2010: The Cultural YTD
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As we approach half-time, what's your take on The Culture in 2010? Writing, screen, music, art and language? Share your best, worst and most thoroughly meta.
136 Responses
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For me it was seeing the Phoenix Foundation at the Mussel Inn in Takaka fantastic venue, fantastic band.
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Well, I'm sincerely hoping Iain M. Banks provides us with another Culture novel this year so I'm still in a holding pattern until then.
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Prepare to meta your maker...
a lighthouse is a high point...
and the long overdue local (VUP)
reprint of Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville
(graphic metafiction at its finest)
is a towering beacon of local culture
and its diverse antecedents. -
Pixies. Stop. Pixies. Eng Paragraph.
Did I mention the Pixies?
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The thing that's stuck with me about the Arts Festival was the publicity: several cases of playing up what seemed most accessible and light ent about an event - without being precisely misleading* still leaving one with the wrong impression about the show. Kind of an ad-agency thing to do but surely not a long term strategy.
The Arrival. Probably should have gone to see 360. Something went tragicly wrong with Eleven and Twelve.
* except possibly re: the shiny blob scupltures outside Te Papa (which now also have experience-ruining 'Please Do Not Touch The Artwork' stickers all over them).
And I've been enjoying doing my improv lately.
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Ditto to Hicksville. I don't understand it, but I really like it.
In book news, I'm still reeling from what others in the book biz are calling Penguin's 3rd strike. Are they out yet?
Seriously though, I'm waiting for the announcement that henceforth Penguin's books will be edited by people who know of what they edit. A grand old name and reputation is at stake. (Yes, of course it's also up to the authors not to plunder Witipedia -- or other authors -- but this latest book, for example, clearly wasn't proofed by a gardener of any stripe, and that's a problem).
Oh, and while they're at it, can they bring back the Penguincubator? Because that would be fun.
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You can shoot me for being biased, but Short + Sweet theatre festival was just brilliant. Managed to catch Avenue Q last night which is good too. Giggling about genitalia talk = always funny.
Hipster-groupie wise, this year's really shaping up to be quite a good one. Passion Pit, Temper Trap, Florrie and the Mashies all for the second time, which isn't my cup of joe, but hey. It's good shit for the kids.
Good to see the ol' Wilco, Pixies and Faith No More here. Ka pai.
Worst? Seeing the Jonas Brothers snob us for Sydney. Life goes on without them I guess. SIGH.
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the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree...
Penguin's 3rd strike. Are they out yet?
They can't be sentenced...
they don't acknowledge words
...or is that a stretch?Curious Orange...
The Penguincubator is...
novel...I wonder how the Penguincinerator
is going with those earlier books...? -
The Fall have put out another album, all is right with the world.
Went to a concert (Joanna Newsom) this year for the first time in aaaaaaages, and it's made me want more. Pity the interesting bands (interesting to me anyway) tend to avoid Christchurch.
Ditto Iain M Banks - hurry up and write another book, man!
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Can commercial messaging be culture? I think so.
Today's response from Air New Zealand to a Listener editorial (flagged in full-page ads in the papers) is brilliant:
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Hot Chip's One Life Stand is my album of the year so far. It cover strikingly unusual thematic ground for a dance-pop record: it's all about maturity, love and loyalty.
And the remix version of "I Feel Better', I Feel Bonnie Feat. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is just bloody fantastic.
And then there's ... the video:
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I'll swim against the tide here, but I'm not feeling the Iain M. Banks love anymore: the last 3-4 culture books have been, by his standards, extremely poor. I personally think the rot really set in sometime around 'dead air'. Everything since (culture or not) has seemed to lack a certain spark.
Faith No More
First gig I've been to in aaaages (man I'm getting old). They rocked my world.
Reunited and it feels so good
Reunited 'cause we understood
There's one perfect fit
And, sugar, this one is it
We both are so excited 'cause we're reunited -
Taika Waititi's Boy. And the subsequent resurgence of the Patea Maori Club and the song Poi E. Apparently I clapped at the end of the segment on Campbell live this week, but as there were no cameras, I'm denying it.
Sometimes it is Ok to just feel good about our little island nation, right?
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Today's response from Air New Zealand to a Listener editorial (flagged in full-page ads in the papers) is brilliant:
That IS clever - we wondered what the full-page ads were this morning, my wife managing to decipher "Dear Listener" at the top, but it was too early in the morning to cope with a whole page of it - will definitely pass that on when I get home.
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3410,
2010: The Cultural YTD
Will be remembered by me as 'the year we made contact'.
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Taika Waititi's Boy.
OK, I'll have to own up to approaching this with some caution after finding Eagle vs. Shark toxic levels of mumblecore twee eminently resistible. But it was toe-curling, in a good way -- ah, weird awkward school days just up the road.
Will be remembered by me as 'the year we made contact'.
That film was my first contact with the flinty allure of Helen Mirren.
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For those for whom TV3's flash just doesn't want to work:
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Al Green at The Civic in January started the year off with a roar, a sigh, a moan, a murmur and two hours of deep pleasure and delight. Nothing else in 2010 has yet come near this experience.
Looking back on 2009, I do find it a little disturbing that Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream was the best-selling global record in 2009, shifting some 8.3 million units. A triumph of middle-brow culture?
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Will be remembered by me as 'the year we made contact'.
Heh, yup. Both 2001 and 2010 came up for me as sober reflections on how far out popular scientific imagination is from actual scientific reality. Not just the utter, utter failure of the space race to have enabled casual space flights to the moon, let alone a manned flight to Jupiter, but also the totally false expectations placed on my own science - Artificial Intelligence. It always makes me crack up that people have their expectations and imaginations of this kind of science set up by such creations as HAL, who say things like "No HAL 9000 has ever made a mistake", and here I am writing software in which the number of mistakes it makes in identifying penis-enlargement spam is simply an adjustable constant, depending on how much you care. I can't think of a software system ever delivered that wasn't chock full of bugs, let alone stuff that deals with complex problems that suggest an Artificial Intelligence solution.
We're still not even close to just talking to our computers to get stuff done. Just getting them to type up what we're saying is hard enough.
As for the whole USA vs Russia thing in 2010, that was out of date within 6 years of the movie, and no mention was ever made in either film of the actual technology juggernaut of the next 20 years - the internet - which did actually exist at the time.
I found I really disliked that movie, upon reflection. 2001 was ground breaking. 2010 was a sell-out, with a cheezy finish. At least Clark was visionary enough in 2001 to see that our first contact with super advanced aliens was going to be something that couldn't be summed up by simple human understanding and cheap political messages.
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Today's response from Air New Zealand to a Listener editorial (flagged in full-page ads in the papers) is brilliant:
Oh, thank you_ for that. I love that they used their taxing music as the soundtrack - I could almost smell the fumigant.
Looking back on 2009, I do find it a little disturbing that Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream was the best-selling global record in 2009, shifting some 8.3 million units. A triumph of middle-brow culture?
Speaking of Boy, would it be too impolitic to express a little less than unfettered enthusiasm at Poi E threatening to become the song of 2010?
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Well, I'm sincerely hoping Iain M. Banks provides us with another Culture novel this year so I'm still in a holding pattern until then.
Indeed. Although as Rich suggests I am hoping at least for something better than Matter; otherwise some non-Culture scifi along Algebraist lines would be much better.
Locally I'm still pretty heavily enamoured with Paul Millar's new bio of Bill Pearson - hopefully a solid contender for the Montanas or whatever they are calling them this year.
would it be too impolitic to express a little less than unfettered enthusiasm at Poi E threatening to become the song of 2010?
Anything that gets that Feelers footy jingle out of my head...
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Speaking of Boy, would it be too impolitic to express a little less than unfettered enthusiasm at Poi E threatening to become the song of 2010?
Boy(le) E?
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the utter, utter failure of the space race to have enabled casual space flights to the moon, let alone a manned flight to Jupiter
We're still not even close to just talking to our computers to get stuff done. Just getting them to type up what we're saying is hard enough.
Well, you science-type people had better get your acts together and deliver me my hovercycle and personal jetpack soon, or I'm going to really start getting mad.
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Just pre ordered the new LCD soundsystem album to replace my um found copy... Wonderful album and comes with their cover of paperclip peoples throw if got via iTunes.
Will be a hard album to beat for the year
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get with the programme fullas...Iain M is yesterday's man.
we're all about China Mieville these days. Buy yourselves The City & The City and get learned up.
just grabbed Nick Kent's new one as well...hoorah. And not a moment too soon. You could even say it's a few too late, but you takes what you gets.
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