Category: Things I’ve Seen

Saw Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School’s second-year production of one-act plays by Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill, which they group-titled ”After Democracy”.
It’s a good series of pieces all with political subjects (per the title). Pinter’s Mountain Language opens, which demonstrates military torment of an occupied people; and Pinter’s Party Time, in which the glamourous elite smarm while trouble brews in the streets, finishes.
Between is Churchill’s oddly-formed Far Away, which itself has three parts (so loosely tied it took some googling after the fact to work out the same characters were in each part). The third of these took me out of the show completely; it pushes too far into absurdity with tales of animals and professions choosing sides in a complex global war, and came off much like an unused and typically overlong season five Monty Python sketch. It was made up for by the second part with the hatmakers, which is probably the piece I’m going to remember for the rest of my life – excellent stuff.
Nevertheless, the whole piece was a fun and intriguing time, making good use of space and a large cast. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re up Newtown way. On until Weds at 8pm.

They’ve only released a teaser poster and they’ve already got it fatally wrong.

Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop was a lot of things. Violent, smart, satirical, more than a little emo. One thing it absolutely was not, was a movie where Robocop smirked like a self-satisfied Val Kilmer.

A moment of silence for the passing of one of the all-time great in-camera effects geniuses, Stan Winston, who with his studio populated my youthful imagination with a series of incredible creations. The alien queen, the predator monster, and the terminator robot – the stars of the big three 80s tech noir films – were all from Winston. His distinctive style also distinguished huge hits like Edward Scissorhands, Jurassic Park and Baman Returns, as well as lesser-known cult faves like the Monster Squad and his own directorial debut, Pumpkinhead.
(And I just checked wikipedia to see if I missed anything crucial, and turns out I did: Winston designed the Mr Roboto mask for Styx! He had a “special thanks” credit on The Thing, to boot.)
Through his visual imagination and ability to translate that into screen reality, he has been the cause of countless nightmares for those of my generation. (Me included, oh yes.) Nicely done, Stan. You went earlier than anyone would have wished.

Many of the people I mentioned this to responded the same way: “that is one depressing film”. So it was.
The key image is the Russian cargo planes that land and depart from an airstrip on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. This leads to an exploration of many problems: the voracious Nile Perch, an introduced species that completely outcompeted the native fish and proved unfishable by traditional methods, forcing industrialisation; the demand for Nile Perch overseas that means all the best parts of the fish are too expensive for the locals to eat; the lack of options for those scrabbling to make a living off the fisheries; the lack of local ownership of anything of substance (the fisheries are run by an immigrant Indian/Pakistani cohort, the planes are owned and flown by Russians, etc.); the orphan street children, manufacturing their own narcotics so they can sleep rough without fear; the unchecked spread of AIDS and HIV; the deliveries of foreign arms to sustain local wars.
The film keeps peeling back layers to reveal connections between its problems it depicts, until you are left with a picture of a system that has found temporary stability as it devours its own foundations. Because it is stable, it resists change fiercely; because it is a large and complex system, each individual actor seems powerless to move things in a different direction. And that, I suspect, is why it comes across as depressing – there doesn’t seem to be a way to unpick the terrible knot in place. And implicit in it, although never onscreen, is us – the Western consumer, with our demand for products for our markets, the effects of which set the base conditions that lets everything else unfold as it does. We are profoundly implicated although the film doesn’t come close to pointing the finger – it doesn’t need to.
Anyway. Wikipedia reveals a controversy over the film – unsurprisingly, the Tanzanian government have spoken out against the film. More curiously, a French writer has attacked the film, calling it a colonial exercise, and feuding with the producer – all the relevant links are to articles in French that are beyond my limited grasp of the language. Francophones are invited to follow the resource links at the bottom of that page and report on the substance of this controversy…

Mike Leigh’s new one (after Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, both wonderful and memorable character pieces) is about Poppy, a relentlessly cheerful woman who learns to drive. And that’s about it. It’s marvellous.
There’s a lot of ground covered in H-G-L, but I’m most interested in how the film explores learning. The theme of how our social interactions shape us. Using the device of formal education of different sorts, it highlights the hidden lessons that exist all around us and that shape us from early childhood onwards.
This is obliquely explored through different kinds of talk. Poppy’s responses to life are fascinating for their incoherence – she contradicts herself repeatedly, and it’s clear that what she says isn’t representative of any inner set of beliefs, but is entirely strategic to build positive relationships. Her counterpoint, Scott the driving instructor, is similar in how what he says doesn’t relay any deeper truth – but in his case, it’s because his talk is founded in self-deception.
There’s a scene in the middle that has not been well-received in reviews, a lengthy sequence where Poppy interacts with a derelict. I loved that sequence, for its sustained tension and its avoidance of clear meaning, and for showing how Poppy’s talk works even when all obvious meaning is stripped away. It’s a brave scene, that exasperates the viewer as much as it should enchant and unnerve – and it’s at the midpoint of the film for a good reason.
See it sometime. No big-screen needed, at all; wait for DVD with impunity. But if you want a change of pace after some big-budget popcorn flicks, this is worth checking out.

Despite me being wall-to-wall busy, Cal and I found time this weekend to finish watching the fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’. Fantastic, urgent, essential television. The flaws in the last season – it had plenty – faded as it built to a pleasing and unexpectedly tight conclusion.
In celebration, then, here are a bunch of links about the greatest TV show of the decade:
Seven minutes of Wire creator David Simon talking about why he loves Baltimore (with cameos from some Wire cast members) (no spoilers)
David Simon on The Wire, talking right at the beginning of season one in 2002
The Guardian interviews Snoop Pearson about how she went from prison to acting (no real spoilers)
Salon on ‘everything you need to know about The WIre’ (no spoilers in the excellent overview in page one, then it describes seasons one and two in detail)
The Atlantic interviews David Simon at the start of season five
Simon writes in the WaPo (which, by the way, gets a hammering in season 5) about his experience of journalism
Simon’s letter to viewers at the end of the series (no spoilers, actually)

The Many Worlds Hypothesis is a solution to a puzzle of quantum physics. Basically, quantum physics produces an impossible result, that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, and the many worlds hypothesis resolves this impossibility by saying both outcomes are true in different worlds. In this universe that we experience, the cat lives; in another universe branching off from this one, the cat has been deaded. (For a detailed discussion, see here.)
Inspired by this hypothesis, I would like to propose my own. It has been seen that television has produced an impossible result: John Munch is in both this show and that show at the same time. The Munchy Worlds hypothesis resolves this by saying John Munch is on both shows, which are in different worlds.
To elaborate: in every fictional world, there is a separate and distinct John Munch. Each world has its own fictional detective John Munch. Sometimes the universe’s Munch comes on screen (e.g. Homicide: Life on the Street, Law and Order, The X-Files). Sometimes, there are no overt signs of that universe’s Munch. Even so, it is reasonable to believe that he is out there somewhere, whinging about his ex-wives and making with the gallows quips. If we stayed long enough in the world of Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, How I Married Your Mother – he would eventually lurch into frame.
Inevitable corrolary: when you create a fictional world, somewhere in the vast and ineffable depths of that creation, there’s a pockmarked Richard Belzer glaring at you through his specs. Sleep on that, creatives of the world. We must all make our peace with the Munchyness of our Worlds.

Just a quick one here. Cal and I made it along to see the new movie Robert Downey Jr. the other day. It features Robert Downey Jr. playing Robert Downey Jr., and he gives an excellent portrayal – not only is he faithful to the source material, but he makes the character of Robert Downey Jr. far more charismatic and charming than you’d believe was possible. You just can’t take your eyes off him.
Also features Gwyneth Paltrow playing A Girl, and she does it well.
I really did enjoy this film. It’s far from flawless – the gender and geo politics are both a bit askew (but then, that’s in line with the source material), and the final fight between Robert Downey Jr. and Bald Jeff Bridges was lacking something or other – but what the hell. Robert Downey Jr.! Whatcha gonna do!
Anyway, word on the street is that Robert Downey Jr. makes a cameo appearance as Robert Downey Jr. in the upcoming film, Not By Ang Lee. Yet another reason to go see that one!

An oddity I stumbled upon yesterday – forgive me if you’ve heard this one… The Beijing Olympics, with sponsorship from McDonalds, are running an Alternate Reality Game right now. (No big surprise – as James Wallis has noted, “ARGs have become a standard part of a marketing strategy”.)
‘The Lost Ring’ ARG has complicated backstory up the wazoo, as is always the case with these things. The bit that fascinates me is this: they’re trying to create a new sport. (Okay, I’m also fascinated by the commitment to different languages on display – game content seems to be divided among about a dozen different languages, including Esperanto.)
The new sport is “labyrinth running”. Check the details here. It’s a timed race where a blindfolded runner begins at the centre of a labyrinth and escapes as quickly as possible; teammates form the wall and hum to help the blinded person’s orientation.
As part of the ARG, groups have sprung up playing this old/new game all over. There’s a bunch of neat videos at the blog of Jane McGonigal (clever ARG designer-person who is presumably a key player behind the scene). The local Wellington crew are going hardout, Jane gives them props and you can see more of their videos and chat on their own site.
The Wellington crowd communicate the appeal nicely: “Basically, Labyrinth Training is a really fun team “sport” we’ve been playing outdoors with a good sense of humour, tea, coffee and biscuits.” (From this page of photos and description.) “Yes, we really gather to play labyrinth running, and yes, we’d love you to join us. No, we don’t take it po-faced seriously. Yes, we are aware we look silly.” (From the NZ site’s FAQ.)
It’s really interesting how this game has been designed – it seems decidedly unGrecian to me, but very in tune with the goals of the ARG which seem to be to build community and cross-cultural understanding. Games historians (or those like me whose parents owned a copy of the book) will immediately click to the comparable ethos of the New Games Movement. The New Games came out of hippie-era San Francisco alternate politics, changing away from zero-sum equations and working productively towards new community-affirming fun. This goes in the same direction, and while there’s a competitive element, it’s much more a communal, team-based, participatory and mutually reinforcing process. (With tea and biscuits, apparently.) The design of the new game is utterly ingenious – I wonder how long it took to come up with? It involves group trust, it can and should be played without language and thus cross-culturally, it invokes ancient forms and symbols, it’s cognitively demanding, it’s physical but not so physical that the participation bar is high… an impressively long list of attributes that serve the greater message.
I’m fascinated to see this ARG at work. I’m not sure if its profile is high or low in ARG terms, and I’m bemused by how the ARG’s aficionados are negotiating the tricky politics of a Beijing Olympiad. But the wider politics of the ARG are very much in tune with mine – games as a medium for communitas? That sounds like a big part of what I value in RPGs, and I’m sure the Creature Collective Ultimate players will also find that resonates. I’m curious about this ARG, and will keep an eye on things as they develop. If you guys come across any labyrinth running, give me a shout…
(also: go the Wellington Labyrinth runners!)