Posts by Geoff Lealand
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Great new season of Media 7 tonight. The extended format seemed less rushed, with time for all to have their say--and we got to see the audience (several times!)
-
Many thanks to everyone for the advice about The Wire . I have seen some of Generation Kill --indeed, even before it went to air in the USA. Andrea Calderwood, the producer, was one of the guests at the Wintec 'Spark' festival last year. Pretty impressive but the gung-ho politics and obsession with image put me off a bit.
-
A bit off the topic--and another medium--but I would welcome any advice....
I intended to spend a chunk of my summer (the late, dark hours) watching The Wire (described by Tom Frewen in the NBR last week as "the best television drama ever made"). We bought season/series 2 from JB's as they were out of season one. Watched one episode* with great interest but also with some bewilderment, as it was difficult to fully understand connections and back-stories. Do I really need to start with season one?
* which ended with the discovery of the bodies of young women, suffocated in the inner recesses of a shipping container). -
O Geoff Lealand? Bill Pearson didnt live long enough on the Coast to get his whitebaiting right
I can't vouch for Pearson's whitebaiting expertise but I do remember Coal Flat as being evocative of other aspects of life on the Coast--life in a burg like Granity, with a politics which has largely disappeared. . But it was years ago when I read it and I may be giving it undeserved praise.
I took a second year course in New Zealand Literature, in the first year it was offered (1980?) at the Univ of Canterbury. I wonder if it still on the programme.
-
I reckon that Bill Pearson's Coal Flat_ --a neglected NZ minor masterpiece--is well worth seeking out.
-
and something called My First Stabbing
A little something which should be read by everyone, this summer and all summers to come!
-
McDonald is 50 years old? The things you assume--I just took it for granted that it was some 23 year old hoon on the run. What initiated the Friday events? If indeed it was something to do with a purse-snatching, then we do need to ask whether subsequent events (the pursuit, in particular) were justified.
-
Not so much books but working my way through a pile of quality magazines, such as Sight & Sound and The Word (one of the best music mags around). But I particularly savour saving up an issue or two of the US quarterly Stop Smiling ("The magazine for high-minded lowlifes") for summer reading. Does anyone else read this?
A couple of books on the go: David Mamet's Bambi vs Godzilla: on the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (might not finish this--he does not write non-fiction that well); Wayne Brittenden's The Celluloid Circus: The Heyday of the New Zealand Picture Theatre (an enthralling pictorial history); and maybe Michael Schudson Why Democracies Need An Unlovable Press.
-
I wish people stopped reminding me that they've been to see Leonard Cohen. (The lucky bastards.)
I know what you mean. I feel the same about those lucky bastards who saw Neil Young at BDO.
I have done a review of LC's Auckland concert and it should be on kiwiboomers sometime soon.
-
....and Intervention!!!