don't really know if that's true or not.” The other story
seemed quite unreasonable and unrealistic and I didn't understand why
people were asserting it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The second nationwide lockdown felt
banal and irritating. The CBD was no less busy, everyone was wearing
masks, less social distancing, disgust and impatience with anyone
coming near. It was an unusually unfriendly time. Auckland was in
lockdown for three months. I don't claim to be a health expert, to
have access to data or to be able to interpret it better than anyone
else, but it is an extreme thing for a government to lockdown an
entire population. It is not and will never be casual, something you
just try to see if it works. I began to doubt whether it was all
worthwhile.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">At what point does the Covid response
become worse than Covid was ever going to be? This to me is a
fundamental question, but tends to receive a reactionary response.
It does not suggest an answer, that no Covid response would have been
better. It simply suggests the consideration, whether it has already
happened or may happen in the future, that the response has done more
damage than the virus was ever going to. The reactionary response is
a result of the fact that there are only two possible stories: either
you swallow whole the narrative of the Government and their Experts
or you are a Conspiracy Theorist fueled by Fake News. Almost
everyone seems content to place themselves in one of these two camps.
I prefer to reserve judgement and remain sceptical. From my
perspective, it is highly unlikely that either story is completely
true.</p>
<span><a name='more'></a></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">From the beginning, the Government's
messaging has been clear and effective. The signs quickly became
ubiquitous and familiar; yellow bars, familiar phrases: “Unite
Against Covid”, “Be Kind”. At one point I suggested it was
starting to look like propaganda: simple, authoritative,
paternalistic, convincing without being informative. It would be
condescending if it wasn't so protective. The Government cares only
about public health, they are guided entirely by Experts who base
their advice on Science, and we simply need to have faith. I
remember when not trusting the Government was cool, when it was
understood that they are slaves to petty political necessities,
ideology and economic interests, but that time has passed. The
propaganda was repeated unquestioningly in the Dominion Post and on
Radio New Zealand. A friend told me, “It's just good government.”
“Maybe,” I responded, “but it's not good journalism. It's not
really journalism at all.” Is this unrelenting propaganda
responsible for the reactionary responses to questioning blind
adherence? Does it establish the binaries of complete agreement vs
complete disagreement, compliant citizen vs anti-vaxxer, sole
possessor of the truth vs sole possesor of the truth? “You're
either with us or you're against us.”</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Covid fatigue inevitably set in, the
major global crisis became banal. When will this end? The message
was that we need a vaccine. When a vaccine is developed and
distributed we will have sufficient defence against the virus and we
can return to normal life. Multiple vaccines turned up, some
developed by huge, ruthless corporations with histories of serious
health crimes. All were conflated as being equally safe and
effective and whatever ones the NZ Government had access to were the
ones we would get. We were told that we would need two jabs, three
months apart, and it would protect us from contracting or passing on
Covid. I am not a medical scientist and I do not know how to
disseminate complex data, but I do possess intelligence. The
newspaper, identical to the Government press releases at all times,
told us the Science in a way we could understand, with simplistic
interpretations of statistics, “1+1=believe us.” Why would I
believe that? The alternative line was, “Someone told me this, and
they don't have an economic or political agenda, so it must be true.”
Why would I believe that? I was given no reason to believe either
story, and I felt no urgency, so I naturally hesitated on getting
vaccinated. Does that sound reasonable: when in doubt, err on the
side of not receiving medical procedures?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I stopped scrolling Facebook because I
found the blind adherence to hearsay and Youtube links disturbing. I
can see no reason to believe that. At some point I stopped consuming
any media: it was toxic and upsetting. There was a decisive moment
for me watching coverage of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. There were
two shots that permanently changed my attitude to The News: a
helicopter shot of a flooded landscape with one human body floating
on the water, and a pan across a room full of hundreds of dead human
bodies in rows. This event produced the best ratings of the year and
filled me with a disgust that has never left me. The (Bad) News
reports anomalous events, especially violent anomalies. Things that
don't happen very often. It is believed there is some mysterious
virtue to following the worst things that happen in the world.
Despite largely being removed from our experience and out of our
control, it is important that we keep up with the endless tide of
negativity. We then see ourselves as informed, believing anomalous
events to be the trend, when they absolutely are not. For my own
health and sanity I withdrew from following any news media that
merely provoked anger. I did not believe what I was told by the
arbiters of truth and I did not “do my own research.” “The
media is the virus” is a slogan that started to gain some
resonance.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I became highly sceptical that the
Government's Covid response was reasonable or effective. The
policies installed to supposedly protect us were developed in a way
that they could be blindly implemented across the entire country
without nuance or sophisitication. We did not need to think about or
understand why they were happening or whether they worked. The most
ridiculous example I encountered was a theatre with two huge marble
staircases going up either side of the lobby to the entrance, one
marked with a down arrow, the other with an up. Of course with one
800-seat venue everyone is either entering or exiting at the same
time, so using one staircase and leaving the other empty does not
assist social distancing, though people slavishly followed it. The
belief seemed to be that if we simply have enough blind adherence to
blanket rules it might be slightly effective at slowing the spread of
the virus, if the virus is even present. The interruption to every
area of our lives is entirely incidental, and it is petulant to even
mention it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Government made the vaccine freely
and easily available to everyone in waves based on age group.
Rumours came that some governments were making vaccines mandatory.
When asked about mandates Jacinda was very clear: those who choose to
remain unvaccinated will not be penalised. All we need is a 90%
vaccination rate to ensure herd immunity. Enough Kiwis will
voluntarily choose to get vaccinated with the correct degree of
availability, support and information. The Health Minister even
claimed that “deliberate misinformation” spread through social
media suggested that the Government was going to make vaccines
compulsory, but he reassured us that that would go against the Bill
of Rights.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The divisive nature of Covid discourse
increased significantly with the subject of vaccination. I remained
unvaccinated, continued to consider the possibility, but felt
increasingly uncomfortable talking about it. We were told that
unvaccinated people are irresponsible and are putting other people's
lives at risk. In other words, the vaccine only works if everyone
gets it. With mass vaccinations delivered around the world it was
discovered that the vaccine is less effective at preventing
transmission of the virus and most effective at reducing the severity
of the symptoms. So why does everyone need to get it then?
Apparently the herd immunity theory wasn't so accurate, but everyone
still has to be vaccinated otherwise unvaccinated people will
overwhelm the health system. Isn't the health system supposed to
reduce the suffering of society, not the other way around? But the
narrative continued to assert that everyone must be vaccinated for
the vaccine to work, despite the fact that other nations were proving
this to be inaccurate. This is what George Orwell called
“double-think”, believing two contradictory things at the same
time.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Government announced a vaccination
mandate, exactly what they said they wouldn't do. This is a
violation of the basic medical ethic of informed consent, but no one
seems to care. If you choose to remain unvaccinated you will be
penalised and excluded from participating in society, you may lose
your job and there will be many public places that you will not be
allowed to enter. Everyone who runs even the smallest public venue
is expected to enforce this, asking every single person who enters to
provide a document proving that they have been fully vaccinated. It
is a mean-spirited law indeed that expects the public to enforce it
or face punishment. So it is primarily vaccinated people asking
other vaccinated people for proof of their vaccination status. The
purpose, presumably, is to keep vaccinated people safe from
unvaccinated people, as if it is no longer the virus that is
contagious but the lack of vaccination. Suddenly it is not just
venue managers asking for my vaccination status, but supposed friends
who don't want to be in my presence if I am unvaccinated.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Many times I have questioned, if what
really matters is not spreading the virus, why testing people to see
if they <i>have</i> the virus has not been a priority. We now have
millions of Kiwis participating in convoluted programs to
theoretically reduce the spread of the virus, despite the fact that
almost none of those Kiwis even have the virus to spread. Twice I
had symptoms and rang Healthline and was told not to bother getting
tested, one time even being ridiculed for thinking I needed a test.
But then they introduced free and accessible rapid antigen tests
into pharmacies, but only for unvaccinated people who were
asymptomatic and were planning to travel. Testing negative for Covid
allowed me to access certain levels of public transport, but the fact
remained that I was unvaccinated and therefore still a threat.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">We were told that all we had to do to
be allowed to fully participate in society was get fully vaccinated.
“Two shots for summer” was the slogan aimed at people looking
forward to summer festivals, allowed only for the fully vaccinated.
But many festivals were cancelled because either they didn't want to
operate under such conditions, or they were unable to under the
traffic light system. “Fully vaccinated” meant two jabs with
three months gap in between. This gap time was shortened multiple
times to ensure people could get fully vaccinated faster, despite it
being less effective, as part of the obsession with statistics. A
booster jab was subsequently added, again changing the meaning of
“fully vaccinated”.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Government has pushed a single
narrative from the beginning. Any doubt or uncertainty, any
disagreement with Government policy, any injury or death from
receiving a vaccine, any severe consequences of Government policies
on people's lives, any intelligent debate about the Covid response,
was labelled as a part of the “other” camp: the Anti-Vaxxers, the
Conspiracy Theorists, alt-right Nazi propagandists inspired by
Russian disinformation campaigns, the people who are completely wrong
and therefore not worthy of engagement. It's amazing the new normals
we can get used to and accept with resignation: increasingly
hysterical media fear-mongering, increasing powers of Government to
infiltrate our lives in novel and invasive ways, increasing amounts
of enforceable social division, and the corruption of basic health
ethics. Some call it repugnant, some call it necessary, all call it
banal. In a matter of months we have gone from a benign socialist
Government with an absolute majority to a coercive divisive
totalitarian Government, and it is already boring.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">But some people have been unable to let
the Government overreach pass. They may have lost their job, they
may know someone who has been injured or killed by the vaccine, they
may have a healthy or pathological distrust of governments or drug
companies, they may have had their children kicked out of school,
they may have lost friends or businesses or somewhere to live, they
may just be over it. “I'm exempt from your bullshit,” is a
t-shirt I have seen. There was a coordinated effort across the
country, across social, political and religious divides, to create a
unified protest, a convoy driving from one side of Aotearoa to the
other. It has culminated in an occupation on the front lawn of
Parliament in Wellington, a protest camp that claims they won't move
until meaningful change is implemented by the Government. Unlike
protests against climate change, where it is not certain the
Government is even capable of doing anything, or lack of suitable
housing, where even a concerted effort is complex and time-consuming,
this is a case where meaningful change can happen instantly, because
the Government itself is the problem.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I received reports from people telling
me that thousands of diverse people were coming together peacefully
to protest unjust Governmental policies, and I read reports in the
media that a small group of misfits with no clear political agenda,
but who were evidently neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Trump
supporters, were making a mess and abusing people at Parliament. The
discrepancy between the reports I was receiving was glaring. I had
to be there and find out for myself. I also felt deeply sympathetic,
not because I agreed with everything that people were saying, but
because I felt that the NZ Government has unambiguously violated
acceptable boundaries of their intrusion into our lives.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">When I entered the protest for the
first time it looked like a festival; people living in vans and
tents, socialising or creating their own space. Ironically, of
course, I thought of all the summer festivals that were cancelled
because of the Covid response, the result of which is a festival
happening on the grounds of Parliament. People seemed very diverse,
from many different social, ethnic, political and religious groups;
they were relaxed and friendly and mainly just hanging out, sharing
food, talking and dancing. At the centre of the occupation someone
stood up on the microphone with Parliament buildings and a small line
of police behind him. He said it was time for the music to end so
people can sleep, and suggested we sing a waiata together. As we
sang “Purea Nei” the government played a recording saying that we
were all trespassing and everyone had to immediately pack up their
tents and leave. But the protesters had heard it before and ignored
it. As we sang, I was moved by the sincerity and commitment of being
present in this place for this purpose.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The Prime Minister is committed to
spreading deliberate misinformation about the presence at Parliament,
claiming it is not a protest but merely a group of people who are
illegally obstructing Wellington from going about their daily lives
and abusing people who are trying to go to school or work. Having
spent any amount of time at the protest it is abundantly obvious that
this is not what is happening. People are unusually friendly and
welcoming and the obstruction of the vehicles has been minimised by
clearing the most important surrounding roads. She has also
condemned the leader of the ACT Party for talking to protesters,
which she describes as “irresponsible.”</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Despite a bit of variation in detail
and some emotional and aggressive overstatement, there is clear
agreement that people want an end to the vaccine mandate and a
restoration of basic human rights. With Aotearoa at a 95%
vaccination rate, the need for vaccine passports and massively
restrictive policies seems entirely superfluous. We were promised
that when a high level of vaccination was achieved then restrictions
would no longer be necessary. Either the vaccines didn't work or the
Government don't want to give up their extra power. The Government's
single narrative is so ubiquitous that it is politically impossible
for any opposition to be given any respect. It is not the
Government, or their Experts, that are running this country, it is
the Official Narrative that they have been pushing so hard for so
long that they totally believe it themselves. It looks to me like
the biggest propaganda campaign in this country since World War II.
I have watched over the last two years as Aotearoa has been
brainwashed in front of my eyes. The reality of the situation is
obviously nuanced and much of what the Government has done has
significantly mitigated our exposure to the global pandemic. But the
propaganda has been so relentless and so uncompromising that all
nuance has been erased. The least likely thing possible is that
either the Official or the unofficial narrative is completely
correct.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Their policy seems to be that Covid is
more important than everything else put together and that it must be
eliminated by any means necessary. The Official Narrative may in
some ways be more factually accurate, but that does not prevent it
from being unforgivably delusional in its tunnel-vision. It is not
surprising that a disparate group of people with legitimate
grievances who do not have access to well-informed professional
Experts are going to be ill-informed. If they don't have the ability
to change the law to suit their needs, it makes sense that they will
have to break some insignificant laws. It is the height of irony
that Jacinda is complaining that protesters are preventing businesses
from functioning around Parliament when her policies have proven
infinitely more disruptive. Her complaint about protesters
supposedly abusing people for wearing masks is profoundly
hypocritical when her vaccine passport system has inevitably led to
the verbal abuse of many innocent staff members coerced into
enforcing it for her.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Many Kiwis refer to our Prime Minister,
Jacinda Ardern, by her first name. My friends used to
semi-ironically refer to Jacinda as the Goddess. She was empathetic,
she had integrity, and we were proud of her. We set up a shrine to
her in the living room, lighting candles, offering fruits and
decorating her image. It was a celebration of a new type of
leadership and it was an ironic take-down of the possibility of her
getting too much respect, when politicians always need to be held to
account. The thought of loving and respecting Jacinda now makes me
feel sick. Her Government has stepped beyond the boundaries of what
is acceptable. Rather than the Goddess I propose Jacinda as the
Demiurge. In Gnostic philosophy the demiurge is considered a false
creator god who is actually subordinate to true power and is the
originator of material illusion. Another definition is from ancient
Greece, meaning public official or magistrate. This is merely a
metaphor to explain an infinitely complex situation, it is inherently
silly and yet it is meaningful to me. All of our metaphors, all of
our slogans, all of the stories we tell ourselves and each other are
merely attempts to condense infinitely complex realities down to
manageable and communicable pieces. They do not, ever, contain the
reality of the situation. If we cannot listen to each other we
cannot maintain a healthy and balanced society.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjy-9T2z2qek0zTxlBxegWg6h7to_7E82MWvB2ADEMafvmf8mEbl5CbbxFd9svLuGEE69PTO9UjcUEW-Mpe9SSwCRestHN2zKqGhSbkJQdugvHK6Hu7-69Ab6qPYjNI7g2PtvBeV8oAsv4t3VB7QRKej8cZJWs8G_S6SW3sryBssECIGzPjS438HAbnXA=s1770" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1770" data-original-width="1026" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjy-9T2z2qek0zTxlBxegWg6h7to_7E82MWvB2ADEMafvmf8mEbl5CbbxFd9svLuGEE69PTO9UjcUEW-Mpe9SSwCRestHN2zKqGhSbkJQdugvHK6Hu7-69Ab6qPYjNI7g2PtvBeV8oAsv4t3VB7QRKej8cZJWs8G_S6SW3sryBssECIGzPjS438HAbnXA=s320" width="185" /></a></div><p></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-31531421412545662632021-12-03T18:27:00.017+13:002021-12-08T00:59:42.214+13:00Early cinema of Jane Campion (1990) by Bill Gosden<p><i>Bill Gosden was, for almost 40 years, director of the New Zealand International Film Festival. Upon the one-year anniversary of his death </i><a href="https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/the-gosden-years/" target="_blank">The Gosden Years</a><i><a href="https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/the-gosden-years/" target="_blank"> was released by Victoria University Press</a>. It is a beautifully produced collection of his writing about cinema and the art of the film festival. His huge contribution to Aotearoa cinema culture as an exhibitor and curator is widely appreciated. This book acknowledges his contribution to writing about film and the innovative poster art that he often collaborated with designers and artists to create. Below is an article not included in the book that he wrote in 1990.</i></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgREb-OFuqv5Oig7zQQhFSh_lcOJa_klNTRKPDfr4TlF051EW2htasc5zOm7brwh_TbgkBTX8kyr_-Adds43sksg3fRXSjlbsoLejQDr-CiHwb9YRcs0fEETdoitJi7k9qCMo5BQvve_ZiBZOBx4KB8yPLBzuFrxcVXEzNQ6CrK6Csm6uRbgKCI8-z-0A=s1024" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="820" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgREb-OFuqv5Oig7zQQhFSh_lcOJa_klNTRKPDfr4TlF051EW2htasc5zOm7brwh_TbgkBTX8kyr_-Adds43sksg3fRXSjlbsoLejQDr-CiHwb9YRcs0fEETdoitJi7k9qCMo5BQvve_ZiBZOBx4KB8yPLBzuFrxcVXEzNQ6CrK6Csm6uRbgKCI8-z-0A=s320" width="256" /></a></i></div><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Early cinema of Jane Campion (1990)<i> <br /></i></h2>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A
tragic tale of suffocation by family, shot through with bizarre,
black comedy, <i>Sweetie</i> is a daring, original and, I think,
marvellous movie. It parodies neurotic behaviour while exhibiting an
intense commitment to the neurotic point of view. It's a potent
blend. Comedy heightens tragedy, tragedy heightens comedy until you
can't tell one from the other.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
competition at Cannes, <i>Sweetie</i>'s emptied-out performances and
full-on visual style earned the contempt of French experts who
recognised contrivance but lacked any understanding of the verbally
inarticulate world Campion was contriving to express. Closer to home
there have been plenty, equally uncomprehending, who found <i>Sweetie</i>
equally infuriating. “The work of an enthusiastic amateur,”
sniffed one New Zealand critic.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
it seems, is a film you love or hate. There have been as many
accolades as insults; the film has even won prizes in France.
Because her work has such a distinctively Australian/New Zealand
inflection (or twang, if you prefer), it's a relief to us hometown
cheerleaders that </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
has accumulated admirers throughout the English-speaking world.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> For
if Jane Campion is an amateur then she is so only in the sense that
not one of her films contains a hint of professional assignment. In
ten years she has expressed a rich, strikingly individual view of the
world in a remarkably varied, utterly coherent body of work.</span></span></span></p><p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span> </span></span></span><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Her
first film, </span><i style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Peel</i><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, was
made at the Australian Film and Television School in 1982 and won the
Best Short Award at Cannes a mere four years later. It's the
nine-minute tale of a red-headed family (and a bag of oranges) whose
weekend drive in the sun-blasted Australian countryside becomes a
fractious riot. Seeing this film now, it's as if Campion sprang
forth as a fully developed filmmaker from the first. Like most
student films, </span><i style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Peel</i><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
was made on 16mm, but unlike most, it's framed for widescreen; it
demands to be blown up. Its use of colour is just as bold – as the
synopsis suggests. Deep-seated family antagonisms are rendered
compactly, deftly and outrageously, just as they are in so much later
work. It's a very self-assured debut and one which apparently took a
good deal of determination to see through. Where did this young
filmmaker come from</span><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">?</span></p><p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Jane
was born in the early '50s and grew up in Wellington, the small
capital city of New Zealand. It would be a mistake to assume that
her own background resembles the cultural desert inhabited by many of
her characters. Her parents, theatre director Richard Campion and
actress Edith Hannah, numbered many of the liveliest minds and
personalities of the day amongst their friends and colleagues.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> She
graduated bachelor of anthropology from Victoria University before
leaving for Europe at the age of 21. She spent a year at the Chelsea
School of Arts then completed the course at Sydney College of Arts in
Australia where she has lived ever since. There she worked with
super-8 and became “completely obsessed” with films. A year
later she went to the Australian Film and Television School and a
year after that, at the age of 26, she had developed the poise and
the skills to give us </span><i>Peel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
She's a film school child, but her cultural heritage is broad and
steeped in theatrical tradition as much as cinema.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> Peel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
was followed, again at the AFTVS, by </span><i>Girl's Own Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
a densely-packed, 28-minute black and white memoir of mid-'60s
puberty blues. This film is as devastating and pungent a reminder of
the excitement and ghastliness of early sexual experimentation as you
could hope to see. If it weren't so mordantly funny or so
breathtakingly frank in tackling material you never thought you'd see
in a movie, </span><i>Girl's Own Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
might be unbearable.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Beatlemania
rules. Black limousines cruise schoolgirls in the streets. The
central girl's parents are embroiled in a messy sexual antagonism,
the father a philanderer, the mother a highly-strung wreck. There's
a virtuoso family dinner horrorshow scene. Another adolescent girl
induces her younger brother to take off his clothes and “play
cats”. Soon she is expecting their kitten.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
visual style – and the performance style – are what is popularly
considered expressionist verging on grand guignol. Camera angles
tilt the compositions. Individual characters face the lens, isolated
in their appetite and dismay.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> Girl's
Own Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is co-written with
Gerard Lee, a young Australian novelist who also contributed to
</span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and who has a
co-director as well as writer credit on Campion's next film, the
12-minute </span><i>Passionless Moments</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
This uses a similarly exact, but less emphatic visual style to
present several vignettes of everyday emptiness, meaningless moments
in our lives when we mark the passage of time. Each moment is
delineated in a deadpan narration too good to give away. The
pictures distill the absurdist wryness of the script and seem
distinctively Campion's.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
precise social location for each vignette is vividly enunciated.
From a few telling interior details – the debris under a little
girl's bed, the living-room of a young gay couple – a local
audience might virtually pick the suburb that's hosting each
particular passionless moment. Campion's detractors feel she
foregrounds art direction, but the clutter in her movies is always
vivid and always particular. She's descriptive; neither judgemental,
nor condescending. She has a rare eye for heightened typicality and
the bric-a-brac which surround so many of her characters can locate
them as precisely as an accent locates a character in a film from
England.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Of
course she uses her props metaphorically too. It's not only oranges
that get peeled in </span><i>Peel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
</span><i>Girl's Own Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is
full of spartan, comfortless-looking bar-heaters from which the young
girls crave the warmth that their pin-ups of George, John, Ringo and
Paul cannot supply. In </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
trees – all trees – are imputed with malign significance.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> From
her next film, </span><i>After Hours</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
a half-hour drama for Australia's one non-commercial TV channel, the
ABC, a metaphor is the only strong memory I retain. Like an
over-ripe plum, it comes unstuck from the film. Directing her own
script, she relates the investigation of an office sexual harassment
charge and demonstrates how the dice are loaded against the victim.
It's accurate, credible and in a looser style than usual. The
recurring image is a frozen chicken in a plastic bag which bears, in
large letters, the harassment victim's name.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> Two
Friends</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is a telefeature,
produced by Jan Chapman for the ABC, from a script by the novelist
Helen Garner. It retrieves and incorporates many themes from the
earlier films and contains much that is new. It wants to be film,
not television. There are few close-ups, much detail and, like </span><i>Peel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
it is framed for widescreen. Ironically no good prints or theatrical
rights exist, and this film is best seen on tape.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> Two
Friends</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is the tale of two girls
who have entered their teens inseparable, but are gradually prised
apart by temperament, experiences and class. The tale is told
backwards, like Pinter's </span><i>Betrayal</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
It proceeds from a point where the two girls, one a bright, diligent
schoolgirl and the other, a Sydney beach punkette, living with a man,
couldn't seem less alike. We are drawn back in time to a high point
in their friendship a year earlier when the seed of their separate
development was barely discernible. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">We
see several periods in between, each one of them a roundly
informative, crisply delivered resumé, covering the many tributaries
that flow into the everyday heartbreak that's taking place before our
eyes.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> It's
a sad story, rendered all the more acute by Garner and Campion's
analysis of why this friendhip couldn't survive the grown-up world.
The time scheme lends distance, but not coolness, and there's a wider
social perspective on display – as befits the larger canvas of a TV
feature. The film is abundant with the increasingly recognisable
Campion style: symbols and juxtapositions and colour codings that
merge inconspicuously into the material. There are bizarre visual
perspectives that highlight the eloquent, detailed décors. As in so
much of Campion's work there's a hint of incest: at the very least
the fathers that are unworthy recipients of their daughters'
adoration.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> A
wide range of characters is clearly delineated in script, performance
and direction, and their complex inter-relationships devolve in an
immensely satisfying fashion. Like </span><i>Passionless Moments</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
and </span><i>Girl's Own Story</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
this is a film you can watch over and over again for details you
missed the other times. Campion's capacity to recapture the pains
and confusions of adolescence is nicely complemented by and
contrasted with Garner's generous, wry humour.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Campion
does not see herself as aligned to any feminist ideology, but women's
experience is always central. Here Garner's script provides a
perspective that is unusual in Campion's work; she takes us outside
the consciousness of the central characters. When the mother of one
of the girls gets together with her friend and they discuss the
tribulations of the youngsters, there's a lovely light-headed sense
that these difficulties are not, after all, forever.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Three
years later </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
escorts us back into the darkness. Even those of us familiar with
the earlier films could see that this was a radical first feature.
As we set out with the tremulous, uptight central character, Kay, the
film might almost seem as doleful as she does – except that we're
seeing the world through her eyes and it's an alarmingly
action-packed place. Every startlingly framed shot overflows with
life, colour and threat. Kay especially dreads trees. She dreams in
terror of the subterranean advance of their roots, but even the
patterns of the linoleum seem to swamp her.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As
we meet the rest of her family, starting with her chronically
uninhibited younger sister, Sweetie, all the emotions, the conflicts
and the unadulterated sibling hatred that switched off Kay in the
first place flood back into the picture. The film gets fuller and
deeper and richer as it goes. By the time it's over you may want to
see it again.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> To
resort to crude national stereotypes, Australians have been known to
regard New Zealanders as pretentious, introverted, non-entities while
New Zealanders often regard Australians as coarse, visceral
braggarts. Some, including </span><i>Variety</i><span style="font-style: normal;">'s
David Stratton, have called </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
the best Australian feature of the '80s. Many Australians, however,
have been saying that </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
is “most definitely a New Zealand film”, and despite a lovely
dreamlike interlude in the Australian outback, it's hard to disagree.
The world the film expresses is dark, precious, incestuous and
inarticulate. These are not Australian characteristics, although the
humour with which they're regarded might be. What's beyond debate is
that only in Australia could it ever have been possible for Campion
to develop the strong personal style, the powerful visual articulacy
to make this exceptional and unshakeable account of stunted growth.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> In
1989 Jane Campion returned to New Zealand to film the autobiography
of the writer Janet Frame. In the short time since </span><i>To the
Is-land</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, the first volume first
appeared in 1983, this autobiography has achieved the status of a
national classic. Not everyone has read it, of course, but everyone
knows the story of the painfully shy, ungainly young woman who was
considered insane, locked away for eight years and given shock
treatment, but who remained a great poet and writer.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Janet
Frame has called the adaptation “delightful” and it's not
difficult to imagine her enjoyment of this telling of her story. </span><i>An
Angel at My Table</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is a much more
conventional work than either </span><i>Sweetie</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
or the books on which it is based. For a start, it has a heroine.
The portrait of a sweet-natured, imaginative, painfully embarrassed
girl and young woman is a sympathetic and admiring one. There are
passages of fierce identification with Frame's pain – her last
sight of her sister Myrtle, her subjection to shock treatment, for
example – that have a simpler, more direct emotional impact than
anything Campion has done before.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Like
all of her work and much of Frame's, </span><i>Angel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
is characterised by arresting perceptions of the absurd and the
beautiful in the ordinary. Beautifully shot, it also displays a
keen, eerily accurate eye for the New Zealand past. Laura Jones, who
wrote Gillian Armstrong's </span><i>High Tide</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
has provided an adaptation with the modesty and good sense not to
delve into the meanings behind those intriguing book titles: </span><i>To
the Is-land</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>An Angel
at My Table</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>The
Envoy from Mirror City</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, for in
many ways these are books about the unfilmable, about the very
process of turning life into literature.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> Originally
made as a three-part serial for New Zealand television, </span><i>Angel</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
was released as a feature after it was acclaimed by audiences at the
Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals. Its failure to win the Grand
Prix at Venice caused howls of protest. Easily her most directly
appealing film, and none the less worth seeing for that, its
popularity around the world should help Campion assemble the finance
for her next project. It's another New Zealand tale, relating the
experiences of a friend of Charlotte Brontë who settled in New
Zealand in the 1850s. Campion described this project, </span><i>The
Piano Lesson</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, to </span><i>Time
Out</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> as “more mature than any
of my stuff so far; it's about the erotic processes of an adult
relationship”.</span></span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.5cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> It
seems to me that Campion has always proceeded at her own measured
pace. And she has always attracted or chosen the best of
collaborators. Her next step seems a daunting one, but we can be
sure that she's ready to make it – and by 1992 when the film is due
I am sure many of us will be more than ready to see it and be amazed.</span></span></span></p>
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-59385793802939742912021-12-03T16:59:00.004+13:002021-12-03T17:49:47.388+13:00Sex with Straight Guys<p> Originally published in <a href="http://rfdmag.org/back-issues.php" target="_blank">RFD #186, "Summer of Sleaze II"</a>, the international Radical Faerie magazine.</p><p> </p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recently
I was sitting in a cafe overhearing a conversation between two
straight guys. “I wanna get fucked tonight. I haven't been fucked
in ages.” “Fuck yeah, dude, I really need to get fucked too.”
They were talking about getting drunk, but it's not what it sounded
like to me. What is it about straight guys? Is it simply wanting
what I can't have? An addiction to disappointment and rejection?
That particular nonchalance? Sometimes it feels extra special when
someone chooses to engage with me because they are truly interested
in me, rather than cos we like the same stuff sexually. Sometimes I
think “straight guy” is a mental illness. The ones I love are
gentle, loving, with intelligence and integrity. Why, then, are they
so uptight? In my desire to fully explore the depths of connection
with a special guy, I don't care if he's straight, but usually he
does. For this reason we have found a strange, wonderful and dodgy
array of ways in which to manifest our mutual desire to connect when
our visions of connection are so different.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Darby
first captured my erotic attention one stoned night in our student
flat. He cornered me in the kitchen, picked up a knife and offered
to cut me open and eat my intestines. Semi-erect and scared of death,
I was frozen and silent, stupefied. Another night, when I was drunk
and vomiting, hanging over his toilet, he thoughtfully and lovingly
got me naked and into the shower to bring me back to life.
Afterwards we stood together and he leaned in to kiss me. I leaned
in and he leaned back, he leaned forward again and leaned back when I
came close, a deliberate cruel tease. I joyously allowed myself to
be manipulated while simultaneously developing a genuine friendship
with this fascinating and narcissistic guy. Trying to start an orgy,
he called me into the bathroom where he was hard and inside his
girlfriend, inviting me to play with his balls. We became best
friends and went out to a gay club together, just the two of us.
“I'm definitely bi,” he shouted in my ear over the noise. “Some
of these guys are hot!” Back at his place I don't know how he was
feeling but I was horny as fuck, resulting in a very intense
wrestling match in our underwear, throwing each other around the
room, slamming against the walls. We never expressed physical
intimacy together in private, though I did suck his cock briefly in
another awkward group sex situation and I still remember the look of
pleasure and disgust on his face. Eventually I got so in my head
about the relationship that we couldn't even be friends anymore.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span></span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">At a
Rainbow Gathering
in the wilderness I met a curly-haired wild-eyed Brazilian man named
Raul. He would play guitar and sing mysterious, emotional and vastly
grappling songs in Portuguese that would captivate me. I performed
outrageous, articulate and deeply grounded poetry by the sacred fire
in the night, intriguing and impressing him. I was drawn by Raul's
singing to a fire under a tiny tarp in the rain. When the third guy
left us alone we wordlessly moved together and kissed passionately
for eternity while I fantasized about the rest of our lives together.
I asked him if he wanted to spend the night in my tent and he said,
“I'm sorry, I can't explore this passion with you. I'm straight.”
I suppressed all my feelings until we reconnected naturally at a
later festival and wandered into the tropical jungle together,
spending four days walking a seven hour trail. Chatting over coffee
in the clouds, moving at our own pace, sharing our music and poetry,
deeply alone in the spectacular wilderness, we became lovers by the
fire at night, with no one to diagnose our sexual preference but an
indifferent nature. The third night he again told me he was straight
and couldn't be intimate with me, later waking me up in the middle of
the night, putting my hand on his erect cock. Outside of the
mystical cloak of the jungle he was straight again. Except one more
occasion: my birthday. We were camping in the park and he said,
“I've got a present for you. Meet me in the public toilet in five
minutes.” He was standing naked in the cubicle, frantically
jerking his dick and inviting me in. I fell to my knees and sucked
him off til he came in mouth, myself coming onto the ground. We
never had sex again.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Somehow
I connected with a couple of provincial Canadian twins who had never
been apart in their lives; enthusiastic travellers, not smart but
experimenting with open-mindedness. I first connected with one of
these guys naked in the rain, covered in mud, by a huge fire. We ran
down to the creek together and rubbing the mud off his extremely
muscular body I touched the hardest flesh I have ever felt. We
developed a loving and trusting bond, spending lots of time together,
picking cherries, playing soccer, running and swimming. Every night
I would sleep with him and his brother and he began to open up to me.
He told me he is a virgin and has only masturbated twice, one of
those times for money, when approached by a porn maker. Meanwhile
his brother was off connecting with women. He told me he loved me
and there have been few friends he's felt comfortable saying that to.
He never asked me about my life and I never told him I'm queer, a
rare omission for me. I was dancing joyously around the kitchen and
he told me to stop acting like a bitch. Assuming we were joking I
told him, “You're doing the dishes, you're obviously the bitch.”
He was not joking. He grabbed me and slammed me against the wall,
“I'm the alpha male, you're the bitch!” He was angry that I
chose to not sleep with him and his brother that night. The next day
he pulled me aside to sing me a gentle song and tell me, “Your
smile is a sign of true happiness and it brings happiness to everyone
around you.” But I glanced at his dick as I entered the sauna and
he tried to power play me,<span lang="en-AU"> demanding that I move.
I ignored him but he threatened me and finally grabbed my throat,
pushing me against the wall. I instinctively lashed out and he
became very excited, “You wanna fight?” “I don’t want to
fight you.” I moved, but his aggression continued, demanding I
apologise for not moving sooner. I hitchhiked my way out of the
situation and never saw him again.</span></span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-AU"> </span></span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Standing
around a crowded fire on a cold night at a Rainbow Gathering, a great
place to meet sensitive, healthy and life-loving young hippie guys
who just happen to be straight, a guy I hadn't noticed before
casually pulled his pants down just enough to warm his bum by the
fire. I was in awe of this totally relaxed expression and his
perfectly soft, round, hairy bum. I was trying not to stare like a
pervert, but its delicate and delicious presence took up all of my
awareness. We discovered a mutual interest in foraging for edible
plants one sunny day while swimming naked in a large group down by
the river. We walked off together into the scrubby and weedy
wilderness. He led, wearing only a light scarf around his neck and
not the slightest thought in his head that I might be attracted to
him. He ended up sitting naked with me at my camp, talking in his
deep voice with his delicate manner. I told him I was attracted to
him and he paused for a moment, baffled, surprised and slightly
disgusted. “Sorry bro, I'm not interested.”</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There
was a guy called Tom, scrawny and feral-looking, usually naked or in
filthy, tattered clothes, with an intelligent English accent and a
big 19th-century moustache. He was very warm, funny, fully engaged
and caring and we struck up a delightful relaxed friendship. I told
him I was attracted to him early on and he told me he's not
interested, he's straight, but neither of us were bothered by this.
We became very close companions for months, living and travelling
together and sharing lots of very fun and peaceful moments. He would
dangerously climb high trees naked while I watched, and one warm day
we were both naked and he got me pretty high up a giant eucalyptus
tree with a rope and harness. Extremely aroused by his caring
attention and naked proximity, he left me on a branch while he
climbed to the very top and I jerked off shamelessly standing on the
branch and watched my semen fall recklessly to the greedy earth. We
would have long deep hugs. I was a bit frustrated about my desire to
be intimate, but it helped that he was so clear. “I'm totally
straight, not interested. I had sex with a guy once, and he was
great, but it just felt wrong.” I provocatively pushed it. “What
if I try to touch you?” I asked him. “I'll deck you.” He
wasn't mean, but he wasn't joking. Eventually we began to sleep
together and though he didn't want to cuddle at night he willingly
cuddled in the morning. I liked this routine and even when we didn't
sleep together I would seek him out in the morning for a relaxed
drowsy cuddle. We both loved role-playing and silliness and we found
ourselves in the recurring characters of a violent husband and an
abused wife. I found it extremely exciting when he would dominate
and threaten me and I would cower pathetically and defy him without
commitment. These playful character arguments were so erotically
charged that I would be overwhelmed with excitement at the
possibility that he would finally have his way with me. In
character, “I'll deck ya” would become, “I'll dick ya.” But
he never did. I was finding this trajectory of closeness and
resistance unbearable and eventually I forced a conversation about
this delicate and awkward aspect of our relationship. He admitted
that he enjoyed flirting with me and could understand that I might
find it confusing and frustrating, but he was still straight.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
has been a long pattern. Even at school there were a few guys who
intuitively knew that I was a good test subject for their flirting
skills. Maybe they didn't even know at that point if they were
straight or not. We were 11 years old and my friend Dennis claimed
he had a 15-year-old girlfriend and his parents let them sleep
together. We would walk home from school together and one day he
suddenly stopped, turned to me and said, “You wanna feel me up?”
Absolutely flabbergasted I managed to force a “yes” out of my
mouth, but he had no intention of following through. Maybe he just
wanted to see my unguarded response. I managed to establish the idea
that we were “going out” and he promised we would “pash” on
the way home from school. I thought pash meant have sex and I was
very enthusiastic. When we were finally alone in the bushes he
postponed our pashing, but he did write “DS 4 CK” on the
power-pole. We found ourselves alone together in the changing room
at school. Without provocation he did a striptease for me, humming
the music as he swung his hips, looking me straight in the eye. I
vividly remember the image of him slowly pulling down his pants and
revealing his dick to me. I merely watched in powerless awe. He
captivated my masturbatory fantasies for many years to come.
According to Facebook he was later married sporting a soul patch.
These flirty boys exercised total control over my delicately forming
queer heart. Are these early experiences the reason I have pursued
alarmingly exciting and unattainable sexual encounters? When our
sexuality moved out of bodies and into our heads in our later teens
and the paranoia about being “gay” emerged, the guys were much
less flirty with me.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was
27 and living in a rural house with some gentle, vibrant and earthy
friends and someone brought Max to visit us. I have since claimed
that I fell in love with Max as soon as I saw him, but maybe it's
just that the beauty I saw on the surface just happened to be true to
the core of his being, and over those first months he unfolded and
revealed layer upon layer of luminosity, joyousness, sexiness and
genuine love and admiration for me. The fact that he was mostly
straight definitely interfered with this blossoming love affair.
Immediately seeking a place of mutual intimacy and passion I invited
him to have a bath with me and I rubbed coconut oil over his entire
body while he looked at me wide-eyed. I rubbed it into his legs, his
arms, his face, his torso, his balls, but he stopped me when I
touched his cock. A boundary had been reached, but I couldn't let it
rest. I invited him to shave my head, which he did. He invited me
to shave his head, and delighted, I did. I discovered his hair was
full of headlice. I ate every louse I found, like a loving monkey.
I invited him to wrestle with me, but he was a gentle and delicate
creature and I had to announce a hunger strike before he finally
agreed. We started off partly clothed, but during the two hours of
non-stop, evenly-matched wrestling on the dry lawn all our clothes
fell or were torn off and we were both naked and covered in scratches
from rocks and thistles.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">At his
first Rainbow Gathering, when he opened up like the most bright and
spectacular flower that has ever lived, I loved him more than I have
loved anyone since my mother nurtured me as a plump and helpless
infant. It was only when we were in a threesome situation with a
woman that he allowed our relationship to become sexual. With that
lovely young woman present, who assumed we were a couple, I was
surprised at the passion he suddenly found for me, kissing me so
intensely that our teeth clacked together and allowing me to suck his
beautiful cock. But it was just the two of us alone in the vast
expanse of nature when we truly became lovers, though I was always
insisting and he was always resisting. Usually he would kiss me
passionately but would be relatively passive while I sucked his dick.
He would get hard as quickly as me when we slipped naked into the
same sleeping bag, but it was always my instigation. Because he had
had a dream that night of being penetrated, he revealed his beautiful
bumhole to me after a sunny picnic lunch and I licked it hungrily.
But I was inexperienced and no one ever teaches you about anal sex
and when I finally got my penis inside him, with the help of a little
flax seed oil, I was so overwhelmed that I immediately ejaculated.
He told me he hadn't enjoyed the experience; in fact he had only had
sex with me because he was afraid that I would leave him; or that he
just wanted to get off. Later we were staying in a friend's house
and cramped in a bedroom together, wrestling on the bed. I stopped
for a moment and we locked eyes. I pulled down his pants and
revealed his hard-on. “That's revealing,” he admitted,
embarrassed. I sucked his cock for the last time until our friend
returned and we suddenly stopped and desperately dressed.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I feel
a bit ashamed to talk about this glorious man in purely sexual terms.
The intensity of those first months was untenable, but our
friendship has found many forms over the last decade. Strangely and
dangerously, though I have been heart-broken and healed a few times
since, my love for him has never diminished. He told me that my
pressure for sexual connection in those early months had an unhealthy
influence on him; with subsequent girlfriends he would plead with
them for more sex than they enthusiasticly wanted. Although I try
not to think about him cos it just brings yearning and sadness to my
heart, I do sometimes still fantasize about him when I jerk off. But
in my fantasies it is his desire being expressed, and all those
nights in which we slept together but did not have sex are rewritten,
and he fucks me lovingly and passionately and lays his seed in me for
a child that will never grow and will never be born.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lately
there has been a barbershop I have walked past frequently and a sexy
barber I have glanced at every time, so I booked him on their
website. He was a short, ripped white guy into kickboxing, with a
shaved head and a lot of tattoos, including up his neck. He called
me bro when asking what I wanted and then silently focussed on the
cut. Because he was short he would have to lean in to get close
enough to my hair. My arms were up on the barber chair and his hip
was constantly pressed against them. I didn't move them. Halfway
through the cut it was no longer his hip but his dick that was
distinctly pressed against my forearm while he intently focussed on
his work. Feeling his dick pressed against each of my arms multiple
times unacknowledged while I passively sat there all wrapped up was
immensely erotic, though he never hinted he knew what he was doing.
I paid him $40, walked out and I've been waiting for my hair to grow
ever since.</span></span></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Is
this what they call a fetish?</span></span></span></p>
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-91147833616430200702021-03-09T19:28:00.009+13:002021-03-10T11:19:10.810+13:00Cousins [2021] by Briar Grace-Smith and Ainsley Gardiner<p> Entwines the very different lives of
three Maori girls, cousins, through tumultuous decades, after one of
them is taken from her family and raised in an orphanage.</p><p><br /></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A very moving and cinematic adaptation
of Patricia Grace's novel, very effectively condensed into movie
length while maintaining the scope and complexity of the multiple
threads. The lives of these three women, though particular and
intimate, effectively represents a larger story of a culture
interrupted by colonialism but regaining its strength and
groundedness. The
interaction between the personal and the cultural, memory and the
moment, are woven together with various events, spanning decades,
creating a complex portrait revealing how the past, the present and
the future interact with each other, how members of a family
interact through space and time, in life and in death. Though the performances were sometimes uneven, the editing and Terence Malick-like cinematography very skillfully conveyed a specific yet expansive spiritual and cultural journey through the entire lives of three compelling and tangible characters.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-81304600657300433822021-03-07T19:58:00.002+13:002021-12-03T17:50:38.982+13:00Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981] by Steven Spielberg<p> American arrogance as entertainment product</p><p>Why is Indiana Jones the hero of this movie? He murders hundreds of people in order to steal valuable artefacts from poor countries. He's not even charming. He's just American. His intelligence is entirely unconvincing. His only apparent ability is determination, and of course miraculous amounts of luck. He is the hero cos John Williams's score makes a catchy noise when he takes action. Ford's performance is only grimace, brawn and hat.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p>The film assumes you are stupid, and you probably are slightly but distinctly more stupid than you were before you watched it. It not only signposts everything without any subtlety, it assumes you have only the most superficial and passing interest in anything that happens, and so it only aspires to that level of interest. It assumes you will forget instantly everything that has happened and be satisfied with that.</p><p><br /></p><p>The film is utterly racist. The Americans are the good guys for no discernible reason. It is simply unquestioned. The Nazis and South Americans suffer familiar racial stereotypes, but the Arabs are simply set dressing. Jones smashes through their city and their bodies as if it was a field of corn. He trashes their cartoon city as if he was knocking over a pile of empty boxes and they flail their arms meaninglessly and helplessly. And the film assumes you feel the same way, and that it's all fun and games. The rest of the world is just a toy for the real people, the Americans, to play with. It is offensive and there is nothing remotely charming, inventive or clever to justify it.</p><p><br /></p><p>The extreme lack of sophistication or cinematic flair and the huge commercial success can only suggest that Spielberg is a coldly-calculating commercial, good-natured psychopath firmly embedded at the centre of the American psyche. The idea that genius, intelligence or artistic skill could topple him is to misunderstand the nature of the industry. The fact that art gets exhibited alongside this type of product is merely a technical issue. They utilise the same technology but have nothing further in common. If this is art then a carpark is an installation.</p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-77613892154023993502020-09-02T11:35:00.002+12:002021-12-03T17:51:28.327+13:00Tenet [2020] by Christopher Nolan<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">Loud and impenetrable</span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: small;">A man on an international mission to save the world from the deadliest weapon of all, the future.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span face="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 18.2px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.75em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Two moods: excessive incomprehensible exposition and LOUD incomprehensible action sequences. At no point do you know what is going on, nor are you given any reason to care. It is at all times tedious, meaningless and irritating. None of the characters are remotely interesting, much of the dialogue is inaudible and the ridiculous convolutions add up to nothing. And this cost over $200 million to make.</span></span></p>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-3874429957910392482018-11-22T15:50:00.000+13:002018-11-22T15:54:15.089+13:00Death in Venice [1971] by Luchino Visconti<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UbOeVPoCtd8/W_YY7xxzPrI/AAAAAAAAAQU/L-BkhXeLKm0Asdq4iMPL_acESrTmumHhACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Death%2Bin%2BVenice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UbOeVPoCtd8/W_YY7xxzPrI/AAAAAAAAAQU/L-BkhXeLKm0Asdq4iMPL_acESrTmumHhACK4BGAYYCw/s400/Death%2Bin%2BVenice.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;">Death in
Venice is a sumptuously beautiful Technicolor immersion into
pesilential Venice. Dirk Bogarde gives a lot in his performance as
the isolated composer Gustav von Aschenbach. He is holidaying alone in Venice to recover from the
overwhelming stresses of his life, particularly of being massively
uptight and self-denying, while simultaneously giving of himself
through the committed and considered perfection of his music. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Flashbacks of passionate conversations with a friend spell out
explicitly how we are to interpret the present scenes in Venice.
There is no separation between the man and his music; he expects
perfection of himself, moral purity, and no corruption
through a mere pleasure of the senses. He dreams of a spiritual beauty
that is pure and perfect. And he discovers this in the beautiful
form of a teenage boy he sees in his Venice hotel, holidaying with
his family, the magnificently beautiful </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Bj</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">ö</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">rn
And</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">é</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">rsen.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> He observes
this boy from afar but does not dare to approach him. Tadzio notices
his attention and is as captivated by his gaze as Gustav is captivated to
gaze upon him. But, as we are so clearly told in the flashback
philosophical conversations, his engagement with life is as a
detached observer.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;">Bogarde's
performance is excruciating in its precision and commitment to
communicating, through almost no dialogue and often merely sitting alone,
the painful self-loathing expressed as pomposity and cowardice. Gustav is horrified in the beginning to encounter a painted and
flamboyant queen who addresses him on equal terms, as if to a fellow
queen. He does not want to humiliate himself with such shameless
abandon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;">Tadzio
plays with his attention and the power it gives him, but Gustav cannot act, cannot place himself on the line, cannot risk to feel so
much, cannot allow himself the potential pleasure promised by
engagement with this beautiful young man fluttering about in front of
him like a butterfly. I suppose this self-loathing and self-denial
speaks to a very specific queer experience that would have been all
too common at the time, and only somewhat less so today. The expression of queer
desire and admiration of beauty is more permissible in Western societies today, but the admiration of the beauty
of adolescent boys, is less permissible perhaps.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;">Gustav's
struggle is as much present in the languorous gaze of
the camera, its subtle movements and carefully editing, as it is in Bogarde's
performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large;">While I
find it unpleasant to identify with Bogarde's character in very
personal and humiliating ways the film remains a work of beauty and
sympathy, with the squalid and dangerous beauty of Venice and the
as-yet-uncorrupted beauty of Tadzio, perhaps equally dangerous.</span></div>
<br />Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-14924904486341336562018-11-14T22:14:00.000+13:002018-11-22T16:25:02.000+13:00Never Say Die [1988] by Geoff MurphyFlashbacks with Geoff Murphy - A Retrospective Trip<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Geoff Murphy retrospective at Ng<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">ā</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">
Taonga Sight & Vision (the film archive) in Wellington has begun
and runs until 30 November. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It
begins with Never Say Die (1988). A young couple are mysteriously
pursued by people with increasingly elaborate attempts to kill them;
they narrowly escape death repeatedly. A sexy, fun and totally
incoherent thriller full of car chases and shoot-outs; with a plot
that barely manages to justify the set pieces and certainly doesn't
do anything else. A Lethal Weapon-style '80s Hitchcock leaning
precariously towards a Buster Keaton routine. Ultimately trash, but
light and effortless, with sexy and engaging star performances from
Temuera Morrison and Lisa Eilbacher. If the film has any meaning
perhaps it can be contained in the opening narration in which Tem's
character complains about the narrow-minded Kiwi mentality, as long
as you know that this film, so obviously a plea for attention from
Hollywood, was Murphy's last film in New Zealand before his long
journey in America as a director for hire.</span></div>
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<br />Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-76473586526842609212018-10-27T12:59:00.001+13:002018-10-27T12:59:27.541+13:00Uneasy Dream and Other Things by Lori Leigh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img alt="Image result for uneasy dreams and other things" class="irc_mi" height="372" src="http://www.regionalnews.kiwi/img/reviewUneasyDreams.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="264" /></div>
What a joy when Wellington theatre can make me feel like I'm in Melbourne, a sexy vibrant city of novelty and risk; young people who are smart and funny and have something to say. I have no time or patience anymore for tradition, formality or familiarity. I want to be surprised, delighted and truly moved, as the perverse, irrational and ridiculous human being that I am; and not just in my head, but in my body and in my soul. I want to laugh without feeling condescended. I want to think without having to bend myself around lifeless abstractions. I want characters who are flesh creatures in front of me, obscene, beautiful, tender, angry, outrageous, loose, intelligent and sexy. I want fantasy that deepens my reality. I want to see something that could never happen, and I want that to bring me more fully into the reality of my life. I want to leave the theatre burning with life, wanting to dance on the street, to dive off the wharf, wanting to fuck a stranger, to fall in love, wanting to live more fully, to perform myself, wanting to realise myself as I've always wanted to realise myself.<br />
<br />
And this is the second time this has happened after seeing a play in Circa's smaller, more adventurous, performance space as part of the Women's Theatre Festival. This time it was Uneasy Dreams and Other Things by Lori Leigh, a play about a woman who wakes up one day with a penis. Does that make her a man? Does that make her husband gay? Will people accept her as she is?<br />
<br />
We meet four characters with frailties and arrogances and needs and desires and shames and confusions and senses of humour. Sam (Lydia Peckham) is a woman who struggles at work, with all the fake macho bullshit of working for a marketing company. Her boss tells her to "grow a pair", if she hardens up she'll do better. Her husband, Greg (Matthew Staijen-Leach) doesn't enjoy work either, but he does it cos he wants them to get their mortgage and have their family. Greg's brother Fran (Arlo Gibson) is living with them too, but he doesn't work. He's in a cover band and prefers to get up at 15.00. Sam's best friend Reta (Johanna Cosgrove) spends more time at her house when Sam stops going to work. She needs her friend. Work's shit without her friend around to make it tolerable.<br />
<br />
All these people need each other, something beautiful about this play. I want to watch characters who need each other. I need people too, what could be more human? They may not even know what they need from each other. Or maybe they know perfectly well. Maybe this leads to disappointment. Or maybe they're just too scared to tell us what they want. But a good playwright draws us gently and tenderly into that space in a character and I was very happy to see it on stage this evening.Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-27090167209000784802018-09-29T17:47:00.001+12:002021-12-03T17:52:20.578+13:00The Departed [2006] by Martin Scorsese<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z44pWiFbGDg/W68RfUghmJI/AAAAAAAAAQA/44LrQSuU0dAkIPpWGNi_BWWqLgL_nNWQQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/The%2BDeparted%2B2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z44pWiFbGDg/W68RfUghmJI/AAAAAAAAAQA/44LrQSuU0dAkIPpWGNi_BWWqLgL_nNWQQCK4BGAYYCw/s320/The%2BDeparted%2B2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I don't understand how there can be
near-unanimous acclaim for this film. Is it because Martin Scorsese
and his renowned cast can do no wrong? Who can question the work of
three-time Academy Award winning actor and legend Jack Nicholson? He
is one of the best actors of his generation and of course when his
fellow actors were promoting the film they all spoken about how much
of a privilege it was to work with him. Is it difficult to notice
that he can't actually act anymore; that he merely caricatures
himself? Maybe he destroyed himself with playing The Joker in Batman
(1989) for which he was given a percentage of the profits and made
about $60 million dollars for one of the worst performances from a
great actor in the history of cinema. His performance in The
Departed was barely more restrained than The Joker. His performance
is like a cartoon and utterly unconvincing as a real human being,
despite being surrounded by grounded, effective performances. This
makes sense discovering that he was given free-reign on set to
improvise and ham it up, his director trusting that he is still a great artist, or
simply too afraid to question him. Despite Scorsese's definite
competence, Nicholson is unrestrained and detrimental.</div>
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The rest of the cast do an impressive
job of being tough guys and talking dirty and were clearly working
hard and taking the film seriously. It cannot have been easy to get
into the minds of such cardboard charaters.</div>
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In some ways this film is classic
Scorsese, portraying the intricate dealings of American organised
crime. He seems to have moved on to Irish crime syndicates, perhaps
responding to criticism that he was reinforcing stereotypes about
Italian-Americans being criminals. In some ways it is a hollow
simulacrum of his greatest films. The film is competently
directed. Apart from the stain of Jack Nicholson, its surface is
immaculate. But this is a film with no soul. It is utterly
lifeless, devoid of heart, or spirituality, of morality or any
thematic resonance that speaks to the experience of being human. To
me, this soullessness is fundamental.</div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Is this supposed to be pure entertainment, with no artistic intentions? I do not find it
entertaining to watch hollow violent vulgar men destroy each other
and themselves within the context of a convoluted and banal narrative
with zero character development. For this film to be entertaining it
would require emotional engagement with the characters and tension
and suspense in the narrative. But the only character who I could
even begin to engage with was Leonardo DiCaprio's character, who did
display an emotionally complex response to the disgusting violence
and deceit occurring around him, but even within the 2.5 hour
duration his character did not have time to develop or find any resolution. There
was not even a palpable sense of injustice in the film about how his
character was being exploited by both the mob and the cops, only
incident and plot convolutions. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Despite Matt Damon's balanced
efforts his character does not manage to be anything other than a
monster. The only female character in the film, played by Vera
Farmiga, is anything but a woman. She seems to have a heart, though
zero intelligence, despite being a doctor of psychology, and there is
no reason why she could be attracted to Matt Damon's character except
that she loves fucking, which would be interesting, but is of course
undeveloped. Otherwise it is inconceivable that she is not aware
that he is a psychopath with no redeeming qualities or human emotion.
The only explanation is that she is not a woman at all, but a man's
idea of a woman, less even than Nicholson's cartoon character, she is
a cardboard cut-out, in the film only to add another needless
convolution to the plot.</div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Of course it is possible that I am not
the target audience for the film. I like well-made, serious, intense
and involving dramas, but I am not a heterosexual male. This film is
overflowing with machismo to the extent that I can't imagine it
appealing to anyone who is not a heterosexual male also full of
machismo. The whole cast is male and super-straight, even the one
female character is basically a man, in that she is the creation of
men who know nothing of women. The characters are all extremely
vulgar and violent and act as if they have no feelings. The film is
actually appallingly badly written. That this film won an Academy
Award for Best Screenplay is only evidence of how far removed from
reality certain people are. Even Scorsese doesn't seem aware that
he's working with a screenplay that is hollow, crude and juvenile.
The characters speak to each other like insecure teenage boys, though
the film offers no perspective or insight into their damaged
masculinity. There is no depth, no substance, no thematic interest,
no narrative shape or character development. It is simply a
convoluted plot with all the characters trying to figure out what is
going on before everyone else figures it out. However, the audience
already knows everything, so there is nothing to learn, so there is
no suspense or tension, and therefore no interest or excitement, and
therefore no entertainment, and therefore no reason for the film to
exist.</div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Surely Scorsese and his heroic cast
could have found a better screenplay to put all that energy into.
Scorsese has been directing films for a long time now, and it is
evident in this film that he is strong, confident and fluent in the
process of filmmaking. But it seems his heart is not in it.
Lawrence Toppman in the Charlotte Observer suggested that “this
picture feels like an exercise by a Scorsese clone”. It is the
best film anyone could have made of this screenplay without awakening
their creativity, their imagination or their humanity. </div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is devoid
of meaning and morality. And if I am wrong and there is morality
intended in the ending, it is even more unforgivable. There is no
redemption after the violence. The violence is redemption. And that
is a repugnant conclusion, and it is irresponsible and unforgivable in an impactful Hollywood
product such as this.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Finally, the last shot of the film offers a visual flourish so lame it contextualises the film perfectly.</div>
<br />Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-43956527597874166632018-09-20T22:20:00.000+12:002018-09-20T22:20:12.879+12:00Medusa - theatre review<a href="https://www.circa.co.nz/package/medusa/" target="_blank">MEDUSA</a><br />
Circa Theatre, Wellington<br />
21 September - 6 October 2018<br />
<img src="https://www.circa.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Medusa-500x300-placeholder-400x260.png" /><br />
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How to commend an exciting and stimulating piece of theatre without giving away its secrets? Yes, there are myriad secrets lurking in the room behind the curtain at the Circa Theatre on Wellington's waterfront. A box of snakes will be opened in front of you and you will marvel at how realistic those snakes are and how much effort must have gone into making them. You will see three women with their snakes out. They will confront you, look at you, stare at you, present in their eyes, present in their flesh.<br />
<br />
This is a surprising and delightful work of performance art /slash/ sonic expression /slash/ anti-theatre. It is devised and performed by three artists with intelligence, integrity, humour, technology and genuine solid earth-flesh. It is a fuck you to Freud, Joseph Campbell and persistent Greco-Roman patriarchal cultural forms. It is a fuck yes to the audience and our diverse perspectives. It is a feminine perspective, a decolonisation of structure and meaning. It may not make sense, but it was certainly reverberating in my body as I wandered out into the night.<br />
<br />
It was a privilege to be sitting in the centre of the front row at the preview performance, knowing that the opening night is already sold out. I got it raw and real and right in front of me and I had the majestic monsters' eyes locked right into mine. I felt locked into my seat, though we were twice invited to leave.<br />
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I encourage you to attend this show if you want to see some edgy, marginal, calmly shocking, smart and funny theatre-ish performance art that is full-power and exemplifies Women's Theatre Festival's acronym: WTF!<br />
<br />
Created by Nisha Madhan, Julia Croft and Virginia Frankovich.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.circa.co.nz/package/medusa/" target="_blank">BOOK TICKETS</a>Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-57683043510840607412018-08-10T15:31:00.000+12:002018-08-10T15:31:33.393+12:00Climax [2018] by Gaspar Noé<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-size-adjust: auto;">CLIMAX is a dance horror film about people destroying themselves that literally turns upside down. </span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
<span style="text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
<span style="text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm not sure Climax is supposed to be entertainment, nor am I sure it's supposed to be art, which makes me wonder what it is. I guess it's for people who feel like they've seen it all and want something more, bigger, weirder, more perverse, more extreme, more original and at the same time confronting nothing that is uncomfortable, except our ability to absorb violence, distress, hysteria and self-harm.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
<span style="text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-size-adjust: auto;">It will certainly provoke debate, I suppose, like his films usually do, but whether that will be a valuable debate is doubtful, especially when there are much more significant, sophisticated, subtle and sensitive films that are not sensationalist but that are nonetheless confronting controversial themes, rooted in deep human feeling and integrity. This film seems embodied, with all that dance, sex and flesh, but really it is disembodied, disengaging, it pushes you away with its fear and repugnance of flesh, of intimate interactions. The bodies merely damage themselves and each other. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-size-adjust: auto;">However, the dance number at the beginning of the film is spectacular and full-on, a much more artful and involving demonstration of intensity and self-destruction than the ludicrous, literal and repugnant rest of the film.</span></span></div>
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3074306641451849901.post-59386893996096898522018-08-10T15:27:00.000+12:002018-08-10T15:27:33.176+12:00Cold Water [1994] by Olivier Assayas<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cold Water is a film made as part of the French series <em style="text-indent: 40px;">Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge</em><span style="text-indent: 40px;">, which required filmmakers to set their film in the year they turned 18 and to include a sequence of teens partying to the music of the day.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: 40px;">Olivier Assayas's</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> is an evocative look back at being a teen in 1972 France, albeit from the perspective of a very peculiar and anti-social pair. She is in-and-out of psych wards and he is a potential terrorist. Their absolute disgust with the adults and the institutions they find themselves beneath is passionately performed, though somewhat out of touch with reality, as we can see their life skills and emotional maturity are severely lacking. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 40px;"><span style="background-color: white;">But the film certainly captures that disgust, determination to individuate at all costs and isolation of being a 16-year-old in a world that has no place for them: certainly no child and not yet an adult. An awkward period for anyone, here captured with passion and sympathy, awkwardness and aggression.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 40px;">Peppered with the works of Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin.</span></div>
Chris Kirkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02930309642305287026noreply@blogger.com0