The Hobbit Affair

I'm going to be naive here and suggest that the whole Hobbit debacle isn't as complicated and sinister as many people are suggesting Here's my timeline of events;

* National Government introduces god-awful employment law.

* Jackson and Warners announce Hobbit movie to be filmed in NZ.

* NZ actors and film workers form long queue which is mistaken for protest action.

* Actor's Equity ask to negotiate collective contract with Warners.

* Jackson and Warners decline to negotiate collective contract on the grounds that it is probably (no one is sure) illegal under NZ law. Instead offer deal that includes profit sharing for all. NZ Government wonders if Hobbit profit sharing could replace superannuation scheme.

* Actor's Equity decides to use Hobbit as leverage against god-awful NZ employment law.

* Actor's Equity places blacklist on Hobbit.

* Warners freaks out. Like most U.S. corporates they despise unions, and in particular militant ones. By default they attempt to break the union.

* Jackson surprised by fuss. Can't understand what he has done wrong. Wonders if his Golden Boy status has been revoked while he wasn't looking.

* Jackson tries to go and talk to Actor's Equity at Wellington meeting. Is refused entry.

* Actor's Equity decries Jackson for not meeting with them.

* Both sides say things they will later regret.

* Warner's gets jumpy when international stars support boycott of Hobbit. Are afraid of Gandalf's staff. Suggests filming elsewhere ... perhaps a non-union country?

* Hearing the Hobbit is up for grabs other countries offer Warners lucrative tax breaks. Warners likes lucrative tax breaks idea. Wonders why it can't get them in NZ?

* Both sides entrench.

* Warners decide the risk of filming in NZ is too great. Suggest Ireland has nice countryside and co-operative union, and they don't mind paying three times the wages they would have to in NZ if they get big tax break and security. The Harry Potter sets are available as well. Bonus.

* Jackson would prefer to make Hobbit in NZ, but wonders if a few pints of Guinness might get rid of the bad taste in his mouth.

* NZ Unions fail to realize how much Americans despise labour (labor) unrest, and still believe they are in a position of strength. Stick to hard line.

* NZ Government scrambles to find juicy treat to wave at Warners ... contemplates wrapping Gerry Brownlee up in bacon and dangling him on a rope as cat toy for corporate tigers, but Brownlee eats bacon faster than it can be applied.

* Hobbit production moves to Ireland. 2000 plus NZ actors, technicians, etc are left without work.

* Unions blames Warners, Jackson, the government, the Illuminati, NASCAR, and the alignment of the stars for losing the Hobbit.

* Everybody else blames the Unions.

* NZ Actors get great "Pink Book" deal. The 27 NZ actors still employed feel much better about life.

* Hobbits and leprechauns unite and go on strike for better working conditions for all creatures under five foot tall.

Cherry 2000 versus Frigid Farrah

Building on yesterday's blog, finally another of those much wanted items of future tech that Hollywood promised me as a kid is here. Sex robots have arrived. Cherry 2000 is a reality.

Roxxxy is five feet, seven inches tall, weighs 120 pounds, and is made by TrueCompanion. Roxxy isn't their first attempt at a sex robot, there was Trudy in 1993, but Trudy wasn't as "user friendly" as Roxxxy is. Roxxxy is customizable, internet connectible, and has moving 'inputs'. She also has multiple personalities.

The designer, Douglas Hines, asked himself that age-old question; "wouldn't it be great if I could create a robot with artificial intelligence and have it hold someone's personality and preferences - this way, we could talk to the robotic version of that person and ask it questions whenever we wanted"?

Questions such as can you spread your legs wider, or do you like it rough? No, you actually chit-chat with Roxxxy about cars, sports, etc. That's just what everyone wants to do with their sex toys, right? I discuss Descartes with a dildo, don't you?

So, Roxxxy, how about them Raiders? Did you hear that rain last night? Have you seen the Picasso exhibit that's in town? Why do you think all my friends laugh at me? Why am I so alone? Is this knot going to hold my weight when I kick the chair away? How many days do you think it'll be before they find my body?

Roxxxy comes programmed with five distinct named personalities, each with their own ways of responding to you. Wild Wendy is outgoing. Mature Martha is, well, older. S&M Susan likes B&D. There's a young, naive personality I couldn't find the name of, but probably comes with bobby socks and a lollipop. Then there's Frigid Farrah. That's right, you can set your sex robot to frigid.

This raises one big question. Who the hell would spend a shit-load of money on a robotic sex slave and set her to the Frigid Farrah personality?

"Have you met my new sex robot. She cost a pretty penny, I can tell you. About ten G's after sales tax. She's top of the line, though. Her name's Farrah."

"Wow, how does she feel when you, you know ... do her?"

"I have no idea, she won't let me touch her. She says I'm not good enough for her. Calls me a loser."

"Um ... you paid ten thousand dollars for that?"

"It's less than my first marriage cost me, Bob. Much less."

As the movie Cherry 2000 taught us, even Melanie Griffith is better than a sex robot. Now that's a sobering thought.

A new low for the History Channel?

I just watched a charming little 1979 war movie, starring Roger Moore, David Niven, Elliot Gould, Tell Savalas, Stefanie Powers, Sonny Bono and Richard Roundtree. Quite the cast. The movie is so-so action flick with Roger Moore doing a cod-German accent, Gould hamming it up, Powers playing a stripper, and everyone having fun.

The question is, what was it doing on the History Channel? It has the historical accuracy of a Grandpa Simpson rant. (Now my story begins in Nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say "dickety" because the Kaiser had stolen the wold "twenty." I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles.)

Nazi super-rockets on a small Greek Island. Only Telly Savalas can save the day, with a little help from some greedy ragtag grifters (a professor, stand-up comedian, stripper, cook, magician, etc.) who end up sacrificing it all for patriotic duty.

Throw in a disco number with the closing credits (Keep Tomorrow For Me by Heatwave) and you have something that was a whole lot of silly fun, but so anti-historical it could have been a right-wing retelling of the Reagan years (the great communicator won the cold war you know).

The History Channel has some utter garbage on it--docos about ghost hunters, Nostrodamus predictions, UFOs, and how the moon landings were faked--but at least the usual lousy fare pretends to be about history. Showing a 1979 comedic war film is a new low. Although I must say, I did enjoy it.

Not in the spirit of the Spirit

I chanced upon a copy of The Spirit DVD in a bargain bin, and we watched it last night. I needed a few glasses of spirits to make it through. The movie, based on the beloved Will Eisner character, was written and directed by Frank Miller.

It looked amazing. Very Sin City. Lots of blacks and whites, with the occasional red splash of tie or blood.

It was awful.

The cliches were thick on the ground. The acting was, well in a word the acting was over.

Miller trampled over the subtleties of Eisner's Spirit and turned it into a over-the-top Sin City meets Dark Knight load of shite . A very beautiful load of shite, but shite none-the-less.

Don't get me wrong ... I like Miller's comics. I have more than a few of them. Dark Knight is one the comics I try to force people to read as the over-the-top overblown angst really works for Batman. But for the Spirit? No.

I'm guessing it had the most beautiful storyboards in the history of movies. It was so beautiful to look at. Shame it had words as well as pictures.

The character of the Spirit was reduced to a zombie seeking revenge.

"Zombie Spirit want brains! Zombie Spirit want woman! Zombie spirit want Samuel L. Jackson's autograph!"

The lowlight of the movie (there were many contenders) is Samuel L. Jackson in a Nazi uniform, for no apparently good reason, in a high-contrast room complete with large backdrop portrait of Hitler. He even does a Nazi salute. Surely that was the point where even Mr. Jackson should have considered walking away. If that wasn't enough of a hint, then the kitten melting scene (yes, the bad guy chemically melts a kitty-cat for no good reason) should have really set the alarm bells off.

Everything about the production seemed confused. It appeared to be set in the 1930s or 40s--judging by the cars, the buildings, and the fashion--but there were cellphones and helicopter gunships. The parade of beautiful and odd woman in The Spirit's life, all complicating his romance with Dolan's daughter, was about as close to the spirit of the comics that the movie managed.

Otherwise it was graphic yet pointless violence between undying and unfeeling characters, overblown voice-overs that seemed to be lifted directly from Miller's Batman, and very, very pretty graphics that severed only to suggest what might have been.

"Zombie Spirit want direction. Direction and brains!"

Okay, so the photo is just weird ...

My wife and I finally got around to watching the third Star Wars prequel the other day. We didn't expect much, and the movie delivered. Like many a crusty ol' bugger I found the prequels to be rather awful compared to the originals.

Many things bugged me about the prequels. The over-reliance on special effects. The bad attempts at humour. The overt racism. The bad storytelling. The wooden acting. The way Lucas decided the way to make each bad guy seem more evil than the last was to have him use more lightsabers (If there are any more Star Wars movies I predict the next 'Darth' will be an Octopus-alien wielding at least six of them.) The attempts to turn a monarchy into a democracy by having princesses elected (A democracy, mind you, that elects teenage girls to the top job ... Miley Cryus for President anyone?) And, of course, the sudden need for midichlorians to explain how the Force works in a pseudo-scientific rather than pseudo-mystical way (to stop those boycott calls from the Bible belt).

However, I was prepared to let these things all wash over me ... until I had a terrible thought ...

... the prequels mean the original movies make absolutely no sense at all.

Let me clarify. At the end of the prequels the Emperor takes over. He deactivates the vast droid armies with an order. Why? Well, because we don't see them in the next movies is why. There's no logical reason to suddenly get rid of a large army of loyal killing machines. "I just feel like it, and I'm the Emperor. So there."

The children of Darth Vader get split up, for their safety. One of them gets to keep his father's last name and go live with relatives of his father. Just as well Darth never bothers to look up the phonebook. "I have you now, young Skywalker, and all I had to do was let my fingers do the walking."

Obi Wan changes his name to Ben, but keeps his last name. A surname that he doesn't keep secret. Either Kenobi is a common as Smith, or once again the White Pages are all you need to track him down. "Your mastery of the Force is no match for my ability to look things up alphabetically."

Obi Wan is to spend his time training with his old dead master, and keep Luke safe. Of course, he doesn't actually bother to teach Luke anything, and it seems the only trick Qui-Gon teaches Ben is how to come back from the dead. Suddenly the Jedi faith has become akin to a suicide cult. "Luke! Luke! You must drink the spiked Kool-aid, Luke, so you can join us."

When Ben finally does instruct Luke, from beyond the veil, to go get some training, Yoda rightly points out that Luke is too old. The prequels reveal that Luke's father was also too old to start training when he was merely a ten year old. Did no-one think to start the training of the last remaining hope for the Jedi before it was too late? Was life in the swamp and desert, respectively, so exciting for Yoda and Ben that they just lost track of time? "Hmmm, forgot your birthdays, I did. Owe you many presents, I do."

Of course, this brings us to the other major problem ... Leia. There are two 'last hopes' for the universe, the twin offspring of Darth Vader. Yet they just ignore Leia. Why? Because she's a girl? There seem to be plenty of female Jedi in the prequels. Is it just that Ben, Qui-Gon, Yoda, and later Anakin, don't want a girl to join them in their shimmery other world beyond the grave. "Clean up heaven, she would make us. Naked Thursdays embarrassing would be. So no girls in Jedi heaven allowed."

That's my biggest problem with the prequels. They imply that the Ben and Yoda of the original films are idiots who suddenly remember they were meant to be doing something important one day ...

"Oh yeah, we were meant to be saving the universe. Sorry everyone, but I was busy cleaning sand out of my underwear for the last sixteen years and plum forgot."

"Foolish, I feel. In fetid swamp lost track of time, I did. Reading books on grammar, was I. Comprehend them, I did not."

It's a Classic ... No, really !

We have a few DVDs in our collection that provoke dismay from some of our friends. Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is one of those. I think it is great. My wife will tolerate it every few years if there's enough to drink when it's playing. Part parody of Apocalypse Now, part cheesy exploitation movie and part sly commentary on the feminist movement, it falls flat at times, but overall it is a fun film.

The writing impresses me on Cannibal Women--I aspire to mix elements into a story as effectively as they are in this movie--but I was amazed to learn that the writer's name, J. D. Athens, is a pseudonym for the writer of Pretty Woman, among other things.

I'm one of those people who can't understand why anyone would find Pretty Woman to be a romantic movie. He buys her for sex. Plain and simple. It is not romantic. Rather it is unbelievable, exploitative, and perpetuates an unwanted myth about the heart of gold hooker and the nice john that I'm sure has been used for evil ever since. But then I'm of the opinion that The Piano isn't a romantic movie either.

For me a romantic movie is The Princess Bride. I'm still a kid at heart. But as for Pretty Woman being romantic? Inconceivable!

Yarr! Me Hearties!

We watched a movie on DVD last night and had to wait while it played an interminable anti-piracy advert. We own many a DVD with the exact same anti-piracy message ... you wouldn't steal a handbag ... you wouldn't steal a car ... equating these actions as being the same as stealing a movie by viewing an illegal copy. The irony, of course, is that if we had obtained an illegal copy we wouldn't have had to sit through the annoying anti-piracy ad.

Copyright law, both national and international, has made criminals of us all for some time now. Have you made mixed tapes/CDs of music? Have you taped a TV show and then kept it for months? Have you taped a TV show for a friend? Have you made backup copies of software, music or films? Of course not, because if you had you'd be a criminal.

By the logic of the anti-piracy ad, if you answered yes to any of the above questions you may as well start stealing cars and handbags ... after all, it's the same thing.

As a creator of written content I have a love/hate relationship with copyright law. I do like the idea that if I write something that really makes it big it will be protected (in most countries) and provide an income for myself and my near dependents.

At the same time, I despise the way copyright law is updated in ways designed to stop creativity. I once wrote a story that featured Winnie-the-Pooh, and by rights the bear of little brain should be out of copyright by now and I should be able to publish that story. However, the law was changed to prevent characters like Winnie and Mickey Mouse from going out of copyright, and on current form the law will be changed again around 2019 when these icons and others are up for general release again.

We have figured out one trick though ... some DVDs we own ask you to select the country you live in. Being a fundamentally honest person I was choosing Australia, since New Zealand is not included as an option (oh, no, I live in a place that doesn't exist ... help me, I'm melting). This resulted in these DVDs playing the annoying anti-piracy ad. However, one day I got lazy and just selected the first country on the list, and to my delight the DVD went straight to the menu. It didn't even play trailers first. Once again, laziness has shown me the way.

Comedy Bug

I mentioned my parent's LP collection in a disparaging manner recently, but I should point out that they had some wonderful comedy albums. Two Fred Dagg records, Wayne & Shuster, and Bridge Over the River Wye. The last of which is a Spike Milligan penned masterpiece with Peter Sellers, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. These records had a lasting effect on my sense of humour. A sense of humour which I'm forced to apologize for on a regular basis.

Combine this with the Muppet Show, the occasional Marx Brothers movies that NZ TV would sneak on air on a Sunday Afternoon, my accidental discovery of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy on the radio, and some Monty Python shows and I was set for a life of nerdy loneliness.

Somehow I survived. I restrained my tendency to quote these shows and records for long enough to fool a woman into marriage. I even managed to pass my somewhat suspect genes onto a new generation. Now thanks to digital technology I can inflict my humour on these unsuspecting children, mutating their humour to something that resembles my own.

Is a sense of humour like a slowly infecting disease? I'm a carrier for a particular strain, and close contact with me can result in the development of related symptoms. Of course, some people are immune. Others avoid contact; "Unclean! Unclean" they scream on the inside. People with the same or similar strains of humour tend to find solace in one another's company. Humour colonies, where isolation not only keeps others safe, but strengthens the strain for those in the colony.

Comedy festivals are like health outreach programs for humour. Attempting to educate the public and show that these afflicted individuals are not always contagious. Mainstream American sit-coms are what's left after the humour has gone through a rigourous sterilization programme, injected with anti-humotics, scrubbed clean with laughter suppressing soap, and irradiated with large doses of UV (unimaginative visualizations).

Uh-oh! I feel I'm coming down with a case of the Goodies. I'd better rest up on the couch and have some warm milk. Goodie goodie, yum, yum!

It's Enter the Dragon meets The Three Stooges

A common movie gimmick is to mix together too popular movies or genres, as parodied in Robert Altman's The Player;

A: "It's like The Gods Must Be Crazy except the coke bottle is an actress."
B: "Right. It's Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman."

Later a political thriller/comedy is pitched ... "a Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate".

When surfing online I found pitching hints by Aaron Mendelsohn, the writer of Air Bud, a movie that has had four sequels!!

As an exclamation point, it doesn't hurt to do the ol' "it's something-meets-something" trick. It's the Sixth Sense meets American Beauty. Or it's Gladiator set on Mars. Just don't reference movies that were flops. Saying your movie is Alamo meets Battlefield Earth probably won't get you too many hits.

Many criticize this method of movie creation as it can lead to disappointing stories that fall to capture the wit or pathos of the stories they meld. Cloverfield, for example, was Godzilla meets the Blair Witch project ... and while it may have been better than the Blair Witch sequel, it will did not live up to the movies it attempted to fuse.

So when I was lent a copy of a movie described by the lender, Art, as a Noir movie crossed with a High School movie ... a Breakfast Clubs meets The Big Sleep, if you will ... I was not that overwhelmed. I should have trusted Art.

Brick -- A detective movie by Rian Johnson, is a great movie ... one I am willing to recommend to anyone who reads this. All the standard noir characters are easily transposed onto a high-school culture. The manipulative nightclub dancer is made into a drama club diva. The crime kingpin is the school's dope dealer, who still lives with his mother. The cops are the school administrators, especially the dreaded deputy principal. What surprised me is how well it all works. Brilliant stuff.

The only criticism of it I have is the sound quality was lacking in places, making the dialogue hard to follow. Guess that means I'll have to watch it again.

It's a Classic!

Sometimes I resist story ideas. Sometimes the ideas fight back.

I had a vague idea about a time-travel story that I'd been pushing to the back of brain whenever it popped up. Time-travel stories are hard. I prefer to be the nit-picker of such tales, rather than the provider of nits for others. Boing! boing! boing! suck! suck! suck!

However, the damn story would not die quietly. It kept prodding me in the soft squishy grey matter with interesting ideas. Then it hooked me with one of those trying-to-get-back-to-sleep-after-being-woken-up-by-my-child thoughts. A bit-character in the story who is a technician scanning alternate timelines and illegally tapes TV shows and films that don't exist in our 'actual' timeline.

The first movie that popped into my head was a buddy picture with Bruce Lee and Dean Martin entitled Ain't That A Kick In The Head. I'd want to watch that. It's just the kind of DVD I'd stumble across in a bargain bin and wave at my wife with unabashed glee while saying; "It's a classic!"

So now the story has a hold of me. But I think I've fooled it. I've managed to avoid most of time-travel aspects by redefining what the story is about. Take that future nit-pickers!

Indestructible Light-bulbs

Back when the truly excretable Dances with Wolves hit our screens the world revived an old kid's schoolyard game of dubious ethnic sensitivity -- the 'What Is You Native American Indian Name?' question. Mine is Wrestles with Packaging.

Anything from a new roll of toilet paper to a bubble-wrapped pair of scissors will have my blood pressure rising as I attempt to gain access to the packaged product. The modern world seems to want to deny me access to any of its earthly delights by wrapping them all in plastic. Plastic isn't just bad for the planet, it's bad for my stress levels.

Medicine seems to be the worst offender. There's nothing to make a headache worse than having to open a pack of pills encased in extra-strength plastic. Even the 'earth-friendly' soap that we sometimes get is packed in plastic. We were once given a packet of organic biscuits that were individually wrapped in plastic. To top it off they tasted like something you would use in packaging.

I'm not alone in my despair with modern packaging design. There are even products made especially to deal with blister-packs and over-wrapped items. But, of course, these openers come in a blister-pack. Only light-bulbs, in their flimsy cardboard boxes, seem immune to the modern disease of over-packing.

The Trials of Jobs

A friend overseas just got themselves a copy of Dead Alive on DVD. They seemed to think I'd respond well to this, but it took me a while until I remembered that Dead Alive is the North American name for Peter Jackson's Braindead.

It's a gore-fest of epic proportions and has both Rufus and Simon in a cameo walk-on role at the start of the zoo scene. I foolishly went to work that day. Jobs really do suck. That job really did. For so many reasons.

As I've mentioned before, I have a degree in Physics. I realized just how useless that degree was going to be in the final year. The department decided in their wisdom to put up a cork noticeboard dedicated to physics related job advertisements. In the entire year they pinned one job notice to the board. We may have been physics students but the twelve or so of us graduating that year could do enough math to know that one job and twelve people equaled unemployment.

So I worked with computers, doing desktop publishing. It was mostly mind-numbing repetition combined with unrealistic deadline pressure. Fun times. I did manage to layout and print some comics while working there. I wasn't sorry when that job ended. I worked in a comic-book store, an English language for immigrants school, and various other odd jobs.

The longest employment I ever had was working at a liquor establishment. For eleven plus years I worked part-time at a bottlestore, Robbie Burns. The staff discount was a major incentive to stay working there. 20% off all alcohol can be a powerful motivator. There were some actual fun times at that job.

My current job, as a full-time father, part-time writer, even more part-time email and web consultant is pretty sweet. It sure beats any other job I've had. The hours are a bit long ... the pay sucks ... there's a huge amount of crap to deal with, literally ... and tears seem to be common, even if they are not usually mine. But I wouldn't trade it for anything else.