Posts by Ethan Tucker
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Part of the interest generated by the leadership campaign is that the candidates have been able to speak about their policies in a relatively unfettered way and that, unusually, the media actually has to listen and report it. And the Government has little, if any, ability to rebut their arguments. In a way, the leadership contest has reversed the usual order of things in which Opposition points of view are a mere tack-on to stories outlining new Government proposals. Perhaps this points to the increasing weakness of NZ public policy debates in a media environment that's reluctant to screen serious political discussion, both in news bulletins and in dedicated public affairs programming. (Still missing Media3!) Arguing about alternative policy perspectives doesn't sell Toyota ads, so it doesn't get airtime. Policy really matters to voters, but it's in the interest of commercial broadcasters to pretend that personality is king.
I'd also go out on a limb and ask whether the 'interesting' decision of TV3 to act as Jones boosters just reflects how out-of-touch they are with Labour members and supporters - still around 30-odd percent of voters. Sure, he's a lively character, and there's ratings in that, but it seems Guncan is/are more comfortable in discussing centrist/rightist candidates because that's their comfort zone. Happy to be proved wrong, of course.
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the new BBC Imagine documentary on Rod Stewart is a highly engaging film
I'm imagining living in a country in which the national TV broadcaster commissions and broadcasts documentaries about popular music that both celebrate and grow our understanding of what it is to be New Zealand music fans. Until that happens, there's always the VHS-sending auntie.
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I think you should pinpoint the ways in which the local media will make asshats of themselves, because I'm not sure which one. I mean, there are so many possibilities.
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If you didn’t catch it at the cinema, Keanu Reeves’ doco Side By Side provides an excellent overview of the shift from film to digital. Gets some great interview access too, including Soderbergh, Rodriguez & Scorsese. There’s a good short intro interview here.
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But don't worry, there'll always be handball, real tennis and cheese-rolling to watch on Sommet.
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So impressed that you worked with Graham Linehan! In the spirit of Geoff's post, here's a couple of pics from a visit to the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum in Seattle last month. Hope the links work.
Jimi Hendrix's hand-decorated guitar from his last London show, 1967
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Was lucky to pick up Westra’s 1976 book with Noel Hilliard, Wellington: City Alive yesterday in a second-hand shop and it’s such a treat. From her photos its easy to see how the mid-70s in the capital and the rest of NZ were closer to D-Day than they are to today’s city life. Also features: a stray Aro Valley pony, plenty of beards.
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Hard News: A Golden Age for the Arts?, in reply to Sacha,
To be fair, the Minister is not endorsing excellence in the arts through a concerted consumption of class A drugs in the mid-1970s.
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Brent Toderian, president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism, in the Seattle Times, 14 April:
Car-dependent transportation models create self-fulfilling prophecies of gridlock by pushing land uses apart and densities down, leading to communities that are unwalkable and not viable for transit.
A car-centric model forces people into their cars for almost everything. And if you try to do high-density planning around the car it also fails. Miserably.
Vancouver illustrates a different and better way. Starting with the refusal of freeways through the city in the late 1960s (which meant we never had to spend the money to bury them) Vancouver continues to design a multimodal city that prioritizes walking, biking and transit and recognizes that the best transportation plan is a great land-use plan.
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For a bit of fun I looked up a recent ZZ Top video, having read an interview with them in Mojo a few weeks back. I steered well clear of them in the 80s but in a way it's kind of refreshing that they're still making exactly the same videos decades later. This track, I Gotsta Get Paid, may not be lyrically complex but it features some pleasingly crunchy guitar-work. Not bad for a bunch of old geezers.
