Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Mr. Darlington:
Masterpiece of understatement...
James Griffin:
I'm not sure whether he'd qualify to be paid out under the Police Employment Rehabilitation Fund - I think you only get the top up if you were employed before 1992 (when the PERF was closed off) and can prove you're leaving for "medical or psychological reasons." Officers recruited since then are part of the government superannuation scheme which is paid out in full whether an officer is sacked, or resigns.Doesn't mean the Police, like the rest of the public service, won't cut a large cheque - with a binding non-disclosure agreement binding both parties, of course - to make a problem go away. A friend who used to work for the State Services Commission calls it The Godfather Option - make 'em an offer they can't refuse. :)
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Daryl:
Shit, that's cynical. Then again, I'm not one to talk because after his extraordinary post-verdict outburst, I'm not entirely convinced he really wants his job back as opposed to laying the ground for a generous 'fuck off' package. (Because that's never happened in the history of industrial relations, has it?) Then again, it's not entirely implausible that he's thick as a brick and twice as dangerous, with a vindictive steak and an engorged sense of entitlement.
In the end, I just want to see this... person gone. Rickards was acquitted on charges of indecent assault and kidnapping yesterday. Being a sleazy prick isn't necessarily a crime - let alone an employment matter. But does anyone want to read the transcript of the trial - including Rickards' own testimony - and his post-verdict comments, and seriously argue he has the character and good judgement to be (quite literally) one promotion away from the top of the Police force in 21st century New Zealand?
If a solid gold (en handshake is the price of taking out the trash, so be it. Doesn't mean I have to like it...
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Che:
Royalist propaganda - from Stephen Frears? To be honest, I don't think a single 'scrounging parasites, kill-em-all' republican is going to walk out of The Queen converted into a Union Jack-waving monarchist or vice versa. If you think Tony Blair is a shit-sucking, marshmallow-spined weasel obsessed with spin and polls (and who doesn't, nowadays?), there's plenty to confirm your opinion.
But the one thing I took away was how absurd - even illusory and dependent on the fickle affection of the public - the 'power' of a constitutional monarch is. And in Helen Mirren's performance anyway - she bloody knows it, but she can't walk away either. Since the age of ten -- seven-eighths of your life -- you've been told to place 'duty above self'; weigh every word, know every public gesture is going to be picked to bits; never display irritation, boredom, any emotion that's going to be thrown back in your face. (And however much you want to, you can't throw the editor of The Sun in The Tower, dismiss creepy-crawly Prime Ministers, or have your psycho-bitch daughter-in-law fitted up for treason and beheaded.) It may be 'borning', but I found it fascinating.
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Hey, my major (hell, my only) academic achievement in 7th form was teaching a Japanese exchange student the finer nuances of English obscenity: There is a difference between telling someone to fuck up (cease your tiresome prattle!), fuck off (depart from my sight!) or just go fuck themselves (you are a most distasteful individual!), after all.
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TXe Ming:
To be fair, at least Martin Scorsese swung into uber-film geek mode and reminded everyone that Hong Kong and Japan are two different countries - not that you'd know from the cast list of Memoirs of a Geisha, but least said soonest mended. Then again, there seems to be some confusion that Guillermo Del Torro made a movie speaks Spanish, made a movie set in Spain but Mexico and the Iberian Peninsula are on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
At the risk of being po faced, Americans mightn't be so quickly stereotyped as insular, racist ignoramuses if they didn't make it so damn easy.
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Bigger film geeks than me could probably name a dozen off the top of thier heads?
Well, I'm probably going to be charged with treason for saying this... but I suspect Peter Jackson's director gong (and the whole Return of the King juggernaut) was rewarding a spectacularly successful trilogy, as much as any qualities in the film itself. It was just their turn.
It also doesn't hurt that Jackson is a consummate player when it comes to PR, and working the endless round of award season events - and I'm not being entirely bitchy or cynical. Nobody could seriously argue that Alfred Hitchcock was a great film-maker, and an enormously successful one over the span of a very long career. But I don't think it was any coincidence that his lack of Oscar success coincided with a *ahem* intensely private, blackly humourous and not always politic demeanour.
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Ah, but the headshots!
Jack Nicholson masticating the scenery like a P-crazed termite! Everyone trying to drop more F-bombs on the Scorsese canon than Joe Pesci managed in Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino combined! Corn syrup sprayed around the sets with a water blaster!
I own both parts of Kill Bill and the even more bloody 'remix' director's cut (hack, gouge and splatter) of Sin City, so I'm not exactly some cinematic prude. But I don't consider either film the best of their respective years - and for much the same reason I ultimately hated The Departed. You can't fault Scorsese, Tarantino or Rodriguez for their technical chops or the visceral sugar-high of artful mayhem. But in the end, is eating your own weight in eye-candy going to leave much behind other than a vague memory of a gut ache.
In short, The Departed never really moved or engaged me. (With all due respect to Rosie, I understand the English subtitles on the DVD are fairly accurate, though naturally don't catch the full flavour of some of the more *ahem* idiomatic and slangy lines - and I didn't find them hard to read. That's a matter of personal taste, I guess.) Infernal Affairs did.
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but one might think a person of Turia's decidely mixed background would be a little more cautious about essentializing in this way (and confusing skin colour, ethnicity and citizenship - or not even caring about the differences between these things).
Well, I didn't want to go there... but on one level, it's not really that different from the Trust Fund Marxists I knew at university, or (on a more sinister footing) how often converts seem drawn to the most extreme, and extremely intolerant, sects in their chosen faith. One appeal of any rigid ideological framework - political, religious, whatever - is that it's one way to avoid (or actively strike back at) the messy, complex and perhaps even intractable bullshit of being alive.
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And hang on, isn't Craig the only Maori on the thread so far?
Um, being a National Party voter/member/ex-office holder immediately disqualifies you from any game of 'Hori-er Than Thou' - the big gay toaster oven was repossessed years ago. (And that was 110-proof facetious, in case anyone was wondering.) If you must, I'm white from the bellybutton up, brown from the upper thigh down, and the fun bits in the middle are a delightful beige and subject to a joint custody agreement.
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We could get coherence and workability, but consensus is a pipedream.
You're probably right - but I don't think any serious observer - left, right, whaever - can claim the status quo is working. At the very least, the New Zealand Immigration Service could do with political and public sector leadership that isn't just staggering from tragedy to farce and back again. I've often said that the people who get lost in the whole debate around immigration are the migrants who play by the rules, and get buggered around like they're bottoming in a porno. I thought trying to make sense of a student loan statement was torture - I've heard some heart-breaking (and stomach-churning) stories from migrant acquaintances about the shabby - and bewildering - treatment they've received at the hands of NZIS. That can't be good enough in any country that wants to attract good people who are going to be absolutely committed to New Zealand.
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