Sunday, October 12, 2008
Auckland International Film Festival: Billy The Kid
Director: Jennifer Venditti There are two major problems with this documentary: It never says what Billy’s diagnosis is (probably autism - but then, what qualified doctor would recommend a functioning autistic to institutional care?); and many of the scenes seem to be recreated for the camera. The...
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Reply To AardigeAfrikaner: Part 6 - Geography
The most important aspect of NZ plitics is geography. If you take a globe and put NZ at the top and look down upon the globe you will see a bit of Antarctica (with 0 population) a tip of Australia and an ocean of blue water. All kiwis kno that what happens in this country stays in this country. Help...
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Auckland International Film Festival: Let The Right One In
Director: Tomas Alfredson This is a sweet little love story about a boy and his vampire. It also links to “TimeCrimes” in that the boy gets to see his future. Oskar is 12, bullied at school, and his parents have split up - as far as the film is concerned possibly because his father has alcoholic...
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Reply To AardigeAfrikaner: Part 5 - The New Zealand Company
The NZ Co. had, as its mission statement, the intention of colonising NZ (nb: not a colony in NZ but to translate British society, customs and culture wholesale to NZ). They had agents in NZ to purchase land (who experienced problems because Maori did not want to “sell” land and didn’t recognize...
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Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Auckland International Film Festival: TimeCrimes
D: Nacho Vigalondo This film is a sort of “Back To The Future”/”Groundhog Day” with murder and mayhem. Our hero has a very bad day - again… and again. And he is the author of his own suffering. A man is attacked by another man whose face is shrouded in pink bandages. He stumbles into a university...
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Reply To AardigeAfrikaner: Part 4 - Early History
By February, 1840, this was the situation… Britain did not want to colonise New Zealand but criminals from its Australian colonies were finding sanctuary in New Zealand, away from British jurisdiction. There were signs that the US wanted to settle some part of NZ. This was due to its whaling and...
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Auckland International Film Festival: Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone
Director: Anno Hideaki I am finding this film impossible to review. It is the first of three proposed films to retell the “Neon Genesis Evangelion” anime TV series. It is, at times, a shot for shot transfer to the big screen. The same animation style is preserved. There is a slightly different...
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Reply To AardigeAfrikaner: Part 3 - History: Tiriti Waitangi
I accepted this brief to explain NZ politics because the US and NZ elections were occurring at the same time. It seemed a good time to discuss guiding principles for the voters and use NZ examples to illustrate them. Principle (d) is the exception because the History’s of our two nations diverge...
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Saturday, October 4, 2008
Gallipoli: “eyes held the glint of sniper-madness”
October, 1915 7 Wednesday: A storm damages the piers at Helles. " There were very few wounds now to attend to in the hospital dug-out. Mostly we got men with sandfly-fever and dysentery; men with scabies and lice; men utterly and unspeakably exhausted, with hollow, black-rimmed eyes, cracked lips...
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Your Chance To Win One Trillion (US) Dollars
Adran Oktar has offered ten trillion Turkish lira to “anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution”. Oktar has, however, argued that, since all fossils are species, they therefore cannot be intermediate forms and therefore evolution is a fraud and creationism true....
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