Posts by Jake Pollock

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  • Hard News: Misadventure and Muppetry,

    Damn right they did. Go Pens.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Cracker: Hot Cross Words,

    I apologise Islander. I was presumptuous, and I don't know all that much about Kai Tahu, and nothing more about Big O than what you've said about it at PAS. However:

    My intimate community living just has nothing to do with what you envision-
    (for instance: one of my closest neighbours and friends, together with her offspring, cleared a *lot* of overgrown trees round my place this weekend. Arthritis limits what I can do: I do not count on my friends - but they will do & help. Then we celebrated with good wine, cheese & nibbles, yesterday, and a little whisky this evening.)

    Has a lot to do with what I envisioned. In urban ANZ, which is where the vast majority live, people are tied to working regimes that are heavily regulated by private enterprise and often impinge upon exactly this sort of time where people can assist their friends and families in these sorts of tasks, or simply enjoy one another's company. Statutory holidays create space for people to do things together, and, as you say, to live, outside of work, for more than two days a week. Without them, and with Ben's vision of everyone taking the days off when they want them, urban life becomes even more atomised.

    I think that would be unfortunate. But yes, you're right that my thinking does not apply to the entire archipelago. My perspective has been shaped by my urban upbringing. But I don't think that makes it invalid.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Cracker: Hot Cross Words,

    Perhaps you could explain yourself, rather than insult us.

    Anyway, as my first post implied, my experience living in a northern hemisphere country has demonstrated clearly that these festivals mark seasons, and the religious element is window dressing. We all know this of course, but celebrating halloween when all the leaves are red, Thanksgiving as autumn turns in winter, a midwinter feast at the end of December, and seeing the first rabbits hopping around a neighbourhood in bloom right around Easter time is a pretty strong demonstration of that. And these things effect everyone.

    Hence my suggestion that we move the holidays to more appropriate seasons, because at the moment we have it arse-backwards.

    I would have thought, as the member of this forum who's life seems to be most closely tied to seasonal cycles, and to a tightly-knit, small community, you would have some sympathy with this perspective.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Cracker: Hot Cross Words,

    In the US (the part of it that I live in at least) they only have collective days off for secular holidays like the July 4th, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Philosophically I think it's fair enough for a pluralist society as long as allowances are made for religious observance, but at the same time employment law in many US states are extremely anti-worker, and it's not an example I would like New Zealand to follow.

    I'm with Martin. It's nice when everyone is off at the same time. It gives us a sense of community, and structures the calendar so that people's lives are lived along the same contours, and people can have something in common.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Cracker: Hot Cross Words,

    I think we should move Easter to October or early November, and Christmas to the end of July, and Halloween to April. Would be better.

    edit: Just in New Zealand I mean.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Hard News: A revolting piece of shit,

    Craig: I was being ironico.

    You've lost me there.

    Kill Bill is several genre films spliced together -- a Western, a Hong Kong action flick, some anime, some other stuff. He shot new film, with his own actors etc., but it's really every film he's ever loved, spliced together. As I said, there's little substance to any of it, he's just toying with the history of cinema. In Inglourious Basterds, he's doing the same thing, but staying within one genre; the WW2 film of the immediate post-war era. But it's still about joining together movies together. What he does, though, is SPOILER ALERT use that history of film to put pressure on history itself. As he said in some interview, what if a film could rewrite history? So, he uses his film to take the ultimate revenge that everyone really wants to take on the Nazis, by having a beautiful jewess kill them all in an inferno. And she does it by exploiting the combustibility of film -- by setting hundreds of reels of old film on fire. More than a medium, film becomes a weapon. And all this takes place in a film that's a weird pastiche of a whole lot of WW2 films. I think it's an interesting exercise in genre, and an almost utopian way of asserting the power of film in an age when we're abandoning the physical object itself for digital reproduction.

    I don't think Scorsese ever did anything like that.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Hard News: A revolting piece of shit,

    what does IB have to say about that genre?

    It should have something to say? What, like an easily digestible message so that you can walk out of the theatre thinking 'oh that was saying that the World War 2 film of the 50s and 60s exalted American participation in war and acted as propaganda for the new American empire by glorifying violence and transforming the enemy into cartoon characters.'? Is that the sort of thing you mean? Because it doesn't have one of those. What it's doing is using the forms of the genre to play out a revenge drama, and dabble in ideas about the malleability of history and how history can become subject to art. Also, very cool scene in the underground tavern. I found it entertaining and useful to think with, personally.

    Kill Bill may not be about substance, but does that mean that it shouldn't have any?

    No, but it doesn't mean it should, either. If you walk into Tarantino's 4th and 5th feature length film expecting substance I guess you have a greater belief in the human animal's capacity for change than I do.

    I happen to disagree that Scorsese is an 'obvious model'. I don't even think there's a 'model', just pastiche of, yes, Leone, but also Akira Kurosawa, Russ Meyer, the blaxploitation flicks and countless others. He makes films about films. No heart, of course. But why does it need it? Or brains for that matter. It's about splicing, and surfaces. And, at the end of Inglourious Basterds, combustibility.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Hard News: A revolting piece of shit,

    He's not fit to lick Scorcese's boots,

    Well, it was no Gangs of New York.

    Protip: It's not a film about Germans, it's a film about genre. A genre. The American World War 2 film. Kill Bill isn't about substance, it's about film, which has no substance, being nitrates on celluloid.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Hard News: A revolting piece of shit,

    all hiphop artists presented a united public front in supporting each other regardless of merit

    Yes, that is something has been that is characteristic of all hiphop artists.


    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

  • Hard News: A revolting piece of shit,

    Fancy that. This means that my only chance to hear this guy is his response to that diss track. He sounds so much like Eminem that I didn't realise it wasn't, for about two minutes.

    /edit I mean, I know he meant to, but still.

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report

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