Public Address - OnPoint (Home)

MAAATT DAAAMON | Feb 28, 2007 21:02

Far be it for me to say that Scorsese doesn't deserve an Oscar, but geez, did they have to give him one for The Departed? It wasn't so bad as a movie, but it was a pale imitation of the original, Infernal Affairs.

(Here is a link to Hamish McKenzie's interview with Infernal Affairs' writer, Alan Mak. Bumpy - but funny stuff.)

Sure, it added a bit of Irish-American homophobia and machismo into the mix, turned Hong Kong-spunk into Boston-rough, but essentially, it followed all the major twists and turns of the original, down to a hell of a lot of cinematic details that were simply yoinked. The female characters (which were purely decorative in the original) were merged into a new subplot - which was interesting, but that was the only improvement made on the original.

Jack Nicolson's own take on the boss character was just too frazzled and insane to be menacing; and god, Mark Wahlberg's character was just a completely incongruous and jarring addition, ripping apart every scene he's in, and ruining Martin Sheen's presence to boot.

They all took away from the delicious moral ambiguity of the original. Di Caprio came close, but wasn't quite there. Ironically, the beauty of Andy Lau's original performance was that it drew on the same self-loathing and fear as Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley, yet, Matt Damon's character just became too much of an #######, and never really had that desperate desire to cling on to his life of respectability.

And oh god, the ending - the ending!

(Spoilers!)

(Spoilers!)

(Spoilers!)

In the original Infernal Affairs, two endings were produced - the real version and another one for release in Mainland China. In the Mainland version, Andy Lau (the fake cop) exits the lift, and is immediately confronted by a whole bunch of cops. They know everything - of course they do, they're the AUTHORITIES - they arrest him and take him away. The mainland censors were uncomfortable with the idea that the main character could be shown to be a dirty criminal, kill people, cheat the system and get away with it.

This was retarded, of course. The whole *point* of the movie was the same as The Talented Mr Ripley's - it was about the ambiguity of living a double life, the lies, the guilt, the desperate, muffled cries of not being able to tell anyone. And like Mr Ripley, it's the loneliness of the character (after killing everyone who knows the truth) that leaves the chill in your bones.

It's pretty goddamn disappointing that Scorsese has as much faith in his audience as the Chinese government censors have in theirs.

(End spoilers.)

(End spoilers.)

(End spoilers.)

In other news...

I'm in Sri Lanka! I'm going off-blog for a while - have a pile of deadlines waiting for me. So, it's likely that I'll do a time-delayed travel blog when I'm back vegging out in Hong Kong, so I can do it properly with photos and all.

Also...

Keeping a close eye on the Rickards/Shipton/Schollum case.

Of course, this case was the one that was being seriously threatened by the pamphleteers last year. It's likely that the lawyers had a go at arguing that a fair trial was made impossible by the pamphleteers' action.

I'm not sure whether a conviction or another accquittal would hurt the reputation of the police more...

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D47: Dynamite! | Feb 20, 2007 06:46

Meacheakalai put two mats down on the hard ground for us. The dogs circled and howled. It was getting late, and only the faintest glow seeped from the horizon. As Meacheakalai, his wife and six children sat down on the dirt, on the other side of the courtyard, the lone light bulb swayed ever-so-gently. The family cow stood directly underneath the light, while the rest of the world faded into darkness.

The sound of a massive explosion rumbled across the plains.

"Um," I asked casually, "what was that?"

--

After a chance meeting in Delhi, I came to Madurai to cover the work of an NGO called SHEPHERD. Their work varies widely, but focuses on the empowerment of rural people, especially women. They've also taken to spreading organic farming and tree-planting, with a little help from the New Zealand High Commission.

We'd been through many farms that day, and Meacheakalai's was the last on the list - and the most remote, tucked away behind the folds of dry riverbeds and small, pudding-like rock-hills.

Away from the village, his and two other families worked that piece of land, and they are in the process of converting to organic. Only three of the children are Meacheakalai's - the rest are from the other families, hanging around to see the spectacle: me. Several more children emerged from the darkness, and ranged from babies to teens, from shy to downright camera-hogs. (Excuse the poor photos here - it really was very dark, and I'm not very good at night photography.)

The explosion, he explained through SHEPHERD's Paramasamy, was on a distant quarry. Nearby, a mighty pillar of rock looked concerned.

--

We visited a village that was, literally, the shithole of Madurai. All the sewage and all the rubbish from the city of 1.1 million ended up here. The village made its living by growing crops with the raw sewage.

The sewage came through a number of open sewers, then flowed through irrigation channels and into the fields.

On the other side of the road, there was rubbish. Hills of rubbish. Rubbish so vast, so deep and so thick, there was a road *over* it:

As we drove over hill after hill of rubbish, more trucks came by, struggling to unload as the heaps became higher and higher:

The hellish ambience was complemented by plastic fires; though small, their heat was intense, even against the backdrop of a scorching sun. The fires sent hot air straight up, sucking up swirling pillars of trash.

This was ecological dystopia meets Dante's Inferno. A world with gentle rolling hills of garbage, glistening rivers of raw sewage, diseased crows circling tornadoes of plastic bags.

It was nuts. Just fucking nuts.

--

Of course, the villagers are sick, there are social, economic as well as ecological problems. But the rest will, unfortunately, have to wait until someone gives me money. I'm saving the A-material for an article that I hope will be published in New Zealand's favourite weekly mag for lonesome housewives. In the meantime, feel free to browse through my photos on Flickr.

I'll be posting more about the gypsy village at some stage.

(I've finally forked out my $25 USD, a goddamn decade after all the cool kids have done it, and spent the last three days uploading and sorting photos. Dangerous combination: Giving a jobless obsessive-compulsive a *sorting-engine*, five hundred photos, half a dozen dimensions to sort by and near-unlimited space for filling out details (that need, of course, to be accurate). It still irks me that the camera had the wrong time for the first set, and I don't have a point of reference to reset it to the right time.)

ANYWAY…

The experience was pretty goddamn awesome. Sitting around with a farmer, chatting about the price of rice. Surrounded by a simple farmhouse and the wide-open plains, nothing stirring except for cicadas and several hundred sticks of dynamite levelling a hill.

And of course, the little slice of hell. It was terrifying, but an absolute privilege to see.

I'm pretty glad I decided to be a journalist. You get to see all sorts of, um, shit. Who else would have people taking them to refuse wastelands? For free, even!

This gig rocks.

This trip was made possible with help from the Asia:NZ Foundation, who gave me money. I encourage you to do the same.

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D38: Hippy Death Ray | Feb 11, 2007 19:55

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India has found my Achilles Heel - a lethal combination of heat and humidity - and has hit me with a remorseless bout of heat rash. During my convalescence, I've been cowering in the air-conditioned fortress of my hotel room, scratching everywhere but in my notebook.

Am I too late to blog about the underclass? Are they still there? I have a poor connection to the New Zealand zeitgeist here, but I'll add my two rupees worth to the debate.

There is a huge wallop of situational irony in writing about the deprivation of people living in state homes and eating nutritionally dubious food when, walking 50m down the road, I can find a dozen people sleeping on the street, including many children. One family of three - a mother and two skinny children, both about 8 or 9 years old - were sleeping on a hand-pulled wagon. There are often small, blanket-covered lumps on the ground, and you wonder whether there's actually a person underneath, and whether they're alive.

I know, I know - social conscience doesn't reach this far. But it does put New Zealand's problems into perspective, anyway.

So... Key's trying to turn a social malady into a national crisis? How terribly Leader-of-the-Opposition of him to do so.

But for once, this is not an issue that ends with "and this will add an extra $?? million to the economy". And National isn't gunning for the underclass vote here. Of course he's still politicking, but at least he's talking about governance beyond economic management, and about politics beyond the pork-barrel variety.

The aim is to galvanise voters around - get this - an common ideal. Or a common fear.

That's the question. Is he really interested in helping those who are left behind, or is he just afraid of what the underclass might do; does he want us to strive for a Kiwi ideal, or does he want us to fear the poor?

It's natural that he'd have a stab both ways, but he needs to decide which one it is, and in so doing, decide which kind of politics he wants to pursue.

The proof will be in the policies, not the rhetoric. But if he proves genuine and he steers away from fearmongering, I think that Key has an opportunity to inject some long-absent idealism into the political arena.

And if that frames the agenda for the next election (rather than tax-goddamn-cuts), then Key would already have done the nation a significant service.

--

I've stopped being surprised by India now. Not that India isn't surprising, but I think my faculty for surprise is dulled - as have my regard for personal safety.

After a month of constant death-defiance on the roads, I've become blasé about a pair of oncoming buses on both sides of the road. And after that, drinking tap water - to the shock of my traveling companion Svenda - just didn't seem so bad-ass anymore.

There is a small temple around the corner of my hotel. There was a small elephant outside it the other day. We gave each other "what are you looking at" looks, and moved on.

Had French onion soup - was full of pepper and spices. Had some tea - it was full of chilly. Had chicken soup, donuts, etc. You get the point. Man the tiger prawns were good, though.

--

Have been doing a story on eco-housing and renewable energy in a place called Auroville - a community that follows the teachings of The Mother blah blah Divine Consciousness blah blah human unity etc.

They're an enclave of people from around the world who built a community from the ground up. Starting from barren ground, they've reforested the area and put up everything from shacks, to stylish hippy eco-buildings to death rays and time machines.

They're probably backed by the Hanso Foundation.

I didn't get to see the death ray. It's a 15m diameter parabolic solar dish that aims sunlight into a central receiver, which transfers the energy into the control centre below, cleverly disguised as a kitchen. The solar bowl is used for cooking, they claim.

It's currently closed for repairs, but I hope that they'll demonstrate its awesome power when I come back in March. I'll buy a puppy for the occasion.

The centre of the city is dominated by an enormous golden sphere. Enormous. It's just a giant time-machine in the middle of nowhere. Again, it's closed for repairs, but they tell me it's a "meditation chamber".

I'm come back for those later, but they did have some other cool stuff.

For example, a scum pond with water splashing around. Impressed? The algae is supposed to be able to purify and desalinate water *and* be harvested and burned afterwards as fuel.

They also showed me solar water heating systems which used glass evacuated tube (double layered glass tubes which uses vacuum in between to retain heat). The tubes heat water to 60 degrees but were cool to the touch. The system in India costs around $500 - 40% less than conventional systems which used a lot of copper.

And finally, a landscaped garden that was actually a sewage treatment plant in disguise. Every building has a series of tanks where waste water flow through. The first two primary treatment tanks are hidden, but the other two looks like a flower garden and a lily pond. Neither looked - or smelled - like they had shit running through them.

I spent the day riding around on a motorcycle (no helmet - gasp!) with a French woman, who showed me all the places. She later invited me to her amazing custom-built house, which was naturally air-cooled through some ingenious design features.

Her husband worked for an oil company, she later noted in passing.

--

On my way back, I passed by a giant temple with a very angry, 20m tall god with a skull at his feet. Passing through the mouth of a giant tiger, I walked down to the dark basement, topless. The walls were lined with meditating figures. A young acolyte/priest took a plate with an oil lamp and a small bowl of red powder, walked to the altar, waved it around, and beckoned me to come. He anointed me with a spot on my forehead.

I am now holier than thou. I think.

--

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