Posts by Matthew Littlewood
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The "captain is in charge" thing seems to be harking back to days gone by. until the mid-70s, international cricket teams didn't have coaches. they had a captain and a manager, but the manager's job mainly consisted of making sure everyone got on the team bus before it left...
...which inspired Shane Warne's famous remark that the only coach worthwhile is the one you sit in and takes you to the game. However, in the case of NZ, particularly their top order, I think there does need to be someone to work on the players' technique and application. There's a helluva lot of raw and not quite realised talent there, but they just don't seem to be able to concentrate long enough to get through.
Tim Mackintosh, as turgid as he is to watch, seems to have the discipline, but so far he doesn't have the runs- Richardson was such an asset because he held up one end *and* made sure the score ticked over, albeit at a relatively slow pace.
There have been examples of coaches really changing and revving up sides, in the relatively recent past though, Steve Rixon really pulled the Black Caps into shape after the shambles of the Howarth/Turner* years (I've talked to sports reporters who used to watch their training sessions, apparently he put them through the ringer), while Bob Woolmer was a bloody innovative coach for South Africa, clearly responsible for moulding them into the most attacking team of their era- even if they didn't ever quite overcome their Aussie bogeyman under his watch- that would come once Smith arrived as captain.
Also, before he became baffling and dictatorial, you can't deny the influence Duncan Fletcher had in pulling the English side together and eventually taking them to Ashes glory. Everything, for a brief moment, clicked.
I think Greatbatch seems a good fit, he's obviously had experience with many of the players (Ryder, Oram, Taylor, etc) as CD coach, while he can clearly pass on some of his own knowledge. Before his catastrophic form slump, he was a superb batsman and genuinely innovative in the case of the 1992 World Cup, while he's also responsible for arguably the finest reargard innings in NZ test history where he batted for hours on end against Australia to save ta test in 1990.
*Glen Turner's coaching tenure in the 90s was a litany of "bold" decisions that were just downright stupid, in retrospect, and he clearly didn't have control of the players.
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This could spark a tabloid telly race to the bottom
Why am I reminded of this classic clip from I'm Alan Patridge?
Actually his love of music sure comes out when he interviews bands like Them Crooked Vultures, and for that I applaud him.
Indeed, as evidenced by this piece for Public Address!
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@George
Opinions on Skins? Nicholson in the Guardian thinks it's clever and well done. I have no idea, because it's never appealed to me enough to watch a full episode.
I've been very impressed by it- it's not only clearly a cut above the OC/Gossip Girl school of teen melodrama (the actors actually being in their teens is a good start)- but it seems capture something. Although I'm perhaps slightly outside the key demographic, being in my mid 20s, the writing is sharp, the characters suitably acidic, the comedy hits correctly, the antics at once exaggerated and believable, and there's a nice running joke at seeing guys like Paul Whitehouse, Josie Lawrence Harry Enfeld (who has co-written and directed a couple of episodes) and the incomparable Bill Bailey play out-of-touch saddo parents, as if to indicate a passing of the torch. I kinda like the unforced fucked-up cosmopolitan aspect of the casting, too- seems to reflect something of the splintering of today's "mix and match" youth culture. (Compared, to, say, the more tribalist cultures of the past).
@Steve
I've never got around to watching Breaking Bad, even though I've heard good things about it. I've since noticed its creator and show runner is Vince Gillian, one of the few X Files writers to write consistently good episodes. I'd like to give it a try - might have to get the first season out on dvd from Aro Video.
Oh yeah, it's superb. Not only is the direction fantastic- I love the washed-out, bleached cinematography during the Tex-Mex border sequences- but it captures suburbian ennui and pent-up mania in a way tha American Beauty was way too timid to even dare*. There's shades of the Wire in its depiction of the complicity between the dealers and the users as well. Brian Cranston's performance is as good as anything I've seen on the small screen in some time, too.
*I kinda agree with the wag who dubbed that film Blue Velour.
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Okay, apologies for being late to the party. I felt like standing back during the whole sci-fi debate.
Anyway, David Peace's the Damned United has been the most impressive book I've read in a while. I love the harshness of the process, the way the embittered, circular stream-of-consciousness from "Clough" plays off against the real-time drama. In its own way, it's just as noirish as his justly celebrated Red Riding Quartet- it's just that the violence is self-inflicted and almost entirely psychological. It reminded me of Nick Tosche's novellistic Jerry Lee Lewis bio, Hellfire, in the way its lead character is clearly on a one-man mission to self-destruct, almost out of spite for what he's chosen- in Jerry Lee's case, it's chosing the path of sinful rock'n'roll over god's work, in Clough's case, it's going with the hated Leeds United.@philipmatthews:
The blogger and, more recently, novelist Mark Sarvas says that he has read The Great Gatsby at least 20 times. I've read it maybe three or four times and can imagine another three at least and I know other people who regularly go back to it as well. Why is this? I think the closing paragraphs might be the greatest, and most moving, that I know of. These lines below give me goosebumps every time I read them or think about them and I'm not sure why:
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
There aren't many sentences better than that last one. It's a small book that contains a huge amount and I think that's why we keep going back to it. Somehow there's always more in it. It's the Tardis.
I'm exactly the same with that book- only the last lines of Maurice Gee's Plumb have a similar effect on me- the realisation that our protagonist still, after all that he's lost, has no idea what his stubborness has done to those that loved him the most. It's heartbreaking.
Speaking of Gee, although I haven't read his latest, I thought Blindsight was superb. Possibly the most devestatingly compact novel he's written in a long time, and it just feels like a Wellington novel, much like many of his early novels apparently (according to my mother who lived there during the time) were very much late 50s/early 60s West Auckland.
As for JG Ballard, he's one of my absolute favourites, but his strength is as much his ideas as his (admittedly distinctive) prose. Ballard's greatest strength- his unblinking, relentlessly serious treatment of frequently absurd dystopians, his treatment of surroundings as characters- is sometimes his biggest weakness- dialogue isn't his strongest suit, for instance. I guess the exception to the rule was Empire of the Sun, his most affecting, lyrical novel- which might be because it was heavily autobiographical.
High Rise, The Drowned World and Crash are my favourites though- not just because I read them at just the right time (second year of university)-but because they're perfectly conceived, and utterly brutalist (or feverish, in the case of the Drowned World)
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Frankly, The Simpsons has been going downhill for so long, I just can't wait for it to die; they are ruining their leacacy. For me, seasons four and five was the peak, and pretty much each season since (21st, now) has been a bit less great than the previous.
Coincidentally, Conan O'Brien was a lead writer for the Simpsons during seasons four and five. While those two are probably the best, certainly the moment where it all came together- in terms of animation, writing, cultural impact and sheer pop culture acuity-but it maintained its supernova high standards until at least season eight. On the commentaries, Matt Groening, Al Jean and John Schwartzwelder admit that O'Brien put a rocket up the rest of the writing team and challenged them to push things even further.
After that, things became difficult, and the quality started to dip, due to a number of factors- the mass exodus of many of their best writers and showrunners (Brad Bird, Mike Judge, etc) during the previous couple of years was starting to show, the death of Phil Hartman and Mike Scully's takeover as lead showrunner moved the show into- how can I put this?- more "cartoon" territory which it never fully recovered. The emergence of Ian Maxtone-Graham, possibly the chief offender, didn't help matters either.
As for the late-night show war, who's up for rewatching their Larry Sanders Show DVDs- that programme clearly got a lot right about the sort of personalties attracted to that format, and the sheer insanity of the format's compromises in terms of the advertiser's and the guest's demands.
Of course, Jon Stewart has been showing them all up for years now, even Letterman. Not just in the sketches, but the quality of guests alone. Even the celebrity movie plug chit-chats seem sharper.
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Aw yeah. Willie Mitchel is one of my favourites that Hi-sound is just...ineffable isn't- somehow finding a perfect middle ground between the brassy toughness of Stax/Atlantic and the silky sinuousness of Gamble & Huff/Philly soul in general. And Mitchell's arrangements were as much a part of that as the voices of Greene and Peebles, both of which would be among my favourite music.
82 is a good innings, but it is sad. Didn't he also help out with Cat Power's excellent The Greatest , recently- I thought that record was a real coup, not quite Big Star's SisterLovers meets Dusty in Memphis, but so close that it didn't matter.
Anyway, back to the BDO, I'll be going again (for the 8th time in a row) this year, but...
The schedule for the Big Day Out 2010 is here, as a jpeg or a PDF. And on reading it, I'm a bit … ambivalent. In one sense, that's silly: a festival featuring Groove Armada, Lilly Allen, Dizzee Rascal, Peaches, The Veils, Dimmer, The Decemberists, The Horrors, Kora, Ladyhawke, Simian Mobile Disco and others playing in a single day ought to be much to my taste.
I think the problem with that lineup is that good as it is, we've seen many of them at BDOs before. And while it's great that Dizzee is finally on the main stage after steaming up the boiler room twice before, I wonder whether he'll have the same intensity in an open area.
Simply, the lineup doesn't really have an ace up its sleeze- whether it's Kraftwerk/Underworld in 03, Flaming Lips in 04, Stooges in 06 or Bjork /Arcade Fire/Clean in 08 or Neil Young last year. Still regardless of who's playing, it's always great fun.
If anyone wants to meet up with me before or afterwards, or even there, (hey, I'm just offering!), let me know, I'm up in Auckland from the 13th to the 19th.
Agree with RB about Muse, but I find their obsessive fanbase just...fascinating. They've clearly found their niche- not quite bogan enough for metalheads, not quite pseudy enough for indie aesthes.
Edit: word to the wise- always remember, when working one piece, don't copy and past it into another accidentally -
Some really good choices by you all, clearly there's some stuff I need to pick up too.
Mos Def- The Ecstatic: Thinking person's hiphop from a very cool dude.
I've kinda lost track of him, though to be fair he hasn't really been that active musically since he branched out and became a very likeable actor. But what I've heard sounds great, and it's got a cool cover too (which features a still from Charles Burnett's seminal The Killer of Sheep). Raekwon's Only Built for Cuban Linx 2 has been getting raves too, so I'd be keen to give that a whirl, as it's not often that a sequel matches up to the original, particularly when the original seriously changed the game (as Jay-Z has discovered with the second and third parts of The Blueprint).
Oh, and happy xmas all! Hope to see some of you up north, or even in ChCh over the break.
Oh and it's good to hear that Roger Shepherd has bought back Flying Nun. Hopefully that means someone will do a decent reissue program- what, we can dream, right?
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That was an amazing review of In My Father's Den, I remember reading it at the time and thinking it captured my own thoughts on the film exactly. I brought it up when I interviewed Maurice Gee for Critic a year later.
Speaking of great adaptations which have little to do with the source material, two spring to mind. The first is Trainspotting :it's a perfect adaptation partly because it acknowledges it would be impossible to make a truly "faithful" one- the original source material is, after all, less a novel than a series of discursive, dialect-heavy narratives loosely focused around the exploits of Mark Renton--and by trimming it back and focusing on the vitality and gallows humour of a few choice episodes, it nails the spirit without getting overly tangled. It also quotes the right music too (very important in Irvine Welsh novels)
Blade Runner, similarly, is nothing like the book- which is just as well, considering the book disappears into total incoherence near the end as it imagines worlds within worlds within worlds, to say nothing of the fact that it's the Replicants which are the villians in the book (in the film, they're suffering saints). But by diverting so wildly from the source material it captures something else- the weird jumble of genres and tones, the mix of benzedrine-addled cynicism and offhand wonder. Perhaps it removes the humour of the original book, but it certainly gets the sense of the unknown.
But back to Avatar.
As I expected, it's Pocahontas in Space- with all that entails.
Firstly, the dialogue is utterly dreadful- but did we think it would be otherwise. Sure, everyone remembers the catchphrases from Aliens and the first two Terminator films, but that's only because the rest of the screenplay(s) is perfunctory beyond belief. He's a step up from George Lucas, for sure, but I'm still reminded of what Harrison Ford's immortal "you can't type this shit George, you sure as hell can't say it" in regards to this flick. I was thankful when the subtitled "alien" dialogue kicked in because at least you could pretend it was eloquent.
Secondly the allegories- about a spritually and ecologically enlightened indigenuous tribe needlessly destroyed by a more craven and materialist aggressor- are thuddingly obvious. Vietnam, Iraq, the Wild West, whatever you want to make of it, you can. I mean, it's so broad as to be preposterous, and even the most complex characters- such as the marine who turns to "the other side" or Sigourney Weaver's empathetic biologist- are drawn with ridiculously broad brushes.
Thirdly, the performances- Weaver aside- are flat to non-existent, which isn't helped by the aforementioned broad character types. Even the alien people are insufferable saints. The fact we're given little idea of the back story- how long have the troops been there? what brought them there in the first place?-makes it all the more facile.
However...as odd and faintly absurd the visual aesthetic is (some of the sequences seem straight out of a Yes album cover), it's absolutely breathtaking to soak in. Many of the early sequences in the forests are like this hypnotic visual balm, you can seriously get lost in it, while as cringeworthy as the "tree of souls" cod-metaphysical hang-ups are, you've gotta give Cameron credit for chutzpah. He really goes for broke here, and as misguided as his aesthetic might be (who on earth would create these blue people anyway?), you can't mistake it for anything else. And as I said before, Cameron can really direct an action scene- let's just say the money is all up on screen without a doubt. There's something almost bafflingly old-fashioned about this flick actually- the more you think about it, the more it makes sense that this has been buzzing in Cameron's head for the last thirty-odd years. Who else would go for something so lysergic now?
So it's a trip, and I'm pleased I saw it, but...I don't know, in a year when District 9 showed a sci-fi flick could be loosey-goosey, funny, kinetic and savage, and carry much heavier subtext with little strain at (literally) one-tenth of the budget, you can't help but think that Avatar is an anomally in the best and worst sense of the word.
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Won't hurt NZ's reputation to have its team cast as the unbeatable giant in the final.
...And yet going into the tournament that was anything but the case. The All Blacks 1994 season was remarkably similar to their 2009 season: back-to-back losses against France at home (the second match being a heartbreaking last-minute effort thanks to The Try from the End of the World, arguably the greatest try ever seen in international rugby), a 2-0 series victory against South Africa* (notable also for being Kirwan's last series- I was there to see his last-ever try for the ABs in Carisbrook!), and that Bleidisloe Cup match with That Gregan Tackle. Laurie Mains's position as coach was in serious doubt at the end of the year.
In fact, it's remarkable how the ABs just clicked in the RWC 1995, although given the sheer raw talent of that squad (Kronfield, Wilson, Lomu, Mehrtens et al), perhaps it's not too surprising. And while that loss against South Africa still isn't easy to take, the symbolic import for the home side was and is massive. I'm looking forward to seeing the film actually, although the thought of Matt Damon as Francois Pineaar does make me chuckle a little!
*Okay, so the results weren't the same for the two seasons, I was more getting accross the fact that in both 1994 and 2009, the ABs fortunes were decidely mixed.
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The interesting thing about Aliens is that for all its admittedly relentless action, the buildup is surprisingly considered. I watched it again the other week, and it struck me how evenly paced it actually is- it's a good 90 minutes before they even land on the planet, and much of the first half deals with Ripley figuring out exactly what's happened since she's been frozen. If it were made today, it would be the same length (probably longer even), but it would cut out the backstory entirely.
Sure, it doesn't have the foreboding, almost glacial pace of Alien, but Cameron doesn't exactly throw you straight into it, either, and more to the point, his setpieces are coherent- especially compared to say, anything directed by Michael Bay or the Bourne films (which admittedly are deliberately disorientating). HK-era John Woo aside, he's probably the action director.