On Web Culture

“The Mutton Birds refer obliquely to the massacre in the song A Thing Well Made on their self-titled debut album. The song is narrated by a man who owns a sporting goods store in Christchurch. As the song closes he describes his work for the day, which involves sending “one of those AK-47s for some collector down the line.” – Aramoana massacre [en.wikipedia.org]

Out Of The Blue: “The movie about the 1990 massacre that rocked New Zealand is a restrained, sad, moral tale of a small South Island beach community where everyone knew one another by their first names – even their killer.” – The spirit of Aramoana [listener.co.nz]

This live video of The Mutton Birds performing ‘A Thing Well Made’ is moving but two things in particular that move me:

• The guitarist’s face at 3 minutes & 49 seconds
• Don McGlashan’s facial expressions after he sings “AK-47′s” at 4 minutes & 29 seconds

Source: YouTube

LINKS

• Lyrics to The Mutton Birds – A Thing Well Made [lyrics.wikia.com]

Official music video for the ‘Panic Bells’ single off the ‘Escape’ EP. Directed & edited by visual effects superstar Aleksandar Janev.

Source: YouTube (click this to watch the clip at 1280×645)

Top 5 albums of all time?
Hmmm. This could either be really easy or really hard. Well, in my opinion and in no particular order…
Radiohead – OK Computer (I’m going to limit myself to one from these guys)
U2 – The Joshua Tree (All That You Can’t Leave Behind was also very very good)
The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
The Beatles – Revolver (Hard choice due to The White Album, Sgt Pepper’s…, Rubber Soul)
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin IV is good too)

If you could be in any band/group, who would it be and why?
Rage Against The Machine during the early & mid-90′s – angry, political and brilliant

What would be your ultimate concert line up?
Mate, what a question. The only caveat I’ll put on this one is that the artist or band has to playing still and reunions don’t count (i.e. Led Zeppelin, Rage Against The Machine):
Radiohead, Dave Dobbyn, Massive Attack, SJD, Lemon Jelly, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, The Mars Volta, The Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, The Foo Fighters, Bjork, Metallica, The Phoenix Foundation, Muse, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Queens Of The Stone Age, Sigur Ros, The Killers, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Roots Manuva, Blur, Beck, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, U2.

First CD/tape you ever bought?
Mmm, I’m not going to admit what my first cassette was. But I know I did buy a Now That’s What I Call Music compilation with ‘Spice Girls – Viva Forever’ on it. Oh the horror.

Song that most reminds you most of your childhood?
That song by Cliff Richards that goes ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday. No more working for a week or two…’

All time favourite movie?
The Shawshank Redemption

Book you’d be most likely to recommend?
Ooh, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

Do you have any pets?
Nein…

Best Christmas present you ever got?
Um, well there is the digital alarm clock that my Aunty gave me that just keeps going and going and going on one battery. And a very sensible jacket that I’ve had for years and recently wore all over the South Island.

Who are you tagging to complete this as well?
Monsieur Bartleby, DB, Pete Corin, Meg.

UPDATE (19/11/2007): Well, what do you know, their archives seem to be staying online for now. I’ve added a direct link at the bottom of the post to accompany the Google cache one.
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Damn. Well, StylusMagazine.com has been and gone and I didn’t manage to link to them before they died.

StylusMagazine.com had a lot going for it, passionate opinionated reviews and articles about music, film, audio. Manned by loyal staff members who wrote well and I enjoyed reading. It was like PitchForkMedia.com but more low-fi & probably a bit more snobby :-) It is a loss.

If you read one article retrospectively, try “Imperfect Sound Forever”:

“…Think about how you listen for a moment. I’d wager that a large chunk of your listening is done during a commute, whether that’s in a car or on a bus or train or a walk through a city centre. I listen a lot on the train myself, running my iPod (songs encoded as 192kb AAC files) through a pair of Koss Portapros and trying to sit next to other people who have earphones in so my leaking sound doesn’t offend commuters who want to read or whatever. Unsurprisingly I see a lot of other people with MP3 players, most of them using tiny earbuds of various kinds. Often their ears are plugged and their eyes are intently focused on a book or magazine or even a mobile phone screen too, senses shut to the horror of public transport. I get the impression that they’re not listening to music so much as avoiding what’s outside.”

Link: Imperfect Sound Forever
Google cache: Imperfect Sound Forever.

This is worth watching. Even if it’s hard, stick in there until 37:00 when the documentary covers four Chinese university students being asked what the image of the Tank Man means to them. The first time I watched that segment the alarm bells started clanging in the back of my head “No man! That is not cool, not cool at all…”

Or perhaps in the words of db, “Somebody do something, that is f—-!”

Source: Irintech.com

Going to a Film Festival is a bit of a luxury. And not a luxury I think I will always be able to afford. I don’t know…I’ve always found them invigorating, inspiring for whatever projects or ideas I have in mind. Sometimes though… at Four Minutes the audience was made up of mostly seniors and I sat there in the darkness with them wondering if it wasn’t inspiration then what was it? The lights go down…

I’m taking a cue from db here. The films I saw at this year’s Film Festival:

Still Life
Still Life could be memorable just for where I was seated…front row – extreme right. That’s a unique cinema experience right there. Still Life follows the stories of several lives in the modern context of China’s Three Gorges dam. By turns surreal and then poignant, I enjoyed the slow pace of the film which unfurled at the same pace of the dialogue.

China is so huge that a film like this seems to say “You have no idea…” I liked the scene when a reunited husband and wife share a tender moment while in the distance an apartment building is demolished to a dull thunder.

Radiant City
Set to the unique guitar soundtrack by Joey Santiago of The Pixies, the reality of planned suburbia on the fringes of the USA’s cities is terrifying. I could feel the cellphone waves in my teeth. Do they really call shopping malls “Power Centers” over there?

This was one of those films where you come away indignant at the West’s greed and opulence but at the same time with some pity those trapped in soccer-work-ballet-shopping cycles. Your wife wants a new home. In the suburbs. With a new kitchen. And she really wants it. And why don’t you want it? And don’t you love her? And the children? Don’t you want the best for the children? How can you be so selfish!

A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints
A Guide… radiated intensity, I said to my mate David when we were leaving the cinema that every scene seemed poised to go really bad at some point and you just kind of held on wondering at the karma of it all. The hot sticky tension of New York City in the 1980′s. It was not hard for me to identify with this film, to just leave it all and go live somewhere thousands of kilometers away. What do you take with you? What do you never leave behind? Where do you go? Does it matter as long as it is anywhere but here?

My Best Friend
So don’t go to this film expecting a comedy. This film is a bitter pill wrapped in a glossy French wrapper. It pokes and pries at friendship in modern Western society, what real friendship means and our expectations of our friends. How many people would come to your funeral? I sat there squirming, I thought of Radiant City and these self-contained boxes for people to separate themselves from each other, hide from real friendships that hold each other accountable and lift us all to greater things.

Four Minutes
I also saw Four Minutes, a German film about a violent troubled prisoner in a woman’s prison who was once a child prodigy on the piano. A old woman who was alive during the Nazi regime is trying as her piano teacher to revive her talent and ambition. Both characters wrestle with their pasts, weaknesses, hopes and desires in what turns out to be a very human story of the capacity to act out good & evil. Some of the scenes are very dramatic but the film swings away right until its strong conclusion. The main character’s self-expression through playing music was an interesting meditation on the power of music to change us and transport us.

Auckland International Film Festival
Who made this website? And why does it suck? This happens every year and I don’t understand why. This is not good design, it frustrates my attempts to click on different links and open them in new tabs. Why is only the text and not the whole block clickable? After I opened 15 new tabs of films I was interested in seeing, Firefox 2.0 crashed and then caused my computer to hemorrhage trying to restore the previous session. Website crashes Firefox? Tick!

If you’re going to some festival films drop me a line with what ones you’re seeing.

We are meant to be here
Such a notion often requires an absence of pride. We as a people are not good at doing this. I am human, I know it all.

The Lamest Wikipedia Edit Wars
You might have passed over the Lamest Wikipedia Edit Wars the first time. I encourage you to give it another go. Watch as we strive for excellence. Watch as the validty of Spyro The Dragon’s inclusion in the Crash Bandicoot article is debated in detail:

* Calm down, kid. As I’ve explained numerous times, those situations are not the same. And if they were, I’d argue for them to be changed too. As for the Pirahna Plants, why do they link to a Mario page? Because they’re Mario in origin. Just like Spyro is, well, Spyro in origin. Doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be noted on the template. He features in a number of Crash games, therefore he’s part of the Crash “universe”, therefore he should be in the template. It’s that simple.

* And, as WE’VE (all three of us) have explained to you (or tried to), the situations ARE the same, you’re just insisting that they aren’t the same so your opinion can, once again, be portrayed as fact. And the plants in Crash are NOT Mario in origin, they’re a totally different plant. Spyro IS Spyro in original, so he is NOT a Crash character. Yes, we KNOW he’s been IN several Crash games, but that does NOT make him a Crash character. He is STILL a Spyro character. Will you give it up already?

* All three of you? The only person to comment here (other then you, myself and Klaus Kratchet) agreed with me. As I’ve said, those situations are not the same, with the possible exception of Nights and Sonic, and if that’s the case, I think that should be changed too. What’s your point?If the Pirahana Plants are not taken from Mario, why does the link go to a Mario page? Obviously they’re considered to be a ‘cameo” or a reference to Mario, or whatever. The point is, they appear in several games, like Spyro, they’re recognised as coming from another series, like Spyro, and they should be in the template, like Spyro.

* Further proof that you ae incapable of reading. We’ve repeated this information numerous times…they are NOT the same flipping plant! Sheesh! You’re a rock, you know that? It’s impossile to get blood out of you. (more)

Dear Late-to-the-Cinema couple,

Emergencies and unforeseen circumstances aside, what went wrong for you? Was the queue for Film Festival tickets longer than you expected? Was it hard finding a park?

Perhaps I am mistaken. Somehow arriving late to the theater, stumbling over people’s legs and belongings and missing part of the film is how you prefer to see your films? I mean, who needs to read the first 5% of a book? It is not like the author wanted you to read the whole thing right?

But, you have paid your money and those tickets grant you access to the cinema at any time of the allocated showing. It is strange however how the rest of the audience do not seem to share your preference. Indeed, early seems more popular to late, with most people choosing to arrive before the film starts. This could suggest this is preferred way of viewing a film and you brave Late-to-the-Cinema couple are bucking the trend. Like driving on the wrong side of the road. Or breathing through your eyes.

Must it continue Late-to-the-Cinema couple? Has this process changed since motion and talking pictures were available for public screenings and its flux has caught you unawares? I’ll grant you that Film Festival screenings are deceptive because they do not have previews or advertisements for the Candy Bar that can be your late-to-the-cinema buffer. But for the most part the concept has not changed: pay to see a film. The whole film. If you embrace this then we all win. I may not cheer the film but if you can do this thing Late-to-the-Cinema couple I will cheer you.

Sincerely…

Dave.

I’m a sucker for these things. And go Slate’s crazy new Javascript nav menu, not sure what to make of it.

The Movie I’ve Seen the Most?

Firstly I think it is fair to discount kids movies your family owned that got thrashed in the VCR player, i.e. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or that movie about some dinosaurs that don’t die. I know I saw Return of the Jedi far too many times.

Then there were a number of films I watched many, many times as part of my film studies paper’s at university which would have been difficult not to watch and try to write essays about.

I’ll get the ironic one out of the way, I have seen Most – The Bridge about 5 or 6 times. The last time I was privileged to play it to an audience of about 40 people. And that was like watching it all over again, observing the way others responded. Most is a fantastic film.

I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption again about 5 or 6 times. These were more spread out though because I think the first time I saw this was in the middle of high school. Those English classes were awesome, I’d get lost in 50 minutes chunks of the movie before the period ended. “Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free”

I’ve seen Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Garden State and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few times each. I thought Eternal Sunshine was a terrific film before I read an alternate draft of the script and went “Whoah, they could have gone to these places in the movie as well?” and well impressed, I had to watch it again.

As far as movies go, I’m happy to watch a good movie again but I can’t match 30 or 40 times for movie I’ve seen the most. For the most part I think of good movies like good books, it’s nice for some time to pass between viewings so you forget the details a little bit and the movie has some magic next time you see it.