Posts by Craig Ranapia

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  • 180 Seconds with Craig Ranapia,

    Oh, and if anyone else feels like playing -
    1) Be candid.
    2) Remember 'favourites' and 'despised' mean just that - not the film you think you should like, or should hate, but the ones that raise you to transports of delight and unreasoning hatred.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • 180 Seconds with Craig Ranapia,

    To be fair, perhaps they were being completely candid and you'd have to completely bonkers to invite them round for a Saturday night watching DVDs and eating crap. (Then again, I'm going through a serious yakuza-palooza at the moment so they'd probably be fools to accept.) But I refuse to believe anyone can be that dull for real - we're talking the Olympia and Triumph of the Will of burnished banality. So much for you get the government you deserve, I guess...

    Any how, I guess it's time to expose my own cinematic tastes to mockery. In no particular order, here are my own picks and pans....

    FAVOURITES
    **Basic Instinct** (1992 - Paul Verhoeven)

    **Metropolitan** (1990 – Whit Stillman)

    **North by Northwest** (1959 – Alfred Hitchcock)

    **Fargo** (1996 –Joel Coen)

    **The Seven Samurai** (1954 – Akira Kurosawa)

    **Blue Velvet** (1986 – David Lynch)

    **The Age of Innocence** (1993 – Martin Scorsese)

    **Brief Encounter** (1945 - David Lean)

    **Topsy-Turvy** (1999 – Mike Leigh)

    **Gone With The Wind** (1938 – Victor Fleming)

    **Princess Mononoke** (1997 – Hayao Miyazaki)

    **Heavenly Creatures** (1994 – Peter Jackson)

    **Raining Stones** (1993 - Ken Loach)

    The Lone Wolf and Cub series (1972-4 — Kenji Misumi et. al.)

    **Hellraiser** (1987 – Clive Barker)

    **The Castle** (1997 – Rob Sitch)


    DESPISED
    **The Shining** (1980 – Stanley Kubrick)

    **300** (2006 – Zack Snyder)

    **The Departed** (2006 – Martin Scorsese)

    **What Dreams May Come** (1998 – Vincent Ward)

    **The Piano** (1993 - Jane Campion)

    **Erin Brockovich** (2000 – Stephen Soderbergh)

    Anyone who can knit the above list into some suitably amusing case study of psychopathology won't win a prize - other than my sincere and breathless admiration. :)

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Christchurch, party pills and NOS Pt2,

    Oh, Liddle Bubbie Jeebus... thanks for the hitherto successfully repressed memories Robyn.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Christchurch, party pills and NOS Pt2,

    Perhaps I'm giving you an insight into why I've got so much grey hair at the age of 35-ish, but you can remember what you were pouring down your neck back in the day? Someone wasn't trying. :)

    Seriously, I think you've got a point: I was too wimpy to move past ethyl alcohol in the recreational drug stakes but, my God, the conversations become a lot less profound when you're not toasted.

    Perhaps I should defer to the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who made this observation in an address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 29, 1870, later published as Mechanism in thought and morals:

    I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to
    put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the
    thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the
    triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and
    filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities which made me an
    archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one
    great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to
    all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed
    upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the
    cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my
    resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote in ill-shaped,
    straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my
    consciousness. The words were these (children may smile, the wise will ponder): 'A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • 180 Seconds with Craig Ranapia,

    Nice to know my first review wasn't a pan - and if you listen really carefully you can hear me remembering to breathe now and them. :)

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Random Play: The Chinese envoy is here,

    i agree both Mayor Wood and Mainland China have nothing to say about anything that relates to domestic affairs in NZ

    Riddley, perhaps I've completely missed your point but I happen to live in a city where George Wood has rather a lot of influence over quite a lot that relates to my life.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Random Play: The Chinese envoy is here,

    Mayor Wood might also consider he's seeking re-election in a city with a not-inconsiderable immigrant population. Somehow, I'm not really comfortable with a Mayor whose appointment diary is revised at the behest of any foreign embassy.

    Ironically enough, the last time I was in a room with Mr. Wood was when we attended the same screening of The Wind that Shakes the Barley - Ken Loach's Palm D'Or winning valentine to the IRA. I don't recall the Irish Republic or the United Kingdom discouraging people from attending what, from one point of view, is a lengthy apologia for a terrorist organisation.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: British style,

    Riddley Walker wrote:
    hope you'll be a little more compelling in your 3 minutes of fame Craig

    Well, you'll have to wait and see. You won't, however, find any stealth F-bombs in my segment. Sorry.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: British style,

    Jamie Anstice:

    Yes - but if Steve Maharey doesn't like that, then he's in a much better position than most to amend the Broadcasting Act. Maharey has apparently decided not to lay a formal complaint with Radio New Zealand, so let's just hope he's going to have a nice long nap over the Easter recess and come back in a better mood. It's not as if Education and Broadcasting aren't too portfolios where there's a lot of work to be done, and real political leadership needed.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: British style,

    I'm rather less exercised by the actual cussing that some people are having conniptions about.

    Meh... If the poor little darling can't handle Question Time, then I respectfully suggest he had in his ministerial warrant and fuck off back to academia. I also pointed out on Kiwiblog the amusing irony that the MPs can stand up and flat out slander anyone they like under pariamentary privilege - and the media can spread the muck far and wide because they're protected by (qualified) privilege in reporting the proceedings of Parliament

    Of course, anyone smeared by this kind of sleaze has NO recourse under defamation law, and has precisely ZERO standing to lay a privileges complaint.

    And I also have to ask what the Public Sector Code of Conduct has to say about civil servants telling their political lords and masters to go engage in auto-etoticism?

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

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