Posts by Dylan Reeve
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I'd be interested to know who the ingredient value compares to having same things delivered from Countdown for example. If anyone has the information necessary to make such a comparison.
-
Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to George Darroch,
$179 for five ‘family’ dinners seems to be right on the high side of things
It's only $8.95 a serve if you're feeding four, or $7.16 if you're feeding five. It's a little pricey, but would probably still fit in the "budget meals" category of many popular cooking magazines etc.
-
Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to simantics,
I think a good next step would be MyFoodBags for bachelors and bachelors-at-heart.
Actually that would be a pretty good expansion, when I used to live alone in the city it was a huge pain in the ass cooking for myself. Hard to shop easily for one, hard to find recipes well suited to one.
-
I suspect the Food Bag hits the spot for a bunch of time poor professional types with a decent disposable income and faith in their abilities as a home gourmet. The people who own dozens of cookbooks (including everything that Ramsay and Oliver have ever released) but never have the time to plan recipes and shop for everything they need. It's something I'd be into were it not for the three kids and trying to stick to a pretty modest food budget.
Also Christie's duck looks AMAZING!
-
Sadly he's right about TVNZ's responsibilities in that respect though. With no charter anymore TVNZ has only one obligation and that is profit and it's shareholder has made it clear in the past that it expect to extract the highest dividend possible.
We still tend to see TVNZ as "our broadcaster" which it sort of is, but only in the sense that we own it. It has no obligation to to give us content that we may deem of greater value than the commercially successful programs it currently offers us. In fact quite the reverse, given it's Number One position among broadcasters and the priority on returning a dividend it's even less likely to take chances on programming.
Unfortunately the CEO and board of TVNZ, to some extent, probably have less freedom than those of a purely commercial broadcaster might.
-
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Ross Mason,
It NOW relates to video games. Which was way out of line IMHO.
It seems that video game only applies to video recordings for games though? Not programmers, artists etc.
So I imagine it would cover cut scenes in games, and maybe performance capture?
But not Television…….interesting….
Yeah, I don't understand why it doesn't apply to TV.
Personally I think the law should have been amended to tighten the loophole for all contractors. For any contractor to be able to claim, after the fact, the benefits of being an employee while having already had all (or some) of the benefits of being a contractor seems dubious. Although the Bryson case really was poor HR by Weta.
-
This article is also odd...
The Hobbit documents released: Jackson's frustrations revealed
It suggests that there never was a plan to shift production out of NZ...
A later email between Ms Blackwood and Mr Brownlee showed that New Line Cinema did not plan to film The Hobbit in a different country, despite its concerns about the labour dispute.
Government warned in October 2010 that the films could be moved offshore if the dispute was not resolved.
Ms Blackwood said there was growing momentum to find alternative places to film, and asked Mr Brownlee to consider similar incentives to those offered by New South Wales.
But she reassured the minister that the company was committed to making the films in New Zealand.
"As I have said to you on every occasion that we have spoken, we are committed to New Zealand..."
Bomber has grabbed on to that at Tumeke and gone, well, Bomber on it.
Here's what the email says:
First, and most importantly, when you asked me if the decision had been made to move the films offshore, I told you that the decision had not yet been made. And it hasn't. As I said to you on every occasion that we have spoken, we are committed to NZ, both because of Peter and Fran's deep commitment to be there, as well as our own - we filmed all three Lord of the Rings films in NZ and are not making any decisions to move this production lightly. If that were to happen, it would honestly be a blow to all of us. That said, we are in a very precarious position given our significant investment to date (and in the future) and we feel that the uncertainty of the labor issues creates a real risk to us
That seems clear to me - they issues were forcing them to consider alternatives. Understandably.
-
Fundamentally I find Equity's ability to hold a veto over actors to be absurd at any level. Casting is a pivotal part of the creative process of film making. No guild or union should be able to hold veto over that.
NZ actors aren't missing out on these parts they aren't being cast for, because they'd never have been cast for them. However if those productions are shot here then many many more NZ actors will be cast in other supporting roles, not to mention the hundreds of NZ crew jobs that will be created.
-
As Lew Stoddart said at the time, Equity “brought a knife to a gunfight”. And they got shot to bits.
I’m not even sure it was a gun fight before Equity arrived – just a couple of guys hanging around with guns tucked in their belts.
-
To be honest, I am more troubled by the potential of unbreakable encryption to be used by paedophile rings and the like
This bothers me hugely and I've seen it in relation to Mega a number of times.
This argument, taken to it's logical conclusion, basically applies to the whole internet or any form of decent encryption.
There are many reasons for people to want their data encrypted (especially on cloud services with offshore servers where laws are different). To simply lump anyone who wants privacy along with paedophiles is absurd and offensive.
The fact is that encryption is already possible and easy, especially for those who are motivated by illegality. Counting Mega's democratisation of that technology as something suspect isn't very reasonable.
In the same way that the Skynet law doesn't impact any serious pirates who understand how to avoid it, the lack of encryption on file sharing services doesn't impact on paedophiles who are already more than capable of hiding their activities with existing technology.