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I carry on my series of cutting-edge posts of deep thought and political indignation with this review of a movie based on a comic book!
Short review: Spidey 3 is a good film. See it if you liked the last two.
Long review: On reflection, I have no time for a long review. Instead…
Medium-length review: Yeah, it does the business quite nicely thanks. There’s some genuine emotion in there, a heaping helping of melodrama, and the superhero action sequences are jaw-dropping and remind me how far our visualisation technology has come from the bad old days of Nicholas Hammond making climbing motions while a winch reeled him up. (Hmm, I bet YouTube has a clip, let me search… ah, here we go.)
Like both previous flicks, it has some serious weirdness in there – in this case a thoroughly weird dance sequence right in the middle of things – and perhaps the least convincing Stan Lee cameo yet, which is saying something. More unusual still is the structure of the thing. It is a long 2 1/2 hours, and it crams a hell of a lot into that running time. Like much of Raimi’s work, the narrative doesn’t run like a conventional Robert McKee story, and instead speeds along with lots of little peaks and troughs. In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as sitting down to read a year’s worth of spidey comics all in a row, telling its story as lots of little micro-stories with overarching plot development and soap-opera subplots set up in one issue, paid off in the next.
The plot(s) aren’t genius and probably won’t stand up to much scrutiny – I haven’t scrutinised and don’t intend to, but my instinct is it would all collapse if I looked too hard. The behaviour of one of the villains, Sandman, really makes no sense at all. It ultimately doesn’t matter. Don’t let this spoil your fun; instead, imagine how you would retcon it when you take over the franchise in future! Hours of fun. Or, not.
Anyway, if you expect to like this film, then you will get your money’s worth. Simple as that.

Persistent spammers have been undeterred by the spam filters on comments – I’m closing them down for a while to see if I go off the radar.
Apologies if anyone wanted to contribute to any of the discussions here. Email still works. Comments will be welcome in the future!
Edited to add: I’ve opened comments on this post. In the past when I’ve been targetted I just close all past comments and the problem disappears; hopefully that will happen again.

Briefly checking in from Auckland, where stronglight and I have been the last couple nights. We’re heading back down to Welly today. It has been quite an intense time (friends of stronglight who don’t know why should click through and find out).
We tried to listen to the Flight of the Conchords radio show on the way up but couldn’t find a stereo setting that didn’t make the quiet bits too quiet to hear over the engine. Will faff around with it before heading back south, because we crave some Flight of the Conchords radio show goodness. Also, S-L purchased a new Ani deFranco from Real Groovy so we have some good listening lined up for the start of things.
Met up last night for tacos in Ponsonby with Andrew L, and much good discussion was had. Particularly, on the symbolism inherent in the Sky Tower that watches over all Auckland like the Eye of Sauron.
Right. Time to hit the road.

Over on No Right Turn, idiot/savant posted about a movement to add an elected assembly to the UN. This would, in effect, be a world parliament – a representative democratic body covering the entire world. Idiot likes the idea:

This is an interesting project, and one that deserves our support. It recognises both the need for some form of global government, and the fundamental truth that power derives from the consent of the governed, that there is no authority without democracy. At the same time, it also recognises that democracy has to grow from the bottom up,

I first heard about this idea of a world parliament in George Monbiot’s book The Age of Consent, and so I was excited to see what Monbiot would say about this initiative. He was just as encouraging, and in typically pithy style put forward a clear summary of the case for a global parliament:

Those who claim, like the British eurosceptics, that regional or global decision-making is unnecessary are living in a world of make-believe. No political issue now stops at the national border. All the most important forces – climate change, terrorism, state aggression, trade, flows of money, demographic pressures, the depletion of resources – can be addressed only at the global level. The question is not whether global decisions need to be made. The question is how to ensure that they are made democratically. Is there any valid answer other than direct representation?

Myself, I feel that a global representative government is an inevitability and something to be anticipated. The question is, how long will it take to get there and how many faltering early versions will we have to go through to get something functional? I hope that the rise of world-scale issues (like those Monbiot mentions) will serve as a driver to make this process relatively swift. It would be nice to see a functioning world parliament in my lifetime.
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As an aside, idiot has made use of Pledgebank again, this time to pledge “I will write to Justice Minister Mark Burton urging the repeal of New Zealand’s sedition laws but only if 20 other New Zealanders will do the same.” It already has well over 20 names. You should sign up too – all the cool kids are doing it!

Briefly: a heck of a day for the narratives of war. A congressional hearing in the U.S. heard some serious mythbusting from people who should know – Jessica Lynch, she who was rescued, and Kevin Tillman, army ranger and brother of Pat, he who was killed in action.
The pathological need for the military to create Commando-comic narratives of heroism has never been shown up so bluntly as in this hearing.
Kevin Tillman: “Revealing that Pat’s death was a fratricide [shot by a fellow U.S. soldier] would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with disasters. The facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed, crucial evidence destroyed.”
Jessica Lynch: “The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.”
I want to say something more about this, about the role of war in our sense of identity, about why it is so important to us and why we are so vulnerable to mythmaking in service to it. I don’t have the time, however. I will say that those who protested at the ANZAC services yesterday do have a point – the rituals and solemnity of ANZAC day may serve to legitimise militarism and so forth.
But, that said, there are ways and means to raise your concerns, and turning up the dawn parade with a bullhorn and a burning flag isn’t going to achieve anything but alienating people. As much as I have sympathy with many left-wing readings of society and culture, this kind of tone-deaf behaviour is just stupid, both tactically and strategically, and hinders the entire political left. Thanks a bunch.

Felix Rooney, my great-grandfather, served in the first world war. He saw many of the most gruelling battles of that war. ANZAC Day, today, commemorates New Zealand and Australian soldiers, particularly those who served in and never returned from the Great War.
Felix kept detailed war diaries, which I have been privileged to read (and want to read again). Although I don’t have copies, I do have with me a monograph on a Cantabrian Victoria Cross winner which quotes Felix’s diaries extensively. So, from that source, the part of Felix’s war diaries that most bears repeating:

Monday 11th: It was a great civic reception [French President] Poincare got yesterday. It was fine weather and aeroplanes overhead dropped messages into the Square. Today, just before marching out we had the news read out to us that hostilities would cease at 11 A.M. today. We left at 11 A.M. and marched 19 kilos to Quievy with full packs. Everyone is smiling now the war is over.

I have wonderful friends.
Today, in the morning, when a certain amount of stressful life stuff was crashing down, the phone rang. On the other end was the Alligator, calling from Seattle to tell me some tales of his night out with the Rat City Roller Girls, sipping Fighting Cock on a homeless man’s blanket, and doing the haka. As we traded news and even some advice, he asked if I’d received his package. What package? Well, I clearly hadn’t received it then, and the conversation moved on. But as we talked I wandered to the front window and spied a large cardboard envelope in the letterbox… could it be? Yes! So he got to listen to me tear open the package he’d sealed up not so very long ago.
There were three photo prints inside – one spectacular shot of Aoraki/Mt Cook, one shot of the two of us gurning for the camera, and the piece de resistance, a large b+w print of the Alligator in full Jewish cowboy getup. The image showed off his hat to excellent effect, and the hat is pretty much the whole costume. This hat is so good it has a scorpion on it. The scorpion hat was bequeathed to me, and has settled in New Zealand. I am privileged.
Anyway, it was really good to hear him talk. I’m terrible at picking up the phone and calling people, but thankfully some others are not so slack. There’s something almost magical about the connection of hearing someone’s voice.
All of which led to just now, when I finally got a moment to put into my laptop a CD also enclosed in the envelope. I played the MP3 entitled “Morgan listen to this first”, and there was that same voice, wishing me well and then reading me a poem. The poem chosen sent me into hysterics. Awesome.
And then within the “And then you can open this” folder, much bounty, including photos from his recent stay in NZ and also from his visit a few years back to see me and Cal in Edinburgh, most of which I’d never seen before. Also some neat-looking music that I haven’t started to listen to yet.
My only regret – never quite managing to get together a crew for the king of the D-sports, Dodgeball. But I have not forgotten that noble goal. It shall be done, sooner or later. Wellingtonians – count yourself warned.
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There are other wonderful friends out there. This isn’t even the only nice thing I’ve received by post from overseas in the last couple weeks. This one compelled me to post, though, because I was so blown away by the poem reading on that MP3. And then I decided not to tell any of you what the poem was. Sorry. You’ll just have to beg me to play it for you when you’re near my laptop, I guess.
I hope you’re all reflecting on this post not with envy for the awesomeness of my friend the Alligator, but with empathy as you think of the great friends in your life. I’m all about sharing the love here. In fact, I’m so into sharing the love, I’m going to follow in hottieperm‘s footsteps and throw in a selfie:

Scorpion-enabled of course…

On Friday night, I was able to see two new films that are playing at the moment: First 2/3 of Sunshine, and Last 1/3 of Sunshine. While sharing some superficial similarities, they were two very different beasts.
First 2/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was an intense, considered science fiction film. It tells the story of a group of scientists travelling to the sun in order to reignite it and thereby rescue life on earth. This premise was used to explore humanity’s relationship with technology, our human limitations and our responses to the exposure of these limitations. Of particular interest were the analogies drawn between technology in the physical sense, spaceships and computers and so forth, and technology in the social sense, such as mission parameters and chains of command. A winning multicultural cast delivered excellent performances which embodied the tensions existing between what is human and what is mechanical. The sun itself was used as a multipurpose metaphor, representing enlightenment, purpose, and the integration of our multiplicity into a single new order of being. The tropes of a disaster film added excitement and tension, and the character studies were fulfilling, although the decision to avoid forcing characters to follow through on a key moral dilemma (can you suppress your humanity and become mechanical for the greater human good) was a disappointment. Nevertheless, First 2/3 of Sunshine was a solid film, limited only by a curtailed final chapter which did not show the resolution of the long mission.
Last 1/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was vastly different. Also set on a spaceship near the sun, it was mostly about a blurry murderer with a skin condition. Last 1/3 of Sunshine was a substandard imitation of Jason X, the “Friday the 13th” movie in which serial killer Jason Voorhees wandered around a spaceship dismembering people. Incoherent, visually frustrating, and completely charmless. Avoid at all possible costs.
It is worth noting that First 2/3 of Sunshine and Last 1/3 of Sunshine are playing as a double feature. Fair warning: any enjoyment you might receive from First 2/3 will be stomped into the ground and then spat on by Last 1/3, and sad as it is to say, First 2/3 just isn’t good enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.

Last week I went to a half-day conference, Making Change – taking the initiative on climate
change communications, which was put together by (to quote from the programme) “Alex Hannant from Mandarin Communications in association with Victoria University of Wellington (Institute of Policy Studies and the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences) and the British Council.”
The conference was, again to quote, “for people who are interested in exploring how to engage New Zealanders with climate change more effectively. Representatives from all sectors are welcome and particularly those actively involved in public communications and communications planning with regard to climate change.” Now we have won the climate change debate, this is exactly what is needed – communications professionals building links and trying to find more effective ways of communicating.
Part of the context for the conference comes in a background paper prepared by Hannant:

Daniel Abbasi, former Director at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment Studies, states: “The problem of climate change is almost perfectly designed to test the limits of any modern society’s capacity for response – one might even call it the ‘perfect problem’
for its uniquely daunting confluence of forces.” Within this confluence he cites perceived remoteness in both time and place, the complexity inherent in the subject matter, cultural filters that obscure and politicise the problem, ingrained habits, institutional capacity to deal with the problem, incentive structures and motivational obstacles associated with collective action. Certainly it is safe to say that information about climate change does not necessarily lead to changes in attitude or behaviour. [emphasis added]

I like Abbasi’s description of climate change as “the perfect problem”. The combined hindrances to effective action are daunting. The scale of the problem is more and more troubling the more we engage with it. However, there is plenty of room for hope – I read just yesterday, in the new Listener I think, that it is heartening that “glass half empty environmental scientists are also glass half full people”. It isn’t too late. We, as a society (and I mean a human society, a global transnational community) have the capacity to arrest climate change before it becomes disastrous. And, in fact, we must do exactly this. The only question is whether we leave it too late.
Attendees filled out one of the law school lecture theatres, and it seemed like a diverse bunch, with representation from academia, public policy, media and interest groups.

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The conference opened with Nick Jones (of Nick Jones and Associates) and Peter Salmon (of Moxie Design Group). They shared some demographic research, which divided NZ society’s engagement with sustainability issues as follows: 5% trailblazers, 25% actively engaged, 40% passive and 30% need persuasion. That 40% of passive people are the group they focused on and recommended directing communications to. Don’t waste time on the “need persuasion” group – focus on turning passive people into active people. In order to do this, they outlined certain elements of the communications message, principally communicating that there are meaningful actions that can be taken as part of a clear chain of inputs to a desirable future.
Second was a pre-recorded video from UK communications outfit Futerra. Go check out their website, it’s a delight, full of nifty resources and founded on a clear commitment to the environment. Chief among these resources are two absolute gems: Rules of the Game and New Rules: New Game (both are .pdf links). These describe key principles of climate change communication, each neatly summarised, some of them familiar, many of them very new indeed. (For example: 9. Beware the impacts of cognitive dissonance – Confronting someone with the difference between their attitude and their actions on climate change will make them more likely to change their attitude than their actions.) If you have any interest in communicating ideas about climate change, which includes just talking about it to your friends or family, then you owe it to yourself to check these out.
Third on the list was Victoria University of Wellington Psychology Associate Professor John McClure, who spoke about his experience relating to earthquake risk perception and risk management behaviours. (Overseas readers: Wellington sits on a major fault line.) He covered, briefly, how optimism about risk was foolhardy; how optimism about agency was essential to avoid resignation and fatalism; and how people always expect bad things will happen to other people and not to them. In the latter case, one way of countering this bias was to give people examples they could relate to: “Jimmy Jones down the street has taken these steps” works better than “Here’s what you can do to protect yourself”.
Fourth, freelance journo Kim Griggs (website; she writes for, among other venues, the BBC news site) talked about the media perspective and how to do a better job communicating with and through the media. She talked up networking and building relationships with relevant journalists, and recommended that it was important for organisations to support media outlets that cover climate change (for example, by purchasing advertising within them).
Fifth was another video presentation, this time from Dan Abassi, quoted above, a former Yale Professor in Forestry and the Environment. Abassi’s video was quite dry, and coming late in the session his detailed account of the preparation of a seminal U.S. climate change conference left much of the audience, including me, unmoved. His book, Americans and Climate Change, looks to be worth a read however. A google has found this extended summary of its content. Check it out.

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Overall, it was a fascinating day. The Futerra stuff alone was a revelation for me; if you do nothing else in response to this post, click on those .pdf links. They are very pink, and each is only a couple of pages. If you’re interested in the general area, check out the other links, or comment/email and I’ll throw some more details your way.

Tuesday night we went to the cast & crew premiere of Ed Lynden-Bell’s movie, The Last Great Snail Chase. Ed is a mate, and used to flat with Cal; at the start when producer David White said “you’re all here because you helped somehow” I figured that must include moral support. I certainly promised Ed I’d get stuck in to lend a hand in a more concrete way, but, er, never quite did. Oh well.
The movie was made on an absolute shoestring, relying on goodwill from everyone, conserving what little money was available for inescapable technical requirements like film, cameras and lighting. Actors and crew and musicians all worked for nothing, locations were secured through favours or for a beer or two, and a last-minute drive to get the CGI rendered was achieved by sending out an email asking people to donate their computers for a few days. A lot of love was lavished on this film.
As it turns out, the film deserves it. It’s a deeply strange piece of film-making, thoroughly engaging and prone to leap into the most wonderful flights of fancy. It tells a bunch of interwoven tales about the inhabitants of a small Wellington flat, following them through troubles in love and in work and watching them emerge slowly into adulthood. It also features a disembodied shadow, large numbers of flying turtles, a suspended tidal wave, a dreamlike art gallery, bumblebee rescue, a Roman centurion, and the devil’s cousin. It’s the kind of film that makes you wonder how on earth it got made, so idiosyncratic is its vision; and then makes you grateful that it was.
It’s a heck of a lot of fun, and quite wonderful. Not all of it comes off and the acting is a bit ropey in places, but there’s so much heart on display here it would be churlish to hold these limitations against it. (Especially if you know how little money was spent to create the film!) I hope the CGI (much of it unfinished at this screening) comes together as well as it promises to, and that the film finds its audience. It does have one. Possibly you?
Release date unknown as of yet.
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More Geeks on Dates from Susan: “…if we wanted stringent and contrived rules in our personal relationships we’d have been popular in our teens.”.
And be sure to listen to Thou Shalt Always Kill, music that is the new awesome. Lyrics here; yes, it does include the line “Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry”. My new favourite song, taking over from It’s All In Your Head (C’Mon C’Mon) by Kupek, a.k.a. Bryan Lee O’Malley (creator of scenester comic of choice Scott Pilgrim).