Sex and Agriculture

The old man and I were walking along Mayoral Drive in the Auckland CBD one afternoon back in the '90s. Another even older man had just walked out of the Pan Pacific Hotel and headed towards us. My father, aged sixty-mumble, did something I'd never see him do before.

He lost the expression of a man wearied by sixty-odd years on the clock, and reverted to a mumbling child as he praised former child actor Mickey Rooney in person. This crinkly polite Yank - accosted on the streets in a strange land by some quixotic stranger in the three piece armour of an attorney - had brightened my Dad's day considerably.

Needless to say, Mickey Rooney's golden days of Hollywood were a bit before my time. Growing up two generations prior to my existence, the old man grew up on tales of conquest by proxies of the British Empire in books, as well as the pulp fiction churned out by Hollywood, leeched as it was of reality by the censors and purveyors of moral rectitude.

The Ten Commandments of Hollywood back then, summed up in one picture, were:



An artifact of this celluloid puritanism popped up last week, nicely raising the profile of Eva Green and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For in the process. In America at least, nipples are still considered Satan's cherries.

In contrast to the old man, all my heroes were outlaws. I grew up with '70s cinema and early '80s auteurs, the golden era of the film director. Years before the blockbuster killed the independent studios' diversity with superheroes and cloned plots, it was all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bugsy Malone, the Blondini gang from Goodbye Pork Pie, Bruno Lawrence, Sam Lowry in Brazil, Buckaroo Banzai, David Lynch, etc.

Moral ambiguity, anti-heroes, irony and pathos were main ingredients. Ultra-violence was used as allegory or hyperbole (A Clockwork Orange, The Evil Dead), as opposed to today's serious yet CGI carnage purely for the sake of it.

But I digress. The Mickey Rooney intersection came into mind on Thursday, as John Banks walked out of court a guilty man. My old man shared airtime with Banks on Radio Pacific. Of all the things Banks could have said as Michelle Boag quietly photobombed away in the background, Banks had to come out with an esoteric 1930's song about standing in puddles. A man so pole-axed, the child came out.

Three days later, John Banks announces he is exiting the political stage once more. Up until this afternoon, it looked like he was blithely looking at hanging around in Parliament, upstaging the election theatre cast from Jamie Whyte to John Key, before crashing through the footlights head first into the orchestra pit.

Farewell then, John Banks. You will be forgotten. Cannabis will be legalised. Look who's stupid then. Auckland will one day reverse your rates poll tax (aka the Uniform Annual General Charge), as well as your puritanical Brothel and Commercial Sex Premises bylaw. Charter schools will be folded back into the integrated schools system, where state accountability sits in judgement over religious schools.

Everything John Banks did will be dirt.

Leaving Las Vegas via New York

The Year of the Horse is off to an inauspicious start with the apparent death by heroin overdose of Philip Seymour Hoffman. The autopsy report has yet to be concluded, let alone released to the public, but this hasn't stopped the NYPD hunting down and arresting four suspected heroin dealers.

Using the same Salem Witch Hunt logic, the cops should also detain the car dealer who handed the keys to the Fast and the Furious' Paul Walker. Alcohol brands would have their assets seized if screenwriters stockpiled their product and drank themselves to death with it.

Such is the weird world of prohibition and liability in the US, this does not happen (although some states do allow drink driving victims to sue the last tavern, usually because they have more insurance money than the drunk driver).

Tests on the heroin found at Hoffman's apartment have reported it to be high quality, free of adulterants and contaminants that have blighted other parts of the North West states. The cops might have just increased the market share of dodgy horse in NYC.

Apparently, dozens of bags were found at the scene. It isn't noted whether this was accumulated stock or a bulk purchase - a horse cellar or a shopping spree at the yearling sales, so to speak. Without going into too much speculation without evidence, I ponder what drove this character actor's motivations in his final act.

Either way, this current witch hunt will end up burning the wrong people. If you live your life in a burning house, you may end up dying of smoke inhalation. No point arresting the real estate agent.

Died So Jung

So long, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Thanks for Happiness.

Thanks for Magnolia.

Thanks for The Big Lebowski.

Thanks for Synecdoche, New York.

Thanks for kindling a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

If You Wish Upon a Pineapple Lump

Felix Na'vi Dad; James Cameron's pet blue Santa. Nicked from here.

The Smiling Assassin has done it again, dividing and conquering his political foes with glamour and a fistful of taxpayer dollars.

Some of Key's most vocal critics this year agree with the Avatar deal announced this week.

Gordon Campbell yums it up, rallying against Treasury as he ponders some mystic economic multiplier effect that they haven't discovered yet. At least he recognises the singular nature of the scheme:

You could call the 25% top rate the Avatar clause, because the conditions seem to have been devised simply to attract and retain the next three Avatar films in this country.

They said that about the LOTR deal back in the day too. See how the sheltered bubble grows? Rod Oram, who has been hard nosed on everything from the Chorus copper to the Tiwai Smelter pay-off this year, gives the scheme a big tick also.

Fortunately, saner voices still exist. Here's Matt Nolan at TVHE looking at the high cost of sexy:

Ok, so who are the people who get all this “pride” from the movies? Generally, middle class New Zealanders. Who is paying, generally wealthier New Zealanders (as they pay most of the tax). What spending is likely to be sacrificed in order to pay for subsides, poor New Zealanders.

Eric Crampton chips in. Patrick Smellie suffers slings and arrows from the Na'vi lovers. Bernard Hickey sums up the bad math:

The Government spent nearly half a billion dollars in seven years and got back NZ$13.6 million in net economic benefits. Not only that, but the extra spending actually reduced the Government's fiscal position by NZ$168 million.

The Labour Party sold out to the luvvies and drama queens ages ago. The best Labour can come up with by way of opposition to the scheme is that it should have been sooner. There's no room for principles in either of the main parties these days.

Here's the conclusion of my father's Maiden Speech to Parliament in 1981. For the purposes of this discussion, replace the farmers with film producers, Timaru with Cameronton/Jacksonville, and wool bales with box office takings:

I do not think people know what happens with supplementary prices. In Timaru, at a sale before Christmas, a station received 620c a kilo for merino wool - a New Zealand record: $5600 for seven bales. Yet tax gathered from the widows, the widowers, and the poor was used to pay that station another $1400 in supplentary minimum prices despite that record price. The reason was that the coarse wool average reduced it below 320c, down to 255c. So to the rich again shall it be given, and from the poor shall it be taken away. There is immorality and injustice in that.

I say to all members on the government benches, and to the farming people who are listening, if they are not aware of it, that privelege and class distinction - long since gone from New Zealand- are raising their heads again under the National government. The poor are refused bread, that the rich may eat cake. Many of our ancestors left England and other countries because of hereditary land rights, and because they could not get a chance. That is happening again to New Zealand.

Peace on earth, except the Na'vi Dad. I hope a pineapple falls on his head while he's holidaying in Hawaii.

Moving Pictures

NZ on Screen has compiled a list of NZ's top 10 films. All due respect, but I beg to differ with their conclusions.

I first learned the power of public persuasion through the art of film. Not long after accidentally watching Peter Weir's head-fucky The Last Wave at the precocious age of seven, the author as a child witnessed Sleeping Dogs at the movie theatre as well. Futures were changed.

Around a decade later, in the '80s, I discovered the fulcrum of one. I had given the old man a Footrot Flats poster for Xmas; the one with Wal as successful duck shooter, with Dog nagging him about the orphaned ducklings. Then-journo Genivieve Westcott used the poster to frame Trev's opposition to film subsidies as then-Revenue Minister in a Close Up special, seeing how the Footrot Flats movie was going through the art of funding at that time.

My argument was more nuanced than the old man's, and I let him know it. The arms race of film subsidies is a game we can't win. And don't get me started on the laws of Hollywood quantum accounting methods. The best we can do is tell universal truths through our specific NZ qualities. If it reaches a larger audience through striking the right chord, woohoo.

But there's no point in blowing a subsidised bubble only for it to burst, shattering the illusions of an industry. Hobbit and Avatar tax breaks are just SMPs for the already-wealthy and wise. It feeding money into the wrong end of the film beast.

I agree with six of NZ on Screen's choices: Goodbye Pork Pie, Smash Palace, Utu, Vigil, Once Were Warriors and In My Father's Den. But the Piano? Oscar, schmoscar. Here's my top Five NZ films not included on NZ on Screen's list, in no particular order.

1. Sleeping Dogs - Duh. Years before I read Orwell, Sleeping Dogs was a mad reflection of Muldoon's idea of NZ. One of Don Brash's redeeming features, seeing how he helped fund it. Watching the DVD is worth it for getting a taste of the sparse Kiwi conversation on the so un-Hollywood Director's commentary. Worth a reboot, if for no other reason than token Yank Warren Oates arrived so close to filming, he was holding his script as a prop.

2. The Quiet Earth - NZ's only hard sci-fi film. Bruno Lawrence at Eden Park in a tutu.

3. Christmas - Seasonally appropriate look at the painful tradition inflicted upon NZers by their baby boomer nut job parents. The Royal Tenenbaums watching Bad Santa.

4. Bad Taste - Peter Jackson before the bloat. Splatter comedy with Caesar Romero levels of satire, at a fraction of the budget. I lived around the corner from the Hataitai house they used for Brain Dead, Feebles will always splat Hobbits, and Heavenly Creatures was well crafted enough, but Bad Taste was something new.

5. Stickmen - Wellington's answer to Guy Ritchie. The windy city has villains too, y'know.

Quentin Tarantino, can you hear me?

George Lucas' 2D Afro-American war picture bombed. There are doubts lingering over Django Unchained's script. Might I humbly offer a plot suggestion for Mr Tarantino?

A historian in Oz wondered why then-US Congressman Lyndon B Johnson visited Townsville for three days in 1942. He uncovered a lot of plot:

An Australian historian has uncovered hidden archive documents which reveal that African American troops used machine guns to attack their white officers in a siege on a US base in north Queensland in 1942.

Now this is a WWII African-American story that Tarantino can really sink his ultra-violent revenge fantasies into:

''After some serial abuse by two white US officers, there was several ringleaders and they decided to machine gun the tents of the white officers,'' Mr Holyoak said.

It could even be a double-header feature, with Taika Waititi directing the Battle of Manners Street, NZ's own little mutiny against loud-mouth racist Yank grunts.

Coen Brothers Movie moot

David Haglund at Slate has the latest in an enjoyable debate on ranking the Coen Brothers movies from good to bad. IFC has a good read on the near impossible task. Haven't done a Coen movie marathon before, and it sounds just the thing to fill the short days with long hours.

The NYT editor guy reckoned Fargo was Death of a Salesman with a chipper, while I thought it was Burn After Reading which was Death of a Salesman with Langley. John Malkovich starred in the movie version of the play with Dustin Hoffman in the lead, so if anyone can channel Arthur Miller, it's Malkovich Malkovich. I hope his performance in Burn After Reading helped get him the role in the Reds movie too.

I haven't seen Hudsucker Proxy or A Simple Man yet, and only seen Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple once. I don't know if I've seen Intolerable Cruelty and I don't care if I never see The Ladykillers (Tom Hanks is not Alec Guinness). With those caveats in place, here goes:

1. "The Big Lebowski"
2. "No Country for Old Men"
3. "Raising Arizona"
4. "Barton Fink"
5. "Fargo"
6. "Burn After Reading"
7. "Miller's Crossing"
8. "Blood Simple"
9. "True Grit"
10. "The Man Who Wasn't There"
11. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
12. "A Serious Man"
13. "The Hudsucker Proxy"
14. "Intolerable Cruelty"
15. "The Ladykillers"

This list will no doubt be subject to flux and revision at a future date.

The Tao of Nim

They're making the story of Nim Chimsky into a documentary. Nice one.

Sax and violins

What with the Atlas Shrugged movie being a leaden crock of shit, gotta throw a libertarian a bone. Frank Miller's Martha Washington Goes to War is a much better adaptation of Rand's turgid Atlas Shrugged novel, featuring the right balance of satire and violence, as well as positive schizophrenic and ethnic minority role models:

That's what I call a bums on seats kind of story.

Atlas Bombed

They also make bad movies. Russell Brand's execrable Arthur remake and Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules are considered far superior movies compared with Atlas Shrugged Part I, at least according to Rupert Murdoch's critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Even PJ O'Rourke is having difficulty finding something kind to say about the pool of libertarian vomit:

But I will not pan “Atlas Shrugged.” I don’t have the guts.  If you associate with Randians—and I do—saying anything critical about Ayn Rand is almost as scary as saying anything critical to Ayn Rand.  What’s more, given how protective Randians are of Rand, I’m not sure she’s dead.

I hope Part Two features a zombie Ayn Rand theme. It could only improve the viewing experience.

Bladerunner Babies

If the prospect of a four part movie trilogy based on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged doesn't put the willies up you (the third part might be "a Les Miserables kind of a musical"), consider a Bladerunner prequel:

There is as yet no indication that the director would be involved with any revisiting of the movie, though the film's would-be producers said it would be "wonderful". At the moment Mr Scott is busy with Prometheus, a prequel to his Alien, which spawned one of the most successful franchises of all time.

I think I'll give the inevitable Bladerunner Predator JarJar Binks crossover a miss.

Hobbits on Film

Speaking of Withnail & I, Peter Jackson and David Court have finally handed in their homework on the Film Commission to Chris Finlayson. Stuff's headline of Jackson review criticises Film Commission is a bit like saying Roger Ebert criticises Peter Jackson films. That's the point, isn't it?

Yes, the Film Commission Board does get singled out as some kind of Star Chamber. No-one's denying that, not even the Board. But the faults go further than that, into the clash between the grey cardies of bureaucracy and the highly-strung and out-of-the-box theatrics of the creative sector.

There are strange parallels in this Hobbit Declaration to the review of Crown Research Institutes not so long ago. Piddly funding, a constant dribble of checklists and tick-boxes for accountability, lots of day after tomorrow promises that never lead anywhere.

It's notable that the core of the market Jackson and Court are talking about is a very low number, something south a 100 talented people nationwide. Even given the TV and advertising sector, it gives a good clue as to just how much training the government should be throwing into the relevant tertiary training arena. No point getting twenty thousand teens with qualifications in film for a pool of 100 jobs.

Yes, incentivise writers by linking their income to box office returns. Writers are treated like shit at present.

Yes, have some limited funding for lo-fi trailers for prospective movie ideas. Links to NZ on Air's funding of music videos comes to mind, albeit with slightly different targets. A trailer can act as a visual business card for writers/directors to sell their vision, while also getting the pool of talent refreshed through no-name trailer stars. Trailer trash, if you will. Everyone wins. That's how Sin City sold itself.

The Film Archive should be split off and assigned to the Librarians' Guild with the National Archives. That's their function, not the Film Commission's. That way, they might be in time to save all that VHS archive from the 1980s before it gets electronic Alzheimer's. That's worth a dollar or two in public goods.

However, I'm with Treasury on the proposal of extending the Large Budget Screen Production Grants scheme. NZ is transparent in its support structures and we do not favour subsidies. Fuck Sony, screw Warner. We have cheap labour as a competitive advantage if they film here. I'm also wary of Australia's mistake with the Docklands Studio:

A schedule of every movie and television program shot at the studios, released for the first time, reveals they have been used for feature films only 50 per cent of the time.

There have been four months when the studio's five stages have been empty. It is vacant at present.

Withnail & I would never have made it into reality without the backing of former Beatle George Harrison of HandMade Films. This production company began life in order to fund Monty Python's Life of Brian because no major studio wanted to go near it. Neither the Film Commission Board nor the offshore studios should pick our winners.

A good film is an interesting story told well. Sleeping Dogs taught us a lot, and it would never have happened without the support and belief of Don Brash (for finance) and even Rob Muldoon (helicopters and rockets). Vigil, Smash Palace, Goodbye Pork Pie, Boy, Once Were Warriors, Christmas; these are our stories, not King Kong or Avatar. If our homegrown talent can add to the panthenon on a regular basis, that'll be good enough.

Oh no, not another apocalypse

From the guy who brought you Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, the thinking man's Michael Bay has put enough CGI candy together to make 2012. How do you beat blowing up the White House (from Independence Day)? Try landing a freaking aircraft carrier on top of it.

Nazis with English accents

There's a lot of WWII stories out there this year, what with Valkyrie, The Reader, Inglorias Basterds, etc. BBC looks at a short history of bad accents in movies, with particular reference to the English actor playing the baddies archetype.

Monkey Dust is a bit more direct:

Reasons to be Cheerful 5

"The meek will inherit the earth, but only after the rich and powerful have finished with it. By then, it won't be worth having." - Marty Feldman



In order to procrastinate on the Balls to 2009 post a bit longer, and be distracted by happier thoughts, here's the annual round-up of escapism into film. Sure, there's snappier sights saying much the same thing. Wired, Film.com, The Times, and Kate Roger at TV3 have some decent picks.

What's the time, Dr Manhattan? Will Watchmen open on my birthday, or will Fox and Warner still be throwing lawyers at each other? While a movie can never do justice to the source material, it looks like it will be closer to Alan Moore's ideas than the movie versions of From Hell or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ever were. Watchmen has gone through all known levels of development hell. I remember the early 90s when Terry Gilliam and Robert De Niro were being associated with a Watchmen movie. Just get on with it!

Anything by Darren Aronofsky is good. Yes, even The Fountain. Give me inaccessible stories involving Spanish conquistadores and interstellar travel over Indiana Jones and the Nuked Fridge any day. The Wrestler is a must see. Even professional wrestler Mick Foley digs the story. It's not art unless someone suffers, and Mickey Rourke does suffering well. Easy the Marv.

There's agony a plenty in Revolutionary Road, featuring Di Caprio and Winslet in this Anti-Titanic of a plotline. Sam Mendes gives suburbia another well deserved bash in the ego. Christopher Hitchens and Roger Ebert sum up this cul de sac of desperation best. Must get the book. It'll go nicely alongside The Corrections.

An actualised revolutionary, Che Guevara, gets the Soderbergh treatment. All six hours of it. I came away from The Motorcycle Diaries with the impression that Che was nothing more than a charlatan who would promise anything to get what he wanted. For a double feature, I'd rather watch Rodriguez and Tarantino's Grindhouse movies again. Zoe Bell rocks, Che doesn't.

Nor am I holding my breath for Benjamin Button. No disrespect to David Fincher. Like Soderbergh, brilliant director. It's just the subject matter that's the problem. In Button's case, the unexplainable conceit of a man born old and growing young. There's fantasy and then there's impossibility. In this case, the second law of thermodynamics.

You may as well invent a character who wasn't affected by the law of gravity, but floated about wherever he felt. At least Dr Manhattan is conceivable. His beginning is explained. A fully grown, fully aged adult man is inconceivable. Roger Ebert is right, it's just wrong.

Another way a character could escape gravity is by tying a whole lot of balloons to their house and floating it across to South America. That's the plot of Pixar's latest effort, Up. Emboldened by Wall-E's success, the people at Pixar are upping the ante in the story department. The teaser trailer is a joy, as is this short clip involving an old man and a boy scout.

Or you could go universally fantastic to float your boat.

But all is forgiven with Soderbergh because of The Informant, which is promising to do to agricultural lobbies what The Insider did for tobacco. The strain on free trade could do with all the help it can get right now, but that's another blog post. Matt Damon chubs up for the role in between Bourne franchise obligations.

Mindless action movie for 2009 will be The International, not Terminator Salvation. This is because fighting bankers is scarier than fighting unkillable robots from the future. Features everyman world saver Clive Owen and Naomi Watts (yum).

Unusual premise of the year goes to The Box. Directed by the guy who made Donnie Darko, a couple are given possession of a box for 24 hours. In the box is a button. If they press the button, they become rich but someone they don't know dies. As far as moral dilemmas go, it's cleaner than Saw but more personal than The Dark Knight's ferry stand-off. I wonder if the deaths are the penultimate recipients who pressed the button?

In the comedy department, there's The Boat That Rocked (pirate radio station antics), The Brothers Bloom (with the DNA of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), and whatever Sacha Baron Cohen calls his Bruno film. Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds covers the exploitation circuit, while Sin City 2 awaits a 2010 opening, maybe. Exploitation name of 2009 goes to Lesbian Vampire Killers. Great title, shame I'm all coming-of-aged out after Juno, Superbad and Pineapple Express.

But the movie I'm most looking forward to this year is the one I don't know about yet. In between the credit crunch and the Screen Actors Guild strike, Hollywood is going to take a back seat to some little ripper from off-shore. It will be like Slumdog Millionaire, but more like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days or maybe Lust, Caution.

Then again, it might be Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.

Happy Birthday, Dude

It's been ten years since the world was introduced to The Big Lebowski. The psychic shockwave abides to this day. There have been books (eg. I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski), bowling leagues, and even its own convention, complete with Donnie, Dude and Jesus impersonators. The politics of neo-cons and Walter Sobchak have been compared, and there's even talk of a sequel:

“That’s just like a sick thought, isn’t it?” laughed Philip Seymour Hoffman recently, commenting on Turturro’s dream of making a sequel that revolves around his child-molesting, bowling ball-licking Jesus Quintana.

So raise a White Russian to the dude who really ties us all together. Happy birthday, Duderino.

Watchmen Trailer

A teaser trailer for Watchmen is now online. Pretty good so far for an impossible to film movie.

Reasons to be Cheerful 4.1

Johnny Depp narrates a documentary on the life and times of Hunter S Thompson. The tomatoes look promising.

A kid's movie featuring the Exclusive Brethren, Son of Rambow.

A toll booth operator who takes on the memories of Holocaust survivors in The Memory Thief.

Bill Maher teams up with Borat director Larry Williams for Religulous.

Reasons to be Cheerful IV

2007 was a good year for movies. Black Snake Moan and Pan's Labyrinth led the pack by some lengths, although other reviewers had their own favourites. Haven't seen The Darjeeling Limited yet... hmmm... Kiwi movies made a splash on Empire's Top 5 lists, with Eagle vs Shark in Best Laughs, and Black Sheep for Best Tagline. Kiwi humour today. Tomorrow, the WORLD!

What does 2008 have in store from the storytellers? Kate Roger says American Gangster and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are worth a go. All good stories involve blood. If you can throw a musical into a bloodbath and get away with it, then it's worth a go. Paul Thomas Anderson shows that the Western ain't dead with There Will Be Blood. It's about oil.

Roger Donaldson returns with The Bank Job, an anti-authority movie harking back to Sleeping Dogs:

"In September 1971, thieves tunneled into the vault of a bank in London's Baker Street and looted safe deposit boxes of cash and jewelry worth over three million pounds. None of it was recovered. Nobody was ever arrested. The robbery made headlines for a few days and then disappeared - the result of a 'D' Notice, gagging the press. This film reveals what was hidden for the first time. The story involves murder, corruption and a sex scandal with links to the Royal Family - a story in which the thieves were the most innocent people involved."

2008 is brought to you by the number 2. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. All hell breaks loose. Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. Hopefully, Doogie doesn't. Of course, one can't ignore the return of The Dark Knight. Some particularly bad timing for Helen Clark. Lots of cartoon mileage to be made here:



Versus:



Yes, it's going to get very dirty. But that is another post.

Fernando Meirelles' follow-up to City of God, City of Men, is the most anticipated of the number 2s. While we're in the ethnic (non-Hollywood) section, best to keep an eye out for Mongol. In the kids' section, there's the classic Where The Wild Things Are. Directed by Spike Jonze with fantastic casting.

Back in the Hollywood category, the studios have doubled 2 and discovered Indy 4, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Rocky 6 proved not only that Sly can't count higher than one hand, Stallone's synapses have stretched his creative talents to calling Rambo 4, John Rambo. This time he's not conspiring with Taleban.

Enough dreck. The most anticipated movie of 2008 is a draw between Burn After Reading and Synecdoche, New York. Burn After Reading is a Coen Brothers spy comedy, while Synecdoche, New York is Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut.

Reasons to be Cheerful 3.11

Yesterday morning, a mate's missus went to the midwife for a check-up for the bundle of joy due in May. The midwife couldn't find a heart beat. Mr and Mrs went off to Wellington Hospital this morning from Kapiti. Throughout the day, the whanau had gathered. In the halls outside, babies cradled in the arms of others', babies in incubators rushing past, songs sung by jubilant strangers. My mates' wife sat all day in a delivery room with a dead baby inside her.

In the waiting room, there was a surprisingly accurate crayon drawing of the classic African safari variety. Around the border was the story of twins who died in utero in the same trimester as this one had. Later on, other stories came out. Dead babies handed over in ice cream containers. Things had changed since those days, but my mate felt some comfort in bringing his own coffin.

Back at work, Cleaner Dave told how his sister had had the same thing happen, only without the midwife check-ups to bring attention to the death. The baby had gone septic inside her. Full hysterectomy, the works.

So, all in all, it's been a pretty fucked-up kinda week. In search of distractions, I have realised how poorly my research into movies was recently. I hereby wish to add this Supplementary Order Paper:

300 - The Battle of Thermoperlimmi-, Thermopylon-, The Battle between the Spartans and Persians as rendered by Frank Miller.

Pan's Labyrinth - How did I miss this? The trailer bogglingly draws on legends such as Alice in Wonderland, The Diary of Anne Frank, LOTR and Neil Gaiman's A Game of You. Hat Tip - The cute chick at Arty Bees.

Zodiac - David Fincher's latest, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey.