Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Craig, I think you missed the "on the side of capital" part of that sentence.
No I didn't -- I just don't want to bore everyone else's tits off with a long, angry rant about everything that's wrong about it.
Films are very expensive. Arthouse films are great but they just don't bring in the revenue. If you have a plan to get arthouse or smaller films better receptions I'd love to hear it, but it's all about those bums on seats.
Up to a point. I think Pulp Fiction would qualify as "arthouse" by any measure -- but a US$212 million global theatrical gross off a US$15m budget is one hell of a return on investment. That's before you factor in the very long tail from ancillary media -- the soundtrack, the screenplay, DVDs and BluRay releases etc.
As indie producer Christine Vachon said on Kim Hill's show a few months back, if there was some fool-proof formula for making commercially successful movies everyone would be doing it. Instead, she's had her share of films that (on paper) should have been slam dunk hits but failed to connect for all kinds of reasons. Then, she had others that were marginal prospects but broke out.
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He's right: the state has entered to meddle in the relationship between workers and capital on the side of capital (as evidenced by the overly broad, vague legislation being rammed through under urgency as I write).
FFS, "the state" meddles in the "relationship between workers and capital" all the sodding time. You'd have to be a particularly unhinged Rand-droid to suggest New Zealand is a worse place for the lack of sweatshops filled with children.
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1. It's very hard to move a coalmine offshore.
Nigh on impossible, one might say...
2. the miners unions at the time of the strike had large memberships - it was very unusual not to be a union member.
It wasn't possible, IIRC.
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Meanwhile, who wants to play 'Spot The Truthiness, Irony Deficiency and Situational Memory Loss' in yet another Herald editorial?
OK, that's unfair - it's far from the most mendacious Herald editorial I've ever read, and I mostly agree with the (badly made) substantive point. All the same, the sight of the Herald editorial board pontificating about falling for "hype and hysteria" is way too close to serial adulterer Newt Gingrich lecturing teh gayz on the sanctity of marriage.
And Warner Brothers has nothing on The Herald's proprietors who it comes to aggressive lobbying and playing very hard ball indeed with its employees and unions. Not that you'd ever read about that in the Herald...
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Death threats fly over Hobbit
Talking of 'lynch mob mentality', enter stage right the New Zealand public.
And that would include the lefty ex-FB friend I kicked to the virtual curb for calling Philippa Boyens a "cunt" who was so good at spreading her legs for foreign corporations she deserved a good... well, you fill in the blanks.
Class not ass, Hobbiton!
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We have more things to be proud of than a movie from a book written by a dead Brit and produced by an enormous international film company - surely!
I used to be be quite proud of the notion that culturally and politically we might have grown up a bit and moved beyond both forms of cultural cringe: The Cringe Direct, and the Cringe Inverted.
Not any more. Long-time readers will know I'm not a fan of "the trilogy", but I like crude mindless cultural (or political/economic) nationalism even less. Which is saying a lot.
BTW, Jan, planning to tell Elizabeth Knox & Lloyd Jones to dump their "enormous international" publishers and stop writing effete un-Kiwi bullshit about bisexual angels in France and a Dickens-obsessed teacher in war-torn Bougainville?
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My fault for not going to university, I guess.
Actually, if you went to a university with a half-way decent politics department you'd have to read -- and apply some serious through to -- Heyeck and Marx, and see the flaws in both. Which wouldn't be a bad thing.
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spooky?
Indeed - I wonder if the French equivalent of Simon Whipp is threatening a global stop work order if Polanski does not revert to shooting proper French films with French actors instead of this les rosbifs travesty! :)
I don't know much about Matt McCarten but, on your analysis, I think I can safely say I like him.
I'm tempted to donate $20 to his Mana by-election campaign. God, the air of condescending entitlement from Goff on Morning Report made me want to go out and kick the neighbours cat. (And I've got to say my own party are just as bad.) Why don't we just save a lot of time, money and energy by removing those silly voters from the electoral process entirely?
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Isn't the person running sparticus like the husband of one of the key agitators in the whole hobbit debacle, which might suggest why it wasn't targeted.
Or more likely, the home office in Redfern decided "Most people wouldn't have a clue who Starz and Rob Tappert are." To put it politely, Spartacus wasn't exactly going to air with high expectations.
That's my theory, anyway -- and you don't have to go below the girdle on Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Michael Hurst to get there.
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So where is the Opposition this, having a dollar both way?
To be entirely cynical, muttering darkly about evil foreign-owned multinationals and their tame Tory bitches won't do Labour any harm at all.
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