Posts by Matthew Littlewood
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I loved Rob Hosking's exam story. I always wanted to know whether those sort of things actually happened.
It reminds me of a friend of mine who decided that the pre-Bursary exams weren't worth a damn as they didn't counted.Our English teacher, who was a wonderful woman, and with a pretty barbed sense of humour (no doubt cultivated by having to put up with pests like ourselves) responded in kind in her marking comments, after my friend tried to bluff his way through.
"Reading the question helps"
says her comments after the friend's first answer
"Studying the material also helps"
says her comments after the second answer
"Actually knowing something really helps"
says her comments after the final answer.
In the end, he actually got a good mark in Bursary and is now doing his Masters at Uni, but he's kept the sheet as evidence of how his deliberate drivel clearly drove one marker over the edge.
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I read some article about Run Lola Run in a newspaper a long while back, that, IIRC, was one of those 'what's wrong with film these days' type efforts. The author decried Lola as an example of how countries weren't making films that were true to the nation any more. Lola didn't, he contended, say anything about Germany in particular; about what it is to be German in the modern world.
Fuck off, I thought.
Even if he were right, why the hell does every film made by a German filmmaker (for example) have to say something expressly about German identity or what have you? What if a German filmmaker wants to make a movie that addresses wider social, political or philosophical issues, but doesn't specifically need to relate to 'German' culture? I'm pretty sure his last line went something like: "Every film outside of Hollywood should be earnest, worthy, Politically Correct, and especially boring."
Exactly. And one of the fascinating things about German cinema in the last decade or so is the number of big, international hits they've had which comment directly on the nature of its (relatively) recent history- Goodbye, Lenin! and The Lives of Others spring to mind, as do, of course, Downfal__l and __The Experiment(which both deal with the effects of totalitarianism and its ugly shroud it has on next generation, one more explicitly than the other, admittedly)- and how it's affected their present condition. While also, y'know, actually entertaining the audience.
From what you say about the piece, it seems the writer ignores the fact that often genres are merely a means to get a point accross, the content and the form are not necessarily one and the same thing.
Think of the way Hollywood borrows from cinema all over the world and spits it back out again. And the trade isn't exactly one way either- to give a very recent example, something like Infernal Affairs, which inspired the Departed, owed as much to Michael Mann's Heat as it did to early HK action cinema (particularly the pre-Hollywood work of John Woo: Hardboiled, the Killer, etc).
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Hell I was, Matthew. Would actually rate the first ten minutes as some of the best moviemaking I've ever seen. It struck me that if Shakespeare were working now, it would be exactly the medium and pop approach he'd be drawn to. My niece agrees and she's a fresh-eyed member of both the William and Baz fanclubs.
Well, I'd concede the first ten minutes were something else, it's the rest of the film I felt was all over the place- it seemed to careen without anything to balance it on, a problem of Luhrman's that became more apparent in Moulin Rouge. You've gotta admire his gall in representing the Bard in such a way, and it is kinda apt to have him hurtle the work into the present, but gosh...talk about overgorged. Half the time I was taken aback, the other half I just wanted it to stop.
Re: my horribly verbose "Berlin in film" essay. Yep, one of the others was Wings of Desire, and there was also M, and a Fassbinder film, I think, too. Run Lola Run is crucial because it's a post-Fall film that makes use of the entire city- there's even a whole subplot about the fact one reason Lola's boyfriend got into this mess is the fact the Taxi driver is an eastener who didn't know much about the West side, and the film plays on the whole idea of "second chances," which is sorta analogous to the New Berlin etc.
I got a pretty high mark for it too. God academic nonsense is great.
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Indeed. I also wonder if it's because Banks is getting a teeny tad preachy in his middle-age: transnational corporations are evil, though not quite as evil as their tame warmongering bitch of the KKKristian Reich Chimpy McBushitler. Even if you're in total agreement with the sentiment, why does the storytelling and characterisation always seem to go down the toilet when contemporary novelists want to get atop their soap boxes.
In fact, if I ever go back to uni that would be one hell of a thesis topic: The Influence of George W. Bush on the Decline and Fall of the Anglo-American Realist Novel, 1999-2009.Yeah, even Don Delillo, one of my favourites, has suffered from that in recent years: even Fallen Man, his most ambitious novel since Underworld seems smaller in its scope and ambition than his previous peaks.
Maybe the only way to deal with an issue so big is go down the Philip Roth route (and I'm amazed someone his age remains as pungent and vital as ever), and work on historical allegory- remembering what came before the last few years can sometimes provide a greater perspective, or at least a wider and more concrete canvas to draw upon. Or you could just go off in multiple-footnoted tangents like the recenty-deceased David Foster Wallace. Whatever suits you best, I suppose.
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Really? I thought it was in dire need of a good hard edit, a real potboiler, oh well I've given thousands of quid to write a book, better crank one out, the fans will buy it anyway.
To be fair, I bought a new copy of it for $10 discounted as something to read on a plane, and that's how I view it. It probably did need to be edited, and it's better to be treated as a series of small articles, but it's breezy and enjoyable enough to get through. Certainly, I don't judge it with the same rigour, as say, his novels.
The trouble I have with Banks's latest work is that less seems to be at stake, somehow. I'm not sure how to articulate this--but his worlds seem flatter. Still, he had a bloody good run.
I loathe Sylvia Plath (and Robert Lowell and the rest of the so-called "confessional" poets) because she never seemed to lift her eyes above her own navel. For fuck's sake, Syliva, I'm pretty sure your Nazi bastard 'Daddy' didn't die just to spite you. It's not the "dark and disturbing" that gets on my last nerve, but the claustrophobic egomania.
"Claustrophobic egomania" is about right. I can't deny the force of her verse, nor her absolutely strident refusal to look outside herself, but damn, it's hectoring even in its lightest moments. It's exhausting for a lot of the wrong reasons.
Oops, double post, sorry. Is there a way to delete the one above it?
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I did like his travelogue about whisky in Scotland, though.
Really? I thought it was in dire need of a good hard edit, a real potboiler, oh well I've given thousands of quid to write a book, better crank one out, the fans will buy it anyway.<?quote>
To be fair, I bought a new copy of it for $10 discounted as something to read on a plane, and that's how I view it. It probably did need to be edited, and it's better to be treated as a series of small articles, but it's breezy and enjoyable enough to get through. Certainly, I don't judge it with the same rigour, as say, his novels.
The trouble I have with Banks's latest work is that less seems to be at stake, somehow. I'm not sure how to articulate this--but his worlds seem flatter. Still, he had a bloody good run.
<quote>
I loathe Sylvia Plath (and Robert Lowell and the rest of the so-called "confessional" poets) because she never seemed to lift her eyes above her own navel. For fuck's sake, Syliva, I'm pretty sure your Nazi bastard 'Daddy' didn't die just to spite you. It's not the "dark and disturbing" that gets on my last nerve, but the claustrophobic egomania."Claustrophobic egomania" is about right. I can't deny the force of her verse, nor her absolutely strident refusal to look outside herself, but damn, it's hectoring even in its lightest moments. It's exhausting for a lot of the wrong reasons.
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Generally, the whole film seemed totally overwrought, but I remained utterly unmoved. It was pretty-looking, melodramatic... and empty. And I liked the first two in the trilogy quite a lot, and there was all that 'he's revitalised the musical!' talk, and I was rather looking forward to it. So... meh.
I actually think Baz Lurhman has become increasingly unwatchable and affected with each new film. I mean, Strictly Ballroom was actually very fun froth, although in the "ugly duckly Aussie film stakes", seemed to have less bite to it than__ Muriel's Wedding__, while Rome + Juliet was fitfully inspired, and largely ambitious, but often overreaching- I wasn't totally convinced by the whole 'Bard goes pop' gambit, and ultimately thought the roughly-contemporary Ian McKellen-starring version of Richard the Third was better- punchier, tighter and just more enjoyable.
But Moulin Rouge__was so __relentless. It didn't stop. Everything about it, from the excessively garish colour scheme to as Sascha pointed out, the frankly strange performances, seemed both overwrought and offkilter. No Sir, I didn't like it.
Seeing as we're going over what we had to write for Bursary exams, I remember the film text was Run Lola Run, which a few years later ended up as part of an honours essay for German film (something about Berlin represented in film, and the character of Lola). I think the book was Clockwork Orange.
But one problem I had with the whole exam setup is the fact there are certain films that are goldmines for these things because the themes hit you over the head with a hammer and seem imbued with enough "importance" for it to be respectable.
As a classic example, I give you the Shawshank Redemption. Beautifully acted and shot, and all, but as an adaptation it's so overly faithful you can practically see every punctuation mark. It's become highly regarded, but I've always found there to be something suffocatingly worthy about it.
These kids think they can write essays on anything now. Just the other day I was marking a paper where a student was talking about the intersection of racism, sexism and homophobia, the prejudices of immigrant communities, and a conclusion where a young girl defers a sexual relationship with an older man in order to further her career, and it turned out she was talking about Bend it Like Beckham. Ridiculous. If she wanted to blather on about pop culture like it actually matters she should wait until university like everybody else.
LOL! To be fair, all those things _do_ happen in the film though...
Mind you, I can't throw stones- my honours dissertation was "the influence of cubist art in the writings of John Berger"....I sometimes wonder whether the best thing about University is that it not only allows you to be stupidly verbose, but it actually encourages it...
The photo of him (Iain Banks) on the cover shows an angst-ridden young man, very intense. By the time you get to later books, like Whit, there's a much more relaxed shot of a genial, laughing man.
It's a shame that the intense guy wrote funnier (if undeniably nastier and sometimes rather unpleasant) novels. I often wonder when was the exact point his prose became so flat and the characterisation so bland, because his early work is fantastically vicious stuff. I did like his travellogue about whisky in Scotland, though.
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Here's an observation - most main street music shops now seem to have more of a focus on DVDs rather than CDs. The DVDs are the exciting displays up the front that lure the punters in, while the CDs are the specialist section down the back.
That's pretty true- and as a film buff, I've got no problem with that! But it does mean that stores, particularly specialist music ones, will have to think of a means to rebrand themselves, without casting their net too wide.
One thing I never quite understood about the Auckland RG (which, until recently, was my first port-of-call whenever I was up there), was their relatively large clothes section. Out of curiosity, did they ever make any money out of it?
Another thing that annoyed me about RG was near the end how much they seemed to overcharge for 2nd hand CDs and Vinyl, supposedly the lifeblood of the store. And then being equally stingy when giving out credit for the exchange.
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The crazy thing was that although I was pretty upset when RG took over Echo in Dunedin, I reckon I must have spent (on an average basis) about double or triple the amount per month at RG than I ever did at Echo. Like another poster, I did enjoy the reggae imports, and it was always nicely discounted (and I found it hilarious that it was right beside the metal section!)
But the real shame is this recent event effectively leaves Dunedin without a specialist record store.
Meanwhile, despite the recent ChCh buyout, they seem to be struggling through things as well- their array of music there is scarcely what it was several months ago, and the shop looks a bit of a mess too.
The real question is who is going to come in and fill the vacuum that this has left. Will JB-Hifi get their tentacles down south? I would welcome them here, for sure...certainly they'd provide better range and access.
At least ChCh still has Galaxy Records. God I love that store- one of those places where even though the stock isn't massive, it has everything you're looking for and usually at a pretty sweet price. And the manager is a great sort.
I must admit near the end of RG's decline, I discovered some of their stuff (particularly recent reissues) was actually cheaper to get at the Warehouse- I managed to pick up the new CCR remasters at a good price the other day.
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Why should students be the only people tied to their parents until they are 25 financially?
That's the one aspect that really didn't make a lot of sense to me, not least because the majority (or at least a sizeable proportion) would've finished their degree by the time they're 22 or 23, so they don't get any support at all. And then there's the fact that just because the parents are earning "x" amount, it doesn't necessarily mean the children will be subsidised in turn (although it could potentially make it easier).
Interesting points raised by Kyle and Paul above- I took those aspects for granted, I guess.