Category Archives: Film & TV

Current Obsessions

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UK Celebrity Big Brother

Regular readers will know of my weakness for the televisual delights of Brother who is Big. Currently screening on Channel 4 in the UK is series six of Celebrity Big Brother, but those of us who don’t live in the UK can stay up-to-date with it via the medium of YouTube.

The series only runs for a manageable three weeks, so every day I delight in the everyday goings-on of the house filled with such people as LaToya Jackson, Coolio and Mutya From Sugababes.

I can’t quite explain the appeal of it, but I suspect it’s the fact that what happens to the house of celebrities is exactly the same as what happens to the house of wannabes in the regular version of BB: after a few days everyone get tired and emotional and starts yelling at each other, little groups form and there’s always some guy who tries to hook up with all the women. Of course, it’s just that extra bit entertaining when the sleazy guy is the performer of “Gangsta’s Paradise”.

The Twilight Zone

I acquired the season four DVD of the original Twilight Zone series, from 1963, and after watching that, moved on to series one.

I like the science fiction/fantasy stories, and it’s interesting to see the obvious reaction to World War II and the scary new world of technology. But what interested me the most was the style of television back in those days.

The acting is kind of stiff and very formal and almost feels melodramatic, which I believe is what was considered good acting back then. People spoke with very clipped, precise language. The only contemporary thing I can think of comparing it to is the scripts of David Mamet, but without all the swearing.

There’s a very slow pace to the way stories are told. I’m all for establishing character, letting tension build up, but there just seem to be so many unnecessary shots of people doing nothing that advances the plot. I started to make mental edit notes of how I’d cut things down. (This reminds me of the chapter about television in “Everything Bad Is Good For You, about how plots of modern television programmes are much more sophisticated compared to the TV of old).

Smoking is all over the Twilight Zone, in a way that makes the smoking in Mad Men look positively moderate. Even Rod Serling can sometimes be seen holding a fag, with smoking curling around him as he delivers his end monologue.

And the one thing that’s always stood out for me in both film and television from this era is the kissing: pashing is forbidden! As well as the Hays Code for film, it appears that television also couldn’t show open-mouth kissing. So if a couple need to do a passionate kiss, they sort of violently press their lips together, creating many double chins. It’s entirely unsexy and seems more painful than passionate.

mashpash

Walking down the street

As a sort of New Year’s resolution, I’m vowing to walk more. Previously I’d catch a bus down to the train station every morning, but now I’m making the effort and walking.

But it’s not exactly as if it is an effort. I’ve always liked walking. It might have to do with having grown up in a rural area with no footpaths, there was nowhere to walk. I used to dream of living in a place with footpaths that I could blissfully stroll along in sneakers, not trudging along in gumboots.

In fact, even when I’m not walking to work, I rather like just going for a walk around wherever. I don’t want to evoke the F word, but for me there’s a real pleasure in walking around a city. There’s so much detail and history and humanity that can be experienced just by the simple act of walking down the street.

F:Rad = teh win

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Well, it’s about time. Fractured Radius, my (old?) team in the 48Hours film competition have just tonight won the Auckland finals with their serious short “The End”.

I was sad that I couldn’t be part of F:Rad 2008, but apparently I am credited as an excellence consultant, which would probably be the “Hey, you can do serious! Go for it!” phone call with the director on the Friday night of competition weekend.

I’m really happy for Dylan, Andy and James – who’ve been the core of Fracture Radius right from the first year in 2003, when they made the appallingly bad “F.I.T” – and for the rest of the team, both amateurs and professionals, who no doubt worked hard and had much fun on 48Hours weekend.

But now my loyalties are torn! “The End” will be in the national finals, but then so will the Wellington winner, Smashing Pants’ “Darlene”, which I also have tons of cinematic love for. Ugh – does this mean I’ll have to support the Gisborne winner instead?

Murder, she watched

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Someone had taken out most of season one of “Twin Peaks” at my local video shop, so I was browsing the shelves looking for something else to watch. And I saw her. Sweet Jessica Fletcher, staring benevolently yet determinedly from the cover of “Murder, She Wrote”.

It used to be one of my favourite TV shows when I was a girl cos I liked the murder-mystery element. I particularly liked an episode from season one, where an amusement park owner is killed in a locked-room murder.

So that was the first episode I watched on DVD. But rather than being the awesome locked-room mystery I remembered, it was kind of cheesy and lame. The crux of the locked room set-up was some stupid voicemail hacking.

It was this lame:

But this opened a new level of appreciation for “Murder, She Wrote”, and I soon found myself mesmerised by things I’d never previously considered, like the set dressing. Whoever did it – IMDB suggests it was several people – had a thing for covering walls with an eclectic selection of paintings and using pot plants galore.

Take this living room, for example:

To the left, you can see the eclectic paintings, positioned to cover the whole wall. And all around are masses of pot plants. It looks like the stereotypical apartment of a single girl in the big city but it is actually the abode of a hard-boiled police detective. (Jessica is walking over to pet his cat on that chair. His cat!)

Here’s another room from another episode:

As well as the eclectic paintings and the jungle of pot plants, this scene also goes one better with the horse sculpture and an artfully placed Lynn Redgrave on the sofa.

Actually, celebrity spotting is another fun part of watching “Murder, She Wrote”.

Here’s Kenickie getting arrested for murder, dressed as a lady:

:D

Don’t worry – he didn’t do it. He was falsely accused, but his fiancee stuck by him and pashed him to prove to viewers he wasn’t a gay, but sadly was unable to prove that he wasn’t a total douchebag. (The real murderer was Kotter.)

And who’s this cute li’l scamp?

Why, it’s none other than Oscar-nominated serious actor Joaquin Phoenix, here playing Jessica’s great-nephew Billy.

But what kept me going as I revisited all those DVDs were the mysteries at the core of every episode. Some of them are far-fetched, others are too easy to guess, but others were quite ingenious and made up for that lame voicemail hack.

So, I think it’ll be a while now before I get around to watching Twin Peaks.

Things I did on the weekend

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ITEM: I went to the Cross Street Carnival on Saturday. The street was closed off and filled up with Craftwerk regulars, including Annette of Nut & Bee, and City the NZ Cupcake Queen. Even the local brothel was part of it. The K Road area has been in need of a carnival, but with K Road itself being a major city road and having the motorway so close and steep streets either side, it’s been lacking a good location for such an event. Cross Street is ideal. I hope it becomes an annual event.

ITEM: So, you know that Flight of the Conchords television programme? Well, I’d never got around to watching it when it was on TV. I felt like the only person in the country who didn’t watch it. I mean, I think even my mum knew what “It’s business time” meant. So now that it was finally out on DVD I bought it and watched it all over two days. It was good, and it didn’t wear thin. Go Kiwi, LOTR, etc.

ITEM: On Sunday I got the ferry over to Devonport, forgetting it was the weekend of the food and wine festival. They make an effort with the admission price to discourage people from getting pissed, but there was still a bit of staggering going on down Victoria Road. And then the added bonus of having Hello Sailor’s live performance in the park echoing around the streets. The New World car park took on a whole different feeling with slices of “Blue Lady” drifting around it.

ITEM: You know what’s cool and new? It’s the Aucklandista blog. It’s a sister site of the Wellingtonista, founded by Auckland-lover Jo Hubris, and hasa growing list of contributors. It’s all about the various aspects of what makes Auckland rather awesome. It’s early days, but it’s slowly finding its own Aucklandic take on things.

ITEM: Ok, let’s have a look at some photos from the Cross Street Carnival. (See how even the Mercury Lane car park looks festive?)

Where to go

Death Farm Film Revisited

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A few years ago I wrote about a disturbing farm safety film I’d watched when I was at school.

At the time my memory was little hazy, but I remembered it being a really sinister and gruesome story of a group of children who visit a farm, and one by one, they all die.

Well, I finally tracked down the film in question. It’s called “Apaches” and Wikipedia describes it as “one of the most notorious public information films of all time.”

It’s a British film and dates from 1977 and appears to have been shown extensively in British schools throughout the ’70s and ’80s, leading to a whole generation of grown-ups who were traumatised by it.

It’s available in its entirety on YouTube, but I feel like I should advise viewer discretion: children get killed, and horribly. When the little girl wakes up in the night after having swallowed poison earlier in the day, man, I don’t ever want to hear that scream again.

I still can’t believe that a) this was shown to me when I was about six years old, and b) they thought it would be relevant to New Zealand children living in what was essentially a rural suburb of Hamilton.

So, as a pre-Halloween treat, here is Apaches on YouTube.

Update: There’s a hilarious fake trailer for “Apaches Redux” and a music video that sets more joyful clips from “Apaches” to Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain” but ends with The Scream That Should Never Be Heard.