Posts by Danielle
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Please do elaborate, Danielle...
Oh Sacha. Are you sure you want to start me down this road? ;)
I wish to stress that I *love* musicals. There is nothing more delightful to me than someone on a soundstage bursting into a tune or doing some nifty dance. (Tap shoes are a bonus.) However, I can't abide too many cuts in musical numbers. I hate not being able to see what's going on - I am of the Fred Astaire school and I am *not* ready for a closeup, Mr DeMille. MR was cutcutcutcutcut and it pissed me off. I felt as though Luhrmann was artificially manufacturing the excitement generated by wonderful musical numbers where none really existed.
Plus I think Nicole Kidman's character was poorly written, weirdly acted, and she generally made me uncomfortable (maybe she was meant to?). Even within the confines of that TB-courtesan-absinthe-drinking world, I didn't believe in her.
Generally, the whole film seemed totally overwrought, but I remained utterly unmoved. It was pretty-looking, melodramatic... and empty. And I liked the first two in the trilogy quite a lot, and there was all that 'he's revitalised the musical!' talk, and I was rather looking forward to it. So... meh.
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And just to join in the reverse 'we're kind of stupid as hell too' thing with Simon, the sheer numbers of people in New Zealand who put on what they think is a Texas accent when they hear my husband is from Texas? Yeah. Don't do that. Also, no, he doesn't wear a stetson, and he didn't vote for George Bush, and he doesn't own an oil well or any cowboy boots. Ho ho ho.
(I also do not handle the 'I normally don't like Americans, but I like you!' thing he gets particularly well. O RLY? Met 300 million people from vastly diverse backgrounds, have you, and disliked them all?)
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the Baz Luhrman Red Curtains trilogy
Oooh! Oooh! I've got an essay title for that one: 'How to Make the Same Film Over and Over Again: A Study in the Law of Diminishing Returns'. </snerk>
(I'm a bit mean to Baz Luhrmann, admittedly. He is talented, but various parts of Moulin Rouge made me want to stab someone with Nicole Kidman's clavicle.)
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what's the female equivalent of "avuncular?"
Avauntular? Or would that be too literal?
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Though I did hear an American friend of mine (recently arrived in NZ) say proudly the other day that he was nearly able to distinguish between the New Zealand and English accents...
Hee. I can't really blame them for that, actually. Particularly given that some of them only ever hear that generic American telly accent. It's just a question of familiarity. I mean, to *us* it's clear who's from Paeroa and who's from Colchester, but we do sound very similar to the untrained ear.
Oh, oh, another one. Several people I met thought that you could ride a commuter ferry to Australia and/or there was a 'causeway' between the two countries.
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Questions asked of me/my mother/other foreign friends while living in Texas and/or Louisiana:
'So, y'all have Christmas in July?'
'What language do you speak in New Zealand?''
'I met a guy from Australia who runs a big Ford car dealership. Do you know him?'
'You have your own money? I thought you would use US dollars.'
'Do you wear grass skirts around the house?'
'London sounds great, but I don't think I could live without peanut butter.'
Them: 'What do y'all think of George Bush in New Zealand?' Me: 'Most of us really dislike him.' Them: <surprised, hurt look>
'Do you have electricity there?'
<resentfully> 'Why are you faking that accent?'
I feel kind of mean for writing all that now and mocking the peeps, actually. Some of them were kindly feeding me and had invited me to their houses and stuff, and they were sweet. And really, why would they need to know anything about NZ? We're irrelevant. But it was hard to keep a straight face on occasion.
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"You do realise I'm in New Zealand right? it's 6am"
(quiet moment while they process this)Heh. Their minds are often cutely blown by those kinds of things. Because very few of them travel internationally, and because their media is so insular, the mere idea that you would be living *out of the USA*, on *purpose*, without being in the military, stuns them. I still remember explaining to a civil servant how to get an out-of-the-USA phone number so someone could fax me something... 'you dial 011, then the country code. All countries have a code. Yeah. New Zealand's is 64...' And the international date line, or the reversed seasons? It's like explaining the subprime mortgage crisis to a basset hound.
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It’s hard to go past John Rowles for NZ First...
Oh yes! Cheesy, bombastic, secretly rather entertaining.
United Future should be something like... who's a kind of crossover, mildly Christian, shittily average band? The Jonas Brothers?
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I think a lot of photo places in malls act as agents, and will take your box of slides and send them away to a conversion company (whose name I now can't remember, sorry). My mother just brought hers in to the Kodak place in Westcity mall in Henderson, and two weeks later, back they came with an attached DVD.
It's reasonably pricey - $150 for up to 500 slides, I think. But *so* worth it, if you're into that stuff.
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Although, as others have pointed out, doing so in your second language is unforgivably smartass.
I know! I feel so inadequate. And hungry for fresh bread.
(I seem to have missed an instalment while I was away. Off to hunt for it...)
Gareth, my grandfather and my mother recently had their slides from the 50s, 60s and 70s converted to DVD. I'm totally obsessed with them and often get mesmerised by my own photo slideshow screensaver. It is weird and cool to have them recontextualised for the world of Flickr, too.