Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s a lot to ask, but I urge you to get a whole slab of that Harden Up. Oh, and send a tanker of it to the All Blacks.
There were copies of a little card being passed around in the lead-up to the Sydney olympics, a cartoon pic of a smiling group of various ages and genders. Along with a Sydney 2000 logo the caption read "Keep taking your medication. Our foreign visitors must never suspect a thing."
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Sacha,
I’d assumed that Ben was referring to that slew of Ronald Hugh Morrieson movies that were all the go in the 80s, though I rather wondered if he’d be old enough to remember them.
It does rather suck to be frog-marched down someone else’s memory lane, but surely we can do better than the lame language of marketing. Coffin-stuffers, ambulance bait, no problem, don’t hold back. Anything’s better than coming across like a brain-dead spokesperson for a generation of telemarketers.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to BenWilson,
FF was very much Murray Ball’s movie, he was pretty energetic and hands-on in his involvement. For example, animators who’d learned the technique of lip-synch on the likes of Scooby Doo were told that an NZ cocky would consider it uncool to ever open his mouth that wide.
Dog was the only character that naturally leant himself to being animated. While it was probably something of a technical triumph that the movie worked as well as it did in its day, there’s no excusing the horror of Cheeky Hobson.
BTW the Lions featured in Footrot Flats, but only because the Springboks were politically unacceptable.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Amy Gale,
Free advice: don’t even try to show someone Footrot Flats: A Dog’s Tale when you find it on HBO Movies On Demand for Kids
While there was some serious talent involved in FF the Movie - some of the background art is gorgeous - it was directed by the odious little slimeball responsible for the previous decade's dancing cossacks.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to James Bremner,
. . . political vultures who scavenge political capital as they pick through the horrific violence.
You get that a lot on the web, particularly in boy-talk circles. Decrying the behaviour of those you don't like, while doing precisely what you complain about. From the aggrieved yelping you'd think Palin had been shot and Dubya winged.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Joe, conspiracy is the only way to describe the implications of McCarten’s column: that a judge sitting alone will convict people who a jury would acquit. It presupposes that the judge will come to a different conclusion simply because they’re part of the establishment.
By that reasoning the 2003 petition for an independent enquiry into the Ellis case, to be presided over by a foreign jurist untainted by connection with the NZ legal system, would have been unforgivably tinfoil helmet stuff.
Concern now focuses on the fact that the interviews on which the entire Ellis case was built would now be ruled completely inadmissible and probably lead to conduct complaints against those who conducted them. That concern didn’t have cogent research behind it 10 years ago. Or do you also disagree with overturning past convictions on the basis of DNA testing that wasn’t available at the time of the crime?
Forensic advances had nothing to do with the Ellis case. The Eichelbaum enquiry was held nearly a decade after the trial, and largely exonerated the experts whose methodology was called into question.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Peter Ellis was convicted by a jury who got bamboozled by what’s looking more and more like a metric butt-load of bullshit. Were they part of a conspiracy too?
Matthew, you're the one who introduced the word conspiracy as a pejorative for anyone who'd dare to express doubts about the potential fairness of a judge-only trial. It's worth remembering that the judge who presided over the last inquiry into the Peter Ellis case found no significant problems with the "metric butt-load of bullshit" that lead to his conviction.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
. . . the implication that a judge will come to a conclusion that is supported only by a vast conspiracy of the upper echelons of the establishment is going too far.
Too far for what, genteel sensibilities? The Peter Ellis saga proves that justice in NZ can all too easily become an exercise in arse-covering. The inflammatory term "vast conspiracy" could just as easily be interpreted as a slur on the jury system. I'd have thought that was every bit as important to our legal system as the integrity of the judiciary.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Roger Ebert is too generous. Any online rummaging will likely be done by those who placed the original tweets, acting at the behest of those folks for whom Palin serves as a useful idiot. Like Pauline Hanson, Sarah has never read a book in her life. And despite claims to the contrary, she certainly hasn't written one.
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Speaker: Pubic Address, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
It could be a roasted potato, or a roasted onion, or kumara, or butternut, or all of the above.
Plus whole garlic (the so-called elephant variety is great for this), and jerusalem artichokes, peeled or not. Top eating.