Posts by Russell Brown
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Meanwhile at the Spinoff, they have VNZMA reviewers who are smart and funny and can write.
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Stuff has a weird, pissy review of the VNZMA coverage. Some of it is warranted, but it’s always going to be difficult broadcasting a stage show live to air. (I’ve been at awards that have been staged according to the needs of TV and they’re tedious.)
Some of it is just stupid:
But aside from the pre-determined award winning
Awards show in “judged in advance rather than made up on the night” shock.
and he head-scratching Six60 snub, perhaps the most uncomfortable viewing was done by those who bothered tuning into TV3 at home.
Six60 might be the people’s choice, but they didn’t impress the 200-strong voting academy enough to win any judged award. Shit happens.
What followed was a hot mess of poor-taste Jonah Lomu references, a running commentary throughout the haka and a sleuth of god-awful acceptance speeches.
Yeah, the word you’re looking for is “slew”. And the speeches were fine. Get a fucking grip.
Viewers were treated to a tasty delight of poor sound quality (think The X-Factor NZ calibre), an awkward mish-mash of awards, Waititi jokes, Jay-Jay and Dom Harvey and more Waititi jokes. Just as you began to suspect things were starting to subside, Gin Wigmore swaggered on stage slurring profanities at Anika Moa. The gag went on for just a second too long and everybody cringed on forward.
The whole room cringed at Dom Harvey’s “joke”. This is what happens when MediaWorks uses the awards broadcast as promo for its media assets.
But Gin Wigmore? That was funny as hell. She wasn’t slurring, she only said “fuck” once and she went on to give a really nice little speech about being a woman in music.
The signs were all there. The awards began jarringly with Savage’s Freaks scooping up Highest Selling Single and setting the tone for the night that was. Freaky and awful, from start to stumbling finish.
I think that should read “the night began with a bang with Savage’s international chart hit ‘Freaks’.” What the hell was jarring about it?
For reasons unbeknown to those at home, Bowden then did the unthinkable, providing live commentary while audience members performed a tribute haka to Jonah Lomu. The only sincere reference to the late, great rugby icon.
This was a problem caused by TV3’s pre-determined and poor decision to not show the Best Maori Album award – six awards weren’t shown, but that’s a reality of live-broadcasting a live stage show. They need to go to ad breaks.
And the haka wasn’t performed by audience members, but by Ranea, the winners of the award.
For those viewing at home, Vector’s canapes and open bar were out of reach, making the show too long-winded and too awkward to be remotely enjoyable.
Fucksake. You’ve got a fridge and a pantry at home, haven’t you?
As for how many Kiwi’s tuned in and stayed tuned on Thursday night, TV3’s viewing numbers are yet to be released. And while we can’t forget Waititi Gate 2015, we can at least seek solace in the fact that we cringed from the cushy comfort of our favourite armchair, remote at the ready, and not from the sweaty pits of General Admission.
“Waititi Gate”? Really? Taika had too many dick jokes and he didn’t get away with winging it at times, but at least he wasn’t a stiff.
The review also whines thus:
Viewers were treated to a tasty delight of poor sound quality (think The X-Factor NZ calibre), an awkward mish-mash of awards,
The production was amazing at the venue – especially the staging and video – and while Marlon Williams’ performance got a bit lost in the inevitable hubbub (it gets hard to keep up with the talk by the end of the evening too), the loud stuff sounded great. I watched the coverage yesterday and it sounded fine.
And by "awkward mish-mash of awards", I presume the writer meant "the same awards given out every year". This just seems like a badly-written attempt to tip bile over everything.
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Street Chant playing recently at the bFM Breakfast Club at Real Groovy.
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Hard News: Friday Music: All Being Well, in reply to Mark Easterbrook,
My Friday five cents...I love "All I Gotta Do". I reckon it was Darcy Clay's best. All kinds of depth and emotional complexity bubbling away under the surface of deceptively simple stonking rock song. One of my all time favourites.
I've been thinking this myself. 'Jesus I Was Evil' will always be the classic, but 'All I Gotta Do' is my favourite too.
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Hard News: Friday Music: All Being Well, in reply to chris,
It looked like one hell of a party, I’ve never seen any NZ awards on that scale. Huge.
There were a few awkward bits, but the production was amazing. I thought it worked really well for Broods – made me see them in a new light.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to Paul Campbell,
That’s crappy. The same thing happened to some good friends of mine yesterday too, in Balmoral, Auckland.
As you imply, it's not so much the lost chattels as the horrible sense of intrusion.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to nzlemming,
Word. Pukeko are Not Nice Birds. At all.
They've begun wandering through our back yard in the last year or so. Colin the Cat watches carefully from the deck with his WTF? face on.
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This US map from Tucker FitzGerald makes a very salient point. Not that that paranoid half of American politics will grasp it.
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to MxDEJ,
And what are the chances you're going to credit the comic to xkcd?
That was the official hotlinking and embedding URL – didn't they use to come through with the credit shown? Anyway, I've added that.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to izogi,
Meh. This is merely a case of MediaWorks refusing to deny a baseless accusation, and that doesn’t prove anything.
Also, it’s very impolite to spread gossip.
I'm told the story was inaccurate to the extent that there was still one other staffer besides Glucina in the office.
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