Posts by philipmatthews
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I'm pleased to report, thought, that some are even more useless at this than me. On Nine to Noon earlier, Kathryn Ryan had not only not managed to get this thing to work, she had the impression that, when it does, it gives you a live video feed. Or am I missing something?
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Thanks Paul. I had a feeling that didn't work.
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The one at Royds St, Fendalton, Chch is pretty hilarious given the scandalous nature of what happened there. A beautiful old house was bowled by a developer who ran out of money and left three half-built townhouses on the site. See if you can spot the developer's van. It's the one with Parkside written on it. What a way to immortalise that spot ....
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Funny that you should mention We're Here to Help. Given that it was a bigger bomb than The Ferryman, once international sales are taken into account, I wonder why Coddington didn''t get stuck into it? Perhaps because it has Rodney Hide in a heroic role (as played by Michael Hurst).
Newsprint, I've been meaning to rent Margot at the Wedding. Was made by the guy who made the excellent The Squid and the Whale.
Rich, of course film-making is a gamble. Many thought Lord of the Rings was a colossal gamble, which is why so many studios turned it down. Some thought Titanic would be the biggest bomb in history. The question of whether public money should be subsidising the arts is one I guess we have to disagree on.
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The last Nicole Kidman movie worth seeing? She did a bunch of quite interesting films earlier this decade: The Others, The Hours, Birth, Dogville, even Cold Mountain. She hasn't had a hit in years but she's still probably one of the only actresses with the name recognition to attach to a purported blockbuster. And I largely agree about Baz -- I hated Moulin Rouge. But my point was that whichever studio or backers funded Australia figured that the combo of Kidman, Jackman and Baz with a historical-romance epic -- people keep evoking Gone with the Wind and David Lean -- and timed for Christmas was a good bet.
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Further to the discussion before about the commercial validity of NZ horror films, the NZFC annual report has 168,000 tickets sold in the UK for Black Sheep and 150,000 DVDs. It took $500,000 at the box office in Australia.
Also, 178,000 DVDs were sold of The Tattooist in the US. The NZ box office for The Tattooist was $575,000 which is pretty good for a film of that type.
That dreaded Ferryman sold some 95,000 DVDs in the US and somehow took US$125,000 over two weeks in cinemas in the United Arab Republic. It ran for six weeks in cinemas in Singapore and Malaysia.
I know that Coddington read the same report I just did. So how can she claim that "Not one theatre bought this movie. The commission says 16,000 people have seen The Ferryman, but look closely and you realise this is based on a DVD being rented 13 times and seen each time by 2.5 people (was the third person half-asleep?)."
As they say, she's entitled to her own opinions but not her own facts.
The report also has Eagle vs Shark in 70 US cinemas and selling 62,000 DVDs. In the same year, we have Rain of the Children, Apron Strings, Rubbings from a Live Man, A Song for Good, The Hollow Men, the aforementioned Second Hand Wedding ... Those with memories that stretch back into the '90s would know that this actually looks like a pretty good year.
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Not really true, Andrew. The thing is that NZ horror films have had an international festival and video audience, largely thanks to Peter Jackson's rep -- which is why The Irrefutable Truth About Demons was released on video in the US, only titled The Truth About Demons -- and why the NZFC actively went into horror production a few years ago. Black Sheep was one of the relative successes, both here and abroad. I don't know how The Tattooist did. Perfect Creature wasn't a hit, but from memory a large proportion of the funding came from offshore.
Sione's, No 2 and Second-Hand did better here but did no business overseas.
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That Deborah Coddington column is a real concern. One example:
"Everywhere you look, a disgrace can be found. A little-known documentary, Trouble is my Business, was funded by the commission and made by a staff member."
That little-known documentary screened in Film Festivals in Auckland, Wellington, Chch, Hamilton and Dunedin this year. It was made by Juliette Veber, who produced Toy Love and The Price of Milk for Harry Sinclair. More important, it seems she started it long before she was a staff member, as this excerpt from an Idealog profile shows:
"New director Juliette Veber did without the day job. In Trouble is My Business, her unflinching camera follows Gary Peach, assistant principal at Mangere’s Aorere College, as he fights to keep the kids in school. Veber took an 18-month break from her job as a freelance production manager and immersed herself in South Auckland. She did everything herself, running behind Peach as he charges around the school and neighbourhood. An early grant of $19,000 from the Screen Innovation Fund held the wolf from the door and, because the film was accepted into the Film Festival, she earned a post-production grant to finish it. Friends and industry contacts pitched in with skills, use of facilities and encouragement.
“It’s not that common to immerse yourself in that world”, says Veber. “I wouldn’t do another in such an extreme way, but unless I committed I would never have that access.” She has just finished showing the film to the kids and their families, and now earns a regular income as manager of short films at the Film Commission."
The inference in Coddington's column is that this "little-known" film was only funded because Veber worked at the NZFC -- ie a corrupt process. That's clearly not the case. But why let the facts etc etc.
That was one of 14 NZ films to debut at the Festival this year. It's likely that none of them would have been made without the NZFC and/or Creative NZ. Of course, very few -- if any -- will return the investment, but does that mean we shouldn't be in the risky and speculative business of film production? Out of the Blue wasn't an international hit, nor was Rain of the Children. But "the culture" was better off for both of them. Unless you're the kind of ideological purist who thinks that bookshops can do the business of libraries.
There's a famous line often attributed to screenwriter William Goldman: "Nobody knows anything." It means that no one can predict what will be a hit and what won't. You can spend US$130m on a film called Australia starring Nicole Kidman and find it only takes US$10m in its first weekend. It's easy to be wise after the event. The Ferryman probably looked like a sure thing -- another NZ horror, a LOTR star -- whereas Second Hand Wedding looked like a risk, with a first-time director, relatively unknown writers, a pretty ordinary script and only one name actor (Brophy). It was lucky to get some good media behind it. But audiences are hugely unpredictable and it could just as easily have tanked.
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In case you're not sure what Giovanni and Russell are talking about, this is from the Guardian one on August 2 this year:
One day, they were sitting together in a doctor's waiting room when out of the blue Dorothy [Johnson] said, "Has our flight been called yet?" Garner was mystified and played for time. Her mother anxiously looked around and said, "We don't want to miss it, where's our hand luggage?"
Suddenly, Garner realised what was happening. Her mother had always loved air travel and Dorothy was making sense of this crowded waiting situation by assuming they were in a departure lounge. When Garner responded with "All our luggage has been checked in, we've just got our handbags," her mother visibly relaxed.
From this and similar experiences, Garner realised that people with dementia frequently go back to old memories in order to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible situations.
Unfortunately, very few people, whether professionals or relatives, understand that this is what is happening. To them, it seems as if the person is completely bonkers. When the person starts calling out for their long-dead dog or talking as if they are at a workplace they have not visited for years, they are nearly always misunderstood as suffering from the kind of delusion for which anti-psychotic drugs are prescribed. The person is as convinced of the reality of their past situation as you are right now that you are reading an article. Yet everyone else keeps telling them otherwise, and like an actor in a play where all the other actors seem to be performing a different one, they either become terrified and panic-stricken or aggressive.
And from the Listener one on August 23:
Garner stumbled on that approach when she and her mother were in a doctor’s waiting room. “Has our flight been called yet?” asked Johnson. An avid traveller, Johnson was making sense of the crowded waiting room by assuming she was in a departure lounge. When Garner told her mother their luggage had been checked in, Johnson visibly relaxed.
From this experience and others, Garner realised that people with dementia frequently return to old memories in an attempt to make sense of the present.
When people with dementia call out for long dead family members or make references to being back at primary school, well meaning family members and friends assume they are delusional and try to bring them to their senses. Anyone would find it terrifying to have his or her sense of reality questioned, and people with dementia often respond by becoming panic stricken or aggressive – for which they may be prescribed anti psychotic drugs.
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"Credit crunch" was a new one on me this year.