Movie Review Sleeping Dogs

**** Four Ninja Stars

One from the digital vaults This brand new DVD is a fine release of Roger Donaldson's dystopian view of New Zealand gone on a Fascist bender. It’s production was a historical moment for Kiwi cinema and it’s a forgotten political firecracker. The story behind the story is fascinating but rather long so I will leave that for later.
I never saw this at the movies so I came to it almost as fresh piece and I it feels 30 years later first a political story, any action, drama or love story was definitely second, So I’ll give you the Political story first,
The familiar and idyllic Kiwi landscape of New Zealand in the mid to late 70's usually has such a calming effect on me, viewed through rose tinted lenses of Childhood nostalgia of but here there is a weird feeling of a parallel time exists another life never lived, I continuously wondered, Could have this have happened ? Was this our past ?
A Nearly-New Zealand has Oil shock Hyper inflation, Labour Unions threatening a general strike the Fascist Special Police bully boys are out on the streets so it's more than a little scary.
Viva La Revolución !
Love story comes second, so here it is Sam Neil is the young father Smith who leaves the lovely wife and charming kiddies after some martial events and returns to the land.
As dirt grubbing a farmer on an island some where in the midst of Maoriland he gets involved in the bigger picture. He's busted by the Special Police for something he didn’t do and didn’t care about. For all the boyish good looks of Sam Neil, Smith is no Che Guevara, he gets involved in everything in such a half arsed way I can't call him our hero he's just a protagonist. Pity that he's such a selfish little asshole really. But in compensation for the generally weak acting effort there are so many little pieces of Kiwi life that looking back 30 years are( For the Kiwi veiwer ) priceless, we see a land deal done with local Iwi that wouldn't get through our political Commissars today
"Give the old man at the Marae a bottle of whiskey !" Indeed !
On the minus side some of the ledger some all the nuances and subtle touches of feeling that turn good movies into great cinema are lacking. But on the plus side it is remarkable to consider the film commission funding and The RNZAF aircraft, How both were obtained considering the subject material ?
The RNZAF contributions were the Iroquois helicopters and Staring in an ground attack role the A4K Skyhawk* which, with rocket pods and determination blasts some Communist Heretics to Hell.
The making of the movie which features Roger, Sam Geoff Murphy and the cast and crew 30 years on is another odd parallel time track. Same people same place and same the events are just dissected differently by the players 30 years later.
Price well ? a weird feeling of a parallel time track exists here too. What could have happened ?
It is worth noting that Red China is manufacturing this and selling it to you via the Warehouse for only $9.99
So Viva La Revolución



*Military Aerospace enthusiasts such as Spaceman Jack will note that the jets used are the older RNZAF A4K. This was before the Kiwi’s small wing of Skyhawks got an entire avionics upgrade. You can tell the difference by the lack of the Dorsal hump on the later models.

And so it came to pass, The Role Play Gamers Ruled the Earth…

Whilst trawling through some Liberal (American style) magazines I came across this little number which I recommend to all my Gaming buddies.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2007/07/10/alternative_reality_games/index.html
The idea of a role playing type simulation to model the real events for training or education is not new of course. It rather reminders me of an interplanetary civilization, The Empire of Azad that Spaceman Jack visited in one of his Astral expeditions.
The human author Iain M Banks covered the subject in his book "The Player of Games"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games
The empire is ruled by an elite who gain their positions by playing in a series of game tournaments. The evil empire is then brought down by the eponymous Player who literally beats them at their own game.
Now we have the technology all we need is a gigantic pot of coffee, plenty of chips and dips. All those who have not the skills to Game on into the new millennium will be our slaves forced to work in our underground Pizza factories and Red Bull refineries

Bwaa-Wha-HaHa ! ! ( That’s my evil empire laugh )

Spaceman Jack is blasting off to the Far East (again)

Those of you who know a little of the secret origins of Spaceman Jack Dee, ( and I know that there are at least 2 of you out there) will also know that he is rather interested in the Orient and has spend some time in China.
Well I’m blasting off again early September. The first part will be attending a few things commemorating the life and legacy of a great New Zealander, Rewi Alley. Unfortunately few of the younger generation have heard of him but in the best "good keen man" Kiwi tradition he helped out a lot of children in some of the poorest areas of China.
I will be going to Beijing, Lanzhou Shanghai and Rewi Alley’s old school in Shandan, Gansu province. Then if all goes smoothly off to Chengdu, Sichuan province to meet some old friends and do my bit teaching English.
I will post more on this exciting development later, in the mean time, ponder this;

Where did the US Marine Corp. battle cry "Gung Ho !" come from ?
All will be revealed in the next exciting episode of Spaceman Jack

Live Earth Saves the World, I didn’t watch it and here’s why

Here I am getting all political and it’s exactly what I wasn’t going to do with this blog. The massive Live Earth concert is now over and I didn’t watch a damn thing from it. It was a fortuitous conjunction of politics and utter disinterest. Nice really to have one’s political convictions dovetail so nicely with doing nothing. It wasn’t even that I objected to the gross distortion of a very important message by self serving and profligate rock stars although that was certainly worthy of consideration.
I heard that Snoop Dog ( an utter punk and disgrace to the planet ) had a particularly grotesque blinged out microphone that would have done Tutankhamen proud, but even that is only a part of the story for me.
This whole sorry story is just an excuse not to do anything and not to get involved. The utter maximum that this series of media events requires Joe Public to do is go to a rock concert. Political participation has been reduced to passive entertainment.
It's no good saying that these celebrities and entertainers raise consciousness or highlight causes or bring in the uninterested youth, they may do that but at a price.
Their price is this; "Entertain Me, Amuse Me, Stimulate My jaded psyche". If the price for getting the younger generation to get involved is massaging the inflated egos of Rock stars and Gangster Rappers then I would sooner they didn’t even try.
This sort of activism is soporific not stimulating and utter poison to a democracy. It places celebrities of questionable intelligence and dubious morals as the spokespersons of global issues that they have no understanding of or dedication to. Lets face it, if Bono was so desperately concerned with Darfur he would move there, either with a rifle or a shovel in his hand (take your pick Bono, no pun intended) and actually do some work. Bono looks like a decent enough man but he is dedicated to his own celebrity first. He will do a lot for Africa but he will do a lot for himself as well. And that really is the whole weakness of these charity events they have to serve the rich first so the poor will always be beholden to them.

And now I feel a bit of scripture coming on, stop me if you’ve heard it before but it goes a little something like this

" And so I say unto thee;
When thou say thine prays be not like the Pharisees who pray at the street corner, for they have already had their reward,
When thou say thine prays go unto thine private place for the Lord God will see what thy do and he shall reward thee "

The Decline of western Civilization Part III, Paris Hilton.

After evading Law enforcement officials across the state of California wanted criminal celébutante and fashionista Paris Hilton is back behind bars.
I go out of my way to avoid celebrity gossip, the coke fiends, the break up dramas, the adoptive parents of entire third world tribes, all seem to be a very slightly more sophisticated version of the endless chatter of a high school clique.
But there is something about Paris Hilton that really gets to me. I’m not talking about gets to me like raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens. It’s more that fingernails on blackboards or vinegar on cold-sores sort of a feeling, she really is that bad. But what is it about Paris Hilton that annoys me so much ?
I certainly hope that its not just some sort of jealousy conversion reaction, whereby I slag her off but actually want her or want to be her. I think I can safely say that I don’t find Ms Hilton physically attractive and I am comfortable enough in my own skin don’t want hers.
I didn’t really expect that Hilton was going to behave in an exemplary fashion in lockup. Even just shutting up and keeping her head down would be too much for her, let alone showing some sort of individual initiative by getting a gang together and through a cunning ruse tunneling out from the exercise yard from a disguised wooden horse. But even with my very low expectations I was disgusted by her feeble and half-arsed escape attempt.
Getting out on a medical is a time honored tradition of the penitentiary. Witness the infamous Australian thug and some-what author Mark "Chopper" Read. He sliced off his own ears just to get a transfer to better accommodation, a place with more afternoon sun, where he wouldn’t get stabbed so much. ( Recent research has revealed that there is a claim that the ear cutting incident was just to win a bet, still tough though)
But Paris just cried for 2 days then got her own psychiatrist to write the Sheriff a note, it’s just pathetic, no way to get you bragging rights in the weights room.
However there is an up side, now with a bit of luck she will do the full 45 days.

But to para-phrase my old master Obi wan Kenobi

"Who is the greater fool ?, the fool or the fool who writes about her in his Blog ?"

The Gilmore Girls

Gilmore Girls TV Review

What is it that draws me back time and time again to the charmingly quaint New England town of Stars Hollow Connecticut ?
Is it thirty something yummy Mommy with a rack, Loreli Gilmore played out with a strange manic style by Lauren Graham or is it the disarming cute Rory Gilmore played in a rather understated fashion by the petite Alexis Bledel ?
It could even be some of the minor characters Lane Kim (Keiko Agena) the repressed Korean girl who yearns to be a punk rocker or Kirk (Sean Gunn) the small town's lovable but bizarre jack of all trades, I would actual rate him higher than Luke Danes ( Scott Patterson) as an enjoyable character to watch. But it is first and foremost a chick show which means excessivly elabrate romantic entangelments.
Luke is the macho love interest of the MILF Lorelai, working class Luke is hairy, manly and runs a small humble but clean and honest diner in town.
The other love interest is the Rory’s father Christopher Hayden (David Sutcliffe) he is cute, some what sissy but seriously rich. He inherited a pile of money from somebody and does some sort of finance thing.
I was some what disturbed when I discovered during my research for this article that the whole thing was conceived with help from the Family friendly programming forum the F.F.P.F. which is part of the Association of National advertisers or A.N.A. The representative body of marketers in the USA all of which smells like fascist state propaganda . Creating the programs according to their own code can eliminate the thereat of advertisers boycotts and who the hell actually writes the agenda for these quasi judicial bodies anyway ?.
The main tensions in the life of Loerlai are her strained relationship with her parent especially her mother Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop) as the third of the "Gilmore Girls" their mother represents all of the old school Protestant family values that the precocious and rather slutty Lorelai rebels from. She left her palatial family home after becoming pregnant and chose the road of a single mother over that of a Ivy leaguer ( Seven Sister ).
Up to the point where solo Mummy arrives back on the door step of her old school mother to beg for the serious dosh required to get her own daughter Delightful Rory the Harvard education she so desparately wants. And so the power of capitalism brings the family together.
The keys to the gates of power in the New Republic (east coast ) are the degrees and diploma of the educational institutions and the contacts they represent. These gates are guarded by those of the exact same class whose interests the serve just like the A.N.A & the F.F.P.F.

It is now cancelled cut, over and done with final episode aired in the States may 15th it now belongs to history

Parasite Hilton

I was feeling I little low on Saturday, you know the feeling, drained of energy, with too many things to do and not enough time to get it done. Looking with a touch of despair upon the sadness of the world.
Then I read that Paris Hilton is going to jail and I bucked right up.
Hooray ! I thought, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving woman.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no class warrior intent on knocking down the rich and famous just because they are rich and famous.
I’m an educator, and I know of no other person more desperately in need of an education than this young lady.
Judging by the effectiveness of her previous lessons this one will need to be delivered old school. 45 days in the slammer may seem a little harsh for driving while disqualified but its rather light for driving while being a ghastly parasite sucking the life blood out of society.
I’m no thug either, I have no interest in seeing anyone brutalized while in prison, such lessons are rarely effective anyway, I’m an intellectual so I would rather see her totally freaked out. That’s they way to deal with this sort of trouble maker. So rather than pairing her up with a 100 kg gangster cell mate with a sharpen tooth brush and a bad attitude I recommend a different approach.
To reform Paris Hilton I would recommend a cell mate, maybe a burglar maybe a hooker from the other side of the tracks. But make sure she is a talkative one. Let the millionaire heiress socialite celebrity ( are any of those actually jobs ?) hear for 23 hours a day the tales of desperation, poverty, fear and starvation. Picking coins out of the gutter, scraps out of dumpsites and the hard graft needed just to keep body and soul together on the mean streets.

That’s an education