Posts by philipmatthews
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And if you'd like to replace Telecom as the key sponsor of the film festivals, Bill Gosden would love to schmooze. :)
Speaking of the festival, the cinephile-enraging choice of Death at a Funeral as the opening night film when Gosden took a sabbatical is an illustration of the potential perils of arts sponsorship. This from Peter Calder's review of Death at a Funeral:
The choice of Michael Haneke's brilliant, boundary-stretching Hidden as the opening-night film for the 2005 film festival was not universally approved. The sponsors wanted a good night out for their corporate guests, not some creepy psychological thriller that challenged, among many other things, the very process of cinema-going.
One assumes there were no complaints about last year's choice, this English farce aimed squarely at those who hardly ever go to - and probably don't much like - the movies.
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Oh thanks, Kier. I've just supported the Auckland Film Society by cutting a cheque, and expect the annual round of overdraft abuse when the festival program is announced. While it would be damn nice to have pointy headed elitist largely Eurocentric film culture directly supported by the Government (and not so dependent on sponsorship, membership subscriptions and awesome amounts of volunteer labour), I think I'll bow out of slagging off anyone who thinks differently as barbarians.
Actually, the film societies have been supported by both Creative NZ and the NZ Film Commission over the years. Both are government funding bodies.
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I remember thinking this NY Review of Books essay on Pinocchio was quite good too, on the differences between film and original book. Was always my favourite of those early (1930s-60s) Disney films as a kid, for reasons I wouldn't want to psychoanalyse.
Anyway, the essay:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17213 -
This is interesting, from the Roy speech:
While the group reached agreement on many points, it is not unusual, given the range of issues addressed, that some strongly held views were not shared across all Parties. As a result, the work of the Inter-Party Working Group has been put into two reports. The first is titled 'Step Change: Success the Only Option' and is supported by all members of the group. The second is titled 'Free to Learn', and will be released by Sir Roger Douglas and me soon.
In other words -- if you thought this week's one was rubbish, wait till you see the report only the ACT MPs could get behind.
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"In some cases schools that are doing the best, have less money [given] to them."
Sounds like tax funding of Independant schools to me.
What do you think?Or an argument against the decile funding system.
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And in context, should we mention how hurtful the title of the piece is?
Indeed. Hadn't occurred to me when I first looked at it.
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That Deborah Hill-Cone column might just be the stupidest I've ever read. Well, that's my feeling; I don't have any data to support it.
This bit is gold:
Many executives are geniuses at suppressing their emotions and pride themselves on looking at cold hard facts. This can lead them to become somewhat disordered individuals; the sad case of Herman Rockefeller springs to mind.
But the bit about autism is offensive rubbish. No, we don't know what causes autism but the "scholars and medical professionals" Hill-Cone sneers at have made the lives of those with autism demonstrably better over the past three or four decades.
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An excerpt from a Chch Press story from 2006 (not by me):
[John] Hattie's take is that in New Zealand, schools account for little of the variability in student achievement. Based on international comparative studies of student performance such as the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) project, and his own research into the relative performance of high-decile and low- decile schools, Hattie says the "school effect" accounts for as little as 4% of variance.
The real difference, he believes, lies at home, in the "cultural capital", or learning advantages, that a child of a family of high socio-economic status brings with them to school.
"In Christchurch, " he says, "you have half-a- dozen public schools with intakes in deciles eight to 10, the same deciles as the Rangi Rurus. I'd challenge you to find any difference if you sent a child randomly from one school to the other."
Certain private schools will point to their domination of NCEA and other academic benchmarks as evidence of superior teaching. But all those results may be telling us is that those schools draw from an advantaged population and can pick and choose their intake.
Better teachers? "The private-school system has run that public-relations argument for years without it being contested. But there is no evidence for it at all."
Rather, once you control for student background, you find some of the most effective teaching occurs in the lower-decile schools.
Hattie isn't arguing that private schools don't have a legitimate role. When it comes to the inculcation of values, for example, "they are clearly different from state schools _ and if they aren't different, then for goodness sakes, they don't deserve to exist".
But their reputation as superior educators is founded more on myth than fact, he argues.
"It's fascinating to observe those ongoing parental perceptions, when the evidence shows that money clearly doesn't make a difference."
In fact, there is some research to suggest that, academically at least, a private education is at best of no advantage once a student has left high school.
One study of 5000 University of Canterbury students found no significant difference in results at third-year level between ex-state and ex-private school students.
Private schools will reply that the comparison isn't valid because a larger proportion of their students are encouraged to go on to tertiary study, including their less able.
But in Britain, a University of Warwick investigation that compared the degree results of A-grade winning secondary students has concluded that a graduate of a private school has a worse chance of getting a first or an upper second. In fact, the more expensive their alma mater, the less impressive their degree. The researchers concluded that, removed from an environment of intensive coaching, some simply lacked the ability and organisation to keep their star aloft.
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Kaching! Surely that is nowadays "Mickey Mouse© system" all users of Disney© characters must pay while they have their specially extended copyright period...
A little while ago, the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University had a list of works that would have entered the public domain at the start of 2010 had copyright protection not been extended in 1976 and again in 1988. Among them: Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the movie From Here to Eternity, the first Marilyn Monroe Playboy cover, Disney's Peter Pan movie, CS Lewis' The Silver Chair ....
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W & M were a force for good, but that all changed after the Christchurch Town Hall.
You might not like post-modernism, but evil is a bit strong, isn't it?