Posts by philipmatthews
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That Stephen Fry laughing fit reminded me of this. It's a few months old now but I only stumbled on it this week, via The Standard. You'll probably develop a whole new level of respect for Pippa Wetzell:
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There's a good view on the Budget from Denis Welch over at his Opposable Thumb blog. The kind of thing he used to do nicely at the Listener.
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Three murders and a topless teen on the front page -- yes, the HoS sure is an energetic tabloid, but the idea that it's a better quality read than the weekend editions of any of the daily broadsheets (and yes I work for one of them) is pretty hard to sustain. Newspaper of the Year? Baffling.
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Can I completely and utterly change the subject and ask if anyone knows: what happened to Poneke? Was enjoying that blog. Not as much as this one, of course, but it had that air of civilisation missing from about 99.98% of the "blogosphere" ...
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I wasn't pushed -- left six months ago. Welch went in about January and the other two left much earlier.
None are in the past month and Romanos was a few years ago.
I know that sounds pedantic, but to imply that Hansford was just one of a whole lot of columnists to go at the same time makes his case less exceptional than it (allegedlly) is. But the budget cut argument is just as credible.
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It hasn't been reported very clearly.
American Studies stays but loses 4.5 academic staff. Art History loses 2 academic staff and a librarian. Theatre Studies keeps its 2 academic staff and is merged with music and fine arts into a Centre of Performing and Fine Arts. Film Studies keeps its 2 academic staff and is attached to English, loses its film production side and the one staff member who managed that technical area.
The other staff losses are in various administrative roles.
I guess there would be mild relief that none of these areas of study have gone from Canterbury.
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Hey Insider Outsider:
As an ex-Listener staffer who's out of the loop these days, I'm just curious: who are the other Listener columnists who have been pushed in the last month?
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On topic -- sorta. I urge everyone to check out the first ep of the TVNZ 6 arts show New Artland which is on the Ondemand site at present. Superb stuff, I thought. How often do we get Ronnie van Hout, Chris Knox and Bob Parker all in the same story ...
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Thought they did a good job with the last few minutes of Shortland Street last night as well -- as Russell says, the splatter stuff in the corridors. Would have liked to see him live to be tried or sent to the madhouse, though -- the death was a little too tidy (well, not literally).
Speaking of The Wire, there's an interesting roundtable discussion at the House Next Door, a really great US film and TV site, in which the relative merits of The Wire, The Sopranos and Deadwood are weighed up by three critics. As in, which is the best of the three shows? I'd always have said Sopranos, but this sends me back to Deadwood, which I pretty much missed.
Link here:
http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2008/03/david-vs-david-vs-david-or-which-is.html
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Great "Sister Ray" -- I refuse to accept that VU can be classified as dad rock, though.