Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to Jolisa,
Jolisa:
OK. I'll sit in the front row at the Great Blend on Thursday and work through my call list while Emma's doing her thing. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Mary Potter Hospice.
And the next person who really wants to bring up the norms of Tudor theatricals better be ready to tell Robyn Malcolm et. al. why they're being replaced with teenage cross-dressers.
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Some people really must get a life at their earliest possible convenience.
I’m sorry this whole thread is pissing you off, but cover your eyes. Pina: A Film for Pina Bausch last night was a wonderful mash up of cinema, music, dance-theatre and intelligent use of 3D. Full house.
But, again, the screening started ten minutes late.
And it was really fucking wonderful when one of the most intense moments in the film was punctuated by someone taking a phone call behind me. And, no Gio, it wasn’t an emergency but arranging a hook up for drinks after the film. You know, something that could have been done fifteen minutes later when the film was finished.
Hell, if someone really can't deal with the psychic trauma of turning their damn phone off for 100 minutes I'll show them how to set it to silent mode and dim the backlight.
I'm just damn sick of the narcissism of people who think their phone trumps any consideration for the people around them.
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Muse: SHELF LIFE: "My Memories of Home…, in reply to Tui Hill,
Books like ‘Blue Smoke’ are why Kiwis aren’t reading much NZ literary fiction (ref Metro and last week’s Nine to Noon).
Oh, I've got something to say about that. Graham Adams' think-piece in the August issue of North & South article is damn hard to respond to because it's a classic curate's egg. Some fair questions asked, but so much of it is tendentiously argued with some epically dodgy numbers and dubious comparisons being thrown around the whole suffers. I can't even a firm handle on what Adams means by "literary" fiction. Was Elizabeth Knox's The Vintner's Luck "literary" when it was published by a university press, and somehow stop being so when it because a surprising best-seller?
Why would you want to keep on plodding through dour miserable stories about dour miserable people when you could be absorbed in well-written stories about fascinating people living interesting lives?
Honestly, I wish all local non-fiction was a well-written and thoroughly engaging as Blue Smoke. It isn't. As for the idea that New Zealand fiction is (to paraphrase Sam Neil) a dour, miserablist literature of unease that nobody wants to read. Pshaw and twaddle.
Look, I'm a firm adherent of Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crud. A shit book is a shit book, and I'm not interested in any of them.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Russell Brown,
No, I don’t think so. It’s just a drive-by by someone with a weak argument.
Cool. You're in a better position to make that call, so I've deleted the reference. Fair's fair and unfair shouldn't stand.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Russell Brown,
The sorry thing is, the person responsible could have said the same things as an actual commenter, but chose to do it the creepy way. Ugh.
{REDACTED - SEE RUSSELL'S REPLY BELOW}
And folks wonder why I’ve got issues with anonymity on-line…
ETA: Hey, ‘Russel’, why don’t you come here make your point under your real name and apologise to Russell and everyone else here at PAS for being a dick? You might not care, but I quite like PAS being a place where this kind of creepy nonsense doesn’t happen.
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to Sue,
But that's not something you can easily do if you want to book your tickets early the only way to 'choose' your seats is if you wait till counter bookings open and even then you have to be really organized at the ticket counter.
Quite - one year, I booked through the Ticketek website. Never again - it was expensive and not so much user-unfriendly as user-contemptuous. I know the Festival gets complaints every year, but I don't know if they've really got any better options. (Though the Ticketek agency we used this year was bloody good. Nice young chap who didn't treat us like shit on the heel of a new pair of Louboutin pumps.)
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to Danielle,
Yes, he's such an endearing character. The fuck is wrong with you people?
Quite possibly the same thing as seeing Kill Bill in a cinema in Sydney surrounded by downright gleeful teenage Asian girls. The whooping every time Uma Thurman went medieval on someone's ass was downright emasculating.
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Fact is, you don't know why this person was late
In my own defence, I'd have asked but the elderly lady who was expressing her extreme displeasure to the gent concerned at the repeated booty bumping and having to stand to let him pass was scary. (The Civic is a wonderful old picture palace, but leg-room most definitely wasn't in the design brief.) Decided discretion, and not impeding the flow of traffic, was the better part of journalistic valour.
And, really, what's a night out without a little light frottage between strangers?
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Muse: NZIFF Rant: A Diva's Place Is On…, in reply to David Hood,
The Austin Drafthouse Cinema were in the news a little while back for their new warning spot before films
Sir, I just have to drop my to add my +1 to Jackie.
And here's John Waters' ever-so-slightly perverse 'No Smoking" warning...
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And just to get it on the record, I'm going to be gushing at great length about what a brilliant job Bill Gosden and everyone else connected with the Auckland Festival have done. I can understand why they're extremely reluctant to turn people away, and the practical problems involved when a good chunk of the audience think they can just show up five minutes before show time. But really... the majority who do make an effort -- and often at considerable inconvenience -- deserve some consideration too.
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