Mighty River Power share sale

Our conservative Government here in New Zealand is making good on its promise to sell revenue-generating companies it owns to try and plug its own created budget deficit caused by a tax cut on the higher incomes. Those will now be able to buy a cash cow for a song. With the help of the Government. And everybody else will just have to pay more for power to ensure a dividend flow.

An insane economic policy but a tribute to dead ideologies.

Waiheke Island election candidate selection

Hitler has dinner at the Oyster Inn to select candidates for the Waiheke Island Local Board elections. And before you get the wrong impression, the Oyster Inn on Waiheke is a world-class restaurant worthy of your patronage. Nothing in the parody video should be taken as literal truth.

If...

Feature films set in English public schools are strangely timeless: their look, their feel, their atmosphere (and if they were in Odo-rama, their smell) are all very similar and, of course not forgetting the hazing, caning, abuse, humiliation, hierarchy, class structure and repression of all sexual orientations - all aimed at transmitting social strictures and structures to the next generation.
Lindsay Anderson's "If... " doesn't depart from that template but the difference is that all those strictures are the film's main subject rather than its background to another story (as in, for instance "Another Country"). Malcolm McDowell's character resistance is existential rather than political and there was something marvellously 1960s about the movie, with its trippy escape into town ("out of bounds!"), street theatre and a joyride on a stolen motorbike, the hook up with the cafeteria girl and the dreams of free love.
The ending is a little disappointing due to the cop-out into violence - the Sixties' hedonist culture did at the time reverberate through even the stodgiest of social institutions, for a while at least.
The film switches back and forth between colour and black & white film stock, which gives it an alienating and interesting feel. (Prosaically, this was due to budget restrictions forcing some scenes to be filmed in black and white for technical reasons).
Marvellous sound track with Sanctus from Missa Luba:

Bonding in the news

The Australian Olympic swimming team was paraded on international TV (and in the newspaper) to confess about the "bonding" they did prior to the competition. It consisted of going to a movie, having dinner together, spinning swimming yarns while having a few beers, talking a sleeping pill and be in bed by 10.30pm.
I reckon they were in dire need of a director of bonding (me) instead of public humiliation, to make sure future sessions involved speedos, condoms, shaving gear and a couple of tubes of Veet to sort the men from the boys.
And if they had won a shitload of medals, nobody would have batted an eyelid.

Project SoHO

The new library building project in Oneroa on Waiheke Island was rudely interrupted by the receivership of the construction company Mainzeal, and has left an unsightly hole in the ground, probably for several years to come.
Another Untergang parody. They are such fun to make!

Headland 2013

 

The Headland Sculpture on the Gulf exhibition is a biennual event in which the artwork has a huge task competing with the scenery, and most times nature wins out. This year's effort was especially weak in content. I had trouble discerning any art amongst the trees and grass. There were plenty of pieces tacked on to trees and plonked next to the walkways. I imagine many an artist just went round the coastal walk trying to work out what they could do in a particular spot and most of the resulting works look rushed and improvised. 

Nothing moved me despite the number of mobiles (or things just flapping in the wind). Hanging a few red fabric balls in a pohutukawa tree does not an artwork make. 
It was especially hard on children for many pieces had a playground feel to them (strings, swings, playhouses) but a confusing "do not touch" policy for some of them, but not others, caused confusion, tantrums, and tears.

I hope the local board doesn't buy any of the entries because none of them are worth preserving much for posterity. I dread they'll inflict another tumbling down corrugated iron piece on us, and yes, seeing that there was one made my heart sink.

My award would go to "Not For Sale", the only piece that actually made you think what it meant.