Hard News: If you can't say something nice ...
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I think if you watch the show, you'll find that he wasn't actually rolling around in the gutter.
No, it seems clear that his more obnoxious behaviour was off-camera or edited from the show.
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Russell:
It wasn't live or unedited -- it never is -- and the HoS story said the recording was stopped and restarted several times because of Garrett's behaviour.
Um, yes... that was the point. Really do have to download that sarcasm font someone brought up a while back...
I've never heard anyone say that the footage of Muldoon announcing the 1984 election should never have made it to air, after all.
Certainly not, Kyle, but I've heard plenty of people ask WTF someone didn't stop Muldoon from putting himself in that situation in the first place. Don't know about you, but anecdotes about having to let down the tyres on the Prime Minister's car so he wouldn't dive home pissed aren't endearing.
Claudette made a decision to go ahead with the show as planned, and she will also have made the decisions to stop and restart the discussion. I just can't see even a whit of equivalence with Garrett's conduct.
OK, I confess -- working with you, has probably lifted my expectations unrealistically high. And, hey, if I turn up to a Public Address Radio taping toasted, causing significant delays in recording, am obnoxious to Glynis and Damien, and just creep out guests everything will be fine. Yes?
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And, hey, if I turn up to a Public Address Radio taping toasted, causing significant delays in recording, am obnoxious to Glynis and Damien, and just creep out guests everything will be fine. Yes?
Are you playing at being disingenuous? You're not a guest, you're the host of this thing, yes?
Certainly not, Kyle, but I've heard plenty of people ask WTF someone didn't stop Muldoon from putting himself in that situation in the first place.
It's society's fault! (But wait, isn't yours the party of personal responsibility? Not for nothing, but the profile on Bennett that Russell linked to kept banging on about how she's "self-responsible" - a lovely turn of phrase. Would that stop applying should she stop being saintly?)
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Y'know, I enjoyed Craig a lot more before the election, when he was looking at both sides of questions and actually reasoning out a position instead of leaping on whatever high horse happens to be ambling past.
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Are you playing at being disingenuous? You're not a guest, you're the host of this thing, yes?
I'm a freelance contributor, Giovanni, and no more indispensable than anyone else. And if I was stupid enough to break my sobriety, and take it into the workplace I wouldn't expect any indulgence whatsoever. Especially if it was damaging Russell's reputation by association.
It's society's fault! (But wait, isn't yours the party of personal responsibility? Not for nothing, but the profile on Bennett that Russell linked to kept banging on about how she's "self-responsible" - a lovely turn of phrase. Would that stop applying should she stop being saintly?)
You're really starting to piss me off, Giovanni, as I don't recall saying Garrett's behaviour was acceptable in any way, shape or form. That doesn't mean it's unreasonable to ask what the hell kind of judgement was involved in letting him go to air in the first place. Please feel free to disagree, but in my view "pretty poor" sums it up.
Meanwhile, since you brought up Paula Bennett, first, if she starts showing up to Cabinet or public events off her face damn right I'd expect her to have her ministerial warrant pulled until she got her shit together.
If I was her press secretary I'd also be advising her to give Eye to Eye a miss, and stick to the grown-up media. There's a real difference between a tough interview (and Native Affairs host Julian Wilcox is an under-rated master IMNSHO), or the kind of substantive panel discussion that is routine on Marae, than Willie Jackson's Sunday morning circus.
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and Native Affairs host Julian Wilcox is an under-rated master IMNSHO), or the kind of substantive panel discussion that is routine on Marae,
I agree with Mr Ranapia here. Julian Wilcox is under-rated. I used to watch him regularly til someone fiddled with the settings on my telly and the sometimes technologically challenged me can't figure out how to tune it back to Maori TV.
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doesn't mean it's unreasonable to ask what the hell kind of judgement was involved in letting him go to air [...] in my view "pretty poor" sums it up.
Sure, it's reasonable to ask the question, and that's even a reasonable conclusion. But it is also reasonable to ask, as many here already have: is that really relevant? Voters didn't just elect the producer to anything, and she's not (even nominally) in government over us.
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Voters didn't just elect the producer to anything, and she's not (even nominally) in government over us.
__Eye to Eye_ does screen on two state-owned platforms (One and TVNZ7), and Front of the Box Productions gets public money to produce the show. So, yeah, while I'm in principle no supporter of the Government owning media outlets, the reality is that it does. And while that remains the case, this citizen-'stakeholder' (apologies for the management-speak) thinks we've all got an interest in getting some quality bang for the bucks. Part of the public service remit is supposedly to get Maori perspectives on air, and IMNSHO there are others doing the job better.
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Oh, and when it comes to saying something nice while waiting for Fiona to start tele-blogging again...
Super-snaps to Prime, which on Thurday starts screening Ken Burns' __The War__ in prime time (pun intended) while TVNZ offers up on One an Aussie Hell's Kitchen/Top Chef knock-off, and on TV2 20/20 offers a searingly relevant expose of 'Polygamous Wives'. (Three, meanwhile, is showing a repeat. But when they're repeating the best local drama ever -- Outrageous Fortune -- they get a pass. Even if it is the first series, which took a wee while to hit its stride.)
I know Burns' stately, rigorously un-sexed up style of documentary film-making isn't for all tastes, but you've got to respect the way he assumes that there's an audience out there with an attention span that isn't measurable only in nano-seconds.
Now, remind me, isn't it supposed to be the foreign multinational corporate-owned broadcasters dumbing us down with foreign trash?
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I was amazed how damn perfect the very first episode of Outrageous Fortune was, seeing it again recently.
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Now, remind me, isn't it supposed to be the foreign multinational corporate-owned broadcasters dumbing us down with foreign trash?
You have a point there, Craig. TVNZ is almost unique in being neither fish nor fowl - it's too commercial to be the BBC or ABC (in Oz), and not commercial enough to be FOX or SKY. Then again, TVNZ 6 & 7 seem to be the torch bearers of the pre-1988 TVNZ, all they need now is the critical mass.
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You have a point there, Craig. TVNZ is almost unique in being neither fish nor fowl - it's too commercial to be the BBC or ABC (in Oz)
Then again, to be scrupulously fair, the BBC is neither fish, nor foul nor good red herring too -- and you can find plenty of people who will argue all sides of the question as to whether that's a good thing. And even the stuff we think of as "quintessential BBC" -- Simon Schama's equally ambitious 15-hour documentary History of Britain comes to mind -- just isn't viable without American co-production finance. And we don't see the full flow of outright shit the BBC churns out with the same enthusiasm as any fully-commercial producer/broadcaster. (Not that I'm knocking outright shit, because that's where the next Russell T. Davies or David Chase are learning their craft.)
And to be fair to TVNZ, I suspect that's the real problem not the ownership model. High quality drama, news/current affairs and "factual" programming (what used to be called documentaries) take time and money. And risk. Mad Men has been the only new drama this year I've really gotten enthusiastic about -- and I'd have passed on it if it crossed my desk. Expensive as period dramas always are. And to be honest, the pilot (which creator Matthew Weiner wrote as a spec script in 2000) doesn't have a lot going on. So, good on the executives at cable movie channel AMC who really made a left-field call for their move into original drama.
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Oh, and when it comes to saying something nice while waiting for Fiona to start tele-blogging again...
Super-snaps to Prime, which on Thurday starts screening Ken Burns' The War in prime time...
Maybe you could just read The Listener. The War got Fiona's doco ups this week. Though I think there was a slight error. They're not double episodes, they're just two hours long each :-)
[Which is a nice change, I hate double episodes with a passion - damn you TV3 and your Heroes!]
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Though I think there was a slight error. They're not double episodes, they're just two hours long each :-)
And how... If Ken Burns has made a documentary that clocks in under three hours, I've never heard of it. It runs in the family -- Andy Warhol might have said everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, but Ric Burns decided Warhol was worth four hours of screentime. Did anyone see it when it did the festival circuit last year?
[Which is a nice change, I hate double episodes with a passion - damn you TV3 and your Heroes!]
Do you think it would have made any more sense cut in half? I'm liking Mama Petrelli get down with her bad self, but everything else... meh. Comic book in all the wrong ways.
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Do you think it would have made any more sense cut in half?
It's not about sense. It's about finding two hours to watch the thing! They're lucky I did. I taped the first double (not double-length) episode of Lost, didn't find the time by the next week and never saw another episode. Now maybe I wouldn't have liked it, but TV2 meant I never gave it a chance.
And how... If Ken Burns has made a documentary that clocks in under three hours, I've never heard of it.
Unfortunately, it's sometimes forced on him. The region 4 dvd release of Jazz has thirty minutes cut from each of 11 of the 12 episodes.
But I might suggest his early work if you're looking for something short, much of it released as Ken Burns' America Collection. 58 minutes for one, I tell you...
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Graeme, are you saying that the DVD set has 30 minutes from each episode that was cut from the TV showing, or vice versa?
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Mark - the region 4 dvd release of Jazz has one 90-minute episode and 11 60-minute episodes (747 minutes total). The Region 1 release has 12 90-minute episodes (1140 minutes total).
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Well that's crappy.
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Well that's crappy.
Don't get me started. It is by far the worst example of R4 being screwed over, but there are numerous others (thankfully, usuualy only over special features, not actual content!). It's very rare (and still a little disappointing for our R1 brethren) when we get the better deal over special features. Schama's A History of Britain is one rare example - the inaugural BBC television history lecture that R2/R4 got is really quite good.
But seriously ... please don't get me started.
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Don't get me started. It is by far the worst example of R4 being screwed over, but there are numerous others.
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It seems to me that the whole 'Region n' thing for DVDs is a crock. Why can't we all watch the same DVDs in a global village?
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It seems to me that the whole 'Region n' thing for DVDs is a crock. Why can't we all watch the same DVDs in a global village?
The answer's simple: the MAFIAA.
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Cough...
But I've only got a 10 GB limit for the month!
;-)
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It's very rare (and still a little disappointing for our R1 brethren) when we get the better deal over special features.
Then again, I'm turning into a fan of quality over quantity. Personally, I'm quite happy with the two-disc edition I have of the 'final cut' of Blade Runner, whose sole special feature is a doozy. Do I really want to shell out another 80 dollars for, in effect, four more cuts of the movie I'm never going to watch more than once, and hours more of nit-picky geek service I was never interested in in the first place?
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Do I really want to shell out another 80 dollars for, in effect, four more cuts of the movie I'm never going to watch more than once?
Well, if you have to shell out $100 for it, no.
But if it was an extra $20, and the whole thing was brand new at the CD & DVD store's latest sale, you might :-)
I think they've sold out though.
They've also sold out of West Wing boxed sets (every episode, plus two discs of special features we got screwed out of in New Zealand) for $125...
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