Posts by philipmatthews
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I wasn't hugely impressed with the doco either but there's interesting comments about both length and content from the script editor on the Australian site Crikey:
I can tell you the original script was looser and longer, and entered the culture a lot more. Two problems - one is money, cos it just didnt have the budget to grow, and the Chinese attitude. Can’t shoot more in the country, because Jeff would have been arrested and we know what that would have been like.
Full bit here:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2009/08/24/script-editor-responds-to-the-10-conditions-of-love-film-review/The comments were in response to a review by Luke Buckmaster (real name?) who argued that the doco wasn't up to the standards of the Melbourne fest.
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(I've created a phrase worthy of an acronym! I feel so proud.)
Next time the cops put out an All Points Bulletin there might be some confusion.
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I have a suspicion that I will prefer what Weta did with District 9 than this.
You should definitely have a look. I saw District 9 yesterday and strongly recommend it. Imagine a gritty-looking low-budget South African hybrid of The Office, Robocop, Cronenberg's The Fly and Starship Troopers and you're most of the way there. A clever and very surprising movie.
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It's Christchurch. Need I say more?
Yes.
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Eddie, I can't speak for his magazine but unfortunately Carol is correct about his books, way too many. I see the book sales each week that Neilsen tracks and I'm sorry to say that this book sold quite a few thousand (at least 2,000 in the first two or three weeks from memory).
I interviewed Wishart, Jonathan Eisen and a few others for a Press feature on conspiracies nearly two months ago (not online, unfortunately). In terms of numbers: Eisen claimed that 5000 to 6000 copies of Uncensored are sold every quarter in NZ and a similar number in Australia. Wishart says that between 6500 and 9000 of Investigate are sold monthly. Neither magazine is audited which is why I had to ask.
As for Air Con, Wishart said it had sold 13,000 copies in six weeks, not just in New Zealand. It's definitely true that it sold better than Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal's Poles Apart which must have been annoying for Random House.
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@3410 -- thank you, funniest thing I've seen all week. Kept half-expecting Will Ferrell and John C Reilly to pop up in the middle of it ...
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The Quietus is an excellent magazine and (I believe, but could be wrong) closely related to the Stool Pigeon, which is pretty much the only music magazine worth reading that I've found in London
Bruce, thanks for the tip. I'd never heard of the Stool Pigeon before but there's some great reading at their website. That kind of fearless irreverence about overblown rock egos that you used to get from the NME back in the day. Just check this opening par to a Marilyn Manson profile. It helps to know that Manson once announced that he was the "God of Fuck":
Today the God Of Fuck is merely the Petty Officer Of Fucking About; the Local Ombudsman Of Mildly Irritating Behaviour. He’s locked in his suitably grand room at a Park Lane hotel with plenty of absinthe and ‘a young lady friend’. A wide-eyed reporter from a London free title eventually comes down the stairs declaring him to be “leathered”; saying that the lanky industro-goth was striding round his room with the girl tossed over his shoulder chatting bare nonsense. Seasoned veterans of idiotic American rock star behaviour, we pack up and go home leaving a business-like but inexperienced guy from the BBC alone in the foyer waiting dutifully for an interview. Predictably, his copy, when it appears online a few days later, is a riot of non-sequiturs; a throbbing psychedelic grotto of drunken nonsense. It isn’t the poor hack’s fault. Simply, the God Of Fucking Can’t Be Arsed. He’s become the Bursar Of Talent Seepage; the Heir Of Nothing In Particular.
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I quite like the writing in Un-Cut, but my main source of music writing is Pitchfork.
I'd also rate The Quietus as a web-only music magazine. They do a good "In defence of" column. Never thought I'd see someone try to mount a defence of Paul McCartney and Wings.
In terms of print, Decibel covers metal but also goes a little broader and can be a good read. The Wire, too, in a good month. They can do archival stuff without it being Mojo or Q-like grave-robbing: with Mojo, you seem to get Pink Floyd on the cover every third month. And Nick Drake and Syd Barrett solo on the other two.
Speaking of metal, I also think Scott Kara should get credit for getting intelligent metal reviews into the NZ Herald. I doubt anyone managed that before.
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Funny thing is that after the Dead C, Merzbow, Non, the noisier end of Sonic Youth, etc, MMM doesn't sound like such a big deal or such a bad thing. I doubt it was really a joke -- any more than LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad's drone music a decade earlier was a joke (which it wasn't). I've often wondered whether MMM was Lou Reed's way of saying that the experimental side of the Velvet Underground was his input -- not just John Cale's, which most would have guessed. Much like McCartney wanting credit for being experimental in the Beatles.
Re rock critics: Lou Reed had his classic put-down: "Lester Bangs is fat and he's got a moustache. I wouldn't shit in Lester's nose."
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And that summary of the Herald's frothing columnists doesn't even include what I thought were the two worst phrases to appear in the weekend's onslaught of Clayton-is-a-nutjob coverage, both from Kerre Woodham: "bedwetting, pill-popping, penis-envying psycho" and "pink-eyed, posturing pervert". In my view, the worst journalism in this coverage has been from the columnists (or, maybe, purple, posturing populists) who claim to have some special understanding of how the Elliotts must feel.