Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Islander,
O, just for the record, my weird surname has an ‘l’ in it: it is Scandanavian in origin
Fixed with apologies. I get extremely pissy when folks mung my weirdly ethnic surname :), and really should be more careful with other people’s.
Kia ora Craig – your comment on Graham Beattie’s blog – and especially here – much appreciated.
You're welcome. I probably have a higher opinion of Naipaul's work than you do but his best work is a long way behind him; even I'm not going to try and defend The Enigma of Arrival or the duology Half a Life / Magic Seeds. They're awful. Anyone who thinks they're the work of the "best living writer in the English language" needs to step away from the P pipe.
And if you really want to put the case for lady-parts tainting fiction with "sentimental" "feminine tosh," Jane Austen is a rather odd name to cite. I'd argue she's lasted for two centuries precisely because she's about as foofy as a cosh to the back of the head.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to 3410,
Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder.
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HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: I've added to the post a link to Rachael King on Nat Radio yesterday. Thank to Fundy Post (Paul Litterick) for bringing it to my attention...
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to 3410,
Sure. I still wonder what kind of person complains about having to see a Malick film once every nine years.
To be fair, even though I'm not the biggest fan of Malick you've got to respect that he's the closest thing we've got to Kubrick's "fuck off and let me do my crazy shit after you've written the cheque" relationship with Warners. And like Kubrick, Malick may be arthouse with a capital A, but he's also reliably (if modestly) profitable and makes films people feel obliged to talk about, even if they hate themselves in the morning. :)
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to David Herkt,
Quite -- as a general principle, once a film hits the two hour mark it has to work damn hard to keep my attention. But like most general principles, you don't have to look far to find exceptions: Gone With the Wind is always one hell of a way to pass 3 3/4 hours.
But Terence Malick isn't so much "slow and boring" as "I've just watched a string of astoundingly beautiful images that don't really add up to anything I give a shit about." (Then again, the Better Half has the same reaction to Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood for Love which I adore.)
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FWIW, Diana Athill doesn't remove her rings to give Naipaul a good rap across the knuckles.
"I was a 'sensitive editor' because I liked his work, I was admiring it. When I stopped admiring him so much I started being 'feminine tosh'," she said this morning. "I can't say it made me feel very bad. It just made me laugh ... I think one should just ignore it, take no notice really."
Naipaul has "always been a testy man and seems to have got testier in old age", said Athill. "I don't think it is worth being taken seriously ... It's sad really because he's a very good writer. Why be such an irritable man?"
It's not the first time the pair have clashed. When Athill told Naipaul that his novel, Guerrillas, did not ring true, the move led, indirectly, to his departure from André Deutsch. And Athill has previously said that, when she needed cheering up, "I used to tell myself: 'At least I'm not married to Vidia.'"
As the kids say: Burn!
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Susannah Shepherd,
I do recall telling the truth being quite high on the list of stuff good Christians were supposed to do.
And more to the point, I suspect most faith-based or church affiliated social service contractors are scrupulous about their legal obligations and survive being audited up the wazoo -- as they should.
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Hard News: Bishop Brian: It's worse than…, in reply to Craig Young,
Well, well. It looks like the latest Roy Morgan has Labour rising eight points up the polls and National dipping below absolute majority status. Cause, or correlation, one wonders?
It probably has more to do with Goff going a polling cycle without opening his mouth and using it as a pop up shoe store.
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Hard News: Here's one I prepared earlier, in reply to Russell Brown,
Glad you noticed. I had exactly the same reaction.
I love it when cats stretch and arrange their limbs in the "that's not right, but is awfully impressive" way they do.
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Hard News: Here's one I prepared earlier, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
Yes, but have Palin's eyes ever graced a brothel advertisement?
Oh FFS... can we please call moral panic/slut-shaming bullshit on this? I know the HeraldFail and ComPost never quite got over the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act, but Calvert has a financial interest in a brothel. Her eyes were... oh, I don't really give a shit. Neither is illegal. Neither is even vaguely improper. Most pertinently, neither has the slightest relevance to my stunned disbelief every damn time she opens her mouth as an MP.
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